thanksgiving/giving thanks

(image CC BY-SA)

let the unknowable be as it is,
and give thanks to all being for being

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“contaminate and conquer” (Kurt Cobb)

preparing to spray a Monsanto product on food crops (Wikimedia)

Kurt Cobb:

Keep in mind that it is practically impossible to prevent all drift from a pesticide [or herbicide] applied to an outdoor field. And, even if Monsanto gets approval for its special dicamba formulation, that doesn’t mean that all farmers will use it when cheaper formulations may be available. Moreover, because drift may be impossible to stop, farmers growing soybeans or cotton may be forced to buy Monsanto’s dicamba-resistant seeds to protect themselves from damage. Farmers raising other crops that have no resistance may be faced with widespread damage to their fruits, vegetables and other crops.

On an analogous topic I wrote previously that Monsanto and other companies producing genetically engineered crops do not take genetic contamination of non-engineered crops very seriously. After all, if these companies can inflict enough contamination on other crops, they will be able to make it impossible to grow non-GMO (genetically modified organism) crops—which are becoming a threat to their market share. I would style this strategy as contaminate and conquer.

[full article]

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one option

Scott Santens:

What underlies a question like this is that it’s okay to force people to work by withholding what they need to live, in order to force them to work for us. And at the same time, because they are forced, we don’t even pay them enough to meet their basic needs that we are withholding to force them to work.

What is a good word to describe this?

…

My favorite story is Garrison Frazier. It’s a story I first learned about from Karl Widerquist, and included in this article. He was a freed slave and chosen as the spokesperson for other freed slaves. He was asked about slavery and how he could be truly free from ever being enslaved again.

Slavery is, receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent. The freedom, as I understand it, promised by the proclamation, is taking us from under the yoke of bondage, and placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor, take care of ourselves and assist the Government in maintaining our freedom… The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor…”

This is to say that without owning a minimum amount of land, it is not possible to truly live by your own labor. One must have this ability in order to not be forced to work for others. If you can’t grow your own food or build your own house, you can’t live by your own hands. This option must exist. But does it make any sense in this day and age to give everyone land? How would we even accomplish this? How would it be universal and equal in quantity and quality? What if some land didn’t grow food? How would this work in cities where our markets have created the dense populations of labor required for them to exist?

Universal basic income is how …

[link to full article]

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People have long been coerced to work by denying them access to resources that let them survive otherwise. The shorthand for this is “enclosure of the commons,” that is, fencing people off from what they can use to sustain themselves. The image of the engraving in the tweet embedded below is of forcible enclosure and expulsion, from Commoning, a Resilience post by Brian Davey.

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“the pain you feel is capitalism dying”

Samuel Alexander wrote:

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there is no other …

there is no other being than this being: all that is happening now

thoughts of past and future and of whatever else is thought are in the mind, recalled – or not – only in this moment, the present

there only ever is this moment, the present, this being: all that is happening now

nothing is other than this

no one is

there is no other being

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want nothing, be well

a good death: “the kind most people would choose”

Nino Sekopet, an extraordinary end-of-life counsellor, on the questions he most often faces

from the article the tweet links to:

A Dutch actress with terminal cancer came to see Sekopet, along with her son. She was unflinchingly realistic and decided that in order to avoid lots of “bulls–t,” she wanted to end her life with VSED. Their conversation was almost buoyant with laughter, simply because that’s where that family was. “That’s a very light, almost funny, cheerful death that’s stayed with me,” Sekopet says.

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lightly edited copy from DWD Canada:

  • It is legal to end your own life in Canada and has been since suicide was removed from the Criminal Code in 1972
  • You have the right to refuse any and all treatment, even if refusal might hasten your death
  • You have the right to stop treatment after it has started. Ethically and legally, there is no distinction between discontinuing treatment and refusing it in the first place
  • In Canada, nutrition and hydration by tube is considered medical treatment. You have the right to refuse or stop it
  • You also have the right to turn down food or drink and the right to refuse to be fed or given drinks by others
  • The above is referred to as Voluntary Stopping of Eating and Drinking (VSED) and is supported by many palliative care providers

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Be sure to choose palliative care that includes informed use of glycerin swabs to relieve thirst, and so on. With no fluid intake you are likely to lose consciousness in a week or so and – without intervention – never regain it. Please read this Guardian piece: 'It was a good death, the kind most people would choose' (Sophie Mackenzie on why her family backed her mother's decision to stop eating and drinking when faced with terminal cancer).

from this page on the DWD Canada website:

Document your wishes. When it comes to end-of-life decisions, what you've put in writing will carry more weight than something you've mentioned in passing. Clear, written instructions will also make it easier for your substitute decision-maker to act on your wishes. So write them down! You can use the forms in our Advance Care Planning Kit or have a lawyer or notary draw up your documents. It's up to you.

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want nothing, be well

image credited in a related post: want nothing

may all want nothing but that all want nothing

wanting anything – wanting something to be or not to be – is dukkha;
nirvana is needing nothing and wanting nothing, not even this:
that all want nothing

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want nothing, be well

want nothing … other than that all want nothing;
be well: do no more than need be done to be and let be*

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*with loving-kindness, compassion, empathic joy, and equanimity

a UBI proposal from 1918 (Bertrand Russell)