Saturday, March 15, 2008

CIVILIZATION AND DERRICK JENSEN


I have finally finished 3 books by Derrick Jensen. It has taken about 5 times the amount of time I would normally spend reading these books because of the content. About 3 chapters at a time are all I could take at a sitting and I had to walk away from it for a while. I intend to discuss why this is so in a later post. The three books I will talk about are, “The Endgame, vol I and II”, and “A Language Older Than Words”.

For those of you have not read anything by Derrick Jensen, be warned. He is going to take apart all of your cherished beliefs concerning what we call civilization. He is extreme radicalism on this subject, although not the first to be so, but in our contemporary world, I think is the most prophetic, the most adamant and the most rational and compelling.

First, a bit of background on him. As a child, he claims that he was raised in a family of utterly extreme abuse, physically and emotionally by his father. His descriptions of what he remembers of this time are horrific. He evidently has spent most of his life learning to deal with it and to heal himself. He uses this base of experience to draw parallels to our modern civilization, which he does with extreme clarity. He appears to be a well educated and well read drawing on a multitude of references.

His main thesis is that our civilization is killing us, alienating us from each other, and killing the planet, and has been doing so for most of recorded history. He maintains that a very few societies remain that do not operate as our civilization does and serve as reminders of how we can live differently.

At the very beginning of the two books “Endgame”, Jensen puts down 20 premises listed below which he supports with a vengeance throughout the two books.

Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.

Premise two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources –gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.

Premise three: Our way of living –industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.

Premise four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.

Premise five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.

Premise six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of the degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.

Premise seven: The longer we wait for civilization to crash –or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down—the messier the crash will be, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.

Premise eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system. Another way to put this. Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, require the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landIbase.

Premise nine: Although there will clearly someday be far fewer humans than there at present, there are many ways this reduction in population may occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity which we choose to approach this transformation). Some will be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear Armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by a crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default of our culture. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence—required and caused by the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich—and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps long term shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively—if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it—the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.

Premise ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.

Premise eleven: From the beginning, this culture—civilization—has been a culture of occupation.

Premise twelve: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something—or their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks—and the poor may not. These “rich” claim they own land, and the “poor” are often denied the right to make the same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.

Premise thirteen: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.

Premise fourteen: From birth on—and probably from conception, but I’m not sure how I’d make the case—we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hat ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our bodies—to be poisoned.

Premise fifteen: Love does not imply pacifism.

Premise sixteen: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be a though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.

Premise seventeen: It is a mistake (more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from them will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans.

Premise eighteen: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.

Premise nineteen: The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.

Premise twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.

Modification of premise twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether those decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.

More modification of premise twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve.

Another modification of premise twenty: Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.

Another modification of premise twenty: If you dig to the heart of it—if there is any heart left—you will find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.

Because the premises took so much space, I will end this post with only a couple of comments.

There are a few of his arguments in the 2 books that I consider weak, even if true. His writings I find difficult to totally absorb. That he is passionate in what he presents to us is obvious from the very beginning. I find that I have to almost totally agree with his assertions and justifications. He is an author that I consider well worth the time to explore.

38 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have not read "Endgame I or II", but I have read a couple of other books by Jensen, and I concur that he is an important read. I especially liked, "The Culture of Make Believe." I don't think that it is possible, or even particularly beneficial to totally throw out civilization altogether when we find ourselves having to re-order our lives. What is going to be important is to be aware of the pitfalls that we want to avoid, and to attempt to establish a more harmonious culture that is rooted in a respect for the planet and rejects patriarchy and materialism and exploitation as the basis for societies. It's a tall order, for sure. I don't expect much change, though, until the population is reduced substantially and differing systems can evolve in different places depending on the natural conditions around them. Nothing is going to change as long as people are watching television, and thereby being programmed into the corporate mindset and while the majority is funneled into wage slavery. People at this point are too exhausted and stressed to be able to think or react to the injustice of their lives. Really, in some ways, being a wage earner is more pitiful than being a peasant. At least a peasant could still live on the land when times got tough. Up until the potato famine, anyway, when the land owners began to realize that it was cheaper to get rid of the peasants and hire laborers. That way, they could be controlled by money and there would be no responsibility to provide food or housing cradle to grave for the whole family.
I am beginning to realize now that the "normal" person today is overwhelmed by the stresses in his and her life. The expenses, the expectations, the sickness, the debility, the demands of this current culture are just crippling. I think there is much devastation and despair and it is all denied and glossed over by this twisted sense of what is normal portrayed on the tube that makes people feel like they are isolated in their pain. One out of every 140 children is autistic now. Just think of the ramifications just of that one statistic. What if it was one in twenty-five? We are just going to have to take it day by day and be as flexible and prepared and as kind as possible, I think. These coming years are going to be intense.

Anonymous said...

To the Trout Clan.Everyday I look forward to sitting around this fire.I used to read the blog this morphed from.All of you light up my life with your words of wisdom and joy,in the face of much bad fucking news.I try to learn from you.I bought a house in small town Saskatchewan,a beautiful yard for a garden.Paid for.Will move there in the summer after I have finished my cancer treatments.I will keep reading,I will return to the fire.I just wanted to thankyou all.Russell in Canada.

Anonymous said...

Awesome, Russell in Canada! You just made my day! It is wonderful to make the acquaintance of yet another part of our cyber tribe. We hold you in a bubble of healing thoughts and wish you all the best for a complete recovery. Your place sounds great. Keep sending more details. Eat lots of sprouts and veggies. Be good to yourself, Brother.

