Animal Cousins

I see all of my pets and every animal in the forest as a fellow Earth Citizen. They have just as much right to live on this planet as we do. They should receive rights and our respect.

Although I feel we must minimize meat intake, I don't advocate vegetarianism. Rather, I respect the food chain. It's okay to eat a little meat on occasion.

For thousands of years we were the ones who lived in terror of faster and stronger animals. Somehow, we got smarter. We created tools to defend ourselves and to buffer us from the other animals. After a few milleniums this got out of control. Most of us have now forgotten where our McNuggets come from. We now live in this sheltered world apart from most animals. We move into the deep forests and when an animal frightens us we kill it. If a snake crawls into our McMansion garages, we whack its head off. What the hell, we are humans -- we are the bad asses of the planet.

Unfortunately, the "have dominion" lie has gone way too far. If we lived in harmony with our fellow creatures, we would likely better learn to live in harmony with each other. Instead, we call pest control companies to zap them, not realizing that we are destroying a balanced ecosystem that would survive on its own if left alone. There are birds and other bugs that would keep the annoying bugs in check. Life is all about balance and equilibrium, and evolution ensures that we will reach that point.

Strangely, we keep cats and dogs in our homes to, well, give us something to love. Cats are warm and soft and nice to pet and hold. Dogs are always loyal, which gives us an ego trip. How can these animals be loyal to us when few of our fellow humans are? We hold them and love them, and instead of sending money to starving people in Somalia, we spend billions on pet food. We ensure that they have yummy food snacks because we imagine we are enriching their quality of life, while we ignorantly desecrate our plant and lower the life quality for all living things.

A friend once told me that if I studied my pets I could better understand people. After all, we are all mammals and we all came from the same marsupials 150 million years ago. So, we are bros and sistas with the cats and dogs, and all other mammals. So, be nice to your cousins. We are all one -- we are all inhabitants together on this incredibly beautiful planet. Let us learn to live together in a respectful and harmonious way.

Earth Day 2012

Earth Day festival with Earth Saver Girl

I had a great time yesterday at Earth Saver Girl's Earth Day Festival in west Cobb County. Earth Saver Girl is a remarkable young lady who writes environmental books for children. It is young people like her who give me hope for the future.

But, today, Sunday, April 22, is EARTH DAY and hardly anyone will do anything. I hope that the tobacco addicts will at least refrain from throwing their cigarette butts on the ground for a day.

A Dedication To Activism

Environmental activism requires three levels of activity:

• Field Activism - Where you are getting out in front of the public at tabling events, demonstrations, etc...
• Armchair Activism - Where you write letters and sign petitions from home, usually in an effort to influence public policy.
• Personal Lifestyle Changes - This is where you "walk the talk" by changing personal habits to reduce impact on the Earth. For instance, one thing we can all do is buy locally grown foods whenever possible.

I live in the state of Georgia, USA, a part of the country that is predominately evangelical Christian. In the conservative, fundamentalist Christian world an environmental ethic simply doesn't exist. Today is Sunday and there are dozens and DOZENS of churches within a few miles of my house. I seriously doubt that even one will mention Earth Day during their services today. I would say the reasons for this are:

• Environmentalism challenges the very foundation of their religious story. In their world, God controls everything, humans are to have "dominion," and so forth.
• Environmentalism is associated with liberals, which are the great enemy of any King James Bible toting believer.
• There is too much mass ignorance and what I call "voluntary ignorance." People just don't want to know the facts about coal plant pollution, climate change, etc... Their God is going to lift them out of this crap soon with the Second Coming, so they just don't care. 

I do see some young people getting engaged in the environmental movement but there's also hundreds of others that simply do nothing but play video games. These are the people I call "background noise." They just don't have it in them to care about the environment, let alone become an activist. Perhaps there was no one in their family or school to serve as a role model. Perhaps their interest in the world around them does not go far beyond the little devices they stare into all day.

