| Don't you know promises were never meant to keep?
Just like the night, dissolve off in sleep I'll be your savior, steadfast and true I'll come to your emotional rescue - The Rolling Stones, from “Emotional Rescue” According to recent headlines: “Oil Prices Rise Amid Geopolitical Tensions”[1] and “US weapons makers celebrate 'benefits' from tensions with Russia.”[2] I guess we're in a Global War Of Tension. Yet it’s as if the non-events and news are manufactured to justify the deal$. Meanwhile, there’s no more Global War On Terror and that’s not breaking news because they switched it up years ago, re-branding to Great Power Competition. I bet hardly anyone knows that because the latter nomenclature sounds innocuous, not media-fear-blasted 24-7 like its predecessor or more recent covid and seemingly waning variants. As to the above headline's “benefits”: “Jim Taiclet, CEO of Lockheed Martin, also advised investors that the likelihood of further American involvement in Eastern Europe would be good for business. 'If you look at the evolving threat level and the approach that some countries are taking, including North Korea, Iran and through some of its proxies in Yemen and elsewhere, and especially Russia today, and China, there’s renewed great power competition that does include national defense and threats to it,' he said.”[3]And Raytheon CEO, Greg Hayes, said: “we just have to look to last week where we saw the drone attack in the UAE, which have attacked some of their other facilities. And of course, the tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.”[4]“Tensions” are THE reason given for more lethal hardware, thus potentially more terror, and more anxiety at the gas pump and/or heating the home. Aside from all the pomp and circumstance, the underlying issue is the economy (euphemism for greedy-control-mechanism) because in a dollar-driven world (though rumor has it the dollar's sway is waning... like the virus), money rules. The recent major shift of funds during virus-times has big pharma and billionaires raking in more billions while masses of people have lost jobs or small businesses. That polarizing effect has the economy trending toward, to spoof the credit card commercial: Dollar Store, almost priceless... For everyone else there’s MasterCard... as in masters and slaves in a two-tiered economy posing as a society, posing as a capitalist system with equal opportunity competition. With his often rude demeanor, Trump took the proverbial mask of democracy off yet now everyone's sedated by Biden's chill woke-speak. Meanwhile, the Center for Biological Diversity reported: “President Biden pledged to reduce U.S. climate emissions. But our analysis shows that one year in, his administration has issued one-third more public-lands drilling permits than Trump. The 3,557 permits handed out by the Bureau of Land Management in a single year beat Trump by nearly 1,000 — and come at a time when wildfires, droughts and storms are shattering ecosystems and making it impossible for wildlife to find safe harbor.”Political mask on or off the policy stays basically the same. And as a 2020 headline noted: “The U.S. Military Consumes More Fossil Fuels Than Entire Countries”[5] Reading between the lines and connecting the dots of global military industrial complex, oil, and wildlife, it's evident that the revolving door of bigwig back-scratching knows no limits, and doesn't care much, if at all, about wildlife finding safe harbor. Spiritual traditions and disciplines around this Earth all require self-discipline and developing the ability to know how to control one's emotions as well as when to feel them deeply. Yet the capitalist system preys upon human emotions, hence the incessant pitch that you need a brand new this or a spanking new that to be happy. They prey two-prong: 1) on desires, so as to control consumer markets, and 2) they prey on fear/anxiety/worry, so as to control what’s mostly beyond the common person’s control, such as production and use of lethal weaponry, and the pipelining and pricing of fossil fuels and other extracted resources that perpetuate climate change chaos business as usual. Occasionally, the people's voices, gatherings, protest or protector camps do create significant changes yet the scale currently tips in favor of the abusers. And speaking of abuse, here's a recent ludicrous attempt to censor literature because the book may stir people's feelings and make them think: “The Charles Dickens classic, ‘Oliver Twist,’ has been hit with a “trigger warning” by a UK university over concerns that its themes of “child abuse,” “domestic violence” and “racial prejudice” could cause “anxiety” and “distress,” the Daily Mail reported.”[6]Woke up, numbskulls, the book is calling out the System that's doing the “abuse,” etc.! The stronger people get by managing their own emotions and urges, the less that those who prey will have to feast on. And while it's challenging or virtually impossible not to feel tensions during one's day-to-day efforts to pay the bills, put food on the table, or protect a pristine sacred habitat, be on the lookout for those peddling savior promises and claiming they can soothe your emotional beast. One way to know the difference between the shysters and the sages was given some 2,500 years ago, as shown in the following bit of transliteration of the Tao Te Ching:[7] The ancients who walked the PathIn other words, stop tying to be woke, stop trying to change people, stop trying to dictate what information may enlighten people ― for when people are naturally content, their basic needs met and with an ability to appreciate, relate with and learn from the wonders of the natural world around them, they naturally find their way in a peaceful manner along an ever-wondrous Path of Living . . . . . . NOTES: [1] See here. [2] See here. [3] Ibid. [4] Ibid. [5] See here. [6] "Oliver Twist hit with content warning” [7] “Westward-Singing Bird: A westward-transmittal of the Teachings of Lao Tzu's Thou Dei Jinn” Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is an essayist and resident poet at Axis of Logic. Check out his newest book Moving Through The Empty Gate Forest: inside looking out. In addition to his work as a writer and small press publisher, he travels a holistic mystic pathway staying in touch with Turtle Island. His website is here. © Copyright 2022 by AxisofLogic.com This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article in its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you! |