In my previous post, The Maldives and Tuvalu will be Alright Without People, I pointed out just such a fact. My reasoning was based on the not-so-recent research and conclusion of Charles Darwin into the creation and maintenance of coral islands, reefs, atolls and submerged sea mounts.
Now, recent measurements as described in the New Scientist prove this is so.
But there’s still no room for optimism because the reason that islands like Tuvala and The Maldives are suffering is because of human interference… How so?
A. Because people keep using the coral for building materials, and smooth out it’s natural deposits into runways and hotels for tourists and the like!
This far beyond what the coral can naturally replenish by accretion from storms and it’s natural growth.
Ancient History
One other aspect comes into the “coral equation”.
Coral almost disappeared following a major extinction event!
Dinosaurs and Coral
The KT event which wiped out the dinosaurs and left room for our own eventual evolution, also wiped out 90% of coral species.
Further analysis of the coral extinctions shows that approximately 98% of colonial species, ones that inhabit warm, shallow tropical waters, became extinct.
Prior to this, in the greatest known extinction event at the end of the Permian Era, far worse damage was done to corals. See link. Quoting from the article:
The event had a profound effect on the terrestrial ecosystem, which is still being felt today, a quarter of a billion years later….
Nothing resembling a coral reef shows up until 10 million years after the Permian extinction, and full recovery of marine life took about 100 million years…
Now this is serious shit! Because we are right now part of a mass extinction event, started by our own human activity, that will one day show up as such in the geological record.
Currently the coral can keep pace with increasing water temperatures and rising sea levels as it did at the end of the recent glacial period ~12k years ago.
It’s Just Like Bladerunner, And Not Just the Weather! Tears in Rain Bladerunner, the movie, based on an old Philip K Dick science-fiction story, was made by Ridley Scott from North-East England, someone I’m distantly related to. Made in 1982, it presents a very grey, wet, bleak future, heavily referencing Scott’s (and my own!) upbringing...
In the news today were two totally opposed news items on life and the human species’ power over life. Primates ‘face extinction crisis’ It’s in the title really. Humans (a primate), are gobbling up all the world’s resources so that loads of primates will be extinct soon. Firm claims first pet dog clones In a...
It’s ten years since Ashcroft “gave assurances” that he would reveal his er.. something or other, to William Hague – according to William Hague in his famous Paxman interview – See Below:
“Lord” Ashcroft Now
Today’s news is that ifthe tories win the forthcoming election, (and in a statement today, he finally confirmed he WAS a non-dom), Ashcroft has promised to become fully “resident and domiciled” in the UK. Try The Sun for more or the BBC.
“Lord” Ashcroft Conclusion
What this all means, of course, is that either;
Ashcroft lied to Hague back in 2000 when Hague put him up for his peerage,
Or that Ashcroft deliberately misled Hague about it all,
Or that Hague colluded in the deception.
I cannot personally think of any other routes that would lead William Hague to state what he so emphatically said to Paxman last summer. What says you? I’m all ears.
However, it’s blindingly obvious (yet strangely ignored) that he hasn’t paid tax to our nation for at least ten years - and yet has a weird magnetic control over some of our affairs….
Labour Donors
Of course, the Labour Party have their own share of grey donors; all the way from Bernie Ecclestone back in 1997 to the Indian born Baron Paul with his own peculiar mix of richness, dodgy expense claims and donations.
The Labour queue is pretty long in financial scandal.
The stench of hypocrisy is becoming worse.
But what burnt the honesty cake for me these last two days, was the flag of patriotism being bandied about.
“It is an election we have a patriotic duty to win because this country is in a complete and utter mess, and we have to sort it out.”
Which is a formidable statement to make given that the whole world is in a turmoil where the rich get richer and the poor have to pay for it, and yet Britain is not a “one-off” and actually, is “not that bad”, you know…
Formidable because the starving poor are now castigated for hunting for food after earthquakes by a corrupt, politically charged and motivated media who employ brainless hacks to tow the editorial line.
Yet in the UK, no-one starves unless through neglect.
Anyone in Britain can get medical treatment and care on demand, with waiting lists at a fraction that they were when the Tories were last in power…
It’s a strange definition of the word “mess” – but a typical usage of the word “patriotism”, by a squeakily clean, disturbingly smooth, scoundrel.
Want and Need
What we want and need is simple.
In a reworking of the slogan “No taxation without representation“, there should be a new slogan, that empathetically states that we do not need lobbying or interference in our governmental process from any person or organisation that does not pay taxes; i.e. it does not directly contribute to the material well-being of the country.
No Representation without Taxation!
This means:
No positions of power.
No quango membership
No parliamentary membership.
No political donations, directly or indirectly.
No lobbying or ‘briefings’, directly or indirectly.
In other words,
Pay up , or shut up!
We all have to, the poor, long-suffering, tax-paying, public.
America
This is especially important for us, as where America leads, we follow.
