Audio
I was interviewed for The Refreshment Center’s radio show on Friday, 1 February 2013. The interview is embedded here, although most of my interview was lost to a techno-disaster. I’m scheduled for another visit in a few weeks.
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Video
Below I include two short clips used in the making of Michael Sosebee’s forthcoming film, Somewhere in New Mexico before the End of Time. I don’t know whether these clips will be included in the final version of the film. If you’d like to support the creation and distribution of this film, please give me a shout via email (guy.r.mcpherson@gmail.com).
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The following two publications are available in print media, and I have an essay in each of them:
McPherson, Guy. 2012. A life out of empire. Pages 481-487 in Keith Farnish’s book, Underminers: A Practical Guide for Radical Change. Published under a Creative Commons License. Electronic copy is here. Kickstarter campaign for printing and distribution of this book is linked here.
February 2013 Beyond industrial civilization, Earthlines 4:22-24 (pdf of contents here). My essay is reviewed here.
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“Print”
I’ve posted the following information at Joe Romm’s website, Think (sic) Progress (sic). Most of this information is old news to readers of Nature Bats Last, and I posted the information in the form of comments to two essays (one here, the other here). I posted comments because an earlier comment cited my work (actually, work in which I was citing others) and in response, Joe referred to my comment as “Tin-foil hat stuff.” As he’s done in the past, Romm blocked my comments. Were I a conspiracy theorist, I’d suspect him of being a disinformation specialist.
According to informed analysis of BP Energy Outlook 2030, we’re headed for a planet 4 C warmer than we experienced at the dawn of the industrial revolution by 2030. Or maybe it’s 6 C, depending on our collective greed. In any case, the projection is less dire than the one foreseen by Paul Beckwith. The report concludes peak oil was a red herring, which it wasn’t and isn’t, but it’s clearly too late to ward off human extinction in the near future. As we’ve known for many years — in this case, the relevant article from the Guardian is more than four years old — on a planet 4 C hotter, all we can prepare for is extinction. Although these two reports are found in the mainstream media, I’m sure forthcoming comments will accuse me of heinous behavior, to which I will readily admit with ample doses of shame and humility.
The co-founders of 350.org, including James Hansen and Bill McKibben, are ignorant or disingenuous with the very name of the organization. I’m guessing they’re lying because surely they know about these two tidbits:
1. Only complete economic collapse prevents runaway greenhouse, as pointed out by Tim Garrett in a paper published in Climatic Change in 2009.
2. About the same time, a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicated Earth’s atmosphere will not experience carbon dioxide levels below the current level for at least the next thousand years. In other words, 350 ppm is hopium of the worst kind.
We’re done, and even the Obama administration knew it way back in 2009. The AOSIS briefing linked and described here was clear about 350 ppm as a death sentence.
I’ve been accused of shouting “Fire!” in a theater. I plead guilty, but the world is on fire and, like most mainstream scientists, you’re taking the approach of too conservative (hence, lethal). Calling me irresponsible for reporting relevant information is exactly the response I’ve come to expect from people who are neck-deep in denial. Such comments remind me of a prescient line from George Orwell: “Truth is treason in an empire of lies.”
Reality is finally catching up to my decade-old prediction about human extinction. Abundant details can be found in my many essays (this one provides a recent overview). Instead of turning away from data and models, I take my advice from Carl Sagan. As such, I refuse to dilute the truth for the sake of comfort: “It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
. . .
For me, one of the particularly bothersome aspects of our climate-change predicament is the relentless bargaining by people who should know better. Somehow, I doubt we’re going to live underground, in the dark, and manage to grow food and generate water for ourselves. Then there are those who believe collapse will accelerate global warming. Could be, although I doubt it would accelerate the extinction crisis, environmental decay, or myriad other predicaments in which we’re enmeshed. And I can hardly imagine a situation worse than the one we’re in — except, of course, the forthcoming climate-driven extinction event — and yet we add to the worsening predicament every day.
By what mechanisms does climate change become climate chaos? Rapidly increasing temperature, along with rapidly increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide has two primary impacts of note. Firstly, the resulting ocean acidification is likely to kill nearly every marine species, including phytoplankton (i.e., food and half the planet’s oxygen). Secondly, the resulting extremes in temperature likely will kill nearly all land plants (i.e., food and the other half of Earth’s oxygen). Additional concerns include wet-bulb temperatures high enough to induce death in mammals (the large-bodied ones will go first, and the tropics will be impacted before the temperate regions), loss of planetary ice (never mind albedo, I’m thinking about fresh water throughout the world’s temperate regions), and the millions of tiny organisms comprising living soil that will be unable to migrate rapidly enough to keep up with changes in temperature and moisture.
February 4th, 2013 at 8:20 am
Organic grocery stores should carry the day.
February 4th, 2013 at 8:23 am
Again Guy, what clear-sighted writing. I really agree with you about the “relentless bargaining by people that should know better”. That’s well put. Please, keep on writing for as long as it’s possible. None of us here reading your blog need a saviour, but it’s really good to know that there are others out there not hooked on hopium.
Here, in “Old” Hampshire, my garden is already full of snowdrops, crocuses,violets and primroses, and birds are singing their mating songs. For most of them it’s far too early. But there they are, it’s another spring for them and me. I hope I can always be like them: happy to live in the now. And that’s my only hope.
February 4th, 2013 at 8:59 am
.
A luxury trip on denial
Is less of a mental trial
Than to be in a bind
And end up resigned
With no usual sociable smile.
Nevertheless, when you compile
All doom’s factors into one file,
You see choice is confined
To shit or go blind,
And not much in life seems worthwhile.
February 4th, 2013 at 9:10 am
The bad news – methane spiking in the arctic, for only one example – is piling up so fast it’s impossible to keep up with it all. And then it’s countered in more than equal measure by the scientific, technological hopium, and conspiracy theories, and religious fervor. Guy’s presentations are about the only source of unvarnished truth. Thanks Guy!
Since I am concerned about forest dieback from tropospheric ozone, I was interested to find a study that was published before Copenhagen, which noted that CO2 is not being absorbed as quickly as it used to be.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/world-on-course-for-catastrophic-6deg-rise-reveal-scientists-1822396.html
“Meanwhile, the scientists have for the first time detected a failure of the Earth’s natural ability to absorb man-made carbon dioxide released into the air. They found significant evidence that more man-made CO2 is staying in the atmosphere to exacerbate the greenhouse effect because the natural “carbon sinks” that have absorbed it over previous decades on land and sea are beginning to fail, possibly as a result of rising global temperatures.”
As forests and phytoplankton die off, that is exactly what you’d expect. More recently, Nicholas Stern was quoted as follows:
“Looking back, I underestimated the risks. The planet and the atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly. Some of the effects are coming through more quickly than we thought then.”
Another fascinating question is whether the lead author of that study would stand by this observation printed in the article:
“Professor Le Quéré said that Copenhagen was the last chance of coming to a global agreement that would curb carbon-dioxide emissions on a time-course that would hopefully stabilise temperature rises to within the danger threshold. ‘The Copenhagen conference next month is in my opinion the last chance to stabilise climate at C above pre-industrial levels in a smooth and organised way,’ she said.”
“‘If the agreement is too weak, or the commitments not respected, it is not 2.5C or 3C we will get: it’s 5C or 6C – that is the path we’re on. The timescales here are extremely tight for what is needed to stabilise the climate at C,’ she said.”
Since last-chance Copenhagen was a colossal FAIL, I take that to mean we are on a path to 5C or 6C.
February 4th, 2013 at 9:57 am
I wish I could make a case with the same compelling logic as Superman1 sometimes does in his comments.
I’m getting sick of all the defeatism and negativity and masochistic ‘we’re all to blame’ crap.
Seems to me, we all know what the problem is. We all know what the cause of the problem is. We all know who is causing the problem, it’s just a small percentage of the total human population.
We know how to fix the problem, because we know how to fix ecosystems and make sustainable communities. So why aren’t we doing that ? Why aren’t we saying to people, either help, or get out of the way ?
Or, even better, why aren’t we getting serious, and saying, get the hell out of the way, or we’ll kill you, because you’re killing all of us with your stupidity ?
That’s what we’re being told by them and their thugs, isn’t it ? Accept the destruction of the biosphere and your future, or else we will imprison or kill you.
Why is everybody willing to accept that ?
Is it that things have not got desperate enough yet ? Or what ?
http://youtu.be/YBLZmwlPa8A
February 4th, 2013 at 10:09 am
Long before we showed up on the scene, there were wetlands that made dirty water clean, prairies that grew sustainable food crops and termites that built living spaces capable of maintaining a nearly steady internal temperature year round. These and other natural systems, developed over thousands or millions of years, are amazingly adept at dealing with the sort of logistical concerns humans face every day—whereas many of the workarounds we’ve found for the problems of our lives are inefficient or overly expensive or carry on the oh-so-human tradition of causing more problems than they solve.
http://ensia.com/features/urban-infrastructure-what-would-nature-do/
February 4th, 2013 at 10:11 am
I’m curious, what does “ulvfugl” mean? how do you pronounce it? I’m not new to NBL but I don’t comment much…
February 4th, 2013 at 10:33 am
Hello pat, you don’t need to pronounce it, just put ‘U’, if that helps
If you really want to know… it’s the Norwegian translation of wolfbird,
ulv being wolf, from the same root, pronounced much the same.
fugl being bird, from the same root as German vogel and English fowl.
Wolfbird is a Scandinavian and N. American Indian name for the raven.
February 4th, 2013 at 10:36 am
Guy, Guy, Guy, you should really come visit & spend a day or so with me. I could quickly get you up to speed as to how the world really works. Long ago, Upton Sinclair said it best:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
My oldest is just becoming aware of how marketing & advertising is merely a device to cause people to ‘consume’ some good/service that they previously didn’t realize was crucial to their happiness & well being.
Oh, Bernays (Freud’s nephew & prime architect behind convincing young Americans that it was their solemn & patriotic duty to give up their lives charging German machine gun nests in WWI), you magnificent bastard. Patron saint (oxymoron, I know) of Goebbels & modern all propaganda. Of course, his activities were financed by the same-old, same-old ‘reptiles’ who only exist in the fevered imaginations of conspiracy theorists. LOL
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Whenever he brings it up as sort of an “a-ha moment”, I take the opportunity to expand upon the theme with concrete, specific examples, namely, the very lifestyle he currently enjoys.
In very simple terms, I state that every single family in our suburban paradise by the beach is completely locked into the status quo. To buck the system is to miss a mortgage payment, to not have a stylish new car, to not enjoy a second home, or take regular vacations to some exotic locale(s).
What is the alternative? To have financial worries? To be thrown out into the street? To be forced into competing for a job that pays a fraction of one’s current position? Yeah, right. What I emphasize is that people will do ANYTHING to maintain what they have – they will lie, cheat steal, exploit the unwary, and even kill if it came down to it. (I leave out the murder part.)
The scientists who you criticize in all probability know the truth. The problem is, unlike you, the 99% cannot live below their means to the degree necessary in which to store a sufficient nest egg in order to buck the system. Lacking that luxury, they MUST tow the line … or else.
You guys should really study the history of usury & debt slavery. Why isn’t it taught from 5th grade on? Why are smart students like BC nurse prof routed into certain academic pursuits only to find out many, many years the chilling truth of how the system really works?
February 4th, 2013 at 10:41 am
Guy As such, I refuse to dilute the truth for the sake of comfort: “It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
As I thought, however much it hurts to see, in the end seeing is better.
February 4th, 2013 at 10:43 am
As usual Guy, a very clear and concise picture of truth.
I’ve got my map and I’ll be seeing you tomorrow at some point.
February 4th, 2013 at 11:07 am
http://www.youtube.com/user/sosebee2?feature=mhee
I wanted to give an update on the film “Somewhere In New Mexico…” In Oct/November 2012 the talented Mike Sliwa with his gracious wife Karen came out and Mike spent hundreds of hours sitting in front of a CRT watching raw footage. He worked with me and Chris Chen for a month to try get things ready for a soft premiere. We premiered it in Las Vegas at the Roots Community Garden outdoors under the stars. Guy came out for the premiere with his wife and spoke after the film. Chris Chen, an editor I’d been working with in San Diego, came out with his wife Maria (a talented filmmaker in her own right) for the premiere as well.
After the film we retired to a small room and Guy spoke. I got some feedback on the film (mostly postitive) with the exception that I left out any hope of industrial society somehow reforming itself into hip local urbanists, vegans of course, eating gluten free vegan in Vegas. Yeah Baby! Some of the responses were hysterical (Not the funny kind). One young lady came to me and started crying. I’ll put together a short video of the event later. My intention was to cut it down to about 90 minutes; it ran long at just over two hours. Then in November I was listening to Guys speech on Radio Ecoshock that he had given in Louisville KY. I had taped Guy giving the speech for the first time in June. He had given the speech dozens of times since then and he had it down. The speech was from a video posted by Ben Evans, the director for the film YERT (Your Environmental Road Trip). I watched it over and over and followed up on every source guy listed and it was all there. That’s when it hit me between the eyes: It’s fuckin’ over.
I then asked Ben permission to use the footage for the intentionally rough videos that you see above. I’m now closing out the film with an edited version of Guy’s presentation. I guess it’s become a horror film.
The DVD should be printed by March and we’ll plan on a public premeire in Tuscon hopefully at the U of A campus in May/June. Mike Sliwa also suggested another venue so we’ll have to do what seems to make the most sense.
I’m writing the closing narration now. Any ideas ? (Yes I’m asking!) Less than 500 words:
Q: What do you say when you tell the audience that we’re going away and the disease is terminal?
Hint: A good bedside manner might be useful.
If you post them on the facebook page, “Somewhere In New Mexico Before The End Of Time”, we’ll award the author that we use (not necessarily the best) with an autographed film poster and DVD. Thanks for your support. Mike
February 4th, 2013 at 11:50 am
The second video says it is blocked in my country ( UK ) on copyright grounds because it contains material belonging to Channel 5
@ B9K9
..they will lie, cheat steal, exploit the unwary, and even kill if it came down to it.
War By Deception 2013
http://youtu.be/blSifMddGf8
February 4th, 2013 at 12:02 pm
<a href="http://guymcpherson.com/2013/02/media-update-audio-video-print-and-print/#comment-59569"@Gail
“Since I am concerned about forest dieback from tropospheric ozone, I was interested to find a study that was published before Copenhagen, which noted that CO2 is not being absorbed as quickly as it used to be.”
Effects of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment on the Growth and
Mineral Nutrition of Quercus alba Seedlings in Nutrient-Poor
soil
“It is difficult to extend the responses of seedlings in controlled environments over 40 weeks to predictions of the responses of forest trees over their life spans. Nevertheless, this study establishes that growth enhancement from CO2 enrichment is possible under nutrient-deficient conditions. The mechanisms of response are likely to vary with species, soils, and nutrients. Increases in NUE, as those that occurred in this study with N, could have deleterious effects over the longer term that could limit the growth enhancement from CO2 enrichment. For example, increased shoot production in the next growing season, which was suggested by increased bud mass, may be limited by the decreased supply of N in storage tissue. The availability of N in soil may decline because of poorer litter quality. The relationship of the short-term physiological responses demonstrated in this study to longer-term aspects of forest productivity has been considered elsewhere (19). Carbon-nutrient linkages at both physiological and ecological levels should be an important component in the assessment of the responses of forest vegetation to rising atmospheric CO2.”
February 4th, 2013 at 12:28 pm
Mike, I’m looking forward to the final version. I really hope you will make it easily available to everyone. I get so frustrated when movies like this one:
http://calloflife.org/
that look really fascinating and are there to ostensibly warn everyone of our dangerously unstustainable trajectory – but then there’s no way to see them other than go to the occasional rare screening in a major metrolpolitan area, or buy the dvd – and sometimes there isn’t even a dvd. They only end up preaching to the choir that way.
If the object is to raise funds, wouldn’t it be better to have a minimal charge that can be paid online to watch it on the computer? It seems to me that filmmakers would get so many more sales that way, that volume would make up for higher prices on dvds – and vastly greater numbers of people would be exposed to the message.
Or maybe someone can enlighten me why it can’t work that way.
February 4th, 2013 at 12:41 pm
Jim Kunstler’s term, “the psychology of previous investment”, fits well here, and goes some way to explaining why people are stuck in a state of inaction, unwilling or unable to harmonize their lifestyle with the laws of physics.
February 4th, 2013 at 12:43 pm
Hey Guy. You’re a fantastic speaker, by the way — though I certainly hope you’re wrong on the ‘game over’ part (while suspecting you may well be right.)
In any case, what do you make of Hansen’s papers that say this: if we cut CO2 emissions right now by say 6-10% per year, temps would go over 1degC for a few decades but then fall back. He’s assuming that by doing this we avoid disastrous arctic/peat/forest out-gassing, which may or may not be true.
In your opinion, why is Hansen’s analysis wrong and that 2009 paper right? (Again, I’m not saying you’re definitely wrong — just wondering why you think Hansen is.)
take care — Dan
February 4th, 2013 at 12:53 pm
Thanks for your complimentary comment, dan allen. I’ve missed your cogent comments in this space.
I suspect Hansen is correct. And, although it may appear inconsistent, I suspect Tim Garrett is correct, too. After all, we’ve been mired in an economic recession since December 2007. During every subsequent year, the world has set a new record for carbon dioxide emissions. The record of 2008 was eclipsed by the record of 2009, which was eclipsed by the record of 2010, which was eclipsed by the record of 2011 (we don’t yet know about 2012, but I’m willing to hazard an unpopular guess). In other words, I see no way to reduce emissions by 6-10% per year without complete collapse. At the very least, that trick would require tremendous leadership, which clearly has been lacking for a long time.
February 4th, 2013 at 12:59 pm
I’m here in Vermont with several dozen browser tabs open on various real estate websites. We’ve been looking for a little piece of land upon which to hunker down for the collapse. The plan is to turn it into a permaculture farm.
But then I returned to Gail’s excellent “Wit’s End” blog via the link in the comments above, and was reminded what ozone is doing to plants and trees. And this blog, which reminded me that even the soil microbes won’t survive this.
At this point, buying land and planting trees seems like it may be fruitless. (Hah, ironic pun.)
Should I forget about sinking my retirement into land, and instead throw it at our debt so we don’t end up in debtors’ prison? Or should we go ahead with buying land, as it’s probably the only way to feed ourselves in the future?
I realize that nobody here is a psychic, but I’d appreciate everyone’s thoughts.
February 4th, 2013 at 1:32 pm
Charlotte:
The problem is the timeline, nobody knows how much time we have. Will the cities begin burning tomorrow?, next weeek? The most consistent advice I’ve seen is this: if you are in a city, get out as soon as possible. If riots start and you are stuck inside the city, you may not get out.
February 4th, 2013 at 1:59 pm
Charlotte, I would just do whatever you WANT to do. It’s not possible to prepare for the unknown and unknowable. I quit planting trees and even annuals in the garden as of 2009 – but this spring (thanks to some shared seeds from KathyC!) I’m in the mood to try again, even though I know it’s not going to be ideal.
Guy, the claim is that the US emissions have gone down in 2012 (see the guardian uk article dated 2/1/13 – us carbon emissions at lowest levels since 1994).
But here’s the problem:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/29/china-is-burning-nearly-as-much-coal-as-the-rest-of-the-world-combined/
February 4th, 2013 at 2:02 pm
Mike you say “All life ends in death. The ending of life on earth was a given, as the sun will do us in at some point in the future. Each human gets at most 120 years, each dog at most 20, each bacteria days. What faces us is not something we could ever avoid. What faces us is untimely death with no genes going forward. It has always been the case that we could cease living feeling we had lived well, or with regret for those things we could have done but did not do. Imagine a Dr. just told you you have six months to live. What would you do with those months. Whatever that would be, start doing that now.”
Something like that?
February 4th, 2013 at 2:05 pm
Gail, I was referring to emissions at the world level, which have increased 3-6.5% annually since 2008. U.S. emissions declined because the industrial economy is severely suffering here. Manufacturing has nearly ceased, and unemployed people don’t drive to work.
February 4th, 2013 at 2:08 pm
Charlotte, maybe you should consider both options: pay off your debt, and then go and join one of the groups of people who already have their land and are making a go of it. Not easy, I know, but then again, nothing about what we’re facing is going to be easy.
I haven’t looked in a while, but I think there are several announcements in the classified section of this site in which there are those looking for partners/helpers/community members, etc.
February 4th, 2013 at 2:14 pm
China is also intending to construct a new series of mega-dams
http://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/5678-China-gives-green-light-to-new-era-of-mega-dams/en
February 4th, 2013 at 2:15 pm
China is also the world’s largest market for wind power
http://about.bnef.com/2013/02/04/china-was-worlds-largest-wind-market-in-2012/
February 4th, 2013 at 5:12 pm
Jay Hanson recently held a seminar featuring Guy on his discussion site America2Point0. His next seminar will be in a few weeks. It will be to discuss the new paper coming out by Richard Duncan – Olduvai Theory,Heading into the Gorge. The discussion site is open to new members – per Jay – All they have to do is send a message to
America2Point0-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
February 4th, 2013 at 5:13 pm
Or visit http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/America2Point0/
February 4th, 2013 at 5:14 pm
Richard Duncan’s last posting of his theory can be found at http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1602/article_1362.shtml
February 4th, 2013 at 6:57 pm
A hymn for the prospect of extinction?
The Hymn of Samadhi
Lo! The sun is not, nor the comely moon,
All light extinct; in the great void of space
Floats shadow-like the image-universe.
In the void of mind involute, there floats
The fleeting universe, rises and floats,
Sinks again, ceaseless, in the current “I”.
Slowly, slowly, the shadow-multitude
Entered the primal womb, and flowed ceaseless,
The only current, the “I am”, “I am”.
Lo! ‘Tis stopped, ev’n that current flows no more,
Void merged into void–beyond speech and mind
Whose heart understands, he verily does.
- Swami Vivekananda
February 4th, 2013 at 7:18 pm
Sorry Guy – I should have been more clear – I was trying to agree with you, by substantiating more recent data.
February 4th, 2013 at 7:23 pm
Distribution of the film “Somewhere In New Mexico…”: I’m ordering up 1,000 Blu-ray* DVD’s with jackets and inserts including links to the information contained in the film. I’m using Blu-Ray because we want the people who buy these DVD’s to set up showings at their local libraries, churches town centers, pubs…anyplace and begin to have conversations with people you know about what’s going on in the present time. It’s a tough sell. Ask Guy McPherson. As Gabrielle Price said to me once: “Mike how are you going to sell the end of the world?” I guess that’s what it’s about. Put down the hopium and start making plans because the omnicidal beast is loose upon the planet.”
John Belushi as spoken by John Blutarski: “So far what most of us have been doing is waiting for someone else to do something; yeah…this is what we’ve done our whole fucking lives. It’s time for all of us to come out of the shadows and begin to speak loudly to as many people as you can get in front of. As it is we’re entertaining ourselves to death. Yes you and you and you…what we’re going to have to do is sit in front of other people and try and wake them up from this massive delusion.”
Each DVD will be $45 plus mailing $4 for a total of $49. Expensive I’m sorry but this is a small run. There are a lot of donors (52) who funded about half of the cost of the film are owed DVD’s and we’re going to distribute it to certain parties asking them to review the film. This is the tough part of being an activist: we need to be a little uncomfortable with this knowledge. As soon as the printing is done I’ll have a pay-pal number. If you send me an e-mail at sosebeetv@cox.net with your name address and e-mail and I’ll reserve a DVD for you.
*If you use a regular DVD on a theater system it will pixilate.
February 4th, 2013 at 7:42 pm
“one of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”
aldo leopold, round river 1953
guy, thank you for your dedication. i am very grateful. you are a decent man. it makes me cry.
February 4th, 2013 at 8:27 pm
Hello Charlotte,
You asked:
“Should I forget about sinking my retirement into land, and instead throw it at our debt so we don’t end up in debtors’ prison? Or should we go ahead with buying land, as it’s probably the only way to feed ourselves in the future?…..I realize that nobody here is a psychic, but I’d appreciate everyone’s thoughts.”
To attempt to answer your question, “we” would probably need to know a few more details. Such as: your age, skill sets as they pertain to homesteading and how much money you have to invest. All three greatly compound each other, and determine what your best options are.
If you’re somehow young with lots of money to burn, then why not go out and buy some land, and give it a whirl. However, you’re in debt and close to retirement, so I assume you haven’t too much to fritter away chasing after a dream, only to potentially throw it into a money pit. And that’s exactly how you need to be looking at the first many years of your homesteading endeavor.
It seems many here, echo each other, and so I’m going to echo what The Real Dr. House has already mentioned. If you’re not necessarily young, and haven’t enormous amounts of money to throw away, and the only reason you’re “honestly” looking to purchase land, is in context to collapse preparedness, then I would highly recommend you NOT buy any undeveloped property.
Basically, it’s a little late in the game to just be starting out.
Instead, look to partner up with existing functioning farms in your area, who might be in need of a financial infusion to either help sustain them, or expand their operation. And look to do this in exchange for any number of collective agreements that would allow you to permanently live and work on the farm.
There are probably many farms in your area, who are close to being insolvent simply because of an oppressive mortgage in a declining economy. Offer to greatly reduce their mortgage payments, and they could be very amiable towards rethinking collective living arrangements.
The problem with this approach, is it seriously lacks the whole romantic back-to-the-land mythos that compels most, if not all, urbanite permaculture dreams.
But, above all else, and I write this knowing virtually nothing about your background or circumstances, and I’m just going off your basic Vermont description. If you are only now beginning to think about “collapse preparedness”, and your thinking is something akin to: collapse is coming-cities bad-rural good-lights go out-people starve-don’t want to die–so we must grow food–therefore we must own land. Then I would highly suggest–and here I’m only going to be echoing Kathy C–that you completely abandon every idea of what you think collapse “eventually means”, and reframe the whole concept of collapse in context to what would be the most fulfilling and ethical life you could be living right now, before the world goes dark.
Because whatever idea you currently have in regards to what you think you actually need to be prepared for, chances are, by the time that ever elusive moment arrives, you won’t be even remotely prepared for it…….simply because all of humanity, isn’t, nor will we ever be, prepared for what is coming.
Even if you somehow wind up being among the incredibly small percentage of people who are capable of providing most of their annual caloric requirements yourselves, there will still be a multitude of critical inputs you will most likely still need from “the outside”, which without them, you will quickly come to a dead end. That is, unless you have an enormous amount of land and all the equipment required to fabricate whatever is needed. And for the same reason why even the most hearty frontier men and women of a by-gone era, eventually needed to re-up certain essentials at their local trading posts, any modern homestead, is tied to urban commerce for any number of things.
I’m sorry if this is coming across as being overly cynical, but there is an enormous amount of hopium and romanticism as to modern day homesteading that is based on a mountain of false presumptions.
Case in point, and this is only one of an ever growing list: With only several more years of Arctic melting, we could easily be closing in on a diminished temperature gradient that will eventually render a majority of the north eastern coast of the U.S. untenable to short term survival, as ever increasing extreme weather events gradually take their toll. Which IMO, makes Vermont not the best long term option. But then again, I no longer think in terms of long term.
But even more importantly, and which seems to be something even many of us dyed-in-the-wool collapseniks willfully ignore, is that the whole concept of “preparedness”, is nothing more than an idea, based on what we want to be prepared for. However, when the time finally arrives, where you need to actually rely on your homestead for basic sustenance, meaning global food riots have collapsed the distribution of goods and services, the collapse of the electrical grid won’t be far behind. And once that goes…..well, it will probably only take a couple of months for the living to envy the dead.
February 4th, 2013 at 8:46 pm
Kathy C
I’ve been blocked from Jay’s site, because I questioned him about 9/11….hmmmm
February 4th, 2013 at 8:57 pm
@ B9K9
You stated: “Guy, Guy, Guy, you should really come visit & spend a day or so with me. I could quickly get you up to speed as to how the world really works. Long ago, Upton Sinclair said it best:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
This is your first example of how you would get Guy up to speed? By relaying a quote most of us have heard a hundred times! It’s so common, Al Gore even used it in his movie.
B9 B9 B9, you might be locked in a nutshell thinking yourself king of the universe, but please spare us your feeble attempts at trying to be condescending.
February 4th, 2013 at 10:40 pm
Guy, can you comment on this. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/a-closer-look-at-moderating-views-of-climate-sensitivity/?ref=science
It’s a NY times article on new predictions that warming trends won’t go above 3C
February 5th, 2013 at 12:00 am
Many thanks to all who responded, you’ve given me a lot to think about!
More info: I’m 34, my partner is 42, and we’ve both been aware of collapse for several years now. I still have student debt (it seems so stupid now!) and ~$50K in my retirement fund, which I fully expect to evaporate when the banks go boom.
Having lived in coal/fracking country – West Virginia, we intentionally selected Vermont as the place to move to for when TSHTF, and did so in 2011. Since then, we’ve rented, mostly to make sure that we like Vermont enough to stay. We do, AND we’re tired of dealing with crotchety Vermont landlords who think it’s OK to let you have a water-damage-caused hole in your apartment’s ceiling, and water/debris on your kitchen floor, for 2.5 days before bothering to come by to start cleanup or repairs (for example). We’re sick of throwing money away on rent and would feel better if we had a place to plant things, build soil, etc. – basically doing the “learning” part of homesteading BEFORE it really counts.
Skillsets: not much re: homesteading. I’m currently a web developer but have always enjoyed houseplants and gardening. I also love to learn and am currently devouring The Permaculture Handbook, looking forward to a different way of life. I grew up rural, and the largest “city” I’ve ever lived in had only about 30,000 people.
Thanks Daniel, I do like the existing-farm idea, and we actually have an organic farmer client who plans on doing permaculture-y things on his farm. Perhaps it’s time for a chat with him.
The REAL Dr. House had great suggestions too. I’m an avid checker of the classifieds section here, but nobody there is in Vermont and I’d like to stay here, having carefully selected it because of the lack of coming water trouble, the resilience of its people (good ol’ Yankee ingenuity!), sparse population, tons of farms, etc.
Gail, it’s good to know that you’re getting back to planting things anyway.
February 5th, 2013 at 12:52 am
I’m just working really long hard days while I mourn the passing of everything.
So much of what i do is pointless and counterproductive to improving people’s quality of life, even in the medium term, even as a doctor, even in a public health clinic in rural Hawaii.
Charlotte, I’m touched by your question.
In the short term, get out of financial instruments and into gold bullion (maple leaves are nice and 100% pure) and circulated (junk) US silver coins.
Live with some hard working organic farmers who are making it already.
It is a super hard life, even as things stand now, but some can do it.
Only then can you see what that means, and what you might do to be part of it.
I’m there. I’m here. I’m engaging. People ask if I’m OK, with a worried look on their faces. I keep seeing death as the easy way out, which I’m not permitted to take, due to responsibilities to others.
Cheers!
Some-kinda-optimist
February 5th, 2013 at 2:36 am
Charlotte – check out the Cold Antler blog. Jenna is in “Veryork”and is a great resource. You would probably love her books.
I have $70 grand in student loans in low-income deferment. Nelnet goes by income, not net worth. I sold my house last August and am in the same boat. If I do buy land, it will be something low enough cost that I have some hope of re-selling, like a cheap lot here in Puna, HI, where you can build an un-permitted shelter, off grid and on catchment water. It does give me pause, however, to consider that if the Hawaiians decided to take back their land, it could get ugly. In fact, it does get ugly here sometimes.
Maybe the rural areas are not really safer.
I may just wonder around, living out of my car, which I have been doing since August and see some more of the country.
It sounds like you have found your spot, so the next step is to gather your tribe. Make connections. There is much you can be learning, like how to make your own everything. I approach it like preparation for an expedition, a marathon, a final exam, childbirth, death, etc.
February 5th, 2013 at 3:49 am
Daniel, well its Jay’s site and his rules. Did he remove your membership or just delete some comments you made? If he just deleted comments and you are interested in what Duncan has to say, just come back on and avoid 911. If he removed you entirely and you are interested you know you can easily create a new e-mail eh? At any rate I will link to the new Duncan paper when it comes out and if anything pertinent to this group gets discussed I will summarize the information for this group.
I actually found Jay’s dieoff.org because of 9/11 – someone sent me some stuff about it and I started researching, found Mike Ruppert’s site, found Stan Goff saying it was Peak Oil and then started researching Peak Oil and found Jay’s group.
February 5th, 2013 at 4:05 am
Daniel …..the whole concept of “preparedness”, is nothing more than an idea, based on what we want to be prepared for. However, when the time finally arrives, where you need to actually rely on your homestead for basic sustenance, meaning global food riots have collapsed the distribution of goods and services, the collapse of the electrical grid won’t be far behind. And once that goes…..well, it will probably only take a couple of months for the living to envy the dead.
I had been realizing that for some years – then Fukushima happened and it began to dawn on us that when the grid goes so do all the nuclear power plants for they won’t be able to be cooled.
Charlotte – you may want to google “400 Chernobyls Matthew Stein” and after reading it look at this map http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2011/03/16/the-nuclear-world-interactive-map/#axzz2K1NRbdqz and see which nuclear power plants blowing will affect you. This in part explains why Daniel says what he says. Those of us who don’t go down in the first round will get to see what a world with 400 exploding nuclear power plants (with no remediation) looks like.
I just offer this as a piece of knowledge to add to your decision making. An unhappy bit of knowledge but its part of our future.
February 5th, 2013 at 5:21 am
OzMan Says:
Ripley
Thanks for the heads up on The Parallax View, one I seem to have missed.
Trying to find a way to watch ‘The Parallax View ‘. Seen some shorts and read the IMDB synopsis. What in your opinion is so disturbing or of interest there, just so I get your drift?
Well, I’m hesitant to give too much away, unless you want me to. But it would fit somewhere between 3 Days of the Condor and the Manchurian Candidate in terms of subject matter. But both those movies have the reassuring presence of lots big stars that cushion the shock somewhat. The Parallax View is more pared down, unconventional, realistic. It has the feel of an investigative documentary that doesn’t know what it’s up against, and this makes the viewer feel very vulnerable and uncomfortable. Although it’s fiction I thought it presented some interesting possibilities. The idea of patsies being recruited to be in the right place at the right time. In light of some evidence, like Oswald saying he didn’t shoot anyone and that we was a patsy, just before he was silenced by Ruby. Powerful people wanting and trying to make some things happen and others not happen, see Operation Northwoods, Smedley Butler plot against FDR.
