Showing posts with label environmental destruction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environmental destruction. Show all posts

29 January 2014

Everything is Wrong


By "everything is wrong" I mean EVERYTHING. I look around me - I'm typing on a plastic and metal and glass computer perched on a desk made from cut down trees and toxic paint. I sit in a building made of wood and bricks that were taken from the earth on a street made of poisonous asphalt that was laid over an ecosystem that had thrived for hundreds of thousands of years. I'm clothed in cotton that was saturated with pesticides while it grew and treated and dyed with toxic chemicals while it was being processed. All of my possessions were made hundreds or thousands of miles away and shipped in styrofoam and plastic wrap via gas burning engines and destructive road and air ways to me. My food, although organically grown and completely vegan, is shipped from where it was grown to my local store and is often packaged in paper, plastic, metal, and toxic inks. I know tons of people that eat meat, smoke cigarettes, drive cars, use drugs, etc., even though they know that these things will ultimately hurt the quality (and length) of their lives. I live in an apartment building where no one is on a first name basis. I know more about idiot actors in hollywood that I've never met than I do about the woman who lives next door to me (and is probably more interesting). While walking to work I inhale toxic exhaust from cars sitting in traffic. To make sure that eating 3 cans of oven cleaner will make you sick, or to make sure that pouring nail polish remover into your eyes will hurt you, we torture mice, rabbits, dogs, cats, etc. We use toxic chlorine bleach to keep our underpants white. We cut down the rainforests to drill for oil so that we can drive to the video store. Do you see what I mean? Everything really is wrong. Even the back to nature people still drive cars and use products made from materials ripped out of the earth. People struggle all of their lives doing work that they hate just to be a functioning member of a system that is wasteful, destructive and unhealthy.

What I advocate is this a sensible, pragmatic, and non-destructive approach towards existence, we need to re-evaluate our practices. Just as it doesn't make sense to hire an elevator operator to run an automatic elevator it doesn't make sense for billions of people to drive to work alone in their cars. It doesn't make sense to consume animal products. It doesn't make sense to use pesticides on agricultural products. It doesn't make sense to derive power from nuclear, coal, and petroleum when we have solar, hydro, and wind power. It doesn't make sense to maintain destructive systems just because people earn their livings from them. It doesn't make sense to pour billions of tons of toxic chemicals onto our lawns so that they'll look pretty and green. I could go on but you're probably either bored or overwhelmed by now. I advocate change; massive, massive change.

Basically we should stop doing these things that are destructive to the environment, other creatures, and ourselves and figure out new ways of existing.
- Moby www.moby.com

23 October 2009

Seeing is Not Thinking

An extract from THE GREAT LEAP OF MIND - Rubén Feldman González

Perhaps you'll agree with me that we have learnt to be incoherent and to insult intelligence moment by moment.

You are insulting intelligence right now smoking your tobacco cigarette. But it's not enough if I tell you. If you don't see right now what you are doing (in Unitary Perception) you'll never stop smoking.

QUESTION: I have to see that smoking is incoherent and unintelligent. But I see it and I don't stop smoking.

R.F.G.: You don't see that smoking is unintelligent, you think it is. When you see what smoking is you'll stop smoking immediately. To see is not to think.

Let's have another example of incoherence: "To procreate more children and earn more money is good for mankind."

In reality intelligence shouts to me that overpopulation and greed are destroying the livable surface of the planet and are endangering the life of all mammals, including my little dog and mankind.

For the first time in the written history of man we face the possibility of the end of mankind.
There is interpersonal incoherence, incoherence between ideas and belief, incoherence between man and nature, between the use of technology and the survival of man, incoherence between belief and action, etc.

QUESTION: I believe I understand that part of the problem is to have overvalued thought, the self and even our gross fantasies as if they were something "spiritual."

R.F.G.: Yes. But we don't see (in Unitary Perception) that the ecological and economic collapse of the industrial civilization (both capitalist and communist) have their root in overvaluing thought.

We are all going to die. You know.

The understanding that we are mortal, that nobody avoids that fate of man, brings great sorrow. That's why we spend our life avoiding to think of death and denying (unconsciously) the sorrow of thinking about our own death "when everything goes o.k."

We dont's talk about the man who wants to die because his cancer hurts.
When everything goes okay we deny the sorrow of knowing we are going to die.
Then we escape from that fundamental sorrow (which is also anger and fear).
The escapes are the search for profit, prestige, fame, power, pleasure, entertainment, etc.
Those escapes are easier when we believe the moment of the death is far away.

I say we have to understand paradox, because it is a necessary paradox to talk about silence. To talk about silence is not incoherent, it is a paradox.
There is something specific to do in silence. I call it Unitary Perception.

Another paradox is to understand that we live fully only when we accept that we are going to die and when we stop avoiding the sorrow of knowing we are going to die.
To live with death is to renounce the habit of verbalizing. Right here starts Unitary Perception.

06 June 2009

The Atrocious Killer: The Reason why we should reject plastic bags

From http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/17318/garbage-blights-dive-sites

Garbage blights dive sites

By: APINYA WIPATAYOTIN

Marine officials found more than 22 tonnes of garbage dumped into the sea last year, most of it at famous dive spots. Koh Samaesarn in Chon Buri province was the site of the biggest undersea garbage dump, Department of Marine and Coastal Resources chief Samran Rakchart said yesterday.

The Samaesarn area of Sattahip district is where the mysterious containers that have been in the news lately are located. An investigation team is trying to find out what is inside the containers.

Half of the garbage found at Samaesan is plastic and beer bottles.

Koh Kra in Nakhon Si Thammarat province contains another large mound of garbage. Most of it is fishing equipment.

Mr Samran said his department had been collecting records of sunken garbage in the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand.

The trash causes the death of many marine animals every year, he said. Autopsies conducted on dead dolphins and sea turtles had found all manner of junk in their stomachs.

It is estimated that 6.4 million tonnes of garbage a year, or 1,800 tonnes a day, is being dumped into the sea globally. Almost 90% of the garbage is plastic waste.

20 April 2009

Extraordinary 2-Sentence Conversation

Miss I, after watching "Baby Boomers" TV show advertisement on TV : "Baby Boomers are killing the planet."

Mr. D : "We have been killing the planet since we started our civilization, Miss I."

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What a nail in the head ^0^