...out of the ashes...

We're all thinking of it. Most of the time we avoid talking about it. It scares us. It reeks of doom and death. The apocalypse. Cities laid in ruins, fires from the sky, the four horsemen riding across fields drenched in blood and decaying bodies. Seas poisoned, all life on earth extinguished, eternal darkness underneath a dead sun.
War. Famine. Pestilence. Death.

We've all seen the movies. The Road. 2012. Armageddon. Jericho. 28 days/weeks later. I Am Legend. The Mad Max trilogy and so on. Not to mention all the books on the subject. Most of those stories describing the apocalypse as a violent, deadly event. But also as an event filled with hope. A new beginning. A new dawn. Out of the ashes springs new life.
Some say it will be a shift of ages, as we currently are living in the age of Pisces and are supposedly entering the age of Aquarius around 2012, although some sources say we won't do that until yet another 100-500 years. Sources vary. They all do. This shift is supposed to awaken mankind. To bring an age of light and hope. An age of peace.

As the year 2012 is drawing nearer, the apocalyptic hysteria is growing by the day. Especially the stories that tells of our impending doom. Of our species extinction. The end of human civilization. The end of all life. The end of planet earth even. But why does it have to be and ending?
Is see it as a possible new beginning for mankind. A second chance. Do I believe in the apocalypse? Oh, yes.

We can all feel it, deep inside of us. Most of us are having a hard time seeing a future, especially in this so-called society of "ours, "our" civilization. Mother Earth is being ravaged, raped, drained and destroyed for minerals that creates the base of this society of "ours". A society we don't really need for our survival. Technologies which are supposed to make our lives easier, but are in truth only making us dumber, inhuman, deforming us, removing our basic skills of survival and adaption, our natural instincts. We are loosing contact with ourselves. Especially with nature. Unemployment is sky-high in third world countries where whole populations are starving to death, western countries are not far off. Overpopulation. Food shortages. Water shortages. Oil shortages. Pollution. War. Genocides. We are a disease to ourselves. To our planet. And still we are building more than ever. Digging, scraping the earth bare of its minerals. Killing species after species, poisoning the oceans. There is no future in this. We can all see that. It's not a matter of "if", but of "when".
How will this society, this civilization of man end? Through war? Through the awesome power and wrath of mother Earth? Or will it one day just cease to function? Alien invasion? We cannot possibly know. But we all know that this society, this civilization will end one day. Nothing lasts forever.
I believe we are in the middle of it. The Apocalypse. The civilization as we know it is crumbling on it's own foundations as we speak. I don't think it will be an instant event, but long and out-drawn. Numerous series of events which are currently taking place that will eventually lead us to our civilizations inevitable end. Note that I don't say our end, but the end of "our" civilization.

I do believe that whatever happens, mankind will survive. At a price. A very high price. I don't think I have to explain what that price really is do I?
What I'm thinking of is cities. I see them as living tombs. Cities of the dead. Necropolis. In my view, the only way for survival is to get out of the cities, out to the country-side, to the forests, the fields and the hills. If and when things go bad, and it will get bad, people living in cities are among the first to suffer. There is nothing prophetical about this, with a little common sense it's not hard to see or imagine. We will need to learn how to live with nature again. Build a new world for ourselves.

I do not view the apocalypse as a frightening event. I welcome it. It is exactly what we and mother Earth need in order to survive. It is not the end. It is a new beginning. A new dawn.

It is hope.

A moment of thought.

Turn off your TV. Switch off your computer. Pull out the plug even. Put down your beer. Just for a few minutes. I ask of you a moment of thought.
Especially now in the wake of the Israeli attack on the ship Mavi Marmara and the ongoing propaganda war from the Israeli government. Think about what's happening. Not just now.
But what has been happening for years. For lifetimes. Palestinians murdered on a daily basis, imprisoned, searched, forced from their homes, the list goes on and on and on.
Today I just want to share a thought of all the lives around the world that is violently ended every day. Not just in Palestine. But also in every part of the world where there is an ongoing conflict or hidden genocides.

Afghanistan, Iraq, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Tamil, Mexico, South Africa(no conflict here but more or less 18000 murders a year and around 3000+ farmers murdered since 1994), The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Burma, Nigeria, Philippines, Angola, Indonesia, Turkey and Kurdistan, Ethiopia, Colombia, Chad, Russia, Tibet, Uganda, Morocco and Western Sahara to count a few.

I do not meant o be respectful in any way towards the Palestinians and their fight for freedom. But where are the voices for all those other conflicts? Who tells the world about all those other hidden genocides? The unlawful Israeli occupation of Palestine is an easily purchased cause, again I mean no disrespect, but the rest of the world is forgotten. It sure does seem like it.

