Job Search - Part One

My apologies to my dear readers, that I have not written a post in the past two weeks. I've been looking for a job. I haven't done that in quite some time. It is exhausting. I've been applying for anything that pays $12/hr or more, everything from light industrial/warehouse, to corporate copywriting. Ten to fifteen applications a day, online. A few highlights:

The first response came from an ad I responded to, for office work. It was an innocuous ad, nothing special. The response came by email, asking if I wanted to be Eugene's personal assistant. A representative for Baume de Mercier watches, he was in Switzerland temporarily, and needed someone to handle money transfers from clients. All I would have to do is receive the transfers in my account, and then transfer the money to another account. That's it. $2000/month, plus 10% of every transfer. Maybe 3-4 hours a day, he said. I just needed to send him all the relevant information. I looked up Baume de Mercier watches online. I emailed him back, innocent like, saying it sounded like a great deal - but if I can buy a Baume de Mercier watch online with a credit card or paypal transfer, why does money need to be transferred through my account? I didn't ask what he was really trafficking in. He did not respond.

The second response came from an ad about entry-level management. I'm not sure why I applied to that one, except they talked about integrity, and it being a family friendly environment. The gal who called was Asian, with a thick accent. We set up an appointment - I figured at the time, I haven't been to an interview in a while, it would be good practice - and she told me to look sharp. Then she told me where the meeting would take place, in an office building on the second floor across the street from the UofM campus, and then I knew it was a shitty call center job with a ridiculously high turnover rate because poor college kids couldn't stand it. I skipped that one.

The next one involved the selling of insurance. I have no interest in selling insurance, but I went to that interview because their niche market is unions, credit unions and associations, and the meeting was in Eden Prairie, one of the ritzier suburbs of Minneapolis, so I figured it was legit. I was also under the impression it would involve more the reviewing of documents, than selling insurance. And I figured, even if there's some selling, at least I'll be talking to union guys. I can do that.

I walked into the office and was surprised to discover everyone working there seemed younger than me. And there was contemporary yuppie music blaring from the front desk, out of two cheap computer speakers. The pretty girl at the front desk was wearing so much makeup I couldn't really see her face, and she averted her eyes as soon as I made eye contact. I interviewed with another young woman, when it became clear that it was all about sales. I didn't exactly hide the fact that I wasn't all that interested, but when she asked if I wanted to stay for the informative "second interview," I was like, ok, sure.

I sat down in a circle of, well, losers - from a success perspective. Not all of them. There was one recent college graduate, who hadn't been totally kicked around by the job market the past four years, though she likely had more debt than anyone in the room. Most of the guys were working class themselves. There was an army wife from Missouri who, when it came time to introduce herself, went on and on like she forgot she was talking. There was a mortgage guy who got out of the business because it had become so "distasteful." Everyone, including myself, talked about how much they wanted to make the world a better place - except the mortgage guy. After introductions, there was a canned speech by the maybe thirty year old Brian leading the meeting, while some dirt bag sat in the corner silently without introducing himself, and took notes about each of us. Then the Brian introduced the introductory video.

I thought it was a farce at first, like they were making fun of fat cat rich guys. Then I realized it was a compilation of the company yearly meeting, set to rock and roll. The leadership looked union, and talked union, except when they got to talking about how much money they made. There were profiles of this twenty something worth two million, and that twenty-something making $435,000/yr, etc. The last guy was the CFO, I think, congratulating his people for their honor and integrity, before he ended the video by saying something about how cool it was to be among so many rich people. I remember thinking, if these guys showed this video to any of the union guys they were trying to sell to, they'd never sell another policy. It might be the end of the business, which has been around for awhile - which wouldn't be good for existing policies of course. Maybe the insurance is good, I don't know. It must pay out, or word would get around. It should probably be cheaper than it is, though. The Brian wouldn't look me in the eye after that, and I didn't even say anything. The rest of the spiel was about how much money you could make. Quite the gravy train, to retire in ten years. Hard to get people to sell insurance, I guess.

I sat down with the girl from the initial interview, after, for the "third interview." She couldn't get rid of me fast enough. I didn't get a call back for the "fourth interview."

The job search got considerably better after that. I'll get to that in part two.


PS: My deepest gratitude, to those readers who have contributed to me recently. You kept the water on, preventing condemnation. Thank you so much - and blessings, for you and yours.

Grief and Anger

I once attended a training taught by a man named Jim Mitchell. A tall, robust black man, a former bank executive who gave up that life well before people were hungry to hang bankers, he'd dedicated himself to training men to deal with their emotional baggage. One of his central ideas, in the training at least, was the idea that there are interior reservoirs, of grief and anger. He told us, if you want to get clear about who you are, and what you are doing in this life, you need to dive down into those reservoirs and drain them.

That made sense to me, on a visceral level. I was working at a Fortune 100 at the time, at their world headquarters, paid more for less work than I'd ever done anywhere before, and yet I didn't feel right. I had dedicated myself to a path of healing two and a half years prior to that, and those years had been productive; I felt better and more clear about who I was than I ever had in my adult life. But still, something wasn't right. I didn't want to be working in a climate controlled tower surrounded by sound deadening cubicle walls and profoundly conventional people. I wasn't sure what I wanted, but it wasn't that. So I took that training, and I thought about what Mitchell said, and I set about an intention.

I took some time off work, and fasted and deprived myself of sleep for three days, at the end of which, six of my most trusted friends came to my house, and they sat in a circle on my living room floor, with me in the middle. I fasted and sleep-deprived myself because I figured, the weaker my defenses, the more I might be able to get to the core of what I was looking for. I also had severe symptoms of Lyme disease at the time, which I didn't know was Lymes, which exacerbated my physical strain immensely. My friend Snake facilitated, and I went about exploring the depth of my grief. I was a mess from the beginning.

I wrote about that experience in my first book, The Dream That Must Be Interpreted. Free to download, such as it is, if you don't read any other part of the book, and want to know what a grief reservoir draining session might look like - there it is, chapter five, Initiation. Suffice to say, I did not know I was that deep. Nothing very pleasant about it, I might add. But such is the nature of personal growth, dealing with unpleasantries.

A young woman who goes by the handle Karpatok said it well, about grief, with these simple words: “How could they...HOW COULD THEY!” in the Doomstead Diner forum recently, in reference to the hideous destruction of the mountainous land of her birth and childhood, West Virginia, by mountain-top removal coal mining. Grief, in it's generalized form, about what has been done to me, what has been done to the earth, and also, consequently, what I have done to myself. The constant breaking down, the demands of obedience, the cruel critiques, the minimizing, the petty and not so petty tyrannical pressure to conform, the physical and psychological abuse, the irrational command and control aggressiveness of Authority. The Destruction of the biosphere in the name of self-interest, the systemic toxicity, the burning of fossil fuels wantonly and the denial of the consequences, the constant enforcement of separation, the predations of the monied. All the stupid petty things I have done to fall in line, to debase myself, to make myself small.

