tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50097493752499890942024-03-12T20:29:10.428-07:00Julio Donato's HabitatJulio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.comBlogger75125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-59455269440897358032018-05-02T08:20:00.000-07:002018-05-02T08:20:30.247-07:00What is life for?<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
What is life for?</div>
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1. To develop an apparatus to experience life to the fullest possible extent of that apparatus and its environment…</div>
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2. To replicate the organism’s DNA which transmits life. Whatever the result, the history of that organism’s chemistry, DNA and neuronal programming will generate inevitable outcomes, the product of a multitude of interactions internal and external, from the beginning capacities, modified by the programming of experience… </div>
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The organism makes no conscious choices as it grows. All its predetermined actions cause interactions that in turn predetermine future actions… Even as I think I have choice, what I manifest in action proceeds from previous programs…</div>
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If you want to know my references for this, I can only say you would have to examine my 83 year history plus the histories bequeathed to me in my DNA and adjuncts that come with it, and any quantum entanglements or time entanglements to which I have been subjected. </div>
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Donato April 28 2018</div>
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Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-87860909641024590582018-05-02T08:19:00.000-07:002018-05-02T08:25:00.164-07:00Inevitability.. story of my life<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Inevitability.. story of my life</div>
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My dream of long ago.. God speaks to me saying “ I give you what you want before you ask”</div>
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Inevitability … The word describes my history, all of my experience, and that of every living and non-living. </div>
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Actualizing our DNA history, our life experience, is only an aspect of experience. Not of some honouring, not out of superiority - no thing, living or not is superior to all others - All have their capacities and skills.</div>
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Kant ….we should care less about our happiness and other’s virtues and more about our own virtues and other’s happiness.. </div>
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Not be merely tolerant but fully accepting- to always seek to activate the mirror neurons…</div>
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be a root that encounters an obstacle, perhaps a rock, and moves around it seeking only to grow..</div>
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So when we interact in some sexy games out of what is either desire/desire, or desire acquiescence, as equals or out of deference to power.. and I gain later an understanding of some of my earlier programming that led to that desire and that choice and effort to manifest that action and you are later re-traumatized by the memory, what is my role now? How can I be taught some truth for myself by a twitter message? How? When I need an essay , need to essay a climb back along the paths of hill and memory to possibly re-frame my neuronal programming around a whole set of incidents to avoid getting stuck in either guilt or repetition… “mindless repetition” or “programmed” repetition .</div>
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Every action I take has behind it the energy and the pattern formed by millions of neuronal events from my entire history - and maybe some from the universe that encapsulates me with quantum entanglements and time entanglements . I cannot act therefore out of “free will”. My “will” is predetermined antecedent to whatever act I perform believing I am free.. </div>
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In this I am no different from that rock falling off a mountain.. whose action is the end result of billions of years of history acting on its elements… and so are all my deeds..</div>
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So, you say, you can choose to act wantonly, crazily, whatever you choose for self-gratification- since “you” are not responsible. Well, you might do that or you might not. Others will call you responsible or irresponsible, you may go your way unimpeded or get locked up. and you will do what you will do whether you read and believe what I have written or not… </div>
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in my dream of long ago.. God speaks to me saying “ I give you what you want before you ask”</div>
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This I now read as a paraphrase of scientific validation describing the life and behaviour of my neurons, collectively, they are God, and I will get what they dictate I will get… and “my” part can only be to be interested in the result. (see what I have written under, (<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=5009749375249989094#editor/target=post;postID=5945526944089735803;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=0;src=postname">“what is life for”</a>)</div>
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This is my connection to all of life and non-life, the seen and the unseen. We are all holograms for the Medicine Wheel, no part superior or inferior to any other. (<a href="http://donatopoetry.com/redroad.html">reference my publication with Suzanne Nadon 'Walking the Medicine Wheel Path”, www.donatopoetry.com</a>)</div>
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The only “I” in all this is that empty one who witnesses all, mirrors all witnessed… and simply laughs at the idea of taking credit or blame for whatever the outcome of “my” apparatus’ choices in the moment. And I have reached a sufficient programmed understanding of how my actions might hurt another or have caused suffering or pain in another, so that my actions either avoid that, or seek to redress the damage.. This our culture calls “adult” behaviour….</div>
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Whether a rock, or an earthworm, we are all subject to the forces of history of billions of years attached to our every particle, none of our actions subject to conscious choice, since whatever happens in the moment is but an act predetermined by our history, which we cannot retrace or remember in all its complex detail.. some of it indeed no long recorded, as if we had climbed up by a ladder and then kicked the ladder away.. </div>
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And if I abuse the trust placed in me by the Universe that gives me life, I will reap the consequences of breaking those laws of natural morality, ie. <b>natural inevitability</b>, which I cannot escape. </div>
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Donato Apr. 23 2018</div>
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Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-30964614740556734602018-01-30T21:23:00.000-08:002018-01-30T21:44:02.047-08:00Vivisection? Not!!<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Vivisection? Not!!</div>
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We have evolved, and continue to evolve, in our understanding of our relationship to all “matter” in the Universe. So now I am clear that animal lives matter. They matter to themselves as much and in the same way as our human lives matter to ourselves. There is no longer any <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Helvetica;">rational or emotional </span>excuse for saying that humans are not animals, or are a “superior” order of animals… </div>
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Our scientifically validated knowledge of the processes of genetics and evolution of DNA and the consequent infinite string of small differences between one life form and the next… means we can no longer pretend we are greatly superior in our life form. Every year that passes we learn more about the community life of animals, (and also plants!) their family lives, their languages, their feelings of pain and empathy, their problem-solving abilities… The direction of time’s arrow is certain, we are drawing closer to them, culturally, with every new scientific revelation… Looking to what will be the future, the conclusion is clear <i>now</i>. We should not interact with animals in any way that, if they could speak, they would object to…</div>
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Given the foregoing argument, we are evidently totally unscientific to continue to put humans on the pedestal that they were assigned to in the Bible and other out-of-date historical “truths”. And thus justify our barbaric practices in raising animals for meat and conducting “vivisection“ on their bodies and minds as though they were “morally” just unfeeling insentient objects.</div>
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As a final argument, obviously we have used our “superior” brains to isolate ourselves from our DNA-based connections to the natural world around us, By creating a technology-based instrumental attitude to everything in nature, we have led ourselves to the brink of destroying all life on earth… And we have not used our supposed superiority to give us the means to both predict it and work together, to avert this catastrophe… Wolves have lived 200 000 centuries of productive family and ecologically useful lives on Planet Earth. How are we “superior” to they who have not come close to the damage we done in but 4 centuries or so ? …</div>
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Please, let us have no more unthinking unprofessional descriptions from scientists about their use of animals in any way that harms their lives. Of course it will take us a little longer to understand how the human brain processes memories... if we choose not to perform invasive experiments on mice bred to be slaves for the sole purpose of being mangled and observed… In the meantime, we can use observe humans, and learn to understand how they behave, and maybe, learn, to behave better. </div>
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Donato Cianci Jan. 30, 2018. donatoshabitat@gmail.com, donatopoetry.com, juliodonatoshabitat.blogspot.ca </div>
