Ecotheology Part 3

Ecotheology Part 1, Ecotheology Part 2

Previosuly I mentioned I didn't like to use words like steward or priest to describe our relationship with the earth. I know that these are words the Bible uses so I'm now going revisit what I think are the Biblical meanings behind words like steward and priest. As I said before for almost all readers these are not helpful images, and arouse ideas over authority and domination. To help us rethink the these words I wanted to start by looking at the way God relates to us because I think there are similar power issues between God and humans.

Central to the relationship between humans and God is Christ, the servant king. Jesus becomes king by being a servant to all. Central to the relationship between God and humans is that any power within the relationship has been inverted. Jesus becomes king by being servant.

Similarly, Paul continues this way of thinking in Ephesians when, whilst agreeing with the thinking of his day that that men are the head or stewards of the household, (“In the Old Testament, the term steward usually refers to ‘the man over the house’, with responsibility to the master for the affairs of the household and his possessions, such as Daniel 1.11.”) he qualifies this by saying that a husband and wife are to serve each other. And, that a husband is to be a steward of his wife in the same way that Jesus is the head of the church, that is by being the exact opposite. To be King, steward or ruler, is to be servant. Once again in the same way the writer of Hebrews call’s Jesus our great High Priest, because of the sacrifice Jesus made for us.

To me to say that we should be stewards or priests is like reading Jesus phrase “first shall be last and the last shall be first” and telling people we need to be first. We may be called to be first but we do this need to by being last. Similarly, we may as Christians be called to be stewards of the earth but we don’t do that in a dominating the earth in an un-Christ like manner, we do it by being servants.

Now that we have looked at God’s relationship with us being one free from issues of control and one of harmony, rather than ruling over us. I would like to, with some liberty say that God’s relationship with us is in it’s essence creative. This is a theme I have mentioned before I would like to repeat a metaphor that I think of for describing the relationship between my self and God.

That metaphor is that of a Jazz band. Where I am the improvising soloist and God is the rhythm section. If I, the soloist, ignore what the God, rhythm section, is doing I am not going to sound good. By the same token the rhythm section does not dictate what my solo will sound like either. No matter how badly I play there is nothing the rhythm section can do to fix it. If I play exactly what the rhythm section is playing it will sound bland at best. What will sound best is when I am in tune to what the rhythm section is doing and I am able to freely and creatively expressing myself. As a soloist in a Jazz band there is no requirement of obedience, and there is more than just the freedom of playing alone. There is more than freedom there is harmony. The freedom of synergistically creating a sound with the rest of the band that is more beautiful than the individuals by themselves. So too I think is our relationship with God. The usual power paradigm of obedience or freedom, need to be replaced with paradigm of disunity or harmony.

Human relationships with God and with each other are by nature creative. There is not a formula or a method that we need to apply to them, creativity is not only what we have in common but is the space in which we are able to have relationship.

From this I conclude three things...

1. God wants to live in harmony with us, rather to rule us
2. God is creative in relating to us
3. God’s relationship with us is free of issues of control

The question is then how do we, who have so much power to affect the earth, serve the earth? How do we relate to the earth? In order to live in harmony with the earth we will have to intimately get to know the earth. In the same way that someone cannot sing a harmony unless they know the tune, we cannot live in harmony with the earth unless we know the earth. I think prolonged contact and interaction is as important for us and the earth as was for God walking in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. Only a deep interaction with the earth can lead us to an empathy for the earth that will propel us to go beyond asking the earth “What are you good for?”.

It is only once we have and intimate knowledge of the earth that we can start to creatively relate to the earth. To think creatively about living with the earth will mean most likely that the solution to our ecological crisis will most likely be one that we have not thought of. It will most likely not be a retreat to a pre-industrialised way of living and equally will not be a blind trust that technological advancement will have the solution.

Essential to any effective ecotheolgy must be how do those who believe that the state of the earth is in crisis and are actively seeking to change it, communicate to those who do not believe this and are not seeking to change things. I believe that once again we need to take up the principles of harmony, creativity and relinquishing control.

This is a song I wrote about the Earth...