Of course, the other side of that is anger, for all the very same reasons. If you want to know what my anger has come to look like, I'll refer you to my recent post 911, which I wrote shortly after I came to the belated conclusion that 9/11 was a false flag, inside job to initiate a war of Terror on all the people of the world, that cannot end or be won, any more than the drug war, which never was about eradicating drugs or drug use, but about the control of the people. What I would like to do, to the defilers! There is a thing in me that desires to kill every last one. But in case you haven't figured out, and I haven't been clear enough about it, I am NOT encouraging you to explicit violence. At most, I am encouraging you to explore the depths of your anger. Because if there is to be anything like a change of course, driving humanity in a direction away from mass extinction and the destruction of the biosphere, IMHO we're going to have to get clear about our anger. As is, it's coming out sideways mostly, directed by Authority at anything but Authority, or directed at Authority impotently, or bottled within and tearing us apart.

Mitchell talked about draining that reservoir too, and he's right. I don't think one can think or be clearly, as long as that reservoir remains full, spilling out over the sides. I think we have to drain it. And at the bottom of those two reservoirs I think, are pearls of forgiveness. Because we have to forgive, or it isn't the thing we wish to destroy that is destroyed, but ourselves instead. And the thing about that is, forgiveness isn't anything like giving up, giving in. Forgiveness is like freeing oneself to be in love with this life fiercely. To be in love with this earth, to be free to do what one can to nurture and protect it, each other and ourselves

So I think if you really want to understand how deep you are, how deep down you really do go, you've got to dive on in, into one's own depth, inside. Nothin' pleasant about that work, necessarily, but real change rarely is.

And if you do that work, if you're anything like me, you may just find, the hardest one to forgive is myself.

Note: There is a fundraising drive going on for me, at the Doomstead Diner. A couple of my posts have been featured there. It's a great crowd, a great resource for dialogue and information about the collapse of Civilization. I find myself in a bit of a financial bind, my utilities long in arrears and threatening to open up another confrontation with city governance over an attempted condemnation of my house. RE, chief admin there, found out, and offered up the idea. I accepted. To anyone who gives, to help give me a little breathing room while I figure out WTF with this house, and myself - THANK YOU! Whether you come from the Diner, or from my blog, drop a note and I'll reply. Blessings, with gratitude.

Techno Triumphal Cornucopianism

Meanwhile, Apple Inc recently pulled out of the EPEAT, a registry of “green” electronics. A non-binding certification process that tech manufacturers have largely agreed to adhere to, a baseline set of agreements that pretty much amount to whether or not the gadget can be taken apart to be fixed, and recycled. The only word Apple has given as to why they will no longer submit their products to the EPEAT for certification, is that the guidelines are no longer consistent with Apple's design direction.

What is that direction? To make smaller and smaller products that can do more and more, but can't be fixed, or recycled, because they can't be taken apart, and so are destined for the trash. Why is that a problem? Because consumer electronics are highly toxic, comprised of a myriad of chemicals and base metals that are anathema to the health of the biosphere. Not only that, many of the rare earth metals necessary to a functioning computer or phone are called rare for a reason. These rare earth metals in Apple products will now be destined for the landfill even more than they already are, where they can never be recovered. Apple is widely acknowledged as a design leader, and other electronics manufacturers are likely to follow.

You are free to call this evil, if you like, this kind of thinking that “designs” the ill health of the biosphere, while eliminating the ability of future generations to build such things as electronics. But you will be in the minority, as nary a soul will stop buying Apple products because of this news. Most Homo sapien with access to high technology are convinced, the resources of the earth are infinite, and technology is making the world cleaner and safer. If that sounds Orwellian to you in a most 1984 kind of way, then take heart, you are not an idiot.

Perhaps the Apple people are convinced that James Cameron, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Peter Diamandis et al, are going to start mining asteroids soon, and the fact that China has a lock on the few remaining rare earth metals won't be any kind of issue. Never mind, as I have mentioned before, that these are supposed to be the good guys, and the bad guys in the Cameron franchise Avatar at least, are the ones going to other places in the universe to mine things, because the earth is dead, because we poured toxins into the biosphere for profit, without limit. That these guys can't see the irony should give them (and you) pause, if they truly gave a damn about the earth, but when you are a master of the universe type, your words have to reflect the opposite of your actions. And it's not like Avatar fans, the majority of them, have critical thinking skills enough, or the will, to put the pieces together.

I haven't read Diamandis' new book, Abundance, profiled in the video above. The computer lady says, "We will soon be able to meet the basic needs of every man, woman, and child on the planet. This bold, contrarian view backed up by exhaustive research..." Contrary to what I said above, I do believe Diamandis believes what he is saying. His TED talk is particularly enlightening. I also readily admit, his attitude is abundantly more attractive than my own, at least as it appears in this, and my latest post. I too believe humanity will live a glorious techno existence someday.* I just don't think the current crop of geniuses and their mostly as yet imaginary tech are capable of overcoming the crop of greedy warmongers controlling things, and we're going to have to pass through a threshold first, which isn't going to be pleasant, at all. And Daimandis is simply saying that everything is ok, nothing to worry about, and Jesus, I mean aliens, I mean technology, is going to save us from our global predicament.

We are seeing this same sort of thing coming from the energy industry. America is to become the new Saudi Arabia, they are repeating endlessly (sort of reminiscent of Dick Cheney in the polar op., "Terror, terror terror terror...") Again, with the irony, that Saudi Arabia is a major oil producer, and also a repressive Monarchy with 28,000 members of the Rich-as-God royal family, lording over an illiterate, unskilled, poverty stricken populace of 28 million (all hail the .001%!) Never mind that the idea America is going to be the world leader in fossil fuel production is a transparent lie, to anyone who understands the definition of EROEI, or is paying attention to the coming collapse of the natural gas bubble - because the media are pumping peoples heads full of bullshit 24/7, and the people are utterly hypnotized.

It's possible these guys don't even believe their own bullshit. When TransCanada built the first Keystone pipeline, the damn thing bust open a dozen times in the first year. Word is, they didn't care that they were building a POS product even when they were building it, as if saying everything is hunky dory after the fact when the damn thing is spraying cancer causing benzene and heavy crude all over the place, is sufficient enough to make it not a problem. Besides, if Obama has his way, and this turncoat Congress is sure to capitulate, foreign nationals will be able to build shoddy pipelines spilling toxins, or things like sulphuric acid from copper mines, into the water supply, and no American law or court will be able to do a damn thing about it.

It's like Enron all over again, and again, and again, and again, ad infinitum. The smartest fucking guys in the room. Do you begin to wonder why in my last post, I was like, off with their heads! I'd be lying, if after reading about the Michigan spill, I wasn't thinking like, line up the entire executive staff of Enbridge and Bechtel against a brick wall, ratta tat tat. But let me be clear, if the scenario I painted last week were to actually happen, say a million Americans descending on the Beltway with rolls of concertina wire, pitchforks and AR-15's, the Department of Homeland Security, in conjunction with the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the military, would just haul out some Apache gunships and start spreading .50 caliber rounds with all the compunction of those goons at that university in California with their pepper spray. And Americans would be outraged for about three days, and then they'd go back to their wage slave jobs and wonder about things like whether or not Top Gun Tom Cruise is going to have to choose between Scientology and his daughter Suri.

