Pictures Found While Researching My Newest Novel

I've developed the habit of looking at countless pictures in order to help me get a feel for the subject matter that goes into my novels. I think it started in Perchance To Dream, but it really became necessary when I began writing not in the present but of events that took place 100 years ago. I needed to describe an era I had never experienced, and I needed to get a feel for it. I also read a considerable amount and watched movies that were both from and about the time, but that is beyond the scope of this post.

My point is, the search for images leads to interesting discoveries. I thought I'd share some of the more unusual ones with you. They are not only oddities, but they might also give you an insight into the book I'm writing (no name, as of yet).

Here is a painting of Mary and Jesus. Gaze at it for a moment, and let me know what you think:

Yes, the blonde-haired Jesus is a little odd, but not too much so considering Europe's bias in favor of a European Jesus. But the artist of this particular one is Adolph Hitler. As I don't consider myself a student of art, I'm unable to give an intelligent opinion of the work, but I'd appreciate any comments.

The rise of Hitler was a gradual one, having its roots in the first World War. Germany was a defeated nation, a people that had spilled the young men onto the battlefield only to have them returned old in spirit and infirm in body. Postwar Germany, like other nations, had to adapt to millions of men who were bearing the scars of war. Below are shown the many attachments available to those who lost a hand or hands in the war. Not pictured are the spoon and fork attachments that helped amputees in the simple task of eating.

The reparations demanded by England and France for their losses in the war were more than Germany could cope with. Desperate to continue to make payments while keeping their economy afloat, The Weimar Republic did what so many others have done: they printed more money, devaluing their currency in order to delay for a time dealing what were impossible demands. What began as an unwise response quickly spiraled into an insane situation, as inflation hit the Germans in a way it never has anywhere before or since. 

Money became so useless people used it as wallpaper and even fuel for the fire. Rather than saving, people rushed to spend their money as soon as they were paid before it became useless. Seeing no future, people began to live for the moment. They spent their money on cocaine and drinks at strip bars. People who had saved their whole lives found they had nothing, while those who spent recklessly discovered their debts easily forgiven. 

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Hitler believed that since he was a symbol to the German nation, that he was married to the German nation, and thus never married his longtime love interest, Eva Braun. She was always kept in the background, never mentioned and only incidentally photographed. This photograph being a rather unusual exception. Here we see Eva Braun in black face. Given the extreme racial policies of the time, this seems almost a harmless bit of fun by comparison. Yes, it expresses ignorance, but it does not demonstrate the willful hatred her beloved showed for virtually every ethnicity that was not Germanic. It was more an imitation of what Al Jolson and others in America were doing.

Here's the Eva Braun who caught Hitler's eye:

Hitler eventually did marry Eva Braun, but not until their very last day alive. Hiding in their bunker, the Soviets bombarding Berlin, Eva Braun and Adolph Hitler were married underground, only to commit suicide a short time after.

Nothing says Christmas so much as eggnog, sharing presents, and swastikas. When the Nazis came to power, everything was co-opted. Everything needed to reflect the ideals of the Third Reich. Nothing was sacred except the party and its leader: 

A couple of propaganda posters, basically saying that Jews and communists will destroy the world if you do not support Hitler's fight against them. Yes, it's propaganda and evil propaganda at that, but you can see how it could be effective.

Just want to give some idea of the size of the rallies that took place during the Nazi era. It must have felt wonderful to be part of a crowd so large and so uniform. Deep within all of us is a desire to belong to something larger. This is actually a very beautiful thing, but it unfortunately can be manipulated into becoming a very bad thing. 

Random Thoughts, Part 25

Another set of truth missiles aimed at the heart of preconceived notions and complacency. Little tablets that, once ingested, will open your mind to new perspectives...and a few attempts at humor.

My problem as a writer is that—whenever I meet someone for the first time—I immediately invent for them a personality and background that are invariably more interesting than the ones they possess. And confirming this character to be uninteresting after a few minutes of conversation, I decide that they are unnecessary to my story and begin devising ways to kill them off.

