Wow, it's been a long time since I've written a blog. Since my last blog my life has changed so much for the better...I have worked hard and it's paying off. I've also traveled quite a bit lately, all over Mexico, as well as up and down the California coast.

So, the title of this blog? Well. I am reflecting on "The Society." I see it everywhere, and I am a part of it, I can't deny that. But I see such herd mentality everywhere! We all go the way Oprah's going, or Dr. Phil, or the latest movie, TV show, or what our little niche demands. The amount of stress I see around me is incredible, and it's all fear based.

I am watching the eyes of the people here in Ensenada as they face yet another weary time of a bad economy. I am watching the people on CNN still trying to outshout each other about politics. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. A lot of talking and nothing getting done.

Talking can be such a deadly thing. I watch great ideas shot down by mediocre minds, I watch the usual banal political attacking and people arguing. I watch people talk, talk, talk and do nothing. I listen to thoughts that will never see action, books that will never be written, and athletes who will never see the field.

I am watching my own country's poison spread into the world, adding to the already existing poisons native to the recipients (think MTV, etc. that the youth in other countries watch and attempt to emulate).

I have been introduced to a major Mexican city that is devoid of its own culture other than having a "Dallas"-like plot to every story, going through the growing pains my country went through over thirty years ago, with the same results. I see filthy rich people that are really no more than rednecks with lots of money.

I see people that seem to have been born with class and those that simply dress the part but have no more class than the mongrel dog down the street. I see journalists that shape a nation, where the journalists have heads stuffed with cotton and personal lives so twisted that I am astonished. I see women whose faces are so Botoxed that they look like the wrong young head stuck onto a sagging flabby body, with tons of makeup to boot! It's like an entire quadrant of a huge city filled with Tammy-Faye Bakker wannabes!

I've been living in Mexico for over four years now. I am witnessing a country undergoing radical changes, considering that Mexico is about 35 years behind us in just about everything. It's like revisiting my entire life, having "been there and done that" and watching it all, like a movie, played out again before my eyes. Yet Mexico still has an 80% poverty rate.

The stark contrasts here continue to amaze me. And there is definitely a caste system here similar to those of India and the Middle East. I have learned of the strong Arab influence that runs through the veins of Mexico. I have learned that during the Depression, upper-income Mexican families, desiring European-looking children, adopted many American children that had been taken to American orphanages, hence, so many light-skinned offspring in the larger cities of Mexico. I have learned that Mexican indigenous people are no different than their Native American counterparts other than that the Mexican indigenous people are still relatively purebloods and they are still poor and long forgotten by their casino-owning counterparts. Here the indigenous people work the land. The women who are younger than me look old enough to be my mother. Yet they are kind to me when I see them.

Here in Mexico, racism is alive and well, but not so much against us gringos, however much we deserve it; the racism is against each other. Sound familiar?

I am still being steeped in the culture...but like my own country, the culture changes from place to place, state to state, from desert to fishing village to mountains. This country is big. Its people are incredibly adaptable...except for the "Dallas" folk. Without their maids and nannies and footmen, they would be as helpless as any American in a Tijuana street.

I know this is rambling, and although MY life is good, I still see what misery is around me. And you know what? There isn't anything I can do about it. One person at a time, I smile, I speak, I listen. Mostly I listen. But what I hear makes no sense to me much of the time because the way of thinking here is still so different to my linear mind that I can't make heads or tails of what people are talking about.

I have taken enormous comfort in the Star Trek shows once again, this time Star Trek Voyager. I love the character of Seven of Nine. She looks at someone acting out and says, "You are such an inferior species." What I really love about her is when someone explains to her about another human's beauty, and she says, "Beauty is irrelevant." She's right. All that glitters isn't gold, and what appears to be beautiful may well have a very dark undercurrent beneath it.

I am on a humanistic learning curve, feeling myself changing and maturing in a very different way than I would had I not done anything to change my lot in life.

This is a very self indulgent blog, but I had to get some thoughts out. There is so much that simply makes no sense to me and sometimes I feel like my brain is going to break seeing what I see and hearing what I hear. Still, there is much beauty, however irrelevant it may be, on this planet and in its inhabitants. I see it every day and it soothes my soul. To me, beauty is a product of harmony. It's that simple.