“the echoes, part 1” (2018) by The Art Of Darkness. on Flickr.

someone said ‘the version of me you created in your mind is not my responsibility’ and wow

someone said ‘the version of me you created in your mind is not my responsibility’ and wow

"I mean, it's okay to live like there's no tomorrow if you're at some primitive stage of culture with endless frontiers of exploitable resources in all directions. That's not where we're at. We have burned through all that, and yet still we party on. And the signs are on the wall. We have invented a sin that no other culture ever even conceived of: it's the sin of looting the future. No other culture was ever so narcissistic and self-indulgent that it cared nothing for the future of its children. Children have always been the value focus for a civilization. But when you pile up four trillion dollars in debt, when you cut down the rainforests and blow off the atmosphere, it means you are in the grip of such an orgy of narcissistic excess that the best thing for it would be for somebody to just walk over and put a bullet through your head as a favor to everybody else. We don't need that kind of a fate. We need to be as noble as the people who preceded us, and a hell of a lot smarter, because nobility by itself is not sufficient. We're going to have to play a very cagey game now. And it's okay with me; I anticipate it. I mean, I think primates love a hell of a good fight, and we've got one on our hands. I mean, we have unleashed processes that, if not skillfully controlled, are extraordinarily terminal - even in the short term."

- Terence McKenna

"Pity stands in opposition to all the tonic passions that augment the energy of the feeling of aliveness: it is a depressant. A man loses power when he pities. Through pity that drain upon strength which suffering works is multiplied a thousandfold. Suffering is made contagious by pity; under certain circumstances it may lead to a total sacrifice of life and living energy--a loss out of all proportion to the magnitude of the cause (--the case of the death of the Nazarene). This is the first view of it; there is, however, a still more important one. If one measures the effects of pity by the gravity of the reactions it sets up, its character as a menace to life appears in a much clearer light. Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction; it fights on the side of those disinherited and condemned by life; by maintaining life in so many of the botched of all kinds, it gives life itself a gloomy and dubious aspect. Mankind has ventured to call pity a virtue (--in every _superior_ moral system it appears as a weakness--); going still further, it has been called _the_ virtue, the source and foundation of all other virtues--but let us always bear in mind that this was from the standpoint of a philosophy that was nihilistic, and upon whose shield _the denial of life_ was inscribed. Schopenhauer was right in this: that by means of pity life is denied, and made _worthy of denial_--pity is the technic of nihilism. Let me repeat: this depressing and contagious instinct stands against all those instincts which work for the preservation and enhancement of life: in the role of _protector_ of the miserable, it is a prime agent in the promotion of _decadence_--pity persuades to extinction.... Of course, one doesn't say "extinction": one says "the other world," or "God," or "the _true_ life," or Nirvana, salvation, blessedness.... This innocent rhetoric, from the realm of religious-ethical balderdash, appears _a good deal less innocent_ when one reflects upon the tendency that it conceals beneath sublime words: the tendency to _destroy life_. Schopenhauer was hostile to life: that is why pity appeared to him as a virtue.... Aristotle, as every one knows, saw in pity a sickly and dangerous state of mind, the remedy for which was an occasional purgative: he regarded tragedy as that purgative. The instinct of life should prompt us to seek some means of puncturing any such pathological and dangerous accumulation of pity as that appearing in Schopenhauer's case (and also, alack, in that of our whole literary _decadence_, from St. Petersburg to Paris, from Tolstoi to Wagner), that it may burst and be discharged.... Nothing is more unhealthy, amid all our unhealthy modernism, than Christian pity. To be the doctors _here_, to be unmerciful _here_, to wield the knife _here_--all this is _our_ business, all this is _our_ sort of humanity, by this sign we are philosophers, we Hyperboreans!--" F. Nietzsche "Antichrist" §7, 1888

“Anger is often justified, but it can still be dangerous, explosive and hard to control, and you are still responsible for every word and action you commit while angry.

Fear is often warranted, but fear will often demand extreme measures to help you keep "safe" often this leads to very harmful behavior against self and others and you are still responsible for your words and deeds when you are afraid.

Violence is sometimes necessary, but violence can be seductive in its own right, and unless you're very careful it can be a tool that gets easier and easier to deem "necessary". You are ALWAYS responsible for the violence you commit, even for justified reasons.

Emotions are valuable, they have meaning and need to be felt and channeled and listened to, but we must be careful not to confuse the EXPRESSION of an emotion with the emotion itself. How you chose to express your emotions is up to you, and you have to accept the responsibility for it, if you do something shitty due to anger or fear you felt was justified, you still did something shitty. Choose your actions and your targets carefully.”

Adam Burke - Natures Child

Artist: Daniel Garcia

“Climate scientists have a body of evidence that no other sibyl has ever produced and yet it’s still falling on deaf ears. And in the U.S. and in growing numbers abroad, powerful people have used a small fraction of their resources to stifle that message further. They deliver sermons of their own, telling the gathered throngs that the prophets are liars and the stars are being read wrong and Cassandra is a woman and a fool. It’s a scheme, a plot, a drive to take away your rights and their taxes and profits. The “political will” to avert Ragnarok just isn’t there.

Even without their efforts, the Church of Climate Change’s weakness is clear in its followers. Once you’re convinced that the Earth is rapidly heating and there’s only a little time left to stop it, then you’re in, you believe. You’re Paul on the road from Damascus, ready to spread the Word and call out the sinners who dare doubt the Newest Testament. But what kind of devotee secretly hopes that their principles of faith are wrong? What true believer wishes deep down inside that things will actually be fine in the end, so let’s just go back to not worrying about it and enjoying things exactly as they are now. “Here’s hoping what we’re predicting doesn’t come true after all” isn’t exactly a religion likely to retain members, let alone gain apostles.

After the recession placed a new cap on what milestones we can ever hope to achieve — owning a home, starting a family, planning our retirement, all former givens that now feel impossible to many of us — people in their thirties today are unlikely to see it that get much easier. Not given the trajectory of everything, not absent massive changes across the board societally — the kind of changes on a scale that manage to trouble both the fabulously wealthy and the merely comfortable. Even the most unshakeable in their worship of the dogma that climate change is our certain doom, the most committed vegans and environmentalists and ecologists and politicians living in the U.S. and Europe, are left hoping that surely it can’t be all that bad, can it? How much sacrifice will actually be necessary to keep us all alive? Isn’t not living through the Mad Max series worth the ignomimity that comes with being wrong?”

“They started out innocuously enough. Ethereum or bitcoin? Is quantum computing a real thing? Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern.

Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?””