It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. ~James Thurber
This is me waxing philosophical with no destination in mind. I’m going to let my mind and fingers wander (yes I know, they are too young to be out alone at night, sheesh even the jokes are old around here).
I have spent the last few weeks pondering many things, life, the universe, our reason for existence, so yesterday, I decided to go find some good quotes to put in a text file, hoping it would give me the inspiration to write, normally I write about things that are deathly important at the time I write them, matters of grave concern and potential grievous bodily harm that may (or may not) befall some poor sod whose has but by happenstance found himself (or herself) in a quandary, predicament, or otherwise sullied state of affairs.
Normally that person is me, more often than not, every great once in a while it’s someone I happen to know, albeit not very well mostly, and sometimes its someone close to me who comes and seeks my counsel (although I am remiss to figure out why, but I do assure you it is on my list).
One of the things that have kept my poor sorely overtaxed grey matter busy is the concept that everything is a business model. This is a postulate of a gentleman by the name of George Ure, who runs the urban survival site http://www. Urbansurvival.com/week.htm (you can copy and paste if the whole parsing of links doesn’t work.) and while I may not always agree with George regarding some of his flights of fancy his postulate of EBM is one I can find no fault with, which is in and of itself strange, because I’m usually the guy that finds the logical fault in damn near everything that is not a law of nature (sorry, I’m not sure we can enforce those laws, and I’d really hate to be a judge on that case).
As much as I hate to admit it, George is right, everything IS a business model, we all trade something of value for something of equivalent value, whether it’s time for money, free range eggs for beef or wheat, computer skills for sex, well maybe not that, but you get the picture, people tried to argue the point of marriage, relations, etc. to which George responded with tacit pointed arguments, that if taken to their intellectual conclusion, made sense. Not all transactions are of money, could be time for time, I help you with the fence, you help me with the porch repair that sort of thing.
I’ve also pondered being poor, now I’m not rich by any stretch, in fact I’m probably just above poverty in many cities across the country, and I have discovered that it’s going to be much easier to enter into the coming singularity if your used to making do or doing without, or making it yourself. Those who have never had to pull up their own bootstraps aren’t going to fair too well in my estimation. It’s hard though to imagine myself without some of the material trappings that I have grown so used to over the years, like heat, light, electricity, cable, and trash pickup. However those things may return on the other side, what shape they will take is yet to be seen.
I have also pondered the upcoming singularity, which depending on which doomsday prophet you wish to listen to is anywhere from 15 minutes ago to 50 years in the future. I think we have the possibility of the singularity arriving sometime relatively soon, the American elections are coming up in a few weeks time, and there is a distinct possibility that roughly half the house and a third the senate will be replaced, by whom I have no clue, but replaced none the less. The American electorate is duly pissed off about the profligate spending our banal government has found itself enamored in. Whether this will make a difference has yet to be seen, but shortly thereafter I am relatively certain we will see something none of us expected, nor should we have accepted, after all a lame duck is the most dangerous kind, especially when they are of the political stripe.
Yes I have been pondering, the world, the big peace, and just how much peace is coming our way. I distinctly remember that silence is deafening, that you don’t realize how much noise is around you day to day until someone takes that noise away from your surroundings. On September 12 2001 it was deathly silent around campus where I was attending school for the umpteenth time in my life, although it was with no particular degree or whatever in mind, it was more a way to keep myself occupied during a extended stint on unemployment, and as long as I went I got my check, but could not help but notice the deafening silence that accompanied the lack of aircraft on that day, the day when the sun still came up, we still went to class, people still went to work, and 3000 of my fellow Americans were dead because some nut job used a 737 as a weapon.
We are all painfully aware of the damage done to Nagasaki and Hiroshima Japan by the measly little 13 kiloton bombs we dropped to end the war against us in the 40’s, given that we have weapons now that are measures of magnitude greater in their destructive power mutually assured destruction has kept that genie in the bottle. What most people don’t realize, and something I have always had in the back of my brain, is that a single warhead of the current configuration and size detonated just inside the edge of the atmosphere directly above the geographic center of the north American continent would cause a power outage that would pretty much last forever, it could and would drive us straight back to the 18th century, your wonderful iPhone would be nothing more than a 600 dollar plastic brick, your televisions, 1000 dollar plastic doorstops, and your refrigerator a really nice casket for a loved one given you were willing to dig a hole that size with a shovel and not try to rely on a backhoe. Credit card machines would not work, and your local grocer would accept only cash and then have to train all of the teenage checkout peeps how to use an abacus, or (gasp dare I say) do math. Just a pondering mind you, but what better way to get the government they want than to send one up and light it off after the elections.
I saw a tee shirt once that read something along the lines of, I’ll keep my food, my silver, my weapons, and you can keep your change. Too bad those at the top don’t know what those at the bottom have already realized to a great degree, we are going to get change, and it’s not the kind of change we want.
05 October 2010
26 September 2010
Livin on the edge
There's somethin' wrong with the world today; I don't know what it is; Something's wrong with our eyes
We're seeing things in a different way; And God knows it ain't His; It sure ain't no surprise
We're livin' on the edge ~Aerosmith “Living on the edge”
“Your preparing for something aren’t you?”
“Yes I am”
“What do you think it is?”
