Whistling in the Dark
Sylvia Shawcross
In the morning, the bobolink sings. It always heartens me—listening to the morning chorus of creatures waking up to the sun singing. Imagine. When was the last time any of us woke up singing to greet the day? Probably the mad, the newly-in-love, those who sing for a living and perhaps the children who thankfully if not hopefully know no better yet.
I’m remembering a day when people used to whistle a tune on the street as they went about their day. There weren’t that many who did but there seemed to always be one on every busy street. It seems like such a foreign concept now. Perhaps people don’t even know how to do that anymore. A dying optimism. At least here, in this fair country where things feel dark, if not in our personal lives then at the edges of the society we live in.
We have been muted and mushed into banal conversations that we might not offend or find ourselves in trouble somehow. That is, if we can have any conversation at all, traversing the cell-phone-ear-plugged-peopled landscape we live in now. When we chance on a conversation we can discuss the weather but not so much why the weather is the way the weather is. We can discuss Kate Middleton perhaps. We can complain about the high cost of groceries certainly, knowing that new reports indicate 25% of Canadians can’t afford to eat but we can’t complain about government corruption.
Well, most of us won’t, in civil society. We don’t know where the other one stands politically. We learned that from the Covid response—the harsh judgment and alienation for some and the high-handed sanctimony of others. And then of course, the naive and trusting, trying to do the right thing. It was a devastating mishmash of some of the worst and best traits of being human, those days.
Being quiet seems to be the only thing to do these days. My father-in-law, a Polish farmer, advised his children to “Mind their own business and follow the crowd.” He would know. Captured by the Nazis in WW2 for having been found using a hidden radio he was sent to a German work camp. He was hard-pressed to discuss the experience but he remembered a dream wherein he was using a plough and it was ploughing across the ice of the Atlantic to faraway shores. And that is why he arrived here to a difficult life of prejudice from others and hard work in trying circumstances. He would come to believe that it was imperative to find a job with the government; a task he would eventually accomplish. And that is how it was. Working for the government, with its high pay, retirement guarantees and generous benefit packages, was the dream of every struggling immigrant. It is not much different today. Security. Freedom from fear.
If you look at voter sentiment in Canada today you will see a sea of blue (conservative) stretching from one coast to the other. In the Maritimes there are a few pinpoints of red (liberal) and north there are a few swathes of orange (New Democratic) and there just right of centre is a splot of red… like a dollop of crimson paint artistically deliberately dropped. And that is the National Capital region of the country.
It was into this red splot that the trucker’s convoy of 2021 would arrive—a totally different world where everyone and their dog worked for or depended on government. The truckers, living in the real world, representing Canada’s majority working class dealing with real world problems would not for the most part be welcome. It would only be the National Capital region that would react this way. Anywhere else the reaction might have likely been entirely different, a reality witnessed by the number of flag-waving cheers on overpasses across the country as the truckers passed on their way to poke the bubble of those living here.
And here is where I sit myself. I’m sure quite inadvertently, but here none the less. It gives me, if not a lot of grief, then a certain perspective for both sides. I will always side with the truckers. On that I do not waiver. I recognize honesty when I see it. Yet I can sympathize with the bureaucrats to some degree. They know a different world altogether and often do not understand the struggles of those who are not so employed. It is simply not within their scope of experience or understanding. Many work very diligently and very hard for “Canadians” but do not know or understand the vast majority. They work on prescribed objectives to make the world perhaps a better place but fail to realize the starting point is very different for some. They fail to realize this because they live in a bubble of their own. It is an easy thing to do when living in this region. There are few who do not live that life and few who do not have friends, relatives and neighbours all dependant on government jobs. There are few who would criticize the hands that feed them.
Since our present Prime Minister took office the federal public service has increased by 30% and 70% of those employed make over $100,000. If a household is bringing in over $100,000 these days, they are considered extremely fortunate if they are not in a frightening mortgage situation. For them, inflation and restrictions have minor effects on their lives. Not so for the working class.
For a bureaucrat, life can and often does improve with government initiatives and very little sacrifice is required. For others, not so much. When all these green initiatives are coming out without the forethought of providing for those whose livelihoods would be immediately and irrevocably threatened it feels more like a crime than anything else. It feels like tyranny. And really, how is it not?
