Category Archives: rant

Attention: Revolutionaries

Anarchy, Black Swan, Chaos, current affairs, debate, FAIL, Law and Disorder, media culture, politics, rant, society, strife

Capitalism hasn’t failed. The people who run it have. While at a basic level, Capitalism comes down to “I have greed, and you have need. Let’s do a deal!”, we all know there is much more to it than that. Otherwise none of us would get worked up over Globalisation(tm)and workers rights and the like. There is obviously a social element to Capitalism, both from “our” point of view, and also “theirs”.

Given this very human element, there comes a time where dead wood needs to be cut out of the system – for it to run at maximum wealth-creating efficiency. We normally call these recessions. The weak fall, the strong and the innovative survive. When you postpone a recession with massive public borrowing, that’s all you are doing – postponing it. Artificially propping up the weak can only last for so long before they fall off, like balancing a ball on a very thin stick.

When you get a recession, every weak element in the system will be tested. If you’ve postponed it, they’ll be tested massively. And they’ll fail, epically.

So, I state again, the reason why everything is completely fucked now isn’t so much the system (as flawed and distasteful as it may be), but the people who have allowed 2 or 3 recessions to hit us at the same time. Any system you replace Capitalism with will still be run by pretty much the same people. Even if they have different faces, they’ll still have the same flawed ideas. And we’ll be fucked again.

Change the ideas, THEN the system, and you may be onto something.

A glossary of terms relating to Discordianism

Discordianism, FAIL, Humour, rant, satire, Trolling

DISCORDIANISM: Like Wicca, it started off as a religion for pot-smoking hippie bums who wanted to pass off their bullshit as a philosophical statement. The key difference was it was full of jokes plagiarized from the Marx brothers. Somewhere along the line, like many obscure things that deserved to stay obscure, it got co-opted by sweaty, anime-downloading computer nerds and has become some stupid inside joke on message boards full of assholes, giving it as much meaning and significance as All Your Base Are Belong To Us.

THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS: Discordians who get bored of saying “Fnord” and “Hail Eris” and wanted to make up new nonsense phrases and pretend like saying them while giggling was a constructive act of activism.

THE PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA: Between “My First ABCs” and “The Essential Guide to Star Wars Ships” in terms of literary importance

THE BOOK OF THE SUBGENIUS: Like the Principia Discordia, only 100 pages longer, and it costs 20 bucks instead of being able to find it on Google.

THE ILLUMINATUS TRILOGY: A plagiarism of Joyce’s work filled with nerdy pop culture references and pretentious rantng.

SCHR?ñDINGER’S CAT: A plagiarism of Vonnegut’s work filled with nerdy pop culture references and pretentious ranting.

ROBERT ANTON WILSON: A man who has accumulated a small fortune selling plagiarisms of Joyce and Vonnegut filled with nerdy pop culture references with pretentious ranting.

MALACLYPSE THE YOUNGER: Some “wacky” nom de plume of a man who probably wrote The Principia Discordia in a stained tie-dye T-shirt on a bongwater-stained couch while listening to a highly worn LP of Freak Out!, The White Album, or The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Wasn’t smart enough to copyright his work so probably died alone and penniless on a gutter while clenching a Coke bottle pipe filled with schwag, while his buddy Robert Anton Wilson eats steak for dinner in his dining room.

KERRY THORNLEY/LORD OMAR/A BILLION OTHER STUPID PSEUDONYMS: Wrote ten crazy Xeroxed rants about Libertarianism and thought his friends were agents of the Illuminati, now posthumously considered a genius.

STEVE JACKSON: The poster boy for the official point of transformation of the vast majority (ie: 40) of Discordians changing from hippie slackers to D&D nerds who wish they could have been alive to be hippie slackers like their parents.

FNORD: A word invented to be used in the boring, pointless signatures, “hilarious” spam, and half-hearted graffiti of Discordians. Might have been a slightly funny inside joke between RAW, Thornley, and Malaclypse, but the Internet beat it into the ground like it does everything

23: The fact that that number can sometimes be seen somewhere is proof of an elaborate evil conspiracy/magical cosmic force that protects and strengthens all Discordians

THE BAVARIAN ILLUMINATI: The 19th century version of the Discordians. IE: They had great ideas but we’re too lazy and fuckwitted and unorganized to get anything done so instead they just made a bunch of bullshit. So obviously the Discordian society idolizes them.

