World falling apart

Increasingly isolated in a virtual world, the people fear authenticity even as they crave it.

Except in the young, the fear usually prevails over the craving until something happens to make life fall apart.

Following the pattern experienced by Cindy Sheehan, the fundamental corruption of first one, then all of our civilization's major institutions becomes transparent.

I have seen this many times in various areas of activism.

Someone discovers that the pharmaceutical industry, or the music industry, or the oil industry, or organized religion, or Big Science, or the food industry is shockingly corrupt, but still believes in the basic soundness of the system as a whole.

Eventually, in a natural process of radicalization, they discover that the rot is endemic to all of these and more.

Each institution supports, affirms, and draws its own legitimacy from the others.

So we discover eventually that the wrongness permeates every institution, and we desire to find and uproot its source.

As activists for the truth, we are midwives to this process.

It is not quite true that no one heeds the boy's cry that the emperor is naked.

Those who are ready to hear will hear, and they are made ready when their world crumbles.

The exposing of all that is wrong serves an important purpose in guiding people from the old world to the threshold of a new - but only to the threshold, not across it.

To enter into the new world requires that we recover the tools of world-creation: first and foremost, the power of word.

A nicer term for a "ubiquitous matrix of lies" would be a "ubiquitous matrix of stories."

I am not suggesting that we abdicate the creative power of language.

Language is an essential means to coordinate human activity, for beauty as well as for destruction.

The stories we tell with words unite masses of people toward a common goal, and assign the meanings and roles necessary to attain it.

To be sure, images, music, and art, both representational and non-representational, contribute to the weaving of a story, especially evoking the emotional energy that powers it, but information is indispensable as well.

In a new world we will not cease to tell the story of what is and what shall be, but we will become conscious of our storytelling.

The sequel to this will explore what I call "storyteller consciousness" on a cultural and personal level, so that we may prepare to tell the story of a more beautiful world, and to speak that world into existence as presidents and kings have spoken wars into existence for thousands of years.

As these old stories fall apart, the time ripens for new ones.

And the old stories are indeed falling apart, of which our increasing immunity to political and commercial speech is a symptom.

No more or less significant a symptom is the crumbling of our great social institutions - education, politics, medicine, money - that are themselves built of a matrix of stories.

When stories fall apart, the world falls apart.

As the crises of our age converge and infiltrate the fortresses we have erected to preserve the virtual world of euphemism and pretense, the world is falling apart for more and more people at once.

The stories that have defined us and bound us are dying.

We sense, as counterpart to the existential anxiety that comes as the old world and our identity within it disintegrates, an invigorating newness close at hand.

So let us cease to be afraid as we stand at the threshold.

It is time to learn the technologies, linguistic and otherwise, of world-creation.

C. Eisenstein

Changes

You only make changes when you are ready to make changes

When you are not ready to make changes you do not listen

Or maybe you listen but you do not hear

You do not bring things into focus

You do not wish to stop what you are doing

You are of course too busy

And best of all you do not need to change

You are in denial

When you are ready to change suddenly you will hear

When you are open to realise there is a problem

You admit to that problem or at least you want to try to understand what it is

Often arguing that it is not as others see

When you do see and accept then there is a chance to fix it

Fixing problems is not always easy as it involves changing

Changing our behaviour

Accepting responsibility for our actions

Seeing them as others see them

Admitting that we are not perfect

Yes for some even believe that they are close to perfect

Funny one that

True too as many have very peculiar perceptions about themselves

Perceptions that drive them to insist that they are right

Change is so hard for so many

Shame because change often allows us to move on to better times while stubborn resistance causes us to keep on experiencing the same problems

Nature will just keep giving us the same or similar problems

We all know people who keep on having "bad luck"

Is it really luck?

It might seem that way as they tell it however usually it is nature stopping us giving us the chance to change

Change is a way to move on, maybe the only way

Can you change?

Nature does not allow us to continue indefinitely with our illusions

Nature will bring change to our lives where we are obliged to take stock of what we are doing

So often once through the crisis people go back to what they were doing before

Guess what nature will return and oblige them to reconsider their behaviour
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Changes and change are a fact of life and those who resist will keep having same problems
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Consider change a friend one that allows us to move on

2009 - Crop circle season

The 2009 crop circle season was prolific with numerous crop circles appearing in many diverse places

As is often the case many appeared in Wiltshire England, which is also a county of historical interest with places such as Stonehenge, Averbury and others being of note

Over seventy crop circles appeared in Wlitshire this year and the following extract from an article by Amely Greeven is provocative

Enjoy

"There is credible, detailed research available that shows what's been observed and measured before, during, and after the formations appear, and it's all fascinating.

