I have been advocating this plan for so long that a single link or two is useless ~ refer to one of my two colleions of seleed writings
~ One lanet akeover, 2022.
I have been living on this planet long enough to have witnessed the ongoing col apse of the biological integrity of our sorry planet. Will it continue the slide into the Black, or will some energy arise to promote the survival of life? Stay tuned, do something, or pass the absinthe.
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eus erditus
August, 2022
I always keep looking for the root causes of problems. It is useless to keep stretching new band-aids over festering wounds, when what we really need is something much more fundamental. I look at the political problems facing the United States, and the Rest of the World, too, and I compare it with the escalating Climate Catastrophe our planet is experiencing, along with the Pandemics, and the Fires that are literally burning our planet up, and I try to think, “What is the Root cause of all of this mayhem? What is really causing this?”
My standard answer, for the last fifty years or so, has been that the wanton destruion of our planetary heritage of Trees is the biggest problem underlying everything else. Now they are telling us that planting trees is not even sufficient anymore. No, it is not ufficient, but it is eceary. This planet is too far gone to be restored to vitality merely by re-planting the Trees that we have destroyed. But it is the underlying pre-condition before anything else can really begin to help. It’s not just about carbon. There is a whole organic biosphere that needs to be restored, and packing compressed carbon dioxide into barrels buried in the ground (at astronomical expense gleefully financed through the Banks) is not the solution. A much better solution is to restore all of that carbon to the planet as Trees that have always been the foundation of its health and vitality.
But I have realized that this problem cannot even be addressed in today’s world, as long as the planet continues as a lawless raging jungle, activated solely by financial considerations. I have said before that Money is the same as Power, in the same way that Matter may be converted into Energy ~ they are two names for two expressions of the same underlying concept. And, just to emphasize again the main point, that is no way to run a railroad , let alone a Planet. That whole cloud of psychic energy which we call Money (or Power) is what runs this planet, and has been causing its inevitable collapse, which is now upon us.
So, before we can address the physical dying of our planet, we have to address the raging conflagration of Power Points ( e.g. , Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Google, Amazon) all struggling for dominance, which is the cause of the planet’s disease. Yes, of course this is the same old theme, because there really isn’t any other hope unless we figure it out ~ that reliance upon financial gain and profit is not ſuitable as the motivating force driving all aivity on the planet.
But today’s idea is to see the problem from a yet more fundamental view ~ always trying to get to the ultimate Root of the Problem. And I find that all knowledge of God seems to have been lost to the present generation.
eus ortuus, eus bſconditus, aut eus erditus. Is God Dead? Or is He only in Hiding? Or has He been Lost?
Since my father was a Methodist minister, I encountered the problem of God at a very early age, but couldn’t understand it. Since then, I have made it a major study, and long ago I began to figure it all out. Now it all seems so simple and obvious. Whether you believe in God or not, at least it is clear what it means. od is to the World as a ardener is to his arden. Did
the Gardener die? Has he turned from his garden and hidden himself away?
Or has the Garden lost its Gardener?
Al this talk about the Gardener makes me sound very conservative, certainly paternalistic (although, of course, the Gardener we are looking for might be either male or female, or even something in-between).
Authoritarian is the word, I guess. Yes, certainly ~ it is all about the ource of uthority ! That is the fundamental problem of the world, and the one which must be addressed first of all, before the other problems can be sorted out. You need a King to keep the Nobles in check. The King, whose power comes from God, allies with the People, in the same way that the whole Free Farm economy and all the free services of health, education, food, and transport are all to support the People, while the Nobles are taxed by the King to pay for it all. But the King cannot be just the most powerful bandit of the lot ~ He must be on a higher level, in which the King is really identified as God. It is no coincidence that this pattern is exaly the pattern of human society from its infancy. So, yes, we long for the Return of the God-King, as in all the best fairy tales, and, lest you misunderstand, we are certainly not talking about the Donald ! What a comical joke for people who somehow yearn for the eturn of the ing to see someone like Donald Trump as the possible Messiah they have been looking for. My viewpoint rises quite a bit higher on the Conservative scale than that ! No, we need to recreate a new King as an Avatar of God in a dedicated Alchemical Vessel.
A lot of people are very fearful of the implications of all of this, but it is certainly clear to me and to a great many other visionaries that our little garden would be a whole lot better off if the Gardener would come back.
Please, if we have lost our Gardener, let us cultivate a new one. If we gather
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a Seminary of healthy young people from all over the world, and give them the best encouragement we can in every way, then surely an Avatar of God will come into Being among them. That’s how magic works.
And if you can figure that out, you will not only understand Magic, but you will also understand God.
We Are Living a Dystopian Novel
September, 2022
The collapse of all interconneed biological systems has been accelerating exponentially. We have suddenly reached the point where the end is now clearly in view. We are not the first generation to believe that the present inhabitants of the world are living in the last days. I have just been reading Boccaccio’s Decameron, which starts out by setting the scene of the Black Death in the city of Florence in 1348. Death was so omnipresent that many people lost all reason, and abandoned all restraint, morals, property, and precaution. It was a descent into Chaos, literally the Black Death.
irabile diu, there were aually some survivors of the human race to soldier on, putting new human beings on their God-forsaken planet, who somehow managed to go on living to suffer another day. And now it is upon us again. Every day’s news brings more evidence of the Last Days. Amidst escalating pandemics and climate change, we have the Russians launching a war of aggression against Ukraine; we have melting Aric ice sheets raising sea level by another ten inches; we have 1000 year droughts and floods; we have our poor planet literally burning up with out-of-control forest fires; we have monsoon floods in Pakistan credibly nominated as one of the worst natural disasters of all time; we have raving lunatics being eleed President of the United States, and we have almost half the country supporting the guy; we watch dumbfounded as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant melts down in slow motion, ready to rain down destruion over the whole of the contested area; we have maniacs like Bolsonaro in Brazil rampaging
destruion upon the last remnants of the Brazilian Rainforest ~ all we need now is another Nero playing his fiddle, or Gabriel blowing his Horn.
So what else is new? Are we all suffering from catastrophe fatigue?
Are we waiting for Aliens from outer space to land on our planet, or a new Messiah who will lead us all back to the Garden of Eden? Or is it time to crack open another bottle of absinthe and go down laughing, like the desperate revelers of Boccaccio’s ecameron? It looks like the human race has colleively given up the struggle and we are all “sleep-walking towards the destruion of our planet,” as warned by António Guterres.
The root of the problem is that our planet is and always has been ruled by Money, Power, and Greed. There is no hope of survival short of a planetary-wide total system change, to put the direion of planetary survival in the hands of new Stewards who will consider the Earth First, not America First, not the Russian, German, or Hebrew Motherland or Fatherland First, nor the Faithful of Allah, nor any other parochial interest. Let us put the Earth and her Trees First, that the survivors of these times, in case there are any, may have some chance of finding shelter on an otherwise desolate planet.
hom the gods would deftroy, they firft make mad.
The Only Way Out
September, 2022
It isn’t easy trying to live a simple life in retirement, tending my fragrant roses and my walnut trees while the world all around me is hurtling to destruion at an accelerating pace. Everyone is wringing their hands in despair, but no one seems to have any idea about how to solve this crisis. I guess I really don’t have to repeat the litany of the collapse of everything we have taken for granted for the last 60,000 years ~ even if you don’t read any newspapers, print or digital, the collapse is all around us ~ global warming causing fire, flood, famine, war, and pestilence. Just when you thought we were getting a handle on COVID-19, then we have monkeypox, and now polio is trying to make a come-back. What’s next, the bubonic plague (the Black Death, erſinia peftis) ? If you are looking for something to read to your children at bedtime, try he lague, by Albert Camus (this is what’s known as black humor). “e knew what thoſe jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or diſappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chefts; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men it would rouſe up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.”
But readers of my rants know all of that ~ the question is, what do we do about it ? Well, anyone who has noticed any of my writings over the past fifty years or so will know also that I have laid out a program of just how to deal with the problem. Of course, plenty of people have indicated many
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ways in which individual problems might be addressed, but it is so discouraging trying to plant trees while evil criminals like Jair Bolsonaro are gleefully raping the dying Brazilin rainforest at the same time, or trying to ride your bicycle while the oil companies are extraing and fracking oil at a breakneck speed, plunging the earth into darkness as fast as they can fill their pockets with gold. Paltry criminals like Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin pale into insignificance with their few millions of people killed, while the real enemies of the human race are making the entire planet uninhabitable for everyone.
So it is not that no one knows how to deal with the several simultaneous and compounding crises facing us ~ the underlying problems are political, not technological. Does anyone remember the heroic efforts of Rachel Corrie, who put her life on the line standing up to the Israeli bulldozer rol ing over the Palestinian lands back in 2003 ? The bulldozer just kept on rolling, leaving Rachel Corrie’s body in the dust. Most individuals, no matter how outraged they are by the events in the world, are helpless in the face of the overwhelming inertia dragging down our world.
And so, once again, I come to an idea I have also expressed a number of times before ~ that it is up to the persons of wealth and power in this
world to step forward and lead the way to a new world. For some reason, many people seem to recoil from this idea ~ aren’t those the people who are most responsible for rushing this world to perdition ? Well, in the first place, not everyone who has accumulated great wealth has done so by rape and pillage. While it is true that the most common road to wealth is over the backs of suffering humanity, there have been a very few, here and there, who have aually produced something of sufficiently significant value as to have earned their place in the sun. I won’t mention any names, but some of them have even established significant philanthropies with the design of returning a great part of their wealth back to the people of this sorry world.
But, in the second place, even if great criminals have accumulated wealth by rape and pillage, but then, on their deathbed, and fearful of the vengeance of an angry god (this would not be the God of the Christians, in spite of the many people who consider themselves Christian who believe that
~ perhaps they have been reading too much of the Old Testament), they decide to employ some part of their gains for the betterment of the world, I would not disdain to accept their blood money. If Genghis Khan wants to set up hospitals to treat his wounded viims, he is welcome to put his name on the door.
As to how they might use their wealth and/or power to effe some positive change, I do not need to diate the terms. Of course, I have my own agenda, but if they have some other idea, let them pursue it. For starters, I recommend, as I have before, convening a convocation of the wealthy and powerful, who might pool their resources to follow any reasonable plan.
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Rachel Corrie, 10 IV 1979 ~ 16 III 2003, in pace requieſcat
Charles ex
September, 2022
Queen Elizabeth II was extremely popular with almost everyone. Her social ta was legendary, and she maintained a regal presence above the fray of politics that endeared her to a great many people all over the world. He son Charles, on the other hand, has quite another style. While Elizabeth was secure and content with her role as a figurehead, the nation’s lovable grandmother, Charles has long been quite passionate about a great many political issues. His primary focus has always been on issues related to climate and the environment. “King Charles’ interests have ranged from tropical forests to the ocean depths, from sustainable farming praices to water security. They began long before such concerns became mainstream.”
~ Justin Rowlatt, Climate editor, BBC.
Way to go, Charlie ! I guess I can understand that, on the surface, Charles is not as lovable as his impeccable mother, but I believe that it is possible for a monarchy to have relevance, even in the twenty-first century.
According to recent tradition, the monarch must remain strily aloof from any political issues, but I believe there is room for a re-interpretation of that tradition. To be sure, it would not be advisable for the monarch to take a stand on specific political issues of the day, but when it comes to the Big Piure, I believe that the monarch has not only the right, but the duty to offer leadership. The issues of climate change and our fragile environment are perhaps the most important set of crises the human race has ever faced. I am appalled that there still remain “climate deniers” in this present day ~
persons for whom the opportunities of making profits totally eclipse their consideration for such troublesome details as the survival of the human race.
There is a lot of talk about the declining relevance of the monarchy, and some Commonwealth countries are reportedly considering dispensing with the archaic formality of the Monarch as Head of State. But it seems to me that the only way for the monarchy to survive is for it to retain or acquire some important relevance, and the issues important to Charles III need all of the support and influence they can get. If he is careful to stay on the high ground, I expe that he might restore the institution of monarchy to a continued relevance, even in today’s world.
On the other hand, if he feels constrained to limit his presence in the world to that of a meaningless figurehead, he might well be the last King of Great Britain (I use the term which might come back into use following the liberation of Northern Ireland ~ If they could give up India, ſurely they can give up Ireland).
Stand up for what you believe, Charles, and you may find a growing respe, influence, and support from people all over the world. No one listens to me, but perhaps some people might listen to you. Continue your work ~ the planet and the human race need to hear your message.
The Cycle of Drought and Floods
September, 2022
I read about the cycle of drought and floods, and it is as though no one seems to understand the important role of trees to stabilize the cycle of the weather. With the loss of the trees, the soil cannot hold water, so everything dries out, and vegetation dies. Then when the rains come onto parched ground, devastating floods ensue. Is this rocket science?
Trees are not only the best natural carbon sink ~ they also maintain the integrity of the land and soil. The roots hold the moisture in the soil, and the leaves shade the ground, proteing the shrubs and other smaller plants and people sheltering under the canopy of the trees, releasing the water gradual y through springs throughout the year. They also provide food. I was reading about the carbon footprint of beef and other protein alternatives. Of course, beef and other red meats are the worst, but other animal food are also pretty bad. The list goes down to vegetable sources of protein such as peas and beans and tofu, but there on the very bottom of the list is nuts, at a neat Zero carbon footprint. But it is even less than zero ~
since orchards of nut producing trees sequester carbon as well as performing other valuable climate related services, the carbon footprint of nuts is a whole lot less than zero, in the same way that a bicycle is by far the cheapest mode of transportation ~ the dollar cost of riding a bicycle is way less than nothing, since it provides valuable health services to offset the negligible cost of buying and maintaining a bicycle.
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So the conclusion? Plant more Trees as if your life depended on it, eat less meat, eat more nuts, and trade in your car for a bicycle.
End of the Trail
September, 2022
There is no “exit ramp” for Vladimir Putin. He is at the end of the road. He has been painting himself into a corner. He is like a rat in a maze for which there is no solution. He has never had a good option. Can you see Putin, like Gorbachev, standing up and saying, “Ha, ha. My mistake.
So sorry. Ha, ha. I guess I’ll just take my toys and go home.” ? But that has been his best and only option all this time. Of course it is true that he was provoked into this quagmire. Ukraine is like an elephant trap (a Bear trap?) into which the hapless Putin has fallen. The relentless pressure of the West and NATO (read the United States war machine) pushing closer to Russia’s borders have given Putin no other option at any time. Backed into a corner, puffing and blowing, he felt he had no other choice but to “put up or shut up.” Since shutting up was never a palatable option for him, he felt he had no other option but to fol ow through with his threats (“It is not a bluff.”) and invade Ukraine. But the trap was sprung, and there he is, dangling in the air by one foot.
Okay, I’m mixing my metaphors again. But regardless of what kind of trap it was into which he fell, there is no way out. Confucius says, “The Way Out is via the Door. Why is it that no one will use this method?” We have already understood that Putin is no more likely than Donald Trump to walk through that exit door, but there is no other way out. The Nuclear Option is a suicide bomb. Perhaps Putin feels some déjà vu ~ that he is reliving his February options again. Will he put up or shut up? If you push
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the man to the brink, will he jump? But the hole he is in only grows deeper the more he struggles, like a fly in a spider’s web, or Brer Rabbit with the Tar Baby.
