Notes from the Peace Trail Archive

Last update: 102602007

Humans failing the sustainability audit

"The fourth Global Environment Outlook: environment for development (GEO-4) assessment is a comprehensive and authoritative UN report on environment, development and human well-being, providing incisive analysis and information for decision making."

The full report is available for download (.pdf, 572 pages) here or may be viewed on the UN website here.

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Art Show!

©Copyfresh 10/17/02007 Fresh Ink. All rights reserved.
I am very happy to announce my first ever Art Show!

I will have a selection of prints on display and for sale at:

Professor Java's Coffee Sanctuary
217 Wolf Road Albany, NY 12205

I will be hanging my photos on wednesday at 6pm, October 17th. If you'd like to come in then, please feel free. Otherwise they will be up the remainder of October and most of November. If you can please stop in and take a peek.Thanks! Your support is greatly appreciated!!! All proceeds will go to the publication of my long awaited book A Thousand and One Appalachian Tales...

Kapayapaan, pagmamahal, at kasariwaan!

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The Fictionary 2nd Edtion is Here!!!

©Copyfresh 11/18/02005 Fresh Ink. All rights reserved.
I am very excited and pleased to announce that The Fictionary: A vocabulous flexicon of jocumolecular jingo and colloquialicious flapinations in the key of G is now available for purchase! It can be purchased online at iUniverse, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble or by special order at your local bookstore.

Please support us so that we may continue to publish more material. Future projects include The Fresh Digest, Peaks in the Landscape: A Selection of Fresh Haiku, and A Thousand and One Appalachian Tales. All proceeds will go towards my future retirement, so that I may one day devote my full attention to the development of The International Peace Trail Project.

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Orang-utans could be extinct in 20 years

©Copyfresh 09/30/02003 Fresh Ink. All rights reserved.

Last Orang-utan
silent into history
This lost habitat.

Beautiful garden
now consigned to memory
by shortsightedness.

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In the beginning was the Meme…

©Copyright 02/25/02003 Fresh Ink. All rights reserved.
The Universe operates through a series of expansions and contractions. In life, these expansions and contractions often manifest in many ways -- in acts of loving kindness and hateful violence, in periods of peace and prosperity and in times of famine and war, in the rise and fall of civilizations. The cyclical nature of all things is the nature of growth and decay, evolution and involution. Furthermore, these polar processes are fractal, existing at all scales. With regards certain yearly festivals celebrated throughout the world, such as Mardi Gras, this fractal nature is again repeated. What often is denied or missed by their celebrants, however, is that these festivals historically culminate in the ritualistic sacrifice of the dragon, the slaying of childhood hopes and dreams, the pursuit of love and happiness and the everlasting quest for the Holy Grail. Afterwards, the beast is contained and the prisoner returns to his cell.

And, each time life must somehow endure or all is lost. If it cannot begin again another expansion, another season, the tides of Earth will surely wash man from it’s shores. This is why the sun plays so prominently in many so-called mythologies-- "every man and woman is a star!" It is from whence life is born and it is to where life must return. But in the mean time, the sun is the energy and the power of love by which all things are possible. It is the springtime and summer in which life grows and flourishes and bears fruit. It is the autumn from which man may harvest this bounty, in store for the winter and the cold dark night of the soul.

This is the ebb and flow of the Universe, the Yin and Yang of Dao.

Progress comes from making efforts during periods of expansion and minimizing risk during periods of contraction. This is why the bear hibernates. This is how man increases his wealth, how he learns -- through the remarkable Lamarkian evolution of thought and ideas as recorded by those who have come before. It is not without supreme candor that Newton quipped, “if I have seen farther than most men, it is because I have stood upon the backs of giants.” This is where we all stand, atop the backs of giants before a yawning precipice...

Environmental Policy A Load Of Crap

Bush blocks bid to save millions of lives

By Geoffrey Lean Environment Editor
02 June 2002

Quoted from article:
"...the United States is blocking an international plan to halve the number of people, two-fifths of the population of the planet, who have no sanitation. Some 2.4 billion people lack even a bucket for their wastes, and this is one of the main causes of world disease...

"...More than 2.2 million people – mainly children – die in the Third World every year from diseases caused by lack of sanitation and by dirty drinking water. The United Nations says that "the incidence of some illnesses and death could drop by as much as 75 per cent" if adequate clean water and sanitation were provided...

"Margaret Beckett, the Secretary of State for the Environment, who is leading Britain's delegation to Bali, describes dealing with this issue as 'absolutely key to any prospect of tackling poverty'...

