one way to think about it

Twenty years ago, i argued that the US had created a horrible nightmare for the children of Iraq.  Through the use of harsh sanctions, imposed under the UN 661 Committee, following Gulf Storm, more than 1,000,000 children were denied access to vaccines and medical supplies.  We ended up killing 500,000 of them.  A half a million of them in ten years.  In other words, over the entire ten year period, we killed the equivalent of a Sandy Hook incident every two days for the full ten years.  We killed another 30,000 during the Iraq war, most of which died during the seige at Fallujah.  And yet, we petition the world to hear our laments for Sandy Hook, whilst continuing to maim and kill children around the world.  Maybe, just maybe, we might think about that.

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far left of obama

It is really quite simple in some ways i suppose. I am, for lack of any better description a: tribally and socially cooperativist; pragmatically, psychedelically, and hermeneutically conscious cognitive libertarian; economically and geo-politically anarchist; and a deep ecological radical. In all practicality, i think that it is extraordinarily difficult to classify most citizens of the US under the simple polarizing taxonomy of liberal/conservative. Even the sub-labels such as socially conservative liberal or socially liberal conservative speak little of the vast diversity of the self aware citizen. But to reflect upon the 2008 election and the necessary work that must be done i openly state my conception of my position along the spectrum from which i advocate the change i seek.


pragmatically, psychedelically, and hermeneutically conscious cognitive libertarian

I have publicly stated on several occasions that i insist that my president would be one who has admitted to taking a relatively large dose (250 to 500 mcgs) of LSD. There are many many reasons for this but first and foremost is that the first time i voted for a presidential candidate, my candidate said the following about LSD:

Senator Robert Kennedy, in 1966 said: "Perhaps to some extent we have lost sight of the fact that LSD can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly"

Jonathan Ott wrote:

I firmly believe that contemporary spiritual use of entheogenic drugs is one of humankind's brightest hopes for overcoming the ecological crisis from which we threaten the biosphere and jeopardize our own survival, for Homo sapiens is close to the head of the list of endangered species.

We are indeed at the apex of a series of events that require the best and brightest minds, the most creative thinkers and artists to provide divergent and vastly numerous solutions to the catastrophic problems we face living on the planet today. It is beyond hope and reason to tacitly concur with this thought, yet do absolutely nothing to contribute to being part of the solutions. We need to agree that reason and rationality be paramount to the din of verbose, useless, religiospeak during this period. Idiotic acceptance of prophesies spoken by priests, pastors, imans, avatars, etc. concerning the whims of invisible, masculine, anthropomorphic, omniscient energy entities (illusions of deities), only further the planetary degradation and the loss of sustainable habitats for all living (actual real living) entities and species. Pragmatic reason must ascend to levels hierarchically paramount to rhetoric of faith, party, and money. Greed is no different a religion than its servant Mormonism or Scientology. As Terrence McKenna said:

Consciousness is what we're in need of to avoid running off the cliff into armageddon

tribally and socially cooperativist

Charles Sullivan wrote in his work for Planetization:

The age of exuberance—like the age of cheap oil—is mercifully drawing to a close. So I will say what was never meant to spoken aloud in the land of excess; and I will say it loud and clear so that it cannot be mistaken: Americans must dramatically simplify their lives to want less and learn more. We constitute less than five percent of the of the world’s population while usurping more than a quarter of her bounty. This is not acceptable—nor is it ethical.


No one has a moral right to take more than their fair share when that taking jeopardizes the chances of others of living a decent life, or makes nil their chances for survival—including other species.


Contrary to what one might think, we do not have to live like third world nations or like the hunters and gatherers of the past. But we must dramatically reduce our consumption and shrink our carbon footprint. Not only must we live within our own means but within the means of the planet to support us.


The majority of our food should be locally grown and mass transit must supplant the gluttonous and polluting automobile that proliferates on our nation’s highways. Moratoriums on development and urban sprawl must be enacted in order to protect critical habitat and rainwater recharge areas. Cities and towns must be redesigned and revitalized with sustainable industry. Goods and services, including work and jobs must again, as they were in the past, be rooted in vibrant, small scale local economies; and free trade agreements revoked.