Blah blah blah. I'm preachin' to the choir, aren't I? Well, let it be said, it's easy to be drawn into the story of the techno triumphal cornucopianists, that we are on the verge of a new day in the life of Humanity, not a collapse but a glorious new techno heaven on earth, utopia for the geek wanna-be-a-cyborg set. Take the Higgs Boson chatter lately. You might think it was like the first time anyone ever saw E=MC2. Confirmation of the standard model of physics, yeah (pump fist)! Except, the standard model of physics contradicts the law of gravity, and it can't explain why anything in the universe spirals or spins, or why quantum physics tells us empty space is denser than matter by an order of magnitude running to infinity. That's a very big deal. Really. For all their talk – and look at all the fancy shit they can do with all those bloody millions and billions! - they don't yet know shit enough not to spoil the damn planet they live on.

Be wary of the masters of the universe, no matter what their specialty. And remember, the calls that everything is fine are always loudest and most shrill, in the weeks and months before meltdown.


* As to a glorious techno future, I'm of the opinion that the "prime mover" so to speak, that is responsible for things spinning and spiraling in this universe, is contained in the vacuum, the empty space that quantum physics tells us is denser energetically than matter by an order of magnitude running to infinity. If the brainiacs ever figure that out, it's a whole new reality. But we aren't even close, and given another 200,000 years, we might figure it out. Maybe.

911

I was reading about 9/11 this week. I know I'm a little behind the times, in that regard. I guess I always kind of knew, but maybe I didn't really want to know. An hour reading was all it took, to convince me, there is only one player on this planet truly capable of knocking down those three buildings in that way, and attacking the Pentagon in the way it was attacked, and that is my government. Or more accurately, the military/industrial complex. And the blame, while widespread, clearly rests with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They were maybe following orders from someone or some others, but they were the hands on de-architects, no doubt.

I'm returning to this because of all the chatter on the Internet about a potential false flag operation planned for the London Olympics this summer. Some people think it will be a faked alien invasion, others think a small nuclear or “dirty” bomb. Many are tying it into the so-called Illuminati and their goal of the new Zion, or total world domination. That weird ass emblem has an uncanny resemblance.

It shouldn't take a genius to figure out something is being planned. Barack “hegemon” Obama hasn't eviscerated the Constitution for nothing. Many are afraid the elite of the world are preparing to exterminate the majority of us. Did you hear the Department of Homeland Security purchased 450 million rounds of hollow point bullets recently? Why are international elite special forces running drills on the waterfront of Tampa Bay? Why are American soldiers running drills on the streets of St Louis? One might argue, the government is afraid of riots, should the global economy go into recession, and they want to be ready to restore calm. What's that they say, about the road to hell being paved with good intentions? Conversely, how can an elite military/industrial leadership capable of something on the scale of 9/11, have anything resembling good intentions? Forty caliber hollow point bullets for crowd control?

Meanwhile, word is out that phytoplankton are going the way of the dinosaurs. Phytoplankton. I know we humans like to think of ourselves as the center of the proverbial universe, but phytoplankton are the primordial foundation of the existing ocean food chain. Not only that, they provide an estimated 50% of the oxygen we breath. Why are they declining? Because we are toxifying the oceans with our burning of fossil fuels and our chemical making. If the phytoplankton are lost, the food chain of the ocean collapses, the ocean dies, the air is no longer breathable, we all die. Get it?

This is old news (that should be on the news every day, every minute, every second, what we are doing about it.) The new news is (which isn't reported either, except to say everything is fine), conventional oil supplies are on the decline, but wouldn't you know it, they've gone and saved the day by figuring out how to drill for oil in super deep ocean waters, dredging it out of the ground like coal, and fracking for it; the later two methods compromising our already polluted and strained fresh water supplies, the former threatening an already strained and polluted ocean (they can figure out these funky new extraction methods but not how to efficiently use the renewable power of the sun, sea and wind to generate power?) But don't just blame the oil industry. The chemical industry is pouring more than 100,000 different chemicals and chemical compounds into the air and water, daily. Of course, humans breathe air and drink water. But that's ok, that they are polluting so wantonly, because we need economic growth more than we need breathable air and drinkable water, and really one of the few sectors where economic growth is even possible anymore, other than making weapons and bombs, is Health Care.

But clearly I do not know what I am talking about, and everything I'm saying is delusional, because if it were true, it would be reported in the mainstream media. Unless of course the mainstream media were simply appendages of the military/industrial complex. (Fuck you, Anderson Cooper, I don't care if you're gay or straight, you're no different than your high dollar cronies on the other end of the dial, Hannity, Limbaugh, et al - you're a well compensated shill for monsters.)

If you have the courage to put the pieces together, the reality is inescapable. Not only is humanity on a course of mass suicide, by way of mass global extinction, our elite global leadership may very well be conspiring to preempt such an outcome by killing off most of humanity. And if you think they aren't capable of that kind of logic, it doesn't matter, because if you're an American at least, there are 1.5 DHS hollow point bullets with your fate embedded in the lead. Whatever false flag operation there is planned, and the foil looks to be Iran, or Syria, it is merely an excuse to institute martial law, total global control, and probably elite managed mass death for the useless eaters and undesirables, basically, the non-militant and not-willing-to-be-a-slave sets.

So what has to happen? I'll tell you what I think needs to happen, assuming our leadership doesn't reverse course and start telling us the truth (acknowledging that just because I think this is what needs to happen doesn't make it a good idea, or even plausible. Think of it as me venting.) Fence off the DC beltway with concertina wire, let no one from Congress, the Pentagon, or K-street escape alive, empty out the executive suites and board rooms of the Fed, Wall Street and all the major banks and corporations, the major players in all the major family empires, the various billionaires, and basically the entire political class and their shill major media talking heads, and add them to the DC mix, and then leave them to cannibalize each other. Or just cut off their heads and be done with it. You know that fence surrounding the White House? The head of Dick Cheney on a spike right out front, with his new heart spiked to his forehead. Donald Rumsfeld on a spike next to him, with GW Bush on one side, and Barack Obama on the other. Ring the rest of it with the rest of Congress, and whatever other major players, and then toss the remaining on the grounds. There'd be heads overflowing, from the roof of the White House to the peak of the fence, yet hardly a percentage of all the sick fuck who have poisoned this earth and turned it, and us, into their private ATM.

But what am I saying? That's so awful! Well, if you think that, you haven't been paying attention.

Of course, all those elite monsters who are driving this military/industrial/technological/financial machine, are also in control of the mainstream media, which is actively engaged in perpetuating the mythology of progress and growth, war mongering, lionizing elite etc, encouraging the demonization of the right or the left among the people, of the poor generally, and otherwise titillating the senses ad nauseum unto blind obedience and abject stupidity. No one gets time on the MSM unless the Machine approves of the message. (Isn't it astounding, how much the military/industrial/technological machine has come to resemble the great beast of the book of Revelations, and yet here in America there are hardly any more fervent supporters of that great beast, than Christians.)

