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I Walk The Line
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
It’s a beautiful fall morning here in Seattle. I just walked myself down to a little local diner and had a nice breakfast by myself. This is my first fall out here in the Pacific Northwest and though it is gorgeous in its own right, I have to say that it is far less dramatic than those of the East Coast. Maybe we’ll hit that point a little later in the year though - I hope so.
My job has been keeping me extremely busy and exhausted during the weekdays. I work four ten hour days in a row, and then have Friday, Saturday, Sunday off. Sometimes the work we do (organic gardening & landscaping) is rather light and some days - like yesterday - it is very heavy. Yesterday I moved between two and three cubic yards of mulch via plastic garbage bucket down two short steep hills, some slippery rock and over the side of a ledge. It was exhausting but it’s also very satisfying to be able to push yourself physically like that, I think.
That schedule and workload have been making it so that I’m little able to contribute much to this website during the week. So I’ve been having to write out most of my posts ahead of time, and then have them publish in a trickle while I’m busy. It’s not what I would prefer, because I have seen that the conversations that result here have a tendency to get a bit more - I don’t know how to say this - extreme while I am away. It’s not that I mind a good knock-down drag-out investigation of differing viewpoints, but I do think there are better and worse ways to go about doing it.
Towards that end, I wanted to try to steer things in a bit better of a direction, now that I find myself with some free time again. There was a comment left recently by a reader named “springhuman” that I think sheds some light on a topic I haven’t been addressing: why am I going on and on about certain topics?
He’s been veering off into this primitivist/technocracy avenue, as I see it, for several reasons: he’s a thinker/seeker, has found these ideas to be interesting and fruitful for his own life process, you guys going on, and his new job. (hope I’m close Tim…?)
Yeah, you are extremely close. I saw this comment before breakfast and spent some time thinking about it on my walk. And what I realized about myself was this: I tend to use what amount to conscious ideas (philosophies, concepts, etc) in a very unconscious way. It may be that when I go on and on about certain topics that I am not (or at least not exclusively) simply investigating those ideas for the sake of themselves. I am doing it for the sake of my Self.
Let me try to break it down by using the last month or so as an example. I first got lit up by this topic of technocracy (lower case “T”), or the scientific management of human populations - you might also call it scientific fascism. And from that vantage point, I became able to see certain trends within that stream and how they dovetail into the anarchist philosophies of primitivism. Now, these ideas are all well and good in and of themselves (actually, I have been arguing that they are NOT well and good, but hopefully you catch what I’m saying so far anyway), but what do they mean to me?
The answers to that question are a bit hard to unravel, since, as I said, they are mostly unconscious. But it’s worth spending the time I think to hopefully pull them up and see what I have gotten from them. Maybe some other people will share what they have gotten from it as well…
I don’t exactly know where to start, because this isn’t really a logical or linear process. It has more to do with big pulses of energy and patterns that I have been living over and over in my life. I have come from a place where I’ve always had kind of a problem with authority. Not for the sake of simple rebellion, but because I’ve tended to feel like authority (in the abstract) doesn’t understand or represent me as a unique individual. Or maybe it is that I think I know better than authority because I can see things that they cannot. As a result, I dropped out of college and bounced from place to place, in terms of jobs, physical locations, emotions, psychology, worldviews, relationships - you name it. My lack of respect for authority has in one sense left me rudderless, and in another equally real sense has allowed me a certain amount of freedom to become my own authority.
What does this have to do with technocracy or primitivism? For those who don’t think it’s obvious, I will spell it out. Technocracy seems to suggest that some people know better (the all-encompassing authority of the expert), while primitivism on the surface seems to say: no you don’t! The knot that I have been trying to unravel has to do with the motives of both philosophies, and breaking down what they really are saying - if for noone else than for me. I’m not saying this to start another big academic conflict about the nature of yadda-yadda. I am saying this for the purposes of self-reflection: but primitivism seems to take this quasi-throwback egalitarian viewpoint of everyone being of equal worth within this tribal structure and that fulfilling us. But it does so by saying - like technocracy seems to - that they know better. That in order for us all to be equal, you have to admit that we know better. Which makes the rebel in me, of course, even more rebellious when I unpacked it for what it really is (or at least what I perceive it to really be from my unique life vantage point).
