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The I Ching, or Book of Changes: Hexagram 12, P’i (Standstill, or Stagnation)

In times of stagnation, attend to your attitude.

It is an unavoidable fact of life that inferior influences sometimes prevail: improperly motivated people ascend to power, there is injustice and conflict and poverty, and spiritual life in general descends into darkness and decay.  While these difficult times are inevitable – and the arrival of this hexagram indicates that this is such a time – this does not mean that we have to stagnate personally as well.  By turning inward and realigning ourselves with proper principles, we initiate the return to light, truth and progress.

The image of P’i is of heaven moving away from the earth.  When this happens, the inferior qualities in ourselves and in others come to the surface and seek expression.  It is unlikely now that you can affect what others do and say or that your activities will bear much fruit.  While it is natural to feel anxious and disappointed about this state of affairs, it is essential to disengage from these inferior emotions now.  To indulge in them is to abandon your superior self and plunge into a state of disintegration.

What is wise now is to accept that external progress is unlikely.  Turn your attention inward and examine your own thoughts and attitudes for inferior influences and departures from the principles of the Sage.  By withdrawing into solitude and refining your higher nature, you continue to grow while all else around you stagnates.

The I Ching, or Book of Changes

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Eat the Rich & Save the Whales

Sometimes,

people yearn actively not

to belong…this sense of ‘breakdown’ –

be it familial or moral or both — isn’t a symptom

of disruption or anarchy but a symptom of progression and

freedom, and of life. The transcendence of ‘basic’ values,

especially those that place people into roles or boxes

or force them to operate under moral taboos

or temporal or spatial prohibitions,

is to be celebrated, not

denounced.”

One can never be too careful.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

“Trash Goes in the Trash”: Professor Richard Hoale explains why recycling is destroying our souls and the universe.

Most of you probably don’t remember something called “throwing away your garbage.” It was a quaint practice wherein when you had some “garbage” or “trash” you would throw it away in a vessel called a “trashcan”.  ALL of your garbage would go in the trashcan.  But a new category of garbage was invented called “recycling” which was created by hippies to make normal people feel shame.  Suddenly the act of “throwing away your garbage” was more complicated.  Today we’ll explore this phenomenon’s origins & its devastating effects on society.

Following the surge in attention the hippies got in the 1960’s when they had a voice to point out some trifling things that annoyed them about American society like unnecessary wars & deeply entrenched racism & hate, the hippies experienced a waning interest in their stupid causes.  After the high (as hippies want to be all the time rather than working) wore off, the “comedown” of not being able to inflict guilt was quite painful.  Since none of them had jobs they had the whole day to smoke “marijuana” & think about ways to make people feel shitty about themselves.  Some joined paramilitary groups that blew up things but those weren’t too popular because the American people don’t like things in their country being blown up & innocent people being killed.  The conditions were perfect for the launch of a new movement.

In the 1970’s the hippies noticed all of a sudden that people were systematically destroying their planet which really put a bee in their bonnet.  But eventually they realized they could “turn that frown upside down” if they transformed that anger into their most potent weapon, shame.  This would allow them to deny the powerlessness they felt (remember they have no power because they’re too lazy to even take a shower) at least temporarily.  Little did they know that they would institutionalize this shame for generations to come, which continues today stronger than ever.  Recycling spread like a plague not unlike Europe’s in the Middle Ages except with much greater & more widespread devastation.  Studies have shown that recycling’s effects on the American people are a million times worse than the bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki.  Never mind that even if everyone recycled everything they could it still wouldn’t make a dent in the other 99% of pollution in the world which is caused by corporations dumping toxic shit into our environment.

So how is recycling destroying society way worse than pollution is destroying the environment?  First of all it’s so woven into us that we don’t even know we’re doing it any more, much the same way that the killing of Jews became normal for Germans during the World War II.  We don’t even think anymore about holding onto that water bottle while we pass 28 trashcans looking for a recycling bin.  Our cars are full of cans & bottles & newspapers & magazines that we keep meaning to put in the recycling bin when it’s convenient.  If you don’t admit that you have at least 2.1 million plastic grocery bags in your kitchen that “one day” you’ll bring back to the grocery store but never will, you’re a damn liar who deserves to be raped to death.  You all have a paper bag in your kitchen where people throw their cans & bottles where beer & soda & syrup is constantly leaking into the bag & through to the floor.  Or God forbid you’re one of those dickwipes who actually goes through the trouble of washing out all those things before putting them into the bag.  You really wash all those refried beans off the side of the can beforehand?  I was gonna say that you’re lower than a Greek but no one is, you’re just a garden variety pathetic piece of shit.  And I’m sure we all look forward to that day before the recycling truck comes when we spend an hour & a half sorting things & breaking down cardboard hoping it will fit in the bin (it won’t).

Which brings us to the more insidious aspect of recycling which is the time & energy wasted that could go toward actually helping people.  By my own non-evidence-based, wildly exaggerated estimate, Americans spend 22 hours a day doing something related to recycling.  Inexplicably it is considered the highest virtue & the top priority of people to recycle.  No matter what you do, you take the time to sort your recyclables & dispose of them in their proper containers, don’t you?  Are you fucking kidding me?  What about calling your mother who yearns to hear from you?  What about helping the elderly & homeless & poor who are literally dying because they don’t get the support they need?  What about taking the time to listen to that friend or family member or co-worker who’s going through a hard time?  What about spending more time with your wife & kids who you try desperately to avoid?  What about taking the time to get flowers for your mistress?  All of these things are lower on the priority list than making sure we recycle which is fucking ridiculous.

We’ve learned a lot about recycling today from its sinister beginnings to its catastrophic effect on our society.  The next time you’re about to recycle something think about the filthy hippie in the “Legalize Bluegrass” t-shirt laughing his ass off at you for falling for his malicious scheme.  So throw that glass bottle into the street & cram your plastic water bottle into a dolphin’s blow hole if you like, but for God’s sake don’t put it in the recycling bin & let the hippies win.  Just remember your new self-evident motto: “Trash goes in the trash”.

Cornlog

The most important tweet about any #SOTU since Jefferson was made last night by the Angeleno philosopher Rob Delaney:

Amnesty releases “Chimes of Freedom”, and it’s stunning.

Amnesty International

has just released Chimes of Freedom,

a 4 CD set or full digital download of 76 Bob Dylan songs

recorded by the likes of Pete Seeger, Flogging Molly, Sinead O’Connor,

Patti Smith, Lucinda Williams, Sugarland, Elvis Costello, Ziggy

Marley, Tom Morello, Johnny Cash, My Chemical

Romance, Michael Franti, Thea Gilmore,

the list just goes on and on.

Oh, yeah, Bob Dylan’s

on there, too.

It’s so damn

fine it’s hard to believe.

Astonishingly great music by the

greatest musicians in the world, and lots

of it for the small price, and you can listen to tons

of it at this link, and the dough supports one

of the greatest causes in the world:

Amnesty International.

Go, listen,

buy!

Though

we travel the world over

to find the beautiful, we must

carry it with us or we

find it not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Therefore,

one should ask:

Which side accords most with

tao? Which side’s leader is more able?

Which side is more attuned to heaven and

earth? Which side is best equipped,

best trained, more disciplined,

more justly rewarded,

stronger?

The Art of War

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