I finished my work for the night and prepared my pack for the ride home. My bike lock, work shoes, and next morning's food fit neatly in its confines and I pedaled off into the night. It is not abnormal for people to be at first surprised that, regardless of the weather conditions, I had chosen to ride my bike to work as opposed to driving my car and I had grown accustomed to convincing offerers that I was plenty fine with having to work towards my destination. In all honesty, it goes beyond riding a bicycle as a hobby. Once actually shunning the use of automobiles from my daily life I began to really understand what J.M. Greer was saying when he described how, all things considered, a human body is inconceivably more efficient in its use of measurable energy than any machine could ever be. Not only that, I also get the chance to get some always-needed exercise, when I go out using my bicycle, or feet, for transportation.
I rode down a dark road where I could see the faintest bit of twilight just fading away as the Earth continued its normal rotation and as many stars as one could see from the middle of a mid-sized--and growing--town on the western edges of Wisconsin. It was just getting chilly enough to show my breath as I exhaled. Once home I come to the door that is usually my entrance into the halled apartment complex and very soon noticed that there were several air condition unit running full tilt. From there it was the same as always through the hallway and my own, slightly stuck front door leading into my under-lit apartment.
I saw the same thing in Phoenix. It could be twenty-five degrees outside and yet people would persist in running the air conditioner to cool down their over-heated apartments. This was at the same time I couldn't get enough heat into my living space (I have been living without a heater and using no lights). Then as is now, I find it remarkable at the inability of people to open a window to cool their space instead of using the air conditioner and I have to ask, "why?" Why is our society becoming so hopelessly addicted to the conveniences we're given that they are almost becoming inconveniences? How could someone possibly find it easier and more comforting to complain about the inadequacy of air-cooling unit and be uncomfortable in their living space than to simply open up the window to be comfortable? It's madness that I can barely comprehend. There's an unwillingness to open even a screened window as if there is some sort of disabling superstition that something other than pure, artificial air may enter that's also accompanied with the obsessive and unnoticed psychological addiction to any and every man-made machine available. It's like in 1984 when '2+2=5"." "Nothing is better than modern technology. Nothing is better than modern technology," is the nonsense that is consistently and subliminally drilled into our skulls from every corner of today's western world.
What's happening is that the majority of the human race is being trained to utterly forget exactly where we come from. I can just see the latest medical magazines telling us, "If you weren't born in a plastic tube, you're FUCKED!" We're being trained to forget that the Earth is the vessel for all life we could possibly experience or even imagine. To those who would not pay attention to the further and increasingly conclusive studies to the contrary, it is becoming ever more nigh impossible to think that rolling around in the dirt, and drinking unpasteurized milk, isn't going to kill you. It's all too easy to look back a hundred years and say that bleed out from the ankles to cure the common cold is madness but it's also all too easy to see the teaching from anywhere in the past thirty-six thousand years and see that popping synthetic pills filled with unreal and bare, unnatural substances that have adverse affects on the body is madness. But all of that is......not at all besides the point, actually.
I think one of the greatest imaginable evils in today's world is the television. It is the television that makes one so easily controllable. It is the television that makes one uncomfortable with the Earth. It is the television that lulls one into a hypnotic daze that wastes away the time and keeps the mind from realizing the truth that is every day you spend watching TV is a day utterly wasted.
A mother wakes up, readies herself for the day, takes her kids to daycare and goes to work. In the evening she picks her kids up, goes home, feeds herself and her kids, and watches television before going to bed. She has accomplished nothing. One more day of survival has passed. She conducted her routine at work and at home. Not once did she take the time to ponder her situation and place in this world, her kids' place in this world, nor anything that could be done to change or better it. Yes, there are hopes for the future, but they are merely hopes. She uses the television at night to take her away from worrying about whatever it is she is inclined to worry or concern herself about. You can see it in her eyes when the commercials roll forth, battering her with a blitzkrieg of useless information, images, pseudo-fantasies, and, let's be honest here, lies. You see that sort of glazed look you see when someones been hypnotized on a stage or slumped in a hallway after shooting heroin. If you're watching you can see that she is absent from the real world, stuck in a hole that she can't so easily escape from--on the edge of starting to drool. The eyes of this woman are not the eyes of a great thinker, or even a simpleton farmer who, in the truest essence of things, is a great thinker. No--no, she is a zombie--a sad and almost pitiful sight as you can nearly see her brains and willpower melting slowly away with every minute that those phosphorescent images flash rapidly in her face. She has accomplished no improvement nor evolution in her thought or development as a spiritual being. She and her life are wasting away.
As I said, the television is the greatest of all evils. It drugs the user into a numb stupor that after repeated use, make the situation of sitting in a chair in the confines of a single enclosed living space--a prison--ever more ideal and comfortable to the point where anything outside of this norm is something bordering on a nightmare. And that point, dear reader, is one of the reasons everybody in the world is outright lazy. Rather than taking the time to walk two blocks to the drug store for condoms and a pack of cigarettes, they get in their car and drive. They drive because they want to get away from the outside air and back in front of their television set, or their computer, as quickly as possible. They can't be bothered to take and extra fifteen minutes to commute two miles to work. Eventually, they become so rancidly addicted to their living-room accommodations that their car windows never open, their house windows never open, they never steep on dirt, and they never truly live. The outdoors becomes something unknown and with mystery there is born a fear.
Fear is how the masses are controlled. With the seed of the fear of the unknown so easily planted, it is planted and manipulated to coerce the unaware into playing along with ever intrusive and downright evil ways of modern western society. The ridiculousness of the things--everything--that is being done to the human race is reaching a point where I'm to ask, "how long will it, or can it, continue?"
****
My father, who lives in the same, rather small, apartment complex as I, called me on my seldom-used cellular phone. He was curious if I want to go out for dinner and I suggested the local german restaurant just a ten minute walk away. We drove to the restaurant through stop and go traffic and spent some time trying to find a parking spot. I had suggested walking earlier but this was merely brushed of as a bit of humor. Afterward we drove back to the apartment complex and were minded to visit the wine and liquor store just one quarter of a mile down the road. I implored that we travel by foot and after some bit of convincing my rather able bodied father agreed to this as it was a beautifully cool evening and the sun was just setting beyond the river. We held somewhat interesting (although he might not have thought so) conversion on our journey with him complaining about walking up the extremely meager incline on the return trip. Once in his own apartment where I was to visit for a remaining moment and sip some of his newly-purchased whiskey, it was noticeably stuffy. He pressed the remote nest to his reclining chair are the air-conditioning unit whirred to life and blew chilled, stale air into the room. After some brief further discussion and a glass of flavorless whiskey I departed to my own way for an evening of my own contemplations and another trip outside, my father sitting in his favorite chair watching television with a full glass of rye on ice.
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