What am I prepared to do? Not much. I have no military training or fighting skills, nor any keen desire to kill or even hurt anybody. I haven't even struck someone in anger since I was sixteen, and then I had a hockey glove on, and he had a face mask (he was also my teammate and he slashed me on the wrists with his hockey stick, in a team practice scrimmage, the prick.) What I want really, is a quiet, ascetic kind of life, to build my own house off the grid, studying plants, gardening, hunting and fishing, with some friends and companions, who appreciate dancing and singing. That's it. But what is that, when the path of humanity is so clearly engaged in making that very simple thing impossible for anybody? When the economic system we take for granted is so inherently hostile to life, so geared to depriving us of true health and general welfare, so clearly destined to generate death on a grand scale here-to-fore unseen? These people who rule over us are not American, in the pure sense of what that was supposed to mean. They are scarcely human, with their desires and their actions, having so closely come to resemble a machine. It's no wonder people get to thinking they aren't human, reptile aliens in disguise (there is not a greater charlatan than David Icke.)

I'm down to my last few dollars. My house is on the verge of being condemned for failure to pay my utility bills. I am estranged from most of my family and my friends. Today, July 04, Independence Day in America, is my 39^th birthday. My name is William Hunter Duncan, and I used to be afraid, but I'm not afraid anymore.


You might want to consult another voice for this kind of thinking, without the recital of explicit violence, and something more in the way of doable sollutions...here.

Lyme Disease

I was in my local public library, looking through the health section for anything on herbals, when a book called Healing Lyme Disease the Natural Way, by Wolf-Dieter Storl, caught my attention. I had Lyme disease in the late summer and fall of 2008, while I was working for a Fortune 100 at their world headquarters. I had terrible rashes, my neck and shoulders were so tight I could hardly turn my head or lift my arms above my shoulders; I blacked out three times, once on the freeway while passing a semi, once in the shower where I was out long enough for the water to go cold, and a third time in my living room, when I woke up in the middle of a seizure, my face bouncing off the hardwood floor. I was given a broad spectrum antibiotic for three weeks and the problem went away.

I looked at the book, and the name Wolf, and I thought, 'He's probably a clean shaven guy who wears makeup, with feathers in his hair every day and lives in Santa Barbara.' As I'm interested in the healing properties of plants, however, and there being nothing else comparable on the shelf, I found a chair and started reading, regardless of my suspicions. What I found in that book instead, was a true healer speaking directly to the core of my being.

Wolf-Dieter Storl is a German born, American and Swiss educated anthropologist, who has traveled the world studying with native healers who work with plants in traditional ways. Author of 28 books, he has the intellect of a true academic, without the pompous superiority so common in the West, one of the few I've encountered who sees western Health Care for what it is mostly, a method of social control and a means to generate economic growth. A bulbous man with a great beard, who lives close to the earth, and cares deeply for people.

According to Storl, the Lyme bacteria is a biological marvel. It is of the genus Borellia, a spiral shaped spirochete like a cork screw, which can actually contract it's form into a sphere, as if you took a rubberband, stretched it out and released it, it would take the shape of a marble – so that it will be “featureless” and so unrecognizable to the host immune system. It can barrel it's way into a host cell, killing the cell and wearing it like a costume. Like a chameleon it can take on the appearance of a host cell, such that if the immune system recognizes it as an invader, it attacks the spirochete as well as the native tissue. It can insinuate itself into tissue so that it can't be found by the immune system, antibiotics, or tested for accurately by any modern method. It has 150 genes in the outer of its three cell walls (most bacteria have three), which can communicate to the bacteria information about the immune defenses of the host, and of any antibiotic, allowing the bacteria to change it's appearance in response. It can encapsulate and go dormant in a matter of minutes, for up to ten months, that neither the immune defenses of the host, or antibiotics can effect it. It can swim so fast through the system that it will colonize the entire body including passing the blood-brain barrier, in as little as ten days.

Yet, so many people have Borellia spirochetes in their body, some scientists are not even convinced Lyme is a real disease. The symptoms of it are so similar to so many other diseases including MS, that doctors often claim one when it's the other. No one knows if the disease even existed before 1975. Some people are debilitated by it, and yet others never know they have it.

Lyme has reached epidemic proportions the last several decades, particularly in the upper Midwest, and the Northeast, spread by the tiny deer tick, Ixodes scapularis. Many doctors are convinced, that antibiotics have no effect on it, even as some doctors go so far as to proffer antibiotics intravenously. It is a true mystery disease, tweaking Western assumptions about what disease even is, and what science is capable of doing about it.

Wolf Storl contracted Lyme, but having had a terrible experience prior with antibiotics, nearly dying not from the sickness he contracted, but the cure, and believing the old shamanic saying that there's a plant to heal every sickness, he chose instead to focus on strengthening his immune system, and searching in the records for a plant that might be of use. Antibiotics of course, act to suppress and weaken the immune system. Here was his plan, in the basics:

• Plenty of sleep
• Fresh air and sunshine
• Exercise
• Healthy eating habits
• Immune system strengthening herbs
• Joy of life and sense of purpose
• Setting time aside for himself

In addition, he took daily hot baths and saunas, and also, for three weeks, a tincture of the root of Dipsacus sativa (D. fullonum, D. sylvestris), Teasel.

When I look back at my experience with Lyme, I'm no longer convinced that the antibiotics did anything to fix the problem. I think my body healed itself, adapted. Because at the time, not only was I taking the antibiotic, I quit my corporate job, I hoped in a 1979 Dasher running on waste vegetable oil, with the woman I loved, took a rambling, two week tour across the northern half of the Western states (in the fall), and then convalesced among the redwoods of Mendcino for two months, eating organic all the while, and berries and mushrooms I gathered myself. That's what healed me.

And I'm not even convinced that the spirochete isn't still active in my body, though an ally now somehow, rather than a threat. Consider, that spirals are fundamental constructs of universal processes. Our DNA is spiraled, the earth spirals through the galaxy as it revolves around the sun and the sun around the center of the galaxy, the galaxy is spiraled. Now consider what I have accomplished in the four years since I had Lyme – I wrote two books, I'm working on two others, I have danced like a whirling dervish in front of tens of thousands of people, I've maintained this blog, I managed a Halloween store twice, I've sung in a way I had no idea that I could. I no longer think of Lyme as a disease, I think of it as a kind of shamanic initiation.*

Consider too, when I woke up in my tent, in the middle of that meadow, and discovered that strange bite on the inside of my left thigh, I was camped next to a stand of teasel, which despite that I am an inveterate observer of plants, I had not seen before, and have not seen since (I didn't use the plant to heal, but the synchronicity is significant to me.) Consider too, that I haven't been in that library but once before, there are only two copies of Wolf's book in the whole 42 library Hennepin County system, and I happened to be looking for information that might spur myself to rededicate myself to healing, and a more earnest study of plants.

