The Astral Pilgrim

Over the summer we had the blessing of having a pair of blackbirds decide to nest in the ivy just outside our bathroom window. This rare opportunity allowed us to see as clear as day the eggs in the nest and ultimately the babies once they hatched. The children found all this very exciting and would check on the nest each day to see how things where coming along. Once they had hatched the children watched in fascination as they where fed, with more than a few “ewwww’s” each time I would explain that the parent regurgitates the food into the babies mouth. During this time I would explain to them that a long time ago we as humans had to chew the food our babies would eat because they were not able to do so. These small moments led to times of contemplation, making me consider our position in the animal world as a human.

It reminded me that even though we spend all our time trying very hard to escape the animal world, we ultimately cannot escape something that we are bound to, such is the law of nature. Some time later, i was again led to contemplate the laws of nature.

Once the babies had grown to the point where the nest could not host them any more it was time for them to jump ship. We came home one day to a garden full of babies hopping about which was a great and hilarious sight to behold. The laws of nature had there funny moments it seemed, yet soon the harsh reality of nature was to strike as the magpies became aware that their dinner was on the loose in the garden. The parents jumped into action defending the babies with great efficiency so much so that if my counting is up to scratch after day one the magpies left without food. If the magpies are to survive, something would have to die, be it the babies in my garden or the babies somewhere else. A little later I popped my head out the door to see what all the racket was as I could hear the parents going crazy again (they make one hell of a racket!) to see the local cats sporting with one of the babies attempting to grab one away from the crazy parents.

I reacted. I ran out into the garden, chasing the cats down into a corner of the garden that they couldn’t scale the fence of, jug of water in hand. A cat was about to learn that going for the babies in this garden gets you very very wet. Once the cats has jumped ship I sat out back for a bit watching the babies and contemplating what had just transpired. I couldn’t help but ponder why I had reacted the way I had with the cats yet not with the magpies. It didn’t take long for me to realise.

All of life is a part of nature, from a worm, to a magpie, to a human, to a chemical waste silo. Everything is part of nature – nothing can be separate from it regardless of any negative impact it may have. That said, although everything is a part of nature not everything is completely dependant upon it. The example here is the cat given that due to a level of domestication we have removed some of it’s dependence on nature and transferred that dependence onto us. The cats are happy with this arrangement and so are we and so I see no problem there. The problem lies in that although the cat has a known source of food and has no need to source any other, it “decides” to do so. It impacts upon nature beyond it’s need. Some of you cat lovers may say that its in the cats instincts to do so but it is not. A cat doesn’t hunt because it has to, a cat hunts because it can. Also bear in mind that without domestication that cat would not even be there to impact on the local ecosystem so the whole point becomes moot.

In contrast the magpie is wholly dependant on the local ecosystem, a system that nature has tweaked, managed and adapted to suit all its users so that there is usually a balance of food available to the carnivore/omnivore whilst allowing a certain survival rate to perpetuate the species. It is a delicate balance, one that can be thrown into disharmony if outside factors impact too much.

All this then lead me onto a topic I have sat on the fence for some time with now. Being vegetarian. All these thoughts lead me to one simple conclusion.

We are not magpies, we are cats.

We are a domesticated animal with a difference. Due to our natural strength being our intelligence we have taken a different approach and domesticated ourselves. Whilst the advantages of this are extremely self evident the pitfalls are even more so. Self domestication requires self discipline, self control and we have exuded neither. We behave like the cat but in the extreme. We don’t hunt unnecessarily like the cat – we go much further. We capture the parents and cage them, making them have as many babies as we can to support our ever growing numbers. We have perfected this process as it makes the need to hunt them down defunct. The babies are born directly into the cage into which we keep them. Maximum output, minimum effort. We are to be appluaded for such a clever and ingenious idea, and we are to be loathed, feared and condemned for our actual use of it.

The greatest evils in the world are the ones that manage to convince you they don’t exist and most of our world goes through it’s life day by day oblivious to the underworld beneath it that it needs to perpetuate. We are too wrapped up in our obsession with image, instant gratification and pleasure to actually take a moment to make ourselves aware at the true cost of all this. yet once you are aware, as a sentient, intelligent being it is then down to you and you alone to decide if you react to that knowledge or not. Sadly many don’t for denial is much easier. As they say….

…ignorance is bliss… yet we should remember a saying from Guatama Buddha…

“Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.”

No excuses, no exceptions – make your choice for you are the author of your life, no other.

Our society is failing to work and it is time we started to accept this as a fact. When you take a good look around you will see failure of our society on every single level, affecting every single class, in fact all forms of social stratification are being let down by “the system”. At the lower ends of society humans are being let down by being forced into slavery under the guise of “honest hard work” whereas the top ends of society are being let down by living in a system that encourages them to abuse the position of power that they are in. Our society is exploitative by design, not by human failure. The greedy select few at the top are only that way because we live within a social system that encourages competitiveness. Often this competition is promoted as good, encouraging free trade and control of market prices when in fact all it does is promote greed, corruption and exploitation. This is achieved through scarcity and the control of resources to ensure the lack of abundance and perpetuation of profit based market systems.

