written by my friend Mark Tarozzi:
Have you ever stopped and thought about where humanity will have progressed in the next 10 years ? Well, how about the next 15 or 20 years ? No ? Well what about the next century ? Take into account the rate at which we burn fossil fuels and harvest natural resources. Also take into account the amount of fat/salt/oil we consume as people in a year (in excess amounts then required) and think about the increasing health risks which become appreant in each society. Everything is on a slow bell curve downwards. We can keep reproducing but our planet won't hold up, in fear of sounding like a hippie eventually we are going to destroy it or ourselves first. Of course with only ourselves to blame, we the unravellers, we the ones who have to make a difference. One generation follows another, changes have to be made somewhere by a vast majority of the population. So when it's your turn to not eat that extra donut, not excercise for the extra 15 minutes, not waste electricity and water, not buy a pack of smokes and not leave your rubbish in public places - it's easier to just not care.
My brother, around 4-5 months ago stopped a bag snatcher in the Carousel shopping centre in Perth. It's a huge shopping complex, and he *used to* work in the (gasp) Telstra shop there selling mobiles etc. This guy, the bag snatcher, was a hobo who probably needed the money, but was malevolent and had the intent of unrightfully taking this lady's bag in front of the Telstra shop. There was a struggle, where the lady yelled out for help ... but you don't need me to tell you that everyone just walked on by without raising an eyebrow. My brother, gave chase to this guy for a while through the crowded walkways of people, still nobody really stopped to think "why is there a hobo running away with a lady's handbag and a young man in a shirt and tie is frantically chasing him." Eventually bro knocked him down, twisted his arm behind his back and got a knee into his throat. This guy was furious and spitting his chips, his great escape plan had blown up to the demise of my brothers good nature. A nearby security guard watched on. My brother gestured, "right, you gonna do something about this mate?" The security guard lethargically procured his walkie-talkie and called for someone to get the cops in. My brothers workmate Will had also given chase mind you, but was a length behind my brother, so that makes 2 people out of the hundreds there who gave a damn (big difference.) Said security guard slowly escorted the snatcher away while Will and my bro walked back to work.
If there's one redeeming message in LOTR it's that even one person can change the course of the future. Imagine what millions and billions of people can do. It's just a matter of doing it. The answer is not to enforce tougher laws, stricter penalties, it's to help each other. If there's another message we've learnt from another movie (isn't tinseltown great) it's "through all of our searching the only thing we've found is each other" ... from Contact. See, we have to help ourselves. Humans are unique yet so much the same at once. It's an ancient thing, yin and yang (if there's one religious belief I have it's in Zen, but we'll talk about that later.) Now the last couple of sentences may have been a bit confusing but I will summarise. I think, crime can be lowered by ruling out mob mentality. The law must be taken into you're own hands in discretion, because the police force can't be everywhere at once (and when they are they're usually corrupt.) If you wan't to see our race flourish, then you need to live healthier (not pointing the finger.) Even small lifestyle changes can make a difference. We know, that we are the only ones who can change the course of the future, if I have not stressed that enough already. A slow tailspin down can be turned into a gradual curve upwards.
Approximately 726, the Dark Ages fell upon humanity. Imperial Rome was the greatest civilisation in the world, if you have cloudy history then think about the movie Gladiator. Rome had 80% of the world under it's control, the most beautiful and advanced cities, vast libraries full of knowledge and many facilities for people to learn and study. Now in places like Hungary and Germania there were barbarian tribes who didn't think much of Rome and it's rule, they weren't very educated and had some bad attitude problem. Whereas they weren't advanced they certainly had a large army. They invaded Rome, and battled and battled and battled. Rome's production and expansion halted because they're time and money went into military recources. Eventually, Rome had to fall. If you rock in you're chair for long enough eventually you're going to stack it. With Rome fell all of the great libraries and much of the great knowledge they had aquired, it all went back to square one. If this had not happened, so long ago, we'd probably be travelling interstellar right now. In today's society, if we break out in war again and suffer another dark age, no doubt a nuclear holocaust - imagine how long it would take us to climb back up the ladder we just fell off. Unfortunately I don't have the answers to make terrorists stop being fagits and blowing people up, or giant corporations controlling our lives with their advertising and products, but that doesn't mean I'll stop caring. If for one day, nobody bought some McDonalds food, you know how much money they'd lose ? After a few weeks of this, they'd have swords piercing their cellulite-ridden skin. A few months later and they would have died of blood loss. This could only be achieved by the efforts of us all working together, and wouldn't that be nice ? Then again, I do like a McFlurry, and a coffee and hash brown in the morning. This is but an example, something to make you think about the effects of us working as one.
