Perpetual Anger

I constantly go through life angry and cynical. In the past few years I've really gotten into anger rock music, like Rage Against the Machine. I like to play it loud — really loud!

I often wonder why I'm continually angry. Sometimes I wonder if I'm angry and cynical just because I like being that way. Maybe it gives me comfort, in a weird sort of way. People often tell me I'm funny, but my humor has a bitter, cynical, and sarcastic edge to it. I'm a sick puppy.

The reason I'm angry is that I find that people are ambivalent, shallow, petty, and extremely selfish. People, in general, don't care about anything except for things that immediately benefit them. Yeah, I know, that's sick, but true.

What I find unfathomable is that people are so wrapped in their little selfish worlds that they do nothing to prevent their own self-destruction, the destruction of their children, and the destruction of their planet. Humans will deny and rationalize, or they simply won't be interested in the issues. I spend a lot of time randomly visiting other people's blogs and I find the vast majority of people to be petty simpletons.

A fellow activist had me pegged when he said something like:

You seem frustrated by the fact that people just don't get things that appear perfectly obvious to you.

For instance, there are major problems in this world like terrorism, abortion, and mass immigration. Your average Six Pack Joe or Caribou Barbie just wants to address the symptoms of the problem with some harsh measure, and on one ever thinks about the "root causes" of the problem. For example, terrorism is directly related to oil wealth and the dysfunctionalism and corruption in the Middle East. Everyone forgets that it was mainly Saudi nationals who attacked us on 9/11. One of the best ways to fight terrorism is to stop buying oil from nations that do NOT respect human rights or provide equality to women and minorities. This should be a given, yet we totally suck up to the totally dysfunctional royalty of Saudi Arabia. Come on, princes? That's right out of a fairytale book, yet we give these people billions of dollars to buy their black goop.

Or, let's talk about Iraq. We send our finest men and women overseas to be slaughtered so that oil companies can get back the contracts that Saddam Hussein stole from them 30 years ago. Yet, our government wraps up their true motives in lies and rambles on about patriotism and democracy, and the mothers of the U.S. heartland willingly give up their sons for corporate America. And all of this is accepted by the average American, or worse yet, they simply don't care either way.

And then there's all the denial about global warming. The right-wing radio show hacks continue to say global warming is NOT human caused, even though a vast amount of data shows otherwise. Yes, sometimes the Earth's orbit shifts and changes, which affects temperature, but that hasn't happened for 10,000 years. But since 1750 humans have been burning coal and other fuels, and releasing millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, yet right wing talking heads and religious conservatives have the gall to say that global warming is a result of "natural causes." These individuals believe their lies so sincerely that they draw others into believing their lies as well.

I could go on and on and on .....

The point is, humans are given no mandate for survival. It's up to our own intelligence to survive as a group. Right now we are destroying ourselves, which bothers me some. A human being is an endlessly amazing and complex animal -- I love the species. But I am heartbroken that the human animal is not able to use its great intelligence to override "human nature" and save itself. It's just a horrible waste. And what REALLY makes me angry is that when we destroy ourselves, we'll be taking millions of other animal and plant species down with us, and perhaps an incredibly beautiful planet as well.

I'm not sure what we'll destroy us first: weapons of mass destruction or environmental degradation. But what I do know is that humans are capable of great good, yet they are totally hellbent on killing themselves. And this is the reason for my endless anger. And this is the reason for my blog, which is appropriately titled, "Goosed."

Evo-Religion

The argument regularly comes up that humans have an innate desire to worship a god, thus there must be a god.

Sorry, but this logic may be flawed. I believe our desire to worship something comes from evolution. Okay, let's go back to, say, 30,000 years ago when humans were organizing into clans and tribes. A religion provided unity, continuity, and some sense of being for the tribe. This held them together and made them not only more efficient as a fighting force, but they also functioned as a more coherent group. The religion provided other benefits like order, structure, and enabled perpetuation of the group. Those wandering groups of homo sapiens who were not well organized through a religious order simply died out or were wiped out by competitive groups.

The Egyptians became the masters of using religion to create order and structure for their society. For an amazing several thousands of years their society changed little. When progressives pharaohs came along and tried to change the order or the religion, they were erased from history.

The ancient Greeks and Romans were long enamored with Egyptian civilization, and in fact, they both invaded the place. Through the contact with Egypt, their religious concepts and ideas permeated throughout the Mediterranean. Hmmm, controlling and providing order to society by using a deity is a GREAT IDEA!

Best of all, the deity, who can bring pleasure or pain, helps people to override their destructive human nature. If you piss off the deity you'll get punished, and if you make him or her happy, you'll get a reward. And, so, this helped make citizens behave, to an extent.

