tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78394096384240611942024-03-13T04:31:29.757-07:00At The Risk of Being Controversial...All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing<br>
Edmund Burke<br><br>
All that is necessary for the triumph of stupidity,<br> is for stupid men to blather on, and intelligent men say nothing.<br> John StrohlThe Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.comBlogger62125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-21469614316429945472019-10-29T21:08:00.001-07:002020-01-06T23:16:35.157-08:00On the Problem of Being White or IndigenousA Canadian fellow named Tad Hargrave posted a piece of writing to Facebook
which I will replicate here for continuity of your experience of this -<br />
<br />
"<i>Dear White Men,</i><br />
<i>White is not skin colour. And there was a time when you were not
white. White is new. White is amnesia. White comes from a particular
place and a particular time.</i><br />
<br />
<i>There was a time when you were French, English, Irish, Scottish,
Russian, Croatian and more. And there was a time before that when there
were no nation states and no clean borders when you would have known
yourself by some word that likely just meant 'the people'. It was a time
of elders, deep culture, language given to you by the land. This is
more you than 'white' is.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Whiteness is the recent amnesia that stops you from remembering
this. Your deep ancestors have more in common with the world's remaining
indigenous people than they do with you. No matter what others say, you
come from something beautiful. You have indigenous roots in you just as
real as any other culture. You didn't ask to be born into these times
where people who look like you are dealt a mixed hand of obscene
privileges and immense poverty, you were borne here by those ones who
came before you, planted here in these times, their best response to the
world as it is. You are the way they love this world, hundreds of
generations pouring their love into the spiral of time and fashioning
you to redeem those forgotten ones, to weave back together the torn
fabric of human culture and to use the tools at your disposal to remake
kinship with your human brothers and sisters, the non-human world and
everything unseen.</i><br />
<br />
<i>White men have done terrible things to this world in the name of
many seemingly noble causes and you weren't born into this world to feel
guilty. You were planted here as a response to them.</i><br />
<i>Being white doesn't mean you're bad, it means a sort of imposed forgetting.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Whiteness is the shrink wrap placed around your soul; a soul that
wants to be bigger. Whiteness is the thing that keeps you from
remembering those old ones who sent you here and keeps them from
recognizing you when they see you. Whiteness is sameness. Whiteness is
the end of diversity. Whiteness is the spell of the eternal. Whiteness
whispers in your ear, "It's always been like this." Whiteness is among
the most recent steps in the making of Empire. Whiteness is the shroud
woven to cover your still living cultures and your indwelling but
uncultivated capacity for culture-making.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Ask yourself, 'When did my ancestors start knowing themselves as
white? Who benefited from this? Under what historical conditions did
this happen? Are those conditions being repeated anywhere else in the
world today? At whose expense was this done? What stopped when this
started?" Ask yourself those things, ask those things of the world and
be staggered by what you find.</i><br />
<br />
<i>White is not skin colour and there was a time when you were not
white. White is new. White is amnesia. White comes from a particular
place and a particular time.</i>"<br />
<br />
To which I add - You are capable of recovering your indigeneity and
losing your "white" by simply shifting back to the mindset that made
your ancestors indigenous and applying that mindset with diligence to
your current "place", your land and water and air. That is how and where
you now need to be indigenous. Indigenous is a matter of your
viewpoint, your attitude, and your engagement, while "white" may well be
the absence of those things, the "amnesia".<br />
<br />
There are tough times coming but they will be much less tough and they
may be survivable if you can remember how to be, and respect being,
indigenous. Then you will become neo-indigenous. It means to be a person
of ethical, moral, spiritual, physical, intellectual, and actual
relationship with the "new" land that you occupy. It means to have an
eco-ethical view of life and living along with how your 'place" fits
into all that and you into it.<br />
<br />
My great thanks and deep respect to Tad Hargrave for writing the piece quoted here (and quoted, I should add, with Tad's permission) <br />
<br />
Keep your candles lit and your powder dry, and..<br />
thanks for being there and reading this,<br />
<br />
The SmokemasterThe Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-7501904012946420312019-07-11T15:42:00.002-07:002019-10-29T18:49:55.216-07:00The Internal Work That We All Have To Do... For Human Survival<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcX2iRdHNDPrr-Furc7pURSONV1wM8gghDd4gvz8tifIrKKhzUMEPNXOAiPia0Z1CXNjQjHSI_mCIiOQheULVNDZvwsOylBE7mHkiYb75_qfCT0lEgWX8AA4oStzGu2lCcuutCvp-hoV3f/s1600/Total+Trust.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1541" data-original-width="1525" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcX2iRdHNDPrr-Furc7pURSONV1wM8gghDd4gvz8tifIrKKhzUMEPNXOAiPia0Z1CXNjQjHSI_mCIiOQheULVNDZvwsOylBE7mHkiYb75_qfCT0lEgWX8AA4oStzGu2lCcuutCvp-hoV3f/s400/Total+Trust.jpg" width="395" /></a></div>
<span aria-live="polite" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">The
cat in this picture is an American Short Hair Tabby - meaning very
hardy because it could/does have any number of other breeds in the
genetic mix and any color you can imagine. She’s a mutt cat and, in this
case, has coloring that is a collision of so called “wild” coloring
with calico, and her name is Amber Smoke. She’s also intelligent,
skillful, self-aware - yes, that’s what I meant - she <span class="text_exposed_show">IS
capable of distinguishing herself as an individual separate from the
environment and other individuals - and she has a personality. She feels
pleasure, and pain, and she will fight for her life. She does things as
a matter of preference and personal style that her siblings do not do.
In this case she transited from the bedroom to my chest in about 1
second of blindingly fast movement, stopped instantly without apparent
effort, and circled up on my arm, which extended as soon as she arrived.
She is demonstrating absolute trust in another animal that is 62 times
larger than her by weight, is not one of her kind (and she knows it) but
who takes the time to connect with her and “understand” her as best it
can, and that has demonstrated a high level of trustworthiness to her.
This is all in proper keeping with the ancient bargain that was agreed
between our kinds millennia ago.<br /> <br /> We live in a world where we as
humans are surrounded by intelligent, sentient beings of other types,
the intelligence of some of whom we are only just developing our
awareness of. A number of those other beings are what we call
domesticated, meaning they have become, by matter of breeding over
time, accustomed to, and desire, the company and care of humans. In some
cases they wouldn’t survive without it. For most of them this bargain
was struck many millennia ago, and most modern humans have no inkling of
that time or that bargain. They just think, as with much of nature,
that they exist for human dominion and service. If modern humanity
remembered those bargains, remembered the times and conditions under
which those bargains were struck, respected our companions in the life
walk - or more, respected ALL of the beings in the life walk regardless
of such a compact or not, made more of an effort to live WITH them
rather than OVER them in an assumed position of superiority, made the
simple effort to understand them and communicate with them, in
community, we could not and would not have done to the planet what we
most certainly have done in our hedonistic pursuit of personal pleasure
and power. <br /> <br /> When I tell people we cannot save our species from
the changes that are coming unless that we critically rethink how we
“live with ourselves, each other in community, and the planet as a
whole”, when I tell people that the first and most important change is a
“deep cultural” change that has to happen in our own minds and lives,
when I tell people that we must undergo a “conscious evolution”… this is
what I am talking about. We need to respect all life enough to accept
their right to be here as equal to ours and to make the effort to
communicate with them just as they communicate already with their own
species and possibly others in the great sphere of life. I hope this
helps some of you understand. THIS IS THE INTERNAL WORK that must be
done (and should have been done long before this) for our species to
survive.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span aria-live="polite" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption"><span class="text_exposed_show">Keep the candles and powder dry, tough times are coming. Thanks for being there and being you.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span aria-live="polite" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption"><span class="text_exposed_show">The Smokemaster </span></span></span>The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-53630486747939819952019-01-08T14:13:00.001-08:002019-07-18T11:00:27.805-07:00The REAL issue could make the Anthropocene the shortest epoch in planetary history!<br />
<div class="_5pbx userContent _3ds9 _3576" data-ad-preview="message" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="js_1s">
Most
of the U.S. is aware of climate change but 90% think - 1) it doesn't
apply to them, or 2) they can't do anything about it, or 3) it's a bunch
of political bullshit (aka they're in denial). All of those viewpoints
are grievously in error. <br />
<br />
If we understand that WE are part of a
materially finite system of life AND, at the same time, a human created
system of social and material process that has foundational requirements
(capitalism - endless growth, endless consumption, endless waste with
no impact) that cannot be satisfied in a materially finite system, and
we have pushed out to the limits of that materially finite system, then
we realize we must make some choices. Failure/refusal to make a choice
is a de facto choice in the negative, so... If we accept the current
scientific understandings in climate, weather, ecology (including habitat for all of life on Earth), human habitat specifically,
agroecology, paleo-climate, and more,
then there are basic, systemic principles that apply to all of that life
-<br />
<br />
1) Climate and weather are the seasonal and real-time
manifestations of Earth's constant energy balancing act - and more
energy is entering and being retained by the system... unbalanced. As a
result we WILL be facing and dealing with ever more violent and sudden
energy balancing activities as planetary feedback systems try to balance
increasingly out of balance energy profiles globally. Laws of physics
applied on the global scale. <br />
<br />
2) All living things on Earth have
varying "zones" of conditions within which their life is possible - at
the center of which their life is "ideal". Those zones are defined by
temperature, moisture availability, nutrient availability, and shelter
conditions (conditions which protect the life form from extremes of
habitat condition and allow the life form to "rest"). We could ( and do)
call this the "Goldilocks Zone" - where conditions are "just right". <br />
<br />
3) Given that all life forms have a Goldilocks Zone, not all Goldilocks Zones are
the same. If living conditions in a given location change so as to
exceed the Goldilocks Zone limits, the affected organism suffers what is
called a "loss of habitat". That organism must either move to new
effective habitat, adapt to the current changed habitat, or die. A form
of adaptation would include being protected by another organism. <br />
<br />
4)
Due in part to human activities over the last 100-200 years conditions
for all of life on Earth are now changing rapidly and exceeding the
Goldilocks Zone of many species alive today. Some species are moving,
some are attempting to adapt, many are dying. The changes are
accelerating and/or are moving much faster than predicted/anticipated.
As a result the changes are too fast for many species to adapt, which
means that they must either move, be protected, or die.<br />
<br />
Because
we are in an increasing exponential curve regarding the level and scope
of life-threatening impact now occurring, the choices that we make in
the next 5 years in relation to this basic and foundational knowledge of
the systemic impact of our ecologically unguided and self-centered
choices and actions over the previous two centuries, will affect all
life on Earth immediately and the ability of Earth to continue to
sustain carbon-based life as we know it for the next 100,000 years...
and YES, this does include human life.<br />
<br />
The actions needed are wrenching and quite realistically civilization ending. A complete cessation of all industrial capitalist activities. A complete reconsideration of how and what living on a planet with finite resources means for humanity and the life it is utterly dependent upon for it's sustenance. A complete reorientation of the human supporting food system. The magnitude of change rests on the magnitude of overall impact to carbon based life's ability to thrive on Earth at all. At best the saving grace for humanity may be aboriginal cultures that haven't entirely lost their sense of who they are and where they came from, and worst case, the extremophiles of Earth's Tree of Life, such as the amazing array of life found around highly toxic and anoxic deep sea high-heat thermal vents along volcanic fissures may be the only things that make it through<br />
<br />
Welcome to what may well be the end of the shortest epoch in global history - the Anthropocene! </div>
The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-29196505221885353282018-11-05T18:09:00.000-08:002018-11-05T18:09:09.143-08:00Convenience - The Core of The Problem<div class="_5pbx userContent _3ds9 _3576" data-ad-preview="message" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="js_710">
From
the documentary "Fresh" - "I used to have a Pakistani room mate at
college, and he said to me one day 'George, there is only one thing
Americans are afraid of.' to which I responded 'What's that?' and he
said 'Inconvenience!' " <i>George Naylor, Corn Belt Farmer</i><br />
<br />
On almost
every level the Pakistani room mate was right. Look at any supermarket.
90% of the stuff on the shelves is packaged the way it is for
convenience - but that convenience costs us. The very existence of that
store is a matter of convenience. - and THAT costs us. I live near a
town of 7,687 people (plus or minus 13 on any given day). It has TWO
grocery stores either of which is capable of feeding that many people
but one has higher priced, better quality goods and the other has lower
priced, and in most cases, lower quality goods and they probably split
the town's population between them... if we don't account for the fact
that many in the town travel routinely outside the town at distances
that give them access to other markets entirely. So, 1/3 of the shopping
gets done somewhere else, 1/3 gets done at store #1, 1/3 gets done at
store #2. HUGE amounts of convenience thinking driving that profile.<br />
<br />
One of the things we need to accept is that most of the "convenience"
availability drives extra material extraction from the natural world (it
was expedient when the process got started and nobody has complained so
it continues) and massive uses of energy, most derived from fossil
fuels (coal, oil, or gas). When I talk about We The People needing to
re-assume responsibility for EVERY joule of energy that is expended on
our behalf every day, this convenience function is the big chunk of what
I mean when I say that. Our egregious consumption of energy is almost
entirely about convenience. Gas in your two or three cars? Much more
convenient than hitching up two or three horses to go to town and
several other places. Faster, more comfortable, safer, more weather
resistant, nicer ride - more convenient.<br />
<br />
Turning on the lights?
Much easier and cleaner and more convenient than filling the oil lamp
with kerosene, trimming the wick, lighting it (make sure you protect
your ceilings from the column of heat from that chimney if it's wall
mounted). Pushing a button on the food processor? Much easier, cleaner,
less work than hand chopping or mincing the ingredients for supper... if
your cooking "from scratch"! Maybe not - just reach into that freezer
and take out some pot pies, frozen vegetables, and cook a couple of
potatoes in the microwave - all relying on electricity piped through
your walls to convenient outlets.<br />
<br />
Americans are awash in
functions of convenience, so much so, that it's almost impossible to
escape - unless you simply move out of it entirely, into a space that
was not occupied by the convenience culture before. It can be done. It's
either that "move out" or engage the level of rigor and discipline to
not use and avoid all the mechanisms of convenience that surround our
every moment... or move out into unformed space and create your own
"inconvenient" personally energy responsible space.<br />
<br />
Its up to us to solve this problem. Its about our consumption - our excessive consumption. If we don't change that, then we are headed for the scrap heap to join every other species that has ever lived... and gone extinct. The biggest reason for extinction is habitat loss. We are on the verge of losing ours too. </div>
The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-20381045130086874062018-05-29T19:17:00.001-07:002018-05-29T20:50:59.301-07:00You've Only Got Two Things To Worry About!You have TWO primary concerns with abrupt climate change - 1) how you manage your survival zone (aka Goldilocks Zone - where all the conditions are "just right") as the prevailing conditions change - permanently as far as you're concerned., and 2) how you manage the survival zone of your food supply (which is more delicate and sensitive than yours is). <br />
<br />
Stable climate is the absolute foundation of our social processes and system. It is what limits our risks to a range that make "extreme events" both rare and profitable to insure against. What we have previously thought of as extreme events are going to become the norm, affecting everything about our way of life in western civilization (which as a substantial side note, isn't sustainable as it is and becomes positively volatile under abrupt climate change). We are already moving into this period of time and far too little is being done to prepare for or mitigate the risks.<br />
<br />
Radical departures from stable conditions usually result in loss of habitat. Most extinction, throughout the history of life on Earth, has been caused by “loss of habitat”. The effect of climate change on all elements of life is completely dependent upon each lifeform’s available habitat. For most lifeforms that occupy the solid surface of the planet a relatively stable climate is a necessity to maintain habitat. Any sustained departure from the required stable condition must either be overcome by changing external factors (adaptation), by changes to the actual lifeforms or their life functions (evolution), or the loss of habitat results in death (extinction).<br />
<br />
Your Goldilocks Zone is comprised of the range of internal temperatures that we must maintain to stay alive, as well as the availability of air (aka correct level of oxygen), water, functional food, protection from the elements, and rest to sustain a meaningful life. To be specific that means 5 critical factors. These factors define the human Goldilocks Zone<br />
1. Oxygen - People can begin to experience brain damage after as few as five minutes without oxygen. For humans and many animals to sustain normal functions, the percentage of oxygen in the breathing environment must be within a relatively small range. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, determined the optimal breathing range to be between 19.5 and 23.5 percent oxygen in air.<br />
<ul>
<li>Several things may prevent you from getting the oxygen you need. Environmental risks such as high altitude, dense smoke, or carbon monoxide can prevent you from getting enough oxygen.</li>
<li>Some medical issues may prevent your body from receiving oxygen like cardiac arrest, stroke, drowning and others.</li>
<li>Without a consistent supply of oxygen, you can experience a condition called cerebral hypoxia which affects our brains.</li>
<ul>
<li>At levels at or below 17 percent, your mental abilities become impaired.</li>
<li>When levels drop to 16 percent or below, noticeable changes to your behavior will occur</li>
<li>Levels under 14 percent will cause extreme exhaustion from physical activity.</li>
<li>Once levels drop below 10 percent, you may become very nauseous or lose consciousness.</li>
<li>Humans won't survive with levels at 6 percent or lower. After 10 minutes without oxygen, the brain damage can be so severe that most people will die.</li>
</ul>
<li>Higher-than-normal oxygen levels in air aren't as harmful to life, however there is an increased fire or explosion risk. </li>
<ul>
<li>With extremely high concentrations of oxygen in the breathing zone, humans can experience harmful side effects. </li>
<li>Very high levels of oxygen causes oxidizing free radicals. These free radicals will attack the tissues and cells of the body and cause muscle twitching. </li>
<li>The effects from short exposure can usually be reversed, however lengthy exposure can cause death.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<br />
2. Water - Other than the air we breathe (and it's approximately 21% oxygen), water is the most essential component for human survival. The body’s functional chemicals are dissolved and transported in water, and the chemical reactions of life take place in water.<br />
<ul>
<li>It is estimated that an average person cannot survive for more than 3-4 days without water. The daily requirement is about 3 liters (approx. 3.2 quarts). Ideal drinking, sanitation, and hygiene needs can be met with approx. 50 liters (13.2 gallons)/day</li>
<li>During hot weather it is recommended that the average person consume more, if available, to replace the amount lost due to sweating, respiration and excretion to maintain a balance of body fluids. In moderate climates you may be able to get by on less.</li>
<li>When the hydration balance is unable to be maintained the body will start to go through the dehydration process.</li>
<ul>
<li>A 2.5 percent loss in water volume in a person leads to a 25 percent reduction in blood volume. This means the blood gets thicker and the heart has to work harder to pump nutrients throughout the body.</li>
