Monthly Archives: December 2022

Brian Bilson

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Mariner’s wife, as regular readers know, is a lifetime librarian, ardent reader and a published journalist and poet. She follows many poets, authors and journalists. The other day she offered a piece by Brian Bilson that is unique. Read below:

They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you and me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cutthroats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way

—-> Now read from bottom up

 

Let’s all wish for a better 2023

Ancient Mariner

The Industrial Revolution is personal

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A few days ago, mariner was about to peel potatoes when he discovered his potato peelers were in the dish washer which was running a two-hour cycle. He had to use a paring knife. Wow! Is this a lost art! He must have sacrificed 20 percent of the potato. King Arthur would have been more precise swinging his sword. This reminded me of the recent posts about Mark Boyle, an economist who lived three years without money. Did he give up peelers?

Where would mariner be without his house slippers with rubber soles or his oil heater in his study. How much time would it take to sharpen his knives, chisels, axes and lawn mower blades without a bench grinder? Mariner is old enough to remember when bathrooms didn’t have showers.

Where would our club basements be if we still used coal furnaces and the front of the basement was filled with two tons of coal? Yes, it is true mariner remembers slave labor as a child who had to shovel coal and carry out ashes as well.

These personal thoughts lead to thoughts about how society has changed faster and faster with great leaps of technology and automation changing reality before it has completed previous changes. Where once it was an innovation to invent potato peelers, now entire libraries are replaced with a search engine. Where once upon a time mothers told us what to do – now it is Alexis. When once we gathered about a table to play games together, now we don’t need people or a table to play the smartphone.

Mark Boyle chose to live without money for three years to force an epiphany in himself. How did one survive before the Industrial Revolution freed humans to ignore basic truths about survival in a natural environment? Perhaps modern folk should forego vacations at Disney World and spend a week in a primitive environment that had no modern inventions – especially not electricity, which old fashioned Planet Earth seems not to appreciate.

Now, back to those potatoes.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Zones

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A reader asked about the four zones of awareness. Rather than repeat the explanation, anyone interested should read ‘On Morality -2’ published September 30, 2022. One point that is very, very important to understand is that the virtue of the four zones of emotional awareness is dependent on the zones that precede each one.

For example, if one murders their spouse, beats their children and kicks the dog, these intimate behaviors will carry forward – perhaps friends and extended family should interact carefully. Further, one’s prejudices may provoke violence against other races or attack the US Capitol.  In the recognition zone, where our values depend on subconsciously formed opinions, the lack of a structured morality in previous zones allows irrational interpretations to be one’s guideline – perhaps murder some Asians.

The fourth zone, ‘inactive’, is the zone where people are dependent on society to set the standard. The most obvious failure is the Nazi holocaust. Jews may have had the most virtuous ethical values in the first three zones but the fourth failed to set a viable standard. There are journalists that bring up this comparison when reflecting on American social ethics.

As with Germany and the holocaust, it will take the US citizenry – along with great effort and sacrifice – to reinforce virtuous behavior in our society.

Ancient Mariner

Social Spirit

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As mariner peruses his news sources, he notices a singular frame of reference. Below are the titles and summaries of just a few frequent topics:

America’s Adult Education System Is Broken. Experts say that more money is critical to improving the national system.

A Water War Is Brewing Over the Dwindling Colorado River. Diminished by climate change and overuse, the river can no longer provide the water states try to take from it.

Shadow Diplomats Have Posed a Threat for Decades. The World’s Governments Looked the Other Way. The U.S. State Department trusts foreign governments to nominate reputable honorary consuls, despite global accounts of wrongdoing.

Porn, Piracy, Fraud: What Lurks Inside Google’s Black Box Ad Empire. Google’s ad business hides nearly all publishers it works with and where billions of ad dollars flow. We uncovered a network containing manga piracy, porn, fraud and disinformation.

Salmon People: A Native Fishing Family’s Fight to Preserve a Way of Life. This documentary film features the plight of the salmon of the Columbia River and the Native people whose lives revolve around them.

This School District Is Ground Zero for Harsh Discipline of Native Students in New Mexico. In Gallup-McKinley County Schools, wearing the wrong color shirt can get you written up for “gang-related activity.”

A Texas Superintendent Ordered School Librarians to Remove LGBTQ Books. Now the Federal Government Is Investigating.

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has opened what appears to be the first-of-its-kind investigation into the Granbury Independent School District.

  • – –

The common theme seems to be social fragmentation. A recent post to this blog referenced four zones of awareness which require different information and ethical systems to be in place [intimate, interactive, recognition and inactive]. The inactive zone is that part of our awareness where we depend on cultural values provided by society at large. All the articles cited above imply some form of disruption to cultural values that we depend on for ethical structure in our society.

This list is one of many kinds of issues that face us in these turbulent days. The point is that many of society’s problems today can’t be fixed with mechanical or procedural change – it is a matter of social spirit.

Ancient Mariner

Democratic Nationalism

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Television news, newspapers, magazines, internet news sources – all are filled with the difficulties of living in today’s topsy turvy world. Older folk can remember when the times had their difficulties, but the society was stable; people knew where they stood in the big picture. There is no big picture today. There are some worldwide, complex issues that may take several decades to reconcile.

Interestingly, the concept of ‘nation’ is under duress. This is due to a significant change in how economies work: supply chains are managed by corporations, not nations. An analogy would be that nations have become like unions in a struggle to control benefits. Also stressing nations is that the Internet and AI are too fast and too universal to be contained within superficial borders. It may come to pass that nations have a role more like regional collaborators for best practices rather than controlling economies directly.

Obviously, the issues with global resources and global warming together will be a major ‘earthquake’ as population outruns natural resources. These issues, too, will strain the role of a nation.

Riding such a high-speed rail of change raises risk for accidents. Nationalism is undergoing major adjustment in a new era; an accident may be to allow dictatorships or corporatism to replace much of nationalism’s role. Far more important than the old-fashioned East-West competition is to hold on to democracy. If democracy fails as a major philosophy and individuals no longer have a say in the world order, Armageddon will arrive much sooner – or some Matrix variation thereof.

Important news to follow is related to:

The philosophical outcome of Putin’s war. Is the European Union still one political entity (watch Great Britain and Germany in particular)? Has the consortium of authoritarian nations in the Middle East collapsed? Has Russia itself reinstated a genuine democracy?

South America seems intent on promoting authoritarianism. Will the United States be able to have direct influence in South American political philosophy or will China continue to back friendly dictatorships? Will America and international groups like G7 solve the immigration problem by underwriting large economic change in dysfunctional nations? A small cousin to the South American issue are the Caribbean and Gulf islands – even Puerto Rico isn’t happy with the US.

Pay attention to who controls public services, governments or corporations. A good example in the news today is the uncontrolled economic influence of corporations in the health industry. With much news coverage is the invasion into health services by Amazon and the hidden invasion into hospitals by venture capitalists. Pharmaceuticals have been an issue for decades. Also pay attention to support for senior citizens and common measures of human worth represented by policies on minimum wage and wealth taxes. If governments are to have a say in the future, they must be able to use taxes as an economic tool. Another sector under duress is all types of education, which have a growing investment by corporations.

So – intellectually there is a battle between 2oth century capitalism and 21st century socialism. Economically there is a battle between corporatism and democracy. Globally between China and the United States there is a battle for dominance in a one-world government.

The elephant in the room is physical war. What would it be like for significant portions of the world to live in battle-scarred ruins?

Ancient Mariner

Earth from God’s perspective

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As one of thousands of creatures in God’s Earth zoo, our human view of reality often is myopic. That view is important because it keeps our species alive from day to day. The downside, of course, is that it is easy to ignore the bigger picture – the view from God’s perspective.

Unfortunately, over recent centuries education in formal categories of study has been socialized. The relationship between students and the Earth Sciences is taught as if the Earth’s 4.6 billion year history were a science-fiction movie. In fact, Earth’s history is very much a daily dynamic that encompasses every move every creature, including humans, makes on a moment-to-moment, day-in day-out basis.

The Earth’s history shows very plainly that the planet is in charge. It is the planet’s rules that will prevail. All creatures in the Earth Zoo must acknowledge the zoo rules for their respective cages, that is, how a species must relate to its environment and fellow members of its species.

Again unfortunately, the Earth itself must abide by God’s rules for astronomic behavior. This means that the Earth will not always be the same. For example, the Earth moved from a dry, barren planet to one that was covered in water because at the time it rained for millions of years. Life began in these waters but perished when the Earth suddenly incurred a centuries long ice age that froze the seas; ocean life had no choice but to perish. It was largely true with the large dinosaurs; a meteor hit the Earth and destroyed 90 percent of life on Earth.

These misbehaviors by Earth are rare. What occurs more frequently is smaller changes attributed to Sun storms, shifts in orbit and the aging of the planet. For example, what was called the ‘Fertile Crescent’ (the region east of the Mediterranean) in early human migrations is now largely desert. The absence of agriculture has left the region in turmoil for centuries; human stability in the environment has disappeared – an example of Earth changing the rules of the ‘human cage’ in the zoo.

For the first time in 4.6 billion years, a new zoo perspective has occurred: a species has decided to make the rules for interacting with the Earth’s environment. Yes, the humans.

It isn’t working too well. The humans are changing the environmental rules from a sophisticated, self-managing zoo to a resource for allowing humans to actually claim ownership of the environment, motivated less by balanced self-management than to optimize comfort, reduced accountability and personal advantage over other humans. (Reminds mariner of the crypto crisis).

Zoo management isn’t taking this sitting down. Earth’s environment is growing unstable. Sadly, this imbalance affects all the species at the zoo.

God is watching.

Ancient Mariner