‘Locked & loaded’ The intransigence of our Fossil Fuel ‘masters’,
while sawing through the limb they sit on.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Wealth and power are highly addictive and as a rule, anything that threatens them is dealt with summarily without any reflective afterthought other than how not to let it happen again. The reactive behavior of the fossil fuel industry is every bit as ruthless and aggressive as of the druglords of the Medellin Cartel. This comparison to the purveyors of crack cocaine may seem hyperbolic, however, it is only our long-term and day-to-day familiarity with oil that seduces us into thinking it is the lesser evil. Taking it for granted is denial ‘white washing’ our bargain with the devil.
I have often marveled at the cold-blooded monstrousness that infuses decision-making by the fossil fuel industry.
My compulsion to delve into this toxic bonfire of incomprehensibility, was ignited by being intrigued with the conundrum that many of the people who are in charge of promoting this vile business have families, which, if for no other reason, one would think would at least ‘chasten’ their deranged willfulness to destroy the world for profit.
For the vast majority of us who have the gift of empathy, trying to comprehend the mindset of the pathologically abhorrent, is akin to trying to read on a moonless night with lightening bugs providing only brief flashes of insight. Their genetic ‘manual’ has pages torn out of the psychology chapter.
As we still retain them, the attuned are able to spot these ‘gaps’, but sociopaths themselves are unaware of the text gone missing.
But for the most part, these omissions frequently go unrecognized by us, while these monsters have no way to fill them in, other than by mimicking behavior in us they cannot comprehend. They subconsciously realize the necessity of constructing a facade of ‘normal’ both to mask their difference and as a tool for manipulation. This begins early in life, as they quickly sense their ‘difference’ and adjust the behavior that sets them apart. They can rapidly become dangerously skilled at making themselves both stealth and attractive at the same time.
For them, their inner world is normal and they see the rest of us as being deficient, weak and by their logic, prey.
Being closed off in a socially abnormal, dysfunctional interior world, with completely self-centered desires, they can see no reason to be otherwise. Without meaningful emotional connections and the curiosity that results through caring about others, they lack the perspective gained through interaction and reflection, easily becoming convinced of their own infallibility. It doesn’t even occur to them that this might need to be questioned.
Lacking empathy has cleared the playing field for them of what is for the rest of us an obstacle course in achieving society’s misdirected goals.
The peer pressure produced by our aberrant social standards can lead many who are not born without empathy, down this dark path to infringe upon the biological sociopath’s otherwise private domain. For not only do the rest of us have vestiges of proto ancestral sociopathic tendencies in our lizard brain, but the vicissitudes of life can provide fertile soil for enlarging that ‘crop’. Sociopaths are themselves a ‘viral’ vector, spreading psychic damage that can metastasize to mirror theirs.
Humans at the top of the ‘fuel chain’ make decisions that are expected of them by the corporate ‘beast’, indeed they have been selected for this faculty. Those under them have neither the temerity nor inclination to question their dictates — their job is expediting.
The imperative of profit will be achieved with no concern for ‘cause and effect’ that deviates from that primacy, and rationalization will mop up any qualms that get spilt.
Although I have not wasted my time expecting any of these devils to shed their horns, I’ve remained fascinated with trying to puzzle out the Rubik’s cube of these rationalizations.
Underlying and strengthening the corporate agenda, are conforming private ones. Being inextricably intertwined, both rule the ‘hive’ and dictate every decision made. In their ‘universe’, it is impossible for this to be any other way, despite the ‘quantum physics’ of environmental collapse and its ability to alter the reality of their delusions.
Those in charge have the laser focus rapacity of sharks, while the only flexibility they display is in pursuit of their prey.
Their’s is the mindset of a dog with a bone.
They are the corporate equivalent of the hardened criminal and could give a master class to Al Capone. They are demonic, vampiric, soulless husks — pushers of the world’s number one ‘substance’ for fueling our universal ‘abuse’. Like herpies virus, they’ve become indelibly imbedded in the spine of our societal structuring, but unlike herpes, they give us no rest. They have long ago mastered our weaknesses and turn them against us to ensure our addiction.
ln this, their omnipotence rivals Putin’s, with whom they engage in a primal dance for the fertilization of supremacy.
