technology is a testimony that nature is inadequate
insurance is a testimony that oneself is inadequate
government and religion are testimonies that the golden rule is inadequate
police and armies are testimonies that humanity is inadequate
Inadequate for what?
Love, nature, oneself, the golden rule, and humanity are all inadequate to serve a civilization that establishes such artificialities. But they sure do thrive where such notions aren’t being made mandatory. If you haven’t noticed, you haven’t pulled your head out of …
The Devolution of Democracy as the United States becomes the Unscrupulous Stetsons, or as Eisenhower put it, the “Military/Industrial Complex”ification of freedom. When bean counters take over government the exchange rate of quality for quantity is at its prime and cheaper. Talk about a philosophy of winning by dying with the most toys!
I have met only one or two people in my comparatively sedentary life who I could say were born here and never swallowed the hook of addiction to the “american way of life”. The public education system and its graduate assistants, the parents, are amazingly efficient at the initiation to the belief in the US myth of the carrot on a stick and the increasingly horrible job of stifling the truth about the reality of life in other lands and the effects of the “american way of life” on them. It doesn’t matter whether one is benefitting from it or feeling cheated, misrepresented or oppressed by it, one is either among the few plunderers or the millions of wannabe plunderers at various degrees of dissatisfaction. The game is on so long as the leaders control the media, the adult equivalent to public school, to frame politics and war like a 24 hour sports channel with their hand picked spin doctors embedded on the sidelines obscuring injuries and the cowardly coaches calling plays from half the world away. It is quite permissible to bitch any time you like, as long as it doesn’t describe the nakedness of the emperor in terms that bring too much attention away from his stick pin and cravat. One of my all time favorite people used to admonish me, when I would be mumbling my myriad realizations about the cancer the system resembles in my more arrrrgh moments sitting around our perfectly placid pond, “Aren’t you glad we don’t live there?”. Bless you, Erica. I knew that.
We all know that when we forget the TV, or having leaders, or affording to acquire the latest craze to end up in the garage in two years and a landfill in ten, or driving five blocks instead of walking, or retrieving a stack of bills and junk mail with no word from a friend. We all know that when the cat crawls up in our lap or we play with the baby or meditate until we forget why we needed to or weed and water the garden and eat a meal harvested from it or take a walk in the wilderness and sleep under the stars. The return to the real reality, the one that is here whether humanity is or not, is the carrot Western civilization, as perfected in the US, puts on the stick sixty-five years long. The investment and preoccupation in whittling away at that stick completely blinds us to the enormous contribution of our wealth and energy and devotion to a system that more than ever shows its imperial face to be of fascistic warlords misrepresenting us, determined to sell the system they perfected on us to the world or label them terrorists and eliminate those who don’t buy it. It’s a very bad play on a very beautiful stage of which we are the prime production support and actors. The directors sell the tickets and we even pay to watch what we already paid for, such is the completeness of this prison without bars. The pot laws are a prime example of the government spinning up a demon, attracting sycophants to their lies, and imprisoning a group of people who have great likelihood of being dissenters. The effect of the media first came home to me when I noticed that if I missed the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson the night before, I was pretty much out of the conversation at work the next day. Enough examples and ranting. In closing I’d like to say that we don’t live in that world and don’t have to but we certainly love to act like we do no matter how much it makes us and the rest of the planet miserable. Join the latest trend, as many have and are doing more often every day: Cough up the hook, it won’t kill you.
5 comments:
That hook of addiction to American life dangles everywhere you turn, they have them the world over now. Most can´t notice everything is controled because they are to deep into it to see.Truths like the ones you speak here need to be everyday knowledge, but most don´t even want to know these things if they could. It seem like America has taught people how to swallow those hooks and like the fact they are there.
You are a true revolutionary Todd.
It is possible cough up the hook and still to live within the system - it requires a little streak of anarchy, a little bit of 'fuck you' and a lot of making enemies.
Cough up the hook but you can still swim the river, seek pleasure in shaking people's beliefs.
Being popular is overrated and requires far too much effort anyway.
Since we are talking in Piscean metaphor here, I refer you back to Spawn
Thanks, Zatikia, Pisces
That's true revelationary thank you very much. lol
Foremost in my thinking about solurions is the distinction between revolutionary and revelationary as the method of the change required. Those hooks have got to be coughed up voluntarily, otherwise many people will get hurt when someone else tries to pull them out. To me revolution is just putting someone else in the driver's seat of a dysfunctional system, I am for realizing a way to live without baby sitters,
a way for humanity to mature by return to tribal living and natural evolution. We can do that right where we are with renewed respect the part of the earth left unpaved and each other as free agents.
I think the only thing that could bring on a return is a disaster of full scale. The best each of us can do is live right, not for our country, but for our world. No matter where we are, we are under that obligation to do so, whether we do or not. Although I am not sure tribal living is the right name for it, close communities growing out of their own needs sounds good. But for America to go from where it is at to there because it is a better thing, will never happen. I should think America has some terrible times ahead of it before it once again becomes a land that good comes from. (unless the Mexicans take it over and straighten it out)
Good post.
Our parents/family unit, is our first socialization into the system.
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