From GENE LOGSDON
When I was a greenhorn journalist starting to work for Farm Journal magazine in Philadelphia many thousands of years ago, I got all wrought up over news that my hometown state of Ohio was having a crop failure in the cornfields. I wanted to write an alarming piece on how the grain markets were in for a real purge. One of the older editors sat me down in his office and gently said: “Gene, you gotta have more ‘perspeck’ on the news. It’s all about ‘perspeck’.” I had not heard of that word, but understood it was his shorthand for perspective. “The entire corn crop of Ohio could fail and it would be only a drop in the bucket compared to Illinois and Iowa and their surrounding states,” he informed me. And then he showed me the statistics to prove it.
Society today needs more perspeck. We have all become paranoid about everything. One doomsday prediction after another throws a shadow over even the brightest news. When I try to relieve the gloom with a little humor, I get scolded for being naïve or ignorant or irresponsible. I am inclined, for example, to make snide wisecracks about global warming. I am supposed to stand here on the edge of eternity, quailing and moaning about future flooding of the coastal plains, future deserts in the Great Plains, future obsolescence of the airplanes, future end of stock market gains, and future destruction of the food grains, all because the polar ice is melting and the oceans have risen a couple of inches (actually I just read that it is really a half inch) in the last twenty years. Sure global warming is a worrisome fact and no doubt humans are making it worse. I will quit making snotty remarks about it the very second I see a significant number of people, or even an insignificant number, reduce their fuel-burning traveling habit by one mile or when I see one government reduce by one gallon the amount of fuel it burns in pursuit of war or votes. I will quit making snotty remarks when I could find a scientist who can tell me with accuracy how much CO2 is being emitted into the earth’s atmosphere by natural sources on any particular day or year. No one, as far as I can find out, has any accurate perspeck on that amount. People are standing around, living exactly like they have always lived, wringing their hands about global warming as if they lived in some sort of ghastly dystopia like people in earlier days worrying about the increase in witches in New England.
A study just released on the diets of French people seems to suggest (doesn’t say so exactly) that a good healthy diet of fruits, vegetables and grains causes people to emit more greenhouse gas than a diet high in meat, eggs and dairy products. So if you want to do your part to save the planet, eat more animal products even if it kills you. Since eating more meat would mean more animals passing more gas, well, you see, we are still doomed. The perspeck needed here is some accurate, reliable figures on how much CO2 the earth is releasing. Is it 1,000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 pounds a day or thereabouts in which case all the farting humans and farm animals together wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket or a bubble in the bathtub.
The gloom and doom industry got a big boost on Feb. 15 when a meteorite disintegrated over Russia. What made that event so delicious for paranoidsville was that on the very same day an asteroid passed overhead, only some 18,000 miles away. God or Gaia or somebody is trying to tell us something. OMG.
Don’t you make fun, Mr. Logsdon. An asteroid did hit the earth in 1908 and flattened an area 20 miles by 40 miles in size. And a very large asteroid hit the earth 65 million years ago destroying most of the higher forms of life. That is correct. And now I quote the New York Times: “Earth collisions with objects that large happen only at average intervals of 100 million years.” The end is nigh—just 35 million years away
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Lots and lots of people think this way. It is perfectly understandable. The choice against denial in the face of overwhelming objective threats is a very difficult one. Anger, fear and and loss afflict folks in “advanced” societies, paradoxically, seemingly more than folks living in “backward” (the euphemism being “underdeveloped”). When I have traveled it seems that the poorer the country the happier the people. What is observed is that the more objective reason people have for being unhappy the happier they are. The difference seems to be that the poorer you are the better you are at getting over stuff (after they get over the latest trauma and loss). The negative emotions are meant to help us with adversity. Normally we are motivated to deal with the problem and move on. In the West, in particular the US, folks don’t seem to be very good at this. Something about enjoying material privilege seems to leave people in a chronic state of anxiety where denial, and its spouse rationalization, is reflexive and apparently irresistible. It also becomes a sort of addiction. And the pushers of the drug of denial make a lot of money. If you are chronically anxious the little bit of relief one gets from, say listening to Fox news, or, better yet, the relief from joining friends around the table at the coffee shop rehashing the falsities of the mass media, is irresistible. That sends you back again and again, often exposing yourself to an avalanche of adds for shoddy merchandise, which is where the profit comes in for the denial pushers, that and the enormous gratuities available from the billionaire cabal that runs things. The logic of addiction to comfortable falsehoods leads to the whole array of addictive behaviors, to drugs, obesity, violence and the rest of the ugly mess that so many people live in. Behavioral addictions are much more robust than mere substance addiction. You can succeed in separating the drug addict from his drugs, but you can not separate the denial addict from his head, at least not easily.
That said, happiness is a personal issue. If you believe that your happiness comes from outside, from things that you have no control over, your experience of “happiness” is the predators joy.
The enormous sadness is that so many adults have surrendered their capacities for critical judgement and so remain functional children. That is why we are on the garden path.
ybera
“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you”― Joseph Heller, Catch-22
(these two articles below are from just the past two days)
In a peer-reviewed paper by the American Institute of Biological Sciences titled “Social Norms and Global Environmental Challenges” (available ahead of print), to be published in the march 2013 edition of the Institute’s yearly journal BioScience, a group of well-known scientists calls on government and scientists to start with the planned social engineering of “norms” and “values” in regards to environmental policies. In addition, they propose putting into effect all sorts of environmental fines and regulations in the spirit of Agenda 21 to hasten the social acceptance of increased governmental control. Also, they propose that the scientific community as a whole should align itself with government “through a concerted effort to change personal and social norms”.
