Far Off Songs

I could hear them fighting in the other room.  Every few seconds Jonas’ high pitch scream would pierce through the music I was listening to, it would crawl under my skin and make me shiver. 
I could hear them fighting over the tablet playing cartoons. As I listened to the vocal coaching on my computer and tried to sing along and practice, their constant bickering moved through the glass door and found me and pushed me away from my concentration. 
I could imagine Noah trying pull the computer more towards him and Jonas pulling back, finally strong enough now to defend himself against his older brother.
It was the endless struggle for property that would stay with them until death.  Territory and desire and anger, they were fully present even at three years old. They were even more evident than in adults, due to the lack of social flitters and niceties and the many disguises the adult world has devised to cloak those inner urges.  When those little boys wanted the computer, the cookie, the train they took it. Available responses of the other was tears, or a scream or to hit back.
I could not hear any response from Noah, so I assumed he was the perpetrator.  I had stopped trying to intervene.  I had grown tired of trying to make them share, or warning them, threatening to take it away, now I had just grown silent. I had other things to do.  I sunk back into the music and left them alone, it would be survival of the strongest.
Occasionally I heard Jonas’ weapon of choice: that scream. The high pitched wail irked me from the inside, one of those sounds which physically chilled me and made me shake and try and shrug off the noise.  I closed the door to the living room.  They were going to do what they were going to do.  There could be no reasoning, they were too young, they were little machines. 
The boys used to sit with me as I did my vocal work. When Jonas had just learned to sit up by himself I would put him on a chair next to me and he would look at me with huge, smiling eyes and laugh at some of the sounds.  Noah would sometimes sing along and then we would dance.
Just a few years later and fully human, they were more interested in Dora and Umizumi and their computers and ignored me as much as I tried to look past their fighting. The babies had recognized the work, they could sit with me, patiently waiting sometimes as I went through the things I wanted to do; these little people did not.
They had fallen.  It was only a matter of time, all beings must descend, become human, become mere machines.
Maybe one day they would stop fighting and hear me singing from the other room. Maybe they would remember some of our early nights together when we sat in three chairs in the living room and they would come out to join me once again: singing, dancing, laughing.

Growth Without Patience

We call it "building a fire."
One must create a fire slowly, first finding small twigs and pieces of paper. It takes time and attention, a little piece here, a little bit of oxygen there…adding larger and larger branches until the fire is roaring.
An easier method, one made for the impatient and short sighted is to add some lighter fluid. This quickly creates flames, but is more volatile and liable to explode.
One method requires patience and skill; the other, fueled by need and instant gratification, needs only the fluid and a squirt.
China has used the quick-lighting method of expansion and they are on the brink of an explosion. Their unprecedented economic growth- growth driven at all costs- is having serious implications on the people and the environment of China, as well as the rest of the world.
This spring, a World Bank study done with SEPA, the national environmental agency, concluded that outdoor air pollution was already causing 350,000 to 400,000 premature deaths a year. Indoor pollution contributed to the deaths of an additional 300,000 people, while 60,000 died from diarrhea, bladder and stomach cancer and other diseases that can be caused by water-borne pollution.
China’s environmental agency insisted that the health statistics be removed from the published version of the report, citing the possible impact on "social stability," World Bank officials said.

All growth- on an individual scale or country-wide should be done with some attention, using all available knowledge, and applying the previous experience and lessons of those who came before us.
Expansion for its sake alone, without any thought for conscious development or evolution, is bound to explode.
At the very least, it maintains the status quo.
It is the machine state at work with extreme power- without the Being in mind.
China is one huge machine- producing goods for the rest of the world- its leaders tout progress while the workers themselves are dying of cancer. The majority of people do not have clean drinking water and much of the rivers are not even clean enough for industrial use. The Communist party realizes there is a problem, but the mechanism is moving at a pace which seems too fast to stop, and it’s gaining momentum. The government is trying to keep the health statistics secret.
Most of the people now are just caught in the cogs, trying to eat and fulfill their basic human needs- but when enough people are dying from the pollution and its subsequent manifestations, people may have a moment of clarity in which they will see the machine apparatus. Then there will be unrest. And the machine will struggle against the necessary changes, changes that could ultimately help billions on the planet and countless others.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/2