The energy that the sun gives to the earth in one hour is equivalent to all the energy used in a year by civilization.

Throughout the past century, humankind has done everything in its power to dominate nature. We dammed all of our planet’s important rivers, chopped down rain and old-growth forests, depleted our precious soil and paved over enormous amounts of fertile farmland. Burning fossil fuels created over eons, we pumped billions of tons of greenhouse gasses in the air, altering atmospheric chemistry, changing weather patterns, and appreciably warming the planet on an accelerated basis. As our world’spopulation rises above the 7 billion marks, dozens of animal and plant species go extinct every day. We have a very simple challenge. Build a sustainable economy, or stay with our unstainable system until it declines, to a planetary-scale degradation, and takes us all down with it.

Once a year we celebrate the earth ecologically. The rest of the year we treat it like dirt.

Stay safe, isolate.

Satoru

I apologize. I have a tough time dealing with incompetence and stupidity on this level. But even the bible says, “Do not suffer fools gladly.” Some people need a job where they do not deal with the public or have to think. A person has to know their limitations.

Trump’s election is simultaneously a sign that many people were desperate for something different and a reflection of the shallow, frivolous, and uneducated culture that spawned him. He’s just trying to skate through his presidency without getting impeached and have his family get rich on the other side. Agent Orange’s response has been typical Trump: Lie or ignore the truth, mislead, obfuscate, appoint leaders inept at leading on the issues and, of course, shift blame. And the Vichy republicans support of agent orange is blind obedience. Trump then declares that everything is under control, when control is the last thing the administration has, especially over an emergency outbreak. And Trump put Pence in charge of the Coronavirus pandemic. A man who believes in fairy tales rather than science, and funerals for miscarriages. This administration has America swinging between imperturbability and panic. With dwindling, public confidence, and unwanted Trump appendages being cut off and fired when they are no longer useful to him. We have taken a giant step backwards to Deja voodoo, and become hypersensitive to bull dust, ever since we have had our faces rubbed in it. Disaster now appears as possible and intolerable.

Stay safe, isolate.

Today, when someone stands too close to me in a line, my first inclination is to say, “Dummy, don’t you have any awareness whatsoever?”

But I have developed a better delivered message, that others around me see as well. I don’t say anything; I just use four gestures. The first gesture is to point my finger at the person, you. My next gesture is to point my two fingers at my eyes, see. The third gesture is to hold my hand out in front of me palm up, stop. The fourth gesture is to point, with my index finger taping my temple, use your brain. The gestures just take a moment. They may take me for someone who’s speech is impaired, but I get their attention, and they back off. In my mind, I’m still saying “Wake up you moron.” I have a right not to be infected by somebody who is not paying attention. Semi-OK it’s not enough. I have a sort of a cranky optimism but I’m severely annoyed by behavior from certain people’s pestilence, phone dummy’s, pollution, climate change, and just annoying behavior especially by stupid people. We have to get back to doing what is possible and the people that say it can’t be done should just get out of the way. We have to act, train, and educate people, not to be morons.

Stay safe, isolate.

Take the time to concentrate on the task that you are doing. Multi-tasking and incompetence permeates our world and mistakes are becoming more frequent and consequential. Zen Concentration on the now means, not only the awareness of the moment, but the discipline to be awake to the people, environment, tasks, and the next twinkling of the universe. How can you reach this level of awareness if you do not take time to stop, look, listen, deliberately think, and are multi-tasking?

If you try to fail and succeed, what have you done?

Satoru

I was talking with a friend about motivation, competence, and Zen focus. We were comparing these actions in modern times to more primitive years, when if you did not work smart, hard, and strong, you did not survive. My contention is that man seeks to satisfy his desires by the amount of least exertion, and that we are just naked apes in a space age world. His contention was that the lack of motivation and competence was just based on being spoiled and stupidity. We might both be right or wrong. Then we saw this entertaining video. What do you think? https://youtu.be/IJMu0JZF7s8