My name's Sean Carr. I'm originally from Olean, NY, which is a small city nestled in the northern range of the Allegany mountains. I now live in the environmental wasteland that is Wilmington, NC. I just graduated from UNCW with a major in Film and a double minor in Religion and Creative Writing. For the time being I'm working for a year taking a break before gradschool(hopefully). I'd like to make films about things that are important, the environment, social issues, and hey, maybe some not so serious stuff too. I love the outdoors, riding my bike, reading good books, and just about anything travel related. I'm just an all around pretty cool mothertrucker.
Disclaimer: this is an angry post with no much substance. I just haven’t read or watched the news for a few days and looked online through it today to catch up and saw this shit. I’m sure a lot of really shitty stuff goes on, but that rape case and this teddy bear bullshit is fucking insane and if there is a hell which I doubt in the Judeo-Christian sense, I hope they fucking burn in it.
Fuck Islam. I mean it, fuck it. How retarded are these sandy assed bastards? I know Christianity was not much better a few hundred years ago, but you know what? We grew the fuck out of it. Islam needs to stop living in fucking 500A.D. I mean with that Saudi rape case and this shit, it pains me to drive a car and support these numbskull douchebags that call themselves Muslims.
9-5 day in and day out. Washing dishes, making food, all for the fattened customers strolling in from their gated communities. They are “well off,” according to their own versions of terrestrial wealth. I watch them scamper in and out all day like a party of ants scouring the sand for their next meal. This is no way to spend your days. If I was to die tomorrow would I want to know that my last day on earth, our home, was spent making food and washing the dishes of this arrogant, ignorant colony of people that moved here for “the good life.” I needed to get out. Away from the constant buzz of the highway and beeping horns of angry commuters trying to get to their destination faster than the next driver. It’s a race down the highways and roads. Who’s got the faster car, the bigger car, the more expensive car. I’d had it with the city. I threw my camera in my backpack and drove off. Not to some distant wilderness location, teeming with the sounds and silence of birds, crickets and water - no, rather to the quiet back roads. A place where the wind can blow without trying to overpower the constant hum of civilization and there is a stillness in the air contrary to the breeze. Out here on this backcountry road, I quiet my mind. I notice the egrets standing in the shallow brackish water, lilies floating on the wind blown surface, which ripples and bobs like a sheet hanging to dry in the summer breeze. Six feet away from me in the shallow, murky water is a large 8 foot alligator. I’m not afraid, but curious, of this beast which I’ve never been so close to. It has no fear of me, although it keeps a very watchful eye. The alligator must think I’m strange to sit there and stare at him trying to warm his body in the sun. And I think of how easily this animal, millions of years old, perfected by time, could take me to my grave in the time it would take my heart to jump in fear of it’s closing jaws. But no, this is not that scene. Instead, it’s just me and the alligator - staring, listening, learning. I’m no farther than a 20 minute drive from the place I see destroyed everyday. Plastic houses, stamped out in the most economical fashion. Nails pounded, rivets punched, screw drivers working as fast as the hands of the illegal immigrant can make it go. This, all in the name of progress. As I sit there I think that “progress” should mean the moving forward of something, the gradual improvement. Though, everyday I see the opposite, I see the plundering of resources for material wealth, with no thought put towards future generations, or the trees and animals displaced to provide a “home” for someone looking to retire or start a new life in the coast. This alligator, as simple as it may be, reminds me of our own imperfections and frailty. If it wanted it could make me its delicious dinner. I am no challenge to this animal, and maybe he senses that. There is something to be said for simplicity. This animal doesn’t want excess or to destroy the environment it lives in. As simple as it is, driven by million year old instincts, it understands that it’s home, it’s life is dependant on a healthy ecosystem. No clean water = no fish. No fish = no food. No food = death. As humans I wonder why we can’t understand that philosophy better. Because something is expensive or large does not make it better, especially if it comes at the cost of the ecosystem. Driving back “home” I am passed by at least 7 drivers. Apparently, 55mph just isn’t fast enough on a two lane road. No matter though, my mind was as still as the alligator, saving his energy to catch his next meal.
