Do What You Can

I've been terribly busy lately and in one way that is a good thing. I have been too busy to dwell upon on the bad news, especially about the environment. The shit storm is heading for us fast. 2011 saw green house gas emissions reach its highest point in history. Closer measurement has shown that the worlds oceans are rising twice as fast as predicted and there is  more bad news after more bad news and no one seems to have any inclination to do anything about it.  Wait a minute you say...what about all the Priuses and the compact fluorescent bulbs, and CFC free hairspray and deodorant and stuff. It is there and it is helping but it is nothing compared to the sheer volume of greenhouse emissions coming from the U.S. and other developed and developing countries. Spend anytime reading around and you will be overwhelmed with the bad news...well it is bad news if you are mostly conscious which appears to leave a lot of people in this country out of the picture especially the so-called leadership. Happily, most of the folks who visit here seem to be in the minority in that they actually are aware of the humongous bag of crap that we are in and thus here is the message...

CHILL! Focus on your own universe. Take care of your own heart and mind and the hearts and minds of those around you. The news coming at those of us that are even marginally attuned to the rhythms of the universe is tragic and disheartening and is a sure-fire path to psycho-emotional burnout.  Each of us has limited energy and capacity. As much as our desire and compassion pulls us into the maelstrom of our planet's problems, sickness, torture, abuse, and pollution we must, at some point, pull back and resist. Even as we see the inevitable death of our earth happen before our eyes we must remind ourselves of our limits.  As much as we might desire the power to affect it, the karma of the universe is not ours to rectify. Our responsibility is to our own karma and to some extent the karma of those we are closet to and love. If you spread your energy too far afield and try to embrace the anger, suffering, violence and pain of our dying planet you will self destruct and in doing so fail to address what you actually have the power to control and that is yourself.

The hard truth is that if each of us did what is right, truly right, for ourselves and our loved ones. If each of us focused on the purity of our local universe and lives, the problems of our planet would solve themselves. We would make the correct decisions for our environment even if it meant foregoing some of the niceties of modern life. We would reject consumerism for what it is...disaster. We would reject the idea of war and with it would go the vast wasted resources that go with it. We would turn and recognize our Mother Earth as our partner instead of adversary and we would grasp our small bit of the web of life and make it whole and as each bit is healed the whole is healed.

Staying focused on what you can control and actually have the power to control is not easy. The distractions of modern life and cries of pain and suffering coming from the rest of the world and even from the planet itself are difficult to resist. We shouldn't ignore them but should put them in their proper place in our worldview. We shouldn't, however, allow them to pull us away from our focus on getting our own bit of the universe sorted. If we, by effort or chance, happen to get ourselves and our loved ones properly balanced and have energy to spare we can widen our boundaries and share our successes with the rest of the universe.

It is not selfish to center yourself on what you can control and make right and hope that the balance and correctness spread from your center.

Cyprus Memory

I came home tonight and Madam was watching PBS and they were begging. We actually have two PBS stations here in Atlanta and they were both at it. On one was the DoWap reunion and on the other was a Beatles tribute by a group called the Fab Four. The tribute band is very good and they are even English. They did a set of Sgt. Peppers stuff and it reminded me of the little caretaker that took care of the embassy boat house in Kyrenia when I was stationed in Cyprus so many years ago. He was a wizened  little Greek man, squinted from too much sun and slightly hobbled from too much hard work but he took good care of us young idiots at the boathouse while we caroused around, drank too much and spent way too much time trying to pick up the European chicks on holiday. He kept the ski boats gassed up and the sail boats in shape, ran to get us kebabs and cases of beer and wine with just a wink and a few shillings. The most fascinating thing was his love of the Sgt. Peppers album and even though he spoke very little English he knew the words to all the songs and would sing along at the top of his voice whenever we would put on the music and he would make the music a condition for doing our bidding. If we wanted him to do a kebab and wine run he would insist that Sgt. Peppers be played when he returned. I can still see that little old Greek man completely enthralled by the music and giving himself totally to the sound. He didn't understand the words but he understood the emotion and meaning and it resonated in his soul. It was a joy to see someone so pleasured.