The 3DOTC clip Guy provided in the previous post is remarkable because Cliff Robertson’s CIA character is stating the Carter Doctrine (mid east oil is OUR oil) several years before it became “official” policy.
February 5th, 2013 at 7:10 am
Hi Guy and all,
Pat, thanks for asking ulvfugl about his (?) name. Wolfbird is wicked cool.
I’m about 700 comments behind, per usual. Small breakthrough in my immediate friends’ circle, as now a few of them are beginning to ask me why I’ve become convinced collapse/extinction is coming soon, as opposed to within a few hundred years. I was going to ask you, Guy, to pull together a time-based argument and see you already have, in the second video linked above (banned, for real, in the UK? Ain’t that great.)
So I inserted the direct link to that video into this week’s blogentry, in which I also take a poke at all you NBL-ers for being just a bit wrapped up in your own discourse. Which is not to say I disagree with the content (indeed, I admire the integrity and dynamics of intragroup interaction here). What I am trying to help co-construct is a discourse about deepening, a verb I settled upon to emphasize the living-well-in-the-moment-now ethos most of you espouse.
http://www.reflexivity.us/wp/2013/02/the-world-is-still-living-flight-behavior-a-review/
February 5th, 2013 at 7:14 am
@Daniel
“I’ve been blocked from Jay’s site, because I questioned him about 9/11….hmmmm”
Jay is adamant about 9 1 1 postings on his website. Maybe you can contact him and and tell him you are aware of this fact now and see if he’ll let you back in.
February 5th, 2013 at 7:45 am
Maybe Jay just doesn’t want to do the “here we go again” thing. Like crop circles, it never ends.
February 5th, 2013 at 7:46 am
Leslie, please take a look at the first figure here. Notice how unusual it has been (would be?) to achieve a stable 18.5 C average-global temperature. It’ never happened to far. I suppose it could happen, but I wouldn’t bet on it. When I mentioned “bargaining” in my post, this is what I’m talking about.
Thanks for the link to your essay, Steph.
February 5th, 2013 at 8:11 am
Dear ogardener,
“Wow. That’s a lot of buzz: Since the release of the breakthrough European study finding that clothianidin and other neonicotinoid pesticides pose a serious danger to our bee population, over 263,000 people have joined you in signing the petition urging the EPA to immediately suspend its use.
If we want to convince the EPA to take action, we need to build as much pressure as possible.
Can you help us reach 300,000 signers? Click here to share this petition with your friends.”
http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=6996344&p=efsa_bees&id=54325-3469653-WzewLxx&t=17
I joined this org a while ago. Pass it around if it pleases you. Thanks.
February 5th, 2013 at 8:12 am
It appears a very small percentage of the United States of Sheeple is slowly but surely becoming aware of the the popular meme regarding 1913. For, dear reader, in the annals of modern history, 1913 is quite the banner year.
Let us take a short visit down memory lane to recall the legal precedents that established the very system which controls daily life to this day. And in so doing, enshrined a debt-slavery system that makes it impossible for any corrective action to be taken regarding environmental self-preservation:
16th amendment – allows Congress to levy an income tax without apportionment amongst the states. With the 16th, both federal & state governments created the system by which a debt-money system could be financed & serviced with ongoing cash flows.
17th amendment – direct election of US Senators by popular vote. An important keystone in which to introduce money politics into the higher chamber, with special notice with regard to judicial approvals that eventually culminated in Citizens United.
Federal reserve act – established a US central banking system by outsourcing (abdicating) Congressional legal authority over legal tender. With this final capstone in place, and an income tax system in which to fund it, banking interests had full control of a major continent and willing sheep to slave away producing wealth for a few at the top.
So many things happened in 1913 that went the right way for the reptiles, that even Woodrow commented:
“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”
“The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.”
Now, knowing this, why did Woodrow sign off on the FedResAct? (Both amendments were already in process of being ratified before he assumed office.) Well, it appears Woody literally had a woody for a certain lovely lady, and that suppression of this information was perhaps critical to maintaining his reputation.
Of course, the FedResAct was not the last step. The dark forces really had to pull out their chits on Woody when it came to having the US declare war on Germany in 1917. The rest, as they say, is history.
So, go on being an angry nihilist. If you were wise, you’d quickly realize that this shit was cemented firmly in place long before your dad even got a look @ your mom. You were born in captivity, and unless something really unexpected occurs, you will die in captivity.
February 5th, 2013 at 8:22 am
Debunking the myth of clean energy:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html
from a comment at the dotearth post (where mostly, the delusion is so overwhelming, it was a really depressing way to start the day!)
“One needs to look no further than the bankrupt climate policies epitomized by emission reduction targets and commitments that have dominated the climate policy agenda—and appear likely to continue to do so. These have done nothing to stem the rising tide of global emissions—and could never have been expected to do so in the absence of an energy technology revolution capable of replacing fossil fuels with equally capable, reliable, and scalable energy sources and technologies. Attempts to cut back on emissions in one place whether via cap and trade carbon pricing or government mandates mainly shift the locus of emissions elsewhere, as studies comparing emissions based on a consumption instead of production have demonstrated. It is like a huge CO2 balloon—push at one point, it bulges out at another.”
February 5th, 2013 at 8:44 am
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
coal miners will never give up, like the great majority who will never understand what is at stake ( at steak?)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/05/us-usa-coal-miners-idUSBRE9140A320130205
February 5th, 2013 at 9:20 am
michele/montreal, thanks for that link. My paternal grandfather (whom I never met) worked in a coal mine in Herrin, IL for enough years to contract brown lung (which eventually killed him quite young). My dad describes growing up with pictures of FDR, John L Lewis and the pope on his wall, and the KKK would come by and beat the shit out of whomever (immigrant Eyetalians and papists, don’t you know). The house also had bullet holes in it from these visits. No republicans in that house.
Steph, I loved Kingsolver’s new one! My favorite is still Prodigal Summer, but Flight Behavior is a close second.
Charlotte, I’ll add my voice to Daniel and TRDH….we bought undeveloped land in Kentucky, which I love deeply. Still, it’s going to require a ton of money to make liveable and we’re in our 50s and not do it yourselfers. The idea of living with other people makes me want to open a vein or two, so an IC is out of the question for us, but might be the way to go for you guys. Think it through.
February 5th, 2013 at 10:20 am
I don’t think that there is any such thing as perfection, when considering energy sources and clean energy. As with H/G, just to exist, any human has an ecological impact, even if only by occupying physical space, compacting the soil by foot pressure, changing the soil composition by urinating, and getting their food one way or another.
So it’s a sliding scale, from least damaging to most damaging.
Other species, e.g. ants, social creatures similar in many ways to ourselves, – learned how to get everything they need without destroying their environment. For example, some species hollow out trees so that they can live inside them, protected from enemies. They don’t kill the tree, they care for it and protect it, removing insects and caterpillars that harm the tree’s foliage. It probably took them several millions of years to learn that relationship. It’s the lesson that we have not learned in our brief time on Earth.
We do know, in theory, that there’s far more energy than we could possibly want, sloshing about out there, in the wind and the waves and the sunshine. What has been wrong has been the attitude, the insane economics, the culture. We could have devoted our efforts to finding harmless ways of harvesting that energy.
People who built steam engines, even people who built diesel engines in the 1930′s, built them to last forever. I mean literally. They really thought in those terms. They were something wondrous and special. Since then the whole cultural attitude changed, planned obsolescence, everything is a disposable throwaway item, which will be replaced by a ‘new, improved’ version… partly because consumers have been trained to like the novelty and status of newness, but mostly because it’s profitable.
There’s no profit in making a product which lasts forever, because the customers never come back. Except perhaps occasionally for spare parts. In nature, that would be an advantage. Build once. Done. No need to waste energy ever again. But in consumer capitalism, the best products are things like cigarettes, which vanish, and force the customer to come back the next day wanting more, makes cash flow. The faster we consume nature, the richer we all get. Until it’s gone. Until NTE.
February 5th, 2013 at 10:48 am
@ Steph
Wolfbird is wicked cool.
And he knows it !
People often add ‘infamous evil egomaniac’, or similar flattery, btw.
Actually, I urgently needed a name years ago, to register with the ISP, and was reading a great book, The Mind of the Raven, by Bernd Heinrich, wolfbird was in the subtitle, so that’s how it happened.
And on the subject of animal behaviour, this is cool and intriguing. Me, I think it’s a quantum consciousness thing. There’s ninja and tai chi exercises, where you stand at the centre of a marked circle, divided by radial lines, blindfolded, and sense attacks from different directions. Some directions are easier than others, for no known reason.
It’s winter on a British meadow, and a red fox is on the prowl. The snow-covered ground masks the sight of its prey but the fox can still hear the telltale rustle of a mouse. It creeps forward slowly, listening intently with erect ears. Once it pinpoints the mouse’s location, it leaps into the air to surprise its prey with a strike from above. This pounce, known as ‘mousing’, is a common sight but there’s more to it than meets the eye. Jaroslav Červený has found that when red foxes pounce, they mostly jump in a north-easterly direction. He thinks that they’re using the Earth’s magnetic field to hunt.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/01/11/foxes-use-the-earths-magnetic-field-as-a-targeting-system
February 5th, 2013 at 10:53 am
And that last link lead me to this one
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/02/04/soil-microbes-invisibly-shape-biodiversity/
Which reminded me of Guy’s mention of the soil micro-organisms, and how climate change will effect them.
There’s not many microbiologists who study the soil, and what they mostly say is ‘We don’t know much’…
We’ve probably already done terrible damage and will never be able to know.
February 5th, 2013 at 11:06 am
Hacking software sees everything you do on your computer
http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2013-02-04/this-hacking-software-sees-everything-you-do
February 5th, 2013 at 11:09 am
..scientists have discovered that sea urchins use nickel ions to harness carbon dioxide from the sea to grow their exoskeleton – or shell. It could be a way to capture tonnes of CO2.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-humble-sea-urchin-may-hold-key-to-tackling-climate-change-2013-2
February 5th, 2013 at 12:03 pm
I will not leave the city, I will not grow food, I will not look for IC, I can’t. I will not see a sane tree again in my life. There is not one sane tree left in this city. The botanical graden is no exception. In my jail, I hear the drum beat where the birds used to sing.
February 5th, 2013 at 1:05 pm
michele:
are you actually incarcerated or just speaking metaphorically?
February 5th, 2013 at 1:09 pm
This description of living in an IC raises some daunting issues and it reminds me of the few days I spent in a camp in West Virginia, preparing to shut down a mountaintop removal coal mine. It was very intense, and the personalities were kind of overwhelming. In the establishment of elaborate manners required to give offense to no one, a hierarchy clearly prevailed. It made me think that a genetically determined desire for status underlies even the most ostensibly benign behavior.
http://leavingbabylon.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/living-by-the-bell/
February 5th, 2013 at 1:38 pm
IMO, IC living seems like nothing more than pre-electricity, pre-oil, agrarian civilization. A good choice if there is some nice, slow, decline in the population with a controlled shut-down of the nuclear power plants and the industrialized cities. But, if the SHTF in a rapid riotous collapse, then they are going to be the first targets of the militarized marauding hordes.
So, the only way IC makes sense, IMO, is somewhere WAY far away from populations. The least densely populated place you can find! (So, nowhere in the US.)
But, given NTE, The debate is moot.
I keep thinking I’ll quit my job and let my house get foreclosed on and then wander the streets. But, alas, I somehow keep showing up, punching the clock, and waiting…
February 5th, 2013 at 2:33 pm
Yeah. Forced communities are weird:
http://www.alternet.org/media/world-forgets-antarcticas-first-great-author-fascinating-life-and-death-nick-johnson?paging=off
February 5th, 2013 at 3:26 pm
Regarding soil microbes; Looks to me like some folks are trying to create jobs for themselves. The solution, which they really don’t want to know, is to not cut down the trees that capture energy for the soil microbes below. The microbes depend 100% for their energy from the trees. Is that too hard to understand? No “study” is needed. The microbes then do their work, break down matter and build soil structure for the trees. It’s like taking nursing mothers away from their babies and then “study” what is wrong with the babies. I continually forget how stupid we really are.
February 5th, 2013 at 4:42 pm
@ dmd
Indeed, stupidity abounds, and when combined with the arrogance you display, it’s a certain recipe for disaster.
You assume that all ecosystems involve trees, that all trees have the same relationships with soil microbes, that all soils are the same. No study is needed ? Sure. Ignorance is a virtue. Jeez.
February 5th, 2013 at 5:05 pm
Okay, I’d like to withdraw my last ad hom aimed at dmd, as I have been reprimanded in private regarding my attitude. Apologies.
We know almost nothing about soil microbes. All that we know is that every time somebody looks at some soil in detail, there’s millions and millions of new life lifeforms to be found. Fungi, bacteria, viruses, all sorts of strange things. How they interact is unknown.
The more we can learn, the better. If we want to conserve or rebuild ecosystems, or even if we want to grow food, we need to understand what we are doing. Just understanding that some plants and some trees take nitrogen out of the air and fix it, – in other words, fertilizer for free,- is incredibly valuable knowledge. The suggestion that wanting to know this stuff is stupid, is stupid. IMHO.
February 5th, 2013 at 5:31 pm
Testimonies of the mothers in Fukushima filmed by the Fukushima Collective Evacuation Trial Team. In the video, one of the mothers highlights the fact that regulatory standard for the food in the school meals at the primary schools in Koriyama City, Fukushima is 10 Bq/kg while the standard at the cafeteria of the offices of the Fukushima local government is 1 Bq/kg, suggesting the fact that the government could sacrifice the health of children by lifting the safety standard higher than normal levels. In so doing, The government officials seem to believe that the promotion of the local consumption of food at the primary schools would make the impact of radioactive contamination in the community look smaller.
Also, the way in which this video presents the statements of the mothers by changing their voices and hiding their faces implies the mothers’ fears of being blamed by their neighbours or other members of their community when they speak out the truth in the public.
SOS from the mothers of Fukushima
http://youtu.be/DFn79MS2P4I
February 5th, 2013 at 5:48 pm
Kathy C,
Yes, Jay removed my membership, and again, not for originally opening the whole 911 bucket of worms, but because he gave free license to someone else, who bashed those of us–including thousand of engineers–who look at building 7, and think to ourselves….that sure does look like a controlled demolition!
In fact, how anyone could possibly see it any other way, could easily be considered the epitome of cognitive dissonance.
But on a scale of 1-10 as to how contemptuous I could have been, I barely registered a 2.
It’s fascinating to witness what some of us choose to let in, compared to what we decide to keep out…..for the sake of getting at “the truth”.
Some will attempt to magnify the slimmest shred of evidence as proof in justifying some insane extrapolated theory, and then turn around and be completely blind to what is staring them in the face. I’m sure I’m no exception.
While the concept of “vested interests” has over the years, become fairly common parlance among those of us who ponder collapse, it has lost none of it’s quintessence as to our culture’s blind spots.
It never ceases to amaze me, how “what” we see, is completely determined by what we “want” to see, and just how ubiquitous that disparity is……
February 5th, 2013 at 6:14 pm
@ BC Nurse Prof
Thanks for the link, great read.
..extended riffs on the idea that life is nothing but a brief, horrifying, meaningless, and futile exercise in existential terror management.
Hahahahaha. Great line.
Has nobody here had experience of Unintentional Communities ?
I’ve been homeless and penniless in foreign cities, wandered into squats, lived there for months with all kinds of strange people, communities that just happen out if necessity.
There was a large rural community like that on common land, homeless people living in trailers and benders and so forth. I got to know some of them. Some were great people, but lots were very damaged casualties, bad mental problems, lots of people making money and using bad drugs, knife fights, people freaking out from the stress, getting obliterated with booze. Not an easy place to live.
Moved into villages, that are long established Welsh communities going back many centuries, nobody ‘intended’ them, they just grew, full of all kinds of odd people who more or less get along just because the are in the same location.
I tried to form an intentional anarchist community, first time, in my late teens, some 40+ years ago, been involved with several others since. Some work, some don’t, all depends on the characters involved, imo.
Met a man who told me about a whole street in London that had somehow lost all legal ownership. He was homeless. Found a house there, full of junkies and alcoholics, threw them out, renovated it, others did the same in adjoining houses. It grew, became a street of artist’s communes in an organic, haphazard sort of way.
I think probably the worst way, the way that fails most, is when several middle class couples with money decide to buy somewhere. They plan and plan and try to foresee every problem, and that goes on forever and nothing happens, and if lawyers get involved that’s another recipe for disaster, imo.
Lammas seem to have been successful
http://www.lammas.org.uk/ecovillage/news.htm
February 5th, 2013 at 6:26 pm
Some will attempt to magnify the slimmest shred of evidence as proof in justifying some insane extrapolated theory
YOUNG CATHERWOOD
That’s Danny. But don’t say it, Nancy, I… I know it’s been hard, but I wanted to give you the swellest honeymoon a girl ever had. We’re going to Greece!
NANCY
And swim the English Channel?
YOUNG CATHERWOOD
No, no. To Ancient Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sang and stroked the wine-dark sea, in the temple by the moonlight, wa da doo dah…
NANCY
What?
YOUNG CATHERWOOD
Don’t you see, Nancy? I’ve built the perfect time machine!
NANCY
Oh, it sounds dangerous!
YOUNG CATHERWOOD
Yes, that’s why I’m going to try it out first. Now, when I get into this grandfather clock, you hit me over the head with this bottle of Champagne, right here, set the dial for a thousand, and put in three dimes. I’ll be gone for a thousand years.
NANCY
A thousand! That’s longer than anyone’s ever been gone before!
YOUNG CATHERWOOD
But to you it will seem only like a minute! Very well, my love. Now, forward into the paaaaaaast! (breaking glass/Tardis)
NANCY
Gee, I hope he gets back before all this dry ice melts! (door open/close) Who…who’s there?
ROCKY
Mrs. Haber?
NANCY
Who’s that?
ROCKY
I’m Rocky Rococo. You may have seen me loitering around the drugstore, drinking chocolate malted Falcons and giving away free high school…
NANCY
Well, what are you doing here? What do you want?
ROCKY
(walking) I’m here for a friend, Mrs. Haber. If you sign a contract you’re supposed to keep up the payments…
NANCY
Oh, you must be a friend of Nick’s…
ROCKY
Yes…
NANCY
Well, he couldn’t want his money already. He, he only gave me the ring last night. I…I’m wearing it, see?
ROCKY
Yes, that’s a very pretty hand you have there…(struggle) Ha ha ha ha!!
NANCY
Oh! Let go of my hand! (Tardis)
CATHERWOOD
Oh, Nancy! Nancy! It’s a success! I’m back! It’s a success! I have proof I’ve been to ancient Greece! Look at this grape! Oh, it’s…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEltFvygT0c
February 5th, 2013 at 6:34 pm
More Americans Addicted To Prescription Drugs
Excerpt:
Experts say prescription drug addiction is continuing to rise.
According to federal data, nearly 7 million Americans abused prescription drugs in 2007 more than cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and inhalants such as marijuana combined. The figure is up 80 percent since 2000.
So when the shit goes down there will be greater than 7 million Americans out and about looking for a fix.
February 5th, 2013 at 7:01 pm
Lyle Lovett – If I Had A Boat (live)
February 5th, 2013 at 7:13 pm
Charlotte, we are also in VT. Could you drop me a line at “lidiaseventeen” via gmail? Would like to exchange ideas, break bread with like-minded folks who are in a similar position. We’d like to invest in a self-sustaining local food operation even if that ends up being the last thing we do…
February 5th, 2013 at 7:46 pm
I’d like to withdraw my last ad hom aimed at dmd, as I have been reprimanded in private
Ye shall know them by their fruits.
Matthew 7:16
(Among the consequences of meditation without adequate preparatory and supportive practices.)
Some advanced beings need no preparatory and supportive practices. The Sixth Patriarch was one such example: indeed he did not even need meditation. It is said that he realised “enlightenment” upon hearing a verse of the Diamond Sutra in a recitation by wandering monks, before be left home. But then not everyone is of that stature – I for one could wish I were even a shadow of it.
The way meditation is promoted in society today misses the mark, often by a wide margin. And when pursued hell-bent on “enlightenment” it can lead very far astray.
Not one of the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount advocates meditation, but each and every one of them will convey the sincere practitioner to the same Being that Buddha was.
February 5th, 2013 at 8:00 pm
@ Robin D.
Thank you for your advice, I’m sure it is well intended. I left buddhism behind a long time ago, and christianity, long before that. I follow the pathless path of soto zen as taught by Dogen. All belief systems are rafts for crossing rivers, after that, nothing but a useless hindrance. I am not the slightest bit interested in enlightenment.
Fruits ? You know what you can do with them. Just look what a mess it leads to.
Buddhists do not really do regret.
February 5th, 2013 at 8:44 pm
Daniel
Regarding this comment you made earlier:
“It’s fascinating to witness what some of us choose to let in, compared to what we decide to keep out…..for the sake of getting at “the truth”.”
I think its one thing to have a personal view, which can be formed for all kinds of reasons, some of which are subective, like an intuition, or feelings.
However, if you or anyone say runs a website, and pushes a view on something like 9/11 and perhaps NTE and catastrophic climate change, for example, it will not come down to subjective evidence, because, as is obvious, in practice what happens is that every nutcase will test your assertions, and many will use the credibility test of the prevailing Scientific worldview to critique your same assertions.
So I think in practice what happens is that if web publishers start talking about these issues with a lot of coverage, not only do they cop a lot of ‘comment’ from deniers, they get hit by the authorities, or their lackeys if the actual laws do not allow, but additionally they get heaps of trolling, like flies to a Rafflesia plant in the Sumartrian rainforrest.
We know here from previous experience.
So I think web and blog publishers can tell from their experience what assertions and proposals will get them into too mch ‘trouble’ or ‘difficulty’, particularly with their linked associates, who can act with ferocity in censoring them, if their message is not trimed to suit.
The ‘truth’ will go down the gurgler there, no question, but that is less than it takes to have an open discussion about the published evidence, and even some anecdotal evidence, which is what happens with excellent coverage of Climate and Biosphere issues here at NBL, thanks to the standards set by Guy and all who contribute in that spirit he attempts to live by.
Others will be obviously a poor example, and the situation you describe, having your membership revoked for ordinary comments shows where the real agenda is there.
Just sayin…cheers.
February 5th, 2013 at 9:22 pm
Fruits ? You know what you can do with them. Just look what a mess it leads to.
(“)Indeed, stupidity abounds, and when combined with the arrogance you display, it’s a certain recipe for disaster.(“)
February 5th, 2013 at 9:37 pm
Want to learn about life in the soil?
Read some Paul Stamets
Mycelium (mushrooms) rules the soil.
From: Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World
“I believe that mycelium is the neurological network of nature. Interlacing mosaics of mycelium infuse habitats with information-sharing membranes. These membranes are aware, react to change, and collectively have the long-term health of the host environment in mind. The mycelium stays in constant molecular communication with its environment, devising diverse enzymatic and chemical responses to complex challenges.” ― Paul Stamets,
Are mycelium the largest organism in the world?
A 2,400-acre (9.7 km2) site in eastern Oregon had a contiguous growth of mycelium before logging roads cut through it.
Estimated at 1,665 football fields in size and 2,200 years old, this one fungus has killed the forest above it several times over, and in so doing has built deeper soil layers that allow the growth of ever-larger stands of trees.
Mushroom-forming forest fungi are unique in that their mycelial mats can achieve such massive proportions.
- Paul Stamets, Mycelium Running
How Mushrooms Can Clean Up Radioactive Contamination
…..with hyper-accumulating mycorrhizal mushrooms, particularly Gomphidius glutinosus, Craterellus tubaeformis, and Laccaria amethystina (all native to pines). G. glutinosus has been reported to absorb – via the mycelium – and concentrate radioactive Cesium 137 more than 10,000-fold over ambient background levels. Many other mycorrhizal mushroom species also hyper-accumulate.
Wait until mushrooms form and then harvest them under Radioactive HAZMAT protocols.
Continuously remove the mushrooms, which have now concentrated the radioactivity, particularly Cesium 137, to a [closed loop] incinerator. Burning the mushroom will result in radioactive ash. This ash can be further refined and the resulting concentrates vitrified (placed into glass) instead of very rapidly spreading through the air and water…..
February 5th, 2013 at 11:00 pm
Guy: a friend of mine at Hubbert’s Arms says there’s a thread there in the Energy News section discussing the November video. Reactions have been overwhelmingly supportive. But when this came up in a thread in another sub-forum (General Discussion), this one guy, who appears to be a hard core supporter of capitalism (he is a capitalist, for one thing) all but asserted that you are cherry picking your data. See response #53 in http://www.hubberts-arms.org/general-discussion/reclaiming-our-imagination-from-'there-is-no-alternative'/msg235410/#msg235410 Just giving you a head’s up, he’s planning on seeing you in May.:-) Methinks he’s a big IDIOT. Thanks for doing what you’re doing. Joe Romm, when all is said and done, doesn’t want the boat rocked, he’s got a berth on it, even if it’s third class.
February 5th, 2013 at 11:22 pm
@ Robin D.
Why do you think I have such contempt for belief systems ?
( My contempt extends to those who hold the beliefs, in the neurons in their heads, who promote and share the beliefs.
Perhaps it should not. Some people insist on the difference between the person and the ideas, which is what ad hominem is all about, in a formal context. Is this blog such a formal context ? For me it’s not, but out of respect for it’s owner, I endeavour not to cause offence. )
I take the ideas personally. It’s these ideas and beliefs that are the enemy, the ‘thing’, the stupidity, that is causing the extinction of species and the destruction of the biosphere. It’s not the ACTIONS. The actions follow the ideas. When the Chinese decide that they are going to dam more valleys and destroy more ecology, it’s because some idiot thinks that is what makes sense in accordance with the way they understand the world.
When the Mennonites cut the Colombian rain forest, or the European farmers ploughed up the prairie to create the dustbowl, it’s because they are convinced that ‘they know the way things should be done’.
Whether it’s the materialism and arrogance of science, divorced from any sense of the sacred, or the blind obedience to the superstition and the dogma of some ancient myth, the combination of arrogance and ignorance prevails everywhere. Nobody has got any respect for nature.
As I’ve stated plainly, in my estimation, your own interpretation of Vedanta and other teachings, which has lead you to the conclusion that human beings are to be viewed as meat robots, is grossly mistaken, misconceived and ill-judged.
February 5th, 2013 at 11:49 pm
@ Speak Softly
Yes, a big cheer for Paul Stamets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuF4s-0-0Gs&feature=share&list=UUR8Y7Ay6PJXndscDLpkLafg
February 6th, 2013 at 12:16 am
Here’s a 3 hour video about Sandy Hook, the first part, which reviews the story, is rather good and thorough, imo, ( I doubt many here will want to watch the whole thing, if you do, and get to the bit about Albert Pike and the UN plot to grab the guns, I think it goes way off the rails… )
I bring it to your attention, in case you don’t know it already, to give some context to the link in the following comment
http://youtu.be/JkZ9HnMLKXg
February 6th, 2013 at 12:18 am
An interesting development, in the light of all the speculation :
Connecticut State’s Attorney Stephen Sedensky has argued that unsealing warrants in the Sandy Hook case might “seriously jeopardize” the investigation by disclosing information known only to other “potential suspects.”
Sedensky said that unsealing the warrants would also:
“identify persons cooperating with the investigation, thus possibly jeopardizing their personal safety and well-being.”
The statement by the CT prosecutor’s office is the first indication from state authorities that Adam Lanza may have not acted alone.
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/342829#ixzz2K6KDokAJ
February 6th, 2013 at 1:23 am
The choice is not from a spectrum of happy motoring to extinction. Not cherry-picking to select a point on the spectrum, but squinting at the departing horse’s ass when deciding about the effect of closing the barn door.
February 6th, 2013 at 2:39 am
Just for the record, I don’t own a pickup truck and I don’t go to church.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/super-bowl-farmer-ad-plows-agricultural-landscape-article-1.1255317
Also, I canceled my subscription to Discover magazine about 10 years ago, when I realized what their real purpose was.
February 6th, 2013 at 3:36 am
There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_orwell.html
February 6th, 2013 at 4:26 am
you’ll appreciate this dmd:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z9_VXVWNV0I
February 6th, 2013 at 5:04 am
dairymandave
A quote that perhaps is a forrunner to that difficult to get, at first, concept – ‘Motivated Reasoning” from the great G.O.
From the same site:
“People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”
And I can’t resist another gem:
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
George Orwell
Like:
“I am human”
and
“I am a consumer”
Or for Robbin Datta:
“I”
and
“I Am”
February 6th, 2013 at 5:11 am
Another Doublethink:
“It is so awfully hot today, much hotter than usual”
and
“I’ll put the air conditioner on to cool things down”
Any better ones from any-all?
February 6th, 2013 at 5:25 am
Re the battle of ideas.
In the 1700s, a few smart people, like those in the Lunar Society, with a knowledge of ethics, questioned The Trade Triangle, and began to spread the idea that slavery was morally wrong. In those days, much of England’s wealth was coming from that trade, and the mega-rich families didn’t like these ideas, so, Bernays-style, they invented counter-memes. They said that the black Africans were not really human, because they interbred with chimpanzees, so should be regarded as animals. They said that God had provided the whiteman with Africa as a natural blessing, a farm full of livestock to be harvested. They said that the Africans were actually very grateful to be captured because they were saved from the ravages of nature, the wild beasts that preyed upon them. They said that they were very happy to be taken to America and the West Indies, where they enjoyed their work and learned the life of good Christians. Most ordinary English folk had no direct experience of the trade, they just repeated whatever they heard or were told by their superiors. I met an old Welsh lady who had lived all her life in rural isolation, 85 at the time, 40 years ago, who told me of the time in her youth, a memorable occasion, when she had seen ‘a blackie’. He was one of a crew of workers who drove by in a truck. She had such a fright she ran inside and locked the door. A legacy of the propaganda and mythology.
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/triangle.aspx
What has this got to do with anything ? In principle, it’s no different to the contemporary battle of ideas, which is, however far more complex and sophisticated and difficult to unravel. These ideas are started by people, spread by people, they exist in people’s heads, come out of their mouths. People like the Kochs pay a lot of money to cook them up into catchy phrases and distribute them.
I am trying, trying, to stand up for the right ideas, and kill off the wrong ones. I can keep the crap out of my head, that’s the easy part…
btw, Infanttyrone, wtf was that all about ? It was entertaining, in a mental-meltdown sort of way… I thought the trick is to stand on the edge of the ten thousand foot cliff with equanimity, not to fall off into a multi-dimensional time warp…
February 6th, 2013 at 5:50 am
@ Robin D.
Your comment which ended :
Not one of the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount advocates meditation, but each and every one of them will convey the sincere practitioner to the same Being that Buddha was.
No one who seeks is ever going to find Buddha or Enlightenment or anything else that’s of any worth, especially not if they think it has something to do with geographical location, or gurus, or following scriptures, or injunctions, or achieving or getting something… all of that stuff is crap which needs to be thrown away.
You already ARE what you are seeking, you’re already immersed in it, no where to escape or hide from it, nothing to find, nothing to be sought, nobody to be enlightened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharmakāya
February 6th, 2013 at 6:23 am
LaMar’s Tar Sands Souvenir Stand!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyuLFMBVmwY
A little tar sand humor
February 6th, 2013 at 6:31 am
Sermon on the Mount Matthew 5:3
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven
or Sermon on the mount Luke 6:20 – 21
Blessed [are] ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.
February 6th, 2013 at 6:45 am
I am no longer religious but having studied the Bible for years I still find parts of it worth quoting. It seems to me that anyone who wishes to grow in what they call spirituality needs to meditate on the verses below and find their spirituality not in quantum physics or mental mind trips called meditation, but in concrete action in relationship to the humans that have gotten the bum end of the deal in this world. The opportunities for such actions as volunteering in homeless shelters are increasing. The opportunities to share your daily bread will surely increase. As we head into extinction that now seems unavoidable, we will have plenty of opportunities for self sacrifice for others. What could be more spiritual than that. If you want to meditate on something, meditate on what you will do if you have 2 days of food left and a woman and child appear on your doorstep begging for food.
Matthew 25
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
February 6th, 2013 at 6:48 am
This is my first comment here, Charlottes question brought me out of the shadows. I am 54 years old. When I was 40 I bought a cabin on 5 acres. I had the romantic notion of homesteading but have now reconciled with reality. I have a garden. I have chickens. I am not even close to being self sufficient and never will be. So I just live season to season now and dont look that far ahead. The flux potential is so great im not sure a bunch of long term planning is viable. I only do what really matters to me. I don’t even try and explain anymore. If I spend all day in the forest looking at the variety of lichen and mosses or mentally cataloging the bird songs I hear, then that day is a gift and to those who think I have dropped out or given up or being unproductive or not ambitious or the other charges that have been levied against me then so be it. I have learned to be very present. I don’t really plan for collapse in the sense of massive food stockpiling or a bunch of survival gear anymore. I did at the beginning. I came here for one reason, stayed here for another: everybody’s got to be somewhere, and a rural community is a good place to ride it out. It’s more civilized for sure. I wouldn’t presume to give advice about what you should do, instead I would encourage you to fill each day with as much of whatever brings you joy. I spend a lot of time apart from my husband who is deeply attached to the matrix and will not entertain any discussion of NTE. If you have a partner who understands what we are facing then you are Truly blessed. If not for these pages I would feel quite lonely. Good luck, and don’t be afraid.
February 6th, 2013 at 7:02 am
@ Kathy C.
Perhaps you’d care to explain, clarify, what that introductory paragraph is supposed to mean :
It seems to me that anyone who wishes to grow in what they call spirituality
What is ‘spirituality’ ? And what would it mean ‘to grow in’ it ?
..needs to meditate on the verses
I think you do not understand what the word ‘meditate’ means. You are using it as if it was synonymous with ‘think about’ or ‘contemplate’. That’s not what it means when I use the word. I mean the formal discipline called zazen, or its equivalent in other traditions.
..below and find their spirituality not in quantum physics
How can spirituality – whatever that is, or isn’t ? Go on, please define it – be found, or not found, in quantum physics, or in any other branch of physics ? Say, Classical Newtonian physics, or in mathematics ?
…or mental mind trips called meditation
I think that your understanding of what meditation is, is so shallow and superficial that it does not qualify as any kind of understanding at all. What exactly do you think that people do when they meditate ?
For someone who insists so fervently that they are a materialist and an atheist you seem to have an extraordinarily strong attachment to ancient mythology.
February 6th, 2013 at 7:06 am
@ Red Eft
Sounds good to me.
February 6th, 2013 at 7:20 am
What a touching story. If only we could do that for this whole world..
“We lost a lot of our riches. But we were also able to save a great deal of our riches, and for that I am overcome with joy,” Cisse said. “These manuscripts represent who we are…. I saved these books in the name of Timbuktu first, because I am from Timbuktu. . Then I did it for my country. And also for all of humanity. Because knowledge is for all of humanity.”
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/people-timbuktu-save-manuscripts-invaders
February 6th, 2013 at 7:29 am
“…I thought the trick is to stand on the edge of the ten thousand foot cliff with equanimity, not to fall off into a multi-dimensional time warp…”
If I was a younger person, I’d be doing this in a heartbeat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsV3bGPMTXo
“Beauty will save the world.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Not the idea of beauty, not the concept of beauty, not the religion of beauty, not the dogma of beauty….
To paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, who was talking about pornography, but the same attitude applies when dealing with Beauty
“…I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [of "hard-core Beauty"] and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”
~Justice Potter Stewart~
A Heart in love with Beauty never grows old, let the Beauty we Love be what we Do and See
.
February 6th, 2013 at 7:43 am
I am on a personal campaign to depress as many of the ‘common folk’ as I can concerning the true state of the environment. Why? Because I have tried to be a good little doober environmentally and I am depressed as hell over it, so I am determined to spread the joy around. If we deserve to be depressed, those that have not cared certainly do!
http://truththeory.com/2012/02/25/planet-infected-by-humans/
February 6th, 2013 at 7:48 am
Red Eft, I think you have the right idea.
We watched National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers for the first time last night….caught several shows back to back and wow, human beings are totally amazing creatures!
One guy, who I kind of related to, is prepping for an earthquake along the New Madrid fault. He and his wife have spent 60 to 70 thousand dollars on food, etc. (According to the map he’s using, we will be okay in KY if there is another big one.)
Another is prepping for nuclear war. Another for economic collapse.
One couple has this gorgeous little farm with animals and garden.
Not ONE of these people are thinking about those nuclear plants that go BOOM without the grid.
But shit, they are well armed! Gillie suits, AK-47s, camo nets, buried caches, blah blah blah.
At the end of each segment, some unnamed “expert preppers” score each person’s preps (no mention of nuclear holocaust by them, either).
Now that is some serious denial. It really is America’s 51st state!
February 6th, 2013 at 7:49 am
I’m looking into the Conservaton Reserve Program. The literature says it’s a good way to sequester carbon. It’s also a good way to give back to the soil microbes what has been stolen to feed the masses. The masses have never, in my 61 years of farming, sent back a single molecule of nutrients. I could finally practice the food cycle. As you may have noticed, this subject has left me with some guilt.
There are a few organic farms in this area but I don’t know of any that do the food cycle. All their produce goes to the farmer’s market and then is gone forever, taken by the more well to do of us.
February 6th, 2013 at 7:51 am
By the by, does anyone know what’s going on with Derrick Jensen’s site? It was down all day yesterday and appears to be down again today. Hacked? Government shit? WTF?
February 6th, 2013 at 7:51 am
The administration’s counterterrorism policies are leading to media censorship, refutation of basic rights and to more terrorism. The man responsible for these consequences should not become head of the CIA.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2013/02/brennanss-drone-policies-censorship-assassinations-more-terrorists.html
February 6th, 2013 at 7:58 am
@Wildwoman
But shit, they are well armed! Gillie suits, AK-47s, camo nets, buried caches, blah blah blah.
It’s amazing how many people think that if they have enough firepower, they can ‘shoot’ and kill any problem. How about the problem of their not being another possible habitable place within at least several light years (and we wouldn’t survive as ‘humans’ anywhere but earth).
February 6th, 2013 at 8:29 am
Bailey, it occurs to apparently none of these people to actually HELP anyone else.
And the ego displayed is mind boggling…it’s all about them 24/7. One guy is driving around in a super modified RV so that “they” don’t get him holed up anywhere. His name is emblazened on the RV and he does a broadcast from his van (he looks a lot like a slimmer Rush Limbaugh but crazier).
Quite a disturbing show. Only in America.
February 6th, 2013 at 8:43 am
Ulvfugl, I have seen truth in the eyes of a baby dying from AIDS as he snuggled tight to my shoulder and nestled his head against my neck. That truth is embodied in the passage I quoted and the fact that it got attached to an ancient myth religion doesn’t change it. The truth is that something inside us changes when we reach out in kindness to other humans or other creatures.
I feel sorry for you.
February 6th, 2013 at 8:49 am
@ dmd
The masses have never, in my 61 years of farming, sent back a single molecule of nutrients. I could finally practice the food cycle. As you may have noticed, this subject has left me with some guilt.
Now you’re thinking, dmd. Here in Wales, first they cut down almost all the trees, way back in the Neolithic and Bronze and Iron Ages, so that the soil washed off the hills and into the sea, and the hills have been bare ever since, just poor quality grassland, to feed tough mountain cattle and sheep, which then got taken, with all the nutrients they’d put into their bodies, down the drover’s roads to be eaten by the people in English cities. It’s always been ‘take as much as you can’, really.
Heck, what’s the point of the guilt ? You’ve been doing your best. You’re just one man. It’s not your fault. This mess is the result of centuries. The cultures are all wrong, the belief systems are all wrong. Plenty of honourable, decent, respectable people, with the best intentions and the highest motives have made decisions which turn out later to be disasters. It’s just impossible to know at the time, with the knowledge available at the time.
On the other hand, there are plenty of evil unscrupulous ruthless bastards too, who know very well what harm their decisions cause. They damn well should feel guilty, but they don’t. That’s what psychopathy is. Someone earlier said something about them being irrational. That’s not it. Psychopaths can be highly rational. It’s not like mental confusion. It’s the inability to feel any empathy with other humans, any fellow feeling or sympathy. That’s why they make good generals and CEOs. They can give orders to wipe out the livelihoods of thousands of people and feel no qualms or guilt at all.
In theory, we could change the cultures, the belief systems, so that they made sense, so that they were compatible with the reality of our circumstances. But in practice, the bad guys have got all the money, they can print it, they control the education and the media systems, they’ve learned all the tricks since Machiavelli and Bernays, as to how to manipulate crowds and voters and public opinion. Imo, there’s no time left, it takes several generations to shift cultural attitudes. For example, how could one get the masses to look at flashy cars and luxury yachts and air travel with disgust and contempt instead of desire and envy ? Bernays knew how to make that sort of change.
February 6th, 2013 at 8:50 am
Parable of the Two Birds
Two birds, beautiful of wings, close companions, cling to one common tree: of the two one eats the sweet fruit of that tree; the other eats not but watches his companion. The self is the bird that sits immersed on the common tree; but because he is not lord he is bewildered and has sorrow. But when he sees that other who is the Lord and the beloved, he knows that all is His greatness and his sorrow passes away from him. When, a seer, he sees the Golden-hued, the maker, the Lord, the Spirit who is the source of Brahman, then he becomes the knower and shakes from his wings sin and virtue; pure of all stains he reaches the supreme identity.
- and then realises that the other bird is just a machine, a meat robot.
February 6th, 2013 at 9:07 am
@ Kathy C.
I have seen truth in the eyes of a baby dying from AIDS as he snuggled tight to my shoulder and nestled his head against my neck.
Yes, you mention it in most threads, you seem to have a thing about dead babies.
It’s happening to someone, somewhere, every second of the day. I’m well aware of that.
That truth is embodied in the passage I quoted and the fact that it got attached to an ancient myth religion doesn’t change it.
Yes, but I don’t need to be threatened with being burned in hellfire to feel deep compassion for all living things, for all who suffer, and I certainly don’t need your hypocritical preaching, when you pour such scorn on everyone else’s beliefs and then want me to take you seriously over this :
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
The truth is that something inside us changes when we reach out in kindness to other humans or other creatures.
You think I don’t know that ?
I feel sorry for you.
How patronising. I’d have preferred it if you would have actually responded to what I asked you. I don’t need you to feel sorry for me, it’s unasked for, unwanted, and ridiculous.
February 6th, 2013 at 9:13 am
Ulvfugl -You think I don’t know that ?
Based on the way that you insult people constantly, No I don’t think you know that. I also don’t think that you know you don’t know that and therefore are someone who is to be pitied.
February 6th, 2013 at 9:28 am
Meet the groundbreaking new encryption app set to revolutionize privacy and freak out the feds.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/02/silent_circle_s_latest_app_democratizes_encryption_governments_won_t_be.single.html
February 6th, 2013 at 9:31 am
@ Kathy C.
Well, as you don’t have the courtesy to respond to the questions I put to you above, quite properly and politely, I don’t feel obligated to respond to you, and it really makes not the slightest difference to me and my life whether you pity me, or anything else, so feel free to please yourself in that respect.
February 6th, 2013 at 9:37 am
@Gail
Your link to the blog post re: Intentional Communities, specifically her experience at the Still Waters Sanctuary. Yikes!
This stood out for me “..exhaustion from unaccustomed work and the heat. What bore down the heaviest, though, was the relentlessness of the life. Relentless physical work. Relentless commitments. Relentless socialization. Relentless overscheduling (even music nights were scheduled!). Relentless gregariousness, relentless ‘people everywhere,’ all the time. The life of the PA farm is one long self-imposed crisis — a crisis caused by too few people, with too few resources, running a working farm, hosting hordes of visitors (some 1,500 a year) and trying to fulfill a vastly ambitious and demanding vision that never quits. It was like being on a treadmill, albeit different from the one we know in Babylon. One of the younger residents was suffering from severe fatigue and debilitating body pains, after two years of this onslaught. The misery of no solitude, no privacy. The stress of always running according to the bell. Never a chance to reflect. All bread labor, no head labor…”
I think many people have forgotten how hard life is when you are operating at a basic survival level, many never having had to give it much thought. This community seems to be making things harder by trying to force/adhere to some ideology of what an IC is, instead of allowing for organic growth/evolution and utilizing individual strengths and skill sets. Also, by not allowing internet use they are really limiting access to information and knowledge that could be very practical. For instance, 5 minutes online and they could improve on things like composting toilets. Anyway, who am I to judge? On the surface the set-up sounds fine, but no privacy or personal time sounds miserable to me, a good way to build resentment towards the system, which is what they are trying to get away from, right?
Maybe it’s just me, or maybe “relentless” too closely describes my own life raising small children with no support system. My partner works 10 hours/day and I constantly worry something will happen to one of us and no one will be there for them. These are the good times and the worry can be all consuming if I let it take hold.
@wildwoman re: Doomsday Preppers
I’ve seen a few of them out of curiosity, and I find it funny that each person/couple/family of preppers are basically preparing for a specific event, i.e. super-volcano, economic collapse, big earthquake, and at the end the “experts” grade them and tell them how long they can survive based on their preps, and then they generally say the likelihood of such an event happening is remote. Seems that no one pays much attention to climate at all. It basically highlights that a lot of paranoid, unstable people are armed to the teeth. That couple with the really beautiful property looked ridiculous trying to set those traps. Does not look like an enjoyable life as there are so many possibilities and eventual outcomes to any collapse scenario that it isn’t possible to prepare for them all. One would go mad from trying.
February 6th, 2013 at 9:41 am
Jeffrey Joy has discovered that symbiosis — a relationship between two or more organisms that can be parasitic or mutualistic — is as much the mother of biological diversity as predation and competition.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130206094712.htm
February 6th, 2013 at 9:46 am
@Mike Sosebee “So far what most of us have been doing is waiting for someone else to do something; yeah…this is what we’ve done our whole fucking lives. It’s time for all of us to come out of the shadows and begin to speak loudly to as many people as you can get in front of. As it is we’re entertaining ourselves to death. Yes you and you and you…what we’re going to have to do is sit in front of other people and try and wake them up from this massive delusion.”
Guilty as charged.
I never meant for it to happen, but somewhere along the line, I let them take my voice, and in doing so, my power.
February 6th, 2013 at 10:40 am
No one who seeks is ever going to find Buddha or Enlightenment or anything else that’s of any worth, especially not if they think it has something to do with geographical location, or gurus, or following scriptures, or injunctions, or achieving or getting something… all of that stuff is crap which needs to be thrown away.
That can be makyo and kensho speaking. In the Vedic tradition, motivated by tamas and sattwa. Whether or not one is unwittingly burdened with baggage.
I think you do not understand what the word ‘meditate’ means.
What is called “meditation” in many traditions is actually preparation. Such preparation may also include a lot that is not meditation. A preparation for what might follow thereafter. The thereafter may or may not follow, (depending on whether or not one retains baggage) but if it does, it spontaneous, not “achieved” of “attained”: not a consequence of preparation. The preparation can be done through meditation (Gnyana Yoga) but can also be done through the Way of Action/Work (Karma Yoga), the Way of Devotion/Worship (Bhakti Yoga) or the Way of Psychic Control (Raja Yoga): of through any combination of these.
Every method is a way to purification: a way to unload one’s baggage – the trash that has been swept under the rug. Some of this trash can be exceedingly subtle, escaping one’s delusion what is deemed to be the closest scrutiny. But in spite of its subtlety it can be a veritable mountain that goes unrecognised. That is why some traditions warn of makyo: a state in which one does not recognise that baggage and mistakenly thinks that it has been unloaded in its entirety.
Top 5 Free Ebooks by Swami Vivekananda
February 6th, 2013 at 10:52 am
re: Doomsday preppers
As usual, europeans have it all wrong. When faced with collapse, they go back to a system that wrought the problem in the first place: agriculture.
When they arrived at these shores, they saw a perfectly workable system and marvelled at the native people. If you read 1491 you’ll see in their writings that the people were tall and healthy, with “clean limbs” and beautiful hair and teeth. They worked a few hours a day and had plenty of time for creating a complex culture. They were not broken down as they aged and were well taken care of until the end, sometimes self-chosen.
So what did the europeans do? They imported the system they were used to and completely screwed up the land, the people, and the flora and fauna.
Now with collapse staring them in the face, they go back to what they think is “sustainable.” It is not.
Having described the native systems as “better” now let me say that they were on their way to the same system as the europeans, but that they were simply not there yet. They would have arrived there even had the europeans not come along.
Some europeans actually ran away from settlements and joined the aboriginal people and never looked back. That didn’t much happen the other way around.
I remember I had a provincial politician come to my class to speak to the students about politics. He is an idiot and I wanted the class to see that from his own words and behaviour. They did, indeed, see this, but I will always remember what he said about his past. He grew up way north of here and his father had homesteaded the land. He watched his father work so hard that he died a broken-up bag of bones. His last wish was that his son would not have to “work with his hands.” So his son went into politics and became an immoral non-human, for sale to the highest bidding political hack. What a choice.
I see that there is a re-wilding movement which might let some people survive a bit longer than the farmers, but the ecosystems are so damaged that it can’t last long.
February 6th, 2013 at 11:11 am
AKBadlands, the Nearings lived off grid and grew their own food in Vermont and Maine and devoted approx. 4 hours a day to it (once they were up and running). They of The Good Life. No animals, they were vegetarians and built their own house, garden, ponds, etc.
The traps that couple bought would do serious damage to any wildlife but that apparently never crossed their minds, either.
I’m still steaming over the arrogance, obviously, of the people selected by the show’s producers.
February 6th, 2013 at 11:27 am
“If you’re in trouble, or hurt or in need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
February 6th, 2013 at 11:39 am
Michelle Obama Is Not Our First Black First Lady? 10 Fascinating Things You Didn’t Know About Black History
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/michelle-obama-not-our-first-black-first-lady-10-fascinating-things-you-didnt-know?paging=off
Quote:
Michelle Obama is not our first black First Lady; Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was.
Jackie O, perhaps America’s most emulated and admired First Lady, descended from a family known as the van Salee’s, who were described as “mulatto” in the 17th century. This family traced its lineage in part to a Dutch mariner named Jan Jensen, who turned Turk (what some Europeans called “going native”), which was more popular than common history reveals.
It is widely believed Jensen fathered two children, Anthony and Abraham van Salee, by a Moorish concubine. Following a dispute with his white wife, Anthony van Salee was exiled to territory across the river, where he became Brooklyn’s first settler. Until a few decades ago, this property adjoining Coney Island was called Turk’s Island after Anthony van Salle — the term “Turk,” in his day being synonymous with Moor (North African). A descendant, John van Salee De Grasse, born in 1825, was the first black American formally educated as a doctor.
When Jackie Kennedy was asked about her van Salee roots during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, she called her ancestors “Jewish.” Of course, her socialite father, born in 1891, was nicknamed “Black Jack” Bouvier for his swarthy complexion. In the 1960s, journalists described the First Lady’s features as “French,” earning her the cover page of countless magazines, including film and fan publications. Not only Kennedy Onassis, but well-borns Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Vanderbilt (and thus Anderson Cooper), are van Salee descendants.
February 6th, 2013 at 11:43 am
@ Robin D.
That can be makyo and kensho speaking. In the Vedic tradition, motivated by tamas and sattwa. Whether or not one is unwittingly burdened with baggage.
It can be whatever you want it to be.
Look, if you want to carry all the Vedic, buddhist, kabbalist, christian, any other scriptures you choose, around with you, in your head, online, on paper, if that’s your thing, fine.
I speak to you from where I am. I have done all that stuff, read it, worked through it. It is no longer of any interest to me. People waste lifetimes on it. We don’t have lifetimes spare to waste. At least, I don’t.
Every method is a way to purification: a way to unload one’s baggage – the trash that has been swept under the rug. Some of this trash can be exceedingly subtle, escaping one’s delusion what is deemed to be the closest scrutiny. But in spite of its subtlety it can be a veritable mountain that goes unrecognised. That is why some traditions warn of makyo: a state in which one does not recognise that baggage and mistakenly thinks that it has been unloaded in its entirety.
Yes, yes, but I am not a hindu, I am not a classical buddhist, zen added taoism, what you are talking about above is wiping the mirror clean of dust, the ch’an school topped that long ago, with Hui Neng, no dust, no mirror, and then it moved on to Japan, a thousand years ago, and nothing has stood still, much has been learned, and now comes NTE, what use is 2,500 years of buddhas handing down the dharma, or in India, or China, you could add on a few more thousand years…. what good ?
We have Tom asking “What’s the fucking point ?”
That’s the big question that everyone on the planet asks, has been asking, since year dot. With the prospect of NTE, it kinda gets more intense.
The answer we get handed, by soceity, by culture, by family, friends, our peers, is ‘Here you go, mate, this is your belief system, everything packaged neat and tidy, and then you die. This is what it all means. Life on Earth. The manual’.
I have my answer. I sweated blood and tears, fasted for weeks, took all the trips, explored all the avenues and dirty back alleys, made all the mistakes. I’m not the least bit interested in Enlightenment or being anybody’s guru. I’m not here to match anyone’s expectations or likes or dislikes. None of it matters to me in the slightest.
Everyone is locked in to their belief systems. My belief system, soto zen, is a way a living without any belief system, that liberates a person from all that stuff, without becoming completely insane. Okay, it helps to be moderately insane, just to be able to put up with all the crap and still be able to laugh at it… like you have to be insane to be a shaman, otherwise you wouldn’t know how to cure crazy people.
What I have is the very best thing it is possible to have. I don’t expect anyone to believe me, and I don’t care at all whether they do or they don’t. It really makes no difference.
February 6th, 2013 at 11:47 am
@wildwoman
I’m struck by how most of the “preppers” are only looking out for #1. Compare that mindset to this interview with former astronauts (sorry, I don’t know how to make a link at the moment, will have to figure that out soon, but here is the address)
http://vimeo.com/planetarycollective/overview
@BC Nurse Prof “If you’re in trouble, or hurt or in need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
That is absolutely correct. People with money throw money at their problems. Poor people by necessity have to figure out how to solve most problems themselves. Also, many won’t expect anything in return, having “been there”.
February 6th, 2013 at 12:09 pm
@ulvfugl
“All that” was about finding a comic version of what Daniel referred to when he said, “Some will attempt to magnify the slimmest shred of evidence as proof in justifying some insane extrapolated theory.”
If you aren’t familiar with the group or their work, in this case the character was using a single grape as evidence that he had traveled back in time to ancient Greece.
I have always had a bit of vertigo when traveling on the “air” side of mountain roads (as distinguished from the “mountain” side), so if we have a choice, I’ll happily let you have the 10,000 foot cliff and I’ll go with the multi-dimensional time warp.
To my brain and its ocular input ports, it doesn’t matter how many times I have listened to transcendent passages from Anthem of the Sun or Eat a Peach, I still see the damn mountain – and all of the air beside it, so give me the quantum wormhole, singularity, or whatever other option is available.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uGnEc0DhY4
Maybe I could cure the vertigo by a short flight in one of those wingsuits shown in Speak Softly’s clip. If it ever happens, NBLers will be the first to read about it.
February 6th, 2013 at 12:22 pm
Former Target Store Manager to Oversee Nation’s Nuclear Security
Retired Air Force Colonel Steve Asher also ran a missile base that later flunked key security tests.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/former-target-manager-nuclear-security-oak-ridge
great.
February 6th, 2013 at 12:24 pm
Nearly Half of All US Farms Now Have Superweeds
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/report-spread-monsantos-superweeds-speeds-12-0
Nearly half (49 percent) of all US farmers surveyed said they have glyphosate-resistant weeds on their farm in 2012, up from 34 percent of farmers in 2011.
February 6th, 2013 at 12:30 pm
Grain Harvest records:
http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C54/grain_2013
February 6th, 2013 at 12:36 pm
Fire study finds landscapes vulnerable to ‘ecosystem collapse’
Ecologists have long suggested that ecosystems disturbed and managed by humans are prone to abrupt environmental collapse.
To test the theory Andrew MacDougall and his colleagues took their torches to small plots of grasslands on Vancouver Island.
And sure enough, the fire was enough to doom seemingly productive and healthy pastureland.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/national/Fire+study+finds+landscapes+vulnerable+ecosystem/7927057/story.html
February 6th, 2013 at 1:17 pm
BCNP: speaking about farming
http://www.globalpossibilities.org/states-considering-laws-that-would-make-it-an-act-of-terrorism-to-report-on-abuses-at-factory-farms/
February 6th, 2013 at 1:21 pm
There is concern that grain prices could drop to 1/2 what they are now. How could that be? Supply seems to be slipping. TPTB don’t like high food costs. It sucks money from the non-farm sector. Will they be able to cause prices to fall? Nicole Foss reminds us that demand isn’t what you want, it’s what you can pay for. Is it possible for grain to pile up in the streets because people don’t have money? We will see. How long will TPTB be able to control the game? This is the last inning.
February 6th, 2013 at 1:40 pm
As the article on biodiversity points out, foreign species are introduced because they yield more which in turn makes enough profit to maybe pay the bills. I know from experience that native species will yield about half. Biodiversity makes no sense now; wheat is wheat and you don’t mix it with anything. Talk about a portfolio is bull shit. These people should show us how to do it. So far, it’s just talk, talk, talk.
People complain a lot but they don’t have any answers. What replaces Roundup? Just another chemical that is even worse. Be happy that you have anything to eat besides newspaper soup. That’s how it is.
February 6th, 2013 at 1:49 pm
.
Understanding Doom Takes Time
Robin Datta says: meat robots
Meat robots need time to plow
Through science which teaches them how
They control mental preps
Through rate-limiting steps
As chemical reactions allow.
February 6th, 2013 at 2:49 pm
Mike and Badlands, what’s the point of spreading the NTE gospel? Converting a few thousand, even a few million folks is not going to avoid the inevitable, it’s not even going to make a dent. We forfieted the planet, period. If you enjoy trying to convert others, then fine. But I don’t see the drive to molest the sleep walkers as a moral imperative.
To state the obvious: Nothing will be done until it is too late. The reason for this is that our planetary civilization is predicated on carbon. This civilization would not exist and about six billion people would not be here in the absence of fossil fuels. Those who propose radical change are conveniently ignoring that such change would require the death of at least half of the world’s population (from famine, war and disease) and the divestment of wealth from the elite power structure. Who is going to decide which populations must be exterminatedn (or simply allowed to die off)? Who will decide which countries are going to collapse? Who has that kind of control?
Historically, the masses have been motivated to accept sacrifice and to effect large social changes when they were confronted by a palpable enemy, e.g. the American mobilization during WWII to defeat the evil Nazis. In the case of climate change, we are the enemy. Our very existence and mode of living is the enemy. The only changes that can be sold to the public are superficial modifications of the current lifestyle, which almost no one is willing to surrender. This is why climate change poses (from a social psychological perspective) a nearly impossible problem to solve.
I would analogize the crisis to this scenario: Imagine a family that has four children. The family has contracted some bizarre disease such that the only cure is for one of the parents to kill the other parent and two of the children so that the other three can survive. Faced with this situation, a completely rational agent would choose homicide, but nearly all of us would never be able to act on it. It is easier for everyone to die than to kill your spouse and two of your children.
February 6th, 2013 at 2:57 pm
@ Kathy C
“The opportunities to share your daily bread will surely increase……”
That’s one of the best lines I’ve heard in while!
February 6th, 2013 at 3:21 pm
Yosemite glacier is melting –
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2008/12/22/v-print/605699/melting-yosemite-glacier-an-omen.html
Notice how San Francisco reports it -
http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Yosemite-s-Lyell-Glacier-may-be-receding-4250789.php#photo-4138834
February 6th, 2013 at 3:38 pm
depressive lucidity; You tell it like it is. We had our party. Who was it that predicted this back in 1800 something?
Both my parents went to Middlebury which is a place in Vermont where these things are discussed. My father told me about this when I was 8 or so. I thought everyone else knew it. Dad never had much to say when out in public. He chose to be a farmer.
February 6th, 2013 at 3:41 pm
@ Red Eft
“I came here for one reason, stayed here for another….”
I hear you.
Sorry you haven’t a partner who you can confide in, must make for a lot of lonely nights. We’re all just little beacons in our own right, transmitting a message that few can see for themselves, so therefore, they don’t see us.
February 6th, 2013 at 3:44 pm
Question Everything:
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2011/04/overpopulation-here-is-the-solution.html
February 6th, 2013 at 3:53 pm
I’ll make a furtive try to get back to the subject of Guy’s original post, climate. There are those who have accused Guy of skewing his evidence, cherry-picking his data. I’ve been doing my own studying of climate for a long while (almost went back to school to do graduate studies in that). The key thing i have learned is that the global weather system is not a machine, but an organism. The paradigm of mechanistic materialism, which dominates modern science, and defined by its use of the machine as a metaphor with which to analyze all physical phenomena, fails here, as it does elsewhere. Process philosophy, which sees process and the organism as central, is far more relevant. And the climate process entails a lot of feedback. Hence, climate predictions which do not account for the feedbacks do not present an accurate picture of what we can expect. It is to Guy’s credit that he has placed such a high focus on the positive feedbacks.
February 6th, 2013 at 4:01 pm
Hi,
You say in the prior post in a comment and response to someone asking of contingency plans that going underground is not an option due to a lack of food and water. That doesn’t seem to take into account tapping into an aquifer, and utilizing hydroponic/aquaponic systems. I have read before that sustainable (at least a generation) bunkers exist. This may or may not be the case.
As for your point about going to the southern hemisphere, I think it’s telling that Bush bought a lot of acreage in South America back in 2007, I believe? This seems to indicate “they” knew of this at least back then. My thought is, based on the plans which are being worked by the government, that “they” have known of economic collapse, and climate devastation as far back as the 1990′s.
My thoughts are that this has been allowed to happen, yet they underestimated the severity. Too little data while most of the damage was being done. Now they realize it’s one big SNAFU, and are simply trying to damage control good enough to buy time to possibly innovate our way out of this mess.
Not sure.
February 6th, 2013 at 4:56 pm
There will be no real leadership on the climate issue because who would vote for someone who ran on a platform that stated 9/10 of humans should die off, immediately?
We seem to have invented democracy and I’m not sure that was a good idea. We didn’t give anarchy a fair run at it, imho.
But now nature will take over and do what we cannot.
Ho hum. Another day in biology.
The End is Near. Prepare to Meet Thy Doom. This is not news.
My husband told me the other day, “Dear? I think I’m becoming a crackpot.” He didn’t look too upset. I patted his arm and said, “That’s ok. You’re also married to one.”
February 6th, 2013 at 5:38 pm
@ Infanttyrone
If you aren’t familiar with the group or their work, in this case the character was using a single grape as evidence that he had traveled back in time to ancient Greece.
No, never heard it before. Yes, I got that bit about the grape
Here’s the peach to eat, bit dated, rambling, they was learning, sweet nostalgia for my ears, thanks,
http://youtu.be/qNuNz2idDtY
February 6th, 2013 at 5:54 pm
@depressive lucidity
what’s the point of spreading the NTE gospel?
I’m new here and don’t have a lifeboat in place, so the point of my spreading the “Good News” of NTE would be to locate potential members of a like-minded group that could be a human community (or part of one) within which to spend the remaining decades or years (or whatever is left) as life becomes more difficult and strange.
Maybe you have your garden thriving and your friends and neighbors all set up for the future, in which case I sincerely congratulate you. Many others don’t.
At the risk of bringing tin foil curses down on my head, consider the recent discoveries of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2013/02/06/20558256.html
Six percent of 75 billion stars means 4.5 billion planets.
Red dwarf stars can be up to 12 billion years old.
That’s quite a few planets which might have civilizations (or cultures, if you can’t imagine a civilization orbiting a distant sun that won’t kill their planet) that are older than our planet.
This isn’t my personal garden of hopium poppies…just saying that unless Guy’s projection is seriously off, it looks like some, maybe all, of us have a statistically greater chance of being rescued (or harvested) by ETs than we do of being alive in 2050 or so, when the plants and plankton are kaput.
Imagine a family that has four children. The family has contracted some bizarre disease such that the only cure is for one of the parents to kill the other parent and two of the children so that the other three can survive. Faced with this situation, a completely rational agent would choose homicide, but nearly all of us would never be able to act on it. It is easier for everyone to die than to kill your spouse and two of your children.
I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure diseases don’t operate in such a way that killing a spouse and two children would increase the survivors’ chances of continued life. If there is such a thing, please post a link next time.
If the scenario was changed to where one parent and two children were infected, and there was no chance for a cure, and the continued presence of the infected ones would to lead to the infection and death of the others, do you really believe that most families would arrange a suicide-for-six rather than doing the rational thing ? Maybe they would…sati (suttee) is illegal, but still occurs from time to time, although I don’t believe the children are expected to Hop on Pop’s pyre. Full-family suicide seems very much like a Dad idea…over a large enough population of families in such a predicament, I suspect mothers would be much more practical and would be able to act rationally in the moment and grieve after doing what needed to be done.
The scenario brings to mind (giving evidence of my age here) a lyric and a joke.
Grateful Dead (Hunter, Weir) Greatest Story Ever Told
I asked him for mercy, he gave me a gun
Said now ‘n’ again these things just got to be done
What model of Nike shoes were all 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate suicide team wearing ?
Desp-Air Jordans
@ulvfugl
Yes, that was the Peach I meant. I had the good luck to be at one of the shows that was released as their Live at the Fillmore East double-LP. Their opening song, Statesboro Blues, was never the same after that night. Happy to help with good memories.
February 6th, 2013 at 6:05 pm
@ulvfugl
If you’re not familiar with Anthem, here’s a link to the whole thing.
They may be teasing around the Mountain melody from about 25:30 on or so and then quote it very specifically at about 27:15.
Worth starting at 0:00 if it’s your first trip, though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBSTyYrQ7ds
February 6th, 2013 at 6:17 pm
BC Nurse Prof says: crackpot
People correctly soon learn
That we’ve lost our minds, as they discern,
And that, as they allege,
We’ve gone over the edge,
Past the point of no return.
February 6th, 2013 at 6:28 pm
The Holy Dial Tone Is Coming
Is the Universe a Computer Simulation?
February 6th, 2013 at 6:36 pm
Ah, ulvfugl…how do we “fix” the ecosystem? Oh well, ignorance is bliss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU-OSLBKwG0
February 6th, 2013 at 6:54 pm
@ Robin D.
Re the Vivekananda books, etc.
The way I see things, historically speaking. Hinduism is vast, immense, huge, so big and ancient it is impossible for any individual to know everything about it, and it gave birth to Buddhism, which again encompasses a huge area, both in its variety of teachings and geographical spread, and then it reached China and blended with Taoism, which again is as ancient as any wisdom tradition on Earth…
Out of all that emerged Ch’an, which moved to Japan and became Zen
To put the teaching I follow in that context, Soto Zen is a tiny, tiny subset of a subset of a subset of all that…
To make a very crude comparisom. 2,500 years ago, there were hundreds of religions in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean, most disappeared, Christianity hooked up with the Roman Empire as the official religion, and thus with secular power and became Roman Catholicism, and so corrupt and decadent that Protestantism emerged and that again split into many sects and sub-divisions.
So, as a very unsatisfactory and crude parallel, one could say that the relationship between Soto Zen and Hinduism/Classical Buddhism, is roughly similar to the relationship between the Shakers or the Quakers to Roman Catholicism, because what these subsets have attempted to do, is to strip away all of the unnecessary paraphernalia.