Within the last two months, a legal judgement was made that made it perfectly proper for any business to promote any political party. The logic was that if a company pays taxes, it should have representation, just as the founding fathers wanted.
The crucial irony is though, that grievous complaints have been raised in the USA that their due process of democracy was already being undermined by these huge corporations that now bankroll the electoral system.
Of course, the reason that the corporations won was due to the massive financial investment in lobbying that they undertook to ensure they won…….
Introduction I knew there was something really, really dodgy about that MyBookFace.net crap highlighted in this post the other day. Not only are they connected to some serious malware (as detailed in the posting), but they’ve an interesting line in popups!!! Google Treasure Chest Rises Yet Again! Here’s what to do… Go to http://mybookface.net making...
Harriet Harman For the last week or so, the highly paid Paxman has become obviously annoyed at the continuous devious behaviour from every politician he’s interviewed. They all say “we understand the public’s anguish” – but, as Paxman notes, they do fuck all about it. As many have noted, if you go into a shop and...
Last night, a washing-machine-sized lump of rock plummeted from the depths of space right across the face of Utah, USA, and right across the news screens. there are now quite a few videos on-line because the people of Utah are so paranoid (it appears), that the whole place, offices and homes alike, seems to be plastered with security cameras. Here’s one:
Omen?
The meteor didn’t ground but made the night sky like daylight, so much so that it tripped the street lights off! So much for the science – these things fall all the time, usually in the ocean as it’s the biggest target. That’s me with my science hat on!
But why Utah? And why just now?
Out of all the places in the world, eh?
As a Buddhist, I see it as a warning for the people of Utah to wake up and throw out the bad things in that state! It’s a warning of dire karmic retribution, with my Buddhist hat on.
Hope
Maybe some folk in the state see the same thing? It’s a religious place where people avidly quote Bible passages and look after each other. The Bible is full of such instances – y’know? Sodom and Gomorrah and such-like. So I hope some people have thought something like this, because if they don’t clean up their act soon and stop ripping the whole world off with their legalised criminal schemes, some form of retribution will undoubtedly unleash itself that’ll make the few FTC arrests we’ve already seen seem like an invitation to a dinner dance.
It may be a ‘god’ thing, it may be the retribution of ‘the universe’, or ‘Gaia’, but I can feel it coming. Maybe the Salt Lake will overflow to it’s ancient boundaries and swallow the whole place? It’s happened many times historically, and, despite the detractors, we are in period of rapid climate change with changing rainfall patterns globally. Last year, they had a big earthquake…?
Introduction I knew there was something really, really dodgy about that MyBookFace.net crap highlighted in this post the other day. Not only are they connected to some serious malware (as detailed in the posting), but they’ve an interesting line in popups!!! Google Treasure Chest Rises Yet Again! Here’s what to do… Go to http://mybookface.net making...
In this post Dangerous EffectiveCleanse – and Scams Too! two weeks ago, I mentioned how a scumbag webhost called byet.org is redirecting a client’s Amazon Shop clicks to that other pustule of conmanship called MyBookFace.net Checks Well I’ve just checked and it’s still on. (Someone wants to get that fixed!) At the bottom of the...
I’m often struck when reading the papers or news, to see the coroner’s verdict on someone’s death as:
Ending his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed
Dennis and Flora Milner said they wanted to decide when to die
Well they have to say something, it’s their job, but the phrase is very peculiar.
Take this couple, the Milners, who were found dead in their home on the 1st November, 2009. They look quite jolly, don’t they. Would you say that the balance of their mind is disturbed?
Current UK law says that it’s OK to end your own life, but illegal to help anyone do it. I’ve emphasised the word “current”, because not that long ago, when the spoken language of the people of Britain would be comprehensible to us here today, it was actually a capital offence to commit suicide! In other words, if you failed to kill yourself, the State would that ensure you got your wish, by hanging you. This all came from the Catholic and then later Protestant religions’ view of life and the hereafter.
This shows that the view of suicide is highly flexible!
Angst
A common view, is as I stated at the top; that someone has a mental problem. This is a tautology, of course. (Statement: ‘All people who attempt suicide are mentally ill.’ Question: ‘How do you know they are mentally ill?’ Answer: ‘Because only mentally ill persons would try to commit suicide.’) But more to the point, what is the mind?
Mind
People have struggled since the dawn of self-comprehension about “the mind”. Descartes said “I think therefore I am” which is as good as anything.
Nichiren, the Buddhist monk has said many things, usually by quoting other previous Buddhist scholars and the like, and with an alarming number of references to the concept of “mind“, “self” and “existence“. For instance, quoting Dengyo he states,
“The two phases of life and death are the wonderful workings of one mind. The two ways of existence and non-existence are the true functions of an inherently enlightened mind.”
Which is all fine and dandy if you’re not depressed, isn’t it? If you are feeling down, it’s as dust to the wind, isn’t it?
