What's with all the Zombie stuff?

In the last year or so, Zombies have come up again and again. There was a television series called "The Walking Dead", a self-defense gun show about them, coyly presented with care to give the viewer the impression of it being 'tongue in cheek', and there is even a group on the web calling itself 'The Zombie Squad'. Turns out, they actually offer training to municipal governments, i.e. police departments, and to institutions or other groups. Training for what, you say? For when the Zombies arrive.

But, Zombies are just cartoon monsters, right? They are the 'un-dead', the 'walking dead', the not quite human anymore dead people who stalk the land, looking for living souls to feast on. They move sluggishly, drag their feet, look and smell like rotting flesh, are, in fact, in a state of nearly complete decomposition.........right?

Not so much, it turns out. The photo included here is of ammunition made by Hornady, one of the most respected ammo manufacturers in the business. So, if Zombies are just imaginary creatures from the Black Lagoon...then why is this deadly serious company--who's advertising slogan is "Accurate, Deadly, Dependable"--making real, live ammunition for killing the 'un-dead'? It says right on the box: "This is not a toy." That's Hornady's way of telling you that zombies aren't really a joke after all.

As you begin looking around the greater gun community online, you can drop-in on forums where people are discussing the right kind of weapons to have for SHTF--uh, that is Survivalist or Prepper speak for "Shit Hits the Fan"--and you will begin to realize that there are a large number of people who are very sure that we're on the verge of a descent into social unrest. Well, actually, 'unrest' is way too insipid to describe what they are anticipating. 'Chaos', and 'Armageddon' are much closer to the image they see of our future.

On some level, given the way the news media--especially our dear friends over at 'Fair and Balanced' Fox--portray the state of our society, it is understandable that people would be fearful of a bad outcome. There are times when my wife and I have wondered if we will come through all the challenges we face intact. There is the ever degrading environment, and the projections of what global climate change could mean. Then there is 'peak oil' and the specter of oil becoming so expensive that it initiates a world-wide financial collapse. The punditry is, by and large, telling us that the world's economy is teetering on the precipice of an abyss, lacking only one small shove to send it into complete collapse. Then there is the ever-present possibility of more bad behavior by terrorists and even terrorist states...with WMDs, quite possibly. Add to that the growing stratification of wealth and economic opportunity...an historic precursor to violent revolution throughout modern history. It appears that most of the world's major religions cannot even avoid causing conflict and have become a major source of hatred and violence. Religion used to be seen as a source of good guidance, 'wisdom', compassion, orderly and right conduct....not any more.

So, yes, it's no wonder that so many people are fearful of what the future holds. But, this whole 'zombie thing' has become almost a pre-occupation,...and here's the thing...it is NOT ABOUT mythical monsters. It is about people coming out of the cities of this country looking for food and shelter. The SHTF scenario includes the idea that there will be virtually hordes of people who were stupid enough and uninformed to the point that they failed to anticipate social breakdown. These people will be desperate and they will want what we, the wisely prepared, have.

"SO YOU WILL NEED TO BE PREPARED TO KILL THEM" now becomes an acceptable viewpoint, even without openly acknowledging that this is what is being unofficially 'authorized'. And, people accepting this shift in moral convention, are gently guided towards the understanding that they will very likely have to do so in great numbers. It seems that the whole zombie concept has become an unacknowledged euphemism for 'other', for 'the enemy', for people who will drag you down too if you are not willing to kill them. Furthermore, if you are so stupid as to think that you can help them, you will become just like them....exactly in the same way that if a zombie salivates on you, bites you, or breaks your skin, you will become a zombie too. How helpful, then, to be able to see them as less than human. How convenient it is to be able to relegate these souls to the status of 'other'. It was exactly that shift in Germany that paved the way to the Holocaust. Jews became sub-human others....so much easier to accept a policy of extermination then.