Our Sierra Club Booth

At our booth yesterday we had two exhibits. The first exhibit was an enviroscape, which taught children about nonpoint source pollution. There were different color water-based paints, and each paint represented a different source of contamination -- fertilizers, clay silt, spilled gasoline, etc.. Other children held spray bottles over the exhibit to create rain. The water washed away the pollution sources, which flowed into streams and eventually into a lake at the bottom of the exhibit.

The other exhibit taught youngsters about the dangers of mercury in fish. A child was given a fishing rod and "fished" in a pail of water. When the fish was caught, we looked for a black "X," which meant it contained mercury. The child who could catch the most fish without mercury poisoning was the winner.

Having thought about it more, I think my work in the festival yesterday is one of the best things I could be doing for the Earth. Environmental education is a beautiful thing and something we need much more of.

Antidote

Education is the great antidote for ignorance. It's important to create a culture where education is respected, young people are eager to learn, and scientific-based facts are presented. In my years of environmental work I have worked with many German-American citizens who have a particular passion for the environment. Or when Californians transfer into our local Sierra Club Group, I find that they also have a strong environmental ethic. It puzzles me how some regions of the world are environmentally sensitive, and most of the southern U.S. is not. My interest is finding a way to port the environmental values of a place like Vermont to a Bible Belt town like, say, Powder Springs, GA, which is where I live. How can I help to change attitudes? After all, I'm surrounded by Young Earth Creationists who think global warming is a hoax. Where do I begin to change the attitudes of these people? I guess one thing is to change the cultural mores and to respectfully challenge outdated ideas, like, for example, the Earth has infinite resources, the Earth is too big for people to harm, etc...

Well, I ramble .... enough for now. The Goose must go on in the lonely battle to save Mother Earth.

Black Hole

Gather around children, for the Goose is going to educate you. You see, both cosmology and molecular biology show us that the entire Universe is mechanical, despite the scale. This leaves little room for a Creator, for the Universe is in itself a living organism that perpetuates and maintains itself.

It's all done by magnetic fields and centrifugal force and the laws of quantum physics. So, you've been reading books written by ancient goat herders, which are ascribed to a deity, instead of your science books? What???

If you dare to study, you'll see that scientists around the world are unraveling every mystery, from the String Theory to Black Holes. As you inhale black smoke into your lungs and cough, did you think about that, man? Did they tell you about this on the last episode of Survivor?

Did God make the Big Bang? Of course, not. You must study the theory called Inflation. At your last meeting of the Flat Earth Society did they tell you about particle physics? As a Young Earth Creationist, are you so sure that the Earth, I mean, the whole freakin' Universe is 6,000 years old? Does your lie make you feel comfortable? Does it justify that dogma that was programmed into you as a child?

What about all those quarks, anti-quarks, and gluons? Yeah, I know, professors made the crap up so they can get grants. It's all a conspiracy of the liberal elite, who have declared war on religion, who want to pry your Bible out of your fingers in your sleep.

As you finger the trigger of your gun, do you wonder about the multiverse? Does the idea of infinity just freak you out? Do you dream of exploring the center of a black hole, or are you more concerned about what Donny Osmond puts in his hair?

Universal Evolution

If atoms could create life on the molecular level, what if solar systems and galaxies could create life on a cosmological level. What if the Earth is an electron in a giant's toe? Hey, don't look at me.

Plato (c. 427–347 BC) and Aristotle (c. 384–322 BC) both posited first cause arguments, though each had certain notable caveats. Plato posited a basic argument in The Laws (Book X), in which he argued that motion in the world and the Cosmos was "imparted motion" that required some kind of "self-originated motion" to set it in motion and to maintain that motion. Plato posited a "demiurge" of supreme wisdom and intelligence as the creator of the Cosmos in his work Timaeus.

Ultimately, everything leads us to black holes and the singularity, for this is what powers the Universe and all life within it. In the center of the Milky Way galaxy, there is strong evidence of a black hole that creates the negative force which keeps the atoms and planets rotating.

Then there is Dark Matter and Dark Energy, which we really don't know what it is, but the Universe is full of it. Space is not nothingness, but Dark Energy in and of itself. This is where the answers to that thing called "gravity" lie. It's there. We thank you, Albert Einstein for coming so close to figuring it all out. Thanks for saving us a few things to ponder.