THE POEE: 12 members strong.

THE DISCORDIAN SOCIETY: 18 members strong.

WWW.PRINCIPIADISCORDIA.COM: An expensive domain name that somebody pays for solely to host a 60-page book that can be found for a yardsale at 25 cents, or in it’s entirity on the first 13 pages of a Google search. In other word, a nerd who felt the obligation to make a site that wasn’t about what bands they like or how similar to Hitler Bush is.

ERISIANS: Discordians who insist on being called something else to be difficult

ERIS/DISCORDIA: There is a disagreement among Discordians and Erisians as to her nature. Discordians think she’s a cartoon character with magic powers who help them out and who they fantasize to while masturbating, (that is, when they’re too lazy to open up their porn folder or turn to the Dryad page of the D&D Monster Manual) Erisians think the same thing although they sprinkle it with some Taoist metaphysical stuff.

OPERATION MINDFUCK: A way to make the world a better place that apparently involves trolling conservative communities, writing notes on bathroom walls, making up little pieces of paper that say “LOL U R TEH POPE” and being too afraid to hand them out to people, and contemplating all of these brilliant ideas on a message board and being too lazy to do any of them.

JAKE: Like a mindfuck except more childish, if that’s possible

WWW.POEE.CO.UK: A website with a professional-looking appearance and informative content. This makes it’s owner Syntapgjax, a Fake Discordian, since obviously the definition of “Discordian” is “someone who can’t get their shit together”

FAKE DISCORDIAN: A term thrown around a lot for practitioners of a religion that embraces ontological freedom and equality. It’s actually a redundant term.

“WE DISCORDIANS MUST STICK APART”: An excuse for not having your shit together

CHAOS MAGIC: If Wicca is people who need an authority figure to give their minds permission to use magic adopting books form Barnes and Noble as such, than Chaos Magic is the same, only with Google and Alice in Wonderland.

ZENARCHY: A term used by Discordians who have to pretend they’re too enlightened to use terms like “Anarchist” to describe their political belief, so they use a term that sounds deep but is actually an unfunny portmanteau, like “Zenarchist” so they can pretend they’re too cool for politics.

THE LAW OF FIVES: An important lesson in epistemological relativism becomes an inside joke among people who make stupid polls on the Internet to waste their lives away

COPYRITE/KOPYRIGHT/KOPYRITE/COPYLEFT/KOPYLEFT: A term that’s obviously Discordian because of the lame pun. Spawned Wikipedia, which is what sexless nerds use as an authoritative source of knowledge, in the same way imperialist intellectual elitists used the Britannica.

DISCORDIAN SAINT: Someone who the government hasn’t forced to take their meds yet

THE PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA.COM FORUMS: Where you can read jokers bickering like the cast of MASH towards the end of the show and pretending that they’re better than 95 percent of DeadJournal users somehow. Also full of long, drawn out, pointless rants that just reiterate the same uninsightful points. Discordians are nerds who don’t have enough sex.

Discordia ’08 – Why it’s relevant to me

debate, Discordianism, personal, philosophy, Principia Discordia, rant

Discordia will always be more relevant to me personally than in any kind of “cause” or “movement”.

Yes, things in society are fucked up, yes “everyone” thinks that “everyone” else wants things to be this way, and there is nothing that they can do about it as individuals. Yes, they are wrong.

But all of this means nothing to me.

I am not an activist, I don’t go out of my way to try and convert people anymore. I used to, but then I thought it was mandatory or at least expected. Since I decided for myself that it wasn’t, I don’t do it. I don’t expect people to wake up unless they want to do it themselves, I certainly don’t expect it to ever make sense for them unless they do it in the hardest and unfunniest ways, but that may be my jaded and bitter inner self talking.

Discordia is not a movement, it is not a purpose, it is not a cause. It’s a state of mind. A state of mind that connects a diverse group of people who wouldn’t give each other the time of day if they met socially in other circumstances and didn’t have the call signs Discordia offers, the “fluff” like 23, Eris or Principia Discordia.

I like that. I like talking to people who I normally would never talk to, who would normally never talk to me.

Discordia is at times an excellent way of tying some of us together to work on projects that normally would never be worked on, like Paths and Shrapnel, PosterGASM and some of the weird and wonderful art projects that have grown out of these forums.

I like that. I like working with people on plans and projects that may have some relevance to how I think about my life, or can help decorate it in a way that makes me question what decoration is.