If you can stand outside the bubble of protection (which is what government jobs provide) and look at the various realities that people are facing and have faced across the country—the number of people using food banks, living in cars, lost in despair from a life they had no choice about: How is it not tyranny to expect them to conform to a reality they had no vote in? Even the poorest had a least that hope and expectation. It was a “good transition with opportunity” is what they were promised—when the Green Dream was sold to us all.
And is still being sold. And we are hearing now that many of the “soon-to-come green” jobs promised may actually not be going to Canadians but to the people of the country of origin who invest here… the battery factories of Quebec, the car factories of Ontario e.g. How is that possible? In a fair and democratic world? Is it possible because those making the decisions live in a red splot in the middle of a sea of blue? They never learned how to swim that sea? They continue to work obliviously in their bubbles perhaps hoping for the best? Perhaps it is not a democracy anymore?
We Canadians, reeling from the indifference, can just be grateful that there are government whistle-blowers. We have gone from listening to whistling tunes on the street to whistle-blowers. It is to these people we possibly learn why things are the way they are turning out. Those who risk it all really. They are the brave now. And to those we must throw whatever lifelines we have. Their courage to criticize the hand that feeds them is a courage of extraordinary character in times like these. We can only thank them. We can only hope they do not have to learn any lesson about “minding their own business and following the crowd.” If in fact that is what happens to any more of them, then we will know what kind of country we are living in. And we don’t want to go there. We want to hear whistling on the street again and not sirens. That is what we want.
Earworm:
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
Dare I say it? The only whistling we’re likely to hear from here on out is Whistling Past The Graveyard.
It seems to me humanity falls into two categories: the 1% that truly wishes to end the world; and the 99% that isn’t quite sure if that’s the best way to go.
The 1% that you mention, assuming that we are to believe there is global population of 8 billion would be 80 million – larger than the entire (official) population of UK.
In reality the power resides in far fewer people’s hands. On top of that are millions of enforcers and enablers globally which for the most part are unwitting useful idiots.
The controllers and loyal minions do not wish to die, in fact, they wish to be immortal. Hence, their research into transhumanism as a solution to mortality. The 99% plus of humanity fear death, which is why Covid-1984 paralyzed them with fear and a desire to survive. It also explains why the fraction of 1% with the assistance of the enforcers can control the 99% plus.
As far as the world ending, I believe it will not happen. However, it does not mean to say that a serious attempt at culling the human cattle will not be attempted. Ironically, the very fear of death by the plantation slaves stifles critical thinking and it prevents positive action, the lack of which may actually result in their premature deaths through being culled.
Them Israelites have put a name to the policy, it’s called “mowing the lawn”…
The Author has a very good taste in music.
Remember the birds is singing, each tree whistles when the wind blows through the leaves, the frogs quacks, the dogs barks, a.s.o.
Each living organic creature contributes with sound and music to our connection with cosmos and our earth.
Thus also we contribute to the whole organic orchestra with classic music, opera, ballet, and singers and whistlers with an extraordinary voice to the beauty of God’s Creation!
Dialling up the desired answer from ‘The Science’ (TM) Part 1 million:
https://www.psypost.org/extensive-gaming-shows-no-harm-to-adult-psychological-well-being/
Let’s have a look at the sample size… 414:
1) It’s ridiculously small on which to base any conclusions.
2) Yet again, it’s a thinly-disguised variant of one their favourite Occult numbers, this time it’s 54 which is 9×6 or three lots of 666. See also Studio 54.
But obviously spending lots of time playing computer games is just brilliant for one’s health because ‘The Science’ (TM) says so.
P.S. Another contrived stunt in the UK election, this time Sunak walking out of the D-Day memorial. It couldn’t be more calculated to alienate his voter base…. so that’s exactly what it was. Meanwhile, one of those helpful “thinktanks” says there’s going to be a massive tax hike whoever wins the election so that’s how much one wing of the unaparty winning this matters in reality.
Rishi’s getting de-mob happy. The statement about not politicising his leaving early was truly pathetic.
A cynic might say that the Tory’s ‘gaffes’ and Reform splitting the centre right vote was an obvious ploy to install the labour side of the uniparty.
What if the vote goes a la brexit and Reform win ?
The globalists have made this world a tragedy.
And with each step we are moving further into tragedy, and at the end of this tunnel is the death of all life on earth.
They have cut the world into fragments with narratives and beliefs, to direct seventy percent of the energy of humanity into war.
War seems to be the only god.
It is a death cult!
Humanity is just a sacrifice, either in the name of nationality or in the name of ideology, greed or religion.