There...this memory is now permanent in the great intertubes.

Seven Years and Counting

Today is the "blogiversary" of The Fallenmonk. Yep, I published the first post on June 23, 2004. Many thanks to all the folks who have been loyal participants and contributors to this little corner of the "tubes". We have made some great electronic friends over the years and from all over the world. I appreciate each and every one of you.
It is only fitting that I repost the first real post on the Fallenmonk and that is the excerpt from George Fowlers's The Dance of the Fallen Monk that inspired the name and so perfectly reflects a large part of my philosophy. Of course, you also have to mix in a little Pagan, Wiccan, Buddhist and Discordian for a somewhat accurate picture of the philosophy around here.

Now I understood for the first time that all these problems are caused by a race asleep and thrashing about in its panicked nightmares. There will be wars and holocausts and genocides as long as God is portrayed and thought of as a tight-minded legislator, a feudal lord, an offended King, a hypersensitive Artisan – even if church managers condescendingly tack onto that ridiculous list the not-very-convincing footnote that He is also loving. As long as people dream that they are insecure and needy in some sort of eternal jeopardy, there will be atrocities. But as the human race grows up spiritually, and as individuals gain a personal experience of the God they have been worshipping in fear, they will recognize that much of their theology and philosophy is built on nightmares. That will be the day of peace. I suddenly found myself unwilling to sit it out in the mountains of Utah. I wanted to play an active role in the process of the world’s awakening. – George Fowler, "Dance of a Fallen Monk"

As the man says "thanks for all the fish" and Hail Eris!

Edited to fix the date ......June not July....thanks Broken Arrow....

Salmon Teachings

I'm just echoing something that Hecate posted but that resonates completely:

My friend the great Dakota activist Waziyatawin once said, “That defeatist attitude makes me want to scream. The battles we’re fighting are overwhelming, but we know things won’t get better if we do nothing. Our only hope is enough people intervening and taking action, people willing to risk something now so we all don’t lose everything later. The only sense of empowerment I feel is by taking some kind of action, whether it’s writing, working to undermine the existing structures, or sitting on the open prairie in December with a Dakota man trying to save our landbase.” She went on: “If our actions will do nothing, why would anyone even want to live anymore? That kind of hopelessness, in the defeatist sense, means an embracing of victimage and complete powerlessness. Here the salmon have much to teach: either they make it upriver to spawn, or they die trying.”

If our actions make it so there is even a one-thousandth of 1 percent chance that things will work out better for ourselves and the planet, then it is our moral duty to act and act and act. Before it’s too late.

Am I optimistic? Not in the slightest. Am I going to quit? Not on your fucking life.

You should read Derrick Jensen's entire post here.

Social Justice

I was challenged by a commenter last week when I posted the thing about Glenn Beck and his charge to listeners to abandon their church if it mentions "social justice". Terrance Heath at A World of Progress does a pretty good job of addressing the issue. The commenter opined that Beck was correct and that there was no such thing as 'social justice' and never has been nor never will be. Whatever!

As Always... Joe Bageant

If you don't regularly check in with Joe to see what he is doing then you are missing some of most important insights and writing about what is happening to our society today. His latest is especially worth a visit.

How much freedom can one man stand?

Nature's Little Rule Book - 1st Rule

I stumbled upon a very interesting website the other day and while it hasn't been updated since 2007, apparently, there are some very good essays to be had. One the most interesting and provocative was an essay by the site's owner Oneida Kincaid called "Nature's Little Rule Book". It is written by Mother Nature to us humans and reminds us of some of her basic truths and rules. I think it would be fun and possibly interesting to post the 10 rules over the coming weeks and see what kind of discussion(if any) it generates. Here is the introduction and the first rule:

Oneida Kincaid: Nature’s Little Rule Book

Hello, dearies, this is Mother Nature. I’m speaking up here because you humans seem to have an awful lot of difficulty understanding and living in accord with the rules of life on Earth, so I thought I’d lay it all out for you in a very simple and direct form. This is very important, so please pay close attention.

