The Ship Is Sinking...

... lower the life boats:..

It Has Begun...

What's Next?...

Naivety is charming in a child; sad (and disturbing) in an adult i.e any fully functioning person over the age of 45... wake up people - the oligarchy rules!

And if you accept that as a truth, what are you going to DO about it?  Accept it and live under its shackles, or reject, resist, overthrow?

Maybe it's too late to do anything about it... 

I think we are beyond the point of no return... 

My 'sense' of what's happening in the world is usually about two years ahead of the curve... and it's usually pretty accurate - say somewhere between 80-100%...

And what I've been seeing/sensing coming (for about the last six months), is societal breakdown on the back of planet degradation, financial collapse, food and water shortages...

I'm not alone in these views; indigenous elders have been warning about this coming for hundreds (if not thousands) of years, western mystics have foreshadowed it, and even hard-headed academics who are not necessarily in tune with 'energy' are stepping out into the open on this...

Some are calling what is coming the "Post-Industrial Stone Age"...

And why do I think it's going to get so bad? 

WE ARE LIVING IN A CLOSED LOOP.... 

ENERGY CANNOT BE CREATED OR DESTROYED - IT CAN ONLY BE TRANSFORMED...

SO, IF WE ARE LIVING ON A PLANET THAT HAS FINITE ENERGY/RESOURCES, IT IS COMPLETELY ILLOGICAL TO THINK WE CAN HAVE INFINITE GROWTH... it just does not make sense, no matter how you look at it...

We're literally trashing our planet, contaminating and killing the earth and the waters and the air, damaging and disrupting natural cycles like the weather, driving other life-forms to extinction, and with our uncontrolled population growth, we've been spreading like a viral plague...

It's been said that if we wanted all people on the planet to live as westerners do, we'd need the resources of at least four Earths...

Most of the planet's wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of less than 3% of the planet's population.   Everything's been commodified.   Now it's not just the Third World poor who can't afford food, water or shelter - millions in the west are in the same boat...

Here in the US, the housing market has not yet finished its downward spiral; each week foreclosures go up and house prices go down...

The real unemployment/underemployment rate is hovering around 30%; 44 million people receive food stamps and 25% of American children are living in poverty.

This in the richest country in the world, while trillions of dollars are being spent on senseless wars/fighting for control of far off places.... 

In one news story, they tell us that X number of jobs have been created last month... at the next news bulletin, they say that unemployment has climbed yet again... NEVER ONCE, DO YOU GET BOTH SETS OF INFORMATION IN THE SAME NEWS STORY, so that you can tell the number of jobs lost EXCEED the number of jobs created...

Things are worse now than during the Depression, but no one wants to call it that; instead, this time we're living through the Great Recession!

The worst the 'experts' will say is that it will take several years to climb out of this pit...

But our way of life (social structure, economic and political philosophies) got us into this mess, and continuing on with the same ideas and actions will never get us out of it...

And I believe the oligarchs know this... but knowing this, they continue to push us all down this path... they appear willing, determined even, to suck the very LIFE out of us and the earth, the mother who carries us all...

So what's next?   Where do we take this knowledge and build on it?

Maybe the best we can do is get together with like-minded people...

Get as far off the grid as we can...

Create connections and networks and ways of living that make minimum impact on the earth and her resources and wait it out...

While we're waiting it out, support each other and work together to come up with a different system of social organisation - perhaps "thrivalism" in small communities, perhaps a resource-based economy... 

Maybe a "Triple P" society, where the focus is Planet, People, Prosperity...

Where, before we make any decision and take any action, we ask ourselves:

Is it good for the Planet?

Is it good for all the People?

Does it bring Prosperity (which is different to profit)?

If the answer to any of these questions is "no", then we scrap whatever the idea/plan/action is...

What do you think?

"Are We There Yet?"...

Indigenous elders from many traditions say we're in the final stages of the Last World...

The Mayan Calendar ends in December, 2012...

Is that a literal or metaphorical ending?

Does anyone have a sense of how crazy it has to get before this 'civilisation' implodes on itself?

What does the end point of societal implosion look like?

As my kids used to ask: "Are we there yet?"