"...Senior British ministers fear that if the Bali conference fails to reach agreement it will be hard for the Johannesburg summit to succeed – and the best chance of tackling world poverty in two decades will be lost for the indefinite future."

©Copyright 06/03/02002 by Fresh Ink. All rights reserved.
Here is a clear example of how poverty and the environment are indelibly linked. Poor sanitation (according to the article quoted above) leads to the death of some 2.2 million people every year in third world counties. Clean water is one of the vital riches of our planet, more valuable than all the gold in the world. Without it, we are all equally impoverished. It is important to see that we cannot make lasting strides in one area (poverty and disease) without making meaningful strides in the other (ecology and environment). Separating these issues is an unnatural division, one that severely hampers both. The earth can live without us, but we cannot live without the Earth.

What good is it to solve disease if we fail to save our ability to enjoy a sustainable quality of life on our planet? Alternatively, how can we address environmental issues without addressing the serious impact over-population, unsustainable farming, and toxic waste is having on the vital riches of our planet? The fight is not just from poverty, it is towards universal wealth! Clean air and water belongs to everyone. They are everyone's birthright. They are worth far beyond what money can buy. Natural habitats and wilderness areas, wetlands and coral reefs, are vital to the fight from universal poverty to universal wealth. What good is ending hunger only to inherit a world sterile, barren, and lifeless? If we do not solve the sewage problem, we cannot cure disease. If we do not address the environmental problem we cannot solve the sewage problem.

We must accept that we are one with the Earth, not separate from it. To solve our problems we must think in wholes, not in arbitrary distinctions perpetuated by outdated reductionist modalities. We cannot solve environmental issues without addressing the human component. Likewise, we cannot solve humanitarian issues without addressing the environmental component. Thus, the World Summit for Sustainable Development, whose "international plan to halve the number of people, two-fifths of the population of the planet, who have no sanitation," affords an excellent opportunity for bi-partisan, non-profit support for trans-charter issues. We cannot afford to allow sanitation to fall between the cracks! It is the issue which unites poverty issues with environmental issues and shows us, they are really the same issues, looked at from an artificial (albiet, sometimes useful) semantic construct.

Instead, to solve the problems of poverty and disease, we must deal with environmental issues; to solve the problems of ecology and the environment,we must deal with social and humanitarian issues. We must protect the natural areas absolutely vital to us, our coral reefs, our aquifers, our wetlands and aquatic gardens. Indeed, these habitats are vital for sanitation! We need them, we are entwined. Furthermore, we cannot solve one issue without solving the others first. At first this may seem daunting, intractable. But together they find their greatest totality as the very basic concept of sanitation and that is an excellent place to begin.

All the separate threads together, make one techniclored dreamcoat.

Far From Good

"An idea is something you have;
an ideology is something that has you."
--Morris Berman

©Copyright 05/27/02002 by Fresh Ink. All rights reserved.
Happy Meme Day. This is the day we celebrate the importance of our memes. It is also the day we celebrate the memory of the many who have fallen defending the honor and integrity of those memes.

However, many dangerous memes exist which threaten to undo what millions of years have slowly and arduously wrought -- ourselves! Or, more specifically, our ability to think for ourselves. The meme you can't fight City Hall, is one such dangerous meme. It defeats us before we've even begun to fight. Such a meme is dangerous not so much to ourselves as it is to our future. For, while we may live to a ripe old age in a cage, the dynamic environment which gave life to thought, which gave life to memes, will perish.

Another such Dangerous Meme is the notion, It's All Good. It's not. It's far from good! To say that it's all good is to turn a blind eye, not a third eye. If it was all good, the world would already have an International Peace Trail! It does not. Therefore, it is not all good.

If it was all good, children would not die of hunger or preventable disease. If it was all good, we would have a cure for AIDS, Tuberculosis, Cancer, Insomnia, Depression, and Male-Pattern Baldness. If it were all good, we would not have to defend dwindling natural habitats and endangered species from further encroachment and extinction. We would not need to blast the tops off of mountains, or polute our rivers and streams, to access precious metals and coal. No one would have need for coal, or oil, or petrochemicals to begin with; everyone would have clean, abundant, energy using small, metallic hydrogen batteries. Education would be free for all who wanted it as would be medicine; there would be no homelessness or hunger, there would be no senseless murder for a $30 vial of crack. In short, if it were all good, there would be a reason not to screw it all up. But there isn't. Therefore, it's not all good.

No one could have imagined the destruction of the World Trade Center Complex on September 11th, 2001. The Twin Towers were more than just office buildings. They were symbols of the seeming stability and soaring heights of our great culture and our civilization. Alas, our world-wide global village is proving to be just as fragile, just as vulnerable, as were the 110 floors of those twin towers on that fateful, early September morning.