Rule No. 1 - Life on Earth is a web, NOT a pyramid.

At first glance, this rule may seem obvious, even trite. “Well, of course,” you may say. “I know that! Tell me something I don’t know!”

But this rule is not directed at your rational mind, which probably knows perfectly well that life on Earth is a complex interweaving of hundreds of millions of different kinds of organisms and processes. Instead, it is aimed at your cultural mind, the one that has been trained from the day you were born to believe in the mythology of your modern culture - a mythology that, when it is lived out in billions of peoples’ lives around the world, is destroying the web of life on Earth.

“Hey, wait a minute!” you are probably thinking. “We modern, scientific people don’t believe in myths anymore! Myths are only for less developed, pre-scientific cultures.”

But given that you humans seem almost completely unable to alter your destructive way of life even though your supposedly rational, scientific minds are generally quite aware that you are destroying the fabric of life on Earth, it seems rather obvious there’s something else going on than just rational, scientific thinking. That something else, I suggest to you, is mythical thinking.

In its most basic sense, a myth is simply a story that attempts to explain to the people of any given culture how something came to be the way it is. A mythology is a collection of myths that, taken together, attempt to explain and express a culture’s deepest understanding of the world and how it works, and the place of humans within it.

Of course, you modern humans don’t see your myths as myths, you think they’re The Truth, just like every other culture from the Greeks to the Maya has viewed their myths as The Truth. That’s what’s tricky about myths - they don’t appear as myths to those living in them. So although you think modern people have progressed beyond all that mythology stuff, the fact is that snuggled up right beside your scientific understanding of the web of life is the pervasive myth that life on Earth is a pyramid - with humans at the very top.

According to your modern mythology, the broad base of the pyramid of life is populated by all of the bacteria and other supposedly “primitive” forms of life that are viewed as being animated by merely the instinctive struggle for biological survival and reproduction. In your mythology, as one climbs up this mythical pyramid, life becomes more and more complex until suddenly there is the great leap to the much-vaunted self-consciousness and presumed “superior intelligence” that allegedly makes you humans so “special” and “unique” among all the rest of life on Earth.

A more extreme form of this “myth of the pyramid” goes even further, lifting humans completely off the top of the pyramid and placing them in the space somewhere above it. In this version, humans have somehow magically transcended the whole messy, instinct-driven mass of life: there is the “natural” world - nature - and then there are humans.

This mythic imagery of a pyramid with humans at top is designed to emphasize several key, interrelated aspects of the “story” being told by the mythology of human civilization:

One, that humans are so special and different from all other forms of life on Earth, that you have somehow been elevated “above” everything else;

Two, that because you are such a special species, you are exempt from the rules of life that govern every other species on Earth;

Three, by virtue of your superior position at the top of the pyramid, you humans are somehow “meant” to rule over and use the rest of life on Earth for your own purposes; and,

Four, even though your supposedly “civilized” way of life is driving you to both a human and ecological catastrophe, you can’t give it up because that would mean giving up everything that makes you humans “special” and admitting that you are not, after all, “meant” to be at the top of the pyramid, dominating and using the rest of life on Earth.

In other words, the guiding mythology of modern society is the “myth of human exceptionalism” - a story that tells you that humans are so utterly special that the rules of life that apply to every other species on Earth somehow don’t apply to you; that the world was, in effect, made just for humans so you could have a stage upon which to show off what a wonderful and “highly evolved” species you are; and that you have no choice but continue acting as you have, even though you now face ecological catastrophe as a result, because that would mean not fulfilling your supposed “destiny” as the most wonderful, special species that has ever walked the face of the Earth.

