Tag: Mother Earth

Loopy, Contagious Feedback

Cannot help thinking that tumors like ISIS are symptoms that have erupted from a much broader illness that has invaded the body of Mother Earth, whose nation-state “organs” are competing with each other for the scarcities: energy (nutrition), and water. That is, methinks, what these wars are really about and the cyclical feedback provided by each organ’s response amplifies the “other” instead of starving it.

Hatred for the actions of the drone-wielding US and the fundamentalist swaggerer Harper must play some part in this sort of horror. Nobel laureate, Malala Yousafzai, who has experienced extreme Taliban misogynistic cruelty, has the balance to see both sides of this sick situation and the courage to speak truth to power. More bombs and beheadings are not going to help in the long run.

Recently it came to me that the 2003 self-sacrifice of Rachel Corrie, killed by an armoured Israeli IDF bulldozer when she stood between it and a Palestinian home in Rafah, Gaza, and the twisted radicalized killers we see now here and in the Middle East are yin/yang symptoms of the same, fundamental, compulsive, societal psychopathy.

One destructive (perhaps irresistible?) response directed heroically inward, one outward. Both are cellular actors in extreme moral agony.

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Old Sol and Mommy Earth

This Canadian Gives Thanks:

All, especially those of us who lucked out and were born in the early 40’s and never had to go to war, have plenty to be thankful for. We were around to have kids and maybe marry someone nice. Or not. Our choice.

I do not thank A god for this good fortune. neither do I take any credit for being obedient enough to deserve this special favour. I do, however thank the two gods without whom I, and my species, would not exist: Old Sol and Mommy Earth. Those are the only absolutely necessary “good guys.”

Of course, I can appreciate that they aren’t that smart, like in all-knowing and in punishing us for our sins, which necessitates keeping some sort of ledger. A shrinking few among us would consider them kinda lazy.

They’re laid back. They provide us with solar energy and photosynthesis and don’t ask a lot in return.

So, thanks Old Sol and Mommy Earth. You did good – and still do.

Now it’s up to us to deserve our good fortune. And not by fighting dirty to keep it.

In, But Not Of, The World… Huh??

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I read someone write recently that they were

in, but not of, the world.

I have seen this statement so many (yawn) times, and I know that people intend it to mean good things when they say it… like they are relatively incorruptible, for example… 🙂

It struck me recently, however, as a dangerous idea.

What I mean by dangerous is that it seems to imply that the world is a distasteful, inferior place. Only someone who believes in heaven could even dream to think it. It can be used by the rapture folk to look at nuclear war and say,

Brrrringgg it onnnn.

I say to these honchos (and honchas?):

Hey! I kinda like this world and would like to see it go on as it is for a few more eons at least. I mean, I don’t expect to be around in my present atomic arrangement to see it through, but I’d sorta like to see at least some of my atoms put to decent use. I know that if I were, at this present moment, to cease to need my personal atoms, a few billion of them would end up as part of a spinner dolphin or a humpback whale, a painted lady butterfly, a cobra or a hammerhead shark. In fact, a huge number of those carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, hydrogen and oxygen atoms that currently make up my DNA would end up in the cell nuclei of basically every other living individual on the planet. Cockroaches even. But I wouldn’t want their “little atomic selves” to have their choices restricted to cockroaches and/or amoebae only – or whatever other tiny folk that would survive a human-facilitated Armageddon of any type. That would be so limiting.

Seriously, fellow humanoids, I have actually heard my 7 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 atoms cry out with a single voice:

No Thanks!

I have it on good authority that no single atom or subatomic particle can exist by itself in isolation. The very concept of an isolated “particle” is a big, convenient fib told by scientists of the Western variety to oversimplify the dimly understood universe so that we can do things like chemistry and engineering, i.e. make stuff that separates us from the planet in, say, air-conditioned comfort. The more comfy or distracting crap we build, the more isolated we become from our ecosystem and the less empathy we feel for it. We are – really, folks –  so intimately connected to every other animate and inanimate thing on this beautiful, sapphire-coloured planet that, to my way of thinking:

It is ridiculous to think of ourselves as not of the world.

Imagination, Humanism, Theism and Note-ism

Human imagination, like technology, can be wonderfully helpful or incredibly destructive. A fair amount of what I will eventually have to say on the imagination comes from yet another CBC Ideas broadcast/podcast. Other sources for this and future blogs are described in the paragraph below.

As for the stuff on humanism, theism and any other isms that might come up in this and future posts, I will acknowledge the sources where I can. Throughout my life I have collected thoughts and ideas from various thinkers. I have made notes on these ideas and recorded tapes of radio broadcasts before podcasts made it easier. I have a box of small spiral notepads that go back to when I was 20 – about 48 years ago. Other formats galore, though some have yellowed, remain intact. My mother, Angel, saved two funny letters from sea cadet camp (at 13) and two years of letters I wrote home to Montreal from Trinidad between 1965 and 1967. Lots of scattered notes, names, numbers and ideas. Blah blah ad infinitum.  Continue reading “Imagination, Humanism, Theism and Note-ism”