Sunday, December 2, 2012

The One Season

The One Season

Simply put
The season reminds me
Of God made flesh
My flesh
And yours
I am responsible for
All of it
Saying Yes to all
For saying No to any
Would divide me
And that
Cannot happen to one
Who is one
No resistance
Embracing all
With arms
Flung wide to the Universe
A rush into the stars
A final flame out
At the edge or
By that Christmas tree
Here amidst
Laughter and delight
Of the children
We have become again
And yet again

Dec. 1 2012

Friday, November 2, 2012

Heretical Thoughts

Heretical Thoughts

The culture of science has to change

When has science ever done anything except give matches to babies, so they could burn the the house down? Or rather, when have we or scientists ever used our free will to limit our use of free will so as to use our scientific discoveries only for beneficial ends?

Our use of science has led us into a territory of massive human and domestic animal population increase, massive consumption and waste, and life-destroying climate change. If I am canoeing a river, I scout the rapids I encounter, to ensure they are passable. If I see they are not, I portage around. We have canoed the river of science without first scouting its rapids.

The earth is in transition

And so are we. Our culture has to adapt, or we and it will die together.

What we must do is focus on our soul work, rather than our utilitarian head and body work. If it’s not enhancing our soul, don’t do it.

We must seek knowledge for its own sake, not for purely utilitarian ends. Observe the butterfly in all the phases of her life, for her beauty, for the merging of her soul with ours, not cutting her up to find a chemical we could sell for a profit.

Our culture must change to focus on frugality and stewardship of all around rather than consumption, as a measure of status and feelings of self worth. Combine this with the moral imperative that our soul work be our main work in life, and recognize we are one with the Planet, a product of and engaged in, her creative effort.

As members of Planet Earth, a member of the Universe, we are with her engaged in creativity, nothing more, nothing less. As the members of our body trust the whole, and their part in the whole, so we can trust the Planet, and our part in her endeavors.

Time is a concept, not a reality.
Time does not exist, what exists and is constant is newness, creativity.

Cause is a concept, not a reality.
Everything is in constant flux and flow. It is artificial and often not helpful, to isolate parts of it and say, this is what happened and what it caused. If you want a rope to be useful, you have to use it entire, not cut it up into parts, trying to use each separately. Always see the whole first, before examining what you call the parts.

Treat everything living and non-living, as holy. Treat everything living and non-living with heart.

As members of the Universe, we are moral beings. As we trust the part we play in the unfolding Universe, we can trust our own morality.

Think of the effect on the children, of every decision you make.

Donato Nov. 2 2012

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Define ouselves by whom we are not?

 This is my reply to
  http://chronicle.com/article/Why-I-Resigned-the-Paterno/134944/

(Michael Bérubé has just become the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Pennsylvania State University, where he is also director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities. He is president of the Modern Language Association.)


My stuff follows:

Too often, humans in groups under stress, define themselves, not by what they are, or do, or wish for, but by whom they are not. And so, when their self-image breaks, they seek a scapegoat, some One, to blame. Yet seldom, in large scale misfortunes, does an impartial investigation find a single individual at fault. Always or nearly always, the fault is complex, multi-formed, an unfortunate conjunction of many strands of causation, impossible to trace to a single source. The" black swan" phenomenon, the " rogue wave".

For those alumni and teachers proud of their University, maybe they'd best follow the Buddha, be non-attached. Let not your self image be dependent on any but but yourself. My school, or any group I belong to,  may indeed become a scapegoat for other's anger at their life circumstances. Especially in this media-ocene era of advertising using false news to pursue the advertiser's self interest. I refuse to be judged by someone who blames me, who am not at fault, for their idea of my group’s fault. Nor will I debate with them, unless they first discuss with me, their experience of me personally, and of my group.



other notes:

I can’t predict the most mundane outcomes of any action. And likewise I can’t assign a cause to any but the most mundane result. So in seeking to make healthy an individual, plant or person, or a group, I’d best look to the health of the environment, the ecosystem, and let the individuals care for themselves in that. Who am I  to declare that what I call illness should be eradicated, its “cause” rooted out, and destroyed? Perhaps, likely, this supposed illness is but a message of  some imbalance in the state of being of the ecosystem,  which requires co-operative remediation, not detached surgery.

