Article: 1 of sgi.talk.ratical
From: (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Subject: welcome to sgi.talk.ratical
Followup-To: sgi.talk.ratcial.d
Keywords: borrowing from ciemo, "blazing trails where no one else cares to go"
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Distribution: sgi
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 91 16:29:43 GMT
Lines: 209
Welcome to sgi.talk.ratical and by association, it’s companion,
sgi.talk.ratical.d.
I created these as an alternative to sgi.talk.politics because I wanted
an "archive" of posts, now to be created
in sgi.talk.ratical, that devotes itself entirely to the tenor of
the kind of things I used to send out to sgi.general. It’s description
reads
reproductions, reprints and analysis of current events
sgi.talk.ratical.d is the discussion arm of this pair. I request that
all feedback/responses/debate/diatribes/flames/etc be directed into this
discussion group. If you ever wish to place an initial posting into
sgi.talk.ratical, please change the line
Followup-To:
to read
Followup-To: sgi.talk.ratical.d
so that all responses will find their way into ratcial.d.
The kind of areas I particularly wish to focus on encompass topics such as:
-
looting our children’s future
A tribe of native peoples of this
land—i can’t remember which—lived
by a fundamental rule included in their collective decision-making
processes, which decreed that the validity of any project they engaged
in was first considered in terms of what wud be its impact on their
descendants, seven generations hence. That’s an enormously powerful
idea when one holds it up to the kind of quarterly time-measuring lens
we all witness being practiced in this time and place. As I listened
to Ed McCracken speak last week re: the current state of SGI’s health,
I thought about how this sort of basis of perceptual reality is so
completely fundamental to the kind of society we find ourselves living
out our lives within. If we are indeed to honestly dream about our
children’s children’s future, we cannot continue to make the decisions
that will be so fundamental to whatever future they will inhabit, in
so short-sighted and limiting a way. Terence McKenna, a man I find
compellingly provocative, recently spoke of how “we are looting our
children’s future.” We have to learn how to grow beyond this
short-sighted way of structuring our lives and values.
-
endemic denial
The single most important practice that enables the continuation of
the ever increasing numbers of homeless, people with aids, nuclear
waste which will not “go away”, continued impossibly useless military
spending and procurement and world-wide sales, more traffic and more
smog, raping and destruction of the environment at large—all these
kinds of visible signs of neglect and avoidance are perpetuated thru
denial. It is this endemic quality of denial—that things really
are every bit as bad as they appear to be across the board—throughout
this society which breeds more and more disintegration and continued
resistance to serving the true needs of all people.
-
trading our liberty for security
Drug war escapades that focus on the casual user rather than going
up against the big seam in the guise of the international distributors,
building more prisons while simultaneously cutting back more and more
on educational spending, artificial art-officials practicing their own
righteous brand of censorship—all these things inevitably will lead
to the kind of book burning (where people themselves will not be far
behind) practiced by the National Socialist German Worker’s Party.
-
the great nation robbery
The Suckers & Losers scam is THE GREATEST heist ever perpetrated, and
all the taxpayers in the United States will foot the bill for this.
Current estimates are that it will easily surpass 1 TRILLION dollars
with the figure of approximately $2,500 being owed to the IRS by
every man, woman, and child in this country to pay for the party hosted
by Ronnie and Georgie during the 80’s. Why isn’t this being rigorously
investigated by the legislature? They, like everything else in this
consumer-based society, are for sale to the highest bidder and who bid
higher in the 80’s than those people who were able to loot an entire
monied industry with implicit government connivance?
-
500 years of genocide and pathological lying
Next year we’re going to be subjected to the ruling class re-enactment
of Columbus’ “discovery” of a land already inhabited from coast to
coast. They’re going to sail 3 replicas of the Nina, the Pinta and
the Santa Maria from Europe to the U.S. which will visit something like
500 different cities along the coast. This perpetuation of the myth
of the European discovery of a continent that was already populated
with a multitude of cultures is being challenged by indigenous groups
that seek to take this opportunity to come together and offer an
alternative voice to the kind of official mythologies that this
nation has always tried to maintain as being “factual”.