The End

Go back America, Jerry Springer needs you. Numb your brains with alcohol, drugs, religion or escapism. Let's ignore the facts and answers. Let's keep ourselves willfully ignorant and dumb. For that makes us feel comfortable ... and happy. Let the preachers preach and the poets ponder, and the scientist reason. It doesn't matter, America. It doesn't matter.

Human Arrogance

 

I am humbled by several of you who have encouraged me to resume blogging. I realize that some of my comments are controversial, but I don't care anymore. There are too many taboo items that need addressing. There are too many giant dead elephants in the room. We live in the era of hyper sensitivity, and too many people are afraid to bring items up for fear of hurting someone's feelings.

Some feel their belief systems are beyond reproach. If you question, you are labeled as a bad person or "messed up," as my mother has described me. So, if some radical Jihadest wants to behead me or people want to ostracize me at a party, well, again, I don't care. I'm getting old any way. I've spent a lifetime observing our dysfunctional world and not saying enough to oppose the craziness.

Okay, blog-ettes, let's dive into today's rant.

Human Arrogance

The whole idea of humans having souls likely started becoming hip about 50,000 years ago. Some early cultures believed ALL living things had spirits. But in the Christian tradition, humans have souls and not animals. Then there's that passage in the Bible about having "dominion" over all the animals, and the idea that God put them on the Earth for us to use and abuse. Like, they are all ours.

To the contrary, we should treat animals with RESPECT and think of them as our friends and neighbors on this planet. I do NOT think I am better than my cat and dogs in any way. They are superior to me in many areas -- speed, smell, hearing, agility. My big advantage is the opposing thumb, which allows me to build things and open cans of pet food. And they are just looking at me, sort of pissed, because there is NO WAY they can get a dog biscuit out of the cabinet.

I once met a lady who felt that animals should have representation in Congress. I'm all for it.

When humans die, many arrogantly want a grave marker to memorialize themselves for posterity. Hey, no one goes into cemeteries anyway except for genealogy hobbyists. No one really cares. Find one of those "natural" cemeteries or heat the world up some with your smoke. That's once puff of carbon that will be acceptable -- you'll go back to the stars from which you came.

Humans are also arrogant in that the first thing we do when boys are born is sexually torture them with circumcision. Some religious traditions believes that God likes this — it's like God is perfect and made this perfect being, but we are going to whack their penis foreskin off anyway to make God happy. I'm not following the logic. Other animals don't do this.

Vegetarianism is another form of arrogance. We are part of the food chain. Though meat intake should be minimal, it is part of our natural cycle. The important thing is that all animals are respected and given a quality life before their automated execution (got to have those chicken nuggets). We should all eat free-roaming, organic meet. Factory farming is disgusting and needs to end. We can find healthier and cleaner ways to get our protein.

Yes, we are smarter than a few animals. Rather than having dominion, which is pure crap, we should commit ourselves to being the caretaker of our fellow creatures. Animals should not be our pets -- they are colleagues, friends, and fellow Earth citizens. RESPECT THEM and LOVE THEM.

Every time I see a dead animal on the road, I hurt. We arrogant humans drive around in metal boxes and slaughter thousands of poor opossums, armadillos, racoons, and other night animals. It is the injustice of this that angers me. Yes, I've accidentally hit a few animals in my 37 years of driving, but I also go to extremes to avoid them. I also stop and help turtles cross the road whenever I see them.

Today, while cycling on the Silver Comet Trail, I was going through a section that had erosion barriers on each side of the trail. This cuts off animals from their water, food sources, mating, etc... WHY DIDN'T ANYONE THINK ABOUT THE ANIMALS!!!! I saw a squirrel climb up on one of the barriers and jump over — as he flung himself over he was almost crushed by a cyclist. Again, it's the unfairness of this that upset me most.

