- As a category of human communication, disaster prediction is flourishing, and with excellent reason. Emerging from widely different perspectives and employing different approaches, many of us unhappily sense exponentially growing difficulties looming on the murkily complex horizon. Differences in individual awareness, experience and psychological bias very naturally preclude agreement about the gory details. We even argue about the basic meaning and potential for damage of the events we are observing. But perhaps all who perceive the likelihood of oncoming catastrophes might at least agree on this much: the majority of human beings do not even begin to comprehend the actual significance of what is going on all around them. We might agree that what appears blithely disguised as business as usual on the surface of the world is, in reality, a bizarre and ultimately hopeless global network built entirely on the denial of the law of cause and effect.
- No matter how assiduously the daily industrial-strength tissue of lies is spun, denying the discernible deterioration of our sick civilization, and no matter how many have invested their lives in believing and sustaining these lies: unpleasant realities are lumbering inexorably toward us. Experts in all fields are dogtrotted out by the truckload, and dutifully trundled through the mills of mass media, in order continually to bury and re-bury any signs of incipient awareness in the populace that all is not well. Official repertoires consisting of studied stupidities, frank falsehoods, diagrams for dummies, simpering smirks and posturing pomposities are designed to semaphore to a somnambulant citizenry that everything is under control. In fact, mounting evidence points entirely to a contrary conclusion. And in the face of our stunningly complicated world problems, the toddler's cartoon version of life, offered by those in power through the mass media's obedient mouth, is one of the most shocking aspects of our predicament. Of a multitude of symptoms indicating rampant human lunacy presently operating on a grand scale, the continual insulting offerings of Frankenspeak in lieu of meaningful communication is perhaps the most directly alarming, disgusting and telling.
- It is not hard to fathom the hidden political and economic causes of the oncoming upset of our earthly applecart. At the same time the material achievements of the 20th century have brought incalculable temporary benefits to many, conveniently ignoring the hidden costs of such progress has eroded human consciousness to a degree beyond all our reckoning. It is not that material comfort need ever have been purchased at the price of sane and ethical existence- but that is nevertheless the path that was taken. It is not that a decent standard of living is a problem per se, or that in and of itself reasonable levels of civilized materialism represent some sort of inevitable wrongdoing. The criminal activity was all in how we got here, in the forms our corporate-born standard of living has taken, and in how we have allowed worldly powers to sustain themselves. It is everything we have chosen to ignore along the way, in order to enjoy prosperity at all costs, that has added up to our coming undoing. Our collective complacent refusal to look behind the scenes into secret and wholly unregulated corporate, government and military activities has resulted in a nightmarish world where the actual state of things is the polar opposite of what is told to and subsequently believed by the majority of the public.
- This civilization of ours, so outwardly attractive to so many, has been constructed over a hidden foundation of widespread institutional theft, deadly levels of pollution, illegal secrecy, drugs and armaments empires, draconian legalisms, and the extraordinarily cynical manipulation of large segments of the population through highly sophisticated forms of genuine mind control offered as "news" and "entertainment". Behind the scenes this is no utopia, as advertised, but dystopia: a realm where all is, contrary to expectations and common belief, in the worst possible condition. Furthermore, dystopia is disintegrating before our eyes, and out from under our feet, even as the absurd efforts to pretend that all is well redouble. We see the ever-more-desperate desire of the many to mutually sustain their belief in a doomed system of interlocking institutions fuelled by ruthless and unregenerate human greed and the unbridled lust for domination. It is not that most people are innately incapable of observing the crumbling foundations of their own unthinking dependencies. Rather, people are still subconsciously choosing to avoid the pain and fear of confronting what is already well underway. Most of the so-called grown-ups on our planet still fearfully turn their minds away from the unwanted spectacle of oncoming troubles. A large percentage of the human race, facing the necessity of giving their highest quality attention to our common dangers, is instead frantically increasing the dosage of self-delusion.
- On the whole, people have been avoiding all honest investigation into the genuine causes of galloping disintegration in human institutions. Yet this will change, and is clearly changing now, as vast shadowy shell games are inevitably exposed to glaring broad daylight. No sooner is the essential trickery-fakery of an institutional lie exposed, than people reel with shock and outrage. Yet it is precisely a long collective agreement to invest blindly in institutionalized criminal greed, and the refusal to know what corporations and governments are actually doing, that inevitably results in the very disintegration now so indignantly confronted. Anyone who wanted to could easily have understood this inevitable scenario long ago. If you asked individuals whether or not they believed their lives could safely be built on criminal or unethical activity, almost all would scoff and say "Of course not." Yet people have pretended that these same basic principles mysteriously do not apply to large human institutions and governments. As if humans in groups might magically be exempt from the great moral necessities of life governing all individuals who wish to live sanely.
- By their own decisions and consensual collusion, many intelligent people have preferred to ride the greed-powered national gravy train, in self-willed blindness to the visibly immoral and ugly underpinnings of longstanding government, corporate and military chicanery. Naturally, as institutions begin to come unglued, we will all pay dearly for the willful self-deception of those of us who chose to hitch their earthly welfare to the dark forces of "civilized" corruption. There will be ever-louder howls of injured innocence from the hordes of victims as our dystopia comes apart at the seams. Yet one might give most normal human beings credit for the ability to discern the difference between ethical and unethical practices on many levels, if and when they care to do so. The alternative is to believe that the majority of people are far too stupid to tell the difference between nominally ethical behavior and rank criminality. On the face of it, while possible, this appears unlikely. Rather, most people seem to have assumed the ostrich position for the sake of short-term personal benefits, and then are astounded and outraged when reality brutally overtakes the forces of denial.
