Zombie means performing basically repetitive tasks by rote and without questioning or evaluation, whether for money or not. It is a state of relative insensibility and numbness with programmed and programmable behaviors and attitudes, similar to a robot, through advertising, regulations, appeals to status and vanity, the opinions of others about self and "popular" values, what's considered important and "good." It's driven by outer expectations and fads. There are a lot of examples historically and recently from the popularity of "pet rocks," cabbage patch dolls, SUVs for suburbia, clothing fashions like tie width and Twiggy mini-skirts, teased hair and pompadours, job titles regardless of work and responsibility entailed, associations by rank not real affection or knowledge, and enactment of the socio-economic theory du jour. These are "reeds in the wind," artifice spouting what's accepted as palatably "okay" or "cool" or "hip" etcetera without honest, thoughtful and independent analysis, reflection or real personal opinion based on experience, knowledge, study and learning. In some cases zombieism is the result of exhaustion, sensory overload, overwhelming problems, and the complexity and confusion of data input, or a lack of alternatives. Zombie institutions, like some banks, are composed by definition predominantly of zombie individuals. Institutions are just concepts, mental constructs, conceptual structures. The organism itself is a usually-charted and hierarchichal compilation, accumulation of beings acting and interacting in particular ways which make up the institution's atmosphere and actuality.

To fully live one opens up awareness with diverse offerings and alternatives that stimulate all the senses with "spice," mental functioning with games, problem-solving, and interior and exterior information that evokes emotion, fascination, insight, and education. Redundancy is deadening -- work that entails enduringly repetitive motions of all kinds with no allowance for creativity, innovation or choice, no fully functioning life creates a zombie-like existence. So does the enforcement and/or acceptance of rigid behavioral roles in social relationships whether work-related or personal or community-based.

Zombies have lived their lives without ever really loving anyone, including themselves, or land, air and water, or any thing or ecstancy -- which they wouldn't know or recognize -- or God, angels and saints, spirits or aliens, nor beauty, truth, goodness, law, elegance, grace, fulfilling creativity, discovery and intimate friendly and/or sexual interaction. They're an outer shell with an unexplored, undelved, unknown interior, and most likely one greatly diminished by lack of input and output, vitalization and consultation. Their power is increasingly broken now as the consequences of mindlessness have spread in destroying old forms and formalities and the justice system on various levels investigates and adjudicates dedications of dishonor, hate and condemnation, forcing those involved to face facts and fate, or in some cases simply wait for the ax to come around and fall inevitably on them and their families and communities. The "love" zombies bought in that past is decreasingly available and worthless really as they've generally lost the opportunity to experience the real thing in giving and receiving. The punishment of deprivation in being, or having been, a zombie is worse than anything any system or individual or group might and generally will bring to bear, a death in a life never really lived or experienced and certainly in no way approaching its fullest potential of glorious awakening and knowledge, experience and endeavor.

In an era inundated by dysfunctional systems and concommitant misery, many worldwide have turned to pharmaceuticals legal and not for relief, to the profit of medical professionals and corporations as well as "drug lords" of a lesser kind inter-continentally. However, these are panaceas which don't address the underlying causes of harm and disorder. Psychotropic drugs of all kinds are certainly a source of enslavement, zombieism, that preclude being happily and fully alive. We need to focus instead personally and inter/nationally on alleviating and remediating the sources and to fund and staff reputable and effective rehabilitation from addiction. Well-known physical, cognitive and social therapies with personnel educated and skilled in their use are available and need to be so increasingly as that population of need has expanded over the past decade particularly. At least some resources easily accessible are free -- on-line and library assistance in various traditional and new remedies -- and require only individual strength and dedication to discovery, exploration and learning/incorporating new behaviors and attitudes that are healthy and free of toxicity. Quite a few are mentioned throughout ACR in various places, but there are many, many other resources indexed by major internet search engines, referenced by librarians, and locatable through magazines and newspapers devoted to wholesome lifestyles.

