Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 7:23 am Post subject: Our Simulated Lives
I was thinking about the:
"Subdivisions named after the ecosystems destroyed to build them" idea...
Green Acres
Shady Pines
River Bend
And it occurs to me that this concept is more widespread.
Look at our houses for example. Paper-thin crap manufactured to look like they are constructed from more substantial material.
My first car, a big ole Buick, would turn a current Buick into paste in an accident.
Greenbelts which obscure the blight of industrialism from motorists with a paper-thin veil of trees.
And on and on...
The same is true of our cherished ideas.
Patriotism is now largely an economic concept.
Community is a branded commodity.
For entire generations of folks, charity begins in your pants.
Afraid of some anti-utopian Matrix dominating human society?
Welcome to the desert... of the surreal. _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Joined: Sep 14, 2004 Posts: 6623 Location: Rural Virginia
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 8:01 am Post subject: Re: Our Simulated Lives
For a while when I was a pimply teenager I lived in a wooded area with several large ponds. I spent several happy years studying the rich "biology" of the area. I even kept a nasty ol' snapping turtle in an aquarium in my bedroom!
Then one day they starting knocking down the woods, draining the ponds, and building acres of ugly "garden" apartments, which they named "Woodlake." On the Woodlake signs was painted the corporate symbol, a leaf.
I went back there a few years ago and the whole place is a drug-infested slum with trash everywhere.
This experience affected me deeply, and ever since my life has been a rebellion against simulation . . . and assimilation.
This morning I went hiking with my dog Jiffy on our 25 acres. It was raining hard and the stream was roaring. Our path was mushy with rich black mud and sodden, leathery, fallen leaves. Lots of dense smells for Jiffy to investigate. The trees shrugged their skeletal limbs in the drenching east wind. On the way back we picked some of the shiitake mushrooms I grow. We fried them up with our home-grown eggs for breakfast.
The simulated life can be at least partially escaped, but it takes constant planning and struggle and lifelong work, especially if one is not born wealthy.
You have to organize your whole life around your vision. And NOT around career, relatives, techno-gadgetry, and other entanglements.
It helps to have a strong back.
As the world's spreading infections converge in a fatal wound, it will soon be difficult for anyone to live as I do. And soon thereafter it will be impossible for anyone. And my own life will expire with the rest of it.
At least I will have taken my stand against the "Woodlake" way of "life." _________________ "Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog
"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother
Last edited by Heineken on Sun Nov 12, 2006 11:42 am; edited 1 time in total
Joined: May 15, 2005 Posts: 4142 Location: THE MATRIX
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 9:55 am Post subject: Re: Our Simulated Lives
Not a fundy but it sometimes seems we have sinned, died and are now in hell _________________ It is easier to enslave a people that wish to remain free then it is to free a people who wish to remain enslaved.
Joined: Oct 23, 2005 Posts: 1850 Location: East of Eden
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 11:55 am Post subject: Re: Our Simulated Lives
Heineken wrote:
At least I will have taken my stand against the "Woodlake" way of "life."
Thanks for posting that Heineken. I've also seen some rich, beautiful areas destroyed for the sake of insanity, though none quite so close to home. _________________ "If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst." — Thomas Hardy
Joined: Sep 14, 2004 Posts: 6623 Location: Rural Virginia
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 12:16 pm Post subject: Re: Our Simulated Lives
Thanks coyote. There is nothing so painful to me as seeing woodland cleared, because I know intimately what is getting crunched under the dozer's iron treads and burned in those towering piles. Needless to say, I've been in a lot of pain. _________________ "Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog
"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 12:41 pm Post subject: Re: Our Simulated Lives
Yes, I could never understand when I saw them cut old trees to flaten out the area prior to building. Then they would plant shrubs and small tree. The big ones could have been left to provide shade and energy savings. _________________ Men argue, nature acts !
Voltaire
"...In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation."
