Responding to the Crisis

[GliderGuider]

Below is an excerpt of my latest attempt to bang the drum for a broader, system-level perspective on the looming crisis, and to promote a human, as opposed to a technological, response to it:

Responding to the Crisis

You need a lot of converging failures to crash an airplane, let alone to cause what we're seeing in the world right now. Unfortunately for many of us, what we're seeing is a collapse.

The main reason we don't yet recognize what's happening to us as a collapse is because the true nature of what is waiting for us just around the corner is still only visible to a very few. Most of us view the situation as though we were peeking into a tiny keyhole, through which we can see only a small section of the vast room beyond. Those pieces that are out of our field of view complicate the situation rather dramatically.

[DemReadingDU]

1. Thank you for putting your thoughts in one posting

Like you say: preparations revolve around changes in attitude.

Ok, I'm in the process of attitude changes, but it's not something that can be easily done. This takes time, but I'm getting there. More so than my family and friends, who still don't see anything coming.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. I really liked the analogy of a "being attacked by a giant snail."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=187337&mesg_id=187337

It's hard to whip up concern for a creeping threat whose predicted advance can be compared to "being attacked by a giant snail."

Some people see trouble coming, but they feel no real sense of urgency.

[tama]

3. From someone

who's gone through a lot of the process of attitude changes and has some experience of the pains that may be involved, some thoughts.

It's an awakening, a rebirth. Every path is unique, but all paths share. There may be difficult moments - and then some. Our worst fear is fear of death, perhaps that is the source of all fear - when that fear has been faced and overcome, life really just begins.

Beyond the usual notions of good and bad - the codependent of "dialectical" opposites, there is something we can call 'basic goodness', being itself, as is. When grounded in basic goodness, joy and sorrow of mere being and breathing... letting thoughts come and go as they do but not getting carried away with them, it comes clearer that systems that are destructive and suicidal and oppressive together their parts don't need our hate and anger and frustration - though such feelings cannot nor should be denied, as lying and self-betrayal does no good - especially because negative feelings and response mechanisms only feed those systems, they need our compassion and love. This applies to both directions, towards "inside" and "outside".

In difficult moments, remember that no matter how lonely you feel, you also are not. You are grounded in basic goodness, you're sorrow and frustration and loneliness, just like your love, is shared by countless others.

Taking long walks and often in forest - or desert or mountain or jungle or swamp or tundra or garden etc. - is a great healing force and source of strength.

[GliderGuider]

4. Thank you.

The words of someone else traveling on their path are sweet music.

Have you found you get in trouble when you express the ideas of moving beyond the good/evil dialectic, and not feeding the evil with your outrage? Perhaps you've even been accused of "excusing evil"? Fortunately even those accusations are simply another part of what is in the moment.

Solitude and mindfulness are essential, as is deep reconnection with nature. It's all a part of de-alienating our selves. Spring is coming -- even up here in frozen Canada -- bringing with it the time of quickening. As above, so below.

[tama]

6. We are all machines

and only by accepting in full honesty that we are machines of linear causality and determinism - aggregates of causes, as buddhists describe karma - observing without judgement how we machines behave, slowly gaining understanding of how our mechanisms work, can we became and be also Something Else besides mechanical puppets. Causes, especially those hidden in subconsciousness, when seen and understood but not judged good or bad, tend to loose at least some of their causative power.

One strong mechanism of complexly social apes like us is partisanship - "us against them" and then "with us or against us" etc, the basic mechanism behind all scape-goting in all forms. That is very much the story of DU and other similar partisan forums - though not certainly the only story -, blaming everything on the Other (party and parties), not seeing any responsibility for the conceived evils ourselves in order to keep hanging to the "good" self-image. IIRC Jung calls this very basic mechanism "projecting".

