I have been encouraged to try and continue blogs.. I might try and find an easier way than through this website, and so i'm notified when people have commented, which i haven't been by this way of doing it.. I've been reading a book called, 'The world as it is'.  by Chris Hedges.  I have found it a great read, at times I don't agree with some of his predictions for the future but sections of it I've swallowed up as confirmations for how I try and live my life.  I thought i'd just quote some of it.  Perhaps out of context of the whole book, it won't be as powerful, but I think its important to recognise the importance of rebellion.  So often we feel that if we don't see outcomes, the trying wasn't worth the struggle.  But the act of trying, the act of not being complicit (as much as we can) in the destruction of the planet is a principle that isn't valued in this society.  It is like ethics and morals have become dirty words, heaven forbid you should take a principled stance on something.  It's like because we have the capacity to do something, we therefore have the right. 

"A living man can be enlsaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object' Albert Camus warned, 'but if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existance of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object".   

"The rebel is aware that virtue is not rewarded.  The act of rebellion defines itself.  You do not become a dissident just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career, Vaclav Havel said.. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances.'..

"But we are not slaves.  We have a choice.  We can refuse to be either a victim or an executioner.  We have the moral capacity to say no, to refuse to co operate'.

There is a great video on you tube, if you type in Mario Savio speech, you'll find it.  Mario said during a 'sit in' in 1964 ..  'There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears, and upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop'.  'and you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all'.  EAch time i see this i cry with passion, sadness, joy and depression.   That we have the capacity to speak up, that we have the capacity for the notion of justice, that someone can articulate something so beautifully and that finally, so often we don't speak up.  The world is so much worse than in 1964 when Mario said this, and yet we are mute, watching cooking shows on tv, getting ridiculously excited about a new phone or hanging prayer flags up...

'Rebellion allows us to be free and independent human beings, but rebellion also chips away, however imperceptibly, at the edifice of the oppressor and sustains the dim flames of hope and love'.  'And in moments of profound human despair these flames are never insignificant.  They keep alive the capacity to be human.'...

I've always thought of blogs as a completely self absorbed kind of activity... who on earth gives a shit about what i'm doing at any moment of any particular day... do other people feel like that?   since when have personal diaries become something that we put out into cyber space, where has our privacy gone, and why are we so free in giving it up so easily...   so i'm still not quite sold on the whole thing about a blog... but have decided i'm going to give it a go...  partly because i think social media is an effective way of getting the knowledge of both our bags and their messages out there to more people.. partly because i'm sick of when i get a bit pissed off or depressed by whats happening on the planet, i simply add stuff to facebook, which i don't much like.  a diary for me isn't enough its seems, i want people to know i'm angry!  and i guess i want others to be angry as well, not asleep like it seems the world is..  i want people to be jolted out of the crap that is on facebook and go, oh fuck, that's right, the orangutan is fighting for its survival, oh geez, the oceans are empty...

its funny i am now wondering whether i should try and use the camera on this laptop and take a picture of me sitting here writing this!  with an angry look on my face... which is hilarious cause that's completely self obsessed!! 

I also figured the blog could be where we put info about issues that inspire the bags.  I think that's the most important reason for doing it.  I could add links to websites and books and if you want to look further and have some place to start..  There are many great writers out there who are writing about what is going on, they aren't often for sale in australia which is shit, but they are out there and as the old quote says 'seek and yee shall find'.  We just have to want to find out what is happening to the world around us.  It aint pretty. 

anyway, i'll add some more bags to the website...