it didn’t have to be this way...except that we were this way
Caution, Hard Hat Area: hippie philosophizing ahead; this is probably totally half-baked, but I hadn’t had the time to bake it…fully.
The title is paraphrasing John Trudell in his scary-brilliant 1986 ‘Rich Man’s War’. Mr. wd and I had a conversation about that phrase recently, as well as discussing my long held beliefs and writings that humanity had been on the path of a great psycho-spiritual awakening led predominantly by the Indigenous of the earth.
That sense was of course underpinned by the global Occupy movement coming to Amerika, and those pesky students high-tailing into Zucotti Park in Sept. 2011 and set up camp. Oh, they were heady (if brutal for so many) days, weren’t they? Even during Occupy, some general assemblies had voted to be called ‘Decolonize __’ as the many Indigenous and blacks felt their communities had long been ‘Occupied’.
This is the far preferable live version of Karine Polwart’s hymn to the Occupy Movement playing her harmonium, but as it’s not embeddable, this meh-mixed one will have to. (the lyrics are here)
And then in late 2012 Idle No More First Nations in Canada burst on the scene. “A reaction to alleged legislative abuses of Indigenous treaty rights by the Stephen Harper and the Conservative federal government, the movement takes particular issue with the omnibus bill Bill C-45.” “A grassroots movement for indigenous sovereignty, indigenous rights and respect for the treaties. Goals include stopping environmental degradation and economic and social inequality.” (wikipedia)
They stopped rail lines created round dances and flash mobs all over Canada and the US of A, frequently in malls.
And in 2012 also came the new Mayan Calendar, which elders explained would herald ‘turning swords to plowshares’ and the next step in human evolution and brotherhood. I know, I know, but it seemed another Indigenous prophecy ringing and winging around the planet, giving my spirits some buoyancy in the ‘a better world is coming’ intuitive sense, and that the Indigenous would lead us out of this deadly morass.
Stir in that at the 2012 Rio sustainability conferences the Indigenous of the world weren’t invited, so many had caravanned to Rio and held side conferences, Peoples Summits, and presented their own accords and manifestos to the world.
Oh, they knew exactly how off-kilter and unsustainable the earth is and was, and to a tribe indicted: capitalism, the Gates-driven ‘Green Revolution’ of genetically modified, herbicide and pesticide ‘resistant’ factory farming, poisoning aquifers, rivers and the seas, the dangerous and false ‘solutions’ of ‘carbon trading’, the burgeoning commodification of nature herself, biofuels, and damming rivers. Most offered their own truly sustainable solutions.
I’d even checked into theories about the planetary collective consciousness as ‘the noosphere’ and Princeton’s Global Consciousness Project and had downloaded some of ‘brainpaint’ images “created from GCP/EGG data using adapted neurofeedback algorithms developed to show the complex beauty of brain activity. Dynamic images of a person’s brain at work are of great value for neurofeedback training, which has been used to improve ADD, ADHD, depression, insomnia, head injury, meditation, etc.” from their site to meditate on. Again: I know, I know…but still I.am.a.hippie. The theory has been called bullshit by any number of scientists (smile).
And yet today, this week…this month…it feels to me as though we’re further away from a massive spiritual awakening than even six short years ago, without which ‘a people’s revolution’ so many of us hope for/yearn for…might just mean that the new bosses might just be too similar to the old bosses.
I’ll forgo listing the deprivations and oppressions and immiserations afoot today, as you’re only too aware of all of them. Then ask yourself what events might possibly lead to a global epiphany of higher consciousness in which all humans share power, are our siblings’ keepers in solidarity, with understandings that the gifts of nature are sacred indeed, and that we need to stop plundering them, live simply, and end the consumer throw-away society, and end at once: the human genome splicing experiments as well as war.