That’s a good penn and teller one, short and entertaining, if you have time though give these other ones a look. Sorry Bible thumpers, you’re religion is just as false as the Muslims. Not saying there isn’t a god or universal force, but we sure as hell don’t have any way of knowing it.
…I would like to say for the record that it takes just as much “faith” to believe in no god. The only educated stance is to be agnostic, and that is to not say a god exists or doesn’t. All we can go by is the archeology and history which so far is pretty crushing against what mainstream Christians believe(I use Christianity because that’s what most people are in this country). Anyway give them a look. I always get nasty comments or questions when I talk about this stuff. I don’t know why. I think mainstream America has gone on for so long believing what their preacher says that they don’t even read the Bible. If they did they’d be pretty embarassed and ashamed of their “God”, or YHWH as you’re supposed to write it. I studied this stuff for three years, and not just Christianity, all the other major religions. It doesn’t make me an expert, but it sure gives me a leg up on most people. I could go on and on but I won’t. Watch the videos and understand that it isn’t some atheist agenda making this stuff up. It’s archeology and history.
On Sunday the New York Times reported on the recrudescence of “faith-based” teaching in Russian public schools:
A teacher named Irina Donshina set aside her textbooks, strode before her second-graders and, as if speaking from a pulpit, posed a simple question:
“Whom should we learn to do good from?”
“From God!” the children said.
“Right!” Ms. Donshina said. “Because people he created crucified him. But did he accuse them or curse them or hate them? Of course not? He continued loving and feeling pity for them, though he could have eliminated all of us and the whole world in a fraction of a second.”
This grisly vignette, which almost perfectly summarizes the relationship between sadism and masochism in Christian teaching, probably wouldn’t delight all those who think that morality derives from supernatural authority. After all, the Russian Orthodox Church was the patron of Czarist autocracy, helped spread The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the West, and compromised with the Stalin regime just as it had been allied with earlier serfdom and chauvinism. It is now part of Vladimir Putin’s sinister exercise in the restoration of Russian supremacism and dictatorship: an enterprise that got off to a good start when our President admired Mr. Putin’s crucifix and “looked into his soul”. (Question: has Putin ever been seen wearing that crucifix again, or did his cynical advisers tell him that the Leader of the Free World was such a pushover for the “faith-based” that he would never check?)
So, and as with Salafist madrassas, it’s easy to see how wicked it is to lie to children when it’s done in the name of the “wrong” faith. But Ms Donshina’s nonsensical propaganda is actually a mainstream statement of what the truly religious are bound to believe. Without god, how could we tell right from wrong, or learn how to do the right thing? I have never had a debate with a religious figure of any denomination, however “moderate, where this insulting question has not come up.
Yet is it not positively immoral to argue that our elementary morality and human solidarity derive from an authority that we must simultaneously (and compulsorily) love, and also fear? Does it not degrade us in our deepest integrity to be told that we would not do a right action, or utter a principled truth, were it not for fear of punishment or hope of reward? Moreover, we are told that we begin sinful and must earn our redemption from an authority whose actions and caprices (arranging a human sacrifice in Palestine in which we had no say, for example, and informing us that we are all guilty of it) were best summarized by Fulke Greville when he remarked ruefully that we are “created sick; commanded to be sound”. This abject attitude, of sickly love for the Dear Leader combined with dreadful terror of him, is in fact the origin of totalitarianism. And there is nothing ethical about that.
I should like, for the continued vigor of this discussion, to repeat the challenge that I have several times offered the faithful in print and on the air. Can they name a moral statement or action, uttered or performed by a religious person, that could not have been uttered or performed by an unbeliever? I am still waiting, after several months, for a response to this. It carries an incidental corollary: I have also asked large and divergent audiences if they can think of a wicked action or statement that derived directly from religious faith, and you know what? There is no tongue-tied silence at THAT point. Everybody can instantly think of an example.
I don’t rest my case but I have stated it as concisely as I can and I look forward to reviewing, and replying to, anyone who might be good enough to respond.
