This topic will be interesting to all as a uniquely well supported central position on a highly polarized subject:
“I simply do not care about gun regulation, laws to regulate abortion, homosexuality, trans… debates, who marries who, or even this ridiculous charade of a presidential election as all of them are in our era. I care about action in the direction of the actual real root issues of society and civilization.
People need to quit sweating the small trivial stuff that will not have any significant impact on our future so they can find the time and energy to care and devote themselves to real issues that we all must grapple with.
This is about rising above our differences to focus our common efforts where we struggle with common problems that under rational, scientific, and logically clear representation can be solved quite easily and in manners that we can all enjoy and learn to embrace in process as meaningful and quality existence.”
A well meaning and conscientious colleague sent me this after I “liked” the post below:
“Brady, I often enjoy your comments and input, but your “like” of the guns thing this AM is mystifying.”
My Comments in order of most recent first:
“Walter, I appreciate the time you are taking to help me on this one.
I suppose I gave a half hearted like to the point that I do not think it matters much when in fact the heart is what must change not the clothing. In this case, if I remember right on the blip about gun carry, it is as if they are saying wear a gun and protect yourself from the meaningless presence of “terrorism”. None of that stuff is real to me. If everyone “wore” a gun—all other things remaining constant—I would be no more afraid to walk unarmed among them than if no one did, only I would want the deep issues of psychosis in society addressed. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.
I aim to address these issues by meaningful purpose and clear routes to technical helps and leadership that are not smoke and mirrors.
I would stress the point of “finding common ground”. I simply do not care about gun regulation, laws to regulate abortion, homosexuality, trans… debates, who marries who, or even this ridiculous charade of a presidential election as all of them are in our era. I care about action in the direction of the actual real root issues of society and civilization. Culturally divisive issues are irrelevant distractions and counter-productive in multi-cultural societies. The only thing I am bat-shit radical about is the need to put most of our grievances and wedge issues aside in the category of cultural un-importance to the whole.
People need to quit sweating the small trivial stuff that will not have any significant impact on our future so they can find the time and energy to care and devote themselves to real issues that we all must grapple with.
This is about rising above our differences to focus our common efforts where we struggle with common problems that under rational, scientific, and logically clear representation can be solved quite easily and in manners that we can all enjoy and learn to embrace in process as meaningful and quality existence.
I simply will not join the fight to regulate ourselves into the future. If we regulate, we had better focus it on government, police, military action, FBI, CIA, and most of all corporate and investment interests. In so doing, the fog will clear sufficiently to see how to create more meaningful jurisprudence toward the grassroots.
Now in our delusional state the first steps happen to be in establishing local community and organizational capacity at that level. In that mix we can accentuate the benefits of global collaborative and cooperative potential through tools of info-communicative technologies and tools streaming from this in simplified collective governance apps etc. The sky is the limit, and more gun, drug, abortion, marriage, regs that stir people to a frenzied division will not move the evolution of human society forward to deeper enlightenment, but rather backward to a reclusive dark age that we cannot afford to sink into in 2016.
Take it as you like, but I will ride the fence on these subjects if nothing else to remind people how ridiculous and inconsequential the topics are.
When I spoke to the local rednecks about the reality that “arms” in the sense of “right to bear arms” is most pointedly a term of power position toward government becoming increasingly corrupt or co-opted and that in 2016, guns do not do this, but instead give such a potential government a reason to fight and that with weaponry and sophistication that make guns look like the child’s squirt gun. The true arms of our time must be discovered collectively and are in-fact our ability to function as cohesive community of intellect and not to feign some individual or group power trip of self deception. If you want to have liberty you must show as a cohesive community that you can work together for sustainable society and environment and that you can solve your problems as they arise. From that point, together you can begin to speak to the national politic in ways that cannot be ignored. Short of that you look like a bunch of little kids in need of parenting by a government vastly numbered from urban population and lobbied by financial and corporate interests that will rise to increasingly “parent” those who cannot find the gumption to cooperate and “parent” themselves especially if they continue to foul the petri dish of their local environment.
To gun control zealots, the message needs to address their fears which are currently falsely presented as “terrorism” because of recent events. It is BS. It is instead the frenzy of the bandwagon they are on, trying to force manipulative arguments to the other side. Cut to the chase; when every willing gun owner has a permit and the unwilling build the black market akin to prohibition “gin” trade, will our world be better? It most likely will not, but will instead be more divided and less internally cooperative. Therefore, why waste the effort to take our society backward-these in terms of trust among multicultural society. Let us instead move on, un-regulated and instead find common ground at a higher level on issues that according to Pareto-Principle strategy considerations will create the meaningful evolution of society.
