a healthy economy
to hazelwoodeditor@yahoo.com
for http://hazelwoodhomepage.com
There is only one thing worse than waking up to the recognition that you've been deluded all your life - NOT waking up to it. We are so used to thinking inside the box of limitations society has put on us over the years we've barely enough imagination to every now and then glimpse a bigger picture. Take cars, for instance. I remember thinking 8 or 13 mpg was okay for heavier vehicles because naturally you're gonna burn more gas if you've got more weight to move. Only as an adult researcher have I been awakened to the extremely bitter truth that the automotive industry (and our industrial society in general) has for many decades been enormously held back by moneyed interests profiting from the status quo rather than progress. Nikola Tesla, who invented alternating current, the radio, and the fluorescent light, has been erased from history by more profit-minded industrialists such as Edison and Marconi (both of whom stole from him) and Westinghouse and J.P. Morgan, who supported Tesla's work until it became clear his energy advances were going to lose him rather than make him money. The automotive industry, similar to how for instance solar was held back as competition by more established energy technologies, illegally and unfairly quashed radical advances such as Tesla's electric car and the Tucker car. And they continue to do so. The electric car is coming out of the patent archives much more slowly than necessary, because it would free us up from fossil fuels and much of the maintenance now necessary with the internal combustion engine. The big 3 automakers falsely charged Tucker in order to stop manufacture of his much better car, and then hypocritically years later used his inventions like power steering in their own cars. Ask yourself why you've never heard of Tucker or Tesla. You've been deluded, baby. Marconi didn't invent the radio, Tesla did. Wonder what else you've believed all your life isn't true?
If we want a healthy economy, it has to be honest. Ours is based on many lies. I remember how blown away I was to find out we had been lied into the Vietnam war. It took me thirty years to learn that that war was over resources and opium, not protecting the world from the Communists. We are now enmeshed in wars, again supposedly for high-minded reasons like freedom from terror, but in reality our economy is being drained to profit weapons manufacturers and drug smugglers, who play all sides of this brutal business game by selling weapons or whatever to whoever's buying and change sides depending on who they're talking to. American history is full of pretended attacks on us, when in fact unscrupulous American businesspeople were facilitating and sometimes even creating these attacks in order to get us to go to war (for THEIR gain, not for the good of the American people as a whole).
The sad fact that it takes money to make money gives the status quo an unfair advantage. It's inertia, that's all - what is at rest tends to stay at rest and what is in motion tends to keep moving. Those who lay their money on the most popular direction are betting on the status quo. The believers in the status quo figure that the majority is probably right. One who cruises out of formation is a loser, who must be crazy, lazy, stupid or something - but definitely wrong. Their favorite slapdown of someone with something new is "If that's such a great idea, why isn't everybody doing it already?" They don't see the circularity of their logic.
But what if the nonconformist happens to know something the normal people don't know, and has the courage to stand up and stand out?
The fact is, we could have a heaven on Earth if we had enough sense to not be afraid, and so allow ourselves to love and work with one another. We are literally causing our own suffering. We could have had non-polluting non-combustion motor vehicles a long time ago. And we're never going to get them with these petty little arguments over fuel standards and how many jobs are going to be lost by the enforcement of environmental regulations. In this time of great change, in which feedback effects make for quantum change, the internal combustion engine has to go, period. Coal has to go, period. The filthy tar sands extraction cannot proceed. And natural gas, being billed now as a clean (or cleaner) energy source has got to go also. It's like an addict switching to a similar drug when one's not available - you're not really accomplishing anything, just getting older. The pinhead mindset focuses on the here and now and me, and that's the definition of greed. If you ignore the pollution caused by the mining of natural gas or nuclear, they look like they're cleaner than say coal. Businesspeople are often expert at being pinheads, stay on point of how much money am I going to make while externalizing the costs quite brutally (and usually unconsciously) to others' lungs or future generations.
The change so many businesspeople fear (for all their hypocritical talk of innovation), in this historic moment of no-more-business-as-usual, is actually good for them too, but they are so blinded by their fear they can't see it and so persecute those who protest their insanity. And it is insanity. If you don't know, for instance, that there is a history of earthquakes being caused by mining and explosives, reason it out. You take something out of the ground underneath you, and you blow off an explosion under you. It's like standing on a tree branch while you're sawing it off - YOU'RE GONNA FALL! Use your head. There were people hundreds and even thousands of years ago who saw bare details of the current mess we're in. Earth used to be covered in forest; look at it now. If something is truly productive, do it, regardless of whether it makes money, and you'll find yourself linked up with others who are similarly wise. If something is not productive, don't do it even if it makes money. That's how we'll make our economy healthy.
