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Derek Best has contributed to several publications, including Macleans Magazine Canada, and Omni Magazine, USA. He is has also produced many documentary films for Television. For many years, he has been interested in A Course in Miracles, a metaphysical thought system, and maintains the official website for that organization. "ACIM", he says "is central to my personal way of seeing the world." This site is strictly personal however. Derek has an eclectic range of interests, and writes about them here as the mood strikes him.

Monday, July 09, 2007

A big non-event.

A rant: Another intergalactic event hijacked a populist cause last week. "Live Earth" was another Geldorf-style musical event, taking place in umpteen countries simultaneously, bragging endlessly about the scope and complexity of its global electronic hookups, and somehow wrapping itself around the theme of climate-change and global warming. I look at all those ancient rockers dragged out for another turn, and I wonder if anybody buys into this kind of flim-flam anymore. What? ... we are supposed to learn lessons in citizenship and ethics from Madonna? I've seen too many shots of puzzled peasants in Bangladesh wondering what the hell these long-haired old western geezers with guitars and personal-assistants had to do with their plight. Who benefits from these promotions? The promoters! They get to be knighted by the queen, and jet all over the globe, writing it all off. No this isn't argumentum ad hominem. I don't discredit Al Gore's cause because he has a jet and a high utility bill... the one has nothing to do with the other. Perhaps it is possible to raise awareness by spreading a little personal bad karma. What I discredit is the notion that anything of any significance in the external world can ever be changed. Period. There is only one thing that can ever be changed and that is my personal perception. When I am healed, the world is too. The problem is not the icecaps or the military industrial complex, the problem is me. The sooner I can accept that one problem - the only problem - has been solved for me, by a power gretaer than Bob Geldorf or Al Gore, the sooner we will all find peace.

The greatest temptation is to water down my own remarks. Allowances and exceptions leak and spray from my thoughts like water from a rotten hosepipe. We should be in the world but not of the world. That's a perennial favorite. Then there's the horrified liberal refrain: Surely you're not saying .... (fill in blank) ...? I say this to myself all the time. At the heart of all this tergiversation (I just wanted to work that word in somehow) is the sense of unease at the sound of my own anti-social voice. How can there be truth in anything that gives such offense? Do I simply want to sound controversial? Perhaps. I don't know how to explain it exactly: it's just that the only way to maintain a position that flies in the face of commonsense and experience is to adopt an almost militant position. It's like building the Hoover dam to hold back a harmless trickle. Trouble is: the trickle never stops, always grows, and becomes a mighty river that will wear you down and sweep you along. That approach really doesn't work I suppose. No man defends himself unless he perceives attack, and to perceive attack is to be an attacker. Ergo: I should stop thinking about it and talking about it, because it is yet another devious way to avoid doing it.

10 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I read your stuff from time to time and try to figure out where you're coming from. With this post I think I have you figured out. You're out of your fuckin' mind!

10:06 AM  
Blogger Derek said...

rc: thanks for clearing that up.

10:53 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Your expectations of people are way too high. They're all sleepwalking! You can't expect them to be aware of what they're doing.

The ego can co-opt anything -- any thought, impulse or idea in order to ensure that it will not accomplish anything that would lead to awakening. People believe that they are bodies and that their brains are the cause of their experiences. As long as they believe that, nothing will change.

Maybe I just spare myself the aggravation by having low expectations, but honestly, it's easier that way.

And, as you said -- getting aggravated over this stuff is a good form of diversion. It's the ego throwing you a bone -- hey! look over here!

7:54 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My, you've been gone a looonnnnggg time.

9:23 AM  
Blogger Donovan said...

My thoughts exactly, Marian... A VERY long time... Where you been, D?

7:18 PM  
Blogger Donovan said...

My thoughts exactly, Marian... A VERY long time... Where you been, D?

7:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

indeed it has been - and an anxious 'derek nation' awaits.

8:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

over 100 days of crickets...

9:41 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

but who's counting...

11:56 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

tick... tick... tick...

7:42 PM  

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