Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category

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The Human World is Going to Hell

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

The human world is going to hell and it is taking the rest of the natural world with it.  We’ve poisoned everything in sight for our own selfish “progress.”  We’ve even poisoned ourselves.  Try finding tap water without chlorine and fluoride in it.  Things seem to keep getting worse, too.  We are nearing the collapse of at least the USA, and possibly the global economy as we know it.  America will no doubt become a third world country.  This is, of course, due to our behavior as a species.  The United States makes up 5% of the population and uses over 25% of the world’s resources.  If that isn’t unsustainable, I don’t know what is.  Americans don’t even produce hardly anything anymore, yet another sign we are headed down the road of becoming the other, the nondominant nation.  And it is entirely our own faults.

When the settlers first arrived here in America, the landbase was pristine, a paradise.  Now it has become the United Malls of America.  We have destroyed this entire continent and called it progress.  We have drained the land of every natural resource we could think of and had a misguided assumption that they would last forever.  God forbid we would think ahead.  I have the most dreadful feeling that in the next 50 years, this whole planet will become nothing more than a stinking ball of garbage and radioactive materials.  And we’ll have 15 billion people if some plague or virus doesn’t wipe out half the population.  I already feel overcrowded with just almost 7 billion people on this little rock.  Imagine how fucked up this world will be if double the people live on it.

Lucky for us, the current way of life is unsustainable, so we probably will never see 15 billion people.  And if we do, it will be a tipping point that will lead to the complete destruction of civilization.  There will be some kind of crash this century and I would argue that we are already in it.  The economy is destroyed.  Most of our food supply is created in a lab.  People either have no job or a job that doesn’t allow them to cover their expenses.  There are millions of rivers of money going from the poor to the rich and the Federal Reserve has our country by the balls, quite literally.  The future looks bleak, and there is little we can do about it but pull up a chair to watch everything crash and burn.  I’m sure the television news will put on quite a show.  And we’ve all got a front-row seat.  Sure, it will be a biased report, but you can’t argue with the facts of what is going on.

People are suffering today worse than ever before due to our psychotic and domineering society and culture.  We are told there is only one way to live and we either live that way (the exact way that is getting us into so much trouble in the first place) or be phased out with violence or simple assimilation.  Just ask the Native Americans about how compassionate civilized humans are.  We are all victims of this culture.  We didn’t ask to be born into a world where 1% of the people control something like 50% of the wealth.  The game is rigged, the scales are tilted and we are all in the dark–intentionally.  Nobody at the top will tell you that you’re getting fucked and have been getting fucked since you started your first day of school.  We are only taught what we are meant to be taught to keep us docile, compliant, and subordinate.  We are taught to never question authority and to accept that rules are rules and laws are laws no matter how ridiculous some of them may be.

So here we have a population of people who are completely devoid of critical thinking.  Sure, there are some people who are resilient enough to break out of the propaganda, but for the most part people just take what they see and hear at face value and believe it, especially if it comes from a trusted media outlet.  The news is the main tool of propaganda, and this is exactly why there are 24-hour news channels.  The powers that be want us to be exposed to their manifestos at all hours of the day and night to keep us thinking the way they want us to think. Here’s a link to Bill Hicks’s JFK assassination joke that shows how the totalitarian media tells you what to think and distracts you with meaningless entertainment.  Even shows that are supposedly entertainment express these same views through the characters’ values and ways of life.  Their main messages are that buying things will make you happy, your government always knows what is best, and that we as a people are entitled to whatever we want, no matter the cost (financial or ecological).  We are told that to challenge authority is a big no-no and to think for yourself makes you a radical.  To propose ideas that are not widely accepted by the brainwashed masses and those who are doing the brainwashing is grounds to get you assassinated (at least some of the time).

It is a mad, mad world out there and a self-destructive one at that.  We are literally biting off the hand that feeds us and it is only going to end one way and at this point I do not believe there is any way to stop the crash.  We are already in it.  Things will get a lot worse before they get better and people will die.  When we run out of the fuel that sustains us, what will we have left to keep up this standard of living and to support this many people?  Hell, even our own crops are grown with fertilizer derived from oil.  Us humans may have been smart enough to control the world, but to do it in a way that will allow us to do it forever is beyond our reach.  We extend our power beyond our understanding and beyond our empathy to the point where we even hurt ourselves in the process.  Can we ever recover from this type of behavior?