Meanwhile, part of me agrees with the technocratic: that we can and should actively try to make things better using the knowledge we have, rather than just simply tossing it all down the drain and pretending like we can start over and everything is going to be peachy-keen. Both sides, therefore, appeal to the intellectual snob in me because they offer up the hope that adhering to an idea is what will ultimately save us in the end. And that all we have to do is make sure that we make the best possible idea that our intellects will allow.
Adhering to an idea or a philosophy - even if it is based on such seemingly worthwhile foundations as “science” and “humanity” - though is always going to lead us away from the mutable world of real life, into fixations, obsessions and ultimately dogmatic rigidity as we come to identify our ideas with our selves and our basic survival instinct is extended into protecting our ideas as though they were us. They are not.
Seeing that problem crop up again and again across the gamut of religious and philosophical thinking - no matter how complex - has really driven this point home for me. Especially lately. But perhaps the most important thing that I have realized about it though is that my rebelliousness, my distrust in authority, etc falls squarely into this trap of thinking that ideas will save me, and protecting my ideas as though they were really me. They are not.
What am I then, if I am not my ideas? Am I my feelings? What about when those feelings seem to be “caused” by another person? Am I my choices, my actions? Often those seem to be at least obliquely controlled by others as well, if not overtly laid out for me.
Realizing that my rebelliousness and over-reliance on individuality have lead me into their own kind of dogmatism have allowed me to begin to dismantle those ideological crutches, and hopefully use those resources to build towards a more positive, more life-oriented direction.
What is life though? What are the core ideals and values of humanity? I think the challenge of being human is that we can and should answer those questions, but that the second we do answer them, we fall into error. We say that life and humanity are this and not that. We exclude or include, limit or expand. That is, I think human nature and human error are essentially synonymous. But that doesn’t mean that our nature is an error - that we have fallen from grace or that we are victim of some kind of moral or agricultural sin at the dawn of time. It just means that being human is walking a tight-rope at all times. This is I think what Thomas Jefferson meant when he said that the price of liberty was eternal vigilance. It’s what Jesus meant when he said that we’d have to stay wake because he would return like a thief in the night. You fail, you fall asleep, you give up for one second, and He passes you by.
I used to think that the world and its rulers were so corrupt that the only way conscientious people could exist within the world was to repudiate it at every step - like how the Christians are always admonishing us to be in the world but not of it. And so I have spent a lot of time in that mindset, the one where you stand on the side-lines and launch attacks and insults into the middle of the fray and then stand around moaning and wondering why nothing actually changes, why nothing is really improving. I find myself slowly but surely inching my way out of the sidelines, preparing myself for a real and serious entry into the world. To not just be in it but not of it, but to be in it and one with it and to improve it.
And so it is that I have been using these philosophical and social discussions on our website as a sort of scaffolding, I guess. A safe place for me to stand on as I build and grow towards something totally other, something much bigger than I have ever allowed myself to be in the past. And the safety instinct would have me continue on the path I’ve been going, and not challenge myself to grow beyond it or grow out of any of the thinking and emotionality that lead me here. But I know that’s a useless struggle. You must let the world change you, if for no better reason than the world itself is change and to be in the world is to be within change. To be within change then, but not to be of it - maybe that means that you allow the world to change you insofar as you allow it to more fully reveal to yourself and those around you, day by day, what you really are and what you really are meant to be. We are eternal and boundless operating within the context of contexts - within change and form and limitation and it is a terrible, beautiful, amazing and challenging thing to be a human.
But hey, here we are!
- Don’t Hide Yourself In the Chorus
- And the living is easy
- It’s just like riding a bike
- The Tame & The Wild
- There is a Policeman Inside Our Heads
- Prev: Are Plants Conscious?
