Forgot All About This!

I completely forgot I had this blog! Wow--seems interesting.

I remember I still felt spunky back then---thought I understood life and I kind of did as far as the external world was concerned--but not quite. I had a pretty good job has been married for 25 years and within a few years I lost everything. I had been living a lie.

What was the lie? The lie was that I had allowed myself to be deceived by my wife and myself--our relationship was on the surface adequate but inside it was rotting and I did not see it because I wanted to believe I had a fairly "normal" if pleasantly bohemian and "spiritual" marriage and family. It was all bullshit. In my desire to settle for a stable life I lost my edge. Yes, I had done some nice art work, composed some good music and raised a family somehow, often with finances right on the edge but still I had three grown children and one teen. I felt good I had accomplished something and I did not see the log in my own eye as I was staring at motes in the eyes of others. Yes, I had helped maintain a family with my ex-wife but it was built on sand and I did not know it or understand it--I believed what I wanted to believe and ignored obvious signs. Above all, I believed that there was such a thing as integrity and morality that people tend to gravitate towards--this is not true at this time either in personal, family, business, political relationships. You can trust nothing and no one unless you carefully examine who they are and what they want with clear eyes. Many people have learned it and I was devastated to find that out around the time I turned 60 and believed I would age within the bosom of my family. We Americans have a tendency to live in fantasies and I fit the bill perfectly.

Sometimes it is useful to have the floor drop out from under you. Between the years 2007 and 2013 that pretty much happened in every department of my life, divorce, death, loss, rootlessness, losing all my money and so on--everything that, on the surface you'd have to classify as tragic happened to me including a loss of health and vitality. I moved through all my toxicity and demons and have come out of it a much sadder but more aware and loving person as a result. It forced me to live more in the now than I had before and even now I'm not out of the woods. My life is new, I have a new wife who is showing me, despite my strong resistance what love is and what I never had both because I never had it and because I had cut myself off of love, as far as another human is concerned, though I had had more than a few visions of divine love I didn't think a human love was possible.

I have spent a lifetime falling off of cliffs like the Fool in the Tarot--somehow I was sustained for what reason I am not sure. I still am unable to fully engage in the world in a creative way because my confidence was taken out and shot a few years ago but occasionally comes to life when it's needed particularly when it's time to help others.

Dizzy and Postmodernist

If you follow the news, read blogs, maybe even hang out it is hard to avoid being dizzy. There's so much out there--so much info to process--what can we do?

Those that know me know that I believe we are in a transition period that is completely unprecedented in human history due to the modernist/postmodernist project. That is, modernism which started with Descartes' Discourse on Method, questions tradition and received opinion and searches for a more solid basis for knowledge than tradition. But modernism is really unprecedented in human history (even for the Greeks)--nearly all civilizations believed in some kind of mythical golden age that occurred in the past. In contrast, the modernist movement stated that there was no golden age, quite the opposite, the ancients were, in a profound way, retarded--the golden age was real but it was in the future, a future that we need to run to catch.

Modernism is unsustainable and is already leading to a move away from the very virtues that created modernism. Principally, these virtues are: 1) the use of reason to govern life on an individual and collective level; 2) creating institutions that can maintain a continuous narrative of the various findings of the inquiry into the world using reason; and 3) the exclusion or diminution of anomalous or unmeasurable information from creating the narrative. Postmodernism is kind of the evil-twin of modernism and developed very gradually in the "underground" and then bloomed in the bohemian art movements starting in pre-WWI Europe. Postmodernism is really a kind of a tendency towards creative confusion and openess to emotional experimentation--a postmodernist is one who makes his or her life the experiment, i.e. it is not just an intellectual exercise as it was with Descartes. In a wasy that attitude has permeated our world and really brought us to this period when the findings of modern science and technology have created an dramatically hedonistic world-culture (consumerism is really hedonism by another name) that has caused us to overheat the globe both literally and figuratively.

I think the methods pioneered by modernism and science just ain't cutting it today--massive amounts of information is just lying around unprocessed and undigested and its beginning to stink and create a very toxic situation on both a physical and psychic level.