"Prepper" is a term that you may have not heard. It is referring to the ever growing number of people who are devoting a great deal of their financial and physical energy to preparing for the big SHTF scenario. Many 'preppers' have formed rural communities, most not much bigger than a few families, and have purchased homes in the country that they have worked to 'harden' and to sustain them as society collapses around them. There is a new series on Nat Geo t-v in February called, "Doomsday Preppers". [ click on the title above to see a YouTube preview of the first part of this series.] If you make the time to watch it, I believe what I am saying here will sink in to the point of your sitting there mumbling to yourself, "Holy shit. These people are serious." You might even question their viewpoint and their sanity.

But, you will not question that they are out there, all across the land, and they are getting ready for the zombie attack that is inevitable in their eyes.

We Hold These Truths......

ONE: A tiny fraction of our population owns and controls a vastly disproportionate amount of the total wealth in this country...and globally.

TWO: They have gained this wealth not by productive means, nor by making any beneficial contribution to our society, but by learning to 'game' the financial system through immoral means and strategies that have wrecked havoc on the world economy and inestimable pain on the population at large.

THREE: They are using their massive financial power to buy influence and to control the political balance in order to manipulate the democratic system for their own purposes, rendering it a sham democracy.

FOUR: Their concern for the welfare of the country and population at large is only that it be maintained in a passive state so that they can continue to plunder the wealth of the middle and working classes.

FIVE: The pain and suffering caused by loss of homes, loss of employment and loss of the means to thrive on all levels....is not their concern, DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY HAVE CAUSED IT. Compassion is not a value they hold or respect, on any level. There is no evidence that they feel any responsibility--nor even a shred of regret-- for the economic devastation they have caused.

SIX: Fairness, any concept of what is 'just', and any idea that a society is only as developed as its most disadvantaged segments....are considerations only for the weak. The strong do not need to consider anything but their own ascendency. The weak are destined to suffer. This is the "...sucks to be you" doctrine.

SEVEN: The looter elite consider their ability to manipulate the financial system no different than their ability to control the political system. Both are the privilege of the strong and the powerful. Democracy is not an ideal, but simply a system by which the vast majority will be controlled and placated...so they can be productive and be taken advantage of.

EIGHT: By owning the means of controlling the political system, the looter elite also holds the means of directing power against their opponents. Not only do the politicians work for them, so too the police, even the military and a powerful propaganda machine, which assures their ability to continue looting and to put down all significant opposition...with violence when necessary.

NINE: The compensation of executives is vastly out of the range of normal compensation for executives around the rest of the world, sitting at approximately 450 to 1. In other words a CEO is being typically paid FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY TIMES AS MUCH AS ONE OF HIS EMPLOYEES. This is an historical anomaly and has no precedent in modern times.

If you do not believe that all of the above statements are true.....you have been manipulated too. Look around you; this is exactly what is happening, and the next time you hear a bought and paid for pundit or politician say that the 99% doesn't know what it is pissed-off about, or what it wants......come back and read this list.

A Penn State alumnus speaks

When I got out of the army in 1967, I began matriculating at The Pennsylvania State University that fall. I was delighted. My family's males had attended Princeton for generations, and I knew that my father was disappointed that I would not even apply. Having grown-up in Princeton, the town, I was intimately familiar with the halls of ivy, had haunted the campus as a 'townie' as a kid on my bicycle, been to countless Tiger football games and lived in a house where orange and black were even the color scheme for a bathroom. (Seems like a recipe for hemorrhoids, in retrospect.)

So, when it came time to apply to schools I already knew that Princeton and its endemic elitism was not on the list. As it turned out, I applied only to one college and was accepted. When I arrived at the Schuylkill Haven branch campus, I was not at all overwhelmed by either the size of it or the demands of it in a social sense. In fact, it felt like a good fit; I felt as if I had come home and knew it was where I belonged. After three quarters, I transferred to the main campus in State College, and that was an easy transition too. I relished having a course catalog the size of a small city's phone book. And, after three years in the infantry, I was dedicated to the idea of taking courses I wanted to take because I was excited about them, instead of taking them because it would lead to a career field. I studied art, in one medium or another, for my entire undergraduate time. I ended-up majoring in philosophy...not because I was fascinated by the incoherent blather of dead Germans trying to explain life by looking at it through the ponderous power of their intellects, but because I met a professor who understood that I was in search of meaning in my own life. And, this, he well knew, would not come from traditional studies, but through widely varied investigations of people like Eric Fromm--a former stevedore turned philosopher--who were devoted to the idea that philosophy needed to be, above all else, RELEVANT.