If the flag you raise is one of defeatism and negativity, only a morbid few will rally to it, and they will never accomplish anything.

It is society that gets to decide who is the blasphemer and who is the prophet. But it doesn’t matter, because they stone them both.

A library is a sacred place where the voices of the ancients can still be heard if we but give them the required silence.

A prophet is merely someone who rises beyond the warring factions of his day and proclaims a pox on both houses. He sees beyond the narrow framework within which the opposing factions tear at each other like rats in too small a cage. He sees what must be done while those who claim to be leaders see only the struggle for power.

When we find that the only answer rationality and the intellect can provide is death, then the only option is to open ourselves to spirituality. The precise job of the intellect is to define reality, and in defining, it limits what it defines. Reality is winnowed away until the spirit is lost, until possibilities unforeseen are lost. It is necessary from time to time for the individual to transcend the intellectual world he has fashioned, rediscover with the eyes of a child what he no longer sees with wise ones. A society too becomes trapped in its perceptions.

The goal is not to change minds but awaken them, not to make people believe but question. For in questioning, they shall find their own path to truth.

Our memories of the fields we played in and the house we lived in in our youth seem so large. And yet when we visit them when we are older they seem so small, not at all as we remember them. So too does the future seem. It appears to the child as a field so large we could never hope to traverse it all, but the adult slowly begins to see the fences appear on the horizon, until at last the old man sees only the smallest of gardens.

If war created peace, wouldn’t we have it by now?

It is impossible to be in 2 places at the same time, but by fixating on where you think you should be or want to be, to the point where you do not live in the moment, it is possible to be in 0 places at once.

Be careful what you call progress. Be certain before you call something inevitable. So much that is bad for us is accepted by us because of those two words.

Calling something inevitable is just another way of calling yourself powerless.

People strain too hard to see miracles, set the conditions under which they will accept the reality of a miracle too high. Miracles are all around us, they are daily occurrences. Miracles occur with every new sunrise and in every speck of life, no matter how small. If we cannot see the miracle of life, of living, we have lost the very reason to go on living.

If you are a smoker, just remember every time you inhale you are choosing smoke over oxygen.

Ask yourself what technological advance you most hope to see and then ask yourself what technological advance you most fear. Does your hope outweigh your fear?

If ever it was a good idea to hold up those who create much as heroes to be admired it is no longer the case. Perhaps a century or more ago, when scarcity existed, those who converted nature into product had their use to society. Today we must learn to hold up he who consumes little as the model to be emulated.

The secret of life is to live joyfully an existence which requires the utmost seriousness and provides us with death and hopelessness as the ultimate end.

Gather about you the various aspects of your personality, assemble them into a single entity that is you. If you do not, if you will be unable to find a center, an essence, an identity, then those various aspects of you will not be under your control and are potentially controllable by others.

Happiness is an elusive prey one can pursue but never possess. While it is a criminal act for someone to step in between you and your pursuit of happiness, it is a greater crime to expect another person to be responsible for your own happiness.

The Road I Travel

A Drive To Work

(If you are a writer, you write about anything you experience.)

I now drive 40 minutes to get to work every day. As an environmentally inclined person, I feel bad about that, but I do need to make the house payments. And despite the fact it takes a bite out of my day, I enjoy the ride. It’s through rural areas, and a good stretch of it is along Lake Michigan.

What I notice most is the number of dead animals lying on the road: deer, racoons, skunks, opossums. Once, society took the time to remove the bodies from the road, but now we leave them there. We no longer have the resources available to do such things, no longer have the political will to do much of anything. Everything that is done is done through the market now, and the market doesn’t care about animals, dead or alive.

Perhaps it was only ever a matter of cosmetics anyway. Perhaps we were just lying to ourselves about how a technologically advanced society treats the natural world. We didn’t want to know what our need for speed was doing to the rest of God’s creatures, or the planet, so we hid the evidence. And now that we have come so far, we no longer care. We’ve grown used to it, like the factory farm I drive by that smells of animal waste, where semi-trucks daily haul out milk in shiny metallic tanks to be packaged in little cardboard containers imprinted with pictures of cows in a pasture.

