Tags
Abrupt Climate Change, Anthropocene Extinction, Australian Bushfires, Climate Change Denial, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Ecological Overshoot, Extinction of Man, Fossil Fuel Industry, Omnicide, Overpopulation, Rupert Murdoch
“3D visualization” of the Australian fires by Anthony Hearsey, compiled from NASA satellite data collected across the span of a month/an injured koala bear sits alone on the ‘apocalyptic’ Kangaroo Island
The year is 2020 and climate change-related disasters are in full swing while at the same time, the most influential country in the world is under the leadership of someone who calls scientists “foolish fortune tellers.” Australia, another country being led to its slaughter by the willfully and criminally ignorant, is literally going up in flames as we speak. Its rich millennia-old evolutionary legacy is disappearing before our eyes. The pictures of charred kangaroo corpses entangled in barbed wire fences and koala bears curled up in the fetal position as they tried to flee the fires are gut-wrenching and should be a wake-up call to our leaders. The platypus, another of the country’s iconic creatures, is dying off in drought-stricken cesspools. To make matters worse, recent heavy rains are causing massive fish kills as bushfire ash washes into rivers. More than a billion creatures(excluding frogs, insects, other invertebrates, or livestock) are estimated to have perished, and the wildlife that do manage to survive the country’s apocalyptic conditions are now at risk of starvation. Scientists fear these fires are causing the extinction of entire species of insects which play a vital role in “processing waste, pollination, providing nutrition for other species, and myriad other ecological functions.” While warming at twice the global rate from humanity’s fossil fuel binge, Australia continues to be the biggest net exporter of coal in the world, thus fueling its own conflagration.
The Australian mega-fires are not a one-off, but just the latest manifestation of an increasingly disrupted global climate system. Australia’s fate was predicted by scientists many years ago. The forever legacy of greenhouse gas emissions means the dust won’s settle in any time scale appreciable to humans. Sea levels will continue to rise for millennia, droughts and storms will grow in frequency and intensity, thousand-year rains will become common occurrences, entire ecosystems will unravel, and the human experiment will undoubtedly come to an end. To quote an Australian on Reddit:
This is what disturbs me about my countrymen. This is not just a one-off terrible event, this is a permanent step down, a large nail in our collective coffin. Long before we recover from this, we will suffer it again, and again. Those poor animals. Worse than being glorified, or not televised, our collapse is being looked at without seeing. It is misunderstood and denied.
For those not from here I’d say that one can’t overstate what is happening here, it is truly awful. We will never recover.
Australia’s annual fire season is only at its midpoint, yet the massive pulse of carbon from these bushfires is now estimated at 900 million tons —double the country’s annual emissions. As horrific as the fires have made life on land, what’s happening in Australia’s oceans out of site and mind is equally disturbing, but of course this is not confined to Australia. Scientists have found that a ‘heat blob’ in the north Pacific ocean killed a million seabirds and wiped out 100 million cod.
We are destroying the life support systems to which all creatures, including man, are dependent, yet it does not appear that any climate disaster no matter how catastrophic will alter mankind’s tragic path to extinction. Wiping out an entire continent’s flora and fauna does not register on the Stock Market. No number of five-alarm fire warnings planet Earth sends will be heeded by this cabon-fueled corporate kleptocracy which carries us all toward a very dark future. Why would we expect any differently from an economic paradigm that tolerates no disruption as it plunders the planet in search of the almighty dollar? A report from two years ago called Australia’s extinction crisis a “national disgrace” and described its institutions tasked with protecting threatened plants and animals as “broken”. We see today that nothing has changed to prevent Australia’s natural treasures from disappearing into the black void of the Anthropocene extinction, never to be seen or heard from again. In fact, current assessments show extinction rates are accelerating:
- Nature is in ‘unprecedented’ decline. A substantial proportion of assessed species are threatened with extinction and overall trends are deteriorating, with extinction rates increasing sharply in the past century.
