Monday, April 30, 2012

Confront or Companion?


I often write of the beauties of natural life and friendships. I am as often upset with our society's ignorance of healthy connections with the earth and dull indulgence of food and consumerist addictions, eroding habitat for all of life on the planet. I see that each of us forms our own beliefs. We may borrow them from others, but we choose them. So I am not in charge of other's beliefs, or actions. Everyone is subject to some "herding" instinct. Everyone belongs to a group that offers comfort in numbers, in "belonging", especially in times of chaos and uncertainty.  So when I confront that other's belief or statement or action, I better remember I am confronting a whole group, most of whom are not present… Not much chance of success, better try to walk with that person a while, see if we can find some overlap in our groups…Nice place to go for some quiet time...http://www.donatopoetry.com

Mindful about Meditation

Lots references recently to Dalai Lama, ideas of using meditation techniques, now called "mindfulness", for gaining or keeping body, mind, spiritual, emotional, health. Just now  I remember a quote from a Zen teacher years ago that when meditating, "we should not meditate "for" something" that being a self defeating exercise. We should simply meditate and accept what comes, or doesn't. Like breathing, we breathe for itself, right now. Personally, I often get caught in the need to act towards something. Makes meditating,  being mindful, difficult. I resolve this somewhat by just stopping now and then whatever I'm doing, and just gaze at the scene, empty mind, empty hands, for a moment. Things seem to become still around me, as in a painting in a gallery. For that moment,  I lose my sense of myself. On the Red Road, I feel myself doing my smudge, my Pipe, in that same way, stepping into sacred space. My son Michael when in Grade 1 age 6 used often to slip into a way of daydreaming. This annoyed his teacher who determined he was being deliberately lazy and disrespectful. She bruised his soul somewhat before we got him out of there, and with a kind and loving teacher who gave him the respect he needed and deserved.

So when to meditate, when to act? To be, or not to be, that is the question...

for my poetry web site, lots of words and photos to meditate up on   go to  http://www.donatopoetry.com

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

6 seconds to get your attention

According to the marketers who are the priests of our time, I have 6 seconds to get your attention. Some of us will survive the coming chaos. They will be those who are still reading this a few seconds from now. The rest, will likely not.

As an intellectual who enjoys reading, writing, thinking about the philosophy of making life among other living and non-living entities on our planet, I see widespread chaos and despair coming, and of course, cannot make a difference, except by my witness and my determination to do what I can to further a good life for all life in my immediate habitat.

But I see something else here besides bad government, or ignorant consumers devouring the wealth of the planet without regard to the welfare of their grandchildren.

The Socionomists say we are living in a time of negative social mood, which comes along like a change in the weather, and produces economic crashes, and authoritarian despots and crooks oppressing and cheating the masses, who respond by "herding"into small groups of like-minded others, for protection in the chaos, some who try to hide, some who try to control others, some who fight back. So don't blame the COD's, (The Obsessive Compulsive Deniers), the Tea Partiers, they're doing what we all do in a time of uncertainty and perceived chaos, find safety by joining the herd.

I understand that in our time, because of the economic and climatic chaos and uncertainty and fear that  brings, humans are abandoning individual exploration, individual life styles, and retreating into their own particular "herd", with its particular slogans and sound bites, for comfort and a feeling of safety., and ideas for action and confrontation with all "the bad guys", the "others", the "not us".

No taxes, small government, the science isn't certain,
Big is better, growth is imperative, wealth is money
Small communities, back to the land, back yard gardens, home schooling
All institutions suspect, God or Allah is caring for all, our hope is in Heaven

Which of the thousand and one groups might I join to know the comfort of belonging, the challenge of action?

I bet you have an answer, but is it my answer? Is it Stephen Harper's?

It's evident to me our government has the same attitude to the environment as that of the US government, "of course, God will keep the environment clean and healthy, and if He doesn't then who are we to argue with the Almighty?" And is this not one of the slogans proclaimed by the hard right wing Christians? So Prime Minister Harper  is doing what we all do in time of uncertainty and chaos, finding security in his particular "herd". Not much original thinking or or even intelligent thinking in that, particularly because the herd he has chosen has no survival skills beyond the contradictory and confused slogans in their 1000 year old Bible and 200 year old economic ideas.

I believe instead, that with what's coming, the ability to adapt to major change in our habitat and economic and educational institutions will be paramount. No particular political groups are showing those that I know of. There are organizations working towards this though. Try theTransition Town movement.  And there are hundreds of websites, and blogs, around Green movements, etc.

We have invented, with the Internet and the mobile phone, communication tools that may be like a genetic mutation enabling our survival in this new much warmer, much stormier, petroleum deficient world we have already created (there's a lag time, we are living in the Fall but Winter is surely , inevitably, on its' way).

The bibles just now for me are Bill McKibben , of 350.org,  Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet: Bill McKibben
and Richard Heinberg,of the Post Carbon Institute, Richard Heinberg | The End of Growth

American citizens have turned their future over to the corporatist groups running the global  military industrial complex, global marketers generating consumption ( and 24 times that amount of waste) of useless goods for the sake of corporate profits and CEO's stock portfolios, and generating wars for the sake of profit making for corporations and promotions for career soldiers, all  paid for by printing free money in US$, and supported by governments voted into power by COD (Compulsive Obsessive Deniers) red-neck, hard right -wing Bible hypocrites  who have no notion of the mercy Christ embodied. 

I believe it is certain the American Dream hypocrisy will end in bloody chaos of civil war, starvation, and disease as the oil runs out and the climate heats up unbearably. We in Canada will become a target of their raiders. Our own government, with our consent, has been taken over by the COD fascists among us. and supports the current American Way without reservation.

The two commandments all Conservative members, and all Federal Government bureaucrats and scientists obey are, "Thou shalt not offend the PMO" and so "Thou shalt not publish or say anything unless it is first reviewed  and passed by the PMO." Means that the mess that is coming to all our lives will be blamed entirely on the Prime Minister, and those Canadians who support Him on his royal throne.

As ever in history,  we will blame someone else for our shortcomings and failures.

I keep writing my poetry and various epistles like this, poking into the readership environment,  to see how it responds, and thus get some idea, a fuzzy picture, of the mental world I inhabit with others like you.  This is somewhat how the physicists conduct their experiments, poking into the structure of atoms and other communities of small particles, to see how they react, and thus to get a model of how they are made and how likely to behave, and how to refine their relationships with those groups.

So poke your MP, see how he responds, and get some idea of the deeper, unseen structure these Conservatives espouse, or maybe, it's not  so deep, just unseen because vacant, absent, a void. That MP is just a tool in the hands of his/her PM, like  a tractor or a manure loader used by a farmer.

By my publishing publicly, I may alert the computer systems and thus their masters, which troll the media for signs of subversion. Maybe I would find their interest in me very unwelcome indeed. However, if enough communicate as I do the sort of rational thought and opinion the security apparatus finds subversive, we would overwhelm them with our sheer numbers, the way lone pigeons confuse the hawk by joining a flock. Maybe we could be the Pigeon Partiers, PP's for short?

How about that? A new group, The Pigeon Party!  Dedicated to making our sh.. visible, so it's easier to clean up, or use for fertilizer…

Donato Apr. 25, 2012   http://www.donatopoetry.com,   donato poetry,  on Google