Discordia will always be relevant to me in some way because of this. Its worth far outweighs the effort of getting anything back from it.

I like models, I like art, I like exploring the weirder aspects of our psyches, and the even weirder methods of exploiting what we find.

I like to laugh, hate, cry and love, as we as humans are meant to, not as we have been conditioned to. As I’ve only learned to do with some intense soul searching and some pain. Discordia has been the chair I’ve sat down in when I’m weary, the desk I’ve used to write some of the most personal and important things I’ve ever written, it has been the mirror in which I’ve seen what I am, what I was and what I want to be.

And I’ve learned to not care what others are thinking about it all, except in specialised circumstances, for example: when I feel like it.

I know what I’ve learned, I’ve learned to question what I know, and I’ve learned to learn more, always learn more.

For me, Discordia is a question, an answer and everything else in between, and it is so huge that I could spend a lifetime exploring it.

Is Discordia relevent? Certainly for me, maybe for you.

Civility vs Decency

Articles by others, blogs, current affairs, debate, media culture, politics, rant

This is a spin-off from my post yesterday about Quentin Fucking Letts, but its something I’ve been considering for a while, and wanted to talk about more, as a general trend within current political discourse, especially among the “opinion-formers” in the media.

Its hardly a novel or surprising insight, I’ll be the first to admit. I know that its a particular aggravation of the brilliant American blogger HTML Mencken, of Sadly, No! fame and the more I see it within our own papers and political discussions, the more it pisses me off.

Some people, it seems, are far more in favour of civility in a discussion than actual decency. As anyone who reads me fairly often knows, I am hardly the poster-child for civil discussion. I rant, I swear, I mock and I troll. “All your carefully picked arguments can be easily ignored” and all that. But I think, underneath it, I am a fairly decent person. Not in the ‘decent left‘ sense, hell no, those people are the poster children for Civility over Decency (especially as Alan ‘Not the Minister’ Johnson’s lack of concern for human rights shows), but in the basic sense that no matter how nasty or cutting or rude I am, I’m only violent in my presentation of language.

In short, I’m not the sort of person who calls for pre-emptive attacks on enemy countries. I do not condone torture. I despise ‘extraordinary rendition’, hate racial profiling, cannot stand people who barely disguise their bigotry and blood-lust under the guise of cheerleading the “war on terrorism” and the war in Iraq especially. I don’t think we should be throwing out everyone whose skin colour is a little too dark, nor cutting benefits for those most at risk in society. I don’t think we should deny gays, atheists, Muslims, transsexuals or anyone else rights that the majority enjoys.

That’s decency. Having some motherfucking respect for the people around you, not demonizing people who have never hurt you, not acting like a jerk simply because “I’ve got mine, and fuck everyone else”. Or cowering in a corner going “oh no, the scary people different to me are here, we must deal with this immediately!”

Because, lets face it, when you dig behind the supposedly ‘respectable’ and civil writing of papers like The Sun, or the Daily Mail, or especially The Express, that is all that is left. Its dressing up ugly and vile opinions in nice sounding tones. A perfect example is that insufferable cunt Peter Hitchens, who just recently denied that homophobia has any real meaning. Well I’m sure gay people all over the world who are being killed, denied rights, attacked and smeared for their sexual leanings will be SO glad to hear that.

But you see, he said it in a nice way, with clean respectable words and no swearing, so he’s perfectly alright!

Whereas on the other hand, all those nasty people over at the Guardian who were saying rude things about Thatcher are evil and nasty leftists. Never mind that none of them are contributing to a set of beliefs designed to deny Thatcher any of her basic human rights. Never mind that Thatcher put in place policies that did ruin many peoples lives, to benefit a few. Oh no, the problem is all those horrible and sweary Guardian types, who refuse to shed a tear at the idea of Our Great Leader passing away.

Well fuck that, and fuck anyone who thinks in that way. Oh boo-fucking-hoo, the nasty little leftists won’t be all nice and civil when discussing your sacred cows? Civility is “manners masquerading as morals”, to quote Sidney Blumenthal. Its about an unspoken social code that relates in absolutely no way to the actual ethical ideas. Its a way of controlling the forms of argument, of dismissing people without actually having to refute what they say.

