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Showing posts with label scifi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scifi. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

THE REAL WAR


All the different reasons we declare war against one another, whether they’re as small as feuds between personalities or as great as ideological confrontations of corporations enlisting half the world‘s population in a war against the other half, are all mere skirmishes within the ranks of our corporatized civilization’s war machine set on establishing dominance over the nature of the universe as it manifests here on Orth within and without we Orthlings' hides.

Being cells in the body of the living planet, the upright Orthlings’ aggressive antagonism toward and ignorance of the well being upon which our own health depends is as though one’s left thumb nail set about converting the rest of the body into toughened keratin to set things to rights for its own good.

In the spectrum of Orthlings’ reality tunnels from scientific atheists to religious zealots there rarely arises anyone arguing against the so obvious sawing off of the limb from the tree of life whereupon we all perch oh, so precariously.

The method employed by the inciters and maintainers of our civilization’s war against nature may seem more familiar in a much more recent series of events, still being played out, that went into overt motion within the memory of anyone older than four orbits of Orth around Ra, to wit:

Needing a cheaper source of energy to enable its agenda to own lead all of Orth in the future, the corporation, Usuki Inc., made the decision to covertly provoke a war against the weakest of the planet’s energy rich corporations. It sacrificed three thousand of its own employees to rouse the remaining three hundred million to revenge. While the terror reigned, the flames enraged and the dust to which the Temple of Gold had been reduced was still settling, corporate security, in the first competent action since allegedly being caught off guard with forbidden airspace penetration by remote controlled drones terrorist hijacked ornithopters crashing into the temple twenty four minimims earlier, found the identification cards for all of the terrorists amongst the powdered rubble of stone, office equipment and three thousand Orthlings — the only things left in tact. And surprise of surprises — they all happened to be from the alliance of corporations with just the energy resource Usuki Inc. needed.

The stooge Usuki Inc. hired to be its political branch CEO lumped scattered, independent dissident groups together by his declaration of a war of retribution against All Kinda terrorists, to define the enemy and of the battle weary corporate grounds of Aghastfistan to be the beleaguered arena for their strategic war.

For protection of their own employees from the same torture they wreaked upon the enemy, their lawyers defined Usuki’s mercenaries to be “legal combatants” in a war of retribution, occupation and usurpation against any Aghastfistanis who objected, defined by the lawyers as “illegal combatants.” As impossible to justify as the war is, none of the corporations that suck up to Usuki have sucked up their guts and objected, lest they be declared “All Kinda” terrorists as well. And thus the demonization of employees of enemy corporations was successfully inserted into the mythology of Usuki’s employees’ belief system.

The much earlier example of this stragedy scenario was enacted soon after the dawn of the upright Orthlings by an embryonic corporation in the form of totalitarian agriculture needing to morally justify wholesale annihilation of vast areas of naturally evolved life forms. To get relatively symbiotic hunter-gatherer-gardener culture to accept such apparent desecration of their environment a two part fable was forged into their mythology. The first was that all of the nature with which the Orthlings had thrived by communing was a creation of an omniscient being who granted ownership to his exceptional creations, the upright Orthlings. The second part depended on this exceptional superiority to justify the demonization of the traditionally revered spirits of nature by morally prohibiting their sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. It was just such evil spirits they were to blame for the instinctual sense of evil they felt when felling a forest for a freshly furrowed field.

All the violence within the ranks any of the corporate civilizations set on owning and exploiting the nature of Orth is the karmic result of individual’s deeply intuitive acknowledgement that they are contributing to a war against universally inexorable natural forces which thwart their warp at every twist in the path to extinction. It is not really a war when the deaths at the hands of the aggressors encourage once innocent collateral damage to rise up against them whether it is other Orthlings or the entire body of Orth.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

… all out of bubblegum


"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass … and I'm all out of bubblegum!"

Just followed Crooks and Liars' video of the 100 cheeziest movie lines on their open thread to John Carpenter's They Live and was slammed in the face with a mirror. Made, ostensibly in reaction to Reganomics trickle-down economics amidst the disco era of '86, I think I missed it protecting one prejudice or another. This morning I watched it and realized that if
I had seen it, this blog would be named the title of this post rather than more subtle cheezy line, "…it must be the vapors," from Vivien Leigh in Street Car Named Desire.

