the hardening within

By far the worst part of living in San Francisco is the large homeless population.

It’s rather the opposite of what you’re probably thinking.

The decay of empathy starts slowly, as you first say “no” every time you’re asked for money. It accelerates quickly after that, as you simultaneously discard eye contact while pretending you didn’t hear the entreaty, eliminating the need to respond. By the end, the scar tissue covers your mind’s eye and there is no active act of refusal anymore. The blind spot you’ve grown simply and completely blocks out what you wish not to see, acknowledge, comprehend, empathize.

That — the complete hardening of oneself until you un-see the unpleasantness — is one of the worst transformative acts I’ve ever seen in myself.

My conclusion is that in between the periods of protective rationalization, embrace the shame and make something positive happen. There’s no gordian solution, just a billion brief bouts of empathy.

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striking the root

Without hyperbole, the most important problem in America today is that as individual citizens, we have lost our sovereignty. It is gone, lost to corrupting power of money. No matter your political suasion, everything you think is wrong with America today stems from this one root cause. Really.

The most important 90 minutes you can spend this weekend is listening to Larry Lessig lecture on this topic. He explains the depth and breadth of the corruption, and he proposes a plan to solve it.

This weekend, instead of giving more of your time and money to the entertainment industry (who have proven themselves to be actively hostile towards us), listen to this lecture, and spend some time thinking about what it means.

There’s no call to action — yet. We are planting the seeds for a grassroots revolution that needs to come.

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Stepping off the soapbox now, I observe with a hint of irony that it is in fact the entertainment industry that has given us the best treatment of the overwhelmingly corruptive powers of institutions on people, that being The Wire.

costumepus

The good stuff starts at 0:54.

Happy Platypus Friday!

scenes from the weekend

The 9th annual No Pants BART ride was over the weekend, and it was hilarity all around.

Jeff and I did the entire trip from condo, walking 10 blocks to BART, the festivities themselves, and the cab ride home all without pants.

Perhaps my favorite moment of the day was when a group of 20 of us were walking down the street, and encountered this mom and toddler. She asked us what we were up to, and we stuck to the line of just forgetting (or hating) pants. The little kid starts pulling at his pants and whines, “I want to take my pants off too!” and this being San Francisco, the mom happily obliged. I shudder to think of what laws were broken in that exchange.

All in all, a lovely time, and it’s been a while since I’ve flown the freak flag.

Check the rest of the album on Picasa: NoPantsSF

flipping over you

From 2011 Year End

We interrupt this Platypus Friday with a delightful video of otters at the Denver Aquarium.

Happy day!