Noting the letters that Lett’s reprinted at the Mail, the common theme among them seems to be that Thatcher’s leadership did not enrichen or improve their lives, so why the fuck should they have to kowtow to her and her legions of brainless followers and admirers among the press corps? Letts doesn’t answer that, because he can’t. The idea of treating such a woman as a great leader worthy of such honour is disgusting, and the level of invective it deserves is well beyond that expressed in the Guardian. Presumably Letts would have us all drink tea with our little finger’s sticking out while discussing the pro’s and con’s of torture and genocide as well.

The fact is that you simply can’t fight some people and the ideas they espouse by being civil. You have to let people know that they’re vile, hateful scumbags with no sense of standards or simple human decency. You have to stand up to them and (rhetorically) kick them in the balls. Repeatedly, in some cases. This whole “oh I respectfully disagree with your views on kicking out all the ‘Muslim terrorist scum infesting this country with foreign diseases‘” bollocks has to stop.

And yes, I am an angry leftist. If you call yourselves a decent fucking human being and you look around at the state of current affairs: a supposedly left-wing government tearing down civil rights and engaging in pointless foreign wars while the gap between rich and poor rises, and a bunch of cretinous reporters in the tabloid media who are willing to give them hell over the only few things they have done right, then you’d be fucking angry too.

And if you don’t like it, Letts, you can blow me.

Honor in Humility

current affairs, Discordianism, philosophy, rant, society, strife

We can never see eye to eye if we never admit to ourselves that our visions contain blind spots. 

We each can see pieces of truth.
Pieces we accumulate as we navigate our Paths, in our Sphere of Possbility. 
As we pursue the honorable pursuit of living life to its fullest.

Where things get fucked up is when we take our pieces and hammer them together to form The Picture. 
Not taking into consideration that our blind spots have missed pieces along the way.
Pieces that others may have been able to see, and picked up along their Path. 

We know that our Paths intersect and merge in various locations. 
It is at these meeting places where we can pick up additional navigational coordinates.
By simply asking to see the others’ pieces of truth.
To have the humility to recognize that a collective pursuit of progress requires partnerships. 
And that we each will have different clues for the course. 

Far too often, however…

…we ignore…

and so…we diverge from a useful unity tackling the unknown…

…and carry on to what certainly will be dead ends.

“I don’t know” is a statement of strength, not weakness.
It is an acknowledgement of needing more input.  The weakness would be ignoring other insights for further information.
We should always want to know more, about that which surrounds us.  And about where it is we are going. 

There is Honor in Humility.  For in the end, it will help us on our way. 

The Internet, Me, and why I don’t give a fuck.

blogs, counterculture, debate, FAIL, forums, Internet - a series of tubes, personal, rant, satire, society

The internet was created as a network to allow humans to mostly interact with others and share knowledge. Amirite? Much like the cruel open world, we’re all mean here, arrogant, and yet faceless. Why do I leech on for my daily dose of the tubes? Besides some form of ridiculous co-dependence, the internet has allowed me to remember that humanity, even at it’s most amazing and selfless hours are still nothing but a collective of douchebags spreading their douchebaggery abound whilst flaunting their epic douchitude. And I find it amusing.

Do NOT come to me asking for help, posting threads of pity or buttons of Paypal on pages asking for donations to keep your website alive or to keep your bunny alive. Eat your bunny plz, post pictures, grant us thee folk of the internet the horrormirth we desire to continue our lives in a sick, twisted illusion of awesome. I am awesome, because I tell myself this on a daily, as it helps me get through my day with no medication requiredâ„¢!

I don’t tell you about my debt, my marital issues, my financial stress and overall hatred of my current status quo in great detail and outside of general jest, because you’re not listening. I did the Livejournal thing for a while, and all it did was create an abundance of drama I haven’t seen since middle school anytime I posted about something a wee bit wrong in my life…then I remembered I didn’t read my friend’s shit anyway, so why the fuck bother?

I don’t listen; you don’t listen.

I began a brief ritual of ‘Wednesday Rants’ on the ol’ LJ during my Sophomore year in college in an attempts to at least bring some sort of reason into having the damned thing…it didn’t work, and I abandoned it rather quickly, as the answers I either got were my friends of the best variety giving me empty praise or some faggot twisting it into bullshit. Therefore, I felt like I accomplished nothing. I often think of posting on Verwirrung, and feel that in short, it will really only benefit those here anyway if at all, because outside of PD.Com, no one could give a fuck about this site, but perhaps they need to? Maybe? Who knows. I highly doubt anyone here will get anything from this smear on the blog.

