Irrational Focus

Forget nukes or environmental damage, the 20 th century's greatest enduring legacy is our refinement of 'marketing'. Given that insanity, we need to change our formerly pagan seasonal holiday from being some wishy -washy family-oriented value-inspired celebration of some kid born well over 2000 years ago, to one that celebrates the real modern values of Christmas: the power of Marketing! After all -- like lemmings to a cliff -- we succumb to the propaganda wave year after year, buying tonnes of useless stuff for each other so that we can either immorally re-gift it, or just toss it into our basements to await the untold years and inches of dust buildup, before someone else comes along and dumps it into a land fill site where it really should have been sent earlier. They say Christmas was an early propaganda attempt to sway the hordes from celebrating their drunken festivals -- such as Saturnalia -- which would make it a very early form of mass marketing. An historic spin-f...

"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless" -- Steven Weinberg The key to our spiritual needs is the answer to the question "why are we here?" No other question, in history has ever been answered so often with so many different variations. Yet, for many people they still search for an answer they can accept. It is, of course, our Achilles heel, that fabled weak point to which virtually anybody can seize control of our will and our actions if they understand how to invoke the right magical incantations. Countless religions, cults and other "organizations" have existed since our very origins as a socialized species whose sole claim to control is the possession of this answer. How many of our billions are under some spell or another? It is funny, because it always seems like the little kid in the car screaming "are we there yet?" every five minutes. I mean, do we really need to know why? We've kinda guessed at...

I always knew it was coming. Since I was a kid, somehow I figured that my generation was going to be the one to live through the height of modern civilization. We were destined to get to the other side and see a long slow steady decline. Maybe it was all of that nuclear paranoia, or the talk of asteroids. It might be those sci-fi books on biological disasters, or our more recent understanding of our own environmental consequences. One thing is certain, I am convinced that the end is coming soon and fast. I feel kinda like one of those crazies on the street with a picket sign prophesying our impending doom. "The end is nigh", it says. You just can't live through that much anti-propaganda and still remain positive. I figure that for all of the potential environmental, biological or natural disasters, we're most likely to do it to ourselves. We are overwhelmed by the sheer number of indicators that are leading the way. We feed on fear in the news. The media keeps deliver...