Under the kind tutelage of Dr. Ernst Hans Freund--a professor emeritus on the verge of retirement, who had as a young man escaped Nazi Germany and the death camps, where he would have ended-up due to being a Quaker--I read whatever Dr. Freund suggested as a likely place to find answers, and I met with him in his office once a week and supported what I had written in response to the most recent readings. It was a higher education in the true sense of searching for meaning and had a depth that just sopping up intellectual arguments and regurgitating salient aspects of them on exams could never touch. All the years since those days of wonder and introspection I have remained deeply grateful to Dr. Freund...and to Penn State for having the wisdom to give this jewel of a man a place from which to shine.

So, when I read the headlines and subsequent press about the scandal that has now devastated the university I felt sad on a very personal level....sad that something precious has been sullied, sad that there are victims of despicable predations, sad that what once seemed like a bastion of learning, both moral and academic, has now been damaged so severely that it will likely take at least a generation to repair it...if that is even possible.

As an undergrad I photographed Penn State football from the sidelines. I watched Joe Paterno in action. It was 1968 and he was yet to become the iconic JoPa, but it was apparent that he was a skilled and caring coach. I felt great pride that his players would receive an education rather than be scooted through a 'phys ed' program that would leave them still semi-literate as has been so often the case at other ultra-competitive universities. Football is important at Penn State, but Joe Paterno never let it become so blown out of perspective that his players were merely being used....often used up.

Apparently, somewhere along the path between then and now, however, something changed. Footbball became God at PSU, and the welfare of a ten year-old child would be considered as less important than a 'reputation' to protect. How this happened and what the mechanisms were that encouraged this descent into turpitude will be much studied and dissected in the next few years. The university is already sending out e-mail to alums saying, essentially, don't worry, we'll bounce back.

But, I will never again look up at the diploma hanging on the wall a few feet from where I am writing this and have quite the same feeling of pride that I did until just a few days ago. Honor is dying in this country. It has a few bastions where it is holding on for dear life...but, it's critically endangered all the same. And, another one of those bastions of Honor just crashed and burned.

You can put the crystal goblet back together...but, it will always have cracks.

Herman doesn't get it.....

Herman Caine is fed-up with the 'nit picky' media. He's sick and tired of being asked about this sexual harassment non-issue. Move on. Let's get 'back on message'. He's dismissive to reporters who dare to raise it once again. He's just plain sick of it. But, what he's not getting is that it isn't going to go away just because he's ready for it to.

The fact is, if you are running for the office of President of the United States, you need to demonstrate that you have a lack of character issues that might prove deleterious to your ability to govern. If you are unable to do this, people are going to look elsewhere. We've pretty much had it up to here with politicians who suddenly reveal that they are sleazeball pieces of crap. Did I put that too mildly? We're sick of idiots and assholes who think they should hold public office. And, I believe we are about to enter a new period of moving towards sending same back to wherever they came from. Without stating it in a position paper, that is one of the underlying messages of the Occupy Movement: time to stop letting self-interested and greedy business and political figures run the show. Time to 'upgrade'....because it's just not working for more and more people.

So, Herman, if you are listening, you need to stop pushing back at the media, answer all the questions until we are either satisfied that you have been wronged or that you are a sleazeball who hits on women in the workplace. Claiming that the media want to destroy you, that YOU are the victim here, that all the allegations are false, that you can't remember....none of that is going to serve any purpose in convincing the voters who might consider you as a candidate that you are worthy of the office. You need to man-up and do whatever you must to set the doubts to rest. Anything short of that is just playing dodge ball.