<li>This lower blood volume also reduces flow to the extremities, leading to numbness in the fingers and toes.</li>
<li>The thicker blood also has a harder time making its way through the small capillaries in the brain. The lack of oxygen to parts of the brain can make it impossible to concentrate or focus for any period of time.</li>
<li>The length of time one can survive without water depends on activity level and environmental temperature. Higher activity will invariably reduce life span, as will higher temperatures.</li>
<li>With no water, the maximum length of time a person can survive is 10 days. Starting at 80 degrees Fahrenheit life expectancy is reduced to 9 days. With every five-degree increase in temperature, the life span decreases a day.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<br />
3. Food - sustenance, a source of biological "fuel", or what we call food, is the next most important factor after oxygen and water. <br />
<ul>
<li>A body that does not have food can survive for quite a long time by subsisting on the fat reserves in the body and the glycogen reserves in the liver and, eventually, the proteins in the muscles.</li>
<li>The first two to three days without food, the body will depend solely on the fat reserves to run the muscles of the body. These fatty acids can’t cross the blood-brain barrier. The body can survive for as much as two weeks without intake of energy rich foods (fats & carbohydrates) </li>
<li>The brain relies on the glycogen reserves to send glucose to the brain. After day three, the liver begins to synthesize ketones (short strand fatty acids) that can cross the blood-brain barrier. The ketone stage can last for up to two weeks.</li>
<li>Once the fat reserves are used up, the body will begin breaking down the musculature into proteins that can be converted into amino acids that are then transformed into glucose. Muscles break down quickly, within one week.</li>
<li>Once this process has completed there is no other internal source of energy and the body dies. Signs of starvation include apathy, listlessness, withdrawal, changes in hair color, flaky skin, and massive edema in the abdomen and lower limbs, all of which lead to a higher chance of infection.</li>
<li>Most individuals who experience starvation don’t die directly from it. Most die due to infectious diseases that attack the body as it consumes its own defenses.</li>
</ul>
4. Shelter (Protection From temp and moisture extremes… or the frequently cited "elements") - A shelter that helps to keep your body at a constant temperature and stable water content - temperature and humidity being the key components of climate - is also a necessity. This could include appropriate clothing.<br />
<ul>
<li>When a person is exposed to "the elements", water and temperature loss is increased.</li>
<li>Cold temperatures and high winds can strip away valuable moisture as quickly as high temperatures can cause sweat related loss.</li>
<li>A shelter should consist of a place to make fire to create heat as well as protection from the wind and rain.</li>
<ul>
<li>Without the ability to keep a constant temperature and hydration, a person runs the risk of hypothermia or heat stroke.</li>
<li>A person’s normal temperature in 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit. If the core temperature drops to 91.4, a body will go unconscious. At 86.0 degrees, the body loses the ability to control internal temperature. At 82.4 degrees, there is complete muscle failure.</li>
<li>On the other end of the spectrum, a temperature of 107.6 degrees results in a breakdown of the central nervous system. At slightly over 111 degrees, the brain overheats and causes death.</li>
<li>Extreme temperature fluctuations can cause hallucinations and illogical behavior, which can cause a person to fail to take the proper steps to keep himself alive.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
5. Rest/Sleep - For a long time sleep was not considered a basic human need. Studies on sleep deprivation helped to change this in the 20th century. In terms of human need, sleep is one of the five most important elements. <br />
<ul>
<li>Sleep deprivation can cause a myriad of problems ranging from decreased body temperature to cognitive impairment and hallucination.</li>
<li>Although the mechanisms of sleep are not well understood, the problems associated with lack of sleep are.</li>
<ul>
<li>Headaches can begin as soon as 24 hours after missing sleep.</li>
<li>72 hours in, memory is impaired and temporal and spatial distortion start to occur. </li>
<li>After 96 hours without sleep, cognition is markedly impaired.</li>
<li>After 144 hours, hallucinations ensue and there is a considerable loss of attention and manual dexterity.</li>
<li>The longer a person goes without sleep the less coherent thought patterns become.</li>
</ul>
<li>This lack of clear thinking can be detrimental on its own, if coupled with a lack in any of the other basic needs areas it could be life threatening.</li>
</ul>
With minor variation, these same requirements exist for EVERY form of carbon-based life on Earth, except that for most OTHER lifeforms, the specificity is much more limited and intolerant. You do the math... If you need specific numbers I have them. Ask and ye shall receive...<br />
<br />
Think about it! Be prepared! Keep your powder dry and your candles lit!<br />
<br />
The Smokemaster<br />
The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-1697322553511008542018-03-27T19:21:00.000-07:002018-03-27T19:21:32.854-07:00Lifeboat Time (comprised largely of a John Michael Greer blog post from 2007)While David Wasdell was busy formulating the detailed view of what was wrong and how it could affect things, which he presented in Nov 2007 @ Westminster, another person who was clued in to the realities, by the name of John Michael Greer, wrote a cogent blog post that was well worth much greater public attention than it got. His post, "Lifeboat Time" is MUCH more relevant now than it was then, and it was spot on then... BUT it has been taken down in it's original location (The Archdruid Report, linked below, is no longer active) and is now promised for an as yet unidentified future date of hard copy publication. With that in mind, I make it available here, for your consideration.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 24.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Lifeboat time</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">by </span><a href="http://www.resilience.org/author-detail/1007065-john-michael-greer"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">John Michael Greer</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, originally published by </span><span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022http\:\/\/thearchdruidreport\.blogspot\.com\/2007\/11\/lifeboat-time\.html\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Archdruid Report</span></u></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> | Nov 29, 2007 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"One of the more notable news stories of the last week concerned the fate of M/S Explorer, a cruise ship built for polar seas that turned out to be not quite up to the rigors of the job. Before dawn on November 23, while cruising just north of the Antarctic peninsula, she rammed into submerged sea ice, leaving a fist-sized hole in the hull and water coming in faster than her pumps could handle. Fifteen hours later the Explorer was on the bottom of the sea. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Fortunately the captain had the great good sense to order an evacuation well in advance. Even more fortunately, everyone knew what to do, and did it without quibbling. Crew and passengers abandoned all their possessions except the clothes they wore, donned survival suits, climbed into lifeboats, and spent five cold hours watching the Explorer fill up with water and heel over until another ship came to pick them up. Later the same day they were safe at a Chilean coast guard base on the South Shetland Islands, waiting for a plane ride home. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I thought of that story this morning while surveying the latest round of debates about peak oil, global warming, the imploding debt bubble, and half a dozen other symptoms of the unfolding crisis of industrial society now under way. By this point there are few metaphors for crisis more hackneyed than the fatal conjunction of ship and iceberg, but the comparison retains its usefulness because it throws the issues surrounding crisis management into high relief. When the hull’s pierced and water’s rising below decks, the window of opportunity for effective action is brief, and if the water can’t be stopped very soon, it’s lifeboat time. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">By almost any imaginable standard, that time has arrived for the industrial world. Debates about whether world petroleum production will peak before 2030 or not miss a point obvious to anybody who’s looked at the figures: world petroleum production peaked in November 2005 at some 86 million barrels of oil a day, and has been declining slowly ever since. So far the gap has been filled with tar sands, natural gas liquids, and other unconventional liquids, all of which cost more than ordinary petroleum in terms of money and energy input alike, and none of which can be produced at anything like the rate needed to supply the world’s rising energy demand. As depletion of existing oil fields accelerates, the struggle to prop up the current production plateau promises to become a losing battle against geological reality. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Meanwhile the carbon dioxide generated by the 84 million barrels a day we’re currently pumping and burning, along with equally unimaginable volumes of coal and natural gas, drives changes in climate that only a handful of oil company flacks and free-market fundamentalists still insist aren’t happening. Worried scientists report from Greenland and West Antarctica that for the first time since measurements began, liquid water is pooling under both these huge continental glaciers – the likely precursor to an ice sheet collapse that could put sea levels up 50 to 60 feet worldwide within our lifetimes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In related news, Atlanta may just be on the verge of edging out New Orleans as the poster child for climate catastrophe. Unless the crippling years-long drought over the southeast United States gives way to heavy rains very soon, Atlanta will run completely out of drinking water sometime in the new year. The city government has had to explain to worried citizens that they are out of options, and there aren’t enough tanker trucks in all of Dixie to meet the daily water needs of a big city. Nobody is willing to talk about what will happen once the last muddy dregs in the Georgia reservoirs are pumped dry, and the drinking fountains, toilet tanks, and fire hydrants of greater metropolitan Atlanta have nothing to fill them but dust. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As Macchiavelli commented in a different context, though, people care more about their finances than their lives, and even the Atlanta papers have seen the drought shoved off the front page now and then by the latest round of implosions in the world of high finance. For those of my readers who haven’t been keeping score, banks and financial firms around the world spent most of the last decade handing out mortgages to anybody with a pulse, packaging up the right to profit from those mortgages into what may just be the most misnamed “securities” in the history of financial markets, and selling them to investors around the world. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On this noticeably unsteady foundation rose the biggest speculative bubble in recorded history, as would-be real estate moguls borrowed dizzying sums to buy up property they were convinced could only go up in value, while investors whose passion for profit blinded them to the risk of loss snapped up a torrent of exotic financial products whose connection to any significant source of value can be safely described as imaginary. All this hallucinated wealth, though, depended on the theory that people with no income, job, or assets could and would pay their mortgage bills on time, and when this didn’t happen, the whole tower of cards began coming apart. Some of the world’s largest banks have already taken billions of dollars in losses, and nobody is even pretending that the economic carnage is over yet. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Connect the dots and the picture that emerges will be familiar to those of my readers who have taken the time to struggle through the academic prose of </span><span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022http\:\/\/www\.xs4all\.nl\/%7Ewtv\/powerdown\/greer\.htm\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse</span></u></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. One of the central points of that paper is that the decline and fall of a civilization unfolds in a series of crises separated by incomplete recoveries. The point is not an original one; Arnold Toynbee discussed the same rhythm of breakdown and respite most of a century earlier in his magisterial <i>A Study of History</i>. If that same pattern will shape the fate of our own civilization – and it’s hard to think of a reason why it should not – the second wave of crisis in the decline and fall of the industrial world may be breaking over our heads right now. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">No, that wasn’t a misprint. Historians of the future will likely put the peak of modern industrial civilization between 1850 and 1900, when the huge colonial empires of the Euro-American world hit the zenith of their global reach. The first wave in the decline of our civilization lasted from 1929 to 1945, and was followed by a classic partial recovery in which public extravagance masked the disintegration of the imperial periphery. Compare the unsteady, hole-and-corner American economic empire of today with the British Empire’s outright dominion over half the world in 1900, say, and it’s hard to miss the signs of decline. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Today we may well be facing the beginning of the next wave. One advantage this concept offers is the realization that the experience of our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generations may offer a useful perspective on what’s coming. In the summer of 1929, nobody I know of predicted the imminent arrival of unparalleled economic disaster, followed by the rise of fascism and the outbreak of the bloodiest war in human history. Such things seemed to be stowed safely away in the distant past. From today’s perspective, though, it may not be unreasonable to suggest that something not unlike the bitter experiences of 1929-1945 – different in detail, surely, but equivalent in scale – may be in the offing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If that’s likely – and I believe it is – we’re in much the same situation as the passengers of M/V Explorer were last Friday, but with an unwelcome difference. No alarm has been sounded, no order to evacuate announced over the p/a system. The captain and half the crew insist that nothing is wrong, while the other half of the crew insist that everything will be all right if they can only replace the current captain with another of their own choosing. The only warning being given comes from a handful of passengers who took the time to glance down into the hold and saw the water rising there, and while some people are listening to the bad news, next to nobody’s making any preparations for what could be a very, very rough time immediately ahead. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Those of my readers who have been paying attention know already that the preparations I have in mind don’t include holing up in a mountain cabin with crates of ammunition, stacks of gold bars, and way too many cans of baked beans in the pantry. Nor do they involve signing onto the latest crusade to throw one batch of scoundrels out of office so another batch of scoundrels can take its place. Rather, I’m thinking of a couple of friends of mine who are moving from the east coast megalopolis where they’ve spent most of their adult lives to a midwestern city small enough that they can get by without a car. I’m thinking of the son-in-law of another friend who is setting up a forge and learning blacksmithying in his spare time, so he’ll have a way of earning a living when his service economy job evaporates out from under him. I’m thinking of another couple of friends who just moved back to his aging parents’s farm to help keep it running. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For a great many people just now, actions like those are unthinkable, and even the simplest steps to prepare for financial crisis – paying down debts, reining in expenditures, making sure savings are in federally insured banks rather than the imaginary economy of paper assets, and putting by extra food in the cupboard and useful supplies in the shed to deal with the spot shortages and business bankruptcies that usually accompany economic crisis – are off the radar screen. That’s unfortunate, because some tolerably simple changes made now, while there’s still time to make them, could spare a lot of people a lot of grief not that far down the road. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s no fun to be jolted out of bed before dawn by a warning siren, and told that you have to head for the nearest lifeboat station, leaving everything behind but the clothes on your back. It’s even less fun to climb down into an open lifeboat in 20°F weather, knowing you’ll be tossed around on the gray Antarctic seas until somebody responds to the SOS – if anybody does. Still, add up all the unpleasantness of both and they’re still preferable to a last-minute scramble for survival on a sinking ship, when half the lifeboats and survival suits are already under water and the deck is heeling over so fast the other half may be out of reach. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: KO;">Millions of people went through some approximation of that last experience between 1929 and 1945. Millions more may undergo the same sort of thing once the current crisis gets under way. There’s been plenty of talk about peak oil and the twilight of the industrial world, and that’s been useful in its way, but talk doesn’t substitute for constructive action when lifeboat time arrives." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: KO;">After reading this, ask yourself - Can we keep the ship of state afloat with sufficient change in culture, economy, and society? It will pretty much mean rebuilding the ship from the keel up, such that we no longer operate anything like the way we have... and doing that while we are still at sea. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: KO;">The alternative is identify the lifeboats and get in them in an orderly fashion, because, as the author says -</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: KO;">"It’s no fun to be jolted out of bed before dawn by a warning siren, and told that you have to head for the nearest lifeboat station, leaving everything behind but the clothes on your back. It’s even less fun to climb down into an open lifeboat in 20°F weather, knowing you’ll be tossed around on the gray Antarctic seas until somebody responds to the SOS – if anybody does. <br /> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: KO;">Still, add up all the unpleasantness of both and they’re still preferable to a last-minute scramble for survival on a sinking ship, when half the lifeboats and survival suits are already under water and the deck is heeling over so fast the other half may be out of reach. Millions of people went through some approximation of that last experience between 1929 and 1945. Millions more may undergo the same sort of thing once the current crisis gets under way. [<i>Ed. Note: they have</i>] There’s been plenty of talk about peak oil and the twilight of the industrial world, and that’s been useful in its way, but talk doesn’t substitute for constructive action when lifeboat time arrives." </span><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: KO;"></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: KO;">Remember, there is no one to respond once we are in the life boats, and he was writing this in 2007 just before the last collapse. We are now facing collapse #3 and business is no longer, and can no longer be, "as usual". If and when we get into the lifeboats this time, we take up oars and row for shore, wherever we think that is, and we start over, from scratch. Maybe you should not leave everything behind except the clothes on your back. Bring your pocketknife and some matches...</span>
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number of people lately who are very much inclined to be "sustainable"
but they have great difficulty letting go of the idea that
sustainability CAN NOT/DOES NOT mean "greening up" stuff that we do now.
They don't get that "going green" wasn't probably EVER a functional
response but that it's just not even in the solution window now.
Recycling all your cans and using helical light bulbs is so far short of
the mark that it almost doesn't move the needle onto the scale. Change
really HAS to be T-R-A-N-S-F-O-R-M-A-T-I-O-N-A-L!! Don't take a page
from the "Amish book" - Buy The Book!!!<br />
<br />
Further more, it's worth noting that in the same period of the last 6
months I have seen a huge number of folks who have the same romantic
notions about "being sustainable" that some white folks here (in the US)
had about "being indigenous" about 100 years ago. "The noble red man,
aligned with nature, continues to live... blah, blah, blah" and while said "noble red men" have never completely lost track of their culture
and heritage, they will be the first to tell you that it wasn't about
nobility. It was about doing the best you can under varying
circumstances, and it was about a lot of hard work, pretty much all the
time. It was also about community that worked together and had not lost its ever present sense of what community means.<br />
<br />
These "nouveau natural" people (same genetic lines as the
pseudo-indigenous, I'm pretty sure) think they've gotten sustainability
religion and what they've gotten is a romantic image of Grandma canning
peaches with the scent of the rich peach-ness floating on the air,
mingled with cinnamon and clove. The aroma therapy is great, but the
vision lacks substance. These folks have not/are not
thinking about planting and growing the trees that the peaches came
from, protecting the saplings against "too cold" conditions, or "too
hot" conditions, recognizing that you will be sharing some of the crop
with the birds, and insects (or badgers as the case may be) and so you
do what is realistic to make sure that you grow enough for everybody AND
you bust a hump when they are ripe to get them off the tree and into
the house.
<br />
<br />
Being ready to light the fire and spin into action on short notice
for the canning requirements of the moment as various thinks hit their
optimum ripeness and you have to can them before they get past prime,
the cleanup and spin-up again, hot on the heals of cleanup if necessary.
