Godless Damned Degenerate for Peace

I'm the first to admit that my inner beast is a stubborn one. It grabs hold of something and doesn't let go until there's some kind of ending, some resolution that doesn't stink of enforced compromise, or that hasn't been steeped until tasteless through the filter of consensus.

Yeah, that's me. But I'm also someone who doesn't waste my time with lost causes. I have no use for people who have given up on themselves, who have turned their brains and hearts over to some master pulling strings they don't even know they have.

It's why religion annoys me. There's nothing democratic about religion. There's some power-hungry asshat behind a pulpit preaching his biases to a crowd of people who are so afraid of their inner selves, they turn themselves over body and brain.

I hate unfair fights and there's nothing more unfair than a power whore abusing those weaker and more desperate than him or herself. The average preacher claims to be a servant or emissary of god, often using the same language as other historical mass indoctrinators of human consciousness  used those words to raise armies in the service of their own special friends.

My main objection to religions is that every one of them has its blood all over wars using some mythical deity as an excuse for the pillaging and slaughter.  One of the many reasons I don't believe in god is that if one existed then he/she/it would have smacked the holy shit out of these morons starting wars and killing people using him/her/it as an excuse. And if I am wrong, then what kind of human being would I  be if I allowed myself to get sucked into these mass murder cults that demand blood and hate as some sort of twisted homage? I couldn't live with myself if I gave up my humanity that easily and for so little. What kind of evil monster would demand such horrid obedience from me that I would literally turn over all that is loving and kind about myself to him/her/it so they could kill and destroy even more?

But every day I see people who do this, people who are so insecure, so afraid of the perceived demons inside themselves that they march sheeplike to the cadence of their masters. This is what war truly is, the strong manipulating the weak and frightened so the powerful may grow richer and more powerful. The only god they're fighting for is money and power. And they use religion to keep people from noticing their hands picking the pockets of the people as they make others die for their own personal enrichment.

This has always been the story of war. It has nothing to do with honor, with glory, with democracy or saving souls. It has everything to do with powermongers who sell weapons to everyone, no matter what their politics or religion. It has everything to do with politicians who are so willing to use the lives of others to score points in some demented game of human chess, they don't even consider the casualities worthy of being referred to as human beings. It has everything to do with land grabs, with historical grievances, with family feuds among the rich and powerful. And religion is the noose they drape around the neck of the sheep so they will die willingly and ask no questions.

But it all doesn't happen so easily. To convince the sheep to enter the slaughterhouse, they use their evil minions, the purveyors of hate and propaganda. They use the lowest of the common denominators to instill hatred and rage because that way they can control the masses. Those who love are beyond the control of evil masters, but those who hate already have one hand on the leash and are ready to hand the other end of it to the first hater who stirs up the venom in their hearts.

As human beings who have the responsibility of passing on a whole and healthy planet to the next generation, we have to understand that love is the only thing that will save us and preserve something worth passing on. Love is the only way we can move forward in a time where hate is a prison waiting to enslave us all. We need to speak up. We need to make some noise. We need to understand if we don't use our own power to create a peaceful world, then it will be taken from us and turned into a weapon of hate that will be used against us. We need to reject hate. We need to reject the cultish behavior that leads to mental imprisonment. We need to stand up and very clearly state: there's a better way of going through life and we are that way.

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Godless Damned Degenerate for Peace

Dividing The Sheep

I realized the other day, after yet another heated virtual discussion broke out on among list members, that every single mailing list I'm on has degenerated at some point into name calling, insults, and hurt feelings. No one can talk anymore. No one can have a discussion without it deteriorating into a flame war shouting match. There's no more middle ground, no more giving way to the possibility that the other person's candidate, religion, political party, choice of relationships, place of employment might be equal or gasp! even better than one's own. We've become a nation of petulant children who must have our way or else.

It's easy to lose hope that we'll ever get along again, but I'm an optimist. It's what's kept me alive and kicking in situations that would have destroyed or even killed others. I always believe in people far more than they deserve to be believed in at times. I have to, because to believe that people really are as awful in real life as they are on mailing lists and discussion forums is to give up on the world. I'm not ready to do that yet, if ever. I'll probably go to my death still believing that we can be better than we are.

But there's some things we need to do in order to reclaim the title of human being. Here's a partial list. Feel free to add to it in the comments section as I consider this a world community project where those of us who really do want a better world are prepared to lead the way toward it.

1. Stop listening to those who insist on creating a divided world. What right do they have to create wedges between human beings, and why are you giving them the power to do so?

2. Stop perceiving human beings as being superior and inferior to each other. If you hate, if you're a bigot and harbor prejudices, then you are a tool waiting to be used. Look at History and see how people's hatreds were manipulated by those with evil intentions, by those with an insatiable hunger for power and greed. It's way too easy to stir up a crowd of people if their noses are already pointed in the direction someone wants them to go. Be aware of those who preach hate. Ask yourself what they have to gain if they succeed in making you hate along with them.

3. Make compassion the core of your being. It's a lot easier said than done because in order to know compassion, you have to receive it. So make  a point of giving it away because it is the only way to create a more compassionate world. There's nothing that can be pointed at and said this is it and this is not it. Compassion is one of those misty things that can only be felt, and if you've never felt it then it's impossible to understand.

4. Step outside your own needs and desires and pay attention to what others need and desire. Once you step outside your tiny little world, then life becomes larger, the world becomes larger. And yet it becomes interwoven once we realize we all have the same basic needs and desires. If we create a world with these as our foundation, then no one need suffer from lack of them.

