i live by a freeway.

i’ve written a lot of intense and raw thoughts about our inter-relationship of this project that came out of no where.  the ultimate spaceship has become a unique place in the artificial world we call the internet.

i hope with this essay, i can share one more interesting observation i recently made about the world around us and how we perceive and interact with it.  forewarning: it’s 1923 words… not for the meek; if you can’t make the time, you don’t need to delve into this topic.

the question has constantly been there in most of your heads when you read essays like ones posted on this site… “so what are we supposed to do, move to caves and live in nature like animals?”

no.

we are homo sapien sapien.  this is our gift.  we are the privileged species on this rock.

we are the ones who carried the tortures of evolution on our shoulders like every other species competing with us on this planet we call earth, and developed a remarkable skill that they didn’t.

it’s called technology.

technology allowed us to do a remarkable thing.  for a limited amount of time, we have been given access to living without competing in the food chain, sometimes referred to as the tree of life.

given that the macro pressures of life, that is air and water will soon exert themselves on us, we can control one of the holy parts of the trinity of life for carbon based organisms like us… food.

although we currently divert water to provide fresh water to arid areas we choose to populate, water will be the next challenge for homo sapien given our insatiable appetite to grow, I still refer to it as a factor we cannot control because mass desalination to sustain our current population is not a technology we have developed, refined and made readily available yet.

the production of oxygen is also something that we depend on out trusty friends, the plants to do; as they do, ever so diligently… every day.

so food is the one thing we have a grip on. instead of fending for ourselves and taking another animals life with our own claws, or our own teeth, we developed tools to kill flesh and take in the calories.  this same technology soon gave rise to our ability to understand the life cycle of a seed to plant, and cultivate the gift our planet has given us…

we quickly sectioned off pieces of what was once free flowing land, to give rise to another technologic revolution… agriculture.

with our first technologic boom came primitive level of advancement.  the tools that arose from this revolution were simple.  chipped pieces of rock to form sharp edges to kill.

the agricultural revolution (probably single most important revolution in our history) gave rise to more complex tools.  sharp devices to cut the land and sew our seeds, and harvest the bounty of the earth.

as our technologic discoveries ‘expressed’ themselves in our surroundings and made themselves at home in our routines, our big brains did something remarkable.  they didn’t stop like the brains of our close cousins chimpanzees do when they modify stems to harvest termites from their hills.

we kept improving on our technology.

this is what makes you human.

you have the innate ability to look at a problem, and puts things together to solve it.

you have the ability to imagine something, and use your hands to make it.  given the technology that your ancestors created before you; your creative ability increases exponentially.

sharp rocks gave rise to hunting, which eventually gave rise to agriculture, which in turn gave rise to cities, which resulted in cars, which led up to computers, which took us to another planet… our moon.  and now, maybe even beyond.

isn’t that just remarkable.

you should be proud to be chosen as one of the privileged members of this truly beautiful and grand species.

but with great power comes great responsibility.

it is now time for me to pose my observation.

dogs evolved parasitically on us.  even though we feed them, and work to pay for electricity to keep them warm with us at night in our modern, nature proof dwellings, dogs parasitically feed on us.

as a species they have capitalized on a evolutionary beneficial relationship which provides their species with the ability to not have to hunt for food.

before the first “more friendly” wolves were taken in by early humans, we had to fight other animals on our own.  but when we began to observe that a few wolves (one our natural predators) were a little more friendly, and not as instinctually predatory, we were drawn into, what appeared at the time, the mystical an sacred relationship of wolf and man.

but in reality this friendship was really a means that a subspecies of wolf emerged that doesn’t have to fend for itself anymore in the wild and turbulent world of nature.  in return we we able to “domesticate” a well bred machine for fighting off and killing other predatory species.  our early dogs provided their “new pack” the security we needed from other animals (as well as each other… take tribalism for instance).

this process is fascinating and is not an original idea or observation by me.  rather it is my attempt to summarize a series of papers and texts i have recently come across.

i warn you in advance, from here on it gets a little bumpy and bizarre.

technology is another organism, feeding on our big brains.  feeding on our fears.  evolving on the backs of our labors.

look around you.  look at how many things you take for granted that give you life, yet are based on technology.

clean water.
heat.
shelter.
food.
clothing.
shoes.
medicine.
communications.
education.
transportation.

all of it.

in fact, please allow me to extent myself by claiming that i really don’t care who you are and where you are reading this essay… if you are reading it, your entire existence is here because of technology.

we depend on it like a drug to stay alive,  just like dogs depend on their owners to stay alive.

but the message in our dog discussion is that it is the owner who is really the “dog”, who is really the slave.  the dog has evolved on our backs to make us it’s slave.

technology, the “super” organism is evolving on our backs, to make us it’s slave.

we check our watches without thinking what happened that we decided to fragment time into hours, and minutes, and seconds?

