The Red Pill: The Nasty Truth

"I'm afraid we have a slight apocalypse."

-Giles, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

And so we have realized for centuries that we were imprisoned, but we have always imagined that we were imprisoned by somebody else. We suspected aliens, Freemasons, the devil, robots, 'Super-Villains', terrorists, communists, heretics, Romans, Muslims, Christians, Jews, the English, The French, nobility, the robber barons, Bill Gates, the rich, politicians, the WTO, NAFTA, the United Nations, Babylonians, Canaanites, the Pharaoh, Unions, dissidents, and barbarians, and witches and wizards and a billion other ridiculous scape-goats.


Nobody makes you take the blue pill. The idea is ridiculous, because ‘they’ lack any real power.
Yes, people work very hard at tricking, bribing, intimidating, and coercing you into taking the blue pill. But in the end, you have to put it in your own mouth. Unless you have been forcibly medicated by outside forces (a not impossible thing today) the blue pill exists in you only as much as you allow it to exist.


You have to decide not to seek more. You have to decide you are afraid of failure. You have to decide you are willing to live a life you hate, because you do not trust your own abilit to make it better. You are the one who have to decide that trusting somebody else to master you is better than mastering yourself. You have to decide that life if more rewarding if you remain a child.

Nobody else will do that for you. It has to be you.


In the Movie adaptation of the graphic novel "V for Vendetta", the title character gives a speech over England's emergency broadcast system. It spells out precisely the problem with blaming leaders for our imprisonment.


"Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of the everyday routine. The security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration whereby important events of the past usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful, bloody struggle are celebrated with a nice holiday. I thought we could mark this November the 5th. A day that is, sadly, no longer remembered by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are, of course, those who do not want us to speak. Even now, orders are being shouted into telephones and men with guns will soon be on their way.


Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation. Words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning and, for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of Surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Certainly there are those who are more responsible than others and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty you need only look into a mirror.

I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you and in your panic, you turned to the now High Chancellor Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent..."


We buy their goods. We pay their taxes. We obey their laws. We walk to the beat that they establish. The evil and the criminal is not in what they command, but that to which we consent. They can command, but we are the ones who make the choice to obey. But, oh dear, you say- they would jail me, or hurt me or worse if I didn't obey. Yes, they might try, but it is your inability to resist those injustices that allows the threat of them to scare you into silent obedience.


We are imprisoned within a culture of hate and destruction, because we lack the will to resist and skill to successfully live freely.

William Kamkwamba on building a windmill

Marcin Jakubowski: Open-sourced blueprints for civilization

What’s the Point?

The new generation has been left holding the bill for the previous generation's carelessness and excess.

I say- no- we should not accept this. I say that it is time to create our own space. I say it is time to push back again armageddon and give to those people who have no place a place to stand. We are not mistakes, we are not broken, we are not outcasts. We are the awakened. We are the next generation of leaders if we can only find our place.

I do not intend to find my place. I intend to create my place.

In his book, 'Ishmael', Daniel Quinn examines in depth the idea that human beings are imprisoned within a civilizational 'system', a mental and social construct that is so pervasive that they cannot even see it as separate from themselves, and so it human nature. Quinn goes on in 'Ishmael' and his later works to explain that not only are these systems and our feelings about them (such as our constant frustration about our lives) not human nature, but they are not even natural to humans in the first place. Rather, the feelings of hopelessness and stress are analogous to the danger signals that any wild animal feels when it is put into captivity. We have been in captivity for so long that we no longer realize that we are captives.

In a later work in the series "My Ishmael", Quinn looks at what keeps us imprisoned in the culture. In "Ishmael" he points out that in order to be free from this system of captivity we have to convince people to stop telling the story, stop buying into and replicating the system of imprisonment, because the system is built and maintained by us-and rebuilt with each generation.

The irony is that we are imprisoned because we have broken the prime law a culture can break. We have imprisoned ourselves because the breaking of the law actually creates the situation we now find ourselves in. To put it another way, breaking the law results in the law-breaker creating their own jail and locking themselves in it. In his book, "The Book of the Damned", Quinn refers to this as "The Law of Life", based on what the Ihalmiut Eskimos of the Great Barrens of Canada called it. He goes on to say the following about the law of life:

"It sounds almost too good to be true, but that's what they called it. It really couldn't have been called anything else, any more than the law of gravity could be called anything else.

