Energy Crisis

Sell it all, get ride of all your possessions and run to the country. The oil is running out. So plant a garden and ask your grandma how to pickle and preserve. Learn how to make beer and distill booze before it all ends. Sharpen your hunting and gathering skills. Take a night course in skinning and curing hide. Forget about that old chain saw (remember there is no more oil), get a good axe and a bow saw. Man this survival business is pretty involved. Most people will probably rather die. Can and will a culture of leisure bother to bother surviving once the system collapses? Either way with the right marinade any kind of flesh can be tasty. Maybe cities are just big human farms, being stocked for the future. It makes me happy to know we won't starve. Well some of us won't. But is this apocalypse going to happen any time soon? They say the oil shortage is soon, but will we really feel it? The prices will rise severely, that is true. But will North America, the continent which houses the American nation be deprived? We Canadians always complain about our psychotic neighbor to the south. Yet being good buddies with the big bully has definite privileges. So will we be dropped off into the dark ages, or will we be on the ride for a bit longer than most? Being a first world country has already saved our asses more than we will ever know. The paths of money will not be abandoned, someone will keep them going as long as there is profit and power to be had. The re-invention of the local business will visit us again. Local farming and goods production will start up again. The railways will be re-instituted as they once were. Maybe not chaos, maybe not a dark age. Perhaps with the combination of individual power production (a series of solar panels on every house) and a new kind of energy conservation ( when you actually can't use what you don't have, you don't) we will see the birth of a new age or the reemergences of an ancient philosophy. An age based on intelligence and practicality. The wasteful use of a car just to go for a ride will be dead. Of course this energy shortage will be the only way the Kyoto Accord will actual be put in affect. As all stupid humans, we have never been able to control our appetites. We are obsessive and compulsive. The only way to control us is to limit us. Once the oil is really gone, then and only then will we be able to start down the road to efficiency. Will there still be war? Fucken right. Will people still starve and die? Absolutely! Humans love conflict, you might shake your head, but look into yourself and see how many times you start fights, verbal and violent (out of boredom, insecurity, anger). Ancient cultures fell apart as they used up all available resources. Until they developed extensive trade routes. The Romans acquired their grain from Egypt. Point is those who say it's all over are just talking about their luxurious life styles. Humans will survive, one way or the other. By hook or by crook we aren't going anywhere but here on this Earth. Anyways, there is no simple answer. But be assured it's the ride of human civilization and it won't end anytime soon.

Things never seem to change all that much

The base existence of religion is food, via the basic concept of survival. The sacrifice of one for another ; the life of one animal to continue the life of yet another. Here is the whole center of the relationship of humanity and the gods. The sacrifice begins as a simple process of killing to eat. We eventually begin paying those in charge of existence. The blood payment to the god(s) is a share of the spoils to guarantee future collaboration and loyalty. Interestingly enough, blood is the one part in the whole of the animal that is wasted, spilt on the ground. Thus it is offered up to appease our guilt and fear. The ancient hunter would ask the spirit or essence of the killed beast for forgiveness. While (coercing it) telling it that he too shall die one day and be eaten. Of course this appeasement is done very much to avoid the anger of the animal and avoid suffering the revenge (haunting, bad luck) of the beast's soul.
From these roots of sacrifice we move into the direct exchange of life to save life. Human sacrifice becomes quite a wide spread and practiced method of acquiring the aid of the god(s). Human blood of course is the greatest offering a human can make. ( incidentally oaths were usually made with a blood seal). These human sacrifices would be transported into the lands of the god(s) and act as messengers and intermediates to the god(s). The living would thereafter pray and leave offerings to the newly sacrificed for communicating directly to the deity for them. Such as the Catholic saints do and Jesus Christ. It is via these conduits that prayers are brought to the attention of god.
This whole need to communicate and gain boons from the god(s) is quite simple. They were the local authorities of existence for our ancestors. Each god had his or her appointed department of expertise to manage. Interesting how the similarities of such pantheons reflect human governmental bureaucracy and humorous how bribery is the basic concept behind religious overings. Just like politics.

