Humanicide- n. "The inevitable extinction of humanity because of human nature."

Seems a symptom of a highly developed intelligence is a massive god complex.  We think we are so entitled.  It's our "rite" to have children.  It's our "rite" to use up the earth.  It's our "rite" to slay others in the name of gods that we can't even prove are real.  We still live in the same world that was survival of the fittest.  We are still playing that game.  We will ALWAYS be playing that game.  We are not better than our environment, nor are we outside of it. People think back on evolution and only see the short game because hindsight is 20/20 and we have a lot of the information from a span over millions of years. And we think we've beaten it from having  been here a few thousand years....But evolution, time, nature, life, existence is only a long game.  Survival of the fittest does not just mean having enough babies to survive.  It means finding your balance with the world, with nature.  Our race will die.  Our culture will end.  It is completely inevitable.  We are already fucked.  We will fall because we refuse to find our place in nature.  We continue to believe ourselves better than. We have gotten to where we are because of our highly adapted brains.  We have gotten that through the ages of slowly adapting to better survive. But there must always be balance. Now, I fear we have caused too much damage too quickly and are working (in terribly too small groups) too slowly on righting the problem.

Or maybe the real problem isn't the majority, ninety-some percent, but the minority, greedy, power holders who benefit so much from the destruction of everything we have come to know. It feels hopeless. We have been hounded and brainwashed and critiqued and judged and condemned and told how to live our lives every second of every day as soon as we pop out of our mothers. Oftentimes, it's even sooner than that. The government is using us. We are their slaves. We are forced into this society, this capitalism, religion, racism, ethnocentrism, patriotism; on penalties of death, imprisonment, "re"claiming of all property, exile, public isolationism and separation from family. Wanting to live life in some other way is not allowed. Since when is there a handbook on the way to live your individual life? I had no idea that all humans were so simple that we all fell into the same philosophical and intellectual/mental and physical mold; or that we were so dumb that when left on our own we weren't able to survive by our own organic methods. When is enough enough? I'm done listening to what everyone tells me I'm supposed to do. I refuse to be a slave forever. Do you?


Mav

questions

I am sad for no good reason. I miss my boyfriend, even though he is asleep in the next room. I don't know what I'm good at. I don't know if what I'm good at even matters.  I feel trapped by things I have no control over, like politics and society.  I'm forced to pay the price for my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents (etc) choices. I don't understand how people think. I don't understand why people allow things inside of our social structure to happen. Why do we view each other based on country? Are we not all children of the same planet? Why do we view each other based on gender? Should not love and self expression be a completely free idea? I don't understand a lack of empathy. In every situation, EVERY ONE, is it not an evolutionary enhancement to be able to see things, no matter what those things are, from the others perspective? 

At work today, we were having cowboy day and this guy (the one guy in our group who I guess has pretty heavy Native American heritage, and they are always making jokes about him drinking and whatnot and he makes them too.  I am one quarter Cherokee.  Maybe it's not half or more, but I'm still proud, so anyway this guy I just told you about...) says, "Well I'm gonna bring my tomahawk since there's gonna be cowboys." And I didn't know how to feel really, but I found myself offended that that is where he went.  Native Americans of all different tribes and locations have rich, wonderful traditions and history. No one is denying that they shed blood (I dare you to name a "race" that never has), but it's a very narrow-minded stereotype to represent them with merely tomahawks. Not to mention that this guy will probably run around like he's scalping people.  

Just to throw it out there, you can be racist against someone of your own "race". Anyone who gives you the whole, "Oh, I can't be racist against <insert race here>, because I am <insert same race>," is full of so much shit that they should be used for fertilizer.  That's the whole point! It's so stupid, that there are no rules of engagement. If all is fair in love and war, then I'd call racism a a kind of socio-verbal war. It acts upon the masses to convey general ideas and perception of different groups of individuals based upon propaganda spread by those on top to keep the masses muddled in their own misconceptions so that they can't see the true injustices that are being done in the world. (It's in the book.) Maybe it's not so conspiracy theory as all that, but all of that does come into play. 

