The highest capability of a being is knowingness. That is knowing without dependency on data or even observation, one just knows. This has been given the label “gut feeling”, probably because many emotions manifest in gut reactions.
Look Don’t Listen
“The Science Is Settled”
Science is rarely “settled”. Dogma is. Propaganda is. True science, not the bought and paid for pseudoscience that comprises at least half the published studies, according to those who know, is constantly evolving.
Before you accept the propaganda lie that “the science is settled”, do a quick look back at the science from past centuries. The washing of hands by surgeons was vigorously opposed when promoted as a good thing and did not gain acceptance till the late 1800s, Blood letting via leeches was practiced for 2,000 years until the end of the 19th century, despite, according to Wikipedia, “In the overwhelming majority of cases, the historical use of bloodletting was harmful to patients.”
Just as we look back with horror on what was medically accepted only 125 years ago, future generations will look back on many of today’s common medical practices with disdain or disgust.
This is one reason I am so willing to entertain the ideas of those questioning medical orthodoxy. It is only by individuals with above average observational capacity observing where current practice does not yield the optimal result, documenting and communicating it do we have the opportunity to review and improve.
If the medical industry persisted with something as harmful as blood letting for 2,000 years, wonder not that observed truth takes some times to penetrate the establishment. Be vigilant against those who tell you not to look or question. After all, the truth does not mind being questioned, the lie hates being challenged.
Build A New Model
I keep posting this to remind myself what great minds encourage me to focus my attention and efforts on achieving.
Life Maintenance
Because a big part of life is routine and mundane. The 4 Ss (Shit, Shower, Shave and Shampoo), meal preparation, eating, cleaning afterwards, washing the laundry, hanging it out, bringing it in, folding and transporting it, shopping, exercising the body, housework, yard work, carrying out the trash, getting to and from work, work itself for most people.
In fact, I have heard it said that most people’s lives lack enough drama. Probably one reason for the success of movies.
You can go through life resenting it or, as I see it, there are two solutions.
1. Stop resenting it and start enjoying everything you do for the satisfaction you get from doing it. After all, many cannot do what you resent doing and would love to be able to do it.
2. Get really, REALLY good at what you do best so you can make a bucketload of money and hire others to do what you do not want to do.
Speak Your Mind
A Letter To My Friends
This is a beautiful letter from Fiona Apple explaining to her fans why she must postpone a concert date. I am impressed at the way she was instantly able to make the decision to choose love over her career. Indeed, the world needs more of this. Enjoy the story…
It’s 6pm on Friday, and I’m writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet. I’m writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later.
Here’s the thing.
I have a dog, Janet, and she’s been ill for about 2 years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She’s almost 14 years old now. I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then — an adult, officially — and she was my kid.
She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face.
She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders.
She’s almost 14 and I’ve never seen her start a fight, or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She’s a pacifist.
Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact. We’ve lived in numerous houses, and joined a few makeshift families, but it’s always really been just the two of us.
She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head.
She was under the piano when I wrote songs, barked any time I tried to record anything, and she was in the studio with me, all the time we recorded the last album.
The last time I came back from tour, she was spry as ever, and she’s used to me being gone for a few weeks, every 6 or 7 years.
She has Addison’s Disease, which makes it more dangerous for her to travel, since she needs regular injections of Cortisol, because she reacts to stress and excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death.
Despite all this, she’s effortlessly joyful & playful, and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago. She is my best friend, and my mother, and my daughter, my benefactor, and she’s the one who taught me what love is.
I can’t come to South America. Not now. When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference.
She doesn’t even want to go for walks anymore.
I know that she’s not sad about aging or dying. Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That’s why they are so much more present than people.
But I know she is coming close to the time where she will stop being a dog, and start instead to be part of everything. She’ll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go.
I just can’t leave her now, please understand. If I go away again, I’m afraid she’ll die and I won’t have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out.
Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes just to decide what socks to wear to bed.
But this decision is instant.
These are the choices we make, which define us. I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love & friendship.
I am the woman who stays home, baking Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend. And helps her be comfortable & comforted & safe & important.
Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life that keeps us feeling terrified & alone. I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time. I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments.
I need to do my damnedest, to be there for that.
Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I’ve ever known.
When she dies.
So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and I am revelling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel. And I’m asking for your blessing.
I’ll be seeing you.
Love,
Fiona
Paul Harvey’s Letter To His Grandchildren
We tried so hard to make things better for our kids that we made them worse. For my grandchildren, I’d like better.
I’d really like for them to know about hand me down clothes and homemade ice cream and leftover meat loaf sandwiches.. I really would.
I hope you learn humility by being humiliated, and that you learn honesty by being cheated.
I hope you learn to make your own bed and mow the lawn and wash the car.
And I really hope nobody gives you a brand new car when you are sixteen.