we get into our cars to drive a few miles to pick up something to eat (which is ready at any hour now) without thinking that it’s a fraction of what our ancestors walked to get water.

technology is this irresistible drug that has latched on to homo sapien and will soon make us it’s slave.

i postulate this because i watch “us” drive by everyday on the freeway.

and if you just step away for a second and look at the freeway, really look at it, you see and amorphous ocean of metal cells…

moving little organic nuclei around the “city” to do their respective jobs…

just like the silent workers in your arteries, the red blood cells…

the “human-car” cells move along the massive arteries of technology, freeways…

to do their jobs at their destinations, and return home to get replenished, only to go back for another round the next day.

red blood cells.  get oxygen in the lungs, deliver it to the cells; go back to the lungs, and do it all over again.

all this to keep the “super-organism” alive.  in your case, it would be you.  your body, your brain, and everything else that makes up what you identify as “you”.

but does a red blood cell know you exist?  and how many red blood cells come and go before you die?

such is our relationship with this slow growing “super-organism” we call technology.

the final stage of this act however isn’t as rosie as the evolutionary version.

you see, despite her cruel and unusual model of sustainability, nature is actually timid to what possibly awaits us.

intellectuals have pondered what could happen when we continue with our unstoppable desire to create intelligent machines.  the question has been contemplated since the beginning of modern technology… “will machines take over?”

in a way, they already have.  they just haven’t developed an identity yet to come out and say “hello human, how are you today?  i’m fine thank you.”

but that’s only a matter of time.  you can rest easy knowing that there are teams of big brains working for technology, helping it develop this crucial part of continued existence.  just like we checked out of the food chain by discovering the tool and fire, technology will check out of earth and travel the universe.

imagine machines that could repair themselves, don’t depend on oxygen and are powered by the sun… but have intelligence.  they don’t even need consciousness.  one can argue that a cockroach doesn’t have the level of consciousness a human does, yet it strives to survive, at all costs.

wouldn’t that be true for a simple intelligent machine with a program to survive?  this is a prototype, but it’s here, right now…

so what do we do?  i don’t know.

was the mark of the beast our ancestors warned us of in their cryptic and almost fictional parables and holy books referring to technology.  if that’s the case then it might be too late, because almost every human carries a mobile phone.  i spent a month in the remote desolate lands of africa and i saw maasi tribesmen who live in dung huts carrying cell phones.

i came home tonight after seeing the film 127 hours.  i won’t spoil the film for you, but I highly recommend you watch this compelling journey into a mans will to survive and his journey to the inner mind during this moment of truth.

the part that stuck with me was that he is still alive because of technology.  water in a bottle and food wrapped in packaging kept him alive a few more days than he could have lived without it.  and in the ultimate example of irony, he used a multi-tool made by machines to cut his hand off so he had a chance to survive.

once again, technology saved us, even it is by cutting off our hand.

what part of our bodies will we give up next to keep living?  as abstract as it sounds, if we live long enough, this might be a question we might have to answer.

would you “upgrade” your legs to faster, longer lasting robotic ones?  would you replace your eyes for zoom lens, UV and infra-red digital ones?

i know, that’s a little too sci-fi for you… how ‘bout this, would you replace your heart with an advanced mechanical one if you were going to dei from heart failure?

it starts somewhere, but once it does, it’s unstoppable.

thank you for reading.

be kind to your planet.

you’re a member of a very special and rare product of nature.  a species that appreciates art, music, mixing foods, learning the truth behind mysticism, and the most special characteristic of human being…

enjoyment.

For the past few years, I’ve been spending a lot of time on college campuses, discussing the ethics of eating animals with college debate teams; I argue that vegetarianism is an ethical imperative for all members of the student body, and my adversaries (two members of the school’s debate team) argue that it’s not.

Last year, I visited Harvard, Yale, BYU, the Universities of Texas, Georgia, and Florida — and dozens of other schools, coast to coast. This fall, I’m slated to visit Cornell, Princeton, Boston College, the University of Minnesota, and half a dozen additional schools.

The topic is a hot one on college campuses, and the teams that have accepted have been rewarded by what they have consistently told us to be their largest event audiences ever. You can watch many of the debates online, if you’re so inclined, but here is the crux of my argument:

First, eating meat wastes and pollutes our land, water and air–as I discuss more thoroughly here. Second, eating meat drives up the price of cereals, which leads to starvation and food riots – as I discuss here. Finally, eating meat supports cruelty to animals so severe that it would warrant felony cruelty charges were dogs or cats so horribly abused — and that’s true even of so-called “humane” farms (video).

Cruelty to animals is where I focus in these debates, because it’s the issue that is most obvious: We are a nation of animal lovers — according to a Gallup Poll last May, fully 97 percent of us support laws to protect animals from abuse — and yet the animals with whom we come into contact most frequently are the animals we pay other people to abuse and kill for us.