- This decline is a direct result of human activity, the most devastating being changes in land and sea use, including natural habitat destruction.
- Since 1980, greenhouse gas emissions have doubled, raising average global temperatures by at least 0.7 degrees Celsius. 75% of fossil fuel burning and anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the atmosphere has occurred since 1970; their effects are just beginning to be felt.
- In the near future, climate change is expected to surpass the impacts of land and sea use change as well as other drivers(direct exploitation of organisms, pollution, invasive alien species).
- Increased human population and per capita consumption is a key driver of the above.
- By destroying the foundations of Earth’s interconnected web of life, we are threatening our own health and existence.
I am loath to repeat these numbers because no price can be placed on intact ecosystems, but the economic costs of this year’s fire season in Australia are estimated to be approaching $100 billion, the costliest natural disaster in that country’s history. And in the U.S., the last decade has been ‘unprecedented‘:
The U.S. billion-dollar disaster damage costs over the last decade (2010-2019) were also historically large, exceeding $800 billion from 119 separate billion-dollar events. After adjusting for inflation, the U.S. experienced more than twice the number of billion-dollar disasters during the 2010s than the 2000s decade: 119 versus 59…Clearly, the historically large U.S. losses from hurricanes and wildfires over the last few years have further skewed the total distribution of extreme weather costs. This increase reflects a combination of increased exposure, vulnerability and the fact the climate change is playing an increasing role in the frequency of some types of extremes that lead to billion-dollar disasters.
The finance industry is starting to see that climate change is an existential crisis, yet offer no alternative to their ideological stalemate of infinite growth on a finite planet. In fact, they believe that the personal sacrifices needed to halt greenhouse gas emissions will create a public backlash towards such efforts. In other words, business-as-usual will rule the day until the hard laws of physics, chemistry, and biology make our bubble economy impossible. We’re undergoing that process right now as anthropogenic climate disruption returns planet Earth to the chaotic climatic conditions of the Pleistocene —a time in which organized societies and agriculture will be impossible. Water shortages, degraded soils, and loss of pollinators will only compound the problem. No amount of accounting tricks will bring back the habitability of the planet.
Cheap and abundant fossil fuels have given us modern science and technology which have allowed humans to feel detached and independent from nature, but when this civilization inevitably collapses we will once again be at the mercy of the natural world. If we have destroyed the biosphere and set in motion a mass extinction event at a time when we strongly need to rely on nature, then our prospects for survival are very grim indeed! Yet another study released this week shows that Earth’s biodiversity is crashing under a perfect storm of global warming, extreme weather events, and human activity. Collapse of industrial civilization and its vast amount of specialization along with a simultaneous planet-wide ecological collapse can very easily lead to human extinction. It’s not hard to imagine a Third World War being ignited by deteriorating environmental conditions and resource depletion as nations fall under the sway of propaganda from demagogues inciting fear, hatred, and violence.
With Earth Overshoot Day arriving ever earlier each year, we have arrived at the last stage of global civilization’s doubling time. The next twenty years will be the final tick of the clock in which our mass resource extraction, consumption, and waste irreparably damage the planet’s regenerative abilities and life support systems. Decades of greenwashing, empty rhetoric, and regulatory capture by the fossil fuel industry have brought us to this precipice:
As you can see, any mitigation efforts at this late date rely heavily on the fantasy of carbon capture with nonexistent technologies that, truthfully, will never scale up to the enormous problem. To some degree or another, we are all in denial of what is unfolding in our final century as we go about our daily lives within a set of living arrangements completely incompatible to the survival of our descendants. Everyone is riding the peak of industrial civilization as we watch the world fall apart on our smart phones and LED TVs. In the meantime, the nightly news drones on about hyperpartisan politics and economic growth. That barely a vague mention is made in the news cycle of the most important story in mankind’s history tells you all you need to know about who controls mass media and why the story of our imminent demise will remain buried.
