Valued Republic
Sifting through the shit storm of information in search of some truth, I found this:
Excerpts from "Making the Best of a Slow Apocalypse" by Joe Bageant.
"Our relationship with the physical/material world is not only holistic and ecologically interwoven… it is also the source of our spiritual essence. Which is why monolithic production, monetization, and commodity fetishism destroy our essence. We must think through that. We must look around us at its proof, and learn it for ourselves. If you don't pick up on that, you're screwed."
"Perhaps we should all "dialogue on this" a bit? Nope. This thing we are facing, this thing we must do, is not just another topic for more "dialogue."In any case, regardless of who's doing the dialoging, Earth First, the Dalai Lama or the ghost of Reinhold Niebuhr, let's not kid ourselves that if we only yak some more, the world and mankind will somehow heal themselves. It's easy for the wealthy of the earth such as you and I (especially if one has an Internet connection) to want to believe that. After all, we had breakfast this morning and we not only have clean potable water to drink -- which 2.2 billion people do not -- but also shit in the stuff. The real solution -- not to the problem, which is unsolvable in the long haul, but to balancing those eternal scales inside ourselves -- begins with a more contemplative and reflective life, and the care of the soul. Both of which are necessarily thwarted by the wasteful daily busyness of our materialism and technology. Jesus did not text message his truth, and the Buddha never had a single friend on Facebook. Yet we hear their truth across millenniums. They simply practiced compassion. Only by eliminating suffering among sentient beings, do we create the spiritual soil in which peace can flourish. That takes conviction. The real stuff."
"It will take an entire lifetime of commitment, and the world will continue to crumble around us even as we work. There will be not one ounce of public glory or reward during our lifetimes, not if we are doing it right. And if we turn a buck on it, we can be assured that we are playing the same game as this earth's wrecking crew. Which is called irony, I guess.
Yet the reward lies right there before us. Knowing and observing the spirit in all things... even above life itself. It is the first fearful step... the first stone on the path to liberation."
"Either we can feel, or can learn to feel the common soul … that essence coursing in all sentient things (and I for one, include trees, rivers, amoeba and the atmosphere in the count) and feel joy and unity in that, or we cannot. Either compassion enters our awareness and experiential reality through suffering and contemplation of the suffering of others … or it does not. Either way, it would seem incumbent upon each of us to try to bring about a world in which compassion occurs for the maximum number of our fellow men. Given that we all share a common grave, compassionate action may well be the only human action of any value. Compassion for all living things on a living planet. In that resides the equilibrium of the world."
AND...
From Jan Lundberg's "Why Losing Your Job Can Be a Good Thing Today"
• Monotonous work is unhealthy, dispiriting, and such employment is slavery.
• Employment takes time away from important survival tasks such as seed saving and seed sharing.
• U.S. society and its government have earned disdain by behaving as if they are fundamentally bad. We have a system of friendly fascism that white-washes issues of deadly pollution and toxicity. Supporting the system as a worker paying taxes is one thing, but being unable to bring about a better world is a killer."
"Hard-core urban activists admirably fight the system with all the brake dust, tire dust, ground-layer ozone, and particulate-matter soot that they can tolerate -- for a while. These are usually young people who think their health can withstand an unnatural lifestyle, and besides, there are more opportunities to get laid and enjoy whatever other jollies the larger cities have to offer. Nothing wrong with this, as the Babylon-based activists are indeed cheating the system and are inspiring others.
This must not be discounted. Joy welling up from the soul, as when people dance to a live primal beat, is a big part of our special animal power. People expressing themselves creatively without vested interest or authority is actually our normal condition that we have almost lost.
Lifestyle change that bleeds the corporate economy to death is a major part of the "solution" -- if there is any solution to our predicament. We need a break with the past, a culture change. What about going part way for now? It is possible to contribute to a project so beautifully radical and world-changing, yet simultaneously live a lifestyle that contradicts it. But not for long."
For more, visit http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=247&Itemid=1
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