It is the Law of Life.

Followed everywhere in the seas, on the shores, in the forests, in the ponds, on the plains, in the deserts.

Followed by everything that moves in the community of life: great and small, naked and armored, scaled and feathered, spined and spineless, brainy and brainless by paramecia and elephants and sharks and grasshoppers and frogs and wolves and ticks and deer and rabbits and turtles and owls.

It's a universal law.

Written where only the gods could have written it.

In the fabric of the living community.

And so a law was in readiness for Homo habilis.

A single law.

A biological law. But not merely a biological law.

A sublime law.

The pattern for a million cultures, no two alike.

As it is the pattern for a million species, no two alike.

A law good enough to be the basis for a billion years of cultural experimentation.

A law never to be outworn or outgrown.

Because it had been written by gods who were actually gods. And not blunderers."

Arvind Gupta: Turning trash into toys for learning

Why Should I Care?

We are supposed to forget about our discontent and join the great march of civilization. Our parents did, clearly. But some of us, and the number appears to be increasing with each generation, cannot find it within ourselves to join the march of civilization. We resent it. What our parents saw as progress, we see as folly. What our parents saw as contribution, we see as despoiling. What our parents saw as achievement, we see as armageddon with life itself. Not all of us of course, but more all the time.

What are we to do? Where can we stand? Is there a place for us? Or are we simply errors, broken cogs that jam this beautiful system?

"Among the people of your culture, which want to destroy the world?"

"As far as I know, no one specifically wants to destroy the world."

"And yet you do destroy it, each of you. Each of you contributes daily to the destruction of the world. Why don't you stop?"

I shrugged. "Frankly, we don't know how."

"You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live."

Daniel Quinn, In 'Ishmael'

Why do people feel trapped? Why is captivity a common facet of our cultural life: The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, Soylent Green, 1984, A Brave New World, World of Darkness, Blade, V for Vendetta, etc..?

"The world of the Takers is one vast prison, and except for a handful of Leavers scattered across the world, the entire human race is now inside that prison."

Daniel Quinn, In 'Ishmael'

Why do people wonder if they are deceived in our culture? Plato wondered about his mythological cave where people were imprisoned and taught that the cave with its shadow puppets was the whole world. Obviously Plato was trying to say that we were being deceived into accepting  a psychological prison of some kind. Descartes said much the same with his thought experiments about the evil mastermind who may be able to convince us that what we see is real, when in fact it is simply a construct of his making. From these images, the Wachowski brothers crafted the Matrix Trilogy- three movies about imprisonment of body, mind and ideology- all of which seem to heavily imply that human beings live in a box.

The Thirteenth Floor, Dark City, Soylent Green, A Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, V for Vendetta and many other works of fiction in film, literature, and comics suggest that the world we live in is a prison in some way shape or form. It may a literal prison, or it may be a psychological prison. It may be a physical prison with walls, or a prison of surveillance. Even the religions of the world consider this world to a prison of sorts: a grim, sinful, and dangerous school where we will be graded and either pass or fail for all eternity. Why do we feel this way? What is wrong with this culture of ours, because certainly if an individual had this obsession with the idea that he or she was in a prison that they were unable to see or even prove the existence of, we would have diagnosed them as having severe paranoid delusions by now. Thus if this enormous obsession with imprisonment is not normal, then why do we feel this way?

John Hardy: My green school dream

Are You One of Us?

Hi, I’d like to introduce myself. If you don’t know me, you likely know somebody like me.

I’m the young person who seems at least reasonably smart and hard working who can’t seem to fit in and get the hang of life. I’m sometimes congenial and other times stand-offish.

I’ve been accused of being unreasonable, unrealistic, naive, or foolish.

I’ve been accused of having a bad attitude, or not wanting to pay my dues, or not understanding how the world works.

I wander, seemingly without purpose. The benchmarks of my parents good pay, good benefits, job security, don’t impress me. I quit or get fired. I am often depressed.