Whatever the name may be, it seems humanity has to be slaughtered.
Only through meditation can we defeat the politicians, and the politicians need to be totally defeated.
Their power has to be destroyed forever.
Their nuclear weapons have to be thrown in the Atlantic and in the Pacific.
And if they want to jump in with them they can jump also, because they are the greatest criminals in the world.
Ordinary criminals may murder somebody and you take them to the electric chair.
But with these blind politicians dominating the world there seems no hope.
Until this moment they think they are beyond all international law.
That may soon change?
The whole humanity is invited, because this is a decisive moment, this is the time when a great revolution is needed, a revolution against all politicians, without any discrimination of whether they are socialist, communist, fascist, capitalist.
Whether they believe in democracy or they believe in dictatorship, it does not matter.
For the first time all politicians are standing together to destroy humanity, and if we can make humanity free from their insane political rhetoric.
They are finished.
What is the need to destroy so many innocent people for a few idiots who cannot come to a solution.
Seeing perfectly well that the time is becoming shorter, and any accident is possible, then there will be no humanity left at all.
Time is running short.
And you cannot trust A.I. to solve this.
They are machines without consciousness.
Knowing oneself is consciousness.
Remember, A.I. can never know itself.
A.I. is not alive.
Consciousness is life itself – intelligence.
It is not accidental that every developed society is replacing man by A.I.
A.I is programmed, obedient, never subversive.
Data use, information is the intellect of A.I.
Intellect is thinking.
Consciousness is discovered only in a state of no-thinking.
No-Mind.
With intellect you can know everything except yourself.
Your consciousness every moment – Is life itself.
Know yourself.
Be yourself.
The majority of humanity is completely closed, not even a single window of consciousness is open.
It is almost the same as if a blind man denies that there is sun and there is light.
As far as he is concerned, he is right.
He has never seen the sun and he has never seen the light.
Politicians are the lowest kind as far as consciousness is concerned, they also have never seen the light.
They are clever, they are cunning, they are mean, too, and they make every effort for a single goal, how to be more powerful.
Their only desire is for more power, not for more peace, not for more being, not for more truth, not for more love.
And what do you need more power for?
To dominate others, to destroy others.
Yet there is no power in human stupidity to prevent the evolution of consciousness.
It is impotent.
It seems powerful only because the majority of the world has been brought up in it, is conditioned for it.
People have been prevented from growing up from their very childhood, but it cannot prevent evolution of consciousness.
Once the movement for evolution gathers momentum, it may change the whole face of the earth.
And it is time that it should gain the momentum.
No-Mind is the greatest alchemy there is.
No-Mind is the revelation.
Oh dear. The Telegraph assures us that “World War 3 has already started”. Well, covid has ran its course, the various “new pandemics” never stuck, and climate change never fooled anyone. UFOs and deadly asteroids didn’t even register. Ah well, back to old faithful. Don’t you know there’s a war on? You can’t expect luxuries like food and water and free speech etc.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Matthew 11: 28-30
From one new world order to another.
Well I wake up whistling and singing, regardless. Thanks to my Lord.
The precipice is close.
The nihilists rule.
https://brownstone.org/articles/nihilism-strikes-with-a-vengeance/
A tribe of selfish, hubristic old men (mainly), who are approaching their own mortality and are determined to take down billions of innocents with them.
Nietzsche was right.
Why would the powerful want to destroy the world? They are living large – private jets – great food and wine – the best hookers etc…
They must have a reason… it’s not a nihilistic whim
Could this be the reason?
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-ultimate-extinction-plan-uep
An Oldie but a Goodie…Now available in meme:
In 1997, 14 years old Nathan Zolner got 43 out of 50
9th graders to vote in favour of banning dehydrogen
monoxide, also known as water. The hoax was a
Science Fair project, which he titled “How Gullible Are
WE ?” He not only won the Science Fair award, but
also inspired the term “Zolnerism”, defined as “The
use of a fact to lead a scientifically ignorant public
to a false conclusion.”
“We have lost touch with the cosmological order. The precise hour of the day is more important to us than the diurnal cycles. We’re so busy worrying — Will I get to work on time? Will I avoid rush-hour traffic? Will I get to watch my favorite television program? — that we have forgotten the spiritual import of the daily moments of transition. The dawn is mystical, a moment to experience the wonder and depth of fulfillment found in the sacred. The same is true of nightfall, and of bedtime, when we pass from consciousness to sleep and our subconscious comes forward. Children, in particular, know that bedtime is magical. Their parents talk to them in a different way at this time: tender, sensitive, quiet.” Thomas Berry
Singing To The DawnThomas Berry On Our Broken Connection To The Natural World
https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/317/singing-to-the-dawn
This is interesting. Because he reveals himself here with a separation that many many people do.