The only two events I can imagine might be if there were benevolent ‘alien’ visitors from other worlds who might stop by showing us that we are not alone and advising us that ‘whoa, Nellie, you’re doin’ it all wrong!’ The other more realistic prod might be the coming economic crash that’s already baked in and that the Ruling Class fears we’ll rebel against as the banks and Feds get bailed out once again while The Rabble ‘eat cake’ or nothing at all. Oh, yes, the Ruling Class at Davos had so many workshops on the existential dangers of ‘inequality’ last year, and my boyfriend Jamie Dimon is honking about it himself.
It’s often said that massive uprisings and revolutions occur when people feel there’s nothing left to lose, as with the Breadwives in France 1789, or the slave rebellions in Haiti in 1791.
In 1986 John Trudell had asked: ‘What goes on hell, anyway? Thing is, it has to do with heart. We have to understand what hearts are for before we can get back to heaven…or paradise, or the power in our minds…’
Could the next major step in Wall Street Crash privation coupled with more jackboots on the necks of the Rabble cause Crazy Horse’s prophecy to come true?
‘Upon suffering beyond suffering, the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world of broken promises, selfishness and separations, a world longing for light again.
I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colours of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole earth will become one circle again….
I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at that centre within you, and I am at that place within me, we shall be one.”
~ Crazy Horse, Oglala Sioux, 1877
I spent a lot of this morning listening to Xavier Rudd’s ‘Spirit Bird’. (lyrics here)
‘Spirit bird he creaks and groans, she knows she has seen this all before
She has seen this all before, she has
Spirit bird he creaks and groans, she knows she has seen this all before
She has seen this all before…
Soldier on, soldier on my good countrymen
Keep fighting for your culture now, keep fighting for your land
I know it’s been thousands of years and I feel your hurt and
And I know it’s wrong and you feel you’ve been chained and broken and burned
And those beautiful old people, those wise old souls
Have been ground down for far too long
By that spineless man, that greedy man, that heartless man
Deceiving man, that government hand taking blood and land
Taking blood and land and still they can
But your dreaming and your warrior spirit lives on and it is so so so strong…’
(cross-posted from Café Babylon)
Comments
Wow.
Thank you.
I'll have more to say later, probably tomorrow. Heading out for a late dinner...
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
oh, my.
i hope that 'wow' signifies at last a modest approval. thanks for reading (and perhaps listening/watching) my hippie philosophizing in any event. ; )
Bravo on your philosophical foray
And all the time I was thinking your were just a butterfly--a monarch no less--but still a butterfly. There was this one time, when I was a young gator, my mama read bedtime stories to me. It was fun. She taught me how, like the spiral arms of the Milky Way, human consciousness would spiral ever upward, ever more purely, until a gleaming sun of promise rose on the horizon every single day, no man or women went hungry, and little children didn't worry about having two parents at home at the end of a school day.
Despite my limited cranial capacity, I was aided by a convenient built-in book rest. This made studying much easier.
In fact, I learned at a young age, when Alphonse would rudely remove my dinner from my face and put it into his face, that sometimes the world is not an ever-improving garden of Eden. Therefore, with pride that you have announced, ab initio, that this was a faerie tale of yours, I concede the accuracy of your statement.
Please, don't ask me with which statement I agree because then I would have to read your essay again--but surely we have points in agreement!
In as much as you, wd, have promulgated an artful and musical essay, in the Universe of Ever-Increasing Enlightenment, reciprocation is of course due you.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSeEYp3_RPw&frags=pl%2Cwn]
bless your pea-pickin’
♥ and gator reading table. you made mine eyes tear over, but no, i’m not simply a buttahfly, but a monarch barfly. whoosh, i hear your mama’s credo, and i’d heard the same ‘upward spiral of humanity since eeek, maybe 1969 from veddy learned comrades, but a some point it all went full-tilt Devo, didn’t it? we are so lost in the woods, everyday humons, gators, endless war, on and on. while jeff bezos makes $11,000 a hour, millions starving.. (oh, i was gonna shut up about all that, wasn’t i?)
