As long as happiness
Denmark, with its democracy, social equality and peaceful atmosphere, is the happiest country in the world. Zimbabwe, torn by political and social strife, is the least happy. The world's richest nation, the United States, ranks 16th. ~University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research (July 1, 2008)
Happyland
This morning I want to live in Denmark. People are happy there and happiness matters. I don’t want to live in unhappy Zimbabwe, but someone has to. It’s global law, I suppose. If there is space for oppression and dictatorial ruthlessness where popular happiness is outlawed so that only a few, secured by guns, might enjoy it, then I don’t want to live there. There are other lands one can be happy in: Switzerland, Iceland, Ireland, Netherland, Swedenland, Canadaland. I’ve been happy in one of them and can attest to its utmost purity.
Outside my window smoke lingers from a week of fire. It might be civil warfare or the afterbirth of earthquake, but it’s only burning chaparral. Zimbabwe lives this everyday and there is endless ash in the struggle for human spirit. But today I’m happy to sport wooden clogs and blond braids, enjoy Danish and coffee in flowering fields of sun, watch happy beaming girls go by in fifteen happier countries than my own with perfect smiles on their happy faces. Yet, as long as Zimbabwes exist, as long as happiness can be classified, it’s hard to see what it is any of them are smiling about.
Joseph Gallo
July 7, 2008
post-time 6:30 PM
6 Comments:
So true. Oppression always finds its way to survive. No matter of mass of bombs could ever replace the Fact that when it can be done, there are the few who believe it should be done. They are the ones to enact such immoral atrocities and become a blight to the mass of civilized and uncivilized society. Power is an unstable tool; even more so when glory is the prize at hand. Some wish to be remembered while other had forgotten their goals long after corruption flooded their minds.
Thus so, the other hand holds something different; people with a sense of good and bad, so they can see the good for all and stray away from the bad. Those people are few and far between and are starting to become a luxury in this world. The gluttony and excess of Men shall prove to be our eventual downfall. No matter of riches bring happiness. True we should be like our friend Denmark and offer a hand up rather than keep our eyes closed to everything lesser in our world.
spot on. its been awhile... im glad i dropped by. i missed reading your work
Macevalor & Rax: Thank you both for your comments. I appreciate your stopping by and taking note. And I guess it's about time I posted something new, eh?
Must do . . . ;-)
Both of you---keep writing; keep mattering.
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/
this site originates from your country ... fyi ... even more than happiness, peace.
NOTR: I'm glad you stated the site originates from our country because true democracy sure as hell doesn't. Not as long as the abominable Electoral College exists to render its running mockery of each and every castrated national vote we so blithely and dutifully cast and which is then summarily shredded to bits not too unlike that emblematic symbol of freedom in our bomb-torn striped-and-spangled banner that has garnered such embarrassingly widespread renown in anthems as well as the blood-soaked actions and rhetoric of so-called patriots.
Kurt Vonnegut made several observations about liberty and democracy in his book Fates Worse Than Death calling the intended notion of our so-called experiment in liberty only recently commencing within the past hundred years and only now beginning to take somewhat of a footing in reality.
After all, it never had a chance at its inception due primarily to the fact that SLAVERY existed for another HUNDRED YEARS AFTER the signing of the Declaration Of Independence. How much liberty was there in that? Considerably less than in the nearly spamless spam-spam-spam-sausage-eggs-and-spam, that's how much.
Unparalleled bastion of liberty and democracy? Wethinks not! But there are some of us, many of us, who daily dream and work for that very reality not only here in America, but the world over.
And if these fucking governments and religionists don't get the hell out of our way, we will make it happen by sheer force of will and numbers unless we blow ourselves up before we can. Which also remains a strong possibility in that American Roulette involves only one bullet, but millions of guns. Did I mention it's a NEWKYALER bullet?
Luckily for Vonnegut, he died in April of '07 and won't have to further express, in English plain enough for any mind to ferret the meaning of even with a fully-uninstalled substandard education, which a full third of us can gleefully declaim, the dire scope of our truer natures and current global conditions, human or otherwise, thank-you-very-much-indeed.
Don't get me started, Rose. Too late. LOL
Thanks for your comment and for stopping by and I just know you've got some good poetry over at Soak The Edge along with your usually divine photos to read and savor.
PS: The above-mentioned site's URL is actually http://www.democracyinaction.org/
:-)
wow ...
now there`s an american perspective that the rest of the world rarely sees. indeed; what is the face of democracy alongside 30 million(!) NEWKYALER warheads still kept in so-called SAFE storage?!
I agree with you that the notion of liberty and democracy transcends borders. With the locus of power shifting in your country, in Pakistan and maybe mine too soon, perhaps a new world order is on the horizon. Don't fight humanity's spiritual evolution, just let it happen. Dare to dream.
... interesting comments, btw.
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