I think time will tell whether or not we can overcome this pathological death cycle we are caught in right now.  Of course, after we have a major crash, there will be someone next in line to assume power and control, but only it will be much harder to control an entire population without all those natural resources.  I hope that one day we can start living from the land, not exploiting it, but I very much doubt I will see this in my lifetime because people are so resistant to change, especially one of this order of magnitude.  And if we do form a society without guns and exploitation, what is to stop another neighboring tribe from doing the opposite and overtaking us, much like every culture that exists today once did?  Perhaps the Earth is better off without humans altogether, but try pushing that idea on people.  Not going to happen.

I have faith that one day perhaps we will realize the folly of our ways and revert back to our hunter-gatherer real selves.  How we get there is unknown to me, but once we realize that it is more intelligent to live in balance as a whole species and retain that species consciousness without being seduced by fancy new tools that increase our power at a hidden cost, then it will be a possibility.  I’m just hoping that eventually we can live the way we are supposed to once again, the way nature intended.

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Posted in Anarcho-primitivism, Anti-establishment, Nature, Simplicity, Theories | 5 Comments »

DNA and Natural Selection

Friday, January 15th, 2010

At our very core, us humans are all the same. We all want to survive and to pass our genes on to the next generation. It is built into our DNA. This is why the act of reproduction feels so good. We are programmed to reproduce at any cost possible because we originated from a world with very few humans with very low survival rates. Natural selection took care of the people who were ill-equipped to survive and the ones with the strongest genes lived on to replicate their DNA time and time again, ensuring the species a better chance of surviving. This was back in our hunter-gatherer days.

In comes agriculture. This new invention forced upon the entire world over time increased our population due to a greater abundance of food, and this led to more people and more food and so on to the point where we for the most part do not go hungry and have more than enough food to feed the world many times over. More and more people are surviving that would have died back in the hunter-gatherer days because survival has gotten easier and easier every generation, evident by all those people you see walking around. So we have a diluted gene pool that just keeps reproducing at the speed of light, with exponential population growth, leading to a resource scarcity and a destruction of our Earth’s ecosystem. The stronger gene people mixed in with the weaker gened people and turned us all into a homogeneous population of consumerism-obsessed “zombies.” Now I use the term “zombie” to refer to the mass of people on Black Friday who want a good sale so badly they trample a Wal*Mart employee to death. We are overcrowded and we sense in our DNA that there will not be enough to go around, so we become agitated and fearful.

We are living so far out of balance, even our own bodies can sense it. Every time I see a tree being cut down or factory-farmed animals in cages, I feel for them. I feel like we could be doing so much better as a race, but instead we look after our own narrow-minded self-interest instead of working towards the greater good for all of the world. We buy sneakers made by child slaves and fur coats made from dead animals that were seen as no more than a commodity, an expendable life for the purpose of fashion. But we don’t want to know. We don’t want to think that the animal we are serving up for dinner spent its entire life in a cage, never seeing the light of day and then was slaughtered in a very bloody death, but all cleaned up by the time we get it at our local supermarket. It wouldn’t have to be this way if there weren’t so many people that we had to start domesticating animals and using them as tools to serve us, rather than allowing them to live their lives as well.

I would argue that natural selection became human selection after some time in civilization. We exterminate all life that doesn’t benefit us, and we keep the things around the we use or find nice to look at. Everything else is expendable. Our own selfish needs, brought about by our selfish DNA, which cares about nothing more than survival of itself and its species, will go to great lengths to make sure we have everything at the expense of every other living creature on this planet.