and ach, i thank you for the grievous angels and ‘tell me no lies’. i’d recently thought to DM a denizen here to ask for a few truths that might hurt my ego or feelings,but never mind that... and augment the request with: ‘so let us not speak falsely now...the hour is getting late’.
this man from another universe owns dylan’s tune by my reckoning, echoing the grievous angels.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY]
Two thumbs up for the Hendrix version
awesome cover, no?
and i'd forgotten to tell you how much i liked your mama's analogy, almost metaphor, of human evolution as the milky way pinwheel lifting us to higher ground.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hGSqqhhokE]
now i yam a major fan of both irony and synchronicity,
and this is both. a café commenter brought this link to the most recent Open Menu, *not to this thread*.
Foreign Policy: 'Why Growth Can’t Be Green; There’s just one hitch: New evidence suggests that green growth isn’t the panacea everyone has been hoping for. In fact, it isn’t even possible; New data proves you can support capitalism or the environment—but it’s hard to do both.’, sept 12, 2018
“Green growth {green capitalism] first became a buzz phrase in 2012 at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro. In the run-up to the conference, the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the U.N. Environment Program all produced reports promoting green growth. Today, it is a core plank of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.’
the rest is economics, but i love irony and synchronicity to the Nth degree, and now that the sixth extinction is baked in (barring miracles, okay mr. wd?), how kind of FP to call bullshit on the green Revolution.
@wendy davis Even if green capitalism
Even if green capitalism were possible, They refused to do it--and refused repeatedly.
In other words, even if it were possible, it wouldn't be possible.
We were living in a world, about a decade ago, where Congress debated energy efficiency. Think about that for a minute.
Now, of course, we're living in a world where Congress debates almost nothing. Only the few issues the rich disagree on, like immigration--or the ones they don't give a shit about, like marriage equality.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
green capitalism didn't really
need congressional approval, or at least all the steps of it, it was a corporate marketing gimmick in the main, coupled with gates' and friends Green Revolution. in the main it was the developed nations who made the rules, although i can't say if 'carbon trades' or 'cap and trade, REDD, etc. were ad hoc or real policy in the US. but market profit masquerading as green, but externalizing the down sides once again...onto the global ecosystem and cheap labor. and oh, how the Thought Leaders loved it! anyhoo...
may i cheat a bit and bring some portions from my linked people’s summit in rio 2012?
Many well-organized indigenous groups around the world know what Green Capitalism really amounts to first hand, and more, and are going to show up in Rio for the People’s Summit. This statement that the large Mexican peace group Teotihuacan (of Mayan fame) will deliver to the Summit fully grasps that it is multinationals and neoliberal economics via bodies like the World Bank and IMF who are either raping, or abetting the raping of the earth for profit, quashing protests about it, spying on activists; that media and educational narratives are increasingly replacing true human values with conspicuous consumerism and competition, abetting the exploitation of human beings in the name of profit…in other words, hijacking and commodifying human labor as well as the planet’s beauty and resources to profit the 1%. From their statement:
“Powerful governments, headed by the U.S.A., are preparing a big coup against the Environment and Mother Earth during the United Nations Rio+20 Summit.
“In a desperate bid to solve the worldwide economic crisis, powerful governments, led by the United States, prepare a new strike against Mother Earth’s gifts and the Environment during the United Nations Rio+20 Summit, which they have had sequestered since many years ago. Together with Big Banks and multinational corporations, they want an ominous world policy on economics approved. Something like the so called sustainable development introduced in the Earth Summit, Río 1992 that has so gravely undermined Nature. They now have agreed to launch globally the Green Economy scheme presenting it as the major global solution to the environmental and social disasters that we are undergoing; as a perverted response to social demands in favor of a real clean environment and the preservation of Nature’s gifts. They want to open great business opportunities by applying false solutions to these predicaments, aiming, specifically at promoting and legitimating carbon markets, environmental services, biodiversity markets, REDD+ Programs, CDM, Clean Development Mechanisms, among other seedy “environmental” dealings which incorporate the true meaning of the term Green Economy.” (REDD: Reducing Emissions from Deforestations and Forest Degradation; 10 of the worst examples here.)
oh, and sent you a DM about minimizing the clutter on the commenting software here; hope you won't take it amiss. lotta folks here haven't twigged to how it works. ; )
Another old hippie here...