Sometimes I think that perhaps it would have been better if in the name of "civilization" had we not abandoned ritualistic scapegoating e.g. like they did in ancient Athens - each year selecting couple poor bastards and beating them ('farmakos' is what the scape goat was called in Athens, same word in different gender from the word meaning poison-medicin (farmakon)) to pulp in ritualistic scapegoating. At least, compared to scapegoating of Shamans, Jews, Commies, Gypsies etc. etc. etc. in Which hunts at the dawn of Enlightened Modern Age, Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, McCarthy's America etc. etc. etc.

[GliderGuider]

8. You understand.

Defusing the unconscious causes of our behaviour by bringing them into awareness is the first step toward liberation. It's hard to do because of the way we are -- one of the things we humans are best at is hiding our motivations from ourselves. We need techniques to slip past the guardians of our egoic selves and access the unconscious indirectly. Such techniques exist -- ritual is one means, as is meditation -- but they don't find much favour in modern technocratic cultures. The pharmakos ritual you mention is one such. Most religious rituals at least began with that goal, though most went off the rails when the priests realized what a wonderful social control tool they had. The vision quest seems to combine elements of both ritual and meditation along with reconnection to the natural world, which is probably why it is singularly powerful.

One big problem westerners have is the tyranny of the mind. "I think, therefore I am." Between that and dualism, Decartes has much to answer for.

In order to avoid the "priesthood problem" I think helps to develop some sense of anarchos -- the state of being without rulers. I know a strong thread of anarchism runs through the work of my chosen teacher, Osho.

[tama]

9. You touch a very itchy issue

I feel closeness to both ecoanarchism (/anarchoprimitivism) and "shamanism" (in the lack of a better word), but these "scenes" are driven by complexities and (IMHO creative) contradictions that often seem to be mutually exclusive. Or perhaps, exclusive more from the anarchist world view. Zerzan explicates that position in his case against symbolic and hence, shamans and shamanhood.

Fundamentally, as I see and feel, both ways are about opening up new possibilities, not fixing a certain future and fixating on it. And then, life itself is a contradiction...

[GliderGuider]

10. Nicely put.

I've been very uncomfortable from the start with Zerzan's rejection of the symbolic. While I understand where he's coming from, it doesn't seem as useful as other aspects of AP. It's hard to imagine what a fully non-symbolic culture might look like, let alone whether it would be any "better" than one that was still symbolic but simply better integrated. I would expect that any being with a neocortex is going to suffer some degree of alienation...

As you imply, any successful response, whether technical, social, philosophical or spiritual, will entail using all the ideas, tools and techniques available to to expand our horizon of possibility.

It sounds like we would have a lot to talk about over a beer.

[tom_paine]

23. Such an excellent conversation. I hope I am not intruding, but I think I have something to add

What you said, Paul, struck me, "We need techniques to slip past the guardians of our egoic selves and access the unconscious indirectly. Such techniques exist -- ritual is one means, as is meditation -- but they don't find much favor in modern technocratic cultures."

In fact, the situation I think is far less benign than you paint. Why? Because when you say "such techniques exist" and "they don't find much favor in modern technocratic cultures", it's true, but quite frankly I WISH that was the only force at work here.

Consider the vast, nearly-inexhaustibly financed reservoir of the "counter-techniques", with millions upon millions of people a day, every day, spending their entire working lives just giving thought to this one issue, which is how to separate people from their souls, dissociate them from their conscience by STRENGTHENING the ignorance of the "egoic guardians" and making us as un-self-aware as possible, so that we may be more easily manipulated.

I speak here not of religion, but of the advertising, PR, marketing, the psychology of manipulation and "professional lying".

Religion, you see, was designed in a haphazard way, by people with no more than an instinctual knowledge of the mechanics of the human mind, and a thirst for domination and control.

These other techniques have been scientifically tuned and calibrated, by literally billions and billions of person-hours and trillions and trillions of dollars over the past 70 years.