For example, it's unanimously accepted by those who bother to look closely that while man made copycat formations do exist, they are easy to spot; the majority of formations are not man made.

See crop circle researcher and author Janet Ossebaard's very practical breakdown of the biophysical abnormalities in the crop and soil here.

Meanwhile, the Wiltshire Crop Circle Study Group send anonymous samples to the UK's major agricultural labs and consistently receive results of distinct changes in both plant structure and soil composition after crop circles.

There's also plenty of material on the electromagnetic energy that may be flattening the crop into these elaborate patterns.

Move to the unavoidable subject of extra-terrestrials and UFOs and the conversation gets really long.

I'll just say that perhaps different brains make different models in order to comprehend phenomena that's unknown to them, and all are as real as each other.

You say extra celestial, I say prana; we both see dancing balls of light.

Other debates focus on the "whats." What is the hidden message in the glyphs -- and will we decipher it in time?

It can be quite crack-the-code exciting.

But try too hard to decode, translate, and semiotically read the symbols and you risk losing the essence of what they're about.

A child, frankly, can understand the symbolism of the crop circles, because they trigger an instant experience.

For example, looking at a perfect geometrical image, which is what many of the formations are, will deliver an instant understanding of something profound.

At some universal level of reality, even if it's far below your chaotic reality, you know that everything is balanced and in the right order.

You don't have to understand "how" geometry works.

You don't have to know the significance of twelve arms of the mandala versus ten.

Like hearing notes in a tuneful chord, you immediately experience the harmony as a felt experience inside yourself when you see it depicted visually.

Likewise with the images of nature, the cosmos, and symbols from ancient civilizations that have been coming up in this year's pantheon of crop glyphs.

Taken together, they create a larger theme that Janet Ossebaard terms, "2009: Year of the Apocalypse," where apocalypse means the great revealing, or an end to secrets and an end to living in a state of disconnect.

That's good to know.

But as potent as these signs may be, it's the individual's experience of the crop formations that has the power to bridge that disconnect, not the rational understanding of them.

Of far more interest to me are the "whys."

Why are these forms appearing?

Why here in this area?

And most significantly, why are people coming to them?

There are no right answers here, only insights.

What I've witnessed is that most people who've been touched by these happenings, whether they've been sitting, sharing, or touring around the barley swirls or attending the impressive "Crop Circle Conference" hosted by the Wiltshire study group two weekends ago, don't want to nail a definitive answer about their raison d'être.

They're simply drawn to experiencing the ineffable for themselves"

Amely Greeven

Long beautiful legs

Might be an act of God to some

To others something to admire

For many suggestive of sexual promise

Some women would be jealous

However when in view few will feel no emotion at all

Funny thing the human body by turns fat and thin are in depending on the culture

Although today thanks to the strenuous efforts of the media and fashion industries a global consensus is emerging

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Rake thin women are the chosen shape of the industry

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Ugly to the point of grotesque

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So for a while this that or the other shape might prevail

Beautiful legs though are always in

Legs, long legs are the envy of many

Jealousy won't change the length of your legs

So better change your thoughts instead

And let us all be grateful then that the fashion and media industries cannot take away the pleasure of beautiful legs!

History of money

Many people think that money has always existed and therefore it always will

Wrong

Human beings have lived on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years of years without using money.

When they were hungry they ate.

When they were thirsty they drank.

Whatever was available to anyone was available to everyone

It wasn't paradise, because food was scarce, and growing populations were eventually forced by this scarcity into a competitive struggle for life

First came the invention of agriculture, and the consequent need to defend the land or property on which crops were grown

Although this gave communities more stability and growth, agriculture and animal husbandry could not by themselves supply everything which they needed too develop cultures.

For this they needed to associate with other communities and pool their resources.

But in the new culture of property there was never again to be such freedom to take whatever was available

And so we began the exchange of products known as trade.

And although some quite advanced bronze age societies managed to trade very well by using barter (e.g Egyptians), it was a supremely awkward way to conduct transactions

With the advent of the Iron Age, cheap metal was for the first time plentiful, and coinage was slowly introduced to facilitate the trading process

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Civilisation has since grown up on the back of this trade, whose sophistication was made possible by the invention of money.

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To the modern mind therefore, civilisation relies money

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This is a misunderstanding

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In fact it is mainly trade which relies on money

Civilisation relies on distribution of material goods certainly, but distribution is not the same thing as trade just as to give is not the same as to sell

Modern industrial society has given us the means to free ourselves forever from that scarcity which has always dogged our forebears

Money is no longer a necessary or logical feature of society, and only a tiny minority benefit from its presence

Over the course of history many things become obsolete

Question when will money?