Smart aliens will stay away. Economic catastrophe won't be enough. It will take a revolt by the environment itself, probably via the effects of accelerated global warming -- drought leading to even more war, famine, massive epidemics, something like that.
Emmet
'smart aliens will stay away'
lol. the planet is revolting (kinda double entendre), and mr. wd had posited that runaway climate chaos might lead to a psych-spiritual epiphany. but of course the poor are already experiences the results, especially in coastal areas on so many islands, in so many nations. but i see you've posited: '...drought leading to even more war, famine, massive epidemics, something like that.'
cholera in haiti for instance, dunno what other actual epidemics are in the works, but many many nations are experiencing famine and failed crops already due to drought and misuse of water.
this is the SPEI global drought monitor, lat updated in august of 2018.
emerging trends in global fresh water availability from GRACE 2002-20016 (MAP)
“Climate models predict that changing weather and temperature patterns will cause the world’s high-latitude and tropical regions — the areas that are already wet — to get wetter, while already dry, arid and semi-arid regions will get drier. But those models foresee major changes coming at the end of the 21st century. Our map clearly shows new patterns emerging today. This includes the U.S.: The northern half of the country has become much wetter, while the southern half has become much drier.
The map is speckled with nearly three dozen regional hot spots for water insecurity — where changes in the water supply will seriously threaten a region’s health, welfare and environment.
Some are driven by climate change, like the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and the mountain glaciers in Alaska, Colombia, Peru, Patagonia and the Himalayas. Others are the direct result of water management, or lack thereof. Many indicate areas where groundwater is being rapidly depleted, pumped at unsustainable levels to irrigate crops and raise livestock for a growing population or in response to drought.”
and he writes that there've always been the haves and have-nots of water. ack, i've mislaid the link to my climate chaos part III water.
but i've seen it said that drought monitors may need to create a different state past 'exceptional drought'; the US drought monitor; here in the 4 corners i'd suggest 'existential'. dry rivers, 18% humidity, reservoirs close to empty, smoke from fires almost always in the air.
Active fire mapping site. ooof, glad i clicked in, it looks like they've gotten a hold of a lot of the massive 'california burning' fires.
it really is too bad that some of the more honest climate scientists note that too many of the other kind low-ball the dangers we're facing right now, not in some hazy, lazy future days. as hunziker notes: 'they're shocked to hear of the runaway glacier melts!'
'Hothouse Earth Robert' R. Hunziker August 14th, 2018
really it's his reality check on the 'hot house earth' mmmm...feel good report.
"“I think it’s time for us scientists to stop being so cautious about communicating the risks.” (Helen Amanda Fricker) Oh, finally, reality hits home!
The “Mass Balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2017,”2 shows the rate of ice loss from West Antarctica increasing from 53B to 159B tonnes per year. Nobody came close to predicting that in 1992, in 2002, or in 2012. No models said that would happen at that rate."
had i allowed this hippie diary to bake more fully, i would have
posited a few more possible/probable epiphanies of spiritual awakenings,(and i don't mean just 'woke' as in 'aware of the cons of the capitalist elites, the mainstream news, divide and conquer, all of that).
but: shared power would mean shared wealth, of course, and equal influence/power for men and women and mixed genders. shared power accorded to children would mean that they would never be spanked or raised by the stick or belt, which creates bullies only too available in the dominant military, wall street, and police state cultures and beyond.
democracy would come from the people upward, as it does in the (chiapas) zapatista villages and elsewhere, and as with most indigenous cultures rules and laws would theoretically pass the Seventh Generation principle. all botanicals would be legalized, bigPharma would be relegated to history.
the value of cooperation would be extolled, not competition. humans would realize that we/they are part of the biosphere, not at the apex of it save for being 'apex predators' of all mother earth's gifts and former bounty. jettisoned would be: "God said: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
power concentrated in individuals or institutions would be eschewed, as would academics ans intellectuals unless they showed wisdom, which is a horse of a different color....well, feel free to add your own, of course.