I guess my point is, it is not just the fact that the techniques you speak of find no favor in Western Cultures, it's that the Western Cultures, either inadvertently, or purposely, have created gigantic edifices to make those techniques absolutely unfathomable for all people (if it could achieve it's final goals completely), make people completely dominated by psychological manipulations of their subconscious, unaware of how to defend it or that it's even happening.

So, quite frankly, to even dream of bringing enlightenment and self-awareness techniques forward, the current Western Monstrous Edifice of Psychological Control, which is the antithesis of the Enlightenment, it is the Totalitarian's Toolkit, and would have to be discredited and understood.

But that isn't going to happen. If advertisers were suddenly forced (if such could even be done, it smacks too much of totalitarian control) to cease and desist using subconsciously manipulative advertisements, the advertising business would teeter and crash pretty immediately, I think, because the "market value" of such ads would drop precipitously, considered much less effective because they do not contain psychological subconscious manipulations, long the staple and "active ingredient" of advertising.

I understand that I am talking of this on somewhat of a lower plane, but I think it's important to articulate the component that spends billions a year to ensure that a spark of enlightenment cannot be kindled in controlled, manipulated minds. This effect is most hideously significant in the USA but we are kidding ourselves if we think the monstrously huge and lucrative industry has not penetrated every nation, to one degree or another.

Anyway, that's my two cents to an already very interesting conversation. Hope it added something.

[GliderGuider]

24. You're right, of course.

The power holders in our culture recognized very early on that the best form of social control was one that the person to be controlled used on themselves. It's easy to teach, because it piggy-backs on our normal socialization -- it's a short step from, "Obey your parents" to "Obey those in power."

It started with religion, and not just Christianity. You can see it at work as well in the Indian caste system that is self-controlled through the Hindu belief in karma. With the advent of modern scientific methods, this technique gained great power in the 1920s as corporations created the consumer society through advertising directed at our unconscious, instinctive impulses for power, status and mating opportunities.

Something wonderful and profound seems to be happening right now though. The results of this relentless programming are being revealed as socially, spiritually and ecologically toxic. The psychic pressure this has created is causing a rebellion of sorts, starting with individuals that then coalesce into communities of interest. some of them are using the very tools developed to enslave them (like advertising directed at instinctual urges) as instruments of liberation.

I agree that the vast weight and span of the social control mechanisms makes it unlikely that the entire mass of humanity will awaken any time soon. However, you don't need everybody to wake up, any more than every cell in a caterpillar needs to become an imaginal cell to trigger the metamorphosis. That's the beauty of a catalyst - you need very little of it in comparison to the total mass of the reaction.

Sometimes all it takes is one single person, and everything changes. There is a lot more than one person making the shift today. Read Paul Hawken's book "Blessed Unrest" -- there are millions of us, spread out aropund the globe like antibodies in our civilization's blood stream.

[guardian]

25. alternative to meditation

"We need techniques to slip past the guardians of our egoic selves and access the unconscious indirectly."

Mescaline also works.

[GliderGuider]

27. Yes, it does (edited)

That's why psychoactive plants have such a long history in shamanism. Peyote, mushrooms, ayahuasca -- they can all open the doors of perception. And the imagery is much better than what you normally get meditating...

Edited to add:

This is probably one of the reasons for the War on Drugs. The philosophy of the '60s counterculture was directly threatening to the guardian institutions of our culture, and the primary counterculture technology was psychedelic drugs. There was a massive crackdown on such drugs, coincidentally just when cocaine flooded the market. Now, cocaine is not a portal to the unconscious by any stretch of the imagination, and there are persistent rumours that the shift from acid to cocaine was a substitution ploy by The Man. After all, cocaine presents much less of an existential threat to the power hierarchy, not least because you need a job to afford it. No turning on, tuning in and dropping out if you're hooked on cocaine.