The myth of human exceptionalism also tells you that humans are so special that, unlike every other species on Earth, you can somehow control your fate (and the fate of everything else that lives on Earth). That is the enormous - and fateful - conceit and drive behind agriculture and the entire edifice of human civilization that agriculture has inevitably spawned - the desperate attempt to wrest your fate from the “hands of the gods,” to become as gods yourselves, supposed masters of your own fate. But you are not gods, you do not have the gods’ wisdom about how the world works, so you are making a real hash of things in your vain efforts to be as powerful as the gods.

I hope that by now it is clear that, regardless of how you modern, “advanced” humans like to think about yourselves, the fact is that you do have your own unacknowledged myths and mythology. In and of itself, that is not a problem. What is a problem is that your particular mythology - the myth of human exceptionalism - has led to the point where Earth now stands on the edge of a sixth mass extinction, one caused not by an massive asteroid from space but by 10,000 years of humans living an unsustainable myth.

What is worse is that you seem helpless to do anything to stop your incredible destructiveness, even though you now stand on the brink of ecological and human catastrophe. In such a dire situation, it really does become imperative that you try to tear the blinders off and take a hard look at the mythology that is driving you to persist in such a destructive way of thinking about and living human life on Earth. In short, you need a radically new way of thinking about and living human life on Earth.

P.S. I know some of you might jump ahead and read all the rules but let's just focus on one rule at a time.
P.P.S. I did a quick Google for Oneida Kincaid and came up pretty blank. If one of you are better at this sort of thing than I it would be interesting to know what has become of her since this was posted in October of 2007.

The American Hologram

A new essay from Joe Bageant is available and a worthwhile read, as usual. If you have a few minutes you might want to read "Escape from the Zombie Food Court"

Shining City On The Hill

If you are not a regular reader of Joe Bageant, you should be.

This is some of Joe at his best:

The truth was always the only frontier and it has always been an inner one about seeking and unflinching acknowledgement of what one discovers -- which in the end inspires universal compassion. Looking upon the world with eyes as cold as ashes but with a heart like a furnace.

And that makes it spiritual. Not religious, not esoteric, not mystical, not cosmic, not New Age, but utterly and humanly spiritual. We are not and never were individuals, but merely brief swimmers in the river of flesh called mankind. Yet inside each frail sentient being there is that small bead of light, of self, of the truth of pure existence. It can guide us in those right things before us, that we either will or will not rise to doing. That is its purpose, if it can be said to have one.

Now that Cotton Mather's City On The Hill has proven a vapor, there are worse things we could attempt than fix upon that light as a beacon for crossing our spiritual Jordan's turbulent waters, toward some more perfect inner shore.

Perfection, whether of the stripe sought by socialists, Christians, atheists, Buddhists or Muslims, is within each of us. It's unhip, unscientific, archaic, politically incorrect and guaranteed to hurt. But it's the truth.

Excellent Casting

In case you are interested. The I Ching cast for 2009 is hexagram 18, Ku, or “Work on What Has Been Spoiled.” “Ku” refers to a bowl in which maggots are breeding, and the hexagram means the time has come to clear away what has been spoiled. The third, fifth and sixth lines are dynamic.

This is a very good omen.

I Ching - Corrupt/Renovating, Ku (KÛ)

Hexagram Number 18 Keyword(s): Repairing the Damage Symbolic of: inner turmoil and disharmony