All of this fits nicely into the context of the current Health Care debate. All of the criticism and support I've heard misses the point entirely, about the Affordable Care Act. Western Health Care encourages us to think that we need not take any responsibility for our own health, that a technological, magic fix will be there for whatever problems we have, when we need it, no matter how we treat ourselves. In addition, everything about Western civilization is about separating us from nature, from plants and their gifts, from the rhythms and cycles of the biosphere, from each other. Industrial culture in fact, assures that most of us remain unhealthy. I'm convinced, most of what we know of disease is not endemic to the human condition at all, it is a result of the stress, the pace, the disconnection, and the myriad pollutants inherent to industrialism.

This nation is already insolvent, spending about 35% more than we generate. And now we are going to expand Health Care, when it is already 20% of the economy? While doing nothing to address the roots of ill health. It is a recipe for bankruptcy. And this argument does not even yet address the degree to which this Affordable Care Act is a massive boon to insurance and pharmaceutical companies, or the fact that it forces someone who knows how to heal themselves and keep themselves healthy naturally, to pay the same as someone of comparable income who subsists on industrial junk food and sits on their fat ass all day. This is not a health care act as much as it is a broad expansion in social control. You will pay to feed the system, whether you like it or not. Nor have I yet addressed the possibility that all this is just a political ploy to distract us from the very real steps the architects of national health care are taking toward martial law. There may not even be much of a functioning economy by the time the mandate, er, tax takes effect. If there's little in the way of a functioning economy, those institutions aren't going to be there for you.

The point of this essay is to encourage you not to depend on institutions for your heath care. Institutions cannot and do not care for your health, they function mostly to encourage your ill health and apply temporary remedies to the symptoms, for profit. Good for setting broken bones, and invasive surgery if needed, but not much else. Consider that encouraging health is in fact contrary, nay, antithetical, to a profit driven economic health care model. Agricultural subsidies to the most polluting players, making the most unhealthy food the cheapest, being a fine case in point. Keep em sick, and keep the money rolling in.

Well, there comes a time when the people are just too plain ill to sustain economic growth. We're about there, I'm guessing. More on this theme, to come.

* That is not to say, go out and get Lyme disease so you can have a shamanic initiation. I'm just speculating, and besides, there is nothing pleasant about Lyme disease. It's not like it has been a financial boon either. I'm broke, in an untenable situation with this house, and I'm feeling more weak and run down than I've felt in a long time. So as always, I'm just reporting my experience in this life.

Tyranny in the State of Minnesota

I know I said I was going to wait a month before I would publish another blog post, but something has come up, and I'll feel better if there is a public record of it.

In early 2010, I made a $100 accounting error in my checking account. In the course of a week, not yet accustomed to using cash, working a plumbing job for a friend, I made ten small purchases using my debit card, for a total of $80, all of it for plumbing materials. US Bank charged me $375 in fees. I called the branch, and told them I would be willing to pay the equivalent of two overdraft fees, $75. Looked at another way, I said, that is effectively 100% interest on the $80 dollars they "loaned" me for a week. They said no. I called corporate, and they said I would be charged $8 a day every day until I paid the total. I told them, under those terms, I would pay them nothing.

US Bank let the total in fees and penalties rise to $800, or 1000% interest in two months, sold the debt to a credit agency (for probably about the same amount as I was willing to pay them), and then had the temerity to leave the account open with a negative balance.

This past winter, I received a call from a man claiming to be a lawyer, with Bradstreet and Associates LLC, who said a judgment for $1200 had been rendered against me in a Hennepin County court. He wanted to know how I wanted to arrange payment. I told him I had no idea there was such a hearing, and I asked him if he even knew what the original debt was for. He did not. I said as much to him as I said to US Bank, I will never pay a dollar.

I called the county then, and after 45 minutes navigating the phone tree, a woman told me she could tell me nothing about the judgment over the phone, that I would have to go to the county offices. I asked her, how was it, that I had no idea I was even supposed to be in court for the original hearing. She said the county sent a letter - to an address I haven't lived at in six years, though I own a house in Hennepin County, and I've paid Hennepin County property taxes for that current address all those six years! She seemed unfazed. I told her I didn't want to go to the county offices, because I was afraid of being arrested.

Yesterday, it became know to me that there was another letter from the county, at that old address. I retrieved it, an Order for [financial] Disclosure. I had ten days to fill out the form and return it to the county. At the time, it was 14 days since the filing of the order. "The Judgment Creditor may ask the Court to hold you in 'civil contempt of court.' If the Court decides that you intentionally disobeyed this Order, the Court may fine you, put you in jail, or both."

I though about taking the train downtown today, to the county offices, to try and straighten this out, but I did a little research first. Our local newspaper, The Star Tribune, published a nice series on debt collection in Minnesota recently, which convinced me that if I present myself to the county, I will face potential indefinite detention in county lock up, until I sign the form, or someone pays the debt.

The story of the debt will not matter. The only thing that matters to the county, at this point, is that I fill out that financial disclosure form. Which would open up a mainline from my checking account to Bradstreet and Associates, LLC. There's nothing in the account, but it stands to reason at some point there will be. In other words, I would be acknowledging the debt is legitimate. I would tell them instead, no, I will not fill out that disclosure form, that debt is not legitimate, they made that debt nearly out of thin air. In which case, I would likely be arrested and put in jail until I did fill out the form - with bail set at the amount of, to twice the $1200 judgment (with the Hennepin County taxpayers spending $200 a day to house me.)

I thought, hey, I'll call Bradstreet and Associates LLC, and tell them if I go to jail, I'm going to sue them, with the county as co-conspirators, for a very large amount of money, and do you really think any jury is going to side with you? They can't just sell the debt to some other agency now that there's a judgment on it, right? Just take it as a loss and let it go, I'd say. But I can't call them, or find them, because they don't apparently have a phone or an address, not listed anywhere. I tried to call the county too, but gave up after 45 minutes on the automated phone tree.

The county at this point, and the Sherrif's department, are acting as henchmen, or mercenary's for a business that buys up debt other creditors can't collect on, a business likely as not full of established criminals. Pull back the thin veneer of civilized governance, and what this is isn't anything but extortion. Confront any one in Hennepin County governance, and every one will claim ignorance. Hannah Arendt said:

"[Of] the forms of government as the rule of man over man...we aught to add the latest and perhaps the most formidable form of such domination: bureaucracy or the rule of an intricate system of bureaus in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few or the many, can be held responsible, and which could properly be called the rule of Nobody. If, in accord with traditional political thought, we identify tyranny as government that is not held to give account of itself, rule by Nobody is clearly the most tyrannical of all, since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer for what is being done." [my italics; the link is about extending the logic here in Minnesota, globally]

No one at the county has any idea what the debt they are prosecuting me for, is from. Nor do they care to know. The are only fulfilling the law. Doing their jobs.

