Owl & Ibis - A Confluence Of Minds

"I just don’t know who to call out anymore" Jim Lassiter May 13, 2021 The lament of the hunter-gatherer now inside the walls Of the first city-state of Mesopotamia. The face-to-face accountability of his former life As a nomadic band member Now only a mythic memory. Personal accountability was now mediated By the written laws and money Invented and controlled by the elite. He was now civilized but something primal In his humanness had died. His now lonely soul subconsciously stretched Toward Bethlehem awaiting deliverance And a return to fraternité. But true salvation and restoration of his humanity In the arms of his Abrahamic brothers and sisters In their love of their one true God, Never came. After Rome, darkness fell. But comfort did not come in the Renaissance, Nor during the well-intentioned Age of Reason. Mammon Modernity was the coup de grâce Atop a slowly steaming mountain Of consumer trash. Now in the Information Age we are him. Rootless, powerless in th

How To Fight Authoritarianism Wesley K. Clark April/May/June 2021 Washington Monthly The approach in the above article is good for the international aspects of authoritarianism. But the greatest threat is from homegrown authoritarians, here and abroad.  Consumer capitalism’s affordable products and the patriotic drumbeats of our politicians touting nationalism have fueled our aggressive potential such that we can now only think nationally/tribally/racially. We in the US and the rest of the West are blinded from our better humanitarian brotherly/sisterly nature by shiny stuff and the myths of social Darwinism and human and white exceptionalism. We want our consumer comforts and privileges now and forever, and will fight and vote in authoritarians to help keep them. Freedom to remain within the comfort of our relative plenty is all that matters. Equality and brother-sisterhood, at home and overseas, are nowhere near as important to us.  It will take much more than a treaty with the EU an