THE KÛ HEXAGRAM The General Meaning Kû indicates great progress and success (to him who deals properly with the condition represented by it). There will be advantage in (efforts like that of) crossing the great stream. (He should weigh well, however, the events of) three days before the turning point, and those (to be done) three days after it. Explanation of the separate lines 1. The first SIX, divided, shows (a son) dealing with the troubles caused by his father. If he be an (able) son, the father will escape the blame of having erred. The position is perilous, but there will be good fortune in the end. 2. The second NINE, undivided, shows (a son) dealing with the troubles caused by his mother. He should not (carry) his firm correctness (to the utmost). 3. The third NINE, undivided, shows (a son) dealing with the troubles caused by his father. There may be some small occasion for repentance, but there will not be any great error. 4. The fourth SIX, divided, shows (a son) viewing indulgently the troubles caused by his father. If he go forward, he will find cause to regret it. 5. The fifth SIX, divided, shows (a son) dealing with the troubles caused by his father. He obtains the praise of using (the fit instrument for his work). 6. The sixth NINE, undivided, shows us one who does not serve either king or feudal lord, but in a lofty spirit prefers (to attend to) his own affairs.

h/t Mahablog

Wolves

I have to get out early this morning for a doctor's appointment but I will leave you something to think about while I get poked and prodded.

An old Cherokee tale tells of a grandfather talking to his grandson. The grandfather tells his grandson,

“Son, on the inside of every person a battle is raging between two wolves. One wolf is angry, jealous, unforgiving, violent, proud and lazy. The other wolf is filled with love, kindness, nonviolence, humility, and self-control. The two wolves are constantly fighting.”

The little boy thought about it, and said, “Grandfather, which wolf is going to win?”

The grandfather smiled and said, “whichever one you feed.”

Battening Down the Hatches

As I mentioned in an earlier post I am being forced by circumstance to "batten down the hatches". I have spent the last few days taking a hard look at where I am financially, we my money is going and what I plan to do going forward. The job market really sucks and even though my resume is pretty good, the possibility of finding employment, at least making the kind of money I have been, in the near term is pretty bleak. So be it.

The good news is that I have been living pretty 'high on the hog' and there is a lot I have done in just a few days to drastically reduce the cost of day to day living. The other good news is that I am already committed to lowering my 'carbon footprint' and that, in itself, makes things a lot easier. I may be rationalizing this but I have come to the conclusion that this whole adventure is actually a good opportunity to further refine my life, focus on what is important and try and live up to a more ideal covenant with the world.

In spite of the suggestion of one of the commenters I don't intend to fall back into 'Monk' mode or go to the extremes that seem so popular in the press these days. Some people are actually making a career out of 'doing without'. There have been recent books on doing without shopping, not buying anything made in China, having 'zero impact, living on $5000 a year, getting rid of the private car, eating nothing but organic or home grown food, and on an on. We are not going to go to the extreme but it will be interesting to see how I can make changes in my life that lower my cost/impact and yet don't necessarily turn life into some kind 'Walden Pond' challenge.

The first steps are done but some of it will be more philosophical in nature. Way back I used to have a little better handle on the the philosophy side of this but I have not forgotten the lessons. In Arthur Koestler’s “The Act of Creation” there is a comment about Western civilization:

“The child is taught petitionary prayer instead of meditation, religious dogma instead of contemplation of the infinite; the mysteries of nature are drummed into his head as if they were paragraphs in the penal code.”

The reality is that without constant awareness of our place and connection to the universe we begin to behave as if it were something outside us and begin to regard it primarily as a thing to be dealt with, we externalize “it”, and objectify it. That's wrong thinking and it causes us to behave badly. Save it, nurture it and live in it but stop thinking of it as a thing apart.

I need to remember how to 'live intentionally'. The good thing is I know how but just need to remember how.

Don't Read This

Don't read Joe Bageant. It will just make you mad and depressed at the same time. True though it may be.

Let's Pollute Everything

Thanks to Jill at La Vida Locavore ,who is currently reading Soil Not Oil by Vandana Shiva, we get a peek into the thinking of Larry Summers who is evidently on the short list as a potential Secretary of the Treasury. This was from back in his World Bank days.

In 1991, Summers wrote in a memo to senior World Bank staff, "Just between
you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty
industries to the LDC [Less Developed Countries]?" Summers had justified the
economic logic of increasing pollution in the third world on three grounds.

