Anywhere But Here Is Better

Lots of thinking going on ... ?

For weeks and months, since my last posting, I've been cogitating, pondering, considering, deliberating, musing, wondering ... and myriad other forms of this activity called thinking.

Thinking is an activity, even though it often seems to be treated as superfluous to action. If we don't think properly, we are likely to do things that aren't all that healthy or useful to human society. At this moment, I could simply rest my case by pointing at the sorry state of the society we have built as of 2013, then sigh and sign off.

However, there's more to be said. Even if I am just talking to myself here. Especially if I am talking to myself - because self-awareness is the key to everything that matters. It unlocks some of the mystery of who we are, what we have been doing and how we are likely to fare in the future.

 

hmmm...

 

When I say that thinking often appears to be missing when people act, I am not talking about scheming, plotting, conniving, masterminding or fantasising. There is plenty of that going on, which can be easily demonstrated by any glance at a news channel, any day of the week. No, what's missing is clear thought on the consequences of our actions. Only through a lack of thought-through insight can we tolerate - even venerate - what we are doing and have been doing to each other, to other species and to the biosphere on which all life depends, for generations.

 I won't labour the point about the evident lack of intelligence (should we term it stupidity?) of a species that, en masse, repeatedly fouls its own bed and yet expects all to remain fine and dandy indefinitely. There are countless clever people in the world who would no sooner accept being labelled stupid than they would 'psychopath', 'sociopath' or 'bad guy'. But what I have been thinking about these many days is the nature of the mechanism - for want of another word - that enables a member of Homo sapiens to take actions with near total disregard for the effects of those actions on others.

Cleverness is cleverness and intelligence is intelligence. These terms ought not to be confused. Clever people can rob others without the latter even being aware they have been robbed. Do I have to mention the events of 2007-08 and the continuing cooperation of entire governments in enriching the already super-wealthy and consequently impoverishing all other citizens? Intelligent people, those in possession of the wisdom (sapience) that earns the otherwise incorrect denomination Homo sapiens, do not grab, steal or purloin for purposes of self-aggrandisement. They understand the tenet that what serves everyone serves ourselves - a code utterly alien to the merely clever.

 This is no diatribe against the small clique of power-wielders who have so ruthlessly exploited the global economy for their own small-minded gain. I'm done with that now. I've learned more, and moved on to what's more important.

 

Big ask

My thoughts are fixed entirely on how can it be that we have not progressed by now into a human society that positively aims for long-term survival? How can it be that by and large, we are so short-termist that our very own children and grandchildren suffer the negative outcome of our thought-less actions? Are we not supposed to be rational beings, while at the same time playing out the modus operandi of Darwinism - the survival of our genes?

It's all very confusing, this clash of relentless genetics and nascent sapience. I have not achieved any firm conclusions as of yet. But I am thinking about these questions. I mean to say, at least I am thinking about such things. Amid the mad thrust of scurrying humanity, I am engaged in the antithesis of "normal" life, looking for answers that create no monetary value, deliver no material benefit, have no "purpose" other than the development of my self-awareness.

I can't help thinking ... that if everyone spent some of their day in such contemplation, there could be a place yet for genus Homo in the continuum of life on planet earth.

 

The Truth was reported on TV this week. But did anybody notice?!

I am staggered. The most momentus revelation surfaced on a TV news bulletin this past week. And I think virtually no one noticed among the debris of big angry storm Sandy and the equally malicious two-billion-dollar storm-in-a-teacup US election.

Isn't that typical of our fucked-up world.

I managed to grab a video link of this broadcast before it disappears forever into the cyber-dustbin of history. So without further ado, watch this three-minute long string of calm words and decide for yourself if you can believe what you're hearing - from a former member of the Ronald Reagan administration no less.

 

Click on the picture

 

 This video clip was available online on 9 November 2012 at: 

http://rt.com/files/news/5897b75131ba609df90b9df98bec6ca9/i08b3c4378bb65151dd4fad236a3f5222_00b7912c.dv.ogv

 

Dr Paul Craig Roberts worked at high level in the US government in the 1980s - a Republican adminstration, note -  so this makes his frank summation of the state of the US government today all the more interesting.

