consumerism

Guns, God, And Greed: From Chapter 1: Guns

His minions would always lower their heads and slink back to their slimy, dark corners.  That’s where he like them best.  He realized something that the rest of them didn’t.  He was their weapon.  Without them they were defenseless, useless.  And he realized that a weapon is more than a tool to kill.  It represented more than death.  It was a principle. 

Guns are mankind’s fears materialized.  A gun can give a man the feeling of power but in reality a gun is a weakness.  A gun will make a coward feel courageous.  They are said to be a practical necessity but they create the impractical reality of violence.

A gun is far and beyond its grey, cold exterior, its butt-handle and reinforced barrel.  It is more than its trigger assembly or its pin mechanism.  A gun is the culmination of man’s imagination coupled with his weaknesses.  It is a dangerous mechanism that brings man’s first enemy, death while the very same man argues that it is life-saving, security-making.  A gun is the lowest commonality of man coupled with his gravest desires for power.

Although he had never held a gun in his hand he imagined that the feeling would be easily addictive.  He imagined that it would feel good because deep down inside everyone knows what it is capable of; what it is made for.  A gun is a hand-held atom bomb made by monkeys cowering behind rocks.  He was always amazed at the ingenuity but was more amazed at humanity’s commitment to our own suicide.  But he was willing to accept suicide as long as it paid.

“I am your weapon.  I am their doom.  Don’t ever forget that.” He reminded his minions, and paused before turning and walking out of the room.

He walked down the corridor to his room and turned on the T.V. where he would sit for the next four hours.

Happy

Happiness is an ambiguous word like “love” or “intellect” and because of its vague nature it is often misunderstood. The irony is that we search for happiness without really knowing what it is or what it takes to be happy. Some parameters might help.

  1. Learn to differentiate from those things and people needed from those that are not and choose accordingly.
  2. Although happiness is often thought about as an emotional state, as such it will be fleeting and dependent; it will be insubstantial. Happiness must be a good in itself; it must be the end-goal.
  3. We must rid ourselves of the need to impress others. We must learn to disregard the unwarranted opinions of others, even of those we love.
  4. We must be curious and passionate about learning. we must accept the pitfalls and frustrations that come with actualizing knowledge.
  5. We must never fall prey to gadgets and toys constantly offered to us by consumerism and so-called culture. Happiness will not be found in a thing.
  6. We must do those things that make us better persons. And as we do those things we must learn that doing such sets us up to do be happy in a meaningful and substantial way.

Truth is Like Poetry…

Problem: Global Warming

Since the 1970’s or even before, scientists have known about the human-induced warming of this planet due to industrialization and the continued production of certain gases.  And yet, in the United States in particular, global warming is “questioned”.  This feigned skepticism is primarily the product of one man and his pathological greed, Charles Koch.  However, he is not alone.  The evidence is clear and unquestionable: we are the primary cause of inducing greenhouse gases that will inevitably change or desecrate life on this planet slowly but surely.

Solution:

Buying a Tesla is perhaps a start, not the solution; controlling overpopulation is.  So, curbing the human population is necessary.  However, that is not the first nor is it the only step.  Secondly, corporations worldwide, especially in the United States, must be regulated stringently regarding their output of goods, services and the numerous pollutants.  Corporations (and all businesses) must pay the real cost of doing business.

Third, societies must be changed from being consumer-based to being sustainably-centered.  This takes education (true education [the next problem]), but it also takes a heavy-handed look laisse faire capitalistic-attitudes of all of us.  Last but not least, we must guard what is left of our natural spaces, forests in particular, in the same way we are trying to guard the last two white rhinos, and must replenish large natural areas by heavily limiting civilization’s sprawl.  Trees are truly part of the answer.

Til’ Death Do Us Part

To look for meaning in life is a natural thing to do.  Most, it might be said, look to find meaning in their work or their family; perhaps, both.  It doesn’t really seem to matter, only that there is meaning in life.  We fight against a shallow existence, but often we find ourselves being the consumer of things rather than thought.

And this is where life takes us,especially when we are young.  But we get old, if we are fortunate, and it is in age that we find that the world cannot be fixed or saved; that we cannot fight the march of what we as a generation choose to call progress.  The wars continue to be fought, children born, people die.

There is injustice in the world now, as there always has been.