“Honestly, I don’t know”
That’s the gist of a conversation I had with a friend recently (well earlier this afternoon anyway) after I sent them an e-mail regarding the fact I was once again compulsively making a list of things I needed to get from the dollar store, the local hardware and that store everyone loves to hate, Wally world (you know the place where you USED to be able to get whatever you needed all in one trip?). Some of the items are mundane, I need more candles, and a few more lighters from the dollar store, and a couple of other items, from Wally world include propane for my candle stove downstairs, maybe some nice hurricane lamps from the candle section (I like them, they make for good usable decoration). From the local hardware store I need some three quarter tubing, some flat stock, a couple of new saw blades (mine are getting dull). Nothing big there; nothing out of the ordinary if you were to think about it.
However what is out of the ordinary is the urgency with which I felt I must make the list. Confessions are tough, especially when you don’t know how people will react to them; I’m a bit of an empath, I have friends that are freaky good at it to, but the one thing that ties us all together is we cannot see ourselves or our situations. I wish I could because then I could know and understand why I felt the sudden urgency to write all that stuff down on a piece of paper, and why I sat there for over an hour hyperventilating over the whole thing. I don’t hyperventilate; I’m the guy whose patience quotient puts JOB to shame. I don’t get excited over stuff, never have, I can dead pan a car wreck with no problem. I pride myself on being unflappable in most circumstance, yet today for some unknown reason, I just had to grab a pad of paper, my trusty pen, and start writing a list of odd things I need.
The seriously odd thing is they are all “holes” in my stuff, consumable items that I need to stock up on (foods covered as long as the ammo holds out, and even then it’s not a problem to obtain, there’s always the cross bow, those rounds are reusable), as well as enough fish hooks, bobbers, line etc. to keep Roland Martin busy for a few years. Plus I have non-GMO seeds available, and stored so veggies would take a season to get going, but could happen relatively quickly. It’s down to the holes now, and those are the holes I now know need filling.
But it still beggars the question, why now, why the sudden rush, what’s coming down the pike that I’m not aware off (at least not consciously) that makes me feel like I need this stuff right now? Is the world not going to be here on Monday? Dunno the answer to that one, is the dollar going to all the sudden become toilet paper? It might, but if it does I’ll be glad I don’t live in Canada where they have dollar coins and not bills LOL. (You know who you are).
I’ve known something was going down for a while now, and every time I think, this is it, I turn out to be wrong, and certainly above all else hope that I am wrong now, however I have also learned to listen to that voice in my head that tells me to do certain things (no not that voice, the other voice that’s actually reasonable)
We're seeing things in a different way; And God knows it ain't His; It sure ain't no surprise
We're livin' on the edge ~Aerosmith “Living on the edge”
“Your preparing for something aren’t you?”
“Yes I am”
“What do you think it is?”
“Honestly, I don’t know”
That’s the gist of a conversation I had with a friend recently (well earlier this afternoon anyway) after I sent them an e-mail regarding the fact I was once again compulsively making a list of things I needed to get from the dollar store, the local hardware and that store everyone loves to hate, Wally world (you know the place where you USED to be able to get whatever you needed all in one trip?). Some of the items are mundane, I need more candles, and a few more lighters from the dollar store, and a couple of other items, from Wally world include propane for my candle stove downstairs, maybe some nice hurricane lamps from the candle section (I like them, they make for good usable decoration). From the local hardware store I need some three quarter tubing, some flat stock, a couple of new saw blades (mine are getting dull). Nothing big there; nothing out of the ordinary if you were to think about it.
However what is out of the ordinary is the urgency with which I felt I must make the list. Confessions are tough, especially when you don’t know how people will react to them; I’m a bit of an empath, I have friends that are freaky good at it to, but the one thing that ties us all together is we cannot see ourselves or our situations. I wish I could because then I could know and understand why I felt the sudden urgency to write all that stuff down on a piece of paper, and why I sat there for over an hour hyperventilating over the whole thing. I don’t hyperventilate; I’m the guy whose patience quotient puts JOB to shame. I don’t get excited over stuff, never have, I can dead pan a car wreck with no problem. I pride myself on being unflappable in most circumstance, yet today for some unknown reason, I just had to grab a pad of paper, my trusty pen, and start writing a list of odd things I need.
The seriously odd thing is they are all “holes” in my stuff, consumable items that I need to stock up on (foods covered as long as the ammo holds out, and even then it’s not a problem to obtain, there’s always the cross bow, those rounds are reusable), as well as enough fish hooks, bobbers, line etc. to keep Roland Martin busy for a few years. Plus I have non-GMO seeds available, and stored so veggies would take a season to get going, but could happen relatively quickly. It’s down to the holes now, and those are the holes I now know need filling.
But it still beggars the question, why now, why the sudden rush, what’s coming down the pike that I’m not aware off (at least not consciously) that makes me feel like I need this stuff right now? Is the world not going to be here on Monday? Dunno the answer to that one, is the dollar going to all the sudden become toilet paper? It might, but if it does I’ll be glad I don’t live in Canada where they have dollar coins and not bills LOL. (You know who you are).