Possibly when society breaks down from the incoherence of current policies which benefit the few

Mmmmm - 67

All change ( of position, substance, or form) is the result of causes

there is no such thing as absolute chance

Nothing can happen for no reason at all for nothing exists in isolation

Everything is part of an intricate web of causal interconnections and interactions

The keynote of nature is harmony:

Every action is automatically followed by an equal and opposite reaction

Which sooner or later rebounds upon the originator of the initial act

Thus all our thoughts and deeds will eventually bring us 'fortune' or 'misfortune'

According to the degree to which they were harmonious or disharmonious

In the long term, perfect justice prevails in nature

D. Pratt

Tamiflu effects

More than half of children taking the swine flu drug Tamiflu experience side effects such as nausea and nightmares.

Studies of 1003 children showed that 51 to 53 percent had one or more side effects from the medication.

The most common side effect was nausea (29 percent), followed by stomach pain or cramps (20 percent) and problems sleeping (12 percent).

Almost one in five had a “neuropsychiatric side effect,” such as inability to think clearly, nightmares and “behaving strangely.”

The World Health Organization has said healthy patients who catch swine flu do not need to be treated with Tamiflu.

Antiviral drugs should be used in patients who are severely ill or those in high-risk groups including the under fives and pregnant women, it said.

The cost of the drug and the potential for resistance were taken into account by the expert panel.

But the UK government said it was taking a "safety first" approach by offering antivirals to everyone

Please note that the vast majority of deaths related to swine flu are in people who had secondary conditions, meaning they were already weak or ill from other causes

Question was it the administration of Tamiflu that acted as the catalyst for their deaths?

We will never know because no investigation of this situation will be undertaken

However in Japan

The Japanese government has warned doctors that Tamiflu, the drug being stockpiled around the world as a defence against a bird flu pandemic, should not be prescribed to teenagers for fear that it can lead to bizarre and self-destructive behaviour.

Tokyo’s Ministry of Health and Welfare today instructed the Japanese distributor of the drug to include a warning not to give the drug to patients aged between 10 and 19, after reports that at least 18 Japanese children taking Tamiflu have died as a result of irrational behaviour

An ongoing saga where slowly it is being understood that Tamiflu has known and unknown sideffects

That several of these side effects are serious and not fully understood, by the public at least

Apart from anything else Tamilfu is not specific to the current strain of swine flu

As such it is not offering anything other than a possible reduction in the time affected

Tamiflu offers no protection from any new or evolving strains of flu

Why in such a situation, apart from political advantage, would any government offer or use this product?

Could it be that the creation of fear is on someones agenda?

Could it be that some are making huge profits from this situation?

Of course they are

So better focus on your own defences

The best defence against all flu strains is still a healthy immune system

Do not take flu shots

Strengthen your immune system

What a farce

Experts warned dispersal of Tamiflu would do more harm than good

The government rejected advice from its expert advisers on swine flu, who said there was no need for the widespread use of Tamiflu and suggested that the public should simply be told to take paracetamol.

An independent panel set up by the Department of Health warned ministers that plans to make the stockpiled drug widely available could do more harm than good, by helping the flu virus to develop resistance to the drug.

But ministers pressed ahead with a policy of mass prescription, fearing the public would not tolerate being told that the millions of doses of Tamiflu held by the state could not be used during a pandemic, one of the committee members has told the Guardian.

It was felt ... it would simply be unacceptable to the UK population to tell them we had a huge stockpile of drugs but they were not going to be made available, Professor Robert Dingwall, a member of the Committee on Ethical Aspects of Pandemic Influenza, said.

Today one of the country's foremost flu experts called for the national helpline to be shut down to stop hundreds of thousands of doses of Tamiflu going out in an unregulated way, which could render it useless when a more dominant strain returns in the autumn.

As it became clear that the current outbreak only had mild symptoms, the committee recommended that antivirals should only be given to those in high risk categories, like pregnant women or people with existing respiratory illnesses.

It suggested the government explain to people that they would not be given medicine they did not need and should use off-the- shelf flu treatments.

There were discussions within the Health Protection Authority and the Department of Health, once it became clear that swine flu was a relatively mild infection, about whether to reserve antivirals for high-risk groups and to advise the general population to treat themselves with paracetamol or ibuprofen, said Dingwall, director of the Institute for Science and Society at Nottingham University.