I have missed you for so long,
I have not sung your holy song,
You are my sister, you are my brother
We were created with each other
I lived right above you
I did not live right beside you
Can I heal the wounds, of all we’ve done
Is it to late, to live as one

You give me joy extraordinary
You are my holy Sanctuary
And I see God in all you do
God give me the grace to show it back to you
Can I heal the wounds, of all we’ve done
Is it to late, to live as one

Cameron Reilly asking tough questions about Christianity

Cameron Reilly who once interviewed me about my work and probably more famously appeared on the front of the Bulletin magazine posted "how many people did god kill in the bible" on his blog. Just as I was thinking I should formulate some kind of intelligent response to the post. Lots of Xns beat me to it with, well mostly dumb responses.

Unlike some of the Xn posters on his blog I believe Cameron does have a right to attack Xy over any other religion in Australia as it is the dominant religion by far.

So, what about the question? Perhaps the key problem and why some Xns find this hard to explain is that they believe scripture is inerrant. I am a Xn not Bibleian (follower of the Bible) I do not see the Bible as the vehicle through which God speaks but rather the written account of God acting in the world. The culmination of that being Jesus. So that means for me that I read everything in the OT through the lens of Jesus. So when an OT prophecy talks about God sending a great leader to rule over all the earth. Rather than thinking Jesus did a pretty crap job of the whole military conquest thing, I see a difference between what the writer was anticipating and hoping for and what God actually had in mind. So instead of a great military leader we get Jesus a great leader but more in a Gandhi sense than a military sense.

Also, something that is important to me (and gets rid of 3 million deaths on the tally) is that I think Genesis 1-11 (the pre Abraham stuff) is myth rather than history. These myths explain how the world got here but probably more importantly they take pre existing myths like creation and flood myths and re-tell them in a Yahweh kind of way. So in the Yahweh version of the flood story for example God promises never again.

All that aside the honest truth is that yes this stuff does bug me and I often wonder if I am just using theological gymnastics to get around this.

By the time I had written the above, Cameron had posted an interview with John Dickson talking about the historicity of Jesus. Much as I suspected this was not going to be persuasive. At best all the historical stuff will prove that there was a guy called Jesus who did a bunch of stuff that people thought was amazing at the time, he was killed and then a bunch of his followers claimed he had been resurrected and they were prepared to die for that. Which is all well and good but doesn't really go any where meaty. None the less Cameron did end the interview by starting to ask questions about the internal logic of Xn theology. This I'm keen to hear.

With any belief system or religion I think there are a few key questions to wrestle with.

1) Is it historical (if it claims to be)
2) Does it have it's own internal logic
3) How can you square this with what you can and can't prove.

I'm keen to hear where this goes I'm kind betting it'll get stuck in the substitution atonement theology stuff and Cameron (like any intelligent person) and much like the Dave Slusher's podcast that I wrote about is going to find it hard to reconcile a God that Xns say is loving and gracious but needs you to pay a price you can't pay for your sin that can only be made by the death of an innocent man (Jesus) all in order to let us spend eternal life with a bunch of Xns. Which, believe it or not is the best of two possibilities.

I also posted a response to the podcast with John Dickson supporting Cameron in his wrestle with Christianity.

Ecotheology Part 2

Ecotheology Part 1

The idea I raised last time that the Earth is a creature, is taken directly from James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, which I found to be both impressive and persuasive. James Lovelock says that “Most of us sense that the Earth is more than a sphere of rock with a thin layer of air, ocean, and life covering the surface. We feel that we belong here, as if this planet were indeed our home. Long ago the Greeks, thinking this way, gave to the Earth the name of Gaia." (James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia) As much as the Gaia Hypothesis appealed to me I wanted not to read the Gaia hypothesis back into scripture but to see if a Gaia hypothesis or something similar was already within the Biblical texts.

In Genesis 1:1 we read that the earth (like humans) was created by God. If we can define a creature as simply something that has been created by God then the earth is a creature. Over and above this the earth also exhibits many, many features that one might usually consider solely the expression of a creature rather than an object. Indeed these are all creature like features that the earth and humanity share. These are…

• We are both created by God
• We both sing praise to God
• We are both blessed by God
• We both have a Sabbath
• God has made a covenants with both of us
• We are both cursed from the fall
  
• Jesus was sent for both of us
• We are both awaiting redemption
• We can both become a new creation in Christ

Scharper describes the earth (Gaia) as “a self-regulating system, a "creature," which moves forward into the future regardless of what humans do.” For me the fact that the earth is created, acts like a creature in the Bible and acts like a creature in a scientific sense is where the Earth gets intrinsic worth.

The Question that arises from concluding that the earth is a creature is how do we relate to this creature? Or, how do we relate to the earth?

