I was looking at all this grief over the Olympics coming to London. You know, this urge to competition with other nations is costing us very dearly and causing a great deal of grief.

Thinking about that, you could easily say the same about competition between individuals. Many people get caught up in an all out race to be better than the next person, without realising what they’re giving up.

As soon as you get caught up in competition, be it keeping up with the Joneses or of another kind, you hand over the reins of your future. If not fully, but partially. Where the others go, you must follow, if you lead your actions are still dictated by the necessecity of keeping your lead.

Why not instead ask, why are we competing? What for? Who is it that laid down the rules, marked out the boundaries and decides the winner? I feel that the best line of inquiry is along that sort of direction.

I was given a heads up to this video on YouTube by its director and I’d like to post it here, as I think it highlights something we all sometimes lose sight of. You can check out the director’s blog here at Podnosh.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TuosrFkNhQ]

Now you could say that in light of the big picture these are small things. But the real point is that politicians can talk, but it takes ordinary local people to put change into action. Without efforts at the grassroot levels, political rhetoric is worthless.

A young man in the first group that the presenter speaks to makes the point that because he can communicate about his fears and problems and people listen to him now he no longer feels the need to cause trouble. This is an important point, we must practice both communication and tolerance, that is the only way we’ll solve our current problems.

A friend emailed me a joke entitled “Friends and Greek Friends”, well, I thought what about Geek friends? The result is “Friend, Greek friends and Geek friends” and can be found over on my Essays page here.

Let me know what you think!

Take nose round the right hand side of the page, looks a little fuller doesn’t it?

Well, that’s because the Wordpress Import tool now supports blogger beta accounts, so you can find all my old posts, with comments safely attached.

Outstanding stuff!

Ready for a bit of video? This is courtesy of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKxKGFw6B68]

Amazing, YouTube has some value after all! I was starting to think I was wasting my time with it….

It’s a known truth that you can’t prove a negative. Well, I found a site today that refutes a whole load of criticism of the Buddhist philosphy/religion. This started me thinking about all the interfaith flamewars that go on, I started to get the feeling that people sometimes base their religious faith on how they defend against criticism.

Well, to coin a phrase “You can’t build spirituality on a negative position”, at least, that’s my take.  In Buddhism you’re expected to inquire and question, which is a positive as you gradually get nearer to reality.  We need to build a positive stance on religions, a negative approach, the feeling that we’re under contant attack and basing the way we define our sprituality or faith on that perception, can only breed intolerance and fundamentalism.

I popped a new widget on here a few days ago that show you which music artists I’ve been playing recently.

I though that was a case of “job done”, until I noticed a side effect. A little voice in my head keeps looking at my music choices in light of how they’ll look in the widget.

I’m putting it down to the novelty factor of the feature, but it does show the side of the human psyche that is powerfully influenced by what others think. I mean, this is my space to do with as I please and most of the people who read this will remain anonymous, so why care?

Interesting, yes?