Five Years of Blogging
Oh wow, it’s been five years of blogging already. I just realized that this blog was begun in July 2005.
On the up side to this effort: I’m still here and so are most of you. My fingernails are getting worn and so is my patience. A lot has happened in the world and we’re still headed down the same self-destructive path as ever. Not much is being done to change this fact, unfortunately. I stand by my conclusions reported years ago on what we should expect, what we should do and where this is all still headed.
You might want to read the 2010 Disaster Calendar for a “quick” overview of events that have all occurred.
These are just some of the events that occurred in 2010, there are many thousands more that all point in the same direction for humanity.
There is a growing sense of “escape” response occurring now throughout America. While I can empathize with this fear, I can’t actually endorse it entirely. Escape implies a refusal to deal with reality, which no matter where you go or run off to, you will still eventually have to deal with.
This life as we know it today is already over. We’re only hanging on by our proverbial fingernails, trying desperately to avoid the personal collapse that is coming our way. We’ve all learned by now that we are not immune or isolated from events taking place elsewhere, it’s all interconnected and intertwined in ways which will and does affect each of us.
Global collapse is a reality, as is our national collapse and right on down to personal collapse. I once wrote about three stages of collapse, pre-collapse, collapse and post-collapse. We’re still in that middle stage, which I now call personal collapse, as it happens to each of us, one by one. We lose our jobs, our homes, our way of life and our reality, our world, falls apart.
We roll with these punches, as best we can. Sometimes we pick up and move and start over, or we hang on where we are at. Most of us are still here, still alive, still struggling on. And most of us, still believe in the “dream”, the one that promised each of us that we could get it all back.
I do not believe in this dream. I do not accept the notion that it is accurate or even desirable. The dream is the same, everywhere you go and with everyone you meet. It is based upon endless consumption and endless resource extraction, fueled by an endless supply of energy. Most companies in America are still spouting this same dream. Most government agencies are still focused on this dream. Most businesses are oriented around this dream. Most lives are trying to live this dream.
But this dream is not going to come true. Like most dreams, it is all based upon an illusion of reality, that stark, harsh world of how things really work.
Five years of blogging (and two forums) and a few million words later has taught me one important thing: we refuse to wake up to reality. As a species, humans have shown an incredible propensity for being unbelievably dense. We suffer from several maladies; cognitive dissonance, speciescentrism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, and although I don’t know the proper word, an incredible capacity (enjoyment) for death, destruction and hatred, to our own kind and to everything else.
The “dream” blithely ignores all this, but reality reveals it many times over. Our maladies are incurable within this present culture, which has elevated these illnesses to celebrity status. The July 2005 first blog entry revealed that “civilization is the problem”, and a short five-years later, it still is. The dream responds within the boundaries of this civilization, itself an illusion of reality. We can’t envision anything else it seems, even our dreams are confined.
But I still contend that it could be very much different, if we but let it happen. Believe it or not, the collapse is part of this process. It signals the end of this civilization and the beginnings of a new one. Because we are so ethnocentric and shortsighted, we have a hard time seeing that. Cognitive dissonance takes over, ruling our very thoughts and imprisoning our minds with “no solution is this”. But this is not true. The solution is happening right now, collapse IS the solution.
I’ve posited many times in past blog entries what I would “save” from this civilization, or from this government, or from this way of life. This of course was pure speculation, because it isn’t up to me what to save and never will be. I recognized a long time ago that most of what we have built needed to be swept away. I pointed out the foolishness of trying to “reform the system” from within, or even from without. That protest and marching and letter writings and “demanding” from our government was never going to work. That your answer lay within you all along — and that the solution was actually up to you, each of you. You had to abandon what was no longer working, turn your back on it all and walk away.
A lot of people struggle with that, still believing that they should “help” or participate within a system that has already abandoned them. The system itself has long since become self-serving, protectionist against anything and everything that would threaten the status quo. I saw little point in any attempts at reform. Let it collapse I said, let it all fall apart, we’ll all be better off without it anyway.
