Phobias

What’s that fear where you’re afraid to go swimming in the Gulf of Mexico because you think there might be an unfathomable amount of toxic crude oil gushing from a ruptured pipeline a mile underwater due to an incompetent oil industry’s negligence concerning the installation of proper failsafes in an attempt to cut both costs and corners and a government’s failure to regulate that oil industry? I have that...

Thinking a lot about the oil crisis in the gulf. Thinking about Capitalism and its effects on the Earth. Its effects on what we consider our version of 'civilization'. Capitalism is not a healthy economic system. Here is an essay I wrote about it, including how it relates to Darwinian Natural Selection. "Oh, well, he wrote an essay... That changes everything..."

I don’t know. I’m just tired of how we treat each other, how we treat ourselves, the Earth. My hippie-heart hurts. How we justify our existence and fuel it with the very substances which will not only ensure but expedite our inevitable ruin. For all its supposed technological advances, humanity as a whole is disappointingly primitive and may destroy itself before working up the courage and impetus to change. We are infinitely ephemeral.

Random thought: Video games rated Mature seem geared toward the complete opposite demographic. I’m afraid of humanity as a whole—when we’re not really killing each other, we’re pretending to kill each other. Random thought.

What’s that fear where you’re afraid to trust corporate monoliths which are legally viewed as 'persons' because you think they maybe don't care about the damage they cause to people's lives or to the Earth, because their self-interest reflects our own desire to survive excessively, because most people would probably do the same thing in that position? Yeah, I have that...

8 comments:

Mel Bosworth said...

you're such a dirty hippie. but that's why i love you. and HEY! goddamn. new look. where the hell have i been?

i like.

Eric Beeny said...

Filthy, utterly filthy...

Thanks, the new look is based on Steve Roggenbuck's blog: http://steveroggenbuck.blogspot.com. He's a cool cat and schooled me to some HTML modifications...

Mel Bosworth said...

i think you may be the new html giant, bones.

Eric Beeny said...

Ha! Hardly. I'm an HTML crumb, a speck, microscopic, bacteria...

Mel Bosworth said...

never. you are an html dreamboat. hunka hunka burning html.

Eric Beeny said...

I think it's funny I wrote 'Ha!'. I wouldn't ever do that, I don't think. Ha! I'm using HTML to plug a hole in my dreamboat's hull...

davidpeak said...

there's a reason that the only video games i play are mario-related and/or part of the final fantasy world.

Eric Beeny said...

Exactly, David. Give me Mario Bros. any day, and I'm big happy. I'm all for subverting authority in games like Grand Theft Auto, but promoting violence is too much like pandering, or something. I understand the cathartic need for such releases, as I listen to violent rap and death metal, but participating in a cultural phenomenon and critically evaluating it are two different things. Not to mention military video games which convert patriotism into a mindless celebration (much like sports utilizing an ‘us vs. them’ agenda to win for some abstract reason) and fail to consider the consequences of war and why it's immoral according to our own societal standards. And the military, I heard on NPR, is scouting for more people who are good at video games to operate all their remote-controlled war machines. That distance desensitizes, and eliminates emotional investment by shielding those pushing buttons miles and miles away from the consequences of their actions...