‪Happy New Year’s is a wish not a greeting‬

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
20
1011

This is our future. Happy New Year.

The decade ends with us more interconnected & existentially lonely then at any other time‬ in human history.

‪The evolution of our shared human experience has been eclipsed by corporate tech algorithms designed to enslave & divide us for profit‬ while the climate crisis we are so desperate to ignore has now spread to every inch of our lived experience in increasingly negative blowbacks.

‪Happy New Year’s is a wish not a greeting‬, kiss the first rays of the next orbit around our Sun with the bitter after taste of entropy and collective despair as our means of social media communication push us further and further away from each other towards more extremism.

It’s hard to start a revolution when we are sold that the tyrants we need to overthrow are us.

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20 COMMENTS

  1. Watching the 6pm news the other night with the olds, I realised that the chickens that I had seen walking down the road for the past ten or so years, have finally arrived home to roost

    • @ EP. For a minute there I thought you were talking about the rogue chickens of Titirangi. Or perhaps you are?
      These, are confusing times.
      We should remember those famous words by Thomas Fuller and I’ll try to paraphrase. ” It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
      These, are certainly dark days, but wait? It will get worse. We know they’re going to get darker. We can no longer enjoy the comforting delights of ignorance and our dawn’s still a long way off.
      But neither can they. Those greedy careless swine who’ve collaborated with each other within their pig pens to destabilise us to exploit us for their pointless profits are now under a very bright light held over a very strong magnifying glass. Behold! The Internet!
      I wonder how that kind of global and very public scrutiny will stand the test of hindsight?
      If, and it’s a large and solemn ‘IF’, the collective ‘we’ survive? It will mean we did the right things in a timely fashion.
      ‘IF’ we don’t? Then fuck it. Serves us right, and our beautiful, pale blue dot’s better without us.
      Carl Sagan. If you can get past the twinkly muzik.
      “Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science populariser, and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences. He is best known as a science populariser and communicator.”
      https://youtu.be/wupToqz1e2g
      When I drive around our countryside and see where the locals have been rutting and chucking their junk and beer cans out into the windows of their mobile breeding units I must confess, I think to myself you’ll not be missed by the spirits and energies of an ancient and wondrous planet.
      The old ‘The Masses being manipulated by the well positioned to make good coin’ must be got rid of.
      The way to do that is for us ‘The Masses’ to insist that our gubbimint levy brutal taxes against any and all new comer narcissistic sociopath who thinks they can fuck us without the kissing.
      To all you wanna-be $ billionaires? I say ” Go you! All you have to do is go and find an honest job that pays the necessary hourly rate then go and enjoy your $ billions once you’ve saved hard like you instruct those whom you exploit to do. And whom you wipe your feet on when they predictably fail.
      What’s that factoid? If one were to save a million dollars a year from the year 1066 you’d have a billion dollars today.
      “What could the US afford if it raised billionaires’ taxes? We do the math”
      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/13/billionaires-taxes-inequality-one-percent
      For the sake of life on Earth, we must put a limit on wealth

      George Monbiot. The Guardian.
      https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/19/life-earth-wealth-megarich-spending-power-environmental-damage

      And an all time fav’.
      Tucker Carlson Blows Up at Rutger Bregman in Unaired Fox News Interview
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_nFI2Zb7qE

      The year 2020 message must be : You, are being exploited by those whom have used their plaything, the MSM, to convince you to believe that. that’s ok. You’ll find out, perhaps when it’s too late, that, that was NOT ok. And now that you know that? What are your revised expectations of your politicians going to be in this election year?

  2. Martyn we can come together at this lightning point you have set up and strike our heads together like extra strong matches, and make our own special fire.
    “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.” Friedrich Nietzsche
    Actually we shouldn’t accept anything as gospel without thinking about it seriously. So I don’t agree with
    Nietzsche, we can be crippled by some negative happening, slowed down.