We need  a new kind of  languaging in our reporting of the news of events. We need to refer to imbalances, not individual causes, not individual failures . We as humans are entering an era of the worst environmental, and media mediated lifestyle stress, we have been under since the last ice age. We will not do our best to survive, unless we find a different way of communicating and deciding action, than seeking individual causes, and blaming others for our plight.

Balance of Life

The Balance of Life

Wolf is well aware
Who are his friends
Who will help
Him feed his family
Who threatens
Their wellbeing
He knows
That first of all
It is his duty
To what he knows
To do daily
That is his best
Work and defense
Paying attention
Being aware
Using all their gifts
As they were taught
The Wolf people
Have survived 20 million
Of years
As we count them
Having eliminated the wolves
We are now threatened
By viral plagues
Borne by burgeoning numbers
Of small creatures
Once food
For those wolves

We have always been
A major source of imbalance
To other life on this planet
Who are now acting together
To restore the balance
With or without
Us

Oct. 17  2012

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Choose What You Get

Choose What You Get

If I were a thistle seed
Floating
Questing
A safe place
Good earth
To make a new
Home
I would fear landing
A patch of desert
Or a wild river
In flood
After a seldom rain
But she
Has not my fears
Just takes
What comes
Makes her best of it

Sept. 23 2012

The Manifesto of myself

The Manifesto of myself, Donato, Myeengun enaaniibwid gini waabmiigyan Standing Wolf Whoseesus

After years of thinking and writing poetry and other forms of screed about the problems of being a rational human person in a culture where rational thought and action is almost non-existent, I am now approaching a few notions by which I wish to live my life, (what is left of it), and live in hope of finding other like-minded people to enjoy what we've got, while awaiting the inevitable collapse.

Some basic definitions.

I need adequate food , shelter, clothing, and companionship, including the space for being heard, for hearing, and for some shared intimacy.

My habitat forms the container for all I need.

In my daily preoccupation I maintain  my container , my habitat, and find my bliss in it.

I no longer subscribe to beliefs. I make statements, definitions and declarations about my perceptions of my world and the ecoculture I inhabit. Anything that sounds to you like a belief I hold, must be just my clumsy wording.

I enjoy playing with my thoughts and ideas and experiences, and those communications from others. I say none of it has any ultimate meaning, except what I give it, or borrow from others. I say there is no "hitching post" in the universe, and I'm not willing to listen to any arguments that there is.

What follows are my thoughts on the components of an ecoculture in which I'd like to find myself living.

About health.

My health proceeds from mental, emotional, physical and spiritual imperatives.

I strive for two states of being only. By myself alone, in Meditation. With others, in the world, in Loving.

Mental: the calm and scope of the Mystic. { like Osho, and Jesus the man). The rule of first rationality, and above that, intuition.

Emotional: Expressing all the emotions, according to, aligning with, my needs and truth of the moment.

Physical: Riding my bike everywhere…

Spiritual: Following the Red Road of North American Native spirituality.  Jesus was God become flesh. To me this story symbolizes there is no God outside myself. I am responsible for everything, and accountable for very little of it.  Everything is holy, when I remember that, everything.

About food.

Food is Medicine. Grow my own to the extent possible. Be Vegan. Eat nothing that ever had a face on it.

About ownership.

Morals of ownership for profit and wealth accumulation vs service.

It is immoral to pay less than a living wage to employees. Whoever does that is not fit to be an owner. The business is not fit to exist, if it can't support its employees.

It is immoral to charge more rent than the renter can afford to pay. Whoever does that should not be in the renting business.

Bottom line:  We approach ownership as if the welfare and rights of the owner were all that matters. Whereas, the right to own something must be preceded by that things right to exist, and the right for a building to exist, or a business to exist, is no different than the "right" of any living or non-living thing to exist. Its "right to exist" is only a form of words. "Rights" aren't applicable. What applies is whether the thing in question is acceptable in the web of life; its existence contingent on its ability to be afforded by those who create or use it. If people can't afford to live there, then the building doesn't have a "right" to exist. If the business can't afford to pay employees a living wage, then the business has no "right" to exist. 

The capitalist law of value says that profit making for wealth accumulation is the sole necessary and sufficient condition for ownership. Instead, the economic law of value should put habitat sustainability and service to all of life as the preconditions for the right to exercise hegemonic stewardship over land and business property. In other words, everything in our habitat should be regarded as "commons" and the only ownership rights should be those of exercising hegemonic control through stewardship activities.

