Work in progress

Ok, links to other blog pages are now getting set up as follows:

Overture here: http://just1law.blogspot.com.au (maybe this will be the 'homepage' and launchpad for the other blogs?)

Dawn here: http://just1dawn.blogspot.com.au

Discovery here: http://just1discovery.blogspot.com.au

My God?! here: http://just1god.blogspot.com.au

Unity here: http://just1unity.blogspot.com.au

Baraka here: http://just1baraka.blogspot.com.au

Serendipity here: http://just1serendipity.blogspot.com.au

Cede here: http://just1seed.blogspot.com.au

Gaia here: http://just1gaia.blogspot.com.au

Grace here: http://just1grace.blogspot.com.au

Stuff is being posted as I go now but it'll naturally grow/decay/grow etc. with the themes that are associated with those titles.

Prologue

By way of organising these posts, I'm going to structure the posts in accordance with the track listing of a great, yet to be discovered, album called One Act Begins It All by an outstanding duo with a supporting troupe of phenomenal musicians called The Backson Society. Their music can be found here:

http://www.myspace.com/thebacksonsociety

Anyway, one of the duo members, Kye Thomas, had (and still has mind you) a fantastic idea of combining stories with music - a project that would provide a soundtrack to a riveting story. Problem was that technology was not like it is now and it was hard to conceive inexpensively. I believe the blog may well be the way.

So, as an homage to that format, I'm going to use posts corresponding to the said album which will provide some context to the posts. Hence this overall post is under 'Overture', for that is the first track of the mighty fine album.

Am I self-promoting here? Damn right!! And why not? It's great stuff!

So, that means that the next lot of posts will be under Dawn but I might not actually go sequentially as there's stuff I'd like to file under Gaia and My God?! soon.

Anyway here's the track listing:

Overture

Dawn

Discovery

My God?!

Unity

Baraka

Serendipity

Cede

Gaia

Grace

These titles nicely cover the themes of dreams, love, (eco)philosophy, religion, spirituality, nature, psychology, politics...

In many ways, some of the stuff I'll rave should've gone on the Myspace site but I never got around to it and so it'll be collated here and I can create links to the myspace site or just cut'n'paste it to there so that site keeps ticking over.

So, Overture is like the big introduction; in musical terms it gave a brief synopsis of what was to be expected in the following symphony - it pronounced the leitmotifs and themes so that the audience would recognise them later in the symphony and get the flow of the story. But sometimes the Overture was so well-constructed and densely packed with the melodies or the following symphony was left unfinished that all we had or remember were Overtures (think Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture). Anyway, the Overture carries with it the main plot, narrative of the following story and I hope that this Overture has adequately portrayed what the following posts will be about.

Contentment

Contentment...to be satisfied with what you contain; to be contained is to be content. Interesting word I feel because there's also an element of control within this power of contentment. An ability to be able to control oneself despite what is put in the way. 

It's obviously an emotion but yet can be reflected in action - I'm so embedded in the sustainability trip at the moment, considering it's been a major focus of my studies over several years as well as my lifestyle - I can't help but see the connection that having just enough leads to just being in abundance. To control one's urges to consume is to control one's cravings and desires and leads to a balanced mind (yes, there are Buddhist overtones here but there's a lot of value in it!). True contentment. 

I'm challenged by this because I'm surrounded by, I suppose, false abundance - the fancy cars (c'mon, do we need Hummers? Weren't they just built for the military?), the obscene variety of choice in the supermarkets (how many different choc-chip cookies do we need to have?), and the plethora of gadgets to keep our minds focused on supposedly important or maybe just entertaining activities that seriously distract us from the main goal in life - to be content. I'm challenged because I see that there is purpose in all that false abundance, for a little while at least. But the main game stays playing in the background and it'll take some time when the focus shifts back to living contentedly. 

Once the oil runs out, it'll get interesting. Then when the coal is all consumed it'll get really interesting. Finally, once the uranium is all dug up, depleted and reburied, well..... 

Philip G. Gallman, in Green Alternatives and National Energy Strategy: the facts behind the headlines (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), put all that to about 200 years. 200 years...ok, I'm not going to be around to see that but that is a blink of the eye for Nature, and there'll still be our descendents traipsing around just like this:

Or this may be the prevalent scene:

And so what happens? I don't profess to have the answers but living simply is key. It' supposed to be easy isn't it? But damn it's hard...

I can't help but be bemused yet furious about this observation:


I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue – that avarice is a vice, that the extraction of usury is a misdemeanor, and the love of money is detestable, that those who walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom [are those] who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin...But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul itself is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight (Keynes 1963[1930]:371-2).

Yep, 1930, in the wake of the Great Depression, and hot onto another global war, it still rings true today because we're still in Keynes' time-frame. Damn it!

Ah, but it's all good, we've got Second Life, Wii, the X-Box, iPhones, the plasma screens...it's ok, technology will get us out of this, won't it?

Somehow, just finding a spot on the side of a hill with a freshwater creek running nearby, growing some veggies  is really where it's at. Isn't that something like what Captain America concluded in Easy Rider? That the new American (read Western) Dream was found amongst those hippies slogging it out trying to grow a decent crop in crappy, stony soil? 

Mmm...the quest for the hill of contentment....

Ain't nuthin' new under the sun, read:  

John Maynard Keynes, 1963, Essays in Persuasion, Norton, New York.

This may or may not be a regular thing (just like the sunset above doesn't happen all the time). But it will cover rants and raves on a range of topics relevant to now - spirituality and mysticism, ecology, psychology, sociology, politics, anarchy, love and dreams. From analytical commentary to poetry, songs, art and photography to travel and good, local, organic food, diets and how to deal with our waste. We'll see how it traverses along the side of the hill of contentment...

Contentment (or lack thereof) - I might have a word or two to say about that shortly.