    But if we keep thinking, talking about what is beneficial to us all, and seeking to do it, we may tear a hole in the curtain of time and change our reality. So let’s not give up. I suggest reading some of the remembrances of people who have lived through the Holocaust and not gone mad afterwards, they leave you humbled. And there have been more than one Holocaust-type event, all slightly different but really chilling to the aghast onlooker.

    It seems that we all have the seed of something malignant inside us, it could be called evil, and that our mission if we choose to accept it, is to direct ourselves to worthwhile things that please and benefit us and others too, and look for the good in our lives and other people. And we will put Scrooge in the centre of our Christmas viewing, as an awful warning of what we can, and are actually, progressing towards.

    Goodwill to all growing things, and our misunderstood planet, that we are made from in an often careless spasm, and take for granted for ever after. A quote that keeps recurring in my mind from W.H. Auden-1 September 1939;
    …Yet, dotted everywhere,
    Ironic points of light
    Flash out wherever the Just
    Exchange their messages:
    May I, composed like them
    Of Eros and of dust,
    Beleaguered by the same
    Negation and despair,
    Show an affirming flame.

    • Greywarbler – ” It seems that we all have the seed of something malignant inside us, it could be called evil…”

      Interesting; Arthur Koestler put it this way “…there is nothing very strange or improbable in the assumption that man’s native equipment, though superior to that of any other species, nevertheless contains some built-in error or deficiency which predisposes him towards self-destruction.”

      You reference destruction of others; Koestler is talking about a flawed evolutionary process, focusing on self; Saint Augustine saw us all born evil – which I reject, and hope I’m right; Nietzsche’s what doesn’t kill us making us stronger, alas is also wrong, as you say.

      Your, “Let’s not give up,” and talking and seeking what is beneficial for us all, is cheering, and is best, because, crucially, you talk about us all, and not just about some of us – and I think that you would be a grand political leader.

      • Thanks Applewood for critiquing my comment. I am pleased that you agree, I can only go on trying with the fuel from others who are thinking and caring about our present tribulations and acknowledging the joys. It is sad that so many are shut to thought, to wondering what could be done better, to caring about those falling by the wayside (like on the march as many concentration camps were emptied at the end of WW2, where they had to walk through snow in emaciated conditions with many expiring after bearing up for years). So bearing others’ pain in mind and buoying each other to carry on pushing for even small changes, the sum of which will be greater than the whole, will set up a virtuous circle that will grow in good effect. We can see that happening now, so it’s not just a hopeful thought-bubble.

  3. “Something has changed!”

    “On Monday morning, #PresidentSanders started trending as supporters of the Vermont Senator tweeted praise for the Democratic presidential contender, buoyed in part by the latest news of his fundraising success.

    Sanders leads the other Democratic primary contenders in terms of fundraising, having announced that he had gathered 4.86 million contributions, with an average of $18 per donation, according to The New York Times.

    In the fourth quarter alone, he has raised about $26 million, more than any of his rivals, The Times reported, describing him as “a financial pacesetter in the 2020 contest.”

    The paper also reported that this is far ahead of the 1.95 million donations of Pete Buttigieg and more than Joe Biden’s estimated tally, whose campaign is hoping that his latest quarter will top the $21.5 million he raised last spring.

    It also comes amid news that media outlets are reporting him more positively which could signal a shift from what his campaign staff in 2016 called the “the Bernie Blackout”, a problem which as reported in The Los Angeles Times, he would be downplayed at the expense of other candidates.

    Politico reported that after being written off as someone who was too far left to win the Democratic primary, “something has changed.” [my emph] More at the link: Newsweek Bernie 2020

  5. ‘Happy New Year’ sounds like a desperate, hollow, even deluded kind if ‘wish’, when I look at the state of affairs in the world.

    Are Kiwis so damned deluded, they refuse to take in REALITY?

    Sadly it seems to be the case.

    We have a situation where social injustice and other issues have led to mass protests in many countries. Yet the establishment carries on as per usual. President Macron in France declared in his New Year’s message, that the reforms of the retirement or pension schemes in France will be continued and implemented, the unions consider this a declaration of war.