First, since wages are low in the South, economic costs of pollution arising
from increased illness and death are lowest in the poorest countries. According
to Summers, the logic "of relocation of pollution in the lowest wage country is
impeccable and we should face up to that."

Second, since in large parts of the South, pollution is still low, it makes economic sense to Summers to introduce pollution: "I've always thought," he writes, "that countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently
low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City."

Finally, he argues, since the poor are poor, they cannot possibly worry about environmental problems: "The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostate cancer than in a country where under five mortality is 200 per thousand."

(pages 33-34)

I will leave it up to the reader to draw any conclusions about the sanity of Mr. Summers.

Book of Love

Here are some excerpts from Monday's Special Comment by Keith Olbermann:

Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.

Some parameters, as preface. This isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics, and this isn't really just about Prop-8. And I don't have a personal investment in this: I'm not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.

And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics. This is about the human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it. ...

With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness—this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness—share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate.

You don't have to help it, you don't have it applaud it, you don't have to fight for it. Just don't put it out. Just don't extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don't know and you don't understand and maybe you don't even want to know. It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow person just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too.

This is the second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all things, the closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.

But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this:

"I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam," he told the judge. It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all: So I be written in the Book of Love; I do not care about that Book above. Erase my name, or write it as you will, So I be written in the Book of Love."

Nothing needs to be added to it in my book.

Odd Bits

Long hard day and an even worse commute. I said yesterday that the client was not that far away from my own offices(which I rarely go to) and that the commute was not that bad for Atlanta. Wrongy! It took me an hour this morning to go the 15 miles and an hour and 10 minutes this afternoon. Sheesh! Glad I don't have to do this everyday. The client is implementing our new work force management product which is really slick. It takes in calls for service from the client's customers and matches them up with available technicians and then schedules the techs to achieve an efficient 'route' for each tech's workday. It is interfaced with Google maps and all that high tech stuff and allows the customer service folks to monitor each call and do everyting necessary to meet customer expectations. It is also very complex and there is so much data involved it makes it very difficult to troubleshoot problems. I am crosseyed from trying to untangle all the variables involved in a simple service call. Tech skills, traffic, conflicting emergency calls, no parts, wrong parts, wrong zip code. It is also a little funny since we aren't talking life and death here but dispatching techs to repair soda fountains and machines but in the restaurant business if your high margin soda fountain is not working it is a bad thing. It's a living.

Trying to catch up on all the blogs this evening and one you shouldn't miss in MandT's newest post on the election at Adgitadiaries. As always it is brilliant.

Finally found a solution for the Austrian Kale in last week's CSA offering. I made a simple soup with chicken stock, onions, a bit of tomato paste and garlic, a can of canellini beans and the kale. Pretty good. If any one is interested I will post a more detailed recipe.

MandT's post, mentioned above, got me to reminiscing a bit about my experiences growing up white in the South of the fifties and sixties. We lived in a fairly small town in North Carolina, Roanoke Rapids. My dad worked at the paper mill and mom at the local dairy as a bookeeper. On the side they owned a little lunch spot next to the Trailways bus station. I can still remember the little window on the sidewalk for serving blacks. Whites could sit at the counter or in one of the few booths but blacks had to order at the window that opened on the sidewalk. It seemed so natural at the time but today I find it hard to believe. How things have changed.

I had a lot of idle time today whist commuting and that is always dangerous since I tend to think. These last eight years have had a hugely negative impact on my presence. I could use the word karma but it wouldn't quite be correct. Over the last years my ability to hate has grown as has my tendency to dismiss others who don't agree with me as stupid or of no account. These and some other 'sins' are a real and unwelcome reversal for me. I have spent years, since the late sixties, studying, practicing and meditating in an attempt to put these devils in their proper place and I was doing fairly well up until 2000. I, unfortunately, let what Paul Krugman calls the "monsters" leech away years of progress. The good news is that I have started to garden again and I already feel energized and more in touch with the universe than I have in many years. I let the fallout from the "monsters" contaminate me and my connection with the world and I should have responded more quickly. I need to do better and I will. I really should have been more in touch with myself and realized why, after so many years, I found it imperative to spend all the time and hard work to start the big garden again. The Tao knew what was needed.

Another day tomorrow trying to figure out why the tech with no 'o' rings on his truck was dispatched to a Burger King with a leaky syrup hose but it is Friday and that is a 'good thing'. Oh and one more thing...our 'test region' is Orlando, Tampa and Fort Meyers and have you ever contemplated how many soda fountains and soda machines there are in such a small area? It is really frightening to consider.

Left or Right, Authoritarian or Libertararian

Thanks to Tata at Poor Impulse Control and the link to the Political Compass test we can have some fun looking at how our political beliefs sit with others. You'll notice the test doesn't simply divide opinions into Left and Right. It also tests for libertarian or authoritarian tendencies. If you don't know by now I am pretty anti-authoritarian about people but on the other hand I feel pretty strongly about rigorous corporate regulation. I like it that I sit in the same quadrant with Ghandi and the Dalai Lama.

The bottom chart is my plot from the test.


You too can find out where your beliefs sit on the Political Compass Test. So where do you sit?

From the Political Compass website.. the top chart shows the positions of some international world leaders. As you can see I'm in pretty good company.

Yom Kippur

Today is the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. It is the most important day of the Jewish calendar. Yom Kippur is also called the Day of Atonement in English. It is a time to amend behavior and seek forgiveness. This is the last of the high holy days of the Jewish calender.

Even if you are not Jewish sometimes it is a good idea to sit back and do a little reflection on who you are and what you are doing. Sometimes it is a good idea to ask yourself some tough questions about the way you are living your life. Are you happy? Why not? What would make you happier? Are you a positive influence in the world and in the lives of others, especially those closest to you?

Even if you are not a 'green', are you doing what you can to minimize your impact on our planet? If not, then why not? Are you making conscious decisions everyday to align your life more sympathetically with the Earth and your environment?

Are you at peace with yourself? Do you like yourself? Could you do better? Are you living from the heart or from the head? There are hundreds of questions and none of us that answer them truthfully won't see room for improvement.

Take some time today to reflect on your life and the world around you. Take some time today to reflect on your place in the world and remember to keep in mind the Eightfold Path -- Correct View, Intention, Speech, Action, Livelihood, Effort, Mindfulness, and Concentration.

Namaste

Choose The Positive

I feel the need to follow up on my screed below, It Ain’t Pretty. Some of the feedback, both in comments and email, has given me the impression that some may think the situation is hopeless and that we are all doomed regardless of our choices in the ballot box. While I was trying to be realistic and firmly believe everything I said in the post I am not giving up. On the contrary, I believe that the better we understand the position we and the rest of the world are in the more effectively we can make the changes needed to secure a better future for us all.

We can see the enemy and yes “enemy” is the correct word. The sad truth of the matter is best acknowledged by repeating the most famous of lines from Walt Kelly’s brilliant comic strip Pogo "we have met the enemy and he is us." Yes, we are the enemy but we are the saviors as well.

All of the problems and challenges we are facing are the result of our own failures as responsible participants in the dance of life and as such can be corrected by addressing our failures.
The good news is that we are already seeing the tide shift. More and more of us are taking to heart the knowledge that we are not just individuals “doing our own thing” but instead part of a greater whole. There is increased awareness that our individual small actions of waste are each contributing to the degradation of our environment. More and more of us are recycling, looking for local food and organic options at the market. More and more of us are seeing that the war, aggression, poverty, lack of health care and hunger affecting any of us is affecting us all. We are beginning to recognize that each of us is part of a larger world and that what affects one affects all. We are beginning to understand that the gospel of man’s dominion over nature is a lie and that man is directly and intimately connected to the world and that ignoring Gaia and our connection with her is done at our peril.