Postmodernism has the virtue of not only being confused but ridiculous and impossible to maintain. It forces us to move towards finding some profound basis for our existence that is far more than intellectual but combines emotional, spiritual, and intellectual aspects of who we are. Postmodernism forces us into the timeless and the universal for sustenance. The alternative is to search backwards and go towards fundamentalisms of all kinds. The growth and maintenance of Christian, Islamic, Judaic and Hindu fundamentalisms is one of the striking aspects of our age. I don't believe these fundamentalism go very deep--they may be holding patterns because they guarantee at least temporary sanity. You limit the information you process you forbid what you can't understand and can get on with life. There are also all kinds of other sects including sexual-orientation sects, age-group sects (peer group identity movements is kind of irrational if you think about it), intellectual sects including the reductionism, scientism, political ideology as a basis for a kind tribalism (we see this in blogs like Daily Kos), feminism and so on. Almost any kind of grouping has a tendency to develop as a kind of half-hearted cult that provides meaning--usually the allegiances are not very strong and people will shift and try to find belongingness where they can. John Lennon wrote, "whatever gets you through the night is all right" and that observation really makes sense for our age.

Where are we headed? What do I mean by being forced to find a timeless basis for the meaning of life etc. Well, obviously I mean that we need to dig deeper, very deep beyond our current understanding of self and of consciousness. Science itself, though often stuck in institutional scholasticism and endless attempts to enforce orthodoxy, gives us all we need to move on. The implication of modern research into physics, biology, psychology, information science (or at least that part strongly based on systems theory) and so on can provide the basis of a new intellectual framework we can build on. The right questions are being asked and sometimes answered by scientists of all kinds. But it is not enough, in fact, science can only be partially helpful in dealing with the postmodernist dilemma. We need to move towards a re-valuing of experience and consciousness not as a matter for scientific research but a field we explore by ourselves with the aid of teachers who are adept in that area and texts that relate to the inner search. Nothing can work until we learn to trust ourselves and our perception--no intellectual framework can heal our emotional and spiritual pain. No science can deal with a love-affair gone wrong. No science can help us in understanding ourselves from the inside out--that can only be done by direct experience and direct spiritual work. Briefly, I will say to you that in order to find that spiritual work but the idea in your head and let it bounce around that there is a path that works for you out there that may come entirely from inside you or from others you meet. Asset to yourself that this is possible--that healing your hurts and confusion is possible--that the universe has something like gravity that moves us towards clarity of mind and bliss. The reason we aren't falling up to it is that we are holding on with various tentacles to a number of false ideas and material things that once we understand and can locate we can unwind the tentacle and begin to break free. The confusion of postmodernism allows us to come to this.

Looking Up the Skirts of Power

I have a need to address those of you out there who are trying to find ways to create social/political change. To you I say to just forget it. It's not going to happen. I have been looking up the skirts of power for a long time and I know that not many people in the power structure believe anything they say do in other words the whole thing is far too slippery. The Washington power game is one you either play by the rules (they are very strict) or you have to get off the court. "Reality" has no bearing in American politics, reason or analysis of "problems" and "issues" has no bearing--what is all important is to weave a web of cover stories called "conventional wisdom" which you must bow to completely before you can even begin to have a real effect. We have a very complex corporate/state-imperial arrangement which more complex and riddled with factions and micro-factions and shifting alliances the Byzantine Imperial Court--this town (I live within the Beltway) is a miracle of complexity and ambiguity with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge mentality that you have to experience to understand fully, where absolutely nothing is as it seems.

The set up, by its chaotic emergent nature, is extremely stable and robust and becomes more so every day. Thus when the absurd policies of the Bush administration come to light in the media (after the media did everything it could to put a "good" face on it) it has very little effect on the structure; if anything it strengthens it as yet another layer of cover stories are woven into the quilt of the narrative.