We act as if we were born into a world that has these laws of survival written down somewhere never to be changed again. We so easily forget that we, the humans of earth, so long ago that it almost doesn't even feel like us anymore, we made all this shit up. We are the ones who decided race was a thing.  We are the ones who chose to listen to a far away possibly nonexistent god or gods.  We are the ones who decided money even was.  Now, we need to remember who we are, and look again and allow those things to change. For us. For our now and future. 

Which is where I get lost again.  Why do so many agree with me, but so few speak out? As a society, we are ruled by outliers.  Why is that? 

Now how do I turn this into a sustainable future?

Mav

PS: broke my phone. again. 

I don't have a good title. How's that?

I ordered a shampoo bar that comes in a paper wrapping.  I got J. R. Liggett's.  It's about 3.5 oz and about 1.5 x 2 inches big.  I go out of my way to avoid the plastic and it comes in a square foot cardboard box with a sheet sized cardboard that has the tiny little shampoo bar on it and it's completely wrapped in plastic -_- 

Plastic. It is inescapable.  I'll be trying it soon. Maybe tomorrow.  Laid up with bronchitis right now. 

But this shampoo bar is all natural.  Made with tea tree oil and hemp and almond oil. I'm excited about it. 

Sickly,

Mav

"Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. 

Open-Spirited, Free-Minded People

I was restocking the silverware at work. We go through hundreds of plastic forks and spoons a day. At work, we also go through thousands of plastic straws that come in little plastic wrappers. Grab a yogurt in a plastic cup. Grab a plastic spoon.  Grab a Vitamin Water in a plastic bottle, or maybe an iced coffee in a plastic up. When you are done, maybe you recycle.  In my county, they accept plastics numbered 1, 2, 4 & 5.  There are seven in total. Most places take less.  In Alabama they only took 1 and 2.  They also didn't do curbside pickup, so most people didn't even try to recycle.  Don't just assume by putting it in recycling that it wont end up in a landfill somewhere. Make sure you check what your county is able to recycle and stop buying plastics as much as possible. Plastic is made with such a strong chemical composition that it doesn't break down, and therefore, is non biodegradable. It doesn't go away. It might break down into smaller and smaller fragments, but it's still there. There is a good documentary about plastic that is on Netflix, called Plastic Paradise. I encourage you to look up information on your own. But if you are the kind of person who likes to eat out a lot then there are lots of ways to stop using needless plastic. Bring your own beverage and food containers. There are bamboo utensil sets out there that you can buy. There are also glass straws. I'm getting wooden case for mine, because I don't necessarily trust that it's "unbreakable". So there are ways to avoid it. It just takes a bit of conscientiousness.  Seeing that I am broke, my first step towards a plastic free existence was purchasing one of those glass straws.  We will see how that goes. If it actually lasts over time. Until then I'm just trying to use as little plastic as possible.  I didn't buy shampoo the other day because I'm going to order a bar shampoo instead of buying the plastic bottles full.

trying something new,
Mav

Catch Up, Butter Cup

I made some cockamamie personal goal to try and blog at least once a week, and I figured since I already missed some months that I might as well get started, but actually after this post, I'm going to be focusing on PLASTIC.  More specifically, I am trying to cut out plastics.  I, of course, will continue to try and get the most use out of all the plastic items I already own, but I am not going to be buying any more.  So enjoy this little chat (it's probably a bit all over the place and maybe even a touch confusing) and hopefully you'll stick around for my new self challenge!

I found a job, but the hours are pretty crappy and it's on the other side of town, so I'm still looking. In the meantime...

I sent in some poems to a couple of magazines here, but they both turned me down.  One encouraged me to send in more poetry in the future.  So that's not so terrible, I suppose.

I've been watching a lot of Doomsday Preppers. I have always had a personal goal of being as self sustaining as possible. And this show is basically about how to live without.  I enjoy gathering ideas of how to cut costs and energy usage and it can be really quite ingenious actually.