The Quakers try to have the simplest possible architecture for the Meeting House, and they just sit in silence, in the presence of God. If someone feels moved to say something, they are free to do so, but there is no compulsion for anyone to say anything. The only thing, afaik, that the Quakers have in common with the Roman Catholics, is the Bible. Of course, there are thousands of other quirky subgroups of Christianity, I’m mentioning the Quakers and the Shakers, because of their emphasis on minimalism, simplicity.
So, back to Soto Zen. There are many different Zen sects and schools but they are all typically minimalist. Why do you need a cathedral and choirs when there is this world and the sky and the wind in the trees and the birds singing ?
Learn the meditation. All that needs is a peaceful quiet place and perseverance, to develop the habit. Open the heart of compassion, the heart of wisdom, so they are applied to everything, especially one’s self. Watch every single thought. Learn the circulation of the chi/ki/qi. All of this can be mastered in six months of diligent pursuit. It’s not such a big deal.
Forget about Buddha and Enlightenment. You are already Buddha, you just don’t know it. Thinking you are enlightened or wanting to be enlightened or trying to become enlightened is all nonsense.
If you don’t know what Enlightenment is, how would you recognise it, if you found it or if it happened ? What does a Buddha look like ?
Sure, if you follow this practice, wonderful results happen. Totally mind blowing. Totally unexpected and indescribable. But you don’t do it because of that. You don’t do it for any reason at all, because the ‘me’ trying to gain or achieve something is an obstacle, a hindrance. There is nothing to be gained or achieved or found. There is just this, here and now, this very moment, perfect stillness of the mind, emptiness, bliss, nothingness, nirvana, limitless being, beyond words.
Doesn’t need any religion or church or scriptures or doctrines or gurus or preachers, nobody can take it from you, nobody can sell it or buy it, it’s everyone’s free natural birthright.
It’s not something strange and exotic, lots of animals know this, do this, lots of birds know this and do this. Just that fucked up, neurotic, confused, educated, stressed out humans have lost their natural way and forgotten how to do it. Smile. Take the smile inside with your breath, into your lungs, to visit every single piece of your body, each toe, finger, your whole scalp, your genitals, your arm pits, every vertebra in turn… why not ? Bless yourself. Bliss yourself. It’s easy.
February 6th, 2013 at 7:08 pm
The Kinks – Apeman 1970
February 6th, 2013 at 7:16 pm
@ Frog Counter
Ah, ulvfugl…how do we “fix” the ecosystem?
I gave a link.
http://youtu.be/YBLZmwlPa8A
There isn’t just one, there’s very many, so they all need different approaches, and it’s very difficult and complex.
I’m in Orwellian Doublethink Mode here.
On the one hand I believe we will become extinct along with most of the rest of the species on Earth, because of the trends I see, from the science. Everything is so fucked up.
On the other hand, I’m going to keep on fighting until I cannot. The more people who understand what is happening, why it is happening, and who get behind a good project and push, the better. At least it is interesting something to do, rather than suicide or stay in bed all day or watch tv or get drunk.
Now the sea urchins have taught us how to get CO2 out of sea water, using nickel, who knows, maybe that’ll prove to be useful knowledge, if we could stop the bad guys putting it into the atmosphere.
February 6th, 2013 at 7:32 pm
@ Infanttyrone
Happy to help with good memories.
Thanks. I’m a long time guitar picker, not as long as Etta…
http://youtu.be/iPwYJqwUi5w
February 6th, 2013 at 7:43 pm
@ Jeff S.
The key thing i have learned is that the global weather system is not a machine, but an organism. The paradigm of mechanistic materialism, which dominates modern science, and defined by its use of the machine as a metaphor with which to analyze all physical phenomena, fails here, as it does elsewhere.
Good point, very interesting, I’ve been trying to talk to people about that for years and watching them glaze over…
Not sure organism is the right word either, but it’s better than the machine model.
The big problem is we only have the ONE Earth, so there’s no other to make a sensible comparison. We arrived at these other notions, organism, machine, by a long process of metaphors and similes, adding a bit of insight each time.
We’ve got Lovelock’s Daisy World, and Peter Ward’s Medea Hypothesis… and most scientists still living in simplistic 19th century reductionist linear modelling, no ?
February 6th, 2013 at 7:45 pm
ulvufgl: February 6th, 2013 at 7:02 am
Just. Cut. It. Out.
You must have some sort of psychiatric disorder. You do contribute interesting material to these threads, but at the apparent cost of your pointless hectoring and megalomaniacal abuse directed, although not exclusively, at certain other posters. You’ve been asked to rein it in, but this advice has not ‘taken’. I’m not a whiner but I am personally pained when I come across these attacks of yours because they are so pointless.
February 6th, 2013 at 7:49 pm
Red Eft, thanks for coming on board and posting. I can understand your attitude: it’s quite hard for most of us who do not have others around us who are aware of the growing catastrophe. Not much to do but sustain and appreciate what little we can just for that reason alone. Don’t be a stranger, as they say…
February 6th, 2013 at 7:52 pm
Speak Softly, I never gave much thought to “Beauty”. Reading your comment, it occurs to me that a key element of beauty is its transitory or fragile nature. Beauty has always had a bittersweet element to it.
February 6th, 2013 at 7:58 pm
DairymanDave, where are you at?
We are about to close the cycle with humanure. We hired some plasterers, and both of them are already doing humanure. It’s just a matter of it becoming socially acceptable, which I think is eminently doable within, say, 10 years, just as smoking precipitously became socially unacceptable. We may not have ten years, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile anyway from a psychological coherency standpoint.
February 6th, 2013 at 8:02 pm
@ Lidia
You must have some sort of psychiatric disorder.
Hahaha, and this is not an attack upon me ?
February 6th, 2013 at 8:14 pm
BadlandsAK, “Amusing Ourselves to Death”: Neil Postman
The wiki summary is valid: “Postman distinguishes the Orwellian vision of the future, in which totalitarian governments seize individual rights, from that offered by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, where people medicate themselves into bliss, thereby voluntarily sacrificing their rights. Drawing an analogy with the latter scenario, Postman sees television’s entertainment value as a present-day “soma”, by means of which the consumers’ rights are exchanged for entertainment.
The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his argument(s), is that “form excludes the content,” that is, a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Thus Rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television for the aforesaid reason. Owing to this shortcoming, politics and religion are diluted, and “news of the day” becomes a packaged commodity. Television de-emphasises the quality of information in favour of satisfying the far-reaching needs of entertainment, by which information is encumbered and to which it is subordinate.”
February 6th, 2013 at 8:28 pm
@depressive lucidity, (re. your family scenario) it is not as though this sort of Sophie’s choice is even one which would be ours to make. Horrifying as it is, that’s a BEST CASE scenario!
What happens when there is only enough 75% of the food that would normally see a population through the winter is NOT that 75% eat and 25% die. 100% eat until there is none left, and then pretty much EVERYONE dies 75% of the way through.
February 6th, 2013 at 8:30 pm
“everyone dies 75% of the way through” Barring politics, of course, which does put its thumb on the scale…
February 6th, 2013 at 8:33 pm
@depressive lucidity what’s the point of spreading the NTE gospel? Converting a few thousand, even a few million folks is not going to avoid the inevitable, it’s not even going to make a dent
I have to say, I agree with you, but I find myself face to face with this dilemma, every single day, where I have to look into the eyes of a 5 year old little boy, a 3 year old little girl, and a not quite 2 year old baby girl, all precious, all innocent. That part of me that Mike accused of sitting around waiting for someone else to do something, well, I can’t be that person anymore. Sure, I’ve always made the small efforts to inform myself and take personal responsibility for my actions upon the earth, and very nearly drove myself mad as a young person trying to address environmental and social issues in my artwork, and I know well that feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, of really not being able to make a difference. I couldn’t live with the knowledge of the suffering in the world.
Even so, until this past year, I didn’t know the full extent of what was going on, basically due to being so overwhelmed by information and personal struggles that I cut myself off from the larger world for a few years, simply to save my own life. And then I really fucked up and had these three beautiful babies, in my late 30′s, when I had no business doing so. I mean, I had already gone the way of Virginia Woolf, tormented by both biology and society, at the prospect of being a childless woman. Should I lie to them? This is their world now, not mine.
Trust me, there will be no “spreading the NTE gospel” trying to “convert” anybody, but I don’t feel like NTE is privileged information that I should keep to myself anymore, either. I have many friends and family that are having babies, living life, and I feel like they are living in a different universe than I am. How will they feel if they find themselves in the throes of collapse, and here I am, sitting on this information?
I have stopped wondering why people don’t pay more attention to the big picture. I used to let it drive me crazy, thinking many people were callous, uncaring, or even worse, stupid, lazy, or greedy. Honestly, I think people are just too busy to pay close attention, but they know subconsciously that something is very wrong, and panic is there under the surface. If I were still among the sleepwalking, I would be furious that someone, anyone, didn’t tell me. For whatever reason, I can look around me and see a suffering planet, in the trees, sky, everywhere, and the desperate human need to want to fix it feels like a curse. So, the only way to get through each day is to lift the curse, not by feeling like I’m going to make a difference, but just to respect life while I’m here, and that means living a life of honesty.
Who knows, maybe if the power goes out on enough superbowls, more people will wake up. No one cared about the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina, but the spectacle of all those people with money sitting in the dark, well, that requires answers, solutions, and action, now!
February 6th, 2013 at 8:49 pm
EPA report for first time shows methane emissions from oil and gas
http://eenews.net/public/energywire/2013/02/06/1
February 6th, 2013 at 9:18 pm
@ ulvfugl
“I’m in Orwellian Doublethink Mode here……”
Why yes you are.
But then again, maybe “Orwellian Doublethink Mode”, other than being a possible Ben and Jerry’s doomer ice cream flavor, is just one of a thousand coping mechanisms.
February 6th, 2013 at 9:36 pm
“The scenario brings to mind (giving evidence of my age here) a lyric and a joke.
Grateful Dead (Hunter, Weir) Greatest Story Ever Told
I asked him for mercy, he gave me a gun
Said now ‘n’ again these things just got to be done?”
Perfect lyric for the situation, as is the line further on, “You can’t close the door when the wall’s caved in.” Anthem is great!
Lots of stuff on Process Philosophy and the organism vs machine in “Nihilism Incorporated” by Australian eco-philosopher Arran Gare, PDF available online, a whole chapter on mechanistic materialism and capitalism. Also see Thomas Lewis “Brace for Impact.” The author was a former senior editor for Time.
February 6th, 2013 at 10:31 pm
Lidia and Badlands, thank you for sharing your thoughts concerning the hopeless situation we are in. I am not criticizing those who make an effort to rouse good people who are unaware of the approaching nightmare. I think it shows a great respect for others. Unfortunately, most of the people I know are either dismissive of the message and the messenger, or simply irritated by the news. Even those who politely listen usually suppress the message as soon as you stop talking and they make no independent effort to educate themselves about the crisis. You would think that if someone were told that their house was burning, or there was a gas leak, they would try to confirm the warning rather than remain on the couch watching American Idol.
The reality is that the sleep walkers are deeply committed to their blissful ignorance. Feel-goodism is their religion/addiction.
Why some people are capable of questioning the pat mythologies that are fed to us from birth, while most others simply follow the social script is a subject as wide as the human condition itself. Sartre maintained that human beings resent their freedom because they don’t want to be held accountable for their own lives, so they rely instead on false external circumstances like religions, political parties and moral codes to make decisions for them. Imo, these tendencies were hardwired into our primal ancestors who relied on group acceptance for their survival. Very few people, it seems, can transcend the pull of the meat suit’s genetic proclivities.
For what it’s worth, I have found happy/angry nihilism (which may just be a subset of Wolfbird’s Soto Zen) helpful: question everything, keep the ontological circle open (meaning, there’s crazy shit in the multiverse so don’t assume that normal reality is REAL), embrace no beliefs (at least no belief that is not subject to questioning) and avoid getting hung up on “save the planet” fervor because the planet is already gone, we just haven’t caught up.
@Wolfbird, I loved your synopsis of the history of religion and found it quite helpful.
February 7th, 2013 at 12:38 am
@ Daniel
Orwellian Doublethink….just one of a thousand coping mechanisms.
To entertain two mutually incompatible ideas simultaneously…
Yes, extraordinary pressures. Normally something I take care to avoid, I check all my ideas over and over to see how they fit together.
But the Spring arrives, the daffodils and snowdrops are emerging, any day now I must be away from this computer and do other things.
February 7th, 2013 at 1:40 am
@ depressive lucidity
I loved your synopsis of the history of religion and found it quite helpful.
Thank you so much. Very hard to compress such a big subject without grievous distortions. It’s a very bad sketch. It would have been nice to add something of the shamanic origins, which continued on the margins, and survives to this day.
You know, I have had people get down on their knees and touch my feet, as if I was Jesus. People wonder why I am insulting people, people think I am suffering from a psychiatric disorder, people accuse me of all kinds of projected nasty things from their own personal hangups. I want people to stop being so bloody clueless. I want them to have their own dignity and wisdom, as you say, depressive, waking up, not following the social script. If I wasn’t upsetting some people, there’d be something wrong, I should probably be upsetting everybody here much more if I was doing a better job… but it’s not really working out that way, is it, just a few people with bruised egos trying to score points, and me getting pissed off that someone here advocates the obscenity called Monsanto… sigh.
The Great Master Dogen, whose teaching I follow, ( Gary Snyder is also a fan but I came upon soto zen by a completely different route ) says you climb the hundred foot pole, and then you keep going. That means, or can mean, that you let go of everything. You don’t try and hold on to anything. It means you trust the Universe, the Tao.
You do the meditation. There is someone who does the meditation, someone who is trying to find something. It’s only when that someone ceases, vanishes, that the end of the hundred foot pole is reached, and then you let go of everything, mind, body, intention, so there is nothing, called in the trade, nirvikalpa samadhi, or, when permanent, nirvana, amongst other terms.
A lot of people never get that far. A lot are afraid to let go. It was very easy for me, because if you feel suicidal and desperate anyway, well, what the heck, worth a try.
And you repeat this meditational practice, the jhanas in Theravada terms, over and over, until you can do it anywhere, anytime, not just sitting in zazen, but walking in the street, talking to people, laying in bed. That takes years and years of work. And with it comes all the weird siddhi effects, which are a sort of byproduct, which you mostly just notice and ignore, which must have some scientific explanation.
Then what ? I don’t know. It doesn’t trouble me that I don’t know, although I’d like to know, so then I’d be able to say to all you people, ‘Hey this is the way’
NTE destroys all traditional wisdom paths.
An Excerpt from Holy Madness: Spirituality, Crazy-Wise Teachers, and Enlightenment by Georg Feuerstein
“Enlightenment is the shattering of all mental constructions about existence, including the notions of emptiness and chaos or fullness and harmony. It is awakening from the dream in which we mistake our metaphors for the real thing. As the psychiatrist and Zen practitioner Hubert Benoit put it: ‘At a single stroke I have completely crushed the cave of phantoms.’ The phantoms are the curious mental creations with which we surround ourselves and through which we live a mediated existence.
“Holy madness, or crazy wisdom, is stated to be in the service of such an awakening, and it has no value or purpose beyond that. Unlike conventional wisdom, it is not meant to create a higher ‘order,’ a new harmony, that is, a better model of reality. On the contrary, crazy wisdom has the sole function of disrupting our model-making enthusiasm, the phantasmagoria of the mind. It is enlightened iconoclasm. It calls into question all our questions and answers to life’s challenges and problems. Crazy wisdom does not propose to be an answer or a solution. If anything, it is radical questioning. In this sense, the crazy-wise adept is the ultimate scientist, whose investigation is so rigorous that it brooks no conventional answer whatsoever. His or her ‘science,’ however, is the science of Divine Ignorance, which means living out of the plenum-void that is Reality.
“Another way of putting this is that the advanced crazy-wisdom master, especially if he or she is an enlightened adept, lives a life of sheer spontaneity. The emphasis is on the qualifying adjective ‘sheer,’ because the adept’s ‘naturalness’ must be carefully distinguished from the impulsiveness of the child and of the emotionally labile adult, as well as from the kind of spontaneity that is pursued by different humanistic therapies and orientalizing ‘be here now’ approaches. Of course, this sheer spontaneity does not exclude the ability to think rationally — to plan ahead or proceed in a systematic fashion. The enlightened adept may well be an accomplished philosopher and scholar, as was the case with the tenth-century Indian master Abhinava Gupta. But even careful thought and forethought occur in such a being on the basis of ego-freedom and hence as a spontaneous flow.”
February 7th, 2013 at 1:59 am
@ depressive lucidity
…the planet is already gone, we just haven’t caught up.
I’m not nearly so certain of that. At least, not this morning. People are the problem. People may go. Hard to imagine, but not unimaginable.
February 7th, 2013 at 2:00 am
@ Jeff S
Lots of stuff on Process Philosophy and the organism vs machine in “Nihilism Incorporated” by Australian eco-philosopher Arran Gare, PDF available online, a whole chapter on mechanistic materialism and capitalism. Also see Thomas Lewis “Brace for Impact.”
Thanks. I think I have it bookmarked, just never got around to reading.
February 7th, 2013 at 2:01 am
It took millions of hours of adverts over several decades to convince people that the purpose of life is to “jump in a car and go vroom,” as ulvfugl described it in a previous thread. This effort has been successful, and as effective as heroin. And it would take that long and that much effort to convince them that AGW means they can’t live that kind of life anymore. We should expect people will desperately cling to any scrap of evidence that vroom can continue, because they have been told it is the only possible way to live, and for nearly all of them it is, because the oil and car corps helped make sure that the entire physical infrastructure was built for the needs of the car (vroom). And so it’s also pretty clear that what happens in the future is going to be decided by the same people who decided that our lives today should revolve completely around vroom. That would be the Exxon/ National Security State-the people who continue to grow richer the faster we burn oil. With all this arrayed against us, we shouldn’t expect to convince many people, and we certainly shouldn’t get down on ourselves when we don’t. Basically we should admit the war is lost. Right now, the entire environment movement like Hitler is his bunker in April 1945, waiting for a miracle that’s not going to come.
February 7th, 2013 at 2:43 am
Jeff S, many, many thanks for the Nihilism Inc. PDF. I read Gare about ten years ago and was very impressed. But I was working from a borrowed copy. Now I can review it again. Thanks.
February 7th, 2013 at 2:48 am
@ Ripley
.. the entire environment movement like Hitler is his bunker in April 1945, waiting for a miracle that’s not going to come.
Hahaha, yes, I know the feeling, I just read
http://aangirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/who-did-9-11.html
so we are trapped between the fascist-mafia elite who would happily kill us all rather than give up an inch of power, and the masses of the sheeple who want to keep watching the tv and going vroom to buy a fucking newspaper… all is lost…
Ah, but who knows what plans the viruses and bacteria may be secretly plotting ?
February 7th, 2013 at 3:11 am
Here’s the link
http://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/swin:9739
February 7th, 2013 at 3:20 am
Ripley; the idea that “vroom” is close to sex is what we really like. Add to that “power” and “control” and “speed” and “status” and, well that’s just about everything a human wants, men anyway.
I suppose there are other ways to get these thrills, like powering and controlling NBL.
February 7th, 2013 at 3:41 am
Lidia; We are located in rural south central NY, near Norwich. Up until 6 months ago, my plan was to farm until things went down and then, having hundreds of acres of land that I have been building up for the past 40 years, (in spite of Monsanto), I would have been in a position, I repeat, in a position to start something local to help get through the bottleneck. My acres would not be depleated. That’s not been an easy thing to do, considering the forces of capitalism, cheap food, and Monsanto. Whoever was involved would be doing the food cycle thing which would make it sustainable.
After “We’re Done”, I gave that idea up. We may sell the cows in a year and then just sell hay and sit on the front porch. Keeping this many animals, 150, is a burden that we can’t continue to carry at our age.
February 7th, 2013 at 4:06 am
dairymandave Says:
February 7th, 2013 at 3:20 am
Ripley; the idea that “vroom” is close to sex is what we really like.
Well they do like to use sex in the car ads, don’t they? I thought the Chevy truck ads we’re particularly effective, like the one they used for many years where Bob Segar ecstatically sings “like a rock” to sell their biggest truck. Hmm…I wonder what they’re referring to there?
February 7th, 2013 at 5:21 am
I think Fetishization of the Commodity is the phrase you are searching for, as you strive to score your point, dmd. These people are satirizing the phenomenon.
http://youtu.be/ljPFZrRD3J8
February 7th, 2013 at 5:24 am
@ulf
If I wasn’t upsetting some people, there’d be something wrong, I should probably be upsetting everybody here much more if I was doing a better job
Well, you are preaching to the choir here dude, so your ad hominems are not needed as you think they are. If you have some kind of messianic complex such that all of your insights are right and everyone else here is wrong, you need to get over yourself. That being said, I think you have some very valuable wisdom, knowledge and insights. You just need to start using a little honey rather than vinegar.
February 7th, 2013 at 5:57 am
@ Bailey
Oh, I have no messianic complex, Bailey, far from it, I’ve been through all that with what’s his name, Martin something, here, who accused me of wanting to be a guru with followers. Like I said, I’ve occasionally had people try and put that role onto me. It’s very embarrassing. They seem to have a sort of archetypal need for the guru figure, or indeed, the rock star figure, amongst many others. It’s nothing to do with me at all.
I don’t mind the mysterious wizard-hermit role, I suppose, because then it’s on my terms, one to one, and I can listen to the individual and tell them whatever seems appropriate. I enjoy that one. I can get people very high, tripping, just with a few words, change their lives, I can explain everything useful, basic essentials, in what, half an hour ? After that, do you think I want the bother and hassle of people depending upon me ? Not really… Only if they are really in trouble or stuck.
I don’t think I am preaching to the choir here, am I, but thanks for the advice. We had a fairly amicable exchange, I felt, re our positions re ‘scratchmarks left by demons’ etcetera ?
Just about every single thread since I arrived, Kathy C. has picked an argument with me which has lead to acrimony. Okay, I should just ignore such irritation. But I am a real complete person, not some disembodied abstraction. I speak my mind, just as I would to someone in my presence. Not an effing meat robot. My enemy is the bad memes in people’s heads, lets pull ‘em out and stamp on ‘em, and replace ‘em with good ones.
Btw, thanks for the compliment. Anyway, I’ll be away, in a few days, I hope, and you can all breath a sigh of relief.
February 7th, 2013 at 6:09 am
I suggested you might like to be a guru because you seem to crave an audience.
You know, I have had people get down on their knees and touch my feet, as if I was Jesus.
This is beyond satire.
And it’s “as if I were Jesus.” But an inexact grasp of the past subjunctive isn’t the problem here.
as was the case with the tenth-century Indian master Abhinava Gupta.
I knew an Abhinaya Gupta. He was a shelf-stacker at Patel’s on Commercial Drive, Vancouver.
February 7th, 2013 at 6:09 am
The Rubberbandits Guide to Farming
http://youtu.be/8vpqKfX3Rzk
February 7th, 2013 at 6:12 am
@ Martin Knight
You’re a pedant, which puts you beyond satire.
February 7th, 2013 at 6:15 am
ulvfugl
You wrote:
“…and then you let go of everything, mind, body, intention, so there is nothing, called in the trade, nirvikalpa samadhi, or, when permanent, nirvana, amongst other terms.
A lot of people never get that far.”
Othar than Adi Da Samraj, show me another.
Yes, in the various traditions, and many there have been, there have been spirit baptisers, and higher stage Adepts and realisers, quietly woking in the wings… blessing, initiating and doing there part, which unfolds(ed) as they practiced.
The last quote there makes me laugh, but not at you, fellow traveler, jst at the understatement there.
BY the way, I was under the impression George Feuerstein was a devotee of Adi Da. I may be wrong, and if that is so,he has written a lot in terms of advocacy of Adi Da, as has Alan Watts. Oe thing Adi Da did say regarding many of these ‘endorsements’ of the lkind one gets in modern ‘spiritual books’ was that he noted many of the men, the big shakers like Watts, do a lot of endorsing of Him, bt don’t get round to becoming a devotee.
I always find his insight, well… very enlightened, pardon the pun.
Your quotes of George Feuerstein are welcome, and I hae done a bit of personal study into the crazy wize ‘school’ if you like, (not a school in the traditional sense, for obvious reasons, eh?)
The fool in Shakespeare has a lot of this energy, and IMO is depicted as pivotal to some of the bigger elements in many plays, especially the tragedies, Othello, Hamlet, King Lear and others.
In Hamlet he is only a dead skull, still making an entrance, that is if you don’t suspect, as I do, that the gravedigger himself is Yorrik, the old kings fool.
Rang Advahoot, was a crazy wize man in India, and via glance gave his blessing to Adi Da on one occasion.(Onece is sufficient)
These guys in the East, including Swami Muktananda, Rang Advahoot, Swami Nityananda, and Ramana Maharshi, they prepared and purified the vehicle that enabled Adi Da to incarnate, and those times of Sadhana, and moments of blessing, like with Rang Advahoot, were an emptying of their accumulated Great Samadhi, and realisations into Adi Das vehicle.
It was reported that when Adi Da revisited Swami Muktanunda at his Ashram in India, there were many more Westerners attending, much more activity, but no silent realisation teaching of the kind Adi Da received from him. It was as though the Siddhi was gone, and IMO that is what was supposed to happen.
The surrender you speak of above the long pole, is not possible if the path was not there from others before.
These guys did the perfect practice for a damn clear reason, and it has been fulfilled.
But not by many so far, but once the path is fully cleared as it is now, the way is clear for all beings to legt go.
Another great post and comment IMO ulvfugl.
I’ll pass on the feet kissing. Simple and honest praise should be enough for you, eh?
February 7th, 2013 at 6:19 am
Bailey replied to ulvfugi:
“Well, you are preaching to the choir here dude, so your ad hominems are not needed as you think they are. If you have some kind of messianic complex such that all of your insights are right and everyone else here is wrong, you need to get over yourself. That being said, I think you have some very valuable wisdom, knowledge and insights. You just need to start using a little honey rather than vinegar.”
ulvfugi: Bailey is offering you sound advice, and his criticism is balanced in that he recognizes your many contributions. I worked for a large multi-national insurance conglomerate. I started at the bottom and after many years of hard work I ended in a senior executive position. The key to winning over people and influencing their point of view is to be nice. It was amazing to me how many people are socially retarded (made my position that much easier). If people like another person the sky is the limit. Allow me to close with a final “facile and sophomoric bumper sticker” (like the PSAT vocab.) given to me by my grandmother: You will catch more bees with honey than you will with vinegar.
February 7th, 2013 at 6:38 am
@ Friedrich K.
Thank you for your advice. FWIW, I got the first forest on this planet to be certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council. I know something about the limits of the sky. What makes you think I want to catch any bees ?
I’d be more sympathetic towards you if you had replied to my comment in the previous thread. I don’t think you did ?
February 7th, 2013 at 6:50 am
ulvfugl: You don’t need to respond to every comment in this space. And not everybody must respond to every comment you make, either, even if you direct a comment directly to somebody.
February 7th, 2013 at 6:57 am
This is no red herring, but dead herrings..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/06/iceland-mass-herring-death-dead-fish_n_2629555.html?show_comment_id=228202289#comment_228202289
Welcome to the new world of daily statistically bizarre events which are now considered ‘normal’ or natural events. Well yeah, when you consider 7 billion humans destroying the geology, land, sea, and air as ‘natural.’
February 7th, 2013 at 6:57 am
@ Ozman
The surrender you speak of above the long pole, is not possible if the path was not there from others before.
These guys did the perfect practice for a damn clear reason, and it has been fulfilled.
But not by many so far, but once the path is fully cleared as it is now, the way is clear for all beings to legt go.
Another great post and comment IMO ulvfugl.
I’ll pass on the feet kissing. Simple and honest praise should be enough for you, eh?
Well, thanks for all the kind words, but I really don’t see it like that. The way I see it, the hundred foot pole is everyone’s own body and mind, their own being, waiting there for them to explore and attend to, via introspection.
It’s really a lot like learning any other technique, like learning to swim or ride a bike or walk a tightrope or juggle. It helps to have a really good teacher to set you on the right path. And then the work has to be done by the person themselves. Of course, meditation, is different, it is peculiar, and as we now know from neuroscience, it results in very significant physical and functional changes to the brain, so really, you’re changing your whole being, almost like a body builder does for their physique, but at a much deeper level.
Sorry, Ozman, I can’t say whether those names you mention merit your regard or not. I’m not much into the guru thing. The teacher who taught the soto zen stuff that I learned was Jiyu Kennett who was the first Westerner to be officially ordained, afaik, and a woman as well, which was unheard of at the time. She’d very likely disapprove of my interpretation of her teaching, but there we are. I do the best I can.
It was her ambition to set up a lineage, but as I’ve said, all such ambitions, in all areas of human life, appear to be nullified, by NTE. Which must mark an unprecedented existential crisis. This blog appears to be the only place where that has sunk in.
February 7th, 2013 at 7:19 am
ulvfugl: You don’t need to respond to every comment in this space. And not everybody must respond to every comment you make, either, even if you direct a comment directly to somebody.
Your website as it is now run is a source of a great deal of hurt and alienation.
February 7th, 2013 at 7:28 am
@uvlfugl, don’t leave, please?
You are blunt and (i guess) take advantage of the interpersonal distance afforded by internet communication (meaning, I think you’re probably not as confrontational in person – unless you’re blessed with a set of friends and family who actually value that in you!)
Not that I have any say in what anyone does, of course
But I do sense some easing of comprehension of the dynamical, discursive flows here and might be able to start picking out a few threads and generating summaries…. for instance the topics of intentional/forced/unintentional communities (Fail, Pat, BCNurse) and surveillance are both on my mind. We’ll see if/how soon I can distill them. Did I mention I’m trying to finish writing my dissertation? There were a few comments made about ‘the machine’ that are consonant with my subject matter. So many overlaps and interconnections there are! Stemming from the disturbing two birds parable which I wanted to have not read after I had and tried to forget/suppress but then there it kept popping up.
Anyway, just sortof place-keeping with this comment now… @wildwoman, Prodigal Summer is my favorite Kingsolver novel too. Her ability to describe the relevance of animal knowledge is part of what impresses me, like that story ulvfugl shared about foxes using the magnetic field to sense the presence of mice.
Guy, you’re welcome. Interesting dynamics regarding your moderation of this group too, which Greg Robie mentioned over in my blog and then I ‘saw’ in action in some of the comments above. It’s the practice of community that fascinates me, if only because my own attempts to belong have been less successful than I might wish. The difficulties of not belonging, though, heighten the value of those relationships in which I am embraced, scarce and/or tentative as they may be.
February 7th, 2013 at 7:28 am
do you people never sleep?
Question Everything:
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2011/04/overpopulation-here-is-the-solution.html
February 7th, 2013 at 7:34 am
@ Guy McPherson
Sigh, okay, I’ll shut up, but an argument about forests might have been interesting.
@ M. Knight
No idea what you’re talking about, if that’s what you think why bother visiting it.
February 7th, 2013 at 7:50 am
No idea what you’re talking about [...]
Feigned ignorance. You use it a lot, I’ve noticed. Amazingly, no one ever calls you on it, even though it is a transparent ruse.
What are you going to do about your itch to dominate? No, don’t tell me I’m projecting; that won’t work. I’m asking you. What are you going to do about it? Because dominating this space is causing unhappiness to many people (what? you didn’t notice?) and so you need to ask yourself what use of your time and skills might not be put to better use for the sake of your and others’ mental equilibrium.
Or is it too late?
February 7th, 2013 at 7:53 am
I know of a very common psychiatric illness that will fortunately disappear with extinction (finding good news where I can). It is inscribed in the New World constitution and called «the pursuit of a penis».
February 7th, 2013 at 7:56 am
@ Martin Knight
I misread your comment and assumed you were referring to my own website, where there is no hurt or alienation. please make it clear to whom you are speaking.
As for this subsequent comment. I don’t think I’d ever consult you about anything.
February 7th, 2013 at 8:02 am
this blog is a good example of why “Community” will never work! we are doomed!
There have always been smart people yet, here we are.
From “Question Everything:”
I am on record as thinking that the likelihood for a very rapid and deep crash of the human population is quite high. My reasons for thinking this way have been covered in previous blogs, but in sum amount to recognizing a chaotic dynamic resulting from entering a phase of human history characterized by diminishing net energy, highly disruptive climate change, subsequent diminishment of many other resources, rising sea levels forcing mass abandonment of the most populous coastal areas, and our low sapient psychological responses to these conditions leading to conflicts on all scales. All of this against the background of population overshoot. Making predictions about chaos is a fool’s game and I resist the temptation to name a date when all of this will come to pass. Nevertheless, the patterns seem to already be emerging, suggesting to me that the trends will be clear within the next 50 to 100 years. But, it could be sooner. And in this chaos I think most people will die early and often horribly. The population will crash in the classical ecological sense.
I guess the question is: “Are you sapient enough to be among the chosen few?”
February 7th, 2013 at 8:04 am
please make it clear to whom you are speaking.
Tell that to Guy.
February 7th, 2013 at 8:05 am
michele/montreal……I think I love you.
For another giggle:
http://youtu.be/hw1C6HuWvj8
February 7th, 2013 at 8:15 am
@LD “these tendencies were hardwired into our primal ancestors who relied on group acceptance for their survival.”
Of course. Again, one must consider first principles when conceptualizing how certain traits were selected. Imagine, if you will, a small group of 15-20 individuals, all of whom unquestioningly accepted the existing paradigm, regardless of specifics.
The one(s) who bucked the ‘system’, who asked questions, who applied reason obviously received the same treatment you and anyone else who cares to broach these subjects in polite company today receive. The problem is, while today the sheep can ignore you, back-in-the-day, if you were annoying enough, they’d either kill you directly, or starve you to death.
Ergo, once again we are all descendents of those who accepted & obeyed generations past. As for those who continue to exhibit ‘anti-social’ behavior, well, that must be some kind of genetic mutation that keeps popping up & hasn’t been fully eradicated.
February 7th, 2013 at 8:17 am
@ulvfugl
Thanks for the heads up on the Green Gold documentary. Missed it in your comment before, sigh.
