I often write that the revolution is not being televised. In The U. S. of A., the battens are down on all the hatches, the wealth bubble has been pierced and the old ways (see and read new ways, meaning just the last hundred and fifty years) are losing ground faster than they ever gained it. People worldwide are beginning to realize that what helps the energy companies, the multi-nationals, the "investment banks" and oligarchs that present the most real and present danger for worldwide ecology. Any hope of our species learning to adapt to changing conditions will require evolving back into native understanding that Gaia, the ecosphere or in scientific terms, our soil, air and water will be known as sacred. Squandering the petrogeologic fossil record that took hundreds of millions of years to put by, in just three hundred years, (which we have been projected to do) will reintroduce every BTU collected by the ferns and fens, the dinosaur residue, the carbon sinks of earlier ages in planetary history.
Many ages have come, and gone, several mass extinctions and the Earth seems to always heal, life is tenacious. The question now is, how do we produce zero waste? How do we consume zero energy? How can we behave as every other organism does, where the only thing they produce is useful materials for other forms of life?
Worldwide, people are confronting the very real fact that however we look around us, the vast majority see decrepit, falling apart infrastructure, massive amounts of potential, but contraction of the economy in every sense. There are no longer enough people making enough money to consume. There are always corrections when we find that we are no longer in need of certain things. Certainly, more and more people are understanding that to buy money for a time has very real costs, savvy investors and those who are just trying to stay afloat don't need that kind of weight around their financial neck to make treading weater any more difficult.
Many people, simultaneously are coming to grips with what we need and what falls into the category of want. It is evermore blatant the way some commercial interest just grab you by the wallet and unleash their suck machine, with you standing right there looking! It seems that if they know that they have you, on their hook, they will feed you any line to land you. Anyone who knows fishing knows what happens next. At best they kiss you and send you back into the water for another "chance", at worst, you are dinner. Everyone that I speak to about these issues admits to feeling cheated on a regular basis by the fewest, the hidden the wealthiest among us. We know who they are, but they operate in such elite circles that we would never know them if we saw them (god forbid) on the street. We are seeing the fact and the writing on the wall: This Emperor has no clothes!
In the U.S. of A. 38% of all resource and material consumption is used by the U. S. military. This is well above 1/3 of our entire use characteristic, just to supply and keep up our military. This is what I reflect on every Memorial Day. The facts behind having the largest army by far, are unsettling and knowing that the vast majority of combat missions are designed to support trans-national corporate infrastructure and viability, not anything to do with our "freedoms", we begin to get the more full effect of grief that this holiday represents. I do not want the lives of those who have died, supposedly for one thing to rest uneasy because the real outcome is preservation of a world that none of us wanted. Block after block in my country is pockmarked with about thirty percent either bank owned or foreclosed properties. Less and less people are able to move out on their own, and any sort of recovery is just a pipe dream, until we collectively agree that businesses can afford to pay more wages. Heck, if more than 1/3 of everything we make or use, as well as 1/3 of the energy is being squandered "keeping us safe", then we all can look forward to paying 1/3 more for everything, anyhow. What are a few more percentage points on your mortgage, another few percentage points on your credit card or the few dollars per month on the cable bill?
It seems that collectively, we have all been transitioning from a state of denial to one of understanding the magnitude of our brain washing. Outrage is a tame word when used to explain the hostility that arises when you fully integrate the meaning of the "recovery" that we have been seeing in the most recent past. The top 15% of earners have captured 90% of the "new money" that has been floating around. I was in a public place a few weeks ago and heard someone tell a friend, "I have the greatest job in the world now...I just set people up with mortgages, even if they can't afford them, we get them in and sell that off the very next day. It's sweet..This after we supposedly fixed the problem with the banks and their mortgage schemes. There is a feeling of sickness, of utter revulsion, that pervades us when we start to learn the multi-faceted truth behind our oligarchy and their hold on us.
It seems that the duping of the public, through false claims, like: that our freedom of speech somehow flows from the barrels of guns, or that we have been threatened in any way by the myriad foe whom we regularly, self-righteously, and in support of the largest corporate welfare recipients, bludgeoned either to their knees, or to death. Who we see as "enemy" seem to make no sense. Largely, the complexities of world events melt down into a radioactive core of greed, deceit, favoritism and angst that no one should have to deal with. It is my deep and abiding compassion for the soldiers lost that compels me to speak out for their memory in the most decent way possible. The largest percentage and most outspoken peace activists have lived through war, they know that it is terrible and terrible mistakes are made. They suffered at the hands of the experience. Most have seen the inept, those who have risen to the level of their incompetence and the tragic results of attacking both people and infrastructure.