We are what we are. It’s hard to change a species’ consciousness. We are doomed to keep up this behavior for quite some time until we crash and burn into a place where we are forced to live like we once did, but who knows if we’ll just repeat the cycle over and over for all eternity, crashing and burning, then rebuilding, then crashing and burning again? Since the human lifespan is not infinite or even more than a century at best, it’s hard to really know if we will ever learn from these mistakes we’ve made or if we will ever change our ways. It’s possible that we are hardwired to keep up the destruction, even well after we have lost everything due to resource depletion. Always the optimist, I know.

It’s possible that we may find that balance again where we live with nature and enhance it, but how we get to that point is beyond my knowledge. Even a plan that looks good on paper is going to hit many, many obstacles that will destroy any hope of a nature-based human world. Humans will go extinct in the future, but it will take a long time, but this exploitative and self-important type of behavior will certainly hasten our demise into oblivion, which is a good thing in that scenario anyway because we’re not living in balance. If we could find a place where we fit and stay there in a nature-based culture, it would also be fine because we could exist for millions of years and still have everything we started with.

But I don’t know if humans are capable of going back. Time will tell.

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Posted in Anarcho-primitivism, Anti-establishment, Inspiration, Intentions, Nature, Simplicity, Theories | 1 Comment »

Eating Animals

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Lately, as we all know, there has been light shed on the horrific factory farming industry.  But it doesn’t surprise me one bit.  Why should it?  It just goes with the typical endless growth culture that will inevitably destroy us.  Factory farming contributes to all sorts of environmental, health, and ethical problems that they could fill a thousand books (maybe more).  But it is in our nature to eat animals.  We simply cannot survive very long without eating the flesh of another creature or we will suffer ill health effects.  We cannot all buy locally grown, grass-fed, free range, certified organic meat either because there just isn’t enough of that to go around.  And the more food we produce, the more people there are, so the more meat is produced in this concentration-camp like slaughterhouse known as factory farming.

This civilization is a runaway train headed straight for destruction.  A system that takes without giving back is doomed to failure on the very principle that it is unsustainable.  And when a system that keeps getting bigger keeps stealing from the Earth and not replenishing it, it will inevitably come to a screeching halt.  This is  no dilemma on whether or not to eat animals.  This is a question of whether these factory-farmed animals are even contributing to our health, being that the factory farms that this pathological civilization have created turn animals into such sick creatures that 90% of their nutrition is wiped out due to all of the horrible living conditions and substandard food.  Let’s not forget to mention the antibiotics and growth hormones.  An animal living an unnatural life confined indoors is not going to produce the same quality meat as an animal that is allowed to live in its natural environment.

But most people just don’t want to know.  They want their burgers and fried chicken and just don’t want to think about what horrors these factory-farmed animals have been through.  And they don’t want to think about all the toxins and genetically modified foodstuffs they are absorbing as they eat what they perceive to be just another meal.  It would be nice if each animal we ate was actually hunted, had lived in the wild for its whole existence, and died quickly, painlessly.  It’s just too bad that things have gotten so bad in the meat industry.  And we are powerless to stop it.  Not enough people care to invoke real change in this field.  Sure, the permaculture movement has seen some success, but agribusiness will always be on top.  It’s not like the ordinary American can afford to eat a Certified Humane piece of steak or chicken every night.  They’ve got too many loans and bills to pay off for seemingly unnecessary things and comforts to spend more than 10% of their salary on food.

Another problem is we have too many people and way too much food.  And since we have too much food, there will be more people, and thus we will produce more food.  And this will inevitably lead to more people.  This is practically a law of nature.  And the more food we produce, the worse the conditions for the animals who are unfortunate enough to be stuck in the gears of our agricultural-industrial complex.  They spend their whole lives living in hell so we can eat one meal.  And it becomes such a meal that it doesn’t even nourish us that much, so we are compelled to eat more to fill the discrepancy in nutrition.  And thus obesity is created, even though most obese people are nutritionally deficient due to extreme degradation in nutrients in ALL the food we eat, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, and anything edible.  This toxic world has ruined our food supply and will continue to do so until it inevitably collapses and hopefully we can move towards a more natural way of life.

