Another magnificent piece -- "Love thy Nature" -- The Road Out

This link below made me cry sometimes and sometimes filled me with just plain awe.  I urge you to watch its beauty and listen to its truth.  Truth, often, is better than any fiction one could create.  While we have time to ponder the great creation that is life both large and small I highly recommend viewing the film below entitled "Love Thy Nature."

Is there something we can learn from the ravages of COVID-19?  Perhaps, it is this: As great as man's big brain is nature in all its creation is bigger than all of us.  It presents challenges that give man pause to reflect on his own diminutive being and ask why the smallest/simplest of microscopic things unseen by the naked eye yet worldwide are bringing man to his knees.  Why does this exist in nature only to pose an existential threat to man; a good topic for research.

I too was felled by a virus and asked many times over my life what on earth could a five year old have done that would exact its pound of flesh from a young body asking me to pay its extortion over a lifetime?  The answer, I think is, there is no answer but to say it teaches us humility that this microscopic piece of RNA will have the last word until man's big brain can figure out a way within nature's laws and working in tandem with nature to halt its destruction of our species.  Another answer, of course, is that man is not the center of the universe and that other things large and small can threaten and even destroy us.

Humans must heed the warnings of science to isolate, use masks, wash our hands for a minimum of 20 seconds and do what the best scientists implore us to do because science is the best way man has of telling environmental truth no matter how difficult that truth is to hear.  Until science with man's big brain as its engine, ultimately finds a way out of this mind altering darkness go and walk humbly with nature seeing the integral part it plays in our survival.  Man works hand in hand with nature and nature, in all its glory, will be the final arbiter of all things as it presents another ever present Everest for man to climb.  Man will climb it though and should do its bidding without destroying the nature that supports us all as it teaches us to find the road out.

https://uplift.tv/2019/love-thy-nature/?utm_source=UPLIFT+TV&utm_campaign=16c7d3caed-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_21_11_39&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_932e12aea9-16c7d3caed-116678369&fbclid=IwAR3WTZeDP7EATLX1b38DPvxIPyoowwKS1mbvlmu5mWzPd7RViPusyND8-6w

British Writer Pens The Best Description Of Trump I’ve Read

Someone on Quora asked “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:   

A few things spring to mind.   Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.  

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humor is almost inhuman.   

But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.   

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.   And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.   

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.   Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.   And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.   He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.  

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  And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a sniveling sidekick instead.   There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.   

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are. 

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man. 

 

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.   He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.   

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created? If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.