Population

Our Government still supports the policy to increase our population... I guess its an economically sound strategy based on numbers; Bigger markets are more competitive, more money can be made from them. Why worry about the standard of living or about a sustainable tomorrow...

I have some reading to do... perhaps I'll start here:

http://www.population.org.au/

A ladder to the sky

He heard it said, ‘mind your left side, what is held tight will eventually go, what is let free will hold.’

And he, as a young man, let go; he let things be as they were and built nothing, knowing a house of cards. He wandered wherever he may and came upon a field where a tall tree grew and rested under its branches. He thought he knew that since everything came from nothing only to later return again to nothing, holding possessions and building security was a vain project set to fail. So even though he acted responsibly for those he knew he took no personal responsibility preferring instead to dream.

But then one day, out of the blue vast empty sky, he spied a girl who could fly. And although the shade of the tree still blocked the heat of the sun and provided some degree of comfort, he all of a sudden wished he had built a ladder to the sky.

Is it right to eat meat?

While it seems natural to ask someone why they chose to be vegetarian many would consider it strange to hear someone ask another ‘why do you choose to eat meat’?

In this culture it’s generally taken to be the norm that people will eat meat unless they choose otherwise. I think this is why I first found the vegetarian products that imitated meat to be a bit bizarre. I saw them somehow as reaffirming the above idea that meat was taken as the norm with vegetarianism seen as derivative.

In fact sometimes people who advocate meat eating argue that eating meat is natural. However this argument seems flawed; All we have to do to question its validity is to ask ourselves can we imagine that there could be a society that survived and thrived who subsisted wholly on vegetables with no meat which could do so successfully so that no one living in that society remembered ever having eaten meat... If we can imagine this to be possible, and can imagine that this society could thrive and be sustainable, then it follows that eating meat is not necessarily natural. This is true even in the face of arguments aimed to convince us that eating meat was necessary during some part of humanities evolution. For even if this is true it doesn’t follow that eating meat is the primary natural state or that it should be. At this point one can see that the claim that eating meat is natural is actually a claim that people should eat meat.

In fact it follows that there are two questions that are equally important firstly, ‘why do you chose not to eat meat?’ and secondly ‘why do you chose to eat meat?’

Yet all this said thus far, what is it about eating or not eating meat that makes this a moral question that requires reasons and/or justifications? The usual response involves something akin the sanctity of life and yet isn’t it true that we live in a world wherein life feeds on life. This is a natural phenomenon and thus somehow too this sort of response doesn’t seem to add up...

That all said I do think that today’s mass production cannot be taken as natural and certainly in this culture the amount of meat that is consumed seems possible only due to the implementation of technology and production. Mass production, while bolstering the ability to slaughter and prepare more meat then ever before also has the potential to make more vegetarian products easily available. So the question of whether the edifice of production causes unnecessary cruelty for nothing more than our culinary pleasure seems like a reasonable and imperative question that lends weight to the idea that as equally true that one should ask why they chose not to eat meat one should also ask why they do.

Revisiting faith and uncertainty

Why do people seem to be so afraid to accept that there might not be an ultimate answer, no capital T Truth, no fundamental purpose or meaning to life?

While it is comforting to believe that there is a divine plan, especially when times seem unfair and life makes no sense, believing that there must be a meaning which we don’t understand doesn’t make life any less uncertain.

If life does have a meaning it is still uncertain and if it doesn’t it is certainly uncertain.

If life doesn’t have an ultimate meaning this doesn’t mean that there’s no such thing as truth (little t truths), or beauty or suffering or for the need to try to understand what life is all about. Moreover this doesn’t dismiss the notion of faith for in the case of faith uncertainty is part and parcel of what it’s all about (we wouldn’t need faith if the meaning of life was certain and well understood).

No words

And so I write words, adding to the never ceasing avalanche of typeface spelt out in an unreal landscape, so many signs signifying, so many meanings lost in translation, and yet I add them… wondering why I am moved to participate? Perhaps it’s a longing for life which is contradictorily held at a distance? A longing to create something of value that will shine on and yet it seems that I can only add to the unceasing torrent of people with too much to say?
I really like cats; They speak yet they use no words.

A can of beans

Little biddy me
Dislikes rules of oppression
The laws that bind
Especially when its the religious kind
And the tides rise
It’s a circus out there
A veritable freak show
And a can of beans

Dissident America

Dissident America 

Dreaming the dream

You can't live in the present forever

Trading in flesh

Counting the cash

Like crawfish, back on out of it

It's a sad and beautiful World

Working for scratch

Out here in the garbage

A sad and beautiful World

(Influenced and 'cut-up' from Down by Law by Jim Jarmusch)

Are you a Cosmic Schmuck?

It sometimes amazes me how certain people are that their way of seeing is the right and only way. Again and again wars are fought and conflicts erupt and hardly ever do people pause and ask themselves what is actually going on. Everyone seems to suggest that they are compassionate yet it quickly follows that they are of course right, and never does it come to pass that the contradiction inherent in this is acknowledged.

For we’re right and they’re wrong they say, and that’s how it is, and it will never be any other way. 