During my years as an environmentalist I've been accused of putting animals before humans. Well, no — I believe all animals and people should live in harmony and in a sustainable manner. Once again, the humans get the unfair advantage. They build their settlements everywhere and typically overpopulate, which, in turn, causes poverty. Desperate people then do desperate, harmful things to their surrounding environment, which not only hurts the local wildlife but also the next generation of humans that must live in the cesspool created by their parents. Plus, not to mention the fact that we are filling the ground, water, and air with thousands of chemicals so that our hair will look fuller and our teeth will be whiter. I mean, what the hell? We as a species do not HAVE THE RIGHT to poison and pollute our world – this planet belongs to millions of other species that have just as much right to be here as we do.

  

I'm Back

First, I'd like to thank those of you who continue to encourage me to blog. It's been a crazy three months at work, but things have now returned to normal. For some reason, I find that I enjoy blogging. I rarely go back and read my posts, so I guess I'm just venting.

At the beginning of the year I created a second blog that was going to be more personal, like a journal. Then I created a secret third blog, were I was going to reminisce about old girlfriends and stuff. But, yesterday, I killed them both. I decided that I like my Goose persona. I'm just this curious guy, going through life and trying to figure it all out. Yeah, that's me. It's therapy – my therapy.

I'm not sure if I'll post links to Facebook very often. My relatives are conservative Christians, and when I question and push the window, well, they just think I'm some wild heathen. It gets awkward at family gatherings. It's no fun being an outcast. It's better to just conform to the dominant culture and just ride life out.

Politics

The Republican primary keeps me depressed and sad. The candidates have gone into outer space. It's like we are going back in time, to some make-believe better era that never was. The candidates follow the conservative and Christian slate, which is to deny global warming, keep gays in the closet, and battle for uterus control. I personally find the Republican Party absolutely disgusting. It is a perverted marriage of greedy capitalists and pious, self-righteous Christians. What a totally fucked up coalition. What doesn't matter is that the example set by Jesus Christ doesn't appear to match the capitalist agenda, but that is a minor detail that is brushed under the table.

The Dome

If I had to choose the biggest problem facing humanity, I would say it's our ability to create our own little worlds and make them our reality, no matter how bizarre they are. For instance, you can be a Mormon and never question the fact that the Book of Mormon is a cheesy rip of the Old Testament. That simply doesn't matter.

Or Newt Gingrich making videos talking about how we can drill our way out of the energy crises, which is both fantasy and doesn't take into account GLOBAL WARMING, which is simply one of those "liberal issues."

Or people who stuff cigarettes in their mouths all day, thinking it won't really hurt them, or they will quit just in time before the health problems start.

Or the alcoholics who justify taking one more drink, even though their pancreas and liver are fried.

The most amazing dome of all are the people who tell me the world, heck, the entire universe, is 6,000 years old. The evidence is overwhelming that the universe is billions of years old, but that doesn't matter to those who live in religious, denial fantasyland. Or, as some Christians used to tell me, "the length of God's days may be longer than our days." Hmmmm. Maybe heaven is rotating around the universe.

The Un-Church

I'm guessing it was about 1980 on a Sunday at mid-day. My car broke down in a grocery store parking in Vinings, GA. A large church has just let out nearby and the supermarket was full of people wearing suits and dresses. They all walked right by me as a tried to figure out what to do about my blown water hose. Finally, a guy came to help me. It wasn't one of the church yuppies, but rather it was a scruffy old guy in an old white car, who looked like he had a hangover.

That was once of those turning points when I got "disgusted" at religion as a whole. The odd thing is that church people did not realize they were being hypocritical by ignoring me -- they simply wanted to pick up a few items for their Sunday dinners. They were hard-wire programmed, just simply doing what they've always done.

I just watched an interview last night on YouTube with Andy Thomson, author of "Why We Believe in God(s). I already know that religion is hard-wired into people's brains and because of the cultural and social mores they are seemingly unable to break free. My big "mistake" was questioning things. Heck, I was a newspaper reporter -- I was paid to question.

Untitled

I, the Goose, in my 51st year of life, has concluded that humanity is totally screwed up.

I do have the greatest respect for others like me who are trying to "save the world" each in their own way. I have about a half dozen individuals like that listed on the column at right.