A veneer of trees obscures much of the crops that grow behind them. Once I imagined vast forests lay beyond, now I know they are mere barrier walls for crops of corn to feed the cows to feed the people.

I reach the lake and soon I am driving past the closed nuclear power plant. Within its depths somewhere, God knows what is stored in God knows what kind of containers. There is no plan to deal with the radioactive waste, and so they sit and will gradually become forgotten about. It is part of our mental makeup to forget about things, no matter how important and dire they may be, if we don’t have a good way of dealing with them.

Not far past the mostly-abandoned nuclear station, I see several signs on people’s property warning about the health risks of wind turbines. I am incapable of understanding the degree of disconnect required to not notice the irony.

Working nights, I drive home in darkness. It seems I have encountered thunderstorms almost nightly this summer. I can never remember a summer so full of thunder. One becomes aware of such things when one has a skittish dog and a long drive at night.

I’ve become aware of the weather of late. It almost seems that nature itself has become unnatural. In late August, I noticed the moon was just a tiny sliver, but that sliver was more red than I ever remember seeing it. A harvest moon, I know, but still it seemed an omen to me. Perhaps it is just me. I know it is foolish to look for signs in the sky. And yet, the desire to do so is deeply imbedded in our species. Perhaps, like animals who can sense impending natural disasters, human beings too are capable sensing danger without being able to understand why.

Nightly I drive home and encounter the wildlife that must contend with traffic while crossing the road. I see a chipmunk speed across, a frog taking large jumps to cross as quickly as possible. I see a deer peering at me from a ditch, a couple of raccoons who, once committed, seem unable to turn back even with my car speeding right into their path. I brake and the disaster is narrowly averted.

My eyes are wide open, my mind alert. I do not want to hit anything, not even a frog. And yet there is something within me urging me to go faster. I need to get home, back to my life I’ve had to abandon in order to do my job to earn money to afford my car payments, car insurance, and gasoline. There is a subliminal urge too great for my conscious mind to control, and my foot applies a little more pressure to the gas pedal. Time is precious. I’ve calculated that driving even 5 miles an hour less should be sufficient to prevent an accident should something jump out in front of me, but somehow every time I look at the speedometer, I’m going faster again. Have to race my coworkers, have to beat them home, win the race.

What is wrong with me? Why do I love nature and yet not only drive so far to work, but drive so quickly from it? It is technology, it enables me to do what objectively I would never wish to do. It is like being home with a box of Twinkies: I would never imagine gorging myself sick on unnatural food, would certainly not go out of my way to do so. Ah, but if it is already there… If bad behavior is effortless and satisfying in the short term, it makes it far more difficult to do the right thing. If all it takes is pushing my foot a little harder on a gas petal, why not go faster? If gas is so damn cheap that I suffer little by polluting the atmosphere and endangering God’s little creations, it does make it more difficult to do the right thing. I do want to do the right thing.

The answer is to fashion a world in which it is easier to make good decisions. We’ve done a poor job of that. We’ve made a world where advertisement is constantly telling you to buy what you do not need, consume what is not good for you, trust in the system advertisers perpetuate. We are told that progress is our only good, and that progress means continually pushing further down on the accelerator.

We are, each one of us, driving down the road at too great a speed, heedless of the damage we cause to the natural world we ultimately rely upon for our survival. We must be reminded again and again that not only are we in control of the gas pedal, but we also have a brake.

Len Wein: Elegy For A Storyteller

I just learned of Len Wein’s passing today, and feel the need to say a few words regarding how much he has contributed to comics and to my childhood and my desire to become a writer.

The youngest of five children, I was always surrounded by the comic books my older brothers would buy. They were one of the coolest things a young child could be immersed in, and I leafed through them long before I was able to read them.

I handled them carefully. My older siblings permitted me to look at them, but only after making sure I would be careful with them. Comics by their nature are rather fragile things, prone to ripping or creasing or water stains left from drinking cups left on top of them. So from my youth, I was taught a reverence for comic books that most kids my age never knew.

