Scott Alexander has written an interesting article reaching sharp conclusions where regards the causes and effects of psychedelics, such as how persons cannot be drawn to them merely for being mentally unsound already, as this disregards the hundreds of condoned scientific researchers of the last century who were not already dirty hippies. And that while these researchers often took quite a lot more than what is deemed by pro-pharmaceutical lapdogs to be permanently damaging, they continued to accomplish profound works in spite of the added dimensions to their characters. If anything, natural hallucinogenics undo mental blocks installed to limit subjectivity of the world around us. They hold the potential to remind us that we do not in fact know much of anything about the universe, which is a beautiful necessity of an acknowledgement to make.
If only world leaders were capable of the same, such as with Trump’s exiting stage left from the Paris Climate Accord. Of course, the accord probably is just another means to add to the coffers of the United Nations, just as the Eco-friendly industry is in fact an industry in every connotation of the term, but yet still, mankind is really fucking up the planet, and anyone who sees otherwise is either in the pocket of competing industrialists or just plain ignorant of the world beyond their gated community of Facebook friends. All of this can be the case at once.
Micah Wight, billing himself as a founder of the Occupy Wall Street movement even though while it was a thing there supposedly were no leaders discounting the obvious media liaisons and chairs of “open” meetings, has given an interview discussing a range of points for what revolution in today’s world means now, in the shadows of the Occupy demonstrations. I feel that the interviewer was better grounded in reality. Over-reliance on technology is a bane, and no matter how trendy they might be online social networking outlets are merely additional venues for voices to get lost in the shuffle. The acknowledgment of protesters today being ill-equipped with the realities of actual governance themselves is a strong one, however. Anybody can hold up a sign expressing a disbelief, but an embarrassing few can muster up alternatives to challenge said belief.
Mark Warner, a Democrat Senator from Virginia, is urging the business community to become even more involved in politics, in a plan for a corporate alliance to oppose the public’s will. Speaking at a global conference sponsored by an economic policy think-tank, Warner continued his lobbying efforts for a deficit-reduction deal that would reduce corporate tax rates and cut public retirement programs. As though the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Trade in Services Agreement, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, each dead now in name only, would not enforce those things and far, far worse, he wants corporations to have even greater power and authority. The Trump administration is actively obliging, every day. But neither Micah Wight or Mark Warner truly understands what the majority of their fellow humans are undergoing in life.
Bill Black wrote a scorching piece citing two relatively recent, detailed examples for how free market Capitalism, which the modern world increasingly thrives upon and which the three impending international trade treaties seek to empower at the expense of governments, is by design incapable of regulating itself. Black is mostly focusing on the relationship between Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry, combative at first glance but in the end perfectly agreeable, yet the rampant lack of ethics or morality can easily be found in any and every other market.
Irish politician and Member of European Parliament Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan had shared a video showing the disgustingly red taped cloak and dagger politicians must go through to even privately read documentation of the trade deals. Yet the fact remains, not one single member of any Senate or Parliament or Congress anywhere in the world has seen fit to actually share specific, word for word details from any of the three trade treaties with their public, not even Flanagan himself. Even if such a person were to face indictment, would they not prove themselves as more dutiful to their constituents than literally every other politician in participating nations? Money can buy an awful lot, but it cannot buy approval ratings like that.
If there was anything remotely positive for the public within these trade deals then there is no cause for secrecy. Any government could use some legitimate bragging points in today’s world. Even the identities of the authors of the trade deals, years in the making, are not yet fully known to the public. These documents were finally revealed to most political leaders only a couple of years ago for the purposes of private review. Very few publicly voiced frustrations over being allowed to make neither additions or omissions to the text of the documents. And yet aside from merely giving lip-service to those concerns for the ears of potential voters, what have any of them actually done about this? We are told that should any politician dare to make copies for public distribution, of matters that greatly concern the public, they are supposedly threatened with charges. If the contents of the deals are so positive for the people, then why would sharing said contents with the public be a punishable offense?
The glaring fact that not one politician on any side of the ocean was willing to risk incarceration for the sake of keeping the public informed proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that not one politician serves any definable public trust. There were no exceptions. Not even self-proclaimed populists like Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders.
Only last year Juan Cole ridiculously asked whether Climate Change might make the Middle East uninhabitable and trigger a mass exodus. I may just be a blogger, but I suspect that the hundreds of billions being actively pumped over recent decades by outside interests into dangerously escalating the centuries of warfare in the region might be a somewhat more tangible cause for the area becoming anymore uninhabitable or of triggering any additional mass exodus. The massive, global industry of Eco-friendly products quite often more costly and/or less effective than their Earth-poisoning counterparts aside, yes, the industries of mankind are fucking up the planet. But barrel bombs and rail guns and smart missiles and the like will do more damage more quickly than styrofoam food wrappers, and to suggest otherwise is delusional and irresponsible.
Which is what all of this boils down to. No matter the lives to be lost, profits shall be manufactured. And that is one narrow-minded pathology in a universe as big as this. To be human is to self-destruct.