To be truly alive is to know that one is a moving and effective piece -- with resultancies from outstandingly wonderful to abominably horrid -- in an incomprehensibly large and complex puzzle of God's making. In my experience there appear to be, with gradations from complete to slight, "I" and "We" people. The former see only their own interests and tend to assume others are similarly motivated. "Scam artists" and others who prey generally on their fellows construct and experience the world as "me versus you/them" without reference to real similarities and differences or mutual interests. The latter are acutely aware of the reactions and feelings, challenges and flaws, victories and distresses of others, especially within their immediate environment and extending from that planet-wide. The "We" people themselves feel badly when someone else is injured or ill; that very frequently leads them to help, or try to. The "I" ones are immune to that, although they may occasionally express the expected as in, "Hope you're feeling better soon" without really meaning it or caring or seeing an opportunity for "altruistic" action. They don't understand the "We" people at all, although the reverse is not true. In my opinion, and that of quite a few others, it's impossible to be truly religious and/or spiritual in that consciousness, the insistence that only "I" am really important and worthwhile, nor is that a reality in the universe. A little excursion through nature and the news from local to international at least occasionally obviates that as a possibility.

A few good and interesting, mostly free sources:
ARTS AND NATURE:
The Affordable Art Fair 2009, New York City NY
A! Arts Mountain Empire, arts council of the Mountain Empire, Appalachia Central
The Jewish Museum, New York City NY
National Museum of African Art, Washington DC
Moscow House of Photography, Moscow Russia
Smoky Mountain National Park
Twitter First Fans, on-line internet community with membership fee

NEWS:
Appalachian Voices, hardcopy and on-line community "bringing people together to protect our mountain heritage"
The Huffington Post
NPR (National Public Radio)
PBS (Public Broadcasting Service)
AlterNet (award-winning Independant Media Institute news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and amplifies the best of hundreds of other independent media sources to inspire action and advocacy on the environment, human rights and civil liberties, social justice, media, and health care issues)
News Trust (non-profit community of news consumers, experienced journalists, educators and students)

It is a cynical fallacy over centuries proven untrue that people prefer bread to freedom and truth. They have substantially and repeatedly chosen over bread freedom of thought, expression, religion, mobility and governance. "Man does not live by bread alone," but by higher functions which define the species and distinguish it from inanimate objects and vegetation. It's extraordinarily callous to assert and act otherwise -- truly ignorant and mindless of reality and history. There is considerable evidence that the species is frequently flawed by what may be grouped as "the seven deadly sins" and fallen individually and collectively on occasion by temptation to each and/or all, particularly by provocation, enticement and material reward. One purpose of law is to mitigate and punish the worst evidences of their manifestations, to promote life-affirming goodness personally and inter/nationally, communally. Directions of our recent past are wrong to a mind-boggling extent and correction of the consequences will take time and courage to analyze, reorder and mend. Other than divine intervention, there is no quick or easy fix to the mistreatments of people and planet by criminal methods that have been allowed to fester for years other than a very firm and public determined direction otherwise. "Words are cheap," but only demonstrable actions make a convincing difference in reality, perception and/or opinion personally and worldwide.

It does not undermine national security to punish and permanently abolish interrogation techniques that are not only illegal but patently ineffective or worse. We need good, reliable, valuable intelligence most historically and scientifically derived from non-abusive investigative and psychological techniques, not terror and physical torture. We need to identify and punish bad behaviors of the past as well as work diligently toward correcting their corrosive and caustic effects. At some level "holy warriors" don't break down because, by definition, they can't. You can't break God. You can, however, disable, disease and/or kill a human being. The inter/national community needs to analyze and address inequalities and inequities that give rise to righteous extremism if it wishes to mitigate those inevitable effects and consequences. Intelligent and fair individuals are not impressed by any claimed superiority or "holy" elitism that results in palpable evil, harm, on the ground personally and publically, making it very obvious that something is profoundly wrong. From diseased and dying children to an ecologically ill planet that isn't true to anyone sensate and still cognizant. As an historic example, no conditions on the ground deterred the "holy warriors" of the European Christian Crusades in attempting to claim and keep the Holy Lands of Palestine from the pervasive ethnic, Arabic dominion of Islam.