It's nice to know that our little blogsite is making ripples that we don't even know about. And, each of us makes ripples, and it grows..
aho

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

Russell from Canada,

Many thanks for announcing yourself, now you have taken the first step I hope that you will continue to walk alongside us. Saskatchewan sounds fine. If you believe what Michael Moore said in Bowling for Columbine, guns are not the problem, it is people with guns that are the problem. By and large, Canadians have a more responsible attitude to their use or non use. They also have a more responsible attitude to the plight of the Good ol’ Boys who have come to realise just what it is they are doing in Iraq and other such places and are making a flight for sanity. Anyway, I wish you all the best for your future and I hope you accept this cyber handshake from our little country many miles away.

Murph,

I have read Jensen’s “A Language Older than Words” and half of “The Culture of Make-believe”, which I had to temporarily put down because certain aspects of life played through, so I know where he is coming from. This must have been a hard post to write and an even harder one to know how to reply to because you have condensed I guess about 1500 pages of reasoned argument into twenty points. I am sure you realised the difficulty of your task at the outset. It is not practical for now to address the individual points but rather make a few overall comments.

In A language Older than Words, Jensen describes an African tribe which was organised from the bottom up. In fact there was only one layer with no hierarchy and they engaged in mutual help, spending about three hours a day on the business of sustainability. Since there was very little else to do with the rest of their time they spent it in socialising and pleasure. Europeans who discovered them were appalled at their ungodly indolence and immediately set about putting their thinking to rights.
Since it was a case of civilisation meets savagery the Europeans never questioned which of them had the right of the situation. Why should they. In a normal eight hour day, if it takes only three hours for the business of living then there were five hours which could be creamed off the top for their mentors benefit. So the ungodly demurred to the cultured and finished up with hierarchy and broken dreams.

Since I have started this reply, I have looked up the etymology of two similar words to see if there is any commonality between them. The words are ‘Cult’ and ‘Culture’. Cult comes from the Latin cultus which is itself derived from an earlier word colere which has a dual meaning of to ‘till’ the land and also to worship. You can see that in earlier pagan type cultures that when the land is tilled there may have been acts of preying for a good harvest and the two things have become intermingled. Cult has now come more to emphasise homage rites and ceremonies of any belief system. Culture comes from the Latin culture and surprise, surprise cultus which is the act of tilling; husbandry; farming; breeding and rearing. It has later come to mean a state of intellectual and artistic development. The word Cultivate also comes from similar roots. So tilling is the link. Cult is derived from the more ritual and divine aspect and culture from the more practical aspects with the possibility of the intellectual and artistic sides forming a circle back to cult.

I would like to propose a more modern area of commonality, that of industriousness. In the last 200 years, say, there has been a move away from agriculture towards mechanised production and this has been incorporated into our culture. The march was relentless until we got to the 70’s / 80’s when we were told that with automation; robotics; CNC machines and early computers, societies production needs could be fulfilled in a fraction of the time. The leisure society was just around the corner and was about to explode on us. Just like some larger firms hold classes for people about to retire to teach them how not to die when they no longer have to go to work so society would need to attend courses on how to fill all this free time we were all going to have. Any local authority worth its salt could not be seen to not be building a leisure centre. Well I am not holding my breath any more. In a similar way to the ungodly Africans, we were found something to occupy our time without the need for us to enjoy ourselves.

For some people the attraction of a cult is that by and large, they are esoteric organisations. Not all special interest groups are cults but many cults are thought to be of special interest. Many cults recruit from easily influenced loners who do not integrate well and who have a desire to be in with the in crowd. There is usually a lot of carrot to begin with but once the initiate has been drawn in and is on the hook, they may have been given a phoney title or rank to make them feel important; then the stick gradually takes over. Their thinking on certain aspects may not quite be correct and they are recommended to put themselves through certain expensive courses so that they can be up to speed with their associates. One thing all cults have in common is their need to keep their people busy. So busy they hardly have time to think, no time for family and friends outside the group and certainly no time to raise questions. Too many questions may make the tangled web start to unravel. It is much better to head off awkward questions by telling the tyro they are not up to standard and selling them expensive training.

Many of us do not realise that, whilst oil lasts at least (and even beyond), the leisure society is readily achievable. We are being kept busy bees in the hive doing many important but unnecessary tasks, for if we are allowed the luxury of thinking time we may come to realise that our culture is the biggest cult of all.

Anonymous said...

You are right, Sir! It's a cult of flag-waving, banker dick sucking, Prozak medicated, suburban commuting wage slave zombies zoning out on their couches in front of the boob tube after eating dinner out of a bag. Future anthropologists won't believe it! And, I'm getting deluged with e-mail from neighbors telling me the sky is gonna fill with legions of angels any minute that are going to whisk us into heaven. US, a cult?? HAHAHAHA!!

You'll have to excuse me, Murph and I were up much of the night reading updates on cryptogon and watching the financial markets tank and Tibet being rolled over by the Chinese. Not good.
Now, there's a benign, stable culture that existed in harmony with the land for a long time and remained at peace for hundreds of years...until the Chinese moved in an screwed it all up. Light a candle for those red and saffron robed monks.
Oh, yeah, Bush, you prick. We'll jump right in and endorse the criminal element in Kosovo that wants to be independent of Russia, since they are involved with oil and drugs, but ignore the Tibetans who are the conscience of the world, but have no friggin' oil, so to hell with them. GAAAAAAH!!

Anonymous said...

russell... you are most welcome here and it is our honor to be graced with your presence and comments. i wish you the best with your treatments and a synergistic transition to your new home this summer. may be just in time too.

on jensen... it sounds like somewhere along the way in his recovery work he's gained some understandings about the idea of what some call tuff love. thus premise 15. most of what is interpreted today as love is, to borrow the words of john prine, a portrait of guilt hung on the wall.

i dunno, the words civilization and civilized are pretty broad terms. but they are essentially what people make of them and not the other way round. the problem with civilization is not civilization, its people. so i'll stay away from comment on that part of it unless his view is as murph implies... that its a causal factor. in which case, i strongly disagree. far more advance civilations have walked this earth and disappeared. but it was not because they were civilized.

as for the rest though, his writings are new to me but what he's saying is not. other than the way he presents civilization, i pretty much agree with his 20 points. especially 10, 13 and 14.

