Not to be a downer and all, but I can feel the fall coming. Last night we all watched a movie about Howard Zinn. He's an outspoken historian who wrote a book called The People's History of The United States which attempts to tell the story from the point of veiw of those her were downtrodden and defeated rather than the victorious. This movie led to a sort of round table discussion of our current global situation. After awhile we all agreed that the world is most definately going to shit. The question of the most effective way to protest or act effectively amid the turmoil was raised.
My own views were crystalized:
The present relationship of humankind to the planet is one of a cancerous cell to the organism. The situtation has reached a level that can not be reversed or changed. Not by mass demonstration, media campaigns to save the environment, or even by the election of more responsible leaders. I beleive that we've reached a point were it is impossible and a terrible waste of energy to attempt to change the system from the inside. The time has come to prepare ourselves for the inevitable collapse. But don't worry. I see this all as good news. Now is the time to make our community stronger because it is this community that will be our saving grace. We need to learn to live outside the system. Disconnecting ourselves from the monetary system, the media system, and the political system. Like when a thunderstorm is coming you need to unplug your computer so that it doesn't get blown out. We've got a few years left but not many.
But honestly, there's no need to worry because in fact after the big she-bang we will all be in general happier and better off. A lot healthier. Although many of us will be dead. Skies are turning black and seas are turning red.
this is where my mind goes when love is absent.
Monday, August 14, 2006
How to Protest? Tune in, drop out.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
15 comments:
After the fall we'll be born, born, born again. After it all blows away.
(from a Klaus Nomi song)
It's amazing what a person's environment does to them. I was on Salt Spring Island this week-end and was surprised there could be people more laid back then prairie folk. Some of these islanders believe that when the end comes they'll just continue doing what they're doing unaffected. Isolation can make you feel like you're invincible!
Sort of like being in New York and feeling like you have a hand on the pulse of the world, and knowing the world is about to explode?
Both delusions. Both valid behavior.
Is anyone else enjoying the variety that life brings?
This is where the modern mind should go, period.
I've always felt that big changes are inevitable, and nothing to be afraid of. People seem to think that anything that shakes up the status quo is, by definition, bad and must be fought against. I tend to see this categorization into bad/good kind of useless beyond the realm of human activity - after all, we are the inventors of morality, are we not?
The universe is in constant change - we would never have had the chance to be born were it not, and we must die so that it may continue. There's no good or bad in it, just our good fortune to be part of it.
Still, advice to "drop out" is not jiving with me. I think we should go with the flow. Even if this ultimate change is inevitable we should still make the most out of our time here, and that means trying to do good (even if it's our invention). I don't think this dark-sky-red-seas-doomsday approach is at all "healthy". Riding your bike, eating seaweed, being nice to each other, promoting positive ideals, and seeing the beauty and light in everything...now that's healthy.
We are not inventors of morality, it is an emergent property of our interactions with each other and the world.
now you're bark'in!
Perhaps inventors was the wrong word. Instigators of morality? Perpetrators of morality? Propagators of morality?
How 'bout just plain immoral.
:)
While we're on the topic, is 'emergence' an emergent property of some particular set, or is it inherent in the universe?
(As a linguist, I am familiar with people speaking of emergent properties of systems, and I find that they usually do so to obscure the fact that they just don't know why it happens, so it must be an emergent property! Actually, I've been guilty of the same, but it did get me some good grades on a couple papers...)
Ha! Very true.
Emergence for me is simply the outcome of two beings in relation. Water molecules emerge into fluidity, macromolecules into cells, cells into organs, organs into humans, we into a relationship of digital production.
It is ontological in that emergence, in a realist sense, exists seperate from my (or our) observations of it, even though my (or our) interactions may constitute it.
It appears to be a property of systems, otherwise one of reality.
In effect, if we did come from nothing (metaphysically and biologically), emergence looks good to me!
:)
Seems to me the world has always been going to shit. Before we had the tools to create massive global destruction we had a majority of societies that actively enslaved large portions of the human race (arguably we still do, but the slavery is just more cunningly practiced.) Though these societies did not destroy the ozone layer or melt the polar ice-caps they did make their lessers work thier lives away for very little. If the price of progress is not to have to freeze our asses off all winter and eat thin gruel 3 times a day, I think we should be a little more appriciative of this "progress" (I can't believe I just said that, I must be playing Devil's Advocate!)
It is not for us to know when the end will come, if it will come, or if it will merely be one big change for the better. Our big job is to live every day and, as James suggests, find enjoyment in the variety of this weird experement we call life. As for morality, it is the key element in the successful contination of social order, without which our species would long ago have extinguished itself.
Perhaps we will all die in the next global war, or as a result of a toxic environment, maybe a meteor will crash, who's to say? That is why we must live today, and everyday, as if it were the greatest gift we've ever been given (as surely it must be.)
{Sermon over}
I don't know if this is callous or not, I just think that like every form of life, humans aren't meant to be around forever. The earth was around for billions of years before we even existed, and who's to say that we won't be extinct after another million or even a few ten thousand.
The dinosaurs all died out, and so will we one day. It's not a bad thing, its just the way things are. Then maybe some new life will take our place. The biggest problem that I see is our obsession to prolong life and consume as many resources as we can as quickly and easily as possible, which results in overpopulation, which acts as a parasite on the rest of the world. Saying this, I can understand why we want to preserve our species, its not rational, its an animal instinct.
Even though there are lots of people who are intelligent enough to treat the earth in a mindful way, it just seems to be a trait of most to not see the global consequences of their actions. So I guess my point it that we're smart, but maybe not smart enough.
I don't see how it would be callous to believe human beings will not exist forever.
I tend to regard human beings as essentially, merely a facet of the world. We are not separate from it - that is an illusion we have taught ourselves for a very long time, but it is not true. Even believing that we are separate does not make us so, and therefore one must view the human species as a part of, and a creation of, the natural, physical world.
Can we say that we are more ill-behaved than other species? If so, then surely it is only by our own measure. Is the world better off with or without us? How arrogant to think we could even contemplate what that question means.
Is the world better off without the dinosaurs? But who is there to blame (or thank, as the case may be) for their extinction? All changes are part of nature... that is, until it comes to human beings, or so we tell ourselves. The changes we bring about are some OTHER, are OUTSIDE OF NATURE.
Not so...
If anyone can confirm this ...I'd like to know.
Once I heard that there was an organism on earth (way before dinosaurs) that grew so rapidly it radically changed (or ended) all life on the planet. It expelled a pollutant that killed everything. The pollutant was oxygen, and the organism was green algae.
over 95% of the species that ever lived on earth have since gone extinct. Sharks and salamanders have a much better track record for survival than humans do.
Yeah alot of the reptiles and amoebas have been around way longer than us. I don't think that any of us will live long enough to see the end of human civilization. Maybe our reincarnated selves will, but thats different.
I've never heard of that type of algae, interesting though.
Post a Comment