The Romans caught on quick and adopted Christianity as their official religion. Yeah, that's the religion that the Hebrews ripped from the Egyptians, and then the intellectual Greeks put their New Age spin to it. Yeah, real basic stuff -- if you're an evangelical Christian you just have to say a three sentence prayer and you go up to heaven, where you pet lions and sing hymns to God for a zillion years. If you're a little shit and refuse to say the prayer, you swim in a lake of fire with Hitler and a billion Muslims. Now, I remember when that river in Cleveland caught on fire in the 1970s — I suppose that's what hell will be like, except me and all the other people will be right in the middle of it. Yuck.

But I digress ... the point being is that the Roman Catholic Church is just like ancient Egyptian religion. Its function is to provide order and perpetuation. The purpose of perpetuation is to impose more order on we lawless and generally crappy human beings.

So, getting back to my point, religion evolved in our brains through Natural Selection, and when we stopped evolving, religion continued to evolve socially. A modern example of this are all the mega-churches popping around town. People got bored with traditional church services, with the stale hymns and the lady in the choir who always sang off-key. These new mega-churches provide live praise bands, multi-media, drama presentations, and even pyrotechnics! Yeah, serious. So, the organism, in order to perpetuate itself, has adapted to changing cultural trends. The beast feeds on that evolved desire to worship that some of us still have. And in turn, we feed the beast.

The end.

There's Gotta Be An End

As I look around in my day-to-day life I'm amazed at all the waste we Americans generate every day. Just your average fast food joint is an environmental killing field, with tray after tray of paper wrappers thrown away. And then look all around — plastic bags, product packaging, Happy Meal toys, and the carnage goes on.

Okay, I use my canvas bags at the store and recycle all my cardboard, chipboard, and other packaging material. But even I, the great environmental pariah, goeth through a lot of trash.

Ultimately, this crap ends up in landfills where it is piled high, packed, and covered with dirt. Then, more land is ripped apart for another landfill. Meanwhile, all this crap starts to decay and it generates methane gas, a bad global warming gas that goes into the atmosphere and holds a lot of heat.

All the while, happy American couples continue to make babies because a) sex is pleasurable, and b) babies are cute. So we create thousands and thousands of little super-consumers who, in turn, go through a lot of disposable diapers and throwaway wrappings.

Common sense would tell us that this cycle cannot go on forever. We are throwing more plastic, rubber, plastic foam, and other crap away at a faster rate than it can decay. And when it does decay it puts more global warming gases in the atmosphere, and at the same time we are making more and more children.

My point is that we are living a lifestyle that cannot go on indefinitely. So, the things we are doing to keep ourselves comfortable will, eventually, hurt those little babies we made. The next generation may not get to live as comfortably as us because, well, we've already screwed the place up.

Really, this isn't fair. Throwaway plates and paper items are convenient, but a big waste. Maybe someone will create products that are rapidly biodegradable — then we can just keep on being lazy. I did see a spoon once made of corn syrup -- completely biodegradable and nonharmful to the environment. Very cool.

Todd

"The artist formerly known as Goose"

Staring Into the Past

I have a great fascination with Ancient Egypt. Today I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the opening of the King Tut exhibit in Atlanta. The exhibit included a 3D movie, 130 artifacts, and various pictures and multimedia presentations. It was a fantastic display, and it was incredible for me to view all these incredible art objects that were made 3,000 years ago.

For several thousand years the Egyptian empire existed, and their political and religious system changed very little during that time. In fact, their political and religious system were melded into one system — and it was this system that brought order, structure, and longevity to Egyptian society. This is perhaps why religion remains so popular today — because the rituals and belief systems create order and continuity.

Egyptian society was organized like a beehive, with the pharaoh serving as the queen bee. For an added touch, the pharaoh was turned into a god. This helped to create order and loyalty among the citizens. Obviously, not many people are going to disobey or disrespect a god, because, who knows, you might get cursed. So, the supernatural element helped to keep the citizenry obedient and submissive.

Today also confirmed something I've known for a few years — it was the Egyptians that invited our modern religion. Some of the parallels between Egyptian religion and modern Christianity gave me goosebumps. The Hebrews ripped the religion from the Egyptians, and the Christians are an offshoot of the Hebrews, with a little mix of Greek intellectualism. In other words, Christianity simply evolved in a continuum. And as for the Egyptian religion, they stole it from the early ancients who worshiped celestial bodies.

My final big observation today is the many parallels between Ancient Egyptian and modern Western Culture. No doubt, Ancient Egypt had a huge influence on the Greeks and Romans, who both invaded the nation at different times. In turn, all three of these ancient civilizations partly make us what we are today. Not only in fashion, but also in values and the way we think.

As I stared at the exhibits, I was amazed at the jewelry, furniture, and art objects. Many of these items haven't changed much in three millenniums. Many religious concepts haven't changed either. Wow, what a surprise. In some ways humans have progressed massively, but in other ways we haven't changed much at all.

One of the items that sticks out in my head were the toilet seats. Royal households had indoor plumbing. The only difference is that the poop from ancient royalty fell into a box, which was then removed by some unlucky servant. So, see, we have a lot to be thankful for today. Yeah.

Todd