10... there are reasons.

13.... power does not have to rule by force. it is a matter of choice on the part of the power holder IF the holder has the power that comes from the freedom to make a choice to NOT over-power another. unfortunately most do not. they are running on their imprints. which is not to say we/they are helpless or not responsible to hold themselves accountable.

14... hatred is the state of an emotion. its not the emotion that is the prob... it is the state it is in as a result of not evolving its conditioning and what it is holding. to think that compassion, real, felt compassion, cannot be born out of hatred is to judge it in similar fashion that we judge all our other so-called unacceptable emotions. and so it is with heart presence. out of compassion comes that thing mf talks about all the time... awe.

i've said it before and i'll say it again... the condition of the human condition can change. it can be healed. in fact, must be healed if life is to go on and be sustained. universe has provided a way for emotions to evolve. i got this understanding from a book some 18 years ago and have found over the years the process to work.

more stuff from the same source came along the way. the prob of population continues to come up as a major obstacle that nobody knows what to do with other than apply some form of eugenics. there is much from this source about the causal factors which, in a word, amounts to the dynamic of fragmentation. along with what is being done about it by universe now.

the author has a new book published within the last year that speaks to the problem you have murph with how to make the case re "probably from conception on" in premise 14.... http://www.rightuseofwill.com/feelings-matter.htm lotta science evidence supporting this now so y'all might want to check it out. all you mothers who really are in touch with that mother instinct have a runnin start on what the woman is saying... p

mrs p said...

Russell in Canada...Bravo. Your place sounds beautiful. Together we make the farm. Reinforce all your good thoughts and moves and energize your true self with the power within you.

Freeacre, you always make me smile big, I'm lighting candles for the monks and loving your cosmic humor, (bush-prik) took the words from my mouth!

On the planet of the apes are we that voice in our heads?, I say no and our real divine selves will thrive long after the already dead ones,(bushco)apes fall and are falling. If not in our bodies, we'll at least be the real us, our true spirit selves, watching and dancing around and away from the poison.

Anonymous said...

Russell my brother, we at this fire are so glad to have you come sit with us and jaw some,like others have said the more voices the clearer the vision, and right now we could use all the fucking vision thats available and thats a big amen. so good to have you and wish you well with your new life, we love you.

murph, i do not know what to say about the post, my ancestors have warned us about all of this and foretold that it would happen for all those reasons and the giant of giants one is when we lost our connection to mother earth, i mean what else is there? this IS the source of all, i mean what cha gonna eat, words of men? thats yummy and quite filling i guess. personally its beyond me so i talked with bug and asked her this,

has the brain been so beaten up by society that it has ( and this is insane i think ) actually developed the capacity to complely shut off that portion that has been beaten up ?, she says no,it has not, and furthermore there is no portion of the brain that has not been beaten up to begin with .then how do people function i ask and she just looks at me and rolls her eyes and says what function? so i look up function in the dictionary and holy shit what a can of worms that was.

functionalism look up in wiktionary

functionalism |ˈfə ng k sh ənlˌizəm|
noun
belief in or stress on the practical application of a thing, in particular
• (in the arts) the doctrine that the design of an object should be determined solely by its function, rather than by aesthetic considerations, and that anything practically designed will be inherently beautiful.
• (in the social sciences) the theory that all aspects of a society serve a function and are necessary for the survival of that society.
• (in the philosophy of mind) the theory that mental states can be sufficiently defined by their cause, their effect on other mental states, and their effect on behavior.
DERIVATIVES
functionalist |ˈfəŋ(k)ʃənləst| |ˈfəŋ(k)ʃnələst| noun &
this is when i started puking, bug holds my head and hands me a wet towel the size of a postage stamp,( she's one inch big folks),where do these people live for gods sake?
i'm sure that this definition was hatched by some fucking moron that never had to wipe their own ass and drank a lot of pruno, ( prison stuff,yes i've seen it but could not work up the stress enough to drink something that smelled like an outhouse and moved even when it was setting still!!!) stoney knows something of this i'm sure.

shit! ok now how about 'functionality decomposition'

Functional decomposition
Functional decomposition refers broadly to the process of resolving a functional relationship into its constituent parts in such a way that the original function can be reconstructed (i.e., recomposed) from those parts by function composition. In general, this process of decomposition is undertaken either for the purpose of gaining insight into the identity of the constituent components (which may reflect individual physical processes of interest, for example), or for the purpose of obtaining a compressed representation of the global function, a task which is feasible only when the constituent processes possess a certain level of modularity (i.e., independence or non-interaction).
this fucking shit gives me a headache just to read and no one would ever mistake me for someone that would even remotely understand what the fuck it means. jesus h fucking christ, as if this will bring some sanity to this pitiful raped out momma of ours.;
so yes p, the women should have an easier time then the guys in bringing light to the world as far as the denial of that which is,... i had a person ask me the other day, they said what do you mean 'the what is' i told her what bug told me once , the what is is what is , its what is actual they said what do you mean by that ? i laughed, same thing i said to bug, i says its what you perceive with your senses, in the material world, and what is actually going on in your mind in the mental sense, and that is what is being referred to, to see clearly what is taking place within the confines of the brain,... its funny just as this is being written my son walks through the door and sees a receipt for a book bought with the idea of growing mushrooms again, anyway it happens but is not necessary that ingesting the sacred mushroom sometimes creates a doorway to that place where the workings of the mind are clearly revealed but thats for another time and so on unless anyone is interested in this subject,
anyway back to it, in reality the mind is a closed fearful conglomeration of odds and ends and pieces of this and pieces of that and a place that is about as wonderful to examine as a basket of regurgitated afterbirth, don't ask me.
sw'samftd? and what does it have to do with the post? o yeah, the common denominator is the fact to what p refers to as denial, this is easy to say and in a popularity contest would rank last,but what else is there, if the self is unexamined what basis do we have to even behave, well thats easy as the post says, we're trained like a bunch of fucking monkeys and that training is based on control by turning an individual into an entity that hates its own existence, thats the underneath driver, the outside in order to live with this unspeakable horror that is us, is given some room to breath by shrouding it in a disguise of which being native american is a very thin vale because its a recent compulsory face of make believe. and it doesn't take very much firewater to bring out that face behind the yesummasterbater, anything you say master,the blacks know this but have had the privilege of serving the white cocksuckers longer then the natives, but also just look at the whites that came here on the boats, they were indentured or owned or somehow made to slave for what? at least a lot of them, so its just not the red people or the black people or the yellow people or the purple people eaters, its every downtrodden son of a mother that ever wore a yoke and kissed the ass of the hand that allowed you to live, even though you lived with the worms.so i say when the shit comes down we eat the rich like the old hippies say long ago and the young ones standing in the wings of those days parroting among them selfs, personally i would rather eat a rats ass , at least it would not be contaminated with bull shit. have you ever seen the aura of someone with to much money? its not a pleasant sight, thats for sure.

