Despair

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The List

George Bush.

The Darwinian struggle that all animals and plants are involved in, a cut-throat competition for food, mates and space. Nearly all fail. In theory we humans care for each other, but in practice, a Republican is motivated identically to a reptile. We humans are just better at disguising our selfish motives. We are not even as smart as reptiles at recognising our long-term self interest.

The entire energy system of the planet is based on life eating other life.

population clock. Each tick of the clock represents not just another birth, but a net increase of births over deaths.

So many people trying to increase the world’s population and squeeze every other species off the planet. Humans think they are the only species that has any right to habitat.

Mankind is so hell bent on destroying the environment as fast as he can. The faster you destroy the environment, the higher your social status. The faster you destroy the environment, the more you look down your nose on those that don’t. The Hummer and the SUV for use in grocery shopping would be prime examples.

There are almost infinite funds for military ventures to fight imaginary or real wars, and utterly nothing to prevent them or befriend our potential enemies.

People in the west think themselves virtuous and the Africans lazy because they have rigged the global markets so that coffee pickers get $5.00 CAD a month.

People in the west consider themselves virtuous and South Africans pirates, because the South Africans had the temerity to attempt to do something about the AIDs epidemic. The west wanted them to refrain from doing anything until they were sufficiently wealthy to pay $5000.00 CAD per month per patient.

The West says $0.05 CAD a day per person would be too expensive to give the rest of the world safe drinking water.

There are billion dollar government handouts to the wealthy, but not even basic primary health care for the poor.

Christians preach greed, violence and intolerance in the name of Jesus.

Advertising can successfully sell almost any lie, from George Bush, to environmental destruction to Free Trade.

EVen in Canada and the USA there are still homeless people, a necessary side effect of our economic system. In the USA, mentally ill people are turned out onto the streets to fend for themselves, even though it would cost no more to provide them with housing and food.

I have HIV. It has impaired but not totally squashed my ability to earn a living. Eventually it will. Even though Canada has the best social safety net in the world, I have no idea how I could possibly find a place to live and eat on $500.00 CAD a month. There are many people in the world so much worse off than I am. The population has no business bringing in so many people into the world without the means to support them.

Everyone gradually ages and dies. We much watch each other become slowly decrepit.

On a planet of over six billion people it is hard not to feel like a mote of plankton adrift on the ocean currents. All you can do is notice the insanity all around you, and packet up your ideas and cast them adrift like spores. Only if you are very clever will you find an idea that will take root in the minds of sufficient other people to have a noticeable effect.

“Life is like stepping into a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink.”
~ Suzuki Roshi

Analysis