I come in peace. Shoot to kill...
I guess I've still got a few things to resolve...
Whilst it's clear to me that I'm utterly mad, I see the rest of the world no saner either. What passes for sanity these days seems to me to be nothing more than the unthinking participation in history's greatest evil whilst pursuing one's own ever more selfish and hedonistic interests. And against this is ranged a whole spectrum of religious lunatics thinking their God wants them to kill the "enemy".
I see so much which just makes me want to scream!
Like, just for instance, here we are (Australia) prancing about on the global stage, wanking on about how Japan should stop whaling and we're taking part in the biggest war crime on earth.
We're destroying the planet (and ourselves) at break-neck speed whilst we get oh-so-concerned about battery chickens and a whole raft of frivolous "rights", none of which will mean zip if we don't all sort out the big problems first.
We cultivate willful ignorance and denial about what havoc globalised capitalism is wreaking just so we can maintain the lifestyle we've become so addicted to, or lust after an even "better" one.
And how about me, I rant about nonviolence endlessly and engage in ever more vitriolic verbal warfare with well-meaning innocent people merely because I'm so rage-filled at what I see happening and the disagreement and confusion about what the problems are and what should be done about them, and the urgency of it all.
A thousand agendas pulling in a thousand different directions while humanity kills its own habitat as time runs out. I see that democracy has become its own worst enemy and a certain road to ruin. And yet I cannot see a viable alternative.
I feel the need to keep ranting, but I have no idea who I should be ranting at.
I can see it ending nowhere except in a real-life dramatisation of Munch's Scream.
I'm in hell... And I can't even write well... Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!!
Whilst it's clear to me that I'm utterly mad, I see the rest of the world no saner either. What passes for sanity these days seems to me to be nothing more than the unthinking participation in history's greatest evil whilst pursuing one's own ever more selfish and hedonistic interests. And against this is ranged a whole spectrum of religious lunatics thinking their God wants them to kill the "enemy".
I see so much which just makes me want to scream!
Like, just for instance, here we are (Australia) prancing about on the global stage, wanking on about how Japan should stop whaling and we're taking part in the biggest war crime on earth.
We're destroying the planet (and ourselves) at break-neck speed whilst we get oh-so-concerned about battery chickens and a whole raft of frivolous "rights", none of which will mean zip if we don't all sort out the big problems first.
We cultivate willful ignorance and denial about what havoc globalised capitalism is wreaking just so we can maintain the lifestyle we've become so addicted to, or lust after an even "better" one.
And how about me, I rant about nonviolence endlessly and engage in ever more vitriolic verbal warfare with well-meaning innocent people merely because I'm so rage-filled at what I see happening and the disagreement and confusion about what the problems are and what should be done about them, and the urgency of it all.
A thousand agendas pulling in a thousand different directions while humanity kills its own habitat as time runs out. I see that democracy has become its own worst enemy and a certain road to ruin. And yet I cannot see a viable alternative.
I feel the need to keep ranting, but I have no idea who I should be ranting at.
I can see it ending nowhere except in a real-life dramatisation of Munch's Scream.
I'm in hell... And I can't even write well... Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!!
posted by The Editor at
1:55 AM
3 Comments:
y'know, it's possible to simultaneously give a stuff about relatively "trivial" things like battery chickens and rights, as well as worry about the negative consequences of globalisation and cowboy capitalism.
sure, it's possible to get very depressed about it all but that's not particularly useful to anyone, least of all yourself, so you might as well try and enjoy the life you have as best you can. and
i guess continue to act locally.
me, i don't see any alternative to globalised democracy and capitalism. i agree they are flawed systems but they also offer great potential to solve a lot of the world's problems. just needs more thought. the internet is a great leap forward, i reckon.
now catatonia is at least one of the forms of madness you don't suffer and it is the madness the cartels of wealth most value in their consumers.
You may be in an asylum but you are better company than all those who live more like cattle in a feed lot.
Gianna, just when I'm in the process of trashing every blog relationship I have, and the homeopathic quantity which remains of my credibility, you decide to pay a visit here... Brave move, girl... Brave move...