Simon says, this is quote.
'The fact then that many complex systems have a nearly decomposable, hierarchic structure is a major facilitating factor enabling us to understand, describe, and even "see" such systems and their parts. Or perhaps the proposition should be put the other way round. If there are important systems in the world that are complex without being hierarchic, they may to a considerable extent escape our observation and understanding. Analysis of their behavior would involve such detailed knowledge and calculations of the interactions of their elementary parts that it would be beyond our capacities of memory or computation.'
i cannot take one more minute of this kind of bullshit, the bug and i are out of here, thank you SATS for your great input, also rockpicker, mrs p and the lovely most beautiful freeacre.
o shit, rockpicker, hot springs is loaded with folks that are 'flue victims' bullshit i have been sick for months with something that will just not go away and am trying to just live with it. w'samftd?
aho

mf&b

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

Mf, you said, “as the post says, we're trained like a bunch of fucking monkeys and that training is based on control by turning an individual into an entity that hates its own existence, that’s the underneath driver, the outside in order to live with this unspeakable horror that is us”.

You been chattin with Marilyn Manson by chance? You see, this entity that hates its own existence and the unspeakable horror that is us - well we are kind of upset that we made you feel like that but don’t worry, it can be all sorted out with this miracle cure for the incredible introductory price of…….

As for most of the rest, well this is what happens when you give people too much time to think. Their fertile minds come up with solutions to the unfathomable and being good citizens they pass it on to eager learners and become eminent in the process. Trouble is they need a university education to understand it and those who have attended need compensating for the effort they have put into the learning process so they can charge outrageous prices for talking to us in language we don’t understand and by so doing become eminent themselves in the process. You know, those Europeans certainly knew a thing or two. By taking our free time away they certainly delayed the onset of that which you speak.

I saw a national Geographic programme the other day. Astronomers and others have found life forms, organisms really, in the most unlikely places. These include the moons of Saturn at minus 200C; methane consuming organisms in the soup of Venus and even here on Earth there are new life forms developing in sulphuric acid pits and in the lagoons of Chernobyl. God knows what will crawl out of the slime in a few years time. All I can say is that nature is a tryer but if we are the high point of what it can come up with then it really must learn to better next time.

Talking about tryers, I have been watching a lady blackbird trying to detach a frond of dormant passion flower which was growing over the roof of my garage for her new nest. That is the chosen strand and no other will do. If she pulls much harder she will have the whole plant up by the roots.

Anonymous said...

In view of what's happening to the US economy, this video is a must see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=4sZCNlPwG8o&NR=1

-rp

stoney13 said...

Montanna Freeman,



Industrial Civilization- Noun- The philosophy which puts forth the idea that living in a box of shit is highest of all pleasures, and the grandest of all ideals! And that mankind must be forever lost in the endeavor of changing all of Nature and The Earth itself into more boxes of shit!

Pruno- Noun- The only known truly organic compound which can pass completely through the human digestive tact, and be thouroughly unchanged in color, viscosity, appearance, and odor!

Yep! Tried it once along! With it's bussom buddy "Raisin Jack". Kinda gave up drinkin' after that untill my release date!

On the bright side, I learned of the best cure yet for constipation, but it's only for the fleet of foot, and stern of pupose!

Russell in Canada,

Glad you stopped by, and picked up the talking stick! Nice to hear from our neighbors in the "Great White North"!

Hope you get over your case of "Industrial Disease" (cause that's what cancer REALLY is!).

Smoke you a nice fat joint of that "BC Bud" after the chemotherapy sessions! Good for what ails you!

Got the latest live CD from "Rush" cranked up in the headphones while I type this! Damn good tunes! Guess Geddy and the boys had plenty of time to practice on those freeze-your-dick-to-a-tree-pissin' days up there!

MUrph

Ya called it again! I don't even need new books to tell me that civilazation is like a parasite on The Earth! AQll I need is the old ones! There has never, EVER been a civilization that didn't finally crash in the end! Be they big, or be they small, when the resources run out, it all turns to shit, and Mankind always goes back to the lose tribal societies that actually DO work! Been that way for thousands, and thousands of years!

Anonymous said...

Stoney,

Those people that have figured out that there is trouble right here in River City don't need the books to tell them so, you are right. The problem, from Jensin's position, is that so few get the message and the ones that get the message can't deal with it. When I even hint of this, most people have the knee jerk reaction of bull shit and immediately launch into defensive points. After all, what you are saying to people is that everything they thought was good and true about this civilization is wrong, evil, manipulative, and built around destruction and killing. All of the stuff we take for granted is based on that. The discovery of the energy contained in hydrocarbons made possible what we have ended up with, an extreme version of past social groups that didn't have the energy link to go farther than they did. Can you imagine what the Romans would have done if they had had this energy link?