The best way, in me estimation, to honor those who serve is to make decisions that will keep them out of harm's way and secure a more liveable planet for all people, not just enhancing the wealth of the one percent.
Many ages have come, and gone, several mass extinctions and the Earth seems to always heal, life is tenacious. The question now is, how do we produce zero waste? How do we consume zero energy? How can we behave as every other organism does, where the only thing they produce is useful materials for other forms of life?
Worldwide, people are confronting the very real fact that however we look around us, the vast majority see decrepit, falling apart infrastructure, massive amounts of potential, but contraction of the economy in every sense. There are no longer enough people making enough money to consume. There are always corrections when we find that we are no longer in need of certain things. Certainly, more and more people are understanding that to buy money for a time has very real costs, savvy investors and those who are just trying to stay afloat don't need that kind of weight around their financial neck to make treading weater any more difficult.
Many people, simultaneously are coming to grips with what we need and what falls into the category of want. It is evermore blatant the way some commercial interest just grab you by the wallet and unleash their suck machine, with you standing right there looking! It seems that if they know that they have you, on their hook, they will feed you any line to land you. Anyone who knows fishing knows what happens next. At best they kiss you and send you back into the water for another "chance", at worst, you are dinner. Everyone that I speak to about these issues admits to feeling cheated on a regular basis by the fewest, the hidden the wealthiest among us. We know who they are, but they operate in such elite circles that we would never know them if we saw them (god forbid) on the street. We are seeing the fact and the writing on the wall: This Emperor has no clothes!
In the U.S. of A. 38% of all resource and material consumption is used by the U. S. military. This is well above 1/3 of our entire use characteristic, just to supply and keep up our military. This is what I reflect on every Memorial Day. The facts behind having the largest army by far, are unsettling and knowing that the vast majority of combat missions are designed to support trans-national corporate infrastructure and viability, not anything to do with our "freedoms", we begin to get the more full effect of grief that this holiday represents. I do not want the lives of those who have died, supposedly for one thing to rest uneasy because the real outcome is preservation of a world that none of us wanted. Block after block in my country is pockmarked with about thirty percent either bank owned or foreclosed properties. Less and less people are able to move out on their own, and any sort of recovery is just a pipe dream, until we collectively agree that businesses can afford to pay more wages. Heck, if more than 1/3 of everything we make or use, as well as 1/3 of the energy is being squandered "keeping us safe", then we all can look forward to paying 1/3 more for everything, anyhow. What are a few more percentage points on your mortgage, another few percentage points on your credit card or the few dollars per month on the cable bill?
It seems that collectively, we have all been transitioning from a state of denial to one of understanding the magnitude of our brain washing. Outrage is a tame word when used to explain the hostility that arises when you fully integrate the meaning of the "recovery" that we have been seeing in the most recent past. The top 15% of earners have captured 90% of the "new money" that has been floating around. I was in a public place a few weeks ago and heard someone tell a friend, "I have the greatest job in the world now...I just set people up with mortgages, even if they can't afford them, we get them in and sell that off the very next day. It's sweet..This after we supposedly fixed the problem with the banks and their mortgage schemes. There is a feeling of sickness, of utter revulsion, that pervades us when we start to learn the multi-faceted truth behind our oligarchy and their hold on us.
It seems that the duping of the public, through false claims, like: that our freedom of speech somehow flows from the barrels of guns, or that we have been threatened in any way by the myriad foe whom we regularly, self-righteously, and in support of the largest corporate welfare recipients, bludgeoned either to their knees, or to death. Who we see as "enemy" seem to make no sense. Largely, the complexities of world events melt down into a radioactive core of greed, deceit, favoritism and angst that no one should have to deal with. It is my deep and abiding compassion for the soldiers lost that compels me to speak out for their memory in the most decent way possible. The largest percentage and most outspoken peace activists have lived through war, they know that it is terrible and terrible mistakes are made. They suffered at the hands of the experience. Most have seen the inept, those who have risen to the level of their incompetence and the tragic results of attacking both people and infrastructure.
The best way, in me estimation, to honor those who serve is to make decisions that will keep them out of harm's way and secure a more liveable planet for all people, not just enhancing the wealth of the one percent.
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