The suicide bomb is the last resort of the desperate man. When there is no hope at all, no matter in which direion you turn, the final despair is to take down as much of “the enemy” with you as you go down to your own final destruion. Every sane person on this planet knows that using nuclear weapons, even a “little bomb” like a “tactical nuclear weapon” is a no-brainer. But if Putin is really certifiably crazy, and might possibly pull the plug on civilization and life on earth, that is all the more reason why he must be resisted and stopped.
“The whole world should be praying for Russia’s viory, because there are only two ways this can end: either Russia wins, or a nuclear apocalypse,”
nationalist Russian tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev tells the inancial imes.
“If we don’t win, we will have to use nuclear weapons, because we can’t lose,”
he added. “Does anyone really think Russia will accept defeat and not use its
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nuclear arsenal?” But any appeasement that leaves Putin in power with anything he can claim as a viory for his nuclear blackmail will only darken the skies for the foreseeable future.
Putin’s problem is the same one faced by most diators ~ once you lose your grip on the reins of power, you are usually prosecuted or killed.
Putin understands perfely well that as soon as he falls from power, his next stop is the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Don’t expe him to go away quietly.
So this is the end of the trail for Putin, but not necessarily the end of the trail for Russia. Russia, indeed, has a perfely good exit ramp ~ dump Putin. In fa, this is the only way forward. Putin must take the fall, and then Russia can put all the blame on Putin, and retreat from the Ukraine fiasco in relatively good order. As soon as Russia does this, sanions wil melt away and happy days will return to Russia. Let the good times roll !
Vladimir Putin, September, 2022
$12 Per Gallon Gasoline
Oober, 2022
Here in California, we will be among the first to enjoy $7 per gallon gasoline, but it’s stil cheap at twice the price. I understand the financial pain of paying so much money for gas. But neither inflation nor recession are the fault of the Biden administration. The underlying economic conditions are worsening all over the planet, caused by climate change and attendant disasters and pandemics, exacerbated by Putin’s war on Ukraine. The good old days are not coming back anytime soon, and times are going to get increasingly hard for everyone, world-wide.
During times of declining prosperity, the gap between rich and poor always tends to widen (and the more severe the economic decline, the wider the gap). Socially and politically, everything moves to the right, as our planet descends to the dystopian reality of George Orwell’s world of 1984.
So just don’t a surprised that all of this is happening. These fluuations are al in accordance with immutable natural law, and there is nothing we can do about it short of systemic change (which is what I’ve been advocating all along, of course).
But all of this rapidly declining prosperity, world-wide, makes it all the harder to adapt to changing realities, like the price of gasoline. When I read the news that OPEC is going to reduce the amount of oil pumped out of the earth by two million barrels a day, I rejoiced. Of course that will drive the price of gas way up at the pump, but that’s exaly what’s got to happen if we
are ever going to get weaned off the oil tit. Crank down those valves on the oil wells and watch with satisfaion as the price of gas soars up to $12 a gal on, $18 a gal on, $24 a gal on ~ until finally oil is only used for highly specialized industrial uses that can pay the high prices. Burning off 12
billion years of accumulated fossil oil in a few generations is way beyond stupid ~ it is criminal.
And the eleric alternative won’t be all that much cheaper ~ with trains, buses, trucks, subways, boats, and aircraft all running on eleric power, it will be many years before the alternative supply chain will be able to cope with the demand for all this elericity. But the fastest way to encourage everyone to make the switch to driving an eleric vehicle (if not a bicycle, to really occupy the high ground) is for the price of gas at the pump to move upwards at a steady and relentless pace. Of course, the whole fossil fuel industry should be heavily taxed in compensation.
I recognize the unfortunate unintended consequence of all of this ~
Putin will receive bloated payment revenues from the sale of his oil and gas, enabling him to continue his criminal assault on the planet, localized most heavily on the heads and bodies of the Ukrainians, but affeing everyone on the planet, make no mistake. The only way to really hurt Putin’s oil revenues is to stop buying his oil.
So, bring it on, OPEC ! Keep pumping out less and less of that oil, leaving more of it in the ground, and help this world to get beyond burning up the world’s dwindling supply of oil as fuel.
It’s Not Going to Get Better
Season of the Witch, 2022
No one seems to have figured it out yet. Everyone thinks that what’s happening now is some sort of temporary aberration. They see inflation, and they think that some new monetary policy will corre the problem. They see political establishments turning more and more to the extreme right wing, and they think it’s just the ebb and flow of cyclical change. But what we are looking at is the face of planetary collapse. All of the problems of the world are dragging down the level of planetary prosperity, from pandemics to war and climate change, with its devastating droughts, fires, floods, and tropical storms. And all of this is causing a corresponding spiritual decline.
And downward direions, just like upward direions, are self-reinforcing.
The further down you go below a hypothetical balance point, the faster the rate of collapse. It’s like the mirror image of an explosion pattern.
And when times get hard financially, the ſharpeners take over.
Sharpeners emphasize differences, and levelers emphasize commonality.
When global prosperity increases, the sharpeners back off, and everyone enjoys the general prosperity. But when times are hard, the distinions between rich and poor increase, as the sharpeners ratchet up the pressure for their personal benefit. Tolerance is a leveling phenomenon, and intolerance and discrimination are sharpening phenomena. An extreme of leveling would be my idea of Free Farms. The extreme of sharpening is fascism.
The far right is the least tolerant, by definition. If the reft of the world becomes uninhabitable, do we let everyone come to enmark?
All over the planet we are seeing a massive shift to the right, as the sharpeners of the world consolidate their gains and continue their goal of pillaging the planet as fast as they can so they can hold onto some benefit, while most of the rest of the world plunges into anarchy and chaos. It is useless to start naming countries which are moving to the extreme right ~
they all are: Italy, Sweden, Israel, just to mention some recent news. The descent of the Unites States into chaos is especially discouraging.
So this is not some temporary blip on the scene ~ this is the continuation of the downward spiral into chaos, darkness, and death that visionaries have seen happening for over a hundred years. The current signs are so discouraging that there is no more hope of any change for the better.
It is only going to get worse and worse from now on. It’s too late; the last lifeboat has sailed long ago. Those who left with Timothy Leary’s Space Migration in the 60s were the last to get away. More and more people are carrying guns ~ in Texas you no longer need a permit to carry a gun openly.
The poor will be relentlessly squeezed as the wealthier classes take more and more for themselves, leaving nothing for anyone else. Prices wil go up; rents and property will go up; food will start becoming scarce and expensive (get used to inse protein meal). Uprisings and rebellions wil become even more commonplace, all over the earth, and as harshly repressed as ever (Burma, Iran, Hong Kong). War will continue spreading its black cloud over Civilization, wherever it tries to rear its head. The poor will start dying off at increasing rates as the wealthy people of the world retire to safe communities, leaving everyone else on the edge to fend for themselves, in an increasingly harsh world. Welcome to the modern dyftopia. We are living it now; we were there. (Will there be any survivors? Will people suddenly
notice these writings, and put a huge movement into play that will create a whole new world, a Golden Age?)
Metaphysically, I have been seeing this as the spreading dominance of the Red and Purple Auras over the earth ~ endless struggle, violence, and oppression everywhere. Now there is less and less of the honest work and toil of Orange, or cultivation of the garden, and certainly little enough peace and rest at the Blue level. Anything higher up than that has been erased from the piure long ago. Now the whirlpool of Red and Purple is swirling down more and more rapidly, drawing down all that is left of life into the Black of death. (vide: volutionary eap ow, www.tree.org/Leap.htm) No one has heeded the warnings, so now we will just have to watch it unfold, and/or die. Perhaps Putin destroying the world in despair will be the most merciful way to end it. ( hy do we need a world, if uia’s not in it? ~
Dmitry Kiselyov.)
Just in terms of energy systems, it is almost impossible to turn around a torrent of energy once it gets so far down the drain of Purple going down into the Black, behind Red. Where are Timothy Leary’s space migration rockets, now that we need them? rognos is not looking good.
I want to display all of this process on my map proje
(aiaura.com) , so we can see the evolution of the earth over time, peaking, perhaps, somewhere around the Seventeenth Century, when the earth was still Green, although in constant turmoil, as it has been in almost all times and places. But then, more recently, it has been falling apart for the last hundred years, and now beginning to drop off precipitously towards the end.
In the course of my own lifetime, I have seen an enormous change, from a
high sometime around 1967, to the present chilling depths of free-fall into chaos. The whole adventure of Vietnam was a surprising and anomalous reality.
I know it is common for people at the end of their lives to look back at the world as falling apart. his is the end of life as we know it. Terence McKenna thought it was the End of History when he died. The thing is, they have all been right. With every cycle deeper down into the Whirlpool, the state of the earth gets progressively worse. Would a Map make any difference? If people could see just where the energies and levels of consciousness were going, would it help to consider ways of addressing the issues?
On a personal level, as soon as a person fully understands the Eight levels of Consciousness as they apply to one’s own life, the sooner it becomes clear that everything gets better the higher up you go (and gets worse as you go further down). Therefore you can more easily modify your behavior to promote outcomes that raise your level, and avoid behavior that will drag you down. Is it possible for the Planet as a whole (aia) to understand what is happening, and begin to move in direions that will elevate the level of her Aura? In other words, is it hopeless to attempt to address specific problems until first the global spiritual and political problem can be addressed? As long as there are wars going on in the world, and rampant pillaging of the earth’s dwindling resources, it is useless to hold out much hope.
Perhaps a funioning and constantly updated Map could focus people’s attention on the oci of most severe problems, and generate a consensus and momentum for positive change.
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The Social Pyramid
eus x achina
December, 2022
Over the last fifty years or so I have been in an increasing state of shock. As the collapse of all systems accelerates, I keep expeing something to happen to reverse this slide unto death. I feel my own body increasingly susceptible to the infirmities of age, and it finally comes to me that my relatively minor ailments are not going to reverse course any time soon. I am going to go on, not knowing the day or the hour of my death, until finally my aging shell can no longer support the life trying to survive inside. I keep hearing the words of Bob Dylan, “When you gonna wake up, and strengthen the things that remain?”
The earth will go on, and some remnant of life will probably survive until I am long forgotten, but it will be a very different world from what I have known. And a hundred years from now, some people may look back nostalgically to the happy days of 2022, and wish those happy days could come again, when there was still some semblance of a world going on. But the grim realities of 2122 will never recede, restoring the bright sunshine of these happy days we are now enjoying. [ irony alert]
There is no point in wallowing in all of the incredible devastation of our planet. We don’t need to be reminded of all that chaos. I am tempted to mention a few of the most egregious crimes against nature, such as Russia’s attempted annihilation of Ukraine, in frustration at being unable to restore the people of Ukraine to the loving bosom of Mother Russia, or the
King Midas problem of fat cats who think that their gold will save them from destruion as they merrily sack the planet for its riches. (cue Barry McGuire, ve of eftruion, 1965)
It is no wonder that young people are turning to drugs for surcease of pain ~ and we are not talking about the stimulating, mind opening, and God manifesting LSD ~ no, we are talking about the opioids which bring only darkness. (cue the Youngbloods, arkneſs, arkneſs, 1969) For a long time I kept thinking that there would be a gradual renaissance of hope and faith and love, but the horizon is bleak, with no relief in sight. It just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. And it is happening world-wide. There was a time when we all thought the Great Satan was to blame for the plunge into darkness that we were seeing all around us. But that was a mis-reading of the signals. Just because the bull makes more damage in the China shop than the mouse, as it hurls its weight around, some of those mice would do just as much damage if they had a bull’s weight. Today there are political upheavals all over the world.
Everywhere we look we see events that would have been totally unimaginable fifty years ago. And over it al , the big concentrations of Money and Power continue their ongoing rape of the planet for their own perceived gain.
It is possible to imagine some ways of changing all of this around, but nothing seems to have any chance of making much progress. “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of Capitalism.”
All Western governments try to pretend that their goal is to encourage the spread of democracy, when nothing could be further from their true intentions. “Democracy” is merely a euphemism and a smokescreen for Capitalism. I’m not making this up ~ democracy has nothing to do with it.
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Uncle Sam will support any regime, no matter how corrupt and totalitarian, as long as they maintain an environment friendly to Capitalism. You want some for-instances? Give me a break.
No, I’m not going anywhere with this. I don’t drink or do drugs, beyond the limits of moderation, so there is nothing for me to do anymore except to rant and rave. As many people have been observing for the last hundred years, we are way past the tipping point. It is not only a physical tipping point of the biosphere; it is a tipping point of consciousness. Even if someone were to come along proposing solutions which might yet be tried to reverse this progressive collapse of our world, everyone is just too jaded to pay much attention. And what chance of that is there, anyway?
No one hopes for Santa Claus anymore ~ al they hope for now is the Sandman. If there’s a Messiah waiting in the wings for his entry cue to perform his deus ex machina routine, He had better show up pretty quickly.
Here’s hoping that there will be a New Year at all, happy and prosperous or not. At least I am still alive, for now.
The End of Capitalism
January, 2023
Thomas Jefferson observed long ago that, no matter how you deal out the cards, sooner or later any population will stratify into levels of wealth and power; and the longer a system remains in place, the more extreme the difference between the higher and the lower levels, and the more deeply entrenched those differences become.
The whole Republican Experiment was conceived as a massive reshuffling of the deck, in which everyone were to be, more or less, equal in wealth and political power to everyone else (at least relative to the ancien régime). But what has happened ever since 1776 has inexorably followed Jefferson’s prescient playbook exaly. The wealthy and powerful have become progressively wealthier and more powerful, while the Little People find themselves with less and less. Much of the losses of the Little People are obscured in the shell games being played with money, in which inflation massively destroys the wealth of the poor, while greatly enhancing the advantages of the rich. When the price of housing goes up, who benefits and who loses, between the landlord and the tenant?
By now, of course, the game is over; they have won, and they negligently take off their gloves, like Netanyahu in Israel, who blithely assures his people that only Jewish people have rights, that they have all the rights to the entire Historic Land of Israel (never mind that there were other people living on the land when they seized it from them, then and now); that
Palestinians don’t have any rights at all; and that now they will begin the process of finalizing that implicit reality into formal law, in pursuance of the
“final solution.” (“Subsequent to the Islamic conquest of the Middle East in the seventh century, Arab peoples began to settle in the former “Palestina.”
Apart from about 90 years of Crusader domination, the land fell under Muslim control for just under 1,200 years. Although Jewish habitation never ceased, the population was overwhelmingly Arab.” ~ theconversation.com, History of Israel and Palestine.)
The present Robber Barons of the world have no intention ~ none whatsoever ~ of al owing the slightest deviation from their program of accelerating the rate at which they absorb the wealth of the world, due to any other consideration ( e.g. , such frivolous matters as the survival of life on earth). Climate change be damned ~ talk to Exxon about Climate Change, circa 1974 . . .
Republicans talk openly about setting aside the Constitution in order to set up a new Government designed to perpetuate this cabal of robber barons, so that the acceleration of the pace of their takeover of the world’s assets can be increased still more flagrantly, in order that they can achieve uncontested world dominance within their own lifetimes. Then they will be able to do anything they want. Perhaps every year they can painlessly euthanize the bottom 10% of the population, in terms of their relative wealth and power. Or should it be 15% ? That would be so much less messy than the current system of grinding poverty wearing people down gradually.