About stewardship:

What I am thinking is the grass and the wolves don't have an automatic right to exist and accumulate whatever they need for their welfare. Their activities and their proliferation are controlled by the needs of other life forms in their habitat, as well as the needs of the habitat itself (weather, volcanic activity, etc.). I have been used to calling their methods "competition for resources". But now I see that's a human word. It's not a word they recognize. I think they would more likely use words like "adjustment" or "compromise" . Even to the trading of one life form for another (if that is what is needed for the on-going welfare of the whole). I am certain that humans can be no different.

If we continue to deny this, and assert human rights for consumption of planetary resources as superseding the rights of all other life forms, then we will be extinguished. We all know at some level the process is well underway. What I am saying is that, recognizing the inevitable decline we face, I must banish the words "right to ownership" altogether from my vocabulary, and substitute instead the words "right to stewardship".

I want to live in culture that recognizes that everything that exists has a life and has both a right and an obligation to take part in the continual adjustments of all members necessary for the sustainability of the whole. I want we humans to change our moral attitude to recognize that this is what is happening, and our survival as a species depends on our ability to recognize and adjust to that fact.

As but one example, our large factories have come to have an independent life of their own. They grow, and coerce their employees and their management (so-called) into causing their further expansion. And they grow without regard to the necessary adjustments and compromises with other life if they are to continue to exist. The only reason they get away with this is that their human employees and so-called owners are in thrall to them and their outputs, and so do not insist they exercise responsible stewardship over the rights of their habitat.

You think it's too far-fetched to say a building has a life and therefore has rights and obligations, as it takes part in the "web of life" on earth? Well,  If I assist in bringing a child into the world, I am in no doubt I have brought forth a living creature which has rights and obligations, and that my act has consequences to me as well as to all other life and non-life in the habitat. The same is a true if I take part in erecting a building, or taking part in any other enterprise that alters or adds to the habitat in any way.

Another bottom line. I see that the governance system humans globally have adopted, based on the rule of the capitalist laws of value, cannot sustain itself, is evidently crumbling, as the global economic system based on the US dollar collapses. I'm sure the end of cheap oil and the collapse of food, water and air resources from global warming will extinguish whatever is left of it. We don't have to do anything about it. We can't prevent it, nor hasten it. I hope that out of the chaos a new human culture will arise. But I greatly fear the onset of severe widespread destruction and misery that will accompany our journey henceforth.

About existence.

The only time I exist is right now, the past gone, the future not here. And right now is infinitesimally small, no time, in fact. So I don't exist anywhere in time. What I do is create experiences. What i have been used to calling "time", is really "creation", the bringing forth, on this instant, of the new. So I am a creator, a hologram of creation, and I exist in creation, not in time.

Meaning:

To say something has meaning is to say it is part of some so-called "higher" more inclusive structure. But everything is part of the whole, a member of the whole. The whole, since it is "all there is", is undefined, has no meaning. So nothing has any meaning except that which I say it has, which is just my words. Words have consequences, but not meanings. Consequences are momentary paths which appear to me to be present  in the chaos but which disappear.

Cause and effect:

A cause may appear to me to be the precursor of a consequence. But everything depends on everything else. And consequences are momentary paths which appear to me to be present  in the chaos but which disappear. I better withhold judgements, try some other method of communicating or deciding.

Worry:

Make everything be an experiment. Nothing to worry about. Just assess the outcome, and move on.

If you want to be happy
And live a good life
Make everything an experiment
And live without strife.

Donato Cianci Oct. 1 2012


Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Don't Take it Personally

Don't Take it Personally Unless You Want To

Please note that whatever I say here is just Donato talking to himself...use it freely, take it personally,  if you wish. Otherwise trash it..

Right Living in the Age of Uncertainty

Right Living in the Age of Uncertainty

1. Do not feel guilty about being uncertain. Do not be impatient, too swift in trying to get back into control.

2. I don’t know what’s right for my children to do with their lives, or how they should live, but...

3. I can invite them to participate in basic life rituals that give them the grounding to use their own healthy intuitions to make their own decisions and be accountable to themselves for the outcomes.
The Rituals

Rite of passage: birth and first foods and first relationships
                          safe exploration of the world born into
Rite of passage:  to adulthood, First bleeding for women, Manhood ceremony for men
Union for the sake of children and of their future (members of a creative universe, we         
                     cannot escape our duty to take part)
Learning and practicing survival skills: gardening (as an extension of our body as garden, not mechanism), communicating, making, doing
Creating our individual Death Song
Rite of passage: Celebration of Death



Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Farmers and Banksters

Farmers and Banksters

Food security threatened

Owners of megafarms, shareholders far from the actual farms, don’t know, or if they do, don’t care, that their products and methods of farming are destroying the nutrient value of the soils, destroying the soil itself at rates much faster than it is being replaced. Modern genetically modified seed grains, are eliminating multi-varieties of ancient grains, replacing them (often by government and corporate free trade agreements forcing small farmers off their land) with monocultures which are susceptible to epidemic disease and may even be poisonous (wheat allergies are common now, likely because the wheat we eat is not is not the same as that our grandparents ate).

Increasing populations and global warming, and excessive water consumption to grow meat protein instead of plant protein, are rapidly depleting planetary supplies of fresh water, and there is no apparent solution to this.

The use of pesticides and herbicides and genetic modifications to seed grains needed to make large scale mechanical farming  “successful” or in the short term, “profitable”, are destroying insects and other life, particularly, honey bees, and soil microorganisms, on which most food plants depend for pollination, and therefore, for their usefulness as food for us.

People die quickly without access to food and water. Local wars and riots involving millions will flare over this.

Security of community and culture threatened

The banksters and all those in the “ financial world” have demonstrated they don’t understand how their products affect the global economic culture, and the risks to that culture, and the risks to local cultures which it has supplanted. Everywhere in the world governments and banksters  (mega-merchants) have combined to encourage people to put their present and old age security in the hands of an illusionary fiat money economic system which is now on the verge of total collapse and not one of those responsible has the least clue how to replace it, or what would work.

People become apathetic or violent when their culture collapses. When the world wide “American Hollywood Dream” culture collapses, the worst of human addictions to consumption will manifest in severe withdrawal symptoms, local predatory warfare, widespread epidemic disease and psychological depression.

Final Note

Humans finally left the Garden of Eden when we invented thinking and science as “manipulation of nature” not “wisdom” (thanks to that old witch burner, Francis Bacon) and used it to develop factory scale farming and global transportation based on cheap petroleum energy. (Cheap only because the dire and horrendously expensive environmental costs have never been counted).

Our mantra should be the living moral attitude of “conservation and reduced per person consumption”, not  the pursuit of mechanical “efficiency and effectiveness” . Our bodies are gardens , not mechanisms. We live in a world of gardens, not of mechanisms. Our every decision should take into account, should spiritually respect, the differing points of view of everything, all of life, and non-life.

Donato Aug. 14  2012  (from May 14 2012 journal)







Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Contrary to Popular Opinion

Contrary to Popular Opinion...Our  machines are alive

We have sold ourselves into bondage to robots. We have invented robots that now control us, force us to do their bidding, service them, maintain them, grow new ones.

These are the apparatus of our  society. All the apparatus, roads, factories, mines, transport systems, energy systems, fields of farmed houses, factory agriculture, schools and institutions. All are born of our engineering release of petroleum from its bondage and its destruction in the conversion of earth’s resources to the robot structure we now cannot live without, and must foster or die.

From inanimate wheels and ploughs, human history has progressed to live tools that we now spend nearly all our time and human energy servicing. We care not, we dare not care, they are destroying the habitat for all life as they proliferate, making the world in their image, a dead planet.  Like Mars, named after the God of War, the God of the edge between forest and field, between “pagan” and "civilised",  between accepting life as a gift, from one living so that another may live, to taking life by killing, with no gratitude nor even thought, for the sacrifice.

The progress to destruction has been swift. From the invention of the wheel, to roads, to agriculture, midwived by the engineering genius of Archimedes and the Greek aberration of belief that Mystery can be exposed and explained by reason. Humans have abdicated decisions about how to live and die to their machinery, which knows nor cares anything for Mystery, and so has made the suicidal challenge to the Creator, that the dead can be brought to life. Aesclepius, greatest of the Greek physicians did this, and was burnt to a crisp by Zeus for his presumption, as indeed our robots and ourselves are about to be...

Yes it is true that without us our machinery would wear out, disintegrate. But so too would we, if the bacteria in our bodies were to disappear. So how are we more “alive”, than this our machinery we must support, or die?

Thursday, May 31, 2012

What should I do now?