Jim McCue
St. Jim the Composter
412-421-6496
composter and biotech researcher
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/02/celebrate-earth.html
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
http://facebook.com/alllifelover
http://plentyoffish.com/member498447.htm
http://hazelwoodhomepage.com
for http://hazelwoodhomepage.com
There is only one thing worse than waking up to the recognition that you've been deluded all your life - NOT waking up to it. We are so used to thinking inside the box of limitations society has put on us over the years we've barely enough imagination to every now and then glimpse a bigger picture. Take cars, for instance. I remember thinking 8 or 13 mpg was okay for heavier vehicles because naturally you're gonna burn more gas if you've got more weight to move. Only as an adult researcher have I been awakened to the extremely bitter truth that the automotive industry (and our industrial society in general) has for many decades been enormously held back by moneyed interests profiting from the status quo rather than progress. Nikola Tesla, who invented alternating current, the radio, and the fluorescent light, has been erased from history by more profit-minded industrialists such as Edison and Marconi (both of whom stole from him) and Westinghouse and J.P. Morgan, who supported Tesla's work until it became clear his energy advances were going to lose him rather than make him money. The automotive industry, similar to how for instance solar was held back as competition by more established energy technologies, illegally and unfairly quashed radical advances such as Tesla's electric car and the Tucker car. And they continue to do so. The electric car is coming out of the patent archives much more slowly than necessary, because it would free us up from fossil fuels and much of the maintenance now necessary with the internal combustion engine. The big 3 automakers falsely charged Tucker in order to stop manufacture of his much better car, and then hypocritically years later used his inventions like power steering in their own cars. Ask yourself why you've never heard of Tucker or Tesla. You've been deluded, baby. Marconi didn't invent the radio, Tesla did. Wonder what else you've believed all your life isn't true?
If we want a healthy economy, it has to be honest. Ours is based on many lies. I remember how blown away I was to find out we had been lied into the Vietnam war. It took me thirty years to learn that that war was over resources and opium, not protecting the world from the Communists. We are now enmeshed in wars, again supposedly for high-minded reasons like freedom from terror, but in reality our economy is being drained to profit weapons manufacturers and drug smugglers, who play all sides of this brutal business game by selling weapons or whatever to whoever's buying and change sides depending on who they're talking to. American history is full of pretended attacks on us, when in fact unscrupulous American businesspeople were facilitating and sometimes even creating these attacks in order to get us to go to war (for THEIR gain, not for the good of the American people as a whole).
The sad fact that it takes money to make money gives the status quo an unfair advantage. It's inertia, that's all - what is at rest tends to stay at rest and what is in motion tends to keep moving. Those who lay their money on the most popular direction are betting on the status quo. The believers in the status quo figure that the majority is probably right. One who cruises out of formation is a loser, who must be crazy, lazy, stupid or something - but definitely wrong. Their favorite slapdown of someone with something new is "If that's such a great idea, why isn't everybody doing it already?" They don't see the circularity of their logic.
But what if the nonconformist happens to know something the normal people don't know, and has the courage to stand up and stand out?
The fact is, we could have a heaven on Earth if we had enough sense to not be afraid, and so allow ourselves to love and work with one another. We are literally causing our own suffering. We could have had non-polluting non-combustion motor vehicles a long time ago. And we're never going to get them with these petty little arguments over fuel standards and how many jobs are going to be lost by the enforcement of environmental regulations. In this time of great change, in which feedback effects make for quantum change, the internal combustion engine has to go, period. Coal has to go, period. The filthy tar sands extraction cannot proceed. And natural gas, being billed now as a clean (or cleaner) energy source has got to go also. It's like an addict switching to a similar drug when one's not available - you're not really accomplishing anything, just getting older. The pinhead mindset focuses on the here and now and me, and that's the definition of greed. If you ignore the pollution caused by the mining of natural gas or nuclear, they look like they're cleaner than say coal. Businesspeople are often expert at being pinheads, stay on point of how much money am I going to make while externalizing the costs quite brutally (and usually unconsciously) to others' lungs or future generations.
The change so many businesspeople fear (for all their hypocritical talk of innovation), in this historic moment of no-more-business-as-usual, is actually good for them too, but they are so blinded by their fear they can't see it and so persecute those who protest their insanity. And it is insanity. If you don't know, for instance, that there is a history of earthquakes being caused by mining and explosives, reason it out. You take something out of the ground underneath you, and you blow off an explosion under you. It's like standing on a tree branch while you're sawing it off - YOU'RE GONNA FALL! Use your head. There were people hundreds and even thousands of years ago who saw bare details of the current mess we're in. Earth used to be covered in forest; look at it now. If something is truly productive, do it, regardless of whether it makes money, and you'll find yourself linked up with others who are similarly wise. If something is not productive, don't do it even if it makes money. That's how we'll make our economy healthy.
Jim McCue
St. Jim the Composter
412-421-6496
composter and biotech researcher
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/02/celebrate-earth.html
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
http://facebook.com/alllifelover
http://plentyoffish.com/member498447.htm
http://hazelwoodhomepage.com
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 11:45 AM
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