I’ve known something was going down for a while now, and every time I think, this is it, I turn out to be wrong, and certainly above all else hope that I am wrong now, however I have also learned to listen to that voice in my head that tells me to do certain things (no not that voice, the other voice that’s actually reasonable)
08 September 2010
EBT And The Downfall Of Man
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. ~Chinese Proverb
I like to eat, don’t get me wrong, but what really, really cheeses me off is that some people eat better than I do. Are these people better off than me? No, not by any stretch of one’s imagination. Have they done something righteous with their lives that allow them the luxury of buying the $20 roast and the $25 dollar bucket ‘o crab legs? Again, nope. What they have done however is suckle at the government teat.
Allow me to explain. This year my federal income tax return AGI will probably be in the 5 digit range (since the government don’t do the whole cents thing anyway) and will most likely start with an 8 or a 9, not sure just yet. I don’t live beyond my means either, I drive a 10 year old minivan that is in desperate need of a new engine, live in a house that was about 25% of what the bank said I could spend (PITI is $660 ish just to give you an idea). I have cable TV of course, the minimum you need to get high speed internet and my cell phone, I have the cheapest plan I could find that was unlimited text and talk since I have family across the country. Of course I pay for electric, sewer/water, trash service, and fuel and insurance for the van (again my insurance bill is like 20 bucks a month). I eat relatively cheap, mostly vegetarian with my meat supply coming at the business end of a box of 270 Winchester ammo I buy for $20 at the local Wally world, coupled with an eighteen dollar license from the state.
So why am I cheesed at those people, cause they not only get the food stamps (of which there are now something like 43 million people using them) which roughly equates to 1.5 percent of the entire population of the country, this does not include the chronically hungry who probably don’t qualify cause they “make too much”. Now I’ve been on food stamps, and let me tell you they make it next to impossible to get off of food stamps, but that story is for another day, even if I laugh myself to tears every time I tell it. What bothers me is that after they are done spending more on groceries for the month than I will probably be able to afford in six, they break out the WIC checks to pay for a couple boxes of cereal, some OJ, some milk, and cheese (mind you they could have gotten all of that on their EBT card). I don’t begrudge those that need these things the help, as I stated I’ve been there done that, burned the t-shirt. But it never fails that they are dressed nicer than I could ever afford, have cell phones that make mine look paltry, and drive new cars (after all what are they gonna spend their welfare checks on, odds are they live in publicly subsidized housing that costs little to nothing). More often than not they are also wearing high dollar jewelry that I would not ever deign to look at the price tag of no matter how I felt it might look on me.
Have we fallen that far as a nation that those of us who are responsible adults, pay their taxes (however begrudgingly), pay for their own way have to stand in line behind the EBT crowd watching them spend my hard won tax dollars? I worked hard for that money, I got up every morning and sacrificed my time and energy to earn it, only to render unto caesers that which is caesers, and watch helplessly while it gets squandered on cheez doodles and ice cream for the multiple screaming brats in the cart that exists to the fore. And mind you mommy looks like she’s barely 20 and the kids are both between 3 and 5 years old, you do the math.
One day all of that is going to come crashing down on them, the government checks and help are going to stop coming in on the first, and people are going to wake up. May the universe help us all when that happens. But i also must question, at what point do we hand out poles instead of fish.
I like to eat, don’t get me wrong, but what really, really cheeses me off is that some people eat better than I do. Are these people better off than me? No, not by any stretch of one’s imagination. Have they done something righteous with their lives that allow them the luxury of buying the $20 roast and the $25 dollar bucket ‘o crab legs? Again, nope. What they have done however is suckle at the government teat.
Allow me to explain. This year my federal income tax return AGI will probably be in the 5 digit range (since the government don’t do the whole cents thing anyway) and will most likely start with an 8 or a 9, not sure just yet. I don’t live beyond my means either, I drive a 10 year old minivan that is in desperate need of a new engine, live in a house that was about 25% of what the bank said I could spend (PITI is $660 ish just to give you an idea). I have cable TV of course, the minimum you need to get high speed internet and my cell phone, I have the cheapest plan I could find that was unlimited text and talk since I have family across the country. Of course I pay for electric, sewer/water, trash service, and fuel and insurance for the van (again my insurance bill is like 20 bucks a month). I eat relatively cheap, mostly vegetarian with my meat supply coming at the business end of a box of 270 Winchester ammo I buy for $20 at the local Wally world, coupled with an eighteen dollar license from the state.
So why am I cheesed at those people, cause they not only get the food stamps (of which there are now something like 43 million people using them) which roughly equates to 1.5 percent of the entire population of the country, this does not include the chronically hungry who probably don’t qualify cause they “make too much”. Now I’ve been on food stamps, and let me tell you they make it next to impossible to get off of food stamps, but that story is for another day, even if I laugh myself to tears every time I tell it. What bothers me is that after they are done spending more on groceries for the month than I will probably be able to afford in six, they break out the WIC checks to pay for a couple boxes of cereal, some OJ, some milk, and cheese (mind you they could have gotten all of that on their EBT card). I don’t begrudge those that need these things the help, as I stated I’ve been there done that, burned the t-shirt. But it never fails that they are dressed nicer than I could ever afford, have cell phones that make mine look paltry, and drive new cars (after all what are they gonna spend their welfare checks on, odds are they live in publicly subsidized housing that costs little to nothing). More often than not they are also wearing high dollar jewelry that I would not ever deign to look at the price tag of no matter how I felt it might look on me.