Our fossil record will be comprised mainly of plastics, radioactive waste, and billions of human bones and that of our domesticated animals. The remnants of wild animals will be extremely rare since we have supplanted them with our livestock. All civilizations, especially complex ones, eventually collapse. Ours, like many before, will be undone by overshoot of the environment’s carrying capacity, albeit this time on a planetary scale and with no second chance for a do-over.
Pingback: The Apocalypse Will Not Be Televised – Enjeux énergies et environnement
David Higham said:
There is no way in the world that that fire map at the top is correct. I live in North Queensland. The fire season here has been mild. All the severe fires since September
have been in Southern Queensland,New South Wales,Victoria,South Australia.
I don’t know anything about Anthony Hearsey ,but that map is bullshit.
Other than that, spot on,Mike.
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David Higham said:
If you check on the list of houses and other buildings destroyed,and lives lost in fires
since September, they would all be in the regions that I have listed. None in North
Queensland.
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Tobbe Nilsson said:
The map has been criticized for making the affected areas larger than reality, due to a ‘bloom’ effect in the 3D program used to create it. It’s really just a “pretty image” that’s been making the rounds on the internet, so take it as such.
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False Progress said:
Regardless of the exaggeration and time-scale merging of that map, it’s obviously a big deal so nitpicking is unnecessary.
Another map worth seeing shows the spread of “clean energy” projects, which are permanently spoiling scenery and killing wildlife in greater numbers. CO2 keeps rising with roughly 356,000 ugly wind turbines littering landscapes like bleached trees after fires.
U.S. map:https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb/
World map in progress: https://www.windpowerengineering.com/global-wind-turbine-mapping-project-surpasses-100000-count/
Such rampant development would be shunned by environmental groups if not perceived as fighting the very fossil fuels that build it. It makes no sense in a total environmental context.
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Linda pearson said:
Killing wildlife? I assume you mean birds. Wind turbines are right down the list. Firstly you have cats and foxes followed by habitat loss.
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False Progress said:
I’m not sure if my previously reply took (rejected links?) but I’ve compiled an extensive list of wind power rationalizations and rebuttals in a blog post easily found with the term “Blight for Naught.” It refers to an increasingly ugly machine-scaped world with no meaningful carbon reduction.
That post covers the overused house-cat excuse and various hypocrisies of wind pushers. Also, you fail to mention bat mortality (no machines kill more bats than wind turbines) and landscape destruction, the most obvious pitfall of something sold as “green.”
I assume you’re aware that wind “farms” are vast INDUSTRIAL sites? See the name of this blog. They’re built with lots of oil and are known as “fossil fuel extenders” because they fail to solve fundamental ERoI shortfalls. Ugly, noisy, lethal and futile.
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Michael Dowd said:
Excellent, as always, XrayMike!
I’m assuming you’ve had time to watch at least a few of my post-doom conversations with our colleagues, yes?
Please let me know when can we might schedule a Zoom call to discuss the questions on the “Conversations” page here: https://postdoom.com
In grief and gratitude,
~ Michael
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Michael B Dowd said:
Excellent, as always, XrayMike!
I’m assuming you’ve had time to watch at least a few of my post-doom conversations with our colleagues, yes?
Please let me know when can we might schedule a Zoom call to discuss the questions on the “Conversations” page here: https://postdoom.com
In grief and gratitude,
~ Michael
MichaelBDowd@gmail.com
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xraymike79 said:
Oh man, you are persistent! It might happen one day, but I won’t want to talk about collapse. Instead, we would chat about our lives and family.
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Michael B Dowd said:
Works for me. Any chance you could send me an email so I have a less public way to communicate with you?
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David Higham said:
Re. ‘Australia’s Fire Season.” Different regions of Australia have different fire seasons. Northern Australia’s fire season is spring (Sep-Nov) . The early monsoonal
storms generally start in late Nov-Dec. The ‘wet season’ is Jan-Mar.