Just in case the video is removed from the web, I will set out Dr Roberts' key points for the record:

 

1. Obama won the 2012 presidential election because he is less scary. His rhetoric is smooth and he's not threatening. Romney on the other hand was threatening, publicly writing off 47% of the electorate and showing he was completely under the thumb of the Israeli prime minister. Romney was a scary person compared to Obama.
2. Nothing will be any different in Obama's second term because the United States is not governed by the president or Congress or the political parties. It is governed by very powerful private interests - by Wall Street, the military-security complex, the Israel lobby, agri-business and the energy, timber and mining companies.
3. No president and no Congress can run afoul of these private interests.
4. Nothing will change. Nothing changed when Obama replaced Bush. The US continued to develop the police state, and continued with the suspension of the US Constitution, and the loss of due process and habeas corpus.
5. Obama furthered these measures when he declared he had the authority to assassinate American citizens without the due process of law. He codifed into law all the police state measures that Bush asserted. He restarted the war in Afghanistan.
6. Therefore nothing will change now - except the US will continue to issue too much debt, they will print too much money and this will continue to erode the acceptance of the dollar as the world's reserve currency and thus erode the power of the United States.
7. All the talk of the president wanting to work together with the Republican party for the sake of the country is just rhetoric. The only thing that's important to them is to save the banks and to stay on the right side of the military-security complex and Wall Street.
8. The presidential campaign was not about any of the real issues. The United States is the Constitution and in the 21st century, the US Constitution has been dismantled. But this was not even part of the election, there was no discussion.
9. How can you have liberty and freedom when the government can throw you in the dungeon for the rest of your life without due process? When they can shoot you down without due process? So far, the people say this is only for terrorists, it won't happen to us. But since no evidence is required, you don't know who it's happening to.
10. Dr Roberts had more to say but the news presenter cut him off.

 

Research has revealed that Dr Roberts was silenced by the mainstream media a few years back, despite an eminent career as a member of a previous US government and a well-published newspaper columnist. He suddenly found that his independent voice was unwanted by "news" organisations. The following video explains more:

 

 

 

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

George Orwell

 

Whether Dr Roberts falls foul of the "the authorities" for expressing these candid views on a Russian news channel just after Obama "won" the election remains to be seen. Whether I attract a knock on the door by repeating him here is also unclear. But I would hazard a guess that no one really cares who says what on this topic or just about any other. The deterioration of the public mind to a brain-dead state is all but complete, after more than a decade of Constant War on Terror propaganda, coupled with infantile "reality" television pumped out day after dulling day that has reduced critical thinking to barely registering on the intelligence scale.

There will be no revolution. The human race is tired of using its brain, and tired of fighting injustice and oppression to no avail. The earth is tired of the abuse we have meted out to the biosphere since the industrial revolution. If there was a god, it would be tired of us too and would have moved on to pastures new by now.

Read (re-read) Orwell for a forensic examination of the unyielding tendency of Homo sapiens to screw up the future for all but a handful of self-appointed masters, by building systems of control and oppression, generation after generation, in every country on the surface of this previously bountiful planet.

 

The truth is always available in plain sight,

but few want to see it,

or retain the ability to use their own eyes.

 

Additional links to Dr Roberts' summation

  The Truth                The Truth

 

A brief note to any would-be survivors

Whichever way you look at it, we are all (as far as I know) part of the gene pool that achieved global "dominance" at the expense of a colossal proportion of the rest of the natural world. Think of us as the descendants of thieves and marauders who raped and pillaged and laid waste to everything in their path.

Americans and Britons in particular can grasp this point via a rudimentary awareness of their country's history, but on the larger scale all Homo so-called sapiens are party to the vicious millennia of carnage that included the "clever" elimination of our physically stronger Neanderthal cousins.

Today, human society still lauds the Alpha Male - who is nothing but the most self-centred and ablest destroyer in the pack. They may look as comical as Donald Trump or as glinty-eyed as Tony Blair, but they are simply examples of Darwinism at its finest.

It is therefore unsurprising that we are where we are today, presiding over a shit-on-our-own-doorstep environment that is really tired of us and will respond in fitting manner in due course through some form of natural correction.

All talk of changing our "civilisation" is redundant. Here's the rub (pun intended):

We can no sooner try to change the way we are than a slug can try not to leave a trail of slime.

The smart answer might be to pull the plug on ourselves, but I'm sure the vast majority would rather remain exactly the way they are - striving to amass worthless currency and silly possessions while the tableau that is their home planet degrades until it reaches the point when it must slough off most of us to cleanse itself.

Living in Disappointment, population 7,000,000,001

What is this place coming to? All the creativity and inventiveness and energy and enthusiasm and aspiring and dreaming and extreme patience under duress has this outcome? Really? This is evolution? This is intelligent life?