In 1997 I had the same ambition and was at it full speed until April 2003 when I started getting tired of charging into a brick wall. Since then, unfortunately, I've been doing less and less activist work. In 2009 my employer cut staff and I've been working long hours, and just trying to survive since that date.

If I had free time, what would I do? My main interest was human overpopulation, so I guess I'd get back to that. Not that I'm trying to tell anyone what to do -- I just know the world would be healthier if there was universal access to contraception. I still think that this one goal can make the greatest difference in the social and environmental well being of the Planet.

But, today shall not be a discussion on Population, for today is Christmas Day.

Christmas

I no longer think much of this day either way. It's just a fun winter holiday. At the risk of being a Grinch, I'll say it's also environmental carnage. People wrap junk in paper. People rip off the paper and have their momentary high. The paper and tons of packaging are then thrown away. People put lights on their homes, and coal-power electric plants spew a little more carbon into the air to provide electricity for those lights. Then there is the cooking and candy — people stuff themselves with junk. This is how we celebrate the birth of Christ, and we are told this is a Christian holiday, even though it's full of traditions and symbols that date back to Pagan times.

Christopher Hitchens

For some reason, I've been really missing the guy this week. The great service he did to the world was to put cracks in people's belief systems. Whether on the political left or right, this world is full of righteous people who believe their dogma is above reproach. Hitchens challenged a lot of things that are simply accepted in our screwed up world, and things that are often seen as "taboo" to discuss. He just "told it like it is" and challenged social norms. He stirred the pot, and he pissed off a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum. In his dying days he was honest and open about his struggle with cancer. I liked the guy.

Tom Shadyac

You know what, I really love this guy. His documentary, I Am, is still going through my head. Here is the classic story of the super successful movie director who has a near-death experience, gives away most of his wealth, and moves from his two mansions to a mobile home. He gives up being a movie director to teach at a local community college. His message is that to "save the world" we must learn to work cooperatively instead of independently and competitively.  I like the message a lot. I encourage everyone to see I Am.

Facebook

Facebook is an interesting social experiment that has literally changed the entire world. I shall not be posting links to my blog there any more. Why? Simply because no one cares. Oh, except for some of my relatives who are apparently shocked that I have dared to question religion. Well, at least they read my blog. If anything, it planted some doubt and questions in the minds of people who are so sure they know the One Right Way. Most of what goes on with Facebook is mindless banter. The people who were posting all their personal drama did provide entertainment for a while, but then it got old. On the plus side, Facebook is a good way to feel "connected" with your friends, neighbors, and relatives. I suppose.

Signing off for now...

I Am

Wow, I just finished watching the documentary "I Am." It really joins together and affirms things that I've been thinking all along, and many items that I've blogged about.

The point of this movie is that what is wrong with humanity is that we've adopted a separated, competitive mindset, and we need to live our lives more as cooperative, and as parts of a greater whole.

I really like the narrator in the movie -- he had everything, except for happiness. I applaud him wildly and I've subscribed to his email list.

A thanks to Tom Shadyac for creating this wonderful movie. It gives me a new sense of direction at a time when I've completely stalled out.

Why We're So Screwed Up

In writing about the Penn State scandal, New York Times columnist David Brooks provides another piece of the puzzle as to why humanity is so hopelessly screwed up.

Here are a few excerpts from his column:

Some people suffer from Motivated Blindness; they don't see what is not in their interest to see. Some people don't look at the things that make them uncomfortable. In one experiment, people were shown pictures, some of which contained sexual imagery. Machines tracked their eye movements. The people who were uncomfortable with sex never let their eyes dart over to the uncomfortable parts of the pictures.

As Daniel Goleman wrote in his book "Vital Lies, Simple Truths," "In order to avoid looking, some element of the mind must have known first what the picture contained, so that it knew what to avoid. The mind somehow grasps what is going on and rushes a protective filter into place, thus steering awareness away from what threatens."

And there's more:

People are really good at self-deception. We attend to the facts we like and suppress the ones we don't. 