Now: the world is closer to nuclear war, or worse, than ever before. India and Pakistan each have the capability to render Kashmir uninhabitable for hundreds of years, to annihilate 10 million people or more in an instant. Palestinians continue to blow themselves up almost daily while Israel seems even more determined to keep them from becoming a Palestinian State than ever before. Iraq has bio-chemical weapons we helped them develop back when we were playing both sides in the Iran-Iraqi war. We have lost Anthrax; who knows what else? Russia has lost plutonium. There remains enough missing weapons grade plutonium in the world to screw things up for good. The only thing missing is a reason not to.

The problem is, no one is trying very hard to create a world where people have a reason not to screw it up. In their defense, the vast majority are far too busy, too dragged along by life, to concern themselves. Besides, what can any one of us do?

Without slack, nothing. It is the spaces between things, between moments, which offer us the possiblity of something new, something different. Without leisure, nothing is possible. Without a moment of honest self-reflection, of turning the light around, the Golden Flower cannot be seen. Without the time to relax and enjoy the moment, not only will we not discover new ideas, nor solve the many problems afflicting us, we will barely have time to notice. We will be too busy, too carried along by the rat-race to care.

If we do not find the Jewel in the Lotus, we will remain apathetic to the future and secretly long for the divine rapture to come and take us away. We will not act to avert disaster, we will instead welcome it.

This is no way to welcome a bright and wonderous future. Instead, we must ask ourselves, have I been on the Peace Trail today? Have I taken a moment to check the path I'm on, to see that it is taking me in a direction I would wish to head? If not, then we are like a rudderless boat tossed about on a stormy sea. This is no way to solve our problems.

Rather, we must realize, we are all on the Peace Trail together! Every time we stop to help someone, or simply say hello, we are on the Peace Trail. Every time we volunteer our time to teach, to share, to care, to turn the other cheek, we are on the Peace Trail. Every time we cure a disease or have an idea for a way to make the world a better place, we are on the Peace Trail. Every time we open our hearts and minds, and act selflessly with compassion and respect for others, we are on the Peace Trail. It's not all good, but by each of us spending some time each day on the Peace Trail, perhaps someday it will be.

Have you been on the Peace Trail today?

Peace On This!

Email From the Edge

©Copyright 03/26/02002 by Fresh Ink. All rights reserved.
Here is the original article (Information Wants to be Worthless) I read which mentions bloggers and blogging. I didn't send it the first time (to people on the mailing list)cuz, while I thought the writer could turn a pretty phrase, he seemed to ramble and leave me wondering, what was so newsworthy? Everything seemed self evident. Yes, information wants to be worthless, if that's the way you choose to look at it; my take is it wants to be priceless -- essentially the same thing from the perspective of Capitalism (there really isn't any more or less to made between something that is free and something that is priceless). Therein lies the difference. But I think the point, at least of the headline if not the article is that, Big Business wants information to cost, and cost premium. It wants to control both the information and the access to the information. This, in essence, is a robbery of our collective cultural heritage, or so I would assert. Of course, this is how Big Business thrives...this is why file sharing, and the Internet upon which it is largely predicated, is such a threat. Basically, the CBDTPA (the Crappy Business Debauchery and Theft of the People Act) wants to make illegal the sharing of information and thus, as a consequence, outlaw all forms of learning upon which the sharing of information occurs (for example, according to this article here, legislation such as this and the DMCA allows Scientologists to stop people from sharing -- some would say exposing -- information about what they believe Scientology is "really" about. In turn this renders people impotent to defend themselves against the potential for predatory mind control and/or other deprivations, which may or may not be the case with Scientologists. The point is not the moral merits of Scientologists or their opponents but rather the free access to information which allows us to decide for ourselves.) Legislation which creates an unnatural playing field drastically slanted towards Big Business is not what a free market economy is supposed to be about.

The CBDTPA shows that Big Business, at least at it's worst, is directly at odds with the natural order of the Universe, which is to share and to cooperate, and to communicate. Indeed, the tremendous success of life on planet Earth can be broken down into one word, co-evolution. The amazing biodiversity of our planet grew together over millions of years to produce a gigantic interlocking inter-dependence, such that the plants could not live without the minerals and the animals, the animals could not live without the plants and the minerals, and the minerals, well, they'd just die of boredom without the plants and the animals keeping it real! Seriously, the whole subject is absolutely fascinating and I recommend Nature's Destiny, by Michael J. Denton and The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann for a wealth of detail about the wonderful fabric of which we are but a thread. It's as if, as fabrics go, life as a whole is a wonderful Technicolor dreamcoat without any stitches and with each thread woven in such a way as to keep it all together. This is why the threats to endangered species (these threads) are so important to the biologists and ecologists. If we kill off all the plankton in the ocean, we kill off ourselves and everything else that requires oxygen to live. If we kill off the coral reefs, we kill off the plankton, if we allow our pig farms to pollute our rivers, we pollute the oceans, we kill our coral reefs, etc. etc...

