Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2013 17:52:58 GMT 10
Moderation is for hippies
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 7:34PM - Tuesday, January 08, 2013
IT'S TRUE, isn’t it? Moderation is a joke. Moderation is un-American. Moderation in any healthy, compassionate sense in this year of our extremely hot and imminently riotous 2013 is nothing short of a goddamn modern miracle.
Don’t you think? Have you noticed? No one believes in it anymore. Fewer still actually practice it. Anyone on any side of a given debate or social issue shun it like it reality TV shuns good taste.
Even the planet itself agrees: Extremism is in. Extremism is the new black, which is also the new blood red, which is also the new, merciless way to deny anything bad or dangerous might be happening as a direct result of our unchecked growth or God-drunk ideology.
Where do you want to look? Popular culture? Honey Boo-Boo Child just earned record ratings by going to new extremes of trashiness, mental incompetence and borderline child abuse. Sports? Extremes of machismo, scandal and homophobia abound. Violence? Please. A teenager massacres 22 elementary school children with a rifle he swiped from him mom, and what’s the response? Let’s arm up even more! Meanwhile, the top-selling video games are screamingly juvenile, ultra-violent first-person shooters for 10-year-old males who never go outside and twitch themselves to sleep.
Extreme postures, extreme politics, dogmas, piercings, sex, degradations, styles, sounds, wealth, resource annihilation, antagonism — for millions, the message is clear: radical positions and hardcore reactions are the only thing that “work” anymore, that shock or inspire feeling or action, that get you noticed, make you money or get you your own embarrassingly awful TV show.
Is it the slightest bit true? Not at all. But you’d never know it, given how jaded we’ve become, believing the world is detonating all around us. Accelerated tech, exploding populations, uncertain futures. Who has time for nuance and thoughtfulness? Who has time to make careful, heartfelt distinctions over a glass of wine and a soft caress? The gays are coming to eat all the white Christian babies!
Alberta! Smells like… the future.
The message rages forth: We cannot slow down. We cannot scale back, cut down, stop driving or birthing or purchasing. Zero growth? Don’t be ridiculous. “More” is the only true American maxim. Have you seen the photos of the Alberta tar sands? Do you know to what extremes we now must to go to feed our energy needs? How deep we have to drill, how much we must frack and tear and pulverize, how much money and power is at stake?
What about food? There is a reason you do not ever see footage shot inside America’s nauseating industrial slaughterhouses. There is a reason you will never go anywhere near the toxic clouds of factory exhaust and pig feces floating over entire Midwestern farm towns like a middle finger from the devil. Industrial agriculture is, arguably, both a salvation and a surefire sign of doom.
Extreme opinions? We’re drowning in them. While not necessarily new, wildly lopsided stances, hate speech, arguments that lack all nuance, thought, subtlety or respect — not to mention humor or kindness — have become ingrained and commonplace. Can you name the single worst invention of the last ten years? Nope, not Facebook. Not Lady Gaga. It’s anonymous commenting. Look below. You’ll see.
Do you know what awful thing sucks the very life-force from the entire universe? Your new iPhone 5! Oh wait, I mean your new Galaxy IIIS! How do I know? Because this one guy over at Engadget or maybe Slashdot or Gizmodo just switched from one to the other, and he wrote 2,500 words explaining why Apple sucks and Android rules because, um, the camera takes slightly better backwards pictures and, uh, its 4,000 miraculous technologies can do two things slightly differently than Apple’s 4,000 miraculous technologies. Chew on that, haters!
But of course, that all pales in comparison to the grand champion of extreme, hostile posturing, the GOP, which shamelessly takes untenable positions on everything from the economy to God, rape to calling the president a Nazi. Science is a hoax! Gays are repulsive in the eyes of God! Rich people should never be taxed! You win, GOP. No one is better at taking the messy, wondrous tapestry of the human experiment and stabbing it with the ice pick of monochromatic fear. Well done. You’ve changed the conversation. For the worse.
Note: You do not have enough flashlight batteries. — Photo by Daniel Bryant/NatGeo.
Meanwhile, the earth is responding in kind, matching and then easily surpassing us, one extreme example at a time. Forget Hurricane Sandy — did you read that it was just 95 degrees in Australia? At midnight? Have you heard that the heat wave now underway down under is so dangerous, Australia’s bureau of meteorology actually had to add an entirely new color to the heat map — a dark, ominous purple? When they finally add black, it’s all over.
Extreme weather is the new normal, in direct response to our extreme gluttony and unchecked growth. 2012, to the surprise of no one with an even passing respect for science, was by far the hottest on record in the contiguous United States.
Will it ever result in serious environmental legislation? Don’t be naive. CO2 emissions set another record high in 2012. Would you like to know the title of an actual presentation by Brad Werner, a respected, albeit mildly radical complex systems researcher from UC San Diego, speaking at the huge American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco? He called it “Is Earth f-u-cked?” Hey, in this climate, who has time for subtlety?
Maybe the problem is tragically shifting definitions? Maybe it’s the bizarre falsity, spurred largely by these same extremist right-wing politicians, that “moderation” has come to mean a sort of mealy wimpiness, a lack of willingness to “be tough on crime” or stomp out terrorism or spend more billions on our bloated, absurdly disproportionate military?
Too broad? Fine. Take it down to the human level. Perhaps you’ve noticed various disorienting trends in extreme fitness, hardcore body modifications, extreme dieting, horror tattoos, extreme sex? How about the massive trend in more and more meds and antidepressants to numb it all away?
Feel anything yet?
It all brings to mind this beautifully simple piece of ancient wisdom, found in nearly every spiritual path the world over. It says that the more extreme experience or stimulation you require to feel or care about anything, the further you are from Source, from Self, from that personal divine thing you can maybe call god or the soul.
In other words: You require severe kink, violence, radical skin punctures, massive drugs, extreme sports, angry gods, furious politics, punishing physicality just to feel alive or turned on? Do you need to rage and tear and get all fired up, livid about this or that perceived indiscretion just to feel engaged and awake? How awful for you.
It begets the ancient equation: Extremism implies disconnection. And more extreme = more disconnection. But the good news is, it also begets the opposite: more compassion, education, distinction, discretion, patience, quiet, inner focus also equal calm, stability, peace. Does it make sense? The old gurus only smile at your panicked expression: Why are you so freaked out by stillness?
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blog.sfgate.com/morford/2013/01/08/moderation-is-for-hippies