Southern Australia”s fire season is usually Dec.-March,though it is now starting earlier. The most destructive fires are in Southern Australia,due to lower humidity
levels in the fire season,and the southern Eucalyptus species having a higher percentage of volatile
oils,the combination leading to ‘Crown Fires’,which rarely occur in Northern Australia.
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rabiddoomsayer said:
If we are to avoid worse than Eemian conditions then we need to stop polluting now and everything will start getting better, perhaps not. See the Eemian topped out at about 300 ppm, so perhaps you could say we reached our budget 100 years ago.
Along with the CO2 we are emitting substantial aerosols that will wash out. so when civilization collapses (fairly soon) and the pollution stops the problem gets so much worse.
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BLCKDGRD said:
Just letting you know I got the allusion in post title
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tom wilty said:
BTW: it is a Koala (Marsupial) full stop. There are not any bears in Australia.
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Lenny Rossolovski said:
Thank you Mike! Here’s pingback in Russian: https://www.aum.news/ecology/6629-apokalipsis-ne-pokazhut-po-televizoru
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Pingback: Апокалипсис не покажут по телевизору — NicolSunrise
Pingback: ral's notebook » Blog Archive » The Apocalypse Will Not Be Televised
xraymike79 said:
https://news.yale.edu/2020/01/16/wiped-out-forever-ecological-impact-australias-wildfires
What is the potential for species diversity loss due to the fires?
“Scientists agree that the local population losses will be immense, and probably on a scale unmatched by any single event in the past hundred years and beyond.
While some of the species may eventually rebound and recolonize areas that are impacted now, the most troublesome news may not be the local extinctions, but rather the potential global extinctions. The affected regions in Australia are home to many species that do not occur anywhere else in the world.
Leaked government reports suggest that for over half a dozen well-studied species, such as birds, frogs, and fish, over 50% of the global population — and in some cases 100% of their habitat — may be lost.“
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TR said:
I’ll soon be able to cross out pandemics, global warming, collapse of civilization, and human extinction off my bucket list. Entertaining times & I didn’t have to buy a ticket.
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TR said:
“So let it be written, so let it be done.” 😉
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TR said:
COVID-19 setting off a global depression would be topped off with a global nuclear war & climate change could finish off the survivors.
Just wishful thinking.;-)
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TR said:
Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.
Lily Tomlin
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TR said:
I’m here to help with the problem that this collapse is moving so slowly.
There have got be several ways to speed up this turtle pace?
Do I have to do it all? ;-0
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False Progress said:
The rapidly escalating hype over COVID-19, which has killed far fewer people than basic flu, is what we’re up against. The public mainly responds to new, shiny threats via evolutionary mechanisms that can’t be turned off.
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Ken Barrows said:
I am sure you have heard of exponential growth. The good news is that exponential growth will end, in many things.
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mike k said:
TR – Your gallows humor is a precious light in these dark times. The world continues to oversupply abundant material for your rapier sallies…….
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mike k said:
Well guess what?! We were not as wrong headed as most folks thought. The wisest among us never said we knew which hockey stick graph would deliver the initial major blow in our inevitable collapse. Turns out to be an unassuming little virus. Of course it doesn’t take much to start a tottering house of cards to tumbling. Poof! and it all starts to collapse…..
Now all the stuff about the stages of grieving, and the tragic sense of life will start to make sense even to the most thick headed among us — or not; our capacity for denial of the obvious is prodigious.
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mike k said:
Awakening is always rare, unique. Widespread awakening is a delusion of those who do not understand. Many are called, but only a few respond. Reality is often frustratingly consistent, confounding our fantasies.
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mike k said:
First the West did nothing. Then they did too little, and the wrong things. Then they panicked and did too much, and the wrong things again. Now they are hell bent on destroying their poor excuse of a culture through madness and greed, and stupidity. Poor us — our karma ripening as it inevitably does.
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mike k said:
The current fear and fascination with a not so
powerful virus is diverting our attention from all the other time bombs progressing towards our possible extinction. Thus a relatively minor shock is demonstrating our inability to use this event to wake us up to our multiple weaknesses and dangerous trends. A sick culture, like a sick person, will put all their attention on just getting over the most salient symptom bedeviling them, to the detriment of beginning to consider the real issue of their total health situation.