Never is it suggested that they might be incorrect, or even more subtly that there might be things that they don't know. Even when it’s true that somebody is at fault, when it’s true that the bombing of innocents is unforgivable and abhorrent, never is it asked why and never is the actual fabric of the conflict addressed. Instead it seems people are more interested in being or projecting that they are right (see also Politicians). Yet the more they puff themselves up with self-righteousness the more fuel is thrown onto the fire. And when weapons of any type are introduced into the fray, whether they are conventional arms or diplomatic and economic sanctions, then the stakes only ever get higher, and the conflict becomes a raging torrent. And the worse it gets the more people feel the need to claim that they could never possibly have been wrong, for by this point it's all out of control, the sides are drawn, and never shall compromise be valued.

And as the dispute turns into a holy war it becomes apparent that those who try to compromise end up crushed under the wave of right and wrong, black and white, us and them. And the poor fools that suggest any other scheme, who claim that we could pause for a moment and reconsider, only end up powerless to make any difference at all. They are dubbed terrorists or sympathisers thereof...

And all the while people forget that it began with their own opinion, their own (or their society/cultures) point of view versus another that conflicted or was merely different.

It has been said over and over that the opinions you have are simply opinions, that "the map isn't the territory," (Map-territory relation) that we shouldn't be so judgemental and we should love our fellow human, that understanding can make a difference. Yet despite the voices of many these ideas are drowned out by the sheer volume of those who never doubt for a moment that they are right.

Is it simply about power? For taking the middle ground is a dangerous position. In recent times America, it seems, had to show its strength and couldn't possibly succumb to weakness against the ominous threat that it faced, for seeking understanding leaves the seeker vulnerable to being bludgeoned by the righteous opinion of others. Yet does it really follow that it’s simply better to take an absolute stance, to be uncompromising and forget about the idea of resolution?

How many people can admit that they don't know?

I am a 'Cosmic Schmuck' (see: Robert Anton Wilson). I'm not always right and I am sometimes in error. I even find it difficult to discern when I am and when I'm not.

Are You a Cosmic Schmuck?

To reassess the terrain by acknowledging that interpretations change, that opinions differ and that sometimes we are wrong doesn’t necessarily mean that we can’t have an opinion. In fact, it could be said that its impossible not to take a stance since taking the option of not deciding is itself a position and it clearly isn’t always the best one. Yet given this, acknowledging that your opinion is just an opinion means hopefully that one endeavours to make an informed decision. It also means that judgements are not made for the sake of judging but for the sake of understanding.

It is we who judge and we do so relative to what and who we are.

Knowing that we all hold opinions that we sometimes later disagree with, and that we never have the objective complete truth, hopefully means that we can make an effort to understand even more so. Not having an absolute answer doesn’t mean that we cannot have any understanding. For in many ways it’s not the answers, or judgements, or beliefs that matter but is instead the questions we ask that lead us to form them. Although, this being said, it is the answers, judgements and truths that we adhere to that form a scaffold around the process of making judgements, and if they are held rigidly then they also restrict the range of acceptable conclusions.

In the field of human conflict what this means is that we hopefully take the trouble to question what we believe about a person or culture and hopefully this leads to a better understanding of the conflict that has occurred. Sometimes it is necessary to take a firm line, yet it seems that often this is held due to a dedication to being right (or to avoiding being wrong) without realising that it’s probably more important to make a decision for the right reasons than for righteous ones. Yet, again and again, when it comes to conflict the need to be right overwhelms the need to do right. The propensity to judge becomes more necessary than the propensity to understand and things are only made worse when certainty becomes the primary goal and prize.

I am a cosmic schmuck.

“My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.”
- Robert Anton Wilson.

Evil Plan (tm): Love is the only way.

Your objective is simple: Soul Accumulation.

Your motive is a little bit more complex: Love (Yes, it works)

Stage One

To begin your plan, you must first expose a pope. This will cause the world to sense a grave disturbance in the force, frightened by your arrival. Who is this really bad guy? Where did they come from? And why do they look so good in classic black?

Stage Two

Next, you must desecrate the internet. This will all be done from a island of mu, a mysterious place of unrivaled dark glory. Upon seeing this, the world will spontaneously combust, as countless hordes of winged monkeys hasten to do your every bidding.

Stage Three

Finally, you must tauntingly wave your secret death ray, bringing about an end to sanity. Your name shall become synonymous with metal, and no man will ever again dare make you clean your room. Everyone will bow before your mind-boggling insanity, and the world will have no choice but to fall madly in love with you.

see also:
Evil plan @ dark sites

Incomplete

There is an idea that that we can be 'one', an idea that suggests that we can experience full awareness of ourselves and the world and be at peace. However, in the world where we live, a world that is beyond ourselves and our creations and yet is forever shaped by our vision of it (and so it is named ‘our’ world), it seems that we are as yet to discover the way to perceive, to see, to think, and to feel that would allow us to fulfill a dream of integration... a dream that really seems to be about integrating with ourselves?

The World is malleable but firm. It is we who name it and decipher what we think it means, and yet the World resists, for it’s always a step beyond our understanding, and we never really see the forest through the trees. We live in the bounds of our own cast off reflections and see only our own vision of the world scaffolded by our languages and descriptions and the limitations of how we all are. It is the World that we see yet we always see it our way.

So is it possible to ‘be’ so that thought can co-mingle with one’s very experience and infuse with it?
Yet perhaps our experience of separation is merely an illusion, so that instead thought and the World are woven together already, the experience of separation here is then just another part of the whole.
But then what could it mean to separate a whole into parts?
Perhaps the whole isn’t ordered and complete (closed, defined, being)... maybe it’s disordered and incomplete (open, generative, becoming)...

Just like my thoughts