When everything's gone wrong somehow
The men of steel, the men of power
Are losing control by the hour.
(lyris by Genesis' Mike Rutherford.)
It’s almost four years since his death and I for one miss Stephen J. Gould.
Like crazy.
There are probably very few of you who didn’t know of him – either from his writing or from his star turn on “The Simpsons” (but, really, who among us has not had guest appearance on “The Simpsons”?) However,just in case you don’t he’s the one on the right in the photo above.
He’s was this guy – “"America's unofficial evolutionist laureate." – and this is the key quote:
"Secondly, he was the best science writer for the public when it came to explaining evolution. Steve did not try to make it simple, he tried and succeeded in explaining the complications. He made readers appreciate how messy and variable life is. Rather than being a popularizer of science, Steve always told the truth in ways people could understand, and he did it better than anyone."
Bingo.
I’ve recently lucked into some lectures by some very smart people on a variety of topics, and, filtered through my own particular lens, I've been musing a lot about what the Liberals, Democrats, Progressives lack when it comes to meeting the challenge of the Party of God head-on.
And don’t waste even one minute on our opponents when they carp that it’s because of a lack of ideas.
First, well, shame on you for listening to them to begin with: at this point anyone that has survived the Reality Centrifuge of the last eight years and remain inside the Dubya Tent pissing out – instead of outside pissing in -- is either a liar, a lunatic, a congenital idiot, or a co-conspirator.
Seriously, not a few of the Conservatives I talk to are willing to grudgingly admit (after peeling back the obligatory ablative-denial-shielding) that they have fallen into what I can only describe as this grim, “Well since were all fucked anyway, why not go out gun’s blazing?” explicitly nihilistic posture.
It's "A world without cheap shit where I can live like a pasha is just not a world worth living in!" kind of thing
As I have said before -- quoting Charlie Chaplin -- they have gotten used to luxury. So used to it that they will consider our foreign policy to have been a success – even if we have to start lobbing nukes – so long as the annihilation of the planet is staved off long enough for them to live large until they die of natural causes.
And if this depraved, solipsistic bottom line costs the live of million or billions of their fellow humans, honestly, they really just don’t give a shit.
It’s “Gimme gimme gimme cheap gas, loose shoes and a warm place to take a dump until I shuffle off this mortal coil” and if that pisses off the rest of the human race –- if rubbing their noses in the fact that our whole foreign policy if now about making sure fat, pig-ignorant, bible-smackin’ hillbillies get a steady supply of cheap gas and Wal-Mart palette trucks of Ho-Hos and Pampers for pennies might make the other six billion inhabitants of this globe (1-out-of-4 of which never see a clean glass of water from cradle to grave) murderously angry -- well that’s why we pay the one kind of taxes the knuckledraggers never object to: taxes for a military that’s second to none.
That’s why we have a nuclear arsenal.
Because the “Fuck everyone but me” Republicans are every bit as much a Culture of Death as the Fundy Republicans.
That's why they grope each other in the dark.
The “Fuck everyone but me” are every bit as global-suicidally inclined as Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell: The only difference is in the timing.
The Christopaths want to be alive and alert when Armageddon comes, whereas the “Fuck everyone but me” Republicans want to have spent every planetary resource to live Jackie Gleason-lavish on an existential Dine-And-Dash; to slip into a double-wide grave just before the Final Tab comes due.
So while we should be paying attention to them in a “know your enemy and know yourself” kind of way, we shouldn't heed them, because their 'advice” is inevitably poison.
And when you slow them down and examine them under a microscope, their “critiques” are never more than GOP talking points, spun up to the speed of light so as to give the appearance of substance.
So the idea that we're out of ideas is drivel; we have them by the job-lot.
No, I believe a big part of the problem is that we have no Stephen J. Gould, or not enough of them.
No Einstein. No Sagan.
Not necessarily men of genius, but gifted Explainers of Things, in the matter of science specifically, and on matters of Policy and Principle generally.
In the sciences it may be simply that emergent sciences require such a degree of specialization that practitioners are reluctant to speak about science broadly outside of their expertise.
Whatever the reason, we lack Integrators.
We lack the bright men and women who can do what Clinton used to do better than anyone else: Explain why this is related to that.
Why helping Third World countries with clean water, or to wipe out malaria and AIDS isn’t just bleeding-heart, but dangerously soft-headed Liberalism. Fuck no. Doing those things -- all of those kinds of things -- is a matter of national security. Saving live around the world, and helping economies grow and modernize around the world, is a vastly more cost-effective expenditure of public fund for keeping us safe than invading armies.
Not that we don’t need armies, because we do. Because we have enemies.
But right now what we need more than any other single thing is to stop driving the world’s people into the arms of our enemies. To show the world that we’re not crazy and not stupid and that we don’t view the rest of the planet and the rest of the people’s of the world as expendable in the Global Struggle To Keep Redneck Gas Really Cheap.