- Next: The Imitation of Christ
September 29th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
A lot of what you’ve written here resonates with me, Tim. I think much of our disagreement may be in what we mean by the word “primitivism.” You seem to think it’s a full body of philosophical work. Ho, if only! I use the term for lack of any better word to describe myself, in full knowledge that all labels are always insufficient. “Primitivism,” to me, is almost a short hand, so we don’t have to recite this post almost word for word every time someone asks us where we stand.
Naturally. I have to say, when you talk about your relationship to “authority,” that resonates with me. I’m surprised that you find primitivism to contain that element, though, which I can’t say I ever felt in it. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never agreed with anyone–primitivist or otherwise–100%. I have big arguments with all the big names in primitivism; I always have. And of course, on one level, everyone always thinks they’re right (if you thought you were wrong about X, you’d just change your mind about X so you felt you were right about it, right? I mean, who believes things that they believe to be wrong?), but I think that’s a far cry from the kind of imposition of others’ ideas that you seem to be suggesting. Heck, I keep saying that the most likely to enjoy primitive egalitarianism are the least likely to be the hippies and ecologically minded–it’s going to be the people who disagree with me vehemently and stumble into it through no fault of their own.
But it is a very interesting reaction. I can’t really speak to it since I’ve never felt it. Perhaps you’ve mistaken me for “the Voice of Primitivism.” I’m not even the voice of Anthropik. I’m the voice of Jason Godesky and no one and nothing else. If I’m persuasive, great, I’m glad we agree, and if not, it’s me you disagree with, not some organized philosophy. Primitivists are all over the map. All we really have in common is a basic respect for the way humans evolved, and a basic understanding that we’ve really screwed up a good thing over the past few millennia. Most of us have faith that we can get it back, but even that isn’t universal.
I don’t think primitivism’s about “going back.” I think it’s about sankofa, about how we make things better. I think it’s more about abandoning all the things we’ve been doing that haven’t been working, and trying some of the stuff that used to work before, and seeing where that takes us. That’s why I keep talking about going beyond civilization, the phrase Daniel Quinn used as the title to one of his books. There is no back; back is gone. The question is how do we move forward. I see the dividing line between me and the Technocrat as being Technocracy’s cry to keep going the same way we have been, whereas I echo Quinn’s skepticism: it didn’t work last year, or the year before that, or the year before that, or the year before that–what makes you so sure this is the year? I’d rather try something else, something that we know DOES work.
September 29th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Oh cool, I totally didn’t realize that’s what you were saying! I thought you were talking about going back. I realize some of that is my own projection, but you also may want to reflect on the fact that you really do make it sound like you are all about going back.
Cause, hell, forward’s all we got!
September 29th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
Once again, Tim, thanks for your blog and the opportunities it presents.
And also once again, you are not a jukebox and we know it–but…
…my thoughts recently have been on Death because of the events in my own life.
Not only literal Death–but also metaphorical Death. About processes ending. About Phoenixes rising from ash, but especially about what it takes to make that ash.
Can you use your rich new experience with “dead matter” to talk about what you think it takes to let parts of ourselves willingly die…and hopefully be reborn?
Just a few indicators that may/may not take you somewhere fruitful (heh heh).
D.
September 29th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Hey David, I will definitely think about it, add it to my mental queue and see if anything comes of it. I don’t want to just write something off on it though unless I feel motivated to do so. But I hope for your sake that I find some way to approach it.
One thing that strikes me right away though: is that with plants, there’s not a great deal of separation between living and dying. You can have part of a plant be dying, or even part of a single leaf that’s dying. And the rest of the plant can be totally utterly fine. In those cases, we simply clip dead leaves and branches off, partly for aesthetics, but also so that the plant doesn’t waste its resources continuing to send nutrients to the dead area. Then, when these things die, they naturally fall back down to the soil, where the plant overtime recycles the nutrients of its own self (thanks to helpful bugs and microbes).
