If someone breaks your heart, do you respond rationally? Can you? Has anyone? Is there any way short of nerve-stapling to end the associated sensations and ideation?
Then stop shitting on people who are responding irrationally to heartbreak. The signs of it are all over the world and have always been all over the world. The depressives, the troubled, the diseased, the suicides, the idiots & fools, the violent, the irreverent, the dropouts, the deadbeats, the hopeless, the grieving... so many classically 'unwell' or 'questionable' bear the distinct scars of a broken heart. They are despised and misunderstood. There is no end to them. Even the happy Wellbeings, in an unguarded moment, may exhibit a subtle sign of pain or relate a story (if they trust you enough).
It is part of a mature mind to understand this. It ought to be part of every mind to possess some measure of empathy and understanding. There ought to be more value placed on wisdom.
There are not many people capable of seeing others at their lowest or worst and overcoming the piteous instinct (which censors reality by truncating it). It is a real challenge to empathize with people who fill you with disgust and disregard. You will have to do so if you value wisdom or humanity. It will be shitty... knowledge gained is not always comfortable. Wisdom is the opposite of comfortable complacency. Ignorance is perhaps truly blissful, but ignorance is not a state in which people grow and become great, and bliss is a fleeting thing.
Wisdom counters the irrationality of a human's response to defeat, disgust, pity, sorrow, or heartbreak. It enables one to look past immediate problems and place the present in an accurate context. It does not lead one to foolish hopes or into the destructive types of desire.
Paired with knowledge, wisdom becomes the greatest force for good that we possess. We undervalue wisdom for supposedly 'practical' values. We always have. The wisest humans of the past were not the most powerful, nor the wealthiest, nor were they always honored accordingly, but their influence is responsible for much if not all of what is considered good.
Wisdom is not in and of itself comprised of virtues. It cultivates virtues. It is not easy to attain. It is not self-regarding; it is humble but confident. It does not announce itself, it is not showy, it is self-evident. To the 'happily unwise' it may well be invisible, but it can inspire others. It is not unnecessary. Wisdom is not indifferent but equanimous. Wisdom knows and accepts imperfection in the self and in others. It is not hasty or judgmental, but it does stand firmly in the face of nonsense. Wisdom wants to know what is, and better it, and overcome fear. Wisdom stands against negativity, and though it need not acknowledge a god, it stands vigilant against evil as well.
Wisdom is not the sole property of the 'smart' set. There is no monopoly on wisdom. Wisdom will not form cartels, it will not attempt to take control – it will attempt to effect change in a patient way. It will not endorse bloodshed or suffering. It will not place one above the other. It will not accept injustice as an unbreakable rule. Wisdom is careful and selfless, it is not mercenary, it can change the world and usher in a new era, instead of struggling in the background under old and broken ways of living.
If and only if we adopt wisdom as a way of life can we ensure that the ills of our society are cured within our lifetime. If and only if we accept wisdom as the crowning virtue in leaders can we avoid bloodshed and conflict and small-mindedness. If and only if we strive towards wisdom can we make our species fulfill its potential.
On a personal level wisdom creates the mental balance necessary for true happiness, it is the precursor to true joy, not the pale imitations of joy & happiness that are coveted today. It makes it possible to accept things as they are and move them towards what they might be. It makes it possible to be selfless without being bitter or exploited. It makes it possible to be firm and strong without being aggressive or stupid or overbearing. It is the destroyer of bad habits, it is the creator of good ones. It inculcates discipline and perspective. It is not easy to become wise, that must be acknowledged, but a lifelong attempt should be one of the guiding principles of the living.
The wise are happier. The wise love more deeply, less selfishly. The wise know more and always seek more knowledge, which they do not use solely for personal gain. The wise will never be ruled by fear. The wise see through the vicious lies of our era, and though they are hurt and worried, they do not allow the negativity to wear them down. The wise value perspective, they strive to see things as they really are. They do not provoke negative reactions in others for any purpose. They strive to better those around them, and to better themselves as well, knowing it the most fundamental way of improving society. They know the value of love in its best sense, and it has changed them.
The wise seem to be a dying race in this world, and they have never really thrived, and that must be changed. Seek wisdom; fuck ignorance, greed, hatred, mendacity. Choose the road that requires true courage, which rewards its traveler in immeasurable ways, which offers the best and most terrifying and most inspiring views. For the sake of us all, choose wisdom and reject the nonsense. If and only if you truly want to be better, and leave behind the false ways, wisdom is your only option. Don't sell it or yourself short.
Showing posts with label collapse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collapse. Show all posts
5/4/15
7/7/13
Spit on Apologists or Don't Stop Believing: The Decline of the Middle Ground
Before they kill all of the rest of us. There's been an ongoing crisis for the last ten or so years and you will be hearing about it soon. Anyone who pays attention to nature or depends on it for a living can tell you some things that will make you uneasy. Things that might even get you to rethink your casual, materially-prosperous, entitled and contented life in the Global Consumerist Utopia. Things like the decline of honeybees, songbirds, everything but rats and rodents, it seems. Of course it's all very far away from the sort of stuff the average person cares about, like earning enough to live, or, having succeeded at that, earning enough to prosper.