And at the age of six, it was time to buy my very first comic. On vacation, I walked a couple of blocks with my older brother to the local mom and pop store and had a look at the wonderfully over-stuffed comic book rack. I still remember the smell of them, blended with the aroma of assorted candies, popcorn, and bubble gum. Despite all the bright comics and recognized heroes on the covers, somehow my eyes were attracted to a comic with a large dark-green creature on the front. A muck-encrusted man-shaped monster, emerging from swampy waters.

I brought it home carefully, read it oh so reverently. At the age of six I could not have been able to read it all myself, and yet a comic book writer tells his story as much in pictures as he does in words. Besides, I had my older brother who read it along with me and was able to explain anything I did not understand. A legend, for me, was born. Another sympathetic creature the world did not understand, not unlike Frankenstein or many others any horror fan of the era would know. The monster who was not really a monster, who was actually more human than most of the people he encountered.

I followed the series as much as a child of my age and means permitted. I even went as far as to cut the cover off of issue #3 to hang up on my wall. But as for the first issue, I kept in as good a shape as could be expected of someone my age, always treated it as my most prized possession.

As I said before, most kids my age didn’t treat comics as carefully as I did. But if someone had a comic I wanted, I was willing to make a trade for it, even if it was not in top condition. Such was the case with Justice League Of America #101, written by Len Wein. To this day, the name Bob is on my copy of this amazing comic, the name of my best-friend’s brother. Again, the cover attracted my attention, but the story within was what so entranced me.

I had been familiar with the two separate teams of heroes, the Justice League of America and the Justice Society of America, had seen them team up to handle a crisis or two. But Justice League #101 had them searching for a third group of heroes, one whose very existence had been wiped from the memories of everyone. Second in a three issue story, this comic nevertheless became a favorite of mine. For years I sought out the rest of the story, which I eventually found in a $1 digest. It did not disappoint.

Flash forward to 1980, when I was 14. I was already reading Dostoyevsky and Hawthorne, but I still had a soft spot for comics. When I came upon the miniseries The Untold Legend Of The Batman, I already sensed it would be a classic. To this day it is still the definitive Batman story for me. It was written, of course, by Len Wein.

Wein later did some excellent work on one of my favorite comics, Green Lantern. He also turned to editorial duties when the Swamp Thing comic was resurrected to correspond with the dreadful movie of the same name. The comics were much better, beginning with very solid work by Martin Pasko, and then brought to an unbelievable level with the introduction of Alan Moore as writer.

And speaking of Alan Moore, Len Wein was there again as editor when Moore wrote the groundbreaking, seminal milestone that was Watchmen. It was an instant and widely recognized classic not just in comics but in fiction in general (I still prefer his work on Swamp Thing, but perhaps it is because I am so fond of the comic Len Wein created).

Lastly, at least as far I was concerned, Len Wein acted as editor of yet another of my favorite comics, All Star Squadron. As happened in my cherished Justice League #101, I was introduced to an entire cast of characters from the Golden Age of comics of which I’d been completely unaware. The past had come alive again, the deepest of archeological digs had taken place in order to have history’s mysteries retrieved. Generations had been bridged, and once again I had Len Wein, in part, to thank for it.

And this was just some of the work he did for DC Comics! There is a whole other story to be written about the work he did for Marvel Comics, but I’ll let someone who grew up reading those to tell you about them. I’ll just mention one name: Wolverine.

While I at some point outgrew reading comics (at least for a time), they—and most notably Len Wein—were at the foundation of my reading experiences, and you never outgrow your foundations. The vast panoramas he created, characters both sympathetic and inspirational, stories that gripped you on multiple levels, these will always loom large in the basement of my soul, the place where comic books are stored to be read on rainy afternoons. Heroism, justice, a sense of mystery and imagination, these were all things that were given to me by a man I was never fortunate enough to meet. I hope in some small way, Mr. Wein, my writing can give to others what you have given to me.

