Saturday, October 17, 2009
'Progress' of Civilization
Thanks Z and Pennilesscripple.
There's a Problem With Civilization. It's so easy to sing ourselves into some kind of nap where we can distract ourselves from what is really going on. It's not even wholly accurate to say it's only 'easy'. It's more habitual.
Ask questions. If you need specific examples of the processes of civilization destroying the planet and our humanity (as beings of the earth), they aren't hard to find. If the simple theory of civilization and its functions is enough to make you feel like there's something off, something that needs to be changed, then look for examples too. They're all around, and they're only affirming.
Like Derrick Jensen said in his book Endgame, Premise 16: "Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses."
We get all hyped-up on apocalypse theories and Armageddon estimates and it's amusing how we can come up with a load of extraneous examples of endings for our world.
It seems for the most part we don't consider the option that we (our culture, this path we've taken as manufacturing fulfillment) is going to crash down at some point. It won't last forever, it isn't sustainable. We can degrade any planet we can get to and deem habitable but in the end all we will be doing is degrading, taking from others that are not of our civilization, taking from the earth and the environment, and giving back destruction.
Do you think the electricity that powers your A/C unit makes the earth any cleaner or any cooler? It does just the opposite.
We live in a world where we can somehow shut out the earth and only take from it when we need it, when it can give us or save us money. It is absolutely imperative that this stops. I'm not proposing you start growing all your food or recycling, though those are indeed steps towards a more sustainable lifestyle (think about it: you cannot sustain your own life), I'm saying that we need to show more people what is really going on. Show them why they should care. We need to consider ways to extract ourselves from this situation. It won't be instant and it won't be pretty or convenient. I'm not Al Gore, but I do refuse to be just another complacent being on this planet.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Graduation
It's waking up in an empty house with the feeling that there's nowhere I need to be, no one to make casual conversation with, and no desire to change the thermostat even though I'm feeling a little cold.
It's looking at the hard copy manuscript thinkin to myself: 'damn that chapter is gonna be the hard one to clean up,' and not having the motivation to start the job.
It's standing in front of my pantry looking for some kind of unprocessed food to eat, and finding nothing quite adequate, but settling for ramen and cooking it on the stove and adding green onions just to make it seem better.
It's sitting on my bed because I have nowhere else to be, looking at the way the light hits the sheets I put on last night at 4 in the morning, and reminding myself to pick my sheets from the linen closet when I can actually see what I'm picking out.
It's stealing whatever sunshine I can get between the frequent rains, because swimming isn't much fun alone, and neither is soccer in the backyard or drinking green tea on the back porch.
It's singing any song that comes to mind, because if I was just talking out loud it would seem a little insane. The fact that it's a song somehow makes it better.
It's lookin at my bookshelf, browsing the books, thinkin: 'what captures my interest today?' and picking out four or five books that I know I won't read much of anyways.
It's doing laundry even though I only have half a load because my favorite shirt is dirty and I'd like to wear it again as soon as I can. And because I can't find any socks and I'm sure there's some in that dirty pile.
It's sitting in front of my piano for longer than is probably healthy, memorizing chord progressions because it's easy and playing anything and nothing at all because...well, that's easy too.
I's feeding the fish even though I know mama fed them just a few hours ago before she left, and not really caring if they bother to eat it.
It's standing in front of my impossibly cute polar bear calendar, lifting up the pages and looking at the days, and seeing BLANK SQUARES EVERYWHERE.
It's going through all my folders and notebooks, throwing away everything that I don't need to look back on anymore and leaving trash bags full of that stuff for my brother to take out when he gets home.
It's a distinct sense of uncertainty.
It's the flavor of sudden autonomy.
It's looking at the hard copy manuscript thinkin to myself: 'damn that chapter is gonna be the hard one to clean up,' and not having the motivation to start the job.
It's standing in front of my pantry looking for some kind of unprocessed food to eat, and finding nothing quite adequate, but settling for ramen and cooking it on the stove and adding green onions just to make it seem better.
