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  • We are the 100%

    We are the cells of the body that shat on the world. It is not the mind’s fault for letting the sphincter open because the rectum said it was full. It’s not the rectum’s fault for filling when the upper gut got hasty. It’s not the upper gut’s fault for getting hasty when the mouth swallowed unpleasantries, it’s not the mouth’s… and on and on. We are all responsible. We are one sick Global Body.

    World Sick

    Poor world doesn't like being shat on.

    Some people are still in denial about the sickness. When our body is sick for long enough, we begin to believe that sickness is a part of life. It’s normal. There’s nothing to fix. Discomfort? Numbness? Anxiety? These just happen. Nothing you can do.

    Some people have reached the point where the sickness has made life unbearable. They have to do something about it because the alternative is unacceptable. They cannot carry on. The symptoms are just too awful. These people may still remember what healthy was like.

    The symptoms of our sickness manifest in our culture: behavior patterns, institutions, beliefs, and systems. From where I’m sitting (Probably the ball sac region. Yes, our Body is a man.) our culture is symptomatic of disease in the following ways:

    • Healthcare and prosperity are supplanted by sick care and war profiteering.
    • Aspiring thought leaders master the arts of manipulation not the arts of reason.
    • Emotions are milked for influence on massive group-think scales.
    • Rationality is losing a bitter feud with instant gratification, laziness, and faith.
    • The strong manipulate the weak while creating such a cluster-fuck that no one knows who is which.
    • Food is poison, medicine is quackery, and experts who we rely on to know the difference get paid not to.
    • Ignorance is taught and embraced.
    • Education is valued less than sports and soldiering.
    • Scrutiny is veiled acquiescence.
    • Truth seekers are marginalized as annoying conspiracy theorists.
    • The few who question are much too few.
    • Those who do threaten those who trade.
    • Systems that fail are enshrined while systems that succeed are crushed.
    • Spirituality is replaced by religion.
    • Control is woven into our education through fear, monotony, and camaraderie.
    • Freedom is defined as allegiance to the system.
    • Terrorism is invented because we ran out of enemies.
    • Wealth is created through scale not value.
    • Politics is pointing a finger to another side of the circle.
    • Distraction is profitable and enjoyable.
    • Consuming is encouraged and addictive.
    • Beauty is branded and bought.

    Since these are all symptoms, addressing any one does what cold medicine does for a cold: gets you high so you can go on ignoring your body while it fights the sickness alone. If you really wanted to help your body get well, you would eat more of the things your body needs to fight the virus and avoid anything that might distract it from doing so. In other words, aid the body don’t just suppress the symptoms. It still amazes me how few people I know understand and/or believe this.

    Most people today think about sickness like this, “well, we see here that this mechanism is breaking down. Maybe if we take a drug that alters the mechanism or adds a new one, we’ll be stronger and healthier.” This is a reductionist approach: drilling down to one mechanism of the body, studying how it works, learning how to manipulate it, and then unleashing that change to the entire body. It’s arrogant, reckless, and ineffective. We usually end up creating more problems than we had to begin with. But don’t worry, there’s a drug for that… and there’s a drug for that… This is sickcare.

    A much smaller but growing group of people think about sickness like this, “well, why is this person’s immune system not helping them? Other people have effectively fought this sort of illness. Why can’t this person?” This is a holistic approach: study all the things that go into and out of our bodies, study all the mechanisms between these inputs and outputs, and figure out how to modify the inputs to support the mechanisms so the outputs look more like a healthy person’s. It respects that our body is an incredibly complex parallel matrix of mechanisms, and that we can’t introduce a new mechanism and know the consequences. The best we can do is try to get out of the way of the body’s natural mechanisms. Give them support, keep them away from harm. This is healthcare.

    Now apply these same two opposing perspectives on health to the Global Body.

    We’ve taken lots of drugs. We’ve added new mechanisms and changed old ones. We’ve done this for so long that we can’t remember what life was like naturally. What was our Body when we were healthy? What were our natural mechanisms, evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, that we have nearly destroyed and forgotten?

    The mechanisms of the Global Body can be divided into two groups: intracellular and extracellular. Or what the individual does internally, and how that individually interacts with other individuals.

    Intracellular
    This is individual health–health for the mind, body, and soul. Everything we do is affected by our internal health. People don’t create terrible systems intentionally. People ARE terrible and they create their BEST. Unless you are healthy first, nothing you do will help heal the Global Body. Start here.

