Best 18 quotes of Steve Bivans on MyQuotes

After ripping through The Hobbit, I read The Lord of the Rings, and the darkness of that story enveloped me in a way that is impossible to explain. I was THERE, in a very real sense. The fear was palpable in the presence of the black-cloaked Ringwraiths, and I could taste the sulfurous fumes of Mt. Doom. I could smell the sweat of horses and hot leather and hear the clash of battle as I rode with the Rohan on the fields of the Pelennor. I bled and died with the sun-king, Theoden. I rose again with Eowyn’s defiance of the Witch King. I soared with the Eagles as they swept the broken and bloody body of Frodo and his companion Samwise the Brave from the smoking crags of the fiery mountain. There has never been such a story, and I don’t think there ever shall be again.

A mistake that a lot of people make, and I’ve been guilty of this as well, is that we assume that just because something is natural it is therefore safe, and ergo, good for us. I like to point out that cobras are natural too, but I don’t want to kiss one.

But of all the women, Éowyn is the strongest, quite frankly, because of her weakness: she's only human. She has no special powers, no immortality, only her innate grit and drive to be something more than just a shield-maiden. And nothing whatsoever will stay her on her course. In the end, she, and her faithful companion Merry, take down the Witch King HIMSELF! She kills the one servant of Sauron that no man can kill; she kills Fear itself in what is arguably the most dramatic moment in the books. I think it is significant that the embodiment of Fear in The Lord of the Rings is slain by a woman. In fact, only a woman is capable of doing so.

During a Facebook discussion awhile back, I posted something to the effect that we didn’t need GMOs and that no one did. While this was a generalization, I refused to retract it when a friend of a friend argued that I shouldn’t speak for everyone, and that we shouldn’t, “throw out the baby with the bathwater.” I would argue that the last thing we need on this planet, is a lot of two-headed babies. Toss the water, and whatever’s in it. GMOs simply have not, and I would argue further, probably never will be demonstrated to be safe, and we do not need them.

Have you ever been in a great mood, or at least a good one, then decided, “You know what, I’m going to troll through Facebook and see what’s happening with my friends.”? I have. I shouldn’t though. It’s a disco strangler of good days. It’s the Ted Bundy of good moods. One minute you’re cruising along and the next you’re chained in a moldy hole in someone’s basement, waiting to be transformed into some psycho’s personal Halloween mask, metaphorically speaking, mind you.

I had hit on the most positive solution to the world’s most negative problems. What we needed were a bunch of little, hairy Hobbits! Not large armies of Gondoreans and Rohirrim, just beer drinking, song-singing, riddle-solving, barrel-riding, pipe-weed-smokin’, second-breakfast-eatin’, long-walkin’ Hobbits!

I picked up The Hobbit. And I began to read. I was swept off to a green, green Shire in a far, far land, and my soul has never returned. I suppose it never will. Yes, my soul at the time wandered more in the smoking wastelands of Mordor or the Dead Marshes than Hobbiton, but wandering in Middle Earth, was superior to my own world in every way.

I swear, they need to make an app for Facebook that has little electrodes hooked up to our private parts, so when we see some idiot spouting off about something he really doesn’t know jack shit about, as soon as we reach for the keyboard, it sends 110 volts coursing through our dis-functioning erectiles, or better yet, through HIS, before he posts it to begin with.

I think that the root of Willful Ignorance, is Fear. We'll return to that in a minute. But the root of Fear, is Simple Ignorance, at least I think that our original Fear is rooted in simply not understanding the World around us: not knowing.

It’s time to step back and reexamine our hatred and let wrath subside. Are we striking out against the real problems: ignorance, fear, want, greed, and political disenfranchisement or just trying to find the most immediate scapegoat on which to lay the blame? Are we so busy blaming our fellow Hobbits that we’ve forgotten who is really behind the fouling of our Shire? Are we personally guilty of greed? Most of us are, to an extent. We need to reexamine our own desires, and make sure they are really needs instead of just wants. Poverty could be wiped out world wide, if enough modern Hobbits just said, “No! We will not stand for it anymore,” or if those at the top of the economic ladder really wanted to do so.

Much of our Fear, is based in the fear of loss. We fear losing our own lives. We fear death for our family and friends. We fear the loss of our means of survival. In the Western World that's tied up in the way we make money to support ourselves and families. In many parts of the World, it's more basic: food and water. We fear violence, oppression. We fear others.

The argument that the chemical and drug companies often make, to counter the growing movement of natural or alternative medicine is similar to my warning about kissing cobras. They will say things like, “Not all things natural are good for you” and “Even walking to the bathroom in the morning carries risks!” They then trot out extreme, obvious examples like drinking hemlock, or kissing cobras, people falling down stairs in their house, and the like. Okay Mr. Chemicalman, some natural things can kill you, like CEOs of chemical companies who poison almost everything they touch with their products? That’s assuming of course that CEOs are natural.

The power of words to deceive is a danger far exceeding any we might encounter from physical weapons. Sticks and stones can break bones! But words can lead worlds into ruin!

We live in a drug culture! Drugs are everywhere and touted as the panacea for every ailment in our society. We have drugs for hyper children, drugs for depression—some of the most insidious drugs ever—, drugs for allergies, drugs for acne, drugs for emphysema and drugs for erectile disfunction—maybe the most useful of them all. And let’s not forget the side effects of these wonder drugs! It’s cliche to even talk about drug advertisements and the laundry list of side effects tacked onto the end of them, usually rattled off at warp speed by someone on loan from the local auction house. I’ve seen ads for acne medicines that include side effects that are potentially fatal! Seriously? “Hey! Buy our Acne-Magic Drug! You’ll have crystal clear skin! In your coffin!” What the hell is wrong with us?

We need to return to harmony with Nature and with each other, to become what humans were destined to be, builders of gardens and Shires, hobbits (if you will), not Masters over creatures great and small.

What’s interesting is that most free-marketers don’t seem to want a free market at all, but a status quo market. The market in the United States is anything but free. If it were, big business would have to survive without corporate welfare to the tune of about $1 trillion (that’s trillion) in government subsidies, the majority of which, about $650 billion, go to the fossil fuel industry! They are living off of the public dole on subsidies totaling billions of dollars—that we hand out either directly, or through tax breaks for their big corporations—with the false assumption that they are creating jobs. They are not. They are creating yachts, Leer Jets, and McMansions with swimming pools.

What’s interesting is that most free-marketers don’t seem to want a free market at all, but a status quo market. The market in the United States is anything but free. If it were, big business would have to survive without corporate welfare to the tune of about $1 trillion (that’s trillion) in government subsidies, the majority of which, about $650 billion, go to the fossil fuel industry! They are living off of the public dole on subsidies totaling billions of dollar—that we hand out either directly, or through tax breaks for their big corporations—with the false assumption that they are creating jobs. They are not. They are creating yachts, Leer Jets, and McMansions with swimming pools.

You know what I really love the most in life? Food. Yep, just food. I love the cooking of food, the eating of food, the talking about food, the thinking about food, and the dreaming about food. Food, food, food. That’s what I love. Can there be anything more Hobbity than that? I reckon not.