Now I'm going to start freaking you out. Religion and the like. I have never believed in any religion and will never follow a religion, also will never bring my children up to believe in it (even though they have the right to the knowledge.) I think it is the root of many evils. It's just more mind conditioning, Microsoft is a religion. Money is a religion. TV Evangelists are extremely smart people, preying on the general stupidity of the American population. If I had the chance to be a TV Evangelist I would, but I don't have enough knowledge from the bible. My brain represses accepting certain things. Anyway, I think the world would just be better off socially with no religious influence, we can retain some of the values, but really ... why go to a cold stone and wooden cottage on a Sunday just to listen to a paedophile read form a book written by some drunkards. Who's to blame Bishops and Priests from going mental and raping little boys anyway ? Forced into a life worshipping an imaginary friend who still hasn't answered you're prayers, being celibate and missing out on one of the most pleasurable experiences we can feel as humans. A pack of choirboys would be the perfect outlet for your bitter tiwsted soul to exact it's vengeance. It's only a matter of time before Christians and Catholics all over the world burst out of their skin and turn into horrible demons. Horrible horrible demons. Zen on the otherhand, Buddhism and other oriental practises I can follow rather easily, because they sure as hell make a lot more sense. It's simple really, Yin and Yang are good and bad. Light and Dark, Up and Down, In and Out, Existence and Bleakness. It's harmony, everything is married and everything has a balance. Mind, body, spirit. Looking after your consciousness and your physical presence. You can't sustain life without sustaining you're mind, because that's all we are. A consciousness controlling a bunch of bones, meat and millions of living cells. Monks can sit perfectly still with utter concentration for years (very reminiscent of a person immersed in a computer game) living on only the bare essentials bread and water, not something many of us can do. This is because they can live in the mind, they have learnt to do this, mind controls body.
Ever wondered what God is ? It's not only an aswer to the caveman's question "why are we here" (see Christianity) ... I think god is every living thing on our planet thinking as one on the same plane. We only use 5% of our brains you know, imagine when we evolve to 60% say? We'll be floating around, communicating telepathically, using telekenises and other nifty things. 100% of our brains I'm afraid to think about, it would be malice if anyone ever achieved it, no doubt would cause some sort of time vortex or immense chain reaction of destruction. Have you ever tried to move something with you're mind ? Have you ever thought about other peoples thoughts, and their thought patterns ? Ever thought about time and how we can alter it ? If someone is thinking about a certain thought in a certain point in time, that will cause them to think about something else 5 minutes later perhaps. Go back in time and change that first thought, the second thought will be completely different. As time passes we are either thinking (retrieving stored information) or passing information directly from our senses into our cortex for storage. If you want to change something just think different thoughts, it's as simple as that. If you want to learn something, then absorb information in manners which you are not accustomed to, you get used to it. Do you want to keep you're brain contained from hurting you're consciousness, incase you think you're too smart ? Think about these few things if the need ever occurs ... Why are humans on this planet, what happens when we die - when did the universe come into existence and when will it end ? You're brain should recoil. Don't worry, I know the answers but I'm not going to tell you.
For this reason, for this brain that we all have, an organic puzzle with untold powers, I have no hangups about martial law and execution of those deemed worthy of it. If someone want's to squander this gift by trying to destroy or harm others lives or progression then they deserve to be robeed of their consciousness. Terrorists, mobsters and gangsters, opressors of free civilisation etc. You may hear on the radio, people having a ***** to the UN because the "standards of prisons" that the Americans keep terrorists in aren't up to scratch. Excuse me ? Terroists deserve to be kept in pristine prisons, being clothed and fed and having more taxpayer money spent on them then the masses of starving and needy people in the world, because they have taken so many lives ? What kind of reasoning is this ? To anyone who believes in living standards for encaged terrorists, then please listen to my point of view. We should take all terrorists out of their cells and into the open, but jam big railroad spikes through their eyes, sever their legs off from the knees and then give them 30 seconds to run away (into the desert) before they are decimated by an apache helicopters' vulcan chaingun, after their demise which they will be devoured by 3 starving wolves. After this process the area will be napalmed in hopes to destroy any remaining cells or trace of said terrorists DNA in the area forever. In the event they manage to escape over a sand-dune and out of the way of chaingun fire in 30 seconds, they will have the remote C4 plastic explosives in their pockets detonated, then - the wolves. I think it's only fair.
There will never be world peace because there will always be conflict. There will never be constant darkness because there will always be light. There will never be poverty without riches. It seems daunting but that's the nature of how things work. We can take out certain factors to improve our world and culture, we may elimiate poverty one day but there will be repercussions, other problems will arise. We can only focus on eliminating one problem for the time being, only to work towards eliminating another problem. Still, there is progress in all of this. Improving our culture and technology improves the way we think and the way we maintain our physical presence. This helps us evolve, we're getting there slowly.