Maybe someone should start a 'Doomsday Clock' device, giving a scale of craziness illustrating our descent into societal annihilation...

To tell how close we are, we just need to know what will be the end point...   

We then work backwards from there, to where we're at right now...

What incidents/examples of 'craziness' - OTHER THAN NUCLEAR DISASTER AND CLIMATE CHANGE - would be listed ... any ideas on content and scale?

Any comments? 

How Sad, Too Bad...

You're hungry? No money? Too bad...

You're cold? No money? Too bad...

You're tired and need a bed? No money? Too bad...

You're naked? No money? Too bad...

You're sick? No money? Too bad...

How sad, too bad...

 

I've been called "crass" in my time... 

I like to take things down to the unvarnished base... 

And then ask people: "what do you think about that now?"...

Most of them don't want to answer because then they're facing their own complicity in this inhumane nightmare we're all living on this planet...

 

 

Semi-random Thoughts...

Once upon a time... 

there was a woman called Michelle Obama, who opened a homeless shelter, food bank and soup kitchen in OUR great big empty White House...

and all state capitol buildings around the country did the same... housing in OUR houses for the homeless...

And Michelle served organic, White House garden-grown fruit and vegetables to the poor and homeless... 

... because she thought that if it was good enough for her children to eat healthy food, surely it was good enough for the homeless and hungry?...

 

 

 

 

 And at the same time, she insisted that all children have free access to the best in health care.   As a mother, she knew what it was like when her children were sick or hurt and she couldn't bear the thought that other children were unwell and in pain...

And her husband Barack made sure that all children in the US get the same level of quality education his daughters got at Sidwell Friends School - rich curriculum, small classes, fully-qualified, experienced teachers, no standardised testing etc... 

 

See, he agreed that all of America's children deserved the same quality of life his girls were enjoying... despite what the oligarchs were whispering in his ear...

 

And they all lived happily ever after...

THE END

 

Metamorphosis

Well, I've started several posts over the past 2.5 months and not completed any of them... they're still sitting in the "draft" queue and I don't know if they will ever appear, which is something of a shame because they've got great images and music and some almost profound(!) thoughts...

But there you go.... that's metamorphosis for you...

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." 

Kafka's masterpiece, The Metamorphosis, is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. 

Metamorphosis - a process of transformation, change from one state of being to another, which for me has defied clear articulation...

Not even sure I can now describe the process, or what the outcome is shaping up to be.... think I'm at the point where the butterfly has emerged, but its wings haven't yet dried enough to fly... 

It was about cutting the final ties that bind me to the material world, as it manifests itself on this planet... casting myself adrift, deliberately, knowing there is no going back...

It was very intense and disorienting... a bit like the feelings I experienced when my parents died, one in 1994 and the other in 1995... Although I was an adult in my late 30s, with three children of my own, I felt I had been orphaned and left quite without any anchor/safe harbour in the world...

Some phrases that are relevant:

I no longer recognise or answer to any authority outside of myself...

We all are at war.... there is a war going on within each of us, and on the entire planet, between expansion and contraction, love and fear...

I had known that intellectually, but had not accepted it emotionally or spiritually - which was BIG and hard!

And it's time to pick a side.... not choosing is still picking a side... and I have picked a side...

I have no attachment to this society/culture we live in... it is dysfunctional to the core and I no longer resonate with it... I have to create a way to live outside it...

I will live my life as I see fit, according to my understanding of Divine harmony and balance, not man-made laws...

I know there are consequences that come with making that choice, and I accept them in full awareness...

Rejecting the status quo brings with it "push back", but I cannot live an authentic life without rejecting the status quo... and it will kill me to live inauthentically... 

I have come to understand that all "awake and aware" people through all time have had to make that choice and live with/through what comes next... they've known full well what would follow making that choice, and have continued anyway - and that's what I have to do... AND I ACCEPT THAT... AND THE FEAR IS GONE... AND I FEEL SOLID...

...and now that I have that clear in my soul, heart and head, I expect my external world to change - AS ABOVE, SO BELOW, AS WITHIN, SO WITHOUT... 

I wonder what it will look like...