The group of scientists involved in the upcoming publication include two Nobel Prize winners, economist Kenneth Arrow and political scientist Elinor Ostrom, as well as behavioral scientists, mathematicians, biologists- not to mention population scientists, the most well-known of whom are Paul Ehrlich and Gretchen C. Daily- whose professional relationship dates back to the Ecoscience days. The authors start out by stating:
“Substantial numbers of people will have to alter their existing behaviors to address this new class of global environmental problems. Alternative approaches are needed when education and persuasion alone are insufficient. Policy instruments such as penalties, regulations, and incentives may therefore be required to achieve significant behavior modification.”
http://explosivereports.com/2013/02/19/prominent-american-scientists-call-for-eco-dictatorship-under-un-rule/
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President Obama Announces Billion Dollar Brain Activity Map Project (BAM)
(NaturalNews) First they map your brain. And by you, I mean everybody.
President Obama has just greenlighted a 10-year Manhattan Project for the human brain. I warned it was coming years ago.
The new billion-dollar enterprise is called BAM, the Brain Activity Map project. The fact that DARPA is one of the agencies involved tells you a great deal. DARPA is the cutting-edge military outfit in charge of new technologies for the Armed Forces. They want to create The Enhanced Soldier and all that that implies. Think “android.”
Behind the front of claims that BAM will create new therapies for mental disorders (for which no defining diagnostic tests even exist), the plan is to forward artificial intelligence (AI), which means creating a computer that works at least as well as the one inside your skull.
This is the technocrats’ wet dream: “We can now power up an artificial brain of such power and intelligence that it can make all crucial decisions for the human race from Central Planning.”
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039152_brain_mapping_government_project_DARPA.html#ixzz2LSd1tXzy
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Again and again and again, WE are being told that we are the BIG problem according to our ‘leaders’ that must be ‘fixed’ to achieve their desired goals of bringing Order out of Chaos as to a New World Order to Save the Planet.
Problem-Reaction-Solution is defined as the strategy of creating a crisis (the problem), waiting for a call for action to resolve the crisis (the reaction), then taking action (the solution), supposedly in response, which actually furthers a hidden agenda, usually gaining power. This is often cited as:
0. The government wants power the people will not freely give.
1. The government creates or exploits a problem, blaming it on others.
2. The people react by asking the government for help, willing to give up their rights. Think terrorist attacks, Cyber Terrorism, Domestic Terrorism, Global warming, Environmental destruction, Financial Collapse, etc.
3. The government offers the solution that was planned long before the crisis.
The endless wars that take up 42% of our budget, the mass continual promotion to consume at all costs no matter how it destroys natural resources, Geoengineering the skies to manipulate the weather, Endless debt based monetary policy to put all in debt servitude that consumes another 40% of our national budget.
Yet what never gets discussed or put on the table is the Wealthy elite’s gross use of precious resources (Gore, a 10 bedroom house, Congress and Executive Cabinet President’s staff, CEOs of Big Biz, all flying on mega-private jets. Lit up like Christmas tree city skyscrapers at all hours of the night, etc.)…. as to solving the problems THEY want to solve that, for the most part, they have/are creating.
WE are not the problem that must be fix, but can be the solution. Keep your money local, start a garden, speak truth to power, activate in your community…be the change and change will come to be when enough have had enough of this past prime regime who wants to control all for solely their own private not so hidden agendas.
Denial … the opiate of the masses.
When you read an article, check on who wrote it and who signs their paycheck. THAT will give you the spin used to write it. Little is written to provide factual knowledge today. Almost everything ties into dollars/power. Yes, we need more ‘perspek’ but few will take the time or make the effort to get it.
Yes, there is severe climate change. I have observed it over my 68 years.
Yes, the US is bankrupt. The signs are all around us if we just open our eyes,
Yes, the government is corrupt and owned by big business, also obvious.
Yes, ‘they’ have plans for our future that we, the 99,99% will not like but we will accept it.
Yes, our lives are not going to be better, materially, in the future.
Put it all into perspective and then do something about your personal world, but don’t deny the real world exists. It’s the Coney Island of life. Enjoy the ride!
In re: CO2 from natural sources (forget narrowing down to day or year; climate change is about changing averages): http://www.skepticalscience.com/No-alternative-atmospheric-CO2-draw-down.html
In re: personal lifestyle changes balancing out massive industrial depredations: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/
Best — Paul H.
That seems accurate enough. Left off is how very fragile the system of dominance of the 0.1% actually is. In some senses this is more scary than believing that the system is invulnerable. For every example of horribleness there is an associated vulnerability. State systems can be washed away in a day by an aroused populace. More significantly, since oppressed populations tend to be too demoralized to resist except under extreme circumstances, external factors, historically often totally unanticipated, result in disorganization of systems of control in sudden and unpredictable ways. The most encouraging thing I have read in a least a decade was Rebecca Solnit’s book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster which shows how ordinary people spontaneously come together in mutual aid when the State dissolves. We have been propagandized to believe that we are helpless and totally dependent for everything on the State. Turns out that all that is opposite of observed truth. We are strong in degrees and ways that we can not imagine as we live immersed in a propaganda universe that hates us.
Be encouraged. Everything is falling apart.
ybera