system of systemic

No amount of talking no volume no book will change the behavior of blowhards and crooks; they are but a symptom of systemic rot; they are not anomalies by a long-shot; they sprout up among us like vermin to feed on our insecurities worry and greed. It seems that their coming could not be avoided that we on these lower rungs must be exploited and lied to by rich fucks who stand up and claim that though they reaped profits their hands are unstained. These slags hide their monies in offshore accounts yet when caught red-handed do not then pay out or feed public coffers or give their fair share; that cash is all their own - not yours or mine, theirs. Each day they take more from us, these plutocrats; they drain us like leeches then hoard like pack-rats then convince their buddies in the Congress hall to bail out and shield them when banks they own fall. It’s simple enough for a dummy to learn: most of us will toil rejected and spurned whereas there’s a handful of blokes so wealthy that theirs is America, sea to bright sea. This here situation is not new but old; it’s found in plays the ancient Greeks themselves told; it cannot be fixed for that’s just how man works - he steals from poor children and gives to rich jerks.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on surfing's anarchism

At its root, anarchism is the absence of rulers, not rules. If everyone were to abide by the agreed-upon codes of conduct, everyone would be able to live in happiness, liberty, and peace. This is especially relevant out in the churning swells; surfing is essentially an anarchistic activity. There are no police, no time keepers, and no crossing guards, wherefore it is necessary for everyone trying to catch waves to act honorably and with due consideration for all the other people risking their fragile health and spending their precious time trying to float across the face of a piling heap of water.

Some people are better surfers than others, and therefore believe they are for some reason entitled to a greater share of waves. This is a spurious notion. Since they can better read the waves and keep themselves in the correct position for riding them, they tend to charge on every arriving peak, regardless of how many waves they've already ridden and how long every other salty soul has been waiting. Plus, they tend to drag themselves past the other people inching toward the peak and put themselves at the front (this is called snaking) instead of displaying a modicum of self-respect and putting themselves at the back, there to wait their turn. Without honor, without patience, without generosity, the act of surfing degenerates into an ego-boosting pissing contest that frequently ends in vocal or physical violence, externalized aggression, and general sadness (for everyone but the snake). Outside of an official competition, there is no justification for stealing others' sea-time by jumping to the front of a line of surfers, every time. Just as today's consumption-oriented capitalistic system encourages the individual to grab as much shit as he can without regard for and often at the expense of the rights and desires of the people around him, consumption-oriented surfing – that is, paddling out just to shred as many waves as possible in the shortest amount of time without giving a floating fuck about the others guys out there too – taints the majesty of the shared experience called surfing, reducing it to something akin to masturbating in public.

There are few conditions as pitiable as greed, few traits as undesirable as blind self service. Without a healthy respect for community and the notion that we're all in this together and none of us is getting out of here alive, a person tends to get wrapped up in what is going on inside his head-space, believe what his ego is telling him, and lose his connection to the less tangible things in life – honor, giving, sharing, and joy. The sea is always a dangerous place, rain or shine, and a person knocked unconscious has but a few score seconds to live. Here, in Bali, there are not many lifeguards; a surfer must rely on the other people bobbing in the brine to save his ass if things turn south. Hence, it helps to make and keep as many friends as possible out there, to display poise and self restraint, and to conduct oneself in a manner respectful of everyone else's time and right to exist. For many people, happiness means the absence of suffering; if everyone were to follow a few simple surfing rules (wait your turn, keep hold of your board, don't snake, don't paddle into a breaking face if others are trying to jump on it), the beautiful justice of anarchy could truly work, at least out at sea, everyone going home having happily ridden a few. In one model of the Universe, the person who gives the most receives the most; give way, give thanks, and receive the ultimate gift – love.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on stealing fire