Post Modern Survival of the Self

The greatest post-modern tragedy has been the denial of oneself in favor of some media campaign. Some make-up, or hair color add telling you how imperfect you are and how their product can solve this problem for you. Worst and most insidious are the drug companies and their cure all remedies for life. Like the snake oil hucksters of old, going from town to town selling cure all ointment then leaving town before night fall to avoid the taring and the feathering. The whole of advertising is aimed at alienating us from our own concept of self worth so as to represent themselves as saviors with cheap and affordable methods or products to ease the suffering for which they have introduced us to. It's down right immoral and as wrong as war and pedophilia. We are the fish in their barrel, and we thank them for it. Where would we be without all the wonderful garbage they make us believe we need. How much more crap can you stuff into your house? Oh, well move and buy a new house to fit new things in. Got to put the crap somewhere. There are actually few things we humans need. Food, shelter, and the work to sustain these two and of course the reason for these three are our families. The rest is distraction from these things we should concentrate on. But we are lost, our new religion is consumerism and the only thing that can save us is another Great Depression. People from that era are real, not wasteful and they understand life. Less is more and it was a hard lesson for them to learn. If we can teach it to ourselves and our children we would be better off . Frugality is an art not an affliction, learn to do with less and you will have more (money in the bank) and have a greater appreciation for life and what it means to be alive. Boredom, just means you haven't mastered living yet. Being depressed is something to beat not lie down and accept defeat from. Technology is great and at the same time the destroyer of thousands of years of human culture. Once again we need to adapt and reformulate ourselves and our culture, so as to move forward into the next thousand years. Not as slaves to media and production, but rather as survivors and proliferators of a freethinking humanity. It might be a silly dream but in regards to this ignorance for which advertising and propaganda have brought us, we must have a game plan of escape. If this is the age of information, we must use this information to drag ourselves from the pit of ignorance. TV taught idiocy. There is a reason they used to call it the Boob Tube and the Idiot Box.

Avarice; our greatest sin

If you shake your head and think " less is more" is just a cop out. Well I suspect your a yuppie or worst a yuppie want a be. It is your sad ideology or selfishism and greed which are destroying the world and human cultures. We cannot support "bigger is better", the future can not hold this childishness up. You must view your waste as robbing the future of its resources. In a similar light as the compound interest factor in your rrsp, the more you waste today the greater the cost will be tomorrow. But who fucking cares, right. Let's not repeat the ignorant pattern of our parents generation. The "me" generation was a failure, they wasted and squandered our future. That's why electricity and fossil fuel is so expensive. It's their shares in big corporations which are inflating the stock market, cutting jobs (for profit orientation). They have geared the corporate world to a short sighted, self centered ideology. You may even feel that I am naive for even saying this. But is a strong, efficient, profit orientated corporation or business not going to have longterm, future based plan. To be strong and wealthy, these companies need to see that the future is all they have, and providing longterm employment will create a society which can afford to perpetuate this capitalist ideology. But everybody is behaving as rats jumping off a burning boat. Thing is they started the fire, and could slow things down and put it out. Problem: greed. The piggies are devouring their own piglets.

Who are you?

Are you living someone else's life. Do you think you're Britney, or Justin? Do you read all the tabloid shit so that you'll know how to dress or act? Because if you do, it's a sad thing that you don't seem to really be into being you. You're not that bad. Being them doesn't even make them happy so why would it content you? You don't need make-up, just wear your o-natural face instead of the mask of popular culture. You only need because you've been convinced and conditioned by a sales happy industry. I'm just saying your worth being. We all are, and the sooner we all get comfy being who we are the sooner we can accept happiness and contentedness for what they are. The simple exercise of being oneself for who oneself is. There is nobody other than you who you can be. So stop trying to hide and play dress up as some star or other. Give yourself a chance, show compassion and love on to yourself. Be nice to you. Not by indulging weak minded binging and wallowing fights of depression. Depression is what you feel when you give up on yourself. So don't give up, continue onward, for what else is there to do. Save yourself, because no one else will, or can.

