Cold and Calculated

I've had some technical difficulties with putting up new posts, but we're up and running again.  Here are the lyrics to the Project 86 song, "Cold and Calculated."

"A life you built exploiting the dreams of innocents
Preying on the wide-eyed fantasies of those with the purest intent
As parasites, they always need a host (how many lives have you bled?)
Your crooked gain will always find a leech’s ending

There is a reason you cannot sleep
You found the wages you’ve sown in greed
There is no solace in what you seek
You found that although you have gained it all you had to sacrifice...

Your prize.

After all was said and done you lost...

Your pet.

Rest it eludes you as spirits fill your head
Longing for the days when ghosts you used won’t follow you into your bed
So now it’s cost the apple of your eyes (you’ll never see her again)
Why can’t you see that she is not your property when...

How many lives have you bled?

After all was said and done, you lost...

Your pet.

Your prize."

This song reminds me a lot of my favorite movie, Donnie Darko, but trying to explain why would take a long time.  Instead, I'll just point out how relevant this song is to the issue of slavery, sex slavery in particular.  The selfish greed that drives many of us silly human beings is not only a very temporary satisfaction, but a temporary satisfaction that causes permanent harm to the perpetrator.   Of course, permanent and irreparable harm is done to the victim and that is what we abolitionists are most concerned about, but we should need ignore the spiritual damage inflicted on the perpetrator as well.

One commonality between the Christian idea of sin and the Buddhist understanding of karma is that both express an undeniable truth: when we do wrong, it seriously and negatively affects us for the rest of our lives.  Once we have manipulated and used and hurt others their faces remain with us and we cannot escape.  We might not ever admit it to anyone or ourselves, but we are haunted by the people we have hurt and the people we have neglected to help.  More and more we need to find ways to put ourselves to sleep because on the brink of dreaming the voices of those who have cried out against us return.  Instead of confronting ourselves and all the wrong we have committed, we seek out more of the same instant and temporary pleasures so that we might forget or convince ourselves that we are, indeed, good and happy people.

Unfortunately, the truth is that we are not good and happy people.  The more we avoid that truth the more we avoid actually getting to know who we really are as individuals.  And the more we avoid who we really are, the less likely we are to ever find peace within ourselves and start walking down the long, hard road to some real contentment. 

"You've found the wages you've sown in greed, there is no solace in what you seek."  We just simply don't want to admit it, so we run after the solace-less pleasures more and more not recognizing the awful consequences. 

I invite you to seriously reflect on your life and who you are.  Are you willing to admit when you do wrong?  Are you willing to admit that maybe you're not as good a person as you think you are?  Have you really dealt with those instances in which you've hurt others or not helped others when you could/should have?  Do you seek temporary pleasures to forget, to convince yourself that you are happy and feel good? 

These are the questions we need to ask ourselves.  Trust me, we are a hair's breadth away from crumbling into some really bad people.  These are the questions that slaveholders and all the people that take advantage of slaves, especially sex slaves, do not ask themselves.  They decided long ago that they couldn't look themselves in the eye so instead chose the path of continual gratification and greed.  We, then, must take the risk of looking ourselves in the eye so that we do not contribute to the problem, and so that we might possibly hopefully God-willing encourage others to do the same.