In typical, in your face moviemaking, Carpenter pierced the mythos of western civilization by creating an alien race of the shepherds of the sheeple against whom I attempt to refrain from railing quite so directly. With just those pair of glasses, our hero sees the subliminal messages behind the media in helvetica extra bold; obey, buy, work, like generic packaging, and the aliens appear to be skeletons. That may be why I didn't catch it the first time.

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

ARE WE THE DROIDS WE'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR?


Ever since sitting in the hot sun outside the theater in the middle of the Highland Mall parking lot waiting to get into see the movie that coined the term blockbuster, I have been confused about whether I should let the farce be with me or go over to the dork side. Since we ate a lot of popcorn and I sat next to my buddy, Doug Cugini, his farts were with me although we’d gone over to the dark inside to see and be inspired for the theme to the Hole in the Wall’s Halloween party that year, Bar Wars. Even golf was never the same; when shooting par the fours was with us and when hitting a wild shot it was on the duck side.

I am still referred to as Yoda by a few who were around in those days. In fact, it wasn’t ‘til I reread that last sentence just now that I realized where I came up with Yodood as my replacement for the more forgettable blog name of gregraetgar (Green Graphics and (et) Gardens). Troutsky still calls me Greg, he’s so yesterday.

I never made it beyond the introduction of Jar Jar Binks before Lucas’ farce became too much and my DVD player went over to the dark side for that franchise. I have younger friends who revile George Lucas for so reneging on the promise of the series beginngs. We were all influenced.

Whether it was Sir Alec’s suave dismissal of the storm troopers searching for R2D2 and 3PO or Yoda’s convoluted language wisdom, there were sensations much more sublime than mere ears pricked up in this society already aware of the alternate meanings of the counter culture’s lyrics and their startling gestures like putting flowers in riot police gun barrels.

If language evolved in the same way species do, and records since language was first translated into stone and metal symbols testify to that being the case, observing the changing meaning of words to certain groups in the same culture in reaction to oppressive authority and relating that to a match in the variation of race to language, probable religion and national turf we can see that the expansion of the human race from one set of parents involved the oppression of crowding at least as much as much as from the natural curiosity of the individual being followed by the flock if the new ground works out for her.

Observing day old chicks evolve to egg bearing matrons, expanding from a cardboard box to a six by twelve foot coop for their first seven months to tentatively separating further while roaming this eight acre area in the woods by the Colorado River free range for the past three months, I feel like I am observing the expansion of humanity without the trappings of civilization establishing marks of permanent ownership though proximity sometimes raises squabbles with the other species and the years older hens whereever they occur. Squabble is a perfect word for confrontation with a chicken by the way, just like gobble is for turkeys.

These girls of mine, with no training other than copying each other, evolved a language that both sounds identical in words and personal in inflection when they are announcing the arrival of the latest egg or voicing their desire for a corn tortilla treat at the porch door. The egg announcement happens to be identical to every other chicken I’ve heard upon such an event.

So, are our words similar to the words in disparate languages through genetics or through evolving from one language. Are there phrases whose utterance in the right volume and frequency will be recognized by the genetic memory of the primitive brain triggering an override to anything learned since birth? Who is the hypnotist talking to?

I dabbled in hypnotism in my teens and decided it was one of those extremely powerful realizations that lead to my just-because-you-can/should-you choice to leave it as background evidence for my curiosity’s other tangential interests as a more oblique approach to this vast unknown. Justin, over at Memetika has just posted on the Millennium in the Shadow of Freud with links to the excellent videos aired on the BBC several years ago about the use of mass hypnosis through propaganda (bad mind control by our enemies) and public relations (good mind control by our leaders).

If we have buttons that have been programmed and someone knows how to push them, are we not the droids we are inventing?

