#Cost of Living

Posted: January 17, 2024 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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There are so many things in life that we just don’t think about.

So many physical things that exist that we don’t think about. So many phrases in our language that we don’t think about.

Cost of Living.

The term implies that we don’t deserve to live. We don’t deserve to be alive. So much for the pro-choice crowd. Once the fetus is born, its on its own.

Self help gurus and the toxic positivity crowd like to talk about what a statistical miracle it is to be alive. Good for content, great for someone whose doing well in life to feel even better about themselves. That concept smacks into a brick wall of the externally, measurable, physical reality of any capitalist controlled civilization.

The paramedic will save your life and tell you that it was a miracle, then the clerk sends you a bill that puts you into medical bankruptcy. The politician tells you it’s a miracle to be alive in the richest country in the history of the world, then votes against universal healthcare.

Cost of living. Trade ⅔ of your life in the service of being to survive the other ⅓ while you’re not working. Five days on for two days off. Fifty weeks on for two weeks off. If you’re a worker with a white collar maybe. What is a weekend? What is a holiday? Sick days? Suck it up and turn your gear on the machine plebe.

Cost of living. You mean the mental and emotional toll that simply existing, maintaining sanity and decorum takes on us? You mean the unanswerable questions about existence? What is consciousness? What happens when we die?

The consequences of the body decaying as we get older as the positive alternative to dying young? The feeling of being alone in rooms full of strangers? Wondering if anyone will ever really get us? Not knowing who we can actually trust? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does absolute power corrupt absolutely? What does living up to my potential mean? Are we alone in the universe? Isn’t there a risk of dying at any moment? That cost of living?

No, not the immaterial cost of living. The other one. The material cost of living. The one that says if you don’t trade your time for money often enough, for enough quantity, you’ll be left to die of dehydration and starvation on the streets. That cost of living.

Naturally #Human

Posted: January 16, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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Nature trail walks/hikes have been a life saver for me.

During the Covid lockdowns in America, I was blessed to live five minutes by car from a nature trail. I went there early and often during those dark days.

Sometimes I go on walks with my earbuds in, sometimes not. Sometimes I stay for hours, sometimes just an abbreviated loop that amounts to the traditional coffee break. But every time I go, I feel at least a little better than I did before being in nature.

It’s called forest bathing. What a blessing.

I can’t recommend it enough. I live in the midwestern area of the United States. It is currently too cold and too snowy to really even go outside for anything beyond survival essentials.

During these times I find myself watching nature documentaries. Or watching HD nature scenery with ambient music in the background on YouTube. Certainly not the same as the real thing, but there’s a calling to seeing nature that soothes my soul.

When I get off the main trail and am genuinely surrounded by trees, bushes, flowers, plants, grass, weeds, dirt, birds and bugs…I feel…at home…I feel…at peace.

Because humans are apart of nature. Just because we as a species want to poor a concrete layer over the entire planet, doesn’t mean that we didn’t come from nature. The forests are home. Nature is home.

The lessons to be learned from observing and being in nature, I feel, directly help combat the mental and emotional illnesses that are becoming rampant in the modern, developed, first world countries of the world.

Economic #Ecological Adversity

Posted: January 16, 2024 in Frackishima
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Why does it seem like climate change is only getting worse?

Why do the institutions, organizations, and countries that can have the greatest impact only pay lip service to combatting climate change?

Why is that even regular everyday people who aren’t skeptics seem apathetic to the prospects of positively reversing climate change?

Capitalism.

Profit motive > anything & everything

Until the many are able to unite against the few, things are only moving in one direction.

Getting people to understand that countries and cultures that are completely identified with capitalism are not going to change positively because the changes required to change would require a temporary loss in profits in large amounts for large quantities of current beneficiaries of the capitalist system.

And we know how we human can justify doing the wrong thing if it benefits us. Every human being has done it at some point in their life. An action either on purpose or on accident that negatively impacts another person or thing. But we believe we’re a good person, we didn’t mean it, we deserve better, etc.

Just scale that up to that of communities, countries, civilizations and corporations.

An aspect of human nature that works in our favor on tackling climate change is the inner drive humans have to help each other. You see it all the time when disaster strikes. There are always helpers. People helping people.

