10/20/18

Grand Deluges – A Pedantic Wet Dream

A Book by Joe Peters

Proudly and humbly announcing my new book, Grand Deluges – A Pedantic Wet Dream

From a 32 page essay I wrote years ago and kept going back to, I fell down the rabbit hole it became and after a couple of years of writing at night and painting houses during the day, Grand Deluges appeared. Feedback so far has been very good, from “unique writing style and pace” to “very relative to today considering it’s like an encyclopedia written as a story” to “refreshing, rational and at times even funny”, and a “very interesting non-linear read”.

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06/12/21

Diversity

Personally, I have a different interpretation of diversity than what is being peddled these days by “race hustlers” of all skin tones. From Black Lives Matter, to corporate media, Hollywood, sports celebrities, social media oligarchs, intellectuals, and corporations. Who all benefit from racial conflict to secure administrative jobs, charity management positions, academic jobs and advancement, or personal political entrepreneurship. But didn’t somebody once speak the truth that we should be judged on the content of our character and not of the colour of our skin. But if race has to be considered, which I don’t believe should be because that’s called discrimination of one over the other and racist, and tossing aside the ability of hiring the best qualified person for the job, then for a company of say one hundred employees to truly be diversified one would want to represent each race according to the only fair way to do it, by demographics.

So to be truly diversified in Canada (Oct.2020), your one hundred employees should include seventy-five white people, six Hindu/Sikh, five Chinese, three blacks, two Filipino, one Latin American, one Arabian, and seven other people representing all other races including Indigenous peoples. If you want to diversify by sex, half would be heterosexual females and half would be heterosexual males, with one to two people representing gays, lesbian or bisexual, and less than one person representing all other genders and sexual preferences.

For a company in the US (Dec.2019) to be truly diversified their one hundred employees would have to include sixty white people, nineteen Hispanics, twelve blacks, six Asians, one Hawaiian or American or Alaskan native, and three people representing all other races. As to sex, once again half would be heterosexual females and half heterosexual males. With two to three people identifying as gay, lesbian or bisexual and one person representing all other genders.

07/28/20

China’s Cultural Revolution

In 1958, Chairman Mao Zedong’s People’s Republic of China (PRC) launched the “Great Leap Forward.” Its goals were to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization. Private farming was banned, and if caught, one was persecuted and labelled a counter-revolutionary, with restrictions on rural people strictly enforced through public shaming, peer pressure and beatings. One of the first things The Great Leap Forward implemented was a hygiene campaign against the “Four Pests” (rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows). Sounds good. Except, two years later devastating locust swarms arrived and ate everything in sight, because their natural predators, sparrows, had all been killed. The ensuing “Great Chinese Famine” is estimated to have killed upwards of approximately 30 million people, out of a Chinese population of 600 million at the time, or five percent. It was the deadliest famine in the history of China, and though the worst famine to-date was the Great Irish Famine, (Potato Famine) where approximately one million of a population of eight million people died, or 12.5 percent, the Great Chinese Famine, in part due to China’s large population, became the deadliest famine in history. Meanwhile, the Great Leap Forward face-planted and ended in 1962.

After the 1958-62 fiasco the Great Leap Forward, the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) leaders pulled back some of the most extreme collectivization efforts. Then, in May 1966 the Peoples Republic of China issued a statement which outlined Mao’s ideas on the Cultural Revolution. By early June, mobs of young demonstrators wearing red armbands, lined the capital of Beijing’s major streets, brandishing huge portraits of Mao, beating drums, and shouting slogans. The mob would soon become known as the Red Guards. In August over a million of these, mostly 16 to 28 year olds, gathered from all over the country, in and around Tiananmen Square in Beijing, where Chairman Mao spoke to them. Over the next few months eight mass-rallies were held where over 12 million people attended. The movement’s stated goal was to purge capitalist and traditional elements from society, and to substitute a new way of thinking based on Mao’s own beliefs. But fundamentally, it was about elite politics, as Mao tried to reassert control by setting such radical youths against the Communist Party hierarchy and to wage war against anybody who didn’t agree with his ideas. He told his mobs that “to rebel is justified” and that “revisionists should be removed through violent class struggle.” He came up with an official blacklist called the Four Olds, (old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas) which were to be all eradicated. With anyone still believing in such things deemed evil, because they were only using such traditions to preserve their power and subjugate the people.

