It is obvious the writer does not hold out much hope for America. That is the difficult part of reading it. Survival Acres with a little hope mixed in would be a much better blog. Bring on your negativity----I can handle it.
Here’s a worthy read from Truthout, one you might consider an endorsement for President.
Americans must be as insane as McCain. Or they’re just too stupid to care anymore, I don’t know which it is. I pretty much despise all politics and once again, WILL NOT VOTE, because I’m withholding my consent. But that isn’t going to change the (s)Election outcome in November one iota. Not even if 10 or 30 million of us withhold our consent. Nothing will, they’ll just crank up the old Diebold again and spew out the results they want. Business as usual.
But good grief, this guy is a walking, talking fool. IT IS GEORGE W. BUSH ALL OVER AGAIN. I doubt very much this country can handle this again, we’re teetering so badly now that another colossal failure in the White House will be just the right nudge to destroy us. And that is exactly what I suspect will happen if this idiot achieves the presidential seat by any means.
We’ll have to see if they’ll steal the election for a third time, anything is possible now. Expect HUGE voter complaints and discrepancies again, why fix what obviously works? But I’m not calling the (s)Election yet, I don’t know.
But once again — it doesn’t matter. Nobody is listening, certainly not Congress, nor the American people. We will get more of the same, only worse. That flushing, sucking sound you hear when you listen carefully is the vortex of an Empire imploding. Next, you will hear the titanic crack of nuclear weapons going off as the Empire denigrates its reputation even worse over some undeserving region.
Wow. Some strong statements. There are also some very tough to watch videos of political protests in Devner involving Ron Kovic and Cindy Sheehan. Some graphic violence.
Here is another post:
The prospect of global wars driven by climate change is not something often discussed publicly by our political leaders.
But according to one of America’s top military analysts, governments in the US and UK are already being briefed by their own military strategists about how to prepare for a world of mass famine, floods of refugees and even nuclear conflicts over resources.
Analyst Warn Of Looming Global Climate Wars
But maybe they should. The data is readily out there, available for anyone to read and pay attention to. A definite, “I told you so” moment.
Refugees, floods, starvation, crop failures, nuclear missiles, melting ice, it’s all there.
“And it’s not just the analysts. I spent the past year doing a very high-speed self-education job on climate change but I think I probably talked to most of the senior people in the field in a dozen countries,” Dr Dyer said.
“They’re scared, they’re really frightened. Things are moving far faster than their models predicted.
“You may have the Arctic ocean free of ice entirely in five years’ time, in the late summer. Nobody thought that would happen until about the 2040s - even a couple of years ago.”
It’s dead-clear that we already well on our way to this “runaway” scenario everyone is terrified of. Here’s some more proof: Arctic Sea Ice Drops to 2nd Lowest Recorded Level
Don’t believe the pundits that claim we’re recovering ice, what little there is, is very thin and rapidly disappears for this reason. September is when we receive the final results of this year’s “melt”. But I can already tell you what the results will be…. (Admin wets finger in mouth and raises it into the air ….) We’re toast!
Don’t forget — we are only now measuring decades past of human industrial activity. What do you suppose this is going to mean when our recent explosion of global greed and gluttony and planet raping activity catches up to us? Doesn’t take an analyst to figure that one out, but for whatever it’s worth, “analyst” is what I used to be.
All we’re doing now is sounding the alarm bells — about 20 to 30 years too late.
Or how about this?
I’m going to publish some harsh words that speak to the truth of some things that have been weighing on my mind for some time now.
We all live in a world of diminishing resources. Just five short years ago, the planet was a different place, one that offered more possibilities, more potential and more future then it does today. Every passing year, hell, every passing second, we are diminishing our collective futures, especially for the young and the unborn. We’re robbing the future, essentially, by our wonton ways and excessive greed. Our culture is saturated at every level with this type of behaviour, which is widely accepted and applauded as being the most desirable way to live. We reward this lifestyle as the very highest level of personal accomplishment.
I think this subject of global diminishment (resource depletion) and human expansion is grossly misunderstood. Its significance is such that it creates a cognative dissonance in our minds, because it forces us to focus on the very root of our combined cultures and our physical existence as a species.
Resource depletion is the logical results of constantly expanding human populations. A lot of finger pointing attempts to blame the Third World, but such activity is in my mind, wasted. The real problem isn’t the Third World and never was. Without the support and intervention of First World nations, the Third World populations would stabilize to their environmental limitations or quite simply, starve, effectively accomplishing the same thing.