Hard realities, but a position I still personally hold. I see nothing good coming from propping up the very system that has destroyed most of this world. I don’t want to be a part of that and more then suggested you shouldn’t be either.
But admittedly, this is all we’ve ever known. That by our living and our very existence, we were seriously contributing to the death of this planet. Facts like that are in the news every single day now, but it’s still passing through one ear and out the other with most of the people on this planet. They simply don’t care, they don’t give a shit, day to day survival has become their modus operandi, they’re “status quo” that I rail on so often.
In many ways, you can’t blame them. We all try to survive, doing whatever it is that we can. We’ve been forced into this position oftentimes against our will. Most of us cannot envision anything else. Many of us do not want anything else. And the longer we keep doing this, the worse it is going to get.
We are now all living witnesses to these facts. Harsh fact, brutal facts, in the news and found on websites throughout the world daily. But these facts have become “entertainment” and do not penetrate the denseness of our minds or translate into new realities for how we actually live on this planet. We cannot seem to change, no matter what it is that we may “know” or “do”. It is as if it is truly beyond our capacity to self-adjust. And perhaps it truly is. Our civilization refuses to accomodate anything else. I’ve long pointed out that it is actually illegal to step away and live differently, this civilization has long committed genocide to any group that did. Laws are enforced to the point of death to ensure you do not “step away” and stop your contribution to this death-culture.
Even so, death be damned, your going to die anyway. I still advocate a refusal to participate. It’s flat-out stupid to believe that you don’t have a real choice in the matter. If they own this much of you already, then we have long since passed the time where a full-blown armed revolution needs to take place, a point I have also raised time and time again.
Your life is your own. Nobody else “owns” it, even though many, many groups and governments claim that they do. You live at your own behest, the promise that your life is really your own and nobody else’s. Nobody should be allowed to tell you what to do with your life either, as long as you do not bring harm to anyone or anything else. But that is not reality in today’s world, where you are truly owned, bought and paid for, enslaved to a system that forces you to participate in its death-culture and planetary ecocide.
But you still have a choice. I repeat — you still have a choice. A life that is worth living is a life that reacts responsibly. Otherwise, you’re just a robot, mindless and without conscience, doing what you are told, when you are told, how you are told. Not many people seem to realize that this has become the job of the American media, which does this very well, molding millions upon millions of human lives into mindless automons.
I often harp on personal responsibility and personal authority, these are definitely related to all my points here today. Humans have choices, even if they don’t seem to exist or be allowed to you (they do in most cases). We get to choose how to live. As humans, we have choices not allowed a plant or a tree or a fish or a bird or an animal. We can live conscientiously, or we can live haphazardly, without responsible thought or choices, wreaking havoc and destruction in everything that we do. That is exactly how this civilization was designed, this habitat of humanity, ensconced within our minds through a myriad of methods of pre-programmed, brainwashed responses. We’re “greenwashed” and brainwashed into beleiving we are “responsible humans” when we’re anything but.
You’re told you do not have a choice. To this I say, “bullshit” (and why my patience is wearing thin). Our civilization self-protects and attacks anyone that brings its tenets into question. But we should question! Constantly, endlessly, seeking better ways to live and to find peace in all that we do (and what we never seem to question, what we don’t do). Endless wars and acts of aggression should be teachers enough to make us stop our collective insanity, but somehow, this doesn’t seem to be impetus enough despite the bloodshed or the rivers of tears we cause. Our behavior is unbelievably xenophobic and hate-filled, insane behavior to an insane culture, totally out of control and beyond all hopes of humanity.
Five years. Five years of documenting, cajoling and ranting about our collective insanity. Not really a very long time at all and certainly not enough time to believe that any real change could be forthcoming. This juggernaut of civilization is massive, unmovable and certainly not willing to change, but I still contend, the change begins with you.