Technological advances—no matter how boldly they are touted as saviors of humankind cannot increase the world’s carrying capacity and they cannot invoke justice. The latter is entirely up to us as sentient beings endowed with conscience. And this brings me to a second point: we must reduce the human population through adoption and cease to procreate for at least one generation—so that the earth can recover her carrying capacity. What better way to save the world, literally.


Simultaneously simplifying our lives by wanting less and reducing the human population will allow room for other people and other beings to share the bounty of the earth. And it will almost certainly have a beneficent rather than pathological social and psychological consequence: it will end our isolation and reconnect us to the rest of the world. We could finally realize our enormous potential to become world citizens and good neighbors worthy of respect and love.


Rather than an economy based upon savage greed and exploitation, let us create an economy based upon justice and equality, need rather than excess; a society that does not leave people behind but invites the full participation of everyone and recognizes that, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” Let it be all inclusive and worthy of respect: where every woman, man, and child, every being of this earth is the same under the law and equally respected and valued—a great global community seeking harmony rather than competitive advantage.


In the end, equality is beholden to the system we choose. Did we ask that the world be run on the profits of greed, or the prophets of wisdom? Where was that democratic choice? The profits of greed have given us voracious greed, consuming everything in sight; but they didn’t give us a choice; they took away our freedom and made us into lesser beings. But, if we are to muster ourselves to call ourselves Human one last time, where the prophets of wisdom really did have something to say, where people and the planet are put before profits in the Golden Rule, and where we have one large collective foot standing on the profit of greed then maybe, maybe YES we will turn this thing around: http://www.planetization.org.

economically and geo-politically anarchist


"I feel sure," William Morris told his fellow socialists gathered at Kelmscott House in 1884, "that the time will come when people will find it difficult to believe that a rich community such as ours, having such command over external Nature, could have submitted to live with a mean, shabby, dirty life as we do." One hundred eighteen years ago Morris was imagining a time "when no one was allowed to injure the public by defiling the natural beauty of the earth."

The Enemy of Nature is the capitalistic system itself, and if readers of such a statement should be tempted to dismiss the claim as mere Marxian doomsday-saying and thus forego a reading of it on the basis of our current celebrations that capitalism is the sole surviving economic system and therefore MUST be the best, such potential readers will be ignoring not only essential information, but be contributing to the continuation of processes which must surely end in chaos and anarchy.P. Webster "Salience" (Alpes-Maritimes, FRANCE)

Emily Hodges argues that most anarchic behaviors are tautologically flawed. From her essay titled "Perhaps Anarchy:"

Anarchism is an idea, a general concept, used to help us orient ourselves in a sea of ideas. But when does something that was meant to help us orient ourselves become a tool of oversimplification? The difference between a group and a community, in my mind, is that a community would act more like an ecosystem. It is more a utilitarian and social network than an identity. I think of artisans, farmers, producers, and notice that there is an independence and a interdependence. But the label of farmer, of cobbler, of blacksmith – these are identities, labels, useful in defining, explaining. Is anarchist, then, as useful? Is it something that you do? That you are? Does it express your daily activities as well as farmer expresses daily activities? To decide this we must first decide what an “anarchist” is or does, and then if “you” can cross-reference what you do and are, and see if there is a fit.


The problem with anarchists is that it is a largely theoretical idea. Very few self-proclaimed anarchists on this planet right now can claim that they BE anarchy. Perhaps they are proponents of change, of a different way of being to be implemented in the future. However, they are not doing it right now, not necessarily by any fault of them. It is simply very difficult to do. Very few people live without a government or authority over them, for the simple reason that there is nowhere to get away to. It is not allowed within the system, and it s impossible to “get out” of the system. – for the simple reason that we are all connected, as a huge industrialized nation under a massive government, as ecosystems and societies. We can even claim that those of us who do “get away” can do so only because of their positioning within the system that they are leaving, a position that happens to make their leaving possible only by the even greater bondage of others.