5. Accept that there is only one way to create a world filled with healthy people, prosperity, knowledge, creativity, and scientific marvels and that is to do away with war. It is the single act that has prevented human beings from evolving to their full potential. We must embrace Peace with the same fervor, the same enthusiasm, the same desire as we do war, or we will never become complete human beings.

Shirt and other gifts with peace penguins available at Ursine Logic

peace, anti-war, compassion, tolerance, divided America

Dividing The Sheep

War's Legacy

There was a time in my life when I didn't know my family was normal...for the circumstances that created us. I thought the insanity lying just under the skin was some genetic affliction I was doomed to inherit eventually, like gray hair or wrinkles or conversations with dead people.

I spent a lot of time examining myself on the inside the way others examine themselves on the outside for telltale signs of disease. Was my alienation increasing? Or did I simply enjoy my own company more than that of others? Was my desire for silence becoming pathological or had I simply reached a point where the noise of cars, sirens, people yelling instead of talking, and constant blaring television sets interfered with the songs of birds, the soft music of the wind and rustling trees and leaves beyond my ability to accept it as something beyond my control?

It was a long list I compared myself against daily. It was a list I drew from the behavior of the people that raised me, people so destroyed by war that the word "normal" was almost an insult, a way of accusing them of having been through hell unscathed. They would never be normal. But I didn't realize that until I tried to measure myself against who they were and ended up realizing that war spans generations and infects the children of the children of the children. I had no more chance of being normal than they had.

A while back my sister brought me a CD of my mother talking about her war experiences. She's a stranger to me, a woman who never really was able to maintain any kind of closeness with her children and drove them from her with an almost mindful deliberateness. I listened to her accented voice with the kind of vague memory one has of having heard that voice before but not really being able to place it. The stories she told were the stories of most survivors of the Nazis, the Fascists, the groups of believers of one ism or another who insisted you believe or die. Listening to her talk was listening to how many ways one can cheat death and still call yourself human. I think the human part got left aside at some point and she never really missed it because it was weak, it was threatening and it almost got her killed too many times.

For women like my mother who left her humanity somewhere between the insulting existence imposed on her by Hitler and Mussolini and coming to America with a child and a new husband who lied about his age to enlist after Pearl Harbor and upon liberating the first death camps, thought at first that they were leper colonies because even though he had killed and seen death and suffered from war, the extent of other people's inhumanity still hadn't sunk in...until he saw the living dead.

These two people should never have had children. They had nothing left to give them. But society wanted them to procreate, to replace the dead and dying, to bring life into an existence where death was all they knew. Nothing took into account that whatever humanity they had before the war became a shallow shell of existence that left nothing for others. We were raised to survive and nothing more.

I accept that now. I have survived so in that sense I have filled the role set out for me. But at the same time it doesn't even begin to explain who I am, why I hate war so much, why I devote so much time to trying to make war become something that exists only in History books and not in the fragile spirits of another generation.

And in that I find my precious normality, the hatred of war that is passed on inadvertently to the children of war's survivors. It's not intentional. It's not something my parents set out to do. They didn't say to me ever to go forward and work for peace. But by being who they were, by losing what they lost, they made it an obligation that took seed in me and continues to grow. It is normal for me to promote peace as a healthy concept within all our reach and war as something that we've grown too much to ever accept as normal again.

War's Legacy

Flies On The Wall #34

Flies On The Wall #34

Global Orgasm for World Peace Day

My main holiday of the year is the Winter Solstice. For the last couple decades I've celebrated it with an ever-growing and changing group of people. We are a mix of many communities: Pagans, Wiccans, Atheists, New Age Christians, Scientists, Teachers, Geeks, Artists, Musicians...you just can't fit us, the collective we, into a nice neat box. We are who we are and that is what has made this yearly ritual so powerful for all of us.

Sure, there are things we do, movements, chants, songs and we meet in one place once a year to herald the return of the sun. And also to acknowledge our ancient blood that understands we are Nature and we are the Sun and together we create ritual to give meaning and momentum to the change of the seasons.

I begin anew each Winter Solstice. I grow myself from the ritual seeds we plant that are wishes, dreams, hopes, aspirations, needs, desires, and our version of what we hope to find under Santa's tree. Each year the ritual evolves and changes. In that way, it mirrors the patterns of Nature who grows, evolves, changes, and becomes.

That is just part of why I am passing this information on to you about the Global Orgasm day for World Peace. I've heard about it for weeks now and the momentum seems to be picking up as I received several email letters, saw some artwork, heard some songs, and created a design in the last few days.

Since I dismiss nothing as a potential seed for world peace, I pass this on to you because it makes such sense to me who lives by the teachings of Mother Nature. I have always believed we live in a world we create each day by our actions, our dreams, our collective visions. I would not spend a moment of my life working for peace if I didn't believe my work is like a snowball that grows and grows and picks up people and their dreams and visions as it rolls along and gains momentum. This is not hard Science or Religion or Woo-Woo Spirituality. It is common sense. If we put our energy towards making something happen, it generally does as long as we do not give up.

The information describing the idea behind Global Orgasm day can be found at

Global Orgasm Day

Here is some information directly from the website:

"Donna Sheehan and Paul Reffell co-founded the anti-war
organization www.baringwitness.org">Baring Witness, a worldwide collective of peace activists who are alarmed enough to spell peace publicly with their naked bodies. The Global Orgasm is a way for even more men and women to be involved in changing the way human affairs are conducted in the world."

WHEN?

Winter Solstice Day - Friday, December 22nd


"At the time of your choosing, in the place of your choosing and with as much privacy as you choose."

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Design from Ursine Logic. Changing minds one t-shirt at a time. Visit Ursine Logic for this and more designs.

Global Orgasm for World Peace Day