how group cohesion and community are destroyed by the world we live in

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Thomas

How group cohesion and community are destroyed by the world we live in.

……passing by, I know your face, i’ve made your acquaintance, and yet you turn away, straight lines pull the corners of your eyes until you look startled or sterile, tense in the effort to pretend you don’t know me—and if you look quickly, pleadingly, into my eyes, a second time, hoping I’ll say hello first, maybe I’ll look straight ahead, terse in forced alienation…….

$$$$$$$$$$$$$

outside the hordes of the relative few who hold the relative wealth the rest of us are forced to fend for the detritus that filters to the overcrowded floor beneath the canopy….

and if we find a little glade where errant beams have actually congregated, we set up camp, barricades and defend ferociously the scraps that fall, not from heaven, but from the gilded tables of the undeserving few……

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

“ ‘what can I do?’, say a powerless few, with a lump in their throat, and a tear in their eye. Can’t you see that their poverty’s profitting you?!”

Buffy Sainte-Marie

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tolstoy’s idea of the conservative

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Thomas

“It is generally supposed that conservatives are usually old people, and that those in favour of change are the young. That is not quite correct. Usually conservatives are young people: those who want to live but who do not think about how to live, and have not time to think, and therefore take as a model for themselves a way of life that they have seen.” Tolstoy, ‘The Devil’

Amen Tolstoy! Fuck.

Condos spiralling upwards as intelligence and moral fabric plummet. Efficiency and mass production and wealth at the cost of originality, thought, consciousness, creativity, meaning.

So clever are you, world, asshole that you are, that you’ve made a tiny niche, a dead end, a cul-de-sac, for our innate impulse towards original, creative thought. Knowing you couldn’t deaden us entirely, you present us with an outlet—but it’s a ruse! In this outlet, we’re allowed to be colourful and irrational and emotional and sentimental. But you encourage it for the sake of marketers! For the sake of sales! Be an artist! Everyone’s an artist! Sell your stuff! Sometimes, rarely, an artist will have the wherewithal to see themselves in context of this vapid, vacuous climate. But how many of those rare souls can resist the temptation to sell themselves?! You exploit the necessarily fragile ego of the soul who is creating.

Sitting on the subway, I look around me and all I see are conservatives stretched tie-to-tie, wallet-to-wallet, lethargy-to-lethargy. Who among us are strong enough to stand: up for ourselves, against the surging tide of complacent, lifeless normalcy, for what what we think, feel, understand, sense, KNOW ought to be?

Every individual, every generation has the responsibility to stop, think and act.

Where did I come from?

Why did my parents do what they did?

What should I do?

What do I want to do?

What is life, to me? What constitutes living?

Individuality, creativity, orginiality are the most fundamental tools we need if we are to address these question honestly, with truthful effort.

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a little credit

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Thomas

When I was living at home finishing my undergrad degree I was often overwhelmed with depression. In hindsight this depression was largely in reaction to a fervent desire to control my life, completely at odds with my actual situation. Up until that point, I had been duped. I wasn’t where I wanted to be, doing what I wanted, but had been lead by a series of traps and simple, pervasive, unwholesome edicts fused to my subconscious by the powers at large. I was in debt for an education that was not what it advertised to be, was not what my parents thought it was (and had urged me to undergo), and that showed no responsibility to truth-seeking. I was living at home at an age past which I think it is natural in order to minimize the debt I was incurring for finishing something that, had I known what it was at the onset, I never would have undertaken. How many people find themselves in this position? Of realizing too late what school really is? But then realizing that, like a blind man being lead down an icy slope, there was only direction to go? But what a cruel trick! How many people are bogged down by inescapable debt at the end of that icy slope, with no choice but to embed themselves in the world of credit? Post secondary education’s main function is to trap us and prime us for a life lived on credit, where nothing is owned, ours, everything is decided for us based on the precondition of being in debt.

But I’m inching towards increased freedom. Consciousness was the first step. And exercising simple freedoms—like my whereabouts—is another step. There are so many fundamental freedoms inherent to existence that are taken away from us by the system we live under. What are the consequences of neglecting simple freedoms?

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upon booking my ticket

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Thomas

March 24, 2010

I just booked my ticket and there are parts of me that are freaking out.

Fear. Way back when I first conceptualized going, the decision felt morally justified, held a weight of conviction, because I believed it would force me to conquer elements of fear that would be left untried if I stayed. The battling of these fears is about to begin. I’m different. I’ve always been different, and it’s cracked my soul not being understood by those that were in childhood closest to my heart. But i’ve emerged from that pain and disappointment. I’ve emerged with a broader understanding of mankind and the diversity of personalities; and i’ve emerged with the ever-present memory of a wound; love and understanding and forgiveness and patience and trust and friendships have healed it, but whole it will never be. And now I seek those who are like me. To rebuild my trust and sense of community, togetherness, brotherhood.

Oh poor me. Maybe it’s all made up. I’m so self-invovled, self-consumed; nothing has signifacance unless it resonates personally. Everything’s about me. And yet it’s all I know. It’s the only way I know how to be.

March 28, 2010

What do you do after you realize nothing matters?

You try anyways.

March 29, 2010

I’m unanchored, or I’m unanchoring myself to leave?

I know that anything I could want to find out there, I could find here if I looked in the right places, with the appropriate eye. But I’m too weak to do that. I don’t want to do that. I want to believe that there’s something out there that is so fundamental that I’ll hardly believe my luck for stumbling upon it. Some way of living, some way of being, of thinking, that is communal and noble and, though necessary a failure, honest and steady in its pursuits and values. Not perfect. But more perfect than where I come from.

I want to satisfy my curiosity. I want to feel like I’m truly living my life, even though I have no hope of knowing what that really means and that I have to fight this creeping sensation of a preordained failure, catastrophe, senselessness.

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A Practical Guide to using PGP in Ubuntu Karmic Koala

Posted on March 27, 2010 by Daniel

As more and more of our data is stored and/or communicated digitally it’s becoming increasingly important for everyone to be aware of their privacy and security. Even though you might think nobody else could possibly be interested in your data, it doesn’t hurt to take some steps to educate yourself on how to protect your data online.

Encryption is one option to protect your data and using it can be quite straightforward. You may rarely or never come across a situation where you’d need to encrypt a message or file but it might happen and being prepared is always good. Besides that, I’m a bit of a nerd and I find this kind of thing fascinating and if you’re reading this then chances are you do too.

This post should serve as a quick-and-dirty primer, so I won’t be delving into too much detail, but for those who are interested I’ll leave you with some links at the bottom of the page. For those of you still stuck with Microsoft, I’m working on a Windows version of this guide – stay posted!

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