Today my ever present boss was at it again with insightful ideas like “recycling is worse for the environment than not recycling”(I think she read it in a book). So my mission right when I got home was to see if there is any truth to what she said. Is recycling worse for the environment than not recycling at all? This of course comes as a concern to me because I drink a good 4 liters of diet mtn dew/pepsi a day. I kill a lot of two liter bottles, but always make sure to recycle them on campus because my apt. complex just put their recycling bin contents in the trash. I even make bird feeders out of them, I know it sounds awfully gay, but hey, it’s being reused for a good purpose and the house finches and cardinals love it. When looking at recycling we have to take in the whole picture. This doesn’t mean only looking at a plastic bottle and knowing that it will get melted down and reused. Instead, we need to look at the whole process, which includes fuel costs, emissions, and chemical processing as opposed to just putting it under ground somewhere and letting microbes munch on it for the next thousand years. In my quick search for the answers I’ve found conflicting information. Some say it’s good and saves a non-renewable resource, while others say it’s using up more of the resource your trying to save by recycling. Although, plastic does take up an extremely large amount of space in landfills for its weight. One of the problems with recycling is that it’s costly. For companies it’s easier just to make it from a virgin product. However when oil and natural gas prices rise, the demand for recycled plastic does to. Aluminum is much more efficient to recycle than plastic, the most in fact. However, aluminum is also very abundant and easily taken from the earth. So which is worse spending the money on recycling or continuing to mine? Opposition says that because the ore that aluminum is smelted from is so abundant, we shouldn’t worry about recycling. The same goes for plastics, because they’re derived from petroleum, we shouldn’t worry. The theory being that with the price of gas going up it will leave more petroleum in the market for plastic production, because it’s so much cheaper to derive from petroleum than gasoline(although that sounds a bit fishy to me). Paper is another big one. My father is a paper salesman, so I have a bit of an interest in this. His company has an environmental specialist on board, but when dealing with larger paper product producers it’s something that must be hard to manage. Much paper comes from paper farms where the trees are grown specifically for paper use. This is a much better option than going and hacking down forests. However, where these paper farms once were, were actual forests. It could be said that now it isn’t posing much of an environmental risk, but it did at one time, and continues to be a poor ecosystem for native animals. This is especially true in the Southeast U.S. where much of the trees for paper production are grown, not to mention sprawl. Not too far from Wilmington you can see these tree farms. The ones I’ve seen have been owned by International Paper. So does recycling benefit or cause harm to the environment? It’s hard to say. There are pros and cons to both. Recycling saves a material from rotting in a land fill for years. Not to mention the greenhouse gases that landfills produce, like methane. I know a landfill back home was thinking about trying to capture the methane produced and using it to produce power. This doesn’t even touch on the issue that trash isn’t localized. Instead it’s shipped from one place to be buried in another. If people’s trash was buried in their own backyard, I think they’d be a lot more apt to save. However, it also takes energy to put it back into a reusable form. What’s the best answer? Let’s go way back to “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” Notice how recycle is the last one? REDUCE. If people would just cut back, use things more than once, and be creative about it. I use my paper bags over for things like ripening fruit or just a good cabinet liner. In the end consuming like we do will outweigh any benefits given by recycling. It just promotes the consumer ideology that is so engrained in our heads. We’re going to have to relearn how to live. Cuba is a great example. They get by on so little, but yet manage to make things work with ingenuity and creativity. America doesn’t award those ideals, instead it awards consumers to buy more stuff and make more money in a perpetual cycle that will be our demise. It’s time to wake up and start cutting back, reusing and yes recycling.
