HUMAN EXTINCTION

Chris Hedges' "We are breeding ourselves to extinction"

http://informationclearinghouse.info:80/article22181.htm

is one of the most insightful, on-the-money, spot-on essays I've ever read. I'm posting it here because I predicted the same events over five years ago when I started writing Mirror Reversal. It's heartbreaking that I could be so right, and yet alone, so helpless.

Professor Cynthia Whipple tells her boyfriend,

“Once you’ve reached a certain level of education, the Bible’s quaint stories don’t answer the questions anymore. The hope for heaven and the fear of hell are just that, mammalian emotions. But the reasoned belief that a futureworld will exist is all but certain. And what will the futureworld be like? – that should be our main concern. Instead of worrying about an imaginary heaven as an individual, let’s devote ourselves to entering a real futureworld as Homo sapiens, the wise. At this very moment there might be future souls praying to us to preserve the Earth and its ineffable beauty. Sometimes, when I’m listening to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, I can hear the sighs and yearnings of the world’s future citizens, ‘Please preserve the Earth,’ they weep, like the mystical chants of Odysseus’s sirens carried by the winds of time, ‘it belongs to us also. Don’t destroy it any further; it can’t be replaced. Your awareness of the condition of the world is the only thing that can save it. Just get us there and we’ll know what to do.’

“I see everything in terms of the Prime Directive and selfish gene theory. Picture a cruise ship sailing down a wide river of time: that’s really what the Earth is, a cruise ship sailing through space at 70,000 miles per hour with a precious cargo of life that required eons to form. Now picture one dominant species taking over the ship – some kind of mammal… a mouse, say. The reality is that the ship is heading straight toward a disastrous waterfall, bigger than Niagara. The entire population of the ship will certainly crash. The mice can feel something is wrong, but all they keep doing is carving out little niches in the ship so they can reproduce. They work and fight and bark at one another. All they care about is their little territory and a place to raise a family. They aren’t evolved enough to think about what’s in store for them right around the bend in the river.”

She seemed in a half trance, as if spilling out pent-up feelings to her psychiatrist uncle. “But the scenario is even worse, from an existential point of view. It’s not a waterfall that’s waiting around the bend, ‘cause the mice had nothing to do with the creation of the waterfall. The mice are heading for an ugly, poisoned and polluted lake that they created themselves with greed, stupidity, and arrogance. There’s no life in the lake at all: it’s filled with insecticides, mercury, and atomic waste - plastic milk cartons, electronic junk, and disposable razor blades. It’s contaminated with run-off from science fiction, mechanized chicken slaughter factories; run-off from robot phosphorus strip mines – miles long – where money is the only thing that matters. The inhabitants of the ship unwittingly created their own deathbed.

A KINKY PARAMIOGRAPHY ON A SMELLY THEME

A fart in time saves nine.

You can lead a hog to a pigsty but you can’t make him stink.

One good fart deserves another. (Familiar Bulgarian saying)

Let the smeller beware.

A new fart smells clean.

When the czar farts it bursts with pride. (Old Russian saying)

A smelly fart requires many words. (German proverb)

A stuffy nose smells no farts. (Heard at Scotland Yard)

Your fart’s smell is a good mirror. (Irish saying)

A house without a fart is the house of a scoundrel. (Portuguese proverb)

A man is not fragrant just because he never had a chance to stink.

A penny for your farts.

A prudent man does not make a fart his calling card.

A single Russian fart outsmells the Polish nation. (Old Russian saying)

A pig believes everybody farts. (Bedouin adage)

A fart should be smelled from behind. (Swedish proverb)

After smelling the fart of a Greek, check your nose. (Albanian saying)

A fart in Germany is a rose in Rome. (Traditional German proverb)

A fart without a smell is folly. (Latvian lamentation)

Beggars should not blow farts. (Oft-heard admonition on Wall Street)

Better to open a window than curse the smell.