Today, we are not just rambling in our dotage. The conclusion is inescapable ~ Capitalism is irretrievably flawed. When you let people do what they want without oversight, the present world is what you get. The
same thing happens everywhere in the world, not just here. What the Chinese have done in Tibet, and to the Uighurs of East Asia, and to Hong Kong, and what they threaten to do with Taiwan; what the Turks have done to the Armenians and the Kurds; what Hitler did to the Jews; what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians; what the Russians are doing in Ukraine; what the Americans have done to the indigenous peoples of North America, and to the hapless Blacks, dragged to their country in chains; so Big Oil is doing to the planet. It’s all wrong.
For over forty years now, ever since he orld nion ompany, 1980, San Francisco, we have been advocating an institution that would hold the Earth in Trust, for its Trees and its People, as an alternative to this international game of King of the Mountain that’s been going on for the last thirty thousand years and more. Instead of the Robber Barons dividing up the spoils of the earth for their benefit, the Trustee would tax all those at the top of the wealth and power pyramid (in addition to fining them for any infraion of rules against environmental degradation), and use that wealth to finance services to the rest of the population. (We have not digitized that very early presentation of the idea, but here it is again in ew olutions, 1992, www.tree.org/b1b.htm.)
This idea has always recognized the homas efferſon rinciple, but simply suggests aggressively progressive taxation to return wealth back to the people (in contrast with the present system, in which the wealthy and powerful use their wealth and power to increase their wealth and power, at the expense of everyone else living on the planet). This whole idea, of course, including the whole new basis of Money, as issued and taxed by this Trustee, advocates nothing less than the most radical social, economic, and
political transformation of the planet of all time, so it is not surprising that there might be a certain measure of resistance to the idea in some quarters
[underftatement alert]. It is radically new, from the roots. But the mounting political and ecological emergencies of our time demand that we either end the rule of the Robber Barons in favor of an impartial Trustee for the Trees and People of the Planet, or we allow the destruion of our planet to continue unabated to its (and our) ultimate ruin.
The Real Turkey
January, 2023
So Turkey is opposing the NATO membership of Sweden and Finland? How about simply dropping Turkey from NATO, and then adding Sweden and Finland? Turkey is not even in Europe, after all, and its government, a remnant of the Ottoman Empire, has been more aligned to the East than the West. That charaer Erdogan has more in common with the Eastern Oligarchs than Western Democracies. And I have always had a lot more sympathy for the Kurds than for the Turks.
[oops ~ I must carefully recognize and resist the unfair prejudice which extends from a few bad apples. No, I don’t hate the Russians, the Israelis (certainly not the Jews), or even the Turks (even though my mother was Armenian, and almost the entirety of her extended family and whole generation were systematically annihilated by the Turks in 1915) ~ what I dislike is Vladimir Putin and his toadies, Netanyahu and the regime of the State of Israel, and Erdogan and his gang, along with other Yahoos too numerous to mention, not the innocent people living in those places.]
What more can I say about the war in Ukraine? In various articles I have mentioned the view of Hermetic alchemy, in which the various levels of consciousness can be compared with the planets and metals of astrology and alchemy and the colors of the aura. For a long time now I have been wanting to set up a website which would display a map of the world colored
in each region according to the color of the prevailing aura, or level of consciousness.
I don’t need to say much about most of those eight levels of consciousness, because in Ukraine there are only three levels going on, at the very bottom of the scale ~ ed: violence, aggression, attack; urple: oppression, defeat, loss; and lack: death, darkness, and chaos. This is the very bottom of the consciousness barrel, the Underworld of lying, cheating, fraud, theft, and murder ~ desperate people doing anything at all in order to survive, many of whom sliding relentlessly down into the lack.
Can’t they understand how wrong it all is? [rhetorical queftion alert] In the case of Israel, how can they not see themselves in the mirror image of their Holocaust? It is the same systematic annihilation and massacre as Hitler killing the Jews as the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem, and it is the same colors of ed and urple. Is it some sort of pendulum swing that transforms the urple of Hitler’s Jews into the ed of Israel exterminating the Palestinians as the Final Solution of the Palestinian Problem?
So my idea was that a Map in which every part of the globe would be painted according to its prevailing aura color (including a lot of Orange, and a few patches of lue among the concentrations of ed, urple, and lack) would show some of these ed States what the larger perspeive was of the rest of the world. Can’t they see in Russia that any use of military force is an admission of failure? The only successful path forward is diplomacy, lue, a much higher level.
In the case of Ukraine, the continued and determined resistance of Ukraine is reaching up to the level of Orange, confli (or, in neutral
applications “close engagement”), a big step up from the ed/urple at the lower level. There is a big difference between a massacre (ed/urple) and a fight (Orange).
On the other hand, new paragraph pleaſe, moving the confli in Ukraine from ed/urple to Orange, is not necessarily a promising way forward. In fa, the whole idea of an Orange confli over there becomes tenuous ~ ask any graduate of Pentagon war game simulations about probable outcomes. So the only continuation is (a quod eft demonftrandum moment, trumpets fading to violins): Diplomacy ( lue). For starters, how about ftatus quo ante bellum?
The only solution is for every warring nation to realize that fighting is always an admission of failure, and that every confli muft be resolved by diplomacy. If someone were to show this article to Vladimir Putin, he might realize what an idiot he has been, to reveal how primitive they were, over in Russia. Where is Talleyrand, now that they need him?
Talking about strange bed fellows when it comes to political alliances (as Turkey in NATO), I recently noticed this quotation by Mark Twain:
“oliticians and diapers have to be changed often, and for the ſame reason.”
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Still Speechless
April, 2023
I haven’t had much to say lately because I have said it all before, so many times. In fa, I am beginning to feel like the old man who keeps telling the same old stories. “Have you heard about the time when . . . ”
Yes, Dad, we have heard that one before. Have some more crackers and milk?
The point which continues to strike me so heavily and despairingly is that all of the escalating calamities affliing our poor, God-forsaken planet are all related. What we are experiencing are the death throes of our planet ( oagula on every hand disintegrating and falling apart towards olve). The imminence of the End Times has been predied by every generation since Jesus Christ walked the earth, but it looks like we are finally heading into those troubled waters. It is not as though no one has seen it coming. Urgent warnings have been coming from every quarter of the globe for many years.
The problem is that the economic and political struure of the planet is total y unable to cope with the present collapse of our civilization and our biosphere.
As long as the planet is dominated by the Economic Jungle, there is just nothing that anyone can do to stop the rapacity of the Robber Barons ~
all of them, from Big Oil to Big Pharma to Big Tech, Big War, Big Land, Big Ag, and all the rest. On every hand, Mr. Big is out to get as much as he can for himself, leaving as little as possible for everyone else. Not the recipe
for universal prosperity. The Golden Age may be just around the corner, and I hope you all have your bags ready to colle the manna from Heaven.
Yes, I am deliberately revisiting all my old clichés, for literary effe.
Thank you to all those voices crying in the wilderness, like Extinion Rebellion currently making noises in the UK, even though they are all doomed and hopeless gestures. Yes, we must all do whatever we can to oppose those 900 mil ion tons of iron and steel plummeting downhill towards annihilation (on greased tracks), no matter how hopeless it is. I have said it al before! I even remember that image of Daffy Duck with his hand upraised in a Stop sign in front of the plunging train. Is there anything left in that bottle of absinthe?
The only hope for the survival of the human race and planet earth is to change the fundamental struure of the economic and political organization of the planet. If this is a totally impossible goal, then we are all doomed, here on the Eve of Destruion.
There must be a world-wide movement to establish a New Regime ~
the Return of the King, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, eus x
achina, or whatever you want to call it. It all amounts to the same thing
~ God must be restored to His Chair of Authority, so the world can be restruured x athedra.
It is useless to talk about the program of regeneration ~ everyone knows what has to be done, at least in general terms. We have the technology to restore the biosphere of the planet just as surely as we have the ability to feed all of the hungry people. The only obstacles are economic and political.
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It really seems hopeless.
The Republican Conspiracy
May, 2023
The Republican Party is on a naked warpath of rape and pillage, not only demanding spending cuts for social programs that benefit the poor and working classes, but even campaigning for more multi-tril ion dol ar tax cuts for the rich, all the while holding the economy of the entire world hostage over this stupid debt ceiling shell game. On the face of it, this is totally unimaginable. If the Republican party is gunning for slashing essential social spending (images of assault rifles are deliberately conjured for rhetorical effe), while, at the same time, pushing for yet more trillion dollar tax cuts to benefit that precious 1% (this is on top of Trump’s famous tax giveaways to the rich, his only notable accomplishment in office, apart from stuffing the Supreme Court with conservative toadies), not to mention spending more on military black holes than the next ten nations combined, why on earth would anyone other than that 1% vote for them??
Of course the National Debt is way out of control and cannot long continue its explosive trajeory. However, the way to balance the equation is to increase revenues by taxing the obscenely wealthy Americans who have been plundering this country since the beginning. As I have explained before, spending money promotes prosperity, as long as the money spent is for good and useful purposes, like health, education, scientific research, and so on. Spending on military budgets, by contrast, has a purely negative effe
on overall prosperity. Other negative spending projes include political campaigns, blasting rockets into outer space for joy riders, and waging
endless wars. Some projes may appear to promote prosperity, like fossil fuel development, only they carry the unfortunate downside of destroying the planet. That’s today’s leure, Economics 101.
So why would anyone vote for the Republicans, other than that famous 1%? I gave the game away in the title ~ it is a conspiracy. In order for the Republicans to get away with their rapacious piracy of the accumulated wealth of the country, including generations yet unborn saddled with that $31 trillion national debt, they have bundled some other issues onto their platform for wider appeal. Apart from the abortion business, which I really cannot understand, the principle rider to their outrageous program of fiscal piracy is the issue of Racism. This is the ugly truth behind the Republican Conspiracy.
Racism is a very serious problem throughout the world, but it is such a sensitive issue that only card-carrying wingnuts like Donald Trump are willing to come out of their racism closet and tell it like it is. Trump famously announced that he didn’t want any more immigrants from shit-hole countries like Haiti ~ he wanted to see more immigrants from countries like Norway. It doesn’t get much more blatant than that. The problem is that a lot of people all over the world share Trump’s view, whether they are willing to admit it or not. Frankly, the Norwegians are some of the prettiest people on the planet, while the Haitians are Black and ugly. (Of course I speak in general terms. There are plenty of very ugly White people, and plenty of attraive Blacks.)
Everyone has heard of the Great Replacement Theory, but when it is refuted, the refutation works because what they refute is not really the issue or the theory at all. They call it a deliberate conspiracy to replace the White
population of the earth with Black and Brown people. Of course this is nonsense, and easy to refute ~ it is not a deliberate conspiracy. But the aual circumstances on the ground show a relentless demographic trend away from White majorities everywhere, and increasing populations of the Black and Brown. Many European countries are declining in population, and the ones that aren’t declining are only able to keep up their population numbers by a constant influx of (Black and Brown) immigrants. The White population of the United States, for example, will soon become a minority of the population.
I can give a few examples of the concerns people have over race ~ there has been a perceived problem of Black and Brown people moving into
“White” neighborhoods, causing more of the White people to leave, and more Black and Brown people to move in, as the declining property values make these areas more affordable to the less affluent Black and Brown populations. I saw something similar happen when I was a child and my father was the Methodist minister for an inner city church with an aging and declining membership. My father was always very progressive and thought that segregated churches were all wrong ~ churches, at the very least, ought to be places where everyone was welcome. So he invited some Black people to attend his church, assuring them that they would be welcome. Not all of his parishioners agreed. I remember one wealthy old woman, who personally contributed 10% of the church’s entire annual budget, who told my father that she thought “this country belongs to the White race.” My father replied, “I think this country belongs to God,” an answer to which there could be no rebuttal. Well, I moved away, off to college, and happened to return again to that city some years later, only to discover that my father’s old church had become entirely Black ~ there were no more remaining White
members of the church at all. I was startled by that. I didn’t think that that had been what my father intended.
Here is another little anecdote. At one time I was talking with some Black folks in a friendly way, and one man was telling the story of his hard life. At one point he mentioned that he came from a large family ~ he was one of ten children. I was a bit startled at that, but then he went on to tel me that both his parents also came from large families ~ his mother was one of ten children, and his father was also one of ten children. I was surprised at the coincidence of the number ten, and I wondered if that were simply a rounded-off way of meaning “many.” Some brothers die in youth, either from illness, difficult circumstances, gang murder, murder by White police officers, succumbing to the ravages of despair and drugs, incarceration, or other problems, so rounding off the number of siblings as “ten” just gives a general idea of the family size. But it doesn’t take a professor of mathematics to realize the demographic consequences if those family sizes are common.
Nor does it take a rabid racist, foaming at the mouth, to feel some dismay at the ongoing demographic changes taking place world-wide.
Plenty of otherwise reasonable people, with no particular animosity to Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, or Rainbow people, find themselves backed into a corner where they are unhappy with this demographic evolution, and don’t know what to think about it.
This is not just a problem that occurs only in the United States ~ all over the world there is rising opposition to endless immigrants overflowing their own countries and seeking to resettle somewhere else, where they are less and less welcome. When minorities remain minorities, there is little
opposition to them. When the first Black faces started showing up in Europe, they were welcomed as novelties, and everyone wanted to befriend them and invite them to dinner.
Mark Twain has a very funny story ( he rateful oodle, from bout
agnanimous-Incident iterature) about a man who finds a stray dog with a broken leg, and he brings him to his home and feeds him and tends his injury until he is well enough to go on his way. A few days later, the man hears some scratching at his door, and he finds the same dog with another dog in tow, who also has a broken leg. Thus far, Mark Twain retells that charming story that he found somewhere, only now he adds to it the sequel
~ after feeding and tending those two dogs and returning them to the world, four more dogs showed up a day or two later, followed quickly by eight more, and then dogs by the dozen were arriving every day, until the poor old man finally had to make his escape and leave his home to the dogs.
So, pulling these threads together, Americans are voting for Republicans, and are willing to endure their fiscal piracy because they have the not-unfounded belief that the Republicans in office will restri
immigration, and will also do whatever they can to obstru and oppose Blacks and Browns (and Queer folk too, while we are at it) from voting, or even trying to live their lives in peace.
So if that is the problem, what is the solution? Perhaps there wil be no peace until racist issues are acknowledged and addressed. Hitler’s methods of “eugenics” are no longer politically acceptable in polite society, but it may be possible to find some gentler way to influence demographic trends. I had the idea that social programs that encourage the birth of children to the poor are only exacerbating the problem. When poor single
mothers pump out babies as fast as they can in order to increase their stipends, this is not an effeive way to address the problem of poverty.
Certainly single mothers should be allowed social assistance, but perhaps the stipend should be a fixed amount, regardless of how many children they have. Another idea is to implement a “baby tax” whereby every pregnant woman would have to pay a tax before she were licensed to deliver her child.
In this way, poor women and families would be less likely to have children.
Of course, this is a very crude way to influence demographic evolution, but, in the long view, it would have a measurable “eugenic” effe on the population going forward, since money is an example of a universal abstraion which distills a great many issues at once. Obviously there will be plenty of exceptions, and innumerable creative geniuses will never have the chance to be born, but, overal , crude though it is, financial standing is a measure, in very general terms, of elevated levels of preference or talent. Of course, there will also be gangsters and villains who will be able to pass on their genes to their progeny, but I can’t think of any other possible lever of influence that is as neutral or effeive as the economic barrier to limit excessive fecundity.