I’m going to rant for a moment, so if you don’t want to read it you can leave now. What in the hell is wrong with the news? I get home last night and all I can find out about what’s going on in the world is that O.J. Simpson got out on bail. They must have forgotten that we are at war, I repeat WE ARE AT WAR, or that the ice caps are melting. Instead we’re covering things like sub-prime loans where dumb ass people took dumb ass loans because of dumb ass people on Wallstreet. No one is talking about people having to leave their homes, instead it’s about the effect it will have on the “economy.” If you can’t afford a home, get an apartment. And now Dubai wants to buy a 20% stake in Nasdaq, because after all this is good for the “global economy,” and I’m sure oil has nothing at all to do with it. Ahh Dubai, where the rich are insanely rich, and the poor people that build their homes and buildings are insanely poor, beyond poverty. Now I haven’t seen the BCC news on television before, but I read it as my main source of internet news because you can get global news rather than some O.J. Simpson/Britney Spears crap. Why can’t we just replace our news with that, you know “like important stuff, dude.” I suppose if you don’t read or watch the news, and are only focused on a local level you probably don’t think there’s a thing wrong in the world. However, if you take in the larger picture, you quickly realized how fucked we are. I mean that with the best of intentions. We are driving ourselves off the planet. It’s not just that, look at how we treat other people. I don’t mean this in a way that we hurt people’s feelings. I mean we use other people to our benefit with no thought of what harm it has caused them. Genocide, war, stealing of land and destruction of native traditions. I’m not a big believer in the bible, because I’m an educated man, but I’d say we’re ready for the return of Jesus, because the end is coming, and that Jewish Zombie should be arriving any day. Ok, that’s it, I’ve ranted and we can all go back to being happy, ignorant people. [God Bless America](not any of those other heathen countries)
…Well it’s September 11th, 2007. Six years ago I was in high school and remember the day well. I don’t want to dwell on what happened though. It was horrible and one hopes nothing like that ever happens, especially in their own country. After 9/11 I remember this huge outpouring of national pride and the attitude that we would overcome and move on. Move on we have. From 9/11 came the Iraq war and from the Iraq war came the divisive nature of the present politics. We are no more unified today than we were before or immediately after 9/11. Instead I drive around and see little magnetic stickers on cars that say “support our troops” or “God Bless America.” Why not God Bless the world? Take some of your Jesus loving crap and love thy enemy. Or at least try to understand where they come from. It isn’t until we understand the root of radical Islam that we can come to understand how to defeat it. When it only takes one man to blow up fifty, you know you’re in trouble. No army can stop a movement. We could put a million troops in Iraq, and yes we would control it for awhile. But we’re not fighting a country, we’re fighting a movement, and that is something completely different. Even if we defeat it militarily in Iraq, it will pop up somewhere else. This isn’t going to be a military fight in the end, it’s going to be a cultural movement. The only way to defeat it is to change the hearts of the people. To make them love America and the freedom that one can have if they let go of superstitious bullcrap from a thousand years ago. I don’t want to get onto the religion tangent but I’ll let it be known that I think it causes a lot of harm and ignorance. I live in the bible belt so I feel I am at liberty to make that judgment, and I’m sure my minor in religion doesn’t hurt either. The only educated belief is to be agnostic. Anyway, like I was saying I still see these huge SUV’s flying around on the roads and the ignorance that seems to come standard with most southern kids people I’ve met around here. That in no way is a blanket statement, because I’ve met a lot of good people here, but the bad seem to outweigh the good in my book. Even today I wonder how many people took a moment of silence or just thought about what happened in the few minutes of downtime they’ve had. Does America not care anymore? It seems to me that the only reason people care is if someone takes their house away or their cheap, shiny stuff. But, liberty, freedom, the American way? It’s no more. We’ve outsourced it so we can buy our stuff cheap at the cost of future generations. A 90 year old man called into the local radio show this morning. He talked about the racism he used to encounter when he was a young man growing up in Wilmington. However, through all the adversity he persevered and got a job at the port alongside his father. He grew up and all of his 7 kids went to college. All of this background was in relation to the fact that the NAACP is coming here because of a race riot we had over a hundred years ago. This old man rememberd hearing about it from his parents and grandparents. His point was one I thoroughly respected though. Instead of jumping on the NAACP bandwagon he said in effect that people need to stop causing trouble over what happened a long time ago and put that energy into improving the current state of things. The example he gave was that one of his grandchildren said he admired a man in prison because “he was hard.” The older man said he was a hooligan and there was nothing hard about that. Hard was growing up in the south when it was much more racist that today. That was hard. He noted that today’s youth doesn’t need any more opportunity either, there’s plenty of it. They just don’t take the initiative to go out and get it. Today’s generation knows nothing about overcoming adversity like that. I may not know if it first hand but at least I’m aware. The whole tangent about this old man is to prove that long ago people pushed on and made the best out of a bad situation. They didn’t sit around and complain and feel bad for themselves. They made the best out of a bad situation. Instead today, I think most Americans are too complacent, and I honestly believe most won’t do anything to help their fellow countrymen or the world unless it affects them personally. It’s sad, just like today. 9/11 isn’t about Iraq, it’s about America forgetting what makes this country great. I look around campus and see kids in BMW’s and Mercedes, I can only shake my head. It seems anymore we judge a person by their material possessions rather than what they’ve accomplished or learned. It’s a plastic society we’re slowly converting over to. I wish a thought like that was far back in my head on a day like today but I can’t help but think they are somehow interconnected. God(whichever one you think is real) Bless…America…and everyone else. I guess it would be kind of hard to fit that all onto a sticker.