In Albany, NY there is ANSWRS, a recycling plant fronting for a landfill. But a land fill for batteries and other hazardous things. Well, they built this on the most precious Pine Bush a rare and fragile ecosystem left over from the last ice age. Basically, a bunch of sand dunes, long covered over with one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the world; home to the Federally Endangered Blue Karner Butterfly. Well, remove the biodiversity and all you're left with is a pile of sand, at the mercy of the wind once more! To further upset the matter they built this plant right up next to the only aquifer in the surrounding area (but this is ok cuz the surrounding area gets it's water from the Helderbergs). Well, since they've already foogled it all up, they allowed an extension of the plant out onto the aquifer!!! Give in an inch and they'll take it all. This is the real battle in ANWR. They've already taken 95% of the Alaskan coastline, so what's the harm in taking the remaining 5%, if it allows each and everyone one of us to ride around in our Explorers and our Canyonairos for just a few weeks longer? Live for today, foogle tomorrow; as long as my stock goes up, the end justifies the means...well, someday tomorrow will be today and we must plan for the day when it all catches up with us (like Enron...) well,anyway, that's all the rant for today. Methinks it wanders just as much as the article about bloggers...Peace, Love and Freshness!

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Reply:
This particular issue happened to be a major issue in my life. There was also a development built in the dunes. There was an attorney named [name deleted] who went to court over it. It was a pretty technical issue. He won the first trial, lost at he state Supreme court and went to the Court of Appeals. The issue had to do with the wording of the second cities act. The court of appeals supported Louis's interpretation of the wording but concluded that the issue was moot: the environment had been destroyed. Case closed except that the city hit the development with a special assesment. It worked out that the special assesment hinged on the same wording of the same act. The development hired [the attorney] to go to court over it. Same thing happened: they won the first trial, lost at the supreme court and filed in the court of appeals. This where I came in, backin 1984: The city hit my development with a special assesment, also under the second cities act. The amount of the special assesment was about twenty percent of the value of my house, ie, way more than I could afford, having only put down 10%, which was also all the money I had. Just to make it interesting, I had just lost my job and couldn't find work. The special assesment meant I couldn't sell my house and move. Anyhow, before the case was heard before the court of appeals, the city offered to settle for half. Now, I was following all this very closely and I was totally convinced they would win in court, based on the last opinion of the court. Nevertheless, the Dunes decided not to take the chance and they settled. A month later, the city hit them with another special assessment! We had the advantage of watching them go throughall this and also settled for half with the proviso that there be no additional special assessment. It took me and [my wife]about twenty years to recover economically.

Where is Everybody?

©Copyright 04/06/02001 by Fresh Ink. All rights reserved.
The obvious assumption is that the Bush Administration doesn't care too much about the environment. But this is an assumption made all too easily, simply by looking at Bush's environmental record in Texas. According to the Sierra Club, "Texas ranks first in the amount of cancer-causing chemicals pumped annually into the air and water, the number of hazardous-waste incinerators, total toxic releases to the environment, and carbon dioxide and mercury emissions from industry. When it comes to environmental spending, however, Texas ranks 49th." Of course, many Republicans might just say the Sierra Club represents a "Liberal Bias." That, it seems, is the method by which many Republicans dismiss the things they disagree with. It is also the tool by which they brow beat the puppet media into submission. But where is the breaking point in how much more we can take? Where are the people to stand up and fight for our clean air, protest the poisons in our drinking water, and protect our parks and forests? Where is everybody?

It seems the central problem with the Bush Administration is that it shows no long term thinking ability whatsoever. It is so focused on short term fixes that it is putting into jeopardy the future of all life on our planet as we know it. What we need is a president who will stand up for the ecology, not the economy. Anyone with long term thinking would see they are inseperable. You simple cannot have a strong economy at the expense of a strong ecology. It just doesn't work that way. By saying that the economy is more important than the environment Bush shows that he sees them as being different things. This also shows that he lacks the critical faculties necessary to make long term decisions. If he did he would see that the strongest ecology produces the strongest economy. For example, he talks of drilling for oil yet fails to mention alternatives to oil. This shows he has no concept of the future because, like all finite quantities, there is only so much oil and it is only a matter of time before it is gone.