I have to give Jensen credit for having the balls to put so much of this kind of perspective out there. It is a finger in the face of the elites and those that support them, which of course all of us have done at some period in our lives, and in may ways, still do. Standing before an accuser of this kind of condemnation is going to cause a great mental discord, an intellectual and emotional discord in most people. And, as Jensen asks over and over, when you get it, what are you going to do about it? All of us that do get it and understand what this is about, can rationalize our inaction all over the place. Interestingly, so does Jensen and he even points it out.

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

Sail on o ship of state
Sail on o nation strong and great
Humanity with all its fears
With all the hopes of future years
Is hanging breathless on thy fate.

Well probably not but after 294 days little Belgium now has a government. People were beginning to wonder if since we had got through nearly a year without one whether we needed one at all. I suspect you can guess my opinion on this one. Still, we are back on track and the king can breathe easily. I don’t know any details yet or the fate of the three towns, I should expect that after this time the agreement is going to be complex. I will let you know when I learn more.

I have a moral dilemma and before anyone suggests the Church of England, it is one that involves your country. You know that if ever I could get the wherewithal together, my secret ambition is to visit you guys and get to know a little bit of the land where you live. Now the DHS has plans to finger print me and any other visitors on exiting your country. It is most likely the next step in Operation End Game. I have never been accused of any criminal activity and would therefore object to such treatment just so they can play king over their database.

Let me tell you what is written on the inside cover of my UK passport, just below the Queen’s crest.

“Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary”.

I will wager your passport doesn’t say anything like that.

Not letting anyone out of the USA before they are fingerprinted is both let and hindrance. Either a passport is a legal document or it is a souvenir. If it is a legal document then insisting on fingerprinting could spark an international incident assuming one was not rendered first.

Palooka's Revenge said...

interesting piece of trivial jabber just came from cnbc. supposedly bear stearns has been publishing their daily economic report without missing a lick. and with no mention of their own recent plight. until today when apparently the only thing it said was.... other than that mrs lincoln, how was the play?

RAS said...

I don't know how many of you have heard about the controversy surrounding Obama's former pastor (I'm doing my best to ignore the political news), but you should really look up the clips of that guy's sermons. I was rolling. Because he was telling the truth. Google Jeremiah Wright and see some of them. I never thought I'd hear NPR broadcasting a clip of anything where the subject was "God Damn America".

Some of my friends are upset with me because I skipped the peace rally of the 5th anniversary of the war today. I've never seen much point in those things; you drive in a fossil-fueled vehicle to protest a war that's about getting more fuel for said vehicle. Um, hello? I think I made more of an impact by buying up 100 pounds of pet food today. (Hey, the four leggeds have to eat too and with prices going to the moon i figured i'd stock up.)

I've been fighting depression lately. Things seem to be going downhille so fast. I know what's coming and that it has to happen. But that doesn't make it any easier to bear. That's where I've been instead of being on here. My spirit guide said 'let it be' (essentially) but for someone who is a healer by nature, that's rather hard.

Anonymous said...

sats, my brother, the reference i was making to was to most of mankind in the wider scheme of things, personally it looks like not many have escaped the wrath of being told what to do or die and this is going to impact regardless of who or where a person comes from, possibly, i look inside and i see that the natural existence of a human being is one of acceptance and this equates at least to me the state of what i would term love..
the yoke of compulsion being derived from the gun of another,whether from an actual gun or an actual bible (which is far more deadly because it kills many times in the same life time until finally the organism can die no more and dies.) no what i mean?
this imbalance which almost seems genetic to me and is used as the guide and pretty much sole expression of human behavior is the most dastardly of evil expression and contains within it the mess of our exaggerated sense of self importance which underneath is what i term as the driver, and just to stay alive as a walker rather then a boxer,we develop a disguise, in order to face and be accepted by those around us,( a good example),... one of my brothers whose career involved the challenge of opening the safes of people he considered having to much money while in one of his many experiences as an inmate at a penal colony had at one point to be surrounded by a gang of white supremacists and was told in no uncertain terms that in order to survive there he had to assume the identity of belonging to a gang of cut throat nasty black people hating thugs, well this is what i am talking about on a undeniable easily recognized level, and that to me translates to all of society in one way or another, society is a vast soul sucking killing machine, removing in the space of a very short number of years all traces of what a real human being would look like if left untouched by us, the disease, or the carriers if thats more palatable,,,, it is to me,somewhat, because who could live with the fact that we are the perpetraters that have the perhaps,mandatory job classification of passing on the sins of the father?
my dream spirit says that maybe the stuff that emanates from within the depths of human consciousness is just to enormous and takes to much energy to penetrate to its origin ,that place where un-manifest becomes manifest and this includes all of human endeavor and behavior, also that any form of conformity is psychological death and the end of freedom of the spirit.
personally i think she may be right, maybe not, only the shadow knows and he remains silent.
so i hope i have made myself clear on this immense topic,probably not,but i no way inferred that i felt any form of self-pity as being more privileged then anyone else to get more then my fair share of physical and mental abuse from the wonderfulness of society. we all live in the same motherfucking cage as near as i can tell, some are just a little more curious and thereby become a little more aware of the workings of it,.
i certainly have found out though that if we do not examine our roots we have not one chance in hell of ever being that which we really are, children of a creator which gave at least to some the determination to understand something that is so vital that only the ending of humanity would bring it to the surface, and i think it is taking place within this cyber communion. i mean to 'me' a long in the tooth seeker, conditions are such that i just can't wrap my mind around which mother fucking tie to wear today and will the rest of the cubelets think that its just the wrong color for thursday.?
holy shit!!

fuck scotty, have you been slacking on taking your Ginkto Biloba? press the button and beam out sorry asses up!!! ,,you old fuck! this place is one motherfucking mess.