It's sitting on my bed because I have nowhere else to be, looking at the way the light hits the sheets I put on last night at 4 in the morning, and reminding myself to pick my sheets from the linen closet when I can actually see what I'm picking out.
It's stealing whatever sunshine I can get between the frequent rains, because swimming isn't much fun alone, and neither is soccer in the backyard or drinking green tea on the back porch.
It's singing any song that comes to mind, because if I was just talking out loud it would seem a little insane. The fact that it's a song somehow makes it better.
It's doing laundry even though I only have half a load because my favorite shirt is dirty and I'd like to wear it again as soon as I can. And because I can't find any socks and I'm sure there's some in that dirty pile.
It's sitting in front of my piano for longer than is probably healthy, memorizing chord progressions because it's easy and playing anything and nothing at all because...well, that's easy too.
I's feeding the fish even though I know mama fed them just a few hours ago before she left, and not really caring if they bother to eat it.
It's standing in front of my impossibly cute polar bear calendar, lifting up the pages and looking at the days, and seeing BLANK SQUARES EVERYWHERE.
It's going through all my folders and notebooks, throwing away everything that I don't need to look back on anymore and leaving trash bags full of that stuff for my brother to take out when he gets home.
It's a distinct sense of uncertainty.
It's the flavor of sudden autonomy.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The M4+r1x
Reply to gogreen18 (Laci Green) on: Unlock Your Mind (Take the Red Pill)
The Matrix could very well be indicative of the effects of religion (or of no religion) on the human psyche as you said, but it also seems pertinent to put it in a more general sense, to elaborate the necessity to seriously consider the philosophy contained therein. For instance, rather than having the Matrix represent religion or no religion, put it instead as a representation of modern consumerist society, the result of industrialism. Say that perhaps humans created this Matrix, began manufacturing reality with the rise of factories and mass importation of resources.
Well, that would explain the barren wasteland of the 'real world' in The Matrix; a result of our destruction of the planet in the process of making or subscribing to this false reality to sedate our conscience (but of course we see the Earth as beautiful and wonderful, neglecting the everyday fact that we are destroying it behind the scenes).
"You've been living in a dream world, Neo" Morpheus says, violently shaking Neo out of his perceptions of the real world. Perhaps the Matrix is a statement on our societal and cultural values changing in a way that creates a false world that perhaps we created to put our minds at ease. "What is real? How do you define real?" he says, and we can take these questions and put them in a societal context, addressing a worldwide problem: What is contentment? How do you define contentment? Are we geared towards contentment in this society? Are we geared towards truth, or do we define contentment as a plausible truth, malleable and useful insofar as it gives us a peace of mind?
Maybe religion is that plausible truth. Maybe it's the lack of religion that puts a mind at ease, or maybe it's all contained in the type of culture we've evolved; making money to spend money, freedom epitomized in 'free' consumerism, pretty gears in a system where purpose is given freely if only you adhere to the rules and perform your function like individual chunks of code in a program.
We as humans have been integrated into a huge system that arguably rules (if not exists as) our culture and society. We work to make money. but we really work because the work needs to get done to keep the system in place. We are motivated by money, because money can give us a little freedom and a little fun for our free time. However, this is not so much serving ourselves as it is a larger system. We really need the money to keep the system in place, to buy the products that keep the system of society and economics running, but all of this is relatively under the surface, covered up by the illusion of satisfaction and personal 'contentment'. It's like a program running in the background that has the appearance of a fulfilling life, but is really rather self-serving, yet still gives us the illusion of a complete existence free of spiritual or existential depravity or incompleteness.
The irony of it is, everyone feels that depravity, masked or not. The system was created out of that depravity, that longing for purpose that we felt lost to, and thus we began manufacturing it. The machines that wage war with us in the 'real world' that so many are oblivious to (or are simply not 'ready' to see) is in fact, that very depravity. We created a false world to escape from that war, that pressure, that lack of real purpose (hence the machines representing a lack of full life) and it is up to those who know what's going on to give out the red pill and wage this war.