The arguments that seem to resonate with students most deeply are:

First, other animals are made of flesh, blood, and bone — just like humans. They have the same five physiological senses (i.e., they see, hear, smell, taste, and touch) that we do. And they feel pain — again, just like we do. At most colleges and universities, students are unanimously opposed to eating dogs or cats; the idea revolts them. Yet there is no ethical difference between eating a dog, cat, chicken, pig or fish. If anything, eating your dogs or cats would be morally preferable, since they would have led a good life until you killed them.

In fact, both pigs and chickens do better on cognition tests than dogs or cats. Chickens can navigate mazes, learn from television and have both a capacity for forethought and meta-cognition. Pigs dream, recognize their names, play video games far more effectively than even some primates, and lead social lives of a complexity previously observed exclusively among primates.

Dr. Richard Dawkins, the foremost living evolutionary biologist, calls other species our evolutionary “cousins” and denounces what he calls “speciesist arrogance” — the idea that we are better than, and can do whatever we want to other species. Darwin taught us that other species are more like us than they’re unlike us. Eating meat entails eating “someone,” not “something.” Eating meat entails eating bits from an animal’s corpse. That’s not hyperbole; it’s reality. That’s not sentimental; it’s a fact. Don’t want to eat corpses? Don’t eat meat.

Second, if we’re eating meat, we are paying people to abuse animals in myriad ways that would violate anti-cruelty laws if these were dogs or cats rather than chickens and pigs. Animals are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them; they never breathe fresh air, raise their young, develop normal relationships with other animals, explore their surroundings, or do anything else they would do in nature. Artificial breeding practices are used so that animals will grow far more quickly than they would naturally, and their organs and limbs simply can’t keep up. For example, chickens’ upper bodies grow seven times as quickly as they did just 30 years ago, so these factory-farmed animals who live for fewer than two months (they’re still chirping like infants when they’re sent to slaughter) suffer from lung collapse, heart failure, and crippling leg deformities.

Michael Specter, a longtime staff writer for the New Yorker , visited a chicken farm and wrote, “I was almost knocked to the ground by the overpowering smell of feces and ammonia. My eyes burned and so did my lungs, and I could neither see nor breathe… There must have been 30,000 chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me. They didn’t move, didn’t cluck. They were almost like statues of chickens, living in nearly total darkness, and they would spend every minute of their six-week lives that way.”

Similarly hideous conditions exist for all animals raised for food; rather than further detailing the horrid details, I will ask that you if you eat meat, you watch “Meet Your Meat,” which is narrated by Alec Baldwin, and “Glass Walls,” which is narrated by Sir Paul McCartney — I generally show the opening two minutes of Meet Your Meat as a part of my 10 minute opening statement in college debates. Both videos offer a gruesome window into what we’re supporting if we choose to eat chickens, pigs and other farmed animals. If we eat meat, we should at least ensure that we know what we’re paying for.

If you would not personally slice a chicken’s beak off, or castrate a pig without pain relief or slice open an animal’s throat, why pay someone else to do it for you? Where is the basic integrity in entering into this mercenary relationship? Is the person who hires someone to do something less culpable than the one who carries out the action? Of course not. Eating meat involves paying people to do things for us that most of us would not do ourselves. Where’s the basic integrity — the consistency — in such a relationship?

Or, put in a more affirmative way: Vegetarianism allows me to live my values — to “pray ceaselessly,” as St. Paul puts it: Every time I sit down to eat, I cast my lot: for mercy, against misery; for the oppressed, against the oppressor; and for compassion, against cruelty. There is a lot of suffering in the world, but how much suffering can be addressed with literally no time or effort on our part? We can just stop supporting it, by making different choices.

So what’s the trade-off: Why do people eat meat? And are the reasons we eat meat — the benefits — worth the costs?

Well, we get a few moments of pleasure — most of us like the taste. We have more options at the grocery store and at restaurants. We can eat over at a friend’s house without having to bring a dish. We never have to explain our dietary choices…

Is that really it? That it’s convenient? That it’s easier?

Although I don’t discuss this on university campuses, where everyone knows plenty of healthy vegans and thus knows they don’t need meat to survive, I should take a moment to point out that meat is absolutely not good for us. The American Dietetic Association — the largest body of nutrition professionals on the planet — conducted a meta-analysis of all the studies that have ever been done on diet and disease, and found that vegetarians have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer and obesity than meat-eaters (they believe that the studies indicate causality, not just correlation). Their position paper on vegetarian and vegan diets concludes that vegetarian and vegan diets are appropriate for all people and during all stages of life, including infancy and pregnancy.

So add it all up: Eating meat wastes and pollutes our natural resources — requiring many times the water, land and energy of eating plants (a moral imperative on its own). Eating meat requires about 1 billion metric tons of grain, corn, and soy — fed to the animals, who burn most of that energy off, which drives up the price of food for people who are starving (another moral imperative, on its own). And eating meat involves paying other people to do a wide variety of things to animals in ways that most of us would never do ourselves.

