1995. I’m camping out in Yellowstone National Park with 75 of my closest friends – well, my ninth grade class – on a field trip. The girls are sitting around the tents gossipping, and we start talking to the beautiful foreign exchange student from Latin America, Minerva.

Minerva has perfect bronzed skin, round, smooth cheeks, perfect teeth, and gorgeous black curly hair. She’s so nice, we all want to look like her, and we start asking her, “What is your secret? What do you wash your face with?”

None of us can believe her answer: “Soap and water,” she says.

“What kind of soap?”

“Bar of soap.”

Here she is, surrounded by Montana teenagers with a dozen facial products each packed with them: Benzoyl peroxide cream, salicylic acid pads, day face wash, night face wash, toner, witch hazel, apricot scrub, Neutrogena, Oil of Olay, Proactiv, mud masks, sunscreen, Accutane (for those “lucky” enough to afford it) etc.

It just goes to show, beauty really is from the inside-out.

Soap and water.

What she probably wasn’t doing was eating the kind of diet we were eating, nor stripping her face of its natural oils and protective bacteria with harsh chemicals. She wasn’t waging war on her skin with weapons of mass destruction or harboring inflammation and disease in her body, and it showed.

When are we going to realize that enough is enough, and just get back to basics?

I haven’t used shampoo or conditioner in my hair for nearly 2 years now, and I constantly get complimented on my hair. I don’t use any shower gels or lotions on my skin other than simple ingredients like olive oil and coconut oil or pure soaps, and I constantly get told how healthy and soft my skin is. I brush and floss my teeth once a day, at night, and my oral hygenists have told me I have the healthiest teeth they’ve ever seen. It’s not that complicated, folks. Don’t let the swindlers tell you that it is. Keep a simple and pure diet and keep your products simple and pure, and beauty will come naturally.

A really interesting study came out this week showing men given shots of testosterone told fewer lies. http://mobile.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/health/121014/men-higher-testosterone-tend-lie-less-study-suggests

Other interesting points included: average person tells 1-2 lies/day, half of all lies come from 5% of people (low-testosterone people?)

This makes evolutionary sense if you consider that testosterone likely allowed men to band together, communicate, and cooperate in order to compete against their fiercest rival historically: the lion.

This also has really interesting implications. If you consider that lying peaks in children around the age of 7, it is before kids receive their last big testosterone surge during adolesence.

Then can you really punish someone for lying in court? They could argue they are low testosterone (and can prove it!).

I still believe that punishment will become a thing of the past. The more you understand about a person’s motives, chemical or otherwise, the less likely you are to treat them harshly.

It also makes me think about obesity, which causes the body to give off more estrogen than testosterone. I then thought of my mother, and how overweight she might have been when carrying us kids, and what effect that would have had on our testosterone or androgen, and might explain some differences in siblings, their body type differences, success, etc. Or not! :)

Just had a thought about parts versus the whole: The more independent you believe a person (or a system) is, the more likely you are to punish them if they fail. This may explain why the US has the highest incarceration rates IN THE WORLD. The old west attitude of “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps” fosters this attitude of severe independence that is not balanced with society as a whole.

Republicans are fond of highlighting business owners who started a profitable business “all on their own”. In fact, no one can create a business in a void. There are usually landlords, suppliers, regulatory agencies, and of course, CLIENTS.

The Republican party is also fond of such statements that favor the individual over the collective, such as gun control, anti-abortion, and smaller government.

It’s like our politics is personifying this ego vs. collective dynamic balance to the extremes.

The democratic side tends to look out for the whole group: social services, bigger government, more taxation of wealthy to balance the economic pain, recognizing that some people are profiting at the other’s expense.

I’m not saying either extreme is correct, but I’m definitely siding more toward the holistic or “whole picture” model over individual. This does come at a cost, and democracy is correct to balance group needs with individual needs, as we wouldn’t want to lose freedoms granted to individuals. However, sometimes the price for freedom is incarceration, rather than rehabilitation and identifying causal factors.

The older and wiser I get, the more I find myself distanced from drama.

There’s a biological reason for this. Are you ready?