This nation abolished autocratic rule "from sea to shining sea" in 1776, and we have reiterated that firm commitment and assertion from Aaron Burr through Leona Helmsly and beyond, and extending to international warrants currently against George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, that America has no ruling class or individual "above the law" and thereby free from prosecution and sanction ever since. Lawyers are citizens just like accountants and football players and brokers and factory workers and are as subject to criminal prosecution for professional and/or personal malfeasance as those pursuing other professions and leisure activities. They are not, very demonstrably, nor should they be an ultra-privileged elite that are somehow above the laws they're certified to represent and uphold as employees in various respects of persons, businesses and governments. It would be an extraordinarily bad precedent to set that attorneys are somehow absolved from criminal prosecution for breaking, or advocating the breaking of law. That is an oxymoron, painfully and fatally idiotic in conception and potential activation.

There being nothing at all uncivil or intolerant about the vast preponderance of our laws at all levels, perhaps this is a good time to review and modify our routine granting of diplomatic immunity from observance of them by those serving here foreign countries. That is a perquisite most employed historically and frivolously to evade adherence to parking and driving regulations including those related to substance consumption, thereby potentially and actually endangering traveling citizens on our byways and highways nationwide, and for absolution on occasion for other more lecherous and dissipated activities. This constitutes a persistent menace of their selves, vehicles and other properties to Americans going about the businesses of their work, study and everyday lives. Why should foreign citizens any more than native attorneys be absolved from civil responsibility and criminal adjudication for real or possibly hazardous crimes? And why should Washington DC not join other glorious and storied national capitals -- such as Tunis, The Hague, Tripoli, Beirut, Rome, Dublin, Tel Aviv, Athens, Cairo, Warsaw, Baghdad, Copenhagen, Algiers, Vienna, Beijing, Paris, Brussels, Sofia, London, Havana, Berlin, and Kingston to name a few well-regarded over times past and present -- in vying for claim to being known and experienced as the most invitingly prestigious in every way?

At the core an individual is created by God, regardless of the structural raiment of any particular religion. Any attempt to disrupt or distend that identity by the force of man is a recipe for catastrophe, flying in the face of God's will and plan. Torture techniques employed against me, unapologetically and without restitution of extensive legally-recorded personal property and well-known damages, over a long period of time in and from Virginia's Shenandoah Valley are a perfect example of their inefficacy in eliciting true, reliable data or positive results of any kind while all documentary evidence supported and still does my initial and frequently voiced contentions of identity, reality and common sense otherwise.

To compete successfully in the global markets of the 21st century we need the alive, not the zombie, to develop, manage, maintain and run our complicated, chip-driven, programmed and programmable machines in factories, offices, shops, businesses and homes. Those operators need to be educated and educable, skilled, knowledgeable problem-solvers, innovators with openly constructive and creative minds. The world of zombies is a trip to becoming a third-world country on our way to being primitive and then extinct. We've visited "The (Sloppy, Droppy, Crocky, Jocky, Schlocky, Balky, Cocky, Gawky, Tacky, Whacky, Sacky, Cracky, Blocky, Flacky) Flocky Horror Show" most recently, witnessed and experienced its banality and bereftness of real progress or hope for a liveable planetary home. We know full well now that it doesn't work survivably, or pleasantly, and that no truly intelligent being would choose it, by ballot or otherwise.

