Exploiting bias to entrench the fossil fuel status quo

How we see ourselves determines how we see the world.

Please consider the following journey in an environmental context. It’s not about anyone being “right or wrong.” Instead, by relating mistakes I’ve made through biased thinking, I hope to encourage others to consider how their beliefs might influence their interpretation of energy-related facts.

Prior to putting myself in a wheelchair, (via a spinal cord injury in 1997), I enjoyed a twenty-year career in the railroad industry in various problem-solving capacities. After my accident, I studied Neuroscience to understand my condition. Eventually I became an amateur liaison between researchers and non-profit funding sources with the goal of promoting clinical trials for acute and chronic SCI.

In 2001, I questioned the medical worth of embryonic stem cells. My situation—disabled in a wheelchair, well-informed regarding research issues, and unconcerned with politics or religion—made me an attractive witness for moral opponents of ESCs and human cloning. Despite my worldview neutrality, I accepted invitations to voice my concerns publicly because so many fates hung in the balance, including my dreams of walking, my wife’s quality of life, and the lives of millions. My activism led to my speaking before government committees, to the Press at the White House, in debates at the NY Academies of Science and on CNN, and on talk radio as a White House surrogate spokesperson.

A large part of my life between 2001 and 2006 involved corresponding with Conservative biotechnology advisers, including members of the President’s Council of Bioethics, congressional staffers, scientists, and international pro-life leaders. My participation in their discussions allowed me to glimpse how intelligent minds promote worldview agendas.

In 2004, Republicans won majorities in the House and Senate, and Bush won a second term. And yet, industry’s stem cell agenda rolled onward [a situation akin to our recent failure to enact eco-reforms despite having a supposedly pro-green Democrat in the White House, a Democratic majority in Congress, and a catastrophe in the Gulf to serve as an eco-wake-up call].

Also in 2004, a strong majority of Catholic voters in California supported a pro-cloning ballot initiative despite its pre-vote condemnation by a Catholic Bishop…a crucial point that later revealed a key to our eco-stalemate: the readiness of politicians and social organizations to betray their purported values in response to corporate pressure, grassroot defections, or effective PR (see Obama attacks China for fostering Green Energy and The Triumph of Climate Politics).

By March of 2005, I realized that only a paradigm shift in how the public perceived biotech issues might allow society to lay aside its worldview differences to consider why industries that leech off human suffering—like Big Oil and the Coal Industry leech off the earth—might wish to lead us down primrose research paths. Charting the financial stakes involved, i.e., “follow the money,” presented the only logical course.

Before 2004, I too had allowed myself to be lulled into an “us vs. them” mentality. I had become so obsessed with fighting my stem cells battle—along with unearthing scientific facts to support my contentions—I ignored everything else, including extensive deregulation of off-shore drilling by the Bush Administration…actions that contributed greatly to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. The elections began to bring me to my senses.

The passage of CA Prop. 71 represented a crushing defeat through the defection of grassroots supporters for the Conservative stem cell coalition. Within weeks, my Conservative allies backed a pro-cloning compromise (called ANT/OAR) to save face and retreat from the stem cells war. And yet prior to the passage of Proposition 71, these same organizations had denounced ANT/OAR as morally unacceptable.

[In retrospect, I'm struck by disturbing similarities between the timing and possible motives behind the ANT/OAR proposal and 'pro-green' initiatives that sabotaged the Copenhagen Summit and blocked eco-reforms on the heels of the outrage in the Gulf.]

Over the next two years, I continued my activism but watched my allies to study how human nature affects society through worldview bias. I came to consider a staggering possibility: The stem cells debates might be a colossal sham. Yes, rank and file members of both parties believed in their causes—I came to know and respect many advocates of both sides. However, I also had cause to suspect President Bush and Republican leaders worked behind the scenes to promote industry’s ES goals. I base my suspicions on the following points:

1. All of Bush’s appointees to the NIH, FDA, and Cabinet health-related positions were industry-approved advocates of ESCs/cloning.
2. Bush appointees to NIH made it their first and unstinting priority to prioritize ESC basic research over non-hematopoietic adult stem cell/cord blood R&D. For both of his terms (a situation that continues), adult stem cell and cord blood researchers were denied funding again and again when they sought to move to clinical trials that threatened the long-range financial goals of industry and basic science.
3. A pro-life member of Bush’s Cabinet reportedly ordered the FDA to shut down an Atlanta cord blood clinic when he learned a cord blood treatment had begun to reverse the paralysis of a patient dying of ALS. (for more on this, see www.cures1st.blogspot.com.)
4. Those who ushered me around the country to testify to government committees (or to speak to Conservative groups) consistently tried to dissuade me from addressing the financial motives for society being pushed in the ESC/cloning directions—and yet without presenting the financial incentives for industry to steer publicly-funded Science away from practical paths to cures, my words fell on deaf ears regardless of my peer-reviewed research facts.
5. I repeatedly urged Conservative leaders to publicly question 1) the medical practicality of ESCs & human cloning, and 2) industry motives for urging society to mortgage its medical future on cells specifically designed to not function safely in post-natal humans.  They refused, claiming the public wouldn’t understand common sense explanations and only by focusing on moral issues might they win the debates…a doomed strategy certain to deepen social mistrust by fueling the public’s impression its sick and disabled might suffer or die for the religious beliefs of others.

By itself, point #4 should have rung alarm bells in my head. For example, while addressing a few hundred affluent conservatives in Washington DC, (in March of 2005) I was interrupted and told to cut my speech by half, which prevented me from placing stem cells in an economic context. For months I failed to consider this point. I assumed the program had gotten off schedule, and it made better sense to shorten my presentation than offend Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist or a Supreme Court justice.

Only later did I consider how my audience might have reacted to a presentation that mapped the financial ties between basic science and pharmaceuticals. In 2003, for example, the top ten drug companies in Fortune 500 made more profits than the other four-hundred and ninety corporations combined. And yet, who did I think had invested their fortunes in pharmaceutical stocks…the average man in the street or the millionaires listening to my speech? In other words, of course I couldn’t be allowed to connect the dots between industry’s stem cells agenda and the health of my listener’s portfolios.

How could I possibly have imagined the GOP and Bush would have sincerely tried to derail long range economic plans so intrinsic to the health of Pharma and BIO? It’s simple: I believed an illusion I wanted to believe—that leaders from at least one side of our polarized society were on ‘my’ side even if their reasons differed from mine.

I came to question whether national Conservative leadership ever meant to win the stem cells debates, or if its purpose was to hoodwink Liberals and Conservatives alike by inciting our worldview passions to safeguard financial special interests. Regardless whether you agree with this opinion, consider it in light of energy, oil, and the health of our planet being trivialized as a subject of worldview debate.

In 2006, I continued my activism despite knowing my actions were doomed to fail. By that time, I had realized I would never walk again—the paralyzed are too valuable as we are…poster advocates for industry goals and sources of profits. But I had to try if I could make the slightest difference. The final straw came late in the year when a Conservative columnist wrote scathing editorials denouncing the existence of global warming—a reality I had experienced firsthand while living in America’s Northeast and hiking the Appalachian Trail.

I soon realized the tactics industry and politicians had used to seduce and exploit us over stem cells were again being used to endanger the earth. Proposition 23 is a perfect example. By turning environmental health into a new battleground of a worldview war, Big Oil and its political agents recruited a sympathetic audience in the majority of the political right—especially the Conservative rich and institutions they control. By playing on our economic fears and unwillingness to change, they continue to work their talons ever deeper into mankind’s future and calcify the fossil fuel status quo.

Until we find the courage to face unwanted realities by not interpreting or filtering information to conform with our convenience, ambitions, or bias, those with the means to exploit human nature will continue to lead us ever closer to climatic ruin for the sake of their egos, power and profits.

In conclusion, please  consider the following in light of the above:

• Frontline: Climate of Denial
• Religious Right and Big Business Join Forces to Slay the “Green Dragon.”
• Obama attacks China for fostering Green Energy,
• Green Inc., An Environmental Insider Reveals how a Good Cause has Gone Bad,
• Obama Double-Crosses Envirnmentalists 
• The Disinformers are Winning—but mostly with the GOP,
• The Triumph of Climate Politics.

##

Twice a surrogate ‘stem cells’ spokesperson for the GW Bush White House, J. Perry Kelly ended his association with the political right over its distortion of global warming. Having witness the psychology of worldview exploitation firsthand, he spent four years crafting “Quantum Fires: The Sibyl Reborn,” a psychological thriller.