He thinks he can separate Nature from God, and make Nature a separate item mankind should examine and could focus on without God as mankinds own personal little hobby .
But Nature and God is the same. If people learn to know God they get all the rest for free. Therefore the link to God is the most important
“Can we understand the Skywoman story not as some artifact from the past, but as instructions for the future? In return for this gift of the world on Turtle’s back, what will I give in return?” Robin Wall Kimmerer
Returning the Gift
https://grateful.org/resource/returning-the-gift/
CNN Explores “Violent Earth” in Original Series Premiering Sunday, June 2 at 9pm ET/PT
https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2024/05/08/cnn-explores-violent-earth-in-original-series-premiering-sunday-june-2-at-9pm-et-pt/
“To give you a feel for what this looks like, consider the Inuit of northern Canada. An old woman was interviewed one time and the interviewer asked, “what’s the worst thing that’s ever befallen your people?” This is a deeply indelicate thing to ask somebody from any kind of traditional culture, and it was clear to him that she didn’t know. So he started suggesting things to her. In fact, what she was trying to do was politely avoid answering the question. He kept prompting her and finally she said, “I think it was television.”
Coming of Age in Troubled Times: An Interview with Stephen Jenkinson
https://abeautifulresistance.org/site/2021/4/18/coming-of-age-in-troubled-times-an-interview-with-stephen-jenkinson
Pretend You Are a River
https://derrickjensen.org/endgame/pretend-you-are-a-river/
My television has been in the garbage can now for 10 years, so I think she was spot on. But off course its difficult to say to a TV man up in his face, on TV :-).
”Only the sense of the sacred will save us.” Charles Brandt
The Oracle of Oyster River
https://hakaimagazine.com/features/the-oracle-of-oyster-river/
Speaking of Nature
https://orionmagazine.org/article/speaking-of-nature/
Why Canada’s boreal forest is gaining international attention
https://thenarwhal.ca/why-canadas-boreal-forest-is-gaining-international-attention/
Thriving Together: Salmon, Berries, and People
https://hakaimagazine.com/features/thriving-together-salmon-berries-and-people/
P.S., the exchange of posts to which I refer was located near the bottom of this forum.
Another day, some more kids and civilians sheltering in a school bombed to death (and more maimed) by YHVH’s righteous army defending the holy land from terrorists
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-bombing-kills-dozens-sheltering-un-school
In the bible, what you call in a despicable way “YHVH’s righteous army”, it call the same group “the false Doos”.
Correction: “The false Doos, the Pharisees, bombed yet another school with children inside.
“Thou shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain: for Yahweh will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” Fixed.
“Since our present Prime Minister took office the federal public service has increased by 30% and 70% of those employed make over $100,000”
The public sector has been growing for decades in many countries, not just Canada.
It is a feature, not a bug. The bureaucracy grows creating a culture of dependency while making taxpayers lives a misery. Unproductive people employed by national and local governments. They are an expense and divert resources away from infrastructure, such a roads, railways, schools, hospitals and investment in economically productive activities.
These same people on the government payroll are the ones gleefully assembling the digital gulag: spying on citizens, removing freedoms and enforcing draconian policies. They have a vested interest in ensuring the system survives and thrives. They will not buck the system or hold it to account. It pays their bills. It is a beast that consumes everything in its way and its non-productive nature will eventually consume its host, the hard working taxpayers.
Public sector employees add to the budget deficit which the private sector has to fund. Eventually, the system will collapse under the weight of the debt, but in the meantime the bloated public sector will continue to grow, misallocating and overspending resources through mismanagement, incompetence and ‘following orders’.
What we have come to know as the ‘welfare state’ has a whole army of additional claimants; those who work for the State itself. They will do whatever they are told to do, without question since their livelihoods depend on it.
The sheer number of people dependent on the State, whether employed by it or living on benefits (welfare) of some description makes those people obedient, easy to control and malleable. This did not occur by chance, it was by design.
Good points as usual. As “the state” expands, so too does the control over the farmed, taxed, brainwashed slaves.
