The Real Enemy !?

"In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself."

Quote on page 75 of The First Global Revolution, A Report by the Council of the Club of Rome. September 1991. An online version of the book is here.

The text below indicates what the book is about – and please do remember that it was written almost 20 years ago!! As far as I can see … nobody learned from it and none of the problems it described have been solved.

In the 1970s, the Club of Rome launched the book The Limits to Growth. Essential reading for all those concerned about the future of the planet, the book was translated into 37 languages. Now, President Emeritus Alexander King and Secretary General Bertrand Schneider review global problems 20 years on, offering both a warning and an approach to a possible solution to world problems. Topics covered by this book include the need for the world to convert from a military to a civil economy, the recognition of the disastrous short-term effects of exploitation by First World countries of Third World poverty and need, and the containment of global warming: the need to reduce global emissions of carbon dioxide, to encourage reforestation, to conserve traditional forms of energy and develop alternatives.

Yet the authors of the statement The real enemy then is humanity itself have also fallen into a trap, just like they warned their readers not to do. By designating all of humanity as the enemy (of the planet and life as we know it), they have failed to point out that the real enemy is not every single individual - herding sheep or planting rice - but those among humanity who are motivated by a perverted greed and the obscene belief that the planet, the Earth, is theirs to control and to manipulate. The real enemy - if truth be told - are the multinational corporations and conglomerates who relentlessly follow the Bible in it's assertion that the planet is something we own - rather than be part of. Says the Old Testament in Genesis: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

Well, the Earth is full and subdued, fish and birds are disappearing due to dominion, an every living thing that moves upon the earth is in dire danger to die of the poisons that fed the greed of the the people who run Bayer, Baxter, Monsanto, Shell ... to name but a few.

And although the Bible continues (Genesis) by saying: God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good - it doesn't look that good once one opens one's eyes to the full extent; they way they were meant to be used.

Photograph: Copyright © CCRCC

The Art of Discrimination

Nowadays, the term discrimination is most often seen as something wrong, negative, chauvinist ... you name it. It's a pity that this has happened, because discrimination is - in fact - one of the most important forms of thinking and intuiting. To be able to discriminate is not only important in perceiving the world more or less correctly, it is actually needed for our very survival.

One is, for example, well advised to discriminate between eating food that is nutritious and healthy - and stuff that poses as food while it actually consists of garbage, plastic and poisons. One also does well to discriminate between vampire-like people who zap one's energy by being both selfish and stupid, and others who aid one's development, honestly share opinions and insights, offer respect and friendship; perhaps even agape of some kind.

However, intelligent discrimination does need nurturing, training, education ... it is almost as difficult as it is for the young girl in this photograph to climb those stairs in the equatorial heat; carrying water to her home in the village on top.

With the following quote, I like to provide an example of how difficult discrimination can be, but also how important for our perception of what is called reality.

Try to make up your mind whether or not the following resembles fiction rather than reality, is misguided conspiracy fantasy or honest assessment of a situation by a daring mind.

"(He) had had too many dealings with the idiots on Capitol Hill to feel anything but contempt for them. Those whose arteries weren't already sufficiently hardened to cut off oxygen to their brains were so venal they never managed to get their snouts out the river of graft that year after year granted them certain return to their privileged sinecures."

And let me remind you that it says Capitol Hill only because the author of this is an American - if another name suits you better, please do exchange it when thinking about this.

Photograph: Village on Nias (Indonesia). Copyright © CCRCC
Quote: Eric Lustbader. Black Blade. London, 1997 (page 613)

Health Care versus Health Scare

There's no need - for a European - to talk about the possibly emerging US health care system - it is something most more or less civilized nations have - and have had for quite a while.
I also know that it would be - given the state of the world we live in - most difficult to change the mind-set of profit driven insurance companies and the medical establishment at large with a bit of Chinese wisdom.


However, I like everyone of my readers to know and consider the following.

In ancient China, way before the idea of communism ever existed, they had an admirably smart system one can only envy! I think it is the best health care system ever conceived. You'd pay your personal physician (GP in modern terms) a certain fee every month as long as you were healthy, as long as she or he kept you advised as to how to stay that way.
However, the very moment you'd fall ill, contract some disease, feel pain here or there ... any payment of yours would be suspended - until, that is, you were well again.
There's nothing or little to praise about modern China ... but the ancients often did have a specifically wise way to look at things.

In our present system, a GP would possibly send his flu carrying kids to school - because contaminating others could perhaps be good for business. The equivalent Chinese GP - a long time ago - would certainly keep them at home ... because it could easily be bad for business.

Street advert in Hongkong, 1981 Copyright © CCRCC

High Speed Penetration

Such is the penetration of internet services in Europe that even this small village on Crete - counting just 400 inhabitants and from which I view the world - has high speed broadband access to the World Wild Web.

In the background, Mt. Malaxa, to the right (invisible) a bay and a port - and further on an airport - to the left (invisible) the White Mountains (Greek: Lefka Ori).

