I'm so far right, I'm left.
I truly feel your pain. I left a good rant on this subject at
The Oil Drum | Discussions about Energy and Our Future already today (its been raining for 2 weeks here).
onafritz: the subject is..umm...oh yeah, "Was David outta line for picking on Stanton 3 weeks in a row?" I don't think so. Mostly, they were kinda snide comments, but the kind of snide comments we all make and hopefully learn to get over.
I'm even MORE paranoid than the rest of you, and I can find patterns in everything. If I didn't trust that David was such an anarchist, I would say that his EDH is part of a conspiracy to hide the true nature of physics from the world. (Let's not go down that rabbit
hole for the moment...)
Brandon: I'm with ya. There truly is some evil about. I believe that evil is when people take action based upon Blind Faith. Whether it is blind faith in democracy, capitalism, corporations, gods, or gurus, if you do something that you don't truly know the cause of your actions, or you believe something to be true simply because of peer pressure or old prejudices, and you take action based on those prejudices and pressures, then you are acting in an evil way. Suicide bombers do it all the time. That's why it's evil. Not because of the destruction itself, we do that all the time when we buy teakwood for our boats, or Happy Meals at McDonalds. Knowing the results of our actions, and seeking a truly Net Creative way of living, either individually or collectively, can remedy many of the ills we fight over.
Last but not least, DBTrek:
I know what you mean about being accused of some kind of slant. We all tend to try to stereotype people in order to save the time it takes to get to know them. I am as guilty of that as anyone. You try to defend an entertaining, high quality newscast, and the next thing you know, you're a right wing nutcase!
I'm not saying that their idea of quality goes beyond the appearance, though.
I'm a gun-toting, psychopathic, farm-raised lunatic, and I get accused of being a leftwing liberal on my blog because I think that we need to care a little more about our land and how people live on it. Go figure.
As to the anger we all are feeling:
We all have some ego to give us a reason to pursue our own desires, but we cannot ever forget that we are not the specially crafted, pristine creation of some imaginary sky buddy. We are symbiots, with alien organisms inside and outside our bodies, dependent upon the world around us for a future. The arrogance of Manifest Destiny thinking has wrought horrible tragedies upon the human race for many years, and there are powerful men who take advantage of our tragedy of the Commons. These men are enabled by the American public, living the Suburbia Dream of mindless consumption, voting for whosoever promises them further dreams.
We are starting to wake up, but it will take time. Many are learning the hard way through upside-down mortgages, high fuel costs, and dead sons and daughters (whether in Iraq or on highways going nowhere fast). There is something fundamentally wrong in this country, and it isn't as simple as 'left' or 'right'. The nearest I can guess, it is a failure of emotional discipline. In the past, the Churches and Temples were the biggest spectacles of entertainment, distracting people just long enough to take a break from labors and pay homage. Once the distractions became commercialized and our lizard brains took over control of our living ego, there was no longer any focus for communities to cooperate in the enterprise of Life. Competition became the norm, instead of cooperation.
That competition feeds over into everything we think and do, from signing our children up for daycare to picking a nursing home for grandpa. Instead of engaging in conversations, we spew epithets and bumper sticker slogans at each other.
We have a hard time coming up to deal with, the Trifecta of Tragedy: Political Idiocracy, Climate Change, and Peak Oil. In the meantime, the UFO subject and the way the government deals with secrets might just open up enough for us to crack into a shell that has been built around our lives, keeping us dependent upon fossil fuels in order to enrich a few powerful men, keeping us from communicating with possible advanced cultures who would either help us or harm us, and keeping us from finding out enough information to possible throw off the chains of myths and ignorance forever.
We aren't going to crack that shell if we don't keep our powder dry, our guns oiled, and our eyes sharp, watching each others' backs.
Everything you think you know is probably either inadequate, disinformation, or a sales pitch.
Books all around:
"Crossing the Rubicon"
"The Conspirators"
"Armed Madhouse"
"The Flouride Deception"
"A Language Older Than Words"
"Endgame"
"The Last Rays of Ancient Sunlight"
"Confessions of An Economic Hit Man"
"Collapse"
"Out There"
"The Hunt for Zero Point"
"What Are People For?"
"The Lost Language of Plants"
"The Greening of America"
"Empire of Oil" (c. 1958 by Harvey OConnor)
"The Poisonwood Bible"
Don't think you have blind faith?
Go to
http://www.microsoftsucks.com and read about it yourself.
Oh, one final note to David and Gene: You guys are great. I would send you some FRN's, but there is no mailing address listed.
(hey pressing 'rolleyes is great isn't it?)
.
