Author: vjmp

Climate Change Is The Left Wing’s War On Terror

When George W. Bush declared a “War on Terror” in the wake of 9/11, right-wing parties in every Western nation immediately won a great victory. Ever since then, they have been able to appeal to the need to fight this war on terror in order to get votes. This has given them a big advantage over the left-wing parties, but now the left wing has its own equivalent of the War on Terror: climate change.

George W. Bush and his Republican Party knew full well that there would never be an end to terror, because there will never be an end to the human nature that impels sexually frustrated young men towards political violence. The Middle East will always be violent, because it’s in their nature to be, and even if they weren’t someone else would be.

Somewhere in the world, there will always be violence and terror, and this means that the War on Terror is an endless war. It is a battle that can never be won. No matter the circumstances, right-wing parties will always be able to use the violence somewhere in the world to justify increasing military spending and cracking down on civil liberties.

This has given them a permanent advantage over the left wing – until now.

If there’s one thing that can be said for certain about Nature it is that she is ever-changing. And she always will be – for over four billion years, Nature has thrown up an ever-shifting set of environmental conditions and admonished her children to adapt or die. There is absolutely nothing we can do about this, because Nature is infinitely stronger than even our collective will.

At any given time, somewhere in the world, there will be people suffering due to the whims of Nature. Somewhere in the world there will be droughts, somewhere else there will be floods, and in other places there will be storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, typhoons and tsunamis.

What the left wing has recently caught on to is the fact that, insofar as we have a moral obligation to fight climate change, this obligation will never and can never be discharged.

If the political class is at all capable of persuading the people they rule to submit to further taxation in the belief that the money will be used to “fight climate change”, they will be able to do so in perpetuity, because the climate will always change.

Because it’s a law of Nature that the climate will always change, no matter what humans do or don’t do, the left wing will always be able to use climate change as a justification for increasing government reach and cracking down on civil liberties. In this regard, the left wing has a weapon that matches the power of the right wing’s War or Terror. Any time anything bad naturally happens as a result of freak weather events, the left wing will be able to use it as an excuse to turn the screws.

This is how we have ended up with politicians like Jacinda Ardern saying that climate change is the “nuclear free moment” of our generation. The Labour Party knows that it can thump the drum of climate change forever, and therefore there is greater scope for long-term gathering of political capital if they prioritise this issue rather than issues like cannabis law reform (which will be soon be solved and moved on from).

Ten years, twenty years, fifty years from now, the left wing will still be prattling on about climate change.

Anti-Buddhism

Buddhism isn’t for everybody. If it isn’t for you, there’s always anti-Buddhism

Most Westerners are familiar with the basic tenets of Buddhism. Few understand that there’s a popular religious movement that seeks to achieve the exact opposite of those tenets, and this movement is sweeping the Western World. It’s called anti-Buddhism, and most practitioners of it don’t even know it’s their religion.

The tenets of anti-Buddhism are essentially the mirror opposite of regular Buddhism. Where a Buddhist will try and make himself satisfied with his lot, thereby decreasing his desires for material pleasure, an anti-Buddhist will try and make himself less satisfied.

The anti-Buddhist will search through every part of his mind, conscious or unconscious, looking for misery. He will ruminate for hours on the most trivial of insults, grinding his teeth at the effrontery, and entertain the most ludicrous revenge fantasies. The tiniest of unfulfilled desires is justification enough to rage at the injustice of the world.

Where the Buddhist cultivates an aura of peace, the anti-Buddhist cultivates one of hatred. The entire world of phenomena is seen through this blood-red lens. As a consequence, everything in the whole world is worthy of contempt. The anti-Buddhist can have no real friends, just temporary alliances founded upon mutual hatred of an other.

And so, nothing is ever good enough for him. The most fortuitous event is not considered a blessing but rather him getting restitution for prior injustices, meaning that no gratitude is necessary. He simply moves straight on to fulfilling the next desire.

Like the Taoist, the Buddhist strives to live a simple life. He recognises that material possessions are just objects that ultimately end up possessing him, because they demand that time and energy be sacrificed to their maintenance and protection. The result of this simple life is the sense of peace and freedom that comes from not having to stress out about defending your wealth.

The anti-Buddhist rejects this line of reasoning as that of a weakling. The value of his life is a direct function of the resources and territory that he controls, and only through the maximum amount of stress and misery can the true value of his life be reached. Indeed, it’s vital that everyone around the anti-Buddhist sees and knows about his suffering, so that they can feel the awe that is the natural response to being around someone so great.

So where the Buddhist greets his fellows with a gentle smile and a reassuring word, the anti-Buddhist scowls and immediately starts going on about his health problems, or the need to exterminate some group of people he hates, because his capacity to cause fear in other people gives him a sense of power that he mistakes for being a worthwhile person.

If there’s one thing that really distinguishes the Buddhist from the followers of other practices, it’s meditation. Through meditation a person can get to genuinely know themselves and the ebbing and flowing of desires within their own mind. Paying attention to how their own mind works, they learn to distinguish genuine desires from conditioned ones and so learn to direct their energy to things that make them happy.

Correspondingly, meditation is the one thing that the anti-Buddhist avoids at any cost. Every millisecond of every day has to be crammed full of as much stimulation as possible, lest one inadvertently catch a few moments of meditation and accidentally become happier. There can be no such thing as rest, no such thing as peace. All efforts have to be devoted to the ceaseless acquisition of capital, because to pause for a moment is to risk slipping back down the dominance hierarchy.

Anti-Buddhism is widespread in our society, but it appears to be falling into decline. We have been so wealthy and yet so miserable for so long, that it’s no longer deniable that anti-Buddhism has failed to bring us any improvement to the quality of lives. Perhaps it’s time to return to the original spiritual practices?

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Te Reo With Mnemonics: Military Words

Army – waitaua

A medieval army lays seige to a tower shaped like the letter Y – the Y tower.

Artillery – ngā pū

A group of soldiers wearing nappies operate and fire an artillery piece.

hit – patu(-a)

A medieval knight hits another knight with a golf putter.

miss – tohipa

Someone has chopped off a large number of toes and put them in a heap. A man throws a cricket ball at the toe heap but misses.

Battlefield – kauhanga riri

On a future battlefield, a giant robot picks up cows and hangs them in trees. A watching soldier says “It’s a cowhanger, really!”

Rifle – raiwhara

A man and a woman get married, and a rifle serves as celebrant. The rifle, from the perspective of the groom, is therefore a wifer.

The Maori word for army – waitaua – sounds like the English phrase ‘Y tower’

shoot – pupuhi

A man fires a gun at another man, but instead of bullets, sewerage comes out. This makes the man who got shot poo-pooey.

Soldier – hōia

Two soldiers are trying to place a mirror on the wall. One of them keeps saying “Higher! Higher!”

Sword – hoari

A woman runs down the street swinging a sword while dressed as a prostitute (a whore).

Tank – waka taua

A battletank swings its turrent and tries to knock down a tower. The tank is trying to whack a tower.

Weapon – patu

A man pulls out an AK-47 and says “This is a weapon,” and then pulls out a magazine, inserts it into the AK-47 and says “This is a weapon part two.”

Shotgun – tūpara

A teenage boy fires a shotgun, the barrel of which narrows down to an extreme taper.

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The above is an excerpt from the upcoming Learn Maori Vocabulary With Mnemonics, by Jeff Ngatai, due to be published by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2017/18.