31 Replies to “Guiding Us to the Light”

  1. I was waiting for one of the protesters to say something about how we have to change some basic concepts of space and time, to get all science fictioney.

  3. OWG,
    Great quote. But for some reason this is only applied to those who have more than others rather than the progressives going to those with less and telling they should be happy that way. Oddly, the church used to carry that message and was then accused by the left of being a tool of those in power to keep those with less in check.
    You can never win with progressives, the only time they are happy is when they are the ones making the decision about who has what and being the deliverer or the largesse to the favourite underpriveleged group of the month. Way of the world I guess.

  4. As someone who has Gone Galt and minimalist at the same time, perhaps one might find a better quote to use than that since they’re largely right: less stuff, less work are much easier and lead to much more happiness.
    Trust me, since I gave up my $40-50k job to work 2 PT gigs for less than half of that, life’s much, much better. In fact, I’d give this way of life up for only one other job… that I can’t really have anymore.

  5. I’m actually having difficulty keeping track of all the conflicted ideals of the 99%ers (who really only speak for less than 10% of us) – They (Occupy) are primarily neo Marxists who banded together to demand wealth redistribution from the 1% to the hordes living in squalor in their occupy camps – it was about demanding a chunk of the crony oligarch’s monopolist pie – I can get that, the something-for-nothing freeloader cult was designing a new political face, ethical disquise and marketing image for anti-intellectual 3rd world revolutionary communist sloganeering. IOW- Kill the rich and take their stuff – I get that , that’s what commies do – it’s an envy/greed thing for lazy mobs.
    – Then they jump to supporting AGW Marxism which was designed by the 1% (upscale globalists) and seems to be about fooling the masses into willingly putting themselves into 3rd world ludddite squalor for the collective and the earth spirit while the 1% prosper on the minimalist existence level sustainability tech to do so .
    So what’s it gonna be young Marxists, lusting after capitalisa wealth or going anti-materialist and freezing in a dark cold cave somewhere for mother Gaia? I can’t keep track of what you want anymore, I bet you can’t either.

  6. Sean, I am retired and worked hard for what little I have. I have no intention of giving up my trips to Florida, golf and cold beer. I like to get a new car every couple of years and I do not plan on giving anything up until I am dead. gaia is not on my list of those who need appeasement. anyone who wants less out of life is more than welcome to have less, just do not expect everyone to agree to having less.

  7. Did anybody watch the CBC National news panel discussion on “climate change” on Sunday like I did?
    I knew I shouldn’t have tuned in. It was one of the worst things I have ever watched, what with my scientific background and my expert or near expert knowledge on the current state of climate science. Would anyone like me to write up a review and commentary / critique on what the panel had to say? (please say no, please say no, please say no).

  8. Red Star claims 3,000 attended the Toronto Climate Fest yesterday.
    On the other hand, average attendance for a Blue Jays home game is 31,600.
    Seems 10X of the residents prefer a ball game to protesting global warming.
    By the way, last summer was all about Occupy and Idle No More. This summer-Nada.
    What’s up with that??

  9. Change?
    Didn’t they just get all the “Hope & Change” they could manage?
    Now they get to Change with millions of illiterate Latin American streaming across the border, to share in the “wealth” and give back some “Health”.
    In fact “No more Wealth & Health” should be the new slogan for Change in the new millennia.

  10. I’m with oldwhiteguy, which is perhaps not surprising since I’m an old white guy myself. I don’t doubt that having less can be very freeing for some people. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to have less yourself; in fact, that’s a choice that I’ve made in some ways. There is a big problem, however, when somebody else decides that you’re going to have less.

  11. So where are the pictures and videos of the northern version of the all-purpose protest-cum-socialist-danceathon in the thriving metropolis of Iqaluit?
    Where’s the CBC when ya really need them?

  13. “Having less is actually very freeing.”
    I’ll spare anyone thinking of defending this maxim the trouble. I have been there. I have seen this elephant. I have this t-shirt.
    It is a heinous lie, and it offends to the core me every time I see it.
    Having less is a trap, a hellish nightmare, and something to be avoided at all costs. It will sap your strength, then your health, then your life.
    You hippies and other suckers want to know what’s “freeing”? Knowing you can afford to BUY that thing that you need, Right F-ing Now. Be it a vehicle, a plane ticket or a knee replacement.
    You want to experience joy and satisfaction? Being able to go out to the barn, open a drawer and pull out the exact special thing you need to do an otherwise impossible job that you need to get done Right Now. You pull that left-handed grapple grommet out of that drawer, and you will feel Joy. You apply it to the job that you can’t do any other way, and it does the thing that its supposed to do without slipping, breaking or otherwise busting your knuckles, and you finish up that impossible job and wash your hands, that feeling that’s filling you is Satisfaction.
    “Having Less” is not “Freeing”.

  14. Hmm — Intersting that I heard about one pair who joined the protest tour so they could shop in NYC afterwards. There were buses going down, and I believe that they were getting free transport (and who knows what other amenities! Food? Lodging?) Who wouldn’t go? It was all a big show organized by Avaaz, MoveOn. As we know, there is no shortage of dollars when these folks are involved. I don’t think too many people are fooled by this type of demonstration anymore.

  15. I think the key is that people can be content with having less if they know that whenever they choose they could have more. Having less for philosophical/psychological reasons is different from having less because you’re broke. It’s all relative.

