The Last Days Of 'Normal Life' In America

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/13/2015 23:00 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-13/last-days-normal-life-america
Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,
If you have got family and friends that you would like to visit before things start getting really crazy, you should do so within the next couple of months, because these are the last days of “normal life” in America.  The website where I have posted this article is called “End of the American Dream“, but perhaps I should have entitled it “The End of America” because that is essentially what we are heading for.  The debt-fueled prosperity that so many of us take for granted is about to come to a screeching halt, and we are about to enter the hardest times that any of us have ever known.  And I am not just talking about economics either.  Based on all of the intel and information that I have gathered, we are about to enter a “perfect storm” that is going to shake this country in just about every possible way that it can be shaken.  So I hope that you will truly savor this summer – days like this will not come around again any time soon.
Have you ever known someone that lived a seemingly charmed life even though that individual made foolish decision after foolish decision?
In the end, reality almost always catches up with people like that.
And in so many ways, we have been living a charmed life as a nation even though we have been making incredibly foolish decisions for decades.  We have cursed ourselves over and over again, and just about every form of evil that you can possibly imagine is exploding all around us.  As a nation, we now stand for just about everything that is foul, disgusting and wicked, and the rest of the world is absolutely horrified by what has happened to us.
Once upon a time, we were one of the most loved nations on the entire planet.
Now we are one of the most hated.
The things that we have been doing to ourselves and to other countries are about to catch up with us in a major way.  We thought that we were getting away with everything that we were doing, but that was never the case.  When you do evil, there is always a price to pay.
Over the past few weeks, some very strange things have begun to happen.  And in the months ahead, we are going to see some more unusual events.  But to be honest, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  For now, you are just going to have to trust me on this one.
If my tone sounds ominous, that is good, because that is precisely the mood that I am trying to convey.  Right now, there are major things going on behind the scenes, and all of our comfortable little lives are about to get shaken up big time.
I have often written about the global elite and about how they like to go about doing things.  Throughout history, they have always liked to create order out of chaos.  In other words, they will often purposely create a crisis in order to push through things that they would not be able to accomplish during “normal” times.
I believe that we are about to enter one of those periods of time.  The problems that we are about to experience are going to be used to justify radical “solutions” that will further the overall agenda of the elite.  But because we will be in the middle of an “emergency”, a lot of people will choose to go along with those solutions.
Sadly, most people don’t understand how the world works because they are so consumed with other things.  We live in a society that is absolutely addicted to entertainment.  Just recently, I wrote about how the average American spends more than 10 hours a day plugged in to some form of media.  If we are not watching television, we are listening to the radio, going to movies, playing video games, messing with our smartphones or spending endless hours on the Internet.  And more than 90 percent of the “programming” that we are fed through these devices is produced by just 6 absolutely gigantic media corporations.
And who controls those gigantic media corporations?
The elite do.
And have you noticed how “the mainstream media” loves to divide us?
Today, Americans are more divided than ever it seems.  Our news broadcasts endlessly fixate on “black vs. white”, “male vs. female”, “liberal vs. conservative”, “rich vs. poor”, etc, etc.
Americans are extremely angry and frustrated at this point, but most of our anger and frustration is directed at one another.
How can we ever hope to come up with any solutions for our nation if we spend so much time hating our fellow citizens?
But this is just how the elite like it.
They love to play divide and conquer.  If we were united, we would be far more difficult to manipulate.
And even if we did find a way to come together, what values and principles would we use to rebuild this nation?
The truth is that most Americans deeply reject the values and principles that the founders of this country once held so dear.
Personally, I am very optimistic about the future.  My wife and I believe that the greatest chapters of our lives are still ahead of us.
But am I optimistic about the future of the United States?
No, I am not.
Perhaps you are reading this and you have come to the conclusion that I am being irrationally negative.  If so, you are probably spending way too much time plugged in to the “propaganda matrix” that I described above.  The establishment wants you to believe that everything is going to be just fine and that the best days for this world are ahead.
If you think that I am wrong, I challenge you to bookmark this page.  Then, after some time has passed, come back and revisit what I had to say today.
I believe that you will be quite shocked by how your perspective has changed.
The last half of this year (2015) is going to represent a major turning point, and we are moving into hard times unlike anything that America has ever seen before.
Unfortunately, most of the “sheeple” are going to be completely blindsided by what is coming.  They just continue to follow their utterly clueless leaders down a path toward oblivion.
But the good news is that once the “shaking” starts, many of these “sheeple” will begin to wake up.
When that happens, who will those “sheeple” turn to for answers?

