D C Greer

[dcgreer]

There's an old country road that leads to the river, An old wooden fence surrounds all the sinners, Who stand by their graves wondering what they done wrong. There's a train whistle blowing across for the fiery desert. . .

The Haunted Windchimes, A Ballad of Human Progress

[anticapitalist]

Everything we feared about communism - that we would lose our houses and savings and be forced to labor eternally for meager wages with no voice in the system - has come true under capitalism.

Jeff Sparrow (via lavenderlabia)

ooop

(via darkjez) Truth.

(via biggadjeworld)

Never not reblog this.

(via moniquill)

[dcgreer]

And somewhere is where east and west and the wall is coming down, Some times we celebrate other times we say what have we done, And I feel you holding on and I'm holding on too, But no matter what we say or do the wall is coming down, The wall is coming down.

K'Naan, The Wall on Country, God, or the Girl

[dcgreer]

Soyez réaliste, demandez l'impossible!

Be a realist, demand the impossible! If only we all thought as such, the world would be better off. Just imagine if everyone demanded the impossible as an exercise in realism. While it may sound surrealist to say that realism and impossibility are complimentary, aren't we already living in an impossible world as judged by earlier generations? I'm not advocating a simple one-dimensional demand of the impossible, but a wholistic re-thinking of the impossible.

[dcgreer]

What you want, what you need

I may never get precisely what I want in the way I expect it or at the time I desire, but I always get far far more than I need

[dcgreer]

Moving Forward

Every so often, we enter transitional periods in our lives. I'm in one right now for sure, which means the future is both unknown and exciting!

[dcgreer]

Why I travel

My life is one built of endless experience: whenever I stop exploring and reaching and learning, I feel dead

[dcgreer]

What happens?

What happens if we completely missed the mark on climate change? If things start accelerating far faster than we've expected and changes come well beyond what we can even hope to adapt to, what's happening in New York and New Jersey will look like fun and games!

[dcgreer]

When you're young, go on at least one adventure each year

[dcgreer]

This ain't a good time, But when is it ever? I know the perfect time, And maybe that's never

K'Naan, Hurt Me Tomorrow

[dcgreer]

September 11

Does it make me a bad person, a bad American, or does it finally mean that the memories and pain have largely passed when I only realized that it was September 11th yesterday when I saw the stamp in my passport when I entered Singapore?

[dcgreer]

ASEAN

To date: 9 (of 10) ASEAN states (Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Myanmar) This summer: 6 ASEAN states (3 left in itinerary this summer). Meaning I'm going to most of ASEAN this summer! Somehow Laos still escapes me...

[dcgreer]

When you. . .

When you turn around and ask yourself the question "Is this my life?" One of my (new) really close friends asked me as we were both leaving the Philippines a few nights ago "Do you ever ask yourself if this is really your life?" And my answer is that I ask myself this all the time.

Lucky enough to grow up in beautiful Colorful Colorado with the most loving family on earth, with parents and a younger sister who care about me more than any others in the world. Loving, but also encouraging, supportive, and emotionally, physically, and mentally strong. As just a small example, I was born with 5 grandmothers (my parents' mothers, dad's step-mom, 2 great grandmothers) and 3 grandfathers (1 great grandfather, my parents' fathers) From there, I went to an elementary school and middle school where teachers taught because they loved it and taught well. Then, a public high school that could easily keep pace with many private high schools. And from there, I went to Stanford. For some of my Stanford friends, it was a given that they go to Stanford, or at the very least, an Ivy League. For me, it was a given that I go to some college, somewhere. Only as I approached senior year did I realize that I might be able to go somewhere like Stanford, but it was never a given.

Of course, at Stanford, I had a good time and all, took off a year in the middle and traveled and worked across Southeast Asia. And getting around Southeast Asia was made simple by my involvement in SEALNet. Came back to (Stanford) Paris, then managed to travel the next summer as well to Switzerland, Italy, France, Singapore, Dubai, and spent some time crashing in the Bay Area. Then, I had a senior year that was amazingly fun, managed to get an amazing internship that FOUND ME.