Too often I think that our relationship with the Earth has fallen into these four possible categories: Rock, Gift, Slave and Master

1. The Earth is a rock: This is pretty much an ancient Greek view of the world where all physical matter is corrupt, and the earth has value only for what we can get from it.

2. The Earth is a gift from God: This kind of sounds nice and to an extent is true the only problem is that the earth has value purely because it is a gift from God and has no value in it’s self.

3. Earth is our slave (or under us): Whether we try and dress this up by using words like steward or priest invariably we will take this as meaning the earth is inferior to humanity, due to the authority we have been given to stewards and priests. For this reason I think these words are not helpful.

4. Earth is the master we obey (or above us): This probably the view James Lovelock would ascribe to. He asserts that when humanity dies out the earth will live on and that bacteria deep in soils and seabeds are probably more important to the earths survival than plants and animals. The problem with this, even though it may be true is that I don’t think this view in necessary helpful when for my entire lifetime I could do as I please to the earth and feel no real consequence as a result. In many ways, I think, an earth centred ecotheology will, in the long run, be as unhelpful as wanting to replace Patriarchy with Matriarchy. The answer to anthropocentric theology is not earth-centred theology but a de-centred theology of relationship. A theology of relationship between two co-created creatures were we view our selves not as stewards over creation, but as kin.

Part of the reason I like to use the word relationship with the earth, rather than phrases like ‘steward’ or even terms like inter-related, was to avoid any word that had a hint of power or control. Although it may be true that humanity and the earth are interrelated the reality is that most western Christians are living as though we are not, and can quite happily live as though we are not, until the environmental crisis gets so bad and it is too late to turn back. What is more the term inter-related may have overtones control, a kind of wrestling were if one does one thing that may affect the other and vice versa – which could lead us back to asking questions of who controls who rather than a picture of two co-created beings standing beside each other ready to start to understand each other.

This does not mean that there is not power in the relationship. Whether it is we have the power to destroy the earth or as James Lovelocks suggests that we will be a mere hiccup on the earth this is not helpful. What is more different people in different places on the earth will have different relationships with the earth. We i the west are more likely to be the oppressors and not the oppressed. So a western response to how they relate to the earth may be very different to how someone in a dessert ravaged country with seasonal flood might relate to the earth. In the later case it may indeed be appropriate to encourage them to follow Genesis 1:28 and subdue the earth by building some dams to hold the flood waters and grow vegetation with this water.

Therefore, it should be no surprise that there isn't a single uniformed attitude towards the natural world in the Bible. Different time periods and circumstances require different perspectives. This is surely the nature of a relationship! That is it changes and grows.

Final installment next week.

Ecotheology Part 3

Emerging Christians?

I've just had a very nice weekend and because I worked till after midnight on Saturday I didn't go to church on Sunday and it felt really nice not to go. This got me thinking, there's often a lot of talk about emerging churches and I tend to spend a lot of time on this blog talking about theology (an emerging theology if you will) but what about emerging Xns? What would post church or emerging Xns look like?

My overwhelming thought is that we would be able to survive as Xns without a church and that we'd responsibility for ourselves and our faith. I think would an emerging Xn would...

• Be responsible for themselves and their own spiritual growth and walking in our faith unassisted.
• Have a self clarity about their faith and healthy boundaries about their relationships.
• Be interdependent on other Xns and not dependent.
• Energising to meet with rather than draining.
• Feel that Church and Church leaders owed us nothing.
• Mean that a Healthy emerging church would be a loose affiliation of autonomous individuals.

Hebrews 10:25 (not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching) is the only command about church attendance in the New Testament, as far as i know. When it comes to meeting together even given the spectrum from traditional Catholic to radical emerging churches these different types of meetings still make for a pretty narrow band. I'd love to see the day when not belonging to a church is about as unlikely to stop someone from being a Xn as not belonging to a running club would stop someone from running.

At the moment the statement "I'm a Xn I just don't go to church" is usually met by Xns with a "Oh you're a nominal Xn who doesn't take your faith seriously" or "You're a fruit loop who is so weird you can't find some small fringe church to hang out with" kind of stare. Not only would it be cool if people knew Xns by their love rather than their church attendance but that Xns felt comfortable as this being the sign of their Xy and everything else is secondary.

Tom Sine bringing back old memories

It's been a while since I first stumbled across Tom Sine in the bargain bin of the local Xn bookshop.