Which puts me in a profoundly vulnerable place, as there is no institution, public or private, that I am a direct part of, protecting me. And the vast majority of Americans, like the people at the county or at Bradstreet $ Assoc. LLC, think if there is a debt and the government is after me, then I must be guilty and whatever happens is just - unless they themselves have been prey. As to the argument that I signed a contract when I opened that bank account, I say, try and get by in this culture without one. What is a contract, if the terms of that contract are purely defined by the one providing it, there is hardly any choice, and the provider is a corrupt bureaucracy of it's own kind? As to my financial foolishness, I plead no contest, as my Federal government has set the example, spending 300 billion a month while taking in 200 billion. But just pay the bill, I hear someone saying. First, I don't have the money. Second, third and fourth, you may be fine with the institutional fleecing of Americans, I prefer not to be fleeced.

It has been said, the wheels of fate grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. I have never been arrested, and I have no desire to be ground up by the wheels of Hennepin County bureaucracy. In fact, I would like to flee. But nor, do I want to leave my garden, or walk away from this house and my family. Mostly, when I think of what could happen to me in that county lock up, how incarceration has come to seem an almost inevitability, knowing that I have become more and more like the American that Thomas Jefferson wished for us to be, capable of self-governing, independent, free thinking, I get to feeling like Samuel Adams in 1776:

"If ye love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom...crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains rest lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."

But I look around me, here in the corrupt, calloused, complacent Heartland of America, and I know not one other who shares that sentiment.

           

Fear

Reading those last two paragraphs this morning over coffee, of the post I wrote last night in a tizzy, in about an hour, they feel hollow. I suppose that's what they call shadow, my own fears of the world projected out at the world.

The truth is, I am afraid. I'm afraid that humanity is driving itself inexorably toward the sterilization of the biosphere, and the extinction of the species, all species, pretty much. I'm afraid of my government, and my President, who has claimed Absolute Power, the President and the State escalating violence across the globe in the name of commerce, empire, and yet I'm the one who could go to jail for talking about spray paint, or smoking pot? I'm afraid that the world could fall into a Great Depression-like liquidity freeze any day now, from which we will never recover, and more likely descend into a frenzy of barbarism, with the four horseman of the apocalypse - war, famine, pestilence, death - reducing the population by several billion at least. I'm afraid the economy is going to crash, and those two aging nuclear facilities on either side of me are going to melt down in short order. I'm afraid people like the Rockefellers and the Obamas are going to wall themselves off, and rain drone hellfire on the rest of us. I'm afraid the good is doomed and sociopath dominators, controllers and defilers are going to reign enslaving us in a dessicated landscape for many thousands of years. Have I forgotten anything? That is but a brief list of my fears, if you can imagine. 

The truth is too, I'm a mess. I'm broke again, so broke I'm not going to be able to keep my phone from getting shut off, and yet I don't seem to care. I feel paralyzed to do anything about it. My glasses are a mess, and I'm like, I had the money at one time, why didn't I get my eyes fixed? and now I feel like I might lose that opportunity. I've been drinking too much and hardly eating anything. I am consumed daily by visions of mayhem, of my own manufacture, based on the compendium of bad news pouring in from around the globe, which I devour insatiably. What is the thought of getting a job, when the world as you know it is about to end, and I'm such a fucking downer anyway? What is worse than knowing the world as we know it is coming to an end, while almost everyone around me is denying the information readily available for anyone to look at, in an effort to maintain an utterly doomed status quo, that is leading us toward oblivion? I guess, being oblivious?

Meanwhile, I have this toxic mortgage hanging over my head, and all my dreams of what I had hoped to do to this house in the way of taking it off the grid, are no more. I'm finding, if the culture as we know it is coming to an end, I have a powerful urge to return to the place of my birth. That would be a far safer place to ride out the troubles than here.

So I don't know what you should do. I'm not even taking care of myself; where do I get off, recommending behavior, especially behavior that could get you in trouble with sadists who have the force of law and cultural agreement behind them? Better to just be. To find a nook somewhere more or less out of the way of the sadists, sociopaths, psychos and slaves this culture manufactures by the hundred million, and make friends with plants, and good people doing the same.

I'm afraid, and I'm weary. And I'm mostly alone. It's not a healthy combination. I can't even seem to draw up the joy, dancing and singing anymore, or even writing. I remember, the goal of this blog originally, was to be a model of ecologically responsible behavior, and joyous wonder at the mystery of it all. I've strayed a long way.

So I think I might take a break from blogging for awhile, until such time as I feel like I'm not just transposing my fear from me to you, until such time as I feel like a model with something worth saying again. To let go of the doom and just work on my house and garden, to offer it up for sale to someone who wants to live in a cute little house in the midst of an urban food forest, who is not so pessimistic about the future of this city. So I can be free to move. I don't mean to say I'm done blogging, I just need a break from the madness. I just need to let go, and start living again. 'Cause it's just too fuckin' much, and I don't see why I have to bear the weight of it all, if that means my ruination. Anyway, thanks for reading.

Happy Summer Solstice 2012

Would you like to see the modern face of fascism? Here you go.

If you link to the page, scroll all the way to the bottom. The Breakthrough Institute is a front organization, environmental in name only, soft-pedaling environmental and economic concerns, using the language of ecology. They just released a major report, that is likely to receive heavy play in the media. What are they saying? Paraphrased, 'The destruction of the biosphere has been good for humanity! Species extinction? No problem! The solution to climate change? Charge straight ahead just as we are. Everything is fine, don't worry about it, it's all under control.' If you look closely at the very bottom of that page, and notice the affiliation, you will see the words Philanthropy and Inc. behind that name. Right, philanthropy as a business.

 I've never been much in favor of the word Illuminati. Most of the information out there is raving paranoia, fantasies of seriously disturbed people. The folks over at the Doomstead Diner are about the only ones I know of, who use the word and are otherwise talking sense. I still don't care much for the word, but what do you call uber-billionaires and uber-billionaire families that have their fingers in oil, chemicals, logging, coal, big ag, security states, weapons systems, information surveillance etc? Regular people?

The two guys who started the Breakthrough Institute, wrote a book called The Death of Environmentalism. How appropriate. It is dead, in the sense that America's environmentalists are mostly empirical shills for consumerism, yuppies who want to live like yuppies, who have sacrificed protecting the earth for doomed and utterly useless CO2 controls and a vision, or rather a fantasy, of an America exactly as empirical/consumer as it is, except run on green energy. Their evident delusion and hypocrisy has made it possible for the Right to demonize the word environmentalist, as though anyone who cares about the earth or their local ecosystem is somehow hostile to people. The former Sheriff of my hometown who is now a state senator, is fond of using the word as a pejorative, in defense of a foreign multinational, extracting copper from Minnesota and taking most of the wealth generated overseas - as example.

What has to happen here? Here is what is happening. You see, multinational institutions are denuding the last of the biosphere's resources, ratcheting up that rate of extraction and exploitation, the leveling of forests, mining, drilling, the hollowing out of the seas, etc, and increasingly, wherever people are standing up in defiance, they are being shuttled aside, beaten, ruined, raped and killed.