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Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-26763464282838620092017-10-28T15:44:00.000-07:002017-10-28T15:44:12.846-07:00Dog or coyote?<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 19px; line-height: normal;">
Dog or coyote? </div>
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Woman posts story of mistaking coyote for a dog and giving it a bath next thing the fact checker scythe say picture is years old and is just that of a tame coyote.. I like the original story a lot better. It has heart that appeals to me. </div>
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If it is not a matter of life and death I prefer my own romance to the sterile words of fact checkers who have no skin in the game no interest except to prove their own superiority...superior to me… fact checking can be way overdone and breaks connections between people. Fact checking does not allow for the power of intuition the ability to know before the scientific studies are published and validated by which time the facts are often no longer interesting, outdated, commonplace and ordinary. </div>
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Worse, fact checking often does not support, even wantonly breaks down, the mythology which is the cultural glue that binds people in communities.</div>
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Even when the facts are correct the outcome can be dangerous or cause breakdown in connections between people. A few years ago a social scientist proclaimed the evidence based fact that standing and holding oneself in certain ways would give one more confidence and enable more influence on others. So what then? What if the influence is evil? Is it a good idea to give matches to babies?? </div>
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In my own life 50% of the supposedly fact checked verified drugs I have been given have been taken off the market only after killing thousands of people when used for a while… so whose facts are useful to me ? The fact that an amanita mushroom is deadly and like examples. Am I not right to ask who has been using this new drug and what has been the effect? No matter what the supposedly evidence based studies say? </div>
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Often the original story is better more fun and interesting tell me this rock came with my Grandfather across the Atlantic from Italy and I prize it, keep it around . Some smug geologist comes along who is only interested in making me wrong and tells me it must have come from Halifax when he got off the boat and I say I wish I had never known you. The rock means far more to me than your “facts” mean to you. </div>
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The great scientists and mathematicians the ground breakers act on their feelings and intuitions in deciding what interest to pursue, often years or generations ahead of their time… In my own life every useful pursuit that led to years of satisfaction started with a completely unverified intuition that only was proven by the outcomes it led me to…</div>
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Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-81223914295196497082017-07-29T18:09:00.000-07:002017-07-29T18:09:25.938-07:00What is Americanism?<div style="font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal;">
Gist of American (Republican? not only) ism </div>
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My take on current news from the USA…</div>
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co-opted for money battening on voter ignorance and frustration with greedy oligarchs seizing ownership of resources creating a revival of medieval economies lords and serfs the GOP legislators have become seriously malicious along with their own long-standing wilful ignorance…</div>
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And here is what the Washington Post has to say:</div>
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/07/14/the-gops-moral-rot-is-the-problem-not-donald-trump-jr/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.a5437cc502e2</div>
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Quote from the above:</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-shadow: 0.0px 1.0px 0.0px #000000;">“Out of its collective sense of victimhood came the GOP’s disdain for not just intellectuals but also intellectualism, science, Economics 101, history and constitutional fidelity. If the Trump children became slaves to money and to their father’s unbridled ego, then the GOP became slaves to its own demons and false narratives. A party that has to deny climate change and insist illegal immigrants are creating a crime wave — because that is what “conservatives” must believe, since liberals do not — is a party that will deny Trump’s complicity in gross misconduct. It’s a party as unfit to govern as Trump is unfit to occupy the White House. It’s not by accident that Trump chose to inhabit the party that has defined itself in opposition to reality and to any “external moral truth or ethical code.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-shadow: 0.0px 1.0px 0.0px #000000;">my response</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-shadow: 0.0px 1.0px 0.0px #000000;">No, not just the GOP. “Victimhood” <b><i>is</i></b> Americanism at its most fundamental…</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-shadow: 0.0px 1.0px 0.0px #000000;">The pervasive background to the American psyche, the cloth on which their culture is laid, has always been their individual and collective victimhood. “National security” is their mantra for nearly every act of governance at every level. When I ask an intelligent well-read well-educated American friend why their government’s vast expenditures and clumsy, intrusive, efforts to secure their borders, already thousands of miles from any possible major enemy, they reply to me “it is because they hate us! “</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-shadow: 0.0px 1.0px 0.0px #000000;">Their collective sense of victimhood, over their entire 240 years of history, of large segments of the American population, has led them to the approaching collapse of what is left of their civility and democratic institutions... and this victimhood is an introjection, a “taking within” of the feelings and fears and abuses they projected onto the “black” africans and the “red” indigenous others by their founding morality as slave owners and genocidal colonialists which has persisted to this day. Now they have even with the vast technological capability of their armies, extended this insult to natural morality to wreaking havoc on millions in the Middle East and elsewhere just because they can and have always been motivated to destroy their imagined enemies.. The first thing Americans did , after 1776, with their new navy, was to travel to the Middle East and attempt to subdue it so as to be able to trade and bring back their goods at bargain prices…</span></div>
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Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-88596387823821301372016-12-17T02:29:00.000-08:002016-12-17T02:48:59.775-08:00Ritual and Rapport on the Path of Drum<div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Rapport is the state of being connected, of being noticeably “One with another”, feeling at the same time being one of two and also, of being only one with the other… </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When I prepare to go to my sit spot, my private natural world observatory, I try to dress in the same clothes I always wear for this, so that I will become familiar to other creatures around, who will hopefully learn to treat me as a non-threatening element of the furniture. When I sit in my sit spot, and gradually become calm, I realize first the silence of earth and growing life around me, then perhaps a few birds and other creatures bring moving manifestations given life by the plant and tee and earth/water life in which they move and have their being. As I meditate and observe I am conscious that my frequent visits to this spot have become a ritual for me, something of “rapport” that I use as an entry into contact with what I call spirit. I am thinking now of the spiralling of leaves around the trunk and branches of the trees, of the minute exactly identical small leaves of the cedar that comprise the larger leaves… each a faithful replication of the ones previous. Is this display of the life-seeking leaves not a ritual, a performance in the sun and air? So I and these trees are connected in our forms of ritual, we are “in rapport”, mirroring each other’s way of taking part in the dance of life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So this is why I do ritual, to reconnect with Earth Mother, with the universe of life.. I sit in a safe container of my own construction, safe from the busy chaotic world of city life endeavour, which is connected only to its own busyness, and would have no life were it not for the mindless activities, or the excessively thinking activities, of the human brains that swirl in its chaotic dance… And when we do ritual or ceremony together, we create that safe space, a wall of trust around us, for deep sharing, or prayer or celebration. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Sometimes we do the Warrior Dance, 200 or more of us fasting and sleeping by day and dancing and fasting for four nights under the full moon in the wide Prairie sky, drums beating, singers singing, healers, fires blazing. This is our ritual display. The sight is glorious. And then we see overhead the blazing green and yellow and white of the Northern Lights, Mother Earth displaying her ritual.. as we respond with ours, showing her we recognize her gifts, feeling deep in our bodies the welling emotions of connection to all life around, all weathers, all mountains, all waters,, all forests and plains…</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So when I drum or do my Pipe, or call in the Four Directions, or conduct the Lodge, or Smudge myself or others, I am creating a formalized ( a “form”, repeated) safe space connection to Mother Earth. Feeling all the emotion of that living power flowing through me.. To be in connection, in rapport with the natural world and the spirit world that animates it, I must engage my body/mind and that I do with my ceremonies and rituals. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It was Earth Mother that birthed me here at this time. She gave me as my tasks to speak my thoughts in the truth of poetry, and to support my connection to life through gifting my drum-making, making the sacred hand drums, which then led me to all my spirit-encounters and my life enhancing friendships, ceremonies and rituals.</span></div>
Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-72915927259750027202016-11-16T18:59:00.000-08:002016-11-16T18:59:19.514-08:00The Trump Phenomenon..letter to a friend<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Dear Friend your word that you felt shame over the election shocked me, and I was surprised at my reaction. Of course I don't ever want you to feel ashamed, particularly over what other people do or don't. So I had to reflect on what I myself was feeling and after some time, came up with what follows...</span><br />
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My Musings on the Trump Phenomenon</div>
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Oh I am really feeling the pain these days of those of us who are reacting with fear and dismay to the unexpected win of the US Presidency by the ultimate narcissistic ignorance of Donald Trump. And also the pain of many of his supporters who felt they had no choice but to take a chance on his being able to do and actually doing what he said he would to distribute the resources of the USA more honestly and fairly. The pain of those who are realizing they have lost their democracy, that neither of their two traditional parties has been defending their democratic constitution. They feel themselves staring into the abyss of the unknown. </div>
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Every day there seems to be something in the news of the world stage that I ought to react to with either fear or celebration.. A lot of it is in the unknown future, or a manifestation of the reportage which I might not agree with had I witnessed the events they describe… I give myself hope by learning to become detached from my desire for any particular outcome, to become detached from excessive and destabilizing emotionality when the unexpected occurs.</div>
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I daily follow the path I know to be mine, where it leads I know not, so am learning not to have expectations and just continue to be interested in what actually occurs. This way, I won’t have a problem, until I do. As for being upset at the apparent decisions of the collective to which I belong, country, race etc.etc. or those with whom I must interact, I am my own moral compass, and choose whether to follow the collective, or not. Certainly, I wish us all well, that the miserable become happy, that moments of joy occur to all. And so walk seeking to project compassion and universal love onto all living and non-living… I know some wise old trees who have the same attitude….</div>
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In Peace Donato Nov. 16 2016</div>
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Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-91527468239631064822016-02-05T19:59:00.000-08:002016-02-05T19:59:22.963-08:00Concerning cultural appropriation concernsLetter to a young friend concerned he may be transgressing on another's territories by taking part in their spiritual ceremonies, concerned to try to find his own indigenous heritage, his own lineage therein....<br />
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I would be honoured to hear more of your journey and that of others as they unfold. </div>
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As for me, I am like Squirrel, I was put here onto this land by Mother Earth to find my spiritual practice, my spiritual gift, which I am then compelled to follow. All I have is not my fault, it is my gift from Mother Earth. I owe nothing to any traditions save those which are gifted to me, and which I discovered for myself from the habitat in which I landed, just like Squirrel...In one way Squirrel has an advantage over me, he did not have to search for the Way he is compelled to follow, he was born following it. And I am not accountable to Manitou for the way in which others do or did live their lives, only for the way in which I live mine. Walking lightly, disturbing nothing, I need manage only myself... That is enough for one life. Even writing this, is a kind of disturbance, but I am not yet a hermit, though that I may become in time..... </div>
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Donato Feb. 5 2016</div>
Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-61351566746481378032016-02-03T21:42:00.000-08:002016-02-03T21:42:03.586-08:00Indigenous or not? <div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
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Some idea that indigenous people are different from us. That they have some status and claim to live safely on this land that we do not have. </div>
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Thinking of myself, whose grandparents came from Italy, where their DNA had lived in a small village for 2000 years or more, and from America, after travelling all across Europe with the Celts and the French Huguenots and the Puritans, to what is now called by some the USA. My DNA has done lots of travelling since it last resided in what most today would call indigenous cultures. I prefer to say of my ancestry that I am descended from a long line of poets and drum-makers, for thousands of years. My DNA heritage in this spiritual calling is more important to me than what my DNA has encountered in the various language and cultural groups it has travelled in the past 40 000 years or so back to the Cro-Magnon people of the Eastern Mediterranean. </div>
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So I would be happy to listen to anyone who had spent time and effort to track their own DNA in history, and learn what spiritual practices and songs it has been exposed to…</div>
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And I say Mother Earth birthed me here out of my DNA heritage, because this is where she needed another human poet and drum maker.. And I have the word of my Anishnabe friends living North of Superior that they too recognize me in that way…I am not taking anything from them, In fact they freely welcomed me and gifted me with the spiritual values and practices I now follow, as I gifted them with with what I was called to do. </div>
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I say it is better to base your spiritual practices on the ways you choose to follow, or are gifted with, out of knowing your own spiritual gifts, than to blindly adhere to one or two of the probably hundreds of spiritual practices your DNA has encountered over the millenia. And if ancestors are important, then I am already an ancestor of a thousand who will come after me, and so I too am important. as we all are…</div>
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Donato Feb. 3 2016</div>
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Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-44762080996737762382015-11-21T08:34:00.000-08:002015-11-21T09:30:22.209-08:00Monetary system collapse<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
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<b>Saving into the financial sphere hurts the real economy</b></div>
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time period 1 corporate revenue = expenses + profit + wages </div>
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time period 2 all must be the same. If some wages or profit saved, then there will be less revenue, less money circulating in the economy and maybe fewer jobs….unless the government puts money into the system by deficit spending on real goods and services, like infrastructure (not just more financing). Government deficit spending is needed to offset the loss of money supply going to private savings…, or there will be a recession, and lots of hardship, and transfer of ownership wealth to the already rich. </div>
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Where cigarettes are currency, fixed number, unless admin puts some money in that can be used to buy cigarettes from outside.. i.e. admin deficit spends.. if some prisoners start to save cigarettes, then fewer circulate, and the economy dies up…again, unless the admin deficit spends more cigarettes into the system…</div>
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<b>Boomers and children</b></div>
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Boomers don’t like to pay taxes, and the government and everyone thinks deficit spending is bad,</div>
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so welfare and education and small business financing and affordable housing are cut back, and the Boomers children stay at home, financed by their parents money, the money the parents wouldn’t pay out in taxes… these parents say, I won’t pay for others people’s kids to get welfare or be educated or get jobs…. <span style="font-family: Helvetica;">These parents save money by investing in already existing large corporate bonds and stocks, not in small business, thus draining money from the real economy..</span></div>
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<b>Boomer’s excessive savings, a result of Government money printing,( the hyperinflation of real estate and stock and bond prices) are wrecking the real would economy.</b></div>
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<b>Recession</b></div>
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When a severe recession hits, because too little money is circulating, ( because of too much financial sphere saving, not enough spending on real goods and services) people can’t pay mortgages and they lose their property. The property flows into the hands of those wealthy enough to buy it up at bargain prices… so recession means wealth transfers to the already rich. The rich like recessions, and oppose the deficit spending on real goods and services needed to halt them…</div>
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We are headed to a global monetary system collapse, it has already begun in many countries, because the major governments, The USA, The EU, Japan and China, have fostered pouring trillions into the financial sphere and practically nothing into the economic sphere to offset the wealth transfers to those already rich (in ownership paper), or newly rich..</div>
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If you are rich enough, you can easily get a big loan from a bank, to buy more stocks and bonds. Enough of the rich do this, the bonds and stocks go up in price, and you can now use the extra collateral to get even more loans… The financial system feeds on itself.. unless some of that money spent on stocks and bonds goes into infrastructure, or factories, or other real goods financing… but then, we have the system sustaining China, of example, where they build one new city for 4 million people every two weeks ( which will only house 1/4 of the increase per year in new housing needed). These cities are empty, people can’t afford to live there….the cities can’t return the capital spent to build them. The system eventually collapses, as the ownership paper on these cities eventually collapses in marketable value, and those owners risk going bankrupt.. While others get the buildings for bargain prices. But without the jobs to justify the workers rental payments, how can this system survive? </div>
