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Entries in consumption (7)

Sunday
Jun132010

Tools & Future Plans

Greetings,

After seeing a film The 11th Hour I've reposted this entry. Narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, the film illustrates human greed, corporate power, and consumption habits. There are excellent commentaries by scientists regarding the scale of Earth being consumed.

Save the Earth is more like Earth doesn't need saving. Earth is a natural biosphere. It is a self generating ecosystem. Humans need to change their attitudes and behavior. 

Human animals developed tools. They have learned how to plan. They can visualize the future. Intelligent life on Earth is a rumor.

Earth is a property. It produces natural resources. As we know, humans have developed an insatiable appetite for: minerals, water, forests, fossil fuels, animals, and laughter.

The BP oil disaster in the Gulf is a perfect example of human stupidity based on corporate greed and power. This is compounded by lies, deceit and finger pointing. No one wants to take responsibility for the consequences.

Create the market for shampoo products. It's all petroleum based. Rinse your brain.

As Wade Davis says: "You are either a human or property." The property is being consumed. Greed. Market. As a speaker says, the means and the ends are distorted. Humans are creating their own extinction.

On Earth inside the Milky Way galaxy filled with 100 billion stars is a small town. In the town is a market where people meet, eat, drink, walk around, sleep, talk, gossip, sell, barter, trade, buy, cry, beg, laugh, and use tools to make things.

What are tools? Tools are things to make things. They make something and use it to make other things. This is called human activity. People once used stones to sharpen other stones to make tools.

Can you show us someone making something?

Ok. Here is a man using a mechanical tool to make a gold bracelet. His tool is made of iron, steel and other materials. It uses energy to work. A woman works makes money and buys the thing. Her friends see it and their desire creates demand.

Where does the energy come from? The energy comes from machines converting sun, wind, ocean currents, burning coal and processing high grade uranium 235 isotopes into energy. 235 is capable of sustaining chain reactions producing energy to run machines called plants.

Do you mean a plant is a tool? Yes. A plant is a living organism and very valuable. As well, there are plants that kill humans, like hemlock. Plants collect energy from the sun to grow. Humans harvest plants for medicine and food and so on.

If a man and woman combine their tools can they make things grow like plants? Yes. More like weeds. This human activity is called procreation. Earth has about 6 billion examples and signs of intelligent life is rare.

 

Show us another tool. Ok, A woman's fingers are tools. She uses her tool to sew colorful objects on a piece of fabric with another tool. The tool is a metal needle. Humans evolved opposable thumbs enabling them to grasp objects. Her thumb is opposable to her forefinger allowing her to use the tool with precision.  

We have time for one more tool. Show us a good one.

This man lives in a poor rural village in Sichuan, China. He is a tool like the gold worker and the seamstress. They are controlled by others and used to perform unpleasant tasks for someone else. They are the means of production in a social and economic sense.

He is using a tool to make new tools. I said this at the beginning of today's story. The stone tools he makes will be used to make a wall, another tool. 

Why do they need to make another wall? They already have a famous wall.
The Chinese have been building walls for 5,000 years. It's in their genetic makeup. 
What is genetics?
A sledgehammer. 

Thank you for your attention.

Metta.

 

11th hour action site...

Metta.

Tuesday
Dec152009

Take bus #11

Greetings,

I'm walking across a screaming motorcycle street in Saigon. Bus #11 is bearing down fast and furious. I escape. Another person in another country in another life along another path said.

'Poor people walk. They take bus #11. It means use your legs.'

The gap between rich and poor - such is the reality in developing countries - is becoming more apparent.

Recent figures speak. Average city wages - $1,054 a year. Rural wages - $540 a year.

The central party hopes their economic stimulus will encourage rural people to buy appliances and cars. I need a 4x wheel drive washing machine so I can I take my family on weekend excursions to the beach, the Himalayas and deep tropical jungles where life is simple. Yeah!

The process evolved like this. I walked. I saved and eventually bought a bike. A Flying Pigeon. Black. One speed. It got me from home to the village rice paddies.  

We had a radio in the work unit. The local propaganda machine blasted revolutionary worker party anthems day and night. We got one for the home. My wife was happy. Then we had the required one child. We wanted another one but the forced abortion committee and local officials said, NO! You do not qualify for two children.

Then my wife wanted a TV. Ok I said, let's get a 24" flat screen with a remote.

What about a new rice cooker? Ok I said.

How about a used refrigerator? What's wrong with the box of ice? You shop for fresh vegetables at the market every morning. Why do we need a refrigerator? Because the neighbors have one.

Oh, I see. I scrounged around and traded rice for some chickens and traded the birds for some used teak wood smuggled in from Burma. I developed some connections. One trade led to another and I eventually found a well used fridge. My wife was happy. Then we filled it up with baby formula.

The formula was tainted with a chemical to increase the protein. We didn't know this small fact.

Our little girl became sick. The Worker's Hospital #8 said I had to pay them a lot of money for medicine or she would die.

I sold my bike to buy medicine. Now I walk to the hospital to see my daughter. It takes forever and a day.

I want to move to a big city filled with neon and food smells and construction projects and appliances hoping against hope to find a job but party leaders say millions of unemployed workers are returning to their villages in the new year.

I have a feeling the new year is going to be a lot like the old year.

The radio and flat screen scream stream tells us to stay home. Be quiet. Don't worry. Practice social stability and harmony. My future opportunities look precarious.

I have to go now because they will cut off the electricity soon and I need to buy some candles.

"Life is found in a desperate situation." - Chinese proverb.

Metta.


 

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