People like me fall into drug use in seemingly larger numbers each year. People like me struggle with depression and seem to swing between apathy and passionate anger at the oddest times. People like me seem to have their lives permanently stalled or locked in neutral at the on ramp of adulthood.

What is to done about people like me?

I often like the outdoors, the sound of wind over the hill. I frequently like hiking and camping and often take martial arts or outdoor sports.

Psychologists and artists both are noticing that the frustration and directionless in security of adolescence is lasting longer and longer. Robert Bly wrote about it in “Iron John”, as did Michael Kimmel in “Guyland”. Adult women read teen fantasy such as “Twilight”- in which a teen girl slowly enters the world of the undead, forever sixteen. Popular television is rooted in the teenage quest for popularity- the reality television show. Immature adults populate movies in ever greater numbers.

But I do not think that most of us want to be here- trapped in this nowhere space between child and adult- despite what Hollywood might think. I think people like me remain here- trapped- because we see no viable exit.

Dave Eggers' wish: Once Upon a School

Gever Tulley 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do

Steven Levitt analyzes crack economics

Dan Dennett: Cute, sexy, sweet, funny

Hans Rosling's new insights on poverty

Wisdom of the Ages

"There are no short cuts because there is no end."

Anonymous

Steven Pinker on the myth of violence

Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives

Dan Ariely on our buggy moral code

Grist: The oceans may be going extinct

New Grist Article

Follow the link to the full text.

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-20-the-oceans-may-be-going-extinct

Grist: Destroying dams could save a salmon species

New grist article, full text below.

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-08-01-destroying-dams-could-save-a-salmon-species

Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our own decisions?

The Foldable Canoe

Not yet purchasable, but Oh so Cool. Details on the 9 pound foldable canoe can be found below.

• http://www.grist.org/list/2011-08-12-add-this-foldable-canoe-to-your-climate-change-survival-plan


• http://cleantechnica.com/2011/08/10/foldable-canoe-for-survivalists-and-others/

Grist: Shell spills oil in the Arctic; the Northwest Passage opens

 Grist Magazine:

Critical List: Shell spills oil in the Arctic; the Northwest Passage opens

Article here:
http://www.grist.org/list/2011-08-15-critical-list-shell-spills-oil-in-the-arctic-the-northwest-passa

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation

Grist Article: Michigan’s gangsta gardener gets off

Read the complete article here.

http://www.grist.org/urban-agriculture/2011-07-14-charges-dropped-against-michigan-gardener-video

Grist Article: How to get into urban beekeeping

Read the full article here.

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-08-02-how-to-get-into-urban-beekeeping

Ray Anderson on the Corporation

"The modern corporation has grown out of the industrial age. The industrial age began in 1712 when an Englishman named Thomas Newcomen invented a steam driven pump to pump water out of the English coal mine, so the English coal miners could get more coal to mine, rather than hauling buckets of water out of the mine. It was all about productivity, more coal per man-hour. That was the dawn of the industrial age. And then it became more steel per man-hour, more textiles per man-hour, more automobiles per man-hour, and today, it's more chips per man-hour, more gizmos per man-hour. The system is basically the same, producing more sophisticated products today."

Ray Anderson in the Movie: The Corporation

Ray Anderson on Wikipedia

Ray Anderson on Amazon

Climate Change: Thoughts from Informed Minds (*sarcasm*)

• http://www.grist.org/list/2011-08-01-the-onion-reports-on-puzzling-behavior-among-climate-scientists
• http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-29-pawlenty-look-at-me-i-dont-believe-in-science-either
• http://www.grist.org/list/2011-07-05-fox-news-takes-credit-for-study-that-debunks-climate-skeptics
• http://www.grist.org/list/2011-08-04-new-tool-maps-how-badly-climate-change-affects-you

Grist Article: From nose-to-tail to stem-to-root, tasty ways to reduce food waste now

Read the complete article here.


http://www.grist.org/sustainable-food/2011-07-28-from-nose-to-tail-to-stem-to-root-tasty-ways-reduce-food-waste

Skookumchuck

A Short video of Skookumchuck Narrows at Hide Tide

Skookumchuck Narrows forms the entrance of Sechelt Inlet on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast in Canada. Before broadening into Sechelt Inlet, all of its tidal flow together with that of Salmon Inlet and Narrow Inlet must pass through Sechelt Rapids. At peak flows, whitecaps and whirlpools form at the rapids even in calm weather. The narrows are also the site of a Skookumchuk Narrows Provincial Park.