It will be good if at least one time you can see puppies born and your old dog put to sleep.
I hope you get a black eye fighting for something you believe in.
I hope you have to share a bedroom with your younger brother/sister. And it’s all right if you have to draw a line down the middle of the room, but when he wants to crawl under the covers with you because he’s scared, I hope you let him.
When you want to see a movie and your little brother/sister wants to tag along, I hope you’ll let him/her.
I hope you have to walk uphill to school with your friends and that you live in a town where you can do it safely.
On rainy days when you have to catch a ride, I hope you don’t ask your driver to drop you two blocks away so you won’t be seen riding with someone as uncool as your Mom.
If you want a slingshot, I hope your Dad teaches you how to make one instead of buying one.
I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and read books.
When you learn to use computers, I hope you also learn to add and subtract in your head.
I hope you get teased by your friends when you have your first crush on a boy / girl, and when you talk back to your mother that you learn what ivory soap tastes like.
May you skin your knee climbing a mountain, burn your hand on a stove and stick your tongue on a frozen flagpole.
I don’t care if you try a beer once, but I hope you don’t like it… And if a friend offers you dope or a joint, I hope you realize he/she is not your friend.
I sure hope you make time to sit on a porch with your Grandma/Grandpa and go fishing with your Uncle.
May you feel sorrow at a funeral and joy during the holidays.
I hope your mother punishes you when you throw a baseball through your neighbor’s window and that she hugs you and kisses you at Christmas time when you give her a plaster mold of your hand.
These things I wish for you – tough times and disappointment, hard work and happiness. To me, it’s the only way to appreciate life.
Joh Bjelke Petersen Warned Us
“I CAN ONLY ATTEMPT TO WARN MY FELLOW AUSTRALIANS THAT THE VERY FUTURE OF AUSTRALIA IS AT STAKE”
On 9 September 1987, Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen, gave a speech to the Queensland Parliament, in which he accused Bob Hawke and his Government, of pursuing a subversive and authoritarian agenda bent on stripping Australians of all their democratic rights and freedoms.
The main target of Joh’s attack was the planned National Identity System – the ‘Australia Card’ – which he said would impose ‘Big Brother’ controls over all Australian citizens.
When I came across the speech recently, I immediately noticed the parallels between what Joh was warning against in 1987, and what is happening today with Health Passports and Morrison’s plan for a new Digital Identity system.
For those who may be interested, I have quoted excerpts below:
……
“I RISE ON A MATTER OF GRAVE AND FAR-REACHING CONSEQUENCE TO THE COUNTRY THAT WE ALL LOVE AND HONOUR.
I refer, of course, to the threat by the insidious and unAustralian Hawke Labor Government to impose upon every man, woman and child in this country a form of institutionalisation that is unknown in the free world.
The matter at issue, is the arrogant determination of the ALP people in Canberra to introduce what they like to call the Australia Card—a name they hope will play on patriotism.
I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO OPPOSED THE SYSTEM AT THE FIRST SUMMIT ATTENDED BY MR HAWKE AND OTHERS.
On that occasion I told them quite clearly that I was completely against the system because of what it meant and what it represented.
In real terms, the proposal could mark the end of the Australian democratic heritage for which men and women in generations past have given their lives to protect and preserve.
In effect, everyone would become just a number.
The Government can call it what it likes—the Australia Card or a national identification system—but by any name it is a plastic tattoo upon every Australian to mark every one of us for the control of our lives, in the grand socialistic ideal to which that luminary of the Fabian society, R. J. L. Hawke, is completely committed.
The arrogance of the Prime Minister, who postures as a man of consensus, invariably against a backdrop of the national flag, seeks to destroy Australia by progressively shifting this land of freedom towards a rigid and totally regulated, socialist republic.
If you do not have this card with you at all times, you will not be able to deposit or withdraw money at your bank; you will not be able to claim your Medicare benefits; you will not be able to get a job; you will not be able to buy or sell any property; you will not be able to sell primary products, even to a marketing authority; AND YOU WILL NOT BE ADMITTED TO A HOSPITAL.
It is absolutely staggering and unbelievable that today the people of Australia face this system that a Fabian-oriented Prime Minister and Federal Government are seeking to impose upon them.
We all know there are many isolated and limited banks of information on each one of us.
But today, there is no system of cross-referencing the information, so that there is no way that a full dossier of private details can be built up.
The Australia Card—the plastic tattoo—will provide a system to consolidate the information and build up personal dossiers with every scrap of private information on every person in this land.
What the Hawke Government seeks to introduce is a system of privacy invasion that is unknown in the English-speaking world.
It is a frightening piece of legislation.
My government will oppose the Australia Card with every means at their disposal.”
https://documents.parliament.qld.gov.au/events/han/1987/1987_09_09.PDF
This System Does Not Suit The Human Spirit