Our society is one governed by money, and a monetary based society is one founded on the need for profit and gain. In this kind of environment, coupled with intentionally created competitiveness we end up with greed and those seeking “more”. This is one of the root causes of crime, as those worse off consistently seek to compete with those via criminal methods as our society cannot support everyone competing through a work/slave market. A lot of these topics are going to be published in a future blog but for now they serve to highlight some of the basic issues of our society which support my current topic – politics and law.

The issue I wish to bring up at this time is our approach to a solution. We need to begin to rethink how we tackle social issues and the failures of the current system, and more importantly how we no longer need those people who currently uphold the system as it is. Politics has long been held as a system that provides a voice for the people, allowing the wishes of the masses to be made manifest through political discussion and the creation of law. This system has critically failed. You only need to ask yourself this simple question – what is currently improving my life? Are the decisions made by politicians actually improving your life? No. Many say that to not vote is to support the status-quo when in all honesty voting supports the status-quo as no matter who you vote for nothing integrally changes. Thatcher was not responsible for poll tax, the system was responsible for it. If she hadn’t of done it someone else would have in some other form, be them conservative, labour or anyone else.

Please bear with me as I try to explain this as I will attempt to not go off and a thousand tangents!

It is very easy to establish that we live in a monetary based society that can only function off the basis of profit and the use of money as a form of wage and payment. How does a company make profit? By ensuring that it’s product trumps any other on the market and that they control supply so as not to saturate availability and therefore water down costs subsequently reducing profits. Many south African diamond mines for example destroy a large portion of the diamond stock so as not to reduce the value of the unit. This process leads to scarcity – the primary cause of high prices and high profits. This failure is not caused by groups of people or individuals, they are merely the symptom – the problem is the social system that practically encourages it to happen. This is system is perpetuated by the political and legal process as we often try to control social systems through law and the governing politics of a law yet this has consistently failed to deliver.

Example

When we consistently see something wrong happening such as cars crashing into each other and killing people because they are going to fast what does our social system do?

It creates a law…

What can this possibly do? Some abide by said law, others don’t. Some people still die and some are locked up in prison for their trouble. This is not a solution, it is a patchwork, a social plaster that doesn’t amount to much.

Do we have the same problem with planes? No – and why is that? We have applied that which humans do best, problem solving and technology. Ever since we designed tools to help remove the skin of an animal or to help build something we have applied our ability to create and design.

Why is this not being done today?..

PROFIT

The monetary system and subsequently the political system that supports it is socially paralysing our development both socially and technologically. New technology is only being encouraged on the basis it will increase productivity and profit. No profit = no funding = no design. Our profit based social mentality cannot allow cars to be designed that require almost no service maintenance and that don’t crash or collide. This would hammer the profits of both the service industry and insurance industry too much – and the people who are at the head of such industries across all of society are people with a lot of money and a lot of political persuasion. This inevitably causes us to look at those who claim to govern our society, this society which has failed to deliver…politicians.

A politician is someone who claims to get things done. Have a problem? Write to your local MP. Want to see change – vote for the party who stands for what you believe.

This is a social fallacy.

What does your local MP have the power to do? Absolutely nothing. Any and all social change cannot be governed any one single individual, and even a single political party can only cause nominal change to occur. Why is that? It is simple really…politicians do not create anything other than legislation and law, and attempt to cause change to occur through the maintenance of the national monetary system – and this is where we are let down. A political party is no different than a corporation – it lives within a monetary system and therefore must work and create within a monetary system following the same route as everyone else – competitiveness and greed cause by intentional scarcity and the drive for market share, or in the case of political parties – power and the drive for voting share.

There is another way. Outside the control of a monetary system our technological and additionally social advancement would not be stifled and paralysed by the governance of profit. We have the technology and the ability to design new technologies that can significantly improve our society and improve the global society as a whole. It may seem far fetched to think of a world devoid of the monetary system but it isn’t. We have not always lived within this system and I believe there is a future for us beyond the system we are in now. We all need to change the way we think – we all need to make a difference to ourselves and in turn make a difference to our society. This archaic and useless system of politics and law cannot last forever and a change in these will take us one step further towards freeing humans from the grip of profit, greed and the corruption it creates.

People need to stop seeing these qualities as something inherently human. You are not born greedy, corrupt or bigoted. These are conditions caused by social functions, socialisation and cultural conditioning. They go to show the failure of our society and the failure of humans create a social environment that works in cohesion with our natural environment allowing us to live more healthy fulfilling lives. The time is now to start changing your life and working towards changing our society for the better.

What are you waiting for?