Each day, tides force large amounts of seawater through the narrows—200 billion gallons of water on a 3-metre (9.8 ft) tide. The difference in water levels on either side of the rapids can exceed 2 metres (6.6 ft) in height. Current speeds can exceed 16 knots (30 km/h),[1] up to 17.68 knots (32.74 km/h).[2] Although it is sometimes claimed to be the fastest tidal rapids in the world,[3] Norway's Saltstraumen reaches speeds of 20 knots (37 km/h).


The tidal patterns keep the water moving at virtually all times in the narrows area, which attracts a plethora of interesting sea life.

Whitewater kayakers and surfer Elijah Mack[4] have surfed the rapids, which can be dangerous.


The unrelated B.C. town of Skookumchuck is several hundred kilometres east in the East Kootenay region of the province. Another location bearing this name, Skookumchuck Hot Springs, is on the Lillooet River east of Whistler. All locations take their name from Chinook jargon for "strong water" and the term is common in maritime jargon for any set of strong rapids, particularly those at the mouth of inlets.

[from Wikipedia here.]


This is the territory within which we are currently planning to build the camp. Any suggestions or ideas are always welcome!

Investigating a Worthwhile Life

A Simple Stand Against Disposable Culture

We live in a disposable culture. I would like to argue to the men out there that this is a simple way you can take a stand against that disposable ideology and increase your MAN score at the same time.

The Straight Razor!

Yes, it is more difficult. Yes, you could cut yourself.

That is actually part of the point. 

You must be more aware, more present in the moment, more attentive of your life as it actually happens.

Interesting concept, yes?

Thoughts on the Power of Story

 

"So many people forget that the first country that the Nazi's invaded was their own."

Dr. Abraham Erskine, Captain America: The First Avenger

From Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn:

"[I]t was not only the Jews who were captives under Hitler. The entire German nation was a captive, including his enthusiastic supporters..."

"...Even if you weren't personally captivated by the story, you were a captive all the same, because the people around you made you a captive. You were like an animal being swept along in the middle of a stampede..." 

"...the people of your culture are in much the same situation. Like the people of Nazi Germany, they are the captives of a story."

Most people will object at this point that they have never heard the story of our culture. They will probably deny the possibility that there is one.

"...That's because there's no need to hear of it. There's no need to name it or discuss it. Every one of you knows it by heart by the time you're six or seven. ...And you hear it incessantly, because every medium of propaganda, every medium of education pours it out incessantly. ...It's like the humming of a distant motor that never stops, it becomes a sound that's no longer heard at all..." 

Most people at this object in a way that generally boils down to the statement that they do not believe you at this point.

"Belief is not required. Once you know this story, you'll hear it everywhere in your culture, and you'll be astonished that the people around you don't hear it as well but merely take it in." 

Studies have shown that we remember information better when it is transmitted by story. Studies have shown that we are more persuaded by narrative. Authors know that they have to pay careful attention to make sure their fiction meets people's expectations for a story, or their fans will turn on them like rabid dogs.

Stories are powerful things, mysterious things. Joseph Campbell noted that the same story structure keeps appearing through history and called it the Hero's Journey. Hollywood noticed that certain story formulas keep working no matter how obvious they are. World Religions rely upon certain story elements with such regularity that a 'Madlibs' game could be made of such elements.

People will die for a story.

People will kill for a story.

People will work for forty years with no future for a story.

People will keep trying things that didn't work yesterday if the story tells them that this way should work.

What's Your Story?

Doesn't seem like such a harmless question now, does it?

Grist Arcticle: Let them eat dandelions

Read the complete interview here.

http://www.grist.org/locavore/2011-08-05-let-them-eat-dandelions-urban-foraging-with-expert-leda-meredith

A Collection of Quotes from Frank Herbert

Presented here without commentary.


