[ubercynicmeister]

Hi Matt! Loved your book!

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MattSavinar', 'B')art,

Shep has touched on something, albeit indirectly: the only people preparing for peak oil are (almost exclusively) rich white hippies who live in towns like Sebastopol, CA. where the average home costs $750,000 or in Willits, CA. where the average home is $400,000.

[killJOY]

uber, you've written some masterpieces here.

Just a few links to show that women are NOT incapable of critical thought and do not need the "assistance" of the PC police:

Gail E. Tverberg

Kellia Ramares

Sonia Shah

Wow, some of those names even sound "ethnic"! Let's pat ourselves on our backs now for our "sensitivity." (There I go again with those "ironic" "quote" marks.)

Yours truly,

Impoverished homo atheist dirtbag (and white), killJOY

[peaker_2005]

Political Correctness makes me sick to the stomach.

The ultimate irony is that it was clearly engineered to avoid the problem. Well, it's an elephant, and it ain't going away. Inventing new words for people does NOT solve the fundamental issue.

We can call people whatever they want, but unless we alter our fundamental disposition it means nothing. The new word for the person or group of persons becomes instead a form of slander and is again useless.

It's yet another symptom of selfishness; We want to be successful, but don't want to work for it, so we engineer false success.

I view PC'ness with the same contempt I view pointless NIMBYism and BANANAism (I concede there are circumstances where NIMBYism is valid, such as railing against a freeway).

[ubercynicmeister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('killJOY', 'u')ber, you've written some masterpieces here.

[deafskeptic]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MattSavinar', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Phebagirl', 'G')ood morning from Pheba, from the farm:
I am a woman, (hear me roar!), rof,lmao.
Actually, I find this kind of nonsense irritating.
the people who buy into this nonsense are making the assumption that women can not think logically, only instinctively, with feelings.
Actually, I can do both. I can reason my way through most problems.
I do have "feelings" I use for input into issues, but I have figured out that what I put down to intuitive thinking is usually just my brains way of processing information that has filtered into my brain.
Men and women do think different, but that doesn't mean that women only think with emotion, or that men are incapable of thinking with emotion.
What a bunch of silly new age nonsense.
Back in the hippie days I was a full blown hippie.
I didn't care about meditation, or higher thinking or any of that lunacy.
I just wanted to get stoned, listen to some Pink Floyd, and eat pizza.
Good grief,
Pheba

[deafskeptic]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mattsavinar', '
')Bart,

Shep has touched on something, albeit indirectly: the only people preparing for peak oil are (almost exclusively) rich white hippies who live in towns like Sebastopol, CA. where the average home costs $750,000 or in Willits, CA. where the average home is $400,000.

So true. She does have a point despite her New Agey pretensions.

That's why I say the solution to Peak Oil is to make enough money so you can move to a places like Sebastopol and Willits where there are lots of rich white people dropping $2,000 on permaculture intensives left and right. What's funny is these areas have lot of folks who claim to be advocates of cultural diversity, yet there are no black or brown people in sight. ("I see white people.")Weird how that works.

Fifty Cent says, "get rich or die trying." I say "get rich so you can take a permaculture intensive or die trying."

LOL, so true. I call ecovilliages yuppie villiages because it's clear only those who are rich can afford such villages. Welfare trash need not apply there.

I'd rather take my chance on making things happen organically. One guy's signature made me smile. It was "Plundering eco-villages."

[galacticsurfer]

Could we do a race and sex poll here to clear the air or is that BS?
What about religion and political party affiliations?
Or age and nationality?

PC is a cuss word because it is an overcodfied way of avoiding hurting everybody's feelings in a mulitcultural setting. In the end nobody feels good because hate remains under the surface but it is a sort of truce. After the end of the soviet union and yugoslavia people said and did what they thought right for them(new mass murders, ethnic cleansing, civil wars, etc.- hey Baghdad will now be completely separate along religious lines despite previous heavy intermarrying)

As a white anglo-saxon / Irish catholic New Age mid lifer I know by my reading of history that saying "Nigger" was once normal with all the baggage that went along with that(back of the bus, lynchings). Granted we have overdone it in the other direction without actually helping the situation in reality. People think one thing and do another(white people just move away from neighborhoods when blacks move in but do not protest- remember results for Yonkers New York-1 million dollars /day fines for trying to stop welfare housing). I read that white people in the south allow blacks near to them emotionally but not to climb the social ladder(black nanny in old south) and in the north just the opposite. This is maybe outdated but the intellectualism inherent in PC is typical for notherner intellectual feministic civil rights thinking. I read for example that whites and blacks in Kenya and Zimbabwe have very openly racist way of talking about one another which is in the circumstances quite healthy to vent steam. Too much hypocrisy to avoid true feelings(just call your girlfriend a stupid bitch and get kicked in the balls a few times to clear the air instead of going into extreme neurotic PC "british upperclass politeness" mode.) just creates more antagonism longterm.

Right now in Europe a lot of rethinking is happening regarding the left wing dominance on this agenda. What to do with the worsening permanent ghettos full of arabs and turks in light of growing native unemployment and accompanying racism? The pie is shrinking and the immigrant factory workers from the 60s are unintegrated undesirable baby machines.

Will hardship bring right wing governments like the murdered gay right wing politician in holland Pim Fortuyn who could use the PC language perfectly but support right wing causes and be antiimmigrant at the same time or perhaps like Haider in Austria or the crazy former interior minister of Hamburg(home town for me now) who was compared with Rudoph Giuliani for his heavy hand or Jean Marie Le Pen(or even Sarkozy-hungarian, and Jewish immigrant in France but right wing all the same).

