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"Species gluttony is nearly over and we've eaten the flesh of the earth and pissed upon its bones."
from a few years ago...
...........no matter how much we hear about political change, no politician can save us. Because no presidential candidate can run on the promise that "If we do everything just right, pull in our belts and sacrifice, we can at best be a Second World nation in fifty years, providing we don't mind the lack of oxygen and a few cancers here and there."
Still, there is choice available, even a superior choice: Accept the truth and act upon it. We can at the very least say no to scorched babies in Iraq. We can refuse to participate in a dead society gone shopping. That in itself can be called embracing the spirit. It won't accomplish shit, but it is nevertheless the right thing to do. Because it's the only just thing left to do. Too late, for sure, but better than remaining a dysfunctional moral cretin. My inner scales tell me so.
As long as we are cataloguing pointless acts of moral common sense, we may as well turn off PBS's Nova for a while. Realize the limits of technology and quit looking for more techno solutions to what technology itself hath wrought. All the green energy sources and eating right cannot repair what has been irretrievably ruined. Species gluttony is nearly over and we've eaten the flesh of the earth and pissed upon its bones. Not because we are cruel by nature -- though a case might be made for stupidity -- but because we took the existence of individual consciousness to mean that each of us is some unique center of the world, acquisitive and deserving of all things. One brand of this collective hallucination, although there are others, is called American exceptionalism. And we can get away with that game as long as the oil and the entertainment last. Which looks to be about another half hour.
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Still, there is choice available, even a superior choice: Accept the truth and act upon it. We can at the very least say no to scorched babies in Iraq. We can refuse to participate in a dead society gone shopping. That in itself can be called embracing the spirit. It won't accomplish shit, but it is nevertheless the right thing to do. Because it's the only just thing left to do. Too late, for sure, but better than remaining a dysfunctional moral cretin. My inner scales tell me so.
As long as we are cataloguing pointless acts of moral common sense, we may as well turn off PBS's Nova for a while. Realize the limits of technology and quit looking for more techno solutions to what technology itself hath wrought. All the green energy sources and eating right cannot repair what has been irretrievably ruined. Species gluttony is nearly over and we've eaten the flesh of the earth and pissed upon its bones. Not because we are cruel by nature -- though a case might be made for stupidity -- but because we took the existence of individual consciousness to mean that each of us is some unique center of the world, acquisitive and deserving of all things. One brand of this collective hallucination, although there are others, is called American exceptionalism. And we can get away with that game as long as the oil and the entertainment last. Which looks to be about another half hour.
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http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/11/the-sucker-bait-called-hope.html
1 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