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Into enormous expenditure on empty buildings, empty cities,</div>
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Into enormous increases in private investment into the armaments industry, on war weapons including nuclear weapons. </div>
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Into fostering the weapons industry by destroying existing economies, and lives, in the Middle East and elsewhere, creating jihadists, thus increasing the justification for more weapons to fight them, </div>
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By generating fear of terrorists, justifying huge increases in expense on surveillance techniques and personnel, and cutting back on expenses to real economy goods and services, </div>
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By fostering and subsidizing poor nutrition, meat and dairy farming, thus increasing the need for more expense on pharmaceuticals and mainstream medical education and infrastructure investments, draining money from the real economy (affordable housing, small business jobs). </div>
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Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-82868890484091624142015-08-26T07:21:00.001-07:002015-08-26T07:21:36.420-07:00The Teen Age Years: a reconnection with spiritThe Teen Age Years: a reconnection with spirit<br /><br />The teens are years of manifestation and re-connection with spiritual longing. We must no longer describe teen years as a time of crazy abnormal behaviour. Nor are they purely awakened sex drives. Teens are experiencing deeply emotional spiritual meanings, beyond mere sexual procreation.<br /><br />The word says it, “procreation”. “pro”, in favour of, “creation”. Teen age behaviour is a manifestation of deep desire, an awakening to the conscious experience of creation, all of creation, the entire Universe. Their ardent desire insists they become conscious of themselves as also spiritual beings, not just a creator of more humans. Since our culture, the adults, never teachs them this, they must go seeking on their own without knowing for what they are looking. All they know is to bond with their desire. And so they ;appear to adults to some how be crazy, unmanageable, sexually driven.<br /><br />In our beginning the spirit world birthed us to this planet. We spent our early years exploring new territory, gradually learning about our physicality in relation to all around. Gradually, we as young children lost our connection to the spirit world, that blissful (unconscious to our infant selves) place. At puberty our bodies awaken us, urge us to recover consciously our connection to spirit. Waves of longing and desire for connection flow through our teenage selves, Enormous energies, matching the tremendous scope of this task. What could be more powerful than getting a sense of connection to our place in the total Universe, the physical and the spiritual Universe? <br /><br />White culture insists this energy belongs to the priests alone, to be administered at times of their choosing, and is certainly not connected to our physical sexuality, which is thought to be sinful somehow. So the culture suppresses the spiritual as well as the physical expression of our desires. So these enormous awakening energies, have no cultural container or appropriate ritual, no way for the young person to understand and flow with them, No wonder they appear to go crazy!!<br /><br />We must not continue to try to control and shame teens into “better” behaviour. <br /><br />We must find ways to celebrate teens in song, dance and spiritual rituals, to help them sublimate their desires to be intimate with each other in spiritual as well as physical expression, so they may awaken, now consciously, to that place from which we all came, and be ready to play their full part in creation, as creative spiritual beings, in creation…<br /><br />Donato Cianci, Aug. 28 2015<br />Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-81759495887184384972015-04-20T18:48:00.001-07:002015-04-20T19:27:48.183-07:00The Mainstays of our NA Economies are the growing and harvesting of sickness and death...Understanding our current monetary situation, <br />
-as neighbors and vassals of the USA, growing and harvesting sickness and death as the mainstays of our economies...<br />
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A primary job of government in the fiat (paper) money era is to manage the money supply. (ref. <a href="http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf">http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf</a> ) This requires a bit of work to digest. I suggest reading on and coming back later if you wish to verify what I’ve said here. <br />
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Too much money in circulation runs the risk of creating an inflation panic which will destroy the value of savings. Too little money means not enough for economic activities to grow with the population and stay at healthy employment levels. <br />
The government should manage the too much money scenario by increased taxation, and the too little money, by deficit spending. <br />
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The only way the new money needed to keep pace with needed new employment, is for the government to deficit spend, i.e.. to spend more than they collect in taxes. (they have to spend first, in order to be able to collect it). Balancing the budget by definition will cause unemployment to rise, businesses to fail, and deflation to set in, and if kept up, result in a major depression. <br />
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Because voters have been taught by the corporatists over the years that deficit spending is the rocky road to the evils of foreign socialism, our governments in North America are forced to strive to achieve balanced budgets. The resulting periods of recession and near depression cause massive unemployment, each time shifting wealth from the mass of population to the 1%, eroding the middle class on the way. <br />
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(This is why our economists, and governments, and universities, do not teach what I’m writing here, because they depend on subsidies by the 1%, for their classrooms and their election campaign expenses)<br />
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Nevertheless, led by the USA, our governments have found a way around this. Spending massively on armaments and health, they avoid the label of “deficit spending”, but can still increase the money supply when needed. <br />
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In addition, giant agribusiness and pharmaceutical corporations contribute massive inputs to economic activity, aided by governments which overlook the fact that agricultural subsidies and agricultural marketing all go to increase the meat, dairy, egg, and corn and soy industry inputs. These agribusiness industries are major contributors to the unhealthy lifestyle and sicknesses which are the chief raw material for the medical and pharmaceutical industries. <br />
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When did you ever hear an agribusiness advertising campaign for broccoli, or cabbage, or apples, for anything but dairy, or meat? <br />
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The pharmaceutical industry spends much twice as much advertising as it does on research, ( and much of that is bogus) . It spends 6 times as much advertising to doctors as to the public. And increasingly we learn its products either don't work, or cause side effects which require yet more drugs to palliate. <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So we have the armaments, agribusiness and health industries, all complicit with government subsidies and expenditures in growing and harvesting sickness and death as the primary support of North American and indeed, global economies... </span><br />
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What we lose is the opportunity to fund education, healthy food, increased effort to stave off global warming. Instead we build a world full of enemies, and transfer increasing ownership of land and its resources to the 1%, who are like the landlords and warlords of the Middle Ages, using <span style="font-size: large;">our</span> bodies and abilities to fight <span style="font-size: large;">their</span> interminable wars of conquest, grasping absolute ownership and control of more of everything than they can possibly use, on the path to eliminating life on planet earth in the process...<br />
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The USA budgets about 18% for defense (really “war”), and 25% for health, plus another 4% to farmers to grow unhealthy food. <br />
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Canada budgets 8% on defense, and about 11 % of federal revenue and up to 50% of provincial revenues on health, and another 15% of provincial revenues on education which perpetuates the economists myths. <br />
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<br />Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-55800167072405102582015-04-14T14:33:00.004-07:002015-04-14T14:33:49.373-07:00News of Our TimeNews of Our Time<br /><br />In the West<br />The women come<br />And go *<br />In the East<br />The warlords too<br />Do come and go<br />Fall and rise<br />Disappear then<br />Materialize<br />Beamed from space<br />Into this place<br />Riding thunderbolts<br />Exploding into parts<br />All that deemed<br />Wise<br />Or arts<br />Of careless living<br />The dances and <br />The grace<br />Of women<br />In the West<br />Who come and <br />Go<br />Speaking only<br />Of Michelangelo *<br /><br />Donato Apr. 10 2015<br /><br />*phrase from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot ca. 1910Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-87116841252954141932015-04-14T14:31:00.001-07:002015-04-14T14:31:43.603-07:00Unlimited Prosperity Machine, Warfare the Product?Looks as if US Leaders, government and industry, have found a formula
for unlimited prosperity, at least for the 1%. They have decided to
“farm” terrorism globally. They spend unlimited amounts of US$ on
armaments, surveillance, and security operations at home and abroad.