    There’s so much to study about this topic it can make your head spin. Every week a new theory comes out about health. But our bodies haven’t really changed all that much in thousands of years. So, to keep it simple, I stick with the 5 point strategy for health. Do these five things daily, and you’ll be healthy:

    1. Sleep well
    2. Eat well
    3. Exercise/stretch well
    4. Meditate well
    5. Avoid/purge toxins

    If you get this strategy nailed, your tactics will become obvious over time… and chances are they will be entirely different for you than any one else. And you can write a book about it and make millions. ;)

    Extracellular
    This is how we treat each other. What signals are we transmitting back and forth? What are our belief systems? How do we educate? How do we value? How do we incentivize? How do we collaborate?

    Again this is a topic of endless debate. Separating the quick-fixes from the evolved mechanisms here is difficult because society has changed so rapidly in recent history. So, I use two simple questions to distinguish them:

    1. Is this signal coming from love?
    2. Or is this signal coming from fear?

    If you can’t tell the difference, focus more on Intracellular health. If you can tell the difference, acting only in case 1 and not reacting to case 2 will do wonders to heal the Global Body. Love is the nutrition, fear is the poison.

    That’s it. That’s the only way the Global Body can achieve health. There is no magic pill that will get us out of this one. This will require a lot of work, deep introspection, and serious will power.

    100% of us are responsible for the health of the Global Body. A much smaller percentage has achieved health on the Intracellular level. And an even smaller percentage consistently distinguishes nutrition from poison on the Extracellular level. Most of us seem to be on the fast track to becoming a cancer cell and/or inflicting cancer on another.

    So as we tear the world down for failing us, keep in mind that we built it. And unless we reprogram ourselves, one person at a time, we are just going to build another monster on top of the rubble.

    The Last Temptation of Me

    Every so often we’re witness to a reality that is so much like what we imagined that we can’t help but think we made it happen.

    Auspicious number...

    Coincidence, they call it. I’ve read stuff about the mathematical probability of it-that it’s just something that should happen given the variables. It’s a result of the dance of evolution: chaos and order caught up in a tangle of exertion, enraptured by fluidity. Inevitably there are collisions. A step on a foot, a miss timing. Moments that shouldn’t be, but are.

    Today I experienced two moments of collision. The first started when I had the thought that my odometer would reach 6666 soon. And I thought how I should document that, perhaps with some trepidation. Hours later, after cleaning my house and messing around on facebook, on a whim I decided to call a good friend. I got in my car (hands free talking), backed up out of the carport to watch the stars, and called. That’s when I noticed 6666.6mi staring back at me. I smiled. What a coincidence! Sure, it was going to happen, duh… but did I have to be sitting in my driveway, calling a dear friend, hours after I imagined this moment, staring at this auspicious number? Did I make this moment happen? Was something else making it happen?

    After the wave of awe passed, the experience could be shelved as just another unknown–just one more sign of the paranormal, or a delusion of a wishful mind. Interesting but not ground shattering.

    Then after a heavy conversation about some of the more meaningful thought turds, I got out of my car. The stars were beaming. I walked around to the back of the house. The concrete slab of a back patio was littered with a smashed table, part of which was now ash in our re-purposed grill. I turned my head up towards the stars and thought as my chest swelled with an emotion I can only describe as yearning, “you’re out there, waiting for me.”

    It was a recognition that I’m putting off the reunion. That I can know something, maybe me, maybe god, but something. Something more profound and infinite than this fleeting existence. And that all the drugs and distractions and delusions are just me waiting. And looking up tonight I thought, “hey, I’m just waiting, aren’t I? Maybe you’re waiting there for me. But you’re there, aren’t you?”

    In that very instant, and in the very small space between the trees that I was directly looking, a shooting star dashed through. As the words, “you’re out there, waiting for me” just left my mouth. And there it was, as if to say, “YES!”

    My heart exploded–laughter, awe, sadness, joy… however you describe that feeling where your heart bangs against your chest and your mind reels as it’s overwhelmed by the sound of it go thump.

    Who am I? What am I?

    And why the fuck am I so damn lucky?! This can’t be coincidence anymore. This can’t be. I seldom go a day without life reminding me that I’m lucky. With blatant opportunity, subtle beauty, or extraordinary experiences, I’m constantly reminded that my life is exceptional. When I mess up, I pay for it quickly. The lessons I learn aren’t too painful. The joys aren’t too hard to find. And shit like stars reacting to my thoughts happens ALL THE TIME.

    But the answer to it all just came to me tonight. And that’s this mandate: stop fucking around and know god.

    Because I can. And because there is no greater purpose. I’ve done this life thing before, many times. And now I’m back one more time. This time I couldn’t be more set. The path couldn’t be clearer. This is my last temptation. All I need do is let it go… be alive, but be free. Then maybe I’ll meet that which makes stars move and dreams come alive.

    I’m so close. I can feel it.

    Theme: Esquire by Matthew Buchanan.