Have we fallen that far as a nation that those of us who are responsible adults, pay their taxes (however begrudgingly), pay for their own way have to stand in line behind the EBT crowd watching them spend my hard won tax dollars? I worked hard for that money, I got up every morning and sacrificed my time and energy to earn it, only to render unto caesers that which is caesers, and watch helplessly while it gets squandered on cheez doodles and ice cream for the multiple screaming brats in the cart that exists to the fore. And mind you mommy looks like she’s barely 20 and the kids are both between 3 and 5 years old, you do the math.
One day all of that is going to come crashing down on them, the government checks and help are going to stop coming in on the first, and people are going to wake up. May the universe help us all when that happens. But i also must question, at what point do we hand out poles instead of fish.
15 August 2010
Why dont we fix things anymore
Our houses are protected by the good Lord and a gun, and you might meet 'em both if you show up here not welcome son. Our necks are burnt, our roads are dirt and our trucks aint clean, the dogs run loose, we smoke, we chew and fry everything. Out here, way out here. ~Josh Thompson, “Way Out Here”
And I’ll bet they fix things rather than running down to the local all you can buy boofarama of Asian made plastic pumpkins and other assorted crap. I am not one of those rabid recyclers; those unhinged humans who think that we are killing the planet and that the planet would be better off without us. I do however understand that 50-75 years ago (a time period that many will remember) things were built to last, and to be repaired. My granddaddy used to fix televisions; he started out fixing radios in the 30’s, and when television came along in the 50’s he started fixing them too. Point being that he would not recognize today’s televisions. I have 2 flat screen TV’s in my home and don’t get me wrong I enjoy both of them. However I am painfully aware that they have a great potential to become roughly 1100 dollar paper weights. And while the cost to replace the smaller of the two has dropped to below 300 dollars, it does not make sense to me to bear that cost when it should have been built to either last longer than planned obsolescence, or made in such a way that it would be repairable by a competent individual with a minimum of tools and knowledge.
Part of the problem lies in the constant need for humans to consume, hence the reason we are no longer called citizens (at least not in the United States) but consumers. It’s a possibly well known, possibly not well known, possibly flat out wrong axiom that all products necessary for a year’s consumption could be made in a matter of a few months, but what then to do with the remainder of the months that are left. In the days before (before what I’m not exactly certain) the farmer would grow his crop, take his crop to market where he would trade with others for what they grew, in this way he could supplement his own food stores with stuff that someone else had that was surplus for them. He then took those things home and preserved them for the winter, in the winter time the farmer would repair whatever implements may have been damaged during the growing season, or to build things that he would need for the following growing season, it’s important to remember that farmers grew and put away during times of plenty, and left their protein sources (also known as meat) to run around in its otherwise unaltered state until it was needed. Chickens do not lay many eggs in the wintertime, as a defense mechanism against the inevitable cold, so those chickens that were maybe a little older, or possibly not laying like they should have toward the end of the season, became soup, fricassee, broiled or otherwise consumed by the farmer and his family.
In order to accomplish this though in the most efficient manner possible the farmer (or other person of that era) would make things that made his life a bit easier. Whether it was a “killing cone”, feather -plucker, or perhaps something else that the individual would need.
The main point to all of these inventive ideas, was they were readily repairable by the person who built it, in the event it (whatever it was) broke with some simple tools the creator of said implement could easily repair it, there was no running down to the local department store to purchase a replacement when whatever it was that one was using finally bit the dust or needed repaired. Even if the original implement was created by someone else, the person using the implement usually had the tools, knowledge, and wherewithal to repair whatever it was. In the event they could not repair it themselves and a trip to town was required, one could be certain that it was repaired as good or in some instances better than it was when it was new.
Now a days, we just trip on down to the local whatever mart to get a new one, I remember my mother having the same toaster for probably 25 years, it broke down once, and she let me look at it, it turns out to have been a simple matter of oiling the slide that you push down to make the toast, it was otherwise sound. I took that toaster with me when I moved out of the house at age 18, mom had the toaster for several years before I was born, and it looked it, but when your first out on your own you take what you can get. It was replaced in a fit of consumerism by my ex wife, because it looked too outdated for our décor, but mind you it worked perfectly well, that was 1985 and here in 2010 I can’t help but think that it would have still been making toast had I not succumbed to the consumerist lifestyle.
I keep things, not to the level of hoarding them mind you, if something has in fact outlived its usefulness and cannot be repurposed into something else readily, or if I don’t have an idea for it right away, depending on the raw materials it contains I’ll scrap it myself, keep the items I know I can utilize at some point in the future, and discard the rest. The end result is the same for the item, the junk heap somewhere to be buried with every other bastion of our consumerist society, however my junk foot print, to steal from the “climate change” crowd is much smaller than most people that are in my rough income bracket, and the stuff I keep will end up being something else later on down the road, in essence doing my own little bit to starve the beast and return the balance.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Robert Heinlein, to wit:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, Conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
We have become too specialized, so specialized in fact that we lack the skills to repair the simplest of things, seeking instead to replace rather than renew.