Also important is that you can remove a big important limb from a tree without killing the tree itself. And that there are plants which you can clip it all the way down to the ground, but that as long as its roots remain, it will grow back next season.
September 29th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Thank you for those comments, Tim. I’m going to save them.
Recently I suffered a big emotional wound, and soon after the bad news, finally decided to throw away a house plant which had been dying for a while. I did it in a huff, deciding that there was no more appropriate time than then, when I felt like something in me had also died and had to be cast off.
I can only hope that there is a relation to that dead matter of my own which somehow can fuel what remains alive in me.
Coming from my usual narrow “esoteric” perspective, here are some discussions using the enneagram’s processes of death/renewal/construction/crime/etc.:
http://www.rahul.net/raithel/otfw/sixProcesses.html
I would seem to be in the “Process 132,” or “Life (1), acting on form (3), produces matter (2).”
September 29th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
I wish people would stop saying this — as if there’s some linear path-way between this and that.
I could suddenly become a “primitive” hunter-gatherer or whatever — I still wouldn’t be going back any where. You can’t even go forward; you just do different stuff after a while. Could we stop sentimentalizing this process?
September 29th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
Not sure what you mean by that! There’s nothing wrong with sentimentality, after all.
If we can’t go back or forward then what can we do? Be mad at each other over our word choices?
September 29th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
The excitement of Seattle in the Fall? Dude, other than the rain starting, you’re seeing it.
As a Seattle born and bred nativist, it’s rain rain rain all the way until April or May. Good luck, you foreign devil.
Of course, I say this having moved to Oakland just about four months ago. It hasn’t rained a day since I got here. I’m in hell.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:30 pm
tim, thanks for writing an honest qestion or two from the heart. we are all alive and awake and paying attention. it is both a blessing and a curse. being controlled by the others is difficult until we realise how much flexibility we have as an individual. then we can move freely in society and not feel judged as a member of a group.
those who control throw us into groups. they call it demographics or market studies or census numbers…….but whatever the name the fact still remains. it`s about prediction and control. we can choose to be flexible and reject the labels and then be free to be who we want to be and live that way. but you`d better know hwo you are and be ready to ride the challenges to your independance.
labels are powerful ways to limit behaviour. call you one thing and you won`t be able to do another.
resist the urge to be labeled.
just keep doing what you do anyway. ask the hard questions.
and you do know better than authority………about you.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
Nothing can top Fall on the east coast! Especially Vermont and New England. We’ll be seeing rain soon enough…
September 30th, 2006 at 12:21 am
Thanks for this summary of where things stand with you, Tim. Usually when I read your posts, or the comments they inspire, it stirs me up to something that requires me to brood and then reply, with urgent intensity. But this morning - it’s Saturday 6am in High Wycombe, England - your post seems so balanced and contemplative that it silences me. And that is no bad thing.
September 30th, 2006 at 12:53 am
To Jason: I must say I had fallen into the same assumptions as Jason, that your primitivism was authoritarian in that you, a privileged seer, were in a position of greater wisdom that all of the shakers and movers in civilization. And that whilst your ideas would be fine and provocative if you wrote them in an entertaining book and then got on with your life, it seemed to me you were involved in a movement, perhaps Anthropik, which was in some way waiting its chance to take over the world or at least offer its expert guidance.
But the one word that you use which provides the focus for Tim’s rebellion, I suspect, but certainly my own rebellion against your ideas, is “we”. “We” is generalising, reductive, presumptuous, analytical, & overlooks the greatest discovery of civilization: the individual “I” (which is perhaps why you like the word “we”, for it suggests we are a tribe).
“I” is a wonderful word. “I” takes us to the depths where we find God, though I’d prefer here to say “Jah”, because “I” is the favourite mystical word of Rastafari. They say “I and I” to mean “we”, but in a special sense of oneness. Not that I am a Rasta.
I man like this thread because “I” predominates. In the matter of “I” each of us is entitled to speak with authority and it does not count as authoritarian!
