I sit outside at the park which rests nicely and quietly next to my family’s house. It has to be in the mid-80’s right now and the sun is shining. It’s 7:22pm and there are no signs of a bad feeling anywhere. Kids are playing on the adjustable-height basketball hoops, lowering them to the point where it is almost possible for them to do anything. A red, white, & blue basketball rolls by, closely followed by a laughing little boy.
On my iPod is a twenty minute live version of Built to Spill’s “Cortez the Killer.” It’s an amazing narrative about Cortez landing on the “new world” and bringing the idea of war and hatred to a land of love and community. It’s full of screaming guitars, pain, and war.
In my hands is Power Down by Richard Heinberg. A friend lent it to me and I’m fifty some pages in. It is quite a heavy read in the sense that it has some dark ideas about the human race and industrialized nations. Heinberg, so far, has been arguing the fact that we will eventually destroy humanity as we know it. We have some choices to make as a collective whole and there is much doubt that we can work so cooperatively between nations and ethnicities and beliefs.
The weather is cooling down. It was in the upper 90’s today and faintly reminiscent of life before SJL (that’s for a whole nother entry, altogether). I feel like a junior in high school again. Working and not paying much attention to much else. I am reading a book tho and that’s a step higher than high school Ben.
Heinberg brings up a point:
We humans are toolmakers, and many of our tools are designed to hurt of kill. In animal combat within a single species, non-life-threatening wounds usually (though not always) discourage one of the fighters before death occurs; in human combat, however, weapons can quickly inflict fatal wounds: a fighter is often killed before he can back down.
The song emulates these same ideas loud and clear through the second verse.
Hate was just a legend and war was never known
People worked together and they lifted many stones, and
They carried them to the flat lands, but they died along the way, and
They built up with their bare hands what we still cant do today.
I know shes living there and she loves me to this day
I still cant remember when or how I lost my way.
Wars are fought over resources. Whether they are about land, oil, money, gold, it’s all about what the men in charge think is necessary for the survival & power of themselves. More times than not, the side with more men or better technology comes away victorious.
Where did the idea of war come from? I came across a reference to a book by the anthropologist Raymond C. Kelly (Warless Societies and the Origin of War) and have decided that it must be my next read.
Things are kind of chilling out here. My laptop’s battery is dying faster than the setting sun. Thirty-seven minutes left (which is sad to say, 50% of the battery).
Life should be simplified. My life, should be simplified. Heinberg has mentioned “Individual Self-Reliance” which consists of getting back to our roots. My ancestors used to farm because they had to. They needed to grow their own food in order to serve their families. There was no Safeway, no Albertsen’s. No fast food, no super markets. As the summer begins to draw nearer, I need to figure out a way to garden and possibly make it portable or something… That’s for another day.
Today has been about work and reading. Gas prices are eclipsing the $3.75 mark all around me. I’m drinking an iced tea that costs the consumer $2.25 (free to me and a special concoction of a green tea called Gunpowder and Peppermint herbs). I’m typing on a laptop that cost $300 three Christmas’s ago. Still, I have more monetary value at this bench out in the park than some people make in a year. It all feels kind of ridiculous thinking about life elsewhere. The sun is starting to fall beneath the cookie cutter condos and a light breeze has picked up. There’s middle schoolers doing alley-oops and off-the-backboard dunks right in front of me. Things are weird.