Getting all the jars ready to rock, with fastidious attention to
detail, because slack in the canning department is poison in the winter -
Hell, HAVING enough jars to handle the load - most people have NO idea
how many jars it takes to can up a winter's worth of food (or more), or
for that matter how productive the garden has to be. Quite obviously,
the list goes on...<br />
<br />
So, while we are busy engineering the transition I think it is
CRITICAL that we remain clear about what we are transitioning to. If
it's not transformational relative to now, it's not the right place. How
to recover the baby we threw out with the bathwater... that is not a
pretty picture to contemplate but if that baby is still alive we NEED to
recover it, not just try to make a new one.<br />
<br />
Prepare yourself - we are getting ready for the "great reveal" when
we discover how much no-shit real work was being done that tempted
Western culture to use human slavery first and then hydro-carbon
chemical energy slaves and then in a (potentially final) burst of market
capitalism excess, newly re-enslaved people as wage slaves to ride herd
on the energy slaves for them. Witness the rise and fall of the
oligarch supreme. TRANSFORMATION - because hanging on to the tattered
remnants of the greatest fail in human history is our death warrant. TRANSFORMATION - because the fundamental survival of life relies on evolution, and the rule of evolution is that when conditions become unsustainable, you change locations, you change your way of being, or you die!The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-54221726272287347672017-08-08T20:14:00.000-07:002017-08-08T20:14:13.823-07:00The Essential Bottom Line - The Human Goldilocks ZoneBasic human survival needs define the human Goldilocks Zone:<br />
These needs are summarized here -<br />
<br />
1. <b>Oxygen</b> (usually as a component of air) - People can begin to experience brain damage after as few as five minutes without oxygen. For humans and many animals to sustain normal functions, the percentage of oxygen in the breathing environment must be within a relatively small range. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, determined the optimal breathing range to be between 19.5 and 23.5 percent oxygen in air.<br /> A. Several things may prevent you from getting the oxygen you need. Environmental risks such as high altitude, dense smoke, or carbon monoxide can prevent you from getting enough oxygen. <br /> B. Some medical issues may prevent your body from receiving oxygen like cardiac arrest, stroke, drowning and others. <br /> C. Without a consistent supply of oxygen, you can experience a condition called cerebral hypoxia which affects our brains. <br /> 1. At levels at or below 17 percent, your mental abilities become impaired. <br /> 2. When levels drop to 16 percent or below, noticeable changes to your behavior will occur<br /> 3. Levels under 14 percent will cause extreme exhaustion from physical activity. <br /> 4. Once levels drop below 10 percent, you may become very nauseous or lose consciousness. <br /> 5. Humans won't survive with levels at 6 percent or lower. After 10 minutes without oxygen, the brain damage can be so severe that most people will die.<br /> D. Higher-than-normal oxygen levels in air aren't as harmful to life, however there is an increased fire or explosion risk. With extremely high concentrations of oxygen in the breathing zone, humans can experience harmful side effects. Very high levels of oxygen causes oxidizing free radicals to form. These free radicals will attack the tissues and cells of the body and cause muscle twitching. The effects from short exposure can usually be reversed, however lengthy exposure can cause death.<br />
<br />
2. <b>Water </b>- Other than the air we breathe (and it's approximately 21% oxygen), water is the most essential component for human survival. The body’s functional chemicals are dissolved and transported in water, and the chemical reactions of life take place in water.<br /> A. It is estimated that an average person cannot survive for more than 3-4 days without water. The daily requirement is about 3 liters (approx. 3.2 quarts). Ideal drinking, sanitation, and hygiene needs can be met with approx. 50 liters (13.2 gallons)/day<br /> B. During hot weather it is recommended that the average person consume more, if available, to replace the amount lost due to sweating, respiration and excretion to maintain a balance of body fluids. In moderate climates you may be able to get by on less. <br /> C. When the hydration balance is unable to be maintained the body will start to go through the dehydration process. <br /> 1. A 2.5 percent loss in water volume in a person leads to a 25 percent reduction in blood volume. This means the blood gets thicker and the heart has to work harder to pump nutrients throughout the body. <br /> 2. This lower blood volume also reduces flow to the extremities, leading to numbness in the fingers and toes. <br /> 3. The thicker blood also has a harder time making its way through the small capillaries in the brain. The lack of oxygen to parts of the brain can make it impossible to concentrate or focus for any period of time. <br /> 4. The length of time one can survive without water depends on activity level and environmental temperature. Higher activity will invariably reduce life span, as will higher temperatures. <br /> 5. With no water, the maximum length of time a person can survive is 10 days. Starting at 80 degrees Fahrenheit life expectancy is reduced to 9 days. With every five-degree increase in temperature, the life span decreases a day.<br />
<br />
3. <b>Food</b> - sustenance, a source of biological "fuel", or what we call food, is the next most important factor after oxygen and water. <br /> A. A body that does not have food can survive for quite a long time by subsisting on the fat reserves in the body and the glycogen reserves in the liver and, eventually, the proteins in the muscles. <br /> B. The first two to three days without food, the body will depend solely on the fat reserves to run the muscles of the body. These fatty acids can’t cross the blood-brain barrier. The body can survive for as much as two weeks without intake of energy rich foods (fats & carbohydrates) <br /> C. The brain relies on the glycogen reserves to send glucose to the brain. After day three, the liver begins to synthesize ketones (short strand fatty acids) that can cross the blood-brain barrier. The ketone stage can last for up to two weeks. <br /> D. Once the fat reserves are used up, the body will begin breaking down the musculature into proteins that can be converted into amino acids that are then transformed into glucose. Muscles break down quickly, within one week. <br /> E. Once this process has completed there is no other internal source of energy and the body dies. Signs of starvation include apathy, listlessness, withdrawal, changes in hair color, flaky skin, and massive edema in the abdomen and lower limbs, all of which lead to a higher chance of infection.<br /> F. Most individuals who experience starvation don’t die directly from it. Most die due to infectious diseases that attack the body as it consumes its own defenses.<br />
G. Virtually every food resource of humans is another form of animal or plant life... which also has a Goldilocks Zone!<br />
<br />
4. <b>Shelter</b> (Protection From temp and moisture extremes… or the frequently cited "elements") - A shelter that helps to keep your body at a constant temperature and stable water content - temperature and humidity being the key components of climate - is also a necessity. This could include appropriate clothing. <br /> A. When a person is exposed to "the elements", water loss is increased and core temperature can increase or decrease beyond the survival range. <br /> B. Cold temperatures and high winds can strip away valuable moisture as quickly as high temperatures can cause sweat related loss. <br /> C. A shelter should consist of a place to make fire to create heat as well as protection from the wind and rain. <br /> D. Without the ability to keep a constant temperature and hydration, a person runs the risk of hypothermia or heat stroke. <br /> E. A person’s normal temperature in 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit. If the core temperature drops to 91.4, a body will go unconscious. At 86.0 degrees, the body loses the ability to control internal temperature. At 82.4 degrees, there is complete muscle failure.<br /> F. On the other end of the spectrum, a temperature of 107.6 degrees results in a breakdown of the central nervous system. At slightly over 111 degrees, the brain overheats and causes death.<br /> G. Extreme temperature fluctuations can cause hallucinations and illogical behavior, which can cause a person to fail to take the proper steps to keep himself alive.<br /><br />
5. <b>Rest/Sleep</b> - For a long time sleep was not considered a basic human need. Studies on sleep deprivation helped to change this in the 20th century. In terms of human need, sleep is one of the five most important elements. <br /> A. Sleep deprivation can cause a myriad of problems ranging from decreased body temperature to cognitive impairment and hallucination.<br /> B. Although the mechanisms of sleep are not well understood, the problems associated with lack of sleep are. <br /> 1. Headaches can begin as soon as 24 hours after missing sleep. <br /> 2. 72 hours in, memory is impaired and temporal and spatial distortion start to occur. <br /> 3. After 96 hours without sleep, cognition is markedly impaired. <br /> 4. After 144 hours, hallucinations ensue and there is a considerable loss of attention and manual dexterity.<br /> C. The longer a person goes without sleep the less coherent thought patterns become. <br /> D. This lack of clear thinking can be detrimental on its own, if coupled with a lack in any of the other basic needs areas it could be life threatening.<br /><br />
NOTE: There are other things you could add to this list like sex, mobility, emotional connection, sense of belonging, etc. The difference is that although sex is needed for the species to survive an individual can live without it. Mobility is an important function and improving one's mobility usually improves one's survivability but humans are essentially mobile as they are created so this is not a basic external need. Emotional connection and a sense of belonging are group needs, not individual survival needs. The truth is, there are only five basic needs; Air, Water, Nutrients, Shelter, and Sleep.<br /><br />
<b>How Does This Stack Up For Us?</b><br />
1. Our Goldilocks Zone -<br /> A. Air has to have 19.5 and 23.5 percent oxygen, fairly clean, and fairly constant (no longer than<br />
5 minutes without) - preferred intake = 12-20 breaths / minute.<br /> B. Water has to be fairly clean, freshwater, and ABSOLUTELY no longer than 9 days without @ 80 F (on average) - preferred intake = periodically during the day @ 3 liters/day<br /> C. Food has to be fairly fresh (NOT decomposing), provide critical nutrients, and be at least every two weeks (to prevent serious damage and loss of faculties). This means having the ability to either access fresh foods on a very regular basis or to access preserved foods in lieu of fresh on an even MORE regular basis. Preferred intake - several times per day @ approx. 2 lb./day mixed nutrient food (fats, carbohydrates, sugars, protein, salts, trace minerals, & vitamins) and 2400 calories. If the Goldilocks Zones of your food sources are being exceeded...<br /> D. Shelter is primarily to ensure stable body temperatures and moisture levels, as well as basic security from harms. It must be able to prevent extreme exposure to "the elements" and protect us from extremes of condition or environment. This may be as little as good clothing or as much as a fixed location dwelling. Preferred availability = full protection as needed, with a minimum of nightly for functional rest, while maintaining core body temperatures between 91.4 and 104 degrees F at all times, and providing protection from temperature extremes or other harms to skin surface and extremities.<br /> E. Rest is a key biological factor, and completely within our control. No greater than 72 hours of sleep deprivation before critical functional loss, and preferred intake = daily for at least 8 hours.<br />
<br />
2. Conditional Status<br /> A. Our air is frequently out of our control. We rely upon what could be called "the commons" - the sense that the air belongs to everybody, and as a result we have significant increases in health problems due to poor quality air, caused by a variety of issues - mostly man-made - like factory exhausts, car exhausts, chemical pollution, etc. Much air in high human populated areas has the oxygen we need... but a lot of other gunk we don't need - smog, smoke, gaseous pollution, particulate pollution, etc. For many people the answer is - we don't handle our air well. Global warming makes air warmer, and climate change means air becomes more of a threat because of increased movement and violence of movement.<br /> B. Our water availability is excellent - at the higher socio-economic levels of the developed world! Everybody else has problems to varying degrees. We have VERY low levels of freshwater world wide, compared to the vast amounts of salt water, and much of that is frozen at the poles. We, collectively, don't get, use, or handle our water well. Climate change radically changes the distribution and availability of fresh water supplies in any given biome and increases the risk of poor consistency and/or quality of water availability.<br /> C. Most of our food comes from, and is dependent upon, plant and animal propagation - what we call agriculture - and ALL of that food production is dependent upon the same kind of conditions (the Goldilocks Zone) as we are, with varying specific requirements - but outside the Goldilocks Zone, they die… just like we do. This is where our critical problem really lies - the fact that climate change threatens the entire food supply both directly and indirectly.<br /> D. Our available shelter is directly dependent upon the health and functionality of our environment, and thus available shelter components/options, as well as our functional ability to easily attain the first three critical needs above. The more difficult it is to acquire the first three, the more time in a day acquiring them takes up. The more time it takes the less time there is for acquiring and applying the components of effective shelter. The critical needs is the ability to maintain core body temperatures but extremities can take a hit if conditions get too hot or cold.<br /> E. Our rest opportunities are largely dependent upon our degree of rest deprivation and the degree to which the other four have been attained. Any shortfalls in the other four mean we are closer to critical survival issues and may be less able or inclined to rest. That said, at some point the body will almost force a rest state, and that could be at exactly the wrong time from a life sustaining standpoint, so, better to chose the time earlier. Abrupt climate change increases the probability that routine periods of rest will not be available or will be disrupted, unless substantial accomplishment exists in the first four.<br />
<br />
Think about it! Be prepared! Keep your powder dry and your candles lit!<br />
<br />
The SmokemasterThe Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-19683856982297773622017-06-30T07:47:00.006-07:002017-06-30T18:25:55.902-07:00On the "Problem" of Climate Change in the WestThe unfortunate news is that the western half of the present United States has a long history of dryness and bleak conditions that well and thoroughly predates white occupation. We are just getting to see one of it’s major shifts as it happens. In the map provided below, you see the major desert ecoregions that we recognize today in North America. They are, by number, <br />
Cold Deserts <br />
1. Thompson-Okanagan Plateau<br />
2. Columbia Basin<br />
3. Northern Basin and Range<br />
4. Wyoming Basin<br />
5. Central Basin and Range<br />
6. Colorado Plateaus<br />
7. Arizona/New Mexico Plateau<br />
8. Snake River Plain<br />
Hot deserts:<br />
9. Mojave Basin and Range<br />
10. Sonoran Desert<br />
11. Baja Californian Desert<br />
12. Chihuahuan Desert<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzjzB7O-cbnxhMIbtW80mD88qmkEIjFG5q8kxWX1sNJ8m2IYdm_PoSNc9DRhAIVRomtnHSzK7xM5z6zKW7b3ucLHZkWERbpoZZNvo_FjyEcnCg0yFKQ7vBxTPZMP192TZGHjFjrXaenwEe/s1600/Deserts_of_North_America.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="638" data-original-width="567" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzjzB7O-cbnxhMIbtW80mD88qmkEIjFG5q8kxWX1sNJ8m2IYdm_PoSNc9DRhAIVRomtnHSzK7xM5z6zKW7b3ucLHZkWERbpoZZNvo_FjyEcnCg0yFKQ7vBxTPZMP192TZGHjFjrXaenwEe/s640/Deserts_of_North_America.jpg" width="568" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Notice that they take up a sizable chuck of what we think of as the Rocky Mountain west. What we do NOT recognize as desert today is the area (that is encircled by an aqua line) to the east of the Rocky Mountains, more formally referred to as the high plains (the western part of the so called Great Plains west of the Mississippi). Notice that this area exceeds the boundaries of the present United States. This area was a desert 6 thousand years ago. As we were driving across this area last year I told my wife to look for any area where the soil might have been thinned by wind or rain, like the base of a rock outcropping, and notice the composition of the soil. It was very pale and tan colored. This is because we were seeing that desert exposed. It takes about 1000 years for 3 centimeters of soil to form. That’s more than an inch but not by much. That means that about 18 centimeters of soil (or 6-10 inches) of soil have formed in the intervening time. Not much when it gets right down to it. That desert is still there and it will be coming back over the next 10-20 years as global warming and climate change really hit with full force.<br />
<br />
6000 years ago, the western part of the present United States was much more inhospitable to human life than it is now. A period of relative increase in moisture and decrease in regional temperatures (hold that thought for later) resulted in increased forests, increased ecological opportunity for everything we have come to know and love about those mountains during this life time. All that is about to change. What I am describing, is, unfortunately the direct impact, on a continental scale, of “average global temperatures” rising by 1-2 degrees Centigrade. Ecological zones change. Land ecosystems gain heat and lose moisture. Most of the entire ecosystem has to adapt, move, or die because that much of a change (which seems like “so little” to so many) takes most of the life in an ecosystem out of the narrow ranges we call their “Goldilocks Zone” - that space where everything is “just right” for them to thrive.<br />
<br />
Mankind is an amazingly adaptive animal - but when will we be outside of OUR Goldilocks Zone? We rely on our technology to maintain the processes of adaptation that we apply in every climate zone of Earth. What will happen when massive human migration - on the North American continent alone, not counting anywhere else - cause a complete restructuring of society and our way of life as we know it. Will that technology be available? What of “localized” agriculture, in the form of permaculture and the like? How localized can your agriculture be when the heat and the sun and the wind don’t really support the growth of typical moderate zone perennials and annuals that we rely on for our staple food supply? The so called growing zones of the United States have already shifted north by one whole zone worth in the last twenty years. Was no one paying attention? <br />
<br />
I have been saying, for some time now, that if you want a rule of thumb draw a line from the n.e. corner of the state of Washington down to about the city of Charleston S.C. I call that line the line of progressive depopulation. Everything south west of that line will become progressively more inhospitable to humans as we proceed into the century with pockets of habitability and vast areas uninhabitable by humans by the end of the century and we’ll be well on the way to that by mid-century. The human population of the current United States will have suffered a relatively HUGE area of habitat loss. Remember that habitat loss isn’t just about living conditions for humans, it’s about living conditions for EVERY OTHER LIVING THING we depend upon for functional human life. That doesn’t just mean crops that won’t grow, fruit trees that will die, and a relative sudden lack of fresh water supplies, that means every form of ecological service that Nature provides today that will change our world as the ecological conditions change, as well as the availability of food, water, and shelter. <br />
<br />
We turned the rudder on the human ship of civilization over 150 years ago, and we’re baffled that the ship is starting to turn. Had we known the intricacies of ecological inter-relationship then that we are just beginning to understand now, things might have been different… but I doubt it. We are a greedy and lazy animal at the baseline. We have a minimum of 40 more years of continuing offense to the natural world, based on the aggregation of effect for greenhouse gases over a forty year period. The effects we are feeling today are the cumulative effects of the last 40 years of our offensive and egregious behavior with greenhouse gases and the last 150 years of human disregard for the natural world. If we stopped doing EVERYTHING offensive - and unsustainable - to our way of life TODAY we’d STILL have another 40 years minimum to ride out. There you have it. Read it and weep. <br />
<br />
Thanks for being there and being you. Keep up the good work.<br />
<br />
Keep the candles lit, and your powder dry.<br />
<br />
The SmokemasterThe Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-90752011174949652112017-01-10T20:08:00.001-08:002017-01-10T22:32:48.268-08:00It's About OUR Personal Consumption and the Energy Behind It... REALLY!!<div class="_5pbx userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="js_b1f">
I've been preaching for some time now - some would say "preaching to the choir" except the choir isn't getting religion either - that the absolute and ultimate bottom line of our current environmental, climate, and global warming problem is the personal energy consumption IN TOTAL of EACH & EVERY ONE OF US. YES - Particularly Americans!! That means EVERYTHING we do on a daily basis - WHERE does the energy for that come from? EVERYTHING!!<br />
<br />
The further back from YOU that you have to go to find the source and the more energy that is expended between the source and you, the worse the problem is. Water? Pumped from your own well? Food? Grown on your own property or traded with other growers? Seeds? Saved from your own produce, traded with another grower, or bought from a catalog? Your clothing? Made from fiber grown, harvested, spun, and woven locally? Or ??? Where did your toilet paper come from??<br />
<br />
The following article, reposted here (just in case problems with reaching anything from NPR emerge in the Trump maligned future) speaks to the difficulties of trying to return to a life of personal responsibility for ALL energy expended for one's own benefit on a daily basis -<br />
<h3 class="slug">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/161357412/food-for-thought">Food For Thought</a></span>
</h3>
<div class="storytitle">
<h1>
<span style="font-size: large;">By Returning To Farming's Roots, He Found His American Dream</span></h1>
</div>
<div class="dateblock">
<time datetime="2016-12-31T07:00:00-05:00">
<span class="date">December 31, 2016</span><span class="time">7:00 AM ET</span>
</time>
</div>
<div class="program-block">
Heard on <a href="http://www.npr.org/programs/weekend-edition-saturday/2016/12/31/507670011/weekend-edition-saturday-for-december-31-2016">Weekend Edition Saturday</a></div>
<div class="program-block">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(all photographic credits to Dan Charles/NPR) </span>
</div>
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxik6OqMFwoGjWtE2aQvQWLAGxtS8xuKs2VnKPmlOHs2MPrdz7a1wfUozdv1jZXX7y0ONY6LDfh8ojBz7OLsdwaAzA9PHUze5Mmvp3xhyJzLRwv5JL7eDM7GbOpxsSP_p19z0X4rrh6mMP/s1600/img_4080-61_custom-feb827c2a6420203670a2b2127d7dc89595fd1d7-s1300-c85.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxik6OqMFwoGjWtE2aQvQWLAGxtS8xuKs2VnKPmlOHs2MPrdz7a1wfUozdv1jZXX7y0ONY6LDfh8ojBz7OLsdwaAzA9PHUze5Mmvp3xhyJzLRwv5JL7eDM7GbOpxsSP_p19z0X4rrh6mMP/s400/img_4080-61_custom-feb827c2a6420203670a2b2127d7dc89595fd1d7-s1300-c85.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
Eighteen years ago, on New Year's Eve, David Fisher visited an old
farm in western Massachusetts, near the small town of Conway. No one was
farming there at the time, and that's what had drawn Fisher to the
place. He was scouting for farmland.<br />
<br />
"I remember walking out
[to the fallow fields] at some point," Fisher recalls. "And in the
moonlight – it was all snowy – it was like a blank canvas."<br />
<br />
On
that blank canvas, Fisher's mind painted a picture of what could be
there alongside the South River. He could see horses tilling the land –
no tractors, no big machinery<b> – </b>and vegetable fields, and children running around.<br />
<br />
This
is David Fisher's American Dream. It may not be the conventional
American Dream of upward economic mobility. But dreams like his have a
long tradition in this country. Think of the Puritans and the Shakers
and the Amish. These American dreams are the uncompromising pursuit of a
difficult ideal.<br />
<br />
The scene that David Fisher imagined, on the
New Year's Eve almost two decades ago, has turned into reality. It's
called Natural Roots Farm.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdb1sgoERKbiLa4Z9542R3IYtsBsD-bVUd0lJ3iCdz6AM0e6uBmEsqPRUZo66o8i80b3OhjL0rVV70-h_OCAv8w6-t6yasAV_jbFy3OLfO5vNN2GUD8JJDC2WYBxkIVhfNdKvaTQxHcUR8/s1600/img_4002-58_custom-e07c5a73d9c530cfd3b5ce3232509e17950feb69-s1300-c85.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdb1sgoERKbiLa4Z9542R3IYtsBsD-bVUd0lJ3iCdz6AM0e6uBmEsqPRUZo66o8i80b3OhjL0rVV70-h_OCAv8w6-t6yasAV_jbFy3OLfO5vNN2GUD8JJDC2WYBxkIVhfNdKvaTQxHcUR8/s400/img_4002-58_custom-e07c5a73d9c530cfd3b5ce3232509e17950feb69-s1300-c85.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
To get to the farm, you have to leave the motorized world behind.
Cross the South River on a swinging footbridge, and there in front of
you are seven acres of growing vegetables, neatly laid out in rows.<br />
<br />
It's early in the fall, on this day; the hillside
beyond the fields is glowing with red and yellow leaves. It's idyllic,
almost magical.<br />
<br />
Anna Maclay is out checking on the fields.<br />
<br />
"I
came originally as an apprentice in 2002," she tells me. "Totally fell
in love with the land. I just thought, 'I want to live <i>here</i>!"<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoOuvt1oI85Ugo907Q8ZPaMLXPo-5f-abv5TWp7fnzrWUb_BshVCWI3ss0Hn0JuqpZ0RznYDfrp0m82SKeRut7iUEuruBo_A0a1-uMc0lY2j02Xtg90P1eu_6x1ELWRwM5Y-V6JDu5TsnG/s1600/img_4272-55_custom-97b41c437bb29e8ff6451313fca30ac40beb8629-s1300-c85.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoOuvt1oI85Ugo907Q8ZPaMLXPo-5f-abv5TWp7fnzrWUb_BshVCWI3ss0Hn0JuqpZ0RznYDfrp0m82SKeRut7iUEuruBo_A0a1-uMc0lY2j02Xtg90P1eu_6x1ELWRwM5Y-V6JDu5TsnG/s400/img_4272-55_custom-97b41c437bb29e8ff6451313fca30ac40beb8629-s1300-c85.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
Her wish came true in a way she hadn't expected. She and David Fisher
fell in love and got married. They now have two school-age children:
Leora and Gabriel.<br />
<br />
It's a harvest day on the farm and David and Anna have some help. They're joined by Emmet<i> </i>Van
Driesche, who lives nearby on his own farm, and two apprentices, Kyle
Farr and Calixta Killander, who are living and working on the farm for a
year. Together, they'll need to fill a wagon with spinach, beets,
broccoli and a host of other vegetables and herbs.<br />
<br />
About two
hundred customers have bought shares in the farm's harvest. Among them
is Maggie Potter. She arrives with her children to pick up her produce.
