It's the end of the year and I'm tired as shit, so let's get this thing over and done with.
Last night I saw a few disturbing things before going to bed. The main thing was this story about this huge swirling land massed sized area of plastic in the Pacific Ocean. Supposedly it's twice the size of Texas. I heard about this several months ago, but just kind of ignored it, hoping I'd see a retraction in the paper in a few months.
There's more plastic in that area than plankton. It's killing hundreds of thousands of sea creatures, up and down the food chain. Is already too big to clean up and is a growing ecological nightmare. The guy said, "Every piece of plastic ever made is still in existence. It doesn't go anywhere."
It's just getting to the point where you almost go from feeling disgusted to being impressed. We were able to bring the entire earth to its knees in a few generations. The dinosaurs ruled the earth for 185 million years, or about 184.9999997 million years longer than us. It is time for us to choose a nice warm tar pit to settle into with our time capsules? Not quite yet. Things are about to get a hell of a lot more interesting. _
What’s funny is that we actually have people that are worth billions of dollars who still believe they have to produce rubbish in order to survive. They somehow think that when shit goes belly up, they'll be able to use their considerable resources to insulate themselves above the fray like something from the movie "Zardoz". It’s a fantasy sure as any. They don't seem to get the fact that we breath the same air, drink the same water, have the same needs and are all linked together in what essentially amounts to an ever shrinking, toxic terrarium.
Is it any coincidence that Hollywood seems increasingly fascinated with Zombies? Or is it just that Zombie flicks don't require scripts and thus striking writers? Either way we're not going to have to worry about diseases turning people into Zombies. And people being chased and torn apart limb from limb. You and I are going to be the Zombies and the victims will be the hyper-rich who attempt to drive through the throng of poor, desperate and starving on their way to their hilltop gated, armed communities.
Things will get bad, inevitably one day. Whether the cause will be man made or not is a toss up. The point is that once shit does go Katrina-style, the rich will actually be able to insulate themselves somewhat for a certain period of time. They will use their considerable resources to hoard resources and try to wait it out until a few billion folks die and it'll be safe for their grandchildren's grandchildren to emerge from their hilltop gated communities.
In any event we have a few years, maybe ten at best before this scenario plays out. That having been said, the thing I don't understand about that big swirl of plastic in the Pacific Ocean, is who thought it was a good idea to dump trash in the ocean? I suspect it was someone exactly like former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University President Lawrence Summers. He and his people and people who believe his macro-economic doctrine are just the type of idealist that propagate the foundational humanity dismissing, anti-environmentalist theories that lead to municipalities tossing non-biodegradable shit into the ocean.
Lawrence Summers famous memo that was leaked to the press on the subject of pollution PRIOR to being chosen as President of Harvard was astoundingly callous and heartless. To paraphrase his statements, he said that we should dump our toxic waste, garbage, refuse and all manner of hazardous byproducts smack dab in the middle of the poorest nations of the world. The Logic? Well, poor nations don't produce that much, and poisons kill, so if anyone's going to die, it simply MAKES SENSE, to have it be poor, essentially worthless sub-humans. Now of course, there were no value judgments, it was all a strict, unbiased, objective analysis of productivity algorithms. You don't have to believe me, The exact ending quote was, "the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that" Well.... if nations of people are prime targets for toxic waste, it must be because non-peopled areas like the ocean are no longer viable dumping sites.
We actually have in our midst a monastery full of cloistered economic "monks" that worship the foundational principles of "Free Trade". But it's been my contention all along, that once we leave the marketplace to "market forces" instead of allowing human beings, and our ideals and principles to orchestrate and guide the market, then we have given up free will and control to the most callous and heartless of false gods... the invisible hand of greed, exploitation, extortion and desperation, otherwise known as "free market systems".
Free trade has a very nasty, nasty resume. In a nutshell, there used to be trade routes where spice, silk, salt, gold, ivory, jewels and all manner of treasures were exchanged. Along with this were eras of great kingdoms that roamed the world stealing treasure and slaughtering entire populations. Folks like Alexander the Great, Augustus, Attila, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Genghis Kahn, Napoleon, etc. Hitler was really the last in the line of world conquerors. The way he did it had been done for centuries. I could go on, but "Trade' and conquest go hand in hand and lately they joined forces.
With world conquest came the creation of the Great Plantations. Rubber, Tea, Sugar, Cotton, Coffee, Tobacco, and their slaves along with serfs who grew the grains, peasants who grew the rice and paid soldiers and mercenaries comprised the intricate complex relationships, agreements, enforcement and resources that eventually stabilized in “free markets” for commodities, and the creation of "corporations" which created, traded, transformed and sold resources…. In a nutshell at least.