I’m not an entirely cold human being, no…but I have my moments. I am close to those I allow to be close, care for them, laugh and cry with them, but my shell is a woman that rarely smiles. This doesn’t mean I’m upset, it means that I just don’t care to unless I have good reason. There was a Daria episode in which the football alum from their high school died because the fucking goal post fell on his head or some shit, and it was pointed out that the reason Daria never smiles is because she ‘thinks’. I often use this as my excuse when I’m asked about my sour countenance. The reaction I get is usually an odd look and a, “But I think too, and I smile, so smile, damnit!” My retort is typically, “Well, maybe you aren’t thinking hard enough?” And leave it at that. I also like leaving my thoughts to myself.

…I also hate my teeth, but that’s another tale entirely.

The internet is my escape from thinking, sometimes WAY too much. It allows me to be creative during work, or gaming, it allows me to sit here and giggle like a motherfucker all day long as I leave this forum tabbed on my browser. The internet is a collective of minds that do the thinking for me, and I like it that way, because it gives my tired brain a break. No doubt others do the same.

So why should I give a fuck about what’s wrong with your life anyway?

GTFO my internet with your piteous throws of fits and excuses as to why you NEED to be accepted or WHY you’re different. We’re faceless, mindless-minds who congregate to feed off of your insolence like sociopath vampires…hiding our identities while we attack you with little or no remorse. If you need a shrink, GO TO A SHRINK, don’t come here, to the internet to find answers because Wikipedia gave you a link or you felt lucky on fucking Google.

Of course, one could always allude the internet is like a gang that you need beating into, which means that you better lay there and get it over and done with quickly to avoid severe injury…rather than putting up a struggle.

Oh fuck it, I really just wrote this to conjugate forms of douchebag. You all may go about your business.

Hearts and Minds

blogs, current affairs, media culture, Operation:Mindfuck, rant, society, war

Welcome to the modern day war zone.  Right now, as I speak, a thousand battles are being waged for your submission and allegiance.  Commanders and politicians have decided that the enemy is us and that we are to be bought to heel, as soon as possible.

No doubt some of you think I’m using hyperbole, or metaphor to illustrate an example of our socially fractured society and the commodification of identity.  And while those certainly are problems, anyone thinking about those in relation to my rant today are wrong.  Right now, you and I are quite literally at war with at least one government, namely that of the USA.

Oh to be sure there won’t be running battles with light infantry.  No air-strikes are going to be called in on your house, and I’m reasonably certain you wont get carted away to Guantanomo Bay, or any other black site that exists.  But just because guns aren’t being loaded and blood isn’t been spilt doesn’t mean this isn’t a conflict.

You see, war isn’t about the clash of armies on the battlefield anymore.  Hell, its barely even about killing, except as an advertising hook or a final solution for people who refuse to stop being a pain in the ass.  No, warfare has moved through the gentlemanly period of pitched battles and low casualties, blown apart by Napoleon and perfected in the slaughterhouse of WWI.  Its not even the dirty political warfare that characterized the Cold War, marked by futile superpower conflict and strategies designed to bleed a superpower by third world proxies, and on the other end of the scale by terrorism.

No, warfare today is about fighting on the psychological and narrative level.  Its about capturing the mind, and shackling it to the agenda of the day, regardless of what that agenda may be.

Continue reading Hearts and Minds →

Arête

Chaos, rant, Uncategorized

VS

There are two drives at war within each of us – the creation and maintenance of order, and the reckless breakneck chase of disorder.

Visualize a skinny nerd walking a big dog. The dog is trying to pull the nerd where he wants to go, and the nerd is gripping the leash with white knuckles. And you are neither the nerd nor the beast, but both at the same time.

  Continue reading Arête →

The Laboratory of Democracy (a special series)

current affairs, politics, rant, society, television

The United States’ Presidential Election 2008 is proving to be an excellent case study in the realm of “Think For Yourself, Schmuck”  I say that because, more than ever, the media has become pervasive and invasive in our daily lives.  I’m not just talking about the 24-hour Cable News cycles.  You also have to include the internet media, the blogs, the political forums, anyone with a little bandwidth and an opinion. 

 The daily drumbeat of this Presidential Election, has been polls, polls, polls.  Or I should say, that is part of it.  The other part has been this Reality-TV style coverage of every utterance, every breath, every movement each of the candidates have made.  Now, this might be okay, if it were on C-Span, where you have little commentary.  You just get to see what is happening and decide for yourself what’s going on and what it means.  But it isn’t C-Span.  It’s MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News, and all of the Internet “news” outlets.  So there is a barrage of “what’s really going on” messages. 

