[Mb-civic] Earth's Fish Disappearing

[Cheeseburger]

Re:  Earth's Fish Disappearing


Ian wrote:


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Max:

You said it!  And for those who want to know "how we got here" vis-a-vis the
environment and humankind's rape and plundering of the earth, I highly,
strongly, extremely recommend Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael" - one of the finest,
most important books ever written.
========



I haven't read it, but the story line looks great.  Quinn's "Ishmael" won 
the Turner Fellowship award.  The link to his book is at:

http://www.ishmael.com/welcome.cfm

The origins of Ishmael can be found here:

http://www.ishmael.com/Origins/Ishmael/

A small quote from that page is:

"The book opens with a deceptively ordinary personals ad: "Teacher seeks 
pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world." Seeking a direction 
for his life, a young man answers the ad and is startled to find that the 
teacher is a lowland gorilla named Ishmael, a creature uniquely placed to 
vision anew the human story."

"Ishmael's paradigm of history is startlingly different from the one wired 
into our cultural consciousness. For Ishmael, our agricultural revolution 
was not a technological event but a moral one, a rebellion against an 
ethical structure inherent in the community of life since its foundation 
four billion years ago. Having escaped the restraints of this ethical 
structure, humankind made itself a global tyrant, wielding deadly force 
over all other species while lacking the wisdom to make its tyranny a 
beneficial one or even a sustainable one."


CheeseNote:  Sounds excellent, if you haven't read it, go explore.  While 
there, you can also read some of the fascinating, and downright nasty, LOL, 
Publishers' rejection letters rejecting Ishmael before it wound up winning 
the Turner Fellowship Award out of 2,500 other worldwide entries.

If you've ever tried to publish anything, you know why I'm putting up the 
following excerpts from the rejection letters, lol.  A couple of my 
favorite quotes about Ishmael from All-Wise Almighty Publishers Incorporated:


"I have too much to read and too little time to read it in"

"I delight in the debunking of myths"

"I think it would be very difficult, if not downright impossible, to find a 
publisher for this book"

"Today's audiences have reverted to conservatism to a good degree -- they 
are more interested in practical subjects than esoteric subjects which of 
course reflects directly on sales figures in the publishing marketplace"

"No amount of revision could possibly turn this into a salable manuscript"


Oh well, the Turner Fellowship Award and 20 languages it being translated 
into later.....  LOL......



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Your missive also brings to mind Agent Smith's "sililoquoy" to Morpheus as
he explains that humans are a "virus": we may be rooting for Morpheus, Neo
and the "good guys" at that point, but Agent Smith is nevertheless largely
correct in his position.

Peace.
===========


If you haven't seen it already, Ian is referring to "The Matrix" movie, 
heh.  Go rent it (the 1st one).  Sit back with some popcorn and explore 
where you really live, lol.....

Yes, Ian, you're right, for all our "good intentions", it appears that we 
are no more than a band of ravenous locusts when it comes to taking care of 
a limited garden, for which there is nobody else but us to care for it.

Big Business, Big Brother, Big Deals.

Have eaten away at what "environment" is left for almost forever now it seems.

The clincher being that The Masses across the entire planet cannot rein in 
their Governments to rein in the Business and its endless destructive 
appetite nor irresponsibility toward "The Environment Etc".

"Environmental Impact" will always be a dirty word to them.  Just as it 
always has been.

It's just not as profitable to preserve the very things we need to even 
just exist on Earth as it is to simply ignore anyone and everything but the 
money coming in at the bank.

 From such greed sprang such terms as "Tree Hugger".

To defame a Conservationist, or Preservationist, or Environmentalist is the 
most fun those Assholes have had in years.

They're not about to give up such parlour delights anytime in the near future.

Nor the extra profits that can be made from ignoring running over anything 
that lives.

Machismo in high gear......  "I Am Power Itself".

Such is life.  Ummm, rather, such is death on a planet that once thrived 
with living things.

What's so interesting is that some of us can actually see it coming to an 
Extreme Conjunction in the not so distant future, while the rest of us tool 
around town licking ice cream and listening to the latest CD without a care 
in the world.

Somewhere inbetween are people endlessly trying to organize opposition to 
insurmountable odds.

People in all sectors, in all countries, surely laugh when one presents 
them with the possibility of George Orwell's books coming into a reality 
some day.

The only problem with that is that his writings appear not to be simply a 
literary achievement but rather a veritable prediction of things to come, 
among other "literary works".

When "The Resources" *really* start to "decline", such things as "Prison 
Camps" for The Masses are only around the next turn in the road.

There is simply no way that "Big Brother" is going to tolerate their Lip in 
the face of "extreme adverse conditions".

Kind of like now, but with a twist.........





Cheeseburger

- Where has the sparrow gone now that I need its song.

.