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 1:18 pm Post subject: Re: Our Simulated Lives
In the city I live in, simulated "natural encounters" for urban dwellers abound. On the edge of town, golf courses with names like Wolf Creek spring up, the result being that the hares and coyotes whose habitat has been disturbed end up drifting into the city, in ever-increasing numbers. The city really isn't a good place for them.
Another popular practice is building new neighborhoods of large, expensive homes all around a man-made "lake" or "canal", which provides a beautiful view for the residents. These bodies of water start out clean, actually even with good growth of plants, but after only a couple of months they are littered with all manner of plastic and aluminum, unfortunate for the ducks and geese which are invariably drawn to these "lakes".
Joined: Dec 04, 2004 Posts: 2407 Location: perpetual state of exhaustion
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 2:06 pm Post subject: Re: Our Simulated Lives
The first several formative years of my life were in what is now a ghost town called Hendrix Lake. Close to Boss Mountain was a long lake. for the 200 feet out in the lake, it was only as deep as an adults knee. This made it really warm, bathtub warm, suprising for a northern climate.
It streched out in two directions split by a thickly forested island. THis is where I and most of our little towns population learned to swim, but you would only even find maybe a dozen families camping at any time.
I went back as a teenager, and they had stripped logged all around it. The little area that was the park itself was protected but you could see the naked hills off on either side. Its not as though I've never seen strip logging living up here but it was ugly, completely ugly and nasty looking. The water was filled with sludge, tree bark and other debris. It broke my heart.
Its tough as a parent trying to steer your kids away from this constant barrage and expectation of using the currency of sex and sex appeal. Trying to teach them that there is more to a person than what is in their pants, and to look beyond at the person is, so far, interesting.
Mind you its even harder when the adults around are still "on the make"... why won't some people grow up?
Joined: Oct 23, 2005 Posts: 1850 Location: East of Eden
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 2:31 pm Post subject: Re: Our Simulated Lives
There's a word I've come across recently: 'simulacrum.' It basically means an icon representing something that never existed. The map without the territory.
In our case, I think the icons with which we surround ourselves represent an ideal that never had much to do with reality. The lawns, the toy shrubs, cookie-cutter suburbia, all an attempt to see nature as something tame and boxed. But that is representation of something that never existed. _________________ "If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst." — Thomas Hardy
Joined: Aug 27, 2006 Posts: 123 Location: occupied Canada
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 4:14 pm Post subject:
There was an orchard in Port Perry, a town just north of where I grew up. It had the best apples, Macs, Spys, Russets. We had a couple apple trees at home but Mom would pick up the other varieties from them... Northern Spy for apple pie... We were overseas for a couple years, when we came back in '76 I went up to the orchard. It was now a tract house development. They called it Orchard Heights and left one apple tree in each back yard.
There is a word from philosophy that I like, haecceity; this-ness, the thing in itself. Authenticity; consumer culture tries to copy and market it but it is the one thing that can't be faked. It's what Christopher Alexander was talking about in "The Timeless Way of Building". It's the quality without a name that Pirsig talks about in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".
Another example; we were shopping for vegetables, I bought some celery root from a supermarket. The poor girl at the checkout didn't even know what it was. Then we went over to Kensington market, it's not shiny or fancy, but the guy we bought our vegetables from owned the stall. We talked about the quality of his vegetables and the exchange was between two people, not a consumer and a corporation.
Last winter I had trouble with water in the fuel system of my tractor. I phoned a neighbour and he told me how to purge the lines and change the filters. It worked. When I thanked him he said why are you thanking me I didn't do anything. As a farmer he didn't confuse talking about something with doing something.
I'm not surprised that people living in modern cities go insane with sex and drugs and suicide. There is no there there. The layer of noise from modern life is distracting.
The real world is still here. Every year I try to go canoeing in Algonquin Park. Being with the water and rocks and trees reminds me of what is; haecceity.
