I ran into this article today on the net.

The Enemy in Our Living Room

From Mark Faulk’s fine website, The Faulking Truth. (GREAT name, eh?)

It talks a little about the recent troubles of the isolated Buddhist country of Bhutan, which is located in the Himalayan Mountains…the model for the country in James Hilton’s novel “Shangri-la”.

They finally allowed TV into the country in 1999, and have since watched in horror as their old and stable society began to fall apart at the seams.

Read on for more.

Before the 1950s, they had no roads, no electricty, and no paper currency. They still have no traffic lights, and no word in their language for “traffic jam.” And just last year, they passed a national ban on all tobacco products, saying that “We want no pollution and good health for our citizens.”

     But all is not well in Bhutan. They finally became the last country on Earth to allow television in 1999, and within a couple of years, they were experiencing their very first crime wave, with reports from many villages and towns of fraud, violence, and even murder. An editorial in the national newspaper, Kuensel, put it this way: “We are seeing for the first time broken families, school dropouts and other negative youth crimes. We are beginning to see crime associated with drug users all over the world – shoplifting, burglary and violence.”

     And here is a letter from a reader of the Kuensel: “Dear Editor, TV is very bad for our country… it controls our minds… and makes [us] crazy. The enemy is right here with us in our own living room. People behave like the actors, and are now anxious, greedy and discontent.”

“…it controls our minds… and makes [us] crazy. The enemy is right here with us in our own living room. People behave like the actors, and are now anxious, greedy and discontent.”

Sound familiar?

Yup.

Just what I have been saying, over and over and over and over and over again, like some demented Energizer bunny.

But it is TRUE, what I am saying. The battery that runs this effort IS that truth. And it NEVER runs out.

More…

In an article in the Faulking Truth entitled The American Way of Life is Not Negotiable, Robin Buckallew put it this way:

    America contains 5% of the world’s population. We account for 25% of the world’s consumption. We are the largest per capita producers of trash. Our carbon dioxide emissions account for 25% of the world’s total. In short, we are not only using our fair share of the world’s resources, we are, each and every one of us, also using the fair share of 4 other people. The saddest part of this orgy of consumption is the research that has been done on human happiness, finding that we rank very low among other countries on nearly all measures of human well being, including our own self-reported happiness. We are not consuming all of this to produce a grander cultural heritage than other countries. We are not steeped in the satisfying glow of human achievement and happiness. No, the more we have, the less happy we are, because we never seem to have quite enough.

 “The more we have, the less happy we are.”

Yup.

And what is the engine that has driven this “more is less” engine?

The media.

You doubt this?

Check out Bhutan’s experience.

And then look around.

Look around within as well.

Nasty, in there…

How many murders have you witnessed on TV…fictional AND real…in your lifetime?

NASTY in there.

As a friend of mine used to say at the beginning of every performance of his music …”Homicide is not entertainment.” (Tom Pierson. BRILLIANT composer. Lives in Tokyo now. Where it’s a little more civilized. Just a little…)

Went over like a lead balloon, mostly.

But that was because the audiences…”good” audiences, mostly, audience of dedicated jazz listeners…were neverthless just as media-hypnotized and mentally cruded out as the worst examples of the ghetto gang-rape of the mind that we are seeing now in the rap world.

Just a different STYLE of crude. The “jazz” audiences had been hyped to let others do the violence for them.

More…

When is enough enough?

    I’ll close this mini-tirade with this email that my daughter, a dedicated inner-city elementary school teacher, sent me recently. It explains simplicity in the simplest of terms….just as it should be.

Succeeding in life?…..

A boat is docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

“Not very long,” answered the Mexican.

“But then, why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more?” asked the American.

The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.

The American asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

“I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, play the guitar, and sing a few songs… I have a full life.”

The American interrupted, “I have a degree in commerce, so I can help you to be a great success! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat.”

“And after that?” asked the Mexican.

“With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers.

Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise.”

“How long would that take?” asked the Mexican.

“Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years,” replied the American.

“And after that?”

“Afterwards? Well my Friend, That’s when it gets really interesting,” answered the American, laughing. “When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!”

“Millions? Really? And after that?” said the Mexican.

“After that you’ll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with the children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings doing what you like and enjoying your friends.”

And the moral is:

Know where you’re going in life… as you may already be there.

Yup.

So here we are.

We have more and more of everything, and we are less and less happy.

We rob, murder and steal…or at least pretend not to know what is happening…so that we can have what we are told we MUST have by the all encompassing, ever-present media.

The REAL job of which is to keep on selling us this progressively larger and more expensive bill of goods until the shit hits and fan and the bubble bursts.

Hmmm…just like what happens in the music world. I have SEEN this…not just once, but literally hundreds of times…in my own life. A musician or a band starts under less than generous circumstances. The music is great. Eventually money starts to come in. Recordings, travel…the works.

And the music gets progressively less fine.

Less honest.

Until it is just a sketch of its previous self, with its original content entirely replaced by cynicism and greed.

When the money comes in, the love leaves.

Every time.

Today, anyway…

Nasty.

So…Happy Thanksgiving.

And wake the fuck UP!!!

Turn off the media.

The media that is inside of your head.

The media that runs you no matter WHAT you may think is happening.

Turn it off before it’s too late.

“Step AWAY from the TV, with your brains in the air.”

Or…

“What’s for Thanksgiving!!!???”

Turkey.

You turkey.

We are eating ourselves.

WE are mentally, emotionally and physically eating ourselves.

Suicide by cannibalism.

Nasty.

Wake the fuck up.

“Step AWAY from the TV, with your brains in the air.”

And…have a Happy Thanksgiving.

In the silence of your own true mind.

Later…

AG