It is not that we get wiser as we get older (wisdom is a rarity).  It is just, maybe, that we get tired; that we realize that the world will not be fixed or saved; that our continuous fight is doing nothing but making us miserable; and in the end we die anyway.

This is not as gloomy as it may first seem.

There are choices that confront us, and if we take the time, we will be faced with choices that actually matter.  If fighting for justice, for wisdom, for progress makes us miserable, perhaps it is us that needs to be saved or fixed for the fight will always and forever be there; until death do us part.

The Agrarian

 Agrarian

  • It takes 1-3 Years to plant with the long term consequences in mind. Plant with space and needs in mind. The plants will start slow and eventually take hold. All the while we must nurture them to give them the best of all possible beginnings.
  • After 1-3 years and the continual planting and possible replanting, the introduction of poultry and other animals for pest control. This introduction has its issues and will never go as smoothly as we think. The animals introduced must be, as the plants must be, if not indigenous, then only what the plants and the land itself will allow.
  • From 5-7 years we must “chop and drop” roughage from the pruning that we will do. The introduction of trees for timber must be introduced but these must not affect the fruit trees bushes, and other perennials that we have worked so hard to keep alive.
  • This is what it takes to eat honestly.

These steps and these processes are necessary because we have not taken the time to follow in the footsteps of mother nature; we have taken shortcuts and continue to do so. But, we must remember that mother nature neither nurtures nor does she care; she simply does. She expects nothing but gives so much to those that will understand her.

We do not seem to understand mother nature any longer. We cannot “google” it, or find it on the ubiquitous internet. We must get our hands dirty, and fail. We must see the dirt under our fingernails and feel the cuts on our hands, the sweat on our brow. We must feel the bites of insects and the heat of the sun. Our cellphones must be put aside and the supermarkets must be forgotten. Technology is not a boon but a bane.

The comfort of our homes and the illusion of civilization must always be put into perspective of the natural reality in which we live. If we do not come to understand this, then we fail as individuals and as a race. Our mother will remind us of this either with our blessings or our pleas.

A good home brew helps!

Local Globalism

Image

Globalism is a word that I’ve never been comfortable with.  Like the new age term “holism” it seems to be an umbrella term for unproven methods and wishful thinking.  In the end, globalism becomes meaningless as well as dangerous because it can be defined and used as justification for anything and everything.  We cannot be individuals in such a context, but must give ourselves over to the whole, and we do so at our own peril.

 

For most of us, life comes in bits and pieces, but we are told that we live in global communities and are a part of a global economy.  Paradoxically, we have come to rely upon a global network to define us as individuals through paradigms such as Facebook, Twitter and a host of other virtual, global “communities”.  We act globally while believing that we are part of individual communities. We have come to understand the whole in the contexts in which we live, but the context in which we live is defined by the whole.  We cannot continue thinking locally while acting globally.  We must do the opposite: think globally and act locally.

 

Communities that are defined by global economies seem separate from one another, but are in fact a part of a holistic phenomenon; they have a global effect. The consequent of realizing that our actions as a community have direct consequences on the communities that surround us and eventually on those that only seem disconnected from our own will eventually force us to act locally.  Oddly enough, I do not believe that there is disconnect between the idea of a global community and individual support of our own communities. We must act on a local level for the sake of global health of the planet.

 

The irony of this of course is that the continued globalization of our individual communities is the very thing that keeps us from supporting those individual communities. There is an understanding between two people that barter, buy or support each other’s community, that eat food grown or raised locally, that is not only missing but is utterly destroyed when bartering and buying and eating on a global scale. Globalization of these traditionally local and often intimate acts has the detrimental consequence of disassociating us from the tools we use, the homes we live in, the economies we support, the food we eat and the communities that we are all a part of. The relationship between these things, the people who make them, and those who we buy them from is a necessary and important one that define who we are as individuals; it gives us purpose and meaning outside of simply pure consumption.

 

The cost of globalization has been studied and analyzed from many different angles, but I believe that one angle is oddly missing: does the globalization of our lives and the communities that we live in make us happier?  I would argue that globalization most certainly makes our lives easier, but happier? Perhaps the highest cost of thinking and acting globally has not been the quantity of our happiness (the ease of living life), but the quality of our happiness (living life).  The globalization of our communities continues to take a toll on our planet, our food and our communities but perhaps the greatest toll for humanity is the universal loss of understanding that there is a difference between the quantity of happiness that we have and the quality of happiness that we all desire as individuals.