 

Interesting town meetings

 

I've been taking stock.

The super-rich are permitted and even incited to pay little tax, even though it would hardly dent their wealth one iota. The greed-motivated banksters steal from the general public and won't lend money that's not theirs in the first place to good businesses that could hire people from the dole queues. Entire industries despoil and pollute their own backyards to make a fast buck for their criminally myopic senior managers and equally complicit shareholders. Expanding numbers of no-haves worldwide are incarcerated in drug-infested jails as a reward for poor education and minimal life prospects. Health and welfare outside of the affluent are increasingly deemed unimportant, left to chance or heroic charitable efforts. ‘Democratic’ governments persistently ignore the will of the people, most notably in the US and UK, using whipped-into-a-frenzy police rather than good argument to exercise their governing. Autocratic regimes everywhere torment their own citizens, bestially preferring to torture rather than cull. Country after country beat the drums of war, in an Orwellian dance designed to keep their own populace living in fear and subdued into grateful inertia.

Am I nuts to question why the West is jumping up and down about Iranian nuclear intentions while enjoying bully-boy status because of their own jealously guarded nuclear arsenals? Anyone with half a human brain would surely suggest that all countries self-preserve by signing up to a binding ‘no use’ pact, rendering redundant the rush to obtain such idiotic weapons.

Why are the same politicians who spout forth about respect for human rights travelling the world like cheap whores touting lethal weapons to questionable regimes? Surely the idea is finally to move from loaded guns to round-table dialogue as a method of settling disputes in this so-called new century.

 

Yep

 

Why are religious institutions brainlessly choosing to fragment and weaken rather than unite and strengthen under common cause? Why the heck does it matter what faith people call themselves, or what gender do the ministering to their congregation, when at root all who term themselves believers believe in identical principles of godly behaviour on this miniscule blue pebble orbiting an insignificant star in a Milky Way back passage.

Come to that, why does anyone anywhere try to convince anyone else that they're wrong about anything? Who has access to the Whole Truth? No one does, not even those smug anti-God scientists who claim only to believe what is provable, and then go quiet when you probe them about how much of what they “know” today is merely accepted theory until “proven” otherwise by fellow members of the scientific fraternity with bigger research budgets and smarter grey matter.

If we were intelligent in the first place, natural selection by all accounts would have increased the level of intelligence - because intelligence is a survival aid. So I can only conclude that we are not an intelligent species, because the level of stupidity is growing, especially among our puffed-up masters. Look at the field of 2012 US presidential candidates, and look at the current crop of genii (sic) in the UK parliament. I rest my case, m'lud.

Observe any humble squirrel unkilled by road traffic and smog and deforestation. What does it do when winter is ahead? We are pathetic in comparison. The whole of capitalism - the epitome of freedom according to many lame brain economists - is utterly short termist. To the point where the amassing of shed-loads of personal wealth by the very few string-pullers has become the only raison d’être of economic activity. Whatever happened to building a better world for all our children?

Me, I have no fear about the future. I'm a tad jaded about the wisdom-free genetic line to which I apparently belong, but I'm not frightened of what's coming. And it's coming as sure as a runaway train down a mountain pass, accelerating as it nears the buffers. No, what I find scary to behold is the blindness of the ruling class, who if they think at all think that fitting castors to the deckchairs on the Titanic is a prudent way to behave.

Over and out.

15-04-12 R.I.P.

Whatever will be

The little boy was very pleased with his bicycling prowess. He begged and begged his mom to come outside so he could show her his skills on his brand new purple two-wheeled rocketship that Bill had sent money for a couple of weeks ago. Mom sighed as she put down the dish cloth but patiently followed Jonny out the front door. "Watch me Mom! Watch me!" He jumped back on his bike that he had propped up by the fence and pedalled furiously out of sight around the corner of the quiet residential street. 

    Mom waited placidly, noting that Mary's bedroom curtains opposite were still closed, and it was past 10am. She also noticed an unusual car parked in front of Mary's, not the husband’s who usually drove off to work at 8 o’clock on the button.

Further thoughts of Mary and her regular morning visitors were driven away as Jonny reappeared around the other corner. As he sped past the front of the house, he gleefully shouted, "Look Mom! Look how fast I’m going!" And he was moving fast, faster maybe than was safe. But he seemed quite adept as he angled left and rounded the corner and cycled out of sight.