The We as we are told to be.

The effect of 2000 years of Christian conditioning has certainly produced a version of humanity which is in constant revolt from its natural state of being. The very base of this Catholic (western European) religion is its explicitly stressed control over human sexuality. From the sperm to the fetus to the new born to the senior citizen. All of human existence is covered. Of course the choice of controlling sexuality was genius on the part of the church. Other than food what instinct controls the lives of men and women. The turmoil and guilt associated with the action and inaction associated with sex is a perfect control mechanism. Destroying the validity of sex as pleasure and replacing it as a sole duty for reproduction was just the exact thing needed to put a collar of insidious manipulation around the instinctual drive of humanity to reproduce. After having such a long and old tradition in a culture it is difficult to know what is really normal (if such a concept ever existed). Perhaps the actual idea of normal itself has been a construct to keep us in line. It is no wonder that the church has had control over education for so many hundreds or thousands of years. Just as the American population is so certainly duped by their blind adherence to television. Christian based culture too has been blinded by an ancient method of mass indoctrination. Not that christian morality does not hold any good, it certainly does. But the whole condemnation of free choice as a damning gift (choice) from god. Basicly back hands the whole idea of free choice while attempting to falsely promote it? After 2000 years of intense cultural programming, it leaves me wondering what next? The corporation as religion and the instituting of Orwell's 1984 in front of our very eyes? For those who can and choose to see?

If you can only experience through you, well then...

We arise from the muck of existence and we eventually descend back into it. We cling to our words, for they identify us as members of cultures and belief systems. What are we, primates, humans, thoughts? If the world is espied through our imaginations, then anything is possible, as long as we believe in it. Thus we are incapable of absolute realizations. Prisoners of our own bodies, minds and hearts: to remain calm and aware would seem to be the only option.

The Retreat

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
--Henry David Thoreau

Words of Wisdom

"Commercial interests with their advertising industry do not want people to develop contentment and less greed. Military interests in economic, political, ethnic or nationalist guises, do not want people to develop more tolerance, nonviolence and compassion. And ruling groups in general, in whatever sort of hierarchy do not want the ruled to become too insightful, too independent, too creative on their own, as the danger is that they will become insubordinate, rebellious, and unproductive in their alloted tasks." - Robert Thurman

The craddle of life

The way we see existence

I asked my son what is god? Firstly he said "god is nothing", then I asked again, "what is god, to the the humans who believe in him or them?". Then he said with that smart ass grin I remember using so often as an adolescent, " Allah". I said, " yes, that's what Muslims call him, but WHAT is god?". He just looked at me grinning and wishing I'd just leave the room so he could go to bed. " God is the personification of nature", I said. " People need to turn the world into a human context to get a handle on it, god is the symbol for ultimate power." He smiled and went to bed. It's alway been so odd to me that humans need to believe they can understand the infinite. Call it what you will the mind of a human being cannot comprehend the incomprehensible. Of course there is the "whistling past the cemetery" theory, fear of death, once again fear of the unknown. Fear and ignorance have always and will always cause suffering. It's to bad, life is good and beautiful. All you have to do is enjoy it.

