moon phases

Started this before change to "New Blogger", as backup in case of trouble with digiphoto blog "In a Small Dark Room", or rants & links blog "Hello Cruel World" . Useful - at one stage Dark Room was there, but like the astrophysical Dark Matter, we could't see it ... better now, but kept Just In Case.

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There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought.
Mark Twain (letter to Joseph Twichell after his wife's death)
[me, on a bad day]

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(and my Wish List)

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"For God, King & Country" (as the cannon fodder millions were lured in World War I)  
We've seen how very well whipping up jingoistic, divisive types of patriotism serves the purposes of politicians over the last 150 years. Indeed, quite recently it's proved effective in Africa & Eastern Europe alike.

Unfortunately, the politicians’ success came at the price of many lives, the maiming of more, the destruction of much hard-won human, social & natural infrastructure, and left a legacy of hate & distrust for generations to come.

The style of "patriotism" that this government and its backers want to drag us back to, along with attitudes to worker-employee and family relations, the intrusion of divisive sectarian versions of religion into politics & reviving forms of social Darwinism disguised as "free trade/enterprise" or "social responsibility" is, surely, closer to the nineteenth century than the 1950s.

Historians remember the huge upheavals of that century as laying the foundations of the terrible twentieth century destruction.

Why would even “elites” risk repeating that devastating cycle, especially now humanity's destructive power and its burden on the planet's systems has become so much greater? Is it some fanatical religious or ideological belief, or just some nihilistic lust for temporary power, and "après nous le déluge"?

[see also post 'Flag-waving' and What Lessons from a War Memorial?, above]

[permalink] posted by Mez at 4:33 am