September 30th, 2006 at 12:54 am
errata: for my second “Jason” in the above, please read “Tim”.
September 30th, 2006 at 2:59 am
The quirky thing which has impressed upon me in endevoring for a lifetime, “seeking the truth,” hoping to follow the lead of the “holy spirit”, is what I see all over these posts and comments: life is a gigantic paradox.
Blessing and a curse? Human nature = human error? Forward is all we have? … or is all we really have is the past and now? What if “the meaning of life” is discovering “the meaning of life” each as indivduals - a global ideal, but with an enigmatic application for each of us. It’s all a struggle, thats for sure, between dynamism and intertia, and the mutliple paradoxs causing our confusion.
This is the purpose for transcendance and clarity as a goal, as the yogis say. Being not conformed to the world, but seeking first the kingdom of heaven, as the christians say. Keeping don’t know mind, only going straight in the present moment, as the zen masters say. These are the sacred principles which resolve the worldly swirl of change and flux.
Somehow there is merit in a heavenly desire to eliminate worldly desire in ourselves. Buddha and Christ thought so, which is how the perplexing paradoxs we each find in life (like zen koans) render the ‘discriminating’ mind useless, and allow the discerning spirit to give rise to life. Death gives life, and life always finds a way. Row, row, row yer boat ….
Not much spectacular about Seattle autumns, aside from the brisk air as a harbinger to change, and a sudden plunge into darkness after we fall back. I hear it’s to be warmer and drier this winter.
Enjoy!
September 30th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Can it be said that our political system has failed us. ?
Does anyone think that our political system has a future.? A positive future that is.
Politics is run on money and phoniness. Are Politicians qualified to run a high energy, complicated system like we have.?
Are politicians more interested in representing international corporations that have no conscience regarding the environment , and do politicians perpetuate the hate-mongering attitudes that lead to the paper-pushers making money on wars that are fought over abstract, false belief systems.?
These are the kind of things I think about as I also enjoy the change of weather in Minnesota. Today the temp will be 65. It is bright and clear.
Our political system has poisoned the minds of the people of America.
Our military is currently taking a hard look at Bush , and Bush is currently a little nervous.
Could there be a coup in the works. ? The military,industrial,congressional complex we were warned about has taken over 1984 style , and run by the corporatocracy, which is world wide , now looting North America.
The military may play a serve and protect role at some point. Does any one doubt that our system is run by corporate thugs with religious dissemblers as front men for them.?
I am saying this not because I wish it, but because this might actually be a best case scenario. Many of the of the scenarios other than a coup against our political system end up even worse. Is it now time for another American revolution.?
There are no political solutions for the problems of society that we face now.
Getting rid of this political system would be a way to start going forward in creating a good society. A good society is one that is free and open , and does not prey on the human spirit as a gullible machine that can be brainwashed as a mechanical toy for the power possessors.
A good society would not have a cast or class system. A good society would not use money. A good society would say that no human is worth any more than any other human.
Time to put on the tennis shoes and go outside. The leaves are turning and coming down here now a little.
September 30th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
To appreciate autumn (and winter) in the Pacific Northwest, pay attention to the quality of the light. It’s different here than anywhere else in the US, and is often described as “opalescent”.
The aesthetic it inspires is along the lines of the Japanese wabi sabi. Which reminds me: time to re-read Tanizaki’s essay on shadows…
September 30th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Why is it that so many internet debates end up being perceived as, “you want to force your way of life on me”? It’s not just Jason, and it’s not just primitivism. I remember getting into countless gay marriage debates in which my opponents eventually angrily hurled this accusation at me: “You just want to make heterosexuality illegal!!!”
Which, naturally, made me go, “WTF? I’m heterosexual. Of course I don’t want to make it illegal. I just want everyone to have the same rights.” That’s not the first time it came up, either. Debating with creationists (I want to make “creation science” illegal), debating Christians (I want to make Christianity illegal), debating Republicans (I want to make conservatism illegal), debating with neo-Nazis (I want to make neo-Nazism illegal). Even when debating Democrats, when I was a Democrat, the accusation was that I wanted like-minded people to hijack the Democratic party and not let anyone else have a voice.