Put another way: If we believe that people should try to protect the environment, OR we believe that we should try not to cause people to starve OR we oppose cruelty to animals, the only ethical diet is a vegetarian one.

I have the pleasure of hearing an author whom I respect highly speak at an inter-faith environmental movement at a church in downtown Los Angeles.  At this event, Bill McKibben spoke about the integral role that religion plays in acting in an environmental manner.  I agree.

During the talks, there were references to the “crimes against creation” and local leaders from each religion were present to offer the perspective of their respective faiths and how they have environmentalism built into each religion.

I observed something very interesting.  Each religion held true to it’s outwardly perceived image.  What is relevant about this observation is that the most truly environmental faith (in my opinion) presented it’s position with the most abstract and disconnected rhetoric available.  In fact, every faith leader used language that really, doesn’t mean much in the real world to represent their ideals.

And that is the problem.  When we talk about your thoughts creating reality and your ideas manifesting your life, the problem is that most people will drift off into la la land and “hope” or try to “imagine” their beautiful world of goodness and health.

There is an ancient Persian phrase that originated in the Zoroastrian faith (one of the first religions that molded what most modern religions are based on) provides humanity with this simple little instruction guide to the quantum world:

“Pendar Nik , Goftar Nik , Kerdar Nik”

Translated into English this phrase means:

“Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds”

Simple right.  It’s not enough to have good thoughts.  You have to use good words, and do good deeds.  Then you can manifest your reality.

I find it ironic that over the course of only 4000 years we were able to derail ourselves from this fool proof premise.  Once again, I refuse to accept that it is human nature to do this.

Some of the images you see in the video above are simply grotesque, yet I argue that every one of those is a result of a human being failing to be a real human being.

To be human is to think.  To think is to understand logic.  To understand logic is to look at one self and evaluate the possible outcome of one’s behavior or decision making.

In a world with such chaos, it is obvious that we are not thinking.  We are not being human.

Once again, it comes back to taking responsibility and being present.  What the wise Zoroastrians tried to capture in their 3 sided phrase of divinity.  Good Thoughts.  Good Words.  Good Deeds

This video was sent to me by a friend who is brilliant.  But what saddens me is that such a powerful message, and powerful imagery is diluted to prayer and hope.  Once again, we live in our heads and refuse to carry on our duty to follow the last two steps of the easy to use instruction manual left behind by our wise elders.

We create with our thoughts, our words, and our deeds.

What if praying and accepting armageddon is what is going to manifest it?  Have you ever thought about what you choose to believe and what you are creating by believing it?

For me, the most difficult part of the process is the observation.  I do not mean the physical act of observing.  I mean watching the degradation and demoralization of society, that at its best is heartbreaking.

Yes, there are pockets of wonderful things: watching people in love, seeing children laughing, finding days old ducklings in the LA River.  There are momentary glances at bliss that carry me through the day.  Because more often than not, I am watching the worst of humanity.  This seems to be much more the norm nowadays.

There are two things that happened this week that has helped me understand the downward trend in humanity.  I wanted to share these, if you, like me, want to find reasons for why attitudes toward one another seem to have shifted so dramatically.

The first was a simple observation, which I think led into my latest theory.

I live in Los Angeles.  If you don’t live here… and I don’t think it matters because I think it has become an epidemic.. the people who migrate into LA are for the most part desiring a career in the entertainment industry.  Their focus in life is to be the center of attention, to look as a certain image or character, and to be in the right place to get discovered.  to summarize simply, they want to be seen.

As I drove through Beverly Hills the other day, the mecca for wanting to be a part of it all, it occurred to me…. if everyone’s sole purpose in this town is to be seen, then it means we have a city of people who think they’re invisible.

I sat with that notion for a while… what does it mean if we live in a city, state, country, where people feel so insignificant that they do whatever they can to be seen?  I likened it to a child who needs attention… they act out, the throw tantrums, they hurt another… all for the chance to be seen by an authority.

The second thing isn’t an event that happened.  It was an opening of my mind to an idea that may be the answer to why things have gotten the way they have gotten.

Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs (Click to zoom)

Have you ever heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?

Proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943, his theory is that there are inherent needs that an individual has to have met, in order to survive, have fulfillment and be psychologically advanced.  As pictured, it is most often depicted as a pyramid.  The base is physiological needs, like food, water, and oxygen.  The other levels include Safety, Love and Belonging, Esteem, and Self Actualization.  In order for an individual to move up the pyramid to higher levels, all requirements must be met at the base levels.  For example, you might not care so much about finding love, if you can’t breath.  (Extreme example, I know.)