This creates growing resistance dubbed “terrorism”, The US$ rises
against all other currencies. Citizens and governments of foreign
counties buy US $, ship the US what it needs for civilian comfort, food,
clothing, manufactures of all sorts, in return for the “safe haven”
saving of US$. Since it costs the US nothing to print this money, maybe
they have created an economy, where constant warfare is the product, and
provides all the well-paying jobs. Come to think of it, that is the
exact situation that prevailed in Europe throughout much of the past
2000 years….<br />
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It is a recursive equation, warfare = resistance = terrorism = more warfare. According to the mathematics of complex phenomenon theory, the system will finally be unable to hold the energy put into it, and due to some unpredictable unlikely unremarkable cause, will collapse in the dynamics of chaos. Return all our governance and survival systems to compost. In history, the human leaders of large systems never forecast correctly the results of their actions… Maybe if we survive, we'll be rid of the large systems, live in smaller ones... Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-82282389806733519112015-04-10T18:33:00.001-07:002015-04-10T18:47:24.698-07:00Medieval or Modern, Warlords or Landlords?Medieval or Modern, Warlords or Landlords?<br />
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The Warlord life style:<br />
Looking at European life in the 14th Century, we see it was organized between three estates, The first, the church, the second, the nobles and knights, and the third, all the rest. The nobles and the church exacted taxes on the rest, and basically held them hostage to make or do whatever the first and second estates needed or wanted to maintain their lifestyles. Individual bishops and nobles raked in thousands of times the annual earnings of even highly skilled artisans in the third estate. The rest, other than the merchants, (whose talent for acquiring and trading wealth the nobles needed to sequester from time to time) of the ordinary people lived by labouring 14 hour or more days, able to save nothing for old age, getting sick and dying for lack of medical care, without education. Basically,they were slaves, their labour and their bodies were used to grow food, make the finery and grand buildings the nobles and clergy wanted, and fight and die in the interminable wars the nobles fought amongst themselves, and against other agglomerations loosely called countries. Countries only because they were ruled by a king, not because they had any form of governance that ensured the safety and well being of the citizens of the territory designated as a country. These warlord rulers lived to indulge in extravagant displays of their wealth such as their ability to cause the erection of enormous cathedrals and castles, laden with high art, and to engage in ferocious battles amongst themselves. They none of them could agree together long enough to form large territories of relatively peaceful governance, until at least another two centuries had passed.<br />
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Then we got the Landlord life style:<br />
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The nobles of fairly large territories got together to force the kings into signing contracts, contracts to which they were all bound, that introduced some order, some rules of governance and justice, thai would provide a glue to prevent them all from continuing to tear each other to pieces, and destroy their citizens in the process. But the powerful had to give up a lot of their own prerogatives, the idea that might was right, and that the people are basically just another resource they could use at pleasure to meet their own extravagant need for display, and heroism in battle, and acquisition of each other’s territory. They had to give up acting on large and serious matters of state out of sheer personal whim, and learn to become rational, thoughtful, and at least somewhat principled and aware of the needs of the citizens.<br />
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But they did not give up entirely their urge for domination, they just put it underground for awhile.<br />
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The ascendance of the Landlords and resurrection of the Warlords:<br />
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Today, on a global scale, we have seen for a brief period that the Landlord lifestyle was superseded in many places by the Democratic governance style. But that period has been short, and is rapidly giving way to a return to the Warlord style over the Middle East, and much of Africa. And the Landlord lifestyle is returning in full armour, driven by politicians and global corporations who are the new landlords, and ruled by the 1% who together now have control of 50% of the world’s wealth. Wealth in the form of deeds of land, control over vast corporations producing armaments to sell to the Warlords, agribusiness to mine people’s hunger, and food addictions, for profits, pharmaceutical corporations to mine their health for profits, funding colleges and universities so they will produce workers educated enough to work the levers of all these corporate interests, but fearful of losing their funding if they speak out against the new (old) despotism. <br />
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On the farm years ago, I heard local people speak of a man with a large “corporation”, meaning he had an over-large belly from eating too much rich food…In Italian, I believe, a man with a seriously large amount of power is called “un pancione”. a “big belly”.<br />
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Warlord business is profitable business. That’s why capitalism and its robot corporations (landlords of money) have brought it back, rather, taken advantage of it’s continued existence and fostered it’s renewed growth.<br />
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I use the word “robot” on purpose. Capitalism and its offspring are robots of the mind and mined resources. The people associated with it, in every way, just mindlessly do what its mindless structures demand of them. <br />
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Donato Cianci April 10 2015Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-27547924900162936002015-04-01T07:26:00.000-07:002015-04-01T07:29:34.216-07:00Not a choice to be goodIslamophobia in the USA<br />
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/islamophobia-in-the-usa-the-case-of-the-arabic-language/5439800<br />
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“On March 18, a student in Pine Bush High School near New York City recited the American Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic. This was done as part of the school’s Foreign Language Week, which was conducted to celebrate the “many races, cultures and religions that make up [the US and the Pine Bush] School District.”<br />
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One would expect the multicultural and cosmopolitan American society to appreciate such gestures. However, the reactions to the recitation of the Pledge in Arabic spoke otherwise: the language in itself was described to be meant for terrorists, and associated with Islam. Such bigotry once again highlighted everything that is wrong with USA: xenophobia, racism, ignorance, violence and above all, Islamophobia.” quote from Sufyan bin Uzayr<br />
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My reflection:<br />
It is not the USA that is bad and mean and wrong, not that beautiful landscape and all its creatures. The human condition itself contains all the adjectives he uses against the USA, including all their opposites, of generosity, open-heartedness, tolerance, compassion, acceptance of others. Nothing and no person is bad or good, just that they are thus. Thus things are thus and just so (flowing within the Tao, the Te of natural justice), that flower that monkey that crying baby that revenge seeking person… All strange and familiar wonderful and fearful. Of course when we have choice we will try to steer in the direction of what we call good. But our perspective is small and immediate and biased by all our programming, our humanity. Imagine going to my garden and seeing that the plants need water. I take some to them. I call that good. But, if I could control the rain, would I call it good to do so? How can I know whom or what I harm by my choice of weather? Better to just take what I get. And when I choose, I choose from my knowledge and my heart, and then wait to see what comes, without being addicted to the outcome I envisaged. No one can foresee the result of any action. Just to choose and go with the flow, witness the path to the next choice…what will be will be…<br />
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I have no choice to be labelled bad or good in any circumstance, only to to do the best I can. Trust my own personal morality, my own awareness and intuitions, accepting what comes, and extending the same welcome to others who follow their own morality, not necessarily that of the majority, of the unaware herd.<br />
Donato CianciJulio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-44260174537537977242015-01-04T12:58:00.001-08:002015-01-04T12:58:21.102-08:00Notes on diet re health notes on diet re health <br /><br />
My last words… on nutrition and health. After this, I’m done talking about it. <br /><br />If you want to be happy<br />And live without strife<br />Get the cows and the cars<br />Right out of your life.<br />
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Old Chinese? proverb<br />