  16. “There is a big problem, however, when somebody else decides that you’re going to have less.”
    Iowa Jim, exactly, and this is the crux of the matter. This same thinking was held by the Pol Pot regime when they slit the throats of people for their own good or for the good of the state. This was the same thinking when the Bolsheviks/Communists arrested, shot or imprisoned in labour reeducation camps tens of millions including many of my family members.
    It is amazing that so many people can be so deluded by this false utopian Marxist propaganda playing on their fears.
    From BizPac Review. “Inherited-wealth 1-percenter Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had all his liberal buttons pushed Sunday during an interview with a reporter from a conservative media outlet.
    And he came out looking like the thin-skinned scion he really is.”
    Kennedy losing his cool occurred at the “People’s Climate March” in New York.
    Even the term “People’s climate March” smacks of Soviet/Communist sloganism.

  17. No politician wanting to be elected dares to suggest to western women that they abandon their dishwashers.
    Not even La Belle Coiffure is dumb enough to express it.

  19. Make no mistake, this is one totalitarian offensive against free enterprise.
    The socialists, fascists, communists are having a ball.
    It also should be mentioned that many are paid players in the schemes of would be dictators.
    You see, it is very easy to create demagogy for a few coins.
    It is altogether another thing to make things work, though the ‘ists have no idea what to do while enterprise is demonized for actually doing something.
    Who do you think the LOV is listening to?
    Listening to the ‘ists is easy and requires no thought.
    Enterprise requires one to get up and think up and do.
    As the old Yoda said: do or do not. Or if you want the real life, Iacocca once said: lead, follow or get out of way.
    Socialists, fascists, communists and other such know this, though they do their utmost best to ignore reality.
    There is one air head though that wants to lead Canada that lives wholly in his own head and spews that that he is told to spew. Has no thought of his own and is utterly lost when somebody mentions real life.
    Such is the sad state of affairs of today’s world.

  21. In related news, the headline at Drudge right now is “Garbage March”. Apparently the “Save Gaia!” Left has left tons of crap in their wake, as they always do. My favorite is the drink cup with the plastic straw and plastic lid, perched with a cluster of other such, with the ReduceReuseRecycle! business facing the camera, and a nice endangered whale printed on it.
    It never fails to tickle me that the only “demonstrators” who ever pick up after themselves are wild eyed Tea Party racist/bigot/homophobe Neo Cons, boo hissss.
    F-ing Lefties, not a clue among the lot of them.

  22. Occam: “They (Occupy) are primarily neo Marxists who banded together to demand wealth redistribution from the 1% to the hordes living in squalor in their occupy camps – it was about demanding a chunk of the crony oligarch’s monopolist pie.”
    Well that and the government jobs their parents hadn’t retired from yet.

  23. These are the folks who took seriously the anti-intellectual, anti-industrial bilge that was spewed from the cozy, tenured professoriate too comfortable to actualize their own drivel.

  24. After which, the actors jet off to their yachts and mansions. What kind of tool associates with this death squad kabuki? Make no mistake, poverty kills, and this evil is willing to inflict it on others, in the name of their false gods.

  25. I wonder how many of the guys there were actually there to pick up stupid women (because stupid women are easy).

  26. I cannot believe the free ride/kid gloves approach these types get from the media. When I consider how hard the MSM tried to portray the Tea Party in a negative light (or ignore it altogether), the exaggerated importance and lack of intelligent questioning of these demonstrators is appalling. Can we sue the Red Star or CBC for malpractice?

  28. The Crumbling Climate-Change Consensus
    Extremists’ rhetoric heats up as their case falls apart.
    they despair that the kind of radical change they advocate probably won’t result from the normal democratic process. It’s no surprise then that the rhetoric of climate-change activists has become increasingly hysterical.
    One reason the rhetoric has become so overheated is that the climate-change activists increasingly lack a scientific basis for their most exaggerated claims.
    Even scientists who accept the conventional scientific treatment of the subject by the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change increasingly question just how much it would help to curb emissions or to radically redistribute wealth, as activists like Klein urge us to do.
    For many years we had been hearing from the “scientific consensus” side that natural climate change is nowhere near as strong as human-caused warming . . . yet the lack of surface warming in 17 years has forced those same scientists to now invoke natural climate change to supposedly cancel out the expected human-caused warming!
    Maybe that’s why the climate-change extremists are basing fewer of their appeals on fact and more on hysteria. You scream the loudest when the opposition is about to tip over on you and pin you down.
    — John Fund is national-affairs correspondent for NRO.
    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/388535/crumbling-climate-change-consensus-john-fund

  29. I “went Galt” more than a decade ago, best decision I ever made. Since then I have all the time and resources [including money] to do whatever I want, whenever I want. Doing more with less makes life simpler and more fulfilling. Time is more valuable than money when you’re past 50. For me it’s not at all like the Phantom described @ 10:02 AM, YMMV.

  30. “Since then I have all the time and resources [including money] to do whatever I want, whenever I want.”
    Dude, that’s not what “Having less is actually very freeing” means. You don’t have less. You’re a despicable Capitalist. You have too much.
    “Having Less” means living in a 10×10 box because that’s the biggest box you can get no matter how hard you work. They choose the box, you get to live in it.
    “Having Less” means they’ll let your mum -die- instead of giving her the hip replacement she needs because she’s over 80, and YOU can’t do squat about it because you’ve got no savings to bribe the hospital board.
    “Freeing” is making a phone call to the bank and mum gets her hip replacement.

  31. Dude, that’s not what “Having less is actually very freeing” means. You don’t have less. You’re a despicable Capitalist. You have too much.
    OK, now I understand that my “doing more with less” isn’t the same as “Having less” as defined by the twitter generation of progs. thanks

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