But the truth of what Nichiren is saying is that it encapsulates one’s concept of “self”, regardless of whether you are up or down with your life.
And surely, by knowing oneself, even if you are suicidal, then your mind is never disturbed because at that point you have a very clear idea of “self”?
Suicide Types
Value
There are various forms of suicide, neatly classified on this Wikipedia entry. What is clear to me, is that there are, in essence, only two types of suicide, and they both to varying degrees are to do with a lack of value to life, not a disrespect of it.
Respect is a concept based in honour and subservience.
Value is a concept that is transferable across many human activities and we all have a good idea of it’s meaning that is far removed from any concept of society, duty, kinship and a host of other things based around law and natural justice.
The first is when one perceives no value in one’s own life.
Here, I’m separating life and existence into two different things, much as all the world’s major religions do. (Most religions, in one way or another, have at their core the premise that when you die, in the physical sense, that you “go” somewhere else afterwards). In such a case, a person may be fed up with their lot and end it all for one of the reasons that Wikipedia lists. For example, men with families like myself, when getting their pension statement will jokingly say amongst themselves that “I’m worth more dead than alive!”. The truth is that this is a truly valid reason that many suicides will use and is a far closer statement of the reality of many in the Western World’s lives than they care to admit.
The second is when a person sees no value in other’s lives.
Such examples could be:
A soldier in Afghanistan
A soldier in WW1 or WW2
A suicide bomber in Iraq or Afghanistan
A kamikaze pilot in WW2
In each of these cases, the potential for that person’s own death is there precisely because they set aside for a period any value of the person’s life they are going to kill, even though there’s a good chance they too will die.
By doing this they wrap up my first reason within the second. It’s impossible not to!
Of course, they justify their reasons under the flags of patriotism or peace and the promise or expectation of a “better life” either elsewhere for themselves or their families or country.
Country-Person, Person-Country?
But what is the point of committing suicide for a country or a belief system like a religion? These are temporary constructs of our human minds. As Nichiren said;
There are not two lands, pure or impure in themselves. The difference lies solely in the good or evil of our minds. – On Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime – The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, Volume 1, page 4
and here;
It is like the case of a person who in a dream sees himself performing various good and evil actions. After he wakes up and considers the matter, he realizes that it was all a dream produced by his own mind. This mind of his corresponds to the single principle of the essential nature of phenomena, the true aspect of reality, while the good and evil that appeared in the dream correspond to enlightenment and delusion. – THE ENTITY OF THE MYSTIC LAW – WND1, page 418
So what we have is our own mind.
Who is to say whether it’s mad or bad?
Who is to say that life itself is a true reality, because every single thing we see with our eyes and perceive with our other senses, is actually processed information by, and a product of, our own mind!
This last is pure physics and logic. We live, and see things just like TV. A TV picture is just dots on a screen. Our mind converts them into news, trees, people, porn. But there’s nothing there, only dots. Similarly with Great Art. It’s just paint splodges. It’s our mind that makes the Mona Lisa enigmatic – not even Leonardo’s - it’s our own mind that does it!!!. Just like the expression, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.
Life and Love
Love
So who can put any suicide under any form of disdain? Who can dare compare the suicide of a soldier (usually dressed up as medals and bravery, and they are brave, make no mistake) dying for his or her concept of patriotism with the suicide of a spurned lover, dying for their own concept of life and duty?
It takes just as much bravery for a young girl to walk into a market place and blow herself up as it does for a soldier to run across open ground through a field of enfilading machine gun fire.
And it takes the same bravery for a spurned or deceived lover to end their life when they’ve been through all the options in their own mind, using all the logic at their disposal and deduced that a new, different life for themselves in the next existence is a better option than the current life, especially if, as I said earlier, they consider the value of their life to be greater when they are dead!
To go through all these acts of certain death takes the same amount of courage from everybody, in that I see no distinction.
‘Fucking love, ain’t it, messing with you, makes you unable to think clear.’
And that’s about the sum of it.
Let there be light
For the love of a woman, a man, your children, a country, a religion, a promise of a better future; these are all good and valid reasons for a suicide.
Question?
Now can anyone tell me a valid reason to oppose someone’s suicide?
Answers must be logically consistent. When you’ve got them, then either reply here or write them on a piece of paper and shove them up your arse.
I really don’t care. It’s my blog space and I’ll say what I want.
You may pile up dung and call it sandalwood, but when you burn it, it will give off only the odour of dung. You may pile up a lot of great lies and call them the teachings of the Buddha, but they will never be anything but a gateway to the great citadel of the hell of incessant suffering.
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The pope says sorry for getting it wrong over the holocaust and the nutty bishop The bankers say sorry for getting it wrong with their greedy decisions that lead to the current economic crisis Cricket captains say sorry for losing some games US car maker bosses say sorry for being crap UK Politicians say sorry...
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Introduction