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If you want to be happy<br />
For a month<br />
Get married<br />
If you want to be happy<br />
For a year<br />
Kill the pig<br />
If you want to be happy<br />
Forever<br />
Be a gardener <br />
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For the past ten years I’ve had the most satisfying relationship ever in my nearly 80 years of life with my own body and health, and with the animals my friends, by adopting a vegan lifestyle. I will no longer contribute to suffering by eating animals or their products. <br /><br />Nutritionfacts.org contributes the best single source of evidence for the primary role of diet in our health since the China Study by T. Colin Campbell ( which did scientifically impeccable studies on about 700 000 Chinese) . <br /><br />Dr. Michel Greger at Nutritionfacts.org posts hundreds of evidence based studies by independent researchers which demonstrate conclusively, irrefutably, that the way to live long and stay healthy is to go vegan, cut out all meat, dairy and eggs from your diet. He is not selling supplements, says the data shows ordinary vegetables, fruits, nuts and grains and seeds, will do just as well. <br /><br />Two stories I like:<br /><br />Lactose intolerant people ( who must stay away from dairy ) suffer significantly less from most cancers than their siblings and the general population. <br />Seventh Day Adventists are healthier and live longer than Baptists. Both groups stay away from alcohol and smoking, but Adventists also stay away from meat, and those Adventists who are vegetarian are healthier than the rest, and those that are vegan are the most healthy of all. <br />eggs<br />a single egg a day significantly lowers lifespans. <br />3 eggs a week damages cardiovascular health and lowers lifespans as much as a pack a day cigarette habit. <br />Dr. David Spence, 30 years as stroke prevention researcher in Robarts Lab in London Ontario. <br />http://nutritionfacts.org/video/whose-health-unaffected-by-eggs/<br />
<br />You can read this stuff, follow the ideas and get control over your health and your food habits. Or you can continue to fight your bodies addictions, risk getting fatter, and dying earlier in more misery than you need to. Your choice. I’m done talking about it. Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-85848681242677475512014-12-26T11:15:00.001-08:002014-12-26T11:15:49.877-08:00The Path is Due ProcessPath<br /><br />Thinking about my sometime inner conflict between, “let go and let God (or the Flow)” and “ God helps them who help themselves ( acting from inner morality, or the Te of natural justice)”, I remember I have had a recurrent vision, was it perhaps once a dream?, of walking a stony outcrop path along a mountain ridge, valleys on either side, down the hillside, mountains distant, sunny, cloudy, not difficult but have to watch my steps around the sharp outcrops of rock. A lot like the hillside behind our house so many years ago in Oliver in the Okanagan Valley in BC, that led up and away to wild mountain ridges… Contented, difficult walking, all my own space and place, strong purpose just to do it, no end in sight nor needed to know. <br /><br />The Path is Due Process<br /><br /> I want to highlight this, what has happened to it? If we insist on it, in all places, at all times, maybe we could find a way out of the traps we seem to be in, environmental, and societal? Let us have DUE PROCESS for all of life not just human. Not just debating what results we want, but first debating what is due process; what process do we insist on following? So our effort now ought to be in debating process, forget for now the result we want, until we get the process agreed.<br /><br />Deep in the woods, by Beaver’s pond, or on a rocky hillside, I notice how “right” the process here is, how the result is always beautiful, no matter how unexpected. So when we follow due process in the way of the Tao, we would encounter the Te of natural Justice, Natural consequences, and be accepted in the Ching, the great calm ensuing. <br /><br />Why do we still think, after so many millennia of failure, that we can guard the Peace with the weapons of War? Why do stern implacable faces march in solid ranks in uniforms on Remembrance Day, or to bury fallen police or soldiers? Do they seem peaceful? What are we remembering with this display? War, not Peace. We used to call it Armistice Day, for the peace we all longed for. Why is this not what we remember now? <br /><br />War is a dreadful, seeming ever-recurring event. Peace is a process. We will not have an end to bloody conflict, the misery, without adopting due process. A place where all can have a say in the process, where all voices are heard, the seeming ignorant, inadequate, angry, as well as the calm and reasoned. When all speech is exhausted, the answer will emerge, the answer we will all support and we will call it Peace. <i>“When all conflict is ceased, when all is said and done, and calm is restored, the people will say, “it just happened naturally.” ” from the writings of Lao Tzu. </i>Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-23150243434238467812014-05-21T06:12:00.000-07:002014-05-21T06:12:19.102-07:00To move or not to move, the furnitureTo move or not to move, the furniture<br /><br />After all my years I have only a few things to say to myself or anybody else who wishes to hear them.<br /><br />The best thing you can do for your children, yourself, for others, is to clean up your own act. The best thing you can do period, is clean up your own act. The only thing you can do, is clean up your own act. Anything else is just moving the furniture around.<br /><br />To live long, worry free, live in vegan territory, and defend it. <br /><br />Do not cause suffering, and heal it, wherever, whenever, you can.<br /><br />Offer small or large gratitude, to yourself and others, and the great spirit, whenever you get a chance. <br /><br />Be alert to experience awe, bathe in it long. <br /><br />To move, or not to move, the furniture, that is the question? No, tao get rid of the furniture, that is the question and the answer. <br /><br />The purpose of life in the Universe is to find and create moments of perfection. The purpose of human life is to learn to realize these moments. <br /><br />Thank you, I’m grateful for your attention, in awe of readers and writers everywhere…<br />
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Donato May 21 2014 <br />Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-63625638801955020172014-04-25T10:21:00.000-07:002014-04-25T10:21:32.981-07:00AtonementAtonement<br /><br />The word contains and conflates “at one-ment”<br /><br />So recognizing we have disturbed another’s path, perhaps that of earth life itself, we feel…what? and the word is this to heal the perhaps wound we seem to have caused. <br />
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But how can we blame ourselves or others? Which of us knows the outcome of our actions?<br />
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All is one- there is no outcome particular to any one action which itself is part of the great flow, the One flow. The error lies in the cultural use of the word, suggesting the need for guilt, or shame, for retribution or restoration, for sacrifice.<br />
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It’s about disturbing the balance (so-called) between good and evil. So if there be no final good, no final evil, there is no balance between them to disturb. <br /><br />There is a balance though, between being aware of our own at one-ment with all, or being unaware. All I know right now is to act right now from my sense of natural justice, trusting in the flow, in the Tao. Thus I am at one, at one-ment, with the Tao, no matter who thinks I am responsible for some outcome he sees and doesn’t like.Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-28397018950125429072014-03-04T13:36:00.003-08:002014-03-04T13:36:42.646-08:00Threats and OpportunitiesThreats and opportunities<br /><br />In my dream a long time ago God spoke to me and said I give you what you want before you ask<br /><br />And so all I want is opportunities to grow my soul, and here they are, all available now, not least because I can now recognize them...<br /><br />Threats<br /><br />climate change, water, air and land pollution and shortages<br />global ecosystem and monetary economic system collapses<br />End of cheap energy and cheap food<br />authoritarianism, violence and civil unrest and warfare<br />scarcity of social justice<br />lack of trust among neighbors, between communities, in governments, in justice systems<br />Justice systems become control of resources systems favoring the rich<br />class warfare<br />epidemic disease, failure of health care systems, constant stress from unhealthy life styles, unhealthy environments, excess human populations<br />ignorance, inability to do critical thinking, failure of education and information systems<br />Environmental pollution, and resulting diseases, destruction of ocean and land ecosystems, shortages of oxygen, <br />Disease from radiation, nuclear meltdowns and warfare and radiation emitting industrial products<br />All the many mental, physical, emotional ills and imbalances that come from being out of touch spiritually with spirit, with the earth part of ourselves. <br /><br />Antidotes and opportunities<br /><br />Aim for community<br />Learning interesting stuff useful survival skills<br />Frequent study circles rather than discussions and arguments<br />emotional support groups<br />creative work, writing, poetry, photos<br />gardening, for self and bees and birds<br />dinners with others<br />cycling adventures<br />travel adventures<br />garage sales, giveaways, dinners, (chick) swaps<br /><br /><br />Our conversations are not about me convincing you of anything, although I might get energy from that, they are about me learning something, but really, the core of them for me is what God promised me, the opportunity to grow my soul, what I asked for and always have, without knowing that was what I wanted. <br />
