Waking Up

The vein that pulses silently feeds the world an addictive electric charge; a lesson in desensitization by shock treatment. We hardly notice its effect until one moment, it's gone...

Wind is often the reason we must wake up to electricity's addictive qualities. The world even seems to slow down, as if our frantic pace really does stem from and addiction to electricity. And though we often talk of breaking our addiction to oil, we neglect our addiction to electricity at our own peril. I don't think we would care where our electricity came from, as long as it ran steadily and uninterrupted, as a good buzz must.

Though transportation, usually by gas guzzling car, is simply a kind of oil-burned-to-create-motion equation, it too relies on electricity to make its insane pace work. Without our electric lights, traffic lights, and lighted destinations the appeal of the car and its offerings loses its shine.

Instead, we walk around to talk to our neighbors. We sit out side of our house and bask in natural light. We feel relief that our pace slows down. Slows...down. We realize the lovely power of conversation.

Converse... converse with yourself, your spouse. Make an attempt to feel what it's like to live in control... control of your time, your movement, your thoughts. Get over the feeling of discomfort an electric free world brings and imagine a different world where you can tune into your life. You can sleep when it is dark, eat when you are hungry, talk when you feel like, work when it is necessary. You are not bound to the insanity of electricity.

You are free.

Hegemony is Easier with Homogeneity- The Power of Slight Differences

The power of slight differences came to my mind yesterday. I was pondering the insanity of farmers losing the power to save seeds. This power is lost because the nature of any corporation, including Monsanto-the owner of destructive technologies like Round-Up and "terminator genes", is simply to make money. And money is often easier to make with hegemony. And hegemony is often easier with homogeneity.

Imagine for a second a dill seed. Tiny, seemingly innocuous, and incredibly powerful, as is the parent plant.

If I buy seeds from the store, they are mass produced for the entire country. There is a need for this seed to grow relatively well everywhere. Obviously, the power of slight differences is lost in this effort. I cannot buy a "Best grown in Cincinnati, OH" seed, let alone a "Best grown in Westwood" seed. But if I take that seed and plant it, and let it reseed it self year after year, that seed will adjust to the soil it is in. It will adjust to the microclimate it grows in. And I need not by dill seed anymore. In fact, bought seed would simply be an inferior product at this point.

Now imagine that that scenario of me letting my seed go to seed as illegal. Imagine that there was a corporation with a team of lawyers and millions of dollars to back them up hot on the trail of anyone trying to save seed. Imagine that charges were being brought against these people who were saving seed. Imagine that the power you have to make slight differences in seeds for the betterment of all was now wrong, illegal, and dangerous. You will have imagined just what Monsanto is doing. You will have imagined the distortion of reality that we are allowing corporations to wrought on the world. You will be seeing hegemony pursuing homogeneity to the extreme. Profit is rubbing out our world.

In fact, it is not much better in consumer electronics. We can relate a product like the iPod to the act of saving seeds. The only difference is that we probably should not have bought that consumer gadget in the first place. A new generation of iThis or iThat is put out just in time for any occasion of buying, which can simply be a new day. The power of technology should be to make our life better. I am positive that the iPod I own has not made my life better. It has taken something away from my life.
And it does not have the power to recreate itself in a new and improved version. The consumer must rely on a completely outside source, a corporation, to bring a new gadget gift to the masses every 6 months or so. And of course this gift costs just as much as the first iteration. Why do we allow this insanity?!?!

You may ask just what the iPod took from my life. Luckily, what it took, I can gain back by simply leaving my iPod on the shelf.

I have done the dished for many, many year now, in part because we do not own a dishwasher. One day, I was rather sick and doing the dishes, and gained a moment of enlightenment. I was enlightened to the fact that I was happy to simply be doing the dishes, and happy to know I would be back to good health soon. Simple, profound, without cost, and priceless.

Yet I had taken to the habit of wearing and iPod while doing the dishes. Instead of finding happiness in myself, I was losing myself to an artificial music experience. I have set my iPod aside for the time and may pick it up when it spontaneously evolves to the next generation.

So I say, leave us alone corporations! We can do well enough with our own seed, our own simple technologies, and our own time to let things be. This act of controlling our own seeds and technologies is enough to enlighten us all. Let things be and be happy in whatever you are doing. Find happiness especially in making slight differences for the betterment of the world.