Mulling And Pondering

You may or may not be interested to know that I bookmark dozens of articles and websites for The Jenius, but that I eventually end up using only a few. I once did a post of stuff I had bookmarked and then left filed, but don't want to repeat that format until some day in the future when I'm too nauseous to sit up straight for more than a few minutes at a time. (I like the format: it's just that I could write that anytime, you know?)

(The song now playing is "Since I Fell For You," the Lenny Welch cover. Hold on while I take it in...)

The point of My bookmarking is that for many of the posts I write, I go through about 10-12 "items" related to it. For example, for My recent "Statistics" posts, I ended up using only a handful of sites after reading through several more for each post. What happens is that I take My starting point ("Puerto Rico's unemployment rate," for example) and then go down a variety of paths to explore whatever strikes My fancy and often end up someplace unexpected.

In this case, My original "angle" was to get snarky about how lazy We as a people are for (a) not really wanting to work at being worthy to work and (b) having a government too lazy, too stupid and too greedy to make actual progress happen (thus creating more jobs.) However, (a) didn't strike Me as being something I wanted to jump on yet and (b) is something I've jumped on to the point where I want to bitch-slap the next Fool I trip over. (Been feeling that way since 1981. My self-control is admirable. I know.)

And yet in that search, I noticed that Our unemployment rate had always been 2-3 times higher than that reported by Uncle Sam. That observation led to the post you may or may not have read. In any case, I'm stating that although there are times when I sit down and just start typing away (like now), there are many times when My typing is the end result of hours of mulling and pondering.

So?

So who else is doing this? Who else is mulling and pondering what We are, what We are doing and where We are going to a serious extent? The Jenius is not the only one, and there are only a few more I know about: Don Dees over at Dondequiera; and formerly Gabo Pagán over at I Can't Spell are two that come to mind immediately, with maybe 2-3 others I could mention, mainly Spanish-language bloggers. Maybe blogs aren't the most fertile ground for this kind of pensive analysis, but given the decrepit spinelessness and water-logged brains We have in Our traditional media, what else is there?

(Hold on: Aaron Neville. I gotta take this in...)

Now I don't think a blog, or a newspaper column, is going to magically transform Puerto Rico by the power of words. If that could be done, The Jenius would have had all Fools tossed into the ocean for shark bait by late 2007. No, what I am aiming at is a push for a higher quality of expression about Puerto Rico, a deeper form of mulling and pondering and writing/commenting about Our society and its actions. Which also means having a people who actively seek this input in order for them to mull and ponder what it might mean. In effect, I'm asking for a wider spread of the higher intellectual level of Us.

Yes, I'm saying that (a) I'm squarely in the group representing "the higher intellectual level of Us," and (b) that We need more of it, now, immediately and for the long term. Frankly, (a) should not surprise you and neither should (b): Brainpower alone can't solve everything, but a deficit of brainpower in a human society makes everything worse.

And when it comes to analyzing Ourselves and bringing solutions to the fore, We are definitely in a brainpower deficit.

Okay, I started out with My bookmarks, passed sublimely through Lenny Welch and Aaron Neville and ended up calling Us "not smart enough as a people" to effectively deal with Our current crises. Yeah. I'm done here.


The Jenius Has Spoken.