Now, I'm an avid fan of a pseudo-anime series called "Aeon Flux" (this has a point) drawn by Peter Chung, a master in his own right. Aeon Flux is an assasin/dominatrix/spy femme fatale character who works for a nation of free people called Monica, she is constantly invading and liberating a controlled city called Bregna (people who live there are Breens.) Bregna is allowed to take people in but people do not get out. All Breens have their lives planned out for them, but they are free to do what they want in the bounds of the city, as long as they don't try to escape. Bregna is ruled by a power-hungry and colourful man called Trevor Goodchild, who is Aeon's arch-nemesis and also her lover. It's a very confusing cartoon, which requires lots of watching and paying attention to detail. The plot's are brilliant, the storyline and character development is brilliant, all of the redeeming values behind each episode are amazing. The fact they manage to intertwine lovers and enemies is magnificent. But enough of my beaming. There is a particular episode where Trevor creates a device which shoots a virus down unto planets. A man made virus (Aldus-B) which of course, is designed to kill people. In the opening scene to this episode, Trevor narrates to scenes showing two men standing against a height chart from profile view. Trevor speaks "I inject two men with a man made virus, say Aldus B. Both men get horribly sick. After a period of time one of the men dies [a large muscle man.] The skinny man buries the 300 pound man without remorse, he is the winner. It's the evolution revolution. The meek shall not inherit the earth" In this episode, Trevor is visited by an alien creature who has no mouth, no bodily orifices who doesn't sweat or excrete, who lives in the mind and communicates telepathically. He learns more about this creature gradually (true to the show he tries to find a way to have sex with it.) All of this time of course Aeon is spying on Trevors progress. She breaks into Trevors bedchambers one night and steals the control (designed to shoot the virus) off him, and buries it outside. There, Aeon finds the ship where the creatures landed and finds all of the crew dead with strange markings on them. She later on finds the little cryopod where survivor climbed out of. She is visited by the creature and knocks it out, and puts it back in it's pod to keep it away from Trevor. But the creature has plans of it's own and knocks Aeon out and seals her in the pod instead. Aeon is then showed in stasis as the world around her passes over what seems thousand of years. When she finally awakens, she finds civilisation burnt and broken down around here, the bounds of Trevor's personal fortress walls have a giant crack in them where she vnetures inside to find large strange alien buildings everywhere. Of course the strange alien creatures like the ones who landed are everywhere, staring at Aeon. She freaks out, and runs up some stairs, only to find Trevor sitting there cross-legged half naked nursing some of the alien children. Trevor looks up, one of his eyes has mutated with a strange pupil like all of the alien creatures have. Aeon says frantically "look what has happened to earth" etc shaking Trevor, "can't you see what you've done" obviously by allowing the creature to stay. Trevor replies "I don't need to see, I alredy see, you're the one who needs to see. You have no idea what it's like Aeon" so on. Aeon runs out to where she buried the control with an emaciated Trevor chasing behind her, yelling at her. Aeon frantically grips the control and uses it, the satellite in space shooting down the virus to Earth, infecting all of the alien creatures and causing their slow demise. Trevor has given up and is on his knees, he says to her "congratulations, you just killed the entire human race, are you happy." Aeon is even more angry now. Trevor explains the creatures were us - evolved, they came back to visit their previous selves in the time where Trevor made the device. But Trevor had used the device, to kill off the weak humans and excel our evolution while Aeon was in stasis. What she awoke to is what Trevor had created through the elimination of the weaker humans, our evolution. In the end, Aeon knocks Trevor out (plenty of violence) and puts him in the cryopod with her, then seals the lid. It finishes with more thoughts of the alien earth and Trevors narration "it's the evolution revolution, may the best man win." Truly a brilliant episode/series and spectacular animation work, I suggest you all get to seeing Aeon Flux soon as possible especially this episode. That was indeed a lot to write about one of my favourite cartoons but it all had relevence.
The mind is wonderful, is it not ? My entire rambling of a column just started with the thought of my brother stopping that bag snatcher, but this is something that I have wanted to put into words for a long time, my own views on the world we live in and the people who live on it. I'm not asking you to give me money, to give me a haircut or find me a girlfriend - I just want you to think. I want you to know you can make a difference. I also don't want to hear **** about this saying "man what was that it didn't make sense" ... just break it down and read it section by section, you will glean insights from it. Plus, if you think this is bad you should hear my friend Kromax when he's on drugs *remembers this one time*
