Lost Myself

Derrick Jensen reminds us that we are all insane. He says we hate life, hate ourselves, hate women, hate other species. Otherwise how could we be in the process of destroying the world and annihilating other species, just as important as ourselves?

I just had another thought. What if we don't hate all those beings and systems (a lot anyway) but we just want to destroy these human made structures that make life meaningless. My life often feels meaningless. I have to get up in the morning from my warm, soft bed. Food is provided for my breakfast. I get on a bus that carries me to a place where I sit in front of a computer all day in relatively warmth and comfort and have the occasional meaningless conversation. Then I come home via the same bus. More food appears (for most it's all ready to heat in a few minutes) and I watch some television, see a movie, have a few drinks (alone is often better sadly). Then it's off to bed and repeat.

Am I waiting to die? Am I waiting for anything? Am I even alive?

At what point does a comfortable life make an animal (and humans are most certainly animals), for tens of thousands of years used to foraging, hunting, starving, freezing, being scared of predators, go mad from all the comfort and security? It's surely in our cells. Watchfulness, catching scents on the wind, running for our lives, rejoicing in another day. You can't destroy these truths with all the ipods, pepsi, cars in the world.

But have we become like cattle. Slaves inside fences protected from everything even bacteria. No purpose, no fear. The eyes lose their sharpness, their focus. When humans are gone, so go these slaves.

So we act, unconsciously, to destroy this human-constructed prison. Some pick up guns, some spray paint cans, others march, others merely maintain the trajectory of doom, taking more than they should each and every day. The end will be the same: a return to the realities of life for our children and our grandchildren and beyond. Struggle, suffering, joy in the smallest things, wonder at the stars. Despite us the perfect, clean, pristine pre-slave world will return in time, a lot of time.

However the longer we civilized persist, the farther the fall will be. So pick up a gun, spray paint, march or speed up your overconsumption. We all have the same liberating goal. Let's get there.

(These thoughts came to me shortly after waking up this morning. Maybe now it's only in dreams that our minds reach their full capacity).

Why Do I Care?

You know that today was my day off and I wasn't feeling well yet I still attended a four hour long council meeting hoping against hope that the "wise" councillors in attendance would vote against a proposed fare increase. In the end of course they did pass the fare increase because staff and proponents bundled it all together with some meagre service enhancements, a ridiculous plan to provide a handful of low-income Hamiltonians with discount passes and also kept the meeting under wraps until the last minute.

I know that peak oil is coming if it already isn't here. I know that our city's air is poison and that many of us are obese. I also know that climate change most definitely is here and we are just making the problem worse by sitting on our hands and debating what we should do. In terms of transportation, it's simple. No driving, no airplanes; more transit, more walking, more cycling. It's easy.

But the councillors don't get it. They can't see the big picture. This system doesn't work. It should be overthrown, broken into so many pieces that it can't be rebuilt and a good number of people must be lined up against a wall.

Realizing this, I'm thinking that I need to just prepare for the crash and build my own resiliency. And I suppose that I should do my best to throw a monkey wrench into the whole damned thing and speed its collapse. No more wage slaving for me . . . well maybe a couple more months.

Farewell

Another of Bush's gang has fallen. Let's ponder what's next for Mr Howard, the former Prime Minister of Australia:

• Perhaps a well paying seat on the board of directors of Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, Exxon-Mobil or News Corporation
  
• Consulting is always an option; I expect Howard could charge well over $500 an hour to inform elites how to be more elite
  
• Like Bill Clinton, Howard could attend high level gatherings and act as a keynote speaker; amazingly, like Clinton, he could have a change of heart and lament the lack of action from "developed" countries on poverty, disease and, yes, even climate change
  
• Perhaps like Mr Blair, Howard will take on the peacemaker's role, perhaps in Indonesia where Australians are well respected

In the end, this defeat is meaningless. Howard achieved record profits for corporations, dried out his country by ignoring climate change and further militarized Australia. (New) Labour would have done the same and I expect they will; perhaps with a few more smiles and some bones for the poor to gnaw on. Signing up to the Kyoto Protocol, seemingly the only difference between the parties, is at this point fairly weak gesture worthy of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Good luck to you John Howard and also to the land down under (perhaps to have a more telling meaning with global warming causing rising sea levels).

Straight Talk

Thank you George Monbiot. Finally some honesty about the Middle East though don't expect anyone to notice. Israel has nuclear weapons but that's somehow okay while Iran holding these deadliest of weapons is an impossible option. Nuclear-free Middle East now!

Upside?

I just finished a really good book about the coming collapse. I recommend that you check it out. And for those of you who question my reading lists of late you'll be happy to hear that the author is the Director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto. The book is The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon.

Homer-Dixon touches on the numerous ways that our modern industrial civilization is under threat. There's climate change of course, the coming energy scarcity, asymmetric warfare, overpopulation, and the growing gap between the rich and poor in states and between states. All these "tectonic stresses" threaten the highly complex yet fragile global civilization that we have created. There is little resiliency in the structures we have created and maintained.

Collapse is natural. It happens all the time in systems. It leads to innovation and change. For instance a forest fire (which humans stupidly prevent thereby making conditions ripe for a monster fire which nothing can stop) allows for new seeds and species to take over newly cleared niches thereby restarting and slowly increasing the complexity of the forest ecosystem which will then experience another creative collapse; do we need more convincing that linearity is unnatural? We've been putting off collapse for so long and pretending that we can continue to take and take forever (insanity?) that we're due for a monumental rebalancing. The longer we wait the more painful it will be; the forest fire will burn so hot it will kill all the seeds.

