Sunday, September 11, 2011

Vicarious Suffering-10 years later

At the risk of appearing un-patriotic, I have a few things to offer on this 10th Anniversary of the WTC attack.

For the past 10 years, I've held back venting on this topic, mostly out of sensitivity to those who were truly, personally affected by this tragic event.  But today, in retrospect, the odds are overwhelming that NONE of you were honestly, personally touched by the events of that day.

On the other hand, if you go to Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, the likelihood that you'll meet someone who has been truly, personally affected by our retaliation for that attack are much higher.  While the casualties to "our side" from the attack and the accumulated losses via warring efforts doesn't add up to even 10,000.  We have done a stellar job of inflicting death and massive injury to our "enemies"; estimates of nearly 600,000 dead.

This media hyped, government encouraged "national suffering" we're all supposed to buy into is purely manipulative bullshit.  If you were living in one of the countries of our "enemies" you would be 60 times more likely to have good cause to suffer a personal loss.  The math-geek in me wants to go do the numbers to see, as a percentage what the real, statistical deal is; but I'll spare you any more numbers and not go there.

War, is a money maker for those who know how to properly "invest" accordingly.  With no "commies" left to fight and not even a cold war anymore, ten years ago, the rational for maintaining a massive war machine was starting to look outdated.

Call me a conspiracy nut if you like (I've been called much worse), but there's money to be made during war times.  Dust off the machinery of war and start building us some better shit to kill some motherfuckers with!

Another "side benefit" of war is to slow the rate of population growth.  Granted, the numbers above are just a drop in the bucket, but any little effort helps.  Now if we could just get the Chinese and Indians at each other's throats, that would make a difference for sure.

To slightly return from that tangent, I'm not at all confident that we were even going after the right people.  But they were weak, still recovering from previous infrastructure damage received when getting their asses kicked out of Kuwait all those years ago.  They were an easy target because we already knew they were "bad guys", it wasn't much of a stretch to think they'd try to pull some sneaky shit like this.  And that made it an easy sell to justify to a bunch of rejuvenated "patriots".

Once the decision to go is taken, anyone who would dare to question the rational behind the argument to proceed looks like a wussified, peace-nik, and may even have ties to (GULP) Al Qaeda.  Maybe a few months in Guantanamo will straighten this sympathizer out.

Blacks and Hispanics breathe a quiet sigh of relief because they are no longer "It", in the game of ethnic "Tag".  (Courtesy of Carlos Mencia.)

We've surrendered over 200 years worth of freedom for the sake of "security".  Fake security, but since we have become such a skin deep culture, the appearance of something is worth more than the actuality of something we don't want to look at or admit.

Ethnic profiling is back, being publicly groped by TSA workers is now standard operating procedure, traffic stops for burned out license plate bulbs lead to vehicle searches, probable cause is now just a topic of historical interest, and as a whole we are more sheeplike than ever before.

I don't care who this pisses off.  Back to the original premise here to close this post; if YOU did not PERSONALLY know someone who was injured or killed during the WTC attacks 10 years ago, sit down, quit waving your flag, and shut the fuck up...if for no other reason than out of respect for those who actually did lose family members and close friends to this tragedy and to those who suffered real loss from the aftermath.

Peacefully submitted,
Brian



Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Oneness = Nihilism?


I find that as I embrace the concepts of non-dualism (Advaita Vedanta) that the ultimate conclusion is essentially nihilism.

All things are one, there is only one substance (God, Universe, Nature, etc...some refer to It as "That") all of the "things" we have names for are simply manifestations of That One substance.

There's no "Deity on a throne" in some "un-designated location", no Karmic scorekeeper, no individual Karma for that matter, no good, no bad, no cause & effect...there's just "That" doing what "That" does.

Essentially, we are sock puppets, living in a painful world.  Order, control, and security are myths.

The punishment or reward due in some idyllic/hellish afterlife scenario as well as reincarnation, as most people understand it, are mind/crowd control myths perpetuated to maintain us as obedient little sock puppets.

But smarter, richer, better looking sock puppets expect us to produce and consume, as good little citizens of sock puppet land are supposed to...and when we do, we truly become the batteries that run the Matrix.

Brian
http://bmmerrill.blogspot.com