That's what shut's up a "They hate us for our freedoms" pinhead. Yeah, a few do, but the vast majority hate us for being fat and stupid and bigoted and unbelievable reckless with out power while they starve and die from diseases we could help them cure for the change that's gotten stuck between your fourth and fifth chins, dumbass.
No, we don't lack for programs.
In fact, because the GOP really has no ideas except their Core Loony Notion that if you obliterate the Federal Government of the United States somehow, through the Transubstantiative Majyks of the Marketplace everything will turn out Just Super Ooper Duper, we tend to get picked apart when we walk into fights where all we talk about are programs.
Discussion of marginal tax rates or CAFE standards should always come second.
First we need to keep it clear, passionate and simple-but-not-stupid, and speak from an integrated philosophy.
Because right now we don’t say, “Because it’s wrong to wipe your ass with the Constitution. Period.”
Enough of our leaders don’t say, as Maryscott O'Connor said on Fox News (Thank’s to Steve Gilliard for the pointer)
“…This is about a principle. He broke the law. It shouldn't be about whether it's a "winning issue" or not. I think that Republicans and Democrats should be behind impeaching this man for breaking the law.”
Because we refuse to say, “We’re going to raise your taxes to pay for it you fucking moocher.”
What we lack are people in large numbers that can speak and frame our issues and policies out of coherent worldview. And in the end, that is all the GOP to offer its Mole Rat People: An integrated philosophy.
An ignorant, cancerous and ultimately suicidal philosophy to be sure, but one that forcefully and coherently guides everything they do.
18 comments:
Absolutley right on! Ties in with a post, "Bright Earth'" over on http://earthfamilyalpha.blogspot.com/ at the moment. Like I commented there, I wish more Americans were exposed to the truth of your words, understood them, and acted with generosity, courage and integrity on them.
Here, here! I distill the Repubs integrated philosophy to be, "What's good for business is good for Amurica." They filter everything through that lens and it works for them. Lower taxes, drowning the tiny gvt in a bathtub, etc...
The Dems are trying with some words around "security," but I think they have to redefine "National Security" to take it more than just bombs and find the filter that works from that phrase to tie all their many ideas/programs together.
But that's just me.
Spot-on...
and PZ Myers did have a good one about this: Suicide is Not the Highest Form of Self-Interest -- In addition to having the BEST "Cephalopod Fridays" around the internets. (*wink*)
Will you joineth mine ministry?
Amen. Sweet lord, but I miss Gould too.
Transubstantiative Majyks of the Marketplace...
pure gold.
Should the world survive George Bush et al, for fuck's sake get rid of your standing army. It's a menace to yourselves and the whole world. You emphatically do not need it to defend yourselves (as Iraq is proving). But you do need it to oppress you own citizens and those of other nations for the purposes of exploitation that would not be tolerated otherwise and THAT is why the US Constitution forbids a standing army.
Oh, and well said, Driftglass
Should the world survive George Bush et al, for fuck's sake get rid of your standing army.
Having served in that army, I really feel compelled to bleat out a contrary opinion here. Or, rather, just echo what was said earlier in the post:
Not that we don’t need armies, because we do. Because we have enemies.
We have armies because we have enemies, not the other way 'round. You'll find that, among all of the nations of the world that have armies, the thinking is similar.
Granted, we're going to need some time rebuilding it once we've gotten it pulled out of the wringer, since the current owners are abusing the giddy fuck out of it. But we'll never stop needing it, even if we manage to reverse every other foreign-policy clusterfuck that the Bushies have dragged, writhing and spitting, straight from the hellmouth out onto the world.
We have a military that's being used like a toy a spoiled, rich kid got for Christmas, and that's sad. But, pointing back to the Iraq example, it isn't the only thing being misused that way.
I'll leave it to other historians to point out the context of the "standing army" comments. Hint: they weren't referring to the Yoo Ess military, at least not at the time they were written.
Well, I find a wee, and God, I mean it's tiny, bit of hope in the fact that just today a dye-in-the-wool, no-thinking Repub actually said to me Bush is a crook.
Sweet Jesus, I almost fell out from the shock.
Now if we can get a few more common folk to see how the big companies and CEOs are pissing on the American workers, out-sourcing jobs, cutting insurance, all for the benefit of their own million dollar bonuses (who's the party of big business, kids?) AND to see all the government tax cuts these bozos are getting while morgaging our children's and grandchildren's future......MAYBE sanity will set-in.
But I'm afraid to be optimistic.
The business of war is strong.
I wonder what Griffon thinks would have happened if the United States, the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth, and the Soviet Union had taken his advice to dismantle standing armies in, say, the 1930s?