He is also very critical of the hollowness of modern industrial civilization with its focus on consumption: "Our economic role in this culture of consumerism is to be little more than walking appetites that serve the function of maintaining our economy's throughput. Our psychological state is comparable to that of drug addicts needing a fix: buying things doesn't really make us happy, except perhaps for a moment after the purchase. But we do it over and over anyway"(197).

Homer-Dixon ultimately believes that collapse is unavoidable. Sooner or later it's coming down. What we need, he suggests, is to be ready to rebuild lest the forces of intolerance and violence take over. While he offers a lot of potential scenarios he explains that we must be guided by new values (that are already becoming visible): "Our values must be compatible with the exigencies of the natural world we live in and depend on. They must implicitly recognize the laws of thermodynamics, energy's role in our survival, the dangers of certain kinds of connectivity, and the nonlinear behaviour of natural systems like the climate. The endless material growth of our economies is fundamentally inconsistent with these physical facts of life. Period. End of story. And a value system that makes endless growth the primary source of our social stability and spiritual well-being will destroy us"(305).

What I liked most about this book was that it wasn't offering crazy solutions to our problems and pretending to be positive about the ingenuity of humans to subdue nature. It recognized that civilization is on a deadly and unsustainable path in its current form (can it ever be sustainable?) and has to collapse for the good of all life, including humans. It was also very accessible to those of us not familiar with panarchy for instance. It was also just plain interesting with examples from Homer-Dixon's Gore-like world traveling (are you part of the problem?).

There are so many books outlining that humanity is headed for disaster (Power Down, Collapse, Endgame, The Long Emergency, The World Without Us) but dear reader, if you want to start to learn the truth, start with The Upside of Down and then move on to Derrick Jensen.

And please if anyone tells you that humans will cope with the breakdown of the natural world at their hands tell them to go fuck themselves. We're fucked but that's a good thing.

Check out what I just made. If you want a t-shirt I'm going to start on them soon.

A Thousand Words

These pictures speak so much to the strange times in which we live. How quickly will nature replace us when we are gone? What arrogance makes us think to rebuild when the clock is ticking? Why can't we see that we're the problem?

Guantanamo Handbook Leaked

If you ever wanted to know every intricate detail of life in Guantanamo Bay for prisoners of the War on Terror (insert laughter here) then you'd do well to read the recently leaked 328 page document. The name of the game is control, though no mention of waterboarding apparently. Right down to how many guards have to be in the shower with you. Who knows what you might get up to after all? No peeing in the shower boys.

When the hell are they going to close this hell hole and put all these men on trial? If they are guilty then prove it.

Blessed

She danced there. It was fall and the cold days were ahead. The trees and their changing leaves bent and creaked in defiance of a strong wind. Her soft feet pounded down the hard earth around the giant fire. The whole forest seemed to drink in this energy and we were all refreshed, all the creatures of the woods.

With my back to a strong youthful tree, I took in the scene. Some others had joined her in the dance, circling the fire, laughing together, holding hands. I was never much for dancing. Never felt good enough. Never understood that your body speaks to you. Never listened deeply as I did tonight.

But I've been wounded by the old world so much that I still can't dance. At least I'm here. So many are not.

As she passed, she winked at me. When she blessed me so I always felt like we were the only two people in the world. My sight focused only on that subtle move and the half-smile which in an instant was gone. Like a recipe:

1 cup seductive
1 tbsp playful
a pinch of joy
combine wet and dry ingredients

I had loved her now for years, through many changes and challenges. When the click of computer keys counted down the days, I often exclaimed how fast life happened. Now I know that this phenomenon was just a lie; time sped up for humans because our souls longed for reality, to be released from a twisted prison. Time moves slowly in the real world, moments like these last and are recalled vividly.

Much like her infective smile, her tattoo, magically coloured, shone in the darkness below the branches. All the colours, the time, the creativity. It was the best of the dead world now abandoned like a plastic bag in the wind. We still all wondered at it. Painted on her shoulder, I once noticed person after person crane to catch a glimpse of it. Often they went away the mystery unsatisfied while for me it was like a lover's hidden gift, a painting only for me to know truly.

Humans could no longer produce such things of beauty and much like our Mona Lisas or just base creations like our expressways and tall buildings, one day it would fade and wither and become something new. Nothing was designed to last, least of all our soft flesh or our pathetic attempts at immortality; beautiful things would come and go. And in this moment, in this place, that was right.

She also liked to sing for all of us and we loved her all the more for it. Later that night as the embers took over, she struck up one of our favourites:

Karma police, arrest this man
He talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge
He's like a detuned radio

Karma police, arrest this girl
Her Hitler hairdo is
Making me feel ill
And we have crashed her party

This is what you get
This is what you get
This is what you get when you mess with us

Karma Police
I've given all I can
It's not enough
I've given all I can
But we're still on the payroll

This is what you get
This is what you get
This is what you get when you mess with us

And for a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself
Phew, for a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself

For for a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself
Phew, for a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself


Will our children still sing this song? What will they make of it? Hitler, fridge, radio, hairdo, maths, all gone. Karma they might understand but police?

If we build the new world on moments like these we might have a chance for them never to know that unfortunate word.

Crash

Though this article never mentions the words once, this is pretty clear evidence of peak oil. The article states: "ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil producer, today reported a 10% drop in third-quarter profits despite the soaring price of oil. It blamed a drop in production levels, with yields falling at some of its mature oil and gas fields, and lower profit margins. "

How can you be losing money with oil at $93 a barrel? Because you're running out of the easy to reach stuff.

Almost there.

Now hopefully this civilization can collapse before some genius decides to set off a nuclear weapon. And I had better learn something useful because I don't think blogging will fill my belly.