Note: Advertisements and “possibly related posts–automatically generated” that may follow this post are NOT part of the Quantum Fires blog or presented by its author.

.

Insinuation: the Ultimate Insult

Imagine being told that your character and spirit are pathetically weak, that your mind is too feeble to think for itself or resist the convictions of others. Now imagine this person further reveals his contempt for you by not insulting you with words directly but rather through smugness and non-verbal signals that express utter disregard for your intelligence, awareness, and integrity.

This is precisely what occurs whenever anyone tries to control our thoughts and actions through insinuation. For example: consider this video of presidential candidate Mitt Romney:

His theatrical arsenal of smirks, sneers, and comic pauses all suggest that anyone who takes climate change seriously (President Obama included), is a moron—and yet he says this without mentioning a single rational fact to support his facial theatrics. Likewise, he insinuates with his ‘promise’ to ‘help us and our families’ that Obama does not want to help American families—that anyone concerned over the state of our planet or its future is the enemy of the people.

This entire skit insinuates that Americans are too dumb, too selfish, or too psychologically weak to not fall for it… that Romney’s antics would sway American voters by feeding the “opiate of self-delusion” in those either addicted to his worldview rant or those in denial that six billion people can pollute a finite planet indefinitely without unleashing disastrous effects. Secure in his knowledge of human nature, he appears to have prepared this strategy in advance.

Sadly, a vast crowd cheers his antics wildly—snickering and applauding his every expression. Between Obama (or environmentalists) and the people Romney thrilled with his non-verbal skit, who was he really insulting, and who deserves his insults?

##

James P. Kelly twice served as a surrogate stem cells spokesperson for the G.W. Bush White House. He ended six years of biotech activism in protest over Conservative plans to discredit the science of climate change. As a creative means of sharing the social, political, and psychological realities he glimpsed through his stem cells involvement, he wrote and recently published The Sibyl Reborn, a speculative adventure/urban fiction that reincarnates Cassandra, the cursed prophetess from the Fall of Troy, to battle the psychological roots of global warming.

The smirks of chauvinists, bigots, and con men — Elections2012

Before you choose America’s direction, please consider the following because it’s never too late until it’s too late.

In a stunningly fair report entitled CLIMATE OF DOUBT, Frontline recently revealed how well-funded organizations seeded doubt in the in the minds of Americans over the science of anthropogenic (human-caused) Global Warming. So successful were their efforts that U.S. Senators literally run for elevators rather than answer questions from reporters whose only interest lay in learning the truth.

Yes, human-caused global warming contributed substantially to Hurricane Sandy trashing New York and coastal New Jersey. It turned our western forests into tinder box catastrophes just waiting for a spark. It devastated an entire season of midwestern crops. It shattered temperature records across the country in June, only to shatter them again in July and August—all in 2012. In fact, August of 2012 represented the 330th consecutive month that average global temperature exceeded 20th Century norms. And yet, many Americans cling to the delusion that anthropogenic global warming is a “liberal hoax.” Why? It’s simple:

Humans believe what we want to believe regardless of facts (1,2).

Sounds simple, right. Not so! Consider this: those leading the public by telling us what we want to believe are as addicted to self-delusion as the rest of us.

For five+ years, I corresponded daily with national biotech policy advisers regarding America’s stem cell debates. I twice served as a surrogate spokesperson for the GW Bush White House. And yet, my biotech activism had nothing to do with religion, morals, or politics. Because I’m paralyzed and once studied Neuroscience extensively, I thought my contacts in Washington were on my side, i.e, that they meant to support basic and clinical research that offered practical hope for treatments and cures. I deluded myself.

Every Bush appointee to head the NIH, FDA, and Health and Human Services was an industry-approved advocate of embryonic stem cells and human cloning. While telling the country he opposed killing embryos on moral grounds, his meaningful actions consistently promoted the financial welfare of Pharma and BIO, i.e, the long-range commitment of vast resources toward highly problematic and impractical research [embryonic stem cells and human cloning] to entrench our medical status quo and safeguard over a trillion dollars annually in global pharmaceutical revenues. Why? Because the top ten American pharmaceuticals made more profits in 2003 than the other 490 corporations in Fortune 500 combined.