And he concludes by saying:

The proper question is: How can we ourselves overcome our natural tendency to evade and self-deceive. That was the proper question after Abu Ghraib, Bernie Madoff, the Wall Street follies and a thousand other scandals. But it's a question this society has a hard time asking because the most seductive evasion is the one that leads us to deny the underside of our own nature.

The last sentence is well stated and explains our obsession with myth worship (i.e. religion), climate change denial, and debt crises denial.

On a personal level, I know people who simply deal with things by not dealing with them. This is often the case of families who live with an alcoholic. On a national level, our political leaders are also simply playing the fiddle and not dealing with the obvious, serious problems. This is what we call "ignoring the giant elephant in the room," and, man, we humans are good at that.

Destiny

It's hard to get motivated these days to do my environmental activist work or anything else. I am feeling that our self-denial is leading to our rapid self-destruction, and our fate is now beyond our control. Half of me still has hope, but the other half feels it is time to simply enjoy the present as best I can and accept the fate of my species. No worries, within a few thousand years Mother Earth will have recovered from the short reign of destruction caused by the big-brained apes. Aside from our concrete bridges, there will be little evidence that we ever existed here.

Sustain-ABLE

As a young teen I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to save the world. One idea I had was to create the perfect government.

I don't know how I got this crazy idea, but instead of debating legislation, all the variables would be fed into a computer, and the device would make the decision, which the government leaders would follow. In my fictional world, the computer was called Computo. By using Computo, the government made the BEST decisions instead of POLITICAL decisions.

Sustain-ABLE

Now, 35 years later, I'm not giving up on my idea of saving the world. Okay, here's my latest idea: What we need is a think tank that would focus on only one task -- creating a sustainable society. Now, the goal is NOT to create utopia, but only to make the world sustainable enough so that we don't destroy ourselves, our planet, and other animal species.

To start, we would give a group of visionaries the task of charting out perpetually sustainable ideas. Every time they ran into a social barrier, they would need to step back and say, "What is causing this resistance?" And then they would need to design a strategy to address that challenge.

Every aspect of society would be "on the table" and the visionaries would do their visioning without budget concerns.

A few ground rules would be put into effect:

• The strategy must include ALL people, and human health must be considered, including mental, physical, and social health.
• Humans must be allowed to live a reasonably comfortable life.
  
• The well being of animal life, I mean ALL animal life, must be factored in.
• Each generation must leave Earth in as good or better shape than how they found it.

As a starting point, the people in the wealthy countries must adopt a more simplistic lifestyle. This would immediately remove massive strain from the Planet. We can all have smaller cars and houses and still be happy. Most importantly, we must all have smaller families.

The think tank would recommend public policies to our elected officials. All recommendations would be based on the long-term, instead of the short-term. If politicians are unable to make their decisions based on the distant future, then we need to find out what forces are blocking them from doing that.

Human behaviors must be modified. How can we end cigarette smoking and religious fanaticism, which are two of the greatest banes on society? How can we get the general public to accept science instead of following the mythology of ancient desert savages?

What other human attributes are essential for long-term survival? Should our dream society be democratic and capitalistic? I'd say that preserving freedom is essential, but we also need to act in a more socialistic way. We all need to contribute to the common cause of creating a clean, safe, and healthy planet for our children, and other animals as well.

We must come to grips with our animalism. A lot of our religious traditions are arrogant -- we must deal with this self-conceived notion that we are better than other animals, or that we have a "soul" and they don't. Once we realize that we are a PART of the great web of life, and not the foolhardy "masters," we will have taken a major step forward.

Could Get Creepy

Admittedly, this entire thing could get out of control. What if we started doing brain procedures to create favorable behavior? What if we socially engineered our children to make them good little tree huggers? We might accomplish our goal, but could lose our freedom of thought. And "freedom" must be preserved throughout this process.

What if we really do create Computo and use Him to make our decisions? Will the masses simply turn to him as a deity? Will we have created our own master, who rules over a healthy, green planet, but sucks our free will away at the same time?

