What is this life if not our most intimate expression of what we value most?

It seems strange to contemplate the world today, and find it as it is. Last night I began to read a book about the life of Ilya Ehrenburg, a Russian poet who lived through the revolutions and two world wars. His life is an extrodinary tale so far, I'm only on page 58!

I found this piece quite interesting, and it is probably responsible for my sombre contemplations.

"Some people tell us that we are being ruled by all-powerful men - by the Kaiser and Lloyd George, by diplomats, by generals and stock exchange magnates. I wish it were so. They are, after all, only human beings. Each one has the same pulsating organ under the left-hand pocket of his waistcoat. When they were children they all played games, and one day each of them will die. But this war is not being waged by humans. Today, I saw our true masters; endless chains of lorries, transporting men to the front, taking the wounded to the rear, carrying bread and carcasses of meat. The soldiers are merely the slaves of that machine. They serve it and feed it with their bodies. When I first saw a tank, I was perturbed: it was majestic and loathsome, archaic and ultra-American, a combination between Noah's Ark and a twenty-first century bus. Inside were twelve miserable pygmies, who naively imagined that they were controlling it."

It was written while he reported from the French front-lines in the great war. Today, the same war rages with different machines. Without soldiers on which to feed it is the people the population, who suffer wars terror.

The sea of violence that swept into Iraq is the chaos that is called Modern Democracy, an insip devaluation of culture, reason and meaning. The US and Uk, my home country weave their own political webs of deceit, that bind all civilisation . Democracy is fast becoming a fringe activity of the human/social movement...we're not an apathetic populus, just disillussioned, led astray from our own moral sense. Led by the nose to become what we despise, in the eyes of our children.

The Industrial Democracy is without the finnese to appeal to our senses, so it drowns out any difference to it's uniform rhythm. De-sensitised, people don't care any more just as long as the tastes, the sights and sounds are not overbearing. But the feeling, the feelings change.

I can't find it in me to support this emotional turmoil I call my homeland, I'm thinking it's time we, the people ruled our own hearts and minds.
To live by honest will, by a true justness and purpose. What need then of order if we can govern our own freedom by talking amongst ourselves and not paying some weak opportunist who'll sell out our rights for personal gain, power and privalege?

Look at today and all it reflects are the advertisements to consume and be consumed. To desire and not to question the purpose of that desire but to live it like it was real.

The conditions of reality are imposed through work and the dreams we are inspired to buy. Advertisers and retailers are staging an offencive, against our senses and sense of humanity. As well as being fed all the artficial additives and stimulants, we are fed the idea that we should ridicule alternative movements, ridicule alternative choices.

That's why I've decided to take my government to court, the best part of this is they sincerely believe they're taking me to court for non-payment of tax, they aren't going to believe their ears when the performance starts...

Thought for the day: There's no future in profit.