Intro to the 7 Deadly Metals & all their Deadly Kin with selected aphorisms on cultural ideals

Hexavalent Chromium!

Be thy name a challenge not only for now

but for the future generations of industrial nations

which make toxic to others that which they cultivate.

Cultural Survival

It is our good wisdom which informs us of the ideal: that which you cultivate shall be a bane to your enemies and a paradise to your friends. This phrase has a simple ring of truth to it. You might call this ideal the first step in the Cultural Jungle, though it may seem like all there is at times.

The Slippery Toxicity of the Cultural Ideal

Perhaps human culture will never again be the freewheeling, rocking and rolling, raving and roller-coastering time which it came to be in the 20th Century. Will this past century be known in the future as the age of the love affair between Disaster & Capital under the banner of Abundance — where age old human dreams finally came to be weighed at the scales of Mendacity, to borrow a word from a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Where fun in the sun, partying and the romance of cities full of lights in the night sky ruled the thoughts of our world… where the challenge was to open the soul to the vulnerabilities of human love, and the dreams of upward economic mobility and human equality trumped our awareness of the impact our cultural evolution has had in trashing the world for individual opportunity and the wealth of a few, which is not to speak at all of the effects of patriotism and tribal dominance. We have chosen the American Dream over the truly difficult prospect of opening one’s heart to other species of life on this planet when it is culturally inconvenient to do so. We live on lands which we have thoroughly destroyed for our own Homely Comforts from the ravages of nature to forge our own castles in the wastes of time.

We often forget the first principles of life in our technologically enhanced cultural world: life does not and can not grow in a vacuum, and thus you are never alone. Nor does life grow from computer parts or hexavalent chromium. Life needs life in order to survive and grow. Therefore in some respects our dreams which…