Are the forces at play here so conflicting that survival of humanity is hopeless? Can we carefully decide what tradeoffs and what rights we are going to sacrifice to ensure human perpetuity? Or should we live free and happy now, and not worry about the ruin we our leaving our children? And if the current iteration of humanity is doomed anyway, shouldn't we just live it up and not worry about all the cigarette butts on the street? Can't we have peace in knowing that some other species may evolve to a high intelligence and replace us? Can the apes turn human again?

Certainly, when you review all the conflicting values, it's certainly easier to just worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster and not worry about life past our lives. We raised our kids to be tough -- they can wallow in the sea of crap that we've left them, and they can work it out. Or can they?

The Goose has much to think about, but I'm starting to get a really exciting vision. Stay tuned.

Kitty Purr

I remember when my last cat, Sassy, was dying of feline leukemia. As I held her she was purring and that gave me a feeling that she was getting better. It gave HER a feeling that she was getting better too. I later learned that cats sometimes purr to comfort themselves when they are gravely ill.

Mother America
We are now faced with the global debt issue, global warming, water shortages, and the threat of nuclear terrorism. Oh, and did I mention peak oil?

I have to learn to accept that it's part of our evolution to only react to danger when it's directly in our face. Humans are not good at long-term planning, even though we put our offspring at great risk when we ignore looming threats.

What I'm seeing now in this country is cognitive dissonance, denial, delusions, and lots of religious escapism. I know that most Americans realize that there is something deeply wrong right now in our country, but most people would rather ignore it or rationalize it away.

We LIKE our way of life. We are comfortable. We don't want to think about or deal with the possibility of radical change.

The Scenario
No one intended to bankrupt America but years of deficit spending have caught up with us. When we get to the point where we can't pay our creditors I don't know what will happen, but I can guess that it will create a chilling effect throughout the world economy. Everything will just stop.

Social Security IS a Ponzi scheme. You are correct, Gov. Perry. Thanks for having the guts to say that. There are less and less workers supporting more and more retired people who are living longer. This system is unsustainable and will collapse with a giant thunder.

Medical Malfeasance
Everyone wants to stay alive as long as possible, and at the same time most people I see don't really take care of themselves. They don't even follow the two simple suggestions of eating right and exercising. Worse yet, the medical industry keeps coming out with more machines, drugs, and procedures to keep our ailing population alive longer. This results in a multi billion dollar industry devoted to eliminating physical discomfort and prolonging lifespans. It's a sector of the economy that must be carried on the shoulders of our taxes and commerce. It sucks the economy dry as desperate people deplete their savings and get a second mortgage on their homes so that they can stay alive longer. Medicaid, Medicare, and the prescription drug plan are all spiraling out of control and are UNSUSTAINABLE. My advice to all of you is - stay healthy!

Scenarios
Sooner or later terrorists will detonate a dirty bomb in the U.S. with the power of the Nagasaki atom bomb. The blast will instantly vaporize a square mile in a major city and could kill as many as a million people. The social, psychological, and economic impacts would be so devastating that the outcome is unthinkable.

Or, maybe severe water shortages and pollution will simply make us sick and frail, and we'll all move to places with abundant fresh water, until it's used up. We will suck dry Lake Superior, and we'll keep growing our population and we will desperately try to maintain "business as usual."

The End
Just bringing up these topics makes me "negative" and a "doomsayer." Even I hope that some unexpected development in technology or change in human behavior will save us at the last minute. I know the odds are against this, but I still cling to hope.

I must accept the limits of humankind and the evolutionary mechanisms that are built into us — the desire to extend life, the desire for comfort in the short term at the expense of the long term, and the inability to react to distant dangers. These are the attributes that will make us simply another casualty in the Sixth Great Extinction. The end of one of the most complex creatures to ever evolve in the Universe will actually be a good thing, for it will allow the millions of other species to thrive in a safer, cleaner environment.

I must say, the Goose is starting to get goosebumps.

Economelt

The whole premise of my blog is that humanity could be heading in a sustainable direction, but we are screwing things up royally, and self-mutilating ourselves as fast as we can.

Class Warfare

Uh hum, so let's talk about class warfare, since we are seeing so much of it lately in Wisconsin, London, Greece, and the Middle East.

