Swimming Against the Current

Here are some snippets from a June 5, 1939 LIFE prediction of life in 1960, inspired by the New York World's Fair and General Motor's "Futurama" display:

"When Americans of 1960 take their two-month vacations, they drive to the great parklands on giant express highways. A two-way skein consists of four 50-m.p.h. lanes on each of the outer edges; two pairs of 75-m.p.h. lanes in the center, two lanes for 100m-m.p.h. express traffic. Cars change from lane to lane at specified intervals, on signal from spaced control towers which can stop and start all traffic by radio. Being out of its driver's control, each car is safe against accident....

".....Off the highway, the driver dawdles again at his own speed and risk."

"The highways skirt the great cities. But the happiest people live in one-factory farm-villages producing one small industrial item and their own farm produce. Strip planting protects the valley fields against erosion. The land is really greener than it was in 1939. Federal laws forbid the wanton cutting of wooded hillsides."

"Cures for cancer and infantile paralysis have extended man's life span and his wife's skin is still perfect at the age of 75."

"Electronic microscopes literally see everything."

"On every front America in 1960 knows more about unleashing the best energies in its citizens. Nearly everyone is a high-school graduate. The talented get the best education in the world. More people are interested in life, the world, themselves and in making a better world. Politics and emotion still slow progress. But these obstructions are treated with dwindling patience in 1960."

I wonder why they were so sure that America would change so quickly in 21 years from what it was in 1939? Was this sheer optimism or a plan in the works? And what made these strange people so sure that such a monotone and boring collective would actually achieve a cure for cancer? As long as people are confined to "happy" farm collectives, and only the "talented" get education, and all traffic is controlled, and emotionless automatons are the norm there will be no cure for cancer.

Curing cancer requires that the parts of the brain intimately linked to emotion are fully operational and creative. Curing cancer requires an unleashing of individuality and freedom, for this is how it will be fought within the body's systems.

I think, we can see a bit how cancer operates on a daily basis in our world. It seems to start small and grow when a population doesn't recognize it as a threat, when individuals are prohibited from defending themselves and kept ignorant. The cancer grows and attacks a weak organ, such as another company or group. It gets the body to attack the weak organ too. Then the energy, or money is sucked from the company or group of people in the form of a settlement or other form. This energy is then given to the cancer to feed upon, thus making it increase in power and allowing it to spread into other systems until it is eating up the body and too late to fight. The host dies, which then kills the cancer because there remains nothing to feed it.

It is very difficult and bloody when a cancer has grown so large that the entire body must unite to fight against it. But if each individual cell were given power and knowledge, it, along with its immediate neighbors could stall or destroy the cancer before it grew and attacked a large organ. This little battle would barely even be noticed and not lead to blood and death.

A completely unified and controlled highway system as envisioned in 1939 is one also susceptible to disaster. Perhaps, it is safer, but it is not free or pleasurable. It also is like pushing a population of handicapped drivers down the road. They forget how to use their muscles and atrophy from lack of use.

Ask a person in a wheel chair if they would rather be pushed around the rest of their life, have doors opened for them, and elevators lift them; or walk even if it meant tripping once in awhile, stubbing their toes, and being called bow legged. Ask the person in the wheel chair if they'd rather be able to ride a bike even if it meant risking that nasty bar in the crotch once in awhile. Chances are they'd laugh and say all those risks are worth freedom and independence. They may cry and say, "Give me the pain. I'll love it because I'm free, I'm standing on these legs, I'm running, and I can carry another if I get the chance."

How does an individual stop to help another on a controlled system that won't let them have that freedom? Doesn't this create a system of people who ignore others because they assume the authorities, Who Ever's In Charge, will take care of the needy? It's an unsafe system that controls our every motion. How do we know the so called higher powers (or powers for hire) will see the problem or that they will have compassion? And how much more will it cost us to pay for this controlling higher power in comparison to what it would have cost a single private individual to be compassionate?

Rather than uniting in giant power groups, rather than driving upon a controlled highway, it would be better for people to get off onto the country roads and dawdle at one's own risk and safety. A giant-controlled highway or social movement is controlled by exterior guides who may not steer us in the correct directions, who may be deceived and deceiving under the guise of safety and public health.

