“It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning. They shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid the general applause from all the wits who believe that it is a joke.” - Soren Kierkegaard
“I wouldn't mind if the consumer culture went poof! overnight because then we'd all be in the same boat and life wouldn't be so bad, mucking about with the chickens and feudalism and the like. But you know what would be absolutely horrible. The worst? ... If, as we were all down on earth wearing rags and husbanding pigs inside abandoned Baskin-Robbins franchises, I were to look up in the sky and see a jet -- with just one person inside even -- I'd go berserk. I'd go crazy. Either everyone slides back into the Dark Ages or no one does.” - Douglas Coupland
"Nuclear apocalpse - who do you need? Actors are probably not top of the list. What can I do for you? I can pretend to be somebody who can grow you some nice crops." - Christan Bale
Once a week...right.
Well, maybe I'll make up for the great vacuum at my heels called the "No-Bloggy Zone" and get back on this pale horse. It's not that I dread doing a blog about Abortion...because I do...but I want to take this blog seriously and I find the blog now as this big deal the same way someone is at the Everest basecamp and their breathing is already labored and the stew made from grass and radishes being heated over a fire made from the stool of the sherpas tastes like the best meal you've ever had because you think it might be your last and...meh...you guys go on ahead.
Which is why I've decided to be a yeller coward and not do the Abortion blog today. I want to revisit my last, more cheery subject...the apocalypse. However, if I pick up speed now maybe I'll crank out a brace o' blogs here in the next few days. The problem with The 'bortion Blog is it will pretty much irk everyone and please no one but it will approach the subject objectively, rationally, morally, scientifically...which is what we're failing to do now. And yes, it's all religion's fault...again.
However, I did want to...seriously...get back to this whole worrisome apocalpyse thingy and examine why we may need such an event in order to give our heads that non-invasive lobotomy. Now I mentioned last episode that the apocalpse need not involve us having to row our boat ashore on rivers of lava, etc. Will we need to eat our pets, and repurpose Bass Pro Shops as our new mead halls because there will be a devastating collapse of civilization due to an assortment of natural and manmade disasters? Ironically climate change...which is at least in part exacerbated by human activity...qualifies to be in both categories. Will it take tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, (and earthquakes that some scientists think are caused by hurricanes), drought, etc. to bring about the change in consciousness that we need to make this planet not a place where people compete and defraud each other but a place where people can figure out, finally, that if we all take care of ourselves, then everyone is taken care of?
Just yesterday there were at least two calls to our house by storm chasers. Not the lunatics who drive a SUV that they turned into a tank close to tornadoes and stuff so they can try to "understand" tornadoes. These storm chasers are like ambulance chasers. Whenever the weather gets a bit rough, they call around to offer a free inspection of your house, shingles and whatnot. Of course, these folks work for the roofing companies and are looking to get you to file an insurance claim. These humans see me as a customer, not a person, and it makes it all the more evil for them to shine me with the spin that they're offering me a free service, while calling me on a Saturday when I'm trying to chillax. These are the people who will not be missed. If my house is damaged, I'll call my insurance company and we'll get it sorted out. These are the same sorts of people who make the commercials asking you if your life has been turned upside down by a tractor-trailer accident...while they are smiling. Insurance companies aren't evil, they're necessary. But modern civilization may be a necessary evil.
And one thing that will certainly help us get ourselves straightened out is to get rid of this whole modern "civilization" thing that has run its course. In a past blog, and I won't regurgitate the whole idea here, but when we look, in the Western World, at how we're living now and think back just a hundred years, not to mention just five hundred years, there must be some explanation as to why technology has advanced so far, so fast. Remember, everything we needed to have the sort of live we have now has always been here. And the Ancient Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, etc. were really really smart. So why haven't we had iPads for two thousand years instead of not even two years yet?
