Conquest, War, Famine and Death - I’ve had neighbors more fearsome; especially those who had underestimated death and its exigent reality - breath. However, pound for pound I’m going with HH the Dalai Lama’s Big Four picks for riders of the Apocalypse - Anger, Hatred, Ignorance and Greed. I’m siding with His Holiness over Christian dogma for practical reasons; the big four of the Christian Apocalypse are all employees of the Ruling Class, whereas Anger, Hatred, Ignorance and Greed are all accessible to the human heart - our control of which remains the only real freedom left to our species; besides I work better with things I can get my hands on. I'm weary from the predictable outcome of Conquest, War, Famine and Death which WorldEconomy Inc continues to flog as the last word in Apocalypses - still without much result; it just feels too much like some seedy Wall Street shell game. All the while we've been betting on Conquest, War, Famine and Death as the gospel apocalyptic scenario, we’ve only lost ground in the existential struggle toward the light - of course that could all change once WorldEconomy Inc uploads the latest version via their lackeys on Capitol Hill. Meanwhile smart money is on HH the Dalai Lama’s picks which are surging; industries sprouting daily to rid the world of Anger, Hatred Ignorance and Greed and just in the nick of time, for Jesus Christ may have been the last human being free of such defects; then again, I may be thinking of the Prophet Muhammad - I get the two of them confused along with Buddha and Lao Tzu.
In any case, what worthier ambition is there than enlightenment as Leonard Cohen points out . .
We were locked in this kitchen
I took to religion
And I wondered how long she would stay
I needed so much to have nothing to touch
I've always been greedy that way
. . I am Greedy, though not for the filthy lucre; untold wealth has achieved nothing close to what might have happened had that same obscene amount of money now sitting in offshore computer servers been thrown into the civil mechanism. Am I Ignorant? I am if I believe what I say or write could persuade you about greed or result in change within your heart. Everybody knows one can only change oneself, right? My personal weakness - Hate; I confess to hating cruelty, oppression, dishonesty, cowardice, etc, I hate any scourge to the human soul and will battle the best way I know how as sensei Bruce Lee advocated - “burrow into the heart of your opponent” and use its own weakness to destroy itself. So in this the second paragraph of a plan to overthrow great weaknesses in our species or at best pick some new winners, I find myself full with greed, ignorance and hatred - 3 major impediments for growth of my own heart. If you place stock in the wisdom of HH the Dalai Lama, as I do, you may also find his objectives nearly impossible to master . . enough to piss off any g_d fearing human . .
. . . oh fuck I possess all four defects in under three paragraphs. Too often I have been betrayed by my own Anger which I understand accomplishes little but to create greater space for itself. So if I spend time with something which apparently exists solely for the sake of its own existence - like anger, money, or the ubiquitous internet is that also greedy. The sad truth is we live immersed in a technology which can play and replay any given problem like the “sky is falling” repeatedly - chopping it up into unrecognizable portions to be parsed again and again through so many channels and platforms it becomes unrecognizable except as a dull hum demanding you be afraid of the falling sky or afraid of something . . then as though for emphasis, reissued or rehabilitated like a bad penny or radioactive politician. Consider the pustulating planetary tragedy of Fukushima - only the tip of an iceberg, or what used to be called icebergs but now the melted seawater of a radioactive maw of encroaching shoreline inexorably swallowing great swaths of historical human habitation. The ruling class zealots won’t tell you about Fukushima, but will say that the shoreline is shrinking; WorldEconomy Inc will then call for higher rent due to austerity and charge you more for less right through to the end. That and/or we the human race will again descend back into the ocean having desecrated the once holy realm of the "Great Spirit" on our way to fully appreciating the physics of disrespect and/or truly rueing our collective lack of spine.
To conclude a 5 Paragraph essay in three may be a useful skill when horsemen of any stripe are bearing down. I'm a geezer and am winded and wheezing, but if the spoon-fed inertia of social media is not enough to alert you that the time is nigh for dismounting from the impending apocalypse, whatever its form - try this fact; no war has ever stopped any war - ever. It is for this reason my target will always be something "other" than you; I will battle Anger, Hatred, Ignorance and Greed or Conquest, War, Famine and Death; it really doesn’t matter which exacta one picks, for however efficient I become in my argument; persuasive with my language or lethal with my drone - until I am able to vanquish the four horseman of my own heart, I’ll be neither conquerer nor conquered - just another serving of Soylent Green for those who can afford what WorldEconomy Inc is shoving down people’s throats as nutrition at the time. In this process of updating the apocalypse, we may have more enemies, and fewer weapons; it's hard to see dawn in this darkness when all we have for illumination is what can be found in the darkness of our own hearts.
We are a dying species - at each other’s throats - be it with family, neighborhood or nation; you can hear the wail from every meaningful call for harmony or peace within earshot. We are about to confront our mortality in ways which have never been known by our kind, up to and including the "anonymous incineration" suffered by those murdered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki nearly 70 years ago. However, rapture will not be part of the carnage we are about to face, for by her very nature mother earth will recover. She will - over time - stabilize, and like the magnificent starship she be, proffer new shoots of growth to whatever strands of DNA or RNA able to thrive in our dying embers just as she nurtured life in the molten cataclysm of our inception. What will likely be missing are we puny humans who unwilling, unable or just too plain stupid to stop hurting each other. There will have been no agent of misery more responsible for our exit than the engine of our own human heart. Conversely the human heart may be the last echo of our species heard by whatever heir survives - hopefully riding that sole sacred noble steed we have managed to recognize - love.
We were locked in this kitchen
I took to religion
And I wondered how long she would stay
I needed so much to have nothing to touch
I've always been greedy that way
. . I am Greedy, though not for the filthy lucre; untold wealth has achieved nothing close to what might have happened had that same obscene amount of money now sitting in offshore computer servers been thrown into the civil mechanism. Am I Ignorant? I am if I believe what I say or write could persuade you about greed or result in change within your heart. Everybody knows one can only change oneself, right? My personal weakness - Hate; I confess to hating cruelty, oppression, dishonesty, cowardice, etc, I hate any scourge to the human soul and will battle the best way I know how as sensei Bruce Lee advocated - “burrow into the heart of your opponent” and use its own weakness to destroy itself. So in this the second paragraph of a plan to overthrow great weaknesses in our species or at best pick some new winners, I find myself full with greed, ignorance and hatred - 3 major impediments for growth of my own heart. If you place stock in the wisdom of HH the Dalai Lama, as I do, you may also find his objectives nearly impossible to master . . enough to piss off any g_d fearing human . .
jts 30/8/2014
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