Standing Wolf whoseesus

Yet we can learn from Wolf
There is still time
To get life from awareness
Joy from singing
Have done with roads
Walk only on trails
Be only in communion
Seldom talking

Admired proud Teacher
Totem of nomadic humans
Wolf had lived
A blameless family life
For 19 million years before us
Playing with the children
Surviving bitter Winter  ice ages
Summer heat then
Unrelenting persecution genocides
From the agricultural science clans
Who have brought all life
On the Planet
To the point of extinction
In merely 200 years or so
Of petroleum fueled destruction
We do not extend our notions of democracy
To other life
Where we build roads
We destroy habitat
And we build roads
Everywhere land sea and air
In compulsive addiction
To traveling
Without conversation
With the land or its inhabitants
We chatter only with each other
In compulsive addiction
To talking instead of observing
Instead of witnessing
Instead of communing

When Wolf travels
She merges with the Land
Flows with it
Silently
Alert
Aware
As Salmon in River
We whether travelling
Or sitting
Close out habitat
Live in a dead cocoon
Sheltered from Weather
Where we look
We see only
What our tools
Have constructed
Transitory images laid
On mountains of waste
Pouring from the jaws
Of our waste-making machines
Talking walking riding
We ignore our surroundings

Yet we can learn from Wolf
There is still time
To get life from awareness
Joy from singing
Have done with roads
Walk only on trails
Be only in communion
Seldom talking

Donato May 29  12




Wednesday, May 9, 2012

What would I give up for the promise of peace?

What would I give up for the promise of peace?

Peace, the end to war on the other life on the planet, as well as among humans…

The Red Road of NA Native Spirituality has many answers to the existential problems of survival in our time. So has the the wisdom of Gandhi, non-violence- the turning of the other cheek, permitting the enemy to see your suffering and so be shamed into peaceful co-existence.

But we each have our own idea of how to achieve peace. Some have proposed a prescription, gained a following. A group led by a wise teacher will not easily accept the teachings of another, even if it’s about co-existence, about peace. The leader is reluctant to become the led, the followers feel insecure without their own leader at the head. In the West we believe our own gurus of science and psychology are preeminent. Especially if they speak our language. Language is a potent barrier to accepting another’s wisdom as one’s own.

These differing groups professing peaceful intentions are nonetheless powerful in their fearful attacks on any who desert them. I know a young man, a First Nations aboriginal Canadian, imprisoned for many years, who first joined the Native Brotherhood in his prison, drummed and attended Sharing Circles, and Sweat Lodge ceremonies with them. Later, he heard about the Muslim Brotherhood there from a man he liked. Decided to join them in their teaching circles and daily prayer rituals. His First Nations friends were angry with him, threatened him for deserting them. Nevertheless he persisted, and achieved a measure of peace and calm in his daily life that he had not experienced before.

Later, he decided to return to the native Brotherhood and their spiritual practice. They welcomed him. But now the Muslim friends deserted him, became angry, threatened him. Being threatened by any group in Canada’s prisons is a dangerous situation... On top of that, his behaviour, switching to a Muslim organization, even for a short time, made him an object of of suspicion to the Prison Administration. His parole hearings often turned on questions of why he had done that, why would he ally himself with a known violent organization? His protests that the way of the Muslims was a peaceful way, that he had sought and found a peaceful route to go, were met with polite disbelief...

Could it be that we might achieve peace by the wholesale adoption of the other's creed, and thus, flooding them with love? Flooding them with the display of our willing sacrifice of our ideals, diluting their prescriptions for daily life with the addition of our own, even if somewhat modified?

Regardless, what I have learned from my friend’s experience in Canadian Prisons, is that to hold fast to one’s own choices, and to make them for one’s own reasons, not others, is the only way for me. Respecting each other’s choices, is the only sure Path to inner peace, which is the only real peace there is.

Donato Cianci May 9 2012

http://www.donatopoetry.com


Sunday, May 6, 2012

Mechanics of Human Behaviour


The Mechanics of Human Behaviour

Note there is another part not described here, the part we call spirit. Spirit is an unquenchable flame from the “Unseen Shaper” that empowers every act of creation in our Universe. Spirit is malleable, formless, pure energy,  a rush of joy,  a heart-stopping clutch of destructive violence. The difference in the human frame is the difference between fire and wood. What follows is my description of the wood. Spirit, the Unseen Shaper behind the candle flame,  I will attempt in another essay.