"It's not only having the vegetables – the nourishment for our own
bodies. It's creating community, making friends along the way," she
says.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8jzfElRF8LplEVXn6pMeM5WssEnD8vrsyOur7DBKot7W-rSOgHC_vFhSy2IUzOtTyCB90Dws_Bc2H-UR16TwcSJFjPsTs4LM9K0HtEkLyWvRqniRB5vOENaLrLanEOqK6qvBTL95qvMfm/s1600/img_4245-63_custom-9b0c81974c2aedf9851e95d16b384c08f38df9b6-s1300-c85.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8jzfElRF8LplEVXn6pMeM5WssEnD8vrsyOur7DBKot7W-rSOgHC_vFhSy2IUzOtTyCB90Dws_Bc2H-UR16TwcSJFjPsTs4LM9K0HtEkLyWvRqniRB5vOENaLrLanEOqK6qvBTL95qvMfm/s400/img_4245-63_custom-9b0c81974c2aedf9851e95d16b384c08f38df9b6-s1300-c85.jpg" width="400" /> </a><br />
If this all sounds like a vision of peace and contentment, take a
closer look. Watch David Fisher at work. While the apprentices stick
together in the fields, chatting as they work, Fisher works by himself,
cutting greens off just above the soil, hacking out heads of broccoli.<b> </b>He
moves quickly, with purpose in every step, almost never stopping, from
daybreak until dusk. And when you talk with him, it becomes even
clearer: He's a very driven man. He's driven, in fact, by a kind of
desperation. And to understand it, you need to know his life story.<br />
<br />
David
Fisher grew up in the suburbs north of New York City, in the village of
Pleasantville, in Westchester County. He spent summers at a rustic camp
in the Adirondacks. "You could only get there by boat, you couldn't
drive there," Fisher says. "No electricity, bathe in the lake, live all
summer in a tent."<br />
<br />
Then, at the end of every summer, he'd get
on a train back to Grand Central Station and it would hit him. "Noise,
steel and concrete and lights everywhere," he recalls. It was an
overwhelming sensory experience, and for young David, it wasn't a
pleasant one.<br />
<br />
When he was 15, that end-of-summer paradigm shift
was more than he could take. He was overtaken by despair over the
environmental fate of the earth. "I was like - this is craziness. The
whole thing. Civilization as I'm seeing it is absurd. The way that
humans are living on, consuming, destroying the earth is absurd," he
says. "The only thing I could see to do was pack up and flee."<br />
<br />
He
determined to drop out of high school; his parents forced him to get a
diploma, graduating early. Then, Fisher got as far as he possibly could
from houses and highways and smokestacks. He hung out in the west,
skiing and backpacking, immersing himself in nature to "soothe his
soul," as he puts it. He loved it, but he still knew, in the back of his
mind, that it was just an escape. It wasn't an enduring path out of his
despair about the world.<br />
<br />
One day, when Fisher was 20 years
old, he was back on the East Coast, visiting a friend at Hampshire
College, here in western Massachusetts, and he wandered into the
college's small organic farm. It was another overwhelming sensory
experience, but the opposite of Grand Central Station: "Autumn leaves
raining down, and the lush fields of vegetables and cover crops. Open
the barn door, and the tables are lined with this abundance of earthy,
healthy, vital produce. And I was like, 'Wow!'"<br />
<br />
He felt like he
was seeing, for the first time, a way to live immersed in the natural
world, and also be productive. To make a living.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPgWi8GURAyEk8wwjyZ5E89-OrzAG_MIZaeViQxyHiyyJKIkbAlZxpjnsVS7KRNMuzo2IKFqFclxkPr9l_Uzmn2TMCKGbqKhxMqYdRDH0Rh-uIETdVV21dTZzSPg9ePjC41tUTeNLGGU6o/s1600/img_3995-57_custom-43f2bcf3db681f3192e5779fb8892c59fc8c8f09-s1300-c85.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPgWi8GURAyEk8wwjyZ5E89-OrzAG_MIZaeViQxyHiyyJKIkbAlZxpjnsVS7KRNMuzo2IKFqFclxkPr9l_Uzmn2TMCKGbqKhxMqYdRDH0Rh-uIETdVV21dTZzSPg9ePjC41tUTeNLGGU6o/s400/img_3995-57_custom-43f2bcf3db681f3192e5779fb8892c59fc8c8f09-s1300-c85.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
He started learning to farm, from other farmers. And then he found this land near the town of Conway.<br />
<br />
You
can call this farm utopian, if utopia is the kind of place where you
work extra hard and live very frugally so that you can grow food in a
way that's more in harmony with nature.<br />
<br />
For instance: Half of
the land on this farm is always devoted to "cover crops" that don't
produce any food that customers will buy. The purpose of these crops is
simply to protect and nourish the soil.<br />
<br />
His most defining choice, though, is to rely on horses as the primary source of power on the farm.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZjBV3F27EeZi0gawiCzEz6KEmc8O07aF1D6zscUH-GZ9YPhMYPQIP5ffNvL4iV5ZPycJRDH_Bsz_l9uzs6cKrRdO1YRrNr4xHEjL9xXpnVEplAJGAX3wYc1jUlTT51N7AnfV-FJKUIYUa/s1600/img_4046-60_custom-9d3b76876f253bcacfb0f54ef293973c10d7d62a-s1300-c85.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZjBV3F27EeZi0gawiCzEz6KEmc8O07aF1D6zscUH-GZ9YPhMYPQIP5ffNvL4iV5ZPycJRDH_Bsz_l9uzs6cKrRdO1YRrNr4xHEjL9xXpnVEplAJGAX3wYc1jUlTT51N7AnfV-FJKUIYUa/s400/img_4046-60_custom-9d3b76876f253bcacfb0f54ef293973c10d7d62a-s1300-c85.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
Two of them, Pat and Lady, pull a wagon full of vegetables from the
fields across the river and up a hill to a small barn beside the road
where families come to pick up their produce. Kyle Farr, one of the
apprentices, holds the reins and directs the horses with cryptic words
and sucking sounds.<br />
<br />
David Fisher is committed to horses partly
because it makes the farm more self-sufficient. "It's so direct," he
says. He doesn't have to rely on fossil fuels. "The fuel is there in the
grass. The power is right there, in the form of these live animals."
Also, he says, horses force you to work at a more natural rhythm.<br />
<br />
But
there's a cost, in the form of time. Horses need care and feeding every
day, whether they're pulling a wagon that day or not.<br />
<br />
Fisher
learned this past year that two former apprentices at Natural Roots Farm
who had learned to work with horses here and then adopted this method
on their own farms, recently went back to farming with tractors.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbIPCmoHh_bu8JLDZTdzTHMVZGNB_ZrsjbF-2koVMqEP-NR1Ct3UVghhbmx728AHS5nXvNjbYCM8BPO0XLSnWay8WsVYrwsQd4Ny-pImofq81vMMyLMA2fYLjH4glX9Md0DwlpdeAGuUfF/s1600/img_4217-62_custom-5637257b6c0f44f6ca27d35f19b47a7ce93010c9-s1300-c85.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbIPCmoHh_bu8JLDZTdzTHMVZGNB_ZrsjbF-2koVMqEP-NR1Ct3UVghhbmx728AHS5nXvNjbYCM8BPO0XLSnWay8WsVYrwsQd4Ny-pImofq81vMMyLMA2fYLjH4glX9Md0DwlpdeAGuUfF/s400/img_4217-62_custom-5637257b6c0f44f6ca27d35f19b47a7ce93010c9-s1300-c85.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
It bothers him. But he's not giving up. Because for him, working with
horses is one small answer to the despair that led him here. "The
environmental crisis is heavy. It's a heavy, heavy situation. And to
find any hope of effecting some sort of change, or examples [of change]
is critical to my emotional, psychological well-being," he says.<br />
<br />
Over breakfast that day, I ask David, "Are you a perfectionist?" He starts to deny it, but Anna cuts in. "Yes!" she says.<br />
<br />
He
and Anna both tell me that David's driving ambition to build a better
farm — constantly working, always starting some new project — has led to
conflict between them. "This is the long-standing disagreement," Anna
says softly. "I always think that we need to take on less, you know?"<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfG-kUx26I0vhPWajPoxUMA-XkIG_UfCA-x_rlu52HYGOPdLw12YIE6szEhJb56nlopSe8EEP8K49GbTag83TJ5X9Bk6QzSzTCppnvVVx-ZrtED6dckMgFVTaa1As-z_4woIa_KlV0R6zH/s1600/img_4255-64_custom-bbad39e200cdadb152ea74142f4c390e4e705ae6-s1300-c85.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfG-kUx26I0vhPWajPoxUMA-XkIG_UfCA-x_rlu52HYGOPdLw12YIE6szEhJb56nlopSe8EEP8K49GbTag83TJ5X9Bk6QzSzTCppnvVVx-ZrtED6dckMgFVTaa1As-z_4woIa_KlV0R6zH/s400/img_4255-64_custom-bbad39e200cdadb152ea74142f4c390e4e705ae6-s1300-c85.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
They've managed to keep this farm afloat for almost two decades now,
but "it's still a serious struggle to make the economics of it work
out," David says. And apart from worries about money, they have to
manage the logistics of a complicated life — 200 families depending on a
steady supply of produce from their farm, children in school and
playing soccer, and their car parked on the other side of the river, a
quarter-mile walk from their rustic home.<br />
<br />
"There's not a lot
that's easy about living this way," she says. "But most of it feels
pretty right. And I guess that's turned out to be more important, for
me."<br />
<br />
Those are the words they often use, talking about their
choices. This small, alternative American Dream, for them, just feels
right.<br />
<br />
( http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/12/31/505729436/by-returning-to-farmings-roots-he-found-his-american-dream - retrieved Jan 10, 2017)<br />
<br />
SO....<br />
This is where we need to be
heading... again! Back To The Future! If we are to feed ourselves and
make our lives sustainable, then the basic requirement is taking
personal responsibility for the expenditure of ALL energy that is used
for our comfort and well being - it's THAT simple! If more of us were
doing this as community, it wouldn't be so hard for those few who do
now. Many hands make light work.<br />
<br />
If you need a model to think about very much akin to what David & Anna have done here then look to the Amish. They still do the large bulk of their farming with a heavy dependence upon animal labor, and relatively minor use of anything derived from fossil hydro-carbons. They don't make use of any exotic electronics or electricity and they rely on family labor first, community labor second before thinking beyond that scale - which means they usually don't get beyond that scale.<br />
<br />
IT'S A CHANGE, people, no getting around it. But that scenario IS where we each can take responsibility for our use of energy - our own, our animal friends, or human neighbors - on a daily basis, for our own well being. That IS sustainability! Think back - it wasn't that long ago when much of the country was sustainable, meaning that we truly didn't make our world or the environment any worse than we found it and, with extra effort, we left it a little better. It's not the ONLY scenario that works but it's right in the middle of ALL scenarios that DO work, so we need to embrace the reality and join David & Anna making the world functional for human habitation again. It's well and truly up to us!<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, while your wrapping your tender 21st century sensibilities around these concepts - take your money out of any bank that's invested in anti-environmental projects (like DAPL) and put it in a local credit union. Get off of that white sugar, white flour dependence. Buy local. Farmer's markets are MUCH more fun! Make your own environmentally friendly clothes washing soap (it's actually quite easy). Remember the goal isn't home buyer-ship, but home ownership. You don't have to mortgage your soul for a decent home. Think about getting rid of the heavy lift vehicle and getting a Volt... or a horse!<br />
<br />
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.<br />
<br />
Thanks for being there and being you,<br />
<br />
The Smokemaster</div>
The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-6377672389032321542016-09-29T21:01:00.002-07:002016-09-29T21:08:27.784-07:00On Sheep, Wolves, and SheepdogsNormally I post my own thoughts in this space, but I have come across a fundamental explanation of the stratification of people that really connects the dots and I want to share it with those who read my blog without having them click of to somewhere else, or worse, not find it at the end of an outdated or discontinued link, so here it is - By LTC (RET) Dave Grossman, author of "On Killing".<br />
<br />
<i>"Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so
because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things
that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time,
that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution,
or as always,even death itself. The question remains: What is worth
defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for?" - William
J. Bennett - in a lecture to the U.S. Naval Academy November
24, 1997
</i><br />
<br />
<i>"One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me:</i><br />
<br />
<i>
"Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle,
productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident." This is
true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the
aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is
that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one
another. Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of
violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an
all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million
Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime
is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year.
Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat
offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less
than two million.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation:
We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is
still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent
people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or
under extreme provocation. They are sheep.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the
pretty, blue robin's egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it
will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without
its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers, and other warriors are
like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow
into something wonderful.? For now, though, they need warriors to
protect them from the predators.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>"Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said, "and the wolves
feed on the sheep without mercy." Do you believe there are wolves out
there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it.
There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The
moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep.
There is no safety in denial.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>"Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf."
</i><br />
<br />
<i>If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive
citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for
your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a
wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for
your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior,
someone who is walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the
heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out
unscathed
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Let me expand on this old soldier's excellent model of the sheep,
wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, that is
what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in
the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why
they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire
exits throughout their kids' schools.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police
officer in their kid's school. Our children are thousands of times more
likely to be killed or seriously injured by school violence than fire,
but the sheep's only response to the possibility of violence is denial.
The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their child is just too hard,
and so they chose the path of denial.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the
wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference,
though, is that the sheepdog must not, can not and will not ever harm
the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little
lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way,
at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that
there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them
where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our
airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much
rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white,
and go, "Baa."
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>The students, the victims, at Columbine High School were big, tough high
school students, and under ordinary circumstances they would not have
had the time of day for a police officer. They were not bad kids; they
just had nothing to say to a cop. When the school was under attack,
however, and SWAT teams were clearing the rooms and hallways, the
officers had to physically peel those clinging, sobbing kids off of
them. This is how the little lambs feel about their sheepdog when the
wolf is at the door.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Look at what happened after September 11, 2001 when the wolf pounded
hard on the door. Remember how America, more than ever before, felt
differently about their law enforcement officers and military personnel?
Remember how many times you heard the word hero?
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a
sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a
sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the
perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the
night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs
yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and
wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed right along
with the young ones.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep
pretend the wolf will never come, <u>but the sheepdog lives for that day</u>.
After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is,
most citizens in America said, "Thank God I wasn't on one of those
planes." The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, "Dear God, I wish I could
have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference."
When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have truly invested
yourself into warriorhood, you want to be there. <u>You want to be able to
make a difference</u>.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>There is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, but
he does have one real advantage. Only one. And that is that he is able
to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the
population. There was research conducted a few years ago with
individuals convicted of violent crimes. These cons were in prison for
serious, predatory crimes of violence: assaults, murders and killing law
enforcement officers. The vast majority said that they specifically
targeted victims by body language: slumped walk, passive behavior and
lack of awareness. They chose their victims like big cats do in Africa,
when they select one out of the herd that is least able to protect
itself.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically
primed to be wolves or sheepdogs. But I believe that most people can
choose which one they want to be, and I'm proud to say that more and
more Americans are choosing to become sheepdogs.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Seven months after the attack on September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer was
honored in his hometown of Cranbury, New Jersey. Todd, as you recall,
was the man on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who called on his cell phone
to alert an operator from United Airlines about the hijacking. When he
learned of the other three passenger planes that had been used as
weapons, Todd dropped his phone and uttered the words, "Let's roll,"
which authorities believe was a signal to the other passengers to
confront the terrorist hijackers. In one hour, a transformation occurred
among the passengers - athletes, business people and parents. -- from
sheep to sheepdogs and together they fought the wolves, ultimately
saving an unknown number of lives on the ground.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men. - Edmund Burke
</i><br />
<i>
Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of
police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature the sheep,
real sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are
wolves. They didn't have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human
being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral
decision.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but
you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and
your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to
protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs
are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust
or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior's path,
then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate,
equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment
when the wolf comes knocking at the door.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>For example, many officers carry their weapons in church.? They are well
concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt
holsters tucked into the small of their backs.? Anytime you go to some
form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police
officer in your congregation is carrying. You will never know if there
is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears
to massacre you and your loved ones.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the
break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church.
The other cop replied, "I will never be caught without my gun in
church." I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me
about a cop he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas in
1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the
church and opened fire, gunning down fourteen people. He said that
officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been
carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw
himself on the boy's body and wait to die. That cop looked me in the eye
and said, "Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with
yourself after that?"
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was
carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would
probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and
would call for "heads to roll" if they found out that the airbags in
their cars were defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire
sprinklers in their kids' school did not work. They can accept the fact
that fires and traffic accidents can happen and that there must be
safeguards against them.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often
their response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog
quietly asks himself, "Do you have and idea how hard it would be to live
with yourself if your loved ones attacked and killed, and you had to
stand there helplessly because you were unprepared for that day?"
</i><br />
<br />
<i>It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically
destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is
counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and
horror when the wolf shows up.
</i><br />
<br />
<i><u>Denial kills you twice</u>. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when
you are not physically prepared: you didn't bring your gun, you didn't
train. Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy.
Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically
survive, you are psychologically shattered by your fear helplessness and
horror at your moment of truth.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Gavin de Becker puts it like this in "Fear Less", his superb post-9/11
book, which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to
terms with our current world situation: "...denial can be seductive, but
it has an insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers
think they get by saying it isn't so, the fall they take when faced with
new violence is all the more unsettling."
</i><br />
<br />
<i>Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in
small print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on
some level.
</i><br />
<br />
<i>And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his
life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes. If you are
warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside
without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad
man will not come today. No one can be "on" 24/7, for a lifetime.
Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon,
and
you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to
yourself...
</i><br />
<i>
"Baa."
</i><br />
<br />
<i>This business of being a sheep or a sheep dog is not a yes-no dichotomy.
It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of
degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-sand-sheep
and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist
completely on one end or the other. Most of us live somewhere in
between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that
continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting
and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their
job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away
from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved
ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of
truth"</i><br />
<br />
Reading this was truly an epiphany for me. It explained my life, my attitude, my very "way of being" in ways I had never "grocked" before. As you might have guessed, I'm a sheepdog. Full on, always ready. I can't begin to tell you the number of times I've almost compulsively moved INTO "the action" instead of away from it in my life, both as a civilian and in the service of the nation with two branches of the military. When the "ugly duckling", the outsider, the misfit turns out to be a sheepdog - well, I wouldn't have it any other way! Now you know too. :-)<br />
<br />
Thanks for being there and being you :-)<br />
<br />
The SmokemasterThe Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-62035408099076075602016-06-14T03:51:00.001-07:002016-06-14T03:51:27.861-07:00On "Common Sense" Gun Regulations - Let's use some actual common sense!I just posted this on Facebook, but wanted it to be more referable for the consuming public over time, so here it is - <iframe allowfullscreen="true" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="315" scrolling="no" src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FOccupyDemocrats%2Fvideos%2F1159342167492169%2F&show_text=0&width=560" style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
I posted this comment with it -<br />
I am a proud gun owner and user. I believe in the Second Amendment AS WRITTEN, not as freely interpreted by the gun nut lobby aka the NRA. I do NOT belong to the NRA because they don't represent or support common sense gun laws in this country and by not doing so they make every mass shooting a more divisive issue than the one before.<br />
<br />
Here's the real BEEF!!! - The willingness of lawmakers to jump on any buzzword that comes down the hall and HAIL IT as the immediate gratification solution! Example - BAN ASSAULT RIFLES! What utter bullshit! I have an AR-15 platform rifle - the so called "assault weapon" - of general focus. I also have a British Enfield .303 cal. Mark 1 Mod III bolt action rifle made in 1916 - other than the US Springfield, probably the longest serving and most commonly deployed military weapon throughout the British empire for over 100 years. Probably EVERY rancher in Australia has a British Enfield as their "goto" gun. REports from the battle front in several wars state that "A well trained British infrantryman can lay down so much fire so quickly with the bolt-action Enfield that there have been occasions that someone though a .30 cal machine gun had been deployed. Been used in more actual assaults than almost any other weapon on earth, but NOBODY thinks of it as an assault weapon. So lets get real about what constitutes the REAL problem, and deal with that part of the bigger picture, not just label a whole class of guns or type of technology and then demonize it with absolutely no justification.<br />
<br />
The problem is PEOPLE who want to come into a SOCIAL VENUE, and shoot a bunch of people rapidly. That requires that people who aren't stable being able to get a firearm easily and quickly - the current background check system would detect only the most egregious repeat offender across a range of public space... and by the way, the national military security system doesn't do a very good job of detecting potential traitors either. It requires that the future perpetrator be able to get as much ammunition as they can carry of afford, which ever is the limiting factor. That's a no brainer. The only limit in most cases is age. It requires that they be able to feed that ammunition to the receiver of the gun as quickly as possible - which means semi-automatic weapons with large capacity clips are optimum, but by NO MEANS, the only way to do this! As previously noted, a good bolt action handled by someone with reasonable skill can do the same thing BUT you have to have available ammunition, so clips matter - ANY CLIP SIZE MATTERS. Why? Because it's more than a single shot and changing clips doesn't slow down the activity that much. Sure, I have to haul around three ten shot clips for every 30 round clip but the 30 round clip is bigger and heavier too.<br />
<br />
If we can drop 6 store security people on an alleged shoplifter in 10 second or less, because they walked through the ubiquitous RFID detector at the door, why in God's name can't we put an RFID on every gun, new or old, as part of a national gun registration process, and detect not only the presence of a gun, but, in milli-seconds, the type of gun, and have public venue security all over it, the same way every major retail outlet in the nation protects the integrity of it's profits, all day every day - think WalMart . There was a policeman on site at Orlando who returned fire. Imagine the benefit to him, and many others, if he'd known within two second of the guy approaching the place that he was armed, and with what. He could have taken away the element of surprise. Just imagine! That's what holding the perpetrator responsible means. That's COMMON SENSE GUN REGULATION. If we put saving lives and holding perpetrators accountable for their actions on an equal footing with preventing theft and protecting profits, we could have this problem solved yesterday and put the argument to rest that the government is trying to take everyone's guns away. They aren't or it would be done already.<br />
<br />
Thanks for being there and being you.<br />
<br />
The SmokemasterThe Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-80675325691934668212016-06-05T11:55:00.001-07:002016-09-04T10:34:09.910-07:00An Examination of "The Good Life"Possibly the MOST contentious or dynamic (and subject to constant
change) aspect of human culture is the definition of "the good life" and
what makes a life "good", no matter the situation. <br />
<br />
Unfortunately,
over time, many definitions of "the good life" (TGL) have become
closely associated with a life of ease or comfort. The reason that this
is unfortunate is that life, for the most part is not easy or, for that
matter, comfortable (with a nod to The Road Less Traveled by Dr. M.