What is pacifism? Jesus talked about turning the other cheek, but Jesus seems mostly to have resulted in Christians justifying military adventurism and empire, or otherwise acting like obedient sheep. Ghandi? How many times have you heard lately, "Be the change you wish to see in the world?" Are Hindus better off than they were under the Brits? Have you heard about the estimated 200,000 poor Indian farmers who have killed themselves in the last decade because industrial agriculture has taken over farming in India, and ruined them? Martin Luther King? Black folk got the vote, and now 40% of black men are at some time incarcerated and disenfranchised, increasingly for profit. The memory of all three of these men has been subsumed by the empirical consumer culture, acting mostly as propaganda to keep people thinking that their empirical lifestyles are justified.

As the industrial world begins it's collapse, do you suppose all those people who think the meaning of life is to consume and control as much as possible, are going to stop and say, "I guess we were wrong, let's dismantle the system and start over in a way that is ecologically responsible?" No, they are going to scapegoat the people who are saying that is what we should do, throwing them in cages, beating them up, ostracizing them, even raping and killing them.

Where are the warriors of the earth, is what I'm wondering?

Now, I'm not advocating going out and being violent. That will only result in blowback ten or a thousand fold, and it will likely ruin you and possibly the people closest to you. The American military, intelligence and police are the most fearsome, intimidating and powerful fighting machine ever devised. Any serious movement in the name of defending the earth is going to be crushed with prejudice, in the way of brutalizers. That doesn't mean, that at some point in your life, the playing field won't be leveled. Are you going to be ready for that day? There's a difference between being violent, and knowing one is capable of violence when necessity calls.

Meanwhile you can undermine. That is most effectively done by stealth. Psychological warfare, so to speak. Like, the next time you happen to be standing behind an oil tanker, or a Wal-Mart truck or whatever, scrawl in the dust, GLOBAL ECONOMIC MELTDOWN - FAMINE + CONSUMERISM = CANNIBALISM, or some such variation. Maybe THE EARTH WILL BE AVENGED. Write it on walls. Spray paint works good too, in prominent locales. You might spray your local Fed, or chemical or weapons or big ag contractor (building) with pigs blood, or maybe just red paintballs. Monkeywrenching works too. Use your imagination. Have fun with it. Just don't get caught. The worst of them will treat you worse than the pedophiles - they will attempt to destroy you, in the way of making examples.

Happy Solstice.

Population Control

Where does one begin?

Well, from the moment of first consciousness, at least, when we are assailed above all else here in the West, with the virtue of obedience - the command and control of the parent/adult/authority - no matter how irrational the command might be, even contrary to any honest measure of justice. That has long manifested in the West, in the ideal of the nuclear family, the command of the father, the subservience of the mother and child. From there, we are immersed in the institutional school, where we are taught to sit for long periods of time and pay attention, where we are taught value judgments about our gifts and how to react properly to directives. We are immersed in religious dogma, and political and economic ideologies denigrating the body, often diminishing us, making us small, inconsequential, weak. Subservience to the State, the goal in such training.

As adults, we are almost entirely dependent upon, and subject to institutions, to provide us with the basic necessities of life, including food, water and security; as I see it, many people simply parroting what institutions tell us to think about this world. The institutional directive, the most effective method of social control ever devised. Lucrative in a few cases, beyond conception.

That message, what to think and how to act, is most effectively reinforced by media. What is that message, simplified for clarity? Consume, fear and despise the Other, support the troops.

Who is the evil Other these days? Terrorists, of course. Conservatives to Liberals, Liberals to Conservatives. Romney, the dominator, is trying to to elicit fear and hostility toward the Chinese, as well as the Russians. It's going to be an all-out-war, globally, for the last of resources, no matter who the president is. So do your duty, and keep consuming, because God says you can't derail that train, no matter how you might like to.

Of course, it's all a losing game. Is there a more pernicious certainty, than the idea of control? Thinking we control nature, allowing us to inflate our numbers to seven billion. Ten billion people would have nothing left to consume, but each other probably. I wouldn't worry about that too much. There are all sorts of concerns about population, all sorts of ideas, about what should be done, what could be done. Nothing, is the only proper answer to that question, insofar as control is concerned. Nature, if I know anything about peak resources, climate change, systemic toxicity and species extinction, is going to deal with that, with prejudice, very likely. No need to meddle. The only thing keeping most people alive, are institutions, and hardly a one of those “persons” especially, gives a damn about people except as consumers. If there's a liquidity freeze world-wide, a collapse in supply chains of everything from food to fuel, it wouldn't take but the cycle of a year to reduce global population by a billion or more.

Speaking of hell on earth, that might cause a little unrest. Don't think that isn't being contemplated, at the highest levels of governance. I know at least one writer who is logically convinced, our government is preparing to exterminate us - not consciously, but the actions of the state are leading the nation inexorably in that direction, he believes. I didn't think there was anyone out there who had a lower opinion of Obama than I do, legitimately, but I was wrong. I hadn't let Obama's kill list fully penetrate my consciousness, until I read Arthur Silber's thought's on the subject.

“Although the NYT article did not disclose new information with regard to the essentials of the State's program of death, its length, detail and prominence constitute a significant ratcheting up of the State's claim of absolute power. Most crucial is the statement in the article that much of the content is derived from interviews with "three dozen of [Obama's] current and former advisers." As I pointed out in Part I, this in effect announces the identity of the article's true author: the author is the U.S. government, the State itself. Through these "advisers," the highest levels of the U.S. government have told the story they want to tell. And what is that story? It is simply this:

The State is become death. Our target can be anyone we choose. Yes, this means you. No, there is nowhere to run.

It is not every day that the State announces in the august pages of "the paper of record" that its primary program, the central mission to which it patiently and carefully devotes its vast resources, is the elimination of human life, wherever, whenever and to whatever extent it wishes....

These people are monsters. This is profoundly evil. All these people, all those who collaborate and assist in such a program, have placed themselves far beyond any limit of what can be designated as civilization.”



Yeah, that's about right. And Americans didn't utter a peep, least of all the Left, Republicans only complaining jealously, that they didn't look so good, testing their “principles and will” so. A morally corrupt nation incapable of even reacting to the news that their President is a cold blooded, methodical agent of death dealing. That he has lifted himself above all law. It is as if history has been wiped away completely, and we are condemning ourselves to repeat it, with here-to-fore unimaginable vengeance.

If death-dealing Austerity comes to America, and we have 25% official unemployment like Spain, more like 35-40% real unemployment, I see this President, or Romney, simply commissioning a legal memorandum justifying drone assassinations on American soil, of Americans, Moslem to Tea Party. Terrorist defined as anyone the state defines as a threat to the institution of the state. That, and full on military intervention, check points and internment camps, and even that logical end. Americans are free to prove me wrong, of course. That's not what I want for America. Nobody I know deserves that fate. I want to believe Americans are better than that.

But then, it could be argued by some in this world that Americans are the most passively banal, efficient death dealers the world has ever known. Almost everything about our lives in America, is dependent upon American empire, the funneling of wealth and resources from poor dictatorial countries to America, channels of commerce monitored and controlled by our military, the most splendid killing machine ever devised. There has never been a dictator so vile that we would not deal with, if we deemed it in our vested interest. Do we Americans truly deserve a better fate than what we have meted out, through our government, in the name of commerce, a better fate meted out to us by that state, that government of our imperial dominion? Are we capable of better?