    We have the US launch a strike on a Shiite militia in Iraq, being a revenge attack to an alleged attack by said militia or something allied to it, to US forces there.

    Hundreds of troops have been sent in by Trump to guard the Green Zone and their embassy.

    Iran is suffering under US imposed sanctions, feels driven into the corner, anything may happen, we saw the attack on the Saudi oil pipelines and refineries late last year, a war is looming in the Middle East, making any earlier war look like a Kindergarten argument.

    We have Kim Jong Un threat the US with a new strategic missile, and with resuming nuclear tests and so, as the US have not responded to what he had hoped for, i.e. negotiations to come to some peaceful agreement for the future.

    We have climate change go rampant, much of Australia burning beyond of what has ever happened, and it is not even the height of their hot summer yet, thousands escape to beaches to survive.

    So meanwhile we have New Years celebrations reported to us as per usual by a complicit, cowardly and sell out MSM, making it seem, all is under control, people are happy and celebrating.

    There are serious tensions all over the world, not just in Latin America, the Middle East, not just in India (a new disputed Citizen Law discriminates against Muslims, it seems), we have China control its people ever more, it uses mass surveillance and control systems, it also aspires to become World Power Number One one day, wanting to take in Taiwan and Hong Kong (wait for the violent suppression that will follow).

    We have our resources plundered all over the world, Kiwis follow like sheep, that is most, the governments that always talk about ‘growth’, ‘well being’, ‘achievement’s and so forth, doing NOTHING real about reducing carbon and methane emissions, just talking, hoping and BSing their way through it, and the lazy ordinary consumerist, mostly middle class Kiwi hopes that nothing much will change to their wasteful and destructive, unsustainable life style.

    This country is screwed, the world is screwed, and we ‘celebrate’ wtf?

    It may need to take violence, attacks to the fossil fuel infrastructure and worse to shake the dumb population up, one day it will happen, they will run like rabbits from the fire, and try to hide in their hollows.

    Taking in all climate and other refugees from the rest of the world will be another disaster for this country. You CANNOT save humanity by overloading Noah’s Arch, it will SINK, for damned sake.

    The greatest threat to the future are the middle class, brain washed idiots that keep voting in the hopeless status quo ensuring useless governments we get, there is NO hope with that happening.

    Have a ‘happy’ 2020, but get real, we will have more wars, more unrest, more crisis, more natural disasters, more of the same and worse than what we had in 2019.

  7. Labour must in 2020 make “Climate change” their ‘real issue of delivery’ and must not hide under the ‘word fact mountian’ again.

    “Action speaks louder than words” -is a powerful saying from our history, and is important that this labour Coaition Government must remenber this year; – as they prepare for this 2020 election!!!!!!!

    • You’re right Cleangreen. But as I said on another blog, the government’s position on climate change is window dressing, not reality. They announce that half the govt. fleet is now electric, but fail to provide the necessary fuel stations to make any rise in the number of electric cars a feasible option for us. Not fooled, we’re not idiots. I prefer survival to idiocy; the likely outcome when the climate crisis is taken seriously

    • Cleangreen ‘ “Action speaks louder than words” – is a powerful saying from our history.’

      Indeed – it goes right back to our beginnings with Saint Paul, who said, “Faith without works is dead.”

  8. Marc
    Your task for 2020 I suggest, is to look for positive happenings, for formidably thoughtful people working for the good of people and the planet and tell us all about them instead of heaping all the negative things you can find on our heads. Those of us who think, are curious about the background to the news and of history, already know these things. Those who just get on with what they earn wages for, will dismiss all that stuff as irrelevant to them, and just an opinion that they choose not to concern themselves with.
    Cleangreen
    Please add to the CC of climate change about which you are so right, the CC of Citizen Combination: CC+CC.
    Now that is a great acronym to put up on banners along with ER.

  11. I’m looking forward to the Gweens not in parliament anymore! Woop! Woop!
    10 years on the sideline will be enough time for the current mob to grow up and get some life experience under their belts.
    By then, they’ll be in their 30’s or more … and maybe less ‘Woke’?

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