How could I have ever deluded myself into believing GW Bush or the GOP would oppose this financial colossus? In other words, what do you really think is behind the Conservative/GOP P.R. blitz to deny and distort the realities of global warming, climate change, and Man’s disastrous addictions to oil, coal, and gas?

This is your future and your life. Do not look away or turn off your objective mind (1,2). And please, do not delude yourself into believing that those who misled you intentionally by playing on your worldview beliefs or financial fears will give you what you want if you give them what they want. YOU are the market—the customers whose lives and incomes they need to bloat the coffers of the special interests they so faithfully serve.

Our time is critically short. I won’t try to sway you regarding the science of climate change in a blog post. You need to sleep, and the elections are tomorrow. Please, do this. Invest an hour of your life by watching CLIMATE OF DOUBT (3), or spend FOUR MINUTES (4) to watch a replay of Mitt Romney smirking in derisive triumph over our climatic future at the GOP convention. In my opinion, you’ll see the faces of fallible people who claim to be moralists—who even claim God as their banner—and yet who literally glow with smugness over exploiting the economic fears of Americans to hijack their future and imperil their lives.

I’m fifty-six years old, and I’ve seen these smirks before…on the faces of racists or chauvinists who reveled over the subservience of blacks or women in decades past…on the faces of hucksters who had deluded others and felt damned good over their psychological tricks…on winners who knew they’d won and why they won and knew in their hearts they didn’t deserve to win.

Where will America turn, and why will she turn there? I sincerely hope the environmental truths we’d rather not face but can’t escape will play a deciding role in how we vote…because America will never escape its dead-end energy paradigm and economic trap—to say nothing of reaching a sustainable future environmentally—as long as we willingly delude ourselves.

1. Westen D, Blagov PS, Harenski K, Kilts C, Hamann S., Neural bases of motivated reasoning Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 11/06;18(11):1947-58.

2.  Political bias affects brain activity MSNBC.com, Jan 24 2006

3.  John Hockenberry, Catherine Upin, Climate of Doubt, Frontline, October 2012

4. Mitt Romney, Climate Change, Hurricane Sandy, and the GOP convention, The ClimateSilence.org, Nov 2012

##

James P. Kelly twice served as a surrogate stem cells spokesperson for the G.W. Bush White House. He ended six years of biotech activism in protest over Conservative plans to discredit the science of climate change. As a creative means of sharing the social, political, and psychological realities he glimpsed through his stem cells involvement, he wrote and recently published The Sibyl Reborn, a speculative adventure/urban fiction that reincarnates Cassandra, the cursed prophet from the Fall of Troy, to battle the psychological roots of global warming.

Romney vs Obama: the Grim Reality of Elections 2012

…a non-partisan view of our choices by a 2011 Waldo Canyon Fire evacuee

Becoming paralyzed led to my taking sides in stem cells after a lifetime of non-involvement in social or political issues. My five years of ‘pro-cures’ activism included daily interactions with national biotech policy advisers and twice serving as a surrogate spokesperson for the GW Bush White House. Sadly, this activism opened my eyes to the stark reality behind our pending elections: Americans and the world stand to lose regardless who wins. The only difference concerns how disastrous our loss will be.

I ended my biotech support for Bush and Conservatives for two reasons: 1) I realized their ‘apparent’ endorsement of scientifically valid research for producing cures was in fact a sham, and 2) they planned to re-enact this charade to divide Americans over clean energy, global warming, and climate changes like Hurricane Sandy, the pending “Frankenstorm.”

Grass roots opponents of embryonic research and human cloning opposed both on moral grounds. Bush vetoed embryonic stem cell initiatives to generate good PR with Conservative Christians. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical and biotech agendas determined every Bush appointee to head the FDA, NIH, and Health and Human Services. All were embryonic stem cell advocates whose actions ensured the courses of Science and Medicine would safeguard over a trillion dollars annually in pharmaceutical and medical revenues for decades to come—monies reaped from human suffering.

The strategy is simple: Tell the public what it wants to believe to promote social division, i.e., that vast, world-shaping issues such as global warming are matters of worldview opinion, that Americans can eat their cake and drive it too, that whatever happens—including ‘natural’ disasters like the Frankenstorm, nationwide droughts, or forest fires that chased tens of thousands from their homes—it’s not our fault. Why? A nation divided will never challenge financial paradigms that betray the present to exploit the future.