I despise government employees (there’s a few here, always misdirecting), they are just as responsible for enforcing and enabling the tyranny, violence and criminality of the unlawful governments, as any of the lying, Freemasonic actors passing themselves off as (S)elected officials.
“I was just following orders” (or collecting a paycheck) doesn’t absolve them of the physical imprisonment (forcing “citizens” to reside in one country) systematic poisoning, genocide, racketeering, disinformation, fraud and theft committed by all governments.
What would the world be without birdsong, the music of nature. We owe so much to these little creatures. Birds will probably still be around when we are long gone. Just today I read, and brace yourselves, that the chicken is the new fashionable pet.
Especially when you consider what we did to their poor ancestors. We even robbed them of their eggs. Only a chicken living free in a human dwelling is a truly humanistically respected one. I know I’m slipping into irony again, but how is this avoidable?
i often hum rather than whistle
often go ho hum after my comments are pended pending
vaporized.
how about an off off guardian
limited hang out
tally ho
If you are left in pending for a while sometimes I honestly have no idea why, but try having a little patience. 🙂 A2
By the way, I noticed something. Community strengthens the will to survive. Something of you is internalized in us and allows us to live on. Roger Whittaker has sung many German songs without being able to understand German. But many Germans can understand English. And learn from your experiences and thoughts.
I am currently experiencing a truly existential crisis. No German will really help me. I’m in enemy territory – my landlord wants to get rid of me because a non-German (Pole) is spreading lies about me. I’m still doing my best to suppress this fate, but I can’t escape it much longer. In a few weeks, I’ll be on the street with no roof over my head. I wish I was in America. At least there I am a stranger among strangers. Over the last few years, I have adopted the community that the English-speaking world offered me as my comfort zone. I don’t know what to do next and bury my head in the sand like an ostrich.
Sorry about your predicament. Do Germans have a Craigslist type site, where you can find another place/room to rent? Better get on that. And get your security deposit back before you move out.
I’m sorry I only discovered your question now. Thank you very much for your sympathy. There are probably some websites where short-term accommodation is available at completely overpriced prices, but in my mid-50s and with no work at the moment I’m out in the rain, I would only move into student flatshares if necessary, but they won’t even take me.
My only brother died of a tumor last year, I’m convinced because of the Johnson & Johnson triple “vaccine”, and if the landlord applies for eviction like I did, does that mean a new lease will ask if an eviction is pending on the last apartment? If I deny this untruthfully, and the prospective landlord discovers this, the entire lease is void. You might be wondering why all this is happening? Unfortunately, I have to point out that Germany has a completely different real estate relationship than you do.
This goes back to the destruction of the major cities during the war, and after the war certain mafia-like rent sharks established themselves, some of whom own entire residential districts. Private home ownership has been rare in Germany ever since, and now that all communities are being flooded with so-called “refugees” (asylum industry), all living space has been completely rented out. Germany is the country with the most homeless people in Europe, ahead of France.
Unfortunate you have such absurd laws in Germany. I always wondered why Europe has such low home ownership compared to the 5eyes. It’s interesting that it’s a result of the WWII orchestration to enable this type of real estate monopoly and racketeering. Sorry about your brother.
Thank you very much for your sympathy. What you say is true. Germany is not the richest country in Europe, as is repeatedly claimed, but the poorhouse (apart from a handful of egotistical millionaires).
And this can be seen precisely from the fact that the average wealth of Germans (East and West together) is less than 100,000 euros. In contrast to Cyprus, for example, where it is 240,000 euros, because practically everyone there owns a home.
But the Germans are complete idiots who are now only paid 60 percent of their wages, the rest is squeezed out by the left-wing liberal tax robbers. It’s no longer worth opening a store or business in Germany, apart from the unbelievably high energy prices since the so-called “government” of this country covered up the attack on the gas pipelines from Russia.
Help with emergency accommodation:
https://sozialplattform.de/inhalt/wohnungsnotfallhilfe
It’s even more insane and unfair: those landlords I was just talking about only receive the standard or basic rent from an unemployed person like me, paid by the employment office.
But with all foreigners or “refugees”, the landlords receive additional subsidies from the municipalities and the city council, so the landlords have now specialized in completely ignoring and disregarding German unemployed people, while they install every conceivable amenity for the “newcomers”.
In this house alone, almost all the German residents have moved out within three years, replaced exclusively by people from Syria, Romania (immigrants) etc., who don’t speak a word of German. But they now dominate the house. that’s the sad reality that no one acknowledges and speaks up about.
