New Year's Resolutions - More Important Than Ever

Given the total turmoil in our current society, there is a certain amount of risk in making firm resolutions about the future. No matter what my aspirations, it all could be for nothing if the upcoming cataclysm ends “normal” life as we know it. Climate catastrophes, power disruption, environmental poisoning, and even Civil War could break out at any moment.

Despite this, I think it may be time to make a few resolutions that, if nothing else, may help to keep me focused in the New Year. Here are the things I hope to improve about myself in the near future.

Appreciate my friends and family

Death can happen to anybody at any time. I don’t mean to be depressing here, but you never know when someone you love will pass on. I will strive to treat EVERY interaction with my friends and family as if it was my last. I will treasure each exchange and try to show respect for everyone’s point of view.

Simplify my life

I am a hoarder. In the course of my life, I have accumulated a large amount of “stuff.” Interesting stuff, for the most part, but there is a lot of it, and it tends to make my life more complicated. Most of what I have is analog information of one type or another (books, records, tapes, maps, magazines, etc.) and has little intrinsic value. I hope to sift through this mountain of stuff and do a massive sorting – determining what things are of no use to anyone and getting rid of it, finding good homes for some of it, and essentially trying to reduce the things in my environment.

Travel more

This will be my first full year in retirement and I hope to spend a good part of it on the road, visiting friends and family, and taking a lot of photographs. I have no idea how much longer I will be healthy enough for hiking and long distance traveling, so I better do it now while I still can.

Be more accurate

My Facebook friends know that I treat my Timeline as sort of my own National Geographic Channel. In addition to my own photographs, I often post things of a historical or geographic nature on a wide variety of subjects. I don’t always get it right. I do try to make sure the things I write are accurate, but sometimes have my facts wrong. Fortunately, my “brain trust” of Facebook friends catches the errors and discretely provide the correct information. I am hoping to ensure more accuracy in my posts and will do the research necessary to make sure I am not just spreading “fake news.”

Be more fair

I cannot deny that I have somewhat firm political and economic opinions. At this point, most of us do. I have strong liberal and progressive values, and have often entered into lively exchanges on social media about politics, racism, economics, the environment and gun violence. I do have a number of conservative friends and they often respond to my comments with considerable vigor. Despite my attempt to only argue the facts and never attack anyone personally, I apparently cross the line at some point. In the last year, I have been accused of being vicious, hateful, racist, bigoted, ignorant, and retarded. Obviously, I am not doing a good job of displaying a sense of fairness, and I need to make sure I am arguing against the content of what people say and not their character.

Restore Democracy

This year, we all witnessed the destruction of Democracy in the United States. Based on Donald Trump’s questionable “victory” last year, Republicans have seized control of the government, filled it with the biggest swamp monsters they could find, and totally abandoned all pretenses of participatory democracy. They are eagerly dismantling government, selling off public assets to the highest bidder, withdrawing from the World stage and accelerating the flow of wealth upwards to the .0000000001%.

All of this is being done while denying ANY involvement of the opposition party. The United States is now officially a one-party dictatorship – one led by a narcissistic fat-cat with little grasp of economics, history, science or World affairs.

I will not stop voicing opposition to this. I intend to advocate, lobby, agitate, march, and speak out in every way I can about the current crisis we face. America is too good an idea to let be destroyed by greed.

I will try to keep this political commentary off of my Facebook timeline as much as I can. I will still be posting pretty flower pictures, photos of nice roads and such things, but our very future is now at stake, and I sometimes feel the need to point out some of the absurdities of our situation. These are issues we can no longer ignore.  The forces of inequality that are tearing our nation apart can either destroy us, or force us to figure out a more cooperative model for society. I will never stop advocating for the latter.