My behind-the-scenes exposure to national policy-making taught me that both sides of our political leadership can be on the same side of lucrative issues, industry’s side, while playing worldview games to lure voters into deluding themselves.

To puppet masters who control our politicians, our lives, and our future, very few issues matter. Big Coal, Pharma, BIO, Big Oil, Energy, International Banking, and agro-giants such as Monsanto care about markets and profits. Abortion, gay rights, education, social welfare, our quality of life, and our financial security serve as battle cries to incite and divide us while seducing voters to embrace industry goals and party platforms.

At the top, GOP and Democrat leaders stand ready to betray us. We like to believe this isn’t so—that someone is on our side. They count on us to believing it, and as long as we do, no one will be on our side…including ourselves.  But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t vote. The truth is quite the reverse.

Between Romney and Obama, one more clearly belongs to powerful special interests…financial entities whose motives lie in blocking the changes our planet and children need us to make. In my opinion, the best Americans can hope for in “Elections 2012″ is to not gift wrap our children’s future to Big Oil, Coal, and Pharma. Whether we do or not depends on us having to the courage to face realities we’d rather deny, ignore, or rationalize into psychologically convenient spins.

We need to admit who stands ready and eager to sell us out.

 ##

J. Perry Kelly recently published a speculative adventure on Kindle, The Sibyl Reborn, which uses plot and premise to entertain readers while exploring the psychological roots of social control, political deceptions, and climate change.

Climate Change: it isn’t me & it isn’t you…

…It’s us.

We can evade reality but not the consequences of evading it. ~ Ayn Rand

Right off the bat…I’m paralyzed because I chose to be paralyzed by choosing to drive when I knew I was falling asleep. Dumb doesn’t get any dumber.

The above point is crucial because I’m totally guilty of the psychological quirk I’m about to relate…and I’ve suffered for it greatly and caused my wife to suffer.

The night before the Waldo Canyon Fire flared to life in Colorado, I sat in Manitou Springs with a respected friend discussing climate change—never guessing the following night a computerized voice on 911 would order my wife and I to leave our home at 2 a.m., or that we’d spend the next forty-eight hours under our friend’s roof.

My friend questions Man’s role in causing climate change. I believe we’re guilty as Hell for wrecking our climatic balance through carbon emissions. I believe this so strongly that I’ve spent years crafting a soft sci fi/paranormal thriller that weaves its plot around the psychology of climate change denial. (“The Sibyl Reborn,” a novel)

My friend accuses me of being obsessed with fighting climate change. He’s right. My pre-injury railroad career involved avoiding railway disasters. As a railroad dispatcher, I assumed I should do whatever it took to avoid derailments, hazmat spills, or railway crossing collisions. I feel the same about doing nothing as our live-for-today-denial devastates the future for our children and our children’s children.

I discovered firsthand what can happen when we deny realities we’d rather not face—whether due to ambition, convenience, worldview beliefs or pride. The consequences of rationalizing reality to fit wants or beliefs can prove catastrophic and permanent.

Consider the Waldo Canyon Fire

Forget for a moment that global warming contributed greatly toward turning our forests into powder-keg infernos just waiting for a match, a lightning bolt, or a carelessly discarded cigarette.  Consider only those who fled their homes and possessions and those who stayed behind and died.

At one point in Colorado this week, 32,000 people abandoned their homes on short notice knowing they might they lose lifetimes of memories and work.  And yet they left. I suggest the inseparable futures of our planet and species might be glimpsed by comparing our response to immediate perils—like a wildfire raging out of control—against our non-response to climate change, a far greater and more permanent danger that set the stage for a runaway blaze from which 32,000 Coloradans instinctively ran.

We abandoned our homes because we know in the bedrock of our souls that a rampaging wildfire cares nothing about whether we choose to believe it exists, whether we stay in its path, or whether we take too long to make up our minds.

I don’t know why an elderly couple failed to leave their upscale home in time to stay alive. I suspect their deaths were a tragic mistake. Perhaps they told themselves this disaster wouldn’t touch their lives. Perhaps the fear of losing their home paralyzed their ability to act. Possibly they believed they had more time for making up their minds or taking action. I don’t know why they died; I only wish they hadn’t—that whatever decisions led to their loss had been decided otherwise because the effects of some decisions—whether we make them or not—can never be undone.

