Mostly green

Aren't pigs funny? Or so Jamie Oliver strongly implied recently, as he saved our bacon. Our bacon. Our country. Our pigs. We own them, we can do what we like to them, but we should at least be nice to them before we kill and eat them, if only for the pleasure of the palette. Better animal welfare means yummier meat.

I think I see what Jamie was trying to do. In showing pigs ejaculating, being born, castrated, horribly confined, and killed, he was showing us the reality of the meat we eat. Think about where it comes from, how it's produced. Don't buy the cheap stuff.

But the whole programme was fundamentally demeaning to pigs. Pigs should be large, hairy, scary beasts which live in forests. Instead they've become pink, bald, fat, live indoors all their lives, eat shit, are treated like shit, have no autonomy, and are cut off from nature so completely they would just die out there. Where's the feeding trough?

Just like us. Where's the Asda? Watching the pigs wasn't dissimilar to watching Big Brother really.

One good thing about Christmas is that people at least have a stab at saying nice things to each other. "Happy Christmas", that sort of thing. And perhaps that's the only good thing about it.
Otherwise its a time of overconsumption, even more waste than usual, panic buying of sprouts, half of which will go in the bin, millions of intensively reared animals killed after spending the whole of their miserable lives in an overpopulated warehouse. When people spend small fortunes on ipods and trainers and wiis for the kids.
And its a celebration of what? It's Jesus's birthday. Jesus himself may have meant well, but his followers since haven't exactly been beacons of virtue. The Crusades, the Inquisition, Northern Ireland, sodomising priests, and now the pope bleating about homosexuality.
Apparently more people disappear around this time of year than any other. They just walk away. They've had enough of it.
Hapy Christmas!

People of this land I salute you! Thank you! Thank you.
This is a historic day. Truly this day will go down in history. A day when you, the people of this land, decided for change. To move forward, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, into a new future, a new tomorrow. Thank you. You are my inspiration. You are my everything. Thank you!
Y'know, I'm just a regular kinda guy. I speak as I find. I don't pussyfoot around. No beating about the bush. Lets get straight to the point people of this land! The truth! The truth is now! The truth is real! The truth is you, me, every man woman and child moving forward, together, into a new tomorrow! Are you with me?!
Make no mistake, this is no easy task. The way forward will not be smooth and straight. There will be rocks, hurdles, twists and turns, dark cold nights. Owls. Badgers. But together, people of this land, together, we will win through! Hand in hand! Together!
Thank you! Thank you so much! (Waves, leaves)

It's too easy sometimes to suppose that my colossal laziness and passivity is due simply to cause and effect, both genetic and environmental.
If cause and effect exists, after all, there is no free will. We don't decide what we're going to do, we just react to circumstance, instinctively, unconsciously. Ask anyone who plays sport.
But perhaps the gulf between free will and determinism isn't so vast after all, it doesn't have to be completely either/or. Perhaps basically cause and effect comes first, then we cogitate and contemplate and think what went wrong or right, what we might do next time, and maybe, if we are not lazy, we practice, thus increasing the chances we'll get it right next time.
I don't know. I don't think anyone knows.
Why am I so lazy?

Perhaps its the death instinct in me, but I'm drawn toward scenarios of impending doom. My favourite until recently was the melting Siberian permafrost releasing billions of tons of methane into the atmosphere with, as usual, unknown consequences.
How much do scientists really know? They can be paid to prove anything. Or at least produce research that indicates anything.
Today I read in the Telegraph that in ten days time the worlds largest ever non-military experiment will commence, somewhere on the Swiss-French border, which is designed to replicate the conditions which existed seconds after the big bang. Its called a Large Hadron Collider, and is costing £4.4 billion. My initial thought was "sounds a bit like half-life". But it could be worse than that, according to Otto Rossler, who says the proton collisions caused by this machine could create "mini black holes" which could destroy the earth. CERN say its perfectly safe, don't worry.
Sometimes it seems to me we're balancing on the edge of a precipice, daring it to swallow us up. No-one is in charge. We, as a species, collectively, want to die.

I read in the Telegraph the other day that the UK is set to become the most populous nation in Europe in about 50 years time. We currently have over 60 million people, which makes us environmentally unsustainable, according to the Optimum Population Trust, who reckon we could possibly support about a third of that figure, if we we lived a bit greener.
And I remember reading the words of a North American Indian, in Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, expressing incredulity at the white man's destruction of the earth. They/we kill everything for short term gain, thinking there'll be something else around the corner. It's surely very stupid, basically unsustainable, so why are we still doing it?
I suppose we don't know how to stop. Personally I don't know what "sustainable" means. I don't know how much land I would need to support myself, and the thought of scrabbling in the earth and maybe killing the odd rabbit isn't very appealing for me. Well, it's slightly appealing.
Am I missing something? Or are we all in total myopic denial?
I'm trying, a little bit. I have no car, no kids, and haven't bought any meat for a while now. I'll eat meat if I find some or am given some, but I hate to support factory farming. I'm appalled by human cruelty, both to our own and others species, and wonder about the cause of this.
We're genetically aggressive perhaps, or passive/aggressive, i.e. we're herd creatures who follow the loudest and angriest of our fellow creatures.