A few nights ago, I was in an in depth conversation about what needs to happen to get people to start changing their habits.  For example, what can be done to get people to stop grabbing for a plastic water bottle, and instead have a connection to the harm that bottle does to our health and environment.  Or, everyone is mad at BP, but not enough to stop driving their cars.  As it often occurs, the conversation was dynamic and built upon topic after topic, and I can’t tell you what provoked this, but I was struck with the idea of looking up Maslow’s theory. I thought there might be a clue to human nature.

My opinion is that I found a possible reason to why society is struggling with doing the right thing.

So, remember that in order to move up through the pyramid to the pinnacle, self-actualization, all the other needs must be met.  And, I ask you to go back to my other observation in the week about realizing that everyone wants to be seen because everyone, psychologically, thinks they are invisible.  If you put it all together, I think you will see and understand what is going on in our communities that if fixed could change the world.

I propose that the reason our society isn’t moving in a direction of morality and ethics is because we simply are trapped in the lower levels of the hierarchy of needs, which makes us physically and psychologically unable to move to the next level.  In fact, I think many people are toggling between Safety and Love/Belonging and cannot get out of the vicious circle that has been created for us.

I also believe that who is to blame is media and entertainment.  I know it has been talked about before on this site, so I will try to be brief.  However, if you are constantly exposing yourself to television, films and print media and the illusion they create about where you “should” be in life, an unrealistic reality, you will always feel dissatisfied and you will always be working towards an unattainable goal.  For example, if you watch a sitcom with a family in which the set is designed so that their house is large, they have a nice car, the latest appliances, new clothes, their children are getting a private school education and they are all doing it, as the script defines, on the average American salary, then you as the viewer will feel devalued because you don’t have the big house, the new clothes, the fancy car, etc., on your true and realistic average income.

The point of a story, whether it be drama or comedy, is to have extreme highs and lows so that the viewer is entertained and finds value in what is being presented to them.  The flaw in this is that we look at our own lives, see that we don’t have extreme tragedies or extraordinary wins, and think that we somehow have failed.  When in reality, most people live a very fluid, one note kind of life.  This isn’t a bad thing… this is how it is supposed to be.  Living a dramatic life is not the norm.

Given all of this, I think we have become trapped in the level of constantly seeking love and belonging.  Whatever story line you can think of, if it isn’t happening to you, since it is that drama that you see everyday, we make the decision that we are just not good enough.

My wife didn’t surprise me at Christmas with the Lexus with the big red bow.  I must need to do better to deserve it.  My boyfriend hasn’t proposed after being together for two years with a 5 carat, princess cut, canary yellow diamond.  I must be unlovable.

The reality is that what is on television, what you read in fiction, what is being told in movies and what is being sung about is simply not the truth.

So what?

Well, if you are constantly looking for love and belonging, not getting, but are told that it comes in material forms, you bring yourself down to the next level.  You stay stuck between safety (this is where unemployment, property and resources fall) and love and belonging (the search for a connection with another).

When you pass these levels you move through Esteem, where you feel comfortable with yourself and have respect towards others, and then can move to the highest level, Self Actualization, which is where morality and lack of prejudice reside.

The other quality of self-actualization is problem solving.  So, if we had masses of individuals that were ethical, moral, and lacking prejudice, we would also reside in a world that can solve problems and be creative and respect one another in the process.

But we reside in the world that we are still looking for love, desperate to not be invisible anymore.  A world where we are not trapped by corporate greed training us to spend more and more money and thinking only of ourselves. I would gather that if we had confidence and trusted that we are enough, that we are worthy, we would move into a world that was sustainable to the human existence.

s5

Thoughts on the video…

“Eating dead flesh”, by s3

When we wake up for the first time, we cry.  It’s almost agonizing the sound of entering the world, a plea for help… because we are indeed born helpless.

Waking up for the second time is no different.  Many of you read this site for amusement, or a glimmer to truth in this harsh world of untruth.

But as it has been since the beginning, I only wish for you to wake up.  I want to assure you of what you will feel when you open your eyes to the truth.  The truth, truth.  You will cry.  You will shrill like you did when you entered this world, for help.

Help because what you will see will be so uncomfortably different than what you have lived to believe, that indeed, you are helpless.

Eating another animal that is treated this way, is no different than eating our own flesh.  It is participating and allowing for the continued barbaric treatment of our fellow Earthlings, the species that are privileged like ours, to experience the miracle of living.

The food chain is a truth of nature, but in no part of it does this kind of abuse, and humiliation of another life form exist.  Every species on this planet, kills it’s prey with the least amount of suffering possible, except for Homo Sapien Sapien.

We enjoy to make these martyrs of the food chain suffer.  We love it so much, we collectively agree to turn our backs as it happens every day.  We go to our markets and buy our cleanly cut, butchered flesh in packaging that is so far from it’s original hairy, smelly form and celebrate in our marvelous accomplishment of enslaving an entire species for not only our own nourishment, but to serve as an outlet of our violent tendencies.

