Is there life after death?

Besides its existential meaning, I feel it’s an excellent question and timely one too, as we’re smack on Halloween night, All Saint day and a bunch of celebration of death and the thereafter. Recently, I watched a documentary about folks who are visited by dead people they once knew. 

While I’m highly skeptical of these revelations, they perked up my interest and made me wonder once more about what’s waiting for us once we get to “the other side”. When confronted with that question, I think: “Why should there be anything?” and calm myself by saying that there’s no good reason for it. This promise of after-life was cleverly packaged by organized religions to make them more attractive, like furniture retailers offer “free delivery” or tire shops offer “free installation”. 

At least, with furniture, it’s been proven, time and time again, that a truck eventually shows up to your residence with a table or a bed! Sure, in the middle-ages, it was a bonus offered to all these serfs that had to build cathedrals and castles without pay so they’d keep going waiting to cash-in when they’d fall from the scaffolding or die of exhaustion. 

I also don’t buy the separation between mind (or soul) and body, so it makes it hard for me to believe that as my body is destroyed, my mind has the ability to float around for a while and then go on its merry way. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to die and would love to have the option of life after death, but I have found out that there’s no free lunch and that if an offer is too good to be true, it probably isn’t. 

What’s amazing to me though, is that so-called religious people are as spooked by death as we all are. They should instead be delighted to go on an all-expense paid vacation forever without having to worry about taxes, inflation or a second death! There’s there a huge contradiction between what they feel and what they say the believe; no one is a natural candidate for dying. 

As for me, I’m in no rush to die either, and when that moment comes, my chances for after-life are in every way as good as the most religious person on this planet. Isn’t that a healthy sign of healthy and positive self-image?

In the 80s, Big Oil knew all about global warming

If we had paid more attention to the news, back in 2018, Benjamin Fanta, from the Guardian newspaper had a story telling us how, in the 1980s, Big Oil companies like Exxon and Shell studied how carbon dioxide released by fossil fuels might impact the planet in the future. 

For instance, Exxon predicted in 1982 that by about 2060, CO2 levels would reach around 560 parts per million, doubling the preindustrial level, and that it would push the planet’s average temperatures up by about 2°C over then-current levels (and even more so, compared to pre-industrial levels). 

Exxon also noted that doubling carbon dioxide levels would cause a global warming of 3°C. A few years later, in 1988, Shell projected similar effects, yet claimed that CO2 levels could double earlier, by 2030 and that sea-level might rise by one meter. 

Its report added that if global warming caused a total melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, sea level could rise by five to six meters and flood low-lying parts of the world. 

Both companies also predicted that entire ecosystems and habitat might disappear, desertification intensify and other potentially catastrophic events might be considered. The report from Shell was disclosed by a Dutch news organization earlier in 2018. Exxon’s study was not supposed to be made public either, but was leaked in 2015. 

At that time, these companies never took responsibility for the danger of their enterprises (even though they’d later deny it), but that it was the responsibility of governments and consumers; yet, Big Oil was able to successfully control governments with its money. 

Now you know which entities control Earth’s destruction and even though I dislike Musk a lot, go and buy yourself a Tesla...

Does an early winter signals a great ski season?

Winter has now been with us since October 23, with snow on the ground, wintry windy weather and a rough transition after a colorful, beautiful and warm Fall season. 

Hard to get used to that brutal downshifting, even the aspen leaves still try to hang on desperately! The local ski area has begun making snow and more of the white-fluffy stuff in the upcoming forecast. 

So the logical questions now are “Will it last?” and “Will it be a great, snowy winter?” Of course no one knows for sure, we can only hope and like the saying goes “One bird in the hand is better than two in the bush”. 

I am cautiously optimistic thinking we deserve it when in fact we never deserve anything. 

For the moment, my dearest hope is for the Democrats to win the upcoming mid-term elections, thanks to the retrograde Supreme Court decision to roll-back the right to abortion. 

If one can sink the ultra-conservative, this one will!

Never too careful…

Dangers of all kinds are lurking from everywhere… 

On Tuesday afternoon as it was snowing hard, I went out to get the mail, so on my way to the mailbox, I took my snow shovel and moved the snow in front of my path.

At some point, there was so much snow in the shovel that it literally stopped me in my tracks and since I had put on sneakers with a dangerously smooth sole, I slid back and fell head first on the handle of my snow removing tool.

My forehead clearly showed the mark. I could have died, but as they say “It wasn’t my time yet…”

Current events’ anxieties and then, hindsight...

These times are generating plenty of anxieties, everywhere and for everyone. From Covid, to Trump (here in America) or other fascist head of states, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there’s been, and still is, plenty to worry about. In spite of the fact that some of us seem less concerned about these events that we don’t control, we’re all affected by them at all kinds of levels, even if we don’t want to show our concern for them. 

The problem is indeed that we generally have absolutely no control, no solution and no strategy to change the course of these events and that’s what is killing us. The feeling it’s just like being a passenger on a bus, plane or train wreck and seeing no tangible way to save ourselves. 

Yet, for those of us who are old enough to look at former catastrophic events, like 9/11, school shootings, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we can see what strategies or best practices could have quelled these developments and stopped them at their inception, but when the event is on-going, panic sorts of sets in and we are feeling totally helpless.

We say hindsight is always 20/20, and that is so true. We need to navigate into chaos and feel every bit of pain possible after going through it, in order to be able to reflect and see what solutions might have worked or could have alleviated the whole situation, but these always appear clearly only after the fact, after the train has left the station, which tells a lot about our problem-solving capabilities when faced with the unforeseen or the unknown. 

The answer to all of that would be to keep these facts in mind, stay super-cool, do whatever we are capable of to help, even a tiny bit, but never lose our minds, lose sleep or go insane over whatever we cannot control.

Dealing with disruptors, bullies and iconoclasts...

As I was watching a documentary about Yves Mourousi, a former famous French TV anchorman, I realized that he wasn’t much different from his countryman Tapie, the Italian Berlusconi, Trump obviously, or other folks who are gutsy enough to break all rules in order to force themselves into and dominate an exchange with others. 

For them, the name of the game is inserting themselves into a strata of society, in the hope that others will be out of resources to call their action and will acquiesce to the most outrageous breach of etiquette. 

In that particular situation, Mourousi who tasked himself into interviewing former French President Mitterand, sat square on his guest’s desk to begin their conversation, while the head of state couldn’t think of what to say. 

That’s right, actions from these daring individuals are often so unexpected, weird and shocking that no one is ready for them and has trained themselves to counter them, which explains why they work in 99% of the situations. 

It would take someone who’s been caught many times by such manipulators to have developed and also recall a lightning-quick response to put such bullies back in their rightful place. 

Over the years, I’ve dealt with my share of obnoxious characters playing that game and must admit that while I’m not bad at it, I still need to think on my feet and not get intimidated in order to fire the proper response at the right time!

Are conservatives backward-thinking?

It’s pretty obvious that “conservative” sounds like the opposite of “progressive” and to me, conservative conjures backward ideas and ideology. 

Literally, conservative means “averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values”, which is not quite my cup of tea. I think that humanity is destined to progressing, moving forward and improving whatever can be ameliorated. 

I’m not saying that progress is always perfect, but it has largely contributed to the betterment of the human condition and this is why I can’t espouse conservative values, and especially political ones. 

In fact in order to hide the essential dysfunction of their philosophy, modern conservatives – at least in America, where I live – have to resort to “crutches” like lies and hypocrisy to make them palatable to their followers. 

Their views are old, stinky and go counter-current to modernity and this is why I both despise them and avoid them.