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The good tidings and the bad
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News
Dec. 9, 2005
As we approach another holiday season that promises to make a yet greater mockery of our earnest good wishes to each other, it seems a good time to tally up the score in the struggle between good and evil.
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Since the bad news gets so much coverage, most of it consisting of egregious lies and deception in the service of minimization, rationalization and outright denial, let's try to get it out of the way as quickly as possible by limiting the coverage to just the most significant items. In spite of the overwhelming attention paid to the bad news, it is really not the important news. In fact most of it is not news in any sense of the word since virtually none of it is anything new. Just the same old reprise of the limitless banality of evil with occasional minor variations.
The threat of nuclear war continues to inch forward. More countries are forced to join the nuclear club, or at least intimate that they secretly have, in order to find refuge from the military threats from the government of the United States which continues to develop new, innovative nuclear weapons meant to be used against the resistance of the weak.
So-called "depleted uranium" is a nuclear weapon actively in use. Uranium and other radioactive elements are being spread as gas and dust across the globe as hundreds of tons of uranium ammunition is expended in Iraq and elsewhere. We will never be able to repair the damage. As long as life exists on earth the consequences of this folly will continue to kill and deform. The genetic damage will continue to spread across the globe as animals (that would include us humans) mate and pass on damaged genetic material through countless innocent generations.
The human population continues to grow at an exponential rate from already unsustainable levels. With the Catholic Church and other fundamentalist, patriarchal institutions actively impeding any attempts to introduce rational plans to curb reproduction, the Malthusian option seems to be the only one on the table for consideration by the elite.
Misuse of the discoveries of biological science, particularly the advent of genetic engineering, are introducing wild cards into the genetic deck that threaten to destabilize the very web of life. Monoclonal agriculture spreading across the globe in the service of multinational corporations is setting the whole world up for a much aggrandized replay of the potato famine. Biological weapons will not stay meekly in secret labs.
Worldwide economic collapse is in its opening phases. Ecological destruction, egged on by the depletion of oil, will see the global speculative financial house of cards come tumbling down. While some demented souls, including me, may say that, in the long run, this is actually good news, in the shorter run there will be much suffering by innocents.
Regardless of what else happens, the earth's climate has been irreversibly destabilized. What is left standing in the wake of the charge of the four horsemen detailed above, will not survive the chaotic energies of an enraged system of weather.
We are in the midst of the greatest, most rapid extinction event known to students of the history of the earth. As life dies back to the simplest most rugged life forms, we humans are not likely to continue to have a seat at the table. As Darwin pointed out, earthworms make soil. No earthworms, no petroleum based substitutes, no soil. No soil, no humans. Sorry.
My apologies for the brevity of my list of concerns. I have attempted to mention only a handful of what seems to me to be the worst of the worst news. If I left out some favorite horror of yours the omission was unintentional.
OK, now that we have that mess out of the way, how about the good news!
The best news by far, from my point of view, is that we are still the same humans that evolved successfully over countless millennia. Genetically speaking, we are the same as the humans who lived, largely peaceful, abundant and rewarding lives for tens of thousands of years in the Neolithic period.
Excepting those afflicted with the disease of inordinate power and privilege, we still enjoy relating to each other with kindness and care. We are still creatures who love most to love. We still smile deeply at the innocent play of children. We still experience awe and joy at the wonders of the night sky, at the poetry of the natural world.
When not deluded and hypnotized by authority to feel otherwise, we are still curious about and kind to strangers. We love stories and music and, given a moments peace, create a profusion of both to our mutual delight.
We love to cooperate with others and the golden rule is a lingua franca of the species. When not driven before the lash to do otherwise we care for the earth as we would a garden, bestowing love and enjoying its gifts.
While diseased cultural scripts now dominate the earth, we are capable of forming very complex, very sustainable, and glorious cultures that produce art, poetry and science in abundance. We have shown this ability repeatedly over time and retain the ability, when allowed, to spontaneously order our lives in careful and loving ways.
We retain the ability to spawn great spiritual teachers (whose teachings are more or less immediately distorted and put to the use of power -- wisdom, being organic, is perishable) who remind us of our potential greatness, of our ability to love greatly, and move mountains with a faith in the goodness that resides within us.
Such a teacher was Jesus. It is a true miracle that, despite the best efforts of two millennia of demented exploiters assiduously distorting the story of his life, his personality shines through the smoke and mirrors of history.
Shorn of our preoccupations over status, it remains true that all of us, down deep, would like to be like him. And in that we have the best news. Perhaps the only good news, but good enough:
Our faith in our ability, as ordinary people, to emulate the goodness of the best of us will, in the end, resolve our conflicts and bring our suffering down to a level where we can cope in good spirits and rejoin the web of life and love.
A merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
© by the author.
What do you think?
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Previous articles by this author:
The revolution this time
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Health care in America: An ongoing, massive con game
by Paul Krugman, The New York Times
with comments by Herb Ruhs, MD
Competition: Destroyer of character
by Herb Ruhs, MD
America without the myths
by Herb Ruhs, MD,
To dream the impossible dream
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Refusing to see the obvious
by Maureen Dowd, The New York Times
with comments by Herb Ruhs, MD
What can we do? Rhetorically speaking, that is.
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Banned in Cloverdale, by Herb Ruhs, MD
All of us are being fatally poisoned
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Daubert is the most influential Supreme Court ruling you've never heard of
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Enough already
by Herb Ruhs, MD
War is sometimes justified, often not, but always insane
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The bad news is the same as the good news
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Trying to control your emotions "can make you pretty stupid"
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The gangsters' mentality
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Nietzsche, New Orleans, and 'Nam
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Four decades in five minutes
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The masquerade of "civilization"
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Habits of successful modern cannibals
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Face these horrors with acceptance, equanimity, humor
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Yet another, higher dose of pain
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The war of one against all:
The roots of our enslavement
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Doctors, medicine, hospitals, and the rest of the story
by Herb Ruhs, MD
System of privilege expands in scope and overall power
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Highway robbery turns out to be legal after all
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Class warfare, anyone?
Why class war is not a fiction but a fixture of our lives
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Why the little-known news is the most important
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Why "Free Speech" does not matter
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Big pharma
by Herb Ruhs, MD
The genius fish and other comments
by Herb Ruhs, MD
When all else fails, try the truth
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Childhood abuse and the role it plays in maintaining coercive power
by Herb Ruhs, MD
Murder by medical device
by Herb Ruhs, MD
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Dr. Herb Ruhs & grandson
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