Washington thrives on the willingness of normal everyday people to believe the most astonishing lies and fables about the world. This combination makes revolution or radical change impossible because there are no substantial social movements, like the old Labor movement, that offer alternative communities that mean anything. Online "communities" mean very little since everything is done at a distance and real face-to-face community is avoided (largely to avoid losing your cover story--hey Washington completely reflects our individual and collective psyches) largely to avoid real commitment. All is, except for a small cadre of the half-mad, talk and fundraising to lobby Washington to be part of the Byzantine show. The various anti-establishment "movements" have been discounted or are easily co-opted by the power elite. This is why, rightly, the anti-War "movement" was ignored by the media and the powerful. They said, in effect, so what? Did the movement shut anything down, did it have any teeth? No, it was just an opportunity for people to pose and then go back home and sit in front of the computer or the TV afterwards and move on to some serious shopping and vacation planning.

The Revolution ain't going to happen barring major disasters and, in that case, it will be made by those on the right who at least have the sense to own guns.

As I've said many times, it is now time to practice truth and being in the present. This comes through a fearless look at the truth of our own nature and being and the discipline to keep looking. From that fundamental stance strength both personal and collective will emerge and society will change dramatically and easily like a cool wind off the Ocean after a scorching summer day.

U.S. Government Policies and the Subconscious

There has been, for some time, evidence that key elites in Washington and Israel are what was once called criminally insane--I believe that Hitler/Stalin/Mao who created the standard for depravity and evil in the world are the models for these people. I know this sounds like hyperbole to you but I believe it is true. Look at this honest quote that shows the Washington mentality when Secretary Albright was interviewed by Leslie Stahl:

"We have heard that a half million children have died," Stahl said. "I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And -- and you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."

Think of it!!! And think of the result. The result was that people died and suffered only to die and suffer even more a decade later. Why did she conclude it was worth it? Not because she necessarily thought it would, eventually, improve the life of Iraqis, but because it was an assertive and forceful expression (the policy) or U.S. power and might. It is akin to the headmaster of an orphanage beating to death one of the children and asserting that it is right because it severs the use of intimidating the others to stay in line. If you carefully analyze what U.S. policy has become, on a bi-partisan basis, you have to come to the conclusion that the dominant goal of that policy is to intimidate other countries. Now, this is not unusual of a great power in the European tradition and it wouldn't be particularly noteworthy except for a couple of problems. First, and most obvious, it runs directly counter to the stated intentions of U.S. policy, public opinion, and the stated intentions of the Founders; second, it has proven to be clumsily and stupidly applied in a cowardly and half-assed manner (by historical standards); and third, it runs counter to any rational analysis of the actual world situation and future needs of the United States as a government and a people.

Given the opportunity, this government (I include all of the Washington elite and media) would commit almost any atrocity--I believe the "decency" of American policy makers so much talked about by the media, by Washington insiders is a misreading of human nature in general and the individuals in particular. I've met some very violent characters who are very personable and sympatico--but when you cross a certain line something else happens. I remember Norman Mailer once noting that one of the most remarkable traits of Americans is their claim to wanting to do the "right thing". This may be changing now as the population is increasingly brutalized. This notion of being virtuous and right, despite the evidence, is very interesting. Nowhere, in the mainsteam media, have I seen an expression of regret and shame over the possibility of 400,000 to 900,.000 deaths in Iraq or the complete destruction of Iraqi civil society that the U.S. has brought to one of the oldest continuous civilizations in the world. And nowhere do I see a clear-headed analysis of the underlying reasons why the U.S. blundered (again on a bipartisan basis) into this insanity of a war. The irony is, and I can't emphasize this too much, is that the criticisms written about U.S. policy during Vietnam and after by alternative scholars and writers were just as valid today as they were then--if fact, the analysis was deeper then that it is now, as I recall, by that same community which now tends to demonize Bush/Cheney and imagines that a change of regime will change the fundamental policy.

I say Bush/Cheney attitudes (force first, intimidation second, and diplomacy to make it look good) symbolize and personify the subconscious attitudes of most Americans. We like to think we are civilized because we put on a veneer of smiles and optimism and cooperative attitudes but the subconscious contains other kinds of creatures. In some forms of psychoanalysis the things lying in the subconscious are not necessarily "repressed" urges but, "undeveloped" personality fragments that never were able to find full expression--thus in certain situations we may each act in very immature and undeveloped ways. Sometimes this comes out in sexual expression, particularly in the whole army of paraphylias that are well-represented on the Internet, and also in situations of intimate relationships, someone saying something insulting, cutting you off on the road, and so on. These situation will all evoke a relatively unsophisticated response because whatever aspects of the personality these things represented were not brought out (educare) in our upbringing. This is why I say that in order for things to improve we need to understand our psychic make-up individually and collectively. This is hard at first but one gets the knack of it if one is supported by others--otherwise we just fall back into our habitual patterns.