A Weekend In Door County

I thought I'd do a little picture blog to share with you our most recent weekend getaway to Door County. It's a trip we've taken often, sometimes as a day trip, other times for a whole week. This in no way represents all that one can see or do, it is merely what we chose to do on this 2-day stay.

Before reaching Door County, we stopped in Kewaunee, where we explored Kewaunee Marshlands Walk, located right off of Highway 42. Kewaunee, although in its own county, has always seemed like the beginning of Door County for my wife and I.

Kewaunee Marshlands

 Our first contact with another species

 My wife has an eagle eye for birds

 A collection of cormorants. Is that the right term?

 Right next door to the entrance to the marshes was an antique store, so of course we had to stop in. I was impressed not only with the collection of oddities they had but also by the prices, which were overall quite reasonable.

A random indoor picture 

 A guitar that had accompanied The Rolling Stones on tour in 1965.

 Moving on to Algoma, the true beginning of Door County. Here's a shot of the beach.

 Here is Von Stiehl winery. Located right next door is Ahnapee Brewery. My wife went left, I went right.

 We met up out back, where we sat at the lake's edge and enjoyed our drinks. Ahnapee and Von Stiehl both have their own outdoor seating available.

 A view from Von Stiehl's backyard into Ahnapee Brewery's backyard:

Next stop was Sturgeon Bay, where my wife always demands we stop and visit the scrapbooking store.  

 We asked the owner of the store where we could get a good burger at a decent price and she turned us onto the Red Room, which was exactly what we were looking for. If you go, order the fried cheese curds.

Ordinarily, we don't have to ask where to go for a good burger in Door County. It's always been our ritual to stop in Egg Harbor and eat lunch there, along with a beer brewed in-house at the Shipwrecked Brewery. But this happened recently:

 The Shipwrecked Brewery has vowed to rebuild, and we vow to be among the first to visit when they re-open.

Here is a picture of the harbor in Egg Harbor:

A few years back, we first stumbled upon The Ridges Sanctuary near Bailey's Harbor quite by accident. After visiting the beach we decided to take a walk through the woods. This time we took a guided tour, which taught us something about the ridges and swales that help to make the area's ecosystem unique. The gradual recession of Lake Michigan's waterline has left a series of high strips of land separated by lower, marshier area.

Here was our first glimpse of wildlife at The Ridges Sanctuary:

 The Carnivorous pitcher plant:

 One of two light houses that were essential to the history of The Ridges Sanctuary:

 The other:

 A swale between two ridges. This one seemed not so obviously marshy, but I wouldn't venture to try walking through it:

 No pileated woodpeckers were seen, but here is indisputable evidence of their presence:

 A random shot of The Ridges:

 There are three frogs sitting on top the lily pads, though two of them are worthy of a Where's Waldo picture:

 Yet another swale:

 A snowy egret quite comfortable with having his picture taken:

After a couple of hours' walk through nature, it was only fitting that we stopped in Beer Zot in Sister Bay where my wife kindly took over driving duties so I could have a couple fine Belgian Beers. For you beer snobs out there, I had a Triporteur Full Moon 12 in a bottle and a Gulden Draak on tap. One does not find such fine beer at your typical bar, nor does one attempt to drive after imbibing such potent brew.

After a walk along the bay and a compulsory visit to Door County Creamery, it was on to Ephraim where we were fortunate enough to catch the sled dogs before they departed the Door County Sled Dog Education Center/Museum. I've seen the dogs twice now and both times it was while they were on the bus. I can't help thinking of them as rock stars on tour, since that is the way they are treated by their handlers as well as their admirers. Whenever animals and humans are forced to interact, I am always worried that the animals might be taken advantage of, but in this case I'm relatively certain that this is a love-fest for all involved. These are rescued animals acting as willing envoys on behalf of people looking to rescue still more animals. Their lives are good ones.

 A short distance from where the dogs stay. You should be so lucky:

 Another picture from Ephraim. Not sure if the restaurant is dog friendly, but many in Door County are:

 Lastly, a few pictures from Fish Creek, which was where we stayed. I've long considered Fish Creek to be the heart of Door County.