I wonder if intelligent life did arrive out our little blue planet, and did enslave us to rape us of our resources, would we all finally open our eyes and realize factory farming is the ultimate decay of human existence?

“One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.”  Henry David Thoreau

“I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species. We err in copying the lower animal world if we are superior to it.”  Mahatma Gandhi

“Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.”  Theodor Adorno

“As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.”  Leo Tolstoy

“Who is the Devil?”, by s5

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.  ~William Ralph Inge, Outspoken Essays, 1922

Last week, a video was released by Mercy for Animals of horrific animal abuse happening at a dairy farm in Ohio.

In the two days since it has been released many are calling it the worst video of animal abuse ever recorded.  Calves are tortured with tire irons and pitch forks, their tails are cut off with anesthesia and they are beaten by the employees with such violence it is horrifying.

In Ohio, the abuse of an animal is considered a misdemeanor.  The men who are responsible for this will walk away with barely a snap of the wrist.

Why should you care?

For one thing, it is an empirical fact that the presence of factory farms and slaughterhouses increase the violent crimes that happen in the surrounding areas.  If you care about your community and the safety of your family, then you want to care about the presence of such facilities in your city.  When the men and women who work in this facility witness abject abuses towards animals, they internalize it and over time lose their sense of compassion towards every living being.  These facilities employ honest people looking for a way to provide for their families, and turn them in psychopaths.  (And, no, I do not believe in any regard that I am over exaggerating and I can link to study after study that confirms my point.)

The simple truth is that if you have complaints about your community (increases in violence, increases in immigration, increases in sickness) then you need to look to the meat industry and demand change.

But it is so much more than that and yet sometimes so hard to put into words.  The reason you are able to eat the meat that you do is because you protect yourself by not admitting the truth.  But you cannot protect yourself from the reality of this any longer.

I talk to so many people that care about the environment.  The oil spill is horrendous.  The fact that our rainforest is being depleted at alarming rates is tragic.  The truth that we are running out of water is frightening.  Everyone is so full of anger and yet we are so inert about it all.

But the truth is that you created the oil spill.  You participate in the cutting down of hundred year old trees.  You are the reason we are running out of water.  Put simply, you drive a car, and you buy clothes, and you eat meat at such alarming rates that factory farms have to exist in the first place.  The number one contribution to fossil fuel use, greenhouse gas release and dead zones in our ocean is because of this insatiable desire that you have for flesh.  The only reason we are drilling in the first place, that creates the environment for a disaster to occur, is because the infrastructure that you find comforting has to keep running.

So, the reason it is okay for a baby calf to be tortured and writhing in pain while its mother looks on with grief in her eyes… is because you don’t stop buying it at the super market.

So when you see this video, the person you should be mad at is the person looking back at you in the mirror.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing.  He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits.  Yet he is lord of all the animals.  ~George Orwell, Animal Farm

If you drink bottled water, take a step back, look at yourself in the mirror, and realize that you are part of the problem.

I’m at LAX. Massive public arena. My tax dollars support this place.
Yet, there isn’t a single water fountain in sight. Not one. Nowhere.
Zilch. NOTHING! So I walk into the store (as the private businesses
planned for me to do) and I pay $5 for 500 ml of Fiji water. $5 for
water! So I am drinking my water and cursing this disgusting system
and I read the back of my bottle and it says “Fiji water is committed
to reducing carbon in the atmosphere please visit www.fijigreen.com”

Are you fucking kidding me! You pouring water into a plastic bottle
and flying it half way across the world? And you are committed to
reducing carbon? And you have a pretty green logo so that’s supposed
to make me feel good. FUCK YOU!

Please put me on a ship to Mars. Where do I sign up?

Read it on your own merit and see what you think.  Creative writing by a very enigmatic author indeed.  I recommend after reading the essay you do some research on the Queen of England and read about Barabbas.  Here is what Wikipedia says about him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barabbas

Even though we like to think we’re free thinkers and science rules our world… imagine science to the Nth degree.  What would an iPhone seem like to a person who lived in the 16th century?

Peter Nguyen
Mr. LeBlanc
May 29, 2000
Religion

The Stations of the Cross Report

Jesus died on Good Friday, so that we could all inherit eternal life.  It’s noted in the Bible that jesus was not murdered, but died of his own free will.  He know he was to die in order for all of mankind to escape a grisly end.  It is part of the mystery of Jesus being that he was able to be both God and man, and understand what was to happen and why he had to do it.  It of course was no difficult task for Jesus, because he was not only our savior, but he was also a heroic Time Traveler from the future.

