originalsaladbasement-blog

[originalsaladbasement-blog]

Ryan Kramer | April 23, 2016 | Eugene, OR 

And we got in the car.

    The question: is the world really dying? Is the world sucking down its last breaths as we speak right now? Are we the last generations? Have all of our pollutants and our children  and our plastics and all that shit caught up with us so soon? And by world—the death of the world—I mean of course global capitalist civilization. I don’t think the earth will die—it won’t until our sun explodes or something. Maybe it’ll hibernate for a long while after the nuclear war and under the clouds of atomic winter. Something will survive. Life has a funny way of holding on- has a funny way of wanting to survive. Perhaps the strongest of our urges is just to keep going. Motivation? What motivates this?

    Anyway- yeah—I’m pretty sure we’ve fucked ourselves. People are done for. We’re on a sinking ship. I am another passenger on this sinking ship. So are you. If someone asks Is there a doctor on board?—I am not a doctor—I would say Hey! I’ll help. I know cpr- you can share my pills with me. But in the end I know it’s a kind of shitty position. It’s a bad mindstate to be in. Robert Heinlein wrote “Its better to be an optimist. The pessimists are more often correct but the optimists have more fun. And since neither can change anything…” I would have to agree with this but I have this funny urge to be correct and logical. I’m not being facetious here- it’s a pain in the ass. I enjoy looking at the worlds of religion and mysticism and all that shhit this way- Its all a big metaphor- Its all a big poem. Any belief I have is just a very nice way of touching on something. A very nice way of influencing my mind space so as to make my world a better place. Its not logical. Its not supposed to be. Its not logically true. It’s a poem.

    And I guess what I’m trying to say is that my poem for ethics- for how to conduct myself in (seemingly) less spiritual matters—is Fuck It. We’re all dying. Do what you wan’t. Be nice to other people while you’re doing it, but do whatever the fuck you want. Drive a big car. Enslave people. Eat cruelly handled animals. Fly all over the world being an American disturb the natives and scare their children into buying Nike and Abercrombie and Hollister and all that bullshit. Shop at wal-mart, eat at MickyD’s if you want. The world is dying- there is no use trying to save it. Watch It burn and if it makes you happy throw a fucking can of gasoline on the fire.

Jesus- do I really feel this way?

    It logically makes sense. If the world is fucked—and I think it is—then it doesn’t matter what we do. Right? That’s logical to a degree. But logics are fucking heartless. All Paths Lead To Death. Choose The Path With Heart. That’s it. That’s all. Maybe we are on a sinking ship. Sure, it could be true. And maybe when the ship sinks we’ll all fucking die and there will be nothing left and it will be a barren wasteland or maybe it will just be the humans that die and the world will be back to the garden of eden. The animals will rejoice. The king is dead. Or maybe the ship will sink and the people will remember how to swim. Is this metaphor a bit obtuse? Maybe capitalistic culture will crash and burn and the people who survive it will learn how to live in a culture that doesn’t attach a monetary value to everything. That puts a price on a can of soda or on an hour of work and forgets to put value on things like people, air, forests… the good stuff. They are priceless. Yes, they do not deserve to have a silly price tag put on them of course- its subconscious. It’s subconscious that  when value is attached to material things everything material is viewed in that sense. More or less. And because there is no monetary value on clean air- there is no penalty for abusing it- there is no dollar sign attached to the beauty and flavor of impeccably clean air. It isn’t possible. It’s priceless. And that very fact is what lets us abuse it. In a system of capitalism the priceless things become valueless things.