Whilst doing some tidying up recently I cam across this quote which I used to read out to churches whilst working 3 days a week as a youth ministry coordinator for 6 churches and 2 schools. With some of the churches being up to 30 minutes away from each other it was as difficult a job as it sounds. None the less it was a great learning experience and it gave me a respect for a mainline denomination that I had not had before.

As I suspect is the same with many churches, part of the problem for a lot of the churches I worked with was a desire for youth ministry to happen but not a great desire from people in the church to do it. I routinely visited the churches of a Sunday morning and would be asked to speak. On one round I thre this great quote from Tom Sine's Mustard Seed vs McWorld book in to the talk.

What we have done, I am convinced, is to succumb inadvertently to a dualistic model of discipleship. In spite of all the talk about Christ’s 'Lordship', everyone knows that the expectations of modern culture come first. Everyone knows getting ahead in the job comes first. Getting ahead in the suburbs comes first. Getting the children off to their activities comes first. And we tend to make decisions in these areas pretty much like everyone else does - based on our income, our professions and our social status.

Essentially most western Christians unquestioningly allow modern culture to arrange most of the furniture of our lives - forty to eighty hour work weeks, single family detached housing, congested timetables for our lives and children. Over the last fifteen years I've seen Christians becoming busier and busier which means that they have less time left over for prayer, church, ministry or even family.

We're racing into a future in which McWorld wants an even larger chunk of our time and money, which means even less left over for the things of faith.

On the other side of this dualism, following Christ is too often trivialised to little more than a devotional lubricant to keep us from stripping our gears as we charge up the mountain trying to get ahead in our careers, the suburbs, and our children's activities. Following Christ is for too many of us reduced to a little more than fifteen minutes in the morning and two hours on Sunday and we wind up with a highly privatised and spiritualised piety that is often largely disconnected from the rest of our lives.

We permit modern culture as part of the deal to define our notions of the good life and better future. As a consequence our lives are too often driven by the same manic aspirations that propel McWorld. No wonder we are exhausted. Modernity calls the tune and we dance.

It was a lot of fun reading this quote. There was a kind of safety in reading something someone else had said rather than saying something myself. I could see a few parishioners squirming with discomfort and priests smiling with joy. The memory of that alone compelled me to share it again.

I've found Jesus!

He was at K-Mart and on special too.

This is my daughter playing with Jesus. This photo shot will probably be the last time I let her play with my new toy. I don't want to be in the shopping centre and have her screaming "Daddy daddy I can't find Jesus" and then asking random strangers "excuse me, can you help me find Jesus?". No, this cuddly toy will be for me. Can't wait for some evangelism expert to come to church and ask "So how do you folks introduce your friends to Jesus?" and whilst everyone is in silence I can hold up my new toy and say "Well I find using this plush Jesus is an effective evangelism tool, turning an abstract idea into something more tangible. I haven't had a friend yet who hasn't wanted to give Jesus a hug."

Below is plush Jesus glamour shot if you want a better idea of what he looks like in full glory.

Emerging Church and/or Theology

The "Emerging Church" is something I have usually associated myself with, and most of the time the emerging church as a whole seems to be focused on how we do church where as my blog although I cover that a little bit often seems to be more focused on big theological ideas. Which could seem not particularly post modern and emerging. None the less I think this is really important and here's why.

I have rather belatedly discovered the amazing "Why I'm not a Xn" podcast by Dave Slusher at "the Evil Genius Chronicles" - thanks to Wired Jesus. Dave outlines why he was once a church going Xn and why he's now an atheist. It is a raw and honest podcast and compelling listening. It reminded me a lot of a very good friend of mine who had a very similar experience to Dave and s now not a Xn. I can remember when I move to the same city as him some of our mutual Xn friends where keen for me to "win him back" to God. This I didn't do (I guess I thought God might like to do that) I did report to the surprise of some of our mutual friends that I thought my friend had given up Xy for good reasons. His beliefs where somewhat different to mine and where not able to stand up to the average set of questions non Xn friends posed to him.

To me it seems that common to both stories the thing that pushed them away from God was not the practice of Xy or church or the institutional nature of religion but the theology of God that they had been taught. Which certainly for Dave Slusher seemed to be so heavily soaked in substitutional atonement theology that God ends up painting God as someone

As much as I'm all for experimenting with the way we do church and the way we live as Xns first and foremost I think we need to look at what we believe about God.