Despite the fact that in most of these cases, I literally started by saying that I was an anarchist and opposed the very concept of laws, people always seemed to come to the conclusion that I wanted to pass a law taking away their freedom of speech, simply because I disagreed with them. And it wasn’t just me - I’ve seen it happen again and again to others on the same message board.
Is this projection, given the fact that most of these people were evangelical Christians who genuinely did want to take away other’s rights for no other reason than that they disagreed with them? Is there a communication problem inherent in the internet that makes people come across as more forceful than they (and their beliefs) really are? Either way, I find it kind of weird that so many people so rapidly make the leap between “I think you’re wrong” and “I think you should be in jail”, or “Here’s how I think the world could be made a better place” and “Here’s what I’m going to order you, personally, to do under penalty of death.”
September 30th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Good point lamanna, Any system worth its salt should embrace the idea of freedom of and from belief. Ones that don`t are worthless , and just made to control people. Ours is worthless.
There is no accounting for belief. That’s why Democracy is such a kind of a fascism of the masses.
I would much prefer a system that is fair and just and secular, where people are not controlled, where they pretty much can do as they please, as long as they do not harm anyone. They can live with anyone , or not.
Our so called modernity is really a very barbaric way to live. Think about , Legal contract for marriage.? Fined in money and property if you screw up , or are accused of screwing up. Ha Ha .
You will find some of the most brain washed people on earth here in America..
October 1st, 2006 at 3:50 am
Giulianna, I have argued with a lawyer who accused me of wanting to make laws illegal, to which I replied: Yep
Life is indeed a paradox.
We could drive an entire civilization through that loophole. Could and did.
A foolproof system is the height of foolishness.
October 1st, 2006 at 6:54 am
There’s a difference, though, between something not being there and something being forbidden. In no hunter-gatherer tribe is there a rule that you must not have laws. They just don’t feel the need for laws, especially since their way of situational problem-solving has worked for them for generations. And, of course, laws don’t look especially appealing when they glance over in our direction and see how well we’ve “handled” crime.
Passing a law is probably the worst way to prevent a behavior. The only law I’ve ever been tempted to see on the books is an anti-hate group law I came up with this idea a while ago. Instead of making racial hate groups illegal (as they do in places like Germany and Canada), they would pass a law saying that anyone wanting to form or join a racial hate group would have to take a genetic test to prove that they are 100% the race they claim to be. Since no one is 100% any race, since race doesn’t actually exist, this would quickly put an end to hate groups. It might also dissuade them all from those opinions in the first place, once they found out that they themselves were “mixed.”
However, the main appeal of this law to me is its cleverness. If given the chance to actually make it a law, I’m not sure I would. Aside from just driving racist groups underground, thereby making them more radical and violent, people’s DNA, in the hands of the wrong government (and let’s fact it, pretty much every government is the wrong government to some degree or another), can be and has been a very, very bad thing. It would also not apply to non-racial hate groups. And it would also be entirely up to the government to decide what constitutes a racial hate group. (Which is what makes me nervous about hate speech laws; what exactly counts as hate speech?) In a country run by people who want to kill all Armenians, an Armenian-owned hall or church could be considered a “racial hate group.”
It all comes down to: laws suck.
October 1st, 2006 at 2:45 pm
What? Are you serious in saying that hunter-gatherer societies don’t have laws? What do you mean by that? What about social and spiritual taboos and time-honored customs that can’t be broken? Aren’t those essentially laws?
October 1st, 2006 at 5:17 pm
hunter-gatherer laws tend to be for the common good, whereas modern societies laws tend to be for the protection of assets and corporations. the common good tends to be invisible in modern technocratic society. just spend a minute or two over at www.adventuresinlegalland.com and you`ll see what i mean. these inalienalbe rights we go on about are mythological at best.
try to argue your point with a traffic cop for instance. he has a gun and is willing to enforce his position with it…………..