There used to be less than 2 million humans on this planet.  Our population wasn’t getting out of balance at that time because if it did, some of us would starve due to lack of food.  If we overhunted, we starved.  Our population had negative feedback, always pulling us back to the center.  Think of it as a bowl.  The further away you go from balance, the more pull there is back to the center.  When agriculture started, we created a positive feedback loop.  We became the creators of our food and domesticated wild plants and animals, making us the deciders of how much food would be available.  Thus, we created more food, and thus more people, and thus more land to house those people was needed.  And all of this enabled hierarchy and plagues and cities and central authority.  When you have billions of people roaming around, there has to be someone to keep order.  Back when there were small tribes spread out all across the Earth, there was no need.  People did as they pleased and did what they needed to survive and spent the rest of their time playing and slacking off.  Now we live in an artificial hell world where every second of the day is structured and commanded.  We care more about efficiency than the health of the people as a whole.  And we care far less about the animals we eat, because to us they are nothing more than mindless robots that have no feelings and are expendable with no rights to the lives they were intended for.

I have no objection to someone going out and hunting for food and eating it.  But there are no wild animals that are as tasty as the ones we’ve domesticated.  We domesticated them because they were our favorites and we wanted more of them.  We didn’t know what it would lead to at the time because there is no way that people back then had the foresight to predict the cruelty we see today in the factory farming system.  But most people are not ready to listen.  Most people do not want to know the truth about that piece of meat in their plate.  Better not think about it.  And this is why it is allowed to  continue.  But people will only listen when they are ready and not before.  I’m just hoping that some people are ready to hear this and are willing to buy meat that was raised in humane conditions, preferably without any chemicals or genetically-modified feed.  And that will be a start.  But it’s going to take a major change in the way we view the food animals we eat before any real change takes place.  I just hope for things to get better in my lifetime and move in a positive direction until we are no longer being so cruel to animals that we should be worshiping because they sustain our lives.

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Posted in Anarcho-primitivism, Anti-establishment, Food/Health Related, Intentions, Nature | 2 Comments »

Milk and Other Issues

Friday, November 6th, 2009

I haven’t drank milk in a long time because I just find it to be counterproductive when it comes to my health. Pasteurized milk from sick cows just allows the factory farming system to raise cows in ever-worsening conditions, pumping them with more antibiotics and growth hormone to the point that milking cows only live a few years, 3-5, and then die well before their usual lifespans. Cows that are fed genetically-modified grains (mostly corn) instead of being able to feed on grass–their natural diet. What exactly is in our milk anyway? It certainly no longer does a body good. It sure used to before all these laws were passed to outlaw raw milk in most of the country and ever since Monsanto was allowed to put rBGH into 95% of our milk supply.

Sure, these laws were passed because of our own incompetence. The pasteurization laws were passed because some dirty farmers were trying to sell milk from sick cows and people got sick, so milk was deemed no longer safe. Much like the raw almonds of today. One outbreak of salmonella and they spray all almonds in California with a toxic pesticide. Milk is so healthy in its natural form and yet it is almost toxic in the form it is in today. A large proportion of our population can’t even digest milk because the enzyme lactase was destroyed in pasteurization and homogenization. Would we expect any less from our government? Could we expect any better from totalitarianism and helpless dependence by an entire nation?

I just want a healthy mixture to put into my fucking coffee. I don’t want some science experiment in my mug. And don’t say soymilk because I’m not too keen on developing breast cancer or breasts for that matter. And let’s not forget about the antinutrients that are found in non-fermented soy. And I’m not really in the mood to drive up to Amish country every time I want some raw cream from a healthy cow.

I’m sure I could find a farmer here in the great state of South Carolina, but it shouldn’t have to be this way. Farming is dead now anyway. Most farming is done by corporations with their genetically modified crops. Corn, soy, wheat, and that’s pretty much it. Those are the staples of our civilization. Of course they factory-farm all our animals and feed them all the corn, soy, and wheat that is unsuitable for human consumption. It is nearly impossible to get healthy meat or dairy from anywhere when even 100 years ago it was easy. Well there were so much less people, too, so there wasn’t half as much competition. And now the medical industrial complex is profiting from the inferior standards imposed on our food supply because we keep getting sick due to eating foods with less than half the nutrients they had 100 years ago. I just want some healthy food and drinks, God damn it! I don’t want toxic waste in my water, antibiotics in my meat, and rBGH in my fucking milk! I want whole, natural foods grown ethically and without poisons.