Mom glanced at the other houses to each side of Mary's. All looked normal and quiet, drapes neatly drawn back and cars gone from the short driveways. I'll need a better job soon, Mom thought. Two hours three times a week at the library was barely enough to buy peanut butter and jelly for Jonny's lunchbox. Couldn't assume Bill would keep sending money. Maybe they'd need to move to a cheaper area downtown.

Jonny's joyful exclamations brought her out of her reverie. "Look Mom, no feet!" And his feet were off the pedals as his momentum carried him swiftly around the corner again. Mom looked at her nails, which could do with a little attention. A couple were broken, and all badly needed a fresh coat of polish. Her eyes flicked back to Mary's bedroom and she wondered what might be happening behind the curtains. Her thoughts made her flush a tinge darker and she unconsciously bit down gently on her lower lip, glazed eyes fixed on the upstairs window opposite.

Suddenly, Jonny was back. He was even more elated. "Look Mom, no hands!" She was slightly more concerned as she followed Jonny's motion, his arms stretched out wide as he sped past the house, still pedalling without a care. She grimaced as he wobbled when he reached the corner, but her face relaxed a little as he grabbed at the handlebars just in time and turned left successfully.

Mary's curtains seemed to twitch, she was sure of it. But no amount of looking would open them. Mom's thoughts returned to Bill, who had left last year to find himself. And she hadn't had any physical contact since, not with anyone. Mom sighed, absently running her hands through her unbrushed dark hair. I must look a state she thought.

"Look Mom!" Jonny's shout brought her back to reality with a bang. "No hands and no feet!" Mom's liquid brown eyes followed his movement anxiously as Jonny made an X shape with his outstretched arms and legs. She gasped as the bicycle careered crazily towards the middle of the road and then lurched back again towards the sidewalk, but Jonny managed to regain control and she could hear his "wheeeee..!" as he disappeared around the corner in a blur.

Mom smiled for a moment, a shade nervously, then her musings turned to Jonny's future without a dad. I'll do my best, she thought. I don't know much about baseball and soccer, but I can learn and then I'll play with him. What else can I do? Her eyes alighted on the interesting old car parked opposite. Expensive, she thought. Wonder what he does.

 

   When Jonny didn't reappear as quickly as before, Mom got worried. She strode to the sidewalk and looked nervously up and down the roadway. Then she walked to the right, towards the corner where Jonny was expected to come around any minute. She hadn't gone ten feet when Jonny turned up, wheeling his bike on the sidewalk. Her relief turned quickly to alarm as she saw the red streaming down Jonny's chin, and she gave out an anguished cry when she also saw the rip on his trouser leg and a darkening gash over his knee.

"Oh Jonny what happened?" Mom knelt down in front of him, placing her hands on his shoulders as her eyes darted all over his face to see what was bleeding. He wasn't crying, please god he wasn't badly cut. And then Jonny grinned, almost in triumph it seemed. His gums were all red and for a moment it was hard to see any white. Her heart leapt like a tiger as her mind raced. Doctor, ambulance, hospital, dentist, Bill's anger...  catastrophe piled on catastrophe.

The boy was a picture of dignity and defiance, a little man determined not to admit defeat. "Look Mom," he blurted. "No teeth." For a moment, the world stopped as Mom stared into his face for an eternity of mere seconds. Then she saw the gaps where his two front teeth had been a month earlier. Then she pushed a finger into his mouth and exhaled with loud relief as she felt all the other teeth that should be there. And the sense of what Jonny had just said hit her like a brick, and she burst into a fit of laughter that had everything mixed in, jangling nerves, release, heartache, amusement and a mother's fierce pride.

Jonny grinned and grinned. He wasn’t in big trouble. Mom wasn’t yelling at him, she was laughing. He let her wipe his mouth and face with a tissue, he even let her wet the tissue with her tongue to clean off a dried bit of blood from the end of his nose. He calmly accepted Mom’s hand as she stood up and led him back to the house, her other hand hauling his bike for him before dropping it down on the small patch of rough grass near the front door.

“We better get Mister Bob to have a look at your mouth anyway, after I clean up your knee,” she said. “It sure is a good thing your grown-up teeth haven’t come down yet, or you’d look like this for life.” Mom peered down at her son, seeing that a bath was in order to get the dirt out of his ears and hair as well as his knee. As she closed the front door, her head was turned so she didn’t spot her neighbour Mary come down her driveway alongside a very well dressed woman, climb into the beautiful old car beside her and drive off together.