And I’ll bet they fix things rather than running down to the local all you can buy boofarama of Asian made plastic pumpkins and other assorted crap. I am not one of those rabid recyclers; those unhinged humans who think that we are killing the planet and that the planet would be better off without us. I do however understand that 50-75 years ago (a time period that many will remember) things were built to last, and to be repaired. My granddaddy used to fix televisions; he started out fixing radios in the 30’s, and when television came along in the 50’s he started fixing them too. Point being that he would not recognize today’s televisions. I have 2 flat screen TV’s in my home and don’t get me wrong I enjoy both of them. However I am painfully aware that they have a great potential to become roughly 1100 dollar paper weights. And while the cost to replace the smaller of the two has dropped to below 300 dollars, it does not make sense to me to bear that cost when it should have been built to either last longer than planned obsolescence, or made in such a way that it would be repairable by a competent individual with a minimum of tools and knowledge.
Part of the problem lies in the constant need for humans to consume, hence the reason we are no longer called citizens (at least not in the United States) but consumers. It’s a possibly well known, possibly not well known, possibly flat out wrong axiom that all products necessary for a year’s consumption could be made in a matter of a few months, but what then to do with the remainder of the months that are left. In the days before (before what I’m not exactly certain) the farmer would grow his crop, take his crop to market where he would trade with others for what they grew, in this way he could supplement his own food stores with stuff that someone else had that was surplus for them. He then took those things home and preserved them for the winter, in the winter time the farmer would repair whatever implements may have been damaged during the growing season, or to build things that he would need for the following growing season, it’s important to remember that farmers grew and put away during times of plenty, and left their protein sources (also known as meat) to run around in its otherwise unaltered state until it was needed. Chickens do not lay many eggs in the wintertime, as a defense mechanism against the inevitable cold, so those chickens that were maybe a little older, or possibly not laying like they should have toward the end of the season, became soup, fricassee, broiled or otherwise consumed by the farmer and his family.
In order to accomplish this though in the most efficient manner possible the farmer (or other person of that era) would make things that made his life a bit easier. Whether it was a “killing cone”, feather -plucker, or perhaps something else that the individual would need.
The main point to all of these inventive ideas, was they were readily repairable by the person who built it, in the event it (whatever it was) broke with some simple tools the creator of said implement could easily repair it, there was no running down to the local department store to purchase a replacement when whatever it was that one was using finally bit the dust or needed repaired. Even if the original implement was created by someone else, the person using the implement usually had the tools, knowledge, and wherewithal to repair whatever it was. In the event they could not repair it themselves and a trip to town was required, one could be certain that it was repaired as good or in some instances better than it was when it was new.
Now a days, we just trip on down to the local whatever mart to get a new one, I remember my mother having the same toaster for probably 25 years, it broke down once, and she let me look at it, it turns out to have been a simple matter of oiling the slide that you push down to make the toast, it was otherwise sound. I took that toaster with me when I moved out of the house at age 18, mom had the toaster for several years before I was born, and it looked it, but when your first out on your own you take what you can get. It was replaced in a fit of consumerism by my ex wife, because it looked too outdated for our décor, but mind you it worked perfectly well, that was 1985 and here in 2010 I can’t help but think that it would have still been making toast had I not succumbed to the consumerist lifestyle.
I keep things, not to the level of hoarding them mind you, if something has in fact outlived its usefulness and cannot be repurposed into something else readily, or if I don’t have an idea for it right away, depending on the raw materials it contains I’ll scrap it myself, keep the items I know I can utilize at some point in the future, and discard the rest. The end result is the same for the item, the junk heap somewhere to be buried with every other bastion of our consumerist society, however my junk foot print, to steal from the “climate change” crowd is much smaller than most people that are in my rough income bracket, and the stuff I keep will end up being something else later on down the road, in essence doing my own little bit to starve the beast and return the balance.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Robert Heinlein, to wit:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, Conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
We have become too specialized, so specialized in fact that we lack the skills to repair the simplest of things, seeking instead to replace rather than renew.
25 July 2010
On Hubbert, and TEOTWAWKI
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains; however improbable, must be the truth.”—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I’ve already written about Jung, and synchronicity, and the lack of coincidence in the universe, I have semi revealed to you some of my thoughts, i.e. being out of place, and time. As I stated in a previous blog post regarding the lack of civility in the church of ostensible peace (I realized later that more people have died in “Godly” fights than for any other reason I could conscientiously think of, anyone besides me recall the crusades?).
I have also regaled you with my thoughts on something wicked this way comes. I have begun the study of bushido, not because I wish to become a samurai, but because the samurai had some good thought processes that anyone can adopt to help them get through life. So it’s not from a swordsmanship perspective, but from a philosophical perspective that I read and study the works of Tsumetomo. In the bushido, or hagakure, Tsumetomo speaks often of the warrior living each second as if they were dying, and even in dying should always move toward their goal. My goal is to survive long enough to get to the other side of whatever it is that is coming.
Last week I was in class, learning Microsoft’s WPF framework, I’m a software developer (don’t ask it’s a long story) and we are adopting this as the model moving forward for all of our windows development. The conversation turned most curiously to on M. King Hubbert, who in 1956 predicted that production of oil would peak in the United States in or about 1970, several years after his prediction, geologists came to the conclusion that Hubbert was in fact correct and oil production in the United States had in fact peaked when Hubbert said it would.
I find this very disconcerting, I am aware that the black stuff in the ground is a finite resource, and even if oil were abiotic (renewable in its current form) we still do not know how long it takes for an oil field to recover, it is quite evidentiary however that whatever that recovery rate is mankind is rapidly outstripping the earths ability to put it back. If it is not abiotic, then we all need to take a page out of the Hagakure, and prepare every day for our death, imagine all the ways we can possibly die, and come to grips with it. I don’t say this lightly, I believe that we could return to ways that were sustainable, and of course those who cannot will unfortunately perish.
