THURSDAY, NOV 29, 2018: NOTE TO FILE
Politics as Usual
Of power, policy and privilege
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: SERVING THE SYSTEM, FROM THE WIRES, RULES OF THE GAME
Abstract: Politicized claims and counter claims are a sea of prattle I am at times forced to swim in. I cannot 'take sides', as I can but vote 'none of the above'. It's a Tweedledum and Tweedledee thing as only those who serve the SYSTEM 'win' by competing to see which can promise to better serve the growth hegemon. 'None of the above' is rarely considered nor mentioned as an option.
COOS BAY (A-P) — To politic or not to politic: that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler to not suffer fools gladly or to take arms against a sea of solemn pretenders, and by opposing end them? Will rhetoric redress the human predicament? Will violent revolution? Will a paradigm shift, when humans are ready for one—will living by foundationally new 'rules of the game' create a SYSTEM that selects for a different outcome?
Whether they die or you sleep, perchance to dream of a prosperous posterity: ay there's the rub; for who would bear the whips and scorns of serving the SYSTEM in the short term: the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's insolent self-assurance, the pangs of rebuff, the law's injustice, the insolence of office and the spurns of they who give high credit to their mere eloquence. Why grunt and sweat under a weary life of service to that which is wholly unsustainable?
Go forth to the undiscovered country no traveler of note has ventured to, to seek out the condition now that will come anyway. Better to abandon those ills of error, ignorance and illusion now, and fly to other ways of living that we of industrial society know not of. Thus they who come to embrace knowing rather than believing will come to be refugees from industrial society all.
Before choosing to politic, to believe in political 'solutions', consider a hypothetical situation:
You are seated. Before you is a man with a gun. You are his 'advisor'. Before him are two men tied to posts. As a citizen of good standing he has been selected to shoot one of them. If he does not, he and his advisor will be killed, will serve as a cautionary example. 
The two men are Donald Trump (or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity) and Bernie Sanders (or Tom Hartmann or Chris Hedges). The man with a gun turns to you to ask, "So, Advisor, Sir or Madam as the case may be, should I take the high ground and not shoot anyone?"
Consider all options. Not killing one of those tied to poles results in the executioner's and advisor's death. Whether you would be shot in the head or slowly killed on a rack might matter to you. Ask the gunman to check how many bullets are in the gun. There are six.
Mention that murder/suicide is an option. If suicide by one of you is an option and the one willing to commit suicide is up for a mercy killing, then why serve the SYSTEM, those who dictate the rules who are in turn subject to selective removal? If abandoning the SYSTEM is not a goal, why do as told if the outcome is merely to continue to do what the SYSTEM selects for?
You could tell the gunman the truth, that if he wants to live it doesn't matter who he shoots. But if he intends to live another day, suggest that he ask, 'And then what?' What will he do with another day? Continue to serve? If not, why not start now to not serve? Shoot both of them.
He was told he would be killed if he didn't execute one of those tied to the poles. Killing both would kill one first as directed with killing the other being unexpected but not forbidden. Someone in authority would have to decide whether or not to create a new, unstated rule: that the penalty for killing both is death. The outcome intended is that one is suppose to believe that it matters which thin edge of the political bell curve you think matters, that one side, or someone in the middle, has answers and solutions to concerns that matter, and above all that your vote matters. By voting, you consent to be governed.
The option excluded, 'none of the above', is not offered. You are to not choose it (the unthinkable). You are given an either-or, but you could respond with an and-both. To destroy the SYSTEM, choose what the SYSTEM does not select for. If you refuse to kill, you die and cannot work to destroy the SYSTEM, though your martyrdom could under some circumstances. If you kill one, either of the two, you serve the SYSTEM's short-termism and likely will continue to do so. So kill both and see what happens—shoot one and then the other until out of ammunition to minimize their miserable existence, then see who does what. The SYSTEM doesn't care who you vote for or kill so long as you play the game (that is an endgame).
Voting for both, however, would be a violation of the rules of the game, would cancel each vote, would be absurd, would and could serve no self interest or other-interest. Not voting is thinkable. Not killing is thinkable. Not voting does not carry the death penalty. If not killing does, the only way to not play by the twisted, pointless rules of the hypothetical game [or Growth's Mandate] is euthanasia/suicide, in that order, or kill one, as ordered, and then the other, as not ordered. If allowed to live, devote the next day, and any others that may come your way, seeking out the condition [aka the sustainable society] now that will come anyway [thereby destroying, from the POV of those who serve the current SYSTEM, civilization] if the possible condition of no society [extinction of humans] is avoided. If we cannot question everything and define new rules of a game that work long-term as determined by Nature (humans don't get a vote), then our extinction will be celebrated by abundant life over the next ten million years or so it will take to recover from our fossil-fueled, technoindustrial, Anthropocene enthusiasm.
There is no religious salvation. There are no political solutions. Believing what you want is pathology. Listen to Nature who has all the answers. To think is to listen. Listen.
"Seek out the condition now that will come anyway." —Howard T. Odumref
"The higher and faster you grow, the further and faster you fall, when you're building up capital stock in a nonrenewable resource. In the face of exponential growth of extraction or use, a doubling or quadrupling of the nonrenewable resource give little added time to develop alternatives.... The real choice in the management of a nonrenewable resource is whether to get rich very fast or to get less rich but stay that way longer." —Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer [Choice? The current SYSTEM always selects for short-termism, a remorseless dynamic we are all trapped in.]
"We are trapped in the perverse dynamics of a civilization that if it does not grow does not work, and while growing, destroys the natural bases that make it possible. It is necessary, then, to escape this dynamic before it is too late." —Moving Away From the Pro-Growth Economy: An annotated bibliography, April 2017, Prepared by Erika Gavenus with the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere.
• Our global socio-politico-economic system is NOT REMOTELY CLOSE TO SUSTAINABLE.
• We are captured and being dragged along by a complex, powerful and remorseless dynamic that automatically thwarts all attempts to stop it.
• If we don’t put time and energy into understanding it, we are doomed to go with it, right to the final curtain. —Garvin Boyle(ref)Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities. —Mark Twain
I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.” —Mark Twain
