Askance.

Nothing says "I don't care," like silence.

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"The bastards! Don't they care at all about their CO2 footprint?!!" This offering of tOad's hits a number of issues in the news (It's polysemous!); I'm guessing intentionally. Responsibility, guilt, and shame, fall on a number line (it seems to me). Responsibility - be it concern (ethical or otherwise) for children and grandchildren or simply abhorrence of waste - can be acted on. Guilt can be accepted, apologized for and ultimately made right (what's the word? atoned?). Shame is the worst - nothing to be done without someone willing to help, a healer. Martin Buber says he is talking about guilt with, "lay his hand in the wound of the other" but to me he is talking more about shame. Nevermind Tom Toles. It is NOT too late, and our goose is NOT cooked - not quite. Close mind you, very close, proximal even - but no cigar just yet. These two groups of ideas are intertwined, interrelated; a nexus of despair if you will. Popping them simultaneously into the neural-net ... brings me back around to the various notions of talking to each other that have appeared on these pages repeatedly. What needs to happen is clear as a bell. Large numbers of people need to get up off the couch. She arrives at the crux of the problem. It was the last thing he needed. ISIS is NOT the problem; ISIS is a SYMPTOM: So if it's not ISIS, then what is it? Is it God playing Almighty Holy Asshole again? Is it divine narcissism working itself out in pathological Old Testament rage? Did God's mummy not give him enough tit in the early stages? (As Gabor Maté opines? Overweening narcissism yet! It's good that our Gabor got enough quality face time with Jian so quickly that he could figgure this out for us categorically.) Do we need a fireproof Ark this time? Is it H. sapiens? Do innate qualities of human beings and/or nature itself (itself not herself mind you) make ecological collapse inevitable? Is it ideology? Is it institutions (including governments) taking on virtual flesh and becoming corporations? Assuming personal form with concomitant responsibilities not fitted to their isness? Is it systems logic? Necessary & sufficient organizational failure? All those algorithmic excuses not to think? Is it scale? What? Whatever ... we can still kick the low-hanging fruit (in the balls if possible!): Big paycheques aren't supposed to further forth the commonwealth: (not designed for that) ['Saco Cheio' merits some explanation. Literally 'a full bag' or a 'good haul'; but 'saco' also means 'scrotum' (in the vernacular) nicely bringing in 'fed up,' 'pissed off' & 'frustrated' as well.] The musical tastes of Arnaldo Angeli Filho: The Beatles are no surprise - everyone in Brasil seems to love the Beatles (which I do not); but finding 'Highway 61 Revisited' and 'Hot Rats' - two of the greatest albums EVER! - side-by-each and combined with ... Grand Funk?! Say wha? Shows ta go ya. No idea what. Muses and Animas looking askance: I keep asking, "What would it take to stop this environmental holocaust?" but no one answers; so ... . I ask people, "Are you aware that Cuba already ran the experiment on what happens when you suddenly turn off the fossil fuels?" and one or two say, "Yeah," and "Yeah," and "So what?" But ... the wheels are still turning, albeit slowly, and hypotheses fall out now and then. As time goes by they are harsher and harsher. More and more they are silly things that cannot be achieved, or only through ... miracles and divine Intervention - all good, but no God or Gods seem to be forthcoming.    • Turn off fossil fuels with a carbon tax so HUGE that it just stops the machinery.      • Collapse the economy. This will happen as a matter of course eventually - but too late to do any good.      • Fire every single last politician, government bureaucrat, and consultant, starting with the UN.      • Crash the population ... by ... half. This will also happen 'naturally' and it will likely be well more than half, and again - too late to do any good. A bonus corollary: All information systems including libraries and books will be long gone so if there's a remnant it may begin to feel like the Garden of Eden to them after a short while.      • Turn the earth 90° on its axis. Magnetic north becomes magnetic east or west and maybe the ionosphere is so screwed up that computers and telecommunications stop working (also see Ken Kesey 'Sailor Song').      • Nuclear fusion? Is it too good to be true? Almost certainly but ... you know ... there is this conveniently located fusion reactor just a few million miles away emitting perfectly useful (and relatively safe) radiation which we have already got all of the necessary technology to capture. Seems like a no-brainer to me.   Like I said at the top: 5% (for starters) need to get off their arses one by one and hit the streets and highways and block the insane traffic; trusting that someone'll come up with a meal at the end of the day. Occupy the earth is what it is I guess. It means leaving almost all the toys behind. Maybe Dr. King's 5% is enough. I don't happen to think so but it would be a better start (seems to me) than this Obama/Pooh-Bear arrangement. Nothing says "I don't care," like silence. Not true of course - consciously doing things to exacerbate all aspects also says "I don't care." These would be the catatonic and narcissistic ends of the spectrum d'you think? Time is the true human coin (they say). That and giving a shit. Without interest and concern time can become ... too long. It does no good to say these things (I know). Time you can only give away and then only if someone wants it. Interest and concern can't be faked, won't be faked; as our Van Morrison reaches without grasping (below). [For anyone piqued to interest, Martin Buber's 1957 (67?) essay 'Guilt and Guilt Feelings' is published in 'Martin Buber on Psychology and Psychotherapy: Essays, Letters, and Dialogue' Syracuse University Press (1999). Bits of this can be viewed at Google Books (rather useless bits because of the silly format dictated by silly fops wielding silly legal & copyright 'considerations' - the man himself is safely dead). I have scanned the thirty or so pages and may get around to posting them somewhere. Don't hold your breath. I think the book is still in print. So many photographs of Buber show him with his head tilted pertly wearing the seraphic & saccharine smile of a gu-ru. A scholar might be able to tell us if this was organized by himself or ... later purveyors.] Ah. Here he is: Martin Buber, Guilt and Guilt Feelings. Let's have a recessional hymn by Van Morrison ... 'Domino':         If you never hear from him, that just means he didn't call;         Or vice versa, that depends on wherever you're at;         And if you never hear from me, that just means I would rather not. (That last 'just means' in there sometimes sounds like 'doesn't mean that' to me.) Be well gentle reader.   [Postscript: Continuous calm very light snow 15th, 16th, 17th ... but odd, a strange first fall, or maybe everything feels strange these days. More on the 18th & 19th with wind, now seeming normal. I see a new word flash by in the newspaper, coined for new climate times I'm guessing - all 50 American states sub-zero - but fail to register it. Long stationary waves of arctic air. Ahh. (If I can find the word I'll stick it in here later on.)] OK, here it is: it's an 'Omega Block'. A hitch in the jetstream gitalong resembling the Greek letter Omega. The jetstream jammed: Something in it for everyone: The 'OMG' block for illiterate Internet muggles; The Second Coming block for all those wee kiddies addicted to 'I am the Alpha and Omega' kind of millenarian nonsense; A-and ... didn't Père Pierre (Teilhard de Chardin) call his consciousness changeover 'The Omega Point'? Opa! Can't remember.

 
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