this also brings to mind just what is a good person? i mean what determines this? is it a matter of definition? i don't think so,is bush a good person? is it a result of environmental influence,of course,some,but not completely, it appears, or, how to know that a person is a good person without having read one single book about what a good person constitutes, to me it seems to be a matter mostly of the absence of self. for while in that state one is unconcerned about the values of obedience one way or another, the price of love is love and all the ways that it may manifest and the sweetness that is its underlying driver, or the absolute absence of a driver at all, other then seeing clearly that the world outside as no different then the world inside and to go from there is there really such a thing as outside or inside?
funny huh? and to go farther then that is there such a thing as your thoughts or my thoughts? or are thoughts just a big bag of invisible energy forms that circle the planet and are picked from according to the current interest of the so called individual? ideas have occurred simultaneously on different parts of the world it would seem so what does this actually say?.. that the bag is not only full but overflowing,?.and if the spirit is nothing more then a servant put in place by the same energy that created us,? as an evolutionary step to spread our seed on out into the universe,? through some crusty assed space ship run on banana peels? i don't think so.
personally i feel that human consciencous ,at least for a few or perhaps many, is set up for the evolutionary path to bring us all together on a level that according to what it looks like now in regard to human frailings is something of a joke, wouldn't you agree? so what would this mean, and is it something that might even to the logical mind that has assumed so much importance see this as a worthwhile endevour? to leave behind that which has held us in prison for so long ? and to realize that that prison is one of our own making? and that there is not one solitary outside agency that will GIVE this freedom to us except our-selfs? and the kicker is this, the the self is the drug that keeps us in this prison? what a fucking delimma what?
dammed if you do dammed if you don't? ok what about this, the self will full fill its role by nothing more then figuring out that that is what it is , a role. and then letting it go , Catch and Release. now behind the curtin of illusion which is the ego,..what is there? ah now we are getting somewhere.
who knows, bug says that there is no way to know except to go there, where ever there is. sound impossible?....well just look at all the 'impossible' things that are now taken for granted , the same energy that brought all the wonderful mother earth destroying bullshit into existence is that very same energy, only on a different level ... sort of, at the core of that insane byproduct of a mind bent gone around the bend with desire for the whatever, is also the desire to manifest a world with out the disruptive entertainment that is the state of todays mind. personally i believe that such a state of mind is desirable over the useless bullshit that it is emersed in today.
what this means to me is the letting go of all the unnecessary mind habits as they surface and allowing the 'deepness?' to seep into ones being. bug says in this 'deepness' lies the gateway to that which is our next step and that it is a world without the migraine of todays pill box.
i am sorry about the condition of this comment but i flunked english completely,however these words have meaning to this one even though they are trashily strung together. sometimes i wonder why langosta even hangs out with me.

your brother in peace and harmony'
our blood swims together in the pool of life
the end. but wait!! ok, fuck it, 'the beginning'
aho
mf&b


ps ras your as hopeless as i am, i have gone through almost 160 lbs. of sunflower seeds for the birds and the deer that think my backyard is the village soup kitchen. and you know for the life of me i can't think of a single thing that makes such a difference to me, i am of the nature that i try to take care of what is within my own personal vision and beyond that is someone else's department. your spirit guide says 'let it be' so does mine. your healing energy is bright no matter which direction it it finds itself taking.( : hugs.
aho

Anonymous said...

fuck i am so sorry upon reading that last comment that a person could grow a beard while reading it.
will be more aware of this in the future,
thank all of you to allow such a more then likely useless sack of words,but it just seems like i have to say them.
mf

Anonymous said...

Montana,

That is what makes this blog unique out of so many, the ability to put into words what we are thinking and send it out. As one fellow I work with put it, "I put out the thoughts and you are free to throw darts at it, perhaps we both shall learn then". I know that I often have a real problem in putting into words to write what is going through my mind, to project the emotional content that rides the same train as the rational. Because we do not have complete empathy and words are only an approximation of our complete thought and because language itself is never accurate, the best we can hope for is presenting a glimmer or our inner thoughts and an even smaller glimmer being understood. We do the best we can, some are just a bit more skilled in the presentation.

Anonymous said...

We just had another pitched battle with the county commissioners trying to strong arm us into putting in nitrate reducing systems in our yards that are huge, ridiculously expensive, and are unsustainable. The news guy estimated that there were 400 people there, but it was more like 750. Anyway, if anyone would like to view the good people of La Pine, you can go here:

http://www.kohd.com/article.aspx?id=
24918§ion=news&contentCat=local

It was a really great meeting, in terms of citizen participation. Every 3 minutes for 3 hours, people got up and gave testimony.

The rural people's concern and respect and affection for each other was especially evident. The solidarity against the county staff was unswerving. I think the commissioners just don't know what to do now that we are a really powerful, united force.

Anonymous said...

Ras, I'm with you on the depression. I know it's ignorant and selfish to let myself get there but this cliff we're falling off has a lot of bumps and hard knocks on the way down and they're just beginning. It's hard to fall down this hill alone. I think about the animals everytime I go buy the food , wondering what's in it and how much more pricey it will become and if I should be figuring out a way to create a recipe of my own. In my case it's 2cats, they don't eat as much as dogs but still, they eat. And I still don't have a good water storage solution. There's so much to do right now for all of us, I feel like we're getting down to the bare bones of the situation. Here we go planet of the apes real soon. I have to admit it's depressing and a bit freaky nervous, etc. Mrsp

Anonymous said...

mf & b: Even if we get a little expansive sometimes...we're dealing with a lot of madness in this life, (era) and one has to sort these things out carefully as you do, your english is allright with me! Mrsp

Anonymous said...

Freeacre, you guys sound like you've been in the trenches. Bless you and your neighbors for organizing and showing up! United we stand. Mrsp

Anonymous said...

