Tuesday, January 31, 2006
The great north woods
Well, this weekend I hopped in the truck and took a road trip up to the great Minnesota north woods. Spent Saturday night buying drinks and having rounds bought for me at the Winton municipal liquor store / bar. Population 189, originally a lumber town - now a little island surrounded by an ocean of frozen swamps and lakes. I guess I just needed a little time for contemplation.
I wonder if many of the folks out there in the world realize how groovy Northern Minnesota is as a landscape. There can be something almost alien about the species of pine; the strangely geometric outcroppings of rock that materialize around the occassional turn in the road, the patches of leafless birch trees with skeletal limbs - layers of greys and whites.
I also needed to take a bit of a step back from the edge of madness this weekend as well. Something about all that reading up on the education system as a weapon to be inflicted on the children of the lower classes, cuz marketing used to have a problem getting adults to buy what they didn't need, so our population had to be dumbed down to either addicts or children. Seems to me that if, in the land of the free, this institution was deliberately created to retard the developement of consciousness and divide the masses - well that's just a bit too fucking much like the Matrix now isn't it?
As an atheist I've already got to shoulder the fact that a majority of the people I will meet and interact with operate in a world view that I feel is fanciful. I'm growing into an understanding of the power of media immersion, and try to encourage people to see participation in such a system as sinfully self-indulgent. My own mortality and that of those I love still haunts me. The erosion of history, the defamation of science, the advancement of the cult of the hero; it's a wonder I can function at all.
Somehow that education thing is just the straw that broke Joe Camel's back. If that's true, then we are totally engaged in a class war where there are no innocents, neutrality is suicide, and we fight desperately just to hold on to our own humanity. This is not the education that Sesame Street promised me, where everyone who took learning seriously in a multicultural environment could expect a life within a generally benevolent society. Sure our military and corportations will kill hundreds of thousands in the third world and our entire economic structure is based on irrational models where the population never stops increasing, but at least within the borders of Rome the citizens could expect some peace and respect.
It might just be the organic, dark roast talking, but at this moment I'm starting to feel that this knowledge (and I'm going to have to devote a fair amount of my time to further evaluate for myself regarding that) shatters my vision of America. It would invalidate my compact with this society.
In my soul I shall struggle to maintain the peace of the great north woods. And with the peace of the warrior, I shall continue to struggle with my duty as a citizen.
I wonder if many of the folks out there in the world realize how groovy Northern Minnesota is as a landscape. There can be something almost alien about the species of pine; the strangely geometric outcroppings of rock that materialize around the occassional turn in the road, the patches of leafless birch trees with skeletal limbs - layers of greys and whites.
I also needed to take a bit of a step back from the edge of madness this weekend as well. Something about all that reading up on the education system as a weapon to be inflicted on the children of the lower classes, cuz marketing used to have a problem getting adults to buy what they didn't need, so our population had to be dumbed down to either addicts or children. Seems to me that if, in the land of the free, this institution was deliberately created to retard the developement of consciousness and divide the masses - well that's just a bit too fucking much like the Matrix now isn't it?
As an atheist I've already got to shoulder the fact that a majority of the people I will meet and interact with operate in a world view that I feel is fanciful. I'm growing into an understanding of the power of media immersion, and try to encourage people to see participation in such a system as sinfully self-indulgent. My own mortality and that of those I love still haunts me. The erosion of history, the defamation of science, the advancement of the cult of the hero; it's a wonder I can function at all.
Somehow that education thing is just the straw that broke Joe Camel's back. If that's true, then we are totally engaged in a class war where there are no innocents, neutrality is suicide, and we fight desperately just to hold on to our own humanity. This is not the education that Sesame Street promised me, where everyone who took learning seriously in a multicultural environment could expect a life within a generally benevolent society. Sure our military and corportations will kill hundreds of thousands in the third world and our entire economic structure is based on irrational models where the population never stops increasing, but at least within the borders of Rome the citizens could expect some peace and respect.
It might just be the organic, dark roast talking, but at this moment I'm starting to feel that this knowledge (and I'm going to have to devote a fair amount of my time to further evaluate for myself regarding that) shatters my vision of America. It would invalidate my compact with this society.
In my soul I shall struggle to maintain the peace of the great north woods. And with the peace of the warrior, I shall continue to struggle with my duty as a citizen.
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: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 8:36:00 AM
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