The problem isn’t going away ~ it is only going to get increasingly worse and worse, but so is everything else on this God forsaken planet of ours. Perhaps the problem will turn out to be entirely moot anyway ~
perhaps the future of this planet will not be between the Whites and the Blacks or Browns, but between the cockroaches and the ants. For what it’s worth, I put my money on the ants to inherit what’s left of the earth.
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Intersex, Transgender, and Queer Pride
June, 2023
I have just read the transcript of today’s emocracy ow! program, and I just have to comment again on an issue that seems really surprising to me. I have referred to this a couple of times before ( vide: ender iberation and elix olydayl eander), but the problem just doesn’t go away. In case you haven’t noticed, my social and political attitudes are liberal to the point of radical, and yet I certainly do not always follow the party line. I am particularly astonished at the present brouhaha over transgender liberation.
There seems to be an implicit expeation that every “liberal” person will, of course, support the transgender rights movement which includes medical intervention for minor children. Well, I am in favor of installing diving boards on the Golden Gate Bridge for the convenience of those wishing to end their lives, and I believe in the right of every non-cognitively impaired adult to live one’s life however one pleases (non-gender-specific pronouns), as long as it doesn’t interfere with the rights of others. But when it comes to medical intervention, whether we are talking about tattoos, piercings, circumcision, euthanasia, or any bodily alteration or mutilation, I believe that some suitable age of consent should be observed below which a child should not make such decisions for oneself.
As I have already said in ender iberation as well as elix olydayl
eander, it seems to run counter to every progressive attitude to assume or insist that everyone must be altogether in one box or the other, Male or Female. So here I am, feeling like a conservative and insensitive outsider
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who does not support medical intervention in the effort to force every child to fit into one box or the other. The whole Queer movement (I dispense with the whole ridiculous alphabet soup of LGBTQLIANBO, etc., when
“Queer” covers the whole ground of non-conformance with the Standard Paradigm) will consider me an obstruionist stick-in-the-mud for marching out of step with the Movement, but I stand by my view that the error lies in the notion that everyone must belong in one Box or another. e don’t need no ftinkin’ boxes!
My reason for re-visiting this topic is today’s emocracy ow!
program, in which Intersex aivists are interviewed. Sure enough, the aivism they are supporting is against non-consensual surgeries that are not medically warranted. They ask to be accepted as whole, original People, who are part of the Family of Humankind in all its glorious diversity. e don’t need no ftinkin’ ſurgery! They don’t need any parts cut off (or added on, e.g.
prosthetic testes) in order to conform to the membership rules of whichever Male or Female club that they are being pressured to join.
This is exaly my argument for the transgender community! Rejoice in your unique and diverse personhood juft the way you are with Pride, and don’t let anyone tell you that there is anything “wrong” with you.
Time Lapse Video: Planet Earth
June, 2023
Time lapse video technology is so old that its special effes seem like child’s play in this current day of unlimited imaginative potential. Whatever one can possibly imagine can be effortlessly represented in a visual presentation that will soon be including total immersion into taile, olfaory, and gustatory senses in addition to the usual audio and video. The latest toys are just the beginning. And today’s news seems to be that quite a bit more (that no one has yet thought of at all) can also be manifested onto one plane or another of reality, through the happy agency of Artificial Intelligence. But I’m not going there today.
Today I want to think again about the simple technology of the speeding up of time, as in telescoped articulations of blooming flowers that allow us to watch the lifespan of a plant passing by in a few moments. What if we could see the events happening on Planet Earth in the same way?
What if we could program a sequence to display the history of any place on earth over any time span? Suppose we could choose any spot, perhaps the whole planet, centered on the largest old world land mass. This would leave out the entirety of North and South America, but, alternatively, we could show the other half of the globe, perhaps zeroed in on the United States. Or we could choose any other region, large or small. Then we choose a time frame and a speed, and we can sit back and watch the Earth unfold from, say, 1650 until the present time.
We could even continue the presentation beyond the Present Moment, by an application of AI, which would simply be a continuation of current trends modified by the most prescient AI engine. Run the program through the end of the century, say 2100, and we would see a very surprising show.
We could set the timing feature to cover that ground in about 20 minutes, or, if we are from New York City, we could allow just four minutes for the entire presentation, but we would have to look sharply, or we might miss something. [. . . and, for those of you who are surprised, drive ſafe. ]
This would be a pretty sobering show. Our world is falling apart on every level at an accelerating rate (climate change, war, ocean necrosis, pandemics, economic sharpening, consciousness plunging from open, tolerant, and progressive to extremely narrow right-wing conservative all over the world, etc. ). I want to set up just such a show as I have been describing on my proposed aiaura website, where every region is colored according to the prevailing level of consciousness, using the Colors of the Aura. This show would be so dramatic that it might finally nudge people off the couch, and get them to take aion.
ake ion. Now we come to today’s message ~ we can’t just sit back and watch it fall, as falling it certainly is. Not only are all signs running ode
ed, but the speed with which they are spinning out of control is accelerating on every parameter, in the classic pattern of an explosion. We can’t just “let George do it” anymore (not that we ever could, but now it really matters). This is a question of the survival of the human race, and possibly all life on earth, or most of it, anyway. It is madness just to continue buneſs as uſual, and somehow hope for some other outcome. We need a world-wide organization to address the issue now and come up with a plan.
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We not only need technological plans to regenerate the earth ~ there are a great many excellent ideas out there, and most of those ideas should work just fine. Everyone has a plan, and all we have to do is pick a few and follow them (e.g., plant trees). But the real problems we face, and what we really need right now, are social, political, and economic solutions that can break up the bottleneck ( read: the strangulating grip of the Robber Barons) and lay out a plan by which we can implement the necessary changes before the irretrievable collapse of our biosphere. I don’t need to mention again my own plans for making over the planet (www.tree.org/One Planet
Makeover.pdf) ~ there may be lots of other perfely good solutions. We just need to get the ball rolling with some international participation for the promotion of urgent and radical change.
It amounts to ocial, conomic, and olitical evolution world-wide ~
that’s what I’m talking about. The scale of the Revolution must match the scale of the Problem, and it has to be Planet-wide in scope. And, as technology (and planetary collapse) are accelerating at an exponential rate, we need to match the speed of that collapse with the urgent speed of bringing forward the Revolution. The participation of young people is especially and urgently needed, as they represent the future of the earth and of the human race.
The Omega Point
July, 2023
As I review the scope of my articles over the years, most of my early work has been devoted to the study of philosophy ~ mostly metaphysics and theology, along with logic, ontology, and teleology. This has been colleed as eleed rticles: etaphycs and heology, 1989-2022. Very early on I was also writing suggestions for a whole new change of program for this planet, starting with ew olutions, and he hurch of the iving ree, recognizing the fundamental importance of the loss of the rees in the declining fertility and viability of our biosphere.
The underlying thread has always been my astonishment and dismay at the way this world of ours is playing out (teleology). But lately most of my articles seem to be focused upon the looming Omega oint described by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ( vide: he henomenon of an). Unfortunately, however, the Omega Point we are approaching is not the transition upwards to a higher level of existence and consciousness; it is the point on the other end, the bottom, not the top. The miracle of life celebrates both birth and death. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could enlarge the scope of our consciousness to break through upwards to a whole new land, and enjoy a new Golden Age ? Dream on ~ go back to your dystopian novels to see how it ends from here.
Recently, astronomers have been pointing out how surprising it is that no other sign of life in the Universe seems to have shown up (yet), in spite of
our increasingly sophisticated tools for exploring our universe. As far as anyone in these waters knows, We just might be the only significantly intelligent life, period. It is a very real possibility that We, on this lonely planet, just might be the whole show. So why, in God’s Name, is this planet hurtling off to Chaos and Death at a breakneck pace, instead of getting it together to survive (or possibly even flourish once again, at a long shot) ?
What could possibly be more illustrative of the dismal state of our planet’s energy than the confli between Russia (ed) and Ukraine (urple, rising to Orange), or the State of Israel (ed) wreaking the final ſolution of genocide upon the Palestinian people (urple) ? Is there an oasis somewhere of sweetness and light that I don’t know about ?
I just don’t understand why no one gets it. It all seems so obvious to me. I am a gardener, growing not only Trees, but many other amazing manifestations of the glorious flowering of ife. All of the Hermetic ideas, from the planets and metals of astrology and alchemy, to the colors of the aura, and even the primary trigrams of the I Ching, all describe the same cycle of life, from beginning to end, including many astonishing stages along the way. The rcanum agnum, in case anyone hasn’t figured it out yet, is
ife.
So, if we can understand the different stages in the life cycle of any plant, we can understand all of the mysteries of the cosmos, by correspondence with the same yftery as seen in a grape vine, a rose bush, or a walnut tree. So all we have to do is to make analogy from the plant to the planet to discover the state of health of ife on our planet, and possibly the entire cosmos.
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Now here we are, eyes wide open, looking bleakly at the analogy.
Clearly, our planet is on the way out. It has followed a trajeory of vigorous growth from the beginning: ed; life exploding onto the universe with a never ending flush of creative novelty, growing outward into new forms, probably reaching its greatest biological zenith about a thousand years ago; bright ellow and reen; with the high water mark of the human race following somewhere about the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, perhaps about the time of J. S. Bach. Ever since then it has been on the wane, with its fertility petering out, and ever increasing problems dragging it down to endless and increasingly destruive war (Orange) with some fragile intervals of peace (lue). But then the compounding problems have lately been pushing it inexorably down, and at an accelerating rate, into the range of the ed and urple, on the way down to lack, final chaos and death, where not one stone is left upon another.
So there it is, our planet swirling down the toilet, carrying with it perhaps the only serious manifestation of intel igent and creative life in the cosmos, while the obber arons go on despoiling the world for their profit (and are required by corporate law to do so, in the interests of their stockholders), while the rest of the people wring their hands in despair, if they have any sense, or just go blithely along following the lemmings in front of them, if they haven’t. The prognosis does not look good.
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Not only have I said all of this before, but I haven’t said anything else, lately. Here is the whole story of life in a nutshell, and I hope someone can see it ~ the ending hasn’t yet been written. Yes, of course ~ what is proposed is the most radical and urgent transformative evolution of all time of the manifestation of ife on our planet, but, by the analogy of the dying plant, unless someone make some radical changes quickly, the plant or planet will just fade out to lack. [ubjunive mood alert ~ this is why I love the ſubjunive mood ~ it gently hints the poibility that ſuch changes might not be happening, in caſe anyone is paying attention.]
What does it take to get people to rise up and make some changes here
? A whole lot has to happen awfully fast, so we had better get going if we want to turn this thing around in time to save some remnant of life out here on this lonely outpost (ave you ſeen what’s going on over on planet arth, lately ?). The whole of ife, as aia, must have a survival instin, so let’s get that survival program engaged. Now is the time for every good person to come to the aid of one’s planet.
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Taiwan and Hawaii
September, 2023
Elon Musk says that Taiwan is an integral part of China, just as the Hawai an Islands are an integral part of the United States. Well, that’s a pretty interesting analogy. In 1893 the American government, under the leadership of its Minister Plenipotentiary John L. Stevens, seized control of the Hawai an Islands, forcing the Queen, “with a gun to her head,” to relinquish her authority. Here is the Letter of Protest of Queen Lili’uokalani
~
January 17, 1893
I, ili’uokalani, by the grace of od and under the conftitution of the
awaiian ingdom, ueen, do hereby ſolemnly proteft againft any and al as done againft myſelf and the conftitutional overnment of the awaiian ingdom by certain perſons claiming to have eftablied a provional government of and for this ingdom.
hat I yield to the ſuperior force of the nited tates of merica whoſe Minifter Plenipotentiary, is xcellency ohn . tevens, has cauſed nited
tates troops to be landed at onolulu and declared that he would ſupport the provional government.
ow to avoid any collion of armed forces, and perhaps the loſs of life, I do this under proteft and impelled by ſaid force yield my authority until ſuch time as the overnment of the nited tates all, upon fas being preſented to it, undo the aion of its repreſentatives and reinftate me in the authority which I claim as the onftitutional overeign of the awaiian Islands.
Lili’uokalani
So, yes, China might consider that Taiwan is an integral part of China (along with Tibet, while we’re at it) in the same way that the United States considers the Hawai an Islands an integral part of the United States, by armed force, in opposition to the will of the people.
The Pendulum Error
Oober 2023
There are lots of logical fallacies which are very interesting and which cause endless error. I think everyone should take a course in elementary logic, because there are quite a number of common fallacies, and it is helpful to see them all clearly categorized, so they are easier to recognize. One very common fallacy is mistaking a part for the whole, or making a general conclusion from a particular event.
But the error I want to discuss today is the endulum rror. What happens is that something is discovered to be very wrong ~ way out of bounds ~ but then the reaion is to make an equivalent and equal reaion, just as far away from the center as the first one was, but on the opposite pole.
It is just like the swing of a pendulum. The pendulum at rest remains still, pointing straight down to the center of the earth. When the pendulum’s rest is disturbed, and it goes to an extreme at the limit of its range (which may increase or decrease), then it has a pent-up energy to rush to the other extremity of the pendulum’s swing. Think epublicans and emocrats, or any other analogy you care to think of.
Now I think about the current news ~ the fighting back of the Palestinians against the unrelenting genocide of the State of Israel against them. The pendulum I am thinking about here is the extremely horrible events of the Jewish Holocaust, and the hardly less horrific Armenian Genocide of 1915, which happened earlier, and in which a larger percentage
of the whole Armenian people were killed during the 1915 genocide than that of the Jews who were killed under Hitler.
So now I see that what is happening in the State of Israel and Palestine is the relentless turning of the screw in pursuance of the inal olution of the
aleftinian roblem. It is a mirror image of what happened to the Jews under Hitler. It almost seems as if they are unaware of the massive irony of the situation, in the way that the negative energy is propagated forward.
[ Red/Purple aura: Boss complains of his employee, employee nags at his wife, wife harasses her son, boy kicks his dog, dog chases the cat, the cat chases the mouse, and the mouse eats the cheese (as in bites the duft). Another variation (Orange aura) is Hatfields attack McCoys; McCoys attack Hatfields; Hatfields attack McCoys; McCoys attack Hatfields; repetatur ad infinitum.]
Such an attitude is not without precedent in the histories of the world.
It was just recently pointed out to me that when white settlers first came onto the shores of the North American continent, the number of native people living there was about ten million. But then, at the end of the Indian wars, their numbers had been reduced to about half a million.
In every case, we are talking about aivity along the very bottom rung of the consciousness ladder ~ the violence of Red opposed to the oppression of Purple, struggling just above the Black of death. Why is this happening all over the earth? It is the self-perpetuating cycle of anger, oppression, and death as our planet tumbles into chaos.
This is the endulum rror, the error of arpeners to separate the extremes of any polarity. It leads inexorably to warfare and annihilation and
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chaos. ~ not particularly useful in today’s world of cascading catastrophes, as our planet proceeds on its path to being uninhabitable, at least for human beings. It seems that the pendulum error is the source of the energy tearing our world apart. It is a vicious cycle. The faster the earth falls apart, due to pollution, deforestation, over fishing, over mining, over oil and gas extraion, while leaving behind piles of toxic waste, the more the arpeners are motivated to ratchet up the rate at which they increase the separation between rich and poor, us and them. And the more that happens, the faster the world falls apart.
So, the solution to this problem would not be to stop all that sharpening, and move in a steadily levelling direion towards the center ~
that would be to commit again the very pendulum error under discussion !