It’s this constant mantra of “business as usual” that will be the down fall of mankind. I find it almost ironic that those people who currently live on a sustenance existence are the best equipped to meet the new world head on. After all they already exist at a level that will be below where the western world finally ends up. I foresee some areas returning to “the wild west” and the areas between the towns will pretty much be a no man’s land, this will not require a terrorist attack, a nuclear weapon discharge, or some other yet unforeseen catastrophe to befall us, we have sealed our own fate by failing to take into consideration that funny looking black liquid that was first mined in Pennsylvania launching the industrial revolution did not have a finite quanta that could be applied.
I’ll leave you with pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, which loosely translates to “plurality should not be posited without necessity”. The simpler something is, the easier it is to maintain that thing. I love my high speed internet, my large flat televisions, the cable that brings me mindless entertainment for roughly 30 minutes a day (don’t know why I own 3 TV’s 2 don’t get watched) and the one that does is usually on either food or how to shows. Time to get simple, or as simple as you can, life is going to get simple soon enough.
I’ve already written about Jung, and synchronicity, and the lack of coincidence in the universe, I have semi revealed to you some of my thoughts, i.e. being out of place, and time. As I stated in a previous blog post regarding the lack of civility in the church of ostensible peace (I realized later that more people have died in “Godly” fights than for any other reason I could conscientiously think of, anyone besides me recall the crusades?).
I have also regaled you with my thoughts on something wicked this way comes. I have begun the study of bushido, not because I wish to become a samurai, but because the samurai had some good thought processes that anyone can adopt to help them get through life. So it’s not from a swordsmanship perspective, but from a philosophical perspective that I read and study the works of Tsumetomo. In the bushido, or hagakure, Tsumetomo speaks often of the warrior living each second as if they were dying, and even in dying should always move toward their goal. My goal is to survive long enough to get to the other side of whatever it is that is coming.
Last week I was in class, learning Microsoft’s WPF framework, I’m a software developer (don’t ask it’s a long story) and we are adopting this as the model moving forward for all of our windows development. The conversation turned most curiously to on M. King Hubbert, who in 1956 predicted that production of oil would peak in the United States in or about 1970, several years after his prediction, geologists came to the conclusion that Hubbert was in fact correct and oil production in the United States had in fact peaked when Hubbert said it would.
I find this very disconcerting, I am aware that the black stuff in the ground is a finite resource, and even if oil were abiotic (renewable in its current form) we still do not know how long it takes for an oil field to recover, it is quite evidentiary however that whatever that recovery rate is mankind is rapidly outstripping the earths ability to put it back. If it is not abiotic, then we all need to take a page out of the Hagakure, and prepare every day for our death, imagine all the ways we can possibly die, and come to grips with it. I don’t say this lightly, I believe that we could return to ways that were sustainable, and of course those who cannot will unfortunately perish.
It’s this constant mantra of “business as usual” that will be the down fall of mankind. I find it almost ironic that those people who currently live on a sustenance existence are the best equipped to meet the new world head on. After all they already exist at a level that will be below where the western world finally ends up. I foresee some areas returning to “the wild west” and the areas between the towns will pretty much be a no man’s land, this will not require a terrorist attack, a nuclear weapon discharge, or some other yet unforeseen catastrophe to befall us, we have sealed our own fate by failing to take into consideration that funny looking black liquid that was first mined in Pennsylvania launching the industrial revolution did not have a finite quanta that could be applied.
I’ll leave you with pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, which loosely translates to “plurality should not be posited without necessity”. The simpler something is, the easier it is to maintain that thing. I love my high speed internet, my large flat televisions, the cable that brings me mindless entertainment for roughly 30 minutes a day (don’t know why I own 3 TV’s 2 don’t get watched) and the one that does is usually on either food or how to shows. Time to get simple, or as simple as you can, life is going to get simple soon enough.
20 July 2010
Romans, Christians, and Does God Give a Crap
"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned." –Author Unknown
This hits the nail square on the head so to speak, why is it that the individual religions and their subsequent followers do not question the existence of whatever it is they believe in. As I have stated previously I am neither atheist nor agnostic, but hold views of a higher power that while not necessarily antithetical to modern religions certainly flies in the face of the established dogmas.
I am currently in the next state over to attend training in Windows Presentation Foundation fundamentals and advanced techniques. While retrieving my belongings from the vehicle I happened across a “church” group holding their weekly meeting in one of the multiple conference rooms located on the lower level of the hotel.
I still believe that all people are free to exercise their religious beliefs in whatever way they see fit, hey that’s up to them, but it does not stop the ice pick in the ear feeling I get when a group of people get together to “praise God and pass the ammo”. Do none of them stop to think why they are there, or are they there out of some odd sense of necessity, do their lives stink so badly as to need the comfort of one another while they worship and give song offerings. I suppose it’s’ better than sacrificing young children mind you, although that thought has crossed my mind from time to time.
I just don’t get it, I may never get “it”, I am unsure of that at this time, however I do know that they definitely did not apply any critical thinking skills whatsoever to their little gathering downstairs in the prince George room. I know this because I was met with contempt when I simply peered in to see what was going on (ever so curios, one day it’s going to get me killed, and hopefully not in a way I have not imagined yet). One of our fine church going ladies was out in the hall way taking a personal cell phone call, now had she been on the phone with God taking direction I could understand that, in fact I may have a few questions for him myself.