I've been thinking a lot about being free and what it actually means to be free.  Free of mind.  Free of need.  Free to do what I want with my time.  ALL of my time.  Not my free time.  Not my off time.  The whole of my time. There's this whole notion that buzzes around that we are free, but we are born into a expected way to be and live.  I was born in America, but I don't claim to be an American.  Personally, I don't claim any of the citizenships.  Why can't I be sans citizenship? A child of Earth.
(Turns out you can renounce your citizenship, but it can cost upwards of $2500 to do it.)


But I kept that job and it's not so terrible.  Our car broke down so I've been riding the bus a lot more.  Which is cool because it's good for environments. I want to get a bicycle to ride soon and we are looking for a more reliable vehicle. I have access to free soda and coffee and good soup and salad, homegrown and local at work so I'm pretty cool with it, even if I work with some characters.
I was having my pre-work  bowl of soup when one of the students comes over and just sits down with me.  I was confused but let it go.  He begins to speak with me and he finds out, eventually, that I have an English degree. He then proceeds to tell me that I should teach English in another country.  I tell him I have no desire to teach English.
"But you're young," he says.
"I know."
"You should travel while you are young and see the world.  Wouldn't you want to travel?"
"Actually, I've traveled a number of places and have no intention of ever stopping. I even moved myself out here because I wanted to. No one made me."
"Oh wow, I did not expect that."
(Why?)
"Well you want a job."
"I have a job."
"Here?" Motions to the coffee bar.
"Yes."
"Is this really what you went to school for?"
"I went to school to learn about myself and the world, to grow and expand as an individual.  Maybe I didn't know it at the time, but it's clear to me now.  I did not go to school for a job, just like i didn't go to school to get married."
There is a moment of silence and he says, "Well, you want money, and a job where you can make lots of money."
"No. Money is bullshit.  It's just a made up concept that keeps the greedy in power."
Silence.
"Well, I have to go to work," I say, "see you."



It's ridiculous how we talk about tigers hunting and killing people in the wild.  The going theory is that they developed a taste for human flesh when eating tsunami victims. How about humans just became the most abundant food source for them and they are adapting for survival.  We are not an apex predator and we underestimate the rest of the world.  We are pushing the rest of our planet into survival situations.  Are we surprised to see a change in behavior? The same goes for humans themselves.  All the alien intervention theories about how it couldn't have possibly be us.  Why not? Do we not think ourselves capable of such feats. Also, just because there isn't a lot of record of what happened doesn't mean that what you find is all there is.  Keep an open mind in all aspects and notions of what and who these people were.  And now we are doing really amazing things, and we say, "It sounds like it's science fiction." Are we still so surprised that amazing things are possible? People are afraid of amazing things because they can be unpredictable.

If you listen to a lot of music, you can tell we come from a complicated and fucked up world.  Most of the fucked up stuff comes from humanity's own journey to figure itself out and find peace. It's that universal constant of growth, change and discovery.  And that shows in our music.  Just as it shows everywhere. But we are also going through a global change in consciousness.  It's difficult and fraught with peril and... we are struggling. Songs like Uprising by Muse, speak clearly to some of these challenges.