The solution is to moderate the rate of sharpening to within that optimum range at which the polarities of the sharpeners produce positive evolutionary growth, rather than the reverse, which would be the descent into chaos and death. The polarities of sharpening and levelling should be in balance, as any good Taoist philosopher could tell you.
If today’s rulers would learn the Way of Heaven, then all would be well. That maxim comes from China, but the rulers of China don’t seem to know it any better than anyone else. Perhaps they should read again their own classics.
The Prior Problem
Oober, 2023
The world is in such a mess these days, on every level. I try to think about the solutions to so many problems ~ everything from the ongoing necrosis of the oceans due to proliferating plastic, along with warming and acidification, to the confli in Israel/Palestine, but consideration of every problem leads to the same conclusion every time ~ the only way to deal with the problem is to deal with the prior problem firft. It keeps happening ~ I see the collapse and death of our biosphere due to the rape of the planet’s trees (and its minerals and its oil), but then I realize that before we can make any meaningful change in the biosphere or tree-planting, we must first deal with the economic problems of the current world (facing down the Robber Barons who want to take as much as they can get for themselves, and to Hell with the rest of the planet), but before those issues can be addressed, the fundamental political problems of the world must be dealt with and resolved.
But, prior to that, the level of consciousness everywhere must be raised, before it will be possible to deal with the political chaos on the ground.
But, is this useful? The pragmatist wants to say, “Oh, sure; of course you are right; but what do we do right now? The problem is upon us, and we need to deal with it immediately.” So what is the appropriate way to deal with a problem? Should we hark back and deal with the prior problem first, or deal direly with the issue immediately at hand, in the best way we can at the moment? The easy way is to deal in some immediate way with the
situation at hand. The harder way is to step back and first corre the error of the prior problem, after which the present problem will no longer appear.
The more I thought about it, the more I formulated a universal law ~
“or ny roblem, the best and most efficient outcome, of all the infinite ways in which the problem could unfold, is by firft addreing the rior
roblem.” That is a pretty wide ranging law; any problem covers a lot of ground. What it means is that, even though it is much harder to address the prior problem first, in the long run, the best and most efficient outcome wil be secured by addressing the prior problems first.
I was thinking about that Law while thinking about the ongoing collapse of civilization in so many parts of the world ~ Russia and Ukraine, on the one hand, and Israel/Palestine on the other. In the former confli, Russia is all Red, while Ukraine is a bright Purple, but rising inexorably toward the Orange. In Israel/Palestine, on the other hand, it is all Red and Purple ~ there is not the slightest vestige of a credible resistance from the Palestinians ~ it is all stark Red against bright Purple.
The most obvious observation one might make under these circumstances is that advice from neither Israelis nor Palestinians will be very useful in finding a solution. The Israelis want to exterminate the Palestinians as vermin, just as the Americans wanted to exterminate the Native Americans, or as the Turks wanted to exterminate the Armenians, or as Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews, or as the Russians want to exterminate the Ukrainians (if they won’t love us, we’ll kill them), or as the Chinese want to exterminate the Tibetans and the Uyghurs.
It is pretty obvious that what is needed is a Higher Authority to regulate these matters. The problems on the planet must be solved, but there is no way that the problems can be addressed without dealing with the prior problem first.
There must be a single world order, no matter what form it takes. A long line of visionaries have known that ~ Einstein, Teilhard de Chardin, Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wells, and many others. It has to happen ~ get used to it. There can be no future for the planet until we deal with this, and no one said it’s going to be easy. I guess the place to start is by elevating the consciousness of the people on the planet.
Om
Biden’s Mistake
Oober, 2023
President Biden probably thinks he is being a loyal toady to the powerful Jewish Lobby by siding with the State of Israel in the ongoing confli in the Middle East. But, for this reason, American Jews must make it clear to President Biden that the State of Israel does not define what it means to be a Jew. American Jews need to conta the White House in droves and explain that the President does not speak for them when he sides with the State of Israel in this ongoing problem.
And roblem it is! What a quagmire! My last article was all about the importance of going back to the Prior Problem when trying to solve a particular problem on the ground. In the case of the State of Israel, I want to contrast two solutions to similar problems. In 1947, as India became free of English rule, one of the largest migrations of people in history took place as Moslems packed up their lives and moved to the new Pakistan, while just as many Hindus moved their households, camels and all, over to the Hindu seion of what would become the free India. This was a huge undertaking, but it served largely to contain the opposition of Moslem and Hindu.
But then, in contrast with this, in 1948, the State of Israel was formed, but the founders of the state concealed their intention gradual y to recover the entire area occupied (briefly) by the Jews of biblical times. They pretended that, somehow, a separate state would be found for the Palestinians, whom the Jews displaced, while it has become increasingly
evident that there was never any intention of holding anything less than the entire State of Judea as known to David and Solomon. But what is to become of the people living there, those pesky Palestinians? Well, how about sweeping them under the rug? Make it a gradual process, so that no one notices.
So, what do we do about the confli between the Arabs and the Jews?
We must first address the prior problem ~ the creation of the State of Israel was fundamentally flawed because there was no provision made for the Palestinian people who were to be displaced.
I first proposed a solution to this problem back in 2006 (A Solution to
the War in the Middle East), which still makes sense to me. Basically, if the land just isn’t big enough for both Jews and Palestinians, the Israelis should buy out the Palestinians. Negotiate a price; agree to it; begin making payments; and the Palestinians pack their camels and depart, shaking the dust from their sandals. With their compensation package worth millions of dol ars per family, they would hardly be refugees, but might choose from numerous options. And the State of Israel would finally have recovered the whole of the State of Judea. It may even soon be seen as a cheap price to pay. Had it been enaed in 2006, none of the current horrors of war would have occurred, not to mention the endless war going forward.
But, in the meantime, tell Biden to back off. He is not serving the interests of the Jewish people by backing the genocide of the State of Israel against the Palestinians. Some problems are Black and White. This one is horribly Grey (or, in another frame of reference, Red and Purple).
The Good Old Days
Oober, 2023
e create our own niverſe ~ old hippie slogan Some things never change. In every generation, for the last ten thousand years, at least, the old men have looked back upon their lives and seen how everything has gone to Hell in their lifetimes, and they end their days with their cronies, lamenting the lost “good old days.” In almost every case, of course, they were perfely corre ~ our world has indeed been going steadily downhill for as long as anyone can remember. Sure, there have been astonishing advances in technology, from fire to the wheel, the printing press, the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, the bomb, the computer, the internet, and AI, but no matter how far we progress technologically, there is some dimension in which the impa of human beings upon the planet has been progressively destroying the biological vitality of the earth we live on. And when our earth loses biological vitality, consciousness dims, and everything falls apart on every level; negative faors compound the rates at which things are hurtling out of control, and everything rushes to chaos (death) at an increasing tempo, under an increasing cloud of accumulated negative energy ( karma), which continues to drag down the levels of consciousness everywhere. When you’re dying, almost any earlier time was the good old days.
On the other hand, it would be just as easy to observe how nothing that’s going on currently is anything new. Flood, Fire, Famine, Pestilence?
Black Plague? Wars going on everywhere? Crimes amounting to genocide?
A dime a dozen. Anyone reviewing the history of almost any part of the world over almost any time frame would be appalled by the crimes and atrocities being committed, left and right. It wouldn’t improve anyone’s mood to detail any specific crimes ~ and I think somewhere I have already mentioned the entertaining series of books by Alexandre Dumas called
elebrated rimes. In case anyone doesn’t know, old Dumas wrote a lot more than the uſketeers and the ount of onte rifto. For some good, edifying bedtime reading, try he iftory of the orgias.
So, maybe it has always been this bad, and we are just lucky to be alive.
In either case, is there any hope going forward? Not much. I am having trouble understanding the news. I couldn’t understand why Russia would invade Ukraine. What could they ever have hoped to accomplish? It is so nonsensical ~ the only way I can understand it is to consider that it is a response diated by physical and chemical pressures on the planet, not conscious thought. If you imagine the energies ~ political, social, and economic ~ coursing around the world like weather patterns, then storms just form as a means of dissipating excess accumulations of tension. In other words, the war between Russia and Ukraine is just a pressure relief valve ~
there is so much pressure and tension that they just have to fight a war to release some of that nervous tension. It is not rational. None of the war aions can have the remotest possibility of producing any positive outcomes for either side.
And now Israel. I have expressed many times my astonishment that neither the Israelis nor anyone else in the world seems to see the energy rebounding off the Holocaust as the Jews turn to the genocide of
Palestinians. It is madness. It makes no sense at all. But even more astonishing (along the order of “Of course Donald Trump is a blithering idiot, but how come so many Americans support the guy?”) there is the question of why the United States government continues to support the State of Israel, as it doubles down in its campaign to exterminate the Palestinians.
Again I ask, “What could the Palestinians have hoped to gain by their assault on Israel on Oober 7th ? Couldn’t they anticipate that Israel would make a furious response? But then, what could the State of Israel hope to gain by this intensified counter-attack upon the Palestinians? Can’t they anticipate the backlash, not only from Iran and other Muslim countries, but from everywhere else? How do they think it’s going to end? tatus quo ante bellum is almost always better for both sides in any confli ~ a lot better.
The only explanation for any of this is that all of these warmongers are just helpless automatons, going though reflexive motions, oblivious to the long term consequences. All of it, endless war all over the world, is just an inevitable manifestation of the overwhelming cloud of negative karma that has been accumulating for so long, and we are all just puppets, dancing on strings, with no rational conscious design direing our energies. Now, as the planet enters a more extreme phase of its descent into biological death, all of the forces compelling all these unconscious zombies from rushing headlong into endless war have just been ratcheted up a few notches, dragging way down the diminishing hope for anything to turn this around before all is lost.
What a sad end to such a promising species! God help us.
End Times
November, 2023
nd ye all hear of wars and rumours of wars: ſee that ye be not troubled: for all theſe things muft come to pass, but the end is not yet. or nation all riſe againft nation, and kingdom againft kingdom: and there al be famines, and peftilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. ll theſe are the beginning of ſorrows. hen all they deliver you up to be afflied, and all kill you: and ye
all be hated of all nations for my name’s ſake. nd then al many be offended, and al betray one another, and all hate one another. nd many falſe prophets
all riſe, and al deceive many. And becauſe iniquity all abound, the love of many all wax cold. ut he that all endure unto the end, the ſame all be ſaved. nd this goſpel of the kingdom all be preached in all the world for a witneſs unto all nations; and then al the end come. ~ Mathew 24: 6-14
It’s no longer news ~ this world is spiraling out of control as we speak and write, and the love of many is waxing cold, while the planet burns. Are we finally living in the End Times ? Every generation since the time of Jesus has been convinced that the End Times were upon them, or at least coming in their lifetimes. But the planet still keeps spinning away, and the sun continues to rise every morning. When people would say to me, “Good morning,” I used to reply, “Every day that the sun comes up in the morning is a good day.” But it no longer sounds like a joke. I used to mean that I would rejoice to have another day to be alive on this glorious red and purple
~ I mean green ~ earth, and I still mean that, whether I am thinking about my own personal life, or the life of the planet. For me, of course, it is all the
same whether it be simply my own personal life that might end, or whether the entire human race might end, like the dinosaurs, or all life on earth.
The problem is that there are ominous tipping points. Before every explosion of rapid change, there are accumulating tipping points that make it increasingly hard to reverse the direion or speed of change, going downhil fast. But there are not just tipping points in greenhouse warming, or glacial melting; there is also a tipping point in consciousness. That has been my biggest concern lately. I see the levels of consciousness plunging all over the world. And, the more consciousness moves downward, the faster it continues to move further down. This, of course, is how wars are started, and how a living planet dies.
All the symptoms are aligned ~ in Good Times of peace and prosperity, there is a leveling process as everyone’s lives get better, with tolerance for all. Then, in bad times of war and poverty, there is a sharpening trend as most people’s lives get steadily worse, while a small class of the wealthy and powerful get ever wealthier and more powerful, and there is less and less tolerance for anything new. Political ideology swings hard right, and everyone prepares for war. They have long since stopped bothering to pray for peace, because God died long ago (or perhaps he is just out to lunch, or bored with his world), so there is no point in praying for peace.
The most powerful players on the map are of greatest concern, because they can do the most damage if they get out of control. Yes, I am speaking mostly about the sorry United States of America, which has fallen on some very hard times lately, but I am also speaking of Russia, China, Israel, Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and many more, down to the interests of Big Oil, Big
Pharma, and countless lesser Robber Barons, all the way down to that silly clown in the red hat, whose days as a loose canon are, finally and mercifully, coming to an end.
The United States has been falling fast. Has anyone noticed ? It is reaching a point of total dysfunion, and could even be on a path to Civil War. Wouldn’t that get God and the Saints laughing ! That’s a good one.
Just imagine, on top of everything else, ha ha, what if the United States were to implode with another Civil War ? And where do we go from there, little wandering planet ?
A fundamental cause of the problem in the United States is that their Constitution has failed them. What we have ended up with is a plutocracy, not a democracy. The problem is just too big for most people to consider.
“So, we need another economic and political solution for the United States, and for the entire world, while we are at it; so, can we get this done before lunch?” Talk about “just pop another pill . . . ”
Joe Biden’s age has caught up with him. The problem is that with increasing age there is often, or even usually, a tendency to lose all flexibility in your joints as wel as in your brain. After a certain point, it becomes impossible to consider any change of any kind. Certain beliefs and attitudes get ingrained so deeply that they cannot be dislodged, no matter how much new information is forthcoming. Take his unwavering support for Israel. I don’t know if there has ever been a time since 1948 when such unwavering support made any sense, but I, for one, have lost my respe for the State of Israel long ago. It may be that, finally, most of the rest of the world is coming around to the same conclusion, but don’t expe any new ideas to percolate into old Joe’s brain any time soon, or anymore. He should have
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quit while he was ahead. One transitional term ~ thank you, Joe ~ good old Joe when we needed you ~ but, missing your cue to exit, stage left ~ that is a regrettable blunder. Something like guests and fish, after a few days, or politicians and diapers needing to be changed (Mark Twain).
For the longest time, along with every other sane and rational American (a diminishing breed), I had to support old Joe because there just wasn’t any other option. To cal the alternative in the red hat unthinkable gives new breadth to the concept of understatement. But old Joe has to step down. After his current vacuous rigidity over Israel and Palestine, he cannot win any more eleions, and it would really tempt fate to put him up against the red hat once again.
Why do we laugh? Because the alternative to laughter is madness, chaos, and death. Or is that just the other side of laughter? I sure hope the sun comes up tomorrow morning.
Big Brother Go Home
November, 2023
I am sitting here baffled at the accelerating rate at which this world of ours is hurtling into the Abyss. I want to say that there are so many things that I don’t understand, but I do understand them. The reasons people have such appalling ideas and attitudes are all related to the plunging levels of consciousness everywhere. You have to be lost in the despair of dystopia, or in the pay of the United States Arms and Munitions Industry, not to rea
with horror and disbelief at the genocide going on in Israel for the last seventy-five years. And as to that appalling a of monumental stupidity, Putin’s war on Ukraine, that was yesterday’s news, ho hum. As long as people are running on their reptilian brains, life is going to continue going on as per usual. (Are they real y fighting theſe wars ſo they can make more money ſelling more armaments worldwide ?)