Loved this, Wendy.
Just read it in bed; bleary eyed and exhausted. But had to write just to say I feel you and have many similar sentiments.
Thanks comrade sister.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
you're so welcome,
my comrade brother. can't tell you pleased i am with your solidarity in thoughts and sentiments. to say the truth, i'd only clicked to rather sheepishly offer a lullaby on what i'd thought was a very.dead.thread.
hope it will resonate as maybe...one day?
best heart,
wd
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xoz4N_exq3A]
I'm optimistic, regardless of the corruption of our government,
that the future belongs to solar panels and electric vehicles. Tesla's making big profits, it's going to have some competition soon and solar has for a while been the fastest growing form of energy. We have to convert and I believe the economics will encourage the conversion. California, with it's new laws to be emmision free in a couple of decades is definitely helping things. Big money will be in solar produced electricity and the products that use it. I've been seeing things such as backpacks with solar panels on the outside that charge phones and other items being carried inside the backpack. Solar contraptions are popular at the many homeless camps that have sprung up here in Oakland. Poor people can get free electricity from solar. Of course Trump, with his stupid tariffs on solar products, is being the usual obstacle.
Beware the bullshit factories.
yes, this is green captalism
of which you speak. i was about to mention recycling, buy a hybrid or electric car, Green Products, the more the better, a long list. and if there's a future, you will be proven exactly correct. but if there were really a psycho-spiritual of higher consciousness, wouldn't you think that public transportation would rule (buses, trains), some posit bicycles, but in some climates and rural areas, they're too impractical, esp. for those w/ families to haul here and there.
but consider the chokeholds of 'renewable energy sources': rare earth metals and elements. i'm working on something else, so these aren't quite what i was looking for (esp. in terms of the nationalism included). but they are indeed part and parcel of africom's unstated mission to secure for the Imperium and some client states or big bidness contracts). i need to just leave the raw links, sorry. years ago i had a link to an article about a woman who'd created
storage batteries from seaweed, iirc. wouldn't that be fine?
but seriously, how many can afford those cars and solar panels? how often do the cheaper panels last? worth asking, even if the truth ain't out there in Industry Land. ; )
https://e360.yale.edu/features/a_scarcity_of_rare_metals_is_hindering_gr...
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2018/03/rare-earth-elements-th...
thanks for weighing in, Timmethy2.0; i appreciate it.
on edit: imagine worker-coops funded by public banks (people's banks, ellen brown) making solar panels, etc. and tax break underwriting for the purchase and installation for same. and fancy diplomacy being used for the purchase of/trading for the rare earth minerals as opposed to warring/toppling elected leaders for them.
what also later occurred to me that during the heady days i've mentioned was this Percy Shelley call to wakening brought out of mothballs once again:
Rise like lions after slumber
In unfathomable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
That in sleep have fallen on you
Ye are many, they are few.
kinda gives ya the shivers, no?
