The New Hampshire primaries are tomorrow and my son, Brycen is now just old enough to vote in his first election. Both of us, usually considering ourselves very progressive, face an ethical dilemma in 2012. The problem at hand is that NO candidate or side in any US Presidential election is for children’s rights, or for total compassion for all people and living things! Human and environmental rights have been co-opted into political “isms” and funding lobbies, with groups using propaganda and rhetoric to deceive people into believing they want equality for all, rights for all humans and respite for our planet. In actuality, they want funding for their narrow-minded political causes. Here I discuss each Party’s record on children’s rights and overall social and environmental justice. [...]

This CNN article, “Audiences Experience Avatar Blues” http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html about moviegoers becoming depressed and suicidal after watching Avatar is troubling yet strangely hopeful. It is curious as well as shocking that people have been so asleep for so many centuries that only now that they have seen a computer generated movie have they become depressed by, shocked, outraged and aware of the severity of the loss of human life, of the loss of the natural, luscious beauty of our planet and of the loss of the joyous, symbiotic cultures that once inhabited the continent of North America.

I think it is testimony to how dull, arduous and downright painfully boring public school has presented history– in attempts by our government to deter people from deeper inquiry and research into the truth behind the atrocities and genocide that our government has committed against the indigenous peoples of the world. A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn is the real-life “Avatar” that every American should be reading.

I suggest and hope that the mass numbers of depressed and suicidal viewers use their angst to rally together to save our very real life planet and the remaining peaceful indigenous cultures from further destruction and seriously rethink our society, our culture, our Government, our Capitalism and our worship of money and material objects. [...]

My publisher suggested to me a few months ago that I should increase my book’s visibility by blogging. Bloggers are everywhere, making it clear to me that blogging is one of the keys to viral marketing. Yes, I’m on Facebook and Twitter, and what I like about Facebook is the ability to post links and write small comments. I am a busy woman, and quick is what I need after a long day of working, overseeing my son’s unschooling and taking care of the day to day chaoses of life. Thus, blogging has seemed like a chore.

I stopped this morning and asked myself why I, a passionate writer who wishes to make a living at promoting my book and writing other books, would be anything other than ecstatic about writing a blog about attachment parenting, unschooling, and natural family living. The answer came as inertia glared down on my shoulders and eye lids: I’m exhausted by the mainstream. I am exhausted by how mainstream ignorance consistently and relentlessly drowns out nature’s pleas with the human race to live in harmony with how we were intended by nature to live. I am exhausted by the bitter and hostile defensiveness of those too wounded by industrialization to even consider that the very problems they complain about are a result of our culture itself and our brainwashed belief that our way of life is the only way imaginable. [...]