Much of the fix illustrated in the documentary is really restraint and acceptance of the inate power of nature. I fear that much of the fixes people envision are dependent on some whiz bang new technolgy from the WESAYSO corporate community. Cooperating with nature rather than dominating nature is a much more likely and sustainable “fix”. Two thumbs up
February 7th, 2013 at 8:26 am
I guess the question is: “Are you sapient enough to be among the chosen few?”
Guess again. Exclusivity works until others notice. Then the exclusive become a target.
February 7th, 2013 at 8:37 am
@ Martin
So are you saying that once the exclusive few of us who are sapient enough are noticed, we will be exterminated (along with the sheeple)?
I agree – and there is no way to solve the poplulation overshoot problem voluntarily (drawing straws, international lottery?). I think TPTB have known this for a long, long, time. If “they” are going to attempt to solve the problem in order to save the human race, it’s not going to include “us.”
February 7th, 2013 at 9:08 am
No, I don’t think people will be exterminated. I simply agree with Dmitry Orlov that to survive you will have to BE something (probably quite alien to what you now are) rather than what is now the case, that is, middle class privilege, because having money or ownership of something or authority will make you a target rather than afford you protection from what’s coming.
In fine: what you can BE rather than what you HAVE.
You really need to consider that your insight into the present state of affairs affords you exactly nothing. What are you going to do with your awareness that the charade is about to end? Bury a cache of tinned ham in a forest? (Actually, that’s not a bad idea; it’s more than most will do.)
But consider that it’s only a matter of time before the people you affect to look down on work out what is going on. And they will. Count on it. And consider this: when the “masses” realize what is going on, which they will, quite quickly, like a cork popping out of a bottle, as happens when people come out of a cultural trance, then you will be indistinguishable from the marauding hordes. What will you do then?
I ask because rather a few people think that knowing our fate means they will be spared. No, it doesn’t. I means your death will be more exquisitely tragic than that of many others.
February 7th, 2013 at 9:23 am
I stopped posting here after reading thru screen after screen of esoteric nit-picking by a famous few that had nothing to do with the topic under which these comments are collected.
Before I withdrew, I suggested an open thread system, where folks could discuss whatever they like without confusing a topic driven thread. Another solution would be to add a forum and keep it separate from the blog posts. Thanks.
February 7th, 2013 at 10:00 am
Wolfbird, thank you again for sharing your philosophical reflections. They have helped me sort out some of the metaphysical clutter in my mind as I try to reach beyond the 100 foot pole. We are incorrigible systematizers and mental model makers, then we pretend to live inside our own machinations, convinced that they are real, that they were given to us by god.
Btw, I just ordered Georg Feuerstein’s book from the dispenser of all knowledge, Amazon.com.
When I wrote that the planet was gone, I “over-wrote,” I meant that people are gone. I suppose it was a Jungian slip as I’m still associating my little ego (or, our collective egos) with the planet itself. A symptom of the tendency that brought us here. We like to subsume Being under the tent of human interests and we keep getting in the way, blocking paths that will reveal that we are just a tiny, contingent manifestation of all that there is.
February 7th, 2013 at 10:43 am
@ Brad
You are so right, the topic is: Michael Sosebee’s forthcoming film, Somewhere in New Mexico before the End of Time. However, the film’s content is stuff everyone here already knows! It’s already been discussed, we get it, nothing new here, WE ARE DOOMED.
in the second clip (9 minutes long), we see the UN Advisory Group conceding that 1C may be catastrophic and we are well on our way to 4C or even 6C. Is anyone listening?
I think the point of Guy bringing this forthcoming film, “Somewhere in New Mexico before the End of Time” to our attention is simply to point out other voices in our midst and, if so inclined, give us the opportunity to help support the film.
The debate on whether or not we need to bother with educating the masses has been oft waged here. If that is the topic of this particular blog concerning the film, then we could simply link to previous discussions. Or, maybe, rather than an open forum as you suggested, there should be a list of each Grand Topic that you can click on and make comments. But, what is really happening here is that, whatever Guy posts, we all just start blabbing about whatever we want in that post’s reply – until he posts something new and we all move to that post’s reply, most times completely ignoring the thing that was posted that we are supposedly replying to.
whatcha’ gonna’ do?
February 7th, 2013 at 10:59 am
Yes, about that film. Is there any way to edit out the inappropriate laughter? Some of it is appropriate, and some is not. It’s rather jarring in the midst of the music and the message.
February 7th, 2013 at 11:04 am
@ Brad – I read the comments because I feel like I am part of this NBL community that chats, shares, and offers genuine support if you have a problem someone knows a solution to. I don’t comment often because I don’t have internet connectivity very often now, but if you check in here often enough, you get to know some background on people, and maybe feel like you know them.
I care about this community. Nothing is off-topic to me here. It is the only blog where I read all the comments. No one in my real life talks about this stuff.
February 7th, 2013 at 11:18 am
I should add that I do skip over any comments too tiresome to extract anything useful from. And sometimes I go to the end of comments and miss the middle. If I get irritated by a personality, I skip it.
February 7th, 2013 at 11:55 am
While I disagree with a lot on Chris Martenson’s site, he is reaching some people to open a few eyes. Here is a comment from today:
How I reached my breaking point
The article by Simon Black, above, was very interesting to me. Sometimes I post things on facebook about what I see happening in the world. Mostly, I am met with deafening silence from my FB “friends.” However, if I post a joke or cute animal picture, everyone is there.
I do believe that people seem to require a “conversion experience” of some kind to open their thinking up to a radically different understanding of what is really happening in the world. (I use the term “really” here with trepidation, as I know that I may have another conversion experience and come to view my current view as false.)
For me personally, my conversion experience occured while reading a book. It was written by a retired professor and was inexorable in its presenation. At one point, I found that I was crying. Out and out sobbing and saying “Please don’t let this be true” over and over. I then noticed what I was doing and said, “OMG. I am believing this!” Then came a period of agitation and frantic reading on the subject lasting 2-3 years. A new world view consolidated. Retrospecitively, I can see Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ stages of dying in my psychological transformation.
I now find that I live in a different “reality” from many of my family and friends. Friends who have not had this painful, gut wrenching opening are not too interested in my views, and in fact, have cut off my newsfeed on facebook. Some prefer to not be around me. It is my understanding that it is not me that they dislike, but they do not want my world view to be “true.” It can be lonely being a visionary.
____________________________________
I bet a lot of people have experienced this.
February 7th, 2013 at 12:05 pm
The world began without man, and it will end without him.
– Claude Lévi-Strauss
February 7th, 2013 at 12:06 pm
39 Minutes of Bliss (in an otherwise meaningless world)
album title by a group called the Caesars
just to add to the meaninglessness of it all so you can decide whether or not to comment, sit still and meditate, research it, go stark raving mad, run around in circles or jump up and down, keep your self “busy” or whatever. It’s not that it matters whether the bed is made or the dusting is done – it’s what matters to you at every moment now. Last as long as you can, go out with a bang, or a whimper . . . nobody cares – because they’re going to go through it too.
February 7th, 2013 at 12:11 pm
I don’t get why people are offended when the comments go off-topic. We’re having a conversation. People go off on tangents. Sometimes the subject matter that started the conversation leads to issues that are totally unrelated to the original subject. So what? We’re human. Humans don’t like to color inside the lines all the time. Like Wolfbird has said, we’re all standing around on a beach having a casual discussion about any damn thing we want to discuss as the tsunami approaches.
It’s interesting how some people like to assume the role of the authoritarian and scold others for not following the nonexistent rules. The hierarchical monkey mind always rears its head.
As for me, I’m admittedly a bad, bad boy.
February 7th, 2013 at 12:15 pm
oh, and one more thing to add to the (increasingly long) list of concerns:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2274605/Solar-superstorm-set-strike-Earth–30-MINUTE-warning.html#axzz2KEjO9nvI
February 7th, 2013 at 1:12 pm
@depressive lucidity
You were right, it is pointless to try waking the “sleepwalkers”. Well, in this case, I merely tried engaging one of my sisters in Alaska during a long telephone conversation, quietly bringing up the topic of the weather. Last winter they had record cold and snow, this past summer they had record windstorms and flooding, and currently they are severely lacking in the snow department, many skiers praying for snow. Here in South Dakota we are experiencing our 3rd “spring breakup”, December saw budding leaves, January mosquitos, and now mud, in general a very wishy-washy winter. As soon as each fairy-dusting of snow melts, everyone starts suffering from the severe dust. This is my 7th year here, and I really couldn’t tell you what normal is for this place. When I first moved from Alaska I lamented that I couldn’t bring my cross-country skis or ice skates, but with each passing winter, I’m pretty ok with it. We don’t look forward to summer because of the heat and drought, which is forecasted to persist and worsen.
Well, anyway, I could go on, as the weather is no longer small talk. My point is, I tried conveying my worries about the climate and how it is affecting us and our health, and she interjected with her own worries about obamacare and taxes. Looks like I will find no allies or sympathizers within my family, as she was the best bet among the 7 siblings.
@everybody Off-topic is no problem here, mainly because I care for/engage/referee small children all day, every day, and reading/commenting here makes me feel like I’m hanging out with the grown-ups, even if it is only during nap time, or after bed time. I know I should be washing the dishes right now, but I’m starting to apply the big picture to the small picture, aka questioning who made those rules and do I really need to follow them any more?
February 7th, 2013 at 1:13 pm
The hierarchical monkey mind always rears its head.
Does it? Bend down. That’s good. Further. A bit further. That’s nice. Now suck it. Mmm. Don’t stop. A bit more. Mmm! Don’t stop. More. More, damn you!
February 7th, 2013 at 1:14 pm
Once again the wordsmith also endowed with common sense and a healthy curiosity, “depressive lucidity” says it best at 12:11pm.
February 7th, 2013 at 1:24 pm
I’m just catching up with all the comments. The Nick Johnson story was great, BC Nurse, I never heard of Ligotti either, I’m almost afraid to read him!
Anyway I had to leave really early yesterday to get to the NDAA demonstration and then there was a panel discussion later in the day, so I didn’t get home (stupid slow infrequent trains!) until almost midnight. But it was interesting to be in the courthouse. It’s huge and has beautiful marble floors and walls and impressive high frescoed ceilings, and giant windows with shiny brass mullions. There were so many people that we had to go into an overflow room, several hundred of us, with lousy audio but even so, the arguments among the lawyers and judge were very powerful.
Michael Moore was asked if he regretted voting for Obama a second time and he looked very pained. He replied by observing that he had ridden in a car to get to the event, and in so doing contributed more to the melting Arctic. He basically said, you do the best you can, choose the lesser of two evils, and it doesn’t really matter because we’re screwed anyway. Hedges said that our corporate overlords are stripping away our civil rights because they are expecting to require unconstitutional, military powers to control the coming breakdown from economic, ecosystem and climate collapse.
Not much hopium there! I took some video:
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2013/02/chris-hedges-takes-swipe-at-ndaa.html
February 7th, 2013 at 1:45 pm
Guy posted links to pieces of Michael Sosebee’s forthcoming film, Somewhere in New Mexico before the End of Time.
Is this film designed to be a wake-up call to the masses? As if to convince them to try and stop it?
Try and stop it?
I thought Guy’s position was that the best possible hope for the survival of the planet’s biology (no guarantee for humans) was a quick crash of everything before the damage was absolutely and permanently done.
I thought Guy’s position was that there is NOTHING that can be done, we are doomed.
Given that, wouldn’t the best course of action be for everyone to hasten the collapse of industrialized civilization? If we truly believe, if we are truly convinced, shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to exasperate the situation?
It seems there are three distinct choices:
1) Try really hard to lessen our carbon footprint: recycle, don’t have children, start a permaculture farm, don’t buy anything, live simply. Donate to third world contraception efforts. REduce our electricity needs such that all nuclear power plants can be shut down and encased in cement. If this is our approach, then convincing others to see the movie and join us in the effort makes sense.
2) Do nothing, sit on our hands and pretend it doesn’t matter. Forget the movie and don’t tell anyone about it.
3) Try really hard to hasten the collapse: max out our credit cards buying plastic things made in China then make no payments and let the credit card companies chase us around to no avail, take out all the equity in our homes but then don’t make any payments and let the bank foreclose. Buy the biggest SUVs we can (on credit) and drive them cross country back and forth. Foster anarchy. Eat only MEAT. And, ask Michael Sosebee’s forthcoming film to include at the end a strong appeal to everyone to do the same.
I’m confused as to what is the consensus of everyone on NBL.
February 7th, 2013 at 2:11 pm
lately, I have seen a lot of footage on the refugee camps for the Syrian population fleeing the war (in Jordan, Lebanon, etc.) Many of the adults were completely desperate because of the lack of hygiene (which comes from the word meaning health in ancient greek). Many said, crying, in front of the cameras that they were boarding busses to go back, or wished they died in Syria instead of the nigntmate they were experiencing. They are so numerous, there is not the shadow of a solution. They arrive in places who are already depleted middle east desertic and stressed communities. There is nowhere to go for them, no water to wash, no food to eat, no toilets, no heating in the cold, nothing but tents and people, people, people… and yes, dead babies.
Lack of hygiene is fast going to be an increasingly important link of the crisis (as was highlighted in this thread about a certain intentional community). Good hygiene is the reason that permitted us to reach our actual numbers and lack of it will take us down in no time, I say.
February 7th, 2013 at 2:27 pm
Thanks DL and others for your response. Wow, you folks are inbred. Good luck to you all. bye.
February 7th, 2013 at 3:05 pm
Gail, wow, great video….I posted a Lee Camp vid upthread, so I loved the whole thing.
Thanks.
February 7th, 2013 at 3:13 pm
@ Brad
??
February 7th, 2013 at 3:48 pm
One of the things I love about NBL is the anarchic ramblings of the comments. So many tangential but essential links to follow!! I wouldn’t want to see it be conscripted to only “on topic” responses. I think we all know what the really big topic is. Many thanks to Guy for treading carefully through treacherous shoals between autocratic dictatorship and benign neglect.
February 7th, 2013 at 4:32 pm
@Gail “Hedges said that our corporate overlords are stripping away our civil rights because they are expecting to require unconstitutional, military powers to control the coming breakdown from economic, ecosystem and climate collapse.”
No shit, Chris. Again, the problem for liberal progressives is they typically failed to study any elementary finance during their formative years. To recap, there is NO solution to an expansion of credit beyond the carrying capacity of the underlying economy ie productivity.
Peak oil doomed peak credit. I’ve said it before & I’ll say it before: we need a couple of Ghawars & Cantrella to get out of our current predicament. Lacking those facilities, then our only other option is to default the debt. However, there are two ways to default: one can either admit they don’t have the money, or, if they control the monetary system, simply debase the currency.
The problem with debasing the currency, of course, is inflation. Unfortunately, the degree of devaluation necessary to get the financial system back in balance is somewhere in the order of at least 10:1 (probably much higher). That means, $40/gal gas, etc. How’s that gonna fly in Peoria? LOL
The solution then is price controls, which leads to shortages, which begats rationing. Now, how are you gonna control the savage masses under these kinds of conditions? Duh – war is always the solution. Or, as Bourne pointedly observed, “war is the health of the state”.
That’s because war not only provides even greater circuses, but presents the legal pretext for the abandonment of civil judicial procedures. I mean, how many people are aware that Hawaii was under military control for the duration of WWII? NDAA is just an update of a very old playbook; long ago, a famous president suspended habeas corpus during a previous national emergency. Who decides whether or not there is an existential threat? Why, the sovereign, ‘natch.
I believe one of the characteristics of reaching stage 5 is a sort of respectful recognition of pure evil in all its terrible glory. When you finally realize just how far ahead the PTB are in this game, it’s something to behold.
February 7th, 2013 at 6:31 pm
Rock Me Baby- The Steve Miller Band
February 7th, 2013 at 6:52 pm
Gail said, “Michael Moore was asked if he regretted voting for Obama a second time and he looked very pained.” He may have looked pained, but I do know that he regrets supporting Nader in 2000. Would you have preferred a Romney administration? We have a two party Republic, not a parliamentary government where minority parties have an opportunity for representation. It’s winner take all. Besides, third party voters had their dreams come true in 2000. Gore was “punished” thanks to third party candidate defections and the result was Bush for eight years- fantastic!
February 7th, 2013 at 7:14 pm
The ‘two party system’ in DuhMerika:
Different cheeks, same Ass
February 7th, 2013 at 7:23 pm
Return to New Orleans
Dimming Nation
by LINH DINH
February 7th, 2013 at 7:58 pm
@ Pat
You stated:
“I’m confused as to what is the consensus of everyone on NBL.”
Since it’s nearly impossible for a group of old friends to even agree where they want to meet for lunch, your presumption that there is, or ever could be a “consensus” as to everyone’s impression of NBL is most likely the source of your confusion.
But, with that said, and given I’m probably as close to a consensus taker that can be found here, not to mention a resident hypocrite, since I strongly believe the whole concept of “we” is nothing but a myth. I’ll nonetheless, try and respond in the best way I can.
So where to begin? Let’s start with a few givens.
First off, everyone here are readers, in fact, probably most everyone here, reads more than most everyone else they know. This little fact alone, speaks volumes as to who “we” are, and where we either fit or don’t fit within a seemingly illiterate culture. A high percentage of our collective frustration, anger, disappointment and sadness stems from just this fact alone.
Second, everyone here has a fairly steady diet of reading non-fiction. Just these two facts, almost guarantees we don’t get invited to too many parties anymore, and why we probably spend way too much time online these days.
Third, “we” have all achieved a degree of privilege that has afforded us the opportunity to spend as much time on NBL as we do. And because we are all privileged enough, to be well read in non-fiction, “we” are all comparatively well versed in climate science.
Fourth, “we” are most likely well outside the two party political system, and because “we” have most likely been ecologically minded for a significant amount of time, we have focused our attention on the latest research commensurate to the single greatest “event” the human race will most likely attempt to deny for as long as it is humanly possible.
Because of just these few similarities, we are all on any given day, most likely an unquantifiable jumble of mixed emotions that can be expressed in numerous ways, ranging from euphoria to suicide plans, depending on how heavy our loads are from one day to the next.
IMO, that’s about as close to a consensus as “we’re” ever going to get. And that’s the easy part of the story.
Enter the acceptance of NTE.
Enter……….the probable end of everything.
It would be the height of both hubris and foolishness to assume that “we”, will ever collectively agree as to what NTE means. It will have an entirely different implication for all of us, simply based on how old we are. Whether we have dependents we’re responsible for. How much money we have. Our past lived experiences. Our ideological and spiritual opinions. In other words, the sum total of all our vested interests will both completely define and obscure our perception of THE ALL THAT IS, and THAT now just so happens to unfortunately include NTE.
What is NTE? Clearly, I have my strong opinion, and this opinion is remarkably shared by many others here. There are also many here who have rather divergent perceptions in regards to almost everything else in life, other than NTE, but given the severity of this particular subject matter, we tend to let bygones be themselves, as long as they play well with others. As long as someone can keep their head in the fire, then so be it.
But what I believe most of us are doing, is just projecting our values unto this space, and while we from time to time take issue with someone “acting out” from a less than sane or cordial place, most us find this blog to be a safe haven to share our views and opinions, given there are few, if any, other places in our society where we can so candidly express such dire awareness.
I for one, see NBL solely as a commiserative crossroads, simply because I see NTE as a decade’s long ticking time bomb, which has now gone off.
But now that this bomb has metaphorically triggered, I see all of us, as if characters being swept up in some incredibly slow motion movie scene, where a massive explosion just went off this summer, and we are all currently being blown asunder in our own individual ways. And I suspect it will take years for us to figuratively hit the ground.
But NTE is no ordinary bomb. It is the last mind bomb. It blows everything away. So we are flying through the air, along with all our past dreams and ambitions. Every idea, thought, philosophy, belief and story we’ve either embraced or repelled is now flying through the air with us.
So, all we are doing, right now, is all we can do, in attempting to live with such unremitting comprehension. Which is, seek some semblance of affinity, so as not to feel so all alone. Not only is this a good thing, it is actually the only thing left us.
February 7th, 2013 at 8:16 pm
@Daniel
we are all on any given day, most likely an unquantifiable jumble of mixed emotions that can be expressed in numerous ways, ranging from euphoria to suicide plans, depending on how heavy our loads are from one day to the next.
Euphoria you say? Where can I get some of that? I knew a kid with my looks and name that had some of that once.
February 7th, 2013 at 8:31 pm
@ Bailey
I hear that…….euphoria is definitely not my end of the spectrum.
February 7th, 2013 at 8:33 pm
@ Depressive Lucidity
Wolfbird, thank you again for sharing your philosophical reflections. They have helped me sort out some of the metaphysical clutter in my mind as I try to reach beyond the 100 foot pole. We are incorrigible systematizers and mental model makers, then we pretend to live inside our own machinations, convinced that they are real, that they were given to us by god.
Btw, I just ordered Georg Feuerstein’s book from the dispenser of all knowledge, Amazon.com.
Thanks for kind words. Yes, indeed. I have not read it, but I posted that quotation because it had some good lines in it, e.g.
At a single stroke I have completely crushed the cave of phantoms. The phantoms are the curious mental creations with which we surround ourselves and through which we live a mediated existence.
This is our problem, isn’t it. Everyone’s problem. We don’t live in the real REAL, we live in a mental model, a social, cultural, construction, a synthetic fake world which we overlay upon the REAL. The map is not the territory. And many spend entire lives in that map, as if it was rolled up like a pipe, which takes them from birth to death, without ever even glimpsing the REAL. A few wake up, artists, visionaries, acid trippers, seers, a few wake up temporarily on holiday or after big shocks, but most are sleep walkers, most of the time.
So what I’m really talking about is a methodology for waking up and then staying woken up, because at least then there is a choice, and most people are not aware this knowledge exists. I mean, waking up is scary. Can be the most scary, terrifying thing it’s possible to experience, absolutely ! So you do it gradually and skillfully. Or not
Hence the mushrooms v. sweeping the ashram debate 
Thing is, as I see it, the key is to have a silent, still mind. Instead of the jabbering story-telling machine that’s always running it’s inner commentary on everything, like a noisy tv in a room, you switch it off. That lets the much more subtle stuff be heard.
You can’t force the brain, the mind, to stop thinking. That’s the wrong approach altogether. You just watch it, in a detached way, as a very interested observer. In fact, like a scientist.
When you have got very good at that, there’s a technique. By breathing from the diaphragm, the belly, the hara, instead of the chest, and by breaking each in breath and out breath into two halves, so as to retain concentration in that area ( on the slight sensation of pressure there ) it’s not too difficult to keep mind completely still for prolonged periods.
If you think of what you do when you try to do an intricate task, say, pick up a tiny particle with a pin, the natural way, is to focus hard, inhale and hold the breath for a moment, and concentrate attention. That’s the sort of approach. It’s a natural thing, that you can then strengthen and develop and extend.
So, you practice these simple techniques, and sit in zazen with a silent mind, and tune in to the Universe, and what is found is totally unexpected and amazing, but beyond words.
And then you get ‘Enlightened’, hahahaha. Except that, as soon as you have that idea, the idea crossing the mind ‘I am enlightened’, you’ve stopped being enlightened, because this imaginary phantom, this mental creation, called ‘I’ has appeared and got in the way and ruined everything. And this second phantom called ‘Enlightenment’ now hangs around your neck like a cast iron albatross which will block all further progress, until you can break free from that wretched curse, and some never do….
The whole concept of Enlightenment is poisonous nonsense, a trap for deluded fools. Sure, there is something called Enlightenment that the Buddha experienced, that changed his life when he had that insight, that others can also experience, but it’s not what people think it is.
Soto zen is actually very mild and soft and easy going, it’s towards the bland end of the spectrum, with the emphasis on serenity, some of the other sects, the Rinzai schools are much more ferocious and demanding and wouldn’t put up with any of the stuff that I tolerate
http://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/bankei_zen_master.html
February 7th, 2013 at 8:52 pm
@ Daniel
Beautiful and eloquent and moving, thank you so much, I am very grateful for your clarity.
February 7th, 2013 at 8:54 pm
I have been mulling over the logical conclusions that ensue from the recent research linked by ulvfugl ( I think) earlier this thread, to an Easter Island rethink, (sorry..New theory).
I looked further than this link and cannot remember if the ideas were included in the original.
To recap:
‘Easter Island Mystery Solved? New Theory Says Giant Statues Rocked’
http://news.nationalgeographic.com.au/news/2012/06/120622-easter-island-statues-moved-hunt-lipo-science-rocked/
“Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii and Carl Lipo of California State University Long Beach have worked closely with archaeologist Sergio Rapu, who’s part of the South Pacific island’s population of indigenous Rapanui….”
That is to answer the burning questions abot how the huge Moai were moved, bt along the way they feel they have found a new answer to how and why the population declined.
In short, European disease.
That lead to population decline and the delicate homeostasis was upset.
These guys propose that the building of the stones, throgh ancestor worship practices, meant they were keeping their existance on the long course, of what we now chide as undoable, sustainable. It tuns out that sustainable is not for them maximising yields, it is looking at what it takes to survive, with some ssiliance factors I assume, and then do life activities that suit that.
I will draw a long bow here.
What is what our modern Anthropologiss call Ancestor Worship?
I have a feeling, (yes) that it is not worshipping every ancestor, just the ones who’s ‘mana’ or power is very noticable and strong. So is that another way of saying worship of ancestorswho have spiritual understanding, but downplayd by Western Eurocentric views?
I am going with that for now.
So, what are they doing then the Rapa Nui? Well they are living a monastic life, doing monumental carvings to concentrate efforts on a spiritual relationship with past powerful beings from their culture. No?
Their actual life support activities are set by this activity, not the other way round, which is how I read Hunt and Lipo.
So it is possible to remain in some state of dynamic ‘ecolibrium’, (Trademarked here, now) on an island when the focus of life is beyond the mundane, and able to be on the spiritual.
No servere ego shit gets in the way of living. According to Hunt and Lipo, the real problems arose after contact and the onset of disease, and then more frequent contact.
I would put forward a guess that the early Polynesian Rapa Nui first arrivals were looking for a place of isolation, or al least acceppted it when thier situation prevented any return.
Even though Hunt and Lipo’s ideas contradict Jarred Diamonds portrail of the demise of the culture, it still IMO, supports the whole concept of looking at what the purpose of life can be, in relation to how sustainable the lived ‘ecolibrium’ actually is.
The reason I posit that is because their early evidence supports the view that the inhabitants were able to maintain an island ecology, for a very long time period, some 500 years, with a view not to maximise the gains in this world, but to orient themselvs to living ‘through’ this world… just like lightly passing through …. which is what is happening in any case.
Great lessons to be learn there IMO.
(Yes rats were a real issue there too.)
February 7th, 2013 at 9:31 pm
The visual metaphor I see of homo petrolius at this moment in time on the Late Great Planet Earth (LGPE), is that of a steely eyed simian Clown resembling a toothless Meth-head, who has managed to light his hair on fire and is now trying to put it out with a hammer.
The other image is more like this
Monkeys with Guns
February 7th, 2013 at 10:45 pm
Daniel, very nice!
February 7th, 2013 at 11:25 pm
Them clowns, sure are a worry.
From a distance they look happy, but the closer you get the more you see how there is an unhappy, jaded dude who wanted to be a Shakespearian actor once, or maybe they were only ‘once’.
I wonder if any ‘aliens’ have fallen into this trap when viewing humans from afar, got closer and realised:
“Aliens figure out the ‘Crude Oil’ trap”,
a written for the web short screenplay by OzMan.
Alien space ship control room.
Just out of hyper-godoogle, Near Earth Stealth Orbit.
Kad-zuput: “Wow, Zoig-dingen, you were right, they really are Afflugal-blad-lum.”
Zoig-dingen: ” OK, hand over the 50 Gunchinglets, all of you. You guys are so gullable, I can spot a Fuukin-aldasset a light-dergal away. You guys just don’t do your homework.
Seems these Ereloids, even the fat ones, look ok from a great distance because they use this makeup called, ‘Crude Oil’. They put it in everthing, and almost everything they use, eat and play with comes form it.”
Draarbe-dolkin: “Wow-ztookle Zoig-dingen, you really know your halitory.”
Zoig-dingen: ‘Cheers Draarbe-dolkin, but you know what is even more silly?”
Draarbe-dolkin: “No what?
Zoig-dingen: “Well, it seems that about 2 Buggullion of the 7 buggullion of these things don’t really rely on the ‘Crude Oil’ makeup, and from a distance, using our long-rungu scanners these smaller group look to be the unhappy ones, and the others using the makeup look way gumucking happy.
But,turns out, when you look closer, it is the ones using the makeup that are unhappy, and the ones who don’t, the 2 Buggullion, who are way the happiest if they get enought to eat and drink, and somewhere dry and warm to surrloop at night.”
Dimmbatty-burkin: “But didn’t you say a few zirgons ago
they needed a fourth thing, something like a Decadent Hugman Conformity? ”
Zoig-dingen: ” Thats Decent Human Community, but essentially yes I did. And they doo, but I’ll be zordoinged, since we last scanned 6 peri-nodarals ago, I could have sworn there was plenty there. Readings now only show a few pockets, left…uh.. no… only 5 no 4 small enclaves left, some in desert regions.”
(Heard over the inboard PA system)
Ver-Dabben-handernous: ” Now hear this, now hear this, atttention all scerrum, due to unforseen circumstances, we have detected next to no hospitable human culture on the Earth thingy we were headed for.
Therefore, Noff-fondu-cruxis and I have decided to use the time-dialation deferbix device to curve into their timeline 15,000 Debungeraals earlier than intended. This means no ‘crude Oil’ makeup is to be applied, and change of…er.. that is no outer garments, excepting aiknimoral fur skins, and some budderbing ornaments. And no effinghauterising the local inhabitants this time, especially you Udder-blighternoue-burgoler, or you will have all your chromosomes changed to make you look like a Nerf-hearder from Kalrithky. Ver-Dabben-handernous, out”
Zoig-dingen: “Dang, why not forward in time?”
Dimmbatty-burkin: “You were on vascilly patrol, last Dorbex don’t you remember, when we already did that?”
Zoig-dingen: “What did you find?”
Dimmbatty-burkin: “Oh hideous, you can’t imagine what emerged from all that habberdrolkerthemoflappincollashery? Not pretty, not pretty”
The End
Reviews are gratefully accepted.
February 7th, 2013 at 11:34 pm
Forget about Buddha and Enlightenment. You are already Buddha, you just don’t know it.
Sadly, I am a Buddha with baggage. Some so subtle that I am probably – almost certainly – unaware of it. Even if others with more insight point it out to me. My delusions will put up defences that try to rationalise it away. Even to the extent that I will fancy that I am a Buddha without baggage, and that I I have ditched all my baggage. Meditation is an enormous help in ditching baggage. But not all baggage may be recognised or dropped.
I am a long way from Dogen’s
“That’s dropping dropped”
as pointed out by Ju-Ching.
There is nothing to be gained or achieved or found.
True. I have to recognise ALL the subtle baggage that I have until now thought did not exist, and then proceed to drop it, and even drop “the dropping”. And nothing is gained or achieved or found by doing that.
nobody can take it from you, nobody can sell it or buy it, it’s everyone’s free natural birthright.
Regrettably, the same goes for the baggage that must be dropped.
Bless yourself. Bliss yourself. It’s easy.
Just as easy to bless all the unrecognised baggage along with everything else.
Lidia:
but at the apparent cost of your pointless hectoring and megalomaniacal abuse directed, although not exclusively, at certain other posters.
That’s a pointer to unrecognised and retained baggage combined with the delusion that it has all been dropped. Pointing it out will elicit the denial and rationalisation that comes from the delusion.
then you let go of everything, mind, body, intention, so there is nothing,
The non-recognition of the baggage permits the delusion that one is rid of it.
Bailey:
If you have some kind of messianic complex such that all of your insights are right and everyone else here is wrong, you need to get over yourself.
That need is a need from your point of view, Bailey. Quite correct, for you. Not everyone can see their own baggage – even I cannot see my own.
Oh, I have no messianic complex, Bailey, …..It’s nothing to do with me at all. …..I can listen to the individual and tell them whatever seems appropriate. I enjoy that one. I can get people very high, tripping, just with a few words, change their lives, I can explain everything useful, basic essentials, in what, half an hour ? After that, do you think I want the bother and hassle of people depending upon me ? Not really… Only if they are really in trouble or stuck.
See what I mean?
Friedrich Kling:
ulvfugi: Bailey is offering you sound advice
You know it, Friedrich. But getting it to be recognised is another problem. A problem that even Buddhas find insurmountable.
Martin Knight:
What are you going to do about your itch to dominate?
Let me venture a guess: You already know the answer.
February 7th, 2013 at 11:34 pm
@Brad, Before I withdrew, I suggested an open thread system, where folks could discuss whatever they like without confusing a topic driven thread. Another solution would be to add a forum and keep it separate from the blog posts.
Wow, you folks are inbred.
No, Brad, not inbred, we were cloned by the same reptilian aliens. We are dysfunctional hybrids who can’t seem to abide by the neurotic dictates of topic Nazis.
February 7th, 2013 at 11:37 pm
That was the best fun I’ve had all week!
Ha Ha!
That was dedicated to Kathy C.
Don’t even think it… I do have ‘fun’ most of the time, really, what with collecting Kangaroo poo, talking to bushwalking tourists nearby of NTE, cheerup-emergency-learn-to-grow-your-own-food-for-6/7-in-the-family-by-oneself( no help – “Why, what’s the rush?)-stuff, walking around. All the simple pleasures, and all fun.