Students everywhere began to revolt against their respective schools’ party establishment because education was deemed the way that old values were preserved and transmitted. Teachers, particularly those at universities, were considered the “Stinking Old Ninth” and were widely persecuted, from suffering the public humiliation of having their heads shaved to assault and even torture. Many were also murdered or harassed into suicide. By June 1966 all classes in primary and secondary schools were cancelled nationwide. The cops were told not to intervene in Red Guard activities, and if they did, the national police chief pardoned the Red Guards for any crimes. And so it began.

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03/23/20

SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 – The Virus and Disease – Timeline

Hello everyone. Since I’m living on my boat in self-exile because I am the worst a man can be today, white, over 60, lung cancer, Chronic Pulmonary Obstruction Disease, nearly losing a battle with influenza-A over Christmas, and eking along on CPP Disability, I’ve been keeping a timeline of all the goings on as of late with the coronavirus. Timeline will be ongoing until further notice, and will be regularly updated when new info comes down the pike. Scroll to bottom for latest. (June 8th 2020) Thanks much.

Notice: If you are interested in receiving notifications whenever a new post is posted please subscribe. If you already had, please do so again. Thank you very much.

Be well and remember they have not yet restricted being rational and calm, or laughter and hope.

Peace.

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01/1/20

Chapter Two – Half-Way There

Chapter Two (11 Pages)

As for the fable, that we are born a blank slate, increasing scientific research today is showing that our “slates” are only partially blank at birth. For through our genes, we are already somewhat biologically programmed. Henceforth, we are constantly at war with our unconscious and conscious selves, while we become products of our environments. Over the past 70 years at least, such programming of our unconscious level has been hacked by the media, politics, and advertising. Especially since we are storytelling animals, and whoever controls the stories being told, controls us. Whether today or tens of thousands of years ago, when we sat enthralled around the evening campfire.

Just because someone tells us something, or we see something online or on TV, until otherwise proven by facts, actions, and/or behaviour, we should take it with a grain of salt. Much like when we were young children walking around asking, why, how come, why not, and what do you mean? To do otherwise would seem something was wrong with us. But then we also continue to give people the benefit of the doubt, which is also pretty crazy. Considering this is where the predators, exploiters, and abusers hide behind. Hence, over 95 per cent of child and spousal mental, physical and sexual abuse is done by a known family member.

The one continuous mental narrative that dominates our consciousness about who we are and about the world we live in, is nothing but an endless stream of stories. These stories can be manipulated and distorted in many ways either by people we know or on a mass scale by people pulling levers behind the curtain. It’s not shameful to be deceived, because our cognitive wiring is prone to believing stories. The people that do the manipulating are the shameful ones. But we must not let shame or cognitive dissonance take away healthy skepticism of the stories told to us. And one must pay attention with as much objectivity as possible to the behaviour that goes with the story. This allows us to be aware of the false story-tellers and side-show barkers, because of the huge gap between what their words say and what their actions mean.

It has been said that by the time we are about five years old, we reach what some call a golden age of development, with the premise that what we become later has already been molded and ready to be shaped into form. While memory supposedly begins when we are about three years old. And though I don’t, some people remember snippets of this time in their lives, and remember very well, and I’m sure it is true to a certain point and all a matter of recall. But the events that shape our lives after we are five often create the biggest changes, only because, before we are five years old we have no choice. While after five years we begin to learn that life becomes about making decisions, where we have a choice. Unfortunately however, we may be apt to later forget we have such choices or are programmed to think that we do. We follow our unconscious choice, which has been altered by outside sources as already discussed, and we think it’s free will. Carl Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, who founded analytical psychology, put it best, “Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate”.

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11/10/19

Half Way There – A Vancouverite Baby Boomer’s Almanac

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The Serenity Prayer – Reinhold Niebuhr

Chapter One

Since I’m perhaps nearing my end I thought I’d start at the beginning.

