Nature’s way

Of mindsets and maiden voyages, of now and then,
Of traveling in time, we travelers, Man.
With beginnings come endings, its nature’s way,
The end of the night, the start of the day.
Some things now close, some far and away.
No one is history as they live their day.
In soft veiled confusion, where change does reign,
We stop to look and are gone again.
Across bridges, through tunnels, sticky threads in space,
Pendulums, fractals and rhyming events race.
More beginnings like the past, reset and grand,
Exploring our minds, space and the land.
Of mindsets and maiden voyages, of now and then,
Of traveling in time, we travelers, Man. (4 July 2011, Mr. Larry)

(Tao Te Ching 41)
“The way that is bright seems dull;
The way that leads forward seems to lead backward;
The way that is even seems rough.
The highest virtue is like the valley;
The sheerest whiteness seems sullied;
Ample virtue seems defective.”

* When there’s a gap between perception and reality, more reality won’t close the gap.

The Virtual World.
Our world has become virtual in so many ways; from our bank accounts to our relationships on social networking sites. We judge our wealth by looking up our 401 Ks online at work instead of counting the physical assets in our possession. We judge our support systems by how many people wished us a happy birthday on Facebook. We judge our personal security by the fact that we may live in a community with a reportedly low crime rate instead of our own abilities to defend ourselves. We view the world through our television sets which tell us that economic collapses always happen somewhere else. We couldn’t imagine gas stations that are out of fuel, grocery stores with empty shelves, banks with no money, or a  local police force that refuses to respond to calls unless they are deemed a “priority”.

We couldn’t imagine these things because most of us in America believe that our “civilized society” has evolved to the point where we don’t need to produce things anymore. Instead, we just need to pay the rest of the world (with the dollars generated from our service based economy) so that they can produce things for us. Regardless of how fragile our social and economic structure has become, due to our reliance on the strength of our currency and our inability to appreciate the gravity of a full-blown societal panic, our ability to thrive in this virtual world has led to a false sense of security that is sure to catch the majority of us off guard when things begin to get worse and the reality of this economic depression begins to settle in.
Hellooo…its time to wake up!

“Wake up, Neo.
The Matrix has you.”

Quotes to remember:
“You’re here because you know something.
What you know you can’t explain.
But you feel it.
You’ve felt it your entire life.”
“That there is something wrong with the world.
You don’t know what it is, but it’s there,  like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”

What is the Matrix?
It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
What truth?
That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else  you were born into bondage.
Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch.
A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is.
You have to see it for yourself.”
“You’ve been living in a dream world, Neo.”

When all else is said:
Industrial society is built on,
1)  a foundation of an organized social structure with feedback loops;
2)  an  interdependent infrastructure of transportation, homes and utilities;
3)  and a massive, energy driven commodity flow that processes materials from the mine, timber and field to operate; diminish any link and the size of the system must shrink, break any link and the system collapses.