Ramblings

It is an odd quality. Faith in any amount moves a person or a mountain, and when it lacks, it does nothing more than eat away at the conscious. The decision is to of course have it, an active choice, required daily. Like prayer. Faith is in all things, from the man of faith (the misnomer descriptor for anyone believing in a higher power, because all persons are people of faith, even when they deny it) to the agnostic to the atheist--although in the later his isn't as outwardly pronounced, nor would he ever admit to having any.

There are moments of fleeting, just-grasped pursuits of faithfulness. Fullness of faith. Or just as the original word implies, of being faithful, devoted and otherwise there. But how there is it? Does it matter to have or be without? Sharing faith is callousness. Sharing callousness is benign. Being benign is called being an asshole. Being kind is being a jerk, and being nice is being depraved enough to know that you're inwardly inflicting harm upon others, but not being man enough to admit it.

To be kind is to do what's right, including what would be right even if it outwardly might appear mean (although not wrong). Being nice is satiating the ego, in more ways than one. He's nice and she's nice, but never kind. And he's nice but not faithful and she's nice but not faithful. And in both cases they're faithless. But in their nice but faithless havens, lacking in heaven (but pursuing it), they speak of the appropriateness of their actions, how nice is good, but kind is wrong, kinda wrong, and goodly niceness. It leads back to faith, altruism, and the pathologies that crusade their daily shenanigans. But never with thought. That requires questioning, even in faith.

Accountable or Responsible?

accountability, noun

1. the state of being accountable, liable, or answerable.
2. Education . a policy of holding schools and teachers accountable for students' academic progress by linking such progress with funding for salaries, maintenance, etc.

responsibility, noun

1. the state or fact of being responsible.
2. an instance of being responsible: The responsibility for this mess is yours!
3. a particular burden of obligation upon one who is responsible: the responsibilities of authority.
4. a person or thing for which one is responsible: A child is a responsibility to its parents.
5. reliability or dependability, especially in meeting debts or payments.

A quick Google search of accountability and responsibility reveals two very distinct viewpoints on the words. Largely, people use them interchangeably. I can see why. But in the search for accountability, we find more about government, while responsibility yields ... less. Continuing further into the results for responsibilities reveals things like "social responsibility," whereas accountability is more about Federal programs (Canadian and otherwise) demanding more accountability, or, persons being answerable for their actions, as in government being answerable to the public for anything they do instead of being responsible in the first place to the public.

Looking at the two words, and actually thinking about them shows something.

When using the words in reference to action, one is more before-the-fact (responsible) and one is an after-the-fact (accountable). An action versus a reaction. Unfortunately, we're seeing more after the fact than initiative for a before the fact; i.e.: they've already committed the transgression. So, it comes down to the expectation that something will be done wrong, and instead of demanding responsibility from persons in power (consider government) to not commit a transgression, we instead ask for accountability (the assumption that, yes, the person will do something akin to large-scale corruption). But why the change in policy from one of responsibility to accountability? Is society itself less responsible now than it was fifty or even a hundred years ago?

The Culmination of a Half-Year of Non-Thought (Part 4)

It was a rather green Christmas where I was. What little snow had come melted. At best, maybe a week of cold and then it was gone in the wind. Literally. Lots of wind, hustling and bustling through the city, keening away. People complained about the wind until it stopped and the cold came back. Then they'd complain about the cold and the wind, hearing them, would swoop back in and gush about energetically. Either form of temperature was disturbing. The subs and pluses.

But I was going to my parents for Christmas, where there would be snow. Lots of it. All white, fluffy, adorable stuff. Throw it at people, laugh, eat a white orb in the face moving at significant velocity . . . okay, not so enjoyable, but you get the picture.

This of course involves an eight hour drive through a wonderful mountain pass. A pass that features blizzard conditions, blowing snow, black ice, compact snow, slippery sections and tailgaters with no sense. You can already see the horrible shenanigans taking place, like retarded ballerinas on ice. Just twirling, twirling into tomorrow. The future. And ruining your present. Of the literal, figurative and ideological sense.

Somewhere off in the middle of no where, between a town of little significance and a town of greater significance as a tourist destination for skiing, I found myself driving slow. Not as slow as I could have been traveling (or as slow as I wanted to be traveling to ensure personal safety). To wit, three vehicles trailed behind me, and while I was assuming a speed somewhere around the seventy kilometer per hour range, I began the hazardous attempt of braking in order to slow myself further.

This in itself was probably the thing that made my life a victim of happenstance moreso than the moment of the tires of my truck coming into contact with the slicker icy surface mere meters beyond the point of my braking. My truck began to slide, following the leftward contour of the road to extremes, the front end beginning to position itself for a head-on collision with the snow (and guard rail) on the opposite side of the road.

As it stands, I'm not sure if what I did was smart or stupid. Perhaps it lessened what could have been catastrophic damage to being merely cosmetic. I jacked the wheel as hard and fast to the right as I could while feathering the accelerator. This caused my truck to slew to the right, missing the opposite side of the road (and all it entailed) to instead rotate my truck one hundred and eighty degrees so I was now facing the direction I had been coming along.

Of course, the three hangers-on that had been following me passed me by. It being the eve of the few days before Christmas, their own familial traditions probably weighing heavily upon their minds, any for of Good Samaritan service would be a preclude to wastefulness of their time and proclivities.

My truck continued its slewing, skating on the surface to the point where the drivers side (occupied by myself) initiated contact with the snowbank. The truck rolled upward, the momentum carrying it. There was a brief moment as I looked to my left over the edge of the snowbank and . . . down. Down. An embankment of perhaps a good fifty feet, probably more. I was on the precipice, and in the back of my mind a small voice said, ironically, not again (a story for another time, perhaps).

However, the moment passed, and the angels reeled in their line pulling my truck back onto its four wheels. No smoke, no fumes, nothing but the purr of the engine. My head rotates to the right, and my sister is sitting stock still in her seat, eyes perhaps a little wider than necessary to perceive the world about her. At this point I placed my vehicle into four wheel drive (a trait I am most thankful for), and placed it into reverse. Three more cars passed, along with an ambulance.

A three point turn and turned-on hazard lights later, I find myself outside my truck inspecting the damage and thanking God for the skid plates under my truck (it's designed for off-roading, you see) that protected the undercarriage from damage. I drove the rest of the way to my parents house at a more subdued speed, but safely.

My truck is still running without fault to this day.