The plan was always for me to return to ‘work’, aka gainful employment, after finishing several major sustainability improvement projects to our mountain top homestead. After nearly two years of continuous work on over a dozen undertakings large and small, several months ago the time finally arrived. Of course, the plan always assumed local and national financial conditions were such that a job was available for me to fill. If not…..well, that was precisely why we had improved our ability to self sustain in the face of national (or global) economic disaster.
So for those of you who have been wondering where the hell Cog is………now you know. Cog has been willingly laboring away at the local (assuming anything twenty four miles away can be termed ‘local’) big box retail salt mine. And no, I am not a Wal-Mart greeter……yet. Suffice to say I work in a physically demanding retail sales environment as an hourly wage slave working swing shifts any day or evening of the week including holidays and weekends. At least it comes with full benefits, though I don’t think I will be joining the 401(k) ‘retirement’ plan or the company discount stock purchase plan anytime soon. Continue reading The Salt Mind→
It is a terrible blow to the ego to admit we are covertly and overtly manipulated or influenced by anything other than our own mind. We wish to 'believe' we are rational, logical and independent thinkers who act in our own best interest all the time. Unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth.
Sadly we will remain under the control of the very thing we reject as manipulating us for as long as we resist fully accepting the knowledge and understanding that much of what we consider original and critical thought is little more than repackaged and personalized propaganda and cultural beliefs. We cannot overcome that which we deny is present in the first place.
The purpose of the following article is not to rub our faces in our own inadequacy or futility. Rather it is presented to help us understand one simple fact, that everywhere we turn we are surrounded by controlling memes and propaganda. The way forward is to fully recognize where we have been and then embrace personal responsibility to change the path we presently walk.
I continuously marvel how well the world works considering the staggering level of gross incompetence exhibited by all, myself included. This observation, one I find myself endlessly encountering in an ever changing light and perspective, was never more apparent than while Mrs. Cog and I struggled with web hosting issues over the last two weeks.
Initially we were but one of several thousand who were suffering a similar fate, an intermittent website at best and error messages at worst. Calling customer service at our web hosting company to ask for resolution or just for some basic information came down to calling three times within a few hours, then averaging the answers to try to determine what was going on and when it would all end. Continue reading We’re Back……and Better than Ever→