Your common sense surely tells you why running from the above wildfire represented the only rational course for those who stood in its path. Likewise, I’m sure you can see the difference between our response to wildfires and our non-response to the global crisis that’s turning our forests into a tinderbox while pushing temperatures to over a hundred degrees in June [at over 6,000 ft. elevation in Colorado Springs]:

One reality is vast, certain, and merciless, inescapable through denial, and immediate. The other is vast, certain, and merciless, inescapable through denial, and immediate for some while only pending in the certain futures of others—a future they refuse to face, accept responsibility for causing, or take actions toward lessening for themselves or others.

##

Twice a surrogate stem cells spokesperson for the GW Bush White House, J. Perry Kelly—author of The Sibyl Reborn—ended his association with the political right over its distortion of global warming for short-sighted political gain and industry profits.

Waldo Canyon Fire: The Paralysis of Fear

The photo on the right was taken this morning (6-26) from behind the Miramont Castle in Manitou Springs.

Sadly, so many cling to the delusion that disasters like this are “acts of Nature” or “acts of God” when in fact if not for Nature—in the form of a favorable and highly unusual wind—our town might already be toast. Nature and God did not warm our planet, turn our forests into dry kindling, cause Colorado to experience 100+ degree temperatures in mid-June at 6,200 ft above sea level, or cause the present southwestern drought that’s predicted to last for 95 years.

I was among 11,000 Americans who were ordered to evacuate their homes in the dead of night due to this regional incident. I fled in a wheelchair through dark and deserted streets while the skyline over my shoulder glowed like Hell released on Earth. Surely others have lost far more than than personal comfort or peace of mind over the worsening effects of man’s values on its planet. Surely all will eventually suffer if we continue to ignore such warnings.

If the above sounds ‘negative’ and bitter. It is. I returned home yesterday morning while clinging to a vain belief our danger was over. The vista this picture captures exposed my delusion as so much smoke…and maybe that’s an understanding that needs to be shared.

J. Perry Kelly

author of “The Sibyl Reborn” (pending Kindle release)

Ps. It occurs to me the fact I’m paralyzed—without a job or car and living on a sub-poverty income—allows me to look beyond America’s economic ‘needs’ to face atmospheric realities of fossil fuel usage on climate change. I say this because most of the conveniences, distractions, and gadgets we consider vital ‘needs’ (toys and distractions I can’t afford) are in fact ‘wants’ that seduce us to embrace denials we want to believe while failing to value Nature. If so, I apologize for stating my thoughts so bluntly. After all, had I not paralyzed myself by falling asleep while driving, I too might deny Man’s role in climate change, or its place in the present crisis.

Whether the earth remains a viable eco-sphere or we’re chased from our homes by threats of fire, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, or Fukushima-like fallouts represent real-life needs—prerequisites for quality of life and possibly survival. The above photo reflects this reality. It’s one the fortunate can choose to deny today but not escape.

##

Twice a surrogate stem cells spokesperson for the GW Bush White House, J. Perry Kelly ended his association with the political right over its distortion of global warming for short-sighted political gain and fiscal profits.

Rethink the world

The Vampire, Edvard Munch

Global monetary distribution links the earnings and actions of the world’s richest 1% to mankind’s current energy and economic crisis. As a snapshot illustration, the Koch brothers, billionaire energy magnates, have spent more money than 99% of the human species will make in entire lifetimes—fifty million dollars-–to discredit the science of climate change and squash clean energy initiatives.

Consider too our most powerful industries—social forces that determine the course and priorities of medical research, the health of the planet, and the fates of billions of lives both living and yet unborn.

The world’s top ten pharmaceuticals made more profits in 2003 than the other 490 corporations in “Fortune 500″ combined. Pharma uses its gluttonous profits to fund the world’s largest and arguably most influential lobbying organization to ensure laws and regulations remain friendly to Pharma while further stuffing their coffers. And yet, monies pharmaceuticals suck from U.S. households [for 'me too' drugs that leech off human suffering while curing almost nothing] pale in comparison to energy costs.