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Donato Cianci Mar. 4 2014Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-87359303209113975382014-02-25T12:37:00.002-08:002014-03-04T13:39:32.043-08:00An Existential Definition of CommunityDefining Community by Observing It<br />
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Travelling recently I saw a flock of maybe 50 wild turkeys scattered over a large snow-covered field. Most were busy pecking and scratching. I've never seen so many together. They usually travel in much smaller single family groups. Of course, I thought, they become community minded when times are tough and survival is threatened. The more that are out hunting and pecking at the snow, the better the chance that some one or few of them will find some grain, and all will eat. <br />
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The Inuit people of old did the same. In winter, several hunters would go out for days in different directions, to different holes in the ice where a seal might rise for breath. When one hunter got a seal, the whole village ate. <br />
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From each according to his ability, or luck, and to each according to her need.<br />
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A long time ago, I was a junior person working in a large oil company that was having difficulty finding oil on the Canadian Prairies. At some meeting, I noted that a few of the many small companies also seeking oil did in fact find quite substantial fields, and asked the vice president in charge of that department in our company why we did not simply buy into a number of those small companies, say 25% in each, and this increase the probability of getting control of more oil. His answer was "We will not give our expertise to other companies". <br />
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Neither the turkeys nor the Inuit would have survived with such a creed. But somehow, we think our society will survive, though it is the creed of our governments and our corporations. <br />
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<br />Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-88695090438026628632014-02-25T12:12:00.000-08:002014-02-25T12:12:37.238-08:00The Prodigal Son The Prodigal Son <br /><br />We know the story. The youngest son goes wildly adventuring, womanizing, loses jobs, fails education, parties, does drugs, damages his health and endangers his life, finally in despair returns home becoming a child again seeking his parents. He is exuberantly welcomed by his father, who with tears of joy exclaims this my son was lost and now he is found and now I am happy, now we we will have a feast and gifts for him!! The older son looks on with barely concealed anger. I have done everything correctly, got my education, got and kept a good job, visited my parents every week, sacrificed myself to raise my family, look after my wife, why should my brother get all this celebration and I get nothing? <br /><br />My Thoughts<br /><br /> The elder son is not made happy by his own rectitude and correct behaviour. He obviously takes his cue to be happy from what his father thinks of him, not of what he thinks of himself. His anger toward his brother and father comes because he tells himself he gave up his freedom to do what his brother did, followed his fathers’ rules, and now feels unrewarded. Evidently not capable of rewarding himself for his choices, he now doubts he is worthy in his father’s eyes. He doesn’t see that the father is not rewarding his brother for his profligate lifestyle, but is celebrating his safety, his returning home. The elder could join in the celebration but he mistakes the reason for it and so doubts his father’s love, and so doubts himself, and his fear makes him angry. <br /><br />The younger son was evidently not made happy by his adventuring and reckless so-called self-indulgence. (How is it an indulgence if he is not happy?). The younger son set out to find himself in opposition to his fathers ideas, and found only suffering, and then he was desperate to get home, to get healed, to feel nurtured. He has not grown up yet, no matter how much the father celebrates him. Both sons have yet to learn about themselves, to have respect and love for themselves, regardless of what others may think of them. When they do, they will attain the wisdom of the father, who respects them both, loves them both, scolds neither of them, and shows them how he feels when he feels it. <br /><br />This parable is played out daily in our culture. More sons and daughters than ever in recent history are returning home because they have not found themselves in the world, and seek safety and comfort of home and parents, like the children they still are. They have yet to grow up. Elder brothers ( and sisters) abound, scolding those who return to their childhood home, scolding the street people, scolding the poor, scolding those without jobs, those on welfare. Scolding the government for not looking after them better, granting them more roads, lower housing costs, better jobs, less taxes, etc. Younger brothers and sisters protest in the streets, demand the return of a nurturing government, demanding jobs, minimum pay, demanding governments do better, stop oppression, organize work and a meaningful place in society for them. <br /><br />Yet returning to the childhood home may be the first step in healing our society for all of us. The childhood home is the nucleus, or ought to be, of a viable community. Where each cares for all and all care for each. And given what is coming to our world habitat, massive and life endangering climate change, the breakdown of our global monetary system, the end of cheap oil fueled energy. Perhaps a time when most of those in developed countries will have to spend their own personal energy growing and making, in order to survive. Will we not need the comfort and skills of small communities of friends and, good neighbors, to survive? <br /><br />It is all about our fear, of violence, of sickness, of hunger, of loss of goods and shelter, loss of love. We call it insecurity. We crave security, and give up our freedoms and often our social justice systems, hoping to get it. <br /><br />There will always be predators. All classes in society are afraid of the predators. The rich bar their doors at night, co-opt police forces to do drive-bys, travel only on well lighted safe streets in fast expensive vehicles, enter only buildings protected by security guards and passcodes, spend time only with others of their class, surrounded by security. <br /><br />Why all this emphasis on security? Why does the United States have 11 battle groups of thousands of warships, costing billions upon billions, army expenditures in the trillions, equal to the next ten largest armies combined? Why does that same country insist on having 3000 tanks and 6 billion rounds of ammunition, and much more, for their homeland security apparatus within their own country? Why do the rich in the developed countries all live in gated communities, and co-opt their governments into making the entire country a gated community for them? <br /><br />They are afraid to lose what they have, afraid of the predators. And even the poorest, the street people, have a well founded fear of predators, seeking to rob them at knife point at night as they sleep on a subway grate in the cold and snow of winter. <br /><br />It is all about fear, this desperate search for security. And there is no such thing as personal or even collective security. A life destroying disaster can happen to any, any time. The elder son in the prodigal son story discovered his self regard, his personal security, shattered when the father celebrated the younger in spite of his profligate behaviour. The younger son will wake the morning after the feast and know the insecurity of understanding he must leave home again sometime, to an unknown future. <br /><br />The only security we will ever know comes from within. Learning not to doubt, learning not to fear, learning to trust and be open always to all the possibilities for joy, moment by moment, in being alive.<br /><br />Donato Cianci Feb. 25 2014Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-25967255978324051752014-02-22T07:59:00.000-08:002014-02-22T07:59:34.222-08:00an example of being blind to the real problem.Public or Private Medical Care, an example of being blind to the real problem.<br /><br />Thoughts when I was asked to comment on an initiative by the Ontario Health Coalition, an organization that seems devoted to the status quo, ensuring that nothing important will ever be done for the first time.<br /><br />(Roy Brady, Peterborough __High Priority Campaign to Stop the Dismantling of Our Local Hospitals and the Contracting-Out of Hospital Care to Private Clinics)<br /><br />Why should we waste energy debating this or that minor fix, public vs private clinics, etc. when the system is fundamentally broken? <br /><br />What Brady seems to be saying is that the people who can afford to pay for medical care that lets them jump the queue will be getting substandard care. What they will get by getting their surgery early rather than late is perhaps a better chance to to stay healthy longer than those who have to wait in line for the the public system, while their illness perhaps gets worse. Why should we care what happens to those who choose private over public? They have as good information as any of us on what they will get and what risks they will run getting it.