But, all of this is raising another even more critical issue: what kind of leader would you be? Your method of pushing away criticism, your desire to ignore your detractors, to deny responsibility....all point to a person of arrogance. Herman, you have a great big ego and you are pretty sure that you can use it to accomplish whatever you want. This may be mistaken for spirited truculence on the part of some neo-cons....those who cheer at the thought of people with no insurance dying, and jeer at an active duty soldier who is gay,....you know, the crowd in the Coliseum who roar when a lion tears a slave to pieces, those people....the idiots and nabobs who think we can motor off into the future as if nobody but ourselves exists, who believe that they have theirs, and it sucks to be you, the Ayn Rand crowd.

Meanwhile, back in the Human Race, we are getting really worried about where all of this is headed. The fact that you, Herman, are the leading GOP candidate in polls, despite your possible malfeasance in the past, despite your arrogant and dismissive attitude.......now that is troubling.

Timing is everything....

I recently met a remarkable person for the second time. John Howe is a retired engineer who lives with his wife, Deb, on a back road not far from here. I first met him a few years ago because I was out wandering with a camera and the field above the Howe's farm affords a stunning view. But, this chance meeting occurred at a cocktail party (yes, we have those here in the backwoods of Maine) the evening before a wedding.

As John and I talked, it became clear that he has a deep interest in not merely the affairs of the world, but in tracking such things as climate change, population growth, peak oil, and he is also working on various projects involving zero impact living. It is readily apparent to all who know John that he's Mensa bright, especially so in the realm of the left hemisphere and in the use of math and logic to investigate solutions to problems. He retired to a simple rural life-style after getting patents on such things as the first metal-composite ski (the famous Head 360), and was in on the beginning of carbon-fiber tennis racquet development. Now he works on things like solar tractors and cars. He's developed a 'threshing machine' that a person can use to separate grains from chaff on an individual level...as opposed to the industrial approach of agri-business.

John's approach to most problems is pretty much what any engineer would do: he crunches the numbers in an attempt to define the problem in quantifiable terms. This allows the various aspects of it to be understood better in relation to all the other elements. And, John, having been mystified by such questions as: "Why are we motoring off into the future as if we'll never run out of oil?" has crunched the numbers revealing how fast our global population is growing, how fast we are increasing the demand for oil, how food production is evolving in relation to the demands that are now and will be placed on it. He's very good at concretizing a set of problems that most of us simply look at and shake our heads. By translating such overwhelming numbers into understandable form, he has arrived at some conclusions--I suppose 'hypotheses' would be a better term--that are alarming.

At one point in our conversation, he looked at me with a sense of resignation and said, "I used to think it didn't matter what would happen...because I would be dead." He's 76 now (but he runs UP mountains for the fun of it) "But, now I know that I will be here.....because, we're right on the tipping point." And he just looked at me.

I might have found his conclusion more alarming except for the fact that my intuition has been telling me the same thing in as many ways as I can hear it. Everywhere I look, everything I read or see on t-v, seems to be conveying the same message: all the elements are in place for a collision with reality. People who have hope that things will come around, just sort of shape-up and return to what we had.....are about to be slapped rudely with a reality check. Our society is on the verge of sweeping and dramatic changes.

What form they will take remains a matter of conjecture. But, there are so many different factors coming to full maturity and effect, that anybody looking at it all from a reasonably objective overview must now acknowledge at least a sense of dread about the future. I delivered a sermon this past Sunday to the local Unitarian church....a wonderful congregation who is adventurous enough that they've had me come back multiple times. The nature of my sermon was essentially the same as what I am saying here, with the added dimension that seeking to create an active community of souls who are preparing is just a very timely and good idea right now.

I had wondered how this message would be received. Would I be seen as a kind of 'Chicken Little' bringer of doom, as inappropriately alarmist on some level. As it turned out, these good people were not only in complete agreement with my message, some of them were way ahead of me. It is now readily apparent to people across the various elements of our society that something is beginning to happen and that we need to prepare ourselves, both mentally and physically. Community, in the sense of a group that depends on each other, dedicated to the principle that we're all in the same life-boat here....is going to be central and vitally important.

