The Oceans Are Dying!!

The oceans are dying!  The oceans are dying! The oceans are dying! The oceans are dying!!

Did you get that? In response to an earlier ocean tragedy, I wrote a mythic response to the Deepwater Oilspill Catastrophe , but this time I'm just going to be straight up.

Read this article :

The Ocean Is Broken . This is not a conspiracy site. This is being carried by Yahoo.

If we pagans care about the sacredness of the earth, this is big news.

I want to know : why are we allowing business-as-usual to continue under conditions where the oceans are dying? Why aren't we out in the streets all the time, rapping at the doors of corporate, government, and UN representatives and demanding radical change?

Seriously. Do we believe in the sacredness of the natural world in which we live?

Do you really believe? Is this a play thing to you? 

I want to make a serious appeal to people to STOP EATING FISH. This article makes clear that the industrial trawling of fish is one of the very strong factors killing the life of the ocean. GOING VEGAN -- or at least cutting down or even better yet STOPPING FISH CONSUMPTION -- is a GIFT you can give to the ocean. To Njord or Yemanja or Neptune, or however you conceive the sacredness, numinosity, or divinity of the ocean. This doesn't mean one has to do so for all time. We can have the Vegan argument later. But for now -- under these conditions --that is the least you can do.

But going beyond personal gifts, we have to stop the JOTNAR, the Giants, the Megamonster Fishing Conglomerates who are NOT observing the Gift-Relationship of any indigenous/pagan culture : you don't just take, take, take. A gift calls for a gift. You take what you need and nothing more. And right now, for most of the consumers of fish, you don't need it. You may like it, it may help supplement your nutrients and mostly your taste buds, but you don't need it. So let's get some radical changes placing some CHAINS ON THIS FENRIS trawling the oceans with its Sky-To-Seabed Open Jaws and SHUT THIS MONSTER DOWN.

This is not playtime anymore, but just about everything else is, yes, including beloved, always-loved, in-the-pocket-of-Gullveig business. Don't talk to me about anything else when the ocean is at stake. Don't talk to me about anything else when the very poetry of our waters is in peril. I want to see widespread, collective action that makes the "Arab Spring" of Egypt look like child's play. If we pagans mean anything, if we are actually engaging in worship rather than frivolous entertainment, we need to put our money where our mouth is and get this going. No, I'm not just talking about donating to a cause here and there, although that's good, too. I mean getting people out into the streets over this. [This is not the only Earth-related cause we should be doing this for. There are impending extinctions of important species, toxic pollution, etc., that all must be attended to. But we must switch the discourse so it is no longer a "minority" issue. We have to turn the tables on the entire way this is looked at.] This means getting tough. This is like rallying for a war. This means no longer allowing protest and in-the-streets to be ridiculed, marginalized, pushed aside by those comfortably numb who are just trawling around living a bullshit existence while the very sacredness of the planet is at stake.

And while we're at it, two fucking years ago I also wrote about the complete disaster that is Fukushima , and here , and here , and here . This thing is STILL GOING ON! I can't believe this : we've got a disaster that rivals CHERNOBYL, and it has been going on, unstopped, for TWO FUCKING YEARS. Not only that, but business as usual has just kept on going as if nothing has happened! Our government representatives tell us it's nothing to worry about -- "nothing to worry about"? We expect the representatives of industry to spit out such lies, but the government replication thereof demonstrates, if nothing else did, how in the pocket of industry all our governments are. Fukushima is serious, folks. It was serious TWO YEARS AGO. It is now EVERY DAY pouring out TONS of RADIOACTIVE WASTE into the oceans. I mean, as we speak!! POURING RADIOACTIVE WASTE INTO THE OCEANS!

At this point in time where we are at on this planet, we should be doing nothing but writing in all caps, bold print, and italics, but there simply aren't enough to underline the importance of what's going on here.

I will quote some things I said earlier (in the links above). These statements apply now more than ever :

"And no one raised a peep. Not a whine, not a whimper, not a stamping of the feet. The shields, long dusty, were kept upon their posts. The spears were snapped in two and thrown on heaps and burned. And all the while the wolves devoured.."

Do you hear what I am doing here? Let me make it explicit : I am calling you fucking cowards. I am invoking the warrior ethos, and accusing you, here, in public, as a matter of your sacred honor, of neglecting to raise the fight about the things that matter most. Do you get what I'm saying here? This isn't just rhetoric. I have just on the world wide internet called out every person who thinks they believe in warrior values and asked why they are not raising the banners to mobilize for this cause. (I'm not discussing, to be clear here, literal weapons-war, but I am discussing serious mass campaigns.)

"I kneel down on the wet sand to kiss the shores, and beg Njord forgive those who have mired them, and realize, I cannot ask him forgive! For you cannot forgive those who have not repented! They have not paid their gild, they have not turned their ways!

They’ve thrown oil into the waters. They’ve spread toxicity of radioactive Balrogs into the wash, and still, still they continue! How can they be forgiven? No. No, I pray Njord that he might clean and keep free the fishes that our kind bath in filth! I pray that he might, in his sea-going sleuth-ways, open our eyes to powers to which we’ve been blinded, with which we might restrain polluters, and keep undesecrated his frothy gardens.

This is Njord’s body. His soul, like all our souls, is larger than his large body, but is infused by will and wish into every molecule of wet. Will we desecrate his liquid-wine eucharist, his brine which is epiphany beyond the shores?"

 

We cannot be forgiven until we have turned from our ways. We are remaining PASSIVE -- PASSIVE -- PASSIVE -- while Njord's body is being killed RIGHT IN FRONT OF US, and why? Because of GREED, because we have allowed MONSTERS -- giant corporations and conglomerates of fishers -- to TAKE CONTROL.

 

A lesson here. When you try to take control of everything (yes, even in the service of Gullveig -- she is not all-powerful), you begin to lose control of everything.

 

It is not enough to stop eating fish for a time until the oceans replenish themselves. We have to give the oceans a chance to replenish themselves. And the only way to do that is to LEGALLY BIND FENRIS, and if our governments won't do that, then they need to be washed away with the tide. We the masses must stand up for the oceans.

 

We the masses must stand up for the oceans, and those who should be spearheading this should be pagans, if pagans are anything other than recreationalists proclaiming sound-good platitudes for the sake of feeling good. Here, politics and paganism cannot possibly be separated. Remaining "apolitical" means throwing in with the destruction of the ocean. Yes, in fact, it is that simple. Pagans should be at the forefront of the vanguard of causing mass upheavals overturning everything that interferes with the biospheric womb of mammalian (and other) life.

 

The future will curse us if we don't.

 

I mean, if there is a future.