tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31865608.post3850674820032230477..comments2024-03-25T17:38:01.020+08:00Comments on Digital Tibetan Buddhist Altar: Where the Streets Have No NameUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31865608.post-58111053356987664572010-06-23T00:32:25.989+08:002010-06-23T00:32:25.989+08:00It's all been decadence since we left simple v...It's all been decadence since we left simple village life. Maybe even before that. Still, my favorite piece of social teaching comes from Lao-tzu:<br /><br />Eighty<br /><br />A small country has fewer people.<br />Though there are machines that can work ten to a hundred times faster<br /> than man, they are not needed.<br />The people take death seriously and do not travel far.<br />Though they have boats and carriages, no one uses them.<br />Though they have armor and weapons, no one displays them.<br />Men return to the knotting of rope in place of writing.<br />Their food is plain and good, their clothes fine but simple,<br /> their homes secure;<br />They are happy in their ways.<br />Though they live within sight of their neighbors,<br />And crowing cocks and barking dogs are heard across the way,<br />Yet they leave each other in peace while they grow old and die.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14287271275791880747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31865608.post-24959786747703396752010-06-22T03:08:35.635+08:002010-06-22T03:08:35.635+08:00And while one 1st-world desert produces energy ano...And while one 1st-world desert produces energy another 3rd-world desert sucks it up.<br /><br />http://www.ska.ac.za/ska2009/download/ska2009_fanaroff.pdf<br /><br />A few lines from the Digha Nikaya would go a long way in clarifying the impossibility of establishing a beginning to the universe - the touted trophy of this ambitious undertaking. But no. Lets spend our resources, scarce as they are, on elitist astronomical carnivals and hope that the overseas investment will trickle down to the man on the street. Its the same rationale that ended up with the arms industry becoming the biggest in the world. In order to offset a trade deficit caused by oil imports and a mushrooming services sector, America choose to sell arms. Manufacturing can't stop now, the dollar and a sizable section of business depends on it. The worst part is that an arms industry relies on countries feeling threatened. Even if they had nothing to fear from their neighbours, a state that exports arms would benefit from making them think they did.<br /><br />http://www.johnralstonsaul.com/SUM_Voltaires.html<br /><br />Who will pay the annual €100 million operating costs once the fidgety scientists decide its not worth it anymore? What will happen to those people who took out mortgages and started a family, only to find they had no job security in the first place?<br /><br />Rational scientific endeavour only ever fixes the failings of previous rational solutions, such as wind power making up for our increasing dependence on fossil fuels. But a colossal radio telescope array? The appeal is to hopes so far-fetched that they fall clean out of the range of rational criticism, and back into the irrational. As Raulston Saul puts its, we've arrived at that point in civilization where we can no longer differentiate fantasy and reality.<br /><br />I really don't see the problem with consumption, so long as its independent. If people made their own energy, grew their own palm oil, did their own research, the world would be a better place. RSA was largely independent due to apartheid sanctions. Now the one good thing that came out of it is being lost, and we haplessly continue Sarah Baartman's legacy of satisfying European curiosities. Rational courtesan's forced to grope and shy in a world of tacit slavery.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31865608.post-5470395027569462732010-06-21T08:12:22.968+08:002010-06-21T08:12:22.968+08:00Glad you mentioned Edward Abbey. "Desert Soli...Glad you mentioned Edward Abbey. "Desert Solitaire" is a particular favorite, even if it is basically about Utah.<br /><br />I ran into his son a few years back, working as a greenskeeper for Billy Walters, in Las Vegas. Told me his Mom was doing stained glass or something.Editorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17607443504553459238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31865608.post-73563125054708750142010-06-21T07:25:59.922+08:002010-06-21T07:25:59.922+08:00So... the "global warming" scam bears it...So... the "global warming" scam bears its intended fruit: Environmentalists, running scared, are now ready to "compromise" in hopes of saving at least something. And what happens when the next "crisis" demands that we "sacrifice" a little more... and a little more....<br /><br />Perhaps the biggest problem environmentalists have is that they're basically nice people, who believe implicitly in the value of "compromise" -- while for the opposition "compromise" is simply another tool to use in getting what they want. Note that "developers" never lose by "compromise" -- and they'll always be back for more. Remember Black Mesa? Thirty years ago that sacred land too was "compromised" to feed the insatiable maw of Las Vegas. And then there is -- or was -- Glen Canyon.<br /><br />Say some psychopath threatens to cut off both your arms. You attempt to defend yourself. "Okay," he says, "how about we compromise: I'll just cut off one arm. Deal?" That's an environmental "compromise".<br /><br />What has struck me most about the whole "global warming" (now renamed "climate change" since it's been shown that the planet probably isn't "warming" after all) discussion is what hasn't been said, what is never mentioned: that the real problem isn't "meeting demand" (for energy, resources, etc.), but the ever-growing, seemingly limitless demand itself -- and I don't mean just the demand for more <i>stuff</i>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac" rel="nofollow">George Carlin on "Stuff"</a><br /><br />Well-meaning environmentalists and other humanists insist that in the context of "global warming", we in the "first world" have to cut back our usage of resources "so that everybody can have enough". I already live pretty simply, but I don't hear anyone proposing that along with limiting demand for resources, the relentless demand for more humans -- particularly among those groups whose "needs" I'm supposed to meet by limiting my own -- could perhaps be restrained, just a bit?<br /><br />Nah, that's off the table: The inalienable right of every human female to excrete as many new human bodies as she wishes -- and then to offload on the rest of us the responsibility for feeding, clothing, housing and meeting the "needs" of all those bodies ("Don't you have any compassion?") -- can never be questioned. Individual freedom + collective responsibility = disaster.<br /><br />So long as "everybody" is a continually expanding number, no amount of "compromise" is going to address the problem.<br /><br />I also live in the "desert" Southwest (though I gather that the area where I live was largely tall grass prairie before Europeans came with non-native livestock that destroyed it); for me the greatest prophet of this land was the late Edward Abbey, who summed up the situation well: "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." And more for the sake of more is what saṃsāra is all about.<br /><br />"It is time to think about less... not more." A noble sentiment, though hardly new. As my Zen teacher used to say, our practice consists basically of two things: meditation and self-restraint. The latter has been proposed by the wise as the only real solution since humans began to think. Maybe someday.... <br /><br />In the meantime, as Gandhi recommended, we can only <i>be</i> the solution we wish to see for the world. And, as recommended in your recent "<a href="http://tibetanaltar.blogspot.com/2010/05/does-samsara-really-need-janitors.html" rel="nofollow">Does Samsara Really Need Janitors?</a>", not get caught up in the movie. "Flowers die though we love them; weeds grow though we hate them."<br /><br />Great photo at the top, by the way; worth the proverbial thousand words.Homohabilisnoreply@blogger.com