Even those “anarchists” who claim to reject government, work, and “taking part in the system” still physically live in the system, in the ecosystem of this system, and thus are a part of it. Additionally, they attempt to “remove” themselves from the system simply by taking part in the system from another angle that they do not realize is still participation. Some anarchists use food stamps or other forms of welfare. They steal, scavenge, squat all actions that may be a practical usage of available resources without consuming new ones – but that is an issue of resources, not anarchist ideology. It is simply not being wasteful. It is not being free. My question is this: those who are as practically anarchist as possible, those who have removed themselves from the system as completely as possible, not taking part in the “official” anything --- workforce, taxes, government – thus, living in a rural community or homestead, or living off of the excess of the urban areas, these people, they are removing their “power” from the system, not giving it any power, not feeding it their life force. But they are not rejecting the system. They have no power great enough to be free of the power that they are rejecting paying homage to. They may not be feeding in to it, they may not be responsible for its continuation, but they are not free from it. They are still citizens at the whim of the authority. They can still be drafted, they can still receive welfare, they can still vote – even if they chose not to. They can still choose not to vote, which is a freedom of this country. They can still reap the benefits of an extremely affluent society – living off of the leftovers of the consumers still affords them more luxury than many other countries. They are still in the location, still within the system, still reaping the benefits. Additionally, they still retain the rights of an American citizen, allowing them a lifestyle very different from those in Burma or Iraq. Additionally, the system still demands that you abide their rules. As soon as you break a rule and they catch you, you will realize how fully you are still part of the system. And the fact that you didn’t realize it before you were caught attests to the amount of freedom you had as compared to certain other places, nations, contexts, cities, identities. (You cannot give up your identity. But you can create it. You can use the power you have, you can give it up, but the only reason you have the ability to give it up is because you have it. It is still a choice that others do not have. ) We must have some citizenship. We must belong somewhere – and good thing, for to be citizen-less is to be power-less. To be undocumented is to have no rights, and I have seen both in Thailand, and the United States. So the question is not how can I remove myself from the system, but how can I create better system? That is question anarchy attempts to answer. But what is the realistic application of anarchy? How does one implement anarchy, so that it can gain power and recognition as a legitimate legal system? Could a country become anarchic, and be respected and powerful in line with other countries?

deep ecological radical

John Seed describes his vision of the role of the deep ecologist as:

Deep ecology is the name of a philosophy of nature which I believe best helps us understand why we behave so foolishly, and perhaps gives us some clues as to where we may best seek change.


The fundamental problem is anthropocentrism or human centredness. We are obsessed with our self-importance. Not long ago, astronomers were burned at the stake for daring to suggest that the Earth is not the centre of the universe and now we blindly destroy the future for 10 million species so as to fill the world with humanity for a few generations more.


To deep ecology, the world is seen not as a pyramid with humans on top, but as a web. We humans are but one strand in that web and as we destroy other strands, we destroy ourselves.


We might no longer believe that the world was made by an old man with a white beard 6000 years ago as a stage for the human drama to unfold with all the other species merely "scenery", bit players to be "subdued and dominated". Yet our institutions and personalities were forged in this mold and we seem hypnotised, incapable of giving substance to our new, ecological, vision.


Through thousands of years of anthropocentric conditioning, absorbed by osmosis since the day we were born, we have inherited shallow, fictitious selves, and have created an incredibly pervasive illusion of separation from nature.


A century ago Freud discovered that many of the symptoms of his patients could be traced to repressed sexual material. However, our sexuality is only the tip of the mighty repression of our very organic nature.


The reason why psychology is sterile and most therapy doesn't work is that the "self" that mainstream psychologies describe and purport to heal doesn't exist. It is a social fiction. In reality the human personality exists at the intersection of the ancient cycles of air and water and soil. Without these there is no self and any attempt to heal the personality that doesn't acknowledge this fundamental fact is doomed to failure. There is no "self" without air and water and soil. Incredible amounts of energy go into futile attempts to heal what is really a fictitious self while our actual, ecological self suffocates.