Cultures around the world celebrate the bringer of fire, the bringer of knowledge. In the Christian tradition, the bringer is called Lucifer, who fell from heaven, whose name in Latin means Light-Carrier. In First-People traditions of the Pacific Northwest, the trickster-god Raven steals the sun from the world-house and gives it to humans, bestowing understanding upon them. In Greek mythology, Prometheus steals fire from a lofty perch and hands it over to mankind; as punishment for his actions he is chained to a rock and must endure having his liver pecked out by an eagle every day (until his rescue by Heracles). These examples from historically and geographically divergent areas speak of the same idea – that some external force physically descended form somewhere above the terrestrial plain and downloaded into the fabric of the human race the ability to ponder and think and reason. And these are but a few of this type of story; many others tell of the sudden arrival of knowledge from somewhere else, of the ability to reckon and mull and fly fancily unexpectedly arising in the minds of theretofore troglodytic bipedal mammals. Did we uplift ourselves, our intelligence arising of its own accord out of the vast and inky aether? (David Brin explores this concept in Startide Rising and his other Uplift books.) Were we genetically manipulated by a rogue extraterrestrial visitor who decided to fuck up his boss' plans and infect us homos sapiens with a full dose of thought's holy fire? These questions have kept our race up at night since the beginning of recorded history, and I don't intend to find answers for them here. I shall hazard to say, however, that I think I see a pattern emerging in the belief-systems of peoples living largely independently of one other, a pattern that suggests that we are not the only sentient beings hurtling through space-time. Keep one eyes on the stars and the other on your six. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

protect economic Safety

Persons who respect and read the Declaration of Independence will recognize that the role of government is to serve one main purpose: to bring about our Safety and Happiness. Keeping this in our minds, we look at the banks in this country that continue to steal billions of dollars from the American people, banks that starting in 2008 C.E. (common era) were given hundreds of billions of tax-paper dollars so that their larcenous and short-sighted practices would not drag this country into total ruin, banks that to this day are removing the families of active-duty military personnel from their homes and evicting old and sick persons with the the full support and active participation of armed and role-crazy police officers.

These are not victim-less crimes: We the People are the victims. The very things our government is supposed to do for us – to protect our Safety and provide for our Happiness – it is not doing; the very purpose it is supposed to serve has been supplanted by the practice of protecting those persons who have rigged the system in their favor and ensnared millions of people around the globe in the swollen tendrils of their me-first capitalism. Tomorrow, friends, we go to the polls to elect a new president. Despite the media blackout being perpetrated by nearly all media outlets, including CNN, FOX, NPR, MSNBC, ABC, and their foul ilk, we have more choices that just one or the other, more candidates to select between than just Mitt and Barack: we also have Dr. Jill Stein and governor Gary Johnson to consider, two candidates who are not part of the Democrat or Republican parties, that massive duopoly that has wrapped up our liberties in a strangle-hold so tight that we might soon see freedom snuffed out forever.

In order to rein in our government and help it to actively create our Safety and Happiness; in order to stop the greed-based actions of giant banks and tax-payer funded bailouts; out of an honest belief in the idea that liberty thrives only when the adult citizen is entrusted with the enormous responsibility of being able to decide to live a life free of ill health, wage-slavery, and police oppression; for these reasons and out of abiding love for the generations yet to come, please vote for a third party candidate this Tuesday, ignoring the ill informed fear-mongers among us warning us to choose between the lesser of two evils. Perhaps one day we might all be as brave as Gary Johnson, who said he would rather die than vote for ass or pachyderm, or as fearless as Dr. Jill Stein, who was just last week arrested for trying to bring food to a group of persons using their bodies to stop environmental degradation in Texas; perhaps one day we might realize that by voting for establishment-sanctioned candidates we dishonor the covenant established by the Declaration and violate the sanctity of our most precious document, proclaiming boldly to a candid world: ”We deserve neither Safety nor Happiness because we have sacrificed the latter in hopes of getting the former.” The only path that leads to true Happiness runs along the violently-rushing brook of full and total liberty; the only candidate courageous enough to take us down this path – and who will gladly get his or her feet wet in the process – belongs to a third party. Demand Safety, create Happiness, and say no to politics as usual! Mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)