Condi for Prez. PC(black, female, religion I don't know, unmarried so she could be lesbian) all the way but total right winger. This is how the system opts out their enemies by giving them power for correct behaviour.

After Peak Oil, PC will be a thing of the past and from under the veneer of enforced politeness will emerge the monster that we all really are. This is when true religion will shine through. Very few people sheltered jews in Nazi germany or Holland during the third Reich. God knows these heroes will be rewarded by God in the afterlife or have good karma(however you interpret it). This is where a proper balance between male rationalism and female soft touch (Yang and Yin) are important. Balance is always important. The heart and the intellect should be balanced out in every person regardless of sex. Remember Jesus first and 2nd commandments then ask "but who the fuck is my neighbour? but he is an asshole God! I'm gonna save my own ass first?" or what my old man(82 year old WWII vet with a soft heart for kids and old drunks) used to say as a joke "I love humanity, it's people I can't stand".

This is the end of today's homily from reverend sun in Pisces, Sagittarius rising. Please open your hymnals to the 14th verse of kumbaya and bow to the sun goddess(Namaste) before making a donation of arable land and fire arms to my favorite charity, the little sisters of charity(Mother Theresa) in Calcutta.

[MattSavinar]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('deafskeptic', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MattSavinar', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Phebagirl', 'G')ood morning from Pheba, from the farm:
I am a woman, (hear me roar!), rof,lmao.
Actually, I find this kind of nonsense irritating.
the people who buy into this nonsense are making the assumption that women can not think logically, only instinctively, with feelings.
Actually, I can do both. I can reason my way through most problems.
I do have "feelings" I use for input into issues, but I have figured out that what I put down to intuitive thinking is usually just my brains way of processing information that has filtered into my brain.
Men and women do think different, but that doesn't mean that women only think with emotion, or that men are incapable of thinking with emotion.
What a bunch of silly new age nonsense.
Back in the hippie days I was a full blown hippie.
I didn't care about meditation, or higher thinking or any of that lunacy.
I just wanted to get stoned, listen to some Pink Floyd, and eat pizza.
Good grief,
Pheba

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MattSavinar', ' ')my belief is humor functions as nature's morphine pump.

[galacticsurfer]

Yeah great article. Another longer quote:

Denial is futile: suffering will always breach the cautionary barricades that we erect around our fragile existence. The ideal is to find a still centre within that enables us to face pain with equanimity and use our experience of dukkha to appreciate the sorrow of others.

The failure to confront unpleasant reality can also be politically dangerous. In the Bible, those preachers who told people to look on the bright side, that God would protect Jerusalem and that everything would work out for the best are condemned as "false prophets". The prophet Jeremiah has become a byword for excessive gloom, but if people had listened to his dire predictions, the Babylonian army might not have destroyed Jerusalem. He was not being "negative"; he was right.

In our global world, we can no longer afford to edit out the uncomfortable spectacle of human misery. In the past, we have sometimes pursued policies that have resulted in great suffering, telling ourselves that all would ultimately be well. We have let conflicts fester until they have become intractable. We have supported such allies as Saddam Hussein, ignoring the atrocities they inflict upon their people. We are now rightly outraged by his massacre of his Kurdish subjects, but at the time we ineffectually turned a blind eye. Today we are reaping the reward of our heedless karma. The pain that we ignored in some parts of the world has hardened into murderous rage.

Perhaps the children who read Jacqueline Wilson's books are learning about the sorrow of others. The First Noble Truth requires us to acknowledge the ubiquity of pain, even when we are happy and successful. If we get a coveted job, other candidates are disappointed; if our country prospers, it may well be at the expense of other nations that are languishing in poverty and despair. In our privileged first world, we have been living in a bubble of false security that is not unlike the Buddha's pleasure palace. On September 11, reality broke in. If we turn our backs on the suffering in our troubled world, it will come back to us, in a terrible form.

Reality is internal and external. The quiet place within described above as "Dukkha" which we produce through prayer or meditation is basically the only way we will be able to survive the coming external madness without giving up or going mad or giving way to group pressures to take part in evil actions like the poor soldiers in Haditha on their 3rd tour of duty more than likely high on drugs massacring innocent civilians in a fit of rage. Nothing can withstand excessive group pressure or heavy ideological pressure in a huge crisis atmosphere other than an internal awareness of a greater reality beyond ourselves. Only this awareness will give us true sense of humour about the coming situation. We are like people all waiting on death row now. No atheists in Fox holes is an old saying but is it true? To call die off a spiritual growth opportunity is pretty sick of course but if I were dying of cancer and had not made my peace with God I would start soon. The world in the form of the machine we call capitalism/industrialism is fighting however against any change and in denial of this cancer it has created like a chain smoker. Total denial. The dinosaurs did not know they were gonna die off. At least we see what is coming and can try to adjust ourselves. Maybe some sort of human evolution beyond our current form is possible for our society or even physically as a species. Obviously in our form as greedy selfish darwinian animals we have little chance. Maybe as something like the supposed aliens we would be better suited to spare our environment and live as an advanced civilization at the same time. Is there really any hope for mankind in its current form?

[gigacannon]

The reason why there are no women around is because the men are talking, dear.

[Atlantean_Relic]

You mean PO won't let me get in touch with my inner Ivan the Terrible???