Photograph: Copyright © CCRCC [click on image to enlarge]

Intimate Part - Delicate Art

Judging by this image, it seems that the world-wide Atheist Club and their ingenious ad-campaign have inspired others to get on the bus as well.

After all, being on a Big City Bus assures a rather large audience, and it may - perhaps - create quite a Buzz.

However, in this case the message seems to be for a rather different club, because the word Yoni is mainly known to people who speak ancient Sanskrit, apart from a few hundred thousand others who have read books about Her, books about the Goddess, books about Gyn-Ecology.

Now if you're not one of this club, perhaps the image at left will say more than the proverbial thousand words. It is just as the title of this item announced ... Yoni Portraits is a book showing - in gorgeous colors - women's most intimate part in the form of delicate art. And the artist who created these intimate portraits (of 49 daring women) is a woman as well. She is Dutch and her name is Christina Camphausen.

So the advert on the bus is about a book featuring her art ... and to find out more about it you can best move your hand for a fraction so that the mouse can click on this link which goes to the website where you can find out all about the artist and her book ... not to mention order it - if you like what you see and read.

Click on the image for a large version.

Copyright © Christina Camphausen - All Rights Reserved. Used here with permission.

Indiginous Energy ... in You and Me

The image at left is a design of mine for the film Modern Tribalism.
Alas, not every design one makes is being used, and low-fi filmworks
has used something else. Still, I do recommend the film.

Here's a bit of text spoken in the film:

There is indiginous energy in the modern person; an energy that has been sitting there for so long that it's really getting tired of being forgotten and left alone like that ...

And here's the official synopsis:
Journey into America's primitive soul in this "graphic, unflinching and startlingly touching" (L.A. Weekly) documentary about the resurgence of humanity's oldest and most intense rituals. From garden-variety tattooing, to frenzied effigy-burning festivals, to the disturbing extremes of body-piercing, Modern Tribalism explores the cultural context surrounding this underground movement.

And there's a trailer available right here.

The Quandary of the 21st Century

The reading that made me write this is concerned with two things: Climate Change and the possible necessity to reduce the breeding of livestock, which means that most of us should turn into vegetarians - unless you already are one.

However, becoming a vegetarian is not what I refer to as quandary, nor do I use quandary in order to imply that climate change presents such a situation. A quandary is nothing more than a difficult and unpleasant predicament, whereas human-made climate change is outright dangerous and possibly disastrous.

Perhaps it is best to read the few lines of text that got me into this philosophical mood:

A 2006 United Nations (UN) report revealed that the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars, trucks, trains, planes and ships in the world combined. The report attributed 18 per cent of annual worldwide greenhouse-gas emissions to cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens and other farmed animals, but new research from the Worldwatch Institute indicates that the figure actually could be much higher. According to Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang, co-authors of “Livestock and Climate Change”, raising animals for food produces 51 per cent of all greenhouse-gas emissions.
[quote from Eagle Eye, a blog that is part of the English newspaper The Independent]

Photograph © CCRCC

It all sounds straightforward, doesn't it? A UN report, authors who publish data based on research by the Worldwatch Institute.

Now what I perceive as the quandary, is the fact that these days, we can't anymore believe anyone. It's a general disease that came with the information-explosion and the media-society, with corporations often employing scientists as PR manufacturers.

These days, it is possible that the driving force behind such a report are the industries running on selling oil and making cars. Feeling that they look bad - in environmental terms - they would be interested in telling us that eating meat is worse than driving cars.

On the other hand, the people behind the cited reports could be extremist PETA vegetarians who want to turn meat-eaters into outcasts, similar to what is happening to tobacco-smokers.

Now how can we decide if the data are true or a full blown lie, whether or not spin-doctors have twisted it - and who paid the spin doctors? Each of us would need an army of scientists, desk-clerks and secretaries to find out what's true and what not ... and we can't afford that.

Then again, governments do have such armies of aides, and we actually pay for them, yet to no avail. Watching the carousel of wrong decisions that's known as government ... these Ladies and Gentlemen seem to suffer from the very same quandary as you and I: How to detect a True Lie?

The Situation in Afghanistan

There is a superb article by Chris Hedges at Truth Dig.
It's bad news, yes, but it's good that this type of news is being published. It tells that the figures in Afghan government are exact clones of the Taliban - it's just that they have a different name: Democratically Elected Leaders (aided by the Western Empire). However, their atrocities and disregard for others - especially women - equals the Taliban in many ways.

And then there's this disturbing article at Slate, in which Christopher Hitchens clearly demonstrates that the West - specifically the United Nations - is in fact complicit to more or less all that's happening there!

I'm so glad to have been in that country when it still was quiet and beautiful - in 1974 - way before the Russians even. The majestic Buddha statues were still standing then, no Taliban was in sight, there were no mines to tread on. I rent a horse and went into the mountains, found surreal landscapes with a terrace of 7 lakes, and friendly people who told me that eating a piece of opium would help my stomach problems.
Photograph Copyright © CCRCC

Think about it ...

Young girl in meditation
on the remains of an ancient temple for a Greek Goddess

Location: Aptera, Chania, Crete, Greece
Photograph: Copyright @ 2007, CCRCC