That was my initial response on being diagnosed last spring with stage four metastatic prostate cancer. Only after a couple of months did I begin to realize that this crisis was really a warning about my total state of poor health that preceded and invited the cancer to take over. Now with appropriate help and research I am embarked on regaining my basic health and immune strength. Thanks to my friend cancer for waking me up to what I have needed to see and remedy for a long time! Hopefully it is not too late for me to correct course and sail on for a few more years past my current 89…….
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False Progress said:
As many of you know, the primary pandemic is human OVERPOPULATION, directly responsible for unnatural wildlife markets. A 1978 Chinese law allowed them to farm wild animals to ease hunger among 950 million people. China enacted its one-child policy the next year but it’s typically framed as “unfair” and an economic “birth dearth” is seen as more important.
Perpetual growth is all the average drone can imagine. It’s a stupid people problem.
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TR said:
You may have seen this.
Should be titled the Clever Ape virus.
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False Progress said:
Definitely saw that one, which the movie quickly downplays, making virtual reality the big villain. Another lost chance to teach real-reality.
That led me to stumble onto the “Planet of the Apes” virus angle in its later incarnations.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/20/15985312/war-for-the-planet-of-apes-dawn-rise-simian-flu-virus-mutates-explainer
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mike k said:
More of everything seems to be human’s basic drive. The greatest heresy in modern society is to suggest less, or simpler. To council going slower is also considered insane in a society addicted to speed. No wonder they persecuted the early Quakers in England.
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TR said:
I’m so disgusted. All this talk & no one is helping me with global financial & civilization collapse & Near Term Human Extinction. My advice: “A little less talk & a lot more action.”
“The roof,the roof, the roof is fire!”
Now, STFU & throw some gas on this muther!
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mike k said:
Aside from snarky dark humor, which certainly has it’s value, we need to talk more about the doom that is coming down on all of us. Even if we don’t come up with a miraculous escape from our near term collective disappearance, talking is good therapy for those of us who unwittingly opened Pandora’s Box without a clue how to deal with the nightmare we uncovered there. And who knows, we might inspire some latent genius out there to lead us out of the dead end labyrinth we are lost in…….
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Michael Dowd said:
TR and mike k,
I’ve found it more helpful to focus on post-doom, than doom. I highly recommend these two dozen conversations. Each one is fucking amazing in a different way… https://postdoom.com/
~ Michael
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mike k said:
March 31 2020 John 16:33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Jesus has the answer to all our seeking. The world as commonly conceived and experienced is a mind created illusion. To see the world as it really is – a manifestation of God’s Unconditional Love/Bliss – frees us from the bondage of our illusions regarding reality.
In this passage Jesus informs us of the purpose of his teaching. He is a Bodhisattva who seeks to free us from our troubling illusions about the world and ourselves and the nature of reality. Only the full truth will make us free of unnecessary suffering. Realization is the foundational understanding that undoes almost all of our problems. Ignorance of the real nature of reality gives rise to our difficulties. Be still in all your fervid mental activity, and know that all of this is God, who is Perfect LoveRadiance – including yourself! Practice is to constantly remember this true nature of all your experience.
To have the full experience of God’s eternal Presence in and as all things including yourself, is to see your previous experience of all of this world as false and deluding. Your whole worldview will collapse in such an epiphany. This signals the death of the ego’s domination of your experience, and the birth of a whole new infinitely expanded prospect…… Meditation is the precious key to realizing this new life, and deepening your constant experience of it. Unconditional Love-Radiance (God) pre-exists the manifested Universe and yet permeates every aspect of it. To be consciously at one with That Love-Radiant Being (God) is the goal of the evolution of life and consciousness.
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TR said:
I don’t have a problem with anyone practicing any religion they choose.
One point many may fail to see,there is no proof of the existence of any deities that have ever been worshiped in the history of man.