Mood? What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises - no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting.
-Counsel of Gurney Halleck to young Paul Atreides when he declares he is not in the mood for training.
-Frank Herbert, Dune

Hope clouds observation.
-Frank Herbert, Dune

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
-Frank Herbert, Dune

There is no escape - we pay for the violence of our ancestors.
-Frank Herbert, Dune

What do you despise? By this you are truly known.
-Frank Herbert, Dune

The highest function of ecology is understanding consequences.
-Frank Herbert, Dune

To accept a little death is worse than death itself.
-Frank Herbert, Dune

Life - all life - is in the service of life
-Frank Herbert, Dune

Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known.
-Frank Herbert, Dune

Grist Article: Not your grandma’s strawberries

Read the Complete Article here.

http://www.grist.org/food/2011-08-02-not-your-grandmas-strawberries

Read the article here.

7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable

•  7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html#ixzz1U7BNMl6E

Ward Churchill on Cowboys and Indians

White domination is so complete that even American Indian children want to be cowboys. It's as if Jewish children wanted to play Nazis.

Fantasies of the Master Race, 1992

 

Ward Churchill on Wikiequote

Ward Churchill on Wikipedia

Ward Churchill on Amazon

The Three A's of Awesome from TED Talks

Sechelt Quest: The Lost Camp, Part Four

And so we had reached the coastline. But we could not find the old camp grounds. We examined the area and found it to be lacking for our needs. The elevation rose too sharply and too fast off the coastline to allow for much of a campground. The ground that was level, was mostly beach sand and rock. And there was new private property that restricted access when arriving by the trail. So this site had proven to be a dead end.

That said, there were a number of alternate trails that looked promising on the map in this area that we had noticed previously. We had no time to check on them now however, if we intended to make the last ferry back to Horseshoe bay.

And so we packed up and headed out. The trip back up to the main trail was murderous. I jury rigged some make shift nordic poles to assist me. Donald began explaining the technical specs of all of the gear he wanted to distract himself. Jordan began plotting to murder the universe in order to keep himself entertained.


When we finally reached the top of the trail and made our way back to the wonderful lake with the intent of submerging our heads in it in order to cool down our baking skulls, we found a couple with a four wheel drive truck just finishing up a picnic.

We all dunked our skulls and then Jordan gave Donald the vehicle keys and I volunteered Donald for rescue duty by asking the couple if they could drive him down to our vehicle. Otherwise we had little chance of making the ferries back. The couple (and Donald) graciously agreed. And off they went.

We remaining three continued along on the trail, with Jordan bravely earning his $#!& in the woods badge after asking a very memorable question.

"Is this poison ivy? No? Then its toilet paper. Everyone keep walking."

Shortly after, Donald arrived like the cavalry, saving us two to three hours on foot (elevation is a crazy thing).

We now even had enough time to have dinner. And food rarely tastes as good as that meal did, after an epic trek like that.

We made the ferry as the third last vehicle squeaking on, because there was no room for the buses ahead of us. Walked in to the ferry we were drunk as a function of muscle and joint pain from the hike, and sat down to watch Superman in the gift shop.

It had been a good trip.

Sechelt Quest: The Lost Camp, Part Three

So, when we had left off yesterday, we had reached the beach! And had also promised you the video of the beach. So here it is, enjoy:

If the video will not display, it is available on youtube here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDtXDVAEdA8

Tomorrow we will cover the trip back, the sacred lake, and our meeting with Superman. Stay Tuned!

Sechelt Quest: The Lost Camp, Part Two

When last we left our intrepid quartet, we were heading down the dusty trail surrounded by berry bushes and fresh bear poop.

Yummy!

The final leg of the journey to Sechelt Inlet was all down hill, and steeply down hill, 800 meters in about 3 to 4 km or so. And the decline was not steady, it was a a series a brutal drops interspersed with flat strips to lull us into complacency.

And by complacency I mean brutalize our knees with large loose rocks and soft dusty soil, both of which gave way at the slightest pressure from our damaged and battered feet.

But at the end of the trek we found ourselves on the beach looking out at this.

Tune in Tomorrow and we'll show you the video.

Sechelt Quest: The Lost Camp, Part One

Brave Warriors We Were and Bold and Brash and Soon to Be Bloodied...

The Weekly meeting of Core Club for Genus Rex decided to have its meeting this week as a day hike. This week's posts will chronicle that epic trip.