Giant movements do not bring about change, but more of the same. England's Protestants overthrew their monarch for another form of tyranny. Russia's Bolshevik, and France's Revolution were also a despot's dream. The real power is not in confined and controlled power groups who yell and vociferate about morals and speak in us-against-them terms. The real power is when each person as an individual chooses to do the right thing, irregardless of the group, irregardless of the time's moral, political, religious, and scientific values.

A school of fish is netted as a group. A single fish must be caught one at a time. It's quite labor intensive and time consuming for a fisherman to catch every single fish in the pool or in the stream. It's more labor intensive for evil to catch people when they're not in a group to be netted, but must be caught one at a time, and outsmarted with baits and flies. If individuals cannot stand alone, cannot act on their own, then they cannot stand or act as a group either. A group of unwhole and helpless people is a group of mental cripples trampling over town and country, hopped up on false righteousness.

image: Via Appia, Rome, Italy, Paul Vlaar

Boom Town Detroit, America

There are hours and hours of footage on display at YouTube detailing the decay of Detroit. One of the more interesting aspects of them is the music, which is used to say what cannot be conveyed in words or commentary. The commentary of countless individuals tells us what is wrong--on the surface, but does not get to the heart of the problem the way the music does. The music gets deeper and shows us that the decay of Detroit is one of the soul.

The musical choices placed along with the movies take us to a dark and sad place of mourning, a place so despairing that it seems impossible to recover from, as if a heavy blanket of chains pulls the spirit downward into a chasm of nothingness where the sun and warmth cannot reach. Detroit is a haunted place, a dark lady wandering along passages of broken glass and death that does not come. She has been desecrated, used up, and left to lay alone in the remains of a glamorous party, kissed and loved by all, then left alone in her drunkenness, her clothes torn, her dignity spread around by the partiers, the broken glass thrown upon her and a pile of cash showered upon her as everyone walks past, turning the lights out, not caring to lift her out and drive her home.

She had no home. Her home was in the bed of countless men who adorned themselves with her as an ornament, then used her for the night, after dancing with her, feeding her, drugging her, and giving her money for fine clothes.

How do we lift this lost lady from the rubble?

Daily, Detroit burns, the carcass and empty windows stare out as we gaze upon her magnificent ruins which, even though ruins are fantastic in their own right. Nothing Detroit does is small. Even her death is dramatic, drawing the attention of a nation, transfixing us in her grip as we watch her gasping her last breathes.

Detroit could rise, although a humbled and quieter woman, if the doctors would stop leaching her even as she dies, if they would loose her from their vampirism. She does not want money, she wants a Samaritan to stop and help her. No longer does she want the wealthy and popular man, but the gentle and poor outcast with a heart and strength to lift her to the inn.

And this disease that Detroit has is slowly spreading across the body of America, but because no other city is as grand, the death is less noticeable. This disease began hundreds of years ago in the mountains and streams when gold, silver, and copper were discovered.

It's called Gold Fever. Creek beds are dredged for it, hillsides razed, and entire neighborhoods removed leaving giant toxic lakes in their wake.

In the early days of the boom town, the recovery was natural, the scars less obvious. The reason for this was that the majority of those who arrived in boom towns were not there for gold, but to serve the mining industry with real commodities until the operation ran out. The boom town was known from the beginning as a temporary residence which would be replaced by permanent and quieter settlements founded upon real human industry and value, especially agriculture.

The modern boom towns founded upon copper and steel grew larger and more vibrant than the old boom towns of the wild west. But these modern boom towns desecrated the very people who lived in them. Butte, MT forced the majority of its residents out in order to tear apart the hill that once lit up the night with life and architecture. Rather than wealth and life, the hill was turned into a poison pit, the largest toxic lake on the continent. Where is the value? Is it people and homes or is it in metals?

Go to a steel mill town, such as Duluth along Lake Superior and it resembles Detroit with the empty buildings, the open fields, the company town with empty churches, the streets pitted, the tracks turning wild. There is the tourist area along Park Point, but it serves epicures and souvenir collectors, rather than any lasting or useful commodity.

Detroit was a modern boom town founded upon quick money, fast living, metals and petroleum. The citizens fell for the illusion, rather than following the example of slower and independent industry. The new boom towns do not settle the land or call people out to farm and set up shop around them. When the operators have cleaned out the soil and souls, they leave for another place to use up. Now, they're in China and poor countries building a new set of boom towns. They don't care how many people they displace, poison, or leave wretched and rotting. People have not value to these boom town operators.

The modern world seems unable to see the cycle of the boom town. The residents linger and wonder what happened. Rather than creating real industry, smaller, and less glamorous, they wait for the gold to rain down from the sky in the form of government subsidies. And the money rains down, while at the same time the taxes rise. And again the boom town is kept alive long enough to strip mine the people of everything they have, and more than they have. This time it's the corrupt elected officials and the gangs doing the mining.

In the old days, the corrupt officials and gangs were hunted down by citizen vigilante groups who valued human life more than gold. But now, it is a crime for a law loving person to defend himself, and he is told to submit himself, to allow the corruption to ravage him. And where the corruption flourishes, a wonderful new mining operation, called prison, springs up. America has one of the largest, if not the largest prison industry in the world. If memory serves correctly, America imprisons more people per capita than Russia or China.

And now, the feeding frenzy upon a paralyzed country is in full force. America, lays like a patient upon the operating table. She has been used, her education has been a false one that wastes young adult's lives creating a lie called teenage rebellion, an unnatural right of passage that only began displaying itself when young adults were told they had to remain children until they turned 18.

America still bases her wealth upon metals because so much of her technology is dependent upon the rare metals that only China is willing to extract for the rest of the world's appetites. A hybrid auto actually destroys the planet because of the slave labor it required to loot the land. And a solar cell uses these rare China metals which will one day run out when the boom is over.

There are only a few constant and replenishable commodities. The most important is human industriousness and creativity which is unleashed when a person is free from government, religious tithes, and corporate monopoly. When a people are free to travel unchecked, choose their educational strategy, and work for them self without strip mine taxes they flourish and benefit all around them. The land, if owned by private citizens, is the pride and wealth of nations. Combined with man, the land is a perfect marriage. It is mankind that gives anything its value, not the things that give mankind value.

The reason Detroit crumbles in wretchedness is that its soul, the humans who live within it are wretched. They were not taught that they are valuable and that they have the power of the golden touch, that it was not the auto industry that made them rich, but they who made the auto industry golden, they who were the mine stripped bare by the Boom town operators. Detroit has been with held the knowledge of its dignity and that mankind is the only mine that can and does replenish itself.

Detroit, and all of America should remember that throwing money upon a dead body cannot resurrect it, and that it is immoral to burden a robbed person with higher and higher taxes. It is immoral to take from one to give to another. This is a great lie that fills the pockets of corruption.

When will America see that it is being strip mined and that now the operation is being escalated at a quickened and desperate pace which if not halted will leave it nothing but burned out buildings and toxic lakes? We don't need plastic surgery, or false fronts erected to create happy illusions for us to gaze upon in self-satisfied arrogance. We need to learn that even in a rougher and less perfect state we have more value than any bag of gold, that it is mercy and not sacrifice that makes the world better and eases the pain and hardship. Those suffering in the world don't need us to sacrifice our life and money for them, they need us to be strong and whole enough to extend mercy.

Is your government working for you or are you working for it?

"....a moderate Tax upon any People, both by keeping them constantly employed [enslaved], by rendering them therefore more attached to those who procure them Employment [forced to work for another in order to pay taxes, since personal employment although more satisfying and productive is also irregular at times due to the trial and error of it], and by inducing a more vigorous Spirit of Industry [enslavement], really profited a Country at large, tended to make them a quiet & happy [enslaved, worn out, despairing], and effected that Subordination & Distinction of Ranks in Society[taxes create class distinctions, disparity, poverty], which is so wanted here" (Ambrose Serle, secretary to General William Howe, Philadelphia, 9 Mar. 1778).

Another Version of Martin Niemoller

Martin Niemoller, a Christian pastor, and early supporter of the Nazi party is famously quoted for his "When they came for the Jews" speech.

Not long after the Nazis came to power, Niemoller realized the horrible truth of what he had once supported and began to speak out, but it was too late, and there was no one to defend him when he was sent to the concentration camps.

There are many variations of Niemoller's famous words. Here is mine:

When they came for the weak,
I remained silent;
I wasn't weak.

When they came for the tobacco user,
I remained silent;
I didn't use tobacco.