Don't be a slave to your lifestyle

Media imposed concepts of the mono culture lifestyle are a curse on personal economic growth and sustainability. If you spend more than you can earn you are a run away train on its way to disaster. Advertising is the great strong arm of falsely represented modes of being. If you can't get ahead, stop and take a look around. Try and see where the money is going and why it isn't staying. Easy borrowing and out of control spending are the horrible combination which are leading our society and our selves into chaos. What really destroyed the family? Too much easily acquired money and the basic moral bankruptcy of the "ME" generation has ruined a once honest and community orientated culture.The corporation has become so brilliantly organized that they now control (via media) what we think (we need) and how we feel. These generations brought up by television are mainly VOID of the common sense and practical know how which our ancestors reallied upon. Concern is based in selfish wants and actual ( longterm needs, those of future generations) are not just put aside but mocked and reasoned as none existent (the future is now). We are a candy culture. Economically we are as children who swept away the meat and potatoes, so as to eat desert for supper. A culture now weakened by personal self interest, instead of family, those for which we ow our very existence. Why shouldn't people be only concerned with "numero uno"? It is that nature of the morality which they have seen and experienced all around them. Responsibility is an idea only left to the courts to decide. If I slip and fall on your property, it isn't my fault. No, it's not up to me to watch where I put my feet. It's not up to me to carry my own weight in such a fashion as to avoid personal injury. No, it's your fault for letting such an idiot walk on your land. When people are so selfish, self centered and greedy that they'll do anything to get a "buck" and trade in their self respect, dignity and responsibility for monetary gain. It is obvious that we are in dire times.

Cultural Evolution

In painstaking fashion we have evolved through out the centuries and millennium. We as all forms of life have endured and vanquished the ages and the odds. We are all the proof of the success of our ancestors. The achievement of reproduction; of the continuation of a genetic code; of a taught behavioral pattern. Our physiology is the hardware and our culture is the software. Cultural evolution, over the ten's of thousands of years is our greatest monument. From whence we ultimately came, we do not know or shall ever truly know. Yet, the world we inhabit, is the culture which enables us to co-operate, communicate and adapt, it is the one true greatness of humanity. It has been proven that other animals too, learn from one generation to the other.But with our various forms of literacy (the keeping of records) we have gained the ability to understand and be taught from the distant past and into the expansive future.

Product Appreciation And Its Many Fallacies

We are all part of a new and very explicit world of information. Our ability to think , find out facts and information are broader than those of our ancestors. If you have a question or desire to find something out, within minutes even seconds your questions can be answered. Thus we don't have so many unanswered mysteries. We have attained such a high level of literacy, that it is nigh possible for us to experience life outside of the world of words. Even if such an event may take place, it is highly improbable that we shall register that sensation or even remember it. Via logic and reason, if something is undefinable, ipso facto it does not exist. But are we not limiting ourselves to a very specific and specialized window of existence? Have we entered the world of Orwell's 1984? Has Engsoc not filled our minds with certain possibilities? While the remainder of actuality has simply been erased by eliminating the proper words to explain it. Or worst, not just the words but the entire method of thought which leads to and accepts that possibility. You may be scratching your head and wondering what ever nonsense is this fellow speaking of. Well with the termination or disuse of cultures and languages such realities are extinguished. It is not only the other animals of the planet which are threatened with extinction, but so are we. It is sometimes a subtle action, and many times an overt aggressive push of genocide. We are always comfortable in pointing the finger at the evils of the past. Yet if we are the present, some day to be the past; should we not look upon our actions, whether deliberate or not and scrutinize and criticize them? Do we sit idly by while thousands are slaughtered, impoverished, murdered? There are so many examples, that I only say open your newspaper, turn on your television and read between the lines. The profit margin and the bottom line are all that matters today, and it is we the people of the world whose backs those profits are made on. At least kings and queens of old had some semblance of responsibility to the nations they governed. But today all is corporate, and there is not a shred of humanity to be found without a price tag hanging from it.

Aiden's Island, Lake Panage

Lake Panage, Northern Ontario

Never Mistake the Inside of Your Cranium as the Extent of the Universe

What ever foolishness I have running through my head, at least now the main program is calmness and it's trajectory is silence. Especially mental silence, which I also fear greatly. No thought, no boredom, just observation without judgment. That would be like moving through the world crystal clear, no emotional discoloration. To see things as they really are, the absence of bias. This of course is impossible, without being obscured by one's own ego. Only an egotist could believe himself in regards to this. Yet, emptying the mind is an exciting and alluring pursuit. To condition one's self with nothingness would be amazing.

