“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Monday, October 2, 2023

The Cool America Manifesto 1

 COOL AMERICA FOUNDATION: a charity created by me to educate the public about global warming. Directors: myself, Dominic Boyer, Cymene Howe. 

Let's begin: 


Cool America: The Manifesto

Tim Morton


Part 1


Let me start by telling you a story. The story of how Buddhism came to Tibet. 


Tibet was a country of cowboys. Rugged, stubborn know-it-alls who had it all figured out thank you very much. Remind you of somewhere? 


The first attempts by Indian Buddhists at importing Buddhism were a total failure. Pandits pleaded with the cowboys, talking to them on and on about compassion and how they would go to hell if they didn’t follow the Buddha, and so on. 


Legend has it that whenever they tried to build a temple, the local deities would come and tear it apart. Whatever really happened, that’s pretty symbolic for “They just could not get through to the rugged cowboys who actually lived in the land they were trying to persuade so desperately.” 


This was terrible, right? For them, the cowboys were going to hell in a hand basket and the world would not be saved. 


Remind you of anyone or anything or any kind of tactic someone may have tried about something lolol….


That’s when Padmasambhava showed up. Padmasambhava was a magician, a tantric yogi. 


Padmasambhava didn’t bother with persuading people. 


He just blew the cowboys’ minds. He performed miracles. He flew. He resurrected people. He persuaded all the local deities to come onside and they became fierce, powerful, devoted protectors of the dharma. They went from destroying the temple to kissing the ass of Buddhism. 


Buddhism has been a rock-solid part of Tibet ever since. 


I think you can see where I’m going with this. 


And that’s where Cool America is going. 


PART 2


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