To discuss god there has to be a definition that all agree with.
God is all knowing,all powerful,all loving?
One cannot surprise God, he knew what you were going to do before you did it.
No one can harm an all powerful being.
Why would an ultimate love being harm anyone for any reason.
Some of the gods have not been very nice in the past.
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mike k said:
The cancer and virus analogy has a long history among those of us who have stepped back far enough from the behavior of our species to gain a better understanding of our MO, and where it will lead us. So far the only flaw in this analogy is the supposed higher intelligence some of us have, and the possibility of our using it to escape the seemingly escape proof prison we have built for ourselves. Higher consciousness seems the only way out, if there is one…….
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TR said:
“If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.”
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False Progress said:
Speaking of chitinous species, fictional entomologist Nils Hellstrom would need to re-do his math, now that “green” wind turbines are killing so many insects and chafing their precious blades.
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aputsiaq said:
Thoughtprovoking, but not correct. Many present lifeforms are not dependent on insects, and there was life on earth well before the insects arrived. But of course, seen from a human perspective, life would be very poor indeed without insects and what depends on them. Surely life on earth will exist even after the insects, just not human life and lots and lots of beautiful plants, birds, fish etc.
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TR said:
We are living in The Great American Attitude Adjustment.
I like xray mikes’ “gallows humor”
Why would anyone voluntarily place the rope around their own necks as in voting against their best interest. 😉
Sometimes it’s difficult to see the problem when it’s staring one in the face, at proper social distancing.
It’s not blacks, women, LBGTQ, illegals, Muslims that brought us here.
White Male Republicans & Democrats have been in complete control of the U.S. govt.
for how long?
The truth is not always pleasant & can also piss one off.
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mike k said:
I am fully aware that the thoughts I shared recently on this blog will instantly put me beyond the pale of the predominantly rational scientific materialists that inhabit this site. But no matter, I am quite used to going my own way, and it has taken me a long lifetime to arrive at the understanding I currently have of reality. I spent many fruitful years in my youth as a full fledged atheist, capable and eager to refute any pretensions regarding religion or spirituality. I now realize that there will never be convincing proof for materialists of things beyond their limited and limiting paradigm. Only those who have ventured far outside of the familiar circle that most inhabit can confirm by their own experience dimensions beyond the ordinary. In this regard I will observe the dictum that those who speak of these things do not know them, and those who know them do not speak of them…….
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TR said:
“Only those who have ventured far outside of the familiar circle that most inhabit can confirm by their own experience dimensions beyond the ordinary. ”
If your back,you didn’t venture far enough. 😉
A friend says, “All we know is what we’ve been told.”
It can be difficult to shed one’s brainwashing.
An old saying, “Old people have no filter.”
I threw mine away at 18 yrs old. I will say what’s on my mind. Those that are offended have a mental problem?
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mike k said:
Maybe Camus had it right in the Myth of Sisyphus — The central problem of philosophy is suicide, To be or not to be…..
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mike k said:
“Pandemic”
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
when we cannot touch.
Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.
-adapted from a poem by
Rev. Lynn Ungar
March 2020
It is deeply disappointing to me that there are so few commenters responding to xray mike’s excellent work on this site. But this is just a particular instance of the general state of profound sleep the populace at large wraps themselves in, so it is just another layer of Casandra-like frustration I have had to get used to regarding our approaching collective demise. Sometimes you can’t even lead a horse to water….much less make it drink.
I would just like to add that in my considered estimation there are states much worse than death, and the present state of our human world is an example of such a condition.
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TR said:
Graffiti in Hong Kong reads: “We can’t return to normal because our normal was the problem in the first place.”
“Jesus is not coming back,he’s sheltering in place.”
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mike k said:
It seems strange that a spirit being having experienced a whole lifetime in this world as it is, would freely choose to return to it – unless you consider the alternative – an eternity of nothingness. Maybe this is why the Great Unmanifest decided to bring all this seeming manifestation into existence in the first place – as a diversion? This enormous Lila as an escape from infinite boredom? Of course there is a price to be paid for these fun and games – it’s called suffering. Hence the longing for extinction in some of us involved in these dramas….