October 1st, 2006 at 7:26 pm
Most crime revolves around the concept of private property. In that our culture is similar to the premise cultures that formed these ideas in Mesopotamia.
Our laws are remarkably similar to the the codes of Hammurabi, and are designed for an elite of power possessors. Money talks. Crooked lawyers etc.
Do we now need private property.?
No.
Why .?
It serves no purpose to have it.
Why do we have it.?
It is the means to maintain a caste or class system, and keeps people in different class`s. It is a way to divide and conquer people , which is the name of the game if you want to brainwash people with falsehoods as being true.
Why would you want to do that. ?
To keep the everything for me and nothing for you system we use presently.
As population rises and resources are destroyed this use of private property and money to organize society becomes more and more dysfunctional , until it destroys everything.
Why.?
To maintain the caste or class system .
This is pointless and self destructive . We need to change our approach in a really radical way from the one we use now.
Money fails as a way to measure things in a good society.
October 1st, 2006 at 8:34 pm
ie, the common good. The concept of property is much more specific and well-developed than abstract notions of “the common good”. Certainly it leads to trouble, but so does everything
October 1st, 2006 at 9:56 pm
the “common good” that we are refering to is being eroded though. we are working harder for less all the time. i make a decent living and indulge in activities and behaviours that most either can`t afford or don`t have the time to do. i`m lucky in that sense, but the trouble inherent in the money system is that it is becoming increasingly unsustainable. we are gobbling up greater amounts of resourses to bung on in the furnace to keep the steamer going down the river.
skip is broaching a difficult topic in that we assume at a deep level that private property is so good and basic a concept that there is no other way to live……..which is going to be the death of us all eventually. none of what we are doing is sustainable. we need less parasitic government, less reliance on money as a metaphor for effort, and honestly i don`t see an answer to it in a positive sense because of the way we`ve worked ourselves so far out on this limb.
we are conditioned from an early age to play this game, to set our own price on ourselves and then put ourselves up for sale, not to the highest bidder, but mostly to the lowest.
October 1st, 2006 at 10:04 pm
I don’t feel that way at all. I feel like I’m working harder and getting more out of it, and want to find ways to work even harder.
But isn’t the whole “benefit” of the money system the fact that it is inherently unstable? Speculation on markets and things becoming absurdly inflated isn’t a perversion of the money system - it’s how it’s supposed to work!
October 1st, 2006 at 10:52 pm
i think that if you take some pleasure in work for work`s sake then yes, that`s a good thing……….but if you are doing something you deplore so that you can feed your kids and put gas in the car to get back to work tomorrow, then that sucks.
the money system is unstable and unsustainable because it`s chewing up our lives. i ride over the highway from my comfy suburban home on a morning and look toward toronto and all i see is a crawling mass of cars heading to the city. this metal snake contains people who`s goal was to have a nice car, a decent job and a home in the suburbs. so they spend 3 hours a day in thier cars going to uncertain jobs and invest in uncertain markets so they can retire one day away from the hell they find themselves in. if that`s the way it`s supposed to work then there are some crazy values out there…………
it does work quite nicely for some though. the ones who run the primetime ads on t.v.
October 1st, 2006 at 11:22 pm
Well, I think it works like this: you can spend your time trying to open up a stubborn bag of snacks by pulling and twisting on the package… or you can go get the scissors and cut the bitch open neatly with no muss. That choice is in the hands of every person all the time
(which I only thought of because I just found myself in that predicament vis-a-vis a bag of Trader Joe’s Sesame sticks)
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:19 am
Don’t know if you’ll catch this, but I wanted to offer some sympathy on the job stress. It’s been sucking out my soul, and 99% of the time I just colapse on the couch for an hour before falling assleap and getting up to go back to work. It’s the perfect, most horrible example of selling ones soul. Can’t quit, because there’s no second job as an out. Can’t get a new job because the first has stolen all the energy to do so.
