700 - Is There No Other Way the World May Live... (Audiocollage of Dissidents from Dwight Eisenhower To Derrick Jensen)

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Episode #700 - Is There No Other Way the World May Live... (Audiocollage of Dissidents from Dwight Eisenhower To Derrick Jensen)

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⌚ Sat 15 November 2014  ☻Derrick Jensen, Chris Hedges, Martin Luther King, John Trudell, Teremce McKenna, Andy Bichlbaum and many others

Download Hour1 Download Hour2To mark our 700th show, a 2 hour audiocollage of new material which questions 'official' reality. Beginning with fairly broadly understood deceptions such as the War On Terror, Democracy and Economics we look at their philosophical underpinning - the notion that humans live in a dead, machine like, essentially meaningless universe which spontaneously arose out of nothing. What if life and communication are more widely spread than we believe, if human consciousness is just one part of Gaia, a universal consciousness which transcends human attempts to pin it down, a life force more accessible to our hearts than our heads?

The title is a quote from Eisenhower's "chance for peace" speech, proof that the US government used to at least discuss alternatives to perpetual war. The audiocollage features almost exclusively new material on the show, is made up of two broad sections. We begin with a look at the lies told by government, corporations and the media to attempt to justify and normalize selfishness, to justify and expand their control over our hearts and minds and to downplay the natural world. Derrick Jensen offers a range of insights, such as noting that the "environmental intelligentsia" have been transformed in the last few decades from preserving the environment for its own sake, into a movement to stage of ecological collapse - what is effectively an effort to drag out the current technological pillage as long as possible.

There's a very prescient book by Karl Polyani, called the Great Transformation, written in 1944. It's a study of unfettered capitalism. And he argues that when a society loses the capacity for the sacred, when nothing has an intrinsic value, when everything is judged solely on its monetary value, then that society cannibalizes itself until it dies. And we can see than cannibalization when 40% of the Summer Arctic sea ice melts, and the response of the corporate state is to mine the last vestiges of fish, gas, oil and minerals. Chris Hedges

Our second half draws heavily from ChazK's "Being of Earth". To mark the 30th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, we hear how "Jude Finisterra" announced the liquidation of Dow Chemical. Derrick Jensen notes the danger of confusing an ability to control matter and energy with a deep understanding of it, and suggests that we should instead of focusing on control seek healthy relationships with the world around us. A range of speakers suggest that we should be wary of the "normal" human consciousness, which is highly detached from other species, and pooh pooh serious efforts to communicate with non-humans. "Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough". Music and speech offer a range of deeper insights that recommend a Gaian consciousness which treats everything as alive, or at least potentially so.

We conclude with a special appeal on behalf of John Taylor Gatto, who is gradually recovering from his stroke, but whose recovery is impeded by lack of funds. If you are looking for a good cause to which to donate funds, I recommend John Taylor Gatto, who is steadily recovering from his stroke, but remains paralyzed in one side. Click here for the donation page.
Music: Jesus Christians, Capitol Steps, Roy Zimmerman, Sicknote, Compassionate Conservatives, Grails and many others
Big thanks to the Chazk for Ponderings From Within Leviathan Redux and to Martin from Kaputt Radio and many other contributors whose raw material gave a lot of inspiration and material for this audiocollage possible.
This episode rebroadcasts content from 608.
Our previous audiocollage was episode 681.
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