[backstop]

Pstarr -

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Regards,

Backstop

[galacticsurfer]

I would like to agree that buddhism or any other comparable religious tradition will help to give sense and pupose to life in times of "trial and tribulation" which are quite obviously coming to humanity. In the book of revelation, when I recall correctly, it says that the people try to kill themselves due to the pain God inflicts upon them for their sins and curse God the whole time.

Obviously we as a society are paying the price for making the whole ecosystem break down, thereby destroying our habitat just so we could have a short term pleasure. Of course our parents and grandparents are not to blame for that as they could not possibly know what they were doing (CO2= global warming)so cursing them is not reasonable but rather irrational.

I dreamt last night of my anger against being emotionally traumatized by religious fanatics in my childhood (US fundamentalist) and told my father in the dream where he could stick his Catholicism too. I though I had made my peace with this part of my life. Obviously I still need to work on it. Personally I believe that the current disaster of PO and global warming is a direct result of the reformation, the rise of protestantism, followed by secular humanuism and scientific rationalism and then capitalism(our protestant work ethic,etc.). This is our new ideology/religion, our western culture. We watch the Arab protests recently and bombings of 9/11 confused and hurt and defend our culture and say they are barbarians but of course it is our culture which has set up the possibility to destroy everything on our planet and get out of balance with nature to such an extent as is now the case. Why should they modernize? That is irrational. Our complete ideology has to be scrapped more than likely for us to survive. The Roman empire went down together with its religion and a new religion came on the scene which was based on the bones of the victims of the Roman Empire. Probably something similar will happen this time.

On suicide. I think often it is chemical or a mood of the day when I am depressed or have lots of pain and do not want to go on but i get out of bed and keep going. I used to read some Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist and survivor of the holocaust, who invented Logotherapy. Logo = meaning. Essentially he would ask patients one simple question "why don't you kill yourself?" they would mention a loved one or some work they needed to finish or an ideology/berlief in God, etc.. I think each of us has to answer this question and in the future everyone will have to answer this as the question will come up due to the hardship after Peak oil gets really going destroying everything we rely on. It is a legitimate question and each person will have to answer this for himself/herself.

I told my son as I walked him to school the other day what were the contrails in the air from planes when he asked and I pointed at the auto exhaust from cars and then explained to him (he is in the first grade) that he would probably never drive a car as by the time he is an adult the oil burnt in them would be mostly all gone. I told him he would probably have to haul his own water and heat it up with a wood fire, etc. Evry generation deals with what is available the best it can. We are no different. I hope my kids make the adjustment well.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger"