Arrived on Wednesday morning November 5 in London shortly after hearing the captain announce Obama’s victory. Wish I had left on nov 5 instead of 6pm on the fourth so I could have partaken in the out in the streets spontaneous joy fest in seattle which I heard about from tina and read in the online papers. i love that stuff. didn’t really make me feel joyous when I heard, although my soul is dancing for the result, maybe not have gone back if mccain had won…don’t know if i could stand another four years of living in a country that is mine and not mine. GOBAMA!!!!
So england is great. first time travelling to europe. different feel than se asia. I mean they’re very different places, don’t mean to say that fact is interesting, but that they make me feel differently. when I see old buildings in asia I didn’t feel as much of a personal connection methinks. when i saw stonehenge and some other old buildings it makes me think about humanity and stuff in kind of a snapshot…view my life as more of an example of the whole, one thread in the tapestry of humanity. Makes me feel more universal and also more individual at the same time. Thinking about ancient civilizations and that my ancestors’ success was required for my life makes me want to kick ass and take names as they must have to hold on to their lives and create more of them.
I’ve a theory that as people decide to have less and less of an impact on the world that there’s a tendancy to start to dislike human life. I mean, to live is to kill, to absorb, to take away from the world, to make food into shit. So if my goal in becoming vegetarian is to be more ecological in the sense that I want to take less from the earth because taking from the earth is bad then to follow that to its logical extreme, i must die for that is the way I will have the least impact on the earth and its inhabitants.
This idea comes up when you talk about the point of civilization, It is definitely to organize and support human life, but with what goals? are we to live harmoniously with the earth, in the way that perhaps hunter gatherer tribes lived, so that if all people were to die there would be no trace of them shortly after. This goal would be most harmonious perhaps, but maybe not as comfortable as i’ve become accustomed to. I guess that making peoples’ lives more comfortable is nearly the same as supporting their lives, it was a rough life that caused such early deaths back in the day when old age was 40, but taking these two different goals to their extremes might have different results.
Another reason for civilization is to ensure humanity’s continued existence. If this is the goal, then we need to conquor and control the elements in our lives that threaten humanity. I see these as ourselves and nature. The problem of humanity destroying themselves is more of an internal struggle to mold one’s self into a person who will not destroy humanity, like not making bombs or genociding, and helping others to avoid becoming those pernicious people. The solution to that problem is beyond the scope of what i want to talk about here. The other problem, conquoring nature, requires that we survive and build space ships so we can live on tons of planets, maybe not be dependent on planets to survive, spread the seed of humanity throughout the stars.
When I get to this point in the conversation and someone disagrees, then I ask “what, you think that humanity not existing is an acceptable possibility?” to which they reply something like, “yeah, that wouldnt’ be so bad” MAN! that’s depressing. what a crazy mix of self and species hate. I know this feeling comes from a place of compassion for the universe and stuff, but it’s a painfully paradoxial way to live your life. Too compassionate I think.
I agree we need to be nice and not hurt stuff unnecessarily, but it is a fact that to live is to kill and suck the life force out of things. It’s just the balance that we make in our lives that decide if we are considerate or inconsiderate, kind or mean.
So anyway to bring this back to my point before about how england and all the old castles and stuff make me feel…it makes me value humanity more than i used to, and also my life and ancestors more too. I feel better about eating animals, and I’d feel more okay about killing to save my life if i needed to. my ancestor’s ability to do these things has made my life possible.
that brings up a good point. If there are any people out there, and I know a couple of you personally, then remember that you wouldn’t have this life without your ancestors fighting for their lives. and when you really think about it, or maybe when you really don’t think about it, (depends how you think about it) life is totally awesome. Or at least sometimes it is and in those moments you can’t help but think all the shit was worth it eh
well i went off on quite a tangent there…
folks and i went to bath, nice place, nice churches like every largish and some smallish towns here. Toured the roman bath and partook in the more modern thermae spa to take the waters. their hot tubs were pretty much warm tubs, but i could stay in them longer than 105 degree tubs like I prefer, and so i felt slow roasted…very relaxed 🙂 The weather’s fairly miserable like seattle in the winter, but england’s five degrees or so north of seattle latitudinally and so perhaps a bit crappier.
went to a proper english pub and it was nice. the barkeeps were great, real friendly and reminded me of people i know, which reminds me of another idea i had: that all people have all elements of everyone else in them, and that they’re individuals based on what amounts of the different characteristics they have in them. now to identify all the characteristics people can have…nope way too complicated for right now.
oh, and money, what a crazy thing, representation of value, what it does to society, etc etc wow. could think about all the implications of money for days. I don’t really get it. oh, and if someone could explain to me why there can be fiscal depressions please I would really appreciate it. My problem with it is this: there are tons of people out of work and then they have no money to live. Money represents value right? well how do we get things of value? they are products of a person’s labor, their purposeful intelligent interaction with the world, like planting crops and tending them, or felling a tree and carpentering up a chair to sit on. So there’s tons of people who will starve unless they create value to support their lives, why don’t they just work for each other, like I’ll make some food if you make me chair. There’s so many people around trying to work to sustain their lives, why don’t they just start doing it? and dont’ tell me there’s nobody to hire them because you’re stuck looking at money as having value in itself. People can create value with their labor, and there’s tons of people willing and desperate to sustain themselves with value. Is it due to the organization of society? That there’s a system, an infrastructure, that if some of its parts fail the whole thing falls apart? Please help me to understand this, I hope I’ve described my confusion sufficiently for you to tell me what I need to know to understand this better. THANK YOU!!!
Okay, enough philosophizing and enough topics, prolly can’t even remember what they were if you’ve read this far 🙂