If you closely analyze drama, it looks a lot like a sympathetic nervous system response: fight or flight. Drama is one person attacking another person, and that other person either fighting back or changing the subject, leaving, or being passive aggressive: Fight or flight.

Think of a roommate/lover drama situation you’ve found yourself in. You felt attacked. At that point you have a choice: let your “instincts” kick in – fight or flight.

OR………..

You can exercise option number 2: Listen, Love, and Problem-Solve.

Love is the only solution to drama.

I had someone admit to me recently: “Yeah, I’m having a lot of drama with my roommate, but it’s whatever, because I don’t care about her that much anyway.”

BINGO!!!

That admission is the source of all your drama with that roommate. Even if you haven’t said it straight out to her, she senses you don’t care about her. People are more sensitive than they like to show. She can tell by your actions and reactions that you don’t care about her, so she can’t give you a “Listen, Love, and Problem-Solve” response to anything you say, because she knows it won’t be returned. Instead, you get a fight or flight response from her.

And you get drama.

Someone told me recently that I appear “strategic” in my responses to people, as if my intelligence allows me to navigate personal conflicts. No! It is my COURAGE, not my intellect, that allows me to remain calm and not get caught up in drama.

You see, it is SCARY when someone appears to attack you with their words, or their silence! They may accuse you of something, they may say hurtful things, they may seemingly tell you they don’t love or care about you by what they say or do.

But if you truly love and care about a person, you have the COURAGE to look past their words and find the kernels of truth and the love behind what they are expressing. Always look for the good in a person, and you will find it.

It takes COURAGE to believe that you can get along with anyone. That you won’t be rejected by anyone. That you will never lose someone’s love. You must always act AS IF you will never lose someone’s love in order not to lose someone’s love. Understand?

It takes COURAGE not to go on the defensive when someone goes on the offensive against you. That’s why they say fools defend and offend.

The wise remain calm and look for creative ways to love, creative ways to solve problems. Getting caught up in drama taxes your nervous system and wastes your energy. And you don’t have energy to waste, right?

Keep calm and carry on.

And have the COURAGE to love, the courage to care, to look past our most primal nervous instincts that once kept us alive, but now keep us apart.

Walking past Civic Center tonight, I’m wondering what the heck is going on there. There are all these strange-shaped temporary buildings up for some kind of event that looks interesting but I haven’t even heard about it.

It seems like the internet has past its point of usefulness to me. Once you have access to all the events and all the parties all the time, you somehow again find yourself with no access to the information you need to make a decision, as it’s all buried in the other information. You then find yourself relying on talking to people again to find out stuff. “What? You didn’t see that on my Facebook page?” No! I never see anything useful on Facebook anymore, unless someone directly brings it to my attention or they just happen to be in my fab five algorithm or however the hell Facebook is promoting status updates these days.

Sometimes, less IS more.

“Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.” David Augsburger

I have learned a few things in my dating life that I thought I would write down for the young-ins.

First thing is, it takes a few dates to get to know someone. In my estimation, it takes about 5 dates to figure out if a person is the kind of person you want to spend a good amount of time with. Once that is established, it’s important to find out what the other person needs, if you haven’t already. This can be an awkward discussion, but it is critical to have this talk in the beginning. Go ahead and ask them: “What kind of relationship are you looking for right now?”

Most people don’t want to ask this question because they are afraid of what the answer might be. Fear ruins everything.

You can’t love someone unless you know what they need. Period. You can’t truthfully say that you love a person, in the sense that you can take care of them, unless you know what that means for them. You might have strong feelings for them, they might make you deliriously happy, but if you don’t know what they need or want, you can’t really love them, and you are not ready for any kind of partnership, much less a commitment.

Having said that, let’s move on to cheating. This word has to be my least favorite relationship word. It implies that someone has set a black and white boundary line and the other partner has crossed it intentionally. What an awful thing this is. I love the way I heard it put on Dr. Phil a few years back: A yogi was asked what he would do if he came home and discovered his wife in his bed with another man. He answered, “I would tell them that when they are finished, to please come downstairs, I will make a pot of tea, and we’ll all talk about it.” Why would he do this? Because he wants information. And getting furious will not get him information. Violently injuring someone will not get him information.

Someone who is a victim of cheating will always be a victim as long as they never sit down and have this discussion. A cycle cannot be broken unless one has information needed in order to change it. What could one possibly learn from having a discussion about an infidelity? Most people are too afraid to talk about it, assuming that it will reveal that the partner doesn’t really care about them, doesn’t find them attractive, that they will lose the relationship they have invested so much time and security in, etc. It is a fear of loss that prevents people from talking about their needs generally. But what is there to lose except the mystery around the situation? You cannot solve problems in a void, but with information, you can move from being a victim to being a problem-solver.

And not talking about your needs/problems only perpetuates them and makes them harder to solve. There is a saying that if you are not moving forward up a hill, you are moving backward. That is, by not addressing the shortcomings in your relationship, you think you are really just keeping yourself in a static comfort/safety zone, but actually your relationship is sliding backward. Best to talk things out before you hit rock bottom and have to suffer enormous amounts of stress.

Love means understanding what the other person needs, even if that means hearing that what the other person needs right now is NOT YOU. If you can accept that, that is true love.

Just heard a story about how the industrial stretch of highway 101 south of San Francisco was referred to as the road for people with bigger dreams but less hope. It was in comparison to the more scenic highway 280 which parallels it.

The comment made me think of the current state of America coming out of the industrial age. The industrial age, with its dependence on science and technology, ushered in an era of “prosperity”, in which more people had access to stuff quickly and in bulk. The first “ready-made” clothes came out in America with the help of sewing machines.

And now, highway 101 is lined in industrial buildings, and it is one of the most lifeless, depressing sections of highway I’ve ever traveled, especially compared to 280. People, in their fear and need for security, jump on technologies as their ticket to big money. After all, if a million people buy your t-shirt, or your app, you won’t have to worry about money for a while.

But that ship has run its course, at least in industrial manufacturing of goods in America. The talent today is all over software products, chasing green there. Food products is yet another disgustingly profitable industry. By food products, I mean subsidized mass-produced wheat, corn (HFCS), and soy making their way into sweet and savory food mashups that actually have negative nutritional value but light up the right brain chemicals.

Human ingenuity, when used to create money via products, can be a force for evil if not checked by society. This is why government is necessary. Unfortunately, it is possible today to also buy politicians.

Anyone who gives a damn about our country needs to be alarmed about how our radical experiment in democracy is being decroded by corruption via corporate influence in government and media.

A society must be healthy and educated in order to govern itself freely. Corporate greed has created food products which are making Americans sicker by the minute and more dependent on profit-driven pharmaceuticals, a double-win for corporate interest. Corporations have also become experts at misinformation in the Information Age, creating an unhealthy democracy which also doesn’t know who to trust or listen to. As a result, Americans are becoming more and more divided, as bullshit walls are thrown up to protect oneself. As Abraham Lincoln noted, a divided nation cannot stand.

The world needs us to end corporate corruption. Now. We can start by not giving them our dollars anymore. Buy from your friends and family. Put your money in trusted credit unions. Move your stocks out of businesses which contribute to our ill health and misinformation.

Join me in getting educated about how we can take back our health and our care for one another. We can and must do this. We can’t wait passively any longer. The evidence in favor of total corruption and ultimate union demise is overwhelming. This is the Tipping Point.

Dreams are big but hope is getting smaller. Time to un-industrialize. Turn consciousness back on. Breathe life back into our people and our economy. Restore hope.

Maybe we should just let China produce all the products, do all the large-scale manufacturing.

Perhaps it is a sign of civilization for a country to relinquish inhuman repetitive manufacturing labor and graduate to idea-making and love-infusion.

China wants to make its country a consumer economy, to have its people buy its stuff. Great! Let them!

Gone soon will be the days of ready-wear clothing, cheap knick knacks, products stamped out from molds. The products of the future will be one-of-a-kind customized for specialized needs. We might as well get a jumpstart on this now. What does this look like for you? Who (or what team of people) can make exactly what you need? Go find them, and put them to work. We will save more money in the end in higher quality products and less waste-management. Local money gets reinvested locally. Someone near you has a manufacturing talent you might not even know they have…just ask!

What can YOU make?