So,to prove that Bush suffers from an inability to practice long term thinking, let us count the ways in which he has shown no concern for the future:

1. The Tax Cut. When was the last time you inherited a million dollars and just gave it away? But just imagine if you put it in the bank and watched it's interest grow. Then, if you wanted, you could give away the interest every year forever! Why wasn't this done years ago? Why isn't the entire world living off the interest of our great great great grandfathers? Would this interest not be enough to provide a life of affluence and means for every man, woman, and child on the planet? What if Bill Gates took all the money he didn't spend for one year and put it into a trust fund for every human being on the planet? In ten years, wouldn't everyone be as rich as Bill Gates is now? Probably not, but poverty would have been irradicated in five. And if the top 1% of the world's rich did the same, in ten years we would be a spacefaring, Type One Civilization, seeking out new life and new civilizations, "boldly going where no Man has gone before..."

2. Arsenic. Who is not shocked and outraged that Bush would show absolutely no concern about the quality of our drinking water? After seeing how he has polluted Texas, how can anyone be shocked at anything he does? Yet, what is not more fundamental to everyone than the purity of their drinking water? And when no one complains or seems to care, when there is not a deafening roar heard from every street corner in America, it makes you wonder, is there anybody out there?

3. CO2 Emissions, Bush claims not polluting hurts the economy. What helps the economy? Selling people clean air? Is that the Bush Administration's secret to a good strong, economy --- to pollute the world until people need bottled air, and then sell it to them?!

   The Bush Administration seems to think the economy is something like this fiscal year's earnings report, or today's closing Dow Jones Industrial Average. But it is not. The economy is a great expansive beast stretched out over many years. If you focus on it's short term health, you put it's long term health in jeopardy. The key to a strong economy then is, obviously, long term thinking! A healthy economy is not made from quick fixes but from long term solutions. It is made from investing in the future. In education and health care, the environment! What good are all the riches in the universe if we've rendered Earth uninhabitable by humans?

4. The Kyoto Protocol. Now, in all fairness to the Bush Administration, the Kyoto agreement was a dead fish in the water even before Bush was inaugurated. But that does not reliquish him of his duties. His duty is not to the next four years but to the next four thousand. His duty is not to the prosperity of those who got him elected but to the prosperity of our children and their children's children. His duty is to make sure we leave behind a world in which we have preserved the rich bio-diversity of our planet for the future, not destroyed it clinging to the past.

5. The National Arctic Wildlife Refuge. This is land that was set aside for the other creatures of the Earth. They have a dwindling place to call home. The Arctic Refuge is one the last great homes to creatures other than humans. To destroy it would be unforgivable. It was long term thinking which created the Wildlife Refuge to protect against moments precisely like this. We must not allow short sightedness to throw it all away. The Arctic Refuge is a rare and precious gem, a priceless treasure. It is not fitting that someone who does not see this should be allowed to have control over it's fate.

Yes, there is definitely plenty to be concerned about. Which is why it makes us wonder, why has it gotten so quiet? Is there no one out there who still cares for our planet? Is there no one left to protest it's careless destruction? Is there no one left who cares?!

Maybe. Maybe not.

Maybe, there's no one out there...

End of the Year Report

©Copyright 12/31/02000 by Fresh Ink. All rights reserved.
Well. It's been quite a year. Alot has happened. Too much not to miss something. Our many thanks to all those who have shown their support to the International Peace Trail Project over the past few years. We promise much more to come in the years ahead.

Let us take this opportunity to briefly highlight some of the many accomplishments which have taken place in, around and/or about this site this year.

• This site and web space has continued to grow, breaking the 5 mb mark in the second half of the year. We added several new pages, one of which is, A Thousand and One Appalachian Tales. This is the continuing serialized document describing Düg's thruhike of the Appalachian Trail in 01988. We are officially at four installments but the fifth installment is currently available for reading. We hope to have a sixth installment out by the end of March 02001.

  Other pages new this year are:

  • The Fictionary Addenda Page, which has seen the addition of 77 new words this year alone
  • Haikuspace, a page dedicated to our explorations of the space of all Haikus
  • Fresh Toons, which will continue to showcase much of the work Düg did as a cartoonist in the late 90's while working as a truckdriver.

• We are happy to report that Düg Fresh, our web master turned network consultant, successfully completed a very difficult goal this year with the passage of his sixth and final exam for his MCSE Windows NT 4.0 Certification. This allowed him to get his first hi-tech job working as a Computer Infrastructure Technician at GE Power Systems, CASE (Control Accessories and Systems Engineering).