Americans Spend More on Gas

In other words, the world’s current economic paradigm hinges on 1) maintaining the medical status quo through the continued prevalence of illness, disability, and disease, and 2) fossil fuel and nuclear industries that feed off dwindling resources that toxify the environment, seed ill-health, and wreck our planet’s climate. Both paradigms represent dead-end financial traps for individual households, national economies, and possibly human civilization—like any parasitic relationship when the parasite overruns the host—and yet both ‘make’ gobs of money for the richest 1% at the cost of spiraling hardships for everyone else.

Albert Einstein called Man’s present way of seeing its relationship to nature, reality and the environment an “optical delusion of consciousness” that must ultimately doom our species. To grasp this relationship in its most basic essence, follow the money.

Before it’s too late…

…rethink the world!

##

Twice a surrogate stem cells spokesperson for the GW Bush White House, J. Perry Kelly ended his association with the political right over its gross distortion of global warming for short-sighted political gain and fiscal profits.

~~~

Acclimatize this!

In the movie “The Matrix,” Trinity says to Neo while his fate teeters on the edge of a knife:

“Because you have been down there, Neo, you know that road, you know exactly where it ends. And I know that’s not where you want to be.”

Neo chose to take her advice and turn aside; I took the road and crashed.

In May of 1997, I hiked with my wife to the summit of Mnt. Shavano in Central Colorado—a grueling but beautiful climb that expressed our love for mountains, nature, and outdoor sports. A month later, I lay in a Montana hospital, paralyzed for life because I let comfort and ego entice me down a road that Neo had the sense to avoid.

In 2004, scientists at Emory University used functional MRIs to discover a disturbing fact: Regardless of intelligence, profession, or worldview beliefs, humans tend to interpret reality to support their egos, ambitions, convenience or bias. Don’t I know it!

While driving across Montana, I knew I needed a cup of coffee or a nap. Instead, I bought a smoothie because I wanted a smoothie and kept driving because I wanted to drive. Ten minutes later, I fell asleep, rolled my pick-up into a gulch, and crushed my spinal cord. Regarding global warming, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says don’t worry, keep your hands on the wheel and your foot on the gas.

“Populations can acclimatize to warmer climates,” they say, “via a range of behavior, physiological, and technical adaptations.”

In other words, don’t speak out against Federal and industry plans to expand fossil fuel usage. Don’t demand a sustainable future loudly, persistently, and now.

When I came out of a coma to discover I was paralyzed, impotent, eight-five percent deaf, blind in one eye, and diagnosed as brain damaged, my therapists insisted my life was not trashed; it was merely ‘changed.’  With an attitude adjustment and a few behavioral, physiological, and technical adaptations [they said], I’d be back on my feet—in a manner of speaking—and loving my ‘new’ existence.

Not quite.

Speaking for myself, I’d count myself lucky to trade every second of the past fourteen years and those to come for one more hike with my wife up steep mountain trails or another chance to make love with her as Nature intended. For me—because some mistakes can never be undone—my future is written regarding so many things I once treasured…things that others take for granted or treat with contempt.

Imagine the rage I’d feel if my therapists had encouraged me before my accident to ignore my danger to promote their careers…because this is precisely what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is doing by writing off your future to safeguard their continued profits.

What technical, behavioral, or physiological adaptations will allow you to escape months of sweltering heat when only the wealthy can afford air conditioning? What attitude adjustments will make your days bearable when America’s live-for-today denial leads to poverty and wars through global resource exhaustion—when climate extremes make hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, floods, tornadoes, famine, disease and death our ‘new’ way of life?

What right does the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have to set future quality-of-life standards for all mankind under any pretext?

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Big Oil and Mining, and their political allies tell themselves what they need to believe to promote their egos, wealth and social control. They spin their self-delusions to exploit the public’s willingness to deceive itself to avoid inconvenience or change.

Don’t let them do it. They’re whispering for you to drive down that road, and we both know where it ends. Only you can free your mind by escaping the matrix of ego.

http://bit.ly/jaahMd

##

Twice a surrogate stem cells spokesperson for the GW Bush White House, J. Perry Kelly ended his association with the political right over its distortion of global warming for short-sighted political gain and fiscal profits.

The Sibyl Reborn

New cover (by cover-artist Amber Shah) for “The Sibyl Reborn.”

Review: The Sibyl Reborn

Review: The Sibyl Reborn by book reviewer Frankie Blooding.