Yes, I don't mean to be snide or aggressive, but a lot of people in the world are living in a goddamn fantasy. Humanity as a whole is becoming a soulless horde of consumerists and apologists. Everyone remembers the clothing factory collapse in Bangladesh, right? Oh, that's right, it was swept under the rug by the inevitable march of time. But the apologists came out of the woodwork then, to protect the capitalist practices which 'create wealth and jobs' in the third world and 'victories for feminism'. Now, I'm not a card-carrying Feminist so I don't purport to speak for women, but I highly doubt that cheap labor and globalism are victories for women, or anyone besides executives and their slaves.
The scariest thing happening right now, besides the potential dawn of a long era of climate change, or the degradation of the environment, or the dawn of an invincible corpocracy, or even the total fucking of the world by trillion-dollar multinational corporations and their countless parasite offspring, or the emergence of well-funded self-deluded police states, or the fracturing of human society by internet individualism and sub/urban anomie... one of the scariest things happening is the collapse of honeybee populations. Google Colony Collapse Disorder for more information. Or ignore this information and go on running your mouth and taking everything for granted. Believe in the physically impossible unceasing growth of Capitalism.
I think it's one of the great ongoing stories of the last decade. I've been keeping a tally and I've seen exactly two bees in the last few days, and I am fairly sure it was the same bee both times. I have a cherry tree and this year's yield was tiny - probably because of the lack of bees and the fucked-up weather. You rarely hear anything about the bee situation, and you would have had to be paying attention to apply a good narrative to it. To be blunt about it: beehives are dying off, leading to potential food crisis and, worst case scenario, a cascade of extinctions. Lots of great, non-engineered foods are possible only because of the honeybee. Fruits and nuts and anything that eats them is directly endangered. Why? Any number of reasons, but a few are becoming more and more apparent: try agribusiness and their overuse of pesticides (which goes along nicely with the GMO Narrative, a pile of shit I will try to keep out of).
This story is fantastic because two groups of people I despise ignore it (and I'm not talking about the Consumerist Masses, even though they're despicable, dumb, and deranged): the pro-and-anti GMO people. Now, food production is very important in theory and practice. Anything that can feed more people using less land probably a good investment, but there is a bit of the old hubris in the practice of genetic engineering – at least it seems like there is. I'm sure there are good people working there, but good people have been pulled into every evil thing we have ever done as a species – without them the evil ones wouldn't be capable enough.
Hippies are annoying but corporates are just as shitty: and both are largely ignoring the bee crisis. I have no strong opinions on GMO crops, but I hate agribusiness, and I hate Monsanto, like any conscious person with a heartbeat. They always believe in fixing a problem with another problem, and they've never admitted to their faults. Caught in a powerful embrace with world governments, and too rich to be subject to the law, corporations have a mindset analogous to papal infallibility. That alone makes me hate them: they could feed the poor for a million years but there would still be suffering poor. Both sides go wet for politics, but they lose their rabid erections as soon as people insist on the truth.
You could argue agribusiness feeds us, but even in the first world people are going chronically hungry. The food supply is arranged for maximum additives, engineered products, and subsidies. Before food is wasted by the consumer, it is wasted by the restaurant, the supermarket, the factory, the government, or the farmer. People would tell you that this is bullshit spread by fatalistic idealists who don't really know what's happening. People who tell you these things are apologists, and they will also tell you that all is well in the third world, to trust in your local or federal police force, to keep a fixed address, and to make as much money as you possibly can. Because they don't want to be alone, and the people who pay them don't want to fall out of power, and those people you never meet end up with more of your money than you'd think.
I guess the story goes like this: we're humans and we have such big brains. We're so smart: we can't go wrong. We deserve our excesses, and we are close to the Most Prosperous Era in History, when all problems will fade away, but we have to keep believing in the capitalist, empirical, and statist precepts that brought us to this point. No abuse of science cannot be cured by another abuse of science. Nature needs our help. We can improve nature. We are smarter than billions of years. We are more powerful than the seasons. We can do anything. We can solve inequality. We can believe in hope and progress. We can buy anything, even health, even love, even happiness. In 20 years we will construct the first artificial souls. So who gives a fuck about declining bee populations? We can solve that with either more poison or robot bees, and nothing needs to change, and we're going to be alright: I bet you twenty thousand give-a-fuck-points that Monsanto already bought the solution to the problem they, aided by plenty of other short-sighted profiteers, created.
Who gives a fuck about traffic jams? Radioactive contaminants bouncing around for thousands of years, and millions of lifeforms? Who cares about an unstable, overleveraged, dangerous food supply? As long as there's food on the table, nobody will care about this one planet we have that we are pissing away. Think about that when you see some sweaty fuck in a car, getting angry at a traffic jam, burning thousands of units of energy just to be bored and frustrated. Then look at the next one, and so on, and so on, forever. Some day, our hungry and scarce distant descendants will look back to this era and wonder if we were even capable of feeling shame.
