wake up and smell the dandilions!

Most anything I can talk about that is talking about my project would just be a repeat of what I have said in my last two blogs, so I am not sure what to talk about. This image is not like what I would like to do, nor would I put text on mine, but it interested me because although the symbolism in pretty straight forward, it is still striking because it is such a sensitive subject to the people that see this happening. There are so many people that think the way the country is being managed is right and this image is an allegory what is happening.
I have been thinking more about respect than anything the last few days. It seems that our culture has a real deficiency when it comes to respect. In other cultures, it is common to bow to each other. I think that a hand shake is not as much a form of respect, but is a potential outlet for asserting power. For it is said that a firm handshake is best. That is because you are asserting yourself when you do that. The bow is merely equalizing yourself to another. The American culture is all about the individual. There is more emphasis on making your self happy that making others happy. This is the cause of greed in the world. If respect was taught in this culture more than it is, common wealth and welfare would not be as big of an issue as it has been make out to be. The lack of respect for other human beings is the cause for food scarcity and poor living situations. If there was more respect, the wealthy could not be so selfish. In order to be selfish, one must lose respect for those that would be affected by the selfishness and greed.

The other day, when spring really started to show, and flowers had started to come up, I was in the court yard by junior ceramics. There were two dandelions plants growing a few feet away from each other. They had some how planted themselves between the wall of the kiln room and the concrete outside. Not only do I feel that it was a feat that a seed drifted there and landed, but there was also a caulking that was making it so there wasn't even visible dirt. Some how a seed had flown over harder, landed in a crack of the caulk in a crack in the concrete and before blowing away, rooted itself, and then survived months of cold and wind....twice. This to me is a miracle. The fact that that happened is beautiful. Later I went back out in the courtyard and someone had torn one of the plants out of the ground. The other one had been allowed to remain, but the one had been ripped out. This couldn't have been an act of weeding, no, it was just because. Whoever ripped it out did it because they didn’t think that it mattered. It's just a dandelion, it will grow back...Well yes that is probably true. It may not seem like a big deal, but the way I look at it is as a form of disrespect. Disrespect for life. This person didn't think of the plant as a separate entity. It's an object in their vision and since their vision is theirs well then something that they seen that doesn't seem to belong to anyone is also theirs. The simple lack of respect shown here is a shallow surface of a deep pool of self righteousness. It is greed; disrespect.

If you trace any dysfunction of the world, it can be traced to disrespect. Murder, genocide, poor people, unhealthy foreign relations, the food industry, capitalism....all of these things are because someone cares more about themselves than others. In order to do that, it is impossible to have real respect for the person. The mentality that our culture teaches is going to being the fall of all we know.