Viewing Earth from the perspective of a tiny fragile globe hurling through space humbles and inspires all at once - but makes flag waving and joining in difficult. And so from age 10 on things got difficult. I mean if you're paying attention, even just a little, how can you not be angry? But how also can you not be inspired and awed.
And so I write. By Charlie Phillips
Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo are both evangelical christians. Both beat the drum for war with Iran. Both wealthy enough to have built ‘rapture shelters’ - underground harden shelters designed to save themselves in comfort while the world fries.
But don't worry, its not cheating, god told them to do it.
Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam recent remarks about the metoo movement caused millennials by the hundreds to literally crawl all over themselves trying to destroy him - despite most not having read what he actually said. Terry likes to provoke with laughter, and to shake people out of their comfort zones. What better targets than modern day victim’s movements.
Ironic then that he was blasting piling on, rigid intolerance to others, viciousness, and the victim mentality in general. White man’s past power and abuse was part of an unjust societal fabric centuries in the making. We have since begun to evolve away from that in all areas but forgiveness.
Imagine going through life the victim. Imagine trying to twist victimhood into power. People’s energy would be better spent forgiving and then evolving together to better times rather than using victimhood as excuse for mind control, judgmentalism, and viciousness.
McConnell
is the fart that lingers even after the body has long since died. Old
white republican men's last hurrah, long past their time.
Someone
may want to tell him he has lost all relevance and lingers only as old
gas dispersed from a source long since extinct. For even gas requires
some time to completely disperse into nothingness.
Madmen lose their grip on the fabric of human construct and free fall into a multidimensional universe of incredible immensity, power, and beauty they cannot comprehend, and thus go insane.
Human construct, sadly, their only reference point - all of humankind’s only reference point. We all cling to this fabric as a child to a mother's apron, oblivious to the other 99.9999% of everything that surrounds us all. All of our lives scurrying about in self made worlds, oblivious to what we are immersed in, losing out on the lessons, stunning beauty, and humility this universe can provide. She will guide us to peace, understanding, near immortality, if only we would look up.
Diamond rings and perfect weddings.
Suits, ties, and self-importance.
Kingdoms and two dimensional construct.
Better than you.
'Happiness' perpetually nearly in grasp.
And then - we die
Noses to devices, isolated, enraged, tearful.
Murdering our own, watching the rest starve in a world of plenty.
Chasing ‘success’, approval, fame, power, wealth all of our lives.
All the while, missing out, something not right.
And then - we die.
And for what?
So that our children may have their rings, perfect weddings, suits, ties, pedigrees, and self-importance? Their atrocities, self-inflicted suffering, and fair share of murder and hate?
Noses to their devices, miserable in their self-made two dimensional constructs, always chasing - success, approval, fame, wealth, 'happiness', all their lives? All the while, missing out, something not right.
All across America we witness near ghost towns where once thriving cities lay. Poverty stricken, methamphetamine, heroin, fentanyl, oxy invested. Towns once dependent on single economies - a couple of factories, lumber mills, a fishery. Relics now, testament to greed and an utter lack of social responsibility by corporations focused on a single goal - profit. Devastated economically, emotionally, spiritually they turn to drugs and sex - nothing to live for, nothing to give to their children, not even promises of a better life - so why the hell not.
Trump would have them believe this was due to corporate outsourcing alone, and uses the devastation to lie about returning things to the way they were in order to extract what he needs from people who have almost nothing left to give.
The real problem is not outsourcing, it contributes, but far and away the real problem is automation and poor resource management - and with automation's continued development you can be sure things will never be the same again.
Perhaps before a corporation turns its back on a community dependent on them they should be required to offer retraining for their workers, and to pay them what they were making while retraining. After-all they have a social responsibility to all the lives they touch, not just their share holders. Why should they be allowed to destroy entire towns so they can make a buck without accepting some responsibility? And think, these workers while retraining could actually afford to buy these corporations products - win win.
But what to do about automation? The next major workforce to be violently displaced in this country will be professional drivers. There are over 4 million of them in this country, truck drivers, taxis, bus, limo, Uber and Lyft. Automated vehicles are about to take their jobs in the next 3-7 years, tops. A report by Goldman Sachs, (CNBC, ) states that at its peak the transition from people to machines will cost 300,000 jobs per year in this country beginning as soon as in 3-7 years from now. Tesla is promising a fully automated passenger car within the next year. It may take a year or two to wind its way through regulatory bodies - but there's no stopping it, it's coming. Uber Freight already offers limited autonomous semi-truck delivery service, as does Tesla, and more are coming online.
Automation of course wont stop with just taking professional drivers jobs and potentially destroying our economy along the way. Automation and artificial intelligence will take almost all of our children's jobs in the decades to follow.
And what are we doing about this? Pretty much nothing. The market will fix it say the politicians too focused on their next election to worry about my daughter's life decades from now. It''l fix it just like it fixed Flint, Detroit, Gary Indiana, and on and on.
The end-point is inevitable. Full automation is coming, it's frankly silly to deny. And so time is not on our side. The longer it takes to fully automate the more devastating to our economy and society as a whole. Complete automation from the extraction of raw materials, to their processing and assembly, and distribution to your doorstep. Every material need provided for free by automation overseen by artificial intelligence and robotic repair apparatus. There are no jobs AI and machines wont be able to do if we allow them to. And so society will, out of necessity, move away from money and consumerism to a new day of exploration and knowledge. But getting there is the hard part. What does society look like when half the jobs are gone to automation but everything is still based on money? It's not pretty.
The solution? Get us to a full automation and the dissolution of money as quickly as possible. As truckers lose their job, retrain them in some aspect of automation, paying them what they were earning as they learn, and then give them jobs in the automaton industry. As more and more of the work force is displaced by automation, train them in aspects of automation that they are suited for - therefore speeding up the process. Towards the end of the process, build the infrastructure but hold off bringing it online until we are ready to make the complete switch, then push the button. Machines will then provide all your material needs - home of your design (within reason), food, and all your 'stuff' - for free. Your self worth as - defined by society - will then be based not in the accumulation of wealth, but instead in knowledge, original thought, original creation, exploration of your universe. This will happen over the next three generations. By the third generation it will be viewed as it should have been all along. My god people working their entire lives at dead end jobs they hated - how barbaric! People living in abject poverty, children starving?!Self worth based in material goods? Stone Age.
But it will take decades of deliberate action to solve this problem, requiring an entirely new financial system, an entirely new individual approach to life, worldwide, to get there. The purpose of government, education, the distribution of material goods, even our purposes in life itself will need to be completely rethought. Money, must go.
And here you thought climate change was a challenge!
This is already beginning. It will ramp up in our children's lives and peak long before they die. Don't you think we owe it to ourselves and to them to be working on this, NOW? Much as climate change? It's not going to fix itself, and it will require massive social and economic change.
She’s crushing it!
Doing all the right things.
Great job, 2 kids, loving husband. Swims with the whales.
Yoga, rowing, 10K’s
Wow now thats one ‘successful’ happy girl.
Except she’s chasing the modern day rabbit - round and round she goes in pursuit of ‘happiness’, and getting nowhere. Just one more really cool vacation, or purchase, or medal, or raise, or kid away and she will have it and we can all admire her and hold HER up as example.
Except it will never happen.
We are not designed to be happy. We are designed to live, then die.
Feeling good occasionally will be balanced by feeling bad.
Happiness with grief, dysthymia, depression. Success at work balanced 5 minutes later by a failure interacting with her kid.
Get the hell over it America. It’s an empty useless two dimensional construct.
Want to know THE secret to living life?
Get born, live, then die. Maybe try to be nice along the way.
