The Last 4th of July

SUBHEAD: Well, the pressure is on and will only increase. Get off the Grid. Get out of the Matrix. Go for what's real and close by!

By Juan Wilson on 3 July 2018 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-last-4th-of-july.html)


Image above: Painting of bombs bursting in air, that was commissioned by the graduating class of the US Army War College. Painting titled "Our Flag Was Still There" in the Defense of Ft. McHenry, Sept. 13-14, 1814, by Don Troiani. From (https://news.usni.org/2018/06/26/rim-of-the-pacific-2018-participation).

This may be not only the latest, but perhaps the last 4th of July "celebration" for American's used to it being a "Party like it's 1999". The holiday that embraces "Bombs Bursting in Air" has run out of our enthusiasm.

"Make America Great Again!"

When was "again"? Was it the time of the the American Revolution for independence from Britain. Back then the nonnative population of Americans was less than three-million people. That's less than 1% of today's human population of the United States (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_history_of_USA.png).

The support required our current American population is staggering and unsustainable. Worldwide if you include the just the domestic livestock of mega-fauna (large-animals) raised in pens for our food (chickens, pigs, cattle, etc) that's over 90% of mega-fauna alive).

Humans are selfish. As if they are all that matter.  

As your nostrils fill with acrid smell of charcoal grill fire-starter and firecracker black-powder smoke just remember you don't have to be sitting baking in the sun while pounding down beer and grilled flesh.

You could be sitting in the shade near your sunny raised-bed garden admiring the pole-beans with a glass in your hand filled with home grown lemonade sweetened with your own honey...

... that is if you started some years ago by building a raised bed, planting a lemon tree and husbanding a beehive.  

Humans live for today. As if there is no tomorrow.

Thousands of years ago we invented "agriculture". That was in the then hospitable Tigris-Euphrates Valley once known as the "Fertile Crescent". Sumerian and Mesopotamian culture was the founded there and morphed into Greco-Roman civilization and ultimately modern "Western" industrial society.
Now the 'Fertile-Crescent" is the 'Fossile-Crescent" stretching from Northern Africa through the Middle East. The last useful scraps of the  "crack-cocaine energy" we fuel ourselves with is there and we will lat waste to it and whoever lives there to "stay high".

If we keep "keep on pushin' on" the fine membrane of life will snap and everywhere will be as bleak as Afghanistan and Syria are today.

Where do we go from here? Certainly not upwards with more of the "same-old same-old". More likely if we make it through through the "eye of a needle" of collapse we will be as ragtag groups of hunter-gatherers.

By that I mean there may be a small bands of humans in some corners of the world still habitable that may survive... possibly the tip of South America, Africa and Australia. It has happened before. See (http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2011/04/one-time-through-bottleneck.html)

Humans can adapt to change. But is seems only under great pressure. 

Well, the pressure is on and will only increase. Get off the Grid. Get out of the Matrix. Go for what's real and close by!

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: American Dignity on Fourth of July 7/1/17
Ea O Ka Aina: The Next American Revolution 7/5/13
Ea O Ka Aina: The American Unraveling 7/29/11
Ea O Ka Aina: Birthday Card 7/4/11
Ea O Ka Aina: "Merciless Indian Savages" 7/3/11
Island Breath: American patriotism's failure 7/4/08
Island Breath: Thinking about July Fourth 7/4/07

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