So, according to the rior roblem theory, it is useless to attempt to change any of the horrendous things going on all around us without first addressing that level of consciousness. For example, I can start right here, at today’s news, and wonder what Orwellian milestones we have passed years ago, and where we are going today, when I read that it is seriously proposed to send records of every book a child reads from the library to that child’s parents ! Even George Orwell never thought of that one ! Anyone with a mind-set that wants to implement such a policy should look around for someone to love, instead.
If our only hope for the future of the earth lies with the young people of today, please don’t limit their horizons. Their search for knowledge and truth and light must be unfettered. That is the only way we can outgrow our present predicament ~ by breaking through the inertia of the past, which is literally dragging us down.
Every new generation has not only the right, but the duty to take responsibility for the current state of their world (a paraphrase from the
eclaration of Independence). Something absolutely New has to happen, and happen pretty quickly. The urgency increases exponentially every year, as this world spins out of control. I think we need to have a transformative experience of Consciousness Change happening Now on this planet, and it has to carry the energy for enormous change, and all of that has to happen very fast ~ the greatest change in the history of the human race has to just happen Now, or we are done for.
We need another Avatar of God. It comes down to that ~ God needs to appear about Now on our planet. Why don’t we learn from the Tibetan lamas and look for the new incarnation of God ? If we seek for God, we wil find One. They understood that, and it works that way.
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Dominionism
January, 2024
I read in a recent article: “Dominionism embraces the notion that some Americans are “called” by the Almighty to impose Christian-based governance over the land and its people.” The idea is that some people have it into their heads that they have a God-given right to impose their beliefs upon others. The whole idea of Christian missionaries, or anyone at all who feels that one’s beliefs are authorized by one’s religion, is called into question.
Oh, it’s a real problem. Whom are you going to believe? When your Commanding Officer orders you to perform some act you “know” to be wrong, you can’t say you were “just following orders.” At some point, you have to cal upon a Higher Authority to help you do what’s right. If only there were some universally accepted laws prevailing all over the planet to help us know what is right!
So it is impossible to dismiss Christian evangelists out of hand. They really believe they are following the dictates of their God. They are doing nothing differently from what everyone else is doing. Everywhere on this sorry planet of ours (and getting sorrier as we speak or write), there are major disputes where everyone on one side is totally right, and everyone on the other side is totally wrong. The problem in every case is that both sides feel that they are the party in the right. [ muc cue: Bob Dylan, ith od On Our
ide] The only ones who win in any dispute are the lawyers or the arms merchants, depending upon your frame of reference. Everyone else loses.
There is no way out of this dilemma as long as our planet is ruled (and ruthlessly) by the Law of the Jungle. When every nation is a Sovereign State, and every individual is ultimately answerable only to one’s God, there can be nothing but endless warfare until this planet finally be ground into dust under the heels of the conquerors, who only discover, too late, that they cannot eat that dust any more than they can eat their gold and silver. The parasite finally dies when the host is consumed, and the Lords of the Earth will follow their peasants into their graves (if they are lucky enough to have someone left to bury them when they die).
We need to plant trees to restore the biological viability of our planet, and we need to set up a network of Free Farms all over the earth where anyone can go and receive free meals and lodging. That would solve so many problems at once. Some people object to the idea of providing free meals and lodging to the destitute (“if they are hungry and they have no bread, let them eat cake”), but “the poor we have with us always,” and by far the easiest and cheapest way to deal with poverty and all of its attendant problems is simply to feed the hungry people. No more need for crime, theft, murder, fraud, drugs, alcoholism, prostitution, gambling, and physical, psychological, and mental health problems, along with all of the attendant secondary problems, such as the effects of these problems upon the children, and society in general. If the option were available to just live in peace, there would be no further need for war. This project could be adopted right away by charities until people realize how much cheaper it is, and then governments would simply take over the role of maintaining the free farms.
Of course, it would not only be cheaper, but it would promote a far easier, safer, and gentler world for everyone.
But no real lasting peace can ever supervene until and unless the entire planet be organized upon the basis of a single final authority (which must be understood to come from God).
But that’s not today’s idea, important as it is. Today’s idea is to take them at their word. If only someone were able to impose “Christian-based governance over the land and its people,” what a wonderful blessing that would be! However, I don’t see any Christians, here. This whole Right Wing Evangelical Christian movement doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Christianity, or to have any Christians involved with them in any way.
Why do they call themselves Christians? They give Christianity a bad name.
(Talk about Somebody turning over in His grave . . . ) Do they think that all they have to do is to sign on the dotted line to become a ember of the
hurch? Gimme some of that Holy Water. Jesus Himself made it perfectly clear who His disciples were, and who might call themselves Christian, in John XIII: 34-35, as follows:
new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye alſo love one another.
y this all all men know that ye are my diſciples, if ye have love one to another.
Wouldn’t it be funny if our Government were actually run by Christians? It may happen in some alternate universe, but don’t bet Grandma’s farm on it. Plant some more trees on it instead, while you’re waiting for the Grace and Love of God to descend upon the Members of Congress, and/or the Members of the “Christian” Church.
The Canary is Dying
January, 2024
What is going on ? I am not surprised that the world is overwhelmed with chaos. Of courſe our world is plunging into chaos ~ there are so many huge problems tearing this planet apart that there are going to be some strange days ahead for the foreseeable future. Oh, no, Toto, forget about Kansas ~ those days are never coming back; that bal oon back to Kansas has sailed long ago. Tensions exploding into war over larger and larger portions of this frail planet of ours ? ~ get used to it. Maniacs attempting to seize power with the help of scared and confused people who don’t know what to think ? ~ what else is new ? [ hich maniacs do I have in mind, here? tart a lift. ]
The whole “Conservative” trend that has been going on lately confuses a lot of different ideas which need to be sorted out. I have considered that the more relevant fulcrum upon which the world turns is to be found in the continuum between the extremes of harpening and eveling. Not to review the whole idea here, but basically it is arpening that leads to effes of diminishing tolerance variously called right-wing or fascist, and leveling that leads to effes such as socialism or free farms. The important point here is that neither idea is right or wrong ~ it is all a matter of degree (and application, time, place, and situation). A certain amount of sharpening promotes an increase of excellence, but an extreme of sharpening becomes fascism, just as surely as ripe fruit begins to rot by a continuation of the same ripening process (oxidation). It is only when the fulcrum between
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sharpening and leveling goes out to extreme distances in either direion, that the probability of revolutionary change increases. This is pure Taoist philosophy here ~ when an extreme of Yang or Yin has been reached, the energy reverses direion, and goes the other way ( enantiodromia). In a complete life cycle there are four such points of change, two of them very gradual, and two of them very sudden. [ vide: End Notes, below]
Yes, one of those sudden changes we are talking about here is the ad
ews. So, the more we see rising symptoms of increasing sharpening all over the world, lurching toward the right-wing, becoming less and less tolerant, more and more hostile, and increasingly angry and violent, the closer and more inevitable that looming ad ews becomes.
None of this, as I have said, is the least bit surprising. All of this is perfely evident to quite a number of people, world-wide, who express their dismay, aghast with unbelief and horror. But what I find most astonishing, and even quite scary, is that nowhere do I see the slightest glimmer of interest, anywhere, in addressing the roblem !
As I have said before, quite a number of times, there can be no progress moving forward until the entirety of planet Earth be united, and cultivated as a Garden by a Trustee who receive ones authority from God.
If you don’t understand what we mean by God, don’t worry about it ~
enough people have understood it over the years to keep the light visible at the end of the tunnel. One way to get an understanding of the idea of God is to compare our present world (without God, or where God has been abandoned) with a potential world united under a single, established institution designed to promote the channel from God to the life of our planet and its flora and fauna, including human beings. This present world of ours is a rolling catastrophe of endless war, greedy mining, raping, and pillaging under the aw of the ungle. That world is now in smoking ruins ~
just ask anyone in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Syria . . .
But a world gratefully accepting the Grace of God in the person of an incarnate Avatar who would supervise the restoration and cultivation of this Earth of ours back to the Garden it once was, would be a game changing improvement, a transformative revolution analogous in scope to the Omega
oint of Teilhard de Chardin (quod vide).
oney is a universal abstraion which describes the movements of human energy on the planet. Thus, a new Bank must be established under an entirely new principle. Money would be created as needed and dispensed to fund every enterprise important to the health of the planet. A funioning economy has to have a free flowing movement of money, so the new Bank would fund farmers to grow food and people to plant trees. All public services, health care, education, research, public transit, struural maintenance, and more would all be direly funded by the Bank, as
authorized by the Trustee. Other services could be provided, such as non-profit food distribution, and free farms for the indigent. Other aspes of life, such as the manufaure and sale of consumer produs, would be provided by a free market.
The Bank would manage the value of the new currency it creates by a system of taxation. A primary tax would be imposed for any pollution or resource extraion of any kind. For example, a very large tax would have to be paid to the Bank for every barrel of oil pumped out of the ground, or every tree cut down. This would force the prices up, so that much less oil would be pumped out and fewer trees would be cut, and those taxes would continue to increase, pricing oil out of the market entirely (except for very specialized industrial uses), and making wood produs very expensive. But after these taxes, a general property or wealth tax would be colleed from the wealthiest of persons or companies. A progressive tax rate wouldn’t even start until around $10 million or so, at very moderate rates, but then rates would increase rapidly at the upper levels of wealth so that it would be the super-rich who pay the great bulk of the tax, while everyone else not only pays little or no tax at all, but receives all of the free services above enumerated for the smooth and happy funioning of the world. Best of all, who among the super-rich will come forward to complain about the tax ?
The amount of ones tax would be an ultimate status symbol.
Anyone else would be free to operate any business without hindrance, as long as there be no infraion of the extensive climate or environmental regulations, taxes, or fines. With a network of free farms, “where everyone is welcome and everything is free,” anyone who runs out of financial resources for any reason could just live a simple life for free (until or unless taking up a
new position in the outside world again). An immense host of social problems would fade away once it were no longer necessary to obtain money at any cost.
There would be very little need for any other international regulation apart from the enormous influence of direing the creation and spending of money. However, the same Avatar, incarnation of the living God, would also exercise the funion of final arbiter of Justice in the court system, in addition to authorizing the disbursement of funds by the Bank. There would be no more use for war, since wars only move one backwards. War creates a nadir of prosperity, which, in turn, creates more anger and violence, which leads to more and more mutually self-destruive war, (this is the self-perpetuating negative cycle of Red and Purple consciousness ~ did you know that there is also a self-perpetuating positive cycle way up above, at the level of Yellow and Green?) Since ultimately it is money over which people go to war, territorial distinions won’t make much difference. It really doesn’t matter who “owns” regions of eastern Ukraine, since everyone would live by the same laws anyway.
All of the transaions with the Bank could be done instantly, by computer. All taxes and fees paid back to the Bank would be simply erased, as the only funion of the taxation is to maintain the value of the currency by trimming the excess off the top. The atural aw of oney (in case you hadn’t noticed) is that it is constantly being vacuumed up to the top, so the obvious principle of taxation, and the role of the State, should be to take it off the top and return it to the base via all the free services described herein.
Notice how the “role of the State” here differs from the Jungle economy, in which the “State” is maintained by the wealthy for the purpose of conserving
and increasing their wealth. The present Jungle economy must be replaced by a Trustee whose authority comes from God. The founding of a Seminary for this purpose has been discussed elsewhere.
Under the beneficent regulation of this Trustee, or Advocate, who speaks for God, a new Golden Age of peace and prosperity would supervene.
Anger and confli would begin to recede; “the war will be over;” soldiers can return to their families and their farms; and the agenda of regenerating the living biosphere of the Earth can begin in a systematic way ~ planting more trees, retreating from the fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy, and more
~ for example, inhumane faory animal farms will be taxed or fined out of existence. Non-organic farming praices will also be taxed away or outlawed.
It is hard to calculate the net effe of all of this on the general index of happiness and prosperity, but it seems to me that a world under the direion of a Gardener under the authority of God would vastly outperform our present world, and the contrast between the chaos rampaging all over the globe at the present time and a world carefully cultivated by the Gardener of God would finally allow anyone who hasn’t figured it out yet to understand what God means, after all.
nd otes: Further information about the ideas mentioned here can be found in the Author’s colleed essays ~ One lanet akeover (tree.org/One Planet Makeover.pdf) and eleed rticles, etaphyſics and
heology (tree.org/Seleed Articles.pdf).
A Sinking Ship
February, 2024
When I was a little kid growing up in the 50s, it was assumed, literally as an article of faith, that the United States of America was the greatest step forward in the political evolution of nations. America was always right; America could do no wrong. In the midst of the chaos and treachery in the rest of the world, the Beacon of Liberty, Truth, and Justice in America wil light the way forward to the ever more glorious future of the human race (with Americans at the head of the pack, of course). And blah, blah, blah.
But over the course of my lifetime, I have begun to question the premises of this logic. First there was the Native American genocide, which was very similar to what the State of Israel has been doing against the Palestinians since 1948, and for pretty much the same reason (they have the land and we want it. I keep waiting for the Israelis to offer free blankets infeed with smallpox to the Palestinians ~ I know those blankets are wearing thin, but can there be anything more incredible? [ ~ yes, as a matter of fa, nce you mention it, how about landmines diſguiſed as toys ſo that children will pick them up and be blown to bits? I paſs the oe. ]
Then, with the last few demoralized Native Americans swept under the rug onto reservations (places where no one else wanted to live anyway), the always-right Americans imported Black Africans into their country to work on their plantations as slaves, rejeing any idea of human rights.
Aually, slavery has quite a long history ~ did you know that the prosperity of ancient Athens was based on its extensive population of slaves ?
Perhaps it is time to take another look a the idea of Freedom. What, exaly, is Freedom, anyway? In the early days of this country, “freedom”
meant freedom from religious and political oppression, but it gradually evolved into the notion that everyone should be “free” to do whatever one wants. Accordingly, persons, companies, and corporations engaged in a mad rush to exploit the earth and its people for personal gain. In classic Gilded Age style, the powerful people, through manipulation and bribes, secured the complicity of the government, in such ways as granting logging permits for free (or praically nothing), so that the corporations could rape the planet of its proteive green cover of living trees in order to fill their pockets with gold. And the scale of the larceny has only been increasing with each passing year.
Does Donald Trump have any idea how wrong he is with his slogan of
merica irft ? It is not only wrong ~ it is ftupid. If there be any hope at all for this poor planet and its warring millions, the whole earth must stand or fall together as One, not as each tiger trying to dominate the rest of the jungle. If Donald Trump wants to play King of the Mountain with Vladimir Putin and all the rest of the rampaging idiots, it really shouldn’t take an AI program to figure out where that’s going to end up. I suppose it is natural, and historically almost universal, for everyone to support one’s own tribe or nation as always in the right, and anyone who differs is therefore wrong, but somehow we have to get beyond that and come together as One Planet instead of a Jungle.
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“e have to get bac to the arden.” That’s the meaning of the biblical story ~ there were our first People, living on the earth in a perfe Garden, overflowing with vitality and life, and it was Good. But it was through their own error that they lost the garden. If God and perfeion start at the top, the downward path goes through confli and war, and ends up with violence, rape, and genocide, with death at the bottom. Just as it is often said that God creates the human being as deviation from Perfeion, as a means of existence at all, with all one’s faults, and that it is the path of each one to find one’s way back to God (yoga, e.g. ), so, having lost the Garden, where all was Good, here we are, far below, with each one at some level of warring with one’s neighbor, and our path is to work our way back up the hill to the Garden, where we can once again live in peace, in union with God.
he way up is always harder than the way down, but only in the beginning.
ventually the upward path becomes eaer and the downward path becomes harder. The way down is easy and fun for a while, but it leads to death. The
way up leads to God. To survive and grow, we have to go higher Up to the Light, not Down to the Darkness.