Our technical reality: how cleantech and the internet will bring us the third industrial revolution

GEPLAATST DOOR SETH LIEVENSE ⋅ 4 JANUARI 2014 ⋅ GEEF EEN REACTIE

Crisis after crisis: ecological, social and economical. It would almost get you dispirited. Like a lecture earlier this year reminded me however, crisis originally also means ‘turning point’. And with our current scientific and technological progress as basic idea and starting point, it shows us we can overcome the problems of our time and en passent bypass government and the market. A turning point to a more social, more liberal and more sustainable society ís possible, the future is ours to create.

Unplanned free time gives space to creativity and the discovery of our passions. Along with some guidance and structure it brings us the possibility to develop on a social, cultural, artistic, technological or scientific level. These enrich our society and bring us innovation and progress. Nevertheless, the way our society is organised we get the feeling societies expectations holds us back. Money seems to be a more and more decisive factor in our decision making -be it private, as small business or as government. Does Technological Decentral Abundance (TDA) offer a way out? Let’s start off with three examples.

The first desktop 3D-printers are already arriving in households worldwide. The developmental costs of this new technology will -as any new technology- go down exponentially and plastic as a resource is already slowly making room for other more sustainable resources. Soon you’ll be printing your own products at home and that will change your world. Why buy a screw driver if you can print it yourself? Grown out of your super trendy croqs? Pulverize them, collect some plastic litter off the street, download your size of the internet and print! And why still use your hard earned money for a brand name when there is a whole scala of free, creative designs online? Or, why not get that handy design student to bring over his laptop and make your creative idea become reality? From lungs and hearts to houses, it’s being 3D-printed as you read.

Or aquaponics, the agriculture of the 21st century. And right in the city centre. Install two growth beds on top of your aquarium, pump the water to the top bed and let it flow down through the other beds back into the aquarium. The excrement of the fish are the the mineral-rich food for the plants and the plants give back purified, clean water for the fish. Not only does it save 80% water in comparison to traditional farming, the use of hydro grains instead of ground makes its maintenance minimal. Your own fresh vegetables and for who’s keen on it, some healthy fish every now and then. This new development hasn’t slipped the mind of small businesses, the first entrepreneurs are already buying up empty office spaces to convert them in aquaponics. Until recently, this was not feasible due to the high costs of electricity for lighting. Recent developments in LED-lighting and the developments in solar energy are changing this rapidly.

Another piece of powerful technology, the solar panel. The ever faster payback time by higher efficiency and lower production costs push the scarcity of finite oil out of the market and bring the costs for energy continuously down further and further until the technological production costs are what is left.

These developments in Cleantech bring us what the American economist Jeremy Rifkin calls ‘the third industrial revolution’. And where once the art of printing on paper led to the scientific revolution then enabling the industrial revolution, the internet will be the means of communication that will herald the third industrial revolution.

The technology of the industrial revolution brought us machines and replaced heavy labour with what we now call the service industry. The inequality that came with the arrival of these machines and the industrialisation would be solved politically. Political parties came into existence that would distribute the scarcity. With all-equal-communism on the one side and winner-takes-all-capitalism on the other, the struggle of the distribution issue broke loose. The current apparatus of governing institutions we have, the current way of organizing our society, was born.

Technology however now once again shows us the untenability of our current way of organising society. Technology is replacing the service industry: the jobs are not coming back. This technological unemployment shows us the untenability of a system that needs the consumer to keep the circle between employer-employee-consumer going.

Technological progress raises even more fundamental questions on how to organise society. The previously mentioned technologies, 3D-printers, aquaponics and solar panels characterise in the ability to decentralisation and provide abundance on a local level. This technological decentral abundance (TDA) combined with the ever progressing developments in more sustainable production and usage of resources form a radical break with how we have thusfar organised the world. A solar panel not only provides national or regional autonomy, but also individual autonomy. Just as printing your own sweater or cutlery gives individual autonomy, so does printing a new table at the community print centre/local specialist give regional autonomy. And a community or local county aquaponics provides reliable, ecological food from a local economy.