Damn, I never knew that Gould died. I only knew him from my Ken Burns baseball documentary.
The standing armies of the above mentioned countries were largely de-mobilised after WW1. After WW11, the US decided to keep a wartime sized army and deliberately turned the economy to pursueing armaments rather than social benefits (and, no, I don't mean social welfare payments). You and the world are now reaping the results of the sowing of that particular whirlwind.
Go here
http://www.strikeforpeace.org
and read some of your history and get some idea of why many people from other countries just roll their eyes at the mention of Americans. The author of the site was a researcher for the US intelligence community and still has a high level clearance to view many documents not publicly available.
From his bio:-
"Brian (Bogart)'s work focuses on the disastrous policies of the Truman administration, its manufacture and escalation of the Cold War for the benefit of the industrialists of war, and the subsequent maintenance of this arrangement through the end of the Cold War to this moment—a condition that perpetuates conflict to sell weaponry (America’s top industry since 1950), and from which the world continues to suffer immensely. One particular point of interest for Brian is the direct ties between Paul Nitze—author of NSC-68, the 1950 document that officially launched the Cold War and America’s military-based economy—and Paul Wolfowitz, architect of the transition from the Cold War to the war on terror."
Getting back to the 1930's, have you ever wondered how Germany recovered from the WW1 pasteing it got to be able to threaten the rest of Europe in such a short time?
It was with the connivance of US and British bankers who gave the rest of the world the Great Depression and financed the German economy which was wholely focused on armaments, prefigureing the US and British economies after WW11.
Standard Oil provided Germany with oil throughout the entire length of WW11 with Rooseveldt's knowledge. (Read Charles Higham's "Trading With THe Enemy").
In short, Germany would not have been threatening anyone if it weren't for the very people who would profit massively from the "Yoo Esses" involvement later. As US Marine General Smedley Bultler said, "War is a racket"
These bankers would not have been in a position to do this if another of the Founding Fathers warnings had been followed, i.e. not allowing a privately owned central bank to exist. (The Federal Reserve is privately owned by bankers)
We roll our eyes at you because you have no idea of how little you know about your own country and it's history. Although it is ironic, it is to some extent understandable as you have not been on the receiving end of your bankers foreign policies till now. It's a different view from the other side of the fence, I can tell you.
But you have no excuses now because you are aware that your "news" is manipulated and you have the internet to find out what is really going on.
If you have questions, I will answer those that I can
Good for you griffon! While not completely at fault, the good old USA has always been a bully. There isn't anyone south of the Rio Grande who would argue with that. And the astounding ignorance
(and STUPIDITY) of the the vast majority of the sheeple can NOT be over-stated. I work with a bunch of imbeciles: they have brains, but not minds.
Drift, you frighten me with that kind of perception. It's too keen; too accurate.
I have been arguing with the conservatives for about 40 months now, since the run-up to the shitmire, when, a few days before bush pulled the trigger, I begged them, literally, to call their congresspeople and senators, to tell them to yank on bush's leash, and stop the madness.
It did no good, of course. And whenever they start talking about what to do to NOW (Okay; they don't talk about Iraq much at ALL, these days...) I just remind them that they lost their "here's our worldview credentials" in a Baghdad morgue.
But something is dawning on me, and I've accused the most zealously pro-war of my sparring partner knee-jerks of it, a couple of times, already. It's what you're talking about.
Some of them...a substantial number, I'm afraid, don't MIND seeing the world turned into a hate-filled armed camp with everything predicated on who can conceive and build the most anti-human and corporate-portfolio-enhancing war toys.
They want it. They want to live in a dystopian B-grade post-armageddon-sci-fi flick, where pump shotguns with 60-round magazines make perfect surrogate dicks for aging middle-class conservatives, who clean their home arsenals, as lovingly as we flogged our dicks, when we first discovered them.
That would solve the pain and confusion they feel, as their women wander off in search of some residual affection and tenderness, from what they once had; as the "queers" come out of the woodwork, some of them, their own children; as the "illegal aliens", unable to find decent paying work for themselves and their families in places like Mexico, head north for a chance to make what for them, is a living and SAVING wage.
For these change-hating time-freezers, the kind of idiot's denial that is now Iraq, is just the thing, and "in for a dime---in for a dollar" is a philosophy that they love.
Better to kill nations, if not literally, then, humanistically, than to admit to how wretchedly, bloodily, wrong they were.
It's up to us. I'm starting to feel like the kid and his mom in "The Terminator" movies.
Not there yet, but this November, if not before, there will be a winnowing. Either the people who have inflicted this obscenity on us are called to account, or we will have no place to hide.