Anyway, I was walking down the hall, with the door opened in the direction I happened to be travelling so I peered round the corner just to see what variety of gathering had everyone all in a ruckus. Said and described woman on the phone decided that “whitey” should not be imposing on “her” church service and basically said “excuse you”, I apologized and said I was simply curious as to what was going on, flashing my best smile and trying to be as apologetic as I possibly could.
Her reaction was nothing short of irascible in its nature. Pretty much telling me that I did not “belong” to “her” church and to kindly remove myself, well that’s kind of tough since I’m at the hotel for the next week (today being Tuesday, yes it takes me several days to write these).
This whole encounter has done nothing but raise the question in my mind of how so called “religious” people can be such hypocrites, I’m not even sure that’s the term I’m looking for. It seems endemic to me as well, that everyone has a label, and either they are trying to remove the one you’re happy with and replace it with theirs or they want nothing to do with you. They all seem to lack the critical thinking skills to realize that the person they just rejected could have been their saving grace.
This hits the nail square on the head so to speak, why is it that the individual religions and their subsequent followers do not question the existence of whatever it is they believe in. As I have stated previously I am neither atheist nor agnostic, but hold views of a higher power that while not necessarily antithetical to modern religions certainly flies in the face of the established dogmas.
I am currently in the next state over to attend training in Windows Presentation Foundation fundamentals and advanced techniques. While retrieving my belongings from the vehicle I happened across a “church” group holding their weekly meeting in one of the multiple conference rooms located on the lower level of the hotel.
I still believe that all people are free to exercise their religious beliefs in whatever way they see fit, hey that’s up to them, but it does not stop the ice pick in the ear feeling I get when a group of people get together to “praise God and pass the ammo”. Do none of them stop to think why they are there, or are they there out of some odd sense of necessity, do their lives stink so badly as to need the comfort of one another while they worship and give song offerings. I suppose it’s’ better than sacrificing young children mind you, although that thought has crossed my mind from time to time.
I just don’t get it, I may never get “it”, I am unsure of that at this time, however I do know that they definitely did not apply any critical thinking skills whatsoever to their little gathering downstairs in the prince George room. I know this because I was met with contempt when I simply peered in to see what was going on (ever so curios, one day it’s going to get me killed, and hopefully not in a way I have not imagined yet). One of our fine church going ladies was out in the hall way taking a personal cell phone call, now had she been on the phone with God taking direction I could understand that, in fact I may have a few questions for him myself.
Anyway, I was walking down the hall, with the door opened in the direction I happened to be travelling so I peered round the corner just to see what variety of gathering had everyone all in a ruckus. Said and described woman on the phone decided that “whitey” should not be imposing on “her” church service and basically said “excuse you”, I apologized and said I was simply curious as to what was going on, flashing my best smile and trying to be as apologetic as I possibly could.
Her reaction was nothing short of irascible in its nature. Pretty much telling me that I did not “belong” to “her” church and to kindly remove myself, well that’s kind of tough since I’m at the hotel for the next week (today being Tuesday, yes it takes me several days to write these).
This whole encounter has done nothing but raise the question in my mind of how so called “religious” people can be such hypocrites, I’m not even sure that’s the term I’m looking for. It seems endemic to me as well, that everyone has a label, and either they are trying to remove the one you’re happy with and replace it with theirs or they want nothing to do with you. They all seem to lack the critical thinking skills to realize that the person they just rejected could have been their saving grace.
17 July 2010
The Bearable Lightness Of Being
“I have become a queer mixture of the East and the West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere.” – Jawaharlal Nehru
I know how he felt, I feel the same way most days. If nothing else like I don’t belong here, as much as my friends try to make me feel differently, I just can’t shake the feeling.
I am unable to put it all into words, the general feeling of dislocation is becoming stronger, I have had this feeling my entire life, and now at 43 its becoming stronger. I feel like I don’t belong “here” in this time period.
Everyone has talents, and skills. The difference is talents are just “there” skills are taught. Cooking is a skill (to do it well anyway), but the ability to draw is a talent, (one I definitely do not possess, I’d be hard pressed to draw a straight line if you nailed the ruler to the desk). But I do have talents; I have the ability apparently to “see” what others miss, to instinctively understand the world around me, almost in a Zen like way, even if I’ve never studied Zen. I often find myself telling people that I’m not psychic; I personally believe that those people exist, but I’m not one of them. I can however look at a situation and pretty much tell you what is going to happen in a very broad sense, and sometimes very specifically. To those whom I have made “predictions”, they themselves will tell you I run about 80% dead nuts accurate, with about 90% of the remaining 20% running in the downright scary category. Don’t ask me the lottery numbers, because if I knew those I sure as hell wouldn’t be telling you LOL.