Jesus came from a bleak and dismal future ruled by dragons and gigantic whore on the backs of animals (Revelations).  In order for him to save our time, he had to back to the past to prevent Judgement day from happening.  To do so, he needed to return to the past and warn everyone.  He went and impregnated his DNA in the womb of a young woman in the form of an Angel, and was born.  When his past self became of age, we would constantly visit and warn Past Jesus of all his enemies, and helped Past Jesus heal the sick by giving him medicines from the future, and helped perform miracles with his invisible stealth suit.  Future Jesus also helped perform miracles by freezing time, and was able to fee 5,000 people with “seemingly” 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread.

But Past Jesus knew what he had to do; he needed to sacrifice himself so that Future Jesus could perform one last miracle and save the future.  By becoming so famous and feared by the Pharisees, they blindly freed Barabbas instead of Jesus at the trial.  Barabbas, however, would go on and begin the Dragon Slayer Bloodline.  Three days after Jesus died, Future Jesus emerged from inside the tomb, using the Time Machine, and told his disciples to begin the Church, and work with the Dragon Slayers, from now until the Final War, in order to save the future!

There have been long preparations for when Future Jesus will be born in our time because when he is, the Dragon Slayer will be found and we will fight to save mankind from the great Dragons and Giant Whore on the Back of a Lion (Revelations)!

And the story continues to unfold…

I am pleased to present a short essay written by a friend of mine.  He is well educated in economics and has a background of history and the “formal” education we all look at with respect.  When you sit with  group of people, many of them reference facts or data that they themselves are not really familiar with.  Afshin is not one of those people.  He states the facts based on research, and logically sound arguments.  It was refreshing to hear an argument for discussions that many of us who are part of this awakening process participate in regularly, that is solid and direct to the point.  Welcome aboard Afshin.

What are you doing out there?

In July 1846 Henry David Thoreau was arrested and jailed for failing to pay his taxes as he protested the Mexican American war.  Legend has it that while he was in jail, the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson comes to visit and asks him
“Henry what are you doing in there? Why not just pay the tax?  Thoreau replies, “are you against the war?” Emerson replies,” yes.” Thoreau responds,” then the question is what are you doing out there?”

On Apri 15, as Americans across the country race to the post office to file their taxes they should pause for a moment and reflect on Thoreau’s philosophy of “Civil Disobedience.”  They should consider where their tax dollars are going.  They should think about how they are unwittingly financing the suffering of anonymous faces half-way across the world.

As you calculate your taxes this year consider the following figures:

2,500,000     The number of US military personnel covering the globe
$700,000,000,000    Department of Defense Budget in 2010
$717,270,978,000    Cost of the Iraq war (to date)
167    The number of countries with US military bases

So this year when you write that check for the IRS ask yourself…..”what are you doing out there?”

Afshin Sabouri

We live in a crazy society.  We are the most bizarre aberration of nature that walks the planet.

I’ve mentioned before that I like to go into the public and observe society during the holidays.  Holidays are special because for a sociologist or people watcher, it’s not unlike a feeding frenzy.  The human condition is so pervasive and readily available to observe that you don’t have to go far to get a lot of data.

Valentine’s day is now one of those.  I found myself at the Grove Shopping center in the middle of the day.  The parking structure can hold 4500 cars.  At the entrance there is a digital readout of how open spots there are on each floor.  Going into the garage the sign read FULL on every level.  Despite this, cars were pulling in by the dozens.  Once inside the labyrinth of the lot, there you have to circle at least one level before you can get out.

Swept into this, I found that every floor of the lot had at least 50 cars competing for spots.  Let’s look deeper though… what were these people doing?  They were spending their beautiful Sunday afternoon competing for spots so they could go shopping.  Shopping for Valentines day or night.  Pink everything was being moved around the mall.  People in festive valentines PJs walking around in public, but that’s okay since it’s all in the spirit of the day of love right?

Guys with Victoria’s Secret bags in hand because to be considered a “good guy” or a “good boyfriend” you have to participate and make Valentines day special.  So you buy flowers, chocolate, lingerie, so make reservations for dinner somewhere.  The point is you have to participate, and consume.  The average person thinks you are strange if you don’t celebrate or at least buy a card… or even SAY “Happy Valentines Day” to your loved one.  All this in the middle of a major economic recession. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/13/BUUV1BUI19.DTL)

Let’s retrace our steps:  Holidays… Crazy Parking Lots… Mass Shopping… Participating to be “Normal.”

How does this axis form?

TV.

Nobody wonders about our bizarre behavior because the images reinforcing that this is normal are flashed in front of your eyes at 30 frame per second.  But to make it entertaining, TV does something reality doesn’t do… it uses different cameras to place you inside the story from different viewpoints.  You never get to experience reality in this mode.  In reality, you are fixed in the position of one camera.  But during an average TV show you are flashed 350 different cuts (camera perspectives).

This number is not fiction.  I watched a sitcom and counted the number of edits, and cuts.  So in 22 minutes, you are shown 350 edits and different camera perspectives.

I propose that for an organic being, born and designed to have only one viewpoint, this is going to have negative neurologic effects.