I say all this because I think it is important to understand that the Israeli tendency towards ever-increasing brutality tells us something. They use the Holocaust as a justification for whatever they do. We use both 9/11 and the fact we believe that we are the saviors of the world to justify whatever we do. This is a collective psychological illness of both these societies--it is an illness because if anyone rationally pursued the statement: "Past actions made against us and "good" intentions justify any action and any sort of brutality even in situations that may have nothing to do with those past actions" there is no way that any rational person could justify that--yet, rational people in the press, in government do actually justify that statement every day.

The Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11. The Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Think of the madness of it! Joe beat me up last week, so that justifies the fact that I beat the crap out of Jane because she insulted me and refused my kind offer to make love to her (and everyone knows what a privilege that is).

Islamic Radicalism and Us

I believe that there are three fonts of radical Islamism/Islamic Fascism today. One is the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt, two is the Saudi regime in Saudi Arabia and, three is in Pakistan. I believe all three states are deeply involved in funding, supporting and manipulating Islamic movements throughout the world. I think there is plenty of evidence connecting, for example, the Saudia Arabia and Pakistan to Al-Qaida both in creating it in the first place and nurturing, aiding, directing it to perform terrorist acts in the West. Though this opinion is somewhat controversial plenty of analysts have connected those two countries to Al-Qaida. Bin Laden, if he is still alive, and his top people are in Pakistan as are the Taliban they were allowed to escape, from Afghanistan, through a deal with ISI who are largely calling the shots in Afghanistan as they have for a couple of decades.

If it were not for nations supporting terrorism I doubt it would get very far--there would be a different kind of radical Islam akin to Hamas and Hezbollah which are not, in my view, terrorist organizations primarily but rather organizations that use so-called terrorism as a military weapon because they face overwhelming Israeli military superiority. Hezbollah and Hamas have no choice as full spectrum organizations whose main function is to create a convivial society in the face of massive corruption on the part of "respectable" officials (Government of Lebanon and PLO) and, at the same time, military opposition by the Israeli government who want corrupt politicians in countries around them that they can bribe and threaten.

Al-Qaida in contrast only exists to carry out terrorist acts, which is why I believe they are largely directed by intelligence services of the above-mentioned countries. The U.S. and possibly European and certainly Israeli intelligence also support the existence of Al-Qaida (though I do not believe they "guide" it) because it gives them and enemy that will never go away (since they are, largely, agents of "friendly" countries). This explains the notion of permanent war the very state of social reality that Orwell warned us about. Permanent war is the perfect situation for the institutionalization of a permanent international oligarchy. Since this "War on Terror" is so unpredictable it cannot suffer from the disease of diplomacy as the Cold War ultimately did--it seemed logical to the public that, after a while, to negotiate with the enemy rather than risk planetary extinction. There are no such pressures on the War on Terror--there are no real consequences to continuing the war other than a permanent financial drain and, as long as there are bread and circuses, no one will care in the short and medium term.

I would refer, ultimately, to many statements made after 9/11 by news commentators and politicians on all parts of the political spectrum welcoming a "sense of unity" in the American people like it was some kind of Godsend; furthermore, commentators were almost giddy at the idea that the struggle against terrorism eliminated moral ambiguity and enabled us to think in terms of "good guys" and "bad guys" which is a huge psychological relief to the problems of post-modernism. Newscasters were ready to present themselves as soldiers for the cause, many young people volunteered to join the military. Prison camps in Afghanistan had cell-blocks named after countries wherein terrorist incidents had been inflicted on Americans, people urged the military to have the names of loved ones inscribed on bombs destined to slaughter Iraqis, people were rounded up simply for looking Islamic and so on. War offers society a relief from internal contradictions both politically and socially and it is my belief from reading the writings of neo-cons with great interest in the 90's that they believed that the survival of the West was in danger not through external threat but through a "loss of nerve", through a descent into sensualism and moral depravity, through a loss of respect for authority, through the loss of a collective sense of purpose. They believed and still believe that the West needs to find its discipline and virtue through struggle. At the time I agreed with their analysis to some degree; I differed from the neo-cons in that I did not believe such a return to virtue should occur through warfare but through spiritual and religious renewal through religious experiences as described by William James in Varieties of Religious Experience. I thought that when faced with the emptiness of consumerism people would begin to peel away from it as an ideology. Because the neo-cons are essentially atheists it is clear they would not want what I wanted.