Well, we have actually found out, through archeology, etc. that the ancients actually did make some important discoveries back then. The Greeks for example did discover steam power. They made a device that involved an apparatus...that...Don, give them the wiki-link, eh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile
Thanks, Don. As Madonna sez, "lookitup." If you already knew the Greeks discovered the steam engine, I'd give you some Rice-a-Roni(tm) (the San Francisco Treat), if we had the budget for it...maybe I should monetize this up in here. So...why didn't they develop the steam engine. Well, I think Terry Jones (director of Eric the Viking) had the best excuse...they were wondering what they would do with all the slaves that they wouldn't need? You see...the Greeks, and other ancient empires like them, like the Persians who discovered battery power...Don, please...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery
...thanks again, Don...you see...they already sort of had it all figured out. And I mean...LIFE. One of the funniest, and soul-crushingly sad, phenomenons of the present day is that there actually is all this discussion about life. We've already been there and bought that T-Shirt. The reality that there are all these strange, narrow, stupid ideologies out there is an indication of how much of a reboot we really need. The Greeks and Persians and Egyptians and Mayans and Whohaveyou had sophisticated civilizations and when something like the Steam Engine (for crying out loud) came along, they said...naw, we'll pass. We're okay without it, and besides, it'll put a lot of people out of work. News flash...just because you can create a robot to make a car, doesn't mean you should, folks.
Now many folks today would say, they just didn't realize the potential, or they were backward, because hey...they believed in stupid things also like astrology, magic, they worshiped a lot of gods...all the things we think makes a culture backward and dumb. And they had slavery, which we know is immoral and cruel. Well, I don't want to do a blog on slavery and digress, but slavery then and the absolute evil slavery in modern times now were two different things. Yes, slavery seems wrong in any light, but many Westerners are looking at their current situation in which they work for someone else, for a set number of hours a week in a strictly scheduled way, and are given a completely arbitrary salary that is not based on how much the company actually makes in revenue and that they have a mortgage that keeps them in that job, and in which the number of laws that restrict what they can and can't do grows every year and we're going...'ang on a minute...I'm really working on a plantation, too.
One thing the ancients certainly got right is that actors and musicians and entertainers in general should be poor and despised since they don't actually apparently have the faculties to do real work. I'll have a blog about why we pay these slackers so much money to do not much at all down the road. This will go for athletes, too. My gawd, Tom Brady...git a reel job!
But seriously...the whole, "our ancestors didn't know any better and they were disadvantaged and miserable and I couldn't live now without my teevee" thing no longer holds water. Currently in the Western World we are beginning, yes just beginning to see the cracks in Capitalism and Democracy...two great tastes that we thought went together, but we see have doomed us because human nature, currently, cannot be expected to be responsible enough to allow such an economic and political system to reach its potential. The experiment of the United States of America, in which the states on the North American continent would unite in a political system of freedom, in which all men would be treated equal, and in which all men would have the freedom to worship how they please, to live as they please, with as little interference from a central governing body as possible...we can now stick a fork in it, can't we? It has been a complete, abject failure. The USA was the modern attempt at trying to do such a thing considering how human consciousness currently operates. And it shows that we are incapable of doing such a thing as we are now. It was doomed to fail...because such a nation with such high ideals was built on a foundation of genocide against the native population and slavery of an imported population. It's like Adam Sandler playing Hamlet...it just wouldn't work.
Yes, the founding fathers had their heads on straight...they had sober ideas about things that baffle us today like religion and the rights of man and science and all the other stuff. They were (Rush Limbaugh) dreamy-eyed intellectuals who had high ideas and they believed in mankind's ability to reason. Many of them recognized the ability to reason as a sign of the divine within man and that when men can employ their reason, en masse, then you would no doubt have a nation that would be as close to utopia as possible. And then we screwed the whole thing up and "invented" the steam engine and thought it was a really great idea and then came the industrial revolution and modern "civilization" and now we are hoisted on our own petard. Which phrase basically means "we've belly-flopped on our own grenade."
You see...we may need a cataclysm in order to reset us back to a more simpler time when our material competence and our spiritual competence were more in balance. Why didn't the Persians develop the Baghdad Battery? They were satisfied. Why didn't the Greeks develop the steam engine? They were satisfied, content Why? They were more balanced. They had material concerns just like anybody but they were balanced by spiritual concerns as well. The great tragedy in the modern era is material overcompetence and spiritual incompetence. I still scratch my head about people like Arthur C Clarke. Clarke was a tremendous mind, a genius in some respects...and a complete waterhead in other areas. He saw religion as just a necessary evil, not a way to examine areas of human life that science hadn't, or couldn't, explain. Oh yes, atheists, you can explain away things like LOVE by talking about the drive to pass on your genetic material, hormones/pheromones, all the biological aspects of that...but you'll find that makes for a Valentine's Day card that will not impress your significant other. Clarke, along with all the other atheists who are mesmerized by this materially-obsessed, scientific age, demonstrate material overcompetence and spiritual incompetence. And if you replace "extraterrestials" with "gods" in Clarke's writing...he's really saying smart things. Clarke's folly is thinking these two classes of entities have to be exclusive...instead of maybe just how the light catches the gem at a certain era in human history.