We set out Sunday morning at 5:30am for the Horseshoe bay ferry terminal, to catch the first ferry across to Langdale and Gibson and from there up the Sunshine coast to Sechelt. Our goal was here, the abandoned bible camp beyond Mount Richardson Park and Tetrahedron Park that we questing warriors felt might indicate a suitable place for our planned camp.

The trip across the water and up to Sechelt went off without a hitch. We got lost trying to find the hiking trail and went up a dead end trail to a watermain access point in our first attempt to find the trail marked on the map.

Our second attempt at finding the trail was successful, and went headed up towards the potential camp site. And up was the appropriate term, because in 6 km of walking we rose 700 m. The elevation change did a number of my (Ryan Cove) knees and reminded me that I do in fact have arthritis. Donald and Jordan powered through like warrior poets. And Michelle?

Well as you can see from the picture, she was so far ahead of us boys in the first 6 km that we couldn't even see her most of the time. She only allowed us to catch up when she accidentally stepped on a bee and got stung.

After the first 6km the terrain flattened out and the travel became easier. We also realized that we could access this road with Donald's truck or even Jordan's if we slowed down and made allowance for the lower wheel base. None of us wanted to turn around at this point though, and so a mental note was made for the next trip.

As we walked we considered the idea of charging two fees for camp attendance, one for those who hiked the monster hike to the camp, and a higher fee for those who arrived by boat without having to hike. We also argued back and forth the idea of a badge for those who did this hike at least once.

Donald spotted deer tracks, and we began to notice piles of old decomposing bear poop near the end of the even trail.

Our final way station before the next elevation change would be an unnamed lake that was therefore christened Jordan Lake by somebody in the group, but certainly not by Jordan himself.

We paused to reflect on how amazing it looked, but this time we didn't stop to stick our heads in and cool down. That would change on the return trip, but we still had another 4km of switch backs and elevation drops (another 800m) to get through before we reached the point on the map where the old camp was supposed to be....

Continued Tomorrow in Part Two!

Why We Aren't Satisfied by Consumerism

Starhawk and the Fifth Sacred Thing

I am a witch, by which I mean that I am somebody who believes that the earth is sacred, and that women and women's bodies are one expression of that sacred being. My spirituality has always been linked to my feminism. Feminism is about challenging unequal power structures. So, it also means challenging inequalities in race, class, sexual preference. What we need to be doing is not just changing who holds power, but changing the way we conceive of power. There is the power we're all familiar with - power over. But there is another kind of power - power from within. For a woman, it is the power to be fertile either in terms of having babies or writing books or dancing or baking bread or being a great organizer. It is the kind of power that doesn't depend on depriving someone else.

-Starhawk


We are looking for new stories, and we are looking for old stories. We want stories that are ancient, to give us a sense of history, but we also want a story that is new, to distance ourselves from the painful, vengeful, destructive, consumptive, gluttonous story that we are forced to be a part of every day.

We are looking for a story that holds more sacred than the almighty dollar and our own ego gratification.


Each being is sacred - meaning that each has inherent value that cannot be ranked in a hierarchy or compared to the value of another being.
-Starhawk, The Fifth Sacred Thing


We do not know the words. we do  not know the path, we do not know how to escape the prison of a culture that we find ourselves in.  


Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation. To do a ritual, you must be willing to be transformed in some way. The inner willingness is what makes the ritual come alive and have power. If you aren't willing to be changed by the ritual, don't do it.
-Starhawk

What are we to do?

Dragons of Earth

If we think that the world is here for us we will continue to destroy it the way we have been destroying it, because we think we can do no harm.
-Douglas Adams



 We are eating the world alive. But that is okay, because the world is eating itself alive as well. And the poop that we poop contains the raw material the world needs to make more world, along with the corpses we leave behind and other odd bits of hanging that disgust us so much.

We are eating the world, but that is okay, so long as we don't eat it all up before it can make more.

And that is the problem. In the manga 'X', and the anime of the same name, we see a battle between the Dragons of Heaven and the Dragons of Earth. The Dragons of Earth are trying to destroy humanity; because left unchecked, humanity will devour the world. The Dragons of Heaven oppose the Dragons of Earth and are apparently the good guys, given sympathetic depictions and heroic character design, but these heroes never dispute the Dragons of Earth in their assertion that humans will devour the world. And thus they are us, perfectly explained.

