A recession is looming, and what does Mr. McGunity tell us to do? To buy! Two days ago he advised all Ontarians to go to malls and buy, buy cars, buy houses, buy stuff.
This is capitalist system. Pure and simple. A system based on consumption, not on taking care of real human needs. Buy, buy, buy until you consume the whole planet, and turn it into plastics and metals and junk. Like a virus that attacks the body of its host and destroys it. This is a system that is based on planned obsolescence, a system that loathes merchandise that last for a long time. Any product in this system should not last more than a few years, otherwise the whole system will crash. They have the "Fashion" in everything, in clothes and cars and computers, etc. They change it every year so that the last year's merchandise is ugly this year and you have to replace them.
Is a system that will collapse if people stop heavy consumption a reasonable and rational system? Of course not. The production system should not be based on greed, but on real human needs, without excesses of totally unnecessary consumption.
And remember: George Bush told Americans the same thing after 9/11. People were scared and not shopping, and he told them to go and shop, otherwise the system will collapse, and right now he is going to legislate laws to pay every American some money to go to the store and buy stuff.
Don't they see how crooked and unstable the system is? Of course they see it, but greed is a stronger motive than reason in human beings.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Death and Man
Life is a stupid, aimless, chemical compound, like water, like salt, like any other crystal. It is inherently tragic, because it is meaningless and it ends in death. Every life is tragic, but human lives are more, because we are the only animal who knows that it is going to die and yet tries to live like there is no death. We go around our daily business with great enthusiasm, we battle for better life, for money and riches and love and sex and pleasure as if we are eternal. We deny death to ourselves. Death is always for others. Even if we try to understand death, our cells deny it and push us forward in this journey. Like a computer that is programmed to work endlessly and can't escape it's program, we run endlessly on the path to death and often forget to enjoy the beauties of the road.
And yet, at the end of the day, even Rockefellers and Genchizes of this world die and don't carry any of that wealth and power with themselves to the other world. Even they get the same as the next homeless guy at the corner of the street, a few feet of land 6 feet under for their bones. So why do they heave and try so hard and put so much stress and fear and anxiety and sorrow upon themselves while they know it is all useless? Why don't they take it easy like a fakir in India? What do they get out of all this anxiety and stress at the end of the day?
And yet.....
And yet, at the end of the day, even Rockefellers and Genchizes of this world die and don't carry any of that wealth and power with themselves to the other world. Even they get the same as the next homeless guy at the corner of the street, a few feet of land 6 feet under for their bones. So why do they heave and try so hard and put so much stress and fear and anxiety and sorrow upon themselves while they know it is all useless? Why don't they take it easy like a fakir in India? What do they get out of all this anxiety and stress at the end of the day?
And yet.....
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
EUROPEAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY PAYS
Linda McQuaig article in Toronto Star about the benefits of social democracy
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Reflections on church and Christianity
A few days ago, a friend invited me to their church and I sat through the whole mass. These are some of the thoughts that passed my mind:
1. How much cruelty and tribalism resides underneath the bible. The sermon was about Moses and how he let the Israelites pass through the red sea "and then the sea came together and drowned hordes of Pharaohs soldiers". Didn't those soldiers have wives and children like Israelites? Shouldn't they be pities, left to their own resources after the death of their fathers and brothers? No, god does not care about that. God is a "tribal" god! He only cares for the Jewish tribe. For him, like any other tribal guy, people from other tribes are not considered human, they are subhuman, even less than their own sheep and cattle and can die in anyway.
2. I look around, see some disabled people there. Why are you, of all people, here??? To thank god who has created you like this, who has inflicted perpetual pain and suffering on you? What is there to thank him for? One of my friends used to wonder about gay people who try hard to be accepted into the church and wage lengthy campaigns for that. He used to say: For what? To go to church to thank god to have created them as homosexuals and denied them one of the greatest pleasures of life which is the love and touch of the opposite sex?
3. they line up to have the wine and bread. Isn't it a totally tribal custom? The tribe's witch giving all sorts of strange things to people to eat and telling them it is the blood of that deity and this god? Weren't the Romans, and actually all prmitive tribes also, practicing these ceremonial sacrifices and drinkings of blood and flesh? Christianity has just changed it by a thin veneer of a religious story. Funny thing that Mormons have changed the wine into water and have water in their churches.
4. Thank goodness I don't need to accompany everybody else in singing the silly songs and standing and sitting every few minutes. Why can I do this, because millions of people have sacrificed their lives in the past hundreds of years so that I can sit there without having to follow the crowd and pretend that I believe and not afraid for my life.
5. The building is large but deserted. It has definitely seen better times, when everybody used to attend the chruch or at least pretended to believe and attended. There are a miserable small number of people here. I think of the power and glory of the church before. Alpha males at that times, used to be attracted to the church because of it's power and money, and as usual, wherever alpha males are, you can expect cruelty and deceit and war and torture and churches did not leave anything to imagination in that department. But now that they can't attract people and money, they are devoid of alpha males, here I can just see some weak soles smiling perpetually. Boy, I can smell the minister's smelly breath from here in the first row.
1. How much cruelty and tribalism resides underneath the bible. The sermon was about Moses and how he let the Israelites pass through the red sea "and then the sea came together and drowned hordes of Pharaohs soldiers". Didn't those soldiers have wives and children like Israelites? Shouldn't they be pities, left to their own resources after the death of their fathers and brothers? No, god does not care about that. God is a "tribal" god! He only cares for the Jewish tribe. For him, like any other tribal guy, people from other tribes are not considered human, they are subhuman, even less than their own sheep and cattle and can die in anyway.
2. I look around, see some disabled people there. Why are you, of all people, here??? To thank god who has created you like this, who has inflicted perpetual pain and suffering on you? What is there to thank him for? One of my friends used to wonder about gay people who try hard to be accepted into the church and wage lengthy campaigns for that. He used to say: For what? To go to church to thank god to have created them as homosexuals and denied them one of the greatest pleasures of life which is the love and touch of the opposite sex?
3. they line up to have the wine and bread. Isn't it a totally tribal custom? The tribe's witch giving all sorts of strange things to people to eat and telling them it is the blood of that deity and this god? Weren't the Romans, and actually all prmitive tribes also, practicing these ceremonial sacrifices and drinkings of blood and flesh? Christianity has just changed it by a thin veneer of a religious story. Funny thing that Mormons have changed the wine into water and have water in their churches.
4. Thank goodness I don't need to accompany everybody else in singing the silly songs and standing and sitting every few minutes. Why can I do this, because millions of people have sacrificed their lives in the past hundreds of years so that I can sit there without having to follow the crowd and pretend that I believe and not afraid for my life.
5. The building is large but deserted. It has definitely seen better times, when everybody used to attend the chruch or at least pretended to believe and attended. There are a miserable small number of people here. I think of the power and glory of the church before. Alpha males at that times, used to be attracted to the church because of it's power and money, and as usual, wherever alpha males are, you can expect cruelty and deceit and war and torture and churches did not leave anything to imagination in that department. But now that they can't attract people and money, they are devoid of alpha males, here I can just see some weak soles smiling perpetually. Boy, I can smell the minister's smelly breath from here in the first row.
Immigration and Democracy
Most immigrants do it for financial reasons, not democracy and freedom. Give them enough money in their autocratic countries, and they won't move one step out. It is a rare immigrant that does it to flee dictatorship. When they come to the new democratic destination, they just strive for money and prosperity, they don't take part in the political process. That is sad but true. The risk the target country takes is that if it accepts too many of these immigrants, it might get flooded with people who don't care who rules them and what system is in power, as long as they can make a living. This will put democracy at risk.
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