So, you might want to look around your own locale for others who are also concerned, if not alarmed, and begin taking steps to organize an intelligent and compassionate response to what is looming on the horizon. Google: "Transition Communities" or "Transition Handbook" and see what is going on with that concept. Wiki has a section on it and it seems to be a much more enlightened response than all the people who are becoming so-called 'Preppers'. Survivalists have been around for decades; most of them are isolationists who have heavily armed themselves and are prepared to kill YOU....or anybody who interferes with their feeling that what is coming is going to be the great winnowing of the 'fittest', which in their minds translates into the most willing to commit violence.

'Community' is the key.

Feedback cycles...and why we need to know about them

In various scientific areas of investigation researchers have long known that sometimes a chemical or even a mechanical interaction will accelerate rapidly of its own accord. Most often, this is the result of some element of the process becoming energized by an action or interaction within the process itself. Hence the term, 'feedback'. For instance, let's say a machine has a problem with harmonic vibration. This can happen in high-intensity engines with many parts moving at furious speeds in relationship to each other. So, a very high rpm shaft develops a vibration that has a harmonic aspect to it, and it sets up vibrations at other levels in addition to the simple one that is the source of the problem. And, as this process develops the secondary and tertiary vibrations begin to cause a break-down in the tolerances of the bearings and pretty soon the machine is vibrating so badly that it will likely tear itself apart if it isn't shut-down. It's the old, 'one thing leads to another.....and another' thing at work.

With regard to climate change and the phenomenon of global warming--still regarded as a myth and conspiracy by the likes of Michele Bachmann and Ric Perry--scientists have discovered a number or elements in the overall process that have feedback potential. A good example is that of changes brought about by the shrinking of the polar ice in the arctic. Instead of a white sheet of ice--which reflects the heat of the sun very well, thereby preserving the cold temps of the ocean beneath it--as the ice retreats, it is replaced by dark green sea water and that accepts and absorbs the energy from the sun much more readily......so the warming of that region speeds up accordingly. Voila! A feedback cycle.

Another example--a more powerful one which is much less predictable--is that of methyl hydrates, frozen methane gas. It exists in vast deposits, both on the ocean floor, and in the tundra regions of the arctic north. As the ocean continues to get warmer, and as the perma-frost in the tundra melts, incalculable amounts of methane are being released. But, despite not being able to clearly monitor or calculate how much is becoming gaseous methane and escaping into the earth's atmosphere, scientists do know--beyond any doubt--that the amount is very great, and that methane is a 'hot-house' gas with even more ability to warm the atmosphere than carbon-dioxide. This has the potential to become a runaway feedback cycle and completely invalidate all the scientific calculations about the speed with which global warming is happening. It's not magic, but the results could seem magical in terms of how surprisingly fast the entire process could become. (Click on the title of this piece to read an article on this phenomenon.)

There are other feedback cycles in this process. Years ago it came to my attention that the vast majority of photosynthesis is performed NOT by the plants of our planet, but by blue-green algae in the oceans. The forests and jungles perform only about 25% of what is required for the maintenance of life on Earth. So, if the blue-green algae in our oceans stop producing oxygen...and up-taking carbon-dioxide....to put it scientifically....we are SO screwed. If the oceans continue to get warmer, some scientists think this is exactly what might happen. But, not to worry, they're clearly making all this up just so they'll have jobs, in the non-existent future.

I hope that you find all of this not merely 'scary'. That would accomplish NOTHING. What I really am hoping you will do is throw the weight of your opinion and your energy behind the fact that we need to stop lolly-gagging and insist on action across the board to do the only sensible thing intelligent beings should do......CHANGE WHAT WE HAVE BEEN DOING TO CAUSE OUR OWN DEMISE.

So who's savage now......?