Some of the oldest human relics that have ever been found were fertility figurines carved from stones over fifty-thousand years ago. They depicted women with a figure of big bum, big belly and breasts. Perhaps not understanding yet that sex produces children, the men were no doubt in awe of what a woman could do that they could not. Women on the other hand were attracted to men who were confident, athletic, brave, a good provider, respected among the tribe, and handsome, with nice eyes. This was because women were selective as to which sperm they wanted, and because such men protected and provided for them. Thus, in nature and in human tribal cultures untouched by modern western ideology, males predominately do the wooing. There’s a perfectly logical reason for this, eggs are more valuable than the dime a dozen sperm. Most females are limited by how many eggs they have at birth, while males are only limited by the numbers of females they can have sex with. For example, for some women today, a pregnancy can simply be a too costly and time consuming responsibility to take on, especially if one is single, and if a decision is made to become pregnant, she at least should be selective as to whose sperm she wants, whether the survival of the species depends on it or not, unlike a Bonobo chimpanzee.

The Bonobo, kin to the other chimpanzees who lived on the other side of the river as it were, spend much of their time fondling, rubbing, and engaging in intercourse. Primatologist Frans de Waal described the difference between chimpanzees and bonobos as being, “Chimps use violence to get sex, while bonobos use sex to avoid violence.”

After studying them for years, Vanessa Woods describes the bonobo’s world as being where all your relatives “think sex is like a handshake”. And if left alone, they live high quality, nearly stress-free lives. Their world is one where everyone takes care of each other, especially the young, and where both males and females, share the babysitting duties, and don’t necessarily care who the father was. When having sex they cuddle, kiss, hold hands and gaze into one another’s eyes, perhaps even fluttering their eye lashes. While jealousy, is considered an ugly trait. Even before eating, instead of prayers, they all have a quickie before sitting down and empathically passing the food around smiling at each other. Then afterwards no doubt all take a nap. I would.

It’s perhaps not so surprising that for bonobos, chimps, humans and dolphins, all of whom might be the smartest of all mammals, promiscuity is the norm. Regardless, because whether by love, lust or instinct, when a male animal and a female animal have sex and do not use protection, there is a good chance a baby may be conceived.

In early 1958, somewhere in the Fraser Valley, British Columbia, my father’s performance reached its crescendo when the floodgates were thrown aside allowing nearly one hundred million sperm cells, the smallest cells in a human, to be ejected as semen, along with a part of his soul, and perhaps a quick pang of sadness that so often happens. Similar perhaps to how the vast majority of women have feelings of sadness or the “baby blues” after giving birth because maybe it’s that feeling that a human that grew inside her belly is now gone. In the there and then, the race was on, as the frantic sperm started swimming like crack addicted tadpoles, bobbing and weaving forward, with their long tails flowing behind. Others undoubtedly swam around like chickens with their heads cut off. Each one affected, or not, by how stressed out the father was, which could impact their future behaviour, just as a mother’s stress at fertilization can affect the egg.

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11/4/19

The Innards and Machinations of Agenda 21

Part Two of Inside Agenda 21 and 30

A 35 page Dense Essay

“If you don’t have a plan, you become part of somebody else’s plan.” Terence McKenna

Much like when the old snake oil merchant used to ride into town. Agenda 21’s goals and targets were deemed critically important for both, the great improvement in our personal lives and for the world being transformed into a better place. And all to be accomplished by 2030 or it’s all over, all bets off the table. So they bark from atop their loudly lit wagon instilling fear into our hearts.

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09/21/19

Inside Agendas 21 and 2030

Part One

A 17 Page Dense Essay

Some things about skeptics, which in ancient Greece were called skeptikos, defined as someone who doubted even the possibility of real knowledge. While the Latin word scepticus, meant being thoughtful, inquiring and reflective. Its most up to date definition is someone who questions validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual. Whether values, plans, mainstream media news, the goals of those in power, statements, or the character of others.

Oddly, in science a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue. Or as George Carlin once said, “Tell people, there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.”

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