At the time (the 90's) I believed there would be a smooth transition to spiritual values through the meeting of the great external threat I believed we faced: global warming and environmental degradation. I felt the struggle to create a convivial life in the face of these threats would be a creative struggle that would, in the end, demand a return to the extolling of a virtuous life and social cohesion through more communal activities in place of the current "cocooning" that is occurring in the McMansions and on-line activities that keep people from truly interacting. I was wrong and naive. The reason why global warming is and was and will be largely ignored in the U.S. is that the current rulers need to have the public massively consume and afraid in order to keep their incomes coming in. "It's the economy, stupid" is the mantra--if doing something about global warming would lower the income of the rich by 5% this would be intolerable.

So, I finally came to the conclusion that the problems of our world are largely about the lack of virtue and social responsibility by the elites and the rich. Societies have always been dependent on the condition and culture of the elites--what "the people" think and do is, historically speaking, largely irrelevant--it is clear they can be manipulated today perhaps even better than in days of yore. Most people like and require authority and a mythical framework within which they can live--making public policy does not fit. Making public policy is up to the elites--how they feel and think about these issues will determine our futures. Before you jump on me on the elites, I don't mean they are a secret organization I just mean that they are those who are most powerful and rich. I pretty much got my POV on the state of modern elites from the book The Revolt of the Elites.

On the Other Hand

If we really look carefully at the situations we live in can we really see anything wrong or untrue? All around us is correct and precisely what we need. This POV is radical. Most people when confronted with this talk about violence, abuse etc. and then say that if we are not pissed off about the state of the world we will do nothing to benefit it. Not so, say the sages. In fact, being pissed off wastes energy, clouds up the mind and takes on an endless trip to precisely the same place we started from as was demonstrated by George Orwell in his book Animal Farm. As Peter Townsend wrote

"Meet the new boss,
Same as the old boss"

The same mentality of anger and need to be right will create the same situation with cosmetic changes whether coming from the left, right or anywhere in-between. Something deeper has to change. Unless we confront the underlying problem we face as a civilization we are trapped. We are the enemy--inside of us, at this point in history, is where the real problem lies. It seems we have no choice at this time but face ourselves--it is the only ground that we can act on. There are some obvious reasons for that at the moment. The current political/economic/cultural forces at work are so powerful, so overwhelming, and so totalitarian in their scope that conventional political or even military opposition is impossible without damaging things further. Technically the current regime in power is illegitimate because it lacks moral grounding. It seems obvious that no morality seems to be recognized except as propaganda to fool the masses. We live in a Machiavellian world with plenty of cushioning for those higher up on the hierarchy to pretend everything is "normal".

There is a great moral vacuum at the center of everyone's life that is covered up by an ever increasing stream of amusement and noise. This is, by the way, true of all classes of society and POVs--those that listen to Rush Limbaugh, Al Gore, Fox News, NPR, Noam Chomsky and even the Dalai Lama or any other spiritual leader. We fill our selves with way more information than we can possibly assimilate and that creates internal noise. The internal noise, in turn, masks the fundamental instability of our cultural situation or positive (dharmic) role.

The first step is to realize that the emperor has no clothes. There is no fundamental basis for our ethical life that we can know for certain unless we have been strictly brought up in a traditional society--even then the contradictions of modernism will drop on you like a fog by just going on the internet.