Scott Peck). It would seem to make more sense to define TGL in terms of
reality and the likelihood of certain things happening, rather than
things that are unlikely or even rare. <br />
<br />
So… maybe we need to take a close look at what "good" means… or should mean.<br />
<br />
The
online Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of good (see APPENDIX A
below - yes go look at it! This essay originally included it here, but
it seriously detracted from the reading flow of the essay, none the less
you NEED a sense of it if not a detailed understanding of it, so go
look at it and come back here) provides an exhaustive and effective
sense of this very useful and flexible word. The dictionary provides 3a -
pleasant, pleasing, or enjoyable as one of a number of choices, and
then provides a clue in "see also good life".<br />
<br />
For the "Good Life" the dictionary provides us with -<br />
<br />
GOOD LIFE (noun)<br />
Learner's definition of GOOD LIFE<br />
<br />
1 US : the kind of life that people with a lot of money are able to have<br />
She grew up poor, but now she's living the good life.<br />
His idea of the good life includes owning several luxury cars.<br />
2 : a happy and enjoyable life<br />
She gave up a good job in the city to move to the country in search of the good life.<br />
<br />
which
explicitly moves us in what can only be seen as a bad direction, if we
have any sense of what is sustainable in our world, and what is not,
based on the simple notion that its "the kind of life that people with a
lot of money are able to have". Given our well understood distribution
of wealth in the U.S. as depicted for 2015 in this Washington Post
graphic - <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFCGuFs_r-84BzfHNzz4l6lGrgBW8Dc8kq-7wirDGU6DYss05ymDp9fDXrZfYp7U-2PliTsM4akwbvc6A-c_xiHjHXh3apWQMEpvg7y-lKUy6YbP4lDgogR3DOWcpRF6Ram2QjrD7yXQZ8/s1600/imrs.png"><img border="0" height="381" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFCGuFs_r-84BzfHNzz4l6lGrgBW8Dc8kq-7wirDGU6DYss05ymDp9fDXrZfYp7U-2PliTsM4akwbvc6A-c_xiHjHXh3apWQMEpvg7y-lKUy6YbP4lDgogR3DOWcpRF6Ram2QjrD7yXQZ8/s400/imrs.png" width="400" /></a><br />
that
would mean that only the top 5% have any realistic actuality of TGL.
However, this also implies that there MUST be more to this or it would
be seen as "beyond the pale" or unachievable for the masses, and people
keep thinking that TGL is achievable, so... The U.S. Declaration of
Independence states "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness." (WikiPedia) which provides us with three specific
instances of "inalienable rights" endowed by "man's Creator" that it is
the intrinsic role of government to protect and enable, as well as a
high altitude sense of TGL in the words "life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness". This, in other words, means to be alive, to have the
freedom to live as one chooses, and to pursue whatever makes one happy. <br />
<br />
With
this in mind, it immediately becomes a subjective determination for
each and every person alive on the planet, relative to their education,
their perspectives, their personality, their maturity, their ethical
sensibilities, their intrinsic and developed values, and their general
state of balance as a human on a finite planet, in a very large cosmos.<br />
Therein lies the rub…<br />
<br />
For
humanity to share a common sense of TGL, then, would require that
everyone have a credible and roughly equivalent education and life
experience, as well as a common understanding and perspective about how
life works on a finite planet, which one would hope would lead to a
common set of values, ethics, and beliefs. This may be the original
"hopium" because, for the most part, they (humanity) do not. There is a
substantial probability of being able to identify large generalized
groupings of common perspective and belief and thus common sense of TGL,
but there would be MANY such groups within any culture or other human
organizational framework, which might or might not align with other
groups of similar culture but alternative geography.<br />
<br />
That
said, there are generally understood expressions of TGL such as the
term "the American Dream" generally defined as "a national ethos of the
United States, the set of ideals (Democracy, Rights, Liberty,
Opportunity, and Equality) in which freedom includes the opportunity for
prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility for the family
and children, achieved through hard work in a society with few
barriers." In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow
Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for
everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement,
regardless of social class or circumstances of birth." (WikiPedia) <br />
<br />
These
views would be specifically 20th century views held primarily by
Americans and yet the very same America is much closer to meeting, and
supporting, the definition of "good life" presented in the
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (see above). There are, obviously,
inherent linkages to a way of life that was perhaps most strongly
developed in America - what started as industrial capitalism, morphed
into predatory industrial capitalism, and has finally ended up taking
the ultimately fatal form of parasitic industrial capitalism. It serves
the oligarchy well to have the majority of the population actually think
they can achieve the "good life" based on lots of money, because that's
the only thing that the oligarchy can give them is money - never a lot,
just "enough".<br />
<br />
Those who use excesses of hopium are
the ones who continue the fiction that "we can beat this addiction by
just changing 'what's wrong' " or who say "What addiction?" without
being willing to acknowledge that there is one, and that the entire
human ecology is based on "wrong" that sustains that addiction. It is
not desparium to recognize the nature and scope of the problem and to
try to get others to do so as well. As is well known in addiction
treatment circles, you can't solve the problem if you fail to understand
and acknowledge that there is one. <br />
<br />
This IS an
addiction problem. Wealth addiction for the few, energy addiction for
the many. Until we all take personal responsibility for our own energy
use and consumption every day in every way, then you better believe in
"desparium" stories, because you're in one. So as not to support either
side of what I see as extremes, I think there will be (or maybe not, in
which case we die) opportunities to do better than "walk and scratch out
a living with your fingers" in this troubled and possibly deeply
challenged future, although that's a rather extreme view of a perfectly
normal condition for half of the world's current population. <br />
<br />
This
points up that fully half of the "problem" aka the lack, or
insufficiency, of TGL opportunities, is rapid over-population - but we
will NOT be able to continue "parasitic industrial capitalism" like we
have been for over 200 years. Thus much of what has been defined as "the
good life" is based on a dream of a human ecology that is essentially
rooted in, and utterly dependent upon, endless and egregious
exploitation, consumption, and excess, driven by exponential growth.
That means that, when closely examined, The Good Life in the developed
world is based on a rather wretched life for many others in the
developing or undeveloped world. This is, quite obviously, the very
epitome of unsustainable. We're going to need a new definition of The
Good Life... for all of us.<br />
<br />
The people on this earth
who are best adapted to what's coming (as a result of centuries of our
over-indulgence) are not our luxuriant, entitled, self-indulgent Global
North attitudes in any case. It's the Australian aboriginal cultures and
the Kalahari bushman culture, among others who haven't lost (though
damn near) the ways of surviving extreme climate change and inhospitable
conditions - which does seem to be, despite so many "developed world"
people's utter abhorrence of the idea, predominantly "walk and scratch
out a living with your fingers". I prefer to think of it as taking
personal responsibility for your daily energy generation and resource
consumption, whatever form that has to take for you. There is a good
life to be had by taking that responsibility and working with one's own
hands to create what is needed. Before the current tribulations are over
we may need to see "the good life" as ANY life at all, where humanity
is concerned, given the conditions we face. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
APPENDIX A</div>
Merriam -Webster Online<br />
<br />
Definition of <br />
<br />
GOOD<br />
<br />
1 a (1) : of a favorable character or tendency (2) : bountiful, fertile (3) : handsome,
attractive <br />
b (1) : suitable, fit (2) : free from injury or disease (3) :
not depreciated (4) : commercially
sound <a good="" href="https://www.blogger.com/null" risk=""> (5) : that can be relied on (6) : profitable, advantageous </a><br />
c (1) : agreeable, pleasant (2)
: salutary, wholesome (3) : amusing, clever
<a good="" href="https://www.blogger.com/null" joke=""> </a><br />
d (1) : of a noticeably large size or
quantity : considerable <a bit="" good="" href="https://www.blogger.com/null" of="" the="" time=""> (2) : full (3) —used as an
intensive </a><a good="" href="https://www.blogger.com/null" many="" of="" us=""> </a><br />
e (1) : well-founded, cogent
(2) : true (3) : deserving of respect : honorable (4) : legally valid or effectual <br />
f
(1) : adequate, satisfactory —often used in faint
praise (2) : conforming
to a standard (3) : choice, discriminating
(4) : containing less fat and being less tender than
higher grades —used of meat and especially of beef<br />
<br />
2 a (1)
: virtuous, right, commendable <a good="" href="https://www.blogger.com/null" person=""> (2) : kind, benevolent </a><br />
b : upper-class <a family="" good="" href="https://www.blogger.com/null"> </a><br />
c : competent, skillful <a doctor="" good="" href="https://www.blogger.com/null"> </a><br />
d
(1) : loyal <a good="" href="https://www.blogger.com/null" man="" party=""> </a><a catholic="" good="" href="https://www.blogger.com/null"> (2) :
close </a><a friend="" good="" href="https://www.blogger.com/null"> e : free from infirmity or sorrow <i feel="" good=""><br /> </i></a><br />
goodish play \ˈgu̇-dish\ adjective<br />
as good as<br />
: in effect : virtually as good as gold<br />
1 : of the highest worth or reliability <br />
2 : well-behaved <br />
: very, entirely <br />
<br />
GOOD (for learners of English)<br />
1 good /ˈgʊd/ adjective in the context of better /ˈbɛtɚ/ ; best /ˈbɛst/<br />
<br />
1 a : of high quality<br />
The food was good. = It was good food.<br />
You'll need better tools for this job.<br />
The car is in good condition/shape.<br />
[+] more examples<br />
b : of somewhat high but not excellent quality<br />
The food was good but not great.<br />
He has done good but not outstanding work.<br />
<br />
2 : correct or proper<br />
good manners<br />
good grammar<br />
She speaks very good English. [=she uses correct pronunciation, grammar, etc.]<br />
<br />
3 a : pleasant, pleasing, or enjoyable<br />
Did you have a good time at the party?<br />
We're expecting good weather for the weekend.<br />
The soup tastes/smells good.<br />
[+] more examples<br />
— see also good life, good-looking<br />
b : not having, marked by, or relating to problems, troubles, etc.<br />
good and bad news<br />
They've been together in good times and bad.<br />
I had a good feeling about the meeting.<br />
[+] more examples<br />
— see also good luck at 1luck<br />
c : adequate or suitable<br />
It's a good day for a sail.<br />
We need to have a meeting. Is tomorrow good [=convenient] for you?<br />
He's a good person to contact if you're ever in trouble.<br />
[+] more examples<br />
d : sensible or reasonable<br />
She has a very good reason for being angry.<br />
He showed good judgment in buying a small car.<br />
She gave us some good advice.<br />
[+] more examples<br />
e : producing or likely to produce a pleasant or favorable result<br />
a good deal/plan<br />
a good risk/investment<br />
a lot of good marketing ideas<br />
[+] more examples<br />
f : having a desired quality<br />
We paid a good price [=a low price] for the tickets.<br />
The painting should fetch/bring a good price [=a high price] when it's sold.<br />
Did you get good [=high] grades in school?<br />
[+] more examples<br />
g : expressing approval or praise<br />
a movie that has been getting good reviews<br />
I've heard a lot of good things about you.<br />
h — used in speech as a response<br />
“I'm ready to go when you are.” “Good. Let's get going.”<br />
“I passed the exam!” “(Very) Good!”<br />
“I passed the exam!” “Good for you!” = (chiefly Australia) “Good on you!” [=well done]<br />
<br />
4 a : not marked or affected by injury or disease : healthy<br />
I went home early because I wasn't feeling too/very good. [=I wasn't feeling well; I was feeling sick]<br />
Her health is pretty good. = She's in pretty good health.<br />
The patient was reported to be in good condition following surgery.<br />
[+] more examples<br />
b : not causing harm or trouble : causing something desired<br />
a good [=healthy, healthful] diet<br />
good nutrition<br />
You've been a good influence on the kids.<br />
[+] more examples<br />
— often + for<br />
Regular exercise is good for you. [=regular exercise makes you healthier]<br />
Hot soup is good for a cold. [=hot soup makes you feel better when you have a cold]<br />
Being with friends is especially good for him right now.<br />
<br />
5 a : not morally bad or wrong : morally proper or correct<br />
a good person<br />
good conduct/behavior<br />
a woman/man of good character<br />
[+] more examples<br />
— see also good life<br />
b : kind or helpful<br />
You've always been so good to me.<br />
It was good of you to answer my request so quickly.<br />
— sometimes used to formally make a request<br />
Would you be good enough to show me the way? = Would you be so good as to show me the way? [=would you please show me the way?]<br />
c : behaving properly : not causing trouble<br />
a good dog<br />
The children were very good today.<br />
<br />
6 a : having or showing talent or skill : doing or able to do something well<br />
She's a very good golfer.<br />
a good musician/doctor/cook<br />
He was really good in his last movie. [=he acted very well]<br />
[+] more examples<br />
— often + at<br />
She's very good at (playing) golf.<br />
He's not very/any good at expressing his feelings. = He's no good at expressing his feelings.<br />
— sometimes used in a joking way<br />
I'm very/really good at saying the wrong thing. [=I often say things that make people uncomfortable, unhappy, etc.]<br />
— see also no good, not any good at 2good<br />
b : able to use something or to deal with something or someone well — + with<br />
He's very good with his hands. [=he can easily make/do things with his hands]<br />
She's
good with children. [=she manages and interacts with children well;
children like her and behave well when they are with her]<br />
c : having a tendency to do something — + about<br />
He's good about writing everything down. [=he usually writes everything down]<br />
I'm trying to be better about exercising. [=I'm trying to exercise more often]<br />
<br />
7 a : happy or pleased<br />
I feel good about what happened. [=I'm pleased by what happened]<br />
She felt good that she had remembered his birthday. = She felt good about remembering his birthday.<br />
Helping other people makes me feel good.<br />
She didn't feel good about having to fire her secretary.<br />
b : cheerful or calm<br />
She's in a good mood. [=a happy mood]<br />
He has a good temper. [=he is good-tempered; he doesn't become angry easily]<br />
Everyone was in good spirits.<br />
<br />
8 not used before a noun<br />
a — used to say how long something will continue or be valid<br />
This offer is good only until the end of the month.<br />
This offer is good for the remainder of the month.<br />
Our
old car should be good for a few more years. [=it should last a few
more years; it should continue to operate for a few more years]<br />
b : still suitable to eat or drink : not spoiled<br />
Is the milk still good or has it gone bad?<br />
<br />
9 — used in phrases like good heavens and good God to express surprise or anger or to make a statement or question more forceful<br />
Good heavens! You startled me!<br />
“Do you agree with him?” “Good God, no!”<br />
(somewhat old-fashioned) Good gracious, I completely forgot!<br />
— see also good grief at grief<br />
<br />
10 : causing laughter : funny<br />
I heard a good joke the other day.<br />
“He says he's never met her.” “That's a good one. [=that's amusing because it isn't true] I saw them together last week.”<br />
She's always good for a laugh. [=she is always funny]<br />
<br />
11 a : large in size, amount, or quantity<br />
The store has a good selection of products.<br />
She won the election by a good [=considerable] margin.<br />
He makes good money as a lawyer. = He makes a good living as a lawyer. [=he earns a lot of money]<br />
[+] more examples<br />
b : not less or fewer than a particular amount : at least — used in the phrase a good<br />
He weighs a good 200 pounds.<br />
We waited a good hour. [=we waited at least an hour]<br />
There are a good 80 people here.<br />
<br />
12 always used before a noun : forceful or thorough<br />
If you give the machine a good kick, it might start working again.<br />
Give the bottle a good shake before you open it.<br />
Take a good look at this.<br />
[+] more examples<br />
<br />
13 : having a high social position or status<br />
He comes from a good family.<br />
She thinks her son is too good for me.<br />
It's a good neighborhood.<br />
<br />
14 always used before a noun<br />
a — used to describe people who know each other well and care about each other very much<br />
She's a good [=close] friend of mine. = She and I are good friends.<br />
my good friend/pal/buddy Joe<br />
b : showing true and constant support for someone<br />
He's been a good friend to me.<br />
I'm trying to be a better sister.<br />
c : belonging to and having loyalty to a group or organization<br />
a good party member<br />
a good Catholic<br />
<br />
15 not used before a noun - sports<br />
a of a serve or shot : landing in the proper area of the court in tennis and similar games<br />
I thought the ball/serve was good but my opponent said it was out.<br />
b of a shot or kick : successfully done<br />
(basketball) The first foul shot was good, but he missed the second one.<br />
(American football) The field goal was good.<br />
(American football) The field goal was no good. [=the field goal was missed]<br />
<br />
16 not used before a noun, informal : not wanting or needing anything more<br />
“Would you like more coffee?” “No, thanks. I'm good.”<br />
“Here's
the money I owed you. So we're good now, right?” “Yeah, we're good.”