Of course pesticides go with the given assumption that all the world’s food is for humans and every other creature that tries to eat “our” food should be killed. Vegans say that they are ethical consumers, but their diets contribute to billions or more of animal and insect deaths every year. Sure, it is less than meat eaters, but not by much. Just creating those monoculture farms kills off entire ecosystems. So it is the whole system that is broken. But my readers already know my position on that. But I’m not going to change the whole system, but I sure as hell can raise awareness about it, can’t I?

I’m not going to boycott eating meat or become one of those freegans. Not that I don’t agree with their philosophy.  It’s just that it’s not going to make any real difference and I’m not too keen on picking my food out of the garbage.  Besides, where am I going to find high-quality, organic foods in the garbage?  The only person I’ve heard of that has been successful at that is Ran Prieur.  Here is his Dumpser Diving FAQ if you really want to go down that route.  Sure, this is more ethical than supporting a corrupt system financially, but this goes way beyond my comfort zone.

You’re still not going to pull high-quality food out of the dumpster anyway.  It is the same shit that they sell at the grocery stores.  You’re just getting it for free.  And it doesn’t attack the problem at its cause.  It merely attacks one of the effects of our current civilization.  The only way we can go back to getting healthy foods is after we dismantle civilization and central authority.  I guess I’ll have to wait until then to get healthy milk unless I really want to go all Amish on you guys.  Which means this blog will become dormant for longer and longer periods.  Can you have a coffeemaker in Amish country?

I’m at least grateful I can live in a time when my opinions can be voiced.  Sure, I can’t go too far or else Big Brother will take me down.  But at least expression is freer than it has been in past civilizations, but at the same time it is getting tighter.  But as the system keeps getting tighter, it is only because it is getting weaker.  It is starting to break at the seams.  Like George Carlin said some 15 years ago, “I always ask people in every city if they trust the water.  They always say no.  That’s a good sign that everything is starting to break down.”  Of course I’m paraphrasing, but that was over 15 years ago.  Now we don’t trust any of the food or drink we are presented with.  What does that say about society in general?  That things are getting worse, but that is a good thing.  That is the first step in the right direction of us going back to nature, but with the intelligence of having lived through this joke of a civilization we created.

But will we learn from our mistakes after the dust has settled?  Who knows?  Perhaps we are destined to keep rising and falling for the rest of our ( likely) short history on Earth.  If that is the case, I guess we are just all along for the ride.  The key for us all is to mentally get outside of the system.  That is the most important part of liberating ourselves.  We need to live a radically simple life as Dave Pollard puts it in his essay How To Save the World.  He has a whole laundry list of what you can do and what you should do.  He is one of the best anti-civ thinkers out there, but he is a bit pessimistic.  But at least he is honest.  With all the information he has about the real state of the world, he can’t help it.  But as of late, in the last few years, he has become more joyful and has concentrated on living in the present, which is a big help to us all IMHO.

We need to start a movement of back to nature, but preferably in a warm climate because I hate the fucking cold.  That way we can get back to the way it used to be and live our lives the way nature intended with full awareness of how not to live so that we never get sucked into this civilization vortex ever again.  But I don’t have much faith in humanity as a whole.  But I do have faith in individual people to spread the word and raise awareness.  But people will only listen when they are ready.  It’s a shame, but it’s the truth.  My question to everyone is:  When will you be ready?

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Posted in Anarcho-primitivism, Anti-establishment, Food/Health Related, Nature, Simplicity, Theories | 2 Comments »

A Virus With Shoes

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Bill Hicks once said “the human race is a virus with shoes.”  I find that to be very true.  I would have used the word cancer, though.  We consume resources at expense of the whole to suit our own selfish needs.  We are a cancer on this planet.  We should just gracefully either become healthy “cells” again or we will be eradicated with the Earth’s immune system once we stop “mutating” to evade all the diseases that are meant to control our population.  We bypass all of those diseases by becoming more and more resistant to everything the Earth and even our own kind throw our way.  There are very few people who are doing their part to put the Earth back into balance and their actions are virtually meaningless because of the immense pull in the other direction.  The corporations are like the tumors of our human cancer race.  They pollute on a scale so large without any regard for any of the life around them that everything we eat or drink is now poisonous to some degree.  Look what we have done to this wonderful world.  Before civilized humans, this place was a paradise.  Now it’s closer to a hell.