The real resource consumers on this planet are First World nations. Using by far the lions share of global resources, they have enabled their own populations to achieve a very high standard of living, and with their support, have enabled the developing nations to strive for the same thing. This democratic approach to global resource depletion needs to be recognized for what it is. But the fault isn’t in the Third World nations desiring what we have. The fault is in the First World nations taking what really isn’t theirs.
Global capitalism has made this all possible. Capitalism is often thought of as good, necessary and productive. Its aberrant behaviour however, and capricious discrimination is most often overlooked. Capitalism basically espouses that anything is possible or available, for a price. Everything, in a capitalistic world, is a commodity, even humans. It doesn’t matter if you’re robbing the resource inheritence of existing nations, or the future generations, if you can make a profit on it now, do it by any means possible. Entire national governements have been developed to enable this activity. Our entire global economy is based upon this rather flawed concept.
The abundance of production produced by First World nations has caught more then the eye and fancy of the developing world, which is fast trying to play catch-up in living standards, capitalistic enterprises and resource consumption. You could say that they are following the First World nations economic model and be pretty accurate.
This enables continued expansion of human populations throughout the world, which of course, creates even more resource depletion and destruction. This blog has documented the collapse of global resources throughout the world, asglobal population growth continues, constantly excaberating the world resource situation. The outcome of all this unchecked procreation and human consumption should be obvious by now to everyone.
There is something wrong with calling natural assets “resources” by the way. Hidden in the use of that word is humans alone have a right to use the resource for their good pleasure at the expense of everything else. The intrinsic value as it is found in the natural world is simply not appreciated by most humans, nor its essential contribution to the existing environment and biological diversity. Putting a price tag on everything from clean air to healthy soils so they can be bought and sold like a commodity is considered progress. Deciding what lives and at what quality, and what dies or is destroyed is called capitalism. The human propensity to place monetary value upon intrinsic resources and even human existence is the engine which drives the global gluttony and greed.
The issue of resources and resource consumption is a human population issue, but it’s not so cut and dried as that. It’s really a issue of First World nations populations. Developing countries with exploding populations cannot feed themselves without the assistance of First World nations. These nations by helping developing countries, are making the problem of population and resources worse.
Unless global populations are brought under control, and First world nations are held to the same standards as every other nation on earth, the imbalance of resource depletion, living standards and consumption will continue. Yet, I don’t actually believe in this socialistic form of human government and control because it too is flawed. It presumes too much, such as equality, justice and fairness. These are not traits which humans exhibit in great abundance, despite all the rhetoric that claims otherwise. In point of fact, the vast majority of humans exhibit all the qualities that have created the global situation we are in today, greed, gluttony, irresponsibility, injustice, hatred, violence and jealosy.
Try as we might, we cannot seem to shake off the seven deadly sins that plague us. I suspect that this is really a component of this insane culture we live in. I don’t believe that humans are inherently bad, despite all the commentary I’ve made to their behaviour, I think it is an issue that human systems are inherently bad because they are so out of synchronization with the “real” world. Our systems are fatally flawed and prevent us from exhibiting the greatest human “good”. Instead, we’re all forced to practice competiveness for everything, relationships, resources, ownership and control.
Our world is an artificial fabrication of social structures and institutions, all wrapped up in glass, steel, plastic and rubber. Early human civilizations had the same deadly sins as we did, but they were prohibited by their environment from making a global problem of them. Not so with us, our so-called inept “mastery” of the mistakenly identified “our” environment has allowed us to make far greater and lasting mistakes then they did. But that environmental limitation, or rather their lack of knowledge, didn’t last long as humans pushed the boundaries of technological progress further and further.
What we’re really talking about here is our ability to change our environment. This knowledge was only grasped in rudimentary forms by earlier civilizations, or better said, symbiotic relationship. But that was abandoned in favor of a violent type of relationship - ownership. Sailing ships, for example, gave way to steam powered ships, which gave way to diesel and even nuclear powered ships. Suddenly, the world became a much smaller place. No longer being “local”, our ability to create widespread destruction and global gluttony was exponentially increased, leading to the results we have today of our so-called “mastery” of the planet.
We’ve done this now in every field of human endeavor, transportation, communications, medicine, technology and even government. Everything has fallen under the heel of “control” and “manipulation” and “ownership” for our so-called benefit, which ultimately reduces us all.
But human nature didn’t change along with human knowledge. It did not adapt or mature to govern itself as our ability to grasp technological concepts grew exponentially. Instead, human nature remained static, despite our best efforts at creating a “better world”. The world we have now manufactured, is still inhabited by the same sins as before.
We’re now able to make war anywhere on earth, in a matter of minutes. We can communicate with almost anyone nearly instantaneously. And if you need to be “there”, anywhere on the planet, you can arrive in a matter of hours. It’s just a matter of throwing enough technology and enough money at it and it’s “ours” for the having.