  Now, for the first time, he is beginning to acquire the financial means to move forward with many of the plans we have meticulously laid out, and discussed herein, over the past few years. We estimate that, with sponsorship, Düg could be ready to present a multimedia account of a thruhike of the International Peace Trail by as early as February 02002. Already Düg has begun making plans to hike the High Atlas perhaps by late next year. This will give him the opportunity to set foot on the proposed Peace Trail for the first time. It will also serve as an important fact finding mission. At the very least, in the annals of this site, it is sure to be an historic and monumental event, so stay tuned.

• In other news, a scary thing happened this year which does not seem to bode very well for the environment or for the future of democracy in this country. Something strange happened during this year's democratic election for President of the United States. What, exactly, may well be argued over for years to come.

  In the words of President Clinton, "Gore won the popular vote, Bush won the Supreme Court Vote." But even more stinging are the words of US Supreme Court Judge John Paul Stevens:

  "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law." From his dissent in Bush v. Gore
  Justice John Paul Stevens, 12-Dec-02000

  Our Web Master has commented on this election at some length on the NERD Society web page. For those unfamiliar, the NERD Society expresses the view that Information is Negative Entropy, or Negentropy, and that this is always increasing.

Plans for over the next few years include the completion of "A Thousand and One Appalachian Tales," more Fresh Toons, a feedback page and much, much more, so stay tuned.

This concludes our End of Year Report. Let us now turn our attentions to the New Year's Celebration and the Beginning of the Third Millenium AD. To all, with Love and Will as One. Amen.

The Value of the Future

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"
Edmund Burke

©07/25/02000 by Fresh Ink
Real values are not something that can be bought or sold. Real values are the wonders of the world that we leave behind. It is our gifts to the future that are the only real values in the universe. The question is, what gifts are we leaving behind? A landfill that oozed onto an Aquifer? A dead lifeless ocean? A desert where once stood a marvelously unduplicatable, irreproducible, ecosystem? Or a living testament to our ability to overcome adversity and create lasting peace and a sustainable habitat for all?

The fundamental truth is that, while you can't take it with you, you can leave it behind. The fundamental question then is, what are you leaving behind? A toxic waste dump? A planet barren of Coral Reefs and scenic untrampled Wildernesses? If all we leave behind is garbage, then that it what our future will be.

The Goal of the Peace Trail Project is to help leave behind a most precious gift, the gift of a future. The creation of a World Wide Trail System and the development of a Network of Environmental and Wildlife Organizations linked together to ensure the long-term protection of Earth's fragile and diminishing Wilderness Areas will be instrumental in ensuring that future. If we do not begin to plan for the future now, there will not be time left to protect these areas from all but certain extinction.

This is where the world needs your help. Only by total worldwide commitment can we ensure our survival, we have grown far too interconnected for it to be otherwise. The International Peace Trail Project is just one assertion of this commitment to the long term survival of the wonderous diversity and beauty of our planet. We believe that, however insignificant the efforts of one person or one group may be to effect global change, it is our fundamental duty to make that effort. Furthermore, it can only be seen as incontrovertible that when everyone shares in this belief, there may be no limit to what any of us can do.

Ethos and the Peace Trail

©05/10/02000 Fresh Ink
Our thanks to Ethos™ for not telling us what they were or how they operate. Without being able to clearly delineate the mechanisms of their "technology", we were again able to reacquaint ourselves with ours. Sometimes like webpages, it is a good idea to stop back in and visit every now and then with your ethos. It is our belief that we must each examine our own personal ethos, unhindered and unfettered by copyrights and patents, to answer the fundamental question, what are we leaving behind? Are we leaving behind a sustainable future for our children, a quality of life for all or only a chosen few? Are we leaving behind a rich and vibrant pageant of diversity or are we leaving behind a mess?

The fundamental goal of the International Peace Trail, the ethos, if you will, is to not leave behind a mess. It is, instead, the goal of the International Peace Trail Project to leave behind a wonderful and precious gift: the protection of Earth's vital wilderness areas from further encroachment and the creation of an enduring legacy of peace for all future generations to come. We believe the development and designation of the Peace Trail to be foundational to these goals, to the planet, and to a future that lives in the stars. After all, how can we ever expect to survive in the universe if we cannot get it together to survive here on Earth? Thus, the Peace Trail is our Great Gift to the future of life's wondrous advance into the cosmos. The IPT is our gift to the future of Mankind that our children might say that their ancestors were wise to create the Peace Trail, that from the Peace Trail all else followed.