February 8th, 2013 at 3:00 am
BC Nurse Prof-
I’ve discovered you can go beyond the supposedly final Kubler-Ross acceptance stage and enter an unexpected celebratory stage. You may find yourself, as I have, building a shrine in your home to the Koch Bros, and forcing your family to make prayers and other offerings. A photo of a polar bear cub has suddenly appeared on my dart board. I’ve begun to revel in the demise of species so stupid as to get in our way and too cowardly to stop us. Good riddance to them, all of them. What miserable failures they are, why do they deserve to exist? Maybe our destiny all along was to rid the universe of these useless creatures. And so it is our great fortune to be able to sit back watch all this happen. I’ve thought about some kind of fireworks celebration ritual, but at 200 species a day this could get expensive. I imagine the Koch Bros could afford to use champagne. If you focus on images of the fantastic levels of wealth and luxury that the great and noble enjoy (see link below), you realize it is all worth it, and should be celebrated. If only we could find a way to tell the polar bears that they died to make such things a reality.
http://www.serendipity3dc.com/FrrrozenHaute.html
February 8th, 2013 at 3:07 am
Ignorance is bliss –
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2013/02/ignorance-is-bliss.html
February 8th, 2013 at 5:21 am
dmd: and i thought the last spoof of that superbowl ad was funny.
check this one out.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/so-god-made-a-banker-2013-02-06
To be read in the voice of Paul Harvey.
And on the eighth day God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need someone who can flip this for a quick buck.”
So God made a banker.
God said, “I need someone who doesn’t grow anything or make anything but who will borrow money from the public at 0% interest and then lend it back to the public at 2% or 5% or 10% and pay himself a bonus for doing so.”
So God made a banker.
God said, “I need someone who will take money from the people who work and save, and use that money to create a dotcom bubble and a housing bubble and a stock bubble and an oil bubble and a commodities bubble and a bond bubble and another stock bubble, and then sell it to people in Poughkeepsie and Spokane and Bakersfield, and pay himself another bonus.”
So God made a banker.
God said, “I need someone to build homes in the swamps and deserts using shoddy materials and other people’s money, and then use these homes as collateral for a Ponzi scheme he can sell to pensioners in California and Michigan and Sweden. I need someone who will then foreclose on those homes, kick out the occupants, and switch off the air conditioning and the plumbing, and watch the houses turn back into dirt. And then pay himself another bonus.”
God said, “I need someone to lend money to people with bad credit at 30% interest in order to get his stock price up, and then, just before the loans turn bad, cash out his stock and walk away. And who, when asked later, will, with a tearful eye, say the government made him do it.”
God said, “And I need somebody who will tell everyone else to stand on their own two feet, but who will then run to the government for a bailout as soon as he gets into trouble — and who will then use that bailout money to help elect a Congress that will look the other way. And then pay himself another bonus.”
So God made a banker.
February 8th, 2013 at 5:26 am
@ Robin D.
Sadly, I am a Buddha with baggage. Some so subtle that I am probably – almost certainly – unaware of it. Even if others with more insight point it out to me. My delusions will put up defences that try to rationalise it away. Even to the extent that I will fancy that I am a Buddha without baggage, and that I I have ditched all my baggage. Meditation is an enormous help in ditching baggage. But not all baggage may be recognised or dropped.
I think this just makes baggage on top of baggage.
Just as easy to bless all the unrecognised baggage along with everything else.
Yes, because I am not setting myself up here as an exemplar of Enlightenment on a platform, for the world to admire and emulate, ( or to throw rotten fruit at ), I make no claim to be anybody’s zen master or guru or teacher, I make no claim to represent any authoritative voice regarding supreme wisdom, I’m not trying convert anybody from one religion to another religion, or to prove how superior my own ideological perspective is, am I, I don’t care about any of that stuff.
You have an identity, a role, as a doctor. I have no such thing. I am fortunate, to be almost completely free of all such labels, but I cannot do anything about the way OTHERS see me, and the projections THEY impose upon me. Everyone does it. They see what they want to see. Beauty or ugliness, the good or the bad, through their culturally conditioned spectacles. It is unavoidable, there is nothing I can do about that, but I don’t play a part to encourage it or exploit it or fit in to it, as so many do.
I’m a man, a human being, part of my ‘baggage’, as you put it, is chronic cluster headache, that’s not something I can ditch, whether I am aware of it or unaware of it, it’s just part of the package of my human condition, along with all the rest, which I accept. Ffs, I’m not trying to be ‘pure’, or ‘saintly’ in Christian terms, I make no effort whatsoever to be so, other then when a choice must be made.
I am on this blog because, as I see it, it is the cutting, bleeding edge…. as Daniel stated so magnificently :
So we are flying through the air, along with all our past dreams and ambitions. Every idea, thought, philosophy, belief and story we’ve either embraced or repelled is now flying through the air with us.
I have shaken a hand that has shaken a hand that has shaken a hand all the way back to Dogen to Ju Ching to the Buddha himself, if the stories of the direct lineage are to be believed and true. Not that it matters much, I suppose. It used to matter. It was one of the sorts of things that made sense of existence.
I think you set yourself up as an arbiter and make a judgement of me, which you have the right to do, but from your perspective, I’m just a meat robot and my mental processes would run just as well on hardware as wetware, and fwiw, I consider that to be a grave flaw in your understanding.
February 8th, 2013 at 5:31 am
George finally posted another entry:
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/
Is the End Near?
He thinks we’re 50 to 100 years from it. In the comments i (as a complete fool) explained that we probably won’t make it out of the decade of the 2020′s due to all the toxic pollution, positive feedback loops triggered and not only the warming temperatures but also their cumulative and interactive effects on food production, clean water and air resources, dying vegetation, economic decline and the rest we discuss here regularly (including the radiation problem).
i’m sure i’ll get a response from some of his other commenters about how wrong i am and that the Earth is so resilient, etc. They keep holding out hope by denying the science (“no one really knows”) and in thinking something life-like will survive – maybe even a small contingent of homo idioticus!
February 8th, 2013 at 6:31 am
ulvfugi suggested: “Hence the mushrooms v. sweeping the ashram debate”
This is “THE” option:
“Culture, set and setting inevitably shape the MDMA experience. Idiosyncratic responses to MDMA aren’t rare. MDMA has even been described as a drug that “could be all things to all people” (Dr Shulgin). MDMA feels mystical, magical or sublime; but it doesn’t feel weird. The drug’s influence feels highly controllable. MDMA tends to enrich the user’s sense of self-identity, not diminish it. MDMA “provides a healthy centering experience. MDMA users feel they can introspectively “touch inside” to their ideal authentic self with total emotional self-honesty.
As well as acting as a “gateway to the soul”, MDMA “opens up the heart”. Taking MDMA induces an amazing feeling of closeness and connectedness to one’s fellow human beings. MDMA triggers intense emotional release beyond the bounds of everyday experience. The drug also enhances the felt intensity of the senses – most exquisitely perhaps the sense of touch. The body-image looks and feels wonderful. Other people look and feel wonderful too. Minutes after dropping a pill, a lifetime of Judaeo-Christian guilt, shame or disgust at the flesh melt away to oblivion.
When MDMA is taken outdoors, the natural world seems vibrant and awe-inspiring, perhaps even enchanted. The experience of colour is gorgeously intensified. On MDMA, Dr Shulgin reported how mountains he’d observed many times before appeared to be so beautiful that he could barely stand looking at them. MDMA is used by a variety of spiritualpractitioners of widely diverse beliefs as a gateway to the divine. Some MDMA users undergo life-changing spiritual experiences.Nicholas Saunders, author of the book E for Ecstasy (1993), cites a Benedictine monk who finds MDMA “opens up a direct channel to God”. MDMA may not be “Christ in (al)chemical form”, but if it had been present in the Eucharist, then we would all still be devout Christians, possibly for ever. A minority of first-time MDMA users undergo what the inventor of the Shulgin scale christened a Plus Four…
” Ectasy or MDMA enables PLUS FOUR, n. (++++) A rare and precious transcendental state, which has been called a “peak experience,” a “religious experience,” “divine transformation,” a “state of Samadhi” and many other names in other cultures. It is not connected to the +1, +2 and +3 of the measuring of a drug’s intensity. It is a state of bliss, a participation mystique, a connectedness with both the interior and exterior universes, which has come about after the ingestion of a psychedelic drug, but which is not necessarily repeatable with a subsequent ingestion of the same drug. If a drug (or technique or process) were ever to be discovered which would consistently produce a plus four experience in all human beings, it is conceivable that it would signal the ultimate evolution, and perhaps the end of, the human experiment. (PiHKAL, pages 964-965)”
Plus Fours are rare, today. But on MDMA, even the most jaded and world-weary soul with a tin-ear for poetry may “see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.”
MDMA is sensuous and sensual in its effects without being distinctively pro-sexual. MDMA is proverbially more of a hug-drug: “I kissed someone I was in love with and almost felt as if I was going to pass out from the intensity”, recalls one American clubber. However, MDMA’s capacity to dissolve a lifetime’s social inhibitions, prudery and sexual hang-ups means that lovemaking while under its spell is not uncommon. Superfluous clothes tend to get shed. In men, orgasm is more intense than normal but delayed.
MDMA subjects feel at peace with themselves and the world. They discover an enhanced sense of self-worth, self-forgiveness and complete self-acceptance. Cynical thoughts and negative feelings disappear. Aspects of life normally too sensitive to talk about can be explored freely. Heightened feeling allows long-forgotten and repressed emotional memories from childhood to be retrieved with unusual ease. In some settings, painful, highly-charged and even hitherto unmentionable problems may be discussed with (rose-tinted) candor. With MDMA a lifetime of accumulated psychological barriers and defence-mechanisms go down, somehow magicked out of existence with a pill. Anger, irritability and ingrained fear dissolve; the hostile amygdala is subdued. Ecstasy users tell each other affectionately what beautiful people they are; and they do so from the depths of their hearts.”
February 8th, 2013 at 6:39 am
Great website,(Question Everything), Tom. Thanks for sharing.
February 8th, 2013 at 7:14 am
@ Ozman
It was not me that posted the Easter Island link, and I didn’t respond because I already got involved in a big haggle over all that last year on the Dark Mountain Forum before its demise, and if anyone is interested, prior to that, there were several long discussions and posts and counter-posts from Diamond and his critics here
http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myth-of-easter-islands-ecocide/
Personally, I have to say, I have little confidence in Lynas, in the light of his flip-flops re ‘The terrible dangers of climate change’ to ‘Not to worry, it’ll be ok’ and then ‘GMOs are evil’ to ‘We must have GMOs’, and whereas I once held Diamond in high regard, I have read so many very critical assessments of his work that I am now much more sceptical and dubious.
February 8th, 2013 at 7:31 am
Question Everything: Here is the solution:
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2011/04/overpopulation-here-is-the-solution.html
February 8th, 2013 at 7:32 am
Daniel, yes, thank you. I’ve been mocked my whole life because of my reading jones, so thanks for calling that bad habit out especially. As one of the “middle brows” here, I don’t think I do understand the climate science so well, but hey, I get the gist.
As a middle brow, all of the navel gazing/Zen buddist bullshit makes my eyes glaze over and the yawn response gets triggered. Yet, others seem interested, so I just scroll quickly through those posts and look for the meat from others.
Ripley, I’m not building the shrine to the Koch brothers yet, but I take your meaning. When I’m really down, the one thing that makes me smile with real feeling is the knowledge that when the grid goes down, all that money in offshore accounts goes “poof”.
Mr. Kling, I did some MDMA way back in my youth. Went to a B.B. King concert in Chicago, sipped the MDMA in a drink, and spent most of the evening in an alley, puking my guts out. There was a lot of it around for a second and I have no doubt it’s a useful drug, which is why our DEA is so afraid of it. Just like marijuana.
Speaksoftly, great image!
February 8th, 2013 at 7:35 am
You guys are making NTE look a lot more palatable. Thanks
February 8th, 2013 at 7:37 am
It is an indisputable fact that when Admiral Roggeveen discovered Easter Island he found a small population of humans living in pitiful state. The residents of the island lived in small bands and they would raid each other for the only reliable source of protein to be found on the island- human flesh. Dr. Diamond’s account seems the most logical to me, and as with any great man, critics abound who attempt to make a name for themselves by casting doubt.
“The Dutch Admiral Roggeveen, onboard the Arena, was the first European to visit the island on Easter Sunday 1722. He found a society in a primitive state with about 3,000 people living in squalid reed huts or caves, engaged in almost perpetual warfare and resorting to cannibalism in a desperate attempt to supplement the meagre food supplies available on the island.” Clive Ponting
February 8th, 2013 at 7:42 am
Wildwoman- I suspect someone dropped a Mickey into your drink, not MDMA. I have never heard of Ectasy being dropped into drinks nor have I ever seen anyone vomit as a result of ingesting MDMA- never.
February 8th, 2013 at 7:48 am
I don’t know what the price is today, but 20 years ago at $35 a tab nobody could afford to randomly drop MDMA into the drinks of strangers. Further, maliciousness is not the mindset of MDMA users. MDMA was a legal medication frequently prescribed by psychotherapists; however, once the drug gained widespread acceptance the DEA stepped in to make it illegal. God forbid the people should be happy, you know.
February 8th, 2013 at 8:08 am
Daniel, it is freaky and wonderful to read my thoughts so much better expressed than I could possibly write them! Thank you!! Every now and then (although less and less) I feel a little euphoria, it’s usually when I’m doing something ordinary and quotidienne – washing the dishes and looking out the window above the sink at the birds – and I realize how lucky I am to have hot running water, a house with heat, and a refrigerator with food in it. I also realize of course that the day will come when I have none of that.
Also I am feeling happier because I feel less guilty for having had three children. They had had incredibly splendid lives, for the most part, so far – especially compared to most people on this earth, currently and in the past. It was a gift for them.
It’s the little children I feel really bad for, who are going to suffer without having had the chance to grow up – and their parents when they figure it out.
February 8th, 2013 at 8:10 am
Yes, I am aware of the properties of MDMA. My companion and I put some into our drinks (some were injecting it, but I never did that) and my companion did not have the reaction I did. I’m a very small person, so perhaps the dosage was too much for me. The people I knew who did inject it always puked and then enjoyed the ride.
It wasn’t BB King, it was Muddy Waters at a small club. With Pinetop Perkins on piano. Loved it. A shame to spend as much time in the alley as happened.
Ah youth. It was closer to 30+ years ago if that makes any difference.
February 8th, 2013 at 8:16 am
@ Friedrich K.
God forbid the people should be happy, you know.
That implies that TPTB care in the slightest whether the people are happy or unhappy. I don’t think they do.
As I see it, decriminalization or legalization, of popular drug use would be catastrophic for the budgets of policing organizations and the prison-industrial complex, especially in USA, where so much is privatised. It might be popular in some circles, but legalization would mean prices dropping, profit margins dropping, and the people at the moment who get the big money, at the top of the dealing networks, don’t want that, do they. Neither do the big banks, who are laundering the drug money.
February 8th, 2013 at 9:00 am
OzMan
So it is possible to remain in some state of dynamic ‘ecolibrium’, (Trademarked here, now)
I like it
—
Anarcho-communist entertainment
The year was 1974. Off grid. The idea was to have as much fun as possible while managing to survive hunting, fishing, gathering, gardening and doing in-to-it type things. Like scavenging the local bear ridden land fill for example. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. It’s amazing what people throw away! We should have all come to realize by now that in Nature nothing is wasted.
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
February 8th, 2013 at 9:01 am
Britamgate: Staging False Flag Attacks in Syria
On January 22 a telling leak cropped up in the Internet. British defense contractor’s BRITAM server was hacked and megabytes of classified internal files of the firm were released to the public. Now the case is acquiring a Britamgate scale due to the publication on Prison Planet. What is the story behind the leakage? Why this scandal is likely to turn around the situation in Syria?
By Voltaire Network
rest at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33860.htm
February 8th, 2013 at 9:45 am
Well, (besides ourselves for taking part), here’s a list of the people you can blame for our predicament (especially regarding pollution):
http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=48354
THE GUYS WHO RUN THE WORLD
Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Is Pulling The Strings
By Michael, on January 29th, 2013
Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Are Pulling The Strings.
Does a shadowy group of obscenely wealthy elitists control the world? Do men and women with enormous amounts of money really run the world from behind the scenes? The answer might surprise you.
Most of us tend to think of money as a convenient way to conduct transactions, but the truth is that it also represents power and control. And today we live in a neo-fuedalist system in which the super rich pull all the strings. When I am talking about the ultra-wealthy, I am not just talking about people that have a few million dollars. As you will see later in this article, the ultra-wealthy have enough money sitting in offshore banks to buy all of the goods and services produced in the United States during the course of an entire year and still be able to pay off the entire U.S. national debt. That is an amount of money so large that it is almost incomprehensible.
Under this neo-feudalist system, all the rest of us are debt slaves, including our own governments. Just look around – everyone is drowning in debt, and all of that debt is making the ultra-wealthy even wealthier. But the ultra-wealthy don’t just sit on all of that wealth. They use some of it to dominate the affairs of the nations. The ultra-wealthy own virtually every major bank and every major corporation on the planet. They use a vast network of secret societies, think tanks and charitable organizations to advance their agendas and to keep their members in line.
They control how we view the world through their ownership of the media and their dominance over our education system. They fund the campaigns of most of our politicians and they exert a tremendous amount of influence over international organizations such as the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. When you step back and take a look at the big picture, there is little doubt about who runs the world. It is just that most people don’t want to admit the truth.
The ultra-wealthy don’t run down and put their money in the local bank like you and I do. Instead, they tend to stash their assets in places where they won’t be taxed such as the Cayman Islands. According to a report that was released last summer, the global elite have up to $32 TRILLION dollars stashed in offshore banks around the globe.
U.S. GDP for 2011 was about 15 trillion dollars, and the U.S. national debt is sitting at about 16 trillion dollars, so you could add them both together and you still wouldn’t hit 32 trillion dollars.
And of course that does not even count the money that is stashed in other locations that the study did not account for, and it does not count all of the wealth that the global elite have in hard assets such as real estate, precious metals, art, yachts, etc.
(read more)
February 8th, 2013 at 9:49 am
Luckily Tom NTE means the people who run the world die too. Gotta look on the bright side.
February 8th, 2013 at 9:53 am
Ms. Wildthing- it was not unusual for bad actors to sell pills they claim are MDMA when in fact it’s nothing of the sort. This is a possibility because I never heard of anyone receiving the type reaction that you did (I believe your story, but question the ingredients) 25 years ago when I was a young, virile, handsome, and naive, pup, I was into the club scene where we listened to music like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMPM1q_Uyxc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvgUdrzGNys
Take care, kid!
February 8th, 2013 at 10:07 am
from the disturbing two birds parable
Not disturbing. Attraction and aversion are a part of life. The idea “”I” am attracted” or “”I” am averse” reflects attachment. Some realise that they are not the eating bird, but rather the watching bird. Then the experience becomes “the meat robot is attracted” or “the meat robot is averse”.
February 8th, 2013 at 12:52 pm
@ Robin D.
Aha !
Some realise that they are not the eating bird, but rather the watching bird.
Perhaps this is the key to the difference between our understandings. It’s comparable to the disastrous Descarte’s Mind-Body split and what that did to the European concept of what a human being is.
The eating bird and the watching bird were once one, not two. How did they become divided ? In my understanding the task is to re-unite them. The internalising the smile exercise would be one way, but there are scores of others. The best way is to have a thought in the mind, a clear strong simple thought, doesn’t really matter what it is, but say, ‘I am Robin Datta’. Focus only upon that, so it stands out and is clearly defined. Then you move that thought forwards, to the chakra point between the eyebrows. Then, after taking a deep breath, you exhale long and slow, taking the ‘I am R. D.’ down the front centre line to the point below the navel. Then you breath in to that point. So you join the thought, and the intake of breath, at that point, concentrated as attention.
Then, retaining the attention there, you breath out, moving the thought down to the genitals, to pick up the sensation of sexual energy, then you breath in, and send the thought, the breath energy, and the sexual energy, all up the spine, as in kundalini yoga, into the skull and back to where the thought started.
( If you want Dharmakaya, you keep going, to above the skull, the God Chakra )
This may seem obscure and peculiar, but what it is about is bringing mind and body together. The unconscious and the conscious together. The parts of the nervous system that you can control directly, and the parts of the nervous system that function by themselves beyond conscious control. The breath function is a link between both. It’s normally automatic, like the heart, but you can over-ride the automatic breathing, at will, and hold it or speed it up or slow it down.
This circulation could be called ‘re-en-soul-ment’. The restoration of the soul that you were born with, which got fragmented by the mind-body split. Soul is not a popular word here, because of the connotations it has accumulated from the Christian traditions, so subtle body would be my preferred term. It is both the watcher and the eater. They are one and the same. Does this make any sense to you, Robin, or are we still miles apart ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtle_body
February 8th, 2013 at 1:23 pm
@ Daniel
Your observation/group consensus is highly insightful. Without knowing you, I’m going to go out on a limb and say your neutral mind is a natural born gift which you have nurtured in life, making you an excellent record-keeper/counselor.
I used to wonder why I was so different from my siblings, why they aren’t “big picture” people like myself, why they don’t seem to give a second thought to the world “out there”. I thought maybe it was because I was the artist of the family, or maybe because I broke out of poverty and put myself through college, maybe the traveling I did as a young person. I realized long ago that it wasn’t the bigger risks I took in life which made me different, but books. It opened up the world for a child growing up in the Alaskan boonies. And when I ran out of things to read, I started getting into my mom’s books.
After reading your post, I started thinking about this again, and I think there was a big shift for me when I found and read her copy of “Watership Down” around age 10. That may seem like a silly book, but the idea that animals have lives, and rights, and we are sharing this space with them, I think helped shape me. She also had many books about the Plains Indians, and it introduced me to things like genocide and the extreme injustice of human life. Anyway, without trying to, you have validated one of my own truths. Thanks for that.
@Ripley
haha! You have really embraced the plutocracy with your shrine to the Kochsuckers. I once read a comment on an article about pandas that said we should let them all die because they are stupid to only be able to survive on a diet of bamboo. I’m pretty sure that guy is going to hell. Well, my version anyway, where all the child and animal abusers go.
February 8th, 2013 at 1:25 pm
http://fairewinds.org/content/sen-boxer-believes-san-onofre-knew-about-problems-years-earlier 4.42 min listen
SEN. BOXER BELIEVES THAT SAN ONOFRE KNEW ABOUT PROBLEMS YEARS EARLIER
In this special edition, Fairewinds analyzes a letter from Senator Boxer and Representative Markey that indicates that the problems at San Onofre were known to its owner, Southern California Edison, years before the steam generators were installed and rapidly failed. This statement by Boxer and Markey supports Fairewinds analysis of one year ago that indicates Edison took shortcuts to avoid public participation in a license amendment for San Onofre.
February 8th, 2013 at 2:23 pm
FK: you might like what the kids are listening to now -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ntwv8K_2xI
February 8th, 2013 at 2:24 pm
or this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u73iC98r6A
February 8th, 2013 at 2:56 pm
Daniel, your skills of written expression are astounding! You keep writing things so well and, while I don’t always agree completely with what you say, I always wind up thinking “yes, exactly!”.
I am in awe, sir.
February 8th, 2013 at 3:14 pm
Friedrich K.,
God forbid the people should be happy, you know.
Ulvfugl,
That implies that TPTB care in the slightest whether the people are happy or unhappy. I don’t think they do.
As I see it, decriminalization or legalization, of popular drug use would be catastrophic for the budgets of policing organizations and the prison-industrial complex, especially in USA, where so much is privatised. It might be popular in some circles, but legalization would mean prices dropping, profit margins dropping, and the people at the moment who get the big money, at the top of the dealing networks, don’t want that, do they. Neither do the big banks, who are laundering the drug money.
The county in which I live is legally “dry” – in other words, alcohol sales are illegal. However, using a loophole in the law there are more than 35 private clubs – all of which are open to the general public at no extra cost – which all sell alcohol.
There have been attempts to make the county “wet”, but each time it has been placed on the ballot the liquor store owners in the adjacent wet counties have pumped enormous amounts of money into keeping the county dry using all sorts of scare tactics – things like how there will be drunks on the streets, bums in every alley, etc. Never mind that these same liquor stores serve a clientele almost exclusively made up of residents of our county. In fact, the two highways leading to the liquor stores on the north and south borders of the county had to be widened to five lanes to handle the traffic.
My point is that in any given situation, there is almost always someone who will lose money/power if the status quo changes. “Illegal” drugs are no different.
February 8th, 2013 at 3:47 pm
@ TRDH
Yes, indeed. This area of Wales, and where I grew up, were the last places in the UK to allow drinking on Sundays. The idea was that everyone was supposed to go to church or chapel on Sundays, so the pubs had to be shut. But the same hypocrisy you describe prevailed. There were umpteen clubs licensed to serve alcohol to members on Sundays, so anybody who arrived at the door, signed their name in a book, got a membership ticket, sometimes free, sometimes for a small fee, and drank as much as they wished. It was all rather silly. The war on drugs thing is a lot nastier though. See this, for example, re Mexico and Fast and Furious
http://youtu.be/YJSiqnZRILY
February 8th, 2013 at 3:54 pm
Here’s one to amuse our resident crop circle experts. Don’t know what to make of it at all.
The Sandy Hook sleuths have been zooming in on every detail of the area, and by chance stumbled upon this extraordinary weirdness. It’s not your standard crop circle. It does slightly resemble some of the prehistoric rock art from Ireland, Portugal, Brittany, possibly, to my eye. Who on earth would create something like that ? Why ? Very bizarre.
I don’t think it would be visible from the ground.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmhennen/8448946132/
February 8th, 2013 at 4:18 pm
i always thought that the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs landed in the Gulf of Mexico. This says it landed in what is now Mexico:
http://news.yahoo.com/asteroid-impact-killed-dinosaurs-evidence-191146621.html
Asteroid Impact That Killed the Dinosaurs: New Evidence
The idea that a cosmic impact ended the age of dinosaurs in what is now Mexico now has fresh new support, researchers say.
The most recent and most familiar mass extinction is the one that finished the reign of the dinosaurs — the end-Cretaceous or Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, often known as K-T. The only survivors among the dinosaurs are the birds.
Currently, the main suspect behind this catastrophe is a cosmic impact from an asteroid or comet, an idea first proposed by physicist Luis Alvarez and his son geologist Walter Alvarez. Scientists later found that signs of this collision seemed evident near the town of Chicxulub (CHEEK-sheh-loob) in Mexico in the form of a gargantuan crater more than 110 miles (180 kilometers) wide. The explosion, likely caused by an object about 6 miles (10 km) across, would have released as much energy as 100 trillion tons of TNT, more than a billion times more than the atom bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
However, further work suggested the Chicxulub impact occurred either 300,000 years before or 180,000 years after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. As such, researchers have explored other possibilities, including other impact sites, such as the controversial Shiva crater in India, or even massive volcanic eruptions, such as those creating the Deccan Flats in India.
Timing of an impact
New findings using high-precision radiometric dating analysis of debris kicked up by the impact now suggest the K-T event and the Chicxulub collision happened no more than 33,000 years apart. In radiometric dating, scientists estimate the ages of samples based on the relative proportions of specific radioactive materials within them. [Wipe Out: History's Most Mysterious Mass Extinctions]
“We’ve shown the impact and the mass extinction coincided as much as one can possibly demonstrate with existing dating techniques,” researcher Paul Renne, a geochronologist and director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California, told LiveScience.
“It’s gratifying to see these results, for those of us who’ve been arguing a long time that there was an impact at the time of this mass extinction,” geologist Walter Alvarez at the University of California at Berkeley, who did not participate in this study, told LiveScience. “This research is just a tour de force, a demonstration of really skillful geochronology to resolve time that well.”
The fact the impact and mass extinction may have been virtually simultaneous in time supports the idea that the cosmic impact dealt the age of dinosaurs its deathblow.
“The impact was clearly the final straw that pushed Earth past the tipping point,” Renne said. “We have shown that these events are synchronous to within a gnat’s eyebrow, and therefore, the impact clearly played a major role in extinctions, but it probably wasn’t just the impact.”
The new extinction date is precise to within 11,000 years.
“When I got started in the field, the error bars on these events were plus or minus a million years,” added paleontologist William Clemens at the University of California at Berkeley, who did not participate in this research. “It’s an exciting time right now, a lot of which we can attribute to the work that Paul and his colleagues are doing in refining the precision of the time scale with which we work.”
Final blow
Although the cosmic impact and mass extinction coincided in time, Renne cautioned this does not mean the impact was the only cause of the die-offs. For instance, dramatic climate swings in the preceding million years, including long cold snaps in the general hothouse environment of the Cretaceous, probably brought many creatures to the brink of extinction. The volcanic eruptions behind the Deccan Traps might be one cause of these climate variations.
“These precursory phenomena made the global ecosystem much more sensitive to even relatively small triggers, so that what otherwise might have been a fairly minor effect shifted the ecosystem into a new state,” Renne said.
The cosmic impact then proved the deathblow.
“What we really need to do is to understand better what was going on before the impact — what was the level of ecological stress that existed that allowed the impact to be the straw that broke the camel’s back?” Renne said. “We also need better dates for the massive volcanism at the Deccan Flats to better understand when it first started and how fast it occurred.”
The scientists detailed their findings in the Feb. 8 issue of the journal Science.
February 8th, 2013 at 4:36 pm
Bing Maps:
Bird’s Eye View: Sugar Ln, Newtown, CT
The field pattern is a GIANT SPIDER’S WEB
ummmh
February 8th, 2013 at 4:59 pm
A FEW THOUGHTS ON TROLL(S)
I didn’t have much to do this afternoon and much to my surprise I have read all the comments through to the end and I thought I would create this little “review” for the entertainment and edification of anyone interested in TROLL(S). I just let it speak for itself at first then add some structure and commentary. Enjoy.
He said:
Yes, because I am not setting myself up here as an exemplar of Enlightenment on a platform, for the world to admire and emulate, ( or to throw rotten fruit at ),
Many of us continue to throw rotten fruit at you and you are so arrogant you do not notice.
I make no claim to be anybody’s zen master or guru or teacher,
But you relentlessly, pedantically, against our wishes claim to know the truth and shove it on us endlessly.
I make no claim to represent any authoritative voice regarding supreme wisdom,
If that were true would you not STOP at some point, shut your mouth rather than relentlessly continue to educate us as to the proper way to think?
I’m not trying convert anybody from one religion to another religion, or to prove how superior my own ideological perspective is Oh yes you are!!
Again, if that were true, you would not continue braying your point of view whilst making every effort to make everyone else wrong. You also contradict yourself further down when you say you ”hold contempt for the ideas as well as for the idea holders.” It is not that you don’t get it – you actually CANNOT get it. You hold us in contempt then tell us our reaction to you is projection? How sick are you?
I don’t care about any of that stuff.
Than why don’t you STFU about it?
but I cannot do anything about the way OTHERS see me
Oh, but you can. You can stop being such a disrespectful jerk whose only agenda here seems to be making most others wrong and to conduct Ad Hominem attacks.
and the projections THEY impose upon me
As the narcissist you are you firmly believe you cannot be wrong and the honest feedback these people are providing you is only their projections. AGAIN: You hold us in contempt then tell us our reaction to you is projection? How sick are you?
I have shaken a hand that has shaken a hand that has shaken a hand all the way back to Dogen to Ju Ching to the Buddha himself, if the stories of the direct lineage are to be believed and true.
After protesting so much that you do not care about this stuff or you are not converting anyone or proving your ideological perspective is true you give us this line of egomania to justify the rightness of you and your position … all the way back to the Buddha himself. Well, I’m pretty sure Buddha would be spinning in his grave to hear your self-importance spouted in the context of ego dissolution.
This is why Kathy C feels pity for you. You have been given dozens of points of feedback about what a jerk you are and you defend and defend and justify and defend to the point you excerpt a quote from a book you DID NOT READ and don’t understand to support your egomaniacal notion you are some kind of crazy wisdom guru. MAYBE WE DON’T WANT OR NEED A C.W.G. HERE!!
Once we stop letting you bait us, pity is the only response left for someone as pathetically self-centred as you.
TAKE A LOOK AT YOURSELF (don’t worry; I know you cannot …) and how you attack and what a fake you truly are:
Indeed, stupidity abounds, and when combined with the arrogance you display, it’s a certain recipe for disaster. (at DMD February 5th, 2013 at 4:42 pm )
Moments later you retract with utmost insincerity:
February 5th, 2013 at 5:05 pm
Okay, I’d like to withdraw my last ad hom aimed at dmd, as I have been reprimanded in private regarding my attitude. Apologies.
Yet sentences later you admit your apology was fake, PHONEY, insincere and that you are incapable of separating (good) people from (bad?) ideas:
My contempt extends to those who hold the beliefs, in the neurons in their heads, who promote and share the beliefs.
Perhaps it should not. Some people insist on the difference between the person and the ideas, which is what ad hominem is all about, in a formal context. Is this blog such a formal context ? For me it’s not, but out of respect for it’s owner, I endeavour not to cause offence.
Here you are clearly indicating you have no respect for the participants of this comment section, if they have what YOU consider bad ideas but you do respect the owner. Why? Because the owner has power over you so you kiss his ass while you will surely continue to shit on the rest of us. Psychopath, much?
You said: I take the ideas personally. How paranoid is that?
It’s these ideas and beliefs that are the enemy and the people who hold them considering you admit your contempt extends to those who hold the beliefs and it is, of course, YOU AND ONLY YOU who has the final say as to the usefulness or validity of the ideas posted here. Who, besides yourself, appointed you the Thought Police?
Oh, your arrogance knows no bounds – I am trying, trying, to stand up for the right ideas, and kill off the wrong ones – as if you know right from wrong. Do I hear the arrogance of the psychopath here in the self-designation as exterminator of bad ideas? Now you are the judge, jury and executioner of bad ideas. Since you cannot distinguish the beliefs from the believers when will you cross the line from killing wrong beliefs to killing wrong believers?
Then at Kathy C:
February 6th, 2013 at 7:02 am I think that your understanding of what meditation is, is so shallow and superficial that it does not qualify as any kind of understanding at all. What exactly do you think that people do when they meditate ?
For someone who insists so fervently that they are a materialist and an atheist you seem to have an extraordinarily strong attachment to ancient mythology.
And you JUST CANNOT STOP. Despite your crocodile tears and fake apology (which you then withdrew) you go on to attack Kathy C YET AGAIN.
To paraphrase TRDH:
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
because only two posts later comes the fake compassion:
February 6th, 2013 at 7:20 am ”What a touching story. If only we could do that for this whole world.. “
and more fake compassion:
Heck, what’s the point of the guilt ? You’ve been doing your best. You’re just one man. It’s not your fault.