Yes, it's possible to "give a stuff" about a thousand things at once, but how many issues have we got the time to ENGAGE with?
Most of us are flat out indulging in (puts on French accent) "engagement" with no more than one major issue. And this is where I see a million people engaging in a million causes whilst there are only about three causes which, if they are not thoroughly sorted in the next few years, will make being involved in the other causes look a lot like fiddling while Rome burns.
My point is about priorities and timeliness. But hey, those who love the idea of "divide and conquer" would not want us unite our efforts on just those three issues, they would want us to be fragmented, fighting a thousand disparate issues. That way the BIG THREE never get handled effectively.
That old Churchillian cliché about democracy being the best of a bunch of flawed choices is just a nice piece of rhetoric designed to stop us even exploring alternative political systems of governance.
Democracy is just a major, major con game. It's a stacked deck. It's political fraud. It's the public wanking whilst the powerbrokers score home runs virtually unpopposed. It serves not the public but its masters.
Globalised "free enterprise" is pure neo-feudalism. The most privileged, the most manipulative, the most exploitative, the most selfish will form the ruling elite, whilst the vast majority of people will be their virtual slaves. The drive towards more material equality or egalitarianism is a dead duck under the NeoCon model of globalised "free trade".
"Aspirational" is the new buzzword for greed and corruption, but who cares, as long as you're one of the "aspiring" few. The Unsuccessful Many will be blamed for "not trying hard enough" or some other "attitudinal crime". Like those who didn't win a medal in the Olympics are just not training hard enough and who cares about them eh? We only cheer the winners.
"Winners are grinners" and the rest just form that great big genetic swamp from which a few "winning tadpoles" will emerge. The rest of us will be consigned to serfdom or oblivion. Darwin had no problem with that at all. Nor did Nietsche. Nor did the Nazis. Oh oh... Someone's now going to shout "Godwin's Law" around about now...
Labor will not save you from what is coming. No one who is not prepared to totally dismantle and bury capitalism once and for all will be able to save us frm that.
There ARE alternatives (e.g. Parecon) that could work beautifully, but they are not properly understood, or not "sexy" enough, and a whole lot of people who have a vested interest in remaining in control and "on top" don't even want you to think about them at all. And if you try to implement them, the full and brutal might of the military industrial complex will try to crush you because you pose a mortal threat to them. And that's whose side both Liberal and Labor are on. Same song, just different parts being sung.
...great potential to solve a lot of the world's problems... I don't know which problems cannot be solved by alternative economic systems, Gianna. I do know that once you take your blinkers off and take a real look at ALL of the antics of capitalism in the last 100 years, you will see that the problems it has caused have far outweighed the few insiginificant problems which ONLY capitalism could have solved.
We live in societies where the propaganda and conditioning is so "invisible" and so total, that we do not even spot the rhetoric anymore. We blindly believe it to be the basis of self-evident truths which wewould never dream of questioning. We are no different from brainwashed cult members in our blind and fervent support of the world's most evil and corrupt system of economics.
I ought to know, I once literally put my life on the line for exactly this system and then spent another thirty years blindly defending it, by faithfully regurgitating the handy bits of rhetoric I had been conditioned by, whilst also steadfastly refusing to read up on, or even seriously consider, any alternatives.
Nor was I (back then) willing to look too deeply into the possibility that we were as brainwashed as "them". That we were as totalitiarian as "them". That we were as expansionist as "them"
Indeed, Gianna, we now have no trouble at all with the concept of one economic system taking global control, nay, we urge vehemently for just such a thing; not realising that it is the forces of inequality, greed, selfishness and corruption. And we happily gobble up the lies and propaganda about the "evils" or "unworkability" of more egalitarian and equitable systems of economics. We are utterly brainwashed.
Clue: "Globalised capitalism" and "democracy" are mutually exclusive terms.
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Greensmile, thanks for the kind words, but I have caused a bit too much havoc in the blogosphere lately, and I fear it has cost me at least two friendships.
[aside to the audience] My cruel and heartless attitude now is this: If they want to prance off in fits of high dudgeon rather than try to have it out with me in order to resolve our differences, they may as well bugger off.
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