The globalised world of banks and multinationals seems -and ís- far removed from our personal everyday lives. TDA gives back the breathing space for the real economy, for small businesses and passionate crafts- and tradesman on a local level. On a more fundamental level TDA undermines the power structures of scarcity. The real or fictive scarcity out of a need for profit that are delivered to us by the game rules of the monetary market -as the political institutions to distribute this scarcity- have been overcome. The more scarce, the higher the price. The more technological sustainable abundance in a decentralised way, the cheaper our existence on this earth will become. The top-down power of money makes way to given power that is earned in respect. By locally being self-sustainable with these technologies we will enter an age of abundance and cooperation. Money as an expression of scarcity will be needed less and less to sustain in our (basic) needs. Freedom will once again be measured in time and autonomy, instead of purchasing power.

A truly liberal, social and sustainable future comes from the human progress in science, technology and the arts, not from the leftwing, rightwing or the market. And when the solutions are not to be found within the workings of our current model of organising society, it might become time to look at each other instead of up. It is up to YOU to shape the future, here and now.

The world is yours to create.

http://limpidus.org/2014/01/04/our-technical-reality-how-cleantech-and-the-internet-will-bring-us-the-third-industrial-revolution/

The Future Doesn't Hurt. Yet

By MATTHIEU RICARD

Published: June 23, 2011

When, in the early morning, I sit in the little meadow in front of my hermitage on a quiet hilltop, two hours’ drive from Katmandu in Nepal, my eyes take in hundreds of miles of lofty Himalayan peaks glowing in the rising sun. The serenity of the scenery blends naturally and seamlessly with the peace within. It is a long way indeed from the frantic city life I once lived.

But the peace I know is no escape from the world below — or the science I once studied. I work with the toughest problems of the real world in the 30 clinics and schools that Karuna-Shechen, the foundation I created with a few dedicated friends and benefactors, runs in Tibet, Nepal and India. And now, after 40 years among these majestic mountains, I have become acutely aware of the ravages of climate change in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau. From where I sit in my little meadow, it is especially sad to witness the Himalayan peaks becoming grayer and grayer as glaciers melt and snows recede.

The debate about climate change is mostly conducted by people who live in cities, where everything is artificial. They don’t actually experience the changes that are taking place in the real world. The vast majority of Tibetans, Nepalese and Bhutanese who live on both sides of the Himalayas have never heard of global warming, as they have little or no access to the news media. Yet they all say that the ice is not forming as thickly as before on lakes and rivers, that winter temperatures are getting warmer and the spring blossoms are coming earlier. What they may not know is that these are symptoms of far greater dangers.

In the beautiful kingdom of Bhutan, where I spent nine years, recent investigations by the only glaciologist in the country, Kharma Thoeb, have shown that a natural moraine dam that separates two glacial lakes in the Lunana area is today only 31 meters deep, in comparison to 74 meters in 2003. If this wall gives way, some 53 million cubic meters of water will rush down the valley of Punakha and Wangdi, causing immense damage and loss of life. Altogether there are 400 glacial lakes in Nepal and Bhutan that may break their natural dams and flood populated areas lower in the valleys. If these floods occur, the glaciers will increasingly shrink. This will cause drought, since the streams and rivers will not be fed by melting snow.

Chinese climatologists have called the Himalayan glaciers and other major mountains located in the Tibetan plateau the “third pole” of our ailing planet. There are 40,000 large and small glaciers on the Tibetan plateau and this area is melting at a rate three to four times faster than the North and South Poles. The melting is particularly accelerated in the Himalayas by the pollution that settles on the snow and darkens the glaciers, making them more absorbent to light.

According to international development agencies, about half of the populations of China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, India and Pakistan depend on the watershed from the rivers of the Tibetan plateau for their agriculture, general water supply, and, therefore, survival. The consequences of the drying up of these great rivers will be catastrophic.

When I was 20, I was hired as a researcher in the cellular genetics lab of François Jacob, who had just been awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine. There, I worked for six years toward my doctorate. Life was far from dull, but something essential was missing.

Everything changed in Darjeeling in northern India in 1967, when I met several remarkable human beings who, for me, exemplified what a fulfilled human life can be. These Tibetan masters, all of whom had just fled the Communist invasion of Tibet, radiated inner goodness, serenity and compassion. Returning from this first journey, I became aware that I’d found a reality that could inspire my whole life and give it direction and meaning. In 1972, I decided to move to Darjeeling, in the shadow of the Himalayas, to study with the great Tibetan masters Kangyur Rinpoche and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

In India and then in Bhutan, I lived a beautiful and simple life. I came to understand that while some people may be naturally happier than others, their happiness is still vulnerable and incomplete; that achieving durable happiness as a way of being requires sustained effort in training the mind and developing qualities like inner peace, mindfulness and altruistic love.