An article by Pierre Trudeau on canoeing:
Exhaustion and Fulfillment: The Ascetic in a Canoe
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 4:57 pm Post subject: Re: Our Simulated Lives
I thought of another example which could be described as "modern development simulating the perfect mountain getaway experience".
About 30 years ago, my husband (then boyfriend) and I started making yearly excursions to our nearest national mountain park. Never having much money to spend, we chose a very simple cabin resort which consisted of small cabins with just the basics - heat, extra blankets, a small fridge and stove - situated by a beautiful alpine lake. The establishment was owned and run by a middle-aged couple. We loved this place because it was quiet, simple and affordable. Over the years we have returned almost annually, along with our children, who have also loved our mini-vacations there.
However, the original owners turned the business over to their offspring some 10 years ago and the changes, or "improvements", to the establishment have been less than desirable, IMO. The accommodations are increasingly more luxurious, it's always busy (to the point of having to book a cabin a good six months in advance), and the children of the original owners are not as pleasant to do business with.
Of course, all the renovations and "comforts of home" added to the once-simple cabins have priced the place out of our reach. I guess it's progress and good business, but we'll remember the humble beginnings much more fondly.
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 8:14 pm Post subject: Re: Our Simulated Lives
NEOPO wrote:
Not a fundy but it sometimes seems we have sinned, died and are now in hell
Indians talk a lot about "If you don't listen to your elders, this or that bad thing will happen to you." I think that we European peoples somewhere along the line did just that. We rejected the lifeways and teachings of our ancestors. Our entire society behaves like a rebellious, undisciplined, spoiled child. Our current pergatory is the inevitable result.
The paradox, of course is that to a greater or lesser extent, many of us European extraction peoples are recognizing that we can't go on living the way we have. Because it has been so long since we lived in a healthy way, the voices in our society which claim to be the most "conservative" are in fact usually the loudest advocates of the short sighted rebellious childishness. The voices which call themselves "progressive" are at least making little tiptoe movements towards acknowledging the lifeways and teachings of our elders.
I'm living in the middle of another paradox of the awakening process. Millions of people are starting to realize that California has become a giant sewer. They're all moving to Montana, where they immediately set out to replicate the thing they were running from. They're in the planning stages for building a monster subdivision in a little town near here. The subdivision is estimated to triple the population of the town. _________________ "So while you sit and whistle Dixie with your money and your power.
I can hear the flowers a-growin in the rubble of the towers.
I hear leaders quit their lying
I hear babies quit their crying.
I hear soldiers quit their dying, one and all." - OCMS
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 8:24 pm Post subject: Re: Our Simulated Lives
smallpoxgirl wrote:
Millions of people are starting to realize that California has become a giant sewer. They're all moving to Montana, where they immediately set out to replicate the thing they were running from. They're in the planning stages for building a monster subdivision in a little town near here. The subdivision is estimated to triple the population of the town.
Argh! we have that here too. A bunch of dickwads from "pick a coast" come here to "find themselves" after they soiled their nest back in whatever craphole they came from. Then they come here and start sniveling and wanting to control everything from the coyotes to the neighbors garden.
I saw a sign for a development in Abq when I was there the other day which was funny.. It read "Stillbrooke estates" which is a joke since there hasn't been a creek there since the last ice age... but when I read it on first glance I thought it said " Still Broke estates"
Still Broke indeed... on all levels....
-G _________________ I Have and will continue to vote against ANY politician who supports the various bailouts. Curse you for selling out our future for status quo now!
Joined: Sep 14, 2004 Posts: 6623 Location: Rural Virginia
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 8:38 pm Post subject: Re: Our Simulated Lives
The comments in this forum remind me of why I am so glad I discovered this web site, and explain why I've hung around here so long.
It's remarkable to encounter people who share my own feelings on this matter---feelings that I have been mostly alone with since childhood. If only there were more of us, we could change this world. _________________ "Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog
"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother
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