Ecotheology Part 1

Ecotheology is something that I think is very important to me and I think I may have a bit of a unique spin on the whole thing. So I thought I'd do a little series on it. To start with a quick quiz...

Who am I?

• I am created by God: “in the beginning God created me” (Genesis 1:1)
• I sing praise to God: “I clap my hands and sing for joy at the presence of the Lord.” (Psalm 98:8-9)
• I am blessed by God: I am “Blessed by the Lord, with the choice gifts of heaven above, and of the deep that lies beneath; with the choice fruits of the sun, and the rich yield of the months; with the finest produce of the ancient mountains, and the abundance of the everlasting hills.” (Deuteronomy 33:13-16)
• I need to rest every Sabbath: God said to my people “In the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of complete rest” (Leviticus 25:4)
• God has made a covenant with me: God promised “you will never be destroyed” (Genesis 9:9-11)
• I am made to be in covenant with humans: It was said to Job “you shall be in league (covenant) with the stones of the field, and the wild animals shall be at peace with you.” (Job 5:23)

I am... the earth.

• And I am cursed because of humanity: God said to Adam “cursed is the ground because of you.” (Genesis 3:17)
• God so loved me that Jesus was sent for me: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. (John 3:16)
• And I wait for my Redemption: “I wait with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. I have been groaning in labor pains. Together we wait for adoption, and redemption.” (Romans 8:18-23)
• Where I will be new in Christ: For God Said “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.” (Isaiah 65:17-25) Yes I will be renewed like humanity “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.” (2Corinthians 5:17)
• Where I will live in harmony with all of God’s creations: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.” (Isaiah 11:6-9)
  

Xns and Xn organizations are often indifferent to the rape and plunder of the world and of its traditional cultures. It is not too much to say that often Christian organizations are as happily indifferent as most industrial organizations to the ecological, cultural, and religious implications of industrial economics. Xns often seem as likely as anyone else to join in teh destruction of creation. Especially western Xy which is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen. Not only is there a dualism between humans and nature but it is often insisted that it's G0d’s will that humans exploit nature for their own ends.

I have read different ecotheologys and I have never been completely satisfied with the ecotheologys that I have read so far. Here I would like to present my own Xn ecotheolgy. I have tried to create an ecotheology with roots deeper than current environmental crisis and hence one that can may have a future if and when this crisis is over.

There are three points to my ecotheology

1. The earth (like humans) is a creature
2. We have a relationship with the earth
3. We need to relate to the earth the way God relates to us which is...
i. Harmonious
ii. Creative
iii. Free of issues of control

More next week.

Ecotheology Part 2

Offers start at $3,387.24

Hammo recently did a post on how much your Blog is worth using this java applet. I'm not sure how exactly it works but I thought I test some of my friends blogs and other blogs to see how we compared.

I've got bad news for my friends April and Derek who's blog is worth $0 some how so is Father Bob's and he plugs it each week on national radio and reasonably well know personality (as far as bloggers go). My friend Nathan's blog is worth only $564.54. Len can get $1,129.08. for his, which is pretty good seeing how infrequently he posts. My blog is worth $3,387.24. The Wired Jesus blog is worth $7,339.02 and Five Public Opinions is worth $9,032.64. My friend Si will be glad to know his blog is worth $9,597.18. Planet Telex has a blog worth $19,758.90. Matt Stone and Hammo do very well at $49,679.52. then there is probably the most well known emergent church blog Tall Skinny Kiwi $352,272.96. and finally Kevin Smith's blog is worth $368,644.62.

So if anyone wants to start the bidding at $3,387.24 let me know!

What to expect and ask from Church

In my not so great recent review of the Hillsong Church I said I'd write a "What to expect from Church" kind of post. This was a bit harder than I first thought but since part of the initial premise of the this blog was to go church surfing and to see if I could find a church, which I have done. I thought I'm probably as good as anyone to write this especially seeing that the church I've found (like many churches) is not a super funky ultra post modern alternative church.

So here goes...

What to expect from a church...

• Expect that the pastor will not be as good a speaker as that head of an overseas theological college you heard on a podcast last month.
• Expect that you won't like the music.
• Expect that almost everyone in the church will be incredibly uncool. Remember that if your a little cool this will then make you the coolest person in church or if you are uncool you will not stand out.
• Expect that your radical ideas on how to revamp the evening service will be ignored. Lets face it if they listen to you then they'll probably listen to the next chump who comes along and suggests that everyone dress up as clowns to run the service.