One way to cut health care costs -- as is so desperately needed to balance budgets personal, business and governmental -- is to encourage healthy behaviors and life styles, particularly in our most vulnerable populations of the young, old and disabled, with education and civic participation as well as wholesome exercise, mind and diet. In this central Mountain Empire region, as just one out of many examples of the latter, the young and the adult have separate volunteer civic chorales which practice regularly and perform publicly to enthusiastic crowds. There are very inexpensive continued learning courses and lectures easily accessible also covering a wide variety of interesting topics from health maintenance to regional entertainments.

You can't cure anything by treating the symptoms instead of the disease. From a woman's right to choose her partner and directions of reproduction to each individual's right to choose governance of self and society, we've been pushed badly astray from long-held spiritual precepts and the underlying estimable principles of democracy, most particularly "one wo/man, one vote." The majority of American citizens in the year 2000 incontravertibly and with good sensibility chose then Vice President and now Nobel Peace Prize recipient Al Gore and his running mate, the first Jew accorded that honor and a well-respected independent U.S. Senator, Joe Leiberman, to lead our next federal administration. The American voters were overridden and overwhelmed, unfortunately, by electoral and legal malfunctions not of their making or sympathy. The price of fraud is disarray worldwide and historic infamy and condemnation for all eternity. The hijacking of democracy by blind and self-serving tyrants is a lesson and caution for the ages to come of vitality and honor usurped by criminality.

The electoral college system of governance was created by flawed individuals, many of whom conceded personally to the South's euphemistically-named "pecular institution" of slavery, a Biblical no-no, and counted Africans as only three-fifths of a human being. We have corrected that error of judgment, ethics and perspicacity. Perhaps it's time to address that with its underlying distrust in conception and structure of the popular will since that has proven to be nearly fatal and unarguably harmful to the greatest nation on earth and its sentient, stalwart people of all races, creeds and ethnicities. "The proof is in the pudding," and the electoral college has shown itself to be an artifact of prejudiced elitism and tyranny, as have our current Court systems from lowly to the highest in our land. It has not proven to be the people en masse who are untruthworthy or lacking in faith and good will but those who would override their free choice and embrace slavery and its tortures and torments which are still an abomination in the sight of God and man, as they were millenia past. It is not a cadre of unethical elitists who are "exceptional," as self-proclaimed, in any positive sense, but the historically hardy, adventurous, hard-working and innovative American people, the enfranchised citizens of the United States.

From classroom to media to informal conversation, the painful consequences of our 2000 election event and continued structure of the electoral college have earned and need open discussion, inquiry, analysis and recalibration, along with that of our Court system so frequently at odds in action with the Bill of Rights and other perquisites of our Constitution. "One person, one vote" means that our democracy, meant as a model for the world of that political structure, system and theory of politics and society, adheres to the highest standards and has processes and professional officials from locality to state to federal that are beyond reproach -- transparent and easily reviewed for error or prosecutable fraud -- of which we may all be justifiably proud.

Blaming victims for the crime is the oldest game in the world and infamous in errant application to rape, robbery, torture, enslavement, maiming and murder of women, Jews, Africans and any ethnicity or religion or association unfavored by tyrants singly and collectively. However, in the eyes of God and the judgments of law and history, individuals are ultimately held responsible for their own actions taken freely by their conscious decisions and choices and the deleterious results of those. The natural laws of cause and effect, action and reaction, yin and yang cannot be overwhelmed in the long run by malicious and pernicious, profoundly idiotic and ignorant egoists. Only true and universal freedom can mitigate those, and must.

"Grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things." -- Saint Paul (Ephesians 3:8-9)

The Nazi Holocaust that robbed Jews and other ethnicities of property, businesses, freedom, dignity, health and life is extraordinarily well-documented, including at Washington D.C.'s Holocaust Museum and in many official documents and photographs archived elsewhere, as well as in the memories of surviving GI's who came upon the horror of concentration camp remains. To deny that it happened, or any other somewhat less horrific of our holocausts worldwide over the aeons, is a psychopathology that needs to be addressed as such since it is an absolute fantasy of denial and disbelief easily and importantly proveable as such. One's religion is, of course, a matter of free choice in this country protected by the Constitution in adoption and expression and is not legally subject to induction by force and against individual will and comprehesion. I see no evidence that "the burn agins" have caused or earned for themselves eternally anything but Hell from a God who chose Jews as His Chosen People, a Jew as His son, and a Jew as that child's earthly mother. It's past time for the Gentile to "get a clue." God does not condone or forgive relentless, unrestrained and unrepentent barbarism against any of His children, or desecretion of His other creations either.