I've been around the sun a few times, or at least enough times to observe that the "invisible hand" really aint that invisible. Is the hand that holds the whip, the gun, the saber, the harquebusier, the grenade, ak-47, the torch, the machine gun invisible? Perhaps it seemingly has a life of it's own, but it's in reality a cash cow that produces riches in exclusive, secluded, quarantined members-only back rooms filled with blue blooded barons that have the credentials to demonstrate inalienable rights written in indecipherable legal-ese granting them license over individual nipples.
The most we can hope for is to find a spot where perhaps we can eat the excrement of the guy that eats the excrement of the guy that eats the excrement of THE GUY on the nipple.... kind of a seventh "economic class" type scenario.
It's somewhat amazing that some deformed mutant being like Lawrence Summers (not to be confused with an actual human) is touted as "intelligent" and yet, wouldn't give a moment to contemplate that perhaps the solution to dealing with toxic waste would be to not produce it, or anything that creates it. Once again, it doesn't take much intelligence, or wisdom to know that as these poisons build up in the environment, we are all going to be affected.... even those of us who make a few million or billion dollars a year.
Granted, to know you can't shit in your own rice bowl is a complex lesson, which requires vast amounts of intellectual capacity, contemplation and of course research to substantiate and definitively arrive at as a wise conclusion.... or is it? If so, why were ALL the tribes in Africa, South America, Cultures of China, and everywhere essentially living in peace prior to being nation-jacked by the colonial forces? And when I say "living in peace,” I mean relative peace with the environment. Of course they killed one another with reckless abandon, but killing humans is the only thing humans have the right to kill. Killing humans does not endanger the lives of humanity as a whole, in fact, it preserves it and more importantly, death is to be expected. We are born to die. That's the simple fact, but must we take every other creature down with us?
Every "indigenous" and so-called "primitive" or "non-industrial, non-invisible-hand culture" knows this, preaches this, teaches this, and lives this. As we come and go in war, pestilence, disease, natural disaster, we are involved in the great cosmic play and ebb and flow of life and death, which although ruthless, can go on for centuries, millennia and geological ages. The point is the dance of life, around the bowl of ever-present death, allows humanity, and the world, to exist in some form ad infinitum. If what you mean by "primitive" means they lived in accordance with nature, and scratched out an existence in a delicate balance and their population would ebb and flow. Then yes, they are "primitive", but they were also something so much more than any individual in "modern" society could ever hope to be.
These humans weren't out just to save, comfort, indulge and enrich themselves. They were part of a legacy and a culture that taught values of a deep respect for nature, our earth, our home, our families and the roles and skills that we needed to learn to not only survive, but to serve as oracles, shaman, wise men and wise women, matriarch’s, historians, judges, negotiators, etymologist, botanist, naturopaths and keepers of the flame. In the time before libraries, humans were the libraries. Every bit of knowledge, wisdom, cultural practice, survival skill, legend, music, rhythm, was embedded within the mind, heart, soul and personality of every tribal member. The price for violating these mores and practices was either banishment or death.
Imagine that, more relevant knowledge in the art of 'living' than can be found in the library of congress within the leaders of the tribe. Wiped out with the pull of a trigger, the casting of a net, a chain, a whip and a steely will for "free market forces" and an over arching drive to find out what market will, or can bear.
The 6 nations united under the Mohawk name had the concept known as "7th generation" which is to say that if your decisions negatively impacted not only your people, but their children, their children, their children, their children, their children and their children, then you could not take that action. Only if the action did not have a negative impact upon the next seven generations could you do it.
The great empires of colonist and traders laughed at the simplicity of these people and the ease in which their cultures were destroyed; land purloined, populace enslaved and their humanity bent upon carrying out the will of the oppressor. But the philosophies of these cultures, their practices and ways are something we should have been more eager to not only study anthropologically, but culturally, economically, spiritually, organically, and how they lived and persisted within their environments.
Ultimately, we must transcend blame, and fully grieve the loss of times gone by if we are to rise to meet this challenge. For now, all of our hands are bloody. The problem with humanity is not only exemplified in "free market forces" or flawed philosophy, the "problem" with humanity is unbounded potential, limitless problem solving, sentient contemplation all wrapped up in this impulsive, prone to expedience and pleasure loving package.
"We" are the problem. You and I and the guy on the hill with a few billion dollars are different incarnations of the same soul. We control him, as he controls us. As he shouts out orders from on high, the collective harmony of our voices as we call out for cheap oil, electronics, groceries, clothes and snacks sounds to him as irresistible as the sirens’ call to Ulysses. Are we mad at him? or ourselves for not being in his position?
Our fascination with death and strange sense of self-preservation, as well as passion and drive has pushed us to the ultimate precipice.
Zombie movies are great, but ever wonder why almost all action adventures end with the hero, a beautiful lady, a world destroying device and several seconds to save humanity, against the odds before we can get back to the status quo? Stories used to not only have a plot but also a moral. Not anymore.
We love to create death and evade it. Well, now we've created it...
One day a hero will rise, to help us all evade it.
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