midnight at the oasis

From easter island, to the other examples the world over, if a civilisation, if a society does not live in a sustainable way, the end is nigh, it isn't optional, it's a foregone conclusion.

We are currently living in the midst of the sixth great extinction according to some experts, you only have to look at the number of species losing out to our way of living to agree.

There have been five previous times in the long story of this planet that many forms of life lost their battle to survive, due to climactic change, or events out of our control like comets or asteroids striking the surface of the world and creating climactic changes, today we are the cause.

So it's midnight for us and the oasis?  Well no area is completely unaffected, all ecosystems are in decline due to overpopulation, ecological disaster in the form of deforestation, it doesn't look good.

Just like easter island, we are using up the resources of the world to create giant buildings in the name of progress and commerce, I think it was Terence Mckenna who said something along the lines of we patted ourselves on the backs when the soviet union and the eastern block collapsed, thinking we've got the right idea in the west and the capitalists and the free market economy, actually we're next.

You see profit IS a dirty word, it creates more and more rich people, so far removed from reality that it's untrue, the governments of the western world and those around the planet who think we're safe are wrong.  Greed has become unsustainable, the desire to rape the earth of it's resources in the name of progress is destroying the very place we all live on, so that we can have ipads and other gadgets.

Whilst all this is going on there is a sensible alternative, growing in small pockets and necessity reclaiming areas of the world in a sane way, working with nature, working together to create community, in a sustainable way for the future.  I see there coming a time, very soon when the worlds economy will collapse because the greedy just cannot lose their need to have more and more money and things.  Perhaps it will lead to anarchy when it does fall, as it must and surely will do.

It's very hard to look at the situation we are all in and be positive about it, given that we are all connected, what happens in one part of the world does affect the rest, just like a butterfly in Brazil flapping it's wings causing a typhoon in asia, none of us are safe or secure in these crazy times.

On Debt
The abolition of slavery didn't end slavery, modern slavery still goes on, the underprivileged in many countries are taken advantage of by companies in the western world who use the fact that the countries they are now getting access to don't have labour laws, don't protect their own citizens.

Many people today are forced into slavery because of debt, look at a mortgage (mort dead in french)

Any loan the banks give out actually creates the money they lend into existence, it sounds crazy but it's true.  They don't lend you physical money that they have been given by investors or savers to lend out, they create new money as debt on a computer every time someone is given a mortgage on a property or a loan.

Then the person who has been given the loan or mortgage has to pay the banks for the privelege.

You have to work your whole life to afford to pay back a loan with the money you earn.

If you can't pay it back, they take your property and sell it to someone else.

They can literally create more money as debt each time this happens.

Only 3% of the economy exists as real hard currency, notes.

The other 97% only exists on their computers.

It's said jesus died for our sins, in actual fact the bankers (money changers in the temples) got the Romans to do their dirty work for them because of his inconvenient truth, that they are immoral.

On Drugs
The argument for and against the laws on drugs are many, often some drugs are seen as gateways to using harder and harder drugs, the reasons for drugs use are many, so called recreational use, but in reality often people use harder drugs to escape a life of drudgery, to escape from the things they've done in the past, to literally drown their sorrows with alcohol, to forget how terrible their life is.

Over the years I have used several different drugs, as crutches, to find some peace, lately as my spiritual life has developed I find myself needing those crutches less and less, and find them less desirable too, I have worked hard on myself, accepted where I went wrong in the past, forgiven myself so that I no longer seek escape from what I see as a miserable existence in those substances.

That is why I find the belief that spiritual experiences are merely chemical effects brought on by drugs so laughable and such a cheap shot, when most spiritual traditions don't focus on drug use, traditional spiritual practise is often far more concerned with repetitive drumming or the use of dance to produce changes in the conciousness of the person who is involved in finding their spiritual heart, or to access altered states, to enter a trance, to find inner peace, to leave their troubles behind.

We have become so inhibited by social norms, what is expected of us as citizens of a defined culture that we are scared to express ourselves honestly, to be who we really are inside in case someone thinks us mad, the church has a lot to blame in this case because they prescribe certain ways of being and comporting oneself, many of which take us further and further from our true nature and nature itself.

On Technology
Technology is a tool, it creates answers and solutions to problems that make our lives easier.

Since I reconnected to nature I have found I need and desire those solutions less and less.

GPS for instance, in my minds eye when I am out and about I can sense which direction I need to go to get where I wish to be, often I get a little lost and learn more about the environment I am in, and I'm never upset because I find something that I would never have experiences or seen in the process.

In the modern world of timescales and bottom lines we have lost our ability to take our time, to learn about ourselves because we have become merely pawns in someone elses agenda, nothing but slaves to create a world that others will enjoy, although from what I've seen of how the other half live, with their air kisses and their deviant behaviour and greed, I'm so glad I'll never be famous or rich.

To move away from instinct, and feeling, to numb ourselves with prescription drugs from the pain we feel, that is caused by the modern lifestyle, that leads us away from our roots since the dawn of HisStory, written by the victors, who use force to get their desires, to literally make of themselves kings and queens over the rest of the populace.  The last several thousand years are like a cul de sac that we have gone down and now find ourselves heading towards a dead end, literally our species is on the brink and the rest of the planet too, all life is in danger of becoming extinct except possibly cockroaches ;)

I used this analogy before but it's just so true, in nature the herd are not lead by the stags, the herd itself chooses which direction to go, the herd that knows where the best food sources are, the stags just concern themselves with rutting and eating and hanging out together.  If they don't move with the herd they are left behind, out in the cold, to starve.

Modern day stags, the leaders of business, of government are just like those stags in the deer herd.

They are just like the cricket who played his fiddle and didn't care about winter coming, while he watched the ants busy with their preparations, those rich people are slowly learning, their children are slowly learning, certain things are becoming clear to those who wish to know them, who wish to rejoin nature, to live in harmony with the environment, to prosper in an ever changing world.

This world has been turning for billions of years without money, the recent past is a mistake.

The world will keep turning regardless but soon those connected to nature, using technology as the tools they were meant to be, not the replacements for truly living that they have become will recreate a prosperous life for themselves and for their children and for future generations.

That will happen because it is common sense that nature our mother and her sister necessity are the only ways out of our current crises, it is insane to harm the thing that gives you life, the very environment you live in, to keep going the way we are going will lead to disaster.

This isn't by any means what I had hoped to write, it's not as fluent, or as powerful.

Lately my mind is becoming less rational, I find it harder to gather my thoughts.

I am just being, and if that means my life gets harder until it ends but that it was happier while it lasted, then so be it.

Love
Jon
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