Where there are different views on what exactly the Matrix can represent to modern culture, be it the haze of religion, the environmental manifestation of material atheism, or the pretty blinds of complacency as a result of our modern industrialized society/culture, one point can be derived from the general philosophy: we need to wake up. We need to discontent ourselves with our prejudices and judgements and label them as both inadequate and destructive. It is too presumptuous to assume we have found the truth in any respect, because clearly the disparate truths are creating an elaborate falsehood that is muting our progression of mind.
There is a larger conflict behind the pixels, equations balancing and unblancing, programs destroying and creating, and as a whole we are too absorbed in what we want to see or what we tell ourselves we see to realize that the quality of life is being drained in our collective ingorance.
Regardless of what the Matrix really is, or what 'reality' really is, it's time to start handing out the red pill and find out, as a collective effort.
Maybe some new messiah will come and be 'the one' to end the war, but he/she won't be magically taken from the matrix. It would be up to the ones who've already taken the red pill to uncover it. It could be anyone. It could be everyone.
The Matrix could very well be indicative of the effects of religion (or of no religion) on the human psyche as you said, but it also seems pertinent to put it in a more general sense, to elaborate the necessity to seriously consider the philosophy contained therein. For instance, rather than having the Matrix represent religion or no religion, put it instead as a representation of modern consumerist society, the result of industrialism. Say that perhaps humans created this Matrix, began manufacturing reality with the rise of factories and mass importation of resources.
Well, that would explain the barren wasteland of the 'real world' in The Matrix; a result of our destruction of the planet in the process of making or subscribing to this false reality to sedate our conscience (but of course we see the Earth as beautiful and wonderful, neglecting the everyday fact that we are destroying it behind the scenes).
"You've been living in a dream world, Neo" Morpheus says, violently shaking Neo out of his perceptions of the real world. Perhaps the Matrix is a statement on our societal and cultural values changing in a way that creates a false world that perhaps we created to put our minds at ease. "What is real? How do you define real?" he says, and we can take these questions and put them in a societal context, addressing a worldwide problem: What is contentment? How do you define contentment? Are we geared towards contentment in this society? Are we geared towards truth, or do we define contentment as a plausible truth, malleable and useful insofar as it gives us a peace of mind?
Maybe religion is that plausible truth. Maybe it's the lack of religion that puts a mind at ease, or maybe it's all contained in the type of culture we've evolved; making money to spend money, freedom epitomized in 'free' consumerism, pretty gears in a system where purpose is given freely if only you adhere to the rules and perform your function like individual chunks of code in a program.
We as humans have been integrated into a huge system that arguably rules (if not exists as) our culture and society. We work to make money. but we really work because the work needs to get done to keep the system in place. We are motivated by money, because money can give us a little freedom and a little fun for our free time. However, this is not so much serving ourselves as it is a larger system. We really need the money to keep the system in place, to buy the products that keep the system of society and economics running, but all of this is relatively under the surface, covered up by the illusion of satisfaction and personal 'contentment'. It's like a program running in the background that has the appearance of a fulfilling life, but is really rather self-serving, yet still gives us the illusion of a complete existence free of spiritual or existential depravity or incompleteness.
The irony of it is, everyone feels that depravity, masked or not. The system was created out of that depravity, that longing for purpose that we felt lost to, and thus we began manufacturing it. The machines that wage war with us in the 'real world' that so many are oblivious to (or are simply not 'ready' to see) is in fact, that very depravity. We created a false world to escape from that war, that pressure, that lack of real purpose (hence the machines representing a lack of full life) and it is up to those who know what's going on to give out the red pill and wage this war.
Where there are different views on what exactly the Matrix can represent to modern culture, be it the haze of religion, the environmental manifestation of material atheism, or the pretty blinds of complacency as a result of our modern industrialized society/culture, one point can be derived from the general philosophy: we need to wake up. We need to discontent ourselves with our prejudices and judgements and label them as both inadequate and destructive. It is too presumptuous to assume we have found the truth in any respect, because clearly the disparate truths are creating an elaborate falsehood that is muting our progression of mind.
There is a larger conflict behind the pixels, equations balancing and unblancing, programs destroying and creating, and as a whole we are too absorbed in what we want to see or what we tell ourselves we see to realize that the quality of life is being drained in our collective ingorance.