The Theory of Theory

Piercing the membrane of a thought structure begins a process of undermining it's integrity. Although it may be weakened or even destroyed, this alteration will most likely lead to innovation and the inevitable creation of a new system. The process is continual, in fact it is evolution.
Thought, of course is tricky. It is not a singularly created entity. There are so many more variables, than can be accurately analyzed. We may isolate major contributors, but most certainly shall never locate every factor. We must play a game of generalization. Which inevitably is inaccurate. There within is the foible of such analysis.
Cross cultural difference's, language, taboo, insinuation...Make it very difficult to ascertain effective and accurate data.
Since the dawn of humanity we have attached labels to everything around us. Trees, winds, dogs, male, female. We assigned roles to nature, and names so as to try and understand the forces of nature. To the great and small we have attributed symbols to give us some method of comprehension. In doing so we had to relate the realms of the unknown to that of our own. The gods and goddess's are kings and queens for royalty controlled our world and it only made sense that some sort of monarchy must control that of the unknown. We once mirrored ourselves from nature (Neolithic period), then latter we mirrored nature from ourselves. Humanity may realise that the earth is not the actual center of the solar system, yet we still remain emotionaly and spiritualy geocentric.

The Fallacious Nature of Objectivety

The objective is a perversion of reality. Its concept is an aberration of subjectivity. Upon a communal construct of many subjectivities, there is a corruption where upon each piece of the whole images each other as the same. Thus, they move forward under the derision of oneness. Which can never be farther from the truth. It is under the control of a central figure, that the concept of objectivity thrives. There is no coincidence that great leaders are said to have charisma, for it is this which enables power to be wielded. The most unfortunate characteristic of the individual has always been it's fear of singularity. This phobia, which most likely is a product of our instinctual evolution, once keeping us within the protection of the heard is now obsolete. Yet it is a foundation and an deep rooted emotion. This phobia is a blight in the bud. Each person is a seed of immense power, yet we are hindered by the fear of ourselves. This insecurity causes a desire of assimilation and absorption into a structure of control and unnecessary hierarchy.
This is the mentality of all herding mammals. But, it would seem that at this time in human history such reticence and childishness could be left aside. Of course the strong hold of the media on the present Western mind is undeniable. Is it not possible to imagine a world where thinking is the desired effect of an education (formal or not)?Is the free mind an old fantasy, cooked up in the imagination of philosophic decadence? Can democracy pretend to exist if its adherents do not possess the mental capacity to think independently of television, popular magazines and newspapers? Please let's all read a book (non-fiction) which has no interest to us. Force oneself to learn something new; something upsetting, controversial and contrary to our own personal beliefs. Let's learn something

All Media is Good Media

The solitary passage of a forgotten god is a dismal path, which eventually leads into oblivion. From a solid form gradually dissolving into emptiness. Each step filled with fear, apprehension and hope. Fear of being forgotten, apprehension of becoming a wisp of a ghost and the hope of belief once again. To be whispered into the ears of dozing children or placed into a drama of a pantheon for some dry academic study is better than oblivion. Of course there are degrees of preferable to loathed. Full fledged demonization is better than being a fairy tale pixie or witch. To be polarized as the fiend, or arch evil of a new belief may not be quite so bad. Pan was made to embody all nature of sexuality and lustful reproduction to the mind of Christian believers. This was his consolidation for losing the pagan/Christian theological wars of the Late Roman Empire. It was the morality which shifted, he actually remained in control of his basic area of expertise. In pursuit of the control of the human animal the Catholic Church outlawed overt sexuality and any practice which embodied lustful activities or thought. In a manner Pan just kept up the same old antics, while mother church did all the PR against him. This of course increased his power. Spreading his message not just through out the Mediterranean world but the entire globe.