<br /><br /> What’s wrong with the medical profession and system everywhere is that it reacts, and does only palliative care, and makes huge profits for the big Pharm. companies, but still has a stat showing that 70% of health care costs go into chronic (that is incurable ) disease caused mainly by people’s addictive self indulgent life styles. <br /><br />Feet (insufficient exercise), forks (poor nutrition) and fingers (smoking), are the indicators of the health crisis we are all in. And it looks like the system will crash from lack of sufficient money or positive results, before the medical profession will wake up to the fact that this is a mental health system crisis ( fixable only by understanding the human neurological system through quantum mechanics ( waves not particles, interacting fields of energy) rather staying with the out of date paradigm of particle physics and chemistry based on Newtonian 18th Century mechanics. <br /><br />The science used in the medical system is getting close to 100 years out of date. And humans’ inability to control their addictions to consumption and to lives of sloth and ease, shows no signs of weakening either. <br /><br />Plus we seem, collectively, unable to define the real problems. Too much traffic? Build more roads, so we can sell more cars create more havoc in the environment. The real problem? Too many roads. Eliminate 50% of all roads, force people to live closer together, work closer to home, shop closer to home, and so on...<br /><br />Education costs too much and has poor outcomes? Stick with the out of date model of huge daily warehouses for students spending most of their time bored into stupor listening to stand up teachers who spend 80% of their time lecturing or marking, and practically no time interacting with students, and argue about how to afford smaller class sizes. Why do we not insist on changing the model entirely, to one where students use the internet resources for learning material, and teachers spend 80% or more of their time facilitating homework for individual students who need some one-on-one? <br /><br />Too much warfare or threat of it? Spend billions on surveillance of every communication, and on weapons and weapons trainings that are 30 years out of date by the time they are delivered. What’s the real problem here? We don’t trust each other. So work on building trust rather than building jails, walls and armaments, that only decrease trust, making the problem worse. <br /><br />Donato Cianci Peterborough OntarioJulio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5009749375249989094.post-6267913374211506182014-01-10T17:18:00.002-08:002014-01-10T17:18:31.293-08:00A Short History of Human FoodA Short History of Human Food<br /><br /><i>We are doing our children no favors, we are in fact failing in our duty as parents, to raise them to live the addictive, waste and pollutant generating lifestyles we were raised to want. The culture generated and fostered by our parents is obsolete. We must not pass it on to our children.<br /><br />But we likely will. Throughout history, humans have never shown a capacity to change bad habits in time to avoid destroying their habitat. Now, to destruction of our external habitat, we are are adding destruction of our internal habitat, our bodies, in which our immune systems and our souls, must reside, or die.</i><br /><br />As I understand from my own eating history and researches into same, it goes like this. For about 1 million or so years of human history, evolution adapted us to eat a wide variety of seeds, nuts, berries, root vegetables plus some meat, fish, eggs, all wild and gathered quite often on the move. There was not likely a lot of animal products in the food, but some. Certainly there were no products of domesticated animals, meat or dairy or eggs. Whatever we ingested was at times contaminated with bacteria or poisons from whatever source. But there were not many sources of pollution in that non-industrialized wilderness, and the plants and animals were all adapted with immune systems sufficient to deal with much of whatever there were. <br /><br />Current research ( nutritionfacts.org and a host of other sites) shows there are factors in all animal products, whether meat, fish, eggs, dairy, cheese, that induce inflammation in the body, then support the growth of cancer cells (normal cells that become rogues and start growing uncontrollably) which preferably form at inflammation sites, then support the spread of these rogue cells to other places in the body. Factors in animal products also appear to damage the body’s immune systems, particularly, the necessary conversion of vitamin D to an active form that plays a large and vital role in much of our immune function. <br /><br />In the distant past, our bodies were adapted, like all plants and animals, to deal with most inflammation caused by ingestion of damaging substances. So our bodies fairly capably dealt with the inflammation caused by animal products, and this let us live long enough to procreate and raise children to the age of 10 or 12 when they were all sufficiently skilled in the indigenous arts of survival and could set about living without parents if need be. <br /><br />The good news is that plant based foods have many factors that actually boos the bodies immune systems, repair damaged cells, and kill off damaged cells before they can start the inflammation process. In addition, we can get all the vitamins, and minerals, and energy and proteins we need from plant based foods. The standard food diet proclaimed by Health Canada, in spite of the fact that it contains deleterious meat and dairy products, also contains enough protein and energy from the recommended plants, so that, in effect, the meat and dairy it recommends is unnecessary. (Except for vitamin B12, for which we need to take a supplement, if not eating meat). And nobody gets excessively fat eating plants.<br /><br />Today though 300 years of rapid scientific and engineering advances in manufacturing and dispersing pollutants, has caused carcinogenic (meaning causing deadly cell breaking) inflammation and excessive damage to our immune systems. This is exacerbated by our habits. We don’t get enough Vitamin D from sunlight in the way our early ancestors did. We eat huge quantities of meat products manufactured by animals who have been concentrating in their flesh the environmental pollutants, dioxins, pcbs, radioactive tritium and so on which our engineering and factory farming has put into their food, the products of the soil, the air, the water, we and they ingest. <br /><br />We raise, slaughter, and process these animals in ways that create enormous bacteria and hormone loads in their flesh, which wind up on our plates, and are a chief source of inflammation in our bodies. Note that bacteria are killed by cooking, but the deadly products of these bacteria, so called endotoxins are NOT killed by temperatures less than 800 degrees F. <br /><br />All the diseases we fear, many of which are now in an epidemic stage, are incited by our meat and dairy food addictions. A partial list is heat disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis. Add to all this, the well-known deleterious effects of stress in our home and work places, again stresses that were simply not present hundreds of years ago, damaging further our immune systems ability to deal with the harmful substances we routinely ingest. <br /><br />The worst things we do ourselves are to live without sufficient exercise, with too much mental and emotional stress (too much flight or flight arousal, even when crossing the street) and our addictions to and excessive consumption of many forms of pollution saturated meat and dairy products, made worse in their effect by our failure to eat lots of fruit, nuts, berries, seeds, and vegetables as immune system boosters.<br /><br /><br />We are threatened by the likelihood of global pandemics caused by superbugs, bacteria which are and now and will be even more in future immune to all our scientifically derived drugs. These bacteria have been generated by farmers who feed their cattle and chickens on antibiotics, so those animals can survive the onslaught of our scientifically engineered environmental pollutants long enough to make it to the slaughterhouse upright.<br /><br />We could solve our massive global warming problem, eliminate most of our ballooning health care costs, and our fear of being overwhelmed by global superbug pandemics, by taking the eating of cows and their products, and driving cars, right out of our lives. <br /><br />We are doing our children no favors, we are in fact failing in our duty as parents, to raise them to live the addictive, waste and pollutant generating lifestyles we were raised to want. The culture generated and fostered by our parents is obsolete. We must not pass it on to our children.<br /><br />But we likely will. Throughout history, humans have never shown a capacity to change bad habits in time to avoid destroying their habitat. Now, to destruction of our external habitat, we are are adding destruction of our internal habitat, our bodies, in which our immune systems and our souls, must reside, or die. <br /><br /><i>As the Greek god Hermes, messenger from the Underworld, so presciently said, “As inside, so outside. As outside, so inside.” Look around your big city’s downtown streets. The clutter, the waste, the mess, the utter unsustainability of it all. What you see is replicated inside your body and its mind. What you see is what you, your culture, has made of what’s inside.</i><br />Donato Cianci Jan. 10 2014Julio Donato Ciancihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00301764740957338879noreply@blogger.com0