The dilemma is that capitalism is the only thing that truly motivates lazy, slob birds like me. Some people are far better at the capitalist game than others, and the wealth is pulled to the top, like sucking chocolate milk through a straw.

As the rich are enriched beyond all dreams, the "damn liberals," socialists, and other left-leaning weenies start worrying about the losers starving in the streets. We are told that based on Reaganomics, the wealth will trickle down to the poor bastards, likely in the form of breadcrumbs and hunks of chocolate stuck to foil wrappers. Then the Tea Partiers tell us that the government shouldn't be in the "hand out" business — that churches and good hearted people will take care of the poor. But so far, those good people don't seem to be giving little Johnny a warm lunch every day. Instead, we hear moaning about those lazy, deadbeats who need to get a damn job like the rest of us.

Now, granted, there is a flip side to this. See, I the Goose, am no liberal, conservative, or moderate, I'm just a dumb bird. But I've flown over enough neighborhoods to know that when you give people aid, a sense of entitlement DOES occur, and the more you give folks, the more dependent they become.

So, now that I've enraged everyone on both sides of the issue, let me say this: Communism and Socialism are failures because since there is no direct benefit, people are not motivated to give their best. Capitalism is a failure too, because it is all about Darwinism and survival of the fittest, and, well, the slow adopters are left behind (and ain't it funny that the same people who don't believe in evolution embrace it passionately as an economic model). Libertarians want the government to stay out of everything, which is simply handing over the car keys to the capitalists (right, they care about us we are told, as they ship our jobs overseas as fast as they can).

The bottom line is that NO current economic system is sustainable. Which means we all need our victory gardens, we need to barter, and we need to learn how to make our own basic necessities.

The End

The reason that Western civilization is failing is simple — we kept spending more than we made, on both a personal and government level. Everyone wanted a good time, and every politician wanted to get re-elected. Hell, in the U.S. we could have dragged this fantasy on a few more decades, until we were all dead and didn't have to worry about. Our children? Oh, send them to the finest private schools so that they can have some good survival skills. Leave them a wad of dough in your will. Croak feeling good about yourself, as your private nurse gives you another shot of morphine. Be proud of the fact that all you really did for your children was crap on them.

But I digress ... the other economic problem is that we stopped creating real wealth a long time ago. Our manufacturing base went overseas. We bought time for a while by whoring our land away, and then we played it out even further by artificially inflating the value of real estate. We gave houses to everyone we could, and after a while we ran out of GOOD creditworthy people to give a five bedroom house to, so then we started giving homes to the BAD uncreditworthy people. For a time, it worked, but then the entire scheme collapsed. But, no worries, Brother Bush bailed out everyone who was "too big to fail" (and "too big" to be responsible).

And let's not forget those two wars that put a drain on the U.S. treasury, and then the "stimulus" plan, that gave us new lingo to throw around like "shovel ready projects."

But what really got us is the fact that the recession meant a sharp drop in tax collections, and to raise taxes in a slow economy would only slow things further, or at least that's what the Republicans said. So, the point being, the collapse caught all the rabid policy makers and golden parachutists BEFORE they had the chance to go to Heaven. So, all these successful, middle aged capitalists are wandering around saying, "What the hell happened?" No one anticipated this, yet the path we've taken in the past three years has been totally predictable.

Big Circle

To add to the fun, energy and food prices are rising around the world, and our global population is continuing to explode, right on target. We have to encourage as many babies as possible because the world is infinite, and you never know when the next Einstein might appear. And it doesn't matter any way because the "good people" will soon be rescued by flaming chariots driven by white unicorns. Men wearing nothing but a diaper and some angel wings will be cracking whips and screaming, "Get on board, 'cause we are headin' for the clouds." Of course, this competes directly with Greyhound's new express service.

In the end, 90 percent of the population will remain in complete denial that the world economy crashed, and even as we eat rodents, rabbits, and neighbors, we'll be reading sacred passages written by Gov. Perry and singing 19th century gospel hymns.

And life will go on, just like it always has. But yet it won't.

Man really attains the state of complete humanity when he produces, without being forced by physical need to sell himself as a commodity. —Che