The problem with my last statement is that it is subjective.  The word negative is the issue.  You see, if you remove the word negative from the sentence, it describes the mission statement of every good filmmaker or TV show producer.  They are trying to create a neurologic effect that keeps your interest.  So to do that they create imagery, camera angles and viewpoints that lure you in and keep your interest.

At first glance this seems benign enough.  But on further analysis, you see the side-effect of this process reveal it’s ugly head.  If your interest is peaked during a process, e.g. rapid camera cuts, you’re subconsciously allowing for the feeling of interest to be experienced while your eyes are watching a certain image.

The effect of this method of imagery is more deleterious than the kind that Plato warned his people of.

TV creates subconscious ideas about what is normal.  The more you see rapid imagery, the more you passively feel pleasure from what’s being shown to you.  And what feels good, is what we all desire.  So we begin to emulate that imagery.  We begin to dress like it, talk like it, and live like it.

While we live in those characters, the same feelings of pleasure are reinforced because the drug that feeds this desire in now around us.  “Reality” is created in TV, and TV then is manifested by reality…  A true Ouroboros.

The irony of the story.  All the people in the malls today, were only soothing the pains of their addiction to this artificial reality by buying things to become the characters they watch on TV Shows, which keeps them working (so they can make money to buy these things), which in turn can be translated as them being slaves to the illusions they choose to believe.

Self inflicted slavery.

A tough verdict to swallow, but look around.

The reason I started this essay with the request that you accept the fact that we live in a crazy society was this very point, that we choose to live in a world of self inflicted slavery.

In this new era, there is no need for whips to make people work.  As long as you constantly want, you will constantly work.  The system we set up was rigged this way.  In our world we have we work to make money, so we can live a life that stands up to the status definitions we are feeding ourselves through our televisions.

One can argue that this is been the process since beginning?  Everyone wanted to live like the wealthy or successful, or “beautiful” people of the society in question.  But there are key differences.

In the older version of this process, your the access to this kind of visual information was not as prevalent and it didn’t change as often.  Think of how fast you can change styles or trends by just creating a new look for a character on a show or commercial.  Where as in cultural groups there have always been the “trend-setters” of the herd, access to these people and their message was not as readily available and rapidly changing as it is in the world of television.

So now fashion changes every couple of months. What’s cool is a fleeting idea that can never be captured for any worthwhile amount of time.  To get proof of this point requires something as simple of monitoring the inventory changes at your local Banana Republic.  Every 3 weeks merchandise is pushed back ⅓ of the store until it hits the sale section in the back.  That is because every 3 weeks, something new is introduced.  I often wondered how many variations of a basic poplin shirt a company can make.

During the entire time I have been awake, and watching, I have counted 14.

TV keeps your brain in a constant cluster fuck.  Not knowing which way is coming, and which way is going you succumb and find yourself spending an hour of your life waiting in a parking lot so you can spend your money on another unnecessary item for an already comfortable American (I am referring to the fact that every American lives many levels above their counterparts in the rest of the world ).

TV teaches you about society.  What to wear.  How to be.  What to drive. What to eat.

TV teaches you who to be.

Now there’s a channel for every “person”, so that they don’t send conflicting messages on one channel.  Every viewer can find their comfort spot or characters and only watch shows like in that zone.  Now advertisers can market to a specific audience, making an already powerful weapon even more powerful.

Before I close this essay, I’d like to put a challenge in front of you.

Unplug your TV for 1 year.

You really don’t have a valid argument against me if you haven’t done this yet.  I haven’t had a TV for many years now… and what I mean by that is that there is no TV in my house at all.

Think about this statistic:  According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day.  That adds up to 28 hours a week.  That means that you spend 1 entire day of your week behind a television set.  That adds up to over 2 MONTHS out of 1 year behind a TV (4 hours x 365 days = 1460 hours/year; 1460 hours/year divided by 24 hours = 60.83 days per year!)

If you assume the average person lives 80 years, that comes out to 11.6 years behind a TV if they started watching TV at the age of 10.  That’s 15% of your life.  And now that screens are every where (literally in the palm of your hands) that number will increase.

Unless you can literally not turn it on, you won’t see the changes.

If there are those of you out there that are really, and I mean really interested in and bothered by what is happening with our world and our society, all you have to do is unplug your TV.

You will notice changes in your life after a short time.  The world will seem different to you, and

People will seem different to you, and you will see reality reality, not the one that has been implanted into our subconscious minds.

Every year the reality show we call reality gets more and more bizarre.  These changes are happening exponentially in this era.  Indeed we live in the era of the exponent.  Every is faster, and our technology progresses, we will be able to make things even faster, in essence accelerating the rate of the bizarre-volution.

Having read this, you are now faced with a choice:

Are you going to be a character or an observer?

Enter the rabbit hole and you will never be able to go back.  Reality is something other than what your conditioning tells you.