In the decades before Native Americans were subjugated, by means of the self-assigned authority of the white man's laws relegating them to reservations--and with the sickening power of our culture, including alcohol, and psychological desolation--we condescendingly referred to the members of this proud warrior culture as 'savages'. We treated them according to the European tradition of treating all indigenous people....like illiterate children who didn't know what was good for themselves, much less how 'civilized' people should live. When I was in Utah and Arizona last spring, my son and I saw once again constant reminders of how the vast majority of Native
Americans still suffer. We probably could have subjugated them and destroyed their culture without firing a shot, just by giving them all the alcohol they wanted. It is heart-breaking to see the results of our history with them.

But, now a new kind of 'savage' is stalking the American landscape. And, far from being a noble being with deep connections to the natural world, this 'new savage' is a true beast. He and she are inclined to dominate with power--political power at this point--but, the single most salient quality that sets them apart....is an astonishing lack of compassion for any other beings, animal or human. They cheered raucously the other night when Ric Perry's accomplishment as the governor of Texas was mentioned. He now holds the esteemed position of being the governor on whose watch more people have been put to death than any other in American history. And, the tea bagger crowd loves this.

When Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul if people who do not have health insurance should be allowed to die, a savage in the audience shouted his approval. Others cheered as well. If one is a student of human history, i.e.,did more than just squeak by a U.S. history class in high school, and has some overall sense of how the human race has evolved, it soon becomes clear that we are only able to avoid sinking to our lowest impulses when we cultivate the idea that COMPASSION is as important as life itself. When we forget to pay attention to this we have our little moments, don't we? Things like the Holocaust happen. Ouch! Didn't mean to do that....just kinda forgot there for a few years what makes us 'human'.

So, here we are at another pivotal moment in our history. We are on the verge of making some very critical decisions about how we will behave towards our fellow human-beings, indeed our fellow Americans....and we are pulling back from the notion that what separates us from the beasts of the forest is ONLY our ability to feel compassion, to empathize, to care about others in a meaningful way. Looking out across the land, and even the entire planet, one now sees a clear tendency to isolate in social groupings, to defend a viewpoint that discounts the needs and the vitality of others. Perhaps this is the ultimate outgrowth of a culture where the worship of material goods and possessions has supplanted a more spiritual outlook. But, even religions that were intended to become a source of guidance in this process of being human and to make us better at it....are being co-opted and used to isolate and attack 'other'. Regardless of the vehicle or the excuse we use, we are identifying our own needs as paramount, and we will not merely allow violence, but are increasingly willing to commit it--in a variety of ways--on those we perceive as a threat to meeting our own needs.

So, it might just be that we have now come to the point where we have morphed ourselves into the kinds of beings that we looked down on so condescendingly for so many generations.

The heretofore 'civilized' human being has now become the savage. It should be noted, however, that even when we declared ourselves to be civilized we were not acting in a civil manner towards most other sentient beings. Since our Cro Magnon ancestors were thumping each other over the head with clubs and sticking animals (okay, yes, each other too) with spears, we have learned a phenomenal amount about how to invent and create 'things' that serve our needs....and foremost among our inventions: WEAPONS. An early hominid could scarcely have dreamed of the weapons we now take for granted. Hell, a soldier in the Civil War could not have imagined that only a couple of generations into the future we'd be able to incinerate a city with a single bomb, delivered by a missile traveling many times the speed of sound. We are living the stuff of science-fiction...only a few decades ago.

So, who is the real savage now?

Of course, there is a percentage of the population that will desperately cling to the idea that being a true Human Being means you possess a quality referred to by mystics for millennia as 'Heart', and that it is via this aspect of our being that we are able to feel compassion for all other beings...and not just human ones either. It may well be this decreasing number (relative to the number of savages who are on the increase) of souls among us that becomes our last life-line to our humanity.

But, as of now, the savage beast in us is advancing to the fore. When I contemplate why this is happening...despite all the lessons of our past....I have to believe that this is just one more episode of our needing to learn lessons that have apparently not sunk in. We apparently need one more turn on the anvil, in a state of red-hot malleability, to shape us in a way that we can once again remember that our only purpose in living has been all along and remains....to become Human Beings.