I recently had a conversation on the phone with a very dear friend, we got onto the subject of houses, what our perfect house would be like, it would have 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, a basement etc. all the normal stuff you think about when you talk about where you would love to live, out in the country, in the city etc. After we hung up, I picked up a piece of paper from inside my desk where I store my excess printer paper, and picked up a pencil and started to draw, now please take note of my missive above about my artistic talents, I aint got none, and I despise pencils, I dislike the scratchiness of them against the paper. Anyway, in roughly 4 minutes 30 seconds (ok probably closer to 6 but hey time is relative) I had drawn a house. Don’t know why I drew a house; I just let the universe guide my hand, much like I do when I’m writing for the blog. I phoned my friend later in the day and said I would like to show them my picture, since I don’t draw, can’t draw, and despise pencils to begin with; they are perfectly aware of all of the above and wanted to see it. Well I ended up taking a photo of my drawing, lacking a scanner and all, and e-mailed it to them.
What came next shocked both my friend and I equally. They asked me where I had gotten the picture from, and when I explained I don’t know, I just started with the pencil and that’s what came out. They then proceeded to tell me that as a younger person (were both “over the hill” so to speak) they had drawn the exact same picture, almost 100% identical (at least as identical as one can get coming from two different minds). They promised me that they would dig out their picture and send it to me for comparison.
Its these and other experiences that tell me I’m out of place, how is it I should know how an engine works, and have since I was 5 years old, I just “knew”, when helping my uncle work on his old Nova, how it functioned, what was wrong, and how to fix it, something no 5 year old should know. I also instinctively know how to grow vegetables (although this year’s garden has been a bit peaked). I also know, even though I keep a book around, how to preserve that food for the long haul. If the world came to a screeching halt tomorrow, I’d make it to the other side.
All of this begs the question, have I been here before (wherever here is, ultimately there might be many “here’s” to be at or from). If I haven’t then what explains my experience as a child and as a knowledge seeking adult that all, however anecdotal, the evidence of having traversed this existence before.
Others with whom I have spoken, also have had similar experiences, which were repudiated by their ostensibly “educated” elders as utter nonsense, the issue I take with this is that no one bothered to investigate it. I bothered. I found that while again highly anecdotal, the evidence is there that all of us have been “here” before, whether we know it or not.
I know how he felt, I feel the same way most days. If nothing else like I don’t belong here, as much as my friends try to make me feel differently, I just can’t shake the feeling.
I am unable to put it all into words, the general feeling of dislocation is becoming stronger, I have had this feeling my entire life, and now at 43 its becoming stronger. I feel like I don’t belong “here” in this time period.
Everyone has talents, and skills. The difference is talents are just “there” skills are taught. Cooking is a skill (to do it well anyway), but the ability to draw is a talent, (one I definitely do not possess, I’d be hard pressed to draw a straight line if you nailed the ruler to the desk). But I do have talents; I have the ability apparently to “see” what others miss, to instinctively understand the world around me, almost in a Zen like way, even if I’ve never studied Zen. I often find myself telling people that I’m not psychic; I personally believe that those people exist, but I’m not one of them. I can however look at a situation and pretty much tell you what is going to happen in a very broad sense, and sometimes very specifically. To those whom I have made “predictions”, they themselves will tell you I run about 80% dead nuts accurate, with about 90% of the remaining 20% running in the downright scary category. Don’t ask me the lottery numbers, because if I knew those I sure as hell wouldn’t be telling you LOL.
I recently had a conversation on the phone with a very dear friend, we got onto the subject of houses, what our perfect house would be like, it would have 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, a basement etc. all the normal stuff you think about when you talk about where you would love to live, out in the country, in the city etc. After we hung up, I picked up a piece of paper from inside my desk where I store my excess printer paper, and picked up a pencil and started to draw, now please take note of my missive above about my artistic talents, I aint got none, and I despise pencils, I dislike the scratchiness of them against the paper. Anyway, in roughly 4 minutes 30 seconds (ok probably closer to 6 but hey time is relative) I had drawn a house. Don’t know why I drew a house; I just let the universe guide my hand, much like I do when I’m writing for the blog. I phoned my friend later in the day and said I would like to show them my picture, since I don’t draw, can’t draw, and despise pencils to begin with; they are perfectly aware of all of the above and wanted to see it. Well I ended up taking a photo of my drawing, lacking a scanner and all, and e-mailed it to them.
What came next shocked both my friend and I equally. They asked me where I had gotten the picture from, and when I explained I don’t know, I just started with the pencil and that’s what came out. They then proceeded to tell me that as a younger person (were both “over the hill” so to speak) they had drawn the exact same picture, almost 100% identical (at least as identical as one can get coming from two different minds). They promised me that they would dig out their picture and send it to me for comparison.
Its these and other experiences that tell me I’m out of place, how is it I should know how an engine works, and have since I was 5 years old, I just “knew”, when helping my uncle work on his old Nova, how it functioned, what was wrong, and how to fix it, something no 5 year old should know. I also instinctively know how to grow vegetables (although this year’s garden has been a bit peaked). I also know, even though I keep a book around, how to preserve that food for the long haul. If the world came to a screeching halt tomorrow, I’d make it to the other side.
All of this begs the question, have I been here before (wherever here is, ultimately there might be many “here’s” to be at or from). If I haven’t then what explains my experience as a child and as a knowledge seeking adult that all, however anecdotal, the evidence of having traversed this existence before.
Others with whom I have spoken, also have had similar experiences, which were repudiated by their ostensibly “educated” elders as utter nonsense, the issue I take with this is that no one bothered to investigate it. I bothered. I found that while again highly anecdotal, the evidence is there that all of us have been “here” before, whether we know it or not.
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