Yes, I interned at Walt Disney Imagineering R&D, and they found me. I didn't exactly go looking for anything in particular during senior year, I was actually not really spending enough time on job searching, and then I got an email from Disney (via a professor I was doing research with).

And now, I find myself 2 years later as a full-time Imagineer, and 8 countries further along (China (HK, Macau, mainland), Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Palau, Philippines, Brunei, Myanmar). And of course, when I travel, I simply post on facebook, and I have a whole list of friends to host me, feed me, see that I'm well, and take care of me.

So what's my secret? errrr, I don't exactly know, and that's the thing with the question earlier. When your life always works out well, nearly every time, you enjoy what you do both in your personal life and in your career, what else is there? I suppose I could be in a relationship, but given my last relationship's level of stress and trouble, I'm actually okay being single and moving about by car, bus, plane, train, however, just moving place to place for a while.

So, is this really my life or am I living in a dream? Did I do anything right or did I just get dealt the right cards? Do I deserve what I have or is it greedy to live as I do? I'm not a religious person, so I can't blame a god or gods for my misfortunes or praise them for my successes. I'm not a strict capitalist, so I can't ascribe my successes to my "brilliance" or "hard work," both of which I'm actually pretty skeptical of.

The only thing that I think I've really done right is to try and look after the people around me, to try and make their lives a little better. And I think that this must be part of it all, if you look after those around you (and sometimes those far away from you), you will be rewarded with amazing friends and communities that allow you to reach further than you could by yourself.

And that one thing, that I have many strong communities and friends all over the world, helps me to see that this is my life and that I have only gotten here through the help of many people, starting with my parents and their parents before them. So, as I reflect here at a coffee shop in the middle of the night in the Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam on traveling to my 30th country tomorrow morning (Myanmar) at the age of 25, I am able to accept my life as it is and to accept that all of the amazing things I have experienced were only made possible by others helping me.

[dcgreer]

Elections

Let's have a talk America, you and I, about politics and elections.

[dcgreer]

Start of a new SEALNet project!

Excited!!!!

[dcgreer]

Politicization

Wrong place, wrong time, that's all that happened to my fellow Coloradoans caught the night before last in the theater shooting. Politicize away on the left and on the right (we should ban guns-no we shouldn't, if only someone in the theater had a gun-the video games did it-guns don't kill people. . . . . ), politicize away if you wish, but the fact is, wrong place, wrong time for the people involved. They were / are normal people going about normal lives when a psychopath walks in and disrupts their normal lives.

To be honest, if a psychopath really wants to plan something like this, they will eventually get their hands on what's needed to do it. At the same time, making it slightly harder to get all of the pieces (i.e. if it were illegal to purchase massive gun clips) creates more opportunities to catch the person before they commit their crime (each time they purchase something illegal, there's a chance that the police may catch them and discover the plot).

It's tragic what has happened. There's no other way to put it. But what can any of the normal Americans like those who died do about any of this? The talking heads and media spinners got up and spinning out of control about 10 seconds after they got word of the tragedy. They live for this kind of thing. The people with voices in our society started talking loudly back and forth. The same people who always talk, who are always part of the conversation. But as a people, we have no voice. Regular Americans go about our lives, day in, day out, but there's nowhere for us to be heard. And whatever little of what we say or think that does get broadcast, seems to be lost in the swirl of talking heads and politicians.

So if anything is to come of this tragedy, we, normal Americans, need  to demand that what we want should not go unheard. I'm pretty sure that few of us (besides a few gun nuts) really want to be caught in a situation like this, so. . . why do we allow the conversation to occur so far from reality and common sense? Why do we allow the gun lobby and a few fringe nut-cases to demand that unlimited access to arms of all sorts is constitutionally protected? What are we waiting for? Where are our voices? Or am I in the minority and you all really do think people should carry around rocket launchers and bazookas if they so choose. . .

[dcgreer]

Constitution

I think it's time to go back to the Constitution and Bill of Rights, fix a few things more explicitly (as in, democratic processes and rules governing them), and then start over with huge sections of the United States Code. This ship is sinking and has too much dead weight (i.e. loopholes for the wealthy and powerful corporations/institutions).