This year, my proud fellow Americans, our goal is to turn ourselves into persons who live without want for things, who accept all adverse situations as gifts from the Universe, and who have learned to conquer such needs and desires as so often tend to hijack our lives. Among such negative influences as are working upon our lives are materialism as exhibited by our constant tendency to go shopping; sloth as exhibited by our insistence on driving cars everywhere we go; avarice as exhibited by the fact that money has become our One True god, the only thing for which we strive each and every day; dependence as exhibited by our nearly universal refusal to grow or raise our own foodstuffs; ignorance as exhibited by our watching of only one television channel or reading of only one newspaper or blog, which causes our minds to narrow and calcify; foolhardiness as exhibited by our having bought into the convenience culture and its tendency to trick us into thinking that life is or should be somehow easy, and that we deserve to be constantly treating ourselves to nice things; and stupidity as exhibited by our lack of proper flag etiquette, especially on such days upon which we seek to honor and celebrate the founding of our nation by displaying the flag for which it stands, under nothing but Liberty and Justice for all.
The negative realities listed above can be surmounted and counter-acted by ceasing to purchase anything but basic necessities (until such time as such necessities can be made at home or bartered for), by moving one's body around on foot or bicycle, by cultivating one's own person spiritual and emotional worth rather than grubbing after external worth such as cash, by making our communities and households food-independent, by getting our news from sources different from one another and unrelated, by making our own entertainment instead of watching television, by buying back out of the hollow culture of convenience, and by treating the flag of the United States of America as it should be treated, as if it were a human member of the family. To live in the manner that we live today is to go about our daily lives as dumb beasts tied to the yoke of distant corporate overlords, circumstances nearly identical to those of Americans living in the 18th century who toiled under the yoke of distant societal overlords. It appears that we in America have come full circle, changing from sheep to eagles, from eagles to swine, from swine to wolves, and from wolves back into sheep, soiling ourselves mightily along the way. There is another path, oh fellow patriots, a path, however, that does not involve merely stockpiling firearms, lying around watching TV, eating processed foods high in fat and sugar, and living under a perpetual Fear Of The Unknown.
Please, dear reader, cherished friend, declare independence from avaricious self-interest and small-minded laziness by throwing off the last, clinging vestiges of foul consumption-oriented capitalism; free your mind, excite your soul, and become a new Guard for our future Security, today.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
Showing posts with label yoke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yoke. Show all posts
04 July 2012
11 April 2012
on luxury & comfort
This morning, while waiting for father sun to awaken, I heard on the radio an advertisement for a new motor-vehicle made by Lincoln. In this commercial, the company touted the vehicle's salient features, among them “organically tanned leather from Scotland, French stitching, and Moroccan (or Algerian) wood accents.” Beyond my abject loathing for a supposedly American company that pays non-Americans to make pretty, expensive cars for gullible Americans to buy, I find myself seething with rage at the notion in this country that we deserve things such as finery, luxury, and comfort.
If while growing up the the writers of the Declaration of Independence had been told that they deserved luxury, that comfort were their ultimate goal, that it were acceptable for them to let their guards down and to relax in a plush and reclining chair, they would not likely have had the stones to rise up and to spit in the faces of their foreign slave-masters. If the frontiersmen had grown up convinced that luxury and comfort were things they deserved, they probably would never have withstood the privations and hardships associated with crossing continents. If Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr. had become accustomed to soft and easy lives, they would likely have changed neither history nor the fate of millions of otherwise down-trodden and wretched souls.
Attention, citizens of America: life is not comfortable, easy, or luxurious. There is no reason you cannot be Happy in your life, or Safe (these being the primary purposes of government, according to the Declaration), but please do not allow yourself to become addicted to the notion that it will be convenient, plush, or pillow-topped. The more one's supposed luxury, the more one has to lose when one's house burns or floods or gets crushed by falling trees; the more one relies on comfort, the greater will be the fall when hardship returns; the more one believes in the lies spewing from the twisted suck-holes of advertisers, the less likely one is to be able to make do with less; and the more one denigrates oneself by driving a car, the longer one is trapped inside a glass-walled, cash-guzzling, burning metal box.
Today, our nation faces trying times: our people lack above-poverty-level employment, our corporations maximize profits at any and all cost to the worker and to the environment, our politicians have been corrupted by Special Interest, half of our “representatives” in the legislature are millionaires, and our government is a tyrannical juggernaut that wages war upon the Liberty of its own citizens. This is not the time to seek comfort, or luxury – this is the time to batten down the hatches and to prepare for the worst (while still keeping a song in one's heart). The underlying reason for the focus on luxury and comfort of late is that these foul conditions trick the person into thinking that she can rest, that she has done her duty to herself and to humanity, that she deserves certain things that only money can buy. Money cannot buy Happiness, nor can it buy Safety, but it can be used as a tool for self-enslavement to supposedly necessary external conditions. Therefore, the patriot relies on nothing but her bright and bursting spirit; she needs nothing but the calluses growing on her strong, slender hands. Rise up, my fellow Americans: shake off the cruel yoke of luxury, and discard the rusty chains of comfort, because your nation, and Honest Abe, need you strong, sane, and self-reliant.
場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit
If while growing up the the writers of the Declaration of Independence had been told that they deserved luxury, that comfort were their ultimate goal, that it were acceptable for them to let their guards down and to relax in a plush and reclining chair, they would not likely have had the stones to rise up and to spit in the faces of their foreign slave-masters. If the frontiersmen had grown up convinced that luxury and comfort were things they deserved, they probably would never have withstood the privations and hardships associated with crossing continents. If Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr. had become accustomed to soft and easy lives, they would likely have changed neither history nor the fate of millions of otherwise down-trodden and wretched souls.
Attention, citizens of America: life is not comfortable, easy, or luxurious. There is no reason you cannot be Happy in your life, or Safe (these being the primary purposes of government, according to the Declaration), but please do not allow yourself to become addicted to the notion that it will be convenient, plush, or pillow-topped. The more one's supposed luxury, the more one has to lose when one's house burns or floods or gets crushed by falling trees; the more one relies on comfort, the greater will be the fall when hardship returns; the more one believes in the lies spewing from the twisted suck-holes of advertisers, the less likely one is to be able to make do with less; and the more one denigrates oneself by driving a car, the longer one is trapped inside a glass-walled, cash-guzzling, burning metal box.
Today, our nation faces trying times: our people lack above-poverty-level employment, our corporations maximize profits at any and all cost to the worker and to the environment, our politicians have been corrupted by Special Interest, half of our “representatives” in the legislature are millionaires, and our government is a tyrannical juggernaut that wages war upon the Liberty of its own citizens. This is not the time to seek comfort, or luxury – this is the time to batten down the hatches and to prepare for the worst (while still keeping a song in one's heart). The underlying reason for the focus on luxury and comfort of late is that these foul conditions trick the person into thinking that she can rest, that she has done her duty to herself and to humanity, that she deserves certain things that only money can buy. Money cannot buy Happiness, nor can it buy Safety, but it can be used as a tool for self-enslavement to supposedly necessary external conditions. Therefore, the patriot relies on nothing but her bright and bursting spirit; she needs nothing but the calluses growing on her strong, slender hands. Rise up, my fellow Americans: shake off the cruel yoke of luxury, and discard the rusty chains of comfort, because your nation, and Honest Abe, need you strong, sane, and self-reliant.
場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)