I know everyone says that "the truth hurts" It is a lie. The true alone heals us. What hurts if fighting to deny or ignore the truth. From this all our troubles come to us. At work, joining one's self to another in marriage; raising a child, facing our faults, in all things it is the lie that cripples our efforts. It is the lie that misdirects our energies. It is not Until a man or women fore swears all lies and all lying that they become dependable. That they can properly address themselves to the needs of our world. Once we abolish lying in our lives, our course starts to become clear to us. In the truth we can always find a way forward. Yet it might not lead to success For this reason we must abandon personal desire. Success and failure are a lie! Here is what is true. You. When you resolve your self to take upon your selves the burden of truth. The world changes for you. The world most often turns her back on you, here I speak of the world of men. But the workings of this world start to become clear. Lies are born when we seek for what we should not have, Weather this be power over others or an excuse to gain what belongs to another. Lies are born when we grow discontent with what we were given and cannot find an honorable way to attain what was never ours. People amerced in lies never see, as we lie first to ourselves. And it is ourselves that we first free when we forswear all lies. No one needs a brutal truth Sayer. To use truth to harm another is a lie. There maybe consequences to our truth telling. just as there is pain in lancing a boil. But both lead directly to a healthier situation. We can heal just about anything once we learn the truth of it. We can harm the entire world as we are seeing now, just by telling a lie.
I highly recommend that we, the enlightened ones watch "The Untold History of the United States" on Netflix. Why you don't even need to acquire a book, and better still one doesn't have to read it! Am I enlightened? Probably not but I like to learn. This series is by Oliver Stone, so you may not like it. Yet I find truth in it and respect Oliver Stone's work a lot.
At last we finally have a information source in Common! LOL I'll check it out over the week end. Thanks for the reference.
Not certain that much room for optimism is there. We simply must stop making and using the stuff. Scientific American, admittedly not the most reliable of sources, wrote that 90% of the world's: correction: SEA table salt contains micro plastic. Yum!
So what? Are we suppose to eat our plastic without seasonings? Color is great but without the flavorings why eat plastic at all!? Without sea salt would plastic not lose it's savor? personally I have a few troubling doubts about our plan to replace water with colorful displays of water.. but I guess we should see it though to the end before I go making a bunch of unfounded objections.
We live in a plutocracy. This means we are ruled by the rich. According to the recent IPCC report that says we have a lot less time to correct our damage to our atmosphere than previously thought, 100 corporations are responsible for 71% of carbon pollution. So this means that our Plutocracy really, really cares about destroying all life on Earth. They love the idea. Their model for capitalism demands the destruction of everything worthwhile. Otherwise, where is the PROFIT to be found?
It's not an all or nothing thing. Plastic is a fantastic material for a lot of applications: without it, you can also kiss goodbye to things like sterile dressings, tamper-proof medicines, and the computer you're reading this message on. Like everything, it's not the existence of the product that's a problem, but the overuse of it. Rubbish toys in cereal boxes and Happy Meals, tourist tat, fidget spinners, plastic carrier bags, excess packaging... this is the root of it. I haven't actually found the note cloasters cites regarding the 100 corporations. Last I saw, 59% of CO2 emissions came from coal burning, and a fair chunk of the rest from car exhausts. CO2 emission is one challenge. Plastics and seawater management are a separate challenge. Freshwater management is a separate challenge. Land management, regreening and soil repair are a separate challenge. Separate, but interlocking. We are not going to be able to achieve all of them at once. Reducing plastic use is a good initiative, but probably not priority number 1.
World war three will be fought on ten thousand fronts. On Land, sea and in the Air. We will be fighting for all we lost before we knew we could lose all. We will need new generals.New stratagems and tactics. We will be drafting every scientist and technologist we can find or create, re-tasking many of our industries to abolish what they created. War time shortages will hamper all our efforts. For a long time we will live in doubt and fear. But we will mobilize! Once we do, we will be changed men and women. We will know sorrows that fade only very slowly. But we will be led on by the hope and the promise of redemption. Set backs and failures will only strengthen our resolve for the task before us is a holy one. We will see migrations across the world and know this world in her pain. We will congregate in this places of greatest loss and bring to them the greatest relief. In the end I truly believe we will be Earth's redemption song. And the garden hearing our new song will once more open to us. And men will open to the garden we walked away from so long ago. At the end of all our sorrowing, We will be singing our redemption songs and returning the birds song back into the trees.