“Romania (immigrants -> Gypsies).
Yes, it’s the UNs policy of forced immigration: Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afgsnistan etc. Forced evacuation and immigration in the 100% orchestrated, fabricated conflicts.
I’ve read that EU “nations” are bribing landlords to take in foreigners. Are there no German landlords who prefer German tenants? They may say in their ads, “native speakers” “fluent German” “locals” or something similar. Like a code.
You are absolutely right, this is exactly how it is being handled. Worst of all are the politicians who label themselves as “left-wing”, who made all this possible in the first place instead of protecting the weakest sections of the population.
They are incomprehensible traitors, because “international socialism” is no mere threat. They are subjecting us to a merciless existence struggle and consider this to be “socialist”.
Yes, your tip about the code seems wise, but it would require a certain amount of time, which I hardly have. I will try it in the countryside, where foreigners generally don’t want to go because they are “too far away” from their parallel societies in the big cities.
Good idea. People are generally more friendly in the countryside too.
Sorry to hear how you have been treated.
Is there no citizens advice office you can speak with?
I am surprised your landlord can evict you based on the complaint of one person. I always thought the tenancy laws in Germany strongly favoured the tenant over the landlord. Especially as contracts are long term and many Germans rent property lifelong.
As Researcher said if possible move to a village in the countryside. Obviously, that depends on where you are looking for employment, but if you can continue to get help with paying the rent outside of larger towns or cities, you should find it easier to rent somewhere. Hopefully, also be able to make new friends and feel part of a community.
There seem to be “investors” from SE Asia and elsewhere who are even buying up entire hotels to be filled with so-called refugees (mostly young, single men but also some families). I think there’s some sort of government (tax payer) funded game going on whereby investors get the real estate cheaply thanks to those funds. Moreover, I think the local politicians are also being paid off … or blackmailed.
Here’s an example of a small thriving business hotel near the Frankfurt airport purchased by a Korean investor, with all staff given short notice and now unemployed. The manager had been corresponding with the local mayor and pleading the hotel staff’s case, etc., but to no avail.
https://reitschuster.de/post/hotel-am-flughafen-frankfurt-macht-dicht-130-fluechtlinge-ziehen-ein/
Kick the Slav where it hurts. I’ve know some good Poles throughout my life but the current bunch (Not all) are rats.
Whistling is now “dangerous” (says the system),
as it could be an almost inaudible “dog whistle”!
I worked for the US gov’t for 9 years. Best paying job I ever had. Also the worst job I ever had. While there were some good, capable coworkers, incompetence, corruption, laziness, and dirty politics seemed to be the major theme of the “workplace.”
If, by implication, the truckers—“living in the real world”—as best representing the majority working class “sea of blue” are therefore socially conservative—“dealing with real world problems”—then, whatever are they actually trying to conserve? The largest toxic chemical wastelands on earth in Alberta, such as the Athabasca tar sands?
Whilst Canada’s industrial economy is largely a tertiary or rentier service economy, and “Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction” is only the third largest economic industry by sector…. You cannot have one without the other. So Rental, Real Estate, and Manufacturing all rely on the “Black Dream” of indefinite tar-sand extraction.
So much has been written about the horrific wilderness destruction this entails that I won’t bother here. My point is that the “sea of blue” is inherently dependent of a “sea of black”. In fact, a quick search will confirm, nurses, waitresses, and checkout ‘persons’ (“till-thems”?) are more typically working class than truckers…. But none of these sectors is sustainable without oil, and 58% of that comes from an ecotoxicological arctic hell.
This is why a socio-ecological metabolic understanding of economics is fundamental. In a non-trivial way, nurses and so on indirectly metabolise and embody oil as Carbonising Canada’s “Black Dream”. No energy industry, no service industry—end of. So whilst most of that crude ecotoxicology flows through pipelines, it cannot move form port to gas station without truckers. Indeed, truckers need gas, and that means the toxic wastelands expand to feed, fuel, and socio-ecologically metabolise the entire working class as physically embodied ecotoxicological tar-sand.
Anybody who knows about this already knows just how much up-front investment has been put into that ecotoxicological tar-sand; so much so that the oil majors withdrew in 2021. So what happens when the truckers stop running? How will 41 million economic refugees fair then? They cannot move North, so will the incumbent POTUS need to build a borderised “Great Northern Wall”? Will the Great Lakes region then be patrolled by ICE gunboats? And how soon is ‘then’?
