Happy Palm Runday!
OK, today I definitely re-injured my foot, that was most likely dumb, but it will get better. I took it easy the last half mile, I only wanted to do 8:30s today, and again I was fast. I really do need to slow down. That it’s a sunny holiday, there were tons of people walking the port this morning, and I was forced to weave in and out of them and make quick cuts and turns as people stepped out in front of me. That’s probably how I injured my toe, or re-injured. Well, hopefully it will be better soon. It is getting annoying and a little depressing.
But it’s Sunday, I have a few things to clean up, some laundry to do, some food to cook. Not much to do today, and I really do need to relax. next week I get even more time, as I don’t work Thursday-Tuesday. Italy does not have an official religion, but let’s face it, this is a Catholic country. As much as it is a country, I mean the idea of “Italy” is pretty much a lie. The North came together easily enough, then they forced the Kingdom of Two Sicilies to join and robbed them. They had been robbing the South for generations as much as they could anyway.
That doesn’t mean the Kingdom of Napoli, or the Kingdom of Sicily, nor the Kingdom of Two Sicilies were perfect. The fact is, all of European history has had a competitive economy. They’ve called it different things; feudalism, capitalism, even today with the EU it is a competitive economy. They’ve traveled the world and forced a competitive economy on the rest of the world and then claimed it as it was the rest of the world’s choice. Will we reach the breaking point of competitive economies and switch to collaborative processes in enough time to halt the next great extinction event, which it seems we are part of right now?
That is what we are up against. The Holocene Extinction, and we are the cause. For those who don’t know the current period of geologic history is called the Holocene. Do we survive it? Maybe, maybe not, but the fact we’re causing it can’t bode well. More than that, why do we think this is ok, even if we do survive? Competitive economy. But it’s not ok, but after hundreds and hundreds of generations, it feels like the normal, natural thing. It’s not, it just feels that way. We are conditioned to believe it to be natural, but when you look around the world you find examples of collaborative economies as the norm, until forced into competition by colonialism. So who needs to change then? If competition is what causes the colonization, which brings the over-farming, over-fishing, over-hunting, over-killing, over-use, racism, sexism, jingoism, bigotry, caste-systems, religious antagonism which are all part of the cause of the over-arching problem (the Holocene Extinction), then clearly we have to move away from competition. We have to get back to a natural, collaborative experience. We have to listen to what science tells us on stopping the use of the things which are causing this.
There is the possibility, and prepare yourself, that we are already too late. It is possible that we have pushed things too far and have already signed our own, and most of the species on the planet’s, death warrant. Think about that, no matter what bullshit the world of humans has put on you, it’s entirely possible we’re already on a dead planet. It’s possible we are merely the last few synaptic impulses, we are the proverbial chicken running and kicking with its head already cut off. Which means all these grand works insecure peoples are building as testament to their greatness are meaningless. As the article I posted above states, it takes the Earth on the order of several million years to recover its biodiversity after a major extinction event. Even if another sentient species were to evolve, a discoverer, explorer on the order of homo sapiens, there would be nothing noteworthy from our time here for them to discover. We’re not like the dinosaurs, who had 65 million years to leave traces. We’ve been around for 200,000 years, we’ve had the ability to record our deeds for about 5,000 of those years. Think about that, 195,000 years of human history with no written record. We’ve only started the processes of domination which have brought about the conditions causing this extinct event about 500 years ago. That is when we started exploring, started dropping pigs, and chickens, and rats, and horses places where they didn’t belong. Speaking of which, you realize the horse was extinct on the American continent until the Conquistadors let some of their horses go. All wild horses in the Americas descend from horses the Conquistadors brought with them.
In 0.25% of our time on this planet we have managed to begin the next great extinction event. A species which has existed for only 0.0033% of the entire existence of the planet, has created an extinct event in just a quarter of a percent of the time they have even existed.
But then let’s look at the mechanics of what happened, I mean I just mentioned the Conquistadors, they called themselves “The Conquerors”, no shit. What were they conquering? What great enemy did they have? Folks who didn’t have half the technology, and no competitive economy? Wow. But really, what they were conquering was the very thing they were claiming they were fighting for. Follow me here: Let’s say the European settlers and conquerors of the Americans, Pacific Islands, etc., were really spreading “God’s Love”. So if God is in everything and everyone and is all, then God certainly is the Earth, as much as God is a person, or an animal, or the Sun, or anything else in nature. So if you’re “conquering” nature, are you not by default conquering God? But, as much as homo sapiens claims religiosity, the fact is that it’s always been a competition to make themselves gods. That’s always been the thing. They want to last forever, because we know we will die. Kind of ironic in man’s quest for immortality we’re going to end up wiping out any trace we ever existed. Unless of course we all change the way we are doing things, and find a way to mitigate the damage already done, and survive the Holocene Extinction. The only way we can do that, is to drop all this competitive nonsense and come together. I have news for you, the conquered people aren’t the ones who need to change, they’re not the ones that need to come on board to the competitive way, if the competitive way is the way of destruction. The European way needs to end, and the only way that happens is if Europeans and their descendants in other lands, stop trying to control everything and oppress others. That is the first step, there are more steps after that, and we are really short on time. So people need to get off their asses and start to make it happen yesterday.
Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!
Posted in Uncategorized by Gil with no comments yet.
Leave a Reply