Regardless of what the Matrix really is, or what 'reality' really is, it's time to start handing out the red pill and find out, as a collective effort.
Maybe some new messiah will come and be 'the one' to end the war, but he/she won't be magically taken from the matrix. It would be up to the ones who've already taken the red pill to uncover it. It could be anyone. It could be everyone.
Friday, October 9, 2009
A(Theism)
Okay, I wanna let you know:
Being a theist requires a bit of faith in any respect. Although, something that is kinda funny is that being an atheist ALSO implies that you have faith.
Let me explain.
It takes a certain degree of faith to 'believe' (and I say believe because religion or theism can't be disproved, despite an atheist's need for evidence to buy into a thought mode) but it takes a bit of faith to 'believe' that there is nothing that exists outside what can be proven to you. What you know to be true is in your little box of perception, and to me it seems foolish to think that what is true exists wholly in that perception, because what's a house to an ant? What's a planet to a cat? What's the universe to a human? We don't see all that is nor understand all that is outside our limited perception.
So, to say that nothing outside what can be proven sufficiently is true, you're essentially putting your truth in a little box that, by the way, is modified constantly. Perceptions change.
Tell me, how can all the truth there is, all the mysteries of life and the cosmos be contained in a box labeled 'evidence' when no person can even cohesively put all the evidence together?
It should be obvious that there is something external to our observational method that puts all the pieces into place.
I'm not being a proponent of God. I'm not a christian by ANY means, and I don't take scripture as fact. I don't believe in some God who has an active or inactive role in my life or even in the course of humanity. Don't get me wrong, I respect religious traditions and scriptures and the lessons therein, but still I do not call myself an atheist.
This is based on the conception that a human can KNOW something. Not having the necessity to be persuaded to any mode of thought by evidence, but having the ability to KNOW regardless of persuasion or conflicting evidence or critiques. To think and to know are very different things. An atheist can think anything of the world they want, but they do not KNOW, outside of an acquisition of enough evidence, anything.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Being a theist requires a bit of faith in any respect. Although, something that is kinda funny is that being an atheist ALSO implies that you have faith.
Let me explain.
It takes a certain degree of faith to 'believe' (and I say believe because religion or theism can't be disproved, despite an atheist's need for evidence to buy into a thought mode) but it takes a bit of faith to 'believe' that there is nothing that exists outside what can be proven to you. What you know to be true is in your little box of perception, and to me it seems foolish to think that what is true exists wholly in that perception, because what's a house to an ant? What's a planet to a cat? What's the universe to a human? We don't see all that is nor understand all that is outside our limited perception.
So, to say that nothing outside what can be proven sufficiently is true, you're essentially putting your truth in a little box that, by the way, is modified constantly. Perceptions change.
Tell me, how can all the truth there is, all the mysteries of life and the cosmos be contained in a box labeled 'evidence' when no person can even cohesively put all the evidence together?
It should be obvious that there is something external to our observational method that puts all the pieces into place.
I'm not being a proponent of God. I'm not a christian by ANY means, and I don't take scripture as fact. I don't believe in some God who has an active or inactive role in my life or even in the course of humanity. Don't get me wrong, I respect religious traditions and scriptures and the lessons therein, but still I do not call myself an atheist.
This is based on the conception that a human can KNOW something. Not having the necessity to be persuaded to any mode of thought by evidence, but having the ability to KNOW regardless of persuasion or conflicting evidence or critiques. To think and to know are very different things. An atheist can think anything of the world they want, but they do not KNOW, outside of an acquisition of enough evidence, anything.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Journal 1
Sometimes I feel that I am much too simple for this life. I lost time in all the obligatory things that I feel obliged to not because I want to, but because I 'should'. I don't want money. Money isn't freedom. I don't want a big house, that's not freedom either.I know though that the way does not flow along the banks of 'self' and 'society', it flows between the banks of 'self' and 'self'. Nothing in this world can obstruct me but myself and with that knowledge, the trivialities of this world seem so very small.
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