So, yes our country and our world is currently being ravaged in the ever increasing search for growth at all costs. Our lives are slowly being poisoned by the global corporations in search of short term profit, the legacy be damned and yes our leadership and our government is very nearly wholly owned by these same corporate masters. But, again the good news is that we are becoming aware of exactly how we are being used and abused by these global hegemonies and it is much to their chagrin that we are. We are coming to realize that we are letting them lead us to ruin and we are beginning to look and find ways to cheat them of their dominion. We let them lead us this far down the road to doom but we do not have to continue to blindly follow. Each of us has dozens of chances each day to strike out on a different path. Each of us has the ability to say no every time we are asked to take a step down the path to our own destruction. You can say no to war. You can say no to continued dependence on oil. You can say no to continued subsidies to giant agribusiness. You can say no to the refusal to address national healthcare. You can say no to every item in your grocery that is full of High Fructose Corn Syrup and the hundreds of other manufactured poisons that we are being told is food. You can say no to the beef, pork and chicken in the grocery that has been tortured and poisoned so that you can have cheap and unhealthy meat.

The giant corporations that are killing us and imprisoning us with our dependence on unhealthy food, useless products, clothes made with slave labor in some foreign country by our brothers and sisters and tying us to them with a dependence on cheap energy live by your dollar and nothing else. Deprive them of their source of power and we will win the battle for our future and free ourselves in the process.

We have been fed a giant lie and we have bought it completely. It is a lie that we can continue to grow, continue to consume with abandon and not pay a price. Our planet can sustain us all but not at an ever increasing pace of consumption and waste. We have to find the balance and it will demand from each of us some sacrifice. It will not, however, demand us to sacrifice peace, our humanity, or our place in the universe. We can live within the limits the universe sets on us but we do have to make the choice to do so.

So the last word is vote. Not only at the ballot box but in every choice you make each day. Choose to say no the status quo. Choose to say yes to change for the better. Choose the positive. Finally, remember always that if it wasn’t food when your Grand Mother was a little girl then there is a good chance it is not food today.

Weekend Rambles

Just a light sprinkle early this morning from Fay. Sure would like to relieve some you Redneck Riviera of some of that rain. We need it in the worst way. Doesn't look like there will be enough rain or whatever to keep me out of the garden today. Been overcast and windy for the last two days and I keep expecting something only to be disappointed.

The mouthbreathers have appeared in the neighborhood as I say two McSame signs in yards this morning on my walk. Didn't notice them yesterday. Don't these people know that these signs for McAncient are just like putting up a sign in the yard that says "I'm stupid and proud of it!"?

Got up early this morning and went to Whole Foods to try and score a Poulet Rouge Fermier. They only get a few each Friday from the grower and they go quickly. Lucked out this morning as I got one of the remaining three. You can check out the link above but they are a heritage breed from France and are grown in as close to a "free-range" environment as you are likely to find unless you grow your own or your neighbor does. From what I have been able to ascertain these folks get as close as is possible in today's industrial food business to getting it right. The chickens sure do taste a lot better than even the premium "Rosie" chickens now showing up in the markets.

Going to pull up all the tomatoes and put in my fall garden this weekend. There are still a few green tomatoes hanging on but not enough to worry about and besides one has to have at least one batch of Fried Green Tomatoes in a summer. Maybe with the red chicken tomorrow.

Started the other book I bought for the trip yesterday...Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth, I have read his previous The Power of Now and thought it worthwhile. My only argument with him is that he makes tackling your ego sound like some kind of simple intellectual excercise instead of the lifelong experience it actually is. Nevermind...if it gets people thinking about the subject of overcoming our ego's and actually moving in that direction I have no problem with it. The reality is that he is making me refocus and that is something I need with the world in the state it is in. It seems everything out there is trying to reinforce the false, ego driven state. This can't hurt.

Hope all you folks in the Florida panhandle have your pants rolled up and your storm kits stocked. Be safe.