Ray

..On Waking Up :

Our cultures have been blanket-bombed with diversion
Where idiocy and wealth are king
And what car you drive
Is more important than
The last book you read
And what some witless celebrity says
Is more important than
What your own instinct tells you
And what the drug dealer is peddling
Is more important
Than what your friend is trying to tell you.

Still, the alert, though ridiculed and pilloried
Trust their own eyes
And gaze out in disbelief
For a while we thought there was no punchline to this one
Or that the joke was on us
But when we eventually heard it
It shook our very foundations
Made us sick to our stomachs
How far does this go?
All the way
Near and far.

But what can one man do, asks a friend
In hushed tones.
I pondered awhile.
One man can say no
I will not be part of this
I can bear to watch no longer
One man can unplug his TV
Refuse to make bombs
Refuse to make bullets
Refuse to baa
One man can wake up
Wipe the sleep from his eyes
And see things differently from then on.

[R.J.Shaw 2006 All Rights Reserved]

I love all the ways we communicate and interact.
I believe in freedom of expression.

Henry Rollins : I Know You
still inspirational. Search and Destroy.

On Wasted Potential :

Wasted potential is the worst crime, and you pay for it with the rest of your life. Time is right now. Time is right, now. These words appearing on the screen. More extraneous words and information. Days and weeks pissed away in a mere sentence. Maybe I should stop kidding myself and write one of those paperback holiday novels instead. A good one, mind you. I could do it in my lunchbreak at the Factory Of Lost Souls Inc. If you can't beat 'em join 'em? Yeah, right. What the fuck is going on? Wasted potential is the worst crime and you pay for it with your life? No, no, surely you have all your life to find and fulfill your potential. Grit your teeth. Find your bullshit detector. Turn it on. Now leave it on until you're done. These are crazy times. 'They' are trying to get the flags flying again, our supposed betters, democratically elected using ancient sheep herding techniques, our 'leaders'. Now lets be honest. Right now. Time is right.

The majority are distracted enough not to question. Or are they? At times the feeling of a sea-change swelling gets through amidst the glut of media that would suggest the contrary. Moments of clarity?

Jame's Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, that this planet we all share is a self-righting macro-organism gives me some hope. If man becomes too much of a stress on the system, Gaia will attempt to return things to how they should be. Killer pandemics not created in a CIA lab. Tsunami. Earthquake. Volcano...

It seems soon there could be a quickening of our species' evolution. The swollen sea-change suddenly experiencing the same moment of clarity. Bullshit detectors on forever. A realisation that the resources this facade is run on are finite. Maybe they will last our lifetime. I doubt it.

When they do run out I think our current leaders will be out of power. Hopefully between now and then we can raise the collective consciousness to a level, worldwide, that will see the end of these grotesque rich men's social clubs. Otherwise, the 'One-World' dictatorship awaits.

As a species, we are now intelligent enough to communicate and organize ourselves for the greater good. We have the opportunity to question the framework that holds this current incarnation of 'civilisation' together. Maybe there will be an evolutionary split, a branching. Nietzche's ubermensch but not at the expense of the untermensch that is left behind. An evolutionary fast track. Gaia working from the inside as well as the outside for the greater good.

Through multiple media, common sense, a process of evolutionary osmosis, moments of clarity becoming days and weeks of clarity in a mere sentence.

The sea change swells. These words on your screen right now. The time is right now. The initial right now is the tap of my fingers on the keyboard forming words and sentences. Paragraphs and pages. More information. The secondary right now is you reading these words, sentences, paragraphs and pages right now.

"Like showing a dog a card trick" - Sir William Hicks.

This finger tapping and your open mouth.

[R.J.Shaw 2006 All Rights Reserved]