Is this what Syl’s great sea of “black and blue” wants so desperately to conserve? For how long? At what cost? Socio-ecologically and metabolically understood, “living in the real world” and “dealing with real world problems” looks more ecologically hell-black than politically blue or red. The majority working class might need a new emblem before long, along with an actually green plan to survive “living in the real world” when the truckers stop running. So when to stop whistling in the dark of the exemplary tar-sands?
For the “downvoters”: 1 food calorie =10 fuel calories (just to produce, refining adds more); that is not just oil, but synthetic nitrogen as hydorcarbon fertiliser we embody. As much as 80% of the protein in our bodies is most probably synthetic in origin, much of the carbon in our bodies was hydrocarbon refined in the foodchain as biosynthesised as us.
Socio-ecologic metabolism is not a metaphor, we actually do embody hydrocarbon at an average rate of 14.4kg per person. It is not just the tar-sand, there is all the mining, pipelines, (North American) refineries and so on to consider. Our whole industrial metaboloic infrastructure is a hydrocarbonising proteomics. But for how much longer?
Without the logistics of “the Truckers”–considered globally–none of this happens. Hydrocarbon power-density is the “circulatory system” of our social metabolism, and it is limited. Canada produces plenty of wheat and beef, but have you seen the prairie size wheatfields? Good luck planting and harvesting them by hand!
It is only because of the minimal effort we have to put into food production that we can build tertiary economics at all. Today’s “Truckers” are tomorrows farmers as we will have to spend much of our time producing food in impoverished “strip-mined” soil with all mannere of latent ecotoxilogical elements in the air, water, land, and in our bodies too.
So which should we really conserve prosocially? Tar-sand or the Land? Neither Canada or any other country is going to replace the “Black Dream” with the wrong kind of “Green Dream” unless ‘we’ get real about our socio-ecologic metabolism.
<We cannot go green; we cannot stay black; and we cannot go back>. We need a new vision that preserves ecology without black toxicology. And we need it now.
It’s a good point.
It wasn’t so long ago that Pete Beale would be whistling a merry tune on entering the caff for a cup ‘o’ splosh.
Nowadays, the plots seem to be based around localised genocide.
(Eastenders is a uk soap)
Thanks Sylvia.
Here’s six melodic minutes in the Aussie bush:
In January 2020, when I’d booked, for Nov.-Dec. 2020, a two-week holiday in Sydney (my longtime partner Jim and I would have been making that trip, but he passed over in March 2019; we both have close relatives who live in Australia), I bought a book on Australian birds! I’ve mentioned in a post some months ago that due to the fake ‘pandemic’ situation, I was forced to cancel that trip (for was not prepared to roll my sleeves up for any injections, not prepared to wear a mask, not prepared to have my temperature taken at the airport, etc…).
Christine Thompson is probably as common a name as Klaus Meyer in Germany. I immediately thought of Chris Thompson (singer of the song).
The video is anything but what I pos-
ted.I am therefore repeating my post.
Ahh, I see now why you posted the video! Thanks.
Good thing I had added that. Oh Christine, if you only knew what a blessing your feedback is. Yes, I need that now. I want to feel connected to people. My grandmother’s name was Christel, she came from East Prussia. I don’t even know if the name exists in English.
The crazy thing is that we Germans are trapped in what used to be the “most intelligent language in the world”, but as soon as we master English, it’s like a window into the free world. You haven’t been free for a long time either, I know. But your spirit is still very much alive and inspiring. You should keep it that way at all costs.
Because everything that makes you genuine will be taken away from you. What will remain will be a neutered air-root language that even illiterates will be able to master with only a vague memory of what once characterized English as the language of high culture. Listen to us Germans, we too are sometimes right!
Your greatest modern literary figure also has his roots in East Prussia: Tolkien. He was against Hitler, but was resolutely opposed to the widespread bombing of Germany. Because he knew that this would not only cause immense human suffering, but also the irrevocable destruction of European culture. I recently read that the bombing of Munich led to the disappearance of an entire museum containing the skeletons of sour animals, a collection belonging to a researcher. They were the only finds to date.