You know, I get so sick of these financial predictions and turns of events. Every day, if seems, the financial headlines and stories get more and more grim. The financial world order is in the toilet. Gold is going to go thru the roof. The linguistics say that the end is near, etc. etc. And then some teasers look like it is all coming down just as predicted. And then the plunge protection team, or the Fed, or the Saudis, or the Tooth Fairy or some such shit steps in and it all turns around. The market goes straight up, the gold dips, but the headlines still don't miss a negative beat."Financial Armageddon" is at hand - except it isn't.
I think I am watching this thing too closely. It's like watching the grass grow. Since we pretty much already live a post collapse lifestyle, it will be redundant when it finally happens, probably.
It's like when you are driving to Vegas and you get so fucking bored that you WISH an alien ship would beam you up and give you a probe, just to break the frigging monotony.
So, I think it is a good thing to look within and share feelings and images, and whatever. I enjoy riding the waves of your thoughts, Montana, even if I don't totally get each one. So, carry on, Dude. If we didn't share what's going on inside, we'd be stuck with the same old outside stuff.

Happy Spring, by the way.
aho

Anonymous said...

You know this fellow Derrick Jensen sounds like a man after my own heart, I may just have to get his books and read up on him and his thoughts a little more in depth.

It gets to me knowing full well that this species we call human beings is capable of so much positive, possess so much creative energy and capabilities beyond any other species and has potential that we have yet to fully realize but through our greed and never ceasing need for domination over everything we are on the brink of self destruction in many ways.

Personally I think the planet could use a huge human power flush and those that remain hopefully will learn the lessons of their recent ancestors and re build in better fashion. There are days when I find it very difficult to like the human species when I see what we have done not only to ourselves but this planet as well.

Sigh ….having one of those days

Ely

Anonymous said...

Ely,

lol yup, one of those days. I very much agree with you. It sounds like you would get off on Jensen. Although, his criticism is not of humans in and of itself, but rather what we call civilization. But, by extension, humans make up civilization, so maybe we are just hardwired to self destruct after some time.

Thanks for your comment.

RAS said...

Freeacre,
According to JMG (the archdruid) this is what catabolic collapse looks like -down a lot, up a little, down some more.
I'm not sure if I wholly agree with his theory or not, but I do think we are watching the collapse unfold before our eyes. Generally speaking, collapse is a process, not an event.

An event which may accelerate this fall if the harvest is bad, which it looks to be. Has anyone seen the map on survival acres of the wheat rust? I wish I could afford a costco membership.

It's a beautiful day here in Alabama. I'm going to go play in the sun.

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

Mf

I spent three hours yesterday replying to your piece, put a small attachment on the end and the main bit including the saves went floating off and just left me with the attachment. Hey ho, I don’t know if I have the energy to reconstruct it. Anyway keep speaking from the heart. We are always listening and here to help.

Ely

Good to see your name back again, I for one have missed your thought line, hope you can drop by some more.

So far as semi stabilized decline mentioned by Freeacre is concerned. The GEAB people see it as a spiral where apparent stability in one country is associated with decline in a different part of the world but with a gradual overall worsening of the situation. The bad news so far as it affects me is that they predict world wide pension funds will be off the rails by the end of 2008. Deep Sigh!

http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-15-is-available!-LEAP-E2020-Alert-The-US-economy-went-into-recession-in-the-first-quarter-of-2007_a644.html

Anonymous said...

We're somewhat distracted right now because my son and his girlfriend are visiting from Tahoe for Easter. Very nice to see them! We just got back from visiting the place that manufactures the tipis (Nomadic Tipi website) that made all the tipis in "Dances With Wolves." So Cool! It's out in the boondocks off of several dirt roads overlooking a canyon without even any power lines for miles and miles. We just may get a 22' ceremonial tipi with a trout painted on it for our clan. That would be cool, eh?

Anonymous said...

Murph

Thanks for your comment. I get sad and frustrated when I think in terms of civilization if only for the reasons that civilization is not all that civil. I am not even certain I understand anymore what it is that we as a human species determine to be the example of being civil. I question as to whether or not I myself as a human can be considered civil? Are those I associate with civil? Is the society I live within a civil society? These are questions I pose to myself and some days the answers really do escape me…

Belgium

Thank you for your kind thoughts. I may not leave behind a word trail most times I do visit but I can assure you that I do follow along with the campfire conversations. For the longest time I had to access the blog through a proxi server and doing so I am not often able to write any comments. I read the postings and follow along with the conversations and take it all in like a cool drink of water on a hot day. These are the things I like about this particular blog. I read a few other blogs but it is not often I can say that they keep it along a civil (lol) discussion and at certain points they cease to actually add anything of value. It gives me a bit of hope knowing that there are people out there who do believe that this is a sacred planet we live on and that we as humans are but visitors in this place though we often do not act as such.

There are many thoughts that flow through my mind from time to time and it is a certain comfort that should I feel the urge I have this place to air them. For the most part though I am fully content to sit near the fire and just listen to the words that often come with implied wisdom.

Ely

Palooka's Revenge said...

the derivatives monster....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/
main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/03/23/ccfed123.xml

if anyone is thinking of buying silver from a broker i suggest you consider doing it soon. especially if its a buy under 10G's minimum. from jason hommel late last week as silver was falling through the floor...

> Three more major silver dealers are reported to be out of silver today: The U.S. Mint, Kitco, and Monex. This, on top of the major dealers yesterday, Amark, Perth Mint, CNI Numismatics, and APMEX, all reported sold out. Further, nearly all of Canada is reported to be out of silver, from Vancouver to Toronto.
>
> This is unprecedented, and is a perfect case of market manipulation in the paper market at COMEX and other futures exchanges to see silver prices continue to drop down to below $17/oz. today. Paper promises can be created endlessly, but real silver cannot.
******************

add to that this that someone sent to jim sinclair...
To: Jim Sincliar
I just went to make a routine on-line transfer of funds from my savings account to my checking account this morning and got this notice. It is the first time I have ever seen a notice like this. I might be wrong, but it looks like the federal "regulators" have come up with another rule to try to limit more runs on banks. They must really be getting nervous.