Some people wanted to take a long-term view of the risk of resistance developing and to seek to preserve the effectiveness of antivirals for the next pandemic, which may be more severe.

Last month, the government launched the national pandemic flu service which authorised more than 511,000 courses of Tamiflu and Relenza treatment during its first fortnight in operation.

Oxford University researchers have warned that antivirals are not a "magic bullet" against flu, and that resistance to the drug could develop, making it useless to fight any future and potentially more serious pandemic flu strain.

The concern was seconded by flu expert Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor at Aberdeen University, who called for the national flu line to be shut down.

I am concerned about the vast amount of Tamiflu that is going out almost unregulated, he told the Guardian.

We are increasing the possibility that the flu will become resistant sooner or later.

At the moment there is no desperate need for Tamiflu.

We should be reconsidering its issue, rather than encouraging its use.

"I think we should stop the national pandemic flu service.

It was put there for an outbreak of far higher mortality than we have.

If you get a resistant strain that becomes dominant in the autumn, Tamiflu will then be useless."

A senior government adviser, Prof Peter Openshaw, said the government was told during the early stages of the current outbreak of the "significant side effects" that Tamiflu was causing in some people.

"I think there was, in some quarters, a slight over-optimism about the acceptability of prophylactic medication and its effectiveness," said Openshaw, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.

Maybe some of the less clinical scientific advisers perhaps slightly over-inflated expectations of the ease and efficiency of antiviral treatment.

Many of us who do clinical work and are clinically trained had a bit more of a jaundiced view of how things may turn out."

Openshaw said antivirals were effective only if used within 36 to 48 hours of symptoms developing.

If the treatment is delayed they are relatively ineffective.

On the other hand, we do have this large stockpile available and I think there is an advantage in trying to treat cases early, in order to reduce the severity and the number of patients who end up needing hospital care."

Such a policy could "blunt" a spike of cases, reducing pressure on health resources, he said.

The pandemic ethical committee was set up at the request of Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer, to assist planners and policy makers with ethical aspects of decisions they face in a pandemic, such as how to allocate scarce drugs when many people are sick.

At its last meeting in May, when it was already becoming clear that the current H1N1 strain was causing a relatively mild disease in most people, the committee discussed the government's antiviral strategy.

Members feared that the widespread use of antivirals in the current outbreak was incompatible with the principle of minimising harm, minutes from the meeting show.

The current outbreak did not alter the risk of a more serious flu pandemic developing in the future.

There would be ethical concerns if the blanket use of antivirals compromised their effectiveness in the future.

Members said it was important to use antivirals in the most appropriate way, not just because the government had a stockpile of the drugs.

The committee called on the government to explain to the public that they were no cure for flu.

The committee concluded that it would be appropriate to offer antivirals as treatment only for those in risk groups, or with underlying conditions.

In a statement, the Department of Health said: "Protecting the public is the prime concern of our strategy, which has been shaped by advice from the most eminent specialists from the beginning.

"There is still doubt about how swine flu affects people – a safety-first approach is the best approach.

This means offering antivirals when required.

However, we will keep this policy under review as we learn more about the virus and its effects.

This is in line with the views of both the Committee on Ethical Aspects of Pandemic Influenza and of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies

Guardian

One other aspect of this situation is the age of government Tamilfu supplies

Nowhere is there any acknowledgment that current stocks of Tamiflu are due to pass their "use by" date in the very near future

At this point these stocks would have had to be thrown away

Did someone somewhere think that they had better be used.....................and political mileage gained?

As it is the Government is now ordering millions more units

And who is deriving most benefit from this farce one might ask?

Could it be that someone somewhere is making lots of money?

Desynchronosis

Do you suffer from desynchronosis?

You know, chronic tiredness, disorientation, stomach upsets, and stinging red-eyes?

Jet lag, as it's more commonly known, can consign you to the zombie zone, usually populated only by new parents.

There's a fairly obvious and simple one, of course: don't fly.

But acknowledging the fact that people do fly to go on holiday, or have to fly for work or to see family members jet lag is an issue for many

Do you avoid alcohol and caffeine and max out on tomato juice and water, as recommended on the NHS website?

Do you stay up all night before a long flight or starve yourself to trick your body into thinking it's in another time zone?

Do you take homeopathic pills or ingest the extract from the bark of a French pine tree for seven days, as advocated by another recent medical survey?

Or do you simply hit the sleeping pills?