I can’t imagine what the world will look like in the year 2100.  It will probably be a flaming ball of shit.  Civilization is in its twilight phase after a very short existence of a mere 10,000 years.  We lived mostly in balance before that for almost 3 million years.  To say we can’t go back is to say that once you go to work you can’t go back to your home afterward.  “You know you can’t go back.”  I believe we can go back to living in balance with the Earth, but it will be no easy transition, especially with all the fucking people we have hanging around this planet.  We need to cut the population by 93% or more to even be able to live in balance and we need to go back to a time without agriculture, which leads to expanding populations, conquest, war, and disease.  We need to go back to a primitive way of living that actually enhances the Earth, not destroys it.  We need to increase diversity instead of wiping it all out.  When I say diversity, I’m talking about diversity of species, not the narrow-minded diversity used to describe a particular subset of the human population.

We also need to abandon technology.  Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but all it has done is complicate things beyond belief.  It is one of the drugs of civilization that keeps it going, and because of it we are larger in numbers, but more stressed out and closer together, which tends to bring out aggressive behaviors and drug abuse.  Our mental health is collapsing all around us because our whole society is insane and in order to adapt, we must also become that way.  One psychiatrist said, “Psychopathy is a perfectly natural response to a pathogenic environment.”  We are victims of circumstance here and if we had a choice on how to live, I’m sure there would be more people living in a more primitive culture, but in this robber-baron consciousness world, they would be overtaken yet again and be forced to comply or be killed.  We have wiped out every indigenous culture, barring a very small few exceptions.  And the primitive peoples, who are seduced by the fancy new toys of civilization, have no immunity to these overtakings.

What I suggest is that we take the knowledge of civilization and what it has done to our planet and what it has done to our species as a whole and retain it once we go to a more primitive way of life.  Sure, we won’t be able to defend against these gargantuan industrial civilizations that come and try and conquer us, but at least we may be able to convince them of the error of their ways before they obliterate us into oblivion.  Even here in America, we destroyed the cultures of the Native Americans and the Africans we brought here to be our slaves.  Where does this come from?  Destruction at all costs to serve our narrow-minded agenda.  It’s hard to reason with these monsters when there’s a gun shoved in your face or you are being hunted like animals to work on a plantation across the ocean.  Christopher Columbus hacked up Native American children and fed them to his dogs.  He claimed to be a man of God.  What would Jesus do?  Violence is never the answer unless you are under direct attack and are only trying to preserve your own life or the lives of those you care about.

All this violence and conquest stem from the agricultural complex.  Since we had more people, we needed to keep conquering more and more space to house and feed our growing population.  Whatever spawned the development of agriculture has destroyed us as a species to the horrible cancer we have become today and will continue to be at an escalating pace until we crash into a post-civilization world that could be anything, good or bad, depending on the mass consciousness of our species at that point.  A lot of people will die during the crash, billions.  It will be horrible, but at the same time a good thing.  We will have a chance, for the first time in 10,000 years, to live our own ways and to make decisions that could bring about major change in the world.  Now is not the time for major change because most people are too comfortable in their little self-created bubbles.  But things are starting to get worse from civilization’s standpoint and better eventually for the rest of the world as the corporations are starting to fall and putting forth in motion the beginning of a collapse that will breed abundance, diversity, and freedom for the first time in a very long time.  Most of us will not see the culmination of this crash, but we will be here for at least the beginning of it.  Let us use our power to nudge civilization into the history books before it destroys every living thing left on this planet.  Let us become a species without shoes.

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Posted in Anarcho-primitivism, Anti-establishment, Inspiration, Intentions, Nature, Theories | No Comments »

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