Yes, I don't mean to be snide or aggressive, but a lot of people in the world are living in a goddamn fantasy. Humanity as a whole is becoming a soulless horde of consumerists and apologists. Everyone remembers the clothing factory collapse in Bangladesh, right? Oh, that's right, it was swept under the rug by the inevitable march of time. But the apologists came out of the woodwork then, to protect the capitalist practices which 'create wealth and jobs' in the third world and 'victories for feminism'. Now, I'm not a card-carrying Feminist so I don't purport to speak for women, but I highly doubt that cheap labor and globalism are victories for women, or anyone besides executives and their slaves.
The scariest thing happening right now, besides the potential dawn of a long era of climate change, or the degradation of the environment, or the dawn of an invincible corpocracy, or even the total fucking of the world by trillion-dollar multinational corporations and their countless parasite offspring, or the emergence of well-funded self-deluded police states, or the fracturing of human society by internet individualism and sub/urban anomie... one of the scariest things happening is the collapse of honeybee populations. Google Colony Collapse Disorder for more information. Or ignore this information and go on running your mouth and taking everything for granted. Believe in the physically impossible unceasing growth of Capitalism.
I think it's one of the great ongoing stories of the last decade. I've been keeping a tally and I've seen exactly two bees in the last few days, and I am fairly sure it was the same bee both times. I have a cherry tree and this year's yield was tiny - probably because of the lack of bees and the fucked-up weather. You rarely hear anything about the bee situation, and you would have had to be paying attention to apply a good narrative to it. To be blunt about it: beehives are dying off, leading to potential food crisis and, worst case scenario, a cascade of extinctions. Lots of great, non-engineered foods are possible only because of the honeybee. Fruits and nuts and anything that eats them is directly endangered. Why? Any number of reasons, but a few are becoming more and more apparent: try agribusiness and their overuse of pesticides (which goes along nicely with the GMO Narrative, a pile of shit I will try to keep out of).
This story is fantastic because two groups of people I despise ignore it (and I'm not talking about the Consumerist Masses, even though they're despicable, dumb, and deranged): the pro-and-anti GMO people. Now, food production is very important in theory and practice. Anything that can feed more people using less land probably a good investment, but there is a bit of the old hubris in the practice of genetic engineering – at least it seems like there is. I'm sure there are good people working there, but good people have been pulled into every evil thing we have ever done as a species – without them the evil ones wouldn't be capable enough.
Hippies are annoying but corporates are just as shitty: and both are largely ignoring the bee crisis. I have no strong opinions on GMO crops, but I hate agribusiness, and I hate Monsanto, like any conscious person with a heartbeat. They always believe in fixing a problem with another problem, and they've never admitted to their faults. Caught in a powerful embrace with world governments, and too rich to be subject to the law, corporations have a mindset analogous to papal infallibility. That alone makes me hate them: they could feed the poor for a million years but there would still be suffering poor. Both sides go wet for politics, but they lose their rabid erections as soon as people insist on the truth.
You could argue agribusiness feeds us, but even in the first world people are going chronically hungry. The food supply is arranged for maximum additives, engineered products, and subsidies. Before food is wasted by the consumer, it is wasted by the restaurant, the supermarket, the factory, the government, or the farmer. People would tell you that this is bullshit spread by fatalistic idealists who don't really know what's happening. People who tell you these things are apologists, and they will also tell you that all is well in the third world, to trust in your local or federal police force, to keep a fixed address, and to make as much money as you possibly can. Because they don't want to be alone, and the people who pay them don't want to fall out of power, and those people you never meet end up with more of your money than you'd think.
I guess the story goes like this: we're humans and we have such big brains. We're so smart: we can't go wrong. We deserve our excesses, and we are close to the Most Prosperous Era in History, when all problems will fade away, but we have to keep believing in the capitalist, empirical, and statist precepts that brought us to this point. No abuse of science cannot be cured by another abuse of science. Nature needs our help. We can improve nature. We are smarter than billions of years. We are more powerful than the seasons. We can do anything. We can solve inequality. We can believe in hope and progress. We can buy anything, even health, even love, even happiness. In 20 years we will construct the first artificial souls. So who gives a fuck about declining bee populations? We can solve that with either more poison or robot bees, and nothing needs to change, and we're going to be alright: I bet you twenty thousand give-a-fuck-points that Monsanto already bought the solution to the problem they, aided by plenty of other short-sighted profiteers, created.
Who gives a fuck about traffic jams? Radioactive contaminants bouncing around for thousands of years, and millions of lifeforms? Who cares about an unstable, overleveraged, dangerous food supply? As long as there's food on the table, nobody will care about this one planet we have that we are pissing away. Think about that when you see some sweaty fuck in a car, getting angry at a traffic jam, burning thousands of units of energy just to be bored and frustrated. Then look at the next one, and so on, and so on, forever. Some day, our hungry and scarce distant descendants will look back to this era and wonder if we were even capable of feeling shame.
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