What to ask from a church...

• Ask that you can give to the church community in some meaningful way. For me at that the moment that means doing the occasional talk and playing bass for music I don't really like very much and going to an Alpha course that wasn't quite my cup of tea either.
• Ask that your different ideas be respected (not necessarily embraced by all).
• Ask that you have space to explore your faith.
• Ask that you get proportional support for your faith explorations and ministry experiments. For me at the moment the best example is the alternative worship service I've been talking about. Me and four others want to give this a go and we've got the support to give it a go, we're not taking over an existing service, after all there is only five of us keen to try this, but we have been given enough support to start this in mid February.

In short expect that church won't be all that you wish it could be or even a quarter of that just ask that you have space to give your ideas a crack. I'm feeling pretty luck at the moment because all of these things I have found in the church I am attending at the moment.

Guardian Angel

While in Sydney recently my wife and I bought ourselves a Guardian Angel.

A beautiful picture from to the fantastic Paddington Markets. (It's rectangular in real life - my photographic skills don't do the picture justice). You can click on the picture to enlarge it.

There is no "Community" out there

I often hear Xns talking about how do we, as Xns, need to get involved in our community. Sometimes that's our local (geographically) community or our work community or getting involved in some kind of hobby based community. The subtle implication behind this statement is that there are communities out there whilst Xns have ghettoised themselves in churches and we don't connect with people because we're not involved in their community but in our own Xn ghetto community.

Much of this I have said myself, now I've decided that non church going people are not really part of other communities that Xns could just be a part of if only we weren't so preoccupied with church. In my experience the people who live in the same suburb as me are about as connected as the a group of people in the same line at a supermarket. Neighbours don’t walk to the local shops together because there are no local shops there are only malls. Apart from needing someone to bring your bin in while you are on holidays there is no reason to get to know your neighbours. Work mates tend not to socialise together and the fluidity of work means highly unlikely that long term relationships at work could be established even if this was happening.

No matter what we have gained in the last 100 years it seems that one thing we all have in common is that we are very time poor. So few people have time to hang out with neighbours or work friends, few people play sports socially unless they're really good at them and most peoples hobbies are things they can do by themselves when they have a spare minute. Further more people who live in the same suburb will all work in different places, play sport in different places and have existing friends in different places. Most people seem to just have enough time to spend time with their families and small group of existing friends, which for many people I know under thirty are still friends from high school.

Rather than talking about getting involved in "the community" I'd like to hear people talking about getting involved with a person, an individual. There is no local community, no work community, no gothic community, no skater community. There are only individuals. Individuals who for the most part are too busy to be part of a community, they only have enough time to catch up with family and existing friends. Individuals who, I suspect, like me find it hard to make new friends because they are not part of these kind communities but who are always keen to meet someone who they connect with.

Banksy

I have just discovered the joy that is Banksy, Graffiti artist, dissident and revolutionary. I am reading his book "Wall and Piece". It has inspired me to think particularly of how much of our public space is polluted by advertising. Advertising that is misleading, degrading and insulting and I'm over it. It only takes a day of being conscious of it to realise how all pervasive it is. I decided a while ago not to put Google adds on this blog, and not just because hardly anyone reads it.

Some of the quotes from the book I love are...

The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. it's people who follow orders who drop bombs and massacre villages. as a precaution to ever committing major acts of evil it is our solemn duty never to do what we're told. this is the only way we can be sure.

Once upon a time there was a bear and a bee who lived in a wood and were the best of friends. All summer long the bee collected nectar from morning to night while the bear lay on his back basking in the long grass. When Winter came the Bear realised he had nothing to eat and thought to himself 'I hope that busy little Bee will share some of his honey with me'. But the Bee was nowhere to be found - he had died of a stress induced coronary disease.

The human race is an unfair and stupid competition. A lot of the runners don't even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water. Some people are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side. It's not surprising some people have given up competing altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk food and shout abuse. What we need in this race is a lot more streakers.

Only when the last tree
Has been cut down
And the last river
Has dried to a trickle
Will man finally realize
That we cannot eat money
And reciting old proverbs
Makes you sound like a twat

Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world I can't even finish my second apple pie

People abuse you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
However, you are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Screw that. Any advert in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. You especially don't owe them any courtesy. They have rearranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.

We can't do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles, In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves.

The quotes are great but the artwork is where he really shines. See pictures check out his website or buy the book.