There is no benefit to losing faith in humanity. There are enough of us who want to help each other on a mass scale by helping the planet. There are enough people on the wrong side of capitalist policies to unite and drive change forward. That is where my hope lays.

Be Aware of #CognitiveDistortions

Posted: January 15, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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Every day I have a reminder of my phone set to go off that says “I am Aware of Cognitive Distortions”. It only goes off once per day. I could probably use another two or three…dozen reminders over the course of the day, as could most people.

Cognitive distortions or perceiving reality inaccurately, is as natural and normal and easy and automatic as breathing. Is it possible for people to not interpret and assign meaning to the things that happen to them? Yes. Is that the normal, commonplace way most humans live? No

Framing what happens to us in a positive way is obviously preferable. But if the majority of people had a positive way at looking at the world, the world we live in would be unrecognizable. We’d be closer to the Garden of Eden than not.

Negativity is natural. It’s part of how we have evolved. It’s how we have survived from hunter gatherers to farmers to the industrial revolution to the information age. Unfortunately the information age has put cognitive distortions on steroids. Social media echo chambers, travel vlog FOMO, influencer sensationalization, hustle culture, face filters and photoshop.

All designed to exploit our tendency towards cognitive distortions; to think less of ourselves, more of the content creators, so that we will spend our time, attention, and emotional reactions on whatever they’re selling.

Being aware of cognitive distortions brings a bit of wisdom to the information age that drowns us collectively and individually. Awareness is the way out after all. No magic pill. Awareness is less than action. But often right action won’t come unless awareness is there.

Positive, productive, beneficial cognitive distortions are preferred to the negative. It is almost always better to frame what is happening to us in a way that is productive as long as it doesn’t bring harm to anyone else.

Today however, as an exercise in having our feet on the ground while our heads’ are in the clouds, lets try to observe the external reality we live in with objectivity first. This is as it is. Acknowledge the is-ness of the moment. Be aware of what is happening without assigning labels. Then take action from there.

This is Eckhart Tolle 101. Practical. Applicable. Real world helpful.

Separated from the spiritual enlightenment and fulfillment practices that Tolle is synonymous with.

#Politics is Theater for the Oligarchy

Posted: January 14, 2024 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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I am regularly around people not from America. I enjoy it. I enjoy different perspectives and experiences and perceptions and opinions.

One of my favorite things about regularly being around foreigners is their reactions when they see American political advertising aka campaign commercials. Which is common because election season in America never ends now, since it’s a set it and forget it emotional trigger and decisiveness tool for the unwashed masses.

After they see one or two…dozen…political ads in an hour, they’ll inevitably start asking the people around them what they think of politics, what they think of democracy, what they are thinking about the upcoming election, etc.

If/when they ask me, my answer is a sloppy version of the following; American politics is theater for the capitalist oligarchy and the military industrial complex to give the masses the illusion of choice, control and influence.

If I’m talking to a European, they quickly understand what I’m talking about. If it’s an Australian or South American, there is usually an explanation of what an oligarchy is and that the MIC is and how they are the shadow authoritarian government and have been for a minimum of half a century.

Any doubt or skepticism towards that can be directed towards the 2008 bank bailouts, 2020 TARP bailouts, the volume of assassinations of anti-war organizers in the 1960s, and of course the never ending wars we have never ending money for while homelessness and wealth inequality reach all time highs in the richest country in the history of the planet.

I remember in the 90’s when Jessie Ventura became governor of Minnesota as an independent. When asked why he was an independent he said that the only difference between a democrat and a republican is the speed at which their knees hit the ground when their donors walk into the room.

Those who would say that America is a democracy and isn’t a corporate captured, authoritarian state; would also openly admit how corrupt Washington is. They would call me a conspiracy theorist, and then complain about how nothing ever seems to get done in Washington. Drain the swamp! But we live in a direct democracy. What does duopoly mean anyways?!

As long as we’re blaming the rank and file voters of the opposite party, obsessing over pronouns, or thinking an ex billionaire game show host is to blame for all of our problems, then we certainly won’t have the mental capacity to comprehend the people who control the currency, the land, the bombs and the resources are the ones controlling the government and that the combination of the two controls our lives.

Because then we would have to admit that we aren’t free, we own nothing, we have no rights. And I know from repeated experience, that ignorance…is…bliss.

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