Some of the best thinking on Ecopsychology comes from the neo-Jungian James Hillman. In his "100 Years of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse", Hillman blames a lot of the social and environmental problems that we face on the fact that the people who should be out there changing the world are in therapy instead. They treat their pain as a symptom of a personal pathology rather than as a goad to political action to bring about social change. Therapists create patients instead of citizens.


People are willing to die by the millions in defense of one social fiction after another - a religion or political system or ideology. Yet attacks on the Earth which gave rise to all of these and without which none could exist, leave us numb.


Because we haven't learned to identify with the living Earth, She fails to ignite in us anything near the passion and commitment that some of her lesser works manage to do. Though we are born, live and die in her, we have made ourselves unconscious of this. As Woody Allen said: "The Earth and I are two."


The fact that our sense of alienation from Nature is entirely an illusion can be demonstrated very simply by holding your breath for a few minutes. We can speak of "the atmosphere" as if it were somehow "out there". But it is not "out there". None of it is "out there". The air, the water, the soil, it is all constantly migrating and cycling through us. There is no "out there", it is all "in here", but most modern people, even those who agree theoretically, don't experience the world in this way.


As long as the environment is "out there", we may leave it to some special interest group like environmentalists to protect while we look after our "selves". The matter changes when we deeply realise that the nature "out there" and the nature "in here" are one and the same, that the sense of separation no matter how pervasive, is nonetheless totally illusory. I would call the need for such realisation the central psychological or spiritual challenge of our age.


In 1986, I co-authored a book: Thinking Like a Mountain - Towards a Council of All Beings. One of the other authors, Arne Naess, was Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Oslo University and it was he who coined the term "deep ecology". In this book he concludes that "it is not enough to have ecological ideas, we have to have ecological identity, or ecological self". How are we to expand our identities in this way? Naess believes we need "community therapies" such as the Council of All Beings.


In the Council of All Beings we remember our rootedness in Nature. Using experiential processes, we recapitulate our evolutionary journey. We remember that every cell in our body is descended in an unbroken chain of life 4 billion years old, through fish that learned to walk the land, reptiles whose scales turned to fur and became mammals, evolving through to the present.

PONDERING AT THE EDGE OF THE OASIS

Wondering and wandering, as i move across space throughout the nights, i find that i am feeling more relaxed in this body than i would have thought possible, given the circumstances of the days. I am not sure why that is, or if it is just my elder years playing havoc with my sense of cynicism and snark. Perhaps i am just worn through, tried of the same old same old repeated again and again for no reasons whatsoever.

Have i given up? Am i too willing to rest on my laurels, or my own lack of concern for the "real" world versus the infotainment? Non lo so...  I am feeling old in my body.  It is all "meh."

Washington State candidates...

Alas, we are into the final swing of madcap electioneering here in Spokane, and the rest of the state.  And if you believe the television advertising, you would come to the conclusion that each candidate only has one significant pro/con position (most of which are really factless opinions).

So herewith, are a few of these opinion positions:

US Senate
    Baumgartner (a former CIA operative) will do good things and Cantwell can't do much.

    Cantwell worked to keep Boeing in the state, and Baumgartner doesn't know much at all.

US Congressional District office
    Cathy McMorris-Rodgers is a trophy for our DoD, and Cowen just makes movies.

    Cowen will strive to serve all the people, and CMR serves only her party.

Governor

    McKenna will protect women and children from abuse, and Inslee is responsible for massive tax increases.
    Inslee will work together with both sides to do some things, and Mckenna isn't who he says he is.

State Attorney General
    Dunn is the savior of all possible victims, and Ferguson liked it when he worked for a cop killer.
    Ferguson is a tough litigator and really cares, and Dunn has been a very bad and corrupt boy.

Indeed, all of the races are being presented in this format.  The lazy language of our process bleeds discontent.  Secretary of State, State Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Instruction (who is running unopposed) all share in this same manner. Nearly like "Me Tarzan, You Jane." 

Sadly, the truth has absolutely zero chance of breaking through.  The voters will be forced to guess which one they care about, based solely on the political party and/or affiliation.  It reminds me of middle school, where everyone is trying to find a position that they can hold onto and failing miserably.