will work for simulation access

So, I'm still on the job hunt.  I had a job and lost it by technicality.  Then I "had" a job and lost it by counterfeit.  I wish I could not work.  No one really wants to work.  So few people actually have that job that is their passion.  Why do we work? It's pointless.  If nobody had money then no one would need money.  If no one had a job, then nobody would need a job.  And maybe some people think it would be boring.  That they need to work, and impress and whatever the hell people want to work for. If you are a scientist, there is no reason you can't be a scientist.  There is no reason you can't still pursue things. (Honestly, if you dream of a desk job, how much are you missing?) It's not a halt to society.  Not having a job doesn't mean you wouldn't work.  You would read or work on your house or tend a garden or practice dancing or go to movies and plays or travel or blow glass or whatever.  Our creative and intelligent minds must pursue! It's just the blinding, driving green snow of money boxes us into this idea of what life should be.  We have placed these binds on ourselves! We spend so much time trying to survive this crazy, oppressive life we have built, that we don't even know what freedom means anymore.  We think spending 40+ hours a week at a job doing work for someone else to make a little bit of money that big brother and his deadbeat family whittle away from you so you can afford to spend two weeks a year rushing around until your too tired to think on "vacation" being "yourself" is FREE? So if you spent 40 hours a week for 40 years at your job that means you spent about 9 1/2 years of your life doing work that benefited you in almost no way at all.  And let's be honest, most people probably work closer to 50+ years.
Let's see, when was the term 'mid-life crisis' coined...it was put into the The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis in 1965. So people have been working proper jobs for a while now and these days the life span of humans has lengthened and midlife is now increasingly reaching a median of 50 years.  Whereas, before this time, it might have been around 30 years.  Think about who you are at 30 and who you are at 50.  You have two extra decades of time, work, sweat.  You have that much more time to think about yourself and who you are and what you would do with your life if you just had the time. People started looking at their lives differently.  Wondering about the point of it all.  Sure we progress and we advance but we still sit and drone st jobs while looking out windows at pretty days wishing we were out in them. Why? before we started getting older we worked until we were dead. Then we were like, "fuck that shit! I'm not working until I'm 80."  So then this thing called retirement plucks up because people realize how completely unfulfilling having a job is, how much they are missing and in their elder years hope to see some of it before they die after wasting so much time.  So we have a crisis where we realize that we have done nothing for our own self in our own life, and we splurge and go a little crazy and blow a bunch of money that we now realize is meaningless to happiness, but the problem is we are still stuck in a culture that prevents us from living our lives to the fullest.  Everyone should be able to travel and see the world their whole lives.  We have so little time as it is, we should put all our effort into exploring and learning that life.  Learning ourselves and others and this world and other worlds and galaxies and universes.  We are far too complacent in this life. Believing that our species is somehow a pinnacle of existence is just depressingly close-minded.  Who would want to live in a reality so small?  One so finite, with little to no room for improvisation...it's scary. And it's not even real.  It's just our own minds, too afraid of endless possibility to allow it to happen.  So we create these ideas of money and work and taxes and debt that keep us separated and weak as a species. No one should have to work.  And it's not that I think the government should take care of everyone because I think those are stupid too.  The entire system is flawed. The way we perceive it is flawed.

conclusively,
Mav

Scatter Brain Betsy

I've been in Portland for about a week now. I am loving it.  Granted, I haven't seen very much of it yet, still settling in, but I love the new apartment, the animals are settling in wonderfully.  I also love the hills and trees and raindrop bedazzled leaves and the magical fog and mist. It makes me feel creative, it makes me feel wild.

Everyone is all, oh people only began to see UFOs because they became popular in sci-fi. Nobody thinks, maybe people just are a lot more open about their encounters or what they see because it has become popular.  People feel more comfortable talking about it.  Whereas, beforehand it probably would have been seen as ridiculous and a lot of people were probably thought mad and put away or given drugs or what have you. Point is, absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.  I know that also works the other way around, but its the idea of leaving your mind open to the possibility.

Membrane Food

I'm visiting home for the first time since I moved away.  I am looking forward to it and also don't feel really ready yet.  My mom wouldn't have me not coming home for some sort of holiday celebration with the family.  I wish Astro, my boyfriend, could come. It'll  be good to go home solo, I think. And better that it be now... I'm going to really enjoy it.  There is a first and a last for everything.  All moments are so bittersweet. Here and fleeting. You have to make the most of it and remember every laugh and smell and look across the table. Things that we see now and take for granted might suddenly become important to you later on, and you'll wish you could remember and hope you never forget.

"Vehicle" by The Ides of March
I wish the quality was a little bit better on this.  But I like that it's actually them performing.

how about another:
"I Wont Let You Down" by OK Go
So many umbrellas. Seriously impressive.


Ponderously,
Mav


PS: my cell phone has been dropped several tiimes and the screen is so smashed, I can't see the darn thing.  I plan to be getting a new phone in the coming couple of weeks. From whence I will start updating my instagram again.