~~~~~Janitors & Custodians~~~~~

Human Beings. Homo Sapiens. As our overidentifiction with our time bound egos fragments.......our consciousness, our lives, and our planet.......we miss all the life and intelligence that surrounds us. We think too highly of ourselves. We think that we are the culmination of all species. God's masterpiece. But are we really?

There are 14 or so spacetime galaxies in Earth's proximity.......all destined to come together....as one.....and.....our Milky Way galaxy and Andromeda are among them......and as they do 'this dance'.....the surfaces of the habitable planets within their star systems are regularly bombarded with the violence of meteors and radiation.......'clearing their surfaces' for the evolution of new species. This is 'the dance' the known universe does. Everything comes and goes.

Mankind has violently done what it usually takes astronomical events to do....clear the surface of a planet and prepare it for new species to evolve.....the effects of our 'industry' lead 100 species a day into extinction. Death. The universe has created in Mankind the '1st species' to do it's 'dirty work' for it....for in the past.....only supervolcanos and pole shifts.....geological events.....'cleared the deck'....'shook the etch-o-sketch'.......and.....'set the stage'......for the arrival of many new species....a new 'epoch' in the Earth's 'continual drama'.

We are just 'in house' janitors and custodians.....'clear-cutting' the surface of our planet....for the 'next crop' of species. Our time bound egos' blinding us' to the fact that the universe does not hold us 'any more dearly' than it did the dinosaur.....we are the cause of the 6th great extinction of species....on this planet. Mankind is just a 'hired hand'.........a 'temporary species'.....and a 'janitor' of sorts. We are really not a very good 'custodian'............at all.

And the dance goes on......

 

The American Culture of Guns and Fear

  Gun laws work, all you have to do is google Australia to find a shining example (the assault rifle ban worked here for years too with the exception of Columbine), but now the NRA is going to tell us that even though it might have worked 'over there' you'll have to pry my gun out of my cold dead hands to take it from me. I ain't gonna give up my guns. Why in Virginia these days I can even pack heat at the local diner. That's The 2nd Amendment my boy. That's what America is all about. Guns and Fear. Arm the schools. Arm the churches. Arm the parking lots. There will come a time when The Guys in the Black Hats show up with their guns and The Guys in the White Hats better be carrying their pieces too. All very Cowboy and Indian. All very very  Bad Karma.
   There's going to be a lot of Fear and Loathing in the carnival of our political discourse in the coming days and it's going to last more than one or two news cycles. There's a lot of people fed up with guns and the killing, and there's a lot of people paralyzed by that fear and dependent on their guns. Things are going to get real nasty, because we as a nation have more guns than the rest of the world, and we're good at killing each other with them.
   This is going to be just another 'litmous test' of  our American Character. We'll watch the pundits, politicians, and talking heads as we remember the twenty dead 6 year olds.........all this dialogue destined to make the sane sick at heart. And there will be questions........
   Will we expand our mental health programs to the Pre-Gipper Years and beyond? Will the CDC take up gun violence as a health issue like they did car accidents? Will owning guns be regulated like owning cars? Will assault weapons be banned again? Will any of this stop the killing? Not only the fame of mass murder, but the ignominious everyday run of the mill murders we see on the news everyday? Will our sense of community embrace our outcasts so that they would not attack us? Not in the America I know......
   Wars of aggression, torture, drone killings, predatory financial practices, domestic spying: we live in a Kingdom of Corporate Whores, shills for the military-industrial-congressional complex, and we spread death better than the proverbial Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse. All you got to do is watch. It's on your television set everyday, but whomever speaks in favor of guns will do so with a backdrop of 20 dead children's faces.

  
  
    

Democracy versus Capitalism

   Another school shooting. Another American Mass Murder, graded on the amount of indifference and carnage, weighed in upon the scales of fame, and now, the POTUS says that this is unacceptable and we must change. Change what? Gun laws? Mental health programs? The fabric of American community? How deep must the change go for such atrocities to end?
  When democracy finally realizes that capitalism has no values, with the exception of the more, and that our capitalist culture is what denigrates our personal relationships, and the fabric of community, maybe that would be a start of some real change. These days it seems as if all the functions of capitalism, of management itself,  have turned on American society. The financial crisis of 2008. Shipping manufacturing jobs overseas. Capitalism seems to value labor only as a commodity and fails to realize that consumers and employees are essentially human beings, much more than functions and commodities. Americans are citizens, and it's democracy that allows every corporation the right  to exist. Democracy has the ability to pull the plug on any capitalist venture, but our representative government has been bought wholesale by capitalism, ruled by their narrow interests, all covertly administered by corporate lobbyists. Even banning assault weapons is a law we passed that was washed under the bridge.
   Change? Our society is based on competition, individual relationships of mutual usage, all based on greed, on wealth, on fame, and such a social compact has it's very foundation resting upon such violence. No wall streeter went to jail. George Bush is a war criminal and nothing at all happened to him. We started this country on the genocide of the Native Americans and the enslavement of other races. We're the only country to drop atomic weapons on another people. We have a deep history of violence. We're even killing other peoples children with drones, but these days Corporate America not only feeds on the other nations of the world, but on it's own people. Violence seems to be 'the flowering' of who we are. To change that demands more than outlawing assault weapons, requiring background checks, and upping the scope of community health services. Such change requires a change in the way we see ourselves, a change in the way we live.
   You have to find this out for yourself, for there are no political or religious answers. All the people of the world are more than employees, more than consumers, more than accumulated wealth, more than fame, even more than citizens. What are we? We all have but a short time upon this earth to ask these questions, made even shorter by corporate environmental degradation and poisoning: what we call Global Warming. What is the answer?
  

Is The American Dream Only A Castle In The Sand?

"The present civilization is based on greed and individual competition; it can not last forever because it has no intrinsic value. The individual, who has created and is dominated by this civilization, is caught up in accumulation, which is his sole incentive; that is, the individual tries to express his ambition and attain his desired social position through the accumulation of wealth and power. He has therefore set up social distinctions and such a civilization, based on ruthless selfishness, must eventually break down. It is merely a matter of time. As long as you have this conception of individuality, which is but selfishness and greed, no civilization, no structure built on it can last, nor can it free the mind from sorrow."

Jiddu Krishnamurti, Early Writings, Volume 7, Radio Talks, USA and Canada 1932

"Las Vegas is the savage heart of the American Dream." Dr. Hunter S. Thompson