Monday, October 12, 2009

NO OTHER GODS


They came with their book and their fire sticks that could strike beings dead from many strides away for food or disobeying the rules they read from the book. The shock and awe that struck beings wherever such magic arrogance intruded its violent version of Gaia into their lives left them fearfully supposing secrets of her great spirit had been confided to these pale possessive people. As the trauma healed, the survivors among my people either became emulators of Gaia’s enforcers by pretending they too owned the part of her body wherever they lived or they moved further from such a dangerous rupture in the rapture of their symbiotic relationship as integral parts of that body.
Easter Island

Within the first new generation a few of those who remained in awe of and proximity to the strangers found one of the books they carried and quoted from as proof of their authority, and began to decipher the markings in it. They learned something more amazing than these visitors’ ability to uncover some of the infinite complexity of Gaia’s body; something more atrocious than how, instead of further revering the whole life of which she has offered them mere hints, they indifferently turn right around and begin using them against her as if only her matter matters and she didn’t exist.

Tipi, Turtle Island

The book turned out to be a fable by the protagonist and His holy ghost writer about the six thousand year history since His creation of Gaia, and the firmament in which she whirls, especially for a pair of little living action figures of Himself to whom He bequeathed it all as stewards of their playground, so long as they never became curious about the endless supply of food that was growing all around them in the garden or the infinite variety of fellow creatures by which they were surrounded. Apparently the creator left His inheritors unable to heed His only prohibition, this one commandment against becoming aware of their connection to their food and endless fun naming everything they saw. The first time they met up with another of the creator’s special creations, the shape shifting avatar of His antithesis, in the form that day of a serpent bearing the answers in the back of the book they couldn’t resist peeking. His wrath has been unbound ever since.

Talk about getting your insurance dropped for the pre-existing condition of having once inhaled in Los Angeles the day before the doctor finally decides to tell you you have a rare disease that can only be cured with an infusion of a billion dollars as empirical proof that there’s no loving creator that gives a shit about anyone —— much less one who thinks we’re all that special; except maybe as the afterbirth of impudent curiosity upon which to further avenge the sin of man’s original awakening. That's small potatoes. These early interpreters learned that the entire six thousand years, ever since that first question, has been saturated with examples of the creator causing disease, destroying entire cities with fire and drowning all life on earth but one mating pair of a trillion species on a boat he told a man to make for his family only. He even tried issuing ten more commandments, just to have more to punish them for violating. Talk about yer exploitive indifference of the elite.


Palenque, Mexico

They found the entire book to be filled with a history of a jealous creator exacting punishment against the punching bags He keeps within arms reach by occasional appeals to their egos promising for their faith rewards of a condo made of clouds and harp playing neighbors — no virgins to deflower, it’s not like that —after he finally grinds them to cringing meal; that they are His special, His most beloved creation and that what was for their own good somehow hurt Him worse than it did them. Ever hear that one before?

When that gospel of fear wore as threadbare as the NSA’s claim their secrets are for national security, some two thousand years ago, the creator wrote a whole new sequel, supposedly non-fiction this time, in which He created an extra super special action figure of Himself who He supernaturally snuck into the human dimension through a virgin wormhole to go out among the not all that special action figures to preach a gospel of love and perform miracles of sharing and acts of compassion right up in the grill of that ageless serpent the creator set out so long ago.


Machu Pichu, Peru

After reaping the karma that kind of peaceful action gets at protest rallies until this day, the creator's latest, greatest got himsaelf crucified, for which He also holds us all guilty, the fable became what is to still too recent a history to deny — The only historical record relative to the the second book’s protagonist's actually existing is the 500 year history of politics over its even being written and the formation of an establishment to enforce its letter: —— a yawning void admittedly filled by religious ad men devotedly putting together the greatest’s hits and pieces from undisclosed sources to smooth transitions between often contradictory essays by his fans and disciples in a brochure targeted at the compassionate guilt market which miraculously seems to appear wherever their search for unwashed heathens to convert chooses to be guided by the hand of the creator. Imagine that!

After due contemplation weighing their own ancestral tradition of Gaia being a consciousness of whose body my people found themselves to obviously be a part, balanced against this cruel myth from which these pale players take the part of their creator when reenacting His good god/bad god routine every day everywhere whether their symbol is a cross or a dollar sign, my people decided that those who could stomach rubbing elbows with the intruders would live amongst them as an exeample of respect for Gaia, just as they always had and still remain undetected as someone needing conversion. It was easy, their lifestyle was too gentle to be noticed by these warriors. The rest would retreat from owned lands to live in full relationship to mother, Gaia. This decision was based on the idea that these pale people are no more than another kind of human being whose ancestors thought survival training must include the nature of Gaia a danger to be conquered rather than revered and respected as fellow elements of her body, as we always have.