The Internet and the WWW are integral components to the ethos of this website. With them we can make the Peace Trail a reality. Instead of wasting everyone's time and energy creating email viruses, or trying to sell people something they already have or don't really need, or which does no one no good anyhow, why not participate in the Grand Ethos of this site to make the IPT a reality? Once again, our thanks to Ethos™, for challenging us in such a way as to help reacquaint us with our own. As we said, it is always good to visit every now and then with one's own personal ethos. It is a mode of inquiry that cannot be patented because no one can do it for you. The technology of ethos is that it acquaints you with your highest virtues just by honest self examination. Ethos does not have to sell you anything, it is there for all to see, in all you leave behind.

The funny thing about Ethos™, at least to us, is that ethos can be trademarked. How can you trademark something that belongs to everyone? Rational Inquiry cannot be patented because no one can do it for you. It is a way of thinking. How can you enforce a trademark on how people think? Will Ethos™ deny people the right to think a certain way just to protect it's copyrights? There are many ways to think, many methods of inquiry, but each journey is unique and no one can make it for you. The problem is, we have all become victims of an ethos gone sour, of an ethos that puts one before the other, that divides and conquers. But there is no future in conquest, no future in division. There is no future without a strong and vibrant ethos; no future where ethos does not sing of compassion and commitment, where ethos does not give without want. Many thanks to the great and Secret Chiefs for presenting us with a mystery waiting to be explored, the mystery of ethos.

The mystery of ethos is not that it writes itself, for it does--ethos writes itself!--but that, while no one can do it for you, it gets done. However, the great secret of ethos is this: no one can do it for you, but we can all do it together! The great and wondrous secret is that we can all participate in ethos together because ethos is an on-going thing. It is a process, a verb. Ethos is a never ending mode of inquiry, it is a way of life. Indeed, our ethos is exposed by the way we live, by the modalities of our inquiry. Be they rational or irrational, technological or artistic, musical, mathematical or confrontational, our ethos is what we give to the future. Thanks to Ethos® for confronting us. They have helped us find new found vigor in the IPT project. They have helped provide us with a reacquaintance with our ethos and helped us to see how our ethos and the IPT are one. The IPT is the modality of our ethos.

But of course, it cannot be our ethos alone. We all need to share in the ethos of the International Peace Trail if we are to make it a lasting gift for the future. For the IPT to become a reality will require a truly Universal Ethos. But, it is a gift we can all share in together. After all, what else could True Ethos be than the greatest gift that we could give? It is our most fervent belief that the IPT is just such a gift.

The Internet provides us with the exciting possibility of bringing us all together, of helping us discover a Universal Ethos. If we could just recognize the Big Goof at the center of existence, then ethos would be an inevitable and natural consequence. But, if we continue to seek short-sighted solutions to the problems which face us, if we fail to find the Big Goof, seeking instead the hollow comfort of a lie, then ethos becomes something which is bought and sold, something, that is to say, which is not Real Ethos at all.

When our WebMaster was younger, he had these visions which for lack of a better word he called prescience, after Frank Herbert's Dune. In these visions, each choice was represented as a branching hallway, each corridor a product of that choice. In these visions, he would follow these hallways, these choices, to see where they led. It turned out that they apparently led everywhere. He was soon left with the puzzle of where, given that they led everywhere, did he want to go? He remembers making a decision but he no longer remembers the details of what that decision was. In retrospect it seems obvious these visions were too precious to keep. Many times he has doubted the wisdom of trusting in these visions to guide him. After all, he could not have predicted he would thru-hike the Appalachian Trail in 1988 from his enlistment in the Air Force in 1985. He just new that he had to enlist. Many times he has disparaged his choices. He did not learn what he would consider a useful trade during his stay in the military. After the Appalachian Trail, the next ten years of his life would be seemingly directionless. No one had any time for ethos, no one could see how ethos would pay the bills. He sometimes despared that he had ruined his life in pursuit of a foolish vision quest, the details of which he had long forgotten. He could no longer clearly describe what he saw in those visions, they hid from view so he could not find them again before their time. He only knew the next step, the next choice, he had to make---he had to buy a computer.

He had tried once before, while in the military, to learn about computers but with dismal results. Suffice it to say that it was not until 1997, eleven years later, that he would try again. But in these last three years, he has gone from knowing next to nothing about computers to becoming an MCSE! Everything he knows about computers he has learned in just these last few years...

Anyway, our webmaster had always toyed with the idea of thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail again someday and thats how the PC and the IPT came together. He was starting up a web page at Angelfire when all at once the idea for the IPT hit him like a ton of bricks. He quickly learned HTML to produce the Site and the rest, as they say, is history.

