Entries from April 2009 ↓

From the time we are able to talk, we unconsciously want to impress others with our superiority.  Men especially love to compete.  They want to run faster, drive better cars and get laid with more regularity than the next Joe.

And that’s where so many people – secretly humiliated by braggarts – begin to develop defense mechanism of inadequacy.  I can remember when I was sixteen there was this eighteen-year-old braggart, Fred, who always talked about is felatio with a woman I never met.  Regardless of whether or not he had actually done what he said, I, a virgin, had to nervously laugh at his alleged exploits and behave as if I knew what he was talking about intimately.

Feelings of inadequacy shook me to the bone.  I wondered how he got laid and had women crawling to be on top of or underneath him.  But I was too embarrassed to ask him how he attracted women and got them to disrobe voluntarily.  My fears haunted me until my late twenties.  I never became a Don Juan, nor was that in my DNA.

Not too long ago, I reread Napolean Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich.”  In one chapter he implied that to become rich you must have or develop sex appeal.  No wonder, I surmised, it was so difficult for me to accumulate wealth.  Napolean Hill,  as a young man, was clearly verile and extremely handsome.  He probably didn’t have to work at being sexy and verile; everyone just assumed he was and treated him as such.  His self-confidence soared.

When people are unquestionably handsome or pretty, they attract people without effort.  In attracting others, they build self-confidence – sometimes ungrounded – that they can seduce anyone at anytime…and they usually can!  On the surface of it, life does seem quite unfair.

Most of the world’s wealth is controlled by less than five percent of the people on this planet.  There is no scientific way to verify this, but I would guess that ninety percent of the five percent are sexually attractive either through looks or endowment or inheritance.  The remainder struggle mightily to find the confidence to believe in their own self worth.  They have to manufacture sexiness through becoming mavens or artisans in some field.  Most don’t have the perseverance to rise above the rabble.

A great majority of people secretly wonder why they don’t have sex appeal.  They dress for success and buy cars and toys beyond their means because they feel like naked eunuchs or hags inside and want to cover up their inadequacies.  What they often attract is not success and wealth, but a cheap imitation of it.  They are frauds and know deep down inside – if they dare take a moment to reflect – that they feel sexually inadequate and frustrated despite outward appearances.

In writing this raw piece I hope to wake up people to the naked truth.  The first step in changing for the better is to admit rather than cover up our inadequacies.

The ninety percent of us without natural gifts and talents and money must learn to challenge the more verile and sensual to a duel of the heart.  That is where each of us with less natural endowment can win against the beautiful-looking and silver-spooned crowd.

“Out of difficulties grow miracles”

~Jean De La Bruyere~

Just a few days ago I had a galling situation with my new doctor.  As some of you may know, a few months ago I had angioplasty surgery and had a stent put in my aortic artery.

Since that time my life habits have been exemplary, and as a result my weight has decreased by close to 12 kilograms without starvation and my blood pressure was 110 over 66 the other day.

When I had my worst moment – prior to surgery – I had been fortunate to be in the right place (with a good friend).  He knew a hospital and could pull strings so that I could be admitted as an emergency patient.  Equally fortunate was that I was met by a young, aggressive, knowledgeable doctor who spoke English very well.

The operation and recovery went smoothly.  My rapport with the doctor was good, probably because I knew that my lifestyle in the previous year sucked and that I had to get back on the straight and narrow.  He could sense my determination.

Then the bombshell came  .My cardiologist told me he was changing hospitals and would no longer be able to treat me.  He recommended that I switch to a Japanese military hospital in my area, and he wrote his letter of introduction to be submitted to the new hospital along with my record of illness.

When I met with the new physician a few days ago, he said in somewhat halting English that “I understand your case well.”

I immediately bristled at that presumption.  I said to the doctor:  “You know nothing about me.  I am not a laboratory specimen.  I have spirit and a will to recover and thrive – not just survive on a regiment of pills.”

He was taken aback by my controlled anger, but he shouldn’t have  been.  If we are sick, it is because our thoughts are sick.  I am not a statistic, nor are you.  We all have the ability to thrive and, at times, participate in miracles.

My favored cardiologist was on my recovery team.  The new doctor, unfortunately, was on my survival team.  The previous doctor – seeing how I had mastered my eating and was gradually increasing my exercise level – wanted to do some CT scans to test the amount of oxygen in my blood after moderate exercise.  The new doctor said that that wouldn’t be necessary for at least six months.

Now I am not saying that a person with a heart condition should throw caution to the wind, but I am saying that a resilient human spirit can create miracles.  Cancers can go into remission and hearts can inexplicably regenerate when our attitudes are in the right place.

At the end of the Second World War and just before the inauguration of the United Nations, a significant though obscure book was published called “The Anatomy of Peace.”  The author, Emery Reves, proposed that the reason for war was the illegitimate rule of illegitimate states which distorted freedoms.

Reves said:

“In the middle of the Twentieth Century, we are living in an era of absolute political feudalism in which the nation-states have assumed exactly the same roles as were assumed by the feudal barons a thousand years ago…..There is nothing kings, emperors or tyrants ever did to their subjects that nation-states are not doing today.”

While it can be said that colonialism and blatant hegemony came to a relative end when the Berlin Wall came down and glasnost spread to Eastern Europe, in reality the United States in particular has continued to justify hegemony in the false name of democracy.  Other countries give America a complicit wink because the United States – at least until recently – was the catalyst to world economic growth.

But world growth really means that a few nations control most of the wealth and another few get a trickle down effect which helps a few within those developing nations to become rich while many continue live in squalor or substandard conditions devoid of any dignity.

Sovereign states by their very nature  can only concern themselves with the welfare of other sovereign states in so far as those nations buy the goods and services we want to sell and we buy the goods and services they have to offer.

This is a purely economic pact between sovereign nations and, in general, when poorer, resource-poor nations violate international law, the western world doesn’t usually give hoot unless there is an outcry which could lead to the defeat or ouster of the ruling elite.  Then the leaders will posture and take a band aid action to quell the violence and silence the critics.

If I sound cynical it is because for 58 years I have watched history repeat itself.  The strong nations subjugate the poorer ones, steal natural resources and then leave the looted conquered lands to warlords and Machiavellian dictators and scoundrels.  Somalia is a blatant case in point.

The only solution to insure that the continued flow of oil and the ecological salvation of the planet is to relinquish the arbitrary borders between people and ideas.  We must not let the hegemony of the United States and its allies continue just because the leaders of these nations can sound benevolent.  History has proven again and again, they are not the sheep but the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

We cannot rest in peace as long as almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.  They are the pirates of Somalia who have chosen terror as the only way to balance the economic playing field.  Sovereignty is a disease which can only react to war, poverty and tyranny when the economic interest of the sovereign nation is in jeopardy.

The sovereign nations of the world have become an anachronistic reminder that the anatomy of peace can only be achieved when a large portion of the world’s population can participate in the technological advancement of an elite few nations.

Every day I communicate with people from all corners of the globe and although at times we can misinterpret each others’ intentions, with each passing day we are learning that we are all brothers and that no king, no president, no dictator has a right or duty to group us and box us off from each other.

President Reagan got it right in words if not deeds when he said:  “Information is the oxygen of the modern age.  It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.”

It is time to prove the late President was right.  Let all of our people go.