We can't stop making plastic, especially overnight. Yet the stuff is for want of better words, killing us. Does it have to?
Actually, no - we can continue to use plastics all we like. Just not the same type of plastics. There are additives that can be included in the formulation of common plastics that includes a stearate group. Stearate is derived from animal fat, and bacteria love it. There are plastics that can be made from wood, chicken feathers, as a bacterial biofilm, fermented corn oil, starch... all of which will degrade at various rates. These aren't without downsides - they're maybe less flexible, less moldable, less easily coloured, more expensive (though that will drop with volume of production), maybe have a bit of a smell, and can rot. Some of the above types of plastic accelerate the breakdown of other types, so material compatibility becomes an issue where it wasn't before. Plus, we have very limited production of any of these at the moment, so they're expensive. This doesn't really help with the build-up of plastic we have today, but that's something we can work on, after we stop adding to it.
But we MUST make plastic from natural gas and oil. It's written in the stars! It's good to know that plastics can be made to be bio-degradable. Thank you, Kaitain!
To be honest I don't really know. It seems like we were always going for stronger, better plastic that endures. Maybe we can spice up the formula to better serve and recycling world. Sorry K. I missed you more informative post.
Exactly this. Many of the alternative plastics from renewable sources have been known about for a very long time, even pre-dating the oil industry. Ironically, the properties we're now looking for (rapid breakdown, biological decay) were the exact properties our earlier generations sought to eliminate. There are some applications that will need bio-incompatible plastics - really just some forms of piping, industrial and medical uses - but for pretty much everything we need as consumers, gone in 20 years is just fine. Some good news.
Something I feel we need to remain clear about.The rich only have power because we abdicated our own power. We the people have pretty much always ruled America. We believe in wealth.we live for monetary gain and the prestige it for some reason brings. We are dealing with a population that can gather facts, but cannot seem to organize them into a useful picture of their world. We the people know: 1. The rich have all the wealth of this nation.. 2. We the people are getting a smaller piece of the pie every year. 3. The rich use race to camouflage their designs and prevent our natural unity. For all Americans are naturally untied by our common needs. 4 We have little to no medical. 5 Poor schools that produce student who can not look at a situation and analyze it to gain truth of it. In short no ones taught them how to think. They are told directly and indirectly that thinking is like really really hard and and should be left to smart people, like the rich. The common man has one uncanny ability. Self deception and depression. He can have and does have access to everything that can be known. But after 20 years of school Wonder and curiosity have been drummed out of their thinking. They honestly have come to believe that what the very dishonest have to say. What 5 minutes of thinking could sort for them has become beyond their reach. They have come to believe that a correct regurgitation of the common sentiment is... thought. We did not come to be divided by accident. "When ever unity cannot be established it is due to tale bearers and traitors interfering and blocking the way." I-Ching Few blame the masses for this situation. Why? Because they ARE the masses and there fore must be led. The fault lies not only with the masses but with those who pretended to offer them leadership as well But here's the rub. The masses will except leadership from any quarter. They can be led to ridicule the parents of their own war dead. To hate without let. And vote to deny funds for education. History has yet to answer the question of weather the common man can be brought to rule over himself in justice. Can he be educated to his proper place within a democracy? Can he be taught to contemplate the news of the day and properly sort friends from foes? Can he intelligently choose his own leadership? These questions have never been more in doubt that they are today.
I hope the EU's rules really amount to a betterment of our pile of detritus. Critical thinking is anathema to the corrupt, selfish liars at the top of the heap. It hasn't been taught to public school kids for decades. We need to change so much in our daily lives and our relationship to power. "They" are making this more difficult by the minute. Air quality? Acceptable. Future? Bleak. There is hope. Some people say hope is for fools. Hopefully this isn't true.
Oh I disagree! As #1 son started secondary school this year, he was most surprised to discover that a full lesson each week (out of 25) is called "values and ethics." We're having to put some effort in to subvert that nasty little piece of social engineering. They're trying to teach the boy how to think, but using a flawed framework, in which facts can be used without context, and evidence can be discarded if inconvenient. Sadly for them, he's seen something of the world already, and so can tell when they're spinning bull manure. So the problem isn't that they're not being taught how to think - they are, and very effectively. The problem is also that they're being taught what to think, and that's where the trouble starts.
Teaching critical thinking fell out of Corporatic favor decades ago. Can't have new citizens criticizing Our Great Plutocracy! At least that's true in this Great Former democracy. Dunno the story in Blighty.