-
breeding ignorance in the guise of being informed—the
maturation of the U.S. state press.
In a recent poll, it was found that with those people who watched
more and more TV coverage on the Persian gulf conflict, their level
of awareness of the facts of the situation—as well as the events
leading up to its inception—was more and more lacking and
misinformed. More and more we see the merging of news corporations
into massive conglomerates. These are of course just like any other
business—they’re in it to make a profit. More and more we’re seeing
a “what’s good for the New York Times Company is good for America” kind of
sham like what was practiced by General Motors earlier this century.
-
elected careerists
These people manage the empire, not the needs of the people.
Whatever happened to the civil servants who would participate in
the legislative process for one or at the most 2 terms, and then
return to their civilian pursuits? Iran Contra was a classic
example of how Congress abrogated its constitutional duty to
confront the executive with the evidence of high crimes and
misdemeanors—impeachable offenses—of which
Bill Moyers spent an
hour and a half exploring on PBS earlier this year. Why did the
elected legislatures violate their own oaths to preserve, protect
and defend the Constitution of the United States by covering up
big grand-daddy’s incompetence or criminal behavior? They didn’t
want another Watergate—another failed administration—another
undeniable indicator of how out of balance our system of
government is.
-
new world nightmare
The new world dysfunctionalism has as its latest “success” the
wholesale forced relocation of an entire country back to its
pre-industrial age status. What gave us the right to orchestrate
and dictate the genocidal destruction that we rained down on the
people of Iraq for 43 days in the guise of 100,000 sorties including
88 tons of explosive force? Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying:
“Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power, have the right
to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that
suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right—a
right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”
I suppose the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of this country
made his own unilateral decision that he would extend the above to
include “any leader ... having the military power, has the right to
destroy the industrial base of a society whose leader he loves to
hate...”
-
national security state junkies
Communism clearly cannot be maintained as the kind of revered enemy
we have been taught to hate. What “group” will now be nominated to
occupy the hot seat? There has to be an enemy. Without it, the
state cannot sustain its legitimacy. The following points are
provocatively discussed by author Leonard Lewin, in his book Report
From Iron Mountain On the Possibility And Desirability Of Peace,
published by Dial Press in 1967:
“War is virtually synonymous with nationhood.”
“The elimination of war implies the inevitable elimination of
national sovereignty and the traditional nation-state.”
“The war system not only has been essential to the existence
of nations as independent political entities, but has been
equally indispensable to their stable internal political
structure. Without it, no government has ever been able to
obtain acquiescence in its legitimacy, or right to rule its society.”
“The possibility of war provides the sense of external necessity
without which no government can long remain in power.”
“The organization of a society for the possibility of war is its
principal political stabilizer. It is ironic that this primary
function of war has been generally recognized by historians
only where it has been expressly acknowledged—in the pirate
societies of the great conquerors.”
“The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in
its war powers.”
In all of this I seek one thing: to stir people up—to get people to
exercise their own analytical powers and focus them on what the hell
is happening to our world that we all share? Which opinion do you value
more—your own or Ted Koppel’s??? The kind of numbing paralysis that
the seduction of consumerism engenders in this culture is truly
earth-shattering and new to the human experience. It seems to more and more
be replacing our penchant for honestly acknowledging the true state of
consensus reality and seeking to improve and regenerate it when called for.
Mass market culture has almost completely replaced past generation’s
experiences of “roots” and local stories and myths. We cannot just sit
back and try to “buy off” on the bill of goods being sold to us as a
sort of permanent Miller Time. If we do, then there is no future for
our children’s children’s children. I hope many more of you than I
can imagine will at least every once in a short while tune in to
sgi.talk.ratical to feel the breeze of a different point of view than
the one we are all constantly ever more being bombarded by like a
commercial scud attack for more and more and more of anything we could
possibly imagine wanting to possess and have but which we don’t really
need.
Know that the people who are the richest
are not those who have the most,
but those who need the least.
daveus rattus
yer friendly neighborhood ratman
KOYAANISQATSI
ko.yan.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) n. 1. crazy life. 2. life
in turmoil. 3. life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating.
5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.
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