We are eating the world, and have been for as long as we have lived on it. That is not the problem, the problem is that we are eating too much too fast, for the world to grow more of itself. The problem is that we know this, but do not want to stop.

So we live our neurotic little lives, like the Dragons of Heaven, Battling the Dragons of Earth, but offering no reason why we should be spared.

For us, there is no longer a fundamental mystery about Life. It is all the process of extraordinary eruptions of information, and it is information which gives us this fantastically rich, complex world in which we live; but at the same time that we've discovered that we are destroying it at a rate that has no precedent in history, unless you go back to the point when we are hit by an asteroid!
-Douglas Adams

All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.
-Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

I can be proven wrong. And this makes me more likely to be right than one who cannot be proven wrong. I want to be clear about this. So let's restate that assertion. A statement that can be subjected to tests that could disprove said statement is more likely to be true than a statement that cannot.

Why?

Because every time the first statement  is subjected to one of these tests, it becomes more accurate. If the test fails to disprove it, then we know that the statement is accurate in the way that the was tested- and new tests looking at the statement from alternate angles can be devised. These new tests can even test the same element of the statement but in a different way or from a different angle, to test the assumptions of the first test.

If the test disproves the statement, the statement can then be revised based upon the information gained from the test regarding HOW the statement was incorrect. The statement can then be examined, rebuild and tested again.

A statement that cannot be tested, cannot therefore become more accurate. Such a statement can only defend itself by pretending that not changing is a virtue- but only the abstract can remain unchanging. Life changes in order to remain alive. A frog in your pond is not the same frog you saw yesterday-even if it is- because the frog is now built from new flies and insects, composed of new atoms, deteriorated further by the entropic breakdown we call aging. Every time you remember an event from your past, the memory itself changes by the act of you remembering it- but the memory disappears entirely if it is not accessed.

We should distrust any idea that seeks to protect itself from inquiry, and act as a dam against the flood waters of change.

I am fascinated by religion. (That's a completely different thing from believing in it!) It has had such an incalculably huge effect on human affairs. What is it? What does it represent? Why have we invented it? How does it keep going? What will become of it? I love to keep poking and prodding at it. I've thought about it so much over the years that that fascination is bound to spill over into my writing.
-Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

Last Chance to See... Homo Sapiens Sapiens

I watched the gorilla's eyes again, wise and knowing eyes, and wondered about this business of trying to teach apes language. Our language. Why? There are many members of our own species who live in and with the forest and know it and understand it. We don't listen to them. What is there to suggest we would listen to anything an ape could tell us? Or that it would be able to tell us of its life in a language that hasn't been born of that life? I thought, maybe it is not that they have yet to gain a language, it is that we have lost one.

-Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

Douglas Adams and his insights are truly impressive, all the more impressive when you think of the fact that he hid them within delightful comedy science fiction stories. Something he revisits frequently is the insufficiency of our current point of view. We mistake our limited little view of the world for the objective truth and act as though we are infallible as a result. We have catalogued the system errors in our thinking, our seeing, our perceiving, our deciding, and still we pretend that somehow THIS TIME, we've got it right.

We are going to be wrong. Let us have the grace and dignity to protect ourselves and our world from our current mistakes and our future inevitable mistakes. Let us have the humility to build adaptability into our decisions, so that future  children can correct the mistakes we did not expect to make a little easier than our parents have made it for us.

We are not an endangered species ourselves yet, but this is not for lack of trying.

-Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

Douglas Adams: Speaking through Dirk Gently

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.

-Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency


"What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?"

This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table.
Richard continued, "What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself.

-Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Douglas Adams 5

The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically that not one of them is worth all the bother. On Earth - when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass - the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another - particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.

-Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams 4

We don't have to save the world. The world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about is whether or not the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us in it.

-Douglas Adams


The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened, it's just wonderful. And ... the opportunity to spend 70 or 80 years of your life in such a universe is time well spent as far as I am concerned.

-Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams 3

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat. Life is a level of complexity that almost lies outside our vision; it is so far beyond anything we have any means of understanding that we just think of it as a different class of object, a different class of matter; 'life', something that had a mysterious essence about it, was God given, and that's the only explanation we had. The bombshell comes in 1859 when Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species. It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it's yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we're not made by anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn't read well.

-Douglas Adams

Resource List from Workshop: Escaping Ground Zero

Resource List

• Genus Rex (Our Page): www.genusrex.com (This list is reprinted here)

• National Emergency Response System: http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/prg/em/ners-eng.aspx
• Wildfires of Note: http://webmaps.gov.bc.ca/imf5/imf.jsp?site=pub_fireinfo
• Wildfire Management Branch: http://bcwildfire.ca/Situation/
• All Current BC Wildfires: http://bcwildfire.ca/hprScripts/WildfireNews/Fires.asp
• One Second After: The Official Website: http://www.onesecondafter.com/
• EMP Commision: http://www.empcommission.org/
• Jeff Rubin Article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/jeff-rubins-smaller-world/wikileaks-reveals-imminent-saudi-oil-peak/article1908385/
• Jeff Rubin Article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/jeff-rubins-smaller-world/is-nature-trying-to-tell-us-something/article1951546/
• GetPrepared.ca: http://www.getprepared.gc.ca/index-eng.aspx
• Disaster Response Routes: http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/popular-topics/driver_info/route-info/disroute/disaster_response_routes.htm
• Vancouver Disaster Response Routes: http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/popular-topics/driver_info/route-info/disroute/disaster_response_maps.htm
• The Effects of Radiation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kiev-UkrainianNationalChernobylMuseum_15.jpg
• Details of the Fukushima Power Plant Evacuations: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/16/fukushima-workers-evacuate-radiation-spikes
• Hurrican Gustav and Evacuation: http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20080830/news/808300290
• Evacuations in New Orleans: http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf/2008/08/11_million_people_evacuate_sou.html
• Southwestern China Evacuations: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/30/china.earthquake/
• Evacuation in the Czech Republic: http://www.nato.int/eadrcc/floods_czech_republic/report_2002_111.pdf
• Refusal to Evacuate: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4835186
• Refusal to Evacuate Continued: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4834156
• The Magic Marker Strategy: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/06/opinion/06tierney.html?ei=5090&en=9673a9d11f3210a0&ex=1283659200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
• Simulations of Panic: http://angel.elte.hu/~panic/
• The Internaional Emergency Management Society: http://www.tiems.org/
• EU on Influenza: http://ec.europa.eu/health-eu/health_problems/avian_influenza/index_en.htm
• Pandemic Flu: http://pandemicflu.gov/
• Influenza Research Database: http://www.fludb.org/brc/homeExtraPage.do?decorator=influenza&extraPage=separate
• The Pacific Ring of Fire- Earthquake and Volcano Zone: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Pacific_Ring_of_Fire.svg
• The WTO Protests in Seattle, Zombie Outbreaks in the Pacific Northwest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WTO_protests_in_Seattle_November_30_1999.jpg
• Tectonic Plat map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plates_tect2_en.svg
• New Orleans after Katrina: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KatrinaNewOrleansFlooded_edit2.jpg
• WHO Pandemic Phases: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/WHO_pandemic_phases.png
• The World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/en/
• Past Pandemics: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4381924.stm
• Geoscape Vancouver: http://geoscape.nrcan.gc.ca/vancouver/earth_e.php
• Neil Strauss, Bug Out Bag: http://www.neilstrauss.com/fliesian/bugout.html
• More Neil Strauss Information: http://www.neilstrauss.com/fliesian/proceed.html
• Gear Patrol's Bug Out Bag: http://gearpatrol.com/blog/2009/05/04/bug-out-bag-aka-ultimate-survival-kit/
• Survival Blog: http://www.survivalblog.com/

Douglas Adams 2

There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.

-Douglas Adams

Dougals Adams

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!" This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. We all know that at some point in the future the Universe will come to an end and at some other point, considerably in advance from that but still not immediately pressing, the sun will explode. We feel there's plenty of time to worry about that, but on the other hand that's a very dangerous thing to say.

-Douglas Adams