(“sour animals” = dinosaurs)
Ahh, you’re German! Guten tag! I studied the German language for 5 years, when at school 1970-74! The first two years of the grammar, etc, were ‘easy’, but the following three years were more difficult. I’ve read that quite a few people say that German grammar becomes more difficult after first year or two of studying (being taught) it. Our German teacher was a lady (also called Christine!) from Lubeck, in northern Germany (yes, I know that the ‘u’ in that place-name requires an ‘umlaut’ accent, but my computer does not provide them for me!).
Oh Christine, you are the sunshine of my day. I am familiar with Lübeck, the capital of the former Hanseatic League (until the British discovered America).
German is indeed a very strange language. Nobody knows why we assign which genders to which objects. You learn it as a child, after that it’s unlearnable. But there must be some meaning to it (or so the hardcore linguists believe).
But why is the day (the sun) male, but the night (the moon) female, while the sun is female, but the moon is male? This doesn’t really make sense in my eyes, and I find it more than understandable that nobody but us thinks this is comprehensible.
Lubeck the marzipan capital of the world.
Got some relatives there.
It’s a beautiful city.
I was born in 1970, so you were already at university? That’s interesting, so at least you lived through all those wonderful, carefree times. I mean, when London really was an English city.
No, I wasn’t at university. I was at school between 1970 and 1975 (was born in 1958, am now 65), then went to College for three years. But I wasn’t at school and College in London, but in the northern English city of Sheffield. My two siblings and I were all born in Taunton, in the West Country here in the UK. We’ve all moved around the country quite a bit; I lived and worked in London 1980-2001, then came to the city of Lincoln, where I still am.
Lol! I wondered why you’d provided me with the above link. So, thinking there might be some clue on the YT site, I clicked on that, and saw “featuring Chris Thompson”! Well, that Chris Thompson is most definitely is not me!
Here in the UK, I saw (when working in central London 1980-92), in a local shop some cards which stated that there are approximately 300+ people with the exact-same name (in each country?). I recall when, approx. 12 years ago I rashly posted on the ‘infamous’ ‘Ratskep’ site (full of uninformed materialists, etc etc… people who follow the false Establishment line in more or less every subject going), one of their other commenters (a closed-minded materialist) claimed that I ‘must’ be the ‘Christine Thompson’ whom he’d found was the secretary of a spiritual group, here in the UK. No matter how much I tried to clarify that that Christine Thompson was not me, the person was adamant that it was. I explained that there are many more than just one person holding the same name, in probably every country on the planet.
That you are not Chris Thompson, you can trust me with that much residual intelligence, please! Wasn’t there also the Thompson family of a well-known British folk band? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_(Thompson_album)
I knew that you realised that that ‘Chris Thompson’ was not me! I didn’t intend to make it sound as if I thought that you did think that, my apologies for making it sound that way! (what a longwinded piece of writing on my part, this short post!)
No please don’t, no apologies, it was your infamous English humor, and I reacted to it in my usual way with my German clumsiness. We Germans are fundamentally incapable of understanding everyone else’s irony, but demand that they understand our own. In this respect, you are not guilty of anything. You and I are now arguing about who was more convincing in their obfuscation.
The German, who believes that everything written corresponds to reality, or the British woman, who believes that the German actually means this nonsense. In the end, we both find ourselves in a conciliatory conversation in your language, which proves that you have defeated us linguistically, but it was the victory of those whose language became a weapon against themselves.
I think that’s wonderful. An English or American or even Australian woman would have the most fun and the greatest pleasure with me. What more could you want for a woman? Every day these misunderstandings that have to be explained, in the end it turns out that both she and I come out of it smarter.
The English woman learns through me that there may well be a world outside her linguistic grasp that ticks completely differently. Now we just have to find out how happy Anglo-Germanic marriages are – I’d wager extremely happy! False friends are the best friends!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend
Don’t give up Christine.
We’re waiting for you 🙂
Wonderful. Another Aussie.
Ernie, I’m flabbergasted to find that the exchange of posts earlier today between yourself and me has disappeared… your initial video link to me has disappeared, and ditto the one you posted subsequent to that, when you discovered that the one which had been printed was not the one you’d intended. I replied to both of your further comments to me (including my mentioning that I did German for 5 years when at school 1970-74), but the entire thread has now disappeared…
I wonder why…. How very strange.
Thanks Ernie.
Role models from nature.
Role models with no agenda or expectations. Unlike humans.
Simply wonderful, Johnny. Much appreciated!
Someone else did all the work Lulu.
The Aussie bush has a symphony if its own.
‘Of’ its own.
I knew an Aussie girl.
She’d seen a cockatoo in the bush.