Monday, December 14, 2009

Love and Doom

I have been oscillating, spiritually, since I became Peak Oil aware. Before this tumult, I concentrated, wholeheartedly, on trying to spread a message of love and compassion. On being a good person. My spiritual questing was informed largely by Quakerism and Buddhism - paths that advocate kindness, pacifism and even-temperedness. Despite a being deeply flawed individual, I would meditate on directing ‘metta’ - loving kindness - to all sentient beings as far as I was able.

In 2005, I was hit by a steam-train of awareness that my heart could not assuage. Simultaneously, I felt rage swell in my core as I beheld the realpoliltik - the malfeasance and insanity of the globalist agenda. The evil promulgated by the lies and prevarications of the corporatists ever permeated my being. As I bore witness to the modus operandi of our fear-based death culture, it felt like a tapeworm was inching its way through my soul.

I left the Society of Friends’ (Quaker) Sunday meditations as I felt increasingly unable to subscribe to their pacifist ideal. I read Derrick Jensen and Ward Churchill and tasted a metallic truth therein. Lady anarchy was a way forward of sorts, yet there was little spiritual consolation to be had within her dictates as somewhere, deep down, my heart had been utterly broken. Literally smashed into smithereens by the sheer insidiousness of the Bilderberger Group, PNAC, the Trilateral Commission and the many other power-wielding cabals, big and small, that value power over virtue, death over life.

This is not the world I want. I cannot help but mourn this every single day. Every time I catch an ugly sound bite from the mouth of a far-right (so-called) ‘Christian’ regarding the poor, the illegal immigrant or the homosexual, I spiritually fragment a little more. Simultaneously, the thing that I am becoming, the individual stocking up on 00 buckshot, ossifies and hardens.

I was reminded of this disconnect from my former incense-burning self, trenchantly, just last week. My son brought home the words to the song that he is to sing on Wednesday as part of his kindergarten’s Christmas concert. When I heard him sing, I felt the pull of that entire world-view that had been evanescing, leeching from my soul. It goes:

“It’s about peace. It is about joy.

It’s about every girl and boy.

It’s about family. It’s about caring.

It’s about people giving and sharing.

It’s about peace, it’s about joy.

It’s about love.”

Surely this is what Christmas should be about, not about the dopamine hit from the purchase of useless gewgaws. Moreover, I wish I could better temper my fatalism with the sentiment in the above song. Surely, as Buddha maintained, there must be a middle way. While I do not wish to collapse into mawkish sentimentality, there has to be more to life than merely steeling oneself to deal with marauding MZB’s.

I am a doomer, yet, it seems, I also have this big human heart. Furthermore, in the final analysis, it seems as though it will not completely go away.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Hopes for Economic Recovery?

To all those who are affirming their collective asses off; to all those of you who are preparing for the inevitable upswing, I have to ask:

Is 'business as usual' really the best fucking scenario you can up with?

Every time I am in earshot of: "Things 'are not so bad', or "It's a great time to buy as the market is bottoming,"I want to projectile vomit.

What you are saying is:

"Who knows, if we are lucky we can continue to rape and degrade the biosphere. Maybe we can up the extinction rate to 300 species a day? Yea! While we are at it, let's find more kids to frog-march into the Bangladeshi sweatshops! In addition, we can all ingest evermore cancer-causing chemicals; we can turn a blind eye while our children's brains continue to be beleaguered with the burdens of ADHD and autism.

"Let's continue to fight our usual wars and ignore the everyday collateral damage - the inconvenient and utterly innocent corpses of women and children.

"If we cross our fingers and wish upon a far away sun, we may get all our usual anodyne messages from the TV (and all our favorite reality shows.)

"Yes, it's going to be great: we will all continue buying compact flourescent lightbulbs, and smelling our 'greener by the day' farts."

I am unequivocal. Damn your despicable recovery hopes (and the insane and addicted civilization that promulgates them.)

I want no part of it. I am a doomer not just because of an absence of hope. It is far more proactive than that. Doom is the only rationality I have. It tells me that this 5000 year old death-urge must cease or somehow be irreversibly stalled - even if it leads to our complete annihilation.

I do not subscribe to the scintillating 'new car smell' version of the future.