This at DMD after all the insults and disparagement you have heaped upon him?
You tell us: what is your sickness?
”Everyone is locked in to their belief systems. My belief system, Soto zen, is a way a living without any belief system, …” Ho Lee Crap – how many contradictions in this statement plus the obvious insanity that he believes he can live without beliefs, has no beliefs yet is the most vociferous person here when it comes to imposing beliefs on others and killing off the wrong ones. Psychopath much?
And, at the same time he says he has no beliefs, he tells us the belief system he doesn’t have …is the very best thing it is possible to have. If It really makes no difference. then why are you so objectionable when people disagree with you – if it made no difference you would just keep your mouth shut – and if it makes no difference then what of your Crusade to kill off, in your opinion, wrong beliefs? You have come full circle in contradicting yourself too many times to hold any credibility with me and with most others on this blog, I would guess.
@ Lidia
You must have some sort of psychiatric disorder.
Hahaha, and this is not an attack upon me ?
No, it is not. This is her statement of dismay at how unpleasant your presence is on this blog and how, even though you fake apologized, you continue to attack everyone you can. It is also her statement of pity toward you … at least that’s how I read it.
This says it all about you:
You know, I have had people get down on their knees and touch my feet, as if I was Jesus. Egomania. Delusions?? People wonder why I am insulting people, people think I am suffering from a psychiatric disorder, people accuse me of all kinds of projected nasty things from their own personal hangups. Unwilling to accept feedback; blaming others, self-referential arrogance I want people to stop being so bloody clueless. but only in the way YOU think is correct. I want them to have their own dignity and wisdom, as you say, depressive, waking up, not following the social script. AS long as it is Elfbuggerer approved – non-poser ideas not allowed. If I wasn’t upsetting some people, there’d be something wrong, I should probably be upsetting everybody here much more if I was doing a better job… EGOMANIA, lack of empathy, doing whatever can be justified to further his own self-referential agenda, delusion – thinks he is a Crazy Wisdom Guru. but it’s not really working out that way, is it, just a few people with bruised egos trying to score points Blaming others, lack of empathy, all-knowing narcissism i.e. Elfbuggerer KNOWS he is correct and he KNOWS the rest of us are wrong. It is only our problem, not his, that we get offended when he attacks us and acts like an asshole.
February 7th, 2013 at 5:57 am
Oh, I have no messianic complex, Bailey, far from it, Another example of the narcissistic inability to entertain feedback. Elfbuggerer, you are little else than a Messianic Complex. Only the psychopath messianic can be so arrogant as to know which ideas to kill and not be able to separate the idea from the idea holder.
and
Just about every single thread since I arrived, Kathy C. has picked an argument with me which has lead to acrimony. Not sure what the technical term is here but I see you as the one who picks ALL the arguments. You have so much (SELF-ADMITTEDLY) invested in being right and killing wrong ideas, you pick fights with everyone. You must sit up for hours scouring the InterWebs to find contrary information with which to make people wrong … else how is it you could be so successful at making people wrong??
February 7th, 2013 at 6:12 am AND AGAIN!! More attack. Inability to consider feedback:
@ Martin Knight
You’re a pedant, which puts you beyond satire.
and this is how he responds to a basically supportive, friendly bit of feedback. The man cannot even take good feedback:
February 7th, 2013 at 6:38 am
@ Friedrich K.
Thank you for your advice. FWIW, I got the first forest on this planet to be certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council. Strawman and Egomania. I know something about the limits of the sky. What makes you think I want to catch any bees ?
I’d be more sympathetic towards you if you had replied to my comment in the previous thread. I don’t think you did ?
February 7th, 2013 at 7:34 am
@ Guy McPherson
Sigh, okay, I’ll shut up, but an argument about forests might have been interesting.
But does he shut up? OF COURSE NOT!
Martin Knight Says:
February 7th, 2013 at 7:50 am
“No idea what you’re talking about [...]”
Feigned ignorance. You use it a lot, I’ve noticed. Amazingly, no one ever calls you on it, even though it is a transparent ruse.
What are you going to do about your itch to dominate? No, don’t tell me I’m projecting; that won’t work. I’m asking you. What are you going to do about it? Because dominating this space is causing unhappiness to many people (what? you didn’t notice?)
Martin gets it, Kathy C gets it, Lidia gets it, I get it, Robin Datta gets it. Only you, Elkfucker, do not get it. Only you cannot see what a total jerk you are.
February 7th, 2013 at 7:56 am
@ Martin Knight
As for this subsequent comment. I don’t think I’d ever consult you about anything. and NO he doesn’t SHUT UP. More disparagement. Yay Elkfucker!!
Brad Phillips Says:
February 7th, 2013 at 9:23 am
I stopped posting here after reading thru screen after screen of esoteric nit-picking by a famous few that had nothing to do with the topic under which these comments are collected. Brad knows too! Except for this particular parsing, I usually skip everything posted by the “famous few.”
But Robin Datta probably says it best February 7th, 2013 at 11:34 pm :
Lidia:
but at the apparent cost of your pointless hectoring and megalomaniacal abuse directed, although not exclusively, at certain other posters.
That’s a pointer to unrecognized and retained baggage combined with the delusion that it has all been dropped. Pointing it out will elicit the denial and rationalization that comes from the delusion.
AND
Robin says: “That need is a need from your point of view, Bailey. Quite correct, for you. Not everyone can see their own baggage – even I cannot see my own.” Then Quotes Elfbuggerer: “Oh, I have no messianic complex, Bailey, …..It’s nothing to do with me at all. …..I can listen to the individual and tell them whatever seems appropriate. I enjoy that one. I can get people very high, tripping, just with a few words, change their lives, I can explain everything useful, basic essentials, in what, half an hour ? After that, do you think I want the bother and hassle of people depending upon me ? Not really… Only if they are really in trouble or stuck.”
and Robin concludes: See what I mean? This exchange is self evident to all but Elfbuggerer.
AND
Friedrich Kling:
ulvfugi: Bailey is offering you sound advice
ROBIN: You know it, Friedrich. But getting it to be recognized is another problem. A problem that even Buddhas find insurmountable.
Martin Knight:
What are you going to do about your itch to dominate?
ROBIN: Let me venture a guess: You already know the answer. (don’t we all)
February 8th, 2013 at 5:26 am
then more denial, self-justification, rejection of feedback (which is almost unanimous now) and the same-old-same-old egomaniacal bullshit (I think the lady doth protest too much).
Yes, because I am not setting myself up here as an exemplar of Enlightenment on a platform, for the world to admire and emulate, ( or to throw rotten fruit at ), I make no claim to be anybody’s zen master or guru or teacher, I make no claim to represent any authoritative voice regarding supreme wisdom, I’m not trying convert anybody from one religion to another religion, or to prove how superior my own ideological perspective is, am I, I don’t care about any of that stuff.
If you don’t care about this stuff, why do you persist on yapping on about it and telling everyone else our ideas are wrong and putting yourself up on the pedestal of knowing which Ideas are the wrong ones and which should be killed (remembering you cannot or will not distinguish between an idea and the holder of the idea … which is pretty scary IMHO).
and more narcissistic egomania:
but I cannot do anything about the way OTHERS see me, and the projections THEY impose upon me.
No, not true. The result of your communication is the result of your communication. That is, if so many people are giving you feedback that you are a jerk, power hungry, that you attack others constantly, that you make others wrong constantly, have a psychiatric disorder then that is how you are coming across. We are not projecting our faults upon you, you are displaying your faults: shittyness, arrogance, egomania and judgementalness to us and we are responding as people constantly insulted usually do – we fight back or turn away. All that remains after that is you … by yourself – Elfbuggerer, the Asshole.
More egomania:
I have shaken a hand that has shaken a hand that has shaken a hand all the way back to Dogen to Ju Ching to the Buddha himself, if the stories of the direct lineage are to be believed and true. Not that it matters much, I suppose.
If it doesn’t matter, why do you keep bringing it up? Oh, right – to support your egomania and the fact you are right about everything. Good. (scary) (NOTE: this is the SECOND time he uses this exact phrase as if he just copied and pasted from the previous usage … or maybe he keeps a crib sheet of egomania at hand)
In conclusion, Elfbuggerer will either completely ignore this or brush it off with a short, disparaging comment or will attack it ruthlessly in detail. For certain he will not take any of it to heart and he will not change his strategy at all … because he cannot. He does have a psychiatric disorder. Anyone care to guess which one it might be? Plenty of clues above.
So keep us real, Elfbuggerer. Tell us what is RIGHT and TRUE. Shout down our stupid ideas. I stopped listening long ago and, even if you are incapable of understanding, I, too, PITY you that you cannot see what an asshole you are and how pathetic you are in all your egomania and self-justification.
February 8th, 2013 at 5:48 pm
@madman:
Wow.
February 8th, 2013 at 7:39 pm
Madmanintheattic
That’s a lot of work for no pay!
February 8th, 2013 at 7:43 pm
@ madmanintheattic
Hahahaha,
I stopped listening long ago…
No you didn’t, you went through every comment with immense care, as if it was from a new lover. If me and my words upset and bother you so much, why not just ignore them ? Nobody is forcing you to read what I write, are they ?
February 8th, 2013 at 7:53 pm
@ Madmanintheattic.
I am sorry you are so hurt and angry and offended, really I am. I offer you apologies. Please calm down. It’s not my fault if I shook a hand that shook a hand, etc, going back to Buddha, I wasn’t boasting, it was just something that happened, it wasn’t something I brought up to impress people, I only mentioned it, because, like all similar continuities that have erstwhile given humans a sense of their place in time and history and sense of purpose, that is one more that loses all meaning because of NTE.
February 8th, 2013 at 8:15 pm
First the attack:
ulvfugl Says:
February 8th, 2013 at 7:43 pm
@ madmanintheattic
Hahahaha,
I stopped listening long ago…
No you didn’t, you went through every comment with immense care, as if it was from a new lover. If me and my words upset and bother you so much, why not just ignore them ? Nobody is forcing you to read what I write, are they ?
I said I had nothing better to do and I also find the parsing of mentally ill individuals quite interesting. Kind of a hobby of mine. Notice the egomania coming through in the first sentence as he equates himself to my “new lover.” How sick and creepy and ABSOLUTELY FUCKED UP is that?? His attacks can be very subtle, yet another clue as to his pathology.
Then immediately comes the phoney, contrition, the fake apology. Predictable and here, side-by-side further evidence of his illness. Complete with more of EXACTLY the same self-aggrandizement with his Buddha bullshit:
ulvfugl Says:
February 8th, 2013 at 7:53 pm
@ Madmanintheattic.
I am sorry you are so hurt and angry and offended, really I am. I offer you apologies. Please calm down. It’s not my fault if I shook a hand that shook a hand, etc, going back to Buddha, I wasn’t boasting, it was just something that happened, it wasn’t something I brought up to impress people, I only mentioned it, because, like all similar continuities that have erstwhile given humans a sense of their place in time and history and sense of purpose, that is one more that loses all meaning because of NTE.
I would rest my case but this pathological piece of shit can’t get it through his head what a sick puppy he is and, as I predicted, HE WILL NOT STOP.
These are two more clues: 1) cannot be gotten through to EVER, and 2) the relentless self-aggrandizement.
It’s not my fault if I shook a hand that shook a hand, etc, going back to Buddha, I wasn’t boasting
I mean, really, folks, just how sick is this guy. And what time is it in Wales, anyway. … Well, it is 3:05 am in London (Cardiff didn’t rate a listing on my world clock) and it is 7:05 pm here. I bet he sets his alarm clock for the hour so he can get up and make us wrong and offer fake contrition and PHONEY humility.
Complete with his stock-and-trade rationalization and justification.
I only mentioned it, because, like all similar continuities that have erstwhile given humans a sense of their place in time and history and sense of purpose, that is one more that loses all meaning because of NTE. (Have any of you encountered stinkier bullshit?)
Translation:
“Oh, no, I’m not an egomaniac; I just managed to fit that into some bullshit context I invented to aggrandize myself by mentioning it. I’m actually very humble.”
Good night, Elfbuggerer. See you in an hour.
February 8th, 2013 at 8:24 pm
This interesting new find dates European humans back to possibly 500k years. It’s quite sobering when you consider we and many other species..some dating back 100mil years could be ‘game over’ in a few decades. Aren’t we fortunate to get to see all this (NOT).
New Look at Human Fossil Suggests Eastern Europe Was an Important Pathway in Evolution
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130207114602.htm
February 8th, 2013 at 8:31 pm
POSTSCRIPT:
Also notice which part of my criticism he is attached to – the Buddhist Bullshit. Thus we know where, outside himself, his locus of identity resides. In actuality this pathology does not have a strong sense of identity and this is what requires this pathology to struggle for control and “power over” without cease. What we see is Egomania replacing ego and Self-Aggrandizement replacing self.
It is also notable that he has not (and likely will not) rationalize his statement that he is out to kill bad ideas but, by his own admission, does not distinguish between the idea and the holder of the idea. To peer this deep into his pathology might actually push him over the edge. Now I have mentioned it he may feel forced to justify himself (more likely he will brush it off with another attack or ignore it altogether). It will be very interesting to see how he manages this wilst retaining his egomania and arrogance.
So keep your eye on this spot for NBL’s newest feature:
Watch The Mentally Ill Guy Justify And Rationalize His Illness
February 8th, 2013 at 8:37 pm
@ Madmanintheattic
I’m following Guy’s advice, that I am not obliged to respond to every comment, even those directed to me, or at me.
@ Bailey
Thanks for that. Have to keep updating the mental models.
There’s another interesting one came up recently. My mental model starts civilsation with Sumeria, and before that, the change from hunting and gathering to domestication of plants and animals in approximately that region of the world, and before that the amazing Gobekli Tepe.
But I had never thought much about other parts of the world. There was a whole large continent, Sundaland, that got flooded as the glaciers melted, and there’s evidence of structures at least as sophisticated as Gobekli Tepe there, at an earlier date.
I know this link is a cranky forum, but the thread has good photos, and the site has apparently been dated by reputable scientists.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread880575/pg1
February 8th, 2013 at 8:58 pm
ulvfugl Says:
February 8th, 2013 at 8:37 pm
@ Madmanintheattic
I’m following Guy’s advice, that I am not obliged to respond to every comment, even those directed to me, or at me.
Oh, LOOK, everybody. Now he is following the guidelines. After the shit he has dumped on every one of us he is now taking refuge in the guidelines. This is, of course, only because it suits his purpose. This is a good example of the slippery, wiley wraith-like substance of this pathology. Since there is no actual self or ego or personhood there, then anything is fair game, any manipulation, moving the goal-posts, rationalization – any thing goes when it comes to the need of this pathology to defend itself. He CANNOT address my comments because if he did he might have to actually DO SOMETHING about the pathology he is.
Of further note regarding this pathology is he actually thinks he angered and offended me. This is his understanding of “PITY” as I pity that he is his pathology and not a real boy at all. Someone as pathetic as you cannot anger or offend me. That your pathology survives in our gene pool angers and offends me but that you are your pathology is merely pathetic.
February 8th, 2013 at 9:09 pm
@ Madmanintheattic
What could I possibly say to you ?
You’re projecting complete nonsense onto me. Ffs, why does it matter to you what time it is in Cardiff ? Why does it matter to you that I shook a hand that shook a hand going back in a chain to the Buddha ? Do you think it’s a lie ? We are all linked by a chain of umbilical cords to the first human that evolved on Earth. That includes you. That’s far more awesome.
Why does anything I say matter to you at all ?
February 8th, 2013 at 9:14 pm
ulvfugl
W.I.L.L. Y.O.U. P.L.E.A.S.E. F.U.C.K.I.N.G. G.O. A.W.A.Y.
you are the most arrogant, self-righteous ass hole I have ever had the displeasure to come across. Every one has told you, over and over,
A.N.D. Y.O.U. J.U.S.T. D.O.N.T. G.E.T. I.T!!!
and I expect the attack to commence
February 8th, 2013 at 9:17 pm
ulvfugl Says:
February 8th, 2013 at 9:09 pm
@ Madmanintheattic
What could I possibly say to you ?
You’re projecting complete nonsense onto me.
And NOW for something completely different … NOT. Look folks, the pathology is back to blaming others for he himself being an asshole. I parsed and quoted and gave context and now the pathology insists I am projecting HIS pathology on to him.
What could he say to me? Nothing, because he cannot address my critiques without precipitating a major identity crisis so he is left with nothing to say. To address my critique would require he address himself and he knows, somehow, he is nothing more than a pathology hiding an empty void. ANY kind of self-examination is an impossibility for this pathology.
So first the pathology ignores the critique (following the guidelines) but he can’t resist the push of his pathology and he falls back on blaming me for projecting his pathology ON TO HIM. Oy vey!!
Do you see the pathology now?
February 8th, 2013 at 9:41 pm
@ everybody else:
I am sorry if I offended you and I hope I am not out of line.
tamsen
February 8th, 2013 at 9:58 pm
Dearest Tamsen Miller,
Speaking only for myself, of course, I found your comment to be perfectly acceptable, on topic, clear, cogent, consice and to the point. I am in no way offended by your usage and believe your tone expressed many an unheard shriek of disbelief and frustration others will identify with. I am impressed with your display of courage at throwing your hat into this particular ring with a strong comment which cut right to the point. I welcome you to our NBL conversatons, I thank you for your comments and I hope to hear from you again.
Be well, Tamesen
February 8th, 2013 at 9:59 pm
Tamsen
Sorry about the typo in my sign-off.
M
February 8th, 2013 at 10:11 pm
The watching bird is awareness. The awareness is apparently – and only apparently – colored by content when illuminating the mind. The mind is inanimate and functions without awareness, just as the body does. The awareness is without content, without characteristics, the Void, does not come into existence, does not go out of existence (and neither included not excluded by either existence or non-existence), is immutable, and can be experienced, but only as the subject of experience. The mind appears – and only appears – to be animate only when illuminated by the awareness.
The discernment between the awareness and what it illuminates (the apparent objects of of awareness, including thoughts, ideas, and physical objects, is known as atma-anatma viveka: real-unreal discernment. It is one of the characteristics of the so-called “enlightened”. It requires purity of heart – the absence of baggage – which is referred to in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Without that purity of heart no amount of meditation, not even till the end of the Cosmic Cycle will do. Sincetity in any path, including meditation, will lead one to it, but the key is sincerity: in other words, a modicum of purity. Without it, meditation can lead one astray without one even realising that one has strayed: this is described in some traditions as makyo. Trying a shortcut of wrapping one’s head around it intellectually also will not do it: it is not an object to be experienced, it is experience itself WITHOUT objects.
The human being is no more than an apparent meat robot in an apparent universe or perhaps in an apparent multiverse. A rope in a dimly lit room may be perceived as a snake. The apparent snake is indistinguishable from a real snake as long as it is perceived as a snake. But its reality is borrowed from the rope. The universe (or multiverse) is perceived as real but borrows its reality from the Real. Purity of heart is the sine qua non for the experience of reality. Efforts to that end should not be directed at intellection but at the necessary purification.
It may appear that over the ages a lot of barking has been done up the wrong tree in this regard. But there is no wrong tree when there is sincerity.
Madman:
These are two more clues: 1) cannot be gotten through to EVER, and 2) the relentless self-aggrandizement.
That is part of the trap of too much unbalanced meditation. The meditative traditions warn of it and in one of them it is called makyo.
February 8th, 2013 at 10:25 pm
Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, Before the End of 1993
Jeepers, Mister Science, wouldn’t it just be keeno-jets if someone would invent a device for these new-fangled computers to where people could skip over text they didn’t need or want to read…sort of like a fast forward switch on a tape player ?
Well, Billy, I just got an email from my friend Eric Michelman, who works at Microsoft, and Eric says that Real Soon Now they will offer a mouse that scrolls.
But, Mister Science,a mouse can’t Stroll by itself.
Even a rooster doing a Funky Chicken needs a partner.
We’re going to have to check the batteries in your hearing aids again, Billy. Of course it takes two to tango or do The Stroll, but the scrolling mouse is something anyone and everyone can use, well, unilaterally, although, strictly speaking, the operative directions are up and down, not from side to side, as that “laterally” might imply…
Geez, Mister Science, if you were any more TMI, they’d have to put you in a movie with Jack Lemmon and Jane Fonda or somethin’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrGLNtZ0rEg
Yes, there were other illustrative clips available, but this one is from Idaho…chosen to honor our host.
February 8th, 2013 at 10:38 pm
@ madmanintheattic
You’re belying your criticism of Ulvfulg’s pathology, through the overt display of your own.
Yes, Ulvfugl is without a doubt a conceited, didactic, arrogant, condescending, ill tempered, passionate, egotistical asshole…….sometimes. But then again, so am I, and by the way you are NOW carrying on, so might you be. As with many things, the character traits we hate in others, we often bear ourselves.
There is a far more constructive way to get your criticism across, then how you’re going about it now. What’s with all the name calling?
I think Ulvfugl knows he is getting close to crossing the line, and is deliberately making an effort–albeit a late one–to back off. But it is still my opinion, that this blog would be greatly diminished without his frequent cogent insight. There aren’t that many people in our culture who have the intellectual capacity to grab NTE by the horns and so thoroughly run with it. And frankly, Ulvfugl’s often lucid ramblings on this vital subject, are some of the best this blog has ever produced, and I believe even some of his critics, would have a hard time disagreeing with that assessment, and I say this, actually being one of those critics.
So, please…….you’ve thoroughly made your point. NTE is many things, and without a doubt, one of these, is a war of words. We’re all going to have to learn how to navigate through everyone else’s crap much better than we have so far.
February 8th, 2013 at 10:51 pm
Dang.
290 comments later, bits o’ poetry, links galore, despair, cynicism, spirituality, inquiry, acrimony, and a font of righteous anger so deep Nemesis herself would be proud, when reality comes crashing back.
Bee:”Daddy, can I have a glass of juice?”
Me: “Sure, baby”
Bee: “Was this glass clean?” (arches eyebrow skeptically)
Me: “Yes”
Bee: “It has floats”
Me: “There are no floats” (examines juice carefully)
Bee: “Yes, right there” (points it out, must be microscopic)
Me: “I’ll get you a new one”
(walks to kitchen, brings back same glass a few minutes later)
Bee: Thanks, Daddy.
Maybe that’s all anyone can do, fib about floats in the juice.
Regards,
dweebus
February 9th, 2013 at 12:40 am
@ Robin D.
The watching bird is awareness. etc
No, sorry, that does not address what I was saying.
February 9th, 2013 at 12:43 am
@ Daniel
Thank you, Daniel. For whatever it’s worth, I hold you in the highest regard.
February 9th, 2013 at 12:45 am
@ dweebus
Hi !
February 9th, 2013 at 1:00 am
@ Madmanintheattic
What could he say to me? Nothing, because he cannot address my critiques without precipitating a major identity crisis so he is left with nothing to say. To address my critique would require he address himself and he knows, somehow, he is nothing more than a pathology hiding an empty void. ANY kind of self-examination is an impossibility for this pathology.
Look shithead, I could shred every single line in excruciating detail and then what ? You have no rational critique, just venomous ranting, spewing out all sorts of incoherent frustrations and hang-ups of your own that have absolutely nothing to do with me.
I’m simply not interested addressing such garbage. It’s not intellectually challenging, it’s not interesting, it’s not even worth having a fight about, it’s just boring. It would also bore everyone else.
I ask you AGAIN. Why does anything I say bother you ? Why does it matter to you ?
If you don’t like it, don’t fucking read it.
February 9th, 2013 at 1:08 am
@ Infanttyrone
A gem !
February 9th, 2013 at 1:20 am
@ Tamsen Miller
Thanks for the rotten fruit.
February 9th, 2013 at 2:32 am
@ Robin D.
The human being is no more than an apparent meat robot in an apparent universe or perhaps in an apparent multiverse. A rope in a dimly lit room may be perceived as a snake. The apparent snake is indistinguishable from a real snake as long as it is perceived as a snake. But its reality is borrowed from the rope. The universe (or multiverse) is perceived as real but borrows its reality from the Real. Purity of heart is the sine qua non for the experience of reality. Efforts to that end should not be directed at intellection but at the necessary purification.
You construct this paragraph as a story, a sequence of thought, in the mind.
What I was attempting to convey, in my previous comment, goes beyond intellection.
It goes beyond thoughts and beliefs and ideas. It requires, first, the unification of mind and body, because, as I see it, that is what we are, that is what we have. The next step is to become liberated from all belief systems.
This means imposing no ideas or concepts whatsoever upon the raw reality. No notions of a universe or multiverse or anything like that, no ideas, no mental activity. It just is what it is.
The main lesson Jung learned from his encounter with Mountain Lake was the importance of forging meaning through a coherent system of beliefs and practice. The content of the belief system is secondary; since philosophical and religious beliefs are based on faith and cannot be empirically validated, in a sense one system is as good as another. Each culture or subculture has their own system of beliefs and practices that provide a sense of meaning. Such belief systems need not be religious; even an agnostic or atheist worldview provides the individual with a view of existence that makes sense to that individual.
http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=881&Itemid=1
February 9th, 2013 at 2:48 am
Setting up a forum to share and discuss NTE, Guy’s posts, etc. is free and easy. The ability to control spam and moderate crazies is always a plus. If anyone is interested in doing that, here is the url: http://online.boards.net/ . I think there are others as well, but this is the one I’m familiar with.
Check out the moderated forum at rigorousintuition.ca for an example of how to run a blog/forum that functions on the levels of information repository and social interaction nexus. Having several co-moderators defuses the fear of censorship. Topic data dumps increase in relevance over time as the paramaters of mutual interest (i.e. NTE in relation to any and everything else) sharpen and focus the material offered and discussed. Anyone can start a topic and anyone who is a member of the forum can respond. Other non-members can read the forum but not post to it.
I will be grateful to be allowed to join such a forum if you decide to try it out.
thanks,
brad Phillips
bradhp@msn.com
February 9th, 2013 at 3:09 am
Will Dorner be the first to be droned? Not sure what is really going on here. Is it a setup? Guns and drones, a double feature.
tp://www.laist.com/2013/02/07/christopher_dorners_manifesto_in_fu.php
February 9th, 2013 at 3:11 am
Correction:
http://www.laist.com/2013/02/07/christopher_dorners_manifesto_in_fu.php
February 9th, 2013 at 3:13 am
My mistake. The correct url is: http://www.boards.net
sorry.
February 9th, 2013 at 3:15 am
Arctic Sea ice Volume and Greenland Melt Update
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/
February 9th, 2013 at 3:25 am
Met with my banker yesterday for an annual benchmark update. We talked about the future of farming, food, warming, finance, energy, fracking, shale oil, CO2, etc. He is optimistic; CO2 is good for plants, the economy will thrive on the new oil and gas produced, renewables will work. We have been here before, we will work it out because we must. Never heard about methane or feedbacks. He must watch TV.
He’s a good man and we had a good talk. I told him what I thought; on a scale of 1 to 10, we are headed towards 11. We agreed to disagree.
February 9th, 2013 at 3:55 am
Police are so scared of Dorner it appears that they shot two women delivering papers without warning or any attempt to identify, because the were in a vehicle similar to Dorner’s http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/ex-cop-manhunt-newspaper-delivery-women-shot.html
February 9th, 2013 at 4:14 am
Daniel Says:
February 8th, 2013 at 10:38 pm
@ madmanintheattic
You’re belying your criticism of Ulvfulg’s pathology, through the overt display of your own.
There is a difference Daniel.
Madman posts occasionally and does not regularly insult anyone.
U posts incessantly and manages to insult just about everyone.
It is hard to comment on U’s behavior without sounding like you are insulting him. And since most of us do not choose to make our comments deliberately insulting, we hold back and then every once in a while one of us blows up. Madman is not the first that has blown up at U. And Madman does a service in his research of showing that the behavior is constant and directed to multiple posters. In fact it is a given that he will get someone to blowup as he deliberately looks for the hooks that grab you in. It can be hard to avoid responding to the hooks.
For instance he said to me Yes, you mention it in most threads, you seem to have a thing about dead babies. It’s happening to someone, somewhere, every second of the day. I’m well aware of that.
Tell me Daniel what the heck U was doing with that comment other than trying to hook me into an argument. Is my concern for the children of the world, born and unborn, a “thing about dead babies”. Is my loving a child condemned to die from Aids a “thing about dead babies”. Of course that made me so furious that I knew I couldn’t begin to respond to it without going off in a tirade. I took a 2 day leave to get past my anger. Little Johnnie wasn’t a thing I had about dead babies, he was a human being with feelings that I could feed and show love to. What kind of monster tells me that I have a thing about dead babies, because I gave some comfort to a child born with a death sentence because his mother had AIDS???????????? Tell me please what kind of person says things like that. I have tears pouring down my face from the memory in the Children’s Home in Port-au-Prince – an emotion I usually try to keep buried. What kind of person says I have a thing about dead babies just to try to get a rise out of me???? Had I responded to that right after I read it you would have thought Madmanintheattic was gentle.
February 9th, 2013 at 4:19 am
ulvfugl Says:
“It requires, first, the unification of mind and body…”
But your can’t stop there, you must keep going.
…the unification of individuals into a culture…the unification of a culture into nature.
February 9th, 2013 at 5:14 am
@ Ripley
Well, I was thinking specifically re zen, as a means pf getting free from all belief systems, including ultimately it’s own.
When your study of Buddhism is through, you find you haven’t anything new. / Enlightenment and delusion too never existed at the start. They’re ideas that you picked up, things your parents never taught. / If you think the mind that attains enlightenment is “mine” your thoughts will wrestle, one with the other. / These days I’m not bothering about getting enlightenment all the time, and the result is that I wake up in the morning feeling fine! / … Nowadays … I just move along at my ease, letting the breath come and go. / Die—then live day and night within the world. Once you’ve done this, then you can hold the world right in your hand! / It’s the buddhas I feel sorry for; with all those ornaments they wear, they must be dazzled by the glare! – Bankei
But you’re right, Ripley. In an ideal, utopian way, if we were to begin all over again, we’d want individuals integrated into a culture, and a culture which was perfectly matched to the natural systems that we are a part of.
At least, that has been my working hypothesis for many years, until last year when it became clear that however hard we worked at it, the irreversible tipping points meant NTE becomes unavoidable.
I’m still not certain how long we have. I think there’s bound to be a grey area.
People are criticising me for being unaware of this or that about myself. I contest that, although I’m not going to argue it here. What astonishes me is the fact that many of the people here are unaware, that it is the very cultural values and assumptions that they themselves hold and exhibit, which are the factors that got us into this mess. IMHO.
February 9th, 2013 at 5:23 am
10 year projection of radiation from Fukushima into Pacific Ocean.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfEPzUdIgds&feature=player_embedded#!
“Try the fish!”
February 9th, 2013 at 5:30 am
@ Kathy C.
No, your concern for babies and suffering, and the distress you feel about it is completely understandable, virtuous, natural, commendable, and something to be respected.
What’s not acceptable ( to me ) is when you use that emotive image to try and discredit other people’s views, as if your Sermon on the Mount was the ONLY measure of kindness and goodness and compassion, after having given me lectures about how there’s no such thing as spirituality, it’s all just imaginary mental phenomena, tricks of the brain, and telling me, in the previous thread that Soto Zen must be the most EVIL teaching…blablabla.
You insist that you are not religious. Okay, fine. But then don’t beat me over the head with your Christian religion, please, with it’s threats of burning in hell forever if I don’t accept it’s moral judgements. Which I do not, considering the historical record, that so-called Christians have probably inflicted more cruelty, death, suffering and misery, on this planet than any other group, ever.
Now, please, I would prefer to make peace with you, if possible, because the haggling is fruitless and only produces further acrimony.
February 9th, 2013 at 5:39 am
ulvfugl
Yes I know you were talking about zen, and I think you’re right, it looks like one of the better disciplines for an individual to practice. But it still leaves as individuals, separated, with all the connections to people and nature yet to made. Connections our civilization has taken pride in destroying, leaving us separated from nature and each other, always looking at the world from the outside–competitive, fearful, and isolated.
February 9th, 2013 at 5:42 am
One of the older dudes, Brooks, comments,
‘Shields and Brooks on DOJ Drone Memo,Brennan Hearing, Syria Strategy’
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june13/shieldsbrooks_02-08.html
at about 8:24
” DAVID BROOKS: But if you have this broad sweep of people saying we should arm the rebels, and then the White House says no, it’s hard to believe, since it was so politically convenient not to arm, that it wasn’t a mistake. And now the wrong rebels are on the ascendance.(in Syria)…”
This is the sort of asswipe fuckup that just ruins the whole place for all of us.
I do remember something, somewhere about an ‘inalienable right to self government’…written down somewhere, on some important document…. ah here it is… oh.. but here… in the invisable-lemon-juice-ink-in-fine-writing it says,
“56.(b)(i)…excepting when it concerns a country the USA wishes to hegamonically fuckup, pillage, and manage from a geopolitical realpoloitic POV”
This is just one of millions of under-the-radar USA( …insert any other active big shithead hegamonic self-styled world power) dickheads who speak for others and spsychophantically inch us toward NTE.
WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
‘The wrong group of rebels are in the ascendency’
WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
… and he got away with it, no critical comment from the other dude, or the dame….
WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Crikey, I damn near lost my hardon when I heard that.
And some Americans wonder why people all over the world hate their guts, but just not personally.
The USA brand is way out of date.
I don’t hate Americans, just for the record.
If you listen to, or otherwise ‘view’, the whole segment, I hope you unlike me, can get through with fewer than 5 dry retches, especially when the topic of drone attacks comes up.
It truely is a wonder all this sharades has lasted so long,(shaking head in utter disgust, especially at sharing some DNA code of some description with these fuckers.)
In the same program:
‘New Discoveries From NASA’s ‘Curiosity’ Rover’s Mission to Mars’
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june13/marsrover_02-08.html
These fuckers spent 2 billion dollars (US) on this joy-ride-buggy.
WTF !!!!!!!
And they want to go back, yes looking for some habitat to move on to.
