streaming consciousness…

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  hardie karges 1:07 pm on November 6, 2015 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, capitalism ( 26 ), CHRISTIANITY ( 161 ), DEMOCRACY ( 10 )   

  The Decline of Western Civilization: RIP Amerika, Christianity, Capitalism, Democracy, etc… 

  Well, we had a good run, we did, Western Civilization, that is, as first articulated by Greece and Rome, before taken up again by London and Paris some 1000 years later, then New York, Toronto and Sydney for the final roll-out. Democracy was our method, Christianity was our mantra and capitalism was our madness. It worked spectacularly, until now, until we’ve run out of resources and ideas. Now we’re put to the test: what’s next?

  Well, it doesn’t look good for the home team; seems capitalism is something of a pyramid scheme—works fine when you’re on top, with lots of resources and free time. Now other non-Westerners can play the game as well or better than us: first Japan, now China, with India, Brazil, and Russia hot on the horizon. Where does that leave us? Well, it should leave us defining the next era, beyond capitalism, beyond consumption, beyond die-hard democracy. But it’s not.

  We’re totally unequipped for what comes next, all of us Westerners, Amerika the least, screwing up the Mideast, sowing our dreams of democracy, and leaving nothing but chaos in the wake—enough, already. We Amerikans have nothing to teach the world about politics, least of all democracy. We can barely get a budget bill through Congress to pay our debts. Now we’re destroying the environment, while still pushing the political and economic agenda of growth growth growth. We’re sick. (More …)

   

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  hardie karges 3:02 pm on October 30, 2015 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, global warming ( 16 ), push button, society ( 5 )   

  Push-button Society, al borde de un ataque de nervios… 

  That’s what we Americans are, a push-button society, coddled and cuddled, just push a button for everything, then don’t even wait for the results, just assume that the button delivers the goods as ordered, even more so now that we’re all digital, with digital demands and digital expectations, virtual commands and virtual libations, all bundled in one perfectly-priced package and displayed for consumption…

  These buttons all connect to machines, off course, machines designed to make our lives better, supposedly, but in reality divorcing us from the very source of our own being, Nature, while killing that very source, too, so to leave us with nothing, eventually, no machines and no Nature, either, victims of our own excess, and our own unreasonable expectations. Hey, at one point, there were even push-button cars, trying to get women interested, I suppose, by allowing you to shift gears by button. Remember counter-top blenders? (More …)

  hardie karges and davekingsbury are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    davekingsbury 3:20 am on October 31, 2015 Permalink | Reply

    Glad I pushed the button and read this!

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      hardie karges 6:18 am on October 31, 2015 Permalink | Reply

      me. too

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  hardie karges 1:18 pm on September 30, 2015 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, communism ( 21 ), ISIL ( 8 ), Isis ( 8 ), Islamic State ( 2 ), Stalin, USA ( 18 ), USSR ( 4 ), William James   

  Needed ASAP: Western Equivalent of ISIL, Moral Equivalent of War 

  We scratch our heads and wonder what is the big attraction with ISIL, like why would anybody in their right minds go halfway around the world to join this band of misfits and miscreants in their bid to destroy the world by creating it in their image and likeness, especially when it’s white fighters who aren’t—or weren’t—necessarily even Muslims in the first place?

  The answer is simple, of course: people are looking for something in their lives, something besides SNL and MDMA, which is about the best that the West has to offer: America, at least. Or, as Mel Gibson’s character in ‘Air America’ said: “I was fighting to defend… chicken BBQs and weinee roasts, and Ray Charles songs and drinkin’ Southern Comfort till you passed out behind the bar.”

  There you go. He said it better than I. That’s what we’re trying to cram down the rest of the world’s throat—weenies—lest they mistake unleavened (pita) bread and other Mideast specialties as the food of prophets, with the strict understanding that unless they change their ‘evil ways’, then the wrath of God will be visited upon them, many kilotons of wrath. Unfortunately for some of us, that just is not enough. Weenies are wretched food, a desecration of all that is sacred and holy, and Southern Comfort isn’t much better. (More …)

   
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  hardie karges 11:28 am on September 6, 2015 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, capitalism ( 26 ), China ( 14 ), CHRISTIANITY ( 161 )   

  The Decline of Western Civilization (Part 2: Bankers, Barkers and Religion…) 

  

  Christian God

  But first my Sunday confession, Father: I’ve been called Communist and I’ve been called Jihadi. Liberals call me a Conservative. Conservatives call me a Liberal. It’s all true. I’m a contrary son-of-a-b*tch, known to act as the devil’s avocado, barely ripe, slippery when wet, but not merely for the sake of argument, I swear, but to try to reach some higher truth, later if not sooner, and for all our sakes, not just my own. When I lived in Berkeley I WAS conservative. When I lived in Mississippi I WAS liberal. Doctrines are there to be challenged, and dogma is there to be run over by karma…

  Now we all know how stupid are the tea-party wing of America’s Republican political party, but that doesn’t mean that Democrats are all geniuses (genii?). The difference between conservatives and liberals, or republicans and democrats, which basically defines the power relationships in the world, is basically the difference between the two types of people in the world: those who save their money—or resources—and those who don’t. Please note, Republicans, that I didn’t use the word ‘lazy’ and I don’t intend to, as I don’t think that is the fundamental issue. (More …)

   
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  hardie karges 5:04 pm on August 20, 2015 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: air conditioner, America, ecology ( 2 )   

  Air Conditioned Nightmares, Eco-Green Daydreams… 

  I hate A/C and all that it stands for: the machines whirring and the air stirring, and the cool breeze blowing up my crack. Actually that part I like—sometimes. But what I hate most is the artificiality, the lie, the ultimate conceit, that we can defeat Nature, that we can override any and all obstacles, that we can ultimately prevail in our quest to enforce our will upon this planet, for the price of a barrel of oil… (More …)

   
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  hardie karges 9:20 am on August 2, 2015 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, bliss ( 4 ), Joseph Campbell ( 4 ), life ( 33 )   

  Which is More Important in Life: Meaning or Experience? Living for the Present, or the Future… 

  ‘‘Living in the Moment’ is the big mantra of our modern age—and it shows. Almost nothing is being left for the future, certainly not responsibility and sustainability. With all due respect to those visionaries of bygone times who honestly felt that we needed to loosen our butt-screws and learn to boogie, fretting our guitars rather than fretting over the future, I respectfully suggest that maybe that train of thought long ago left the station, and maybe needs to backtrack a bit…

  I’d respect my hero Joseph Campbell less if he hadn’t himself backtracked on his own famous dictum to “follow your bliss,” which he later amended off-the-cuff to “blisters”—sounds less hedonistic. Still the die is cast. We are a nation and world society that follows its whims like no other before, all the while marching off the cliff of non-sustainability, the capitalist foundations of this society heavily based on oil and other fossil fuels that will one day run out, and destroy the planet, long before its people will give it up, most likely…

  To put it bluntly, we’re committing societal suicide, or let’s call it “civilicide”. And that’s the global level. On a personal level we’re doing no better, sacrificing all for the moment, rather than plan for a future that may or may not come. Sounds like self-defeating prophecy to me. I think I realized this while myself writing an article for inclusion in a book about ‘following your passion.” But most of my friends—artists, musicians, writers and such—don’t need to follow their passions. They need jobs!  I don’t need 150 more countries; I need focus!  Nevertheless, in the course of that project I came up with a concept that I like even better–highest common denominators.  More on that later…
  (More …)

  hardie karges and Kc are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Kc 11:31 am on August 2, 2015 Permalink | Reply

    speak for yourself on the sustainability thing, we’ve been working for years to be that way, it is a bit more difficult (or not) in a mean small southern town, but by god, we have food, at least within hitching distance or walking if needed. Home grown food, and finally the farmers’ are disliking chemicals. it is high time. still i dream of a farm, pigs, goats, chicken, a mule and 5 acres, plus a well, an outhouse wd be nice but it really matters not where you poop as long as you poop. the self sustainability dream is alive and well in MS, ya just gotta know some people. and Barter, barter, and more barter. peace to you Karges.

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      hardie karges 11:54 am on August 2, 2015 Permalink | Reply

      I was referring to society, yes, self-sustainability is achievable with land and seeds…

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  hardie karges 9:26 am on July 31, 2015 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, Aztec, Isis ( 8 ), military, police, WAR ( 10 )   

  Military Madness and the American Police State… 

  Do cops have to undergo background checks before they’re issued guns? Do they get any training? In what?Don’t we kill enough people overseas that people here back at home get to live and breathe and have their being? Isn’t that the deal? We’re no better than ISIS: not much, anyway. Modern American culture is a thinly-concealed death cult, murder by proxy, similar to the ‘guerras floridas’/flowery wars/Xōchiyaoyōtl of the Aztecs, in which wars were fought largely as sport, and the taking of prisoners, the better to placate major public gods, of course. When do we get to vote on this issue?

   
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  hardie karges 9:29 am on July 26, 2015 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, guns ( 4 ), ISLAM ( 67 ), terror ( 3 ), violence ( 7 )   

  American Exceptionalism, Violence, and Racism: Time for some soul-searching… 

  We Americans like to pretend that we’re better than everyone else, and that we need to teach the rest of the world how to behave themselves, but we tend to make fools of ourselves in the process, exposing our hypocrisy to the world, only to become the object of ridicule. We lecture the rest of the world on democracy, when many times our own elections barely reach ten percent of the electorate—as if voting were the only manifestation of democracy in the first place…

  Then there are all the guns, and violence, home-grown terrorism, and what-have-you, something we Americans know very well, as our country writes a new chapter daily in the American Book of the Dead. It seemed an abstract squabble over constitutional minutiae among paisanos until the terrorists all of a sudden have become ‘the enemy within’. (More …)

   
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  hardie karges 9:08 am on July 13, 2015 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, Ariana Grande, doughnut   

  Ariana, the Big and the Small… 

  We now know Ariana Grande’s true nature as a doughnut whisperer and defiler of fresh greasy fried fluff. That comes as no great shock. What we didn’t know were her feelings toward her home country America. So why do I feel new respect for her? She’s telling the truth, un-scripted; that’s why (nice comeback, too). She’s entitled to hate her own country. Now if a foreigner had said that, it’d be different…

   
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  hardie karges 4:01 pm on June 16, 2015 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, sex ( 39 ), violence ( 7 )   

  What Sells? What’s New? Sex and Violence… 

  Remember back in the 60’s and 70’s when good citizens used to rail against sex and violence on American TV? Fast forward fifty years and the only thing that’s changed is that the TV must share turf with Internet, while the sex and violence have increased many-fold to the point that we’re inured to it. Remember when we used to rail against police brutality? Unfortunately liberalism is pretty much dead, and that’s not such a good thing…