Where are the demonstrations to stop mining for Coltan in The Democratic Republic of the Congo? Coltan is a mineral which is used for computers, cellphones and videogame consoles etc. All those things that we "need". People die for that luxury, by the thousands every year. Anyone know the real reason for the war in the Congo? Anyone even know that there is a war going on there? Take a look at this.
People die everyday for our "needs". Yes, that includes the Ipod. Almost 7 million dead all in all.

Where are the demonstrations to stop the hidden genocide of white and coloured farmers in South Africa? Yes, there was one in Sweden a while ago by right wing extremists, neo-nazis, and that stinks! It stinks because they manage to show the problem in the wrong light, turning it into propaganda for themselves and their sick ideology. And the 18000 murders per year speaks for itself.

And where are the voices for Western Sahara?

And what about the Tamils in Sri Lanka? Yes, there where some demonstrations in Oslo about a year ago, but only the tamils living in exile demonstrated or tried to make their voices heard. Recently the Sri Lankan government more or less eradicated the tamil tigers from the face of the earth. Atleast from Sri Lanka.

There are ongoing conflicts all over the world and we know of but a handful of them.
But what scares me the most is that in 9 out of 10 times we have no idea of what caused the conflict in the first place. I'll give you a hint: Corporate interests! Profit! Not just oil. But Coltan, as mentioned above, and other minerals, diamonds, weapons(new weapons gotta be tested and used, right?), drugs, cattle farms for fast-food restaurants(Yes, one of the reasons to why the Amazon forest is disappearing) etc.

A moment of thought.

For all the lives that is lost for "our" comfort.

Thank you.

Fear! Fear! Fear!

All our lives we run around being scared, frightened, spooked. Scared of being murdered, raped, mugged(robbed), physically abused, fooled, tricked, neglected, forgotten, hated, despised, hurt, laughed at, poor, homeless, jobless, childless, lonely. We are simply scared into oblivion, especially in this western society of "ours".
What we do not understand, we fear and alternatively hate. If we do not agree, we fear it and cast it aside. Change is fear. Life is fear. There is always someone out to hurt us. We cannot trust anyone.
That's what we are told atleast.
"Do not talk to strangers", "Do not pick up hitchhikers", "Do not recieve gifts from strangers". Does it ring a bell? Ofcourse it does. All our lives we've heard these phrases. And we have all learned on the TV via movies and the news what happens if we do break these "sacred" rules. This is propaganda, brainwashing. What they are basically saying is that we should all stick to ourselves, that your business is your business alone. This refrains us from helping eachother. We isolate ourselves even though we are surrounded by millions and millions of people who are in the same situation. We create security in gadgets. We're taught to do this from birth, because there is always an enemy, a murderer, a rapist etc.
When we're children there is the monster underneath the bed, in the closet, and the stranger lurking in the bushes. When we grow up there is the terrorist/freedomfighter, in the 50's it was the communist, there has always been a "boogey-man", wether it has been a "savage", a french, a german, a heathen, a christian, a muslim, an american, a north-korean, there is always someone, as we have been told, out to hurt us, to kill us, to take away everything that we hold dear.
And this mentality never lets go. It infects all "layers" of society, all subcultural groups use this fear to seal themselves off. There is always an "us and them". There is always someone to blame. To hate, to laugh at, to spit at, to despise and to fear. Your closest friend might be your next enemy.
This fear is not natural. It is created, we all know that. It is easier to control a bunch of sheep that is scared and crying for help, than to control a pack of wolves who are confident, secure and independent.
We are stripped of our confidence at birth, same with our independence. We are made scared so we have to depend on our governments, "our" society for safety and protection, and it's not even us it protects in the first place, it protects the elite from us. Holds us in place. With fear. And it works, astonishingly well. Everyone buys it.
They create the fear, the murderers, the rapists, the wars they so highly warn us of. They? Governments, religious institutions, multinational corporations, banks, capitalists in general to keep their interests running. The money must flow. Power must be maintained. And to be able to do what they want, even before our very own eyes, they create this fear to keep us in check. They create the problem and they offer a solution, for a price.

But, what if we one day would just let go of this fear? Opened up our eyes and realised that all this fear around us isn't real? Yes, there are murderers, rapists and robbers out there, but they themselves are created in a world that is not real. The world is upside down.There is no "us and them", there is only "us".
What if we one day would stop a stranger on the street and tell that stranger that we trust her/him? That we offer our help, in any way we can? What if we for once stopped complaining and just decided to walk out of the job we hate so much, to reclaim our lives? What if we one day pulled over and picked up that wet, hungry hitchhiker sitting by the road, even though he's male, shaggy and bearded? What if we just for once trusted our guts instead of the headlines? What if we for once took a last look at our apartments, our things, our gadgets, our cars, and just left, walking out into the wilderness, creating a whole new life for ourselves? What if we one day just decided to quit smoking, decided to quit drink alcohol, decided to quit using money?

What if we all would just let go? There are hundreds or thousands of people out there doing it right now, thousands more have already done it. People are slowly waking up.
Another way of life IS possible.