[=we have settled our business; there is no longer any problem between
us]<br />
all in good time<br />
— see<br />
1time<br />
all well and good<br />
— see<br />
2well<br />
as good as<br />
: almost or nearly<br />
The plan is as good as dead.<br />
Those people as good as ruined the school with their foolish ideas!<br />
(as) good as gold<br />
— see<br />
1 gold<br />
as good as it gets<br />
informal<br />
1 — used to say that nothing better is possible or available<br />
It's not a great restaurant, but in this part of the city, it's as good as it gets.<br />
2 — used to say that something is very good and cannot be improved<br />
There's nothing I enjoy more than spending time at home with my family. That's as good as it gets.<br />
as good as new<br />
— see 1new<br />
fight the good fight<br />
— see 1fight<br />
for good measure<br />
— see 1measure<br />
give as good as you get<br />
— see 1give<br />
good and<br />
chiefly US, informal /ˌgʊdn̩/<br />
<br />
1 : very<br />
I hit him good and hard.<br />
He was good and angry.<br />
I like my coffee good and hot.<br />
<br />
2 : completely or entirely<br />
We'll leave when I'm good and ready.<br />
good egg<br />
— see 1 egg<br />
good for<br />
somewhat informal<br />
: able to provide or produce (something)<br />
I'm good for a hundred dollars if you need a loan.<br />
— see also 1good 4b, 8a (above)<br />
good for it<br />
informal<br />
: able to pay back a loan<br />
Why won't you lend me the money? You know I'm good for it. [=you can trust me to pay it back]<br />
good graces<br />
— see 1 grace<br />
good old<br />
informal<br />
— used before a noun to describe a familiar person or thing with affection or approval<br />
Good old John: you can always count on him to help.<br />
I don't need fancy shoes. I prefer good old sneakers.<br />
They were talking about the good old days. [=happy times in the past]<br />
— see also good old boy<br />
good riddance<br />
— see riddance<br />
good to go<br />
US, informal<br />
: ready to leave or to start doing something<br />
We have all the tools and supplies we need, so we're good to go.<br />
good word<br />
— see 1word<br />
have it good<br />
: to be in a favorable position or situation<br />
There's no reason for her to be so unhappy. She really has it (pretty) good.<br />
He's never had it so good. [=he has never been in such a favorable situation]<br />
have the good grace<br />
— see 1grace<br />
hold good<br />
: to be true<br />
The advice she gave us 10 years ago still holds good [=(more commonly) holds true] today.<br />
if you know what's good for you<br />
: if you want to avoid trouble, problems, etc.<br />
You'll take my advice if you know what's good for you.<br />
She'll forget about the whole thing if she knows what's good for her.<br />
in good company<br />
— see company<br />
in good part<br />
— see 1part<br />
make good<br />
<br />
1 : to become successful<br />
It's a story about a kid from a small town trying to make good in the big city.<br />
◊ If you make good your escape, you escape successfully.<br />
The prisoners dug a tunnel under the fence and made good their escape.<br />
<br />
2 : to do something that you have promised or threatened to do<br />
He made good his promise.<br />
— usually + on in U.S. English<br />
He made good on his promise.<br />
They made good on their threat and forced the company to go out of business.<br />
<br />
3 a : to pay for (something) — usually + on<br />
The insurance company was required to make good on the loss.<br />
b chiefly British : to repair (something)<br />
The contract obliges you to make good any damaged windows.<br />
so far, so good<br />
— see 1far<br />
too good to be true<br />
— used to say that something cannot be as good as it seems to be<br />
The price of the car is too good to be true. There must be something wrong with it.<br />
If it looks/seems too good to be true, it probably is. [=there is probably some cost or bad part you do not know about]<br />
very good<br />
formal<br />
— used as a response to say you will do something that you have been told or asked to do<br />
“Show the ambassador in.” “Very good, sir.”<br />
what's good for the goose is good for the gander<br />
— see 1goose<br />
with (a) good grace<br />
— see 1grace<br />
2 good /ˈgʊd/ noun<br />
plural goods<br />
<br />
Learner's definition of GOOD<br />
<br />
1 a [noncount] : morally good forces or influences<br />
the battle of good versus evil<br />
Teachers can be a strong force for good.<br />
the difference between good and bad<br />
b [count] : something that is right or good<br />
They had to sacrifice lesser goods for greater ones.<br />
What is life's highest/greatest good?<br />
<br />
2 the good<br />
a [singular] : the pleasant things that happen to people<br />
You have to take the good with the bad. [=you have to accept both the good things and the bad things that happen to you]<br />
b [singular] : things that are morally proper or correct<br />
Parents must teach their children the difference between the good and the bad.<br />
c [plural] : morally good people<br />
She believes that the good go to heaven when they die and the bad go to hell.<br />
Only the good die young.<br />
<br />
3 [noncount] : the part of someone that is kind, honest, generous, helpful, etc.<br />
They cherished the good [=goodness] in him, overlooking the bad.<br />
She believes there is some good in everyone.<br />
<br />
4 [noncount]<br />
a : something that helps someone or something to be better, stronger, etc.<br />
She did it for the good of the community. [=to help the community]<br />
citizens working together for the common/public good [=to help or benefit everyone]<br />
I know you don't want to do this, but it's for your own good. [=it will make you stronger, better, etc.]<br />
They talk too much for their own good. [=they hurt themselves by talking too much]<br />
b : a useful or favorable result<br />
What good can possibly come of that?<br />
No good came of our efforts. = Our efforts came to no good. [=our efforts did not produce a good or useful result]<br />
— see also no good (below)<br />
<br />
5 goods [plural]<br />
a : products that are made or grown in order to be sold : things for sale<br />
The store sells a variety of goods.<br />
baked/canned goods<br />
leather/paper goods<br />
[+] more examples<br />
— see also damaged goods, dry goods, durable goods, white goods<br />
b : things that are owned by a person<br />
He sold all of his worldly goods. [=all of his possessions]<br />
c British : products carried by trains, trucks, etc. : freight — used before another noun<br />
a goods lorry<br />
— see also goods train<br />
be any good<br />
: to be useful or helpful<br />
Would an apology be any good? [=any use]<br />
deliver the goods<br />
informal or chiefly British come up with the goods<br />
: to produce the desired or promised results : to do what is wanted or expected<br />
We knew we could count on him to deliver the goods. [=get the job done]<br />
do good<br />
1 : to do kind or helpful things : to do things that help other people<br />
She tried to make the community better by doing good.<br />
She has done a lot of good in the community.<br />
— see also do-gooder<br />
<br />
2 a : to be useful or helpful — used with any, much, some, etc.<br />
I tried to convince him to change his mind, but it didn't do any good. [=I was unable to convince him]<br />
He's been exercising more and it seems to be doing some good.<br />
You can try, but it probably won't do much good.<br />
It might do a little good.<br />
b : to be useful to or helpful for someone or something<br />
You should exercise more. It might do you (some) good.<br />
Weeding regularly will do your garden good. [=will improve your garden]<br />
The
visit with her grandchildren did her a world/lot of good. = (Brit) The
visit with her grandchildren did her a power of good. [=it was very good
for her; it made her feel much better and happier]<br />
◊ If you do not
think that something is helpful, useful, or worth doing, you can ask
What good does it do?, What good is it?, What's the good of it?, etc.<br />
What good does it to do to bring an umbrella along [=why bring an umbrella along] if you are only going to leave it in the car?<br />
What good is a college education when you can't get a job after you graduate?<br />
What's the good of working hard if your boss doesn't give you any credit for it?<br />
I could try talking to him, but what good would that do/be? He has already made up his mind.<br />
for good<br />
also for good and all<br />
: forever<br />
“When is she coming back?” “She's not coming back. She's gone for good.”<br />
have/get the goods on<br />
informal<br />
◊ To have/get the goods on someone is to have/get evidence showing that someone has done something wrong.<br />
We can't arrest her until we get the goods on her.<br />
in good with<br />
US, informal<br />
: in a favored position with (someone)<br />
She's in good with the boss. [=the boss likes her]<br />
it's an ill wind that blows no good<br />
— see 1ill<br />
no good<br />
or not any good<br />
: not effective or useful<br />
I tried to convince him to change his mind, but it was no good, he wouldn't listen to me.<br />
It's no good [=no use] talking to him. = It isn't any good talking to him.<br />
— see also be any good (above)<br />
not much good<br />
: not very effective or useful<br />
I tried to convince him to change his mind, but it wasn't much good.<br />
to the good<br />
1 <br />
— used to say that a particular result or effect is good or would be good — usually used after all<br />
If
the new policy requires the government to keep more accurate records,
that's all to the good. [=that's a good thing; that's desirable]<br />
2 <br />
— used to indicate an amount of gain or profit<br />
In the end, we were $100 to the good. [=we gained $100]<br />
up to no good<br />
informal<br />
: doing bad things or planning to do bad things<br />
If you ask me, that woman's up to no good.<br />
3 good /ˈgʊd/ adverb<br />
<br />
<br />
Learner's definition of GOOD<br />
informal<br />
1 chiefly US : 1well 1<br />
Things have been going good lately.<br />
The team is doing good this year.<br />
“How did you hit the ball today?” “Good.”<br />
◊ The use of good to mean “well” is considered wrong by many people. It occurs mainly in very informal speech.<br />
2 chiefly US : completely and thoroughly<br />
The other team whipped us good.<br />
That was a funny joke you played on him. You really got him good. [=he was completely fooled by the joke]<br />
“They sure soaked you with that bucket of water.” “Yeah, they really got me good.” [=I got completely soaked with water]<br />
(Brit) Clean it up good and proper.<br />
3 — used for emphasis before words like long and many<br />
I haven't seen her for a good long time. [=a very long time]<br />
There were a good many people [=a lot of people] at the meeting.<br />
(chiefly Brit) Not all our students go on to university, but a good few [=quite a few] of them do.<br />
<br />
Thanks for being there and being you,<br />
<br />
The Smokemaster <br />
<br />The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-39616116425453893402016-04-20T17:46:00.003-07:002019-12-30T12:41:50.333-08:00The REAL Zombie Apocalypse - Playing Out In Neighborhoods All Around You!As was predicted in The Limits To Growth (1972) and reaffirmed in the recent paper from a Melbourne University study of Limits To Growth (http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf), regarding our actively moving toward an imminent societal and civilizational collapse, there is not time to waste in turning the proverbial ship of state i.e. human civilization around… and yet it's not happening. The best that can be said is that the global community is now talking with relatively one voice about the problem. Even at that the nature of the discussion is so utterly ridiculous as to be grand comedy… damning with feint realism the future of much of the Global South by stating that we should focus on limiting the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C.<br />
<br />
This, when 2 degrees C is a farce by any realistic measure of assessment, because the actions and functions already in play from the previous 40 years of egregious climate change denial (that show no sign of slowing any time soon) quite realistically (and conservatively) commit us to 4-6 degrees C rise. Further, this is without considering the as-yet-unquantified, but horrific, potential influence of Arctic methane. In other words, in this grand comedy of our "new" awareness, WE are the butt of the joke. "An hour late and a dollar short" would be an extremely positive statement of the situation.<br />
<br />
The absolute and whole root of the problem traces back irrevocably to our human behaviors, specifically excessive and egregious consumption, and all of the extraction, exploitation, commoditization, and waste that accompany excessive consumption. Sure, there are exacerbating factors like global over-population as a result of excess means of sustenance, over-extraction, and over-production as a function of the mad pursuit of wealth. The deliberate development of this excessive consumption as a function of market economy gone mad in the late 1800's and early 1900's, influenced by the "wisdom" of such social engineering capitalists as Edward Bernays (the generally acclaimed father of Public Relations) is another story worthy of review. Suffice it to say that there is no consideration of the fundamental limits of a finite physical system anywhere in the prevailing social or "mainstream" thinking. <br />
<br />
As such, the Zombie Apocalypse is already happening all around you, in the form of your neighbors, your fellow citizens, even your friends, certainly most of the population of the developed world - unable to let go of the "security" of the chattel pittance they are begrudgingly allowed, their "retained value" for the lifetime of work expended under the parasitic industrial capitalist system. Mind you they only get THIS concession because, as the old joke goes, "Somebody has to buy retail!" Combine this with the inability to let go of the "provided" comforts of a progressively less benevolent society, run by a progressively more arrogant and greedy oligarchy, and you have a population of very real zombies, waiting to be "activated". When the system upon which they are utterly dependent collapses they will come for you, and whatever little you may have done to prepare. <br />
<br />
They are the natural end product of over 150 years of deliberate social engineering and human domestication. Never doubt that they will unhesitatingly come after you, or anyone who is self-sufficient or self-reliant, when the "owners" stop being interested in the industrial domestication of humanity. Why zombies? Because they have no coherent thought beyond the material world upon which they utterly depend. Like locusts, and to some extent pigs, they simply consume, defecate, move, and rest, all the while over-running any available resources. Like all parasites, eventually they die… when they have consumed everything consumable…or been killed.<br />
<br />
So… to bend a line from Capt. Barbosa, of "Pirate of the Caribbean" fame, "You better believe in zombie stories, Missy…Because You're In One!" Until we, as a society, can step away from the smorgasbord of egregious consumption and take responsibility, on a personal level, for the generation and use of energy and resources we need for daily survival… we have met the zombies… and they are US!<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading, keep the candles lit, and keep your powder dry<br />
<br />
The SmokemasterThe Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-88178703677671203362016-03-22T10:45:00.001-07:002016-03-22T10:48:38.452-07:00Moving Forward Against The Inertia and Cognitive Disonance of Old Paradigm<style>
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The state of affairs post-COP-21
could be considered bleak if it weren’t so dire. The occupants of Earth are
faced with a set of circumstances within which there are more whens than ifs,
and the real question is which one will trigger cascading disaster first. Even
some of what would generally be called main-stream climate change reporting (as
opposed to Guy McPherson type end of times) are finally openly embracing the
concept that 1) we have a profoundly industrial base for our developed world
civilization, 2) that profoundly industrial base is entirely and utterly
dependent upon fossil hydro-carbon chemistry and energy, and 3) the end of what
has been treated as an unending supply of those hydrocarbons is in sight, which
will mean 4) the end of our industrial civilization as we know it.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Nothing about the outcome of COP-21
in any way presents a different scenario. If anything, it can be said that for
the first time in 21 years of holding these meetings, the majority of the
attendees agreed that global warming is the root problem in climate change, and
that global warming is largely due to anthropocentric activity. The good news
ends there. By way of offering a meaningless fig leaf to developing nations, it
was agreed that the gathered body would focus on limiting temperature rise to
1.5 degrees C – which is as ludicrous as it is commendable – primarily because
of the 40 year lag in GHG effect which means that what we are experiencing now
is the cumulative effect of what has not been done to change the course of
human activity over the last 40 years. </div>
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<br /></div>
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If we stopped emitting tomorrow, we
would have 40 more years of aggregated effect to deal with, not to mention the
nominal loss of the minor reflective effect that comes from particulate in the
air cause by some sources of GHG emissions. Given what we are now experiencing
and the realistic observation that the situation has picked up both speed and
scope in recent years and months, it is quite realistic to think that we have <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">at least</i> another 5 degrees C already
committed by actions that are “in the can” so to speak, and can’t be undone by
any current means. This is taking into account what we can realistically
project<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of aggregate effects from what
we know full well has been done by humanity over the last 40 years. Given that
we are neither positioned to accomplish, nor seemingly desirous of, such a
cessation, it is likely that the aggregating effect will continue to be the
name of the game for some time to come. Further, there is no accounting for
release of the immense stores of methane in the Arctic. Welcome to the
Anthropocene! </div>
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<br /></div>
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There are those who are quick to
say that the failure of industrial civilization will result in the extinction
of homo sapiens. I disagree. While there are good reasons to suspect that the
temperature rise previously mentioned will imperil the large majority of
processes and methods that the majority of homo sapiens use to maintain a
comfortable life style today, that does not effectively argue that humanity is
unable to survive without those “creature comforts.” I would hasten to remind
the reader that Australian aborigines and Kalahari bushmen have lived and
thrived on some of the hottest, driest places on Earth, through periods that
has encompassed a number of major climate changes that quite likely equal or
exceed conditions predicted for this situation, with almost superhuman
tenacity, for well over 40,000 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The fact that you are not a member of one of those groups does present
your survival odds poorly, but is not an instant death sentence. </div>
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<br /></div>
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On the larger scale, across the
spread of humanity as we now know it, it could be reasonably said that the
people least prepared for the rough ride ahead are the citizens of the so called
“developed world”. Why? Because, for the most part, they have become fat, dumb,
and dubiously happy occupants of a social structure and a civilization that
does not stress or value personal resilience or self-reliance, but does
everything that it can to eradicate those two in the name of increased market
dependence, the very foundational essence of market economies that drive our
over-industrialized state. To the extent that developing countries have “bought
into” the same mythology of egregious materialism and excess resource
extraction that has powered the developed world to it’s detriment, they too,
will suffer.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Which humans can best be said to be
effectively prepared, by nature of having retained or maintained their
intrinsic functions of regional knowledge, resilience, and self-reliance? As a
broad generality, indigenous peoples fit this description. Indigenous people
can be described as having a local & regional understanding of the ways of
the natural world, with a perspective of themselves as fitting into that world,
rather than being apart or different from it, and intrinsically knowing how to
live effectively and sustainably within that environment. This type of
knowledge, passed on as a function of culture (the accumulated knowledge and
behaviors over time, of any group of humans, who deliberately pass on the
knowledge, skills, and behaviors as a function of their social structure)
creates a much more balanced and functional sense of values and ethics, related to
self, place, and community, that is resilient, resourceful, and sustainable over
time. It happens that Australian aborigines and Kalahari bushmen are among the
most effective of those who have retained and practice these values and
traditions into the modern day.</div>
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<br /></div>
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So… the question that I find myself
trying to answer is “<b>How can I contribute to improving the survival and
resilience odds for my fellow citizens of the developed world?</b>”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This objective has some serious problems, given
that there are simply too many of people in the first place, as a result of
egregious over-population, to support expanding market economies that are
unsustainable on a finite planet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
are huge numbers who are simply sleep-walking into the unfolding environmental
disaster and extinction event, unable to comprehend or accept that their way of
life is so profoundly unsustainable that it, and they (as currently disposed)
cannot survive another century. There will be a thinning of the proverbial
herd. <i>That said, there are opportunities to spread a more coherent and understandable
message of the imperative; provide mechanisms for re-learning,
re-indigenization, and re-engagement with the natural world; development of
resilience and preparedness strategies and skill sets; and develop or refine
appropriate technologies with an eye toward benefiting all impacted
constituencies, improving life sustaining functions, and perhaps most
important, doing no harm.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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If we are to re-discover or
re-create the critical body of knowledge that is associated with being
“indigenous” or with re-indigenization, we must regenerate a sense of both environmental
culture and environmental ethic, as well as the individual skills and behaviors that
sustain the two. We are perilously close to having lost these understandings
and skills across a broad sweep of our society, because of a rapid move into
artificially sustained life-styles that are dependent upon fossil fuels and
industrial production. The result is that we have come very close to an
indigenous cultural sustainability threshold, signified by the steady loss of
land ethic and indigenous culture (as previously defined) in the common
discourse, such that, if a community drops below a certain level, there is
effectively no indigenous understanding in the common discourse at all. </div>
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<br /></div>
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In the current situation, that threshold
has been crossed in many areas, is just short of it (resulting in scattered
pockets of indigeneity remaining intact) in others, and is relatively whole,
albeit not intact, in others. This means that the opportunity exists to
recreate and render whole the base of knowledge, skills, and behaviors required
for indigenous continuity in many land and waterscapes, while extending that
wisdom to others with the additional due diligence required of a nominally
different land or waterscape. </div>
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<br /></div>
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With that in mind, I have
identified a piece of land west of Athens, Ohio that presents an excellent
opportunity to establish an Academy of Applied Sustainability & Neo-Indigenous
Studies. Here the functional realities of operational indigeneity, practical
agro-ecology, principles of sustainability, emergency preparedness and disaster
recovery, as well as personal and group resilience can be explored, refined,
taught, and expanded, enhanced by effective identification and engagement of
appropriate technologies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This enterprise
will function as a Center of Excellence where best practices for various
processes and techniques of sustainability, resilience, and preparedness are
identified and taught, where ongoing research into improved ways and means for
the above are conducted, and where ultimately an intentional community will
take shape to carry these principles and learnings forward as a new paradigm
for human life in natural community, with an associated cultural progression.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Much of the functional
knowledge required to proceed into the future with a confident degree of
personal resilience and self-reliance, based on essential principles of global
sustainability as we now understand them, exists in the present or is emergent. There is also reason
to believe that a good bit of highly valuable and sustainable wisdom exists in
many of the old ways and methods for doing things that slightly predate the
availability of externally powered machines to do the work. Any number of
skills and disciplines still incorporate elements of this learning, and various
“placer deposits” of wisdom exist in various compilations such as the Foxfire
book series, published by the young people of Rabun Gap, Georgia, as well as
the broad reach of publications and studies conducted relative to previous
indigenous cultures, as well as the living models presented by Amish,
Mennonite, and Hutterite communities of today. In short there is an abundance
of material already available, although generally not in a “comprehensively
aggregated, organized, and coordinated for instruction and learning” practicum.