On my three last fraudulent jailings by Virginia's Shenandoah Valley criminals, I wrote on the entrance papers in the place asking religious preference "Jew," because I identified more with that religion than brands of "Christianity" most prevalent at the time, most particularly "the burn agins" with their ignorant aggressions and vicious intolerance and incursions into matters of private and intimate choice that were absolutely none of their business, personally or legally. Perhaps those entries explain some of the Valley's extreme pitilessness toward me and determined attempts through propaganda and drugging to change my consciousness and attitudes to ones acceptable to them. They failed as I never intend to align myself with abuse and bigotry nor have any sympathy at all for those who pursue those in activity and allowance. As I've said and written elsewhere, Jews have behaved personally and professionally toward me throughout my lifetime with extraordinary generosity and good will and taught me much that has enriched my life and that of others in every conceivable way. I would never abandon or forsake people and a sacred obligation to them, their true knowledge and education, who showed me a path toward blessings and riches that cannot really be adequately described or conveyed in service of the true God and the real Christ but are worth more than any money or horror endured in recompense for breaking laws of every kind in that region and, unfortunately, nationally also. Theft, murder, torture, and other harms to the children and creations of God cannot possibly earn Heaven for anybody, and that is very clear in both the Old and New Testaments of The Holy Word of God. Those are also tenets of almost all other world religions as written and transmitted orally. It is certainly not the message of Jesus, and one cannot be "born again," by inflicting them on anybody. One can, however, earn historic condemndation and eternal damnation as promised by earthy and holy law.

It's time and past to get known criminal tormentors quieted and off the streets so good people can live and work in peace and prosperity in our beloved country, the land of freedom and plenty, and for the Commonwealth of Virginia in particular to reclaim its heritage as home of multiply intelligent and well-educated founding fathers of our country's political and legal structures and ideals. Prison is for those who can't handle freedom responsibly as some have proven inept in that to the point of nearly untreatable catastrophe. That is what law enforcement personnel and Courts are meant, designed and enabled for, not the perpetration and perpetuation of evil in unrestrained thought and activity. The somewhat flawed legacy of Virginia's original families in the perplexity and miscegenation of owning slaves, despite verbal dedication to freedom universally, has long since been Constitutionally abolished and overcome magnanimously by our current President, First Lady and their families. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, President and innovator, scientist and philosopher, we "...shall need too, the favor of that being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old from their native land." Armies of the light from all fields can do this, and must if life and love are to prevail on this small sphere of God's truly glorious and infinite world. Acting now in concert we cannot fail.

"When you pray, don't forget to move your feet." -- African proverb

Sight

As villagers fled conflict and privation
by fording a river dangerous too,
one child fell screaming
from his father's shoulder,
caught in the torrent,
lost to the seige,
and I wonder sometimes what glories,
magnificence and magic
he may also have witnessed
that others have missed
in their quests for earthly power
and material beneficence.
Some sands flow
irridescent and electrified
under the mystery of night skies.
Rare plants thrive
and grandly-colored birds fly
in places the "rich" dare not visit
except to raze and plunder.
So what did he know and see
that they never will
though they live to be a hundred?
And to escape harrowing pain
what heights of spirit,
consciousness and concentration
did he and others climb?
God's blessings aren't for
narrowed minds and sightless eyes
when they close them,
ever-blind and unaware,
to die as they've lived,
really,
alone
and unawaited.