My takeaway from that New York Times article is, I feel bad for those two girls, because their father is a monster. And Americans, both the Left and the Right ideologically, are complicit, indifferently, obliviously. And I seriously wonder if we would deny the existence of domestic internment death camps and drone assassinations, as easily as we deny that America is an empire, let alone one on the downslope side of collapse, seriously vulnerable to global economic meltdown.

Aquinas

In a recent post, I said something about Thomas Aquinas, that he fused theology and rationalism in a fundamental way, in the Western mind. I might have been more accurate to say Theology and Logic, maybe. As with most theological expositions and exposition-ers, reading about his life, and some of his words, I feel very much like Aquinas is reported to have felt, toward the end of his life. He is said to have found himself in the presence of Jesus, who asked him, “What do you desire?” Aquinas replied, “Only you.” That might have been a mistake, because he went into a deep funk then, and never wrote again. He is reported to have said, “Mihi veditur ut paleam,” attributed, “All that I have written is like straw to me.” He died a little more than a year after, giving a commentary on the Song of Songs. It is not reported, what that commentary was.

I'm not anything like an expert on the theology of Thomas Aquinas. I'm more like an orderer of symbols, as words, and so Thomas Aquinas is more a symbol to me, just as he is to many Catholics. I know there were various setbacks in his life, various attacks against his theology and character. But I believe he was sincere, genuine. Indeed, for most of his adult life he influenced Catholic theology considerably, and by the end of his life he was revered. To this day, the Catholic Church takes the theology of Aquinas as its theology, required reading in all the apostolic schools.

When I contemplate the life of Thomas Aquinas, I'm most interested in that late insight. What did he see, that made the whole of his life-work like straw to him? Indeed, there are few in the history of humanity, who have as broad or influential a life work, influential more than seven centuries after his death. The Catholic Church ignores the consequences of this late revelation, as a kind of God-influenced discombobulation, but what could they say? That straw is a cornerstone of their institutional/intellectual foundation. He couldn't have meant it!

My idea, and it is only an idea, is that on asking Jesus, only to know Him, Aquinas saw how far his life's work had been from a recovery of the garden, and he saw how the whole of it would be taken very seriously, for a very long time. That, and there was nothing to do to prevent it, nothing he could say, nothing he could write to take it back, only cast off as the raving of an old man gone mad. Dante suggested in the Paradisio, Aquinas was poisoned. It makes sense, if he was attempting, as perhaps – conceivably - in his commentary on the Song of Songs, to take it back, to renounce, to return to the garden?

In the context of the perniciousness of institutions, and their inherent drive to control, the Catholic Church is a kind of preeminent example. In a way, the Catholic Church is like the template of the enduring institution. Even after split in half, that other half splintering into seemingly endless variety, it endures. Even after it has been revealed time and again to be inherently corrupt, incapable of not being corrupt, it endures. Now, it is one institution among many under the arc of Christianity. Perhaps the most powerful though, still.

Christianity itself may not have survived, but for the institutional structure the early Catholics built.

I look at Christianity now, in the twilight of American empire, and I am full of contempt for it's leadership, and to a lesser degree for Christians generally. The early Catholics survived and built their Religion with a capital R, in part by taking control of the Roman Empire. Christian's in America today, have not shown any less comfort with imperialist pursuits. Christian leaders have never much quibbled with their congregates conception of the American dream. It has proved very lucrative. Then there have been the calls to war. Worst of all, is a refusal to accept the full implications of science, while partaking insatiably of the fruit.

Why can Christians accept the fruit but not the full implications of science? Because faith in the institution would collapse. The Christian gnostic may not have any problem accepting the revelation of science, or the gnostic scriptures, because a gnostic doesn't depend on any institutional authority to establish his or her relationship to the divine. The typical, institutional Christian, Catholic or otherwise, would not likely be a Christian, but for the hierarchical power structure, providing strength by association, telling him what to do, how to act, justifying his willful ignorance, and so perceives any threat to the mythology that sustains that hierarchy, a threat to his soul, her salvation. In the time of Aquinas, you paid the local ecclesiastical elite to grant you indulgences, that you might be saved. These days, the institution panders to your indulgence. It's a lucrative co-dependency, and virulently defended by both dependents. Never mind what science has revealed about the depth of the cosmos; let us embrace ignorance; and we shall demand it from all! The people shall bow down before God! Tyrannical, very Islamic like mytho-fascism. 

Thomas Aquinas. I wonder what his intellect would have done with a true knowledge of the working cosmos - and global resource limits? Who knows? Would he remain tied to the one God monotheism of his fathers? Could he allow that the masculine is like a divine energy embedded in universal processes, and could he see the feminine the ethos of Western Civilization is designed to dominate and subdue? I find it deeply gratifying that he died, giving a commentary on the Song of Songs, that one erotic book in the bible. I like that he took refuge there, at the end of his life, the great man who never lay with a woman. And it seems to me, if he lived a whole year after his conversation with Jesus, maybe he was headed on a whole new path. If he transformed the Catholic Church in a fundamental way, he might have turned it another. What Dante said is perfectly in keeping with institutional motive. A good Catholic can't have Thomas Aquinas advocating for a return to the garden (if you'll beg my indulgence.)

As for Christianity, I was raised Lutheran, and then evangelical. Little of the gross hypocrisy, crass materialism and willful ignorance that drove me from the faith, has abated; indeed, I see it now mixed with a belligerent quasi-nationalism, with gay-bashing, anti-female, militaristic, fascist overtones. I'm starting to sense a kind of rabidness, an urge to internal violence. With most guys, Christian and non-Christian alike, I think they're just bored, mostly, and angry, full of rage, and aiming it at what they know to aim at, what they've been told, pretty much. It's not like critical thinking is truly encouraged, by any of our institutions.

Good Christ, our soldiers are killing themselves in record numbers. Just wars, Aquinas, Augustine? If I could talk to such a soldier in such a place, I would say, offer yourself up in service to the Goddess, and see what happens.

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I published the third chapter of Progress Interrupted. I apologize beforehand for the scrolling necessary to get there, if you've read the first two chapters; I'm working on making it more user-friendly with my webmaster. There's also a blog entry, recently published, about where I'm at with the garden and the house. I know I've been on a curious path lately, rather harsh, radical in the extreme. I'm reevaluating everything. Everything has changed, and I'm not sure what to do or where to go from here. No regrets, but I feel a little like the wild man howling into an echo chamber. If anybody out there has any opinion, I'd love to hear it, and if you don't want your comment published, say so and it won't be.

That last post, Dum and Dee, was my 200th on this blog. I think it would have been better served, to have been a post of gratitude. Thank you for reading. Thank you for taking a chance with me. About a hundred people a day, lately. Not so long ago, it was 35. That's a lot of responsibility, more than I've ever had. I'm honored. I'm trying to make sense of this world I inhabit. Your checking in tells me, I'm making some.