WHY I BECAME A MILITANT NON-BELIEVER

There’s been much debate about trying to deprogram religious people, as opposed to ignoring them and letting them adore and worship any divinity they please. Live and let live, it’s a free country and what harm are they doing. In fact, religion can be a good thing because, like music, it soothes the wild beast.

Religion was fine with me most of my life. Religious people felt sorry for me, I’m losing my soul; I felt sorry for them, they’re losing much of the joy of life in anticipation of heaven. As long as we keep the laws of the state and try to be good people, everything was copasetic.

That was before President George W. Bush came along. Religious people broke state laws (a cleric cannot endorse a candidate from the pulpit) and the spirit of American democracy by voting as a block. Rev. Jody Hice of Atlanta even called for a coalition of preachers to form a union to promote Christian ideals. If Sarah Palin and/or Mike Huckabee ever win it’ll be against the law to engage in non-reproductive sex. Hice spends his time arguing for the right to hang the Ten Commandments on public buildings. How about the Eight Beatitudes, Reverend? How about “Blessed are the merciful” in back of the judges bench? Maybe there wouldn’t be over two million souls wasting away in jail.

Imagine the power this man is trying to seize. A political coalition of Christian ministers would be formidable and ominous. They already worked their miracles in getting W elected—the man whose arrogance and incompetence will curse this country for generations to come. We are in a Middle East quagmire that is completely unwinnable. The country is bankrupt from supporting a billion-dollars-a-day war habit. The corporate stooge winked at conspicuous mischief. There never has been just a transfer of wealth from one country to others (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, etc) in the history of the world.

Worst of all, he devastated the reputation and pride of the nation. Operation Shock and Awe murdered thousands of innocent people. Americans will have to live with this ignominy as long as people pledge allegiance to the flag.

Then there’s Opus Dei. Where does the pope come off influencing and determining the outcome of the American presidential election? In 2004, W sent an emissary to the Vatican to inform the pope that he was losing and needed help. He advocated a faith-based platform, especially on the abortion issue, and merited the pope’s support. Pope John Paul II agreed and handed the matter over to the clandestine organization headed by the present-day pope, Cardinal Ratzinger. Letters were sent to every American bishop ordering them to exhort President Bush’s election in Sunday’s sermon. The rest is history. The pope pulled strings like a Godfather (pun intended) and changed the history of the world. No wonder W broke all protocol and met the pope at the airport.

Then there’s the “endmeme.”

To be continued. Please refer to www.mirrorreversal.com for a definition. Or search Youtude on “endmeme".

PROVERBS, MAXIMS AND PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM

A friend in weed is a friend indeed.

Everything is a trade-off. (From MR)

If politicians are so religious, why are they so corrupt?

I know that God would never send me to hell for refusing to abandon reason.

When we’re young we seek to spread our genes; when we’re old we seek to spread our memes.

The only time politicians tell the truth is when they’re insulting one another in a negative campaign.

“C’mon, do I have to write you a memo? What can I say? We evolved from oversexed primates; that’s not my fault. Let’s make the best of it.” (From MR)

We remain in the Dark Ages. But maybe some day, scholars, writers, artists and teachers in the local schools will be respected more than warriors, athletes, and egotistic pop-culture celebrities. (From MR, after Sir Edward Gibbon)

With religion and superstition so powerful here, it’ll take centuries before humanity can evolve into a spiritual entity. (From MR)

If a shop has two barbers, always go to the messy, disheveled one. It’s obvious they do each other’s hair.

Most people look at war, crime and corruption and say, “Its human nature and it’ll never change.” A few say, “That’s the way it is because the political, corporate and religious alphas want it that way and it’s got to change.”

The very pillars of society – the judgment of right and wrong -- are decayed and corrupt. (From MR)

God isn’t an underachiever; He’s a complete dropout. (After a line by Woody Allen)

We have to stop being sheep.

The endmeme is real and threatens the future of all life on the planet.

Getting old ain’t for wimps. (From Bette Davis)

The greatest spectacle of Nature is the Cosmos itself.

Right wing people are pro-life all right — pro-afterlife.