They got to the top of their profession because they are psychologically tailored for the job. They drive themselves forward like zealots and it is that zealotry that’s sustains them with chimeric self esteem.
Their primary purpose in life is feeding the corporate beast at the cost of all else as they sacrifice ‘everything’ to that insatiable, evil god that knows no gratitude. Eventually even they will be thrown on the pyre, to be burned alive with the rest of us.
Someone once said that sociopaths rise to the top of the corporate ladder “like cream rises in milk”.
They will voraciously pursue their goals and to the bewilderment of reason, they are willfully blind to any and all alternatives, as well as heartless when it comes to the consequences — even while bearing witness and knowing themselves to be the cause. They are puppets to greed.
This couldn’t be clearer, than when taking into consideration the proof released not long ago, exposing the fact that when faced in the 1970s with what their own scientists were telling them would be the result of their business model, they deliberately chose that agenda which prioritized profit over the survival of humanity and life as we know it. Considering the many opportunities they’ve had to rethink this, this news did not come as a surprise, but did carry some voltage. Apparently the health and welfare of their own families, as well as the future of their children was of insufficient substance to factor into their calculations or there were no bonds strong enough to restrain.
Since building, nurturing and protecting the family is a biological imperative, it is difficult for most of us to wrap our mind around this glaring dereliction of patriarchal duties. As it can appear as if they genuinely care about their families, perhaps this fundamental failure was the result of cognitive dissonance. But personally, I feel the sturdier explanation is the simple fact that deep down inside they simply don’t give a fuck about their wives or their children.
For as tough and ruthless as they have needed to be to succeed, they are, like most everyone else, total slaves to cognitive dissonance.
To do things differently requires first seeing things differently, and then feeling the need to react with informed deliberation and a willingness to embrace socially beneficial inter-connective change.
That requires the will to face horrors of your own making, and with sociopaths, that ain’t gonna happen.
The various people ostensibly in charge of the FF industry all need to be replaced with others that possess the ability to see the larger picture and are eager to work aggressively to transition away from Fossil Fuels for the common good. Those who have willfully conceived of and carried out this ‘mother of all crimes’, whether in the past or present, need to be arrested and tried for their crimes against humanity. That they are not, is indicative of the power they wield, but this shield needs to be torn from their grasp before they kill us all. Leaving these mutants in place and essentially self-regulated, is ‘the blind eye that courts insanity’.
As accomplices, we the consumer, need to atone by assisting in their demise.
To do this we must accept the part we have played in enabling them. So far the majority of us have been too busy digging this mass grave to become focused on the true character of the enemy or our own contributions to this crisis.
Once we become alert to these, it will empower us to fight back successfully as we will gain the upper hand, amplified by the flexibility they lack and steeled by fear.
So far regulatory legislation with ‘teeth’ as eluded our compromised and feeble efforts, and what few legal consequences there have been, have not been measured against the magnitude of their crimes — only that of their wealth, influence and power.
While such action may still seem to be within the jurisdiction of the ‘sandman’, that is an illusion. Although they have remained unfazed by half-hearted demands from the consumption distracted electorate, we are a sleeping tiger currently being wrested from our slumbers by El Niño. Assuredly, bringing them to tow, lies within our power, but for now the nebulousness of our will remains their ‘escape-hatch’.
Fortunately, as the shit hits the fan, it can become propellant for change.
While time evaporates, what remains firmly within our reach is our ability to turn the tables on them, like a Judo master displacing their own weight to bring them down. By curbing our consumption on all levels to real necessities, not what we’ve been brainwashed into thinking we need, we can crush them under their own weight by removing their support —us. This will choke off their ‘pipeline’ and set us rapidly on the path to recovery.
We created this crisis one action at a time primarily through individual negligence and desire.
Therefore, the inverse holds and we can clean it up with determination and the desire to survive — as individuals choosing to act.
If we’re ever to make Gaia fertile again we need to dig these ‘stones’ out of the field and cast them into the sea of oblivion.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/5/22/2242030/-Trump-s-offer-of-a-quid-pro-quo-of-ending-climate-fight-in-exchange-for-Oil-cash-has-been-accepted?utm_campaign=trending
Pakalolo
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