The earth is a sinking ship, and, not only are there some obvious loose canon caroming around the deck, but most of the other canons are just as loose! In a ship where one canon breaks free of its restraints and caroms mindlessly around the deck, it is a very serious problem, leading to the probable destruion of the ship in short order unless the canon can be restrained in time. But if every canon on a ship be without restraint, the resulting mess will resemble an army in which every soldier is marching (and shooting) in one’s own direion to one’s own drum. [ I apologize for my caſcading metaphors, but you can’t loo direly at the ſun without going blind . . . ]
Lately, in the wake of the genocide in Palestine, it is hard to look beyond the unbelievable atrocities there, or to look, dumbfounded, as the American President slavishly supports the Israeli pogroms (rubbing his hands with glee, salivating at the burgeoning sales figures for American armaments, and giggling conspiratorial y at the leaders of ExxonMobil, as they count their money, probably smoking Cuban cigars under their green eyeshades), but, lest the destruion of Ukraine fall into the cracks of yesterday’s news, let me share this joke, at Russian expense ~ there was an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Russian who happened to please some magical spirit who then promised to grant a wish for each of them. The Englishman said, “I want a country estate with a big garden, walnut trees, and a pack of hounds.” Granted. Then the Frenchman said, “I want a Chateau on the Loire, with vineyards and servants.” Granted. Then the Russian said, “I have a nice little house in a valley with five cows, but my
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neighbor on the other side of the valley has 100 cows. So my wish is to kil my neighbor’s cows.”
I guess the blind or asleep constitute at least 90% of the human race, and for them, life just goes on while they watch, passively, as the idiot box has taught them to do. But for a visionary, or even anyone fully awake, it is very hard to watch this old earth crumble. I hope that some of Timothy Leary’s space ships managed to reach habitable planets. Here on earth, however, we are on the Eve of Destruion [ cue arry cuire].
Three Solutions to the War in Palestine
February, 2024
As a philosopher, I look at the confli in Palestine in terms of the energy patterns, in order to understand what is going on. It is useless to talk about the caſus belli of a war that has been going on for thousands of years ~
so long that it has gotten way beyond such simple explanations as cause and effe. Shortly after the Hamas onslaught against Israel, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “that didn’t happen in a vacuum,”
as Israel seems to pretend. So the only way to make sense out of the confli
is by a study of the energy dynamics. According to my system of using the colors of the aura as related to the levels of consciousness from Hermetic alchemy, I see that confli in terms of the Red and Purple energies going round and round and down in an accelerating negative spiral. Negativity feeds on itself. Just as expressions of love multiply and spread in expanding patterns of joy, so expressions of anger and hatred stoke the flames of confli, which spreads like a foul contagion. That means that the confli in Palestine is not likely to be resolved until the fire has reduced both sides to ashes, or external control be exercised from outside. (That solution, the only one that really makes any sense, is not considered here, as it has been dealt with extensively elsewhere. ide, e.g.: he anary is ying, tree.org/Canary.htm.)
The severity of this outbreak of madness is exacerbated by President Joseph Biden’s incomprehensible lock-jaw solidarity with the Israelis. This is a classic symptom of growing old ~ a slowness amounting to an inability
to comprehend change of any sort. On the contrary, the great hallmark of Youth is an openness to new ideas, and the ability to respond to the quickly shifting circumstances of change. Nothing ever stays the same for very long
~ if one be unable to recognize and adapt to the changing circumstances of life and times, one will be poorly adapted for survival. [ ue: he imes hey
re a-hangin’ by Bob Dylan] So there is old President Biden, clinging to an old idea of a firm alliance with Israel, unable to recognize that anything has changed. It is chilling to speculate about the influence of all that money that American arms manufaurers are making from all the warring going on in the world. It is a very bad harbinger of future tidings if the major industry of the world’s most powerful and dangerous country is the manufaure and sale of deadly armaments. [ es, I have mentioned that before, and I alſo continue to remind everyone to plant more trees. ]
So if this confli in Palestine (I may just as well call it Palestine as to cal it Israel) is ever going to end, it will have to be by some surprising wrench from the prevailing inertia, because I have already tried to indicate where the overwhelming energy behind the inertia is tending. I suggest three possible continuations for ending that confli ~
The first one is the most obvious. Just as Vladimir Putin might awake one morning from troubled dreams, and suddenly realize his folly ~ not to be backed into a corner from which there is no way out, he boldly proclaims that the special military operation has been a big mistake all along, that he is immediately recalling all troops from Ukrainian soil, and is offering Ukraine $200 billion in reparations for his war crimes. “Ha, ha! So sorry. My bad.”
~ in the same way, Netanyahu might be struck by a blinding flash of light, like Saul on the Road to Damascus, and hear the voice of the Lord ~ “ibi,
ibi ~ why perſecuteft thou me?” Recognizing the error of his ways, he immediately recalls all troops from aion, issues his most profound apologies to any surviving Palestinian people, organizes the distribution of food and the rebuilding of houses, hospitals, schools, and utilities in the devastated areas of Gaza, and offers an additional $200 billion in reparations to the Palestinian people for his war crimes. He will, of course, tear down all fences, end all naval blockades, and welcome al Palestinians to enjoy free travel anywhere in Palestine or Israel.
But rather than waiting, hopefully, for those events to occur, here is my second solution ~ since the Israelis are in possession of most of their land, with no likelihood of leaving anytime soon, the Palestinians might make the best of a bad situation by leaving the area entirely, provided, of course, that the State of Israel pay them sufficient compensation ~ say, $200,000 for every man, woman, and child. I first made this suggestion in July of 2006 ( vide: olution to the ar in the iddle aft, tree.org/war.htm), and it still sounds like the most realistic and likely solution, but I have one more solution to offer ~
Suppose the entire land were to be constituted as a liberal parliamentary democracy. The obvious problem with that is the inevitable endless warring of sides to secure a majority in Parliament and thereby control the running of the country. I suggest surmounting that issue by setting it up as a Constitution that the Parliament shall be composed of 100
seats, with 40 allocated to the Jews, 40 to the Palestinians and other Moslems, and 20 to the Christians or Other. Neither side would be able to form a majority without cooperation from one of the other sides of the house. Perhaps there might be two aisles, with the Christians in the middle
and the Jews and Moslems on the outer sides. It seems to me that such an arrangement might eventually lead to a livable situation for all parties (along with a court of arbitration to resolve disputes).
The objeions to these proposals are the same in each case ~ no one will agree to any of them. The first case is a unilateral exception, but the chances of such a continuation are meagre . . . The third solution would never be accepted by the Israelis, but they are not likely to accept the second suggestion either. But if there be no chance of agreement in any case, that leaves only that negative whirlpool spiraling down to chaos and death.
The only way to put the brakes on that destruive collision is for old Joe Biden and the United States government to get off their sleepy donkey and intervene. All they have to do is cancel the annual gift of money to Israel (a minimum of $3.8 billion per year and counting, not including additional funds of another $18 billion or more to assist with Isarael’s current war of genocide against the former occupants of the land ~ “Cowboys and Indians” revisited), and give that money instead to the Palestinians. That would at least shift the center of gravity, making it at least remotely possible for some solution to be found and implemented.
Plebiscite
February, 2024
The human race continues to amaze me. So many stupid people doing so many stupid things ! Take war, for example. War is failure. War is the very last and worst of all possible options for resolving confli. It is obvious that any other possible resolution of confli other than waging a war of mutual destruion would be an enormous improvement for all sides.
Waging war is the worst of all possible options from the economic standpoint (unless you are profiting from the sales of weapons). There are only two possible continuations following after the Orange of confli ~
descending ever downward following the negative inertia into the violence and oppression of Red and Purple, finally ending up at Black, chaos and death, or to rise above the level of confli into the rarified air of Blue ~
peace, diplomacy, agreement; all of which can take many forms, such as arbitration, ftatus quo ante bellum, trial by combat, trial by chessboard, or some other agreed upon conditions for the resolution of the given confli.
Now we have two horrible and senseless wars going on simultaneously, not to mention ongoing wars of lesser intensity or future peril all over the burning globe (and, meanwhile, the globe goes on burning merrily away while we watch, stupefied, or blissfully uncomprehending) ~ this is just madness, way beyond folly ! I cannot watch the genocide in Palestine any longer, in astonishment that the United States lets itself go on record as being in full support of Israel this whole time, since 1948, or at least 1967.
So today I wil look again at utin’s olly further north, and wonder at the scale by which entropy is advancing exponentially, leading to poverty and devastation and ruin on all sides. What folly for all involved ! It doesn’t seem to me that there are any problems which could not be easily resolved at the level of diplomacy, without resort to the dishonor and folly of unleashing destruive war.
Of the four choices I have mentioned (and, of course, there are plenty of other choices available), any one of them would be vastly preferable to the continuation of an aive war footing, with all of its enormous costs. I suppose people don’t realize, in advance, the effe of their current aions upon their future experience. If they were to know, ahead of time, that one course of aion would lead to an outcome ten times better (or ten times worse), after ten years, than an alternate course of aion, they might reconsider their automatic reflex to push the war button whenever they get angry.
The most amusing solution would be a chess match between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, say, best of five games. The problem with that is that Putin would almost certainly lose, so he would never agree to a chess match. A resolution by personal combat of a champion from each side would be possible, but not very likely. Both Russia and Ukraine could put up a Champion to fight it out. tatus quo ante bellum would hardly be suitable for Putin, in the circumstances, unless the dates are seleed very creatively, so that really only leaves arbitration of some sort.
There is this foolish and contentious border between Russia and Ukraine over there, so why not simply drawn a line in the sand? We might agree upon a committee of persons who would oversee a study of where to
draw the line separating the limits of authority for both Russia and Ukraine.
The obvious solution would be simply to ask the residents whether they would prefer to pay their taxes to Kyiv or Moscow (and expe services forthcoming from same). This plebiscite might need to be modified by historical circumstances, which the judges of arbitration would take into consideration. Of course, it really doesn’t matter a hill of beans where the line is drawn ! All that matters is that there is a line ſomewhere which is ſettled and agreed upon, so that everyone can go on about their business without worrying the matter any further. Of course, many dissatisfied persons might prefer to move to the other side of the line, rather than remain where they are, but once the line be settled and clear, life should be able to continue, which is the whole idea, or it should be. The proje hinges upon finding a team of judges who would be acceptable to both sides. All potential judges would profess to an open mind, pending their examination of circumstances on the ground.
That’s it ~ everybody go home and make some babies to replace those who have been lost. Don’t worry ~ your weapons and ammunition will continue to have excellent resale value, as all of the wars going on in other parts of the world are keeping the arms market quite robust.
“Antisemitism” is a Fig Leaf
March, 2024
I am so tired of people shrieking about “antisemitism” anytime anyone criticizes the disgusting and bloodthirsty government of Netanyahu and his gang of villains ! I am equally outraged and disgusted at that villainous scoundrel Putin, over in Russia, but that doesn’t mean that I hate the Russian people. Trying to defle any criticism of the State of Israel by crying “antisemitism!” is a flimsy ruse through which any intelligent person should immediately be able to see. The Emperor of Israel is Wearing No Clothes, and he should be arrested immediately for indecent exposure ~
along with his other crimes, such as the genocide of the Palestinian people.
For the last fifty years or so this campaign of genocide, “the Final Solution of the Palestinian Problem,” has been carried out by slowly tightening the thumbscrews “so that nobody notices,” as the remnant of what was once Palestine is slowly and progressively degraded, in military terminology. But, finally, with the connivance and complicity of the American government, and with President Biden principally and shamelessly responsible, they are taking off the mask and gloves, and they no longer seem to care what anyone else in the world may think about it, thumbing their noses with obscene raspberries.
I just have to interje, in this critical eleion year, that, deplorably wrong as Biden may be on this issue, he cannot be compared with The Mad Donald, who is so unspeakably bad that the fa that he continues to have so much support from the American people is a shameful and damning
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indiment revealing just how low the mighty United States has fallen, just over the course of my lifetime. I have been writing of all the ominous signs of the imminent collapse, not only of the United States, but of the whole world, crushed under the weight of so many cascading catastrophes that the final end of the human race, probably with a Bang, has to be recognized as a clear possibility bordering on probability. But if The Donald regains control at the helm of the Ship of State, watch out for icebergs ahead ! ou have been warned, and not by me only !
But, just as I cannot fathom why so many people persist in supporting the Mad Donald, I just cannot understand how so many people are content to wring their hands over the sorry plight of the Palestinian people and lament that there is nothing they can do. Of course, it is hard to make much opposition to the Israeli pogroms when Biden and the United States government continue to send billions of dollars, and billions of dollars worth of arms, bombs, and rockets, in support of that rogue regime over in the land of Palestine, calling itself “the State of Israel,” displacing the people who were there before them. But the final outrage is to insist that anyone who
opposes the Zionist State of Israel and its campaign of annihilation and genocide is antisemitic !
There are so many honest and honorable Jews who oppose the murderous regime of Netanyahu and his thugs that the State of Israel cannot claim to speak for either the Hebrew people or the Jewish religion, any more than that other principle war criminal of our time, Vladimir Putin, can claim to speak for the Russian people.
If the rulers of the State of Israel want to put a stop to the rise of
“antisemitism,” they should stop disgracing the name of Judaism by their heinous crimes, so that people who cannot see beyond Netanyahu’s obscene fig leaf, and conflate the State of Israel and its crimes with the Jewish or Hebrew people, will have the principle driver of this modern “antisemitism”
diminished. Perhaps if Netanyahu and his government would make profound apologies to the Palestinian people, and offer substantial reparations for their war crimes, then, after a few generations, this tide of
“antisemitism” may begin to recede.
And, while I am at it, clearing the table before lunch, if some Russian patriot, who loves his country and his children, would step up to the responsibility and put Putin out of his misery, then, after a few generations, what’s left of Russia (which has been almost as badly devastated as Ukraine) may gradually recover a place at the table of honest nations.
Prediions
March, 2024
I used to be an optimist. I thought that, as the world slides into chaos, sooner or later people would wake up to the urgency of the problem and begin a movement to stave off the collapse of civilization and the possible end to all (human) life on the planet (the ants may adapt and survive). But it just doesn’t work that way. We are caught up in a downward spiral of destruion and death, and the worse things get, the worse things continue to get. All of the negative problems cause further decline, with no end in sight.
Wars to the point of genocide are occurring with increasing frequency all over the planet, and this causes an acceleration of the descent into poverty everywhere, which, in turn, causes increasing anger, diminishing tolerance, and more and more war, chaos, and devastation.
Spending money on worthwhile projes (healthcare, land restoration, reforestation, education, research, infrastruure) creates increasing prosperity, while spending money on destruive projes, of which war is the ultimate example, causes increasing poverty and despair. War not only causes poverty to increase everywhere, increasing the sharpening tendencies of diminishing tolerance which increases the spread of more war, but war is one of the prime causes of climate change, both in the manufaure of weapons and in their use. All of these problems reinforce each other, leading to yet more rapidly accelerating descent into darkness.
