There is nothing more gray, stultifying, or dreary than life lived inside the confines of a theory.
Jaron Lanier One Half of a Manifesto,” The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)
A premise is that which a position is based upon. The following 6 inter related topics explains how I see things. My premise is more a series of observations, pointing at something like “Impediments to our survival; Distractions, Corporations, Overpopulation, Digital manipulation, propaganda; 42” but that seemed long so “Premise” is what I am going with.
Contents
1: The perpetually aggrieved
2: The plutocracy
3: Your footprints
4: Well worn play book
5: Brace for impact
6: Hope
A bit of background reading
First Premise: the perpetually aggrieved
Struggling over identity, be it race, gender or sexuality is self serving narcissism. For a moment turn away from your Pavlovian conditioning and accept that premise. What remains is the ability to develop a character, a backbone, a strategy.
Being able to discern the difference between Character and Identity is much like the ability to discern the difference between Critical Theory and Critical Thinking.
Once you focus people on issues of gender, race and sex, you have them distracted from the real issues. The drama of course is deeply personal, it just of no consequence or relevance. It is in no way connected to our survival or the creation of a just society. Bertrand Russell did much of the analysis in the 1920’s, more than 100 years ago, you can find an evening of reading here, a summary of his paper “what i believe” and how he influenced the beatles.
But the real struggle is between the rich and the poor, the rich 1%, using the entitled 9% to control the bottom 90%. Howard Zinn in a nutshell here. George Carlin in all his glory here.
If you get lost in Marxist Critical Theory, you will find the hatred and anger are very real, and this is precisely why race and gender issues are aggravated by academia and the corporate media. The business case to create and reinforce these distractions is quite compelling.
More on things of no consequence here
Second premise: the plutocracy
For thousands of years we all struggled under the yoke of Slavery inflicted by self proclaimed royalty. Russian serfdom, the Windsor crime family, Japanese or South East Asian royalty, the Slave economy of the Dahomey, all flavours of the same hierarchical necessity only obscured by technology, abundant energy and successive organized struggles. The successful struggles were countered with coups orchestrated over the years by lawyers and accountants. The plutocracy that brought you slavery still exists today, it has no skin colour or race. Today the challenge is to address the role of the plutocracy, thru corporations and capital markets as tools of oppression and that necessitates the struggle to separate corporations and the state today.
More on the Plutocracy here Zaibatsu is here
Third premise: your footprints
In the 65+ years of my life time, the world population has gone from almost 2 billion to more than 8 billion people. Overpopulation is the most glaring problem we face. Carbon emissions, conflict, mass extinctions, fascism, racism, hierarchy, oppression are all worsened by more people. To achieve a sustainable, just and equitable society it is not our individual behaviors that matter. Driving a car or bike, recycling or eating tofu is not going to help. The first step is recognizing we are either going to reduce our population size or our freedoms. I prefer trying to achieved a global population of a few billion people living in freedom rather than 10 billion living under fascist rule.
A little ditty about a big problem, overcrowding
Fourth Premise: Well worn play book
Those seeking power have a well worn play book in terms of how to manipulate the minds of others. The goal is to channel you into an identity, not an individual of character but a follower; easy to manipulate. Propaganda has been perfected. The debate tightly controlled. The corporatist agenda was satirized by George Orwell first in “Animal Farm and then in “1984”. A citizen has to tune in to what the media of today has become, Turn off the data feeds, read pre-meta books and drop out of social media. Your sanity depends upon it.
More on the role of Manipulative Media here
Fifth Premise: Brace for impact
5th Premise Part 1: Douglas Adams Mashup
If you consider that for a hundred million years we have lived at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and we all think this is normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.
We are as ignorant of our way forward as a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well!
Our puddle gets smaller and the question is; are we smart enough to say, You know that thing we have been doing for the last 250 years? Don’t do that again.
Douglas Adams Speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge, UK, (1998) from Wikiquote
Maybe. In 1859 Darwin publishes “On the Origin of Species”. Eventually we got to grips with it and begin to understand we are not the center of the Universe and we’re made simply by variations in progeny, some that worked out, others that did not. Many still do not accept the idea, so will we respond fast enough? Maybe not.
Fifth Premise Part 2: C.F.I.T.
C.F.I.T. is Controlled Flight Into Terrain, the pilot just flies the plane and the unsuspecting passengers into the ground, it happens surprisingly often. C.F.I.T. is a leading cause of airplane accidents involving loss of life, causing over 9,000 deaths since the beginning of the commercial age of air travel.
Usually the pilot and co pilot are disagreeing on things, the second last thing the pilot does is turn off that annoying “Pull up! Terrain! Pull up now!” warning. Thinking the instruments, the warnings, the science of it all is wrong. Thinking that young punk of a co-pilot should keep his mouth shut and do what he is told, is the last mistake made.
Momentum and the permanence of the ground relative to a tube of aluminum foil traveling at 600km/hr is a powerful combination.
While you are nibbling on a little bags of candied walnuts fate is altering your future. Fate does not really care about your travel plans, personal truths or how many followers you have. You were put on this planet to shape our destiny for the better, that is all, you blew it, now Brace for impact!
The 6th Premise: Hope
To be hopeful is to have a goal and a strategy. Goal: peacefully lowering our population, Strategy: peacefully dismantle the plutocracy. We need to stop feeding the rich.
“Hope has two beautiful daughters,” Augustine writes. “Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”
Summarized from a sermon given by Chris hedges and published in Consortium News
Chris Hedges: Crucifying Julian Assange Summary can be found here
August 23, 2023
The challenge is to learn and think independently and yet execute collective action against a common enemy; unbridled greed.
As individuals:
*work towards a separation of corporations and the state
*dis-engage from monitoring and manipulation,
*source news free of corporate influence,
*technological literacy for success in a digital world,
*embracing a secular scientific worldview
End
~*~
A bit of background reading
Starting to write I had no title, so I typed in “Premise of Enquiry” as a nod to Mrs Premise and Mrs Conclusions visit to Jean-Paul Sartre. After the outline was done I realized some concepts needed to be understood;
-Why the German peasants wars failed,
-Peter Kropotkin and his anarchist ideas,
-Bertrand Russell on socialism and peace
-Karl Polanyi Primer to understand the roots of fascism
And a little bit of Wikipedia Homework.
-J.M. Keynes to understand the boom of the 1940’s to 1970’s,
-M. Friedman to understand the bust of the 1980’s,
-T. R. Malthus for the bust to come; brace for impact:,
-Karl Polanyi for policy mistakes that lead to fascism and war
-Naomi Klein and disaster capitalism.
The how to of it all is difficult, you can start your journey as a Digital Deist here
Remember the message of Marshall McLuhan; “First you shape your tools, then your tools shape you“.
~END~
It feels good to deflate a bag of hot air overlooking a garden of daffodils, green grass and with a warm fire and the steady beating of rain on the roof.
A rainy day the end of April, cool, the wet forest is coming to life, the red wing blackbirds are back.
May 2021
Last updated Sept 2023 A sunny cool September morning, on the way to the farm for a weekend of woodworking the basswood I cut in the spring.