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  • hardie karges 8:01 am on August 27, 2017 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , consumerism, , , ,   

    Buddhism 101: Going with the flow… 

    img_1935There are two kinds of people in this world. How many times have you heard that? That the world can be divided between optimist or pessimists. LA people or San Fran people. Cubs fan or a White Sox fan, chick-flicks or action movies, Beatles or the Stones (yawn), or maybe even white meat or dark (we’re talking about chicken, unless you’re new to Thailand and the locals are looking for you a GF)…

    But I’m thinking of something more substantial, that goes to the heart of personality, or lack thereof, that determines an individual’s entire approach to the world around him (or her) and underlies all human interaction, it seems to me. And that is whether an individual interacts with the environment, giving and taking, advancing and retreating, responding to changes proportionately, or whether the individual’s approach is to dominate the environment, and Nature, by acts of will and brute force, where necessary…

    I certainly have a distinct preference for the former alternative, and its kinship to Buddhism, while the latter alternative would seem to be more the typical American beat-em-up approach, ‘forcing Nature to reveal her secrets’ and harvesting the bounty therein with little thought to the future… (More …)

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  • hardie karges 5:37 am on October 2, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , consumerism,   

    Religion 102: She’s Gotta’ Have It—Christianity, that is… 

    IMG_0379…stuff, that is, the more the better, piles and piles of it highly derived and thoroughly contrived, mostly useless adornments and bows of worship to the gods and goddesses of fashion, reflecting the finely manicured thumbnail status of our culture, whatever is trending; that’s most important, much more so than whatever came before and whatever will come after, pesky details best left to historians and our paid apologists…

    Yes, apparently Jesus died on the cross so that we could go shopping, among other things. Some of my favorite ‘other things’, by way of example, are the daredevil stunts that we Westerners have become famous for. How many people risk their lives each year climbing mountains that there are no reasons to climb, or reaching speeds that there are no reason to reach, or performing stunts just for the big screen, just for the sake of celebrity?

    (More …)

     

    • jodie 10:32 pm on October 31, 2016 Permalink | Reply

      It would seem that the path you are on is as experientially biased as all religious, philosophical, or psychological endeavors ultimately are. If it suits you then ….. sit well…..

  • hardie karges 11:05 am on November 29, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: carpe diem, consumerism, , , turkey   

    Holiday Dilemma: Giving Thanks, Fielding Tanks, Gorging on Techno and Turkey 

    I don’t know about you, but I’m finding it harder and harder to get all smiley for the Holidays when people are being slaughtered in the street, sometimes by the very people we pay to protect us. And the fact that I’m white makes me feel no better about it, that theoretically I can legally ‘stand my ground’ to protect myself from the raging mobs, each one with a knife ready to stab me, a gun ready to shoot me, BUT… I don’t buy it, and I don’t want it. I’d rather walk down the street naked with a bulls-eye on my buttocks than crouch in the shadows with an Uzi and a pocket full of tissues…

    We Americans have lost our way badly, what with our hatreds and our fears and our once good manners now long gone and our bad habits apparently here to stay. There was a time not so long ago when you didn’t even have to lock your doors. I wouldn’t advise trying that now. Anger is the new normal. Fear is the order of the day, and anxiety is the glue that holds it all together…

    We Americans talk about ‘freedom’ as if it were a commodity for sale on the supermarket shelf, but is it really something so simple to define and distribute, for sale to the highest bidder? Freedom is a feeling, a good one, and without it life is wretched. Freedom is that patch of blue in the upper corner of your prison-cell wall, the hole that will never be big enough to crawl out of, but it doesn’t really matter as long as it lets light in… (More …)

     

  • hardie karges 8:10 am on April 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: consumerism,   

    CARGO CULTS 

    The cargo cults demand obedience.  The cargo cults demand sacrifice.  The gods of the cargo cult are jealous gods.  More more bigger bigger, you have to build a longer runway to attract the jet planes of the really important gods with the really important goods.  Entire populations build symbolic ports and harbors to place upon altars in their own private homes to placate the restless gods looking for devotees to reward and the ignorant to punish.  Consumerism is a jealous god, a god without face nor gender, just legal tender, no idols nor idleness.  Hard unceasing work is the ultimate sacrifice, the only thing that will placate the spirit of a God with no name, only number.  These gods drink sweat, not blood, and count their conquests in sales, not souls.  The only conversions allowed are for currency, the arbitrage of circumstance, prostitution to a higher god, complete immersion in the blood of money, the word of the book of the united states of sacrifice.  Leave if you can and don’t look back.  The whore of Babylon disobeys and receives her Lot; Saddam and Gomer and Bin and Tony share a bed of their own making, the fearsome foursome caught in the act of the sins of their fathers, sharing shallow graves in empty deserts, forbidden fruits long gone to seed and drifted elsewhere, leaving the trees of life to their own devices.

     

  • hardie karges 10:20 am on March 24, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: consumerism,   

    LCD’s 

    With the Industrial Revolution gradually came Consumer Culture, the age in which we live.  In reality there is no explanation for the Industrial Revolution, though Protestantism, capitalism, and mercantilism all played roles.  It was a cultural mutation that couldn’t have been predicted, a ‘brilliant mistake’ like much of evolution, biological or cultural.  It’s even getting prettier now with multi-colored Internet screens limited only by speed and memory, prettier but dumber.  We’re dumbing ourselves down to lowest common denominators, LCD’s with flat screens and multiple display options.  The more technology we get, the dumber we become, victims of our own progress, even the technicians ignorant of the Big Picture.  Will they even believe it millions of years from now when they go digging around and start pulling up televisions and cars that must have been created somewhere between the fourth and fifth glacial stages? 

     

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