Touch Of The World. If Fish Creek is the heart of Door County, Touch Of The World is the heart of Fish Creek. Here, Door County simply explodes in bizarre and beautiful expressions of summer, of joy, of life. While there are certainly people with a good deal of money who come to Door County, it doesn't cost a penny to walk around the shops. And there are curiosities to be found for anyone, regardless of their price range.

 Some of the many shops that can be found off the beaten paths in Fish Creak. The donut doesn't actually sing, but that doesn't lessen the surreal atmosphere that exists here:

As for the evening, there was plenty to choose from. The Indigo Girls were playing in Fish Creek, along with a lot of local bands. There is a Drive-In theater nearby which we previously went to, as well as the Peninsula Players Theater which we also knew from experience to be a good time. But I saw a poster for a play called Blue Material, which appeared to be written by a local. Sometimes I just get this sense that something is worth experiencing, although there seems to be no compelling reason to believe so. I had that feeling with this play, and so I urged my wife to give her Friday evening over to something that could possibly be a bust.

When I saw the modest size of the theater, I almost turned around:

When I entered the Gibraltar Town Hall and saw a mere 20 or so folding chairs, I asked myself what the hell I had gotten myself into. But then I remembered the times I had seen amazing performances by musicians and other artists, and I realized that the size of the audience seldom equates to the quality of the artists. So we sat ourselves down to a play written by an unknown, performed by a cast who didn't have the courage to set an actual price for viewers. Oh, plus we got free coffee and bakery from Fika Bakery and Cafe.

My sense for the obscure but wonderful has never really failed me. The play I watched was truly impressive on all levels (save spectacle. There were no helicopters exploding on stage or performers flying through the air.) Acting was very good, dialog was crisply written and delivered, there was both humor and depth to the story, and the dialog flowed smoothly between the play itself and the play within a play, namely Chekov's Uncle Vanya. If there was one performer I might suggest was deserving of special mention, it would be Anna Mae Beyer, if only for her excellent singing and ukulele performance.

And such was our weekend getaway to Door County. Our next visit, I'm sure, will be quite different than this one, as there are many other places to explore, though I will make a point of seeing the Open Door Theater Company again.

The Slow Strangling Of Our Consciousness

Asking the experts of today to solve the world’s problems is like asking the priests of the volcano god how to end the drought. All they will tell you to do is sacrifice a virgin, it’s all they know. Today’s experts are little different, there are just more of them. Ask them what their solutions are, and they will tell you to bomb it, privatize it or medicate it.

Everyone in a position of power in a corrupt system is de facto corrupt himself. In bowing to a corrupt authority, they have surrendered their conscience, have proven themselves unable to choose between right and wrong. They cannot save us, they can only hurt us. We must help ourselves, there is no other power we can turn to.

Those in power, those whose job it is to inform the public, are more herders of opinion than people interested in expanding our understanding of the circumstances we now face. Their job is to limit the view of those who must toil for the present system in the same way horses are blinkered to prevent them being distracted from the task demanded of them.

And in blinkering others, they blinker themselves. Intent on their task, they are so focused on it that they lose sight of their larger obligation to humanity. Not constricted themselves, they yet become even more myopic than those they blinker because, as it is said, none are so blind as those who refuse to see.

An object in motion tends to stay in motion. A rock rolling downhill not only continues to roll downhill, it picks up speed as it does. Media that is more concerned with directing thought than it is opening new paradigms and providing greater context for its viewers will not merely maintain the status quo but will continue to narrow the window through which the world is shown. This has been occurring for decades now, though it has happened just slowly enough that we somehow have not become aware of it. The imperfections of the human mind are many, and the study of how those imperfections can be exploited has been well funded. Kind and decent human beings can be manipulated into supporting the most inhuman of systems if they are led to believe that the “experts” know more than they. Research the Milgram experiments if you have any doubt.