From my online banking account this morning:

"We are required by federal regulations to monitor savings and money market account withdrawal activity and limit third-party or pre-authorized transfers to six per month. This includes transfers made by personal computer (online), telephone, or from overdraft protection. Of these six transfers allowed per month, no more than three may be made by check or draft. If transactions continue to exceed these limits, the law requires us to close savings accounts and transfer funds to a non-interest bearing checking account. Please note that money market accounts will not be closed, but converted to a non-interest bearing checking account and a fee may be charged when transaction limits are exceeded.

If you have any questions, please call the 1-800 telephone number printed on your banking statement."

All I can say is... May [we all] live in interesting times.

All the best,
CIGA Buz

and all i can say is circle the wagons. we're under attack!!

Anonymous said...

Palooka,

Indeed we are under attack, but realization that we have been for over 100 yrs now is even more discouraging for the public to swallow it wholesale. It's just more obvious now as the elites don't even try and hide it. As I see it the elites figure they got it all locked up and they no longer are going to have to listen to the great unwashed masses, or even pretend to listen.

Anonymous said...

Murph, Freeacre, etc.,

I've only posted 2 times, but I've read every word (and Cyclone's, as well).

In Chicago again after 10 years in Southern Illinois (if they were granted statehood, they would enter the nation as a slave state).

As you can well imagine, I see the tremendously congested South Side of Chicago as a better bet than a town where the Confederate flag can still be seen.

But I need a lot of advice/suggestions. I recently received Irish citizenship, thanks to my father's parents, Irish immigrants, who died twenty years before I was born.

My question is like that Clash song: "Should I Stay Or Should I Go"?

Single, 2 older cats...50.

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

Sociology,

This is really a case of calling them as you see them, only you can answer that question. It is hard to leave a beautiful land and the things that are familiar to you but since you asked directly I would waste no time at all in getting my ass as far away as I could from where you are now. I will not be that long now before Mayor Daily’s men spring out of the closet again with predictable results. After the big city Ireland will be hard to come to terms with where nothing much happens from year to year and your one horsepower transport knows its own way back from the bar. Heaven or hell, only you can say. Nothing lasts forever, not even in this backwater country but you will have a lot more make your mind up time to see how events are playing out across the world. And the Guinness is good too.

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

Motherland
(Natalie Merchant)

Where in the hell can you go far from the things that you know
Far from the sprawl of concrete that keeps crawling its way about 1,000 miles a day?
Take one last look behind, commit this to memory and mind.
Don't miss this wasteland, this terrible place.
When you leave keep your heart off your sleeve.

Motherland cradle me, close my eyes, lullaby me to sleep.
Keep me safe, lie with me, stay beside me don't go.
Don't you go.
Oh, my five & dime queen tell me what have you seen?
The lust and the avarice, the bottomless, cavernous greed, is that what you see?

Motherland cradle me, close my eyes, lullaby me to sleep.
Keep me safe, lie with me, stay beside me don't go.

It's your happiness I want most of all and for that I'd do anything at all, oh mercy me!
If you want the best of it or the most of all, if there's anything I can do at all.

Now come on shot gun bride what makes me envy your life?
Faceless, nameless, innocent, blameless and free, what's that like to be?

Motherland cradle me, close my eyes, lullaby me to sleep.
Keep me safe, lie with me, stay beside me don't go.
Don't go.

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

Freeacre,

Nomadic Tepee’s have a really beautiful web site. I found them some time ago and started making paper tepee’s from their design. This one really does work and the tepee leans a little backwards like it is supposed to and unlike some other designs you find on the web. One thing I have learned about tepees is that because of their design, in a hurricane, the wind forces the poles down into the ground and not up into the air as you would expect.
There are two small points I think you should consider. Firstly the ceremonial style is very beautiful but would it harmonise with a pictographic style trout?
Secondly, consider what you are going to use it for. Moreover, does it need to be portable? I have no experience with tepees but I have read that 18 foot is the maximum that anyone can back pack, and the larger the floor diameter the larger the poles so consider how these might be moved over a considerable distance. Can they be roof racked and could there be a question of the availability of gas?
Like I just said to Socioilogy, you call them as you see them but it is just a few things to think about before you put your money down.

Aho.

Palooka's Revenge said...

I recently received Irish citizenship, thanks to my father's parents, Irish immigrants, who died twenty years before I was born.

since i'm working within a similar set of circumstances. i'd like to hear more about this.... how you managed it, how hard is it to jump thru the hoops? if you're willing to share about that you can write me here... offthewalls@bellsouth.net.

not that i'm considering to relocate there. it has more to do with re-claiming my heritage. something i attempted to purge along the way out of massive guilt and mis-construed judgement. times have changed and i've changed and i embrace my heritage with pride.

btw, you might be interested in the work of michael tsarion's irish origins of civilization... http://www.irishoriginsofcivilization.com/

Anonymous said...

Sociology,
Nice to hear from you again! Boy, what an option! Personally, I would never move to a place without visiting it first. See if it "feels" like home. I lived on the South side for a year in the 70's. It was a very long year. What is the deal with having Irish grandparents? Murph's got 'em as well.
Belgium, loved the song. Those poles are too long to transport on a pickup truck, for sure. And, we'd probably get an unpainted one and paint the trout on it ourselves. We don't figure on moving it anywhere off property.
...got to go. Seeing the kids off.

mrs p said...

I remember that old theme you guys pondered on not so long ago. "What Election?" and the theory of the presidential directives, etc. So I couldn't help but think about your angle on it with relation to the financial picture that we're seeing now or "being shown now."
http://momsreallymad.blogspot.com/2008/03/meltdown-market-marshall-law-what.html

Just a thought, who knows these days?