The personal development industry has never been bigger! It consists of a myriad of authors basically telling us how to improve our lives. We are constantly being told self help and self improvement has never been easier. New techniques, gadgets and potions adorn the shelves of new age shops and the 1 billion dollar industry, that is personal development, offers many different approaches to help better our lives. They offer ways to increase our bounty and ultimately alter our own reality. A great example of this is how to develop a Prosperity Consciousness. But does this state really exist and if it does will it bring the effortless unlimited wealth promised?
A lot has been written about prosperity and how to attain it. We have been told by many religious traditions and every personal development guru that the Universersal Source (God, Spirit, Cosmic Mind or whatever label you chose to give it) is boundless wealth. We are also told that abundance, wealth and prosperity are our birthright! Why then are so many people ill, broke, frustrated and unfulfilled? Can a person really develop a prosperity consciousness and effortlessly attract wealth? Well as with everything in life there is only one way to find out. Test it for yourself!
Before we can attain and then test the effectiveness of having a prosperity consciousness we need to understand some basic truths. Let's start by explaining three fundamentals of personal development namely; 1. The Universal Source is all wealth, abundance and prosperity; 2. Prosperity is our birthright; 3. You get more of what you focus on.
1. Why are we told that the Universal Source is unlimited wealth? - Because the Universal Source is the consciousness of the Universe - a universe that is still expanding. It is the driving force behind physical reality. It created everything you see, hear, touch and smell as well as all that we are unaware of (microwaves, radiation, air etc.). It has been stated in religious and metaphysical traditions that this intelligence is not only the Source of everything but that it is also the substance of it! It creates the Universe from itself! It is omnipresent (everywhere present). That means that the entire seen and unseen aspects of the universe are a part of this Universal Source. Science reaffirms this theory as it states that nothing is solid and everything is just one mass of pure energy that vibrates at different frequencies and gives the illusion of separateness.
So we can now claim that the Universal Source is unlimited wealth, abundance and prosperity with some belief. For if this Source is the very substance of everything then it is all the wealth, abundance and prosperity that exists at this very moment!
Ok so far? Now lets look at the second point - prosperity is our birthright.
2. If this Universal Intelligence is the source and substance of all things then there can be only one intelligence in the Universe. Jesus said to his disciples "know ye not that you are the temple of the living God?" Buddha attained enlightenment and "oneness". The list of these religious teachings are too numerous to mention but their message remains the same - God (Universal Substance) resides within and around us. It's very substance makes up our physical body and the world around us - "For in him we live, move and have our being" Acts17:28. Therefore, if this Universal Source is at the very core of our being and is the substance from which we take physical form then it stands to reason that we are connected to everyone else and in fact everything else around us - we are a part of all the wealth, abundance and prosperity of the universe. Just as your hand or foot is a part of your body, so every grain of sand, blade of grass, wisp of wind, bar of gold and brick that is laid in a mansion is part of you. The unlimited wealth of the universe is yours for the claiming. It is already yours, always has been and always will be. It is a part of you.
Ok let's go the third point - you get more of what you focus on.
3. "It never rains but it pours", is a saying I have used myself in the past. Have you ever wondered why such a statement appears to be true? Well metaphysics and religion tell us that "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he" or as Job cried out to God "For that which I greatly feared has come upon me". What we focus our conscious attention on increases! Don't believe me? Test it for yourself! If you can muster up the strength to do it then think in negative terms for a week. Judge everything that happens to you in negative terms and think only of a negative outcome and watch what happens in your world!!! This is a relatively easy experiment as we are conditioned to think negatively by the world. A word of warning though - once you prove that your focus determines your reality stop thinking negative thoughts as best you can.
I will not go into the 'hows' of why our focus has such a profound influence on our lives (that would be the subject of a book or perhaps a future article) just prove to yourself that it does. A clue can be found in the teachings of Jesus when he said "The Kingdom of heaven is within".
So now we have the three principles of the prosperity consciousness explained let's put it to work. The attainment of a prosperity consciousness is relatively simple - just think on the first two principles until you fully understand them and integrate them into your consciousness. As you focus on them you will discover that your feelings of lack disappear and you begin to feel a connection with everything around you. It is really just an attitude shift - nothing metaphysical or mystical about it at all. You begin to consciously realize that everything is a part of you. Your focus changes from poverty to wealth.
If it helps make a list of affirmations that correspond to the two principles outlined e.g. "God is the Source and substance of everything", "I am at one with everyone and everything around me", "I am a part of all the wealth, abundance and prosperity of the Universe" etc. Don't just rhyme them off in a parrot like manner, think on them and realize the scientific or spiritual truths behind them.
Will it work? Well I can say now that if you follow the above instructions a real change will happen in you. You will start to see the beauty of the world and the unlimited resources that are available within and around you. Will you attain wealth, abundance and prosperity? Test it for yourself! self-hypnosis
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Come and check it out if you get time, Scott.
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