There are two ways thought can travel: outward and inward. We can expand our understanding of the world we live in by permitting ourselves to hold more than one possibility, one paradigm at a time. By not demanding hard and simplistic answers we can drift off into seeing facts and events from multiple perspectives. This requires a degree of faith, a relative absence of fear. In this way we can acquire a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the world and our place in it.

But fear is a barrier that bounces such understanding back upon ourselves. The media has erected a curtain of fear that causes us to seek simple answers in order to deal with immediate threats that may or not be real. The media would have you believe that ISIS, fascists, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and people of the party opposite yours are right outside the door. The crisis is perpetual, though ever-shifting, and in such a situation, you have little recourse but to trust those who have been kind enough to alert you to the threat. They have to run the media this way, it’s good for business.

Once your thoughts and perceptions begin to peer inward, once you begin to discard possibilities and embrace simplistic solutions, the lens through which you see the world continues to shrink. And like the teeth of a predator, the tools of the media are designed to grab hold of you and constantly direct you towards its awaiting maw. You sit transfixed, staring with fear and incomprehension at the world outside which is actually the world inside the media’s constricted narrative.

It is worth reminding yourself that the media is not your friend. What they do they do for money. There are ample examples easily found on the internet where those who are in the know admit as much. The CEO of CBS himself said of Donald Trump’s presidential run, “It might not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Are these the sort of people you want guiding you, guiding your nation? Are these the sort of people in whose hands you want to place your emotional and spiritual well-being? The future of the planet?

They do what they do for money. They do what they do for self-enrichment. Oh, I know, the mantra of the day is that the free enterprise system that rewards individual greed ends up being the ultimate delivery system for all that is good for us. It is repeated to us constantly until we accept it uncritically, indeed unthinkingly. And who is it delivering that message to us night and day? The media, a conglomeration of corporations that not only seek profit for themselves but seek a cultural milieu that justifies such profiteering for themselves and their sponsors.

The result is ultra hi-def television that nonetheless offers us only black and white broadcasting, the contrast level turned so high that there is little to no gray area. The definition our televisions are capable of is nothing short of miraculous, and yet so little detail is ever provided. Instead, instances of violence are looped continuously and the narrative that accompanies the video must play to the beat.

In short, the media is a Frankenstein monster created by powerful corporate interests and faithfully obedient to the Military Industrial Complex, the more direct weapon of those same corporate interests. It has a job, and it is not to inform you. It has a mission statement, and it is not the search for truth. It has an obligation to someone, and it is not the viewer. Unless you truly believe you live in a free society, you must know this is true.

You do know it is true. On some level you are unable to accept the lie. In your calmer moments, those moments where the media is not busily herding ideas that have strayed too far from the official narrative the way a sheepdog herds the flock, you have admitted as much. But then the powers that be find some new unsavory business to attend to and the media is put into motion once again in order to justify some great evil, such as destroying the environment or bombing nations that have done nothing to us. Then the fear sets in and you cling to the narrative the media spins the way Harlow’s lab monkeys clung to their cloth mothers.

It's time to step away from the artificial zone of comfort the media has constructed for us. Not only is it a trap but it is one that crushes us once we are inside it.

It will seem like madness at first, because you have been conditioned your whole life to think within the box. Those paths to death and destruction are the only ones we’ve been shown, and you’ve been corrected every time you’ve strayed too far from them. But one only has to look honestly at the ever-shrinking mindset that the authorities present to realize they offer no hope to humanity. They offer death, fear, environmental destruction. Their hope for the future is a technology bereft of all morality or humanity, Their hope is that perhaps we can export a few fortunate ones to some new planet to begin again this dysfunctional system. Hope for tomorrow is just another product or viewpoint they’re trying to sell, not a guiding principle.

We’re on our own. Humanity must evolve or perish. The system that exists today, the one all the authorities and institutions promote in order to advance themselves, is a death cult hell-bent on wasting Earth’s precious resources to make weapons in order to blow up more of Earth’s precious resources. Where are the voices in government, in business, or the media that decry the insanity? They are not merely silent, they are loudly crying for more.