Our function would be to deliberately be an aggregation point for this
knowledge to collect, organize, operationalize, and, ultimately, convey it to
others, with the ultimate goal of an onsite intentional community to function
as an exemplar of the teachings in practice. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
I would like to see the activities
as closely integrated into current conventional community life as possible as
well as providing a mechanism for creation or development of new communities of
practice based on the aggregate body of principles and best practices, with the
ultimate goal being to achieve neo-indigeneity for any person entering or
engaged with the program, and resilience, preparedness, and sustainability for
related communities. I would be focused on providing on site learning
opportunities of varying lengths, as well as taking the knowledge to other
appropriate locations (high schools, community centers, community colleges,
Ohio University, etc.), facilitating “community conversations” about our times
and our potential issues and responses, providing a working library of related
materials, and provide opportunities for the development and growth of community
(physical and virtual) around this working body of knowledge.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Thanks for being there and being you... and reading this blog!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
The Smokemaster </div>
The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-63841973690594329902015-11-26T12:57:00.002-08:002016-06-05T12:11:04.138-07:00What is "water"? Isn't THAT the prize?A good friend and climate warrior on the front lines of voicing the unvoicable about imminent disaster and abrupt climate change recently posted a commentary on the upcoming Paris climate change summit, officially referred to as COP21, @ http://www.boomerwarrior.org/2015/11/lets-keep-our-eyes-on-the-climate-ball/. In the opening thoughts he points out the similarities of climate change and ISIS, but he also refers to Paris as a "celebration" (really??) and admonishes us to keep our "eye on the ball". While he makes some good points that I completely agree with, he has recently taken to soft pedaling the level and scope of our prevailing disconnect with the reality of our situation as regards the actions of the "movement" and the leadership. Needless to say, I don't agree with that.<br />
<br />
My response is "You forgot the one thing that really unites the two great blots on our future - they are both a direct result of our own failure to function intelligently as a society... and therein lies the rub! Our own egregious insults to our home world have not only manifested as a massively degraded environment, but a massively degraded society & civilization, which is the dystopian womb from which springs Abrupt Climate Change & ISIS. While you point out the obvious tragedy of 130 dead in Paris, you then shift to the millions that will be affected by climate change. What about the thousands who are dying in their attempts to escape the brutality of ISIS or Syria's government, or other dystopian futures unfolding right now?... every month! The millions who are displaced by the natural nexus of an environment and a civilization in upheaval? We have no good answers that fit the desired formula, which is to maintain and preserve the status quo.<br />
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As your countrywoman, Naomi Klein, so aptly noted recently "There are no non-radical solutions to our problem." We have blithely overlooked a commonly used phrase to explain why certain animals and plants are threatened by, or have suffered, extinction - loss of habitat. Baby birds instinctively know not to shit in their own nests, so as not to suffer an early and untimely "loss of habitat". Fish flopping in a farmer's fields after a short term flood event are experiencing a rather rapid "loss of habitat" which they weren't instinctively primed to avoid. </div>
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Our continued intransigence, our overwhelmingly prevalent ignorance (as a population), our acceptance of the scarcity based philosophy of existence put forward by the oligarchy for over 100 years, aka the "societal owners", all are contributing to our rapid loss of habitat - because habitat isn't just your house, it's your basic capacity to live in a place on any sustained basis. As I drive through the Ohio countryside and look at the indicators of life around me, I realize that 90% or better of the people here don't spend ANY significant time on ANY given day thinking about the imminent "loss of habitat". They are no brighter than the fish in that field, who may at best be thinking "Oh, look! Some some new food has been uncovered!" They don't even know what "water" is, because it's what they live in and they take it for granted.... until it goes away. (For a great take on this principle see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI)</div>
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Paris is on track to be a gathering of fish who can see that it's bad to be in the field when the water goes down, and want an orderly movement of all fish back to deep water. They have no functional mechanism for delivering this outcome... and even if they did, it wouldn't stop the water from continuing to go down, after the field is high and dry. The 1% don't care - they are waiting on the edge of the field to harvest the stranded fish and fish scrambling to get back to deep water when the level drops, with no clear sense that THEIR habitat is also going away. The schools and shoals of fish in the field? They're just sucking up that new food and thinking how good life is. They may fight with other fish for the pickings in some select spots (ala Black Friday) but in general they don't really think about the future... ever. For those who didn't bother to watch the video above, the point of the "what's water?" story is merely that the most obvious important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.... and out time, like that of the speech presenter above (who subsequently took his own life) draws short. So, when we gather in Paris, maybe we should first get clear on "What is water?" followed closely by "Shall we talk about the water??"<br />
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For all you do, this one's for you. Thanks for reading!<br />
<br />
The Smokemaster</div>
The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-37185749110205844722015-09-08T21:22:00.000-07:002015-09-08T21:28:20.344-07:00The Ultimate Accomplishment of Predatory Industrial Capitalism<span style="font-size: small;">If you spend more than five minutes thinking about it, you will
recognize the ultimate accomplishment of predatory industrial
capitalism. In the old days predators had to wait patiently around the
edges of the herd for the weak, the old, the young, or the careless to
make themselves available. By breaking down our community structures,
our family structures, and our other natural support structures and by
convincing us of the critical scarcity (a Madison Avenue ploy to
increase sales of the endless supply of goods) of everything we hold
near and dear, "we the people" have been reduced to a milling mob of
helpless individuals who lack any faith in themselves and their world,
who are convinced of their inability to fend for themselves, and who are
all prey for the oligarchic system. Congratulations, the ENTIRE herd is
now available to the predators! </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">This is the challenge of our time - can
the large majority of society cast OFF the mantle of insecurity and
timidity that have been bred in over the last 100 years and STAND for
themselves and community again? The ULTIMATE weakness of mankind is the
vulnerability of individuality and it's strength is now, and has always
been, deliberately chosen community. The opposite? Divide and conquer.
Our forefathers understood this. It was the primary reason for the
"United we stand, Divided we fall" concept of UNITED STATES.
Unfortunately, we have preserved the union of states but lost vast
amounts of the union of meaningful community, neighborhood, and family
to the marketing and divisiveness of predatory industrial capitalism. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">American cities are huge human CAFOs (normally - Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, but in this case - Concentrated American Fleecing Operations). Humans are, after all the best
domesticated stock, because they are smart enough to self-herd,
self-feed, and self-motivate, and stupid enough to think predatory
industrial capitalism is good idea, to think they're too smart to be "suckered", and they allow themselves to be fleeced
routinely. Have you never noticed the way you are allowed to earn just enough to keep you "happy", "harvested" regularly to keep you from developing real awareness, and kept busy with a veritable cornucopia of entertainment so that you are blinded to the reality - that you are a herd animal and "they" own you. I believe the question was "How do you control "the masses"? - I believe that Latin answer was "panem et circensus"...</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">It's time to wake up and smell the ammonia ...</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Regards</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The Smokemaster</span>The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-4476040117627999142015-09-07T10:56:00.004-07:002015-09-07T10:56:58.214-07:00What are the links between Predatory Industrial Capitalism & Climate Change?
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The
fundamental linkage that I see revolves around the central principle of
sustainability - </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">At the
planetary level resource allocation is a zero sum game - all life on Earth is
entitled, by being life on Earth, to a proportionate share of the planetary
resources. Any aggregation of resources beyond the entitlement of an individual
(or the many individuals of a group), on the part of one group or entity,
occurs as a direct function of loss of resources by one or more other entities
or groups. Sustainability says that we live in such a way that we get the
benefit of the planetary resource flows, and we preserve that maximum benefit
and value of those flows for everyone else as well.</span>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">All
human wealth is a derivative function of natural resources, co-opted
unilaterally by humanity for personal enrichment or improvement of material
well being (in the last three hundred years bolstered by the Christian notion
of eminent domain or human dominion over Nature, but extant long before that
philosophy rose. There has always been a way to justify taking what is wanted
regardless of the intrinsic right to it. The fundamental mechanism of this
appropriation is to minimize the value or rights of ALL other living creatures
including people not of the exalted “group”, while maximizing the rights and
authority of the exalted group). The initial construct for doing this may have
been when we aggregated people into large groups (the better to fleece them) -
the creation of cities.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Thus, In
any situation where someone is aggregating wealth beyond their need or
effective requirement, much less beyond their intrinsic entitlement, they are
doing so at the substantial expense of the material well being of others, in
most cases many others, including the natural realm, which is being massively
depleted of resources that are intrinsically valuable to planetary resource
flows, in many cases in ways we are only just beginning to understand. This is
the study of ecological services, with humans included in the ecological
equation - an emergent science. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Climate
inaction occurs for many reasons but the predominant one is the engineered
and/or coerced response of the consuming public who represent the engine of
consumption that is the defining purpose for the predatory industrial
capitalist regime, and who, in the best interest of regime but
definitively NOT the planet, just keep on consuming. It is through this
process that the multitudes convert & transfer the value of their lives and
their share of the planetary resources to the exclusive use of a few - the
oligarchy or plutocracy (whichever you prefer). It is good to remember that
pigs are not encouraged to consume as they do so that they may become liberated
and better pigs. They are encouraged to consume so that they may be better TO
consume!</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The
"market" economy that is used to accomplish this, in the name of
"sustaining the multitudes at a higher standard of living" requires
three things for it's functional success - endless raw materials, endless
consumption, and endless capacity to absorb waste… none of which are present,
by definition on a finite planet, with the narrow exception that Madison Avenue
expends ever greater sums of money to convince the consuming public to keep on
consuming and, in fact, to consume MORE!</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">There is
no functional view of the future that is accomplished through either investment
or regulation, both of which are machinations of the oligarchy for control. The
only realistic path forward takes us back to square one with a new recognition
of what we are actually and functionally entitled to of the planetary resource
share, acceptance of a new view of value and transfer of value that is not
expressed only in terms of the predominant form of value transfer today
(money), and which takes an entirely different approach to ownership,
recognizing the commons as the paramount value. I would suggest that in such an
environment, incentives will probably be more productive than regulation, with
the primary incentive being that the global village recognizes that it's very
life and happiness are based on planetary equilibrium and health, not
essentially the health and well being of any individual, but of ALL
individuals… human or otherwise.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Money as
currently construed and applied, is itself a coercive and destructive process,
especially when it degenerates, as most world currencies now have, to being
both fiat (backed by nothing other than promises) and debt-based (all money is
"created" as a function of debt). This is a profoundly destructive
force, at the very center of that global wealth transfer and aggregation that
underlies the predatory industrialist capitalism and market economy. The rigged
process by which money is literally made and controlled is the reason for
"inflation" and "deflation" and the fact that your
"worth-less" now than you were twenty years ago.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Predatory
industrial capitalism is a classic example of the quote ""Power tends
to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always
bad men." by Lord Acton, expressing his opinion in a letter to Bishop
Mandell Creighton in 1887, or a similar quote from William Pitt The Elder, Earl
of Chatham & British PM in a 1770 speech to the House of Lords, in which he
said "Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess
it."</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Long
story short : Predatory Industrial Capitalism is directly and predominantly
responsible for the egregious and exploitive co-opting of natural and human
resources (ultimately, any resources) that the purveyors could justify as
having valid application to their personal objectives and goals and rationalize
their exploitation of. The direct result of this is the fouling of all of
Earth’s natural environments, the manifest exploitation of 90% of life on Earth
to satisfy the whims of less than 10% of human life, and the fundamental
endangerment of all planetary life as we now know it. We can trace the current
state of climate change directly to these functions of illegitimate and
ill-considered exploitation which knocked Earth’s ecosystems severely out of
balance, raising some question of if, when, and under what conditions they will
find a new equilibrium. </span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Thanks for being there and being you ... and thanks for reading this!</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Smokemaster </span></span>
The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-36377632926741838062015-04-29T05:54:00.000-07:002015-04-29T05:54:33.643-07:00If you want to understand radicalization and/or the “issues” of war veterans, try this on for size…
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Noteworthy Light";"></span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Noteworthy Light";"></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Noteworthy Light";"> In
the reporting of slews of young people with good upbringing, from modern well
informed countries becoming “radicalized”, or war veterans falling through the
gaping “cracks” in the social system, or growth in gang problems, or veteran
suicide, and more, I frequently hear words to the effect of “Why? What could be
so ____________ (fill in the blank) that they would do that?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never cease to be amazed by this, or the
amounts of time and money that are spent chasing the chimera of false
understanding that wants to rationalize the problem as anything BUT the real
problem.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Noteworthy Light";">Elliot
Ackerman, author of the newly released "Green on Blue" talked with
the host of The Takeaway on Thursday (19 Feb, 2015) about the underlying issue
of young men throughout a difficult world being at “loose ends” and looking for
"purpose". He is a veteran of five Marine Corp deployments to Iraq
& Afghanistan and makes the highly accurate observation that the essence of
the warrior - nobility, camaraderie, esprit de corp, and the relatively clearly
defined, highly responsible role available in a war situation - create the
"crystal meth of purpose" for young men who are living lives
particularly devoid of self-defined or self-evident purpose. He makes this
observation in the context of the apparent similarities in the function and
opportunities for a recruiter for IS and a recruiter for the Marines. Then he
makes, almost as an aside, what I considered the stunningly accurate connection
with what happens when the conflict ends and that young man goes home. He
relates how the opportunities presented by routine civilian life - where the
level of responsibility is not 1/10th that of the military environment, where
so many never actually lead anybody and those who do are in their 40's before
they are trusted to do that, where the collected opportunities of life are the
functional equivalent of the "light beer" of purpose - are so
underwhelming, so disappointing, in some cases so devastating that the root of
PTSD and depression probably has much more to do with the sudden radical
demotion of role, responsibility, and purpose as any of the "accepted/
correct” reasons such as battle field fatigue or dealing with death in
combat. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Noteworthy Light";">Now
(and THESE are my words) - Realizing you will never again have that kind
of experience, as much because of your social setting/position, and the
prevailing structures of your society, as anything else - not because of any
shortcoming in you - that the rest of your life will be sitting on your front
porch drinking "light beer" - is so hugely demoralizing and
enervating that it can account for almost any form of emotional state,
mental health issue, or deviant behavior. So… the next time you encounter
a (wo)man of any age who "served their country" in the military as a
young (wo)man and who has attempted to make a realistic life after their
military time was done, think about this. THINK HARD about this. Think about
what it is like when you ask someone to be their VERY BEST, and they DO it, and
then, when they come home, you don't show any respect for that, you don't ask them
to continue to be their best, to continue to bring that to "the
party", you don't even invite them to "the party"… If you
don't present even a bad approximation of a good opportunity to build on what
they know, what they have done, WHO THEY HAVE BECOME… there are
consequences. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Noteworthy Light";">If
you encounter ANY man (or woman), of any age, who "served his/her
country" in the military as a young person, and (s)he seems
"driven", or "sad", or "desperate", or
"angry", or slightly off center… ALL THE TIME… even though life seems
perfectly "normal" to you, try some understanding instead of the
all too familiar dismissal, disrespect, and holier-than-thou rationalization.
The disappointment NEVER goes away. The need for purpose NEVER goes away. The
sense of loss is palpable. Having a sense of place and purpose is IMPERATIVE
for their good health and well being jut as it is for yours. The difference is
that they have been to the top of the mountain and now they are relegated, by
their own people, to the rock pile at the bottom. That dog just don't hunt.
Only if they are very lucky or inordinately obstreperous will they overcome any
part of this. Otherwise they will spend the rest of their lives dying… slowly -
at your expense.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Noteworthy Light";">On
that note, maybe it’s time to seriously review our modern societies and our
social structures, with an intensive focus on if, how, and when they deliver
functional respect and inspire purpose – purpose that will last a life time,
and be an inspiration to the next generation to do the same. Maybe we need to
seriously consider how much of ALL of our major issues relate to this fundamental
denial of respect and purpose to the large majority of the population.
Disenfranchisement, denial of opportunity, and worse, denial of basic respect
are short paths to hopeless. Hopeless is the blood brother of radicalization,
and desperate action of almost any kind. It’s not about “bad” Islam and “good”
western civilization; it’s about being human and lack (or loss) of purpose,
respect, and hope.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Noteworthy Light";">Thanks for being there and being you, and thanks for caring enough to reading this </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Noteworthy Light";">Copyright,
Feb 2015 </span></div>
The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-22162740972268510292015-04-05T10:41:00.000-07:002016-04-20T17:52:33.932-07:00This I Believe...A number of people I know are scared, exhausted, depressed, anxious, over-worked, and vastly unappreciated. The people of whom I speak are uniformly eco-warriors, fighting to change the harmful paradigm that holds sway over most of the planet on a daily basis - the predatory capitalism and all the goes with it to make life miserable and unthinkable. Climate change activism DOES have emotional consequences. One of these people, in trying to deal with his difficulties, recently quoted from Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, in the opening moments of which states “<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.</span></span></span>” <br />
<br />
I agree with this. More importantly, I BELIEVE in this. This is the key concept - belief - or faith. What you are willing to stake everything you are, know, and do on - that is what you believe in. As the old saying goes, regarding your stated faith that someone can push a wheelbarrow across Niagara Falls on a rope - "<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's not faith unless you're in the wheelbarrow.</span>" The wheelbarrow is climate change, and you have no option. You ARE "in the wheelbarrow"… as is every other living thing on earth.<br />
<br />
The problem is that we're ALL in this wheelbarrow, and not only is faith scarce but denial is prevalent. Here are some other things, some corollary principles, that I believe - <br />
1) What's supposed to happen does. What's not doesn't. (which is approximately equivalent to the Viking observation that our thread was woven into the tapestry of life long ago. Being afraid of death serves no purpose and makes no difference.) We just need to "do" and "be" what we naturally are drawn to. Which goes hand in hand with "<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Each and everyone of us is exactly where and who we are supposed to be at any given moment.</span>"<br />
2) I believe that we are all energetic beings having a physical experience. This in no way means we are impervious to the pain and panic of our physical world and times but it does mean that there is something more, something greater about us than anything this physical plane can meet out. Think of this as a stage of metamorphosis in our development. <br />
3) I believe "you get what you focus on" - what you believe in. This is a simple statement but it is quite literally at the root of everything we have and are. We create our world around us every moment of every day, as a matter of forging into physical space the thoughts and concerns of our deepest conviction, whether they be fear or fantasy. Whatever you "be" or you "are" is what you will get more of because you are attracting that energy to you by "being" that way. <br />
4) I believe that we must "know the enemy" if we are to have a prayer of beating him. That said, we must not focus on any latent fear, uncertainty or doubt that may appear in relation to that knowledge. We MUST hold our desire for good at the center of our being, because that is the focus that will prevail in our forging of Source energy (of which we too are made - the forging of desire and thoughts of our parents) Source energy is the universal "I AM/ WE ARE" that unifies us all and is in everything. Do not think of electrical energy. Think of another plane of energy, the energy of being, the very energy of existence itself. Think of the Akashic Field. This is perhaps, our greatest test of faith.<br />
5) Significantly, I believe that we in this physical plane, this particular place and time in the tapestry of life, are facing something that can best be described as a breakpoint change for life on Earth with special impact for humanity, and as such, because we affect everything, the planet. This is inviolate. Nothing we can say or do will change this. Such epochal change has happened at regular (and decreasing) intervals since life began. It is happening again now. We happen to be the individuals of choice to be here, now, in the final days of old paradigm, of "old viable" for the last epoch. We also have a unique opportunity. Never before in all of Earth's history has any species been in a position to have this awareness, and to act upon it. Within that exists the opportunity to influence either positively or negatively, what emerges as the "new viable". Think about this. It HAS happened a number of times before (each epochal shift) and it IS happening again… now! You ARE part of the opportunity. Act accordingly.<br />
<br />
I believe many things, but for this thought, this discussion, one final belief - I believe in emergence. Margaret Wheatley has a great paper about using emergence to affect social change (http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/emergence.html) and I will not try to regurgitate it all verbatim here. Suffice it to say, that this is where our real power lies. By becoming informed and impassioned, and talking to others we form networks of common interest. As these networks develop, communities of practice emerge, which in turn seek out others and systems of influence emerge, quite suddenly in some cases. As Margaret says "<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The third stage in emergence can never be predicted. It is the sudden appearance of a system that has real power and influence. Pioneering efforts that hovered at the periphery suddenly become the norm. The practices developed by courageous communities become the accepted standard.</span>" <span style="font-size: small;">Again, in her words, </span>"<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Emergence is the fundamental scientific explanation for how local changes can materialize as global systems of influence. As a change theory, it offers methods and practices to accomplish the systems-wide changes that are so needed at this time. As leaders and communities of concerned people, we need to intentionally work with emergence so that our efforts will result in a truly hopeful future. No matter what other change strategies we have learned or favored, emergence is the only way change really happens on this planet. And that is very good news.</span>" In a nutshell, if you get enough people, focused on the right things, working in cohesive morphic resonance, the crystallization of synergy occurs and you immediately get a result that is greater than the sum of the parts.<br />
<br />
This is emergence, this is an absolute reality, and this is our opportunity. We get what we focus on, and I am focused on creative, abundant, ecologically functional emergence… but I DO pay attention to where the potential problems are. The transition to a better way of living with ourselves, each other in community, and Earth, will NOT be a "trip to WalMart"! :-)The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-86838474769685055282014-11-18T21:19:00.000-08:002015-08-04T08:11:18.217-07:00The Time of The Metamorphosis Is Upon Us<div class="postbody">
<div class="xg_user_generated">
<span class="text">The time of the metamorphosis is
upon us. Just as the imaginal cells of the caterpillar are present from
Day One of the caterpillar's life, the caterpillar's sense of normal
includes the immune system trying to kill them because they are
"foreign" cells... which indeed they are. They are the blueprints and
active agents of change for the butterfly yet to come. They continue to
multiply, the immune system fights them even harder, but if the immune
system were to succeed it would mean the end of that life prematurely.
Instead, the imaginal cells ultimately reach a point where they
overwhelm the immune system of the caterpillar and the time of
metamorphosis begins... with the result that we all know.<br /> <br /> We
here, and in every respect that is talking about this, are the imaginal
cells of humanity's metamorphosis. If you don't see the "activity" that
you think is necessary, you might want to consider that what you see as
the lack of action and the lack of "solutions" in this kind of space is
entirely appropriate. How much "action" could you actually see here?