The second step is to realize, by necessity, that since there is no external or cultural basis for morality that we have to find it in our being since our awareness of being alive is the only certainty we really have. From that point we can then realize that all that really exists when we are quiet and not creating and recreating the stories that whirl around our heads (since the very essence of our current culture is to be surrounded by a whirlwind of stories sometimes deemed information) is the present moment and our witnessing of this moment right now.

The third step is to find, on the basis of our direct perception of this moment those cultural artifacts that make sense in terms of the essential being we experience in this moment. These artifacts can be the basis of a new emergent human culture. On a realistic level we know that this process is bound to be error-filled because we are used to using internal narratives to establish being rather than direct experience.

Having said all that I can only say that some kind of yoga or spiritual practice is the only thing that can contain and nurture these steps thought we may have to remind ourselves that any spiritual path and scriptures are only signs. Religion has debased itself by making the signs into gods and often removing any sense of divinity from its practice. Christianity seems to have attempted and succeeded in that very well but the others have done fairly well as well particularly Islam and Judaism. Yet this situation is entirely correct and perfect for us right now. If things were not as they were it is pretty clear the increasing focus on spiritual growth and yoga would not be there.

Today is the Only Day--the View From Here

I ignored this blog for most of this year while I adjusted my life in ways I didn't understand very well while I was making these changes. I was trying, usually unsuccessfully, to be in the moment but I was in the moment enough to make the changes I needed to make and faced my fears. I look forward to facing them everyday now--if that happens. If not, then I have a day of joy or moments of joy interspersed with confusion, with battling thoughts with impulses to do this or that. Today, I realized that I had a lot of thoughts about all the things I should be doing; also, about what I didn't do that I should have. I should have not allowed my thoughts to distract me doing quite so many moments during meditation. I should have gotten up earlier and, in fact, had no right to feel joyful today I mean I hadn't accomplished anything, in fact, I never accomplish anything etc. You get the drift. Our minds, often become possessed by these urges to experience pain in all its variety--Eckhart Tolle calls it the "pain body", a very useful concept. This "being" is very clever, as all beings are when it comes to survival, and seeks out pain and then "handles" the pain. It causes the problem then takes the credit for "solving" the problem. I may think I "wasted" my day and feel pain but then my pain body turns around and dresses up like a sexy woman and pulls out a bag of comforts and asks me to choose one. I get the "comfort" as a reward for having allowed the pain body to live in my suffering and rather than wait for me to get fed up with it, I am offered something or other that will cause me to turn off my discriminating intelligence that would normally appear and short circuit the problem by turning myself down and/or off with escapes which would have the seeds of future suffering. I would, when the pain body had an opening the next day, become upset that I had done something escapist rather than either face my pain directly using the discriminating intelligence or hand not accomplished something "useful" instead.

We all knot ourselves up sometimes in very intricate and complex ways sometimes in very straightforward ways. Really the knots are not so hard to unravel or avoid. We need not suffer so much--it is that pain-body that seeks to come out at those times it has nothing to do with anything real. The pain-body can disappear and even die. It is not real--it is a self-perpetuating virtual being completely dependent on our attention. The more attention we give to our pain and suffering the worse it is. That doesn't mean, for example, that if we experienced suffering that we have to "forget" about it. It happened and it shaped us to some degree but it is past and gone--it is, essentially, a story or history--an interesting subject not unlike some battle in WWII but nothing that ought to involve our attention beyond that. Here right now, it might be good to give an account of that suffering, as an illustration, again as a story mental to enhance this moment we are, after all, artists of our own life. For us in the West we are blessed with this notion of "the artist" which is sometimes just full of shit but in it's essence has some great spiritual power--I leave it to you to ponder that.

There is personal suffering then there is the large stage of history. All of us are involved and the story is very hard to easily follow--we live in a deep reality that has depth in every direction. Existence itself only appears shallow because we are shallow in our awareness. I sometimes lose myself in the contemplation and in researching all kinds of things that are going on in the world--it is so rich, so astonishing, there are so many threads, tendencies, possibilities, conflicts, opportunities and, above all, paradoxes to put to shame the full collection of imaginative stories ever published or told by any human beings and it is all happening right now at this moment! To not be excited about all this is seemingly impossible.