Now of course we do have the opposite...that of people who are materially incompetent and spiritually overcompetent (or they think they are). These would be the suckers who buy into the New Agey stuff, y'know what I mean. Recently a woman was cooked to death...yes...because she took part in an exercise that basically buried her alive in one of the sensory depriving rituals that are supposed to do something for you spiritually. She is reported to have already paid out five figures in past such activities and retreats and services. Lissen. If you want to have a spiritual awakening, one place to start is just to go to a quiet room and sit in a chair and stare outward for a few minutes. But such folks are trying way too hard to try and reboot their brains. And of course the reality for many who say they are spiritual is that they aren't, but are part of a culture that is hunkering itself down because it sees its religion coming apart at the seams in a changing world and they're either not able to change or scared to. Of course many of these folks are quite entrenched in the world and are concerned about money and stuff and have bought into the culture of greed. Only in the Western World would a group of people whose god has commanded them to love their neighbor as they love themselves would not do so but instead build a very large building for their Sunday Morning conditioning sessions while having the nerve to thank that same god for their blessings.
Yeshua bar Joseph and Benjamin Franklin are both right now beating their heads against a wall. (Are there walls in Nirvana?) Yes, modern civilization has run its course, it's served its purpose and we're ready to take the next step in our evolution and if we need to go back to wearing togas, then let it be so.
You see, my Theory of Woohoo...of Everything...sees Western Civilization as a virus (and Xianity as a carrier) and European conquest and Xian missionary trips to "convert the heathens" and basically conquer in Jesus' name is the means to bring about the spread of technology in order to bring about this current era of Globalization. The increased communication between all the cultures and races and nations of the planet is to allow us, when the reset button is pushed, to all be on the same page, globally, and when we rebuild...we'll use technology to benefit us all, not "mess in our own nest." Because we've seen how the industrial revolution has allowed the few to exploint the many and that technology should be used wisely, or not at all. Xianity, with its idea that its god is the only god and that it is the only religion compels many of its followers to evangelize and spread their religion...and where Xianity goes, so does McDonalds restaurants and cell towers. No, Clarke, religion isn't a necessary evil...but religions and small-minded ideologies that insist there is only one horse in this race unfortunately are...but not for much longer. I hope.
But this is why the spread of Islam scares the fertilizer out of the Xian. What? There's another religion that wants to conquer the world? Didn't we already do that? Well...I say let the Muslims have their turn. Wrong for the Xians to have all the fun, innit?
Will we need to have all our toys taken away for us to enjoy the sandbox? Perhaps. Of course there are some folks who think they will rule the sandbox and only possess the toys and so be able to ride out the apocalypse and be the guys sitting pretty on the pile of cinders. Obviously we have seen how the wealthy and powerful seem to be more reckless than ever in accumulating wealth and power for themselves at the expense of the environment and civilization. As I have touched on before...these folks have an inside track, through various means, including black ops and black magic, on how the chips are going to fall. This idea was explored in the movie 2012, in which it is known in advance that the cataclysm is going to happen and a certain number of people are preparing to escape it. A great number of very wealthy people are exploring technologies that would make them human/machine hybrids that would enable them to survive the next big change. I defecate you not. Of course, we need to all be reset back two thousand years, before the Dark Ages which were brought about largely by the Christian Church supressing the knowledge of the ancients, to have another chance at doing it right. It would be very unfair for Richard Branson and a few others to be safe and sound watching the lava flows from their space station or whatever while they party like it's 1999. No, the paradigm shift will take all of our lunch money.
Again...if we all take care of ourselves, we'll all be taken care of. And stuff and wealth and politics are only tools to bring about that end. The solution is for us to stop being tools, isn't it? And if we can't figure that out, but we're supposed to, because that is the fate of life...to not be miserable or at war with ourselves or unloved...then taking away our toys and putting us in a timeout may be the answer. After we've been spanked to within an inch of our lives, too.
You just wait until your daddy gets home. Because as Bill Cosby said, what parents want is peace and quiet...unless he's wrong...which is what I'll touch on next episode. Putting babies on spikes can wait.
Selah.
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