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mike k said:
Or you could spend your time wondering if baseball is coming back this year?
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TR said:
I would like to thank the 7,700,000,000 Clever Apes for their religious,political economic,social ,cultural theological brain washings.
Yes! They are theological,believed as if their value systems are Gods.
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mike k said:
The beginning of freedom is to imagine it’s possibility. After that the long work begins. Anything else is only the blind repetitions of a slave.
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mike k said:
If there were only one among the billions of seeming robot zombies who manifested a glimmer of real freedom, it would signal the possibility of escape for anyone who dared to dream of it.
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TR said:
We need a forensic investigation to find out who FUBARed this Clusterfuck.
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mike k said:
Look within. Pogo was right. We are the architects and wardens and inmates of our own prisons.
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TR said:
If I am found positive for Covid-19, I’m ordering a tailored body bag.
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mike k said:
Sooner or later every gross physical life vehicle will require disposal. The destiny of the very subtle life that was associated with that vehicle is another question. As physics has realized, the very subtle can exhibit behaviors based on other laws quite beyond the limitations of more gross manifestations.
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TR said:
How does one social distance from the voices in their heads?
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mike k said:
Meditate. This teaches us detachment, among other very important things for going forward in this increasingly chaotic world.
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David Proudfoot said:
I live on a small farm in WV and manage to grow most of our food with the help of purchased chicken feed and purchased seeds. Also fossil fuel for the tractor, mower, and tiller. With the infinite growth leading us over a cliff I don’t even see how I can make it. I rely on the whole system even with all the work and “self sufficiency”. One small hope is that the collapse will reduce global warming and WV will remain livable. (and that is an awful thing to hope for)
So my long term plan is to keep the farm viable and collect tools that work without fossil fuel for the next owner. I am building a blacksmith’s shop that runs on charcoal currently or coal.
This Covid stay at home order has been a boon to the farm- we are getting more work done than ever. Our neighbors are enjoying the free potatoes from our root cellar. I have always grown way more than we use for this kind of emergency. I guess I will expand that this summer.
I have no idea how most people can prepare.
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mike k said:
As a lazy forest dweller, I envy your energy David. And you have been honest enough to recognize that your efforts are in no way a general solution to the collapse of our so called civilization. We are in for some heavy karmic payments that we are in no way prepared to meet in the coming days of humanity’s brief time on Earth. Be happy in the way you have chosen.
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mike k said:
Planning for “the future” seems more and more futile in these uncertain times. Going deeper into the present may be more rewarding – and actually might lead to a better future, at least for oneself and a few comrades.
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TR said:
I can’t believe that 7,800,000,000 Clever Apes are having such a hard time bringing on collapse.
Do I have to do everything?
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mike k said:
Maybe you just aren’t trying hard enough TR? Or you could try this —
“Good creatures, do you love your lives
And have you ears for sense?
Here is a knife like other knives,
That cost me eighteen pence.
I need but stick it in my heart
And down will come the sky,
And earth’s foundations will depart
And all you folk will die.”
A.E. Housman
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TR said:
The Gatlin Bros -” I’m taking someone with me when I fall.”
I can’t figure why one wouldn’t take more. 😉
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mike k said:
Maybe for some of us it is more like this:
“I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.”
― A.E. Housman
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mike k said:
How do you pursue unconditional love? Unconditionally.
Practice beyond all conditions, or limitations. Eating bitter is part of this. Just give yourself totally to your quest, prayer, effort, program. Surrender to the Work of becoming loving. Just lose yourself in this Work. Put yourself in it.
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TR said:
I’m in it! No one loves me me more than me! 😉
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TR said:
Wondering if Covid-19’s big brother will rise up from melted permafrost & say “C-19,get out of my way & let me show you how it’s done!”
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