There are some trends that appear from my vantage point to be dominant. This George Carlin routine may have it right. To be sure, Carlin is pissed off but his goal is to destroy illusions and illusions are what America is all about, i.e., "the American Dream--you have to be asleep to believe it". Carlin never was a genuine hippie in the sense that of "hipness". Hippies later came to mean spaced out and incompetent weaklings who just took drugs--that isn't what hippies were about before they became a weird kind of symbol for rebellioius youth. In fact, hippies were street smart (they had to be) and were searching for truth (in all the wrong places) but at least searching for truth and authenticity and *not* escapism. Drugs were recreational or something that was meant to open up heterfore unacknowledged states of consciousness. That some ended up addicted or using to escape was not the initial impulse.

To digress, there are two issues that show that our civilization has become highly toxic and beginning to display serious behavior problems such that almost any condemnation of it has merit:

Issue number 1 is the ongoing environmental degradation. It is irrelevant whether or not global climate changes or other looming ecological disasters will come sooner or later or will be severe or less severe--the point is that there is a strong possibility that within a generation that serious disasters could occur which could or could have been averted had there been a small adjustment in priorities and life-style. In fact the changes that could have been made would have made life more elegant perhaps slower paced and probably more interesting as attention would have shifter from large scale industrial enterprises to more knowledge intensive and creativity-intensive operations. The change could have been gradual and led by people that knew something about the world other than how to manipulate the public to buy ever increasingly mass quantities of whatever can make the highest profit. I have a reason to believe that alternative energy sources have been discouraged and deliberately suppressed in order to enrich the current people at the top.

Issue number 2 is the so-called "War on Terrorism". When there is a war usually a bunch of soldiers invade a country and conquer the land often times doing a little looting and worse (sorry kids but all soldiers do that) and it is very obvious when it happens. Not so our new "War". There is absolutely no proof that I've seen that anyone that the government claims is an enemy is an enemy. It's all based on assertions by people I know for a fact mean me no good and, in fact, hate everything about me (if they bothered with me at all) and if things continue as they have will put me in a concentration camp if I'm lucky. From my point of view as an old hipster the whole thing is a scam from beginning to end. There is little truth in it. It is like the street. Police get pressure to crack down on drugs so the cops go to the big dealers and ask them to rat on some poor patsy who all of a sudden finds out that the big-boys want to cut him into a big-time drug deal. Naturally he gets caught and the cops relish in their big bust, the dealers lay low for a few weeks and then are back in business as are the cops (I should say "some cops" or the powerful in the Department because most cops are not on the take) taking the kick-backs. That's the way it works. In the same way "terrorists" are usually intelligence assets deployed to some cut-out organization who recurit genuine "believers" who are clearly either demented or somewhat retarded like Richard Reed or Zacarias Moussaoui. Also there are the traditional patsies like Mohammed Atta and most of the other alleged 9/11 hijackers who, in fact, are intelligence assets who wander around from place to place following orders they don't understand while being supplied with lots of money for parties and whatever vices they have (they are usually required to be suggestible and morally weak) only a step above the Richard Reeds.

The tragedy of 9/11 is not only that nearly 3,000 people perished but that the American people fell for the official story. Almost everything about the official story is pathetically weak and uninspired--sort of like "my dog ate my homework" kind of story. While I believe that Jack Kennedy was not killed by a lone assassin, I also believe that a cursory look at the evidence would show that a somewhat far-fetched case could be made for Oswald being the lone-gunman (if you ignore motivation). In 9/11 there is no case at all to be made for the government's story--the story is utterly impossible because there is no there there--in short, no evidence.

I have no interest here in convincing anyone that the government is lying--you can believe the government but if you look at the evidence or lack of evidence I believe you will not longer be able to do that. I don't talk about it and avoid writing about it because it seems you are either the sort of person that believes authority or you're not. I personally wish that we could believe authority--I believe we ought to live in a social structure wherein authority and wisdom can co-exist but it just is not the case today. What saddens me most out of all this is the phenomenal lack of critical thinking that is not only in the masses but, more tragically, in the "educated" classes particularly those that identify as leftists.