 “Oh my God!  Obama is a horrible bowler!!!!  If he can’t handle some 10-pin, how’s he going to handle Iran???”

Yes, I know that’s one of those trivial little things that happen on the campaign trail, and it doesn’t compare to more important “scandals” like Rev. Wright, bitter comments, phantom sniper fire, nut-job pastors endorsing candidates, and the like.  But the point is, at every turn someone is telling you how you should think about these things.  Or, if you are getting multiple scenarios, it’s typically an either/or paradigm. 

We’ve all heard how a candidate is all style and no substance, an empty suit.  That he or she is relying on soundbites and talking points.  But the thing of it is, the media who is telling us that is doing the same thing.  Their coverage is all about soundbites and talking points.  Save for the debates, how much actual coverage of actual policy proposals do we get?  And so this is why Joe Schmoe is so easily swayed by the talking heads, because he has little else to go upon.  And he certainly isn’t going to give up his nightly ritual of worshipping the boob-tube while swigging some PBR, to go do some actual research on the candidates. 

What does this mean for the future of U.S.A. Democracy(tm)? 

We will explore this next week….

The Spark

philosophy, rant, society, Uncategorized

sparkThe hope for the future lies in our past.  I believe this to be true. 

But, not as a collective.  Not as a society, or as a country, or as a race.  The hope is in our individual past.  It is in, The Spark. 

It’s that moment, or series of moments that we’ve all had.  Perhaps for some it has long been buried by years of apathy and the leavings of a crumbling self.  Perhaps for some it was squelched by an overbearing parent or militant grade-school teacher.  Regardless, I believe we all have had it. 

What is The Spark?  It’s when you discovered you could be Ian Paice using the pots and pans in your mother’s kitchen.  It’s when you figured out how to turn a piece of paper into a soaring jet plane.  It’s when you strummed your first E5 with the gain turned up to 10.  It’s when you blew out your gut onto a piece of lined paper.  It was when you help hope and promise, not for the world, but for YOU.

Youthful exuberance.  Vim and vigor.  As you think about it now you are probably remembering back to fond times of yesteryear.  That’s good.  Because when you become reacquainted with that feeling, you need to drag it back with you.  Reinstall it into your psyche, your personality, your YOU. 

It’s hard to think that The Spark was what landed the Accounts Payable position for the financial institution.  It’s hard to conceive that it was The Spark that lead to the junkie with the needle in his arm.  It’s unimaginable that it was The Spark that has us deep into a conflict in the desert that is seemingly endless.  No, it would seem in these cases, and many, many more, that The Spark was relegated to the back seat while The Retreat was riding shotgun. 

The Retreat is where we went, and where we still go, when we don’t want to cause trouble.  It is where we, well, retreat to when we don’t wish to take on the challenge of choice.  When we fear the choice of becoming a professional Clown, egged on by The Spark, we then decide to pursue the safety of becoming an insurance salesmen presented at the job-fair hosted at The Retreat.  We’ve learned from others that The Retreat is safe and will allow us to live a life of comfort and a resulting joy.  The edges are all smoothed to keep us from harming ourselves. 

The Spark is rough and ragged.  It is possible that it can hurl us off a cliff into a crevice of danger, yet it also can propel us to the pastures of potential.  We could go all in, sell our stuff, hop on a bike with just a guitar and some gusto and maybe make it as a well-known musician.  In the effort, we may have to wait tables to put food on our own table.  We may have to forgo owning IPODS and cellphones while forging ahead.  But, the potential rewards for the soul, I would argue, are much richer than those who languish in the lap of luxury. 

It would seem that far too many have forgotten their Spark while living in their Retreat.  Many are unconscionably ignorant to the lack of fire burning within, while simultaneously feeling the chill coming, unheeded, through the windows of their Retreat.  And so, that’s where we find things.  Those in the cold far outnumbering those still yearning and burning for what tomorrow will hold.  But, it is not lost.  We simply need to form the search parties to explore and excavate that which was left in the dead days’ dust.  Meanwhile, for those who have managed to maintain their fire, we need to keep stoking it and assuring that it is never quashed.  It is this hope from our past that is going to give us the promise for the future…