When they came for the gun owner,
I remained silent;
I didn't own a gun.

When they came for the fat people,
I remained silent;
I wasn't fat.

When they came for the Toyota company,
I remained silent;
What right did Toyota have to compete with Government Motors?

When they watched children undressing via school-issue computers,
I remained silent;
It wasn't my child.

When they taxed my jobless neighbors out of their homes,
I remained silent;
I didn't like them anyway.

When they came for the sinners,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a sinner.

When they came for me,
There remained no voice to speak.

image: Slave Woman

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Linked To Hamsters

I find it quite interesting that no matter how many times I try to allow comments to be posted on my previous post it never sticks. Is this censoring by Blogger? I'll be finding the answer after a few posts. I wonder if they know about the Bill of Rights?

And boy, we have it sooo hard here in America. I'm surprised we're not all dead with these plagues and hardships we face on a daily basis. Swine flu, cigarette smokers, Toyotas, Depression. Yeah, Depression, economic and otherwise, but these other things are (of course) much more devastating and dangerous. If only we could have it easy like they do in third world countries where their only problems are shelter, starvation, war, dirty water, and selling one's child into slavery.

I can think of nothing more frightening than being in a Toyota, driven by a tobacco user who hasn't been vaccinated against "swine" flu. Jeepers, it's like playing Russian Roulette. What if the gas pedal sticks, what if one gets lung cancer from 2nd hand smoke, what if they sneeze on you and you get the flu? I'd rather jump off a cliff with no bungee cord to bounce me back.

We should follow the advice of the Confidence Man, er, I mean the Corporations, I mean the Government and live in paralyzed fear. They say park the Toyota, get the shot and quarantine yourself, ban those who smoke cigarettes. I have a better idea. Get a giant hamster ball and knock yourself out, over and over again against the same wall.

I say we ban the obsessive compulsive disorder of the Government Corporations and blow smoke in people's faces (metaphorically), press the accelerator down to the faulty floor mat (metaphorically), and sneeze on everyone we meet (and not say "God Bless you) to do our part in creating a sustainable world population. That will leave more beer, fat, fun, and other joyous "sins" for those of us who know we're going to die and want to enjoy ourselves before it's too late.

Won't Come Back From Dead Man's Curve!

The Bard remembers the good old days--the days when there were still a few deafening engines mowing down the stop lights, and there were some who thought it cool to drive hoodless. I don't know, perhaps, driving hoodless was due to laziness, or improper latching, or some other malfunction, but it was cool. Those that chose to leave the hood back in the trailer court really had nothing to show off, since the hoodless vehicles were also the ones that needed the most paint and looked as if they had been run into signposts, and deer, and old ladies, and other obstructions. But it didn't matter because they made the most noise.

Ah, the good old days when the good old cars were still on the road. One acquaintance had a particularly special car. Oh, my! It was in mint condition with perfect white vinyl covered seats. And they were bench seats, which means that everyone gets to sit in the front. A hundred miles an hour down Main St. once, was what the officer said! But that was nothing.

Now, there is an automobile euthanasia program called the Car Allowance Rebate System aka "Cash for Clunkers," which seeks to rid the streets of these old reliables because they are now considered liabilities and wasteful burdens.

Really, the car must not be a clunker if it is still registered and drivable. A real clunker, one that has been sitting in the back forty is not eligible for the government voucher upon trade in.

Somehow, this program strikes me as disturbing. When the old vehicle is turned in to the dealer the engine must be destroyed before the car can be sold for scrap. This is how it is to be done: "Drain the oil, then run several quarts of sodium silicate through the engine. As engine heat evaporates the solution, deposits of dehydrated sodium silicate line the engine's lubrication system, abrading all the moving parts and causing the engine to seize" ("'Cash for Clunkers' starts Monday" msn.com).

"Scrap facilities can sell any part of the car except the engine block or whole drive train, but ultimately the car must be taken off the road" ("Cash").

This seems incredibly wasteful and disrespectful of a healthy and strong, although old vehicle. And where will the scrap parts be sold to? If I were to guess, China, which has quite a trade in scrap parts and bodies of all sorts. If it bleeds blood or oil they'll profit from the parts and sell it back to us in a repackaged form.

Image: 1986 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS