On April 20, an explosion on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico caused a massive leak a mile below the ocean’s surface. It was clear then that we were witnessing an historical catastrophe, and now, three weeks later, the oil continues to flow unchecked into our environment. Estimates of the damage have varied from bad to horrendous, and now there is video of the underwater oil geyser spewing forth its toxins into the environment. It is devastating. Having failed to contain it with a giant structure lowered to the seabed, BP admits that it’s arsenal to stop the leak is limited and includes a last ditch effort of shooting junk — actual human waste — into the hole in hopes of stopping it. While I am a fan of anything that works, this clearly demonstrates how unprepared the industry is to deal with their own environmental disasters.

Who is to blame? Everyone is pointing fingers and looking for a scapegoat. BP! Halliburton! The US Government! Each of these players had a role in this specific instance, but I think it comes down to our global obsession with petroleum. We have become oil fiends incapable of evaluating the true cost of our addiction. Not only does it wreak severe havoc on our natural environment with leaks and greenhouse gases, but we engage in war–as in destruction and murder– for its control. It is the basis of our economy, which relies on the illusion of cheap energy.

While I would love to believe that this disaster will be a wake-up call and will shift our dependence, I am highly skeptical that we are capable of this necessary change. We will probably continue our unabated consumption just as our artificial lifeblood currently gushes into our true lifeblood.

The Supergood ORG was hacked recently and I apologize to anyone who was randomly redirected away from the site. Luckily Matt at Bluehost Help Center worked it out, finding the offending code in my Wordpress Theme and eliminating it. I’m not going to take this cyber attack personally, and I am assuming that this is not a declaration of war on supergoodness, but it is still frightening how obviously vulnerable we are to dorks…

Ever since I celebrated what I considered to be one of the greatest political victories of all-time, it has been a constant losing battle. Obama’s victory felt like such a reversal of bad trends that had consumed our country during the Bush administration, but since that peak in November 2008, we have been subjected to more of the same; more bailouts, more troops, more gay-marriage defeats, more inaction on climate change. On Tuesday, my home state of Massachusetts dealt me a blow by electing Scott Brown to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat. When Kennedy died, I cried. He was a a lion in Senate and a personal hero; everything he did represented something good as he fought for truth, justice and equality for all. He was especially a force in the health care debate, a champion for universal care and when he passed away, the movement lost a great leader. Yet it seemed as though the Democrats, enjoying a 60-40 advantage in the Senate, were on the move towards passing a bill that would protect the people from the tyranny of the insurance industry. And then those Massholes elected Brown, giving the Republicans the filibuster they will use to crush our hope. That hurt.

But the worst news came on Thursday, when the Supreme Court struck down major campaign finance regulations to allow corporations unlimited election spending. When it comes down to it, I believe that this is the very root of American politics. We The People has been replaced by We The Capital; money has become infinitely more powerful than voters in politics, as influence is bought and sold by those who direct its flow. Lobbyists, Special Interest groups and Corporations buy votes and candidates with their “donations” and focus political discourse on their own issues and needs, shifting policy away from serving our best interests, and towards their own political, financial or moral profit. Our elected officials are then forced to vote for the money over the people. I don’t see any way that a politician could justify doing the best thing for the population by voting against health care, but I do see how a few groups wielding a ton of cash could initiate fear and convince the public that any changes to the current system would lead to a (terrifying!) socialist state. In exactly the same way that advertising works, our perceptions are based on information (true and false) and we are, as consumers, highly susceptible to our media. While money has always influenced politics, this decision opens the door to unlimited abuse and worse, makes a mockery of democracy. Whatever fears people might imagine about a “Socialist” USA should be completely undermined by the realities of our current Capitalocracy; our votes and our candidates have become commodities and the marketplace has just been completely deregulated. The only person who can truly benefit from this political structure is not a liberal or a conservative, but a corporation, to whom we have granted the unalienable rights of personhood.

In theory, Democracy works…

Following our San Francisco theme, we watched the amazing Gus Van Sant film about gay rights activist Harvey Milk. His dedication to the cause is truly inspiring, fighting endlessly to provide a voice for his people in government. Though ultimately tragic, his life represented hope and love in a world of intolerance and hate. He may have spoken loudly for a small minority, but anyone who desires freedom and justice should consider him a true hero. Amazingly, he fought the beginning of the gay rights movement around the time of my birth and here we are, thirty years on and the fight is still as big as ever, with discrimination against gay marriage (or gay adoption) the current vehicle of hate. When will we acheive real freedom for all? I deeply hope that it happens in my lifetime.

OK. The roll call I originally posted garnered two responses… And not coincidentally, those two readers happen to be my two biggest sources of good media and entertainment, keeping me abreast of all that’s good in TV, cinema, literature and music. Clearly they are keeping up on things! To be clear, I don’t write this blog for them, or any audience, so much as I write it for myself. Long before I wrote a blog, I wrote my thoughts in journals which evolved into a blog as the technology allowed. When I created the supergood.org website, it was simply an outlet for my music and videos, but eventually words were added and my personal journals were superseded. My primary audience is my(future)self, but I love the freedom of information that allows my words to be read by ANYBODY! If you are reading this, it is completely by free choice and I thank you for it! You owe me nothing and I can only hope that you found it worth your while. In the end, this blog is just a record of how I try to live the best life possible. Over the journey, through trial and error, good experiences and bad, I have learned to make better choices and I document them here, with you as my witness, in my quest for Supergoodness.

Buckminster Fuller was a man from the future. His concepts and philosophies would still be considered progressive today, 80 years after he began to publish them. He coined the term “Spaceship Earth” and recognized the importance of minimizing our impact on our environment, striving always to do more with less, and devoting his life to making his philosophy practical by designing hyper-efficient houses and cars that maximized their resources, then applying the same principles to larger communities and even earth in “an experiment, to find what a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity” (Wikipedia/NYTimes). He also wrote a pre-net blog, The Dymaxion Chronofile, in which he documented every 15 minutes of his life. Of course, his thinking was so far ahead of his time that he had no commercial success and is remembered as a visionary designer of a better life that we have yet to live. Still, as the conservation movement grows stronger, I believe he will be recognized as a one of its most important founders.

The worst sort of mistakes are the ones you make because you made an earlier mistake. And worse yet are ones you make on top of those. I call these compound errors and I desperately try to stop myself from making them. Unfortunately, they can be the easiest ones to make.
Mistakes happen. If we use them to learn and make better choices, then we become better people. I think the whole point of everything is to be the best you can be and how would you know what that is if you never made the worst choices?