- It is not only dysfunctional human institutions that are breaking down, despite all efforts to pretend otherwise. The earth's natural systems are in a state of breathtakingly rapid degradation and subsequent mutation into who-knows-what new versions of themselves. The earth as a whole is simultaneously undergoing both dramatic climate change and a systemic breakdown from toxic shock. And yet such a rapid accumulation, combining, and coalescing of disastrous forces is not causing the slightest change yet in collective human behavior at levels where it might make any difference. If ever there is a setting in which calamities are most likely to befall the human race, it is the current one. A sinister synergy is underway, composed of corrupt worldly authorities, a relatively apathetic and self-victimizing populace, severe spiritual and physical pollution resulting from a world powered by uncontrolled greed and totalitarian tendencies, and drastic changes occurring in the earth's natural systems.
- Recipes for disasters don't come with more potently volatile ingredients than these. And for some, no sudden catastrophe or combination of disasters will come as any surprise. A certain percentage of human beings throughout history, aware of being caught in cyclic periods of wholesale degeneration, have always instinctively felt the truth that life itself will never suffer the proliferation of human insanity beyond a certain point. The sole remaining question some of us ask ourselves these days is exactly what that point might be. In all human cultures, there have always been those who have warned people again and again that we cannot live on lies or thrive on degeneration. We have always been free to ignore such warnings, but we certainly have never been free of the fatal consequences of such ignorant decisions. Whenever human beings abandon the principles of reality for the foundationless hallucinations of egotism, willful ignorance, selfishness and greed, disaster must and will come to raze such illusions to the ground. This is as implacably true for civilizations as it is for individuals.
- Mankind is inherently designed to understand what it means to live an honorable life. The suffering required before human beings freely accept this fact might be long and terrible, yet this reality must and will be made manifest. We may only shorten, or lengthen interminably, the quality and quantity of misery involved in accepting the fact that we are meant to become decent, reasonable and just. Humanity's age-old self-serving habit of offering meaningless lip service to spiritual truth is having very bad results. Whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, we are endowed with conscience, intelligence, free will, the capacity to love, and the commensurate responsibilities for manifesting these astonishing gifts we have been given. Spiritual stewardship includes direct responsibility for the right employment of all of our capacities, in every aspect of our lives here. There is no such thing as being spiritual, for instance, while blissfully ignoring the implications of the present cesspool civilization has become. This world is one House and the inhabitants and systems it depends on are woven into a single interactive web of life. All efforts to pretend otherwise, in order to avoid the strenuous difficulties of solving seemingly intractable problems, are doomed to eventual destruction.
- The general attitude of obliviousness and refusal to regulate worldly authorities has generated a thick psychic fog in which malevolent forces have been operating with near-perfect immunity. Most people are still settling for a position of complete passivity in relation to the entire external world, as if half-watching a rather boring television show. Extremes of disgraceful behavior, manifesting everywhere in the highest levels of military, government and corporate power, have been accepted, or barely registered, or excused as "the price of doing business", or perceived as a disgusting display about which nothing ever can be done. Meanwhile, suggestively interconnected natural and human systemic failures, likely to be of immense consequence to us all, are perceivable everywhere, and increasing by the day. As it is, those of us considered "alarmists" are dismissed with a sad shake of the head as psychologically mal-conditioned doom-mongers. And far worse yet, many are now summarily categorized as "traitors" for having the temerity to observe and comment in public on various outrageously wicked, dangerous and idiotic activities underway in the name of preserving "civilization". When venal, frightened, hopelessly dishonest and secretive authorities designate the most thoughtful and concerned segment of a population as "traitors", we may take it as one more certain sign that the disintegration of dystopia is proceeding apace.
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- Comment
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- From Sheryl Jackson
moonfyre1@earthlink.net
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- I have to say that St. Diane Harvey is the most profound author that you have ever had on your site. Her ability to turn a phrase is unrivaled in today's literate field. She speaks with a divinity that she herself denies. But the monastic way she lives is the most obvious tell of her spiritual journey. I am so sorry that what she writes is above the heads and below the feet of the Average Sleeple of this world, but for me I would walk barefoot over busted Budweiser bottles to read what she writes. I know all of which she speaks and it gives me great joy to know that I am not alone in my "traitorous insanity". I never once as a child believed that I was going to be Benedict Arnold when I grew up, but according to the BabyBush I most certainly am. I imagine the gendarmes will appear any day now that I am, and have been, so vocal about 9/11 and about medical marijuana that the CIA,corporate/military government cannot control. They are against anyone working on their own cars, being able to build without contractors, farming free food, basically being self-sufficient. That is what made the American People great and strong. Our ability to maintain our families, and conduct our business without corporations controlling us. That is what the true dangers of MSN and computers are all about. AS we become addicted to them, we will be required to use them more and more which will raise the online prices exponentially. Great dangers lurk out there in cyberspace. Not the least of which will be control and access to all of us at any time the government decides to take us to jail. We live in terrible times...
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