Does this long winded throat-sing come across as rational and above the noise? That is really all we need. We need to rise above the fog and confusion to focus on a few vital empowerment avenues that will help all of us while functionally transitioning much of the deeply corrupt power from centralized authority and production to the consensus of an empowered locally organized democratic society bent on environmental stewardship and knowledge based economy.
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“Guns do not need control at this time in America and Canada… or do they?
Walter: I appreciate your saying. I do not own a gun and am not of that crowd. However, I live amongst them and try to listen to their ideas diplomatically. They are much more coherent in person when they trust you as a neighbor. To me this is not an issue of importance like so many others so I would just as soon support a compromise as hear the debate and fighting words continue. It is an extremely unimportant issue to me. Rather, getting it to go away is my biggest and most important objective, so I can continue trying to rally concern, interest and energy behind creating cohesive local community, and ecologically symbiotic society at the local rural and semi-rural level.
I suppose I would rather see the problem go away without any new legislation as I live amongst those who feel an important security in their guns being close at hand and not easily taken away. I don’t have any desire or see any need to cause them to feel further pinched.
To story the subject (let’s understand this as a stint of journalism): In and amongst farming I worked with an amiable and conscientious Latino farm worker who I got quite a lot of time to visit with. He was, at the time, working very hard in the fields to make a fraction of the income he had made for most of his life thus far trying to escape the gun running circles that he was co-opted into from a very young age. His detailed and troubling stories further substantiate the known fact that criminals will supply themselves with unregulated guns.
In the US this issue is on par with the drastically failed experiment of “prohibition” which lead to an increase rather than decrease in violence, hatred, and mayhem. The same alcohol related law would have worked fine in many other cultures and societies, but not in America and not at that time. Alcohol literally does ruin lives and kill more than most drugs or weaponry on our soil and is therefor poignantly relevant to our current topic. I don’t feel we need the “drama” that now nor any dumb distractions that pull us away from the actual work of building an ecologically symbiotic civilization and converting from a long standing extractionist civilization toward an intentional evolution of ecological integration.
That work, which to me is paramount, if done right can give relevant pride and purpose of an organic nature to millions across the globe, especially rural where, in America most of the guns reside. In such, it will positively affect most of our modern social issues.
Furthermore; If it were possible, the most important gun and violent weaponry control measures would need to start with law enforcement, FBI, CIA, and government in general including Assumed Drone privileges, and covering the trend toward private prison and poverty nearly equaling criminality in our system. In the soup of all this organized crime at government levels, I think it is foolish to ask the “rednecks”, weird as their arguments sometimes seem, to submit to legislation that embeds and perpetrates fears of a future loss of their form of “insurance” and security in the far flung reaches of the countryside.
Giving credence to their feelings: In my community, when the economy slumped, the homes with brazen gun presence were not robbed while a long list of others were suddenly targeted. Those caught eventually were not gun toting folk, but rather meth addicts who did not own guns.
The naïve opportunist addicts, even in their drug addicted compromise of reason, naturally shied from the homes where a sudden break in may end in them being shot or apprehended by over zealous self protectionist country folk. In a small community, where the perpetrators grew up, it was common knowledge who was well armed and ready to protect their property and who likely was not. Most people in rural America are less afraid of guns than finding themselves in a compromised situation on a less frequented tract without one. That is the reality. I know of many county women who ride horses and go about alone in the woods and everywhere without fear because they have a gun in their pocket in case they run into the wrong sort of person. I know of others who travel unafraid with no guns not only near their homes and communities, but in the far reaches of the globe. It is a very clear cultural issue. It is curiously related to the way rednecks, who are tough as nails in big clunky-heavy work-boots, feel uncomfortably vulnerable in flip flops. They have learned for generations to lean on their particular ways for feelings of security. Just as I don’t own a gun, I also don’t own a pair of boots big and tough enough to crush a man’s toe, smash a knee cap, or survive being run over by an excavator.
Whether the fears and “insurance policy” are accurate or not statistically is less important than the widespread acceptance. The point that Switzerland, often heralded by gun ownership advocates, is highly regulated by the government is less important than the fact that those people trust their government and have a long list of reasons to do so while Americans do not trust their government and have a long list of reasons not to do so.
Therefore, I will not tell my neighbors to put their name on a list that they believe will someday put them in a compromised situation toward a government that neither they nor I have any confidence will be trustworthy next year or those following. First things first; let’s address the most pressing and powerful points of the nexus of modern knowledge while leaving aside the low impact high turbulence ones.
occupyconscience 