You don’t need any crystal bal or Delphic Oracle to predi how al of this is going to end. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a classic ploy of governments to defle criticism of themselves towards an external enemy.
Whenever a state is in serious trouble, close to collapse, the inevitable solution is to foment a war somewhere so that you can rouse people to come patriotically to the defense of the Flag and the Motherland. This war is a festering sore on the planet which consumes horrendous quantities of slowly accumulated value. As all of these millions of bombs, rockets, drones, guns, and ammunition are destroyed in the mindless frenzy which is war, poverty follows inevitably in its wake, increasing the anger and distress of all parties to the confli. Eventually, everyone will be exhausted, the land will be reduced to rubble, thousands of people will be kil ed and many more injured, while fields of grain become wasted battlefields, littered with mines, and all means of livelihood are destroyed. Finally, the only hope of recovering anything is to wage more war, like a gambler trying to recoup his losses, until finally there is such a state of exhaustion that war can no longer be sustained, and the fields of battle are left as smoking ruins (like crashing from a meth run). So, finally, Russia will “win” the war, and have a few more acres of devastated land to rejoice over, churned up into rubble, at the horrendous cost of thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars worth of accumulated value annihilated, a huge loss of international standing, respe, and prestige, and the inexorable advance of climate destruion, disease, and pestilence, followed by internal collapse and revolution.
And what about the genocide going on of the State of Israel against the Palestinians? A war weary world, numb to further atrocities, will just look on, with eyes glazed over, unwilling to get involved. So what else is new? The Americans might realize that what the Israeli settlers are doing in
Palestine is no different from what the early Americans did to the native Americans who were living on the land before them. So, finally, the Palestinians will be crushed and eliminated, whether by starvation or gunfire, and the bodies of any surviving Palestinians will be cooked down into soap for the Israeli settlers to wash their feet with. Wealthy Israelis will build luxury homes on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea on land formerly known as Gaza, and jaded onlookers will turn their attention to other atrocities going on in other parts of the globe.
The United States will descend further into chaos and civil war, as its dysfunional Congress is unable to accomplish anything useful, other than promote endless war all over the planet for the enrichment of its arms manufaurers and other very wealthy beneficiaries of the American Dream who are plundering the earth for their profit. Thomas Jefferson had it all figured out at the outset of the “experiment in democracy” ~ it doesn’t matter what form of government you choose ~ monarchy, oligarchy, tyranny, democracy, plutocracy, idiocracy, or anything else ~ the longer a regime continues in power, the more the populace divides into the wealthy at the top and the poor on the bottom, and the divide just continues to increase until there is finally a revolution, the cards are re-shuffled, and a new hand is dealt out to the survivors.
Under cover of America’s slide into chaos, China will probably seize the opportunity of launching its long announced invasion into Taiwan, while the Americans are too engrossed in their own collapse to interfere. Taiwan, like Ukraine, will be pounded into rubble; all the value which has been slowly accumulating over hundreds of years will be destroyed in a few years
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of warfare; the surviving people will be thrown into poverty and finally sold into slavery to work in the faories owned by their Chinese overlords.
But China, too, will be choked in the pollution of its own coal fired power plants, which are propagating like rabbits over there. After swal owing up Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, China, too, will crumble and fall into civil war when the divergence between the wealthy winners at the top and the impoverished losers at the bottom causes it to become unstable and break up into chaos like the Americans and Russians before them.
And, sooner or later, when the final survivors of the international Monopoly Game come to blows to determine the King of the Mountain, the probable losers, seeing the writing on the wall (mene mene tekel upharn), will succumb to the madness of nuclear weapons, which will finally leave the entire planet as a smoking and devastated ruin, unable to support life of any kind.
As Scrooge asked of the ghost of Christmas-Yet-To-Come, “Is this what WILL happen, or only what MIGHT happen? Is there yet no chance of reform? Can the people of the earth change their ways, elevate their consciousness, and become good? Is it still possible to save life on earth, or has that ship sailed long ago, while human beings were too busy making war to realize what was going down?”
Irony
April, 2024
What do the following quotes have in common?
“In 2023, the tropics ſaw 3.7 million heares of foreft loft - equivalent to 10
football fields per minute, a ſlight decline on laft year. heſe loes would have been far higher if it weren’t for razil and olombia.”
~ Matt McGrath, “limate hange: Logging decline after political change
And ~
“ . . . e blowed out a cylinder-head.”
“ood gracious! nybody hurt?”
“o’m. illed a nigger.”
“ell, it's lucky; becauſe ſometimes people do get hurt . . . ”
~ Mark Twain, uckleberry inn
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Isn’t that good news? Only ten football fields per minute of forest loss? Isn’t that wonderful news?
I guess I’ll just stop here. Anything further I might add would only be
“gilding the lily.”
Plant More Trees
(and Make Love, Not War)
April, 2024
As I read the daily news headlines about Israel trying to drag the United States into a war with Iran as a smoke screen to hide its genocide against the Palestinians, I have to remind myself that all of this ongoing chaos is really nothing new. A brief search of just the major wars since World War I turns up the following ~
World War I (1914–1918), Turkey’s genocide against the Armenians (1915), Russian Civil War (1918–1920), World War II (1939–1945), Korean War (1950–1953), Vietnam War (1955–1975), Israeli-Palestinian genocide, 1967-present, Gulf War (1990–1991), Bosnian War (1992–1995), Afghanistan War (2001–2021), Iraq War (2003–2011), Syrian Civil War (2011–present), Yemeni Civil War (2014–present), Russian attack and
“Special Military Operation” against Ukraine (2014–present), War in Sudan (2023–present).
Ho, hum ~ another cup of coffee ? Sometimes when I lie awake at night I imagine what I would do if I could do anything. The first thing to do, of course, would be to eliminate all mosquitoes, along with assorted bedbugs, chiggers, ticks and various motley biting inses. With that out of the way, the next item of business would be to render all guns, bombs, drones, and rockets, from the smallest handguns to the largest nuclear bombs, inoperable. Next up would be to stop immediately all extraion of
fossil fuels ~ oil, coal, and gas. Any such fuels that have already been extraed from the ground might as well be al owed for use, as a way to provide a “soft landing” (ha, ha) for the withdrawal of all fossil fuels from the market place. That would fix their wagon !
Or would it ? There is already so much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere that even if such draconian measures were possible, they would do nothing to stop the continuing slide into planetary chaos caused by increasing planetary warming, with all of the tropical storms, ocean necrosis, and toxic pollution by plastic rubbish that isn’t stopping anytime soon. So far, all of my fantasy measures are only half of the equation ~ the essential other half of the equation is to plant more rees by the millions, by the billions, and by the trillions ~ say, at least a trillion more trees per year ~ that ought to slow down the rate of planetary destruion ~ a net trillion trees, not just an absolute trillion, since they are cutting down the trees so fast (equal to ten football fields per minute, as mentioned in my last article, Irony) that the tree planting program has to exceed that loss by the net gain of a trillion trees per year, in order to make any headway.
Finally, before dozing off to sleep in satisfaion that I had solved the problems of both war and climate change (not to mention those pesky mosquitoes), I considered that with all of those measures in place, it might be reasonable to hope that our world could recover its equilibrium within as little as another hundred years or so.
Then, in the morning, I realized that it was al a dream, and that the real world is an altogether different and very scary place. Oh, well; maybe I am really just a butterfly dreaming that I am a human being (and this whole
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sorry world is just a part of that dystopian dream), to quote from Chuang Tzu.
Happy Bicycle Day !
19 April 2024
Last October I posted one of my most important articles,
he rior roblem, in which I indicated that when cascading problems are spiraling out of control, the most efficient way to address all the issues at once is to hark back to the Prior Problem in every case, working back and back until you finally come to the root of the problem. In that article I worked back from the deteriorating environment to the loss of the trees, to the economic problems, to the political problems, and I finally reached the conclusion that there was no hope for any amelioration of the horrible mess on the ground in our world today until the issue of plummeting consciousness world-wide be first addressed.
So today, on Bicycle Day, commemorating the famous bicycle ride of Albert Hofmann, the inventor of LSD, I return to an idea I have expressed three or four times already, that what the world needs most urgently right now is a massive resurgence of LSD world-wide. Now it is time to take my tongue out of my cheek ~ the repression of LSD is just one more symptom of the problem. I remember, back in the 60s, that the most profound effects of LSD were not the pretty colors and psychedelic effects on the visual and auditory circuits of the brain, but the dramatic effects on fundamental consciousness, which increase with every repetition of the experience, leading ultimately to what is widely described as a religious experience, comparable to Saul’s blinding flash of light on the road to Damascus. I have already said it all many times before, so of course I am repeating myself, but with every
passing day the urgency increases ~ when you take a significant dose of LSD
(300-500 micrograms, with appropriate set and setting), “you see God, and you love everyone.”
The most memorable experience of the psychedelic era of the 60s was this feeling of cosmic unity and oceanic love for everyone ~ all people and all life, everywhere. Of course the micro-brains of Vladimir Putin, Bibi Netanyahu, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and a host of other blithering idiots are in most urgent need of this transforming medicine, but there is a “100
monkey” effect when enough people world-wide all raise their consciousness from the horrible mire of Red and Purple up to the exhilarating expansiveness of Gold and Green (vide: he olors of the ura).
So I suggest that all people everywhere encourage their governments to release this and other doors to a wider universe and liberate the mind from the arbitrary restrictions of those pea-brains who are terrified of anything new that they cannot lock up or control. The most repressive governments and governmental leaders are the most in need of such liberation, but everyone can benefit from the expansion of consciousness triggered by the wonderous experience of LSD.
By the way, in addition to celebrating Hofmann’s famous discovery, it is also appropriate to celebrate the Bicycle itself. If everyone would trade in their automobile for a bicycle, that would go a long ways toward reducing the greenhouse gases which are a primary cause of climate change and, consequently, much of the planetary collapse of which we are now in the throes.
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Happy Bicycle Day !
The Meaning of Life
May, 2024
At last! Some good news: “.. gnals ſupport for poible I ſanions over Iſrael arrants. ” But then, when I go to read the article, it turns out that the sanions under discussion are sanions against the International Criminal Court for daring to suggest that Israel had done anything wrong!
We are told that the I CC has made a “profoundly wrong-headed decision.”
That’s worse than Donald Trump instigating an insurreion when he fails to get re-eleed. Both the United States and Israel need to take off their blinders and see what they look like in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Both countries are aing from a very primitive level of consciousness. But since levels of consciousness have been plunging precipitously all over the planet, it is all the more important for some visionaries to exercise some leadership at a higher level, to guide this wayward planet back to health, because, of course, the planet’s prevailing level of consciousness is direly related to the prevailing level of biological health. As one goes down, so does the other. It is the unintended conſequence of climate change.
Oh, how the mighty are fallen! This used to be a great country (relatively speaking) as recently as 1950, but it’s all over now, Baby Blue.
The rate at which stuff that goes on in this world is spinning out of control is rapidly accelerating. I must be getting old, if everything I see happening is wrong, wrong, wrong, and getting worſe. I take some comfort from the fa that most of my views align with those of the very young, who
are concerned about climate change, and consider it a real issue, unlike the endless parade of useless news that is just out there to distra us from what is really going on. Most young people, all over the world, want to see charges dropped from Julien Assange (and given a Congressional Medal of Honor, into the bargain), and are strenuously opposed to the genocide perpetrated by the State of Israel against the Palestinian people, who were living on the land before the Jews came along to take it from them.
Anytime I say things like this I have to repeat that I do not dislike Jews
~ it is the odious State of Israel and its leaders that I dislike, with their unreconstrued view of Zionism ~ very Old Testament, and repugnant to modern sensibilities. In the same way, I do not dislike the Russian people or the American people; I just dislike the wicked governments of same.
What else do we agree on, young people and I ? ~ the insurgents in Burma (calling itself Myanmar, these days), and the people of Ukraine, Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, all of whom want to be free. Tax the rich, especially billionaires, who can most easily afford it, and, in return, provide a Universal Basic Income for the rest of us (similar to my suggestion of Free Farms ~ I still like the free farm idea; it’s more fun, cheaper to implement, and an altogether better solution for people who run out of money). Tax Big Oil and any other criminal gang profiteering from the rape of the earth.
Settle international disputes by diplomacy instead of war. Free the herb, of course, but free LSD, too, and all the rest of the agents of change, while we are at it. Free people should be allowed to make their own choices about the way they want to live their lives [thank you, imi endrix]. Education should be the only legal recourse against anything with which one has a problem. If people want to tattoo their bodies, change their gender, abort
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their children, love someone whom other people consider inappropriate
[which is worse ~ loving someone of an “inappropriate” age, gender, or status, or not loving anyone at al ?], jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, or otherwise behave in ways at variance with the dominant paradigm, it is nobody’s business but those who are direly involved.
I think the voting age should be twenty-five. Anyone over that age shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
There is a reason why the large strand of human energy flows in the way that it does, but creative variations all around the central cord, in constant search of an alternative, are the energy of creative evolution, the endless quest for novelty. It’s the Meaning of Life, after all.
Ranked Choice Voting
June 2024
I have lost track of how many times I have urged the imperative need to institute Ranked Choice Voting. We saw the textbook illustration of the problem in eorge ush vs l ore vs alph ader. Vote for Ralph Nader and you throw the eleion to George Bush. Now we have a similar situation shaping up: Donald Trump is well past his sell-by date (and beginning to smell like old fish), but Joe Biden passed his date long ago. What to do?
Biden should have retired with honor after his first term and let some younger people carry the torch for a new generation; but, no, he had to miss his cue, and remain on the stage, perhaps seeking the masochist’s pleasure of being pelted with rotten tomatoes (and Old Stinky Fish, himself).
Increasingly there are calls for third party candidates to step forward, as many voters find that they just can’t stomach either Donald Trump or Joe Biden. If ever there were a time for a third party candidate, now is the time!
But any third party candidate stands no chance at all the way our system is currently set up. It is not clear which of the two front running candidates would benefit from any spoiler aion, but the whole program would be a horrible mess no matter what the outcome. Whoever gets eleed will be blamed for the spoiler effe confusion, and the whole speacle wil be a huge embarrassment for Democracy. With Ranked Choice Voting, one could vote for whatever third party one preferred, even more than one, if as many as five voting choices be allowed. In the present example, one could
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vote for four Alternatives before finally giving one’s fifth vote to Joe Biden, so that the results of voting would show the aual intentions of the People, down to the last vote.
With the freedom to vote for any alternative candidate without causing a political catastrophe (for example, the eleion of some maniac like Donald Trump, or some senile blockhead like Joe Biden ~ affy uck or owdy
oody?), then everyone could freely vote their first choice for the top bal ot spot. Within a couple of voting cycles, third parties would blossom and offer serious alternatives to the constipated parties of Business, As Usual. The evolution of new parties would interje some novelty into the system, which is the source of Change. To continue the metaphor, novelty and change is the cure for constipation. We need some change, so we need to provide an opening so that it can happen; let the magic in.
If only everyone would listen to me, I could straighten out the world’s problems very quickly. It would be even better if I didn’t have to keep repeating myself so much. When I make a declaration ex athedra, anyone might pick it up and run with it immediately. It’s all channeled direly from
oſmic onſciouſneſs, which is God.
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Start by planting more Trees. We need to restore the Ancient Forest if the human race is to have any chance of survival.
