by robert irwin
The "peepers" or frogs or whatever they are fill the air now in the gloaming with their nighttime in the mountains sounds. Back in the days before pesticides and oil, they would have been everywhere in abundance chirping their chorus. It's a relaxing sound, as sounds from the natural world tend to be. I never realized how loud tires are until I had a shop in Sparta. At Jr's house on hwy 18, when I paid attention to the sound when a car or truck went by, the noise was far more tires on pavement than exhaust. Passing an 18-wheeler on the interstate is an exceptionally loud event that drowns out the car's interior sound system. Unlike that bitter noise, the peep of these little frogs is something like an auditory fireplace. Like a fire, the peeps in relation to the others are constantly changing, never the same, in ongoing random change. Same pattern, but different arrangements of the sounds. A bit like Philip Glass music in that way.
Since I have learned this time we're in is temporary, I feel quite a bit better about humanity of the future, like the Indians said, for 7 generations. In America we don't make considerations for future generations. Take it all now. Like a needle-point pillow I saw on a sofa in Roaring Gap said, "We're spending our children's inheritance." That is as American as jazz. Attitudes of the ruling class make their way into the middle class, then into the working class. That one has reached the working class by now. I don't know of anybody who thinks 2 or 3 generations ahead. Even one. I don't. Now that I've seen how temporary this period of time is that is lethal to humanity and our home planet, everything that lives on the planet, I relax seeing that humanity does have a future, albeit to the chagrin of the repubs. In fact, a sorrow I've carried for the 2/3 of the earth's population in poverty, the capitalist passion for killing the poor, the American passion for putting people in prison, especially the darker brothers and sisters, a portion of the sorrow has lifted.
In our society depression over not having what you want is believable, but it's absolutely not believable if one is depressed over the human condition that keeps billions of people living in slum cities around landfills. It's like the attitude is if you don't experience it, it's invalid for you to empathize with the people who do experience it. We are such an anti-literate society by now it's not even conceivable that someone can know about something he/she has not experienced first hand, like from reading. Reading is not even given consideration any more as a way of learning something. Except in school. When school is over, reading is over. In school, we read texts full of facts to memorize for the test. And yes, Bob, there are exceptions.
Earlier today I saw the documentary about Pat Tillman, the pro footballer who gave it up to serve the propaganda machine, ended up in Afghanistan, propaganda superstar, recruiting poster child. He went into it naive, got the picture right away, was snuffed by a bullet from a rifle with a scope from about 30 yards. From 30 yards the American Army outfit and helmet are recognizable by people in the same garb. Through a scope at 30 yards you can easily recognize the face in the crosshairs even if overlooking the outfit. It was not in the heat of a firefight. He was manufactured into a hero by the propagandists with Cheney/Rumsfeldt lies that even were told before congressional hearings, and the congressmen knew they were lies. No problem, boys. I hear more and more people talking about the way things are going in DC, and educated people I know, not all, of course, are uniformly saying tear the whole thing down, throw everybody out and start over. It's interesting how universal that thinking has become.
I remind myself we are the Babylon of the end times, and like in the reggae songs, Babylon will fall. The fall is the end of the age of oil, because this Babylon is made of oil; the economy, plastic toys, plastic everything, car interiors, computers. Civilization as we know it will be over, the 2nd time. First time was the 150 years since oil came into our control. The 50s ideal of conveniences, the time of washing machines, electric can openers, garbage disposals, modern living that took a long time for everybody to give over to, quit having gardens, quit knowing self-sufficiency, and let the corporations handle all of it and choke us to death with inflation.
I believe it has raised our collective consciousness a great deal, and the downward curve will raise our consciousness further. Then we'll be back to like we were before, living in communities again, though this time with awareness of soil composition and much that has been learned by science over that time too. I see it an intensely creative time of learning to live without, while the time learning to live with what oil can be used for was creative too. In the overall history of humanity, this period of time will be an amazing time in History classes and Art History, as well as the sciences and everything else.
This Pat Tillman story spells out that this is where our government has failed its people from the middle class down. They will lie to us before they'll tell the truth about anything. They're all on the take, on the make and Congress plays step-n-fetchit for the ruling class. In the American class system, one does not ever look down the ladder. Congress only looks up the ladder. That's where the money is. Down the ladder is working class, people out of work, people living in kitchen stove boxes. To the ones at the top in charge, we're no threat. We're not organized and the ruling class has spent the last 30 years dismantling any possible organization of the working class, except as right wing stooges rallied by Bobo Limbaugh to work against their own interest for the ruling class.
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