What does it mean to be hard-wired, to perhaps harbour a suicide gene?
What have the Bees and the Flies got to say to us?  (read on)

Weasel s Habits

Weasel in henhouse kills
And kills without limit
Far more than he needs
Not thinking of his children
He is controlled by his habits
Only other nature will control him
We too are creatures of habit
We strive always to find the Promised Land
When we get there
We kill and and consume
Without limit
Not thinking of our children
Nor of
What other nature will control us

Nothing is more important
To us as adult humans

Than learning to control our habits
Making a habit
Of daily rituals daily prayers over food
And our future

A habit of learning
And controlling
Our habits

Feb. 13 2012,

Science and our tough new world

It should by now be clear what our science tells us, that our science has not allowed us to escape nature’s controls over even the most dominant species of the global ecosystem.

Until recently, all our science has done for us is to permit us to do more, greatly more, than ever we did when we had to rely on our personal strength and tribal culture for survival. The things we do haven’t changed, we just do more of them, with greatly more people and per capita energy consumption, involved. Then we could travel, now we travel further, faster. Then we could get food, and clothes and heat to survive winter. Now, more people can do the same, with much less effort. And so on.

However, our recently developed telecommunications and our elucidation of the mechanics of the brain, allied to the scientific method of applying controlled experiments and evidence based research, to social behaviour, have opened the possibility of fashioning a new way of living. Not too soon, for our science of more is better has drastically altered the world we live in. We have altered forever our Planet and it’s climate and resources, and the life habitats that will support. Only our new sciences can save us, and there is very little evidence that 7 billion people can develop the motivation and the knowledge to change their habits before it is too late, before the changes are so great our DNA cannot survive them.

It’s possible a new world religion could bring the necessary changes soon enough too, but I’m certain we cannot rely on that, or that life would be worthwhile if we had to live it according to religiously prescribed rules. And who would be the Rulers?

No, I don’t want to write the rules, but I would like to find them. And that’s what I’m aiming to do with this thinking and writing, find the Grail, the cup of self-knowledge from which we may drink, and so be certain then to live wisely and well...

Left/Right. Conservative/Liberal. Hard-wired habits

Since ancient Greeks and maybe before, the pattern of human thinking ( in the Western World, derived from them) has been bipolar, this or that, either/or, wrong/right, good/bad, conservative/liberal, etc. Neurological science has identified the basic structure in the brain, left brain, right brain, that seems to channel this pattern into our daily life choices. Now we read they have identified brain structures that produce humans hard-wired to fall into one of the two camps,

the conservative, being rigid, controlling, organized, reliant on rules, oriented to the past, avoiding the new and unexplored,  a place for everything and everything in its place;

 or the liberal, open, free flowing, disorganized, avoiding rules, oriented to the future, embracing the new, exploring.

Each has its useful place, each has advantages and disadvantages. Used inappropriately, either can lead to poor outcomes, failures. Used appropriately, suited to the situation, each would produce successful outcomes.

The point to note though, is that these behaviours are hard-wired into the brain. Conservatives don’t choose to be that way, they just are, likely from birth, or close to it. And similarly, Liberals don’t choose their attitudes, their habitual way of perceiving and choosing in the world, they just are that way, and always have been since early in their lives, if not born that way. Each group is hard-wired in their neurological structure to follow either the conservative, or the liberal, choice and perception patterns.

People see the world, and react to it, from their inbuilt half of the general bi-polar pattern. Each of us has a built-in tendency to be either left or right, either liberal or conservative,( in Meyers-Briggs, Jungian, terms, P-erceptive or J-udgemental) and some will be more extreme than others in their habits and perceptions. 

The evolution of our habit patterns,

Genetic scientists tell us our DNA has evolved from that of the simplest organs 3 billion or more years ago, to to the manifold complexity we possess, or which posses us, today. all the result of small changes over time,  by adding one alteration at time, one new trait of behaviour or capability at a time, over thousands of millennia, billions of generations, until now.

So, a simple way to understand the conservatives and liberals,is to examine the differing behaviour of the bees and the flies. Our decision making capacity, or, lack of flexibility, may well be built on some of the same DNA strings they first invented many thousands of years ago.

A simple experiment shows the difference between them. Catch a bee in a large mouth bottle. Place the bottom of the bottle against a glass window so the bee inside can see the outdoors, but can’t get to it. Then, take the top off the open end of the bottom, so the bee could, in theory, just fly out that way into the room. But it doesn’t! It just buzzes and buzzes against the glass wall, striving to go where he can see to go. He won’t try anything new. He is programmed to fly according to directions between the hive and the flowers, and he’ll do that and nothing but that, until he dies. Typical extreme conservative behaviour.

Now try the same experiment with a fly. The fly just drifts aimlessly around, exploring inside the bottle, until he discovers the open end and just “flys” out! Typical extreme liberal behaviour...

Both species of insect are successful, adapted to their habitat. But it’s difficult to imagine how they could ever work successfully together. The fly is a loner, a garbage collector, a dumpster diver, master of his own fate.  The bee is a hard working community member following religiously the rules of his tribe and his Queen.

I won’t carry this analogy any further, neither of these creatures have developed the genes for altruism and compassion that we have, though they both have ways to ensure the birth and survival of children.

People can and do care for other life, besides their own. People can change their habits, by thinking their way out of those that do not serve them well. People can form attachments to”higher powers” that may or may not help them to make better decisions than they would on their own.

Have our genetically hard-wired addictions become the “suicide gene” ?

And people have major addictions, habitual behaviours, formed perhaps before birth, more likely soon after by the conditions they are raised in, and so hard-wired into their neurology. A particular set of these addictions seem endemic in all humans, and seem to be pointing in only one direction, to the extinction of human DNA, like what has happened to maybe 95% of all species. Our addictions to consumption have led us to create conditions in our habitat which we are not likely to survive. The way bacteria in a petri dish will eat and procreate, until all the food is gone, and then they will all die out.

Where and when did it start,  the use of our genetic powers of reason, the communication through language of what we have learned to do, so as to invent tools for agriculture and warfare, of roads and wheels to travel them, of one person able to grow food for ten, and later, for fifty, the conversion of oil to energy, such that every person in North America accesses the same energy as if 1500 people worked for him/her?  Why is it that we have not learned as a species, that we must cry “Hold! Enough! ?

Tracing the roots doesn’t matter now. What matters is that this kind of profligate expenditure of energy on making people, ever more people, and enabling their prodigious consumption of earth resources, is coming to an end. Right now, for every ton of things made that are kept for a useful or decorative purpose, 24 tons of waste are also made. Every lb. of what’s called wealth, represents 24 lbs. of waste. The rich and powerful are distinguished chiefly by the fact they can waste far more of earth resources than other people. We ought not to call them the “Wealthy”, we ought to name them the “Wasters”.

What of the long history of mighty Kings, Warriors, explorers, poets, singers, artists, writers, scientists, mathematicians, musicians, physicians, priests, have they not influenced human life for the better? All their output, no matter how glorious in the short term, to me seems futile in the face of the ongoing ever-increasing destruction to the habitat and lives of other life species, and finally, the strangulation and end of the human in his/her own excrement.

The Prescription

We must study our destructive addictive habits. We must get to know them as well as we know our own face. We must resolve to rule them, make our virtue out of being extremely frugal in our consumption of everything. We must make all our decisions thinking of what they will mean to the wolves, the rabbits, the grasses, the trees, and our children. Forget dominion, and become instead stewards of all living and non-living on the planet. Recognize as my Native friends on the Red Road of North American Native Spirituality do, that mankind is fourth , the most dependent, in the hierarchy, that goes, first, Planet Earth, then the green grasses and trees, then the animals, and finally and least among all else, mankind.

Donato Cianci  May 6  2012















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

Monday, February 20, 2012

Gasoline Prices up Bike Riding up

You want to know what gas prices are going to be in the next year ot two? Here’s the math. Over the past decade or so, convention crude oil production numbers are about 6 barrels of oil for every barrel of oil  equivalent used for energy to produce them, so the net gain is 5 barrels of oil to be sold for every barrel of consumed by the oil companies. This means, at today's prices, the oil companies need to get about $500  ($100 per barrel) out of every barrel they consume in producing the oil they sell. BUT, the tar sands oil, and other expensive deep sea stuff, only net about 1.5 barrels of oil for every barrel consumed in production. So now, the oil companies, running out of conventional oil, are going to have to get $500 back from every 1.5 barrels they sell. Prices are going to be $330 per barrel instead of $100. So gasoline is going to be over 3 times as expensive in a few years... for sure...there is no science that can compensate for the increased cost of producing hard to get oil out of the ground. The best way to prepare for our future is to do a lot of bike riding, figure out how to live without a car. 