Those of us who are being the most powerful imaginal cells that we can
be are much more "solution" aka metamorphosis aka butterfly oriented
than to sit around "telling stories". We're busy making it happen! If
you want to experience my story than come join me doing what I am doing
to affect the change.<br /> <br /> You have a front row seat to a remarkable
time in human history - the creation and reinforcement of a global
morphic field through THESE conversations that is driving and building
the momentum of the imaginal cells (us) out in the working world on a
day in day out basis. You are watching a very real transition, a
metamorphosis, from the selfish human to the selfless human, a very real
function of conscious evolution. When we talk about problems it helps
each of us achieve greater alignment with others who are working the
same or similar problems, a significant part of sustaining that morphic
field.<br /> <br /> I, for one, am not interested in hearing "success"
stories or telling them, because we are not done yet. As imaginal cells
our work is just starting. There is a rather large chunk of what I think
will be terribly tough times ahead of us that is pretty typical of
metamorphosis. We are talking about a complete and total transformation
of human society as we now know it. We will be changed too. Some of us
will not make it to the "promised land". How would the caterpillar tell
success stories about the butterfly's emergence? It wouldn't - because
the caterpillar must be completely gone for that to happen. Does the
caterpillar see that as success? Probably not... but as an imaginal cell
of humanity I am committed to the human butterfly's emergence.</span><br />
<span class="text"><br /> * <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Etheguardian%2Ecom%2Fworld%2F2014%2Fnov%2F16%2Fdavid-cameron-third-eurozone-recession-g20-warning&urlhash=HdTY&_t=tracking_disc" rel="nofollow" target="blank">http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/16/david-cameron-third-eu...</a><br /> <br /> * <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Etheguardian%2Ecom%2Fenvironment%2Fearth-insight%2F2014%2Fjun%2F19%2Fopen-source-revolution-conquer-one-percent-cia-spy&urlhash=hEjA&_t=tracking_disc" rel="nofollow" target="blank">http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jun/19/op...</a><br /> <br /> * <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emmisi%2Eorg%2Fpr%2F03_01%2Fsibley%2Epdf&urlhash=jbW7&_t=tracking_disc" rel="nofollow" target="blank">http://www.mmisi.org/pr/03_01/sibley.pdf</a><br /> <br /> * <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Frspb%2Eroyalsocietypublishing%2Eorg%2Fcontent%2F280%2F1754%2F20122845%2Efull%2Epdf%2Bhtml%3Fsid%3D375e073b-99c9-411e-b40e-5389053a1407&urlhash=qKTk&_t=tracking_disc" rel="nofollow" target="blank">http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1754/20122845.fu...</a><br /> <br /> * <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emargaretwheatley%2Ecom%2Farticles%2Femergence%2Ehtml&urlhash=Xgz6&_t=tracking_disc" rel="nofollow" target="blank">http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/emergence.html</a></span></div>
</div>
The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-40658546639492163702014-07-28T19:14:00.001-07:002014-07-28T19:14:18.377-07:00Tipping Points, Bifurcation Theory, and the Justification For Whole System Thinking<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">For those who wonder why a "tipping point" matters, or why critical thinkers are now talking about "whole system thinking"...</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Tipping point (climatology)</span></b> – the point beyond which unstable
global climate does not return to a previous equilibrium state but gets more
unstable until it finds a new equilibrium</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tipping point (sociology)</b> - <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is the event of a previously rare phenomenon
becoming rapidly and dramatically more common<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tipping point (ecology)</b> – exceeding planetary
boundaries, in which living within the boundaries' stable state retains
planetary habitability on Earth<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tipping point (catastrophe theory)</b> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- the value of the parameter at which the set of
equilibria abruptly change<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tipping point (civil engineering - angle
of repose)</b> - the maximum angle of a stable slope of granular materials
before it destabilizes<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tipping point (economics)</b> - the
point at which a dominant technology or player defines the standard for an
industry-resulting in an permanent market advantage & "winner-take-all"
economies of scale and scope (market advantage = loss of equilibrium)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">{Ed: <b>Tipping
Point (everything)</b> – that point at which the stable state of system parameters,
or system equilibrium, is sufficiently disturbed that the system cannot return
to that steady state (or equilibrium) without significant external influence.
The system will invariably seek a new equilibrium state, that may require
complete annihilation of many previous system factors}</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Bifurcation Theory</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> - is the mathematical study of
changes in the qualitative or topological structure of a given family, such as
the integral curves of a family of vector fields, and the solutions of a family
of differential equations. Most commonly applied to the mathematical study of
dynamical systems, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a bifurcation occurs
when a small smooth change made to the parameter values (the bifurcation
parameters) of a system causes a sudden 'qualitative' or topological change in
its behavior.</i> Bifurcations occur in both continuous systems (described by
ODEs, DDEs or PDEs), and discrete systems (described by maps). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Catastrophe Theory</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, a branch of bifurcation theory in the
study of dynamical systems, originated with the work of the French
mathematician René Thom in the 1960s, and became very popular due to the
efforts of Christopher Zeeman in the 1970s, considers the special case where
the long-run stable equilibrium can be identified with the minimum of a smooth,
well-defined potential function (Lyapunov function).</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Bifurcation theory
studies and classifies phenomena characterized by sudden shifts in behavior
arising from small changes in circumstances, analyzing how the qualitative
nature of equation solutions depends on the parameters that appear in the
equation. This may lead to sudden and dramatic changes, for example the
unpredictable timing and magnitude of a landslide.</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Small changes in
certain parameters of a nonlinear system can cause equilibria to appear or
disappear, or to change from attracting to repelling and vice versa, leading to
large and sudden changes of the behavior of the system. However, examined in a
larger parameter space, catastrophe theory reveals that such bifurcation points
tend to occur as part of well-defined qualitative geometric structures.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Look back at the list above. It
includes climate, physical events, sociology, economics, and is only a part of
what our world system is. Certainly the political systems we are so
vitally interested in here are wrapped up in it all in very complex ways. Here
is what I am driving at: we are now facing a variety of instabilities all
at once. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Again a partial list:<br />
<i>climate change <br />
ocean acidification</i></span></div>
<i>
</i><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">global warming</span></i></div>
<i>
</i><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">pollution</span></i></div>
<i>
</i><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">polarized elections</span></i></div>
<i>
</i><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">wars<br />
bees and birds, insecticides<br />
agricultural crises<br />
water surplus and drought<br />
economic turmoil<br />
communications, internet, technology<br />
many, many more</span></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">No one of
these can be studied adequately isolated from the others yet we try so
desperately to do just that. In climate science alone we keep seeing new
things as changes progress that potentially change everything.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Maybe we humans are an
"intelligent" species. Yet we are also arrogant if we believe
the progress briefly described here is enough to adequately deal with what is
coming and seems to be coming faster and faster. Is there an answer?
The only answer is to become as flexible as possible and maybe some
adaptation will be possible.</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Summarized from </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">“<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/25/1316743/-Are-you-ready-for-this-A-multi-dimensional-tipping-point">Are
you ready for this? A multi-dimensional tipping point</a>” by <span class="name">Don
Mikulecky (<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/25/1316743/-Are-you-ready-for-this-A-multi-dimensional-tipping-point?detail=email#">http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/25/1316743/-Are-you-ready-for-this-A-multi-dimensional-tipping-point?detail=email#</a>)</span></span></h2>
<h2>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span class="name">Thanks for being there and being you... and thanks for reading. Your comments and thoughts are appreciated and solicited.</span></span></h2>
<h2>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span class="name">The Smokemaster </span></span></h2>
The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-25643982735096606072014-07-17T20:04:00.000-07:002014-07-17T20:06:08.985-07:00We don't need to DEFINE or DESIGN anything - We need to DO THE DESIGN that already exists!<div class="postbody">
<div class="xg_user_generated">
In the early stages of our cultural shift, I am
seeing a lot of people reflecting the question “What should I do?” or
reflecting that they are feeling intimidated or scared by this whole
coming together – good, empowered, but intimidated. Others are framing
the whole coming together and talking and sharing as a good thing but
lacking in substance unless we are “doing things” to make this change,
this SHIFT, happen.<br />
<br />
First we need to agree on some basic "rules of the road" in our current journey to "the light". These are an assortment of blinding flashes of the obvious and other insights that have come to me over the years as immutable "truth".<br />
<ul>
<li>What's supposed to happen does. What's NOT doesn't.</li>
<li>What goes around, comes around (Karma is real) </li>
<li>There is no such thing as life balance, because balance is static and life is dynamic.</li>
<li>There is life equilibrium, which is dynamic balance</li>
<li>In a closed biological system the accumulation of resources is -</li>
<ul>
<li>a zero sum game (your gain is someone else's loss - definitively)</li>
<li>the most serious disturbance of the forces of equilibrium</li>
<li>unsustainable</li>
</ul>
<li>Western civilization has been unsustainable almost from the start</li>
</ul>
Several significant points need to be recognized:
<br />
1) If we do nothing the SHIFT will happen. WE will not be involved in
it in the same way, but it will happen. We, none of us, either
collectively or individually, control this. The outcome may be different
than we would like. That is one of my motivations for being here - to
influence as best I can the outcome - to be favorable for humanity. My
BEING HERE does that. THat means it qualifies as "doing something".<br />
<br />
2) Our Presence and Engagement Here ARE substantial action in, and
of, themselves. Whatever else we do, so much the better. The very fact
that we are engaging routinely around conscious evolution and
co-creation, coherence and resilience, and that we are here to enable
that, IS taking a SERIOUS action step, because we are creating an ever
more substantial and sustaining resonant morphic field that flows between us and
around us to everyone we connect with, within which the SHIFT will
occur in profoundly meaningful ways as a matter of emergence.<br />
<br />
3) Expanding on #2, EVERYTHING that we are doing in this resonant
field is “doing things” of substance – talking, contemplating, writing
poetry, creating blogs, planting a garden, building community, or making
presentations to critical decision makers, whatever…it’s all GOOD. We
have no master plan that has been handed to us, nor do we have to create
one.<br />
<br />
4) Just as an engine has operational limits but it is designed, even
optimized to do certain things well, so are we... and we have not yet
reached our full potential. The SHIFT will bring us an order of
magnitude (or two) closer to fulfilling that opportunity... if we can
make it successfully. We have an inherent "design" in our nature and
being. We cannot change that anymore than the engine can change it's
engineering. Whether you chose to see that as "externalized" deified
design or the natural design of the universe in 200,000 years of
evolution (more actually) is of no matter.<br />
<br />
5)That said, we do NOT need to
design or define ANYTHING! We just need to DO THE DESIGN that we "are"
the best it can be done.<br />
<br />
Sometime we get too wrapped up in the issue of "What should we do?"
and the answer is always the same "What we SHOULD do!" It is frequently
our lack of faith in ourselves that keeps us from doing what we SHOULD
do, but rarely a lack of knowing what that is. Sometime the knowing is
broad. It is a sense of things rather than a detailed knowledge of
things. That's OK. Listen to that small quiet voice that is INSISTENT.
Most of our guidance doesn't come with burning bush credentials. The
detailed knowledge will come when it is time.<br />
<br />
Ultimately, it is about alignment with Source, individually and
collectively. That’s the premier benefit of this environment, and this
interaction, is to promote and facilitate in each of us the opportunity
to better align ourselves, and help others align, with Source, better
and more consistently than we would be or do without this. Some of you
know Source as God, others have a variety of other names. That’s all
good too. Don’t get hung up on the name.<br />
<br />
We don't need to DESIGN and DO, we just need to DO THE DESIGN that
already exists (in each and everyone of us) to enable and empower our
co-creative capacity. We are not creating a new technology here - we are
realizing our place in a higher capacity that has always existed. We
exist as a group because it was time for this part of the design to
emerge, to happen (see Functioning Collectively - my next blog :-) .
All of this will take effort, more for some than for others. Rarely is
anything just “easy” when it’s your first time doing it. Some have just
been “doing” this for somewhat longer already.<br />
<br />
Your comments are welcome :-)<br />
<br />
Smokemaster John</div>
</div>
The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-57167694433430326092013-11-09T06:29:00.001-08:002015-08-04T08:12:42.616-07:00Root Cause & Human Domestication<div class="comment-body">
The problem is that we cannot have this
discussion about conflicting interests and (to quote Gar Alperovitz)
"what then must we do?" without first being willing to recognize that
the so called conservatives that have been mentioned - not conservative in any
meaningful use of the word but conservative in that their capacity for
future vision is so limited it cannot encompass their OWN possibilities
much less a greater possibility for mankind - are a direct and terrible
end product of the selective breeding process incidentally conducted by
politico-industrial social engineering (control of living conditions, education, &
media) and Madison Avenue (marketing & sales) interests for well
over 100 years.
<br />
<br />
ANY social/physical stratification and brainwashing of the
foundationally ignorant in a society WILL result in a dumbing down of
the selected populace over a relatively short period of time by what can
only be called "unnatural selection". This was the same way that Luther
Burbank accomplished what he accomplished with fruit trees and vines -
put the characteristics that you want in close proximity to each other,
nurture their biological "success" (regardless of whether Nature would have
nurtured it), and then facilitate their cross pollination and - voila! -
you get hybrid fruit! After a few rounds of such "selective" breeding,
you can start crossing them back into each other and get "true
breeding" fruit that will stay "as bred" over time.
<br />
<br />
So... in dealing with the so called conservatives that have been
mentioned (but not really discussed) many times in the course of many discussions, we have to recognize that they are quite literally "a
breed apart" and are so different in terms of their inculcated values
that they might as well be an alien life form. This "fruit", this
arm-chair quarterback, this couch potato has been bred to work hard,
follow orders, think that they are entitled to a certain amount of
"entertainment" (that is dutifully served up by media - for a price!)
challenge any who question authority, rationalize and tolerate
progressively harder living circumstances, believe in fairy tales and
sea stories (the difference between fairy tales and sea stories is that
one of them begins with "Once upon a time..." and the other begins with
"This is no shit!"), and spend everything they make on the designed
obsolescent goods produced by their fellow wage slaves to enrich those
who own the largest herds of fiduciary cattle (wage slaves in large
groups)*.
<br />
<br />
*[ Industrial Agricultural Note: Fiduciary chattle and Moron-o sheeple
are the most productive animals to keep because they are self-herding -
they group up and proceed to their working environments by themselves
in the morning, they group up and herd themselves back to their stalls
at night, they put up with almost everything they get being taken back
by the same industrial capitalists that gave it to them, and they just
low or bleet when anyone asks them a meaningful question or challenges
their thinking.]
<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, these folks are still considered people, or more
basically "human", and so there is the self-sustaining industrialist
belief that they (industrialists) cannot lose because any planned
departure from the true breeding "norm" will require the agreement of
the "herds" - which will never be forthcoming! It's actually fascinating how
many people in my discussions over time have failed to recognize this
fundamental issue, and persist in thinking "they" are just like "us"!
No, no they aren't - and they WILL KILL you to protect their personal
comfort without ANY thought to the future.
</div>
<div class="comment-body">
<br />
As a matter of point, if you took the average beef steer or dairy cow
and morphed it into the shape of a human w/ speaking ability, but
retained all the other characteristics of livestock, you'd have
something not much different from many of our fellow "citizens" ( I use
the term loosely!). That is, quite literally, how different they are.
The same things that have been bred out of earlier versions of cattle to
make them MORE domestic and more docile have been bred out of the
majority of our society over the last 100 years FOR THE SAME REASON.
<br />
<br />
This is diametrically opposed to the intent of the "founding fathers" in
the institution of public education and the focus on a liberal arts
education, but notice how far off THOSE rails we've gotten! Education now is
to prepare people for obedient servitude in the ranks of wage slavery,
not free thinking, self determination. How would THAT benefit industrial
capitalists"? It wouldn't! This is exactly what I'm referring to when I
talk about the citizens (back when they were) being seduced by the
materialism of the "new" industrial age" - and you'll please notice that
keeping that appearance "new" is a vital component of the industrial
marketing complex - keep up that facade at all cost! New, goods, new
fashions, new YOU... you're not REAL if you don't have the NEW
whatever...when does it stop? What it really comes down to IS the same
thing that has also been raised many times in these discussions -
change comes from the edges, the margins. Thanks your lucky stars that
you still have some "wild" in you, that you're STILL on the edge of the
herd!!
<br />
<br />
So... back to my original quote from Gar Alperovitz "What Then Must We
Do?" - which happens to be the title of his new book. Recommended
reading!! More to come (bet you couldn't have guessed that :-) on this
subject!! Don't move that dial! We'll be back after news and the
weather... :-) </div>
<div class="comment-body">
<br /></div>
<div class="comment-body">
Be Well,</div>
<div class="comment-body">
The Smokemaster </div>
The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7839409638424061194.post-44126867806119434842013-10-19T03:33:00.000-07:002013-11-09T06:46:58.292-08:00The Tea Party Coup of 2010<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There is a desperate need for the Republicans to recognize
that they aren’t loosing elections and referendums. They have lost their party!
By a process of well coordinated strategies and tactics, an extraordinarily
well funded and well organized semi-covert effort was put in place before the
second election of the President, to essentially co-opt the Republican party
for the benefit of the “new Right”, more commonly known to the prevailing
sheeple as the Tea Party. Consider this – if the unbalanced, extremism of the
Tea Party had surfaced in the usual ways it would have been sidelined as yet
another of the “extremist” third parties such as the Green Party, The
Libertarian party, and so on. The people involved didn’t want that to happen
and they knew that the only way to avoid that in our system of politics was to
shape the face of the party to be pseudo-Republican, and then conduct a coup on
Republican leadership by casting them as the “liberals” and back-sliding bums
that needed to be thrown out. To the fearful, ignorant, insecure, parochial,
rapidly dwindling guardians of the un-American dream (unfair advantage, unlevel
playing field, uneducated, unfathomable influence, unrealistic wishes for “the
way it used to be” – when you could get away with all that…) this was a dream
come true – the only visible way to regain their past glory! In severely
gerrymandered districts where these political illiterate now held sway – it
could happen! And so the coup on the real Republican party began. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It is important to understand that before this coup, one
reason for the prevalence of a predominantly two party system was the unspoken
but understood reality of governance, accepted primarily between those two, that
starts with “We Go To Washington To Govern – On Behalf of: 1)ALL the people in
our district, not JUST those who voted for us. 2) ALL the people of the State from which we
come not JUST the people who voted us in, and 3) All the people of the United
States, not JUST the state from which we come.” It is, after all supposed to be
a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” This implied a state of committment to governance and a willingness to work together for the national benefit. This appears to
have been forgotten… or deliberately disavowed as a function of the Tea Party coup-de-gross.
In fact, there is a fairly straight forward indication of this that constitutes
the Congressional oath of office –</span></span><br />
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">“ <span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">I do solemnly swear (or affirm)
that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against
all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance
to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation
or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties
of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God. </span>“</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Which the Tea Party Congressmen (I
will not continue to dishonor the Republican party by referring to Tea Party
representatives as Republican) were manifestly in violation of, with their recent
antics over the Affordable Healthcare Act. (<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leo-w-gerard/congressional-republicans_b_4014217.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leo-w-gerard/congressional-republicans_b_4014217.html</a>)
To quote from the above link –</span></span> <br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">“<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">The purpose of the U.S. Constitution as stated in the preamble, is pretty
clear: </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">'<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more
perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of
Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.'</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">The GOP threatening to shut down the government, threatening to default on
its bills, does the reverse of promoting domestic tranquility and general
welfare. It creates domestic turmoil and general chaos. The Constitution
defines the authority of each branch of government. The first two powers it
lists for Congress specify that it collects taxes, pays bills and borrows money
when necessary</span>.” </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">That doesn’t say “borrows money
in concert with the beliefs of a minority of the citizens of the US.” It says
(for emphasis) “borrows money when necessary.”
What exactly is MORE necessary than keeping our government in play and
continuing to pay its bills? Well if you’re a Tea Party member, it may be the
subversion of the United States of America, it’s rightfully elected government,
and its majority approved way of life. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So… To The Tea Party Congressmen
- Don’t get up on your stump and keep saying that the Affordable Healthcare Act
is the government “not listening to the will of the people”. It’s the
government enacting something that the MAJORITY of the people want! Remember,
the majority of the people wanted President Obama. It’s THOSE people not listening to the will of
“your people”! If things were the way they are supposed to be, you WOULD be a third
party and there would be one, maybe two, Tea
Party congressional representatives.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In a Future Post – how to reverse
the coup!</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Thanks for being here, and being you!</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Smokemaster </span></span><br />
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The Smokemasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02470856801909040127noreply@blogger.com1