…and another link.
quick story. Tonight I was at walmart returning an item. On the way out I noticed a nice Volvo with he vanity plate which said “blessd.” I had to take a photo of it with my cell phone and sent it to my friend via text message.. I then went unloaded my groceries I purchased after returning my item. As usual, I put all the stray carts into the cart area because people are too lazy to take the 2 extra seconds it takes to do it themselves. A lady came up to me and said, “you must be Christian!” I replied, “no, just a decent guy.” We then parted ways. I saw her walk back to her car and she got into the Volvo with the vanity plate. I’ll still never understand the whole Christian thing. Even after growing up with a minister stepfather and studying religion as my minor, I feel like it’s something you have to have you’re blinders on to believe. This is not to say I’m an atheist, on the contrary I believe there is life after death, I just don’t presume to know what it is and exactly how to get there. If the only way to “heaven” is through Jesus, heaven’s going to be an empty place. But hey, after Wilmington, that might be a welcome change. My AC has also quit on me tonight so I’m drinking beers to get to sleep, meanwhile pouring alcohol out my sweatglands. Just fyi.
Today we went into Denali National Park. Instead of doing the usual tourist trap stuff we decided to rent bikes and go straight for it. I noticed afterward that the buses that take you deep into the park to see the wildlife were full of old, southern fat people. I don’t know how to explain this phenomenon, but it was perplexing nonetheless. Jeremy and I rented the bikes for 40 bucks for the whole day. I figured it would be an easy ride though the mountains and we’d see a ton of wildlife. Well, it turned out that for 20 miles from the start of the only road goes uphill. Literally, the whole way was uphill. Needless to say we walked a good portion of the Tour De Denali. We didn’t see any animals on our bike ride either except some really fat rabbits. When we got back to the main lodge there was a mother moose walking through the brush with her two kids. All of the fat, southerners I referenced couldn’t contain themselves and had to rush over towards the moose at the dismay of the lodge staff who specifically advised them not to. Apparently, a moose, possibly that very one has been charging campers. It’s kind of funny. Well anyway like I said the ride was completely uphill. So, the ride back was alot more fun than the ride in. Downhill the whole way. So I took my $3000 video camera and grabbed it in one hand and held on to my handle bar with the other. Was this a smart decision? No, probably not, but it was pretty fun and the footage is pretty sweet. The fact that I sang stupid songs in an Irish accent the majority of the way down hill probably had something to do with it. Tomorrow we head for Fairbanks. Although I love the hostel and all the people, especially Steve the pirate, it will be good to see some civilization. We’ve basically been keeping the bar acrossed the street in business and hanging out in the hostel common room chatting with all the fellow travelers for almost every country and state you could think of. It’s been a really good experience so far. Although, Jeremy complains because he says my farts are rancid. I really can’t argue with him.
Many of you who know me know that I’m not what you’d call the biggest fan of organized religion. For many reasons but many because it allows for abuse and politics to rule rather than the true point of believing in (a) god or God. I found this site www.beyondreligion.com This guy used to be a minister but is now involved what what many would call “new age” spiritual practices. But they aren’t new at all and it does provide good insight into what I believe. Not that any of you care but I’m tired of hearing that God and his innumerable atrocities(Old Testament), yes part of that book many deem as the word or God are somehow ok. Bible Atrocities … check ‘em out and see just how great your God is.
All I have for you today is an excerpt from Ed Abbey -
The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it’s possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, even the categories of scientific description. To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a nonhuman world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock.
…Pretty much sums up my feelings on religion although I have been to mediums/grew up in what I think is a haunted house which lead me to believe there is something after we die or return to the earth as I like to think of it. Anyway watch the video, it’s short and informative.