Yet, nobody is asking, is this a good thing? Is this really the best humans can do? The side-effects of our attempts at global control may well wipe us out as a species. And getting to this level of mastery has already wiped out tens of thousands of other species. And we’ve yet to “arrive” at that dubious place where we can really declare ourselves gods of this universe. But the quest continues, and so does the planetary destruction. That is the price we’ve had to pay, but in reality, it never was “we” that was paying the price directly. That was and is the price every other species has had to pay and continues to pay for our experiment in global control, but who in hell gave us that right? And as long as this continues, which it will, we will ultimately have have to pay the ultimate price - human extinction.
Is it worth it? I think not. I think we’ve gotten off the right track a long, long time ago. We’ve enabled technological development, but human development has stagnated terribly. We continue our practices of injustice, gluttony and greed and wrap it in flags of democracy and patriotism. We create new enemies as fast as we can play new sound bytes in between inane commercials for useless junk, exhibiting our own ancient prejudices and jealousy.
The world has changed, because we caused it to change, but we haven’t changed one bit. If anything, we’re stupider, dumber and less learned then those who existed before us. We’re more callous, arrogant, indifferent and out of touch with each other then ever before. We’re better “informed”, but strangely, indifferent. We understand almost nothing about the real world that exists outside of our cubicles and our office chairs. Beyond the city limits is the great unknown, that dirty, cold and brutal world we are desperately trying to enslave and master for our own exlusive use. We’re surrounded by shiny toys and distracting baubles to keep us from really thinking, but we’re really only being diminished as being truly human.
We’re entirely dependend now upon this vast social and technological infrastructure we have created, which makes us terribly vulnerable now as a species. We’re in a very dangerous place, but the warnings are being repeatedly ignored.
It is the lack of understanding the interconnectedness of all life forms on earth to the existing component of human populations that will ultimately, destroy our species. If other forms of life cannot live here because of our excessive ways, our arrogance and our indifference, then neither can we. Once we have irradiated the soils, polluted the atmosphere and the water, destroyed all forms of plant and animal life, all in the fools quest to “have it all”, then we will find ourselves without the sustenance and energy sources which have kept us all alive for milleneum.
But long before then, long before that comes even close to happening on a global scale, in fact, right about now, we’ll start experiencing the effects of our supposed “mastery” of the world and all the human and social ills this has caused. In our striving for ‘advancement’, we’re now taking two steps back for every step forward as we continue to fail to see the futility of our efforts and destructive ways.
We indeed are living in a diminishing world and I doubt very much that anything can really change that at this point. The wherewithal to stop, slow down and change direction simply isn’t there. Certainly not in my lifetime or in the lifetime of your children’s children. We’re going to have to ride this one out to the finish, which is highly uncertain and even doubtful.
The present global inheritance and all that it contains, which if we’re honest isn’t just “ours”, is flawed, perhaps fatally in many ways, by our own hand. The need to critically examine our methods and institutions, our cherished beliefs and economic models, our lack of compassion, understanding and empathy, our dependency and the interconnectedness of all life on earth, is more important now then ever before.
It is our continued and persistent failure to understand and accept these conditions and limitations that will doom us and everything humankind has tried to do. I cannot accept that, not ethically, not morally and not responsibly. But I fear, with a growing dread, that I am utterly powerless to do anything at all about it. My audience is tiny, nearly voiceless and without any power whatsoever. The only thing I can change is myself and I struggle with even that.
This demonstrates, to me anyway, just how difficult and impossible a task it is, to truly change the course of human nature and human events. I see no evidence anywhere else either that anyone else is having any demonstratable success. Therefore, the diminishing world we live in will continue, unabated, despite our “best efforts”, because all of these efforts, now fall woefully short of the radical changes that are truly needed.
We’re past the point of self-control and the ability to steer off into a new direction. This is at best, disheartening and hard for me to accept. I don’t want to be forced to accept a diminishing world and I don’t think you should either. But what we can actually and truly do about it now, at this stage, is beyond me. I simply do not know. I don’t know if anybody does.
I have some advice for Mr. Survival Acres. Watch some inspirational movies like "It's a Wonderful Life"; take some walks in large gardens, hug the people you love, think about people who have helped you in your life, then forget about your root cellar plans for awhile and write some thing more meaningful in your blog. Thanks to the man from Steve Kilbey's circle for the URL. Pessimists have their value, but it seems like this guy has gone a little over the edge. I sure hope the world is not as bad as you say it is. I still believe in a place called HOPE.