That’s the main thing, but I did want to add one quick note. Science at the beginning level is an appeal to authority. The school system pretty much sucks, and that’s all most can hope to get at an introductory level. After that though, it’s just a matter of needing to “read the book” before arguing the fine point of the characters within it. If some scientists seem like pompass asses, think how you’d feel if someone took three out of context quotes from your site and then proceeded to fill in the blanks with smak-talk they heard from ex-girlfriends. There’s nothing stopping anyone from jumping in and publishing in a journal as long as it’s not filled with too glaring a mistake in the experimental design. There’s some pretty far out stuff in the journals, and for all the griping by people who claim the man’s keeping them out, I really can’t imagine ‘anyone’ could find themselves unpublished as long as they didn’t insist on the harvard of their field’s journals. And, of course there are just as many elitist assholes in any scientific field as exist on any other occupation. You can be pretty sure that even if their work is good, their coworkers are snubbing them just as much as the office asshole has anywhere else.
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:21 am
that`s why i`m riding my bike when those people are stuck in traffic.
October 2nd, 2006 at 10:31 am
Thanks alistair , for recognizing what I am saying. You can see equally well that Tim does not think sustainability , a just type of economic system, and over all change of society is important.
He is thinking about different things, like abstract concepts , such as Christianity. People that think mostly on this level are not interested in practical things, like saving the world . Just their own morbid belief systems.
Occasionally I try to explain to people that religion is actually the problem. It works together with our Political , and Economic system to divide and conquer the people into stupidity.
No doubt you understand exactly what I am saying alistair.
I also agree with you that our present system is doomed. Soon.
Tim maybe you could try and think of it this way.? The more we hang on to the fake values of the present society the worse it will be .
My attitude is that you are either part of the problem , or you are part of solution.
When people hold up the problem as a solution they only makes things doubly worse.
Tim , your statement , Its how its supposed to work, is right in the sense , if you settle for a hate based system , inhuman, and very Christian in principle , you are right on the money. Christ said all kinds of hateful and demeaning things about humans. Take a look at the modern preachers. You won`t find bigger hate mongers anywhere.
As far as I can tell , and I can`t very well, you are an abstracted mystic, somewhere between Don Juan’s school of sorcery , and Jesus.
The Don Juan books are mostly fake , and Jesus was a loser. Jesus was young and stupid. He was carried away with a whole lot of bullshit that got out of control.
He then was killed . It is a sad story. People relate to it because they see the same process in their own lives, and are morbidly fascinated by the story .
October 2nd, 2006 at 10:38 am
Tim , one more thing, work is for horses, be careful you don`t ruin your health in your role of making someone else rich. You are what is referred to as a wage slave.
You will be thrown on the dust heap when you can no longer perform.
October 2nd, 2006 at 9:00 pm
I appreciate your position, but I didn’t post this to complain about my job. It’s perfectly fine and it’s giving me a great new perspective on things. It’s just causing me to rearrange my schedule!
October 2nd, 2006 at 9:03 pm
Well yes, that’s the whole point isn’t it, Skip? I’m sorry my talk of religion sends you into fits of convulsion! It must be difficult to bear!
Hahaha. Classic. Thanks for your kinds words!
October 3rd, 2006 at 11:29 am
Interesting!
Skip, if you get to read this comment, you need to be aware that coloring the life of Jesus based on the linear historical perspective, colored by centuries of organizational dogma and personality cult, will only leave you with your tired perspective. Failure to appreciate the timless wonder of Jesus’ revolutionary message, can only lead to a fruitless search for something better - which doesnt exist.
True, religion is a big problem, but that comes from small minded thinking, and bad teachers. It’s not for me to explain it all here for you ( I think I have to a degree on other posts here), but humbly and meekly consider Love to be an endless, powerful source of motivation to assuage the suffering so apparent in the here & now.
This simple “abstract concept” easily gets overlooked as simplistic, but when it takes hold, “one may turn away 1000 attacks, but two can turn away 10,000.”