I think there's multiple different positive visions
That cheap or free renewable energy can and will enable. I'm learning a lot about solar energy these days as it's a field I want to become active in. No rare earth elements need be used. Most solar panels today use silicon which is, I think, the second most abundant material?/element?/solid? (trying to recall from my recent class) after maybe carbon. There are technologies that use yucky stuff like cadmium, and they might be more efficient than silicon, but 90% of solar panels are silicon, most are being made in China. Here in Oakland, electric scooter companies have been dropping off their scooters all over the place, to the annoyance of quite a few people. To use them you download the app and do something when you come across a scooter, not sure what. But for a dollar to start and then a time based fee you ride the scooter wherever you want to go and just drop it off when you get there. It has a geo-locater so the company knows exactly where the scooter is and they come collect it in a truck full of them and take it to be recharged. There's a lot of fake myths about solar, i.e. it takes more energy to make the panels then the panels give back: complete and utter bullshit disproven by the professor in one of my recent classes. Battery technology is improving, including the environmental aspects of it. A lot of new technologies are coming to fruition like "Artificial photosynthesis", using sunlight to break up water into hydrogen and oxygen which can then be stored as a fuel.
Beware the bullshit factories.
you are on to something good, Timmethy2.0, cheers.
yes, you sound quite
interested. here's a chart on earth's element availability, and yes, silicon is second, carbon's down the list. and it makes sense that silicon being a semi-conductor is used, and i discovered there are three types used, but you know all that already, i reckon.
well, your mouth to the gods' ears on emerging battery technologies. but i admit i loved that your professor called bullshit on the bullshit, lol. of course he did, which is part of the reason that i'd mentioned that the truth about the external costs of solar won't be noted by the industry. and i just took a short crash course at solarworldonline.com. sure it's coming, as is wind power, perhaps even wave power. we just need to be wary of 'shopping our way to technological climate change solutions', as was part II of my climate chaos series.
thanks for weighing in, and best to you in your new career. we have a friend and neighbor in the solar installation bidness... ; ) we heat our house w/ passive solar, but we built it in 1975 when not much was known about the key importance of mass for cooling. ah, well, old hippies and all that jazz.
Thanks Wendy
nt
Beware the bullshit factories.
for posterity,
save for the inaccurate naomi klein quote, kenn orphan said a lot of things righteously in his September 20, 2018 ‘The Power of Language in the Anthropocene’, Kenn Orphan, sept. 20, 2018, including these paragraphs:
“These are the forgotten of the earth. The ones whose lives or struggles don’t register in a corporate press beholden to profits and enamored by spectacle. Their tragedies, though measured in the hundreds of thousands if not more, don’t spur hashtag movements, or generate round the clock coverage on network and cable news, or even cause the Eiffel Tower to dim. Facebook doesn’t have an option for safety check ins on these kinds of catastrophes either. Their poisoned fields, flooded villages and dried out crops pass away to more scintillating news about salacious celebrities or idiotic tweets from the bloated narcissist in the Oval Office. But they are the first victims of climate change and the merciless cupidity of the global capitalist class. The 1% whose corporations ransack and pillage the world leaving countless bodies and shattered communities in their wake.
In their quest to maintain and indefinitely grow their coffers, they see all of these unfolding and looming catastrophes as economic opportunities. And if they do not employ think tanks to muddy the waters of public discourse with outright denialism, they use obscurantist language designed to rationalize the unfettered exploitation of capital. Dissolving ice caps are a strategic option for geopolitical and business advancement.
Atmospheric warming gases are the chance to advance a scheme of carbon trading. Hunger and famine are economic and technological opportunities to litter the world with more profitable pesticides, chemically/genetically altered food, or factory farms. Flattened woodlands and fouled rivers become excuses for moving indigenous peoples into overcrowded, cordoned off corporate colonies for easier exploitation, social control, neglect and abandonment. They see the resulting unrest and political dissatisfaction as opportunities for technological advances in surveillance and security, selling arms and weapons to any faction or regime that is interested and can pay."
he reminded me once again of the axiom that the same system that created problem...can't be used to solve the problem/s. it's the system that must be replaced. and by that i mean: not nibble about the edges, as with reform capitalism, or as naomi klein named the monster: unfettered capitalism', later 'neoliberal capitalism', as if it will ever be 'fettered' or 'liberal' again. the Owners have won...barring the topic of this diary.