Then one day in 1979, shortly after our monastery in Nepal had been equipped with a phone line, someone called me from France to ask if I would like to engage in a dialogue with my father, the philosopher Jean-François Revel. I said “of course,” but thought that I would never hear from the person again, as I did not believe that my father, a renowned agnostic, would ever want to dialogue with a Buddhist monk, even one who was his son. But to my surprise, he readily accepted and we spent a wonderful 10 days in Nepal, discussing many issues about the meaning of life. That was the end of my quiet, anonymous life and the beginning of a different way of interacting with the world. The book that followed, The Monk and the Philosopher, became a bestseller in France and was translated into 21 languages.

It dawned on me that much more money than I had ever envisioned having would be coming my way. Since I could not see myself acquiring an estate in France or somewhere else, it seemed to me that the most natural thing to do would be to donate all the proceedings and rights of that and subsequent books to helping others. The foundation I created for that purpose is now called Karuna-Shechen, and it implements and maintains humanitarian and educational projects throughout Asia.

Humanitarian projects have since become a central focus of my life and, with a few dedicated volunteer friends and generous benefactors, and under the inspiration of the abbot of my monastery, Rabjam Rinpoche, we have built and run clinics and schools in Tibet, Nepal and India where we treat about 100,000 patients a year and provide education to nearly 10,000 children. We have managed to do this spending barely 4 percent of our budget on overhead expenses.

My life has definitely become more hectic, but I have also discovered over the years that trying to transform oneself to better transform the world brings lasting fulfillment and, above all, the irreplaceable boon of altruism and compassion.

Imagine a ship that is sinking and needs all the available power to run the pumps to drain out the rising waters. The first class passengers refuse to cooperate because they feel hot and want to use the air-conditioner and other electrical appliances. The second-class passengers spend all their time trying to be upgraded to first-class status. The boat sinks and the passengers all drown. That is where the present approach to climate change is leading.

Whether people realize it or not, their actions can have disastrous effects — as the environmental changes in the Himalayas, the Arctic circle and many other places are showing us. The unbridled consumerism of our planet’s richest 5 percent is the greatest contributor to the climate change that will bring the greatest suffering to the most destitute 25 percent, who will face the worst consequences. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, on average an Afghan produces 0.02 tons of CO2 per year, a Nepalese and a Tanzanian 0.1, a Briton 10 tons, an American 19 and a Qatari 51 tons, which is 2,500 times more than an Afghan.

Unchecked consumerism operates on the premise that others are only instruments to be used and that the environment is a commodity. This attitude fosters unhappiness, selfishness and contempt upon other living beings and upon our environment. People are rarely motivated to change on behalf of something for their future and that of the next generation. They imagine, “Well, we’ll deal with that when it comes.” They resist the idea of giving up what they enjoy just for the sake of avoiding disastrous long-term effects. The future doesn’t hurt — yet.

An altruistic society is one in which we do not care only for ourselves and our close relatives, but for the quality of life of all present members of society, while being mindfully concerned as well by the fate of coming generations.

In particular, we need to make significant progress concerning the way we treat animals, as objects of consumption and industrial products, not as living beings who strive for well-being and want to avoid suffering. Every year, more than 150 billion land animals are killed in the world for human consumption, as well as some 1.5 trillion sea animals. In rich countries, 99 percent of these land animals are raised and killed in industrial farms and live only a fraction of their life expectancy. In addition, according to United Nations and FAO reports on climate change, livestock production is responsible for a greater proportion of emissions (18 percent) of greenhouse gases than the entire global transportation sector. One solution may be to eat less meat!

As the Dalai Lama has often pointed out, interdependence is a central Buddhist idea that leads to a profound understanding of the nature of reality and to an awareness of global responsibility. Since all beings are interrelated and all, without exception, want to avoid suffering and achieve happiness, this understanding becomes the basis for altruism and compassion. This in turn naturally leads to the attitude and practice of nonviolence toward human beings and animals — and toward the environment.

 Matthieu Ricard was a scientist in cell genetics 40 years ago when he decided to live in the Himalayas and become a Buddhist monk. He is a photographer and the author of several books, including “Happiness: How to Cultivate Life’s Most Important Skill.” He lives in Nepal and has been involved in more than 100 humanitarian projects.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/opinion/global/24iht-june24-ihtmag-ricard-30.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0