Whatever you do

Stay up and go to bed at your normal time in local time when you get there

Better drink only water while flying

Sleep and doze if you can

Feel no fear the pilot does not want to die either

Flying is much safer than crossing your local roads at home

Flying West to East is tougher

North to South or vica versa not too bad at all

If aircraft noises trouble you then play some music, wear earphones

Whatever your system or approach make the trip an acceptable one psychologically

Remember you are going somewhere different, wherever it is regard this with pleasure

Feel good about the change however long or short

If coming back then take the good memories with you, leave the others behind

It is your state of mind that determines how you experience travel

All too often we let negative media stories influence our experience of travel

Create your own stories

Make them fun and happy ones

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Being tired is OK when you let yourself accept that it is OK

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Modern travel for all it's pains can also be OK

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Your choice

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Oh, and desynchronosis is fine too

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Just your state of mind is all

Two problems

One is over consumption

And another is overproduction.

Half the world eats too much

The other half has too many babies.

There is just too much human flesh for a healthy planet

Yet few have considered what this means for our future

And fewer still who have ever been brave enough to show the future as it really will be.

Instead the future is shown as an age where we live ever longer

Where we enjoy good health into old age

Yet around us more and more people are on medications

More are suffering from stress

And yes more and more are fat going on obese

No one mentions the problems caused by the fatness.

Or the babies.

The UN has predicted that half of all adults will be obese by 2050.

Meanwhile, the United Nations reckons that by then the world’s population will have risen by 40 per cent to 9.1 billion in the same year

That’s a lot of extra mouths to feed, even if they don't eat as we do in the West

So why do we keep on eating so much?

Birthing is declining in the Western world and as we know increasing in many poorer parts of the world

In the poorer parts of the world if women were better educated, or in some places educated at all, then birth rates would fall as we have seen over and over

Regarding the other problem so many are made utterly miserable by their inability to override their instinct to eat.

The answer is that our bodies are hardwired for life in an uncertain world, not the West in, 2009.

Our problem with babies and beer bellies is thanks to how ruthlessly our DNA was then honed for success.

Back in our native habitat, refusing food or refusing children would have been suicidal.

Both were, for various reasons, scarce.

Now both are overabundant.

Refusing them is the means to our survival.

But is it even possible for humans to override their instincts like that?

Of course, individuals have practised self-denial, but it’s not something we’ve ever undertaken as a collective project.

Until now.

The ONS report stated that one in five women in Britain is remaining childless — a trend repeated across the Western world.

What intrigued the authors was that current childlessness is different from the childlessness of the postwar years, when it was the poorest women, or those left single, who didn’t have children.

By contrast “present-day childlessness is occurring increasingly often among healthy females who are living within marriage or cohabiting”.

The more educated and wealthy a woman gets, the less likely she is to have children.

Although they could not ask directly, the statisticians were left wondering if increasing numbers of people are actively opting out of parenthood.

If so, they would be doing it for profoundly rational reasons.

Study after study on happiness levels shows that while marriage is excellent for mental well being, having children is not.

Happiness levels dip after the first born, and are not restored until the last child leaves home.

Sociologists accept this, but as Daniel Gilbert, Professor of Psychology at Harvard, says, those findings are very hard for the public “to swallow because they fly in the face of our most compelling intuitions”.

Children do not make us happy, although surveys also show we believe very strongly that they will.

What accounts for this parenting paradox?

Well, we are enslaved to our instincts.

When you ask parents exactly what it is they get from their children, they often explain it in terms of “fulfilment” or “selflessness”.

I do not exactly enjoy kneeling on the bathroom floor as I act as midwife to my daughter’s toilet activities, but I think, in the scheme of things, I am doing something meaningful.

Yet “fulfilment” and “selflessness” — the feelings may be real, but it’s the kind of vocabulary that shows it’s the DNA talking.

We are fulfilling a drive for our genes to repeat themselves, rather than seeking enjoyment in any rational sense.

Some of the childless women in the ONS study may be the first generation to conquer that instinct en masse.

It is interesting that it is the more educated women who seem better inclined to fight biology with reason, for a “post-instinct” kind of life (it is also one with more relaxing holidays).

Is it a coincidence that the risk factors for getting big with child — lack of education, jobs and other ways of honing higher reason — are the same as those for getting big with food?

At the obesity clinic, I talked to people just after they had had their gastric bands inserted, or, as they liked to think of them, “willpower” in the form of an artificial plastic clamp.

Overflowing their hospital chairs, breathless just from standing up, these people were used to society judging them to be weak.

They felt the same way about themselves.

They hated their bodies and their cravings for food.

Their instincts were killing them.

Since medieval times, the idea of the mind ruling the body has been nothing more than a diversion for philosophers.

Now, it’s an emergency.

Will we manage to live against our genetic drives?

What will that world look like?

Times