Through out everything, however, has been a deep unwavering ethos. Whether it is something reencarnational or genetic, his ethos was there even before he was aware of it. The International Peace Trail is merely a logical extension of this ethos.

So what is Ethos™? Recently we met with a sales rep for an organization named Ethos™. It was explained that this organization was in possession of a technology, of a mode of rational inquiry, that was being patented by its leader. That was pretty much it, no explanation of the mechanics involved, just an offer to "go-thru" the modules for the price of admission. It was clear they would provide no useful information without money. So to these people, it seemed to him, ethos was a business. You had to pay to play.

This bothered him for several reasons.
1.) In the Age of Aquarius five things should be free: Food, Housing, Medical and Legal Assistance and Education.That is to say, no one should not have these basic human rights due to lack of money.
2.)It is his most fervent belief that it is fundamentally unethical to withhold any information which has the potential to benefit others. If you are in possesion of knowledge which has the ability to help people, maybe even to save someones life, it is your solemn duty to share it freely without charge.

For example, Alcoholics Anonymous does not require those who attend its meetings to pay any enrollment fees to learn the 12 step program. It would be fundamentally unethical for them to do so.

3.)Helping others is its own reward. Profitting from the misfortunes of others is a denigration of any real ethos.

So what does ethos mean to us? To us, ethos is a word without any ethos in it. Rather, ethos is what you bring to ethos. Ethos is the fundamental principles which guide your life, it is what you give to the world whether you like it or not. Ethos is the way you play the game. If you are a self-serving son-of-a-bitch, then that is your ethos. If you are unconcerned with the repercussions of your actions, or your inactions, then that is your ethos. However, these are all examples of a weak ethos, of a lie disguised as ethos, not True Ethos itself. True Ethos has at it's core, the highest virtues you have to offer. It does not extort you, it does not require anything more than honest self-inquiry. True Ethos is the way of the Tao, it is the way of Service. True Ethos is self evident in the fruits of your labors. A True Ethos is a strong ethos, a weak ethos is a lie. For more information on True Ethos we recommend reading the teachings of Lao Tzu, specifically the Hua Hu Ching and theTao Te Ching.

For us, our ethos can best be exemplified by the IPT. It is our belief that ethos is what we leave behind, our gifts or our garbage. The International Peace Trail Project represents our desire to leave behind a gift, not garbage. Our ethos is to leave behind a self-preserving, self-sustaining gift for the future of all of Earth's creatures. It does not seek reward or recognition, it does not seek monetary gain. It seeks only to aver our highest aspirations to leave for the future a world worth living in. That is the ethos of the Peace Trail.

What's New?

©10/13/01999

Our Field Correspondent has been very busy lately, working on his MCSE. So far he has completed two exams:

70-058 Networking Essential
70--73 Windows NT Workstation 4.0

You may ask what that has to do with the Peace Trail. Well, its simple. We need an income that will allow us to one day hike the IPT. Currently, that is not even a remote possibility. With an MCSE Certification however, that should change. We estimate that as a Network Administrator our Field Correspondent should be able to make enough money to support the first two years of the thru-hike in about 5-6 years. Once things start rolling, however, we hope that we will be able to continue the journey to the end through the support of donations and sponsors. In the future, we hope to have T-shirts and merchandise available so please check back every now and then to see how things are progressing.
-Düg Fresh

Why A Peace Trail?

We live in a world that desperately needs a Peace Trail. Instead of a world of brotherhood, we live in a world filled with violence and hate. Instead of a world of harmonious coexistence, we live in a world that is hastening the apocalypse at breakneck speeds. The problem is systemic. It points to a worldwide breakdown of biblical proportions. But why? What is it that compells us besides the inertia of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Are we all so unhappy that we secretly desire a quick and painless death or are we really that dumb? Are we really too busy to see what we are doing or are we just too lost to care?

One of the beautiful things about the IPT is that it works on so many levels to redress these problems. It applies the interconnectivity of the internet to the precious ecosystems of the planet. Just as people all over the world are brought together through the World Wide Web, so too does the IPT bring the world together through a World Wide Park System. What's more, the IPT, if it becomes an Internationally recognized trail system, will provide a means for protecting the future of Earth's dwindling wilderness areas as well as the wildlife which inhabits them. As we rush headlong into the 21st century, the vital importance of the IPT cannot be overstated. Please join us in our efforts to make the International Peace Trail a reality. Write to your local representatives, write to the United Nations. Urge them to take an interest in making the International Peace Trail an officially designated Long Distance Path. If you would like more information on what you can do to help, please E-mail our Field Correspondent, Düg Fresh. Back to IPT

Email: fresh_dug@hotmail.com