Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I always suspected as much: All these various left-of-center causes, from socialism to vegetarianism to driving-a-hybrid to the hostility against religion, are really all about one thing: Nihilism. Becoming a zero. Slipping through this existence like prunes through your digestive tract, leaving not a single trace that you were ever here.
I need suspect no more. Now I know.
North Americans who spend their lives reducing, reusing and recycling can keep doing their bit for the environment after they die, if Europe’s “green funeral” trend makes its way across the Atlantic.
Canadian activists say green send-offs could help the dead contribute to a sustainable environment, with funerals that use shrouds or biodegradable containers and involve no embalming, no headstones and no grave linings.
“Having a green burial is one more thing a person can do to lessen the impact we’re having on our environment,” said Dorothy Yada of the Memorial Society of British Columbia.
Ugh. It’s the ultimate in bathosploration, something like a cartoon character jumping into a hole, reaching up, and pulling the hole in after himself. Maybe I should retract that prune analogy; prunes leave something of an aftertaste. So there’s no carcass and therefore no space being occupied, therefore no plot, no tombstone. Just memories and a eulogy that reflects those memories. Uh, what’s the eulogy going to be if these activists have their way? “He was relatively harmless”?
You know what is so attractive about offering the opportunity to people to eliminate themselves? Here’s my theory: It’s not the objective of quiet self-destruction itself, it’s the political movement that always seems to be attached to it. When you tether a political movement to this nihilism, it greatly enhances the potential of that political movement as a contagion. If someone suggests to you there’s no afterlife, and maybe your legacy should be a great big fat nothing, not even ashes or a tombstone, so you lose everything, your consciousness, your remembrance, your corporal remains, and go away entirely — and you agree with all this — you will sustain a white-hot angry quiet rage at anyone who does not.
Human nature. You’ll be seething with anger about this every single time. You see yourself going away, and that someone else, with values antithetical to your own, will not be. This sets people off.
There will be family bickering. If the “green burial” movement really takes off, there will be more and more of it.
And with the passage of time, the hold-outs will be seen as the cause of the bickering. That’s human nature too, you know. People who want to just keep on doing things they way they were already doing them, are often seen as the cause of discord, when all they really want to do is mind their own business and hope everybody else will mind theirs. It’s the way people are; a hot new thing comes along, and somehow, anybody who doesn’t want to try it is seen as a troublemaker.
I have to admit I’m a little divided on this. Not on whether I want to do it myself, but on whether it’s a “live and let die” situation. I’m just having a tough time envisioning how you can cheapen death without ultimately cheapening life. We seem to be getting perilously close to a Soylent Green society, and I’m worried that if too much more of this kind of creativity is shown, future generations are going to wonder how anybody could have found that old movie to be creepy in the first place. They won’t get it.
This brings us within spitting distance of that? I dunno. It certainly isn’t pushing us any further away from it.
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You think that’s bad, look at this thing taken to it’s (il)logical conclusion: http://www.vhemt.org/
- Duffy | 06/18/2007 @ 10:03[…] be, and not to do; and what you should want to be, is a nothing. That’s the ultimate goal, to jump into a hole, reach back up, and pull the hole in after yourself. That’s the […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/21/2013 @ 13:17[…] be, and not to do; and what you should want to be, is a nothing. That’s the ultimate goal, to jump into a hole, reach back up, and pull the hole in after yourself. That’s the […]
- Memo For File CLXXXII | Rotten Chestnuts | 07/21/2013 @ 14:27[…] well, they should just be expensive. Child support, like gasoline, has to be made more expensive. Oh yeah, and on your way out, your burial should be green. It all has to do with making people into financial liabilities, make sure they’re never […]
- The Lurking Variable | Rotten Chestnuts | 08/03/2013 @ 08:30[…] well, they should just be expensive. Child support, like gasoline, has to be made more expensive. Oh yeah, and on your way out, your burial should be green. It all has to do with making people into financial liabilities, ensuring they’re never […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 08/03/2013 @ 08:31