All other life, and our grandchildren, will be happy if we quit using crude oil.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Let's adopt Respect and Learning to find a goodpath forward

 I want more happening around me of Respect

 for the Red Road of Respect and for the White Way of Learning . Maybe you d like to check out more on this at my web site page http://www.donatopoetry.com/earthbound.html


Soul

Soul is not in the head
It’s in the feet, the sole
Our language knows that
Walking barefoot
Connected to Mother Earth
You are ensouled
Living in high rises
Never going barefoot on earth
Leads to our desolation
De-sole-ation

Nothing more erotic than going barefoot
Try it!!

1500 lb. of soybeans can be grown with the resources it takes to grow only 1 lb. of beef It takes 40 000 lb of water to grow one lb. of beef, only 250 lb of water to grow 1 lb of wheat.

Humans can live well on a diet of plant foods only. The diseases of the rich would disappear, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimers, osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis, cancer. Medical care costs would drop drastically, all could afford good educations, and good medical care. The competition for scarce money between the old needing medical care and the young needing education, would disappear.

Let us imagine a world and so create a world where children are taught from an early age to treat food as a sacrament, ingesting the products of the soul of the world, so as to manifest ourselves as creative beings, products of the soul of the world, giving back what we have been given.

Teaching children to grow and prepare their own food, and to eat soulfully, we teach them to connect to the earth. Connected to the earth, they stay healthy, to old ages we seldom see now, but which would become normal.

The communal spirit of growing and preparing food and of eating soulfully together, brings people into the right relationship with each other. It forms the basis for peace and resolution fo conflict and inordinate desire. It is the new sacrament.

To eat soulfully is the first and most important ritual of beginning and renewal that brings us into right relationship with others of our kind, with all living and nonliving beings of the universe.

After emerging from the Sweat Lodge of the Red Road, having re-experienced .our birth journey from the Spirit World, we feast. Our feast reminds us we are now here, in this world and must eat in order to stay. If we then feast soulfully, we keep ourselves in the right relationship with the Spirit World, and we will have no fear of returning there, when our time comes.
Love Donato
http://www.donatopoetry.com

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Apocalypse Now

I’m thinking that most of the journal and magazine articles I read, and the news reports of politicians' and think tanks’ outputs, desires and forecasts, are irrelevant. I can only relate them to imagining the Captain of the Titanic at the dinner table, blandly regaling to his special guests his stories of this great ship’s exceptional functioning, all the while as they rush towards that iceberg...... out of sight, just over the horizon, in the dark.

What’s the point now of my adding another rant against the  heedless ignorance of our times, adding to the g growing yet still feeble pile of clear eyed visions published?

It’s time to read, to write,  what i can do to prepare to live in a different land,   
under a different climate, where the basics, food, shelter, community, cannot be taken for granted, have to be built from the ground up, by us as newcomers, who do not yet know the language we must use. In the land we will all shortly occupy we will have to acquire new skills to do the work necessary . We will find few teachers, and so have to invent, or re-invent our own skills of basic survival. We will have greater reasons to fear the predators and  power-seekers among us.

How it has come to this...

Everything we have come to rely on as if of course that is what sensible people do , all the articles and faiths of our present consumerist oil based culture, all are irrelevant and will be swept away by the coming tsunami of global scarcity.

We have overpopulated the planet and are running out of the cheap oil and the readily available resources, of metals, and chemicals (think fertiliser) , and pure water and clean benevolent air, that fuelled our population growth since the 1700’s. The global economic scheme that started with the Industrial Revolution is ending. 80% of what we do, or eat, or wear, or use for medical care, is fuelled by cheap oil. Which will soon be gone. Our children will have to stay close to home, get everything they need for survival near by. Medical care will be seen as the fraud it is, based on the wrong kind of science, a mechanical science, instead of what would work, an ecological and biological science. We are members of a culture, we are not mechanisms with interchangeable, replaceable parts, and will soon have to relearn that fact, forgotten for a mere century. All the speeches and prognostications claiming what we must do to save our education systems, our medical care systems, our economic systems, our democratic organisations, are now all irrelevant. No one knows what the coming collapse will look like, or how to survive it. All we can do to prepare, is to try now to learn to live as if we had no oil, nor any food except local food, nor any medical care or education save that we could  provide ourselves.
with love from Donato

http://www.donatopoetry.com
http://www.postcarbon.org