As the famous character from the 1960 Sci Fi tv show ‘Lost in Space’, Dr Zaccary Smith was often heard sighing:
“..The pain, Oh the pain”
Thinking of thse folk in Eastern USA with all their now usual, friekiish devastating catastrophic weather.
If I prayed, I’d be praying for you all there now.
Best wishes to you there.
February 9th, 2013 at 5:52 am
8.0 earthquake amid many in the 6 range indicates increasing subduction activity in Santa Cruz islands in the Pacific.
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/crust-upheaval-near-santa-cruz-islands-signals-planet-undergoing-massive-change/
(from article)
Planet in crisis: “We are entering an era of increased planetary instability, brought on by a significant rise in the geothermal gradient, and subsequent magmatic fluid expansion within the planet’s interior. It will be a time, in which, we will see catastrophic and exponential increases in the number of natural disasters- most notably: earthquakes, storms, and volcanic eruptions. Yet, it is not the number of earthquakes that will strike the planet in the future that should most concern us. It will be the cluster eruption of mega-quakes, and their resonate aftermath, which will signal the planet has entered an intensified cataclysmic period of transition…these quakes will signal the secondary stage of Earth’s thermal acceleration, and should come to be viewed as signs of increasing disorder. Some of the quakes will strike as singular events; others will erupt in clusters, and some will strike some of the world’s most dangerous faults…this time will be marked by increased tectonic plate agitation, and an increase in the outbreak of the most powerful and destructive type of earthquakes, known as mega-thrust earthquakes.” –The Extinction Protocol, pp. 166,167,172 (2009)
add this to the list of concerns going forward
February 9th, 2013 at 5:58 am
Kathy C
from ulvfugl:
“Now, please, I would prefer to make peace with you, if possible, because the haggling is fruitless and only produces further acrimony.”
Yes, yes, take the olive branch….pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease !!!!
take the olive branch…
Once more for emphasis…
(In school teacher mode)
One hundred times write:
the haggling is fruitless
the haggling is fruitless
the haggling is fruitless
the haggling is fr….
Please concentrate on NTE.
It seeems to bring out the best in us.
(but by all means also discuss anything else too).
February 9th, 2013 at 6:03 am
@ Ripley
Okay, I’m following you. My line of thinking, over the years, was firstly, how do we get rid of the old ? So zen is a way of looking at that problem, helping to make a paradigm shift.
Others have seen it differently, e.g. Tim Leary, T. Mckenna, Krishnamurti, many people have thought about how culture could be changed.
Then comes the problem of what would a good new culture look like ? So lots of people have thought about that, too. My politics has always been anarchist, so I’ve always been interested in the notion of anarchist community. But then, there’s 7 billion and growing…
Permaculture is great, and international, and possibly the best attempt at putting everything together in one place in Mollison’s Designer’s Manual. Still leaves plenty of problems.
Arne Naess’ Deep Ecology, another good attempt…
Another angle is to consult the people who never stopped being connected, the Bishnoi, the Kogi, there’s a few others….
Other than that, I don’t know… Got any brilliant ideas yourself ?
Honestly, I’m pretty much exhausted, myself. Everything is so totally f****d.
February 9th, 2013 at 6:16 am
‘Lance Armstrong Doping Scandal: Cyclist Under Criminal Investigation by Feds’
http://www.latinospost.com/articles/11409/20130206/lance-armstrong-doping-scandal-cyclist-under-criminal.htm
‘Match-fixing claim zeroes in on NRL, AFL’
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-sport/matchfixing-claim-zeroes-in-on-nrl-afl-20130208-2e43a.html
‘Drugs, match-fixing threatens Australian sport’
http://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/thai/highlight/page/id/253394/t/Drugs-match-fixing-threatens-Australian-sport/in/english
‘International rise of match-fixing in sports’
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-09/international-rise-of-match-fixing-in-sports/4509662?section=sport
‘Cricket’s match-fixing scandals exposed tentacles of organised crime ‘
http://www.news.com.au/sport/cricket/organised-crime-invades-all-levels-of-sport/story-fndpt0dy-1226572954311
Now if it was my intension to destablise a population who was already reeling from attempts to disarm them, after suspending Habius Corpus, getting them really ready for the street carnage, I might just choose the moment, through my many tentacled arm of media interests, to release the stories all at once about match fixing in sports.
Best to get the masses to lose thier faith in their sacred cows, that will surely weaken their spines.
Could be something comming your way in the USA.
February 9th, 2013 at 6:19 am
@Ozman
“One hundred times write:
the haggling is fruitless
the haggling is fruitless
the haggling is fruitless
the haggling is fr….
Please concentrate on NTE.”
I second this. And also, internet psychiatry/psychology is fruitless. After having been one of the admins for popular web forum for a number of years, I have learned the best way is to step over, around, or whatever..these sort personal exchanges and stay on topic (ANY topic!).
February 9th, 2013 at 6:29 am
OZman, U has show over and over that he can only reform himself for at most 1/2 a day. His apologies are insincere. All he wants is to keep everything being about him. Therefore attempts to discuss NTE are constantly sidetracked by his ad hominems.
I am tired of paging down hoping to find something to read or discuss and risking being attacked if I do make a comment. I already self censor topics I would like to discuss because of U.
Pretty soon U will run off most everyone and have no one left to attack. I’ll check in from time to time to see if anything improves. Ta ta for now.
February 9th, 2013 at 6:33 am
Got any brilliant ideas yourself?
Not really, but people should try those approaches you mentioned and any others they can think of and try to recreate the idea of community that was deliberately destroyed. I mention all this because I just think it is important to remember that the notion that the individual was ever meant to carry the entire burden of life is a fraud of Western culture, esp capitalism, and is bound to fail, and is failing. I think the epidemic of mental illness is one sign among many. The individual was for eons embedded in a supporting structure of extended family and tribe or village. Yet we abandoned hundreds of thousands of years of cultural practice because a few hundred years of Western capitalism and its precursor ideologies told us to. This why I remain suspicious of the constant emphasis on the isolated activities of the lone individual.
February 9th, 2013 at 6:41 am
Assange on U.S. TV
http://youtu.be/ovHTbtIsyFw
February 9th, 2013 at 6:53 am
Ripley
Some reasoned comments there on the mechanism of how the individual was abandoned, or marooned into a sea of no and all responsibility for everything.
I have a few comments on thet.
Traditionally, the individual voluntarily does this by taking upp a soiritual path. There is lots of help in these traditions as to this burden of responsibility, or deconditioning, and hopefully not much if any of some new conditioning, in each school or way.
But as you point out, the wholesale abondonment of the culture of the individual is a madness, ecause the culture broardly has the responsibility to mature the individual.
As I have pointed out in other threads, it is the child or adolescent stage that capitalism prefers, because thes are the stages you can convince people to let go of their money, after you have convinced them they need to earn it.
Also children still have that instinct to trust and rely on the culture, and want to grow and aquire competencies etc. They get it hammered ot of them very soon after they reach puberty, but the littlins still have it, if they aren’t permitted to watch too much evil screens and thumb activated i-things that is.
I think when the food and water run out, as Guy talks about, that’s when you will see the desire for real back to basics community getting going again.
Will it be too late?
Sadly, for many who have learnt to rely on complex machines and slavery in a can(of tomatoes, beef, corn whatever), but have not also learnt how to do a lot of sillful self sufficiency work, it ill be.
It will only come back, that is decent human community via the need for it, but it will have to be recognised ny most first, otherwise it will not be valued, and it will continue to be treated like just another expendable coodity. IMO.
February 9th, 2013 at 6:55 am
Sorry for typos.
February 9th, 2013 at 7:01 am
@ Ripley
Yes, I agree completely.
Where I live, Wales, had much stronger communities in my youth, and presumably, stronger still before that, in the rural villages and hamlets, because everyone grew up knowing everyone else, lived their whole lives that way, and the whole economy demanded co-operation.
Capitalism plus technology has been the major force that undermined all that, and then incomers and retirees from England with independent incomes, which meant they had no need to be involved with the local community, but diluted it, in many cases, until it vanished, and became ghost villages of holiday homes.
The general soceity has now become so stratified, by income disparity and class, and fragmented into sub-cultural groups with differing likes and values, there’s only about 1% who are connected to the land, farming, and they have no idea about nature or wildlife or ecology. I don’t know what can be done about any of this.
When I worked trying to conserve nature, I met some wonderful people, but they are like one hero out of hundreds of thousands. A lot of the people involved were very right wing privileged elite who saw it as private recreation, despised the masses, and viewed any political action to reduce CO2 emissions, or to save endangered species, etc, as dangerously subversive and revolutionary, which came as a great shock to me at the time.
February 9th, 2013 at 7:07 am
Good points Oz. We should build community wherever we are even if it is just little pieces. As a source for principles to reintroduce that would become the basis for any community, try to think of all the things that capitalism/empire hates and start there. A few I can think off hand would be, egalitarianism, sharing, compassion, empathy, connection to nature…
I’m sure many of you could come up with many more. It’s a healthy exercise that we should do, no matter the ultimate outcome. Doing it will make us feel better, and piss capitalism off, and those are good reasons.
February 9th, 2013 at 7:18 am
Daniel, I disagree with your assessment of U. When I first read his comments – and his blog – I also thought he had interesting things to say. I don’t think anyone would accuse him of being stupid. But as I said a few threads back (and afterwards never again referred to him or responded to any of his comments, which I since have scrolled past), is that the sheer number and length of his comments is inappropriate. You don’t have to agree or disagree with anything he says, or even object to the hostility he exhibits, to simply observe that he is overwhelming the thread.
A difficulty with a blog about NTE like NBL, as was the exact case I saw in the Occupy movement, at a mountaintop removal action, and even just this week at the panel discussion about the lawsuit against the NDAA, is that it attracts people who are unbalanced, people who present a full range of mental impairment and who have no other place that will accept them. It’s very difficult to prevent them from dominating the discourse if that’s what they want to do, because a blog like this, and counter-cultural protests generally, are inherently open, respectful of people and non-authoritarian.
I don’t know what the solution might be but for myself, I just try to politely ignore them. As madman said, I feel sorry for them because they’re obviously unhappy – but there’s not much to be gained in arguing with them, other than, as KathyC observed, every now and them to call them out. I especially understood her pain at the comment about “having a thing about babies”. As soon as I read it, I knew how much that would hurt.
February 9th, 2013 at 7:28 am
Another Enviro-film TRASHED
http://youtu.be/7UM73CEvwMY
February 9th, 2013 at 7:34 am
@ Gail
On every blog and every forum some people dislike others, and there is discord, factionalism, territoriality. Guy has been banned by Joe Romm, you have been banned by the Archdruid. People say all kinds of things about me and to me, I pay attention to all of them and make my judgements according to how I view that particular person, their level of insight and understanding, breadth of knowledge, etc, and that includes you, Gail
February 9th, 2013 at 7:40 am
Gail, yes. My sentiments exactly.
Tom, that link you provided on the dispersal of Fukushima radiation was amazing! I lifted it and will be posting it.
U, this is the only time I’m going to speak directly to you, but congratulations, you’ve done for Buddhism what the parish priests did for Catholism when I was growing up….made it something I’ll avoid the rest of my life. Good job.
Keep scrolling.
Kathy C, don’t let him get to you. He’s an asshole as everyone here now sees.
February 9th, 2013 at 8:17 am
Instead of Robert’s Rules of Order just substitute Hare
Welcome to “Without Conscience”
Robert Hare’s Web Site devoted to the study of Psychopathy
Hare Psychopathy Checklist
Ya can’t tell the players without a score card.
February 9th, 2013 at 8:26 am
@ wildwoman
I’m not here as an advocate trying to convert people to Buddhism or to do a public relations job for Buddhism or any such thing, so I really couldn’t care less whether anybody avoids it or not.
Perhaps, if some of you people did actually read some of my comments you wouldn’t have such completely mistaken ideas as to where I am at.
As for dead babies. The U.S. Army has killed hundreds and hundreds of children in Afghanistan.
If we are to weep for dead children, we must all be weeping all the time, day and night, forever, because, there is some woman, some man, broken by grief, at this moment, and every second of the day and night, over the loss of a loved one.
To have compassion and sorrow and empathy for them ALL, is noble and we should all feel it. However, it’s not respectful of any dead child to use that death as a rhetorical weapon to gain advantage in an argument by emotional manipulation. That’s not legitimate or honouring the memory.
All this stuff, about politeness and insults and so forth… If, as seems highly likely, in the next few years, the whole human race ceases to exist, not only are there going to be uncountable numbers of dead babies, dead children, dead adults, but there will be no more people thereafter, neither to grieve nor to complain about insults…
Has that not yet sunk in ? Has that not yet given a sense of proportion ?
February 9th, 2013 at 8:36 am
I’ve posted a new guest essay, courtesy of Dan Allen. It’s here.
February 9th, 2013 at 8:43 am
In their panic and fear to capture Christoper Dorner, the Authorities shot two woman delivering newspapers because apparently they were driving the same model of pickup he drives.
Time for Drones I guess.
Women delivering newspapers in Torrance shot in manhunt for ex-cop
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/ex-cop-manhunt-newspaper-delivery-women-shot.html
February 9th, 2013 at 8:59 am
Dorner manhunt: Police fired at carriers without warning, lawyer says
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/torrance-shooting.html
The newspaper carriers fired upon by Los Angeles police during a manhunt for a fugitive ex-officer received “no commands, no instructions and no opportunity to surrender,” their attorney said.
Yikes, the Authorities are pretty tense (i.e. weak)
“Emma Hernandez, 71, was delivering the Los Angeles Times with her daughter, Margie Carranza, 47, in the 19500 block of Redbeam Avenue in Torrance on Thursday morning when Los Angeles police officers apparently mistook their blue Toyota Tacoma for a truck belonging to Christopher Dorner, the 33-year-old fugitive suspected of killing three people and injuring two others.
Hernandez,71, who attorney Glen T. Jonas said was shot twice in the back, was in stable condition late Thursday.”
They jump, they shoot, Nothing but Net, aye.
February 9th, 2013 at 3:18 pm
@ Kathy
I understand your frustration with Ulvfugl, he does seem to possess a compulsion that can be rather self-defeating at times.
The two of you, are NBL’s most prolific contributors, and as is often repeated, the leading voices in any social forum, often find themselves at great odds. I am by no means attempting to validate Ulvfugl’s often needless acrimony, but for some reason, and honestly, I’m not quite sure as to why, I am compelled to defend his right to post here. Maybe it’s because we deep green anarchist tend to be thick as thieves.
But with that said, you’re right, this is not the first time Ulvfugl has been isolated as being a provocateur, and I pretty much see this as being two strikes against him.
If he can’t temper his responses to others in a more constructive manner, other than a barrage of insults, then he should be blocked. And if a majority of others here, feel that too much damage has already been done, I understand as to why you want him gone.
I believe that NBL is important to all of us, and I very much appreciate both of your perspectives. I want to go on the record, and state I consider your (Kathy C) contribution to NBL to be the most honest, guiding and strangely comforting. It is your voice that I have the greatest affinity with. I’m sure I can speak for many here, we would greatly miss your participation, and I very much want you to continue to feel that this place is home.
February 9th, 2013 at 3:24 pm
@wildwoman
You stated:
“As a middle brow, all of the navel gazing/Zen buddist bullshit makes my eyes glaze over and the yawn response gets triggered. Yet, others seem interested, so I just scroll quickly through those posts and look for the meat from others.”
Normally, I would completely agree with you. I am devout non-theist, and haven’t much–if any–patience for subjective hyperbole as to any scripture based perception. But then again, of course I would feel this way, because I’m a dogmatic empiricist, and like most humans, I selfishly want everyone to see the world as I do.
So, I find myself in a bit of an ethical dilemma when it comes to others dogma concerning NTE. If the contributors here who regularly digress into to proselytizing their particular brand of spirituality (there’s about four who regularly do), didn’t also contribute an enormous amount of valuable and related scientific observations as well, I’m sure I would be leading the charge in haranguing Guy to establish more definitive ground rules.
However, NTE is so mind shatteringly unprecedented, I find myself these days, needing to let go of even my most entrenched biases. I can’t begrudge anyone for how they find solace in confronting NTE…….at least “their spiritual practices” are primarily eastern based, and non-religious.
Yes, personally, I would prefer that NBL be designated a strict science blog, which only permits climate/collapse related topics to be discussed here. But if that were to happen, then we would also miss out on some of the most cogent, engaging, informative as well as enraging contributions from those who don’t share “our secular” perspectives. Not to mention, I would be a hypocrite if I sought to censor others, given that I can as well, be a loose acrimonious cannon concerning certain issues.
For the most part, NBL still falls well within the empirical, secular-humanist, observable phenomena parameters. IMO, the bulk of contributors here are probably agnostic non-theists. And as we’re all busy moving around the deckchair on our own person voyages into the abyss, I see us all making room for ideas and opinions we once would have never considered before.
But with that said, I would like to see a little more self-restraint from those who do regularly proselytize their inner spiritual beliefs, especially, in full knowledge that most here consider it inappropriate.
In probably only a couple of more years, the conversation about NTE, is going to significantly shift towards end of life concerns as our privileged economic immunity wanes. We’re all still relatively waltzing through others suffering, but with the continued encroachment of permanent drought, we’re going to be entering into such a horrific house of mirrors, we’re not going to know our heads from our asses, and the more room we can make, or allow, for widely divergent perspectives–including rather prickly ones from time to time–I think the better it will be for all of us in the rather short long run.
February 9th, 2013 at 4:07 pm
ulvfugl, re. Madman: “as if it was from a new lover…”
=> Fascinating, dragging in a sexual dimension to Madman’s critique! <=
U. is an interesting subject, unfortunately distracting some of us, some of the time, from what we desire here: information, support, and camaraderie.
I don’t know whether I would say I have “pity” for him (thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt, though, Madman…!), only that I recognize his kind (a person who probably has Narcissistic Personality Disorder). I’ve come across a couple of these individuals in person (one was an ex-boss, another a family member) and came to identify one very clearly in the public sphere (where there are many). They have a need to dominate any space with their “offerings” whether sane or insane, reasonable or unreasonable. As Madman noted, they will abandon a position to occupy another merely for the sake of occupying it, and will pick fights just for the thrill of it. They may often lie when the truth would serve them better. They can and will make outrageous claims merely to test loyalties and to put themselves in a position of being able to congratulate themselves if their ruses succeed. Underneath, they apparently have a deep sense of self-loathing.
My ex-boss would seek out any reflective surface (not just mirrors, but anything at hand) and preen himself. He intentionally positioned himself so that he could talk to you whilst looking over your shoulder at his own reflection. My brother-in-law is similar, and will watch himself in–for example–the microwave, rather than look anyone in the eye. I pointed this out to my sister, who asked him why he did this; he spat “it’s so that I can see what a horrible troll I am”.
This condition is not curable, since subjects are impervious to suggestions that they need help.
They can be highly intelligent (like U., my boss, and my BIL) or abjectly stupid (like Sarah Palin, who was the subject of a long investigation in which I took a minor part). They will always be manipulative, and the only way to effectively deal with them is “No Contact”, which may infuriate them (see U’s efforts to bait Kathy C. out of her brief self-imposed no-U-contact; Sarah Palin doggedly tried to personally call out President Obama and became increasingly frantic the more he ignored her) but after a while will cause them to turn to more fruitful fields, full of new, unsuspecting people who will try to engage with the subject as though he/she were normal.
I’m only offering this because I recognize in Madman’s highly specific, curated, effort my own effort to expose a mentally-ill narcissist who took the whole nation for a ride with a wild hoax which remains barely-questioned in the Media. Despite her glaring lies and inconsistencies, she was taken at face value, and is still being sold to us by some as somehow, even if only potentially, “normal”, although most people are by now wary of her. Human instinct to shy away from these creatures can only be suppressed so far.
I have little patience for the supposed extra-terrestrial origins of crop-circles or self-described alien abductions. I concur with Gail’s -was it Gail’s?- explication that the ‘exotic’/extra-human takes on the form dictated by our own human society (high-tech UFO-borne aliens in recent decades replaced the succubi and demons of earlier times). But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in any so-called “conspiracy theories”, one of which is the theory (proven to my satisfaction) that the afore-mentioned Sarah Palin did not give birth to “Trig”, her supposed son with Down Syndrome (TRIsomy G). Supported by the research of other skeptics, I was so taken with this outrageous story that I made a series of YouTube videos ("The Perfidy of Sarah Palin" under the name Lidia Seventeen). As in Madman’s exposition of U., the words of Sarah Palin herself give away the game, if one listens to what she is actually saying! There is a professional term for this kind of investigative parsing: statement analysis.
I really thought that everyone would eventually see through Mrs. Palin’s charade, if only enough people were made aware of it, but I found the reaction to be strikingly like the reactions, described by some commenters here, on occasions when evidence has been laid out for grievous ecosystemic harm and imminent social and financial collapse: people put up barriers to knowing.
I showed women who had themselves been pregnant an unquestionably-dated news-service photo of Mrs. Palin with a completely flat abdomen at a time when she claimed to be 7 months’ pregnant, and they would invent spurious justifications out of thin air, like “well, her face looks puffy!” Ex-CUSE me?!!? Men, especially, don’t appear to want to even THINK about any actual pounds of fetus, placenta and amniotic fluid residing “down there” so it’s impossible for them to think clearly on the subject but, bizarrely, SP also has vociferous female champions.
That there are many things desperately wrong with the human psyche is clear. Perhaps narcissistic psychopaths are the least of our problems and those roped in by their shenanigans—the vast majority of purely reactionary, defensive, unquestioning dupes in denial—are those who are most to blame. “To blame” only to the extent that we might confirm whether humans are capable, in the main, of behaving any other way.
So Madman has latched on to U. the way I latched on to S.P., perhaps out of a sense of duty to expose a charlatan, or out of a sense of fun or challenge or taking the piss out of U. It goes with the NPD territory that these characters do have a compelling gravitational field that sucks incredible amounts of energy into their orbit; they have an amazingly effortless stealth capacity (of which they may not even be truly aware) to steal our life-force even as we try, like Kathy C., to resist them.
February 9th, 2013 at 4:13 pm
Mrs. Palin would also abruptly and unjustifiedly sexualize her attacks/attackers, which ploy served to embarrass folks and get them to back off.
February 9th, 2013 at 4:36 pm
@ Lidia
Well, thanks for your attempt at amateur psychiatry, Lidia. What a load of cobblers and projection. You’ve certainly plummeted in my estimation. You compare me to Sarah Palin ? Are you drunk ?
…what we desire here: information, support, and camaraderie.
Who is this ‘we’ that you claim to speak for ? You elect yourself to represent everyone here ? What conceit and arrogance !
I’m not here for support or camaraderie. I’m here for discussion and intellectual analysis and to hear the insights of the people here whom I admire.
As for the rest of your rather slanderous comment, point to one single lie that I have told on this forum. You cannot and neither can anyone else.
Anyway, the problem is now resolved, because the new forum will allow everyone sufficient space to avoid anyone who they find offensive. So I shall waste no more time on your remarks here.
February 9th, 2013 at 6:23 pm
Kathy C., re. U. pushing your “dead baby” button. Sarah Palin went down to Haiti on Franklin Graham’s private plane amidst much hoop-la. When presented with a sick child, she reached out a bony finger and poked its hand RIGHT WHERE AN IV LINE WAS GOING IN. Malignant narcissists have an uncanny sense for striking people’s weakest points. They cannot help themselves in this, mind you.
February 9th, 2013 at 10:32 pm
Hi ulvfugl,
Hope all is well Over the Water.
I debated saying anything more, almost didn’t’ t, but what the heck…
Since people brought up the Sermon on the Mount, what about Mt. 7:3-5. Or if you prefer your medicine in the Plain Lk. 6:39-42? So, have you any “floats” in your juice?
Regards,
dweebus
February 10th, 2013 at 2:59 am
Hi dweebus,
Nice to see you’re still around. Hope life treats you well. Oh, it’s like a rugby scrum, if you join in the struggle, you get covered in mud, and sometimes injuries result. Most stay on the sidelines, jeering and cheering and never know what mud tastes like.
There’s a lot of extraordinary people here. It’s too crowded. Like trying to put on a ballet in a cupboard. People want to strut their stuff and crash into someone else and stamp on their toes without even intending to. Friction. More space on the new forum will help.
Floats ? Hahahaha. My cup runneth over with the darn things… As a boy, I had a classmate with whom I sometimes shared adventures. Not best friends but we got along. His father was killed, when the car he was driving crashed into a tree. The boy went off the rails from the shock. He kept laughing all the time, completely inappropriately. Otherwise, schooldays continued as normal.
After a year or so, the mother met a new man, fell in love, married. Two weeks later, the second husband died in an almost identical car crash. The boy kept laughing all the time, whatever you said to him, rather too loudly. It made everyone very uncomfortable. Nobody knew what to say to him. There was a sort of invisible barrier of pain and grief and desperation, and nobody knew how to find a way through it. Mad loud laughter and awkward embarrassment.
The mother capitulated from the shocks. The boy had to jump from being a 13 year old lad to being the man of the household, taking care of everything, as best he could. He was no good at it and there was nobody to help him learn.
My own life was hell, but for very different reasons. We two happened to share an interest in biology, insects, moths. One day we hatched a plan to go to some greenhouses where mercury vapour lamps attracted the moths. In the evening, without our parents knowledge, we got well and truly drunk and shared our mutual misery. We both decided life wasn’t possible and suicide would be better. We broke through all the barriers, with that reliable old remedy, alcohol.
So the decision was made. We had abundant chemicals for killing and preserving insects. We’d mix them with every pill we could find. Finish the booze and leave this world. But then we had forgotten about the moths. So we went to the greenhouses, and there they were, wonderful hawkmoths and big and small rarities we didn’t recognise, and we were drunk and falling about and noisy, and it was the early hours of the morning, and the owner was roused and came upon us and caught us.
Well, he caught me. The other lad ran away. He caught me, swung his fist, smashed my nose, kept swinging and swinging, until my mouth was full of blood and my eyes full of blood, until I got free and ran too… And then I got beaten up again, verbally, by my mother.
And the next day in school. Well, he was cured of his loud crazy laughing. We’d been through a rite of passage and survived. And we were not dead. I woke today, with that recollection in my mind, as if that was yesterday. Floats ? Dweebus, I LOVE my life, everything is sublime
February 10th, 2013 at 7:48 am
Lidia, I’m thrilled to “meet” you because I was a huge fan of the videos and the bloggers who wrote about Sarah Palin. I put a lot about it on my own blog because, aside from the fantastic entertainment value of her crazy antics, I thought exactly as you said – the acceptance of her blatant lies tells us something very important about the infinite capacity for humans to deny obvious truths that challenge their comfort. It lies at the heart of the explanation for why we are marching with eyes wide shut towards NTE. Thanks for all the work you did about Palin.
February 10th, 2013 at 10:38 am
Hi ulvfugl,
What a marvelous story! Thank you for sharing. What is it about young men and liquor (or Ganga) Seems to be a universal theme, huh?
The thing about floats is they come from rubber ducks. When the girls were really little they had a collection of rubber ducks. The traditional yellow,and some that were red, pink, lavender, sky blue, and so on. So after bath time was done, we would try to get them to squeeze the Water out of the ducks before the put them back in the drawer.
Well, for some dang reason, they would forget to squeeze the Water out of the biggest duck. He would sit, full of stale water, in the drawer. After several times of this, he mildewed. So when they played with him in the bath, and squeeze him, the tub would be full of icky grey floats. Daddy, there are floats in the tub! Oh, I treated big ducky with bleach, but eventually I had to throw him away.
You can also get floats from dirty glasses and such. The things is, they come from stuff that should be good for us. Things that bring joy or just make life easier. But they come from not paying attention, from not squeezing the Water out. And once you have them, they are hell to get to of. Sometimes you have to just throw it out.
I am glad you have managed to learn to live with your floats. I think mosteople pretend they aren’t there at all, or if they are we fib about them
February 10th, 2013 at 10:57 am
*hell to get rid of. *most people.
Marvelous in the sense of the narrative, and the fact you made it out in one piece, not the crashes of course.
Oops…
Regards,
dweebus
February 10th, 2013 at 11:29 am
Daniel, thank you for your thoughts and comments. I really don’t want to censor anyone, and I’m not anti-spirituality either. I like toads and frogs and have several that live around my home here in development hell.
The thing about them is that you can watch them for a long time. To me, that is a meditation. I don’t need a special cushion or particular mantra and I can be in any position I wish to be in. That is my form of connection. Others have theirs. Groovy.
It is very difficult to try to live in perfect congruence within your own moral code. I have good days and bad days and so does everyone else. Through our actions, we will be known. As we contemplate NTE, it’s going to be harder and harder, I think, to live within any code at all, so I’m practicing harder now to be better later.
Does that make any sense? Speaking up for people and ideas is within my code. Those that would attack the people I care about are attacking me as well. Most of that I deflect. I just wanted to be on record about behavior I find offensive.
February 10th, 2013 at 11:46 am
No need for the corrections, dweebus, I got that the first time.
Alas, the treachery of words, eh.
When I write I’m into ‘zen buddhism’, people think ‘Aha, he’s trying to persuade us to become buddhists’, as if when I write ‘sea lions’, I might be trying to convert them to be ‘lions’.
Or as if ‘zen buddhists’ are ‘buddhists’, or ‘sea lions’ must be ‘lions’ merely because of the verbal similitude.
It’s not my fault that people are too dense to understand the subtleties of a nuanced argument, or willfully misunderstand and construct irrelevant strawmen. Frustrating, though.
Yes, young men and alcohol. Another class mate, not a wild one at all, very studious and well behaved, only got drunk once, died in the night from inhaled vomit. Sad for the parents, all that effort and hope, raising him into teens, and the poof, gone overnight from something like that. Other reckless idiots were drinking themselves stupid all the time, and sniffing glue, everything else, and didn’t die.
February 10th, 2013 at 2:34 pm
Drones for Dorner. Who could have guessed? LAPD lied about that, too.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/376732/Man-hunt-for-ex-soldier-who-shot-police-chief-s-daughter-and-killed-policeman
February 10th, 2013 at 3:30 pm
@ Red Eft
My apologies in advance for not restricting my comments to the content of the original post
Hi Red Eft. Guy has stated that people making ‘off topic’ comments does not bother him. What bothers him is ‘uncivility’ of which offence, I have to say, I am the major offender, of late.
It is others here who set themselves up as self-appointed unelected moderators who complain about ‘off topic-ness’, and all sorts of other gripes, presumably because of officious character traits that drive them to want to control the discourse.
February 10th, 2013 at 4:30 pm
Another thing about floats. The more I reflect on it, the more appealing the metaphor is. If you have floats in your juice, that’s not so bad, eh? They can make you nauseous, perhaps even give you food poisoning. The thing is, it only affects you. Now you could share your juice. The other person can drink, and run the risk of swallowing your backwash, they can politely refuse, or they cab knock the glass away in revulsion. Point is, there is a choice. But floats in the tub from the Big Ducky, well that’s quite another matter. You see, the littlest was very good about squeezing the water out of her ducks. But her big sisters, not so much. The Big Ducky was theirs.
Well, of course, when they took a bath, and squeezed Big Ducky, the icky grey floats were in all their bathwater.
Here in Downstate IL, everyone is so excited that the drought has “broken”. But it ain’t snowed. We have have had four dustings, not a one over an inch. Just rain. Last Mar. ’twas 80f. And, being surrounded by corn and bean farms, there’s the matter of nitrates in the well.
Floats abound.
Regards,
dweebus
February 10th, 2013 at 5:37 pm
@ dweebus
Yes, I think it’s the floats you can’t see that you need to worry about, eh.
Like all the bacteria, nitrates, CO2, radioactivity, GMOs in the food, all that stuff.
We have to learn to live in at least two quite distinct worlds. One is the world directly perceived by our senses, where we can feel hot or cold, where we learn what hurts when we bump into it, all the tangible, visible tactile stuff that’s all around us.
Then there’s the world that science tells us about, about what’s really out there, which is quite different. So, we have to imagine it, model it in our mind. We can’t see the infra red and the UV, the radio and tv signals, the oxygen and the carbon monoxide, the zillions of bacteria everywhere, our own DNA, and so on and on.
And then, if you have a vivid imagination and spend time playing with the mental models, as Einstein did, imagining himself as being light moving through space-time, you begin to get a completely different concept as to where we are located and what we are a part of.
And then there is the even trickier question, as to what is it, that is actually doing this modelling ? And where is it located ?
I’ve tried discussing that here, without success. Most folk here don’t seem to grasp the significance or relevance at all.
But you can’t have it both ways. Either you stick with the simple minded direct perceptions of the senses, as many folk do, and live in a world of objects.
Or, you add on what science tells us, that it is actually far, far more interesting and complicated, and then you have to add on all the invisible stuff too, and that gets you straight away into quantum physics and all the weirdness. Photons.
And then, to add icing to the cake, if you follow the various spiritual paths, and get into all the strange phenomena encountered there, you’ve got all the PSI stuff to add to the mix, messages from the dead, precognition, telepathy, past lives, etc, etc, no end to it.
Out of all that, people here choose their pick ‘n mix, accepting some, dismissing some, often getting very upset and angry over the boundary lines. Highly amusing. And sad.
I’ve tried to explain how all this stuff can be logically and intellectually resolved, re various insights that we already have, that are solidly grounded, but people don’t really want to hear, they mostly prefer to shoot the messenger.
There’s a wonderful Sufi story about some people who lived in an isolated valley, long ago. They have sheep but no goats. Occasionally a traveller passes through and remarks on this fact, and tells them about the virtues of goats.
Over the years, these people often discuss goats, and embellish the tales they have heard, and remark how much better their lives would be if only they had some of those incredible goats to solve all their problems.
After many years, one day a man arrives from across the mountains with a goat. The people gather around and ask him where he got this strange sheep with the peculiar horns. He explains, it isn’t a sheep, it’s a goat. The people explode with rage, “Liar ! Fake ! Try to trick us, would you ! We know all about goats, they are amazing, marvellous, nothing like that miserable thing, which is just a peculiar sheep, we’ll show you how we deal with frauds like you !”
So they kill him. And the goat.