Ankor Wat, Cambodia

Now my people are many more, and paler than the old ones of whom I tell today. Our plan is slowly working. For the past six hundred years or so most of our people have gone deeper into the wilderness wherever those symbols start making speeches while the more curious of us integrate invisibly into the wound their culture makes, living as we always have amongst them.


Igloo, Frozen Turtle Island

Over this time we have found an interesting connection to a possible reason for their antagonism toward nature and their penchant for making permanent, dead things out of great portions of Gaia’s living tissue. Believing nature was the enemy who must be outsmarted with clever devices would come much more readily to a portion of humanity trying to survive a sunless ice age for many generations than to the rest basking on tropical shores eating the fruits of the Garden of Eden, living in temporary homes in respectful recognition of Gaia’s hurricanes, eruptions and heavy seas. Not long after they invented totalitarian agriculture, their suddenly exploding population had expanded out of the cold and was building high-rise hotels like walls around every shoreline as a private beach. Oh, yeah.

New York, Turtle Island ($64)

As the invader’s progeny of today notice the color of the people they bother to notice at all seeming to be getting darker, we notice the skin of all the people headed for caramellow as our number grows less from babies than from we who get it and become my people as surely as I have. It is never too late to become indigenous in the community of the mind.

We are where we are naturally, so all we need do is be natural where we are by not acting as if we could possibly own wherever that is — it’s all Gaia admiring herself through myriad eyes seeing their various versions like a good yawn and stretch feels to my body.

Have a good day and love your mother.



Addendum: As an unsolicited testimony to the effectiveness of the subliminal influence my people may exert upon the collective consciousness that is Gaia, I swear I did not know until just now, 7:53 PM, that today is Columbus Day. I felt a small sense of anxious urgency to finishing it, but that is pretty common when a post is bound to gore a few oxen.

Friday, August 14, 2009

MEAT SPACE


It’s my favorite new term. I found it in a chat between programmers speaking about the effects of virtual reality’s influence on “meat space”. I like it for a number of reasons, the primary of which is its delineation of the threshold between being absorbed in ideating the potential of infinite possibilities in the mental, meditative, cyber space of the mind, and the singular, final realization resulting from action taken in material, “real” reality, meat space. You need only type “threshold” or “golden rule” into the blog search text block at the top of the page to find my previous posts to see how many times the concept comes up for me and what I feel about the existence of such a separation between thought and action; the interim where golden rule contemplation of ethical intent is required for harmony among humans.

This new slant on the threshold also suggests another pair of halves in my oft returned to theme of a species split. This time it’s between the entertained and the entertainers. Our culture is becoming defined by the amount of energy exerted by a service industry to supplant the energy required for the direct experience of nature so shunned by the served. There was a level of cultural depth not delved by the sifi blockbuster, Matrix: all the humans being milked for their energy were supposedly entrapped into such an existence. The tangent it suggested to me was the quite possible result of humans existing within western culture readily volunteering for the milking in return for being permanently entertained by electronic feed from only the most adrenalin soaked experiences continually being culled from wired sensory systems of humans (entertainers) being rewarded most for experiencing the most sensually entertaining activities in meat space. What a deal all around; meat space life as manna of porn heating cyber space up to room temperature.

The humans not wired at either end in such a future will be those who aren’t now — the indigenous cultures, to which many may repair by merely getting real about life on earth.

Jose Phillip Farmer’s series, Dayworld, described a world whose artificially boosted rate of reproduction was solved just as artificially as western culture seems destined always to try, by keeping dormant 6/7ths of the population 6/7ths of the time so that 1/7th of the population enjoys the world and its facilities one day per week in rotating occupation of meat space with, one supposes, no consciousness of the other six except how the day before left your house, did your job, etc. I imagine such people living seven times longer in a cultural world changing seven times faster would eventually dissolve like anything held too close to the heat.

No matter how we stack ‘em, the planet cannot sustain the population resulting from our insisting on artificially increasing food production and refusing to artificially limit the birth rate with contraception and incentives for smaller families. These are those interesting times the ancients supposedly cursed us with by telling fairy tales we had to close our eyes to believe. Meat space has more going on than any tale can nail. Just trimming off the fat is a lifetime activity.