[tama]

31. The Herb

especially when consistently used over long periods is a great spiritual teacher. Very introspective and quite gentle in suffocating the excesses of ego and self-importance - not least because of the constant embarrassments it keeps providing. :)

It should be obligatory. Just say no to mere legalization, make Herb a civic duty!

[tom_paine]

29. ROFL. I'll take a pass on that, guy. n/t

[tama]

30. Very important point

I would like to add Western medicinal practice and the materialistic foundation of its psychological dogma to the list - medicalizing and medicating individual spiritual crisis or it's symptoms (diagnozed as "severe depression" "psychosis" etc.) with pills in attempt to "normalize" people back into the system that itself is very sick.

[GliderGuider]

33. Paul Levy is a canonical example of the medicalization of spiritual experience

http://www.awakeninthedream.com/bio.html

In 1981 Paul Levy had a life-changing spiritual awakening, in which he began to wake up to the dream-like nature of reality. During the first year of his spiritual emergence, Paul was hospitalized a number of times, and was diagnosed with having had a severe psychotic break. Much to his surprise, he was told that he had a chemical imbalance and had manic-depressive (bi-polar) illness, and would have to live with his illness for the rest of his life. Fortunately, he was able to quickly extricate himself from the medical and psychiatric establishment. Little did the doctors realize that he was taking part in some sort of spiritual awakening/shamanic initiation process, which at times mimicked psychosis but in actuality was an experience of a far different order. In 1993, after many years of struggling to contain and integrate his experiences, he started to teach about what he was realizing. He has been in private practice for fifteen years, assisting others who are spiritually emerging and beginning to wake up to the dreamlike nature of reality. In a dream come true, psychiatrists now consult with him and send him patients.

[tama]

35. There's a very resent study

from Finland showing that mental disorders by type are highly local in nature. E.g. those from Northern Finland (Samiland - shamanland) have three time more likelihood of being diagnozed with psychosis than rest of the population. What matters is place of birth, not place of residence.

[tom_paine]

34. That was very well said. n/t

[wuvuj]

5. Some are stealing lifeboats...

...some are singing happy songs with the band...some are freaking out...some ask "is the ship really sinking?"...most just do as they're told....and pretend everything will be OK....and I'm doing all of the above....just to be sure.... :shrug:

[tama]

7. Sure of what? n/t

[wuvuj]

11. Well...I wouldn't want to do the wrong thing.

:woohoo:

[tama]

12. Wrong in what respect?

This could go on for a long time - or not, if you decide that would be the wrong thing... :)

[wuvuj]

13. Confused?

...the end.

[tama]

14. As in Apocalypse Now?

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need... of some... strangers hand
In a... desperate land

Lost in a roman... wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the kings highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby

Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake... he's old, and his skin is cold

The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and we'll do the rest

The blue bus is callin us
The blue bus is callin us
Driver, where you taken us

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and... then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door... and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother... I want to... fuck you

Cmon baby, take a chance with us
Cmon baby, take a chance with us
Cmon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin a blue rock
On a blue bus
Doin a blue rock
Cmon, yeah

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

[wuvuj]

15. You think you know me...

...and I do know you. I deal with a good bit of this...but remember I know the source.

It's all cycles...death and rebirth. Illusion and truth. What is....is....and how you experience it depends on what you understand. Maybe you think you understand more than you really do? You need to get yourself an honest job.

[tama]

16. Nope

I don't think I know you. There.

[GliderGuider]

17. This is like watching two Tibetan Buddhists playing Chinese checkers

Or something.

Fun, anyway :-)

[tama]

18. If it

appears as a game, then why do you feel excluded from the number, do you?

[GliderGuider]

19. Excluded?

Nope. Simply commenting that it's not the sort of discussion we get very often on this board. It's fun to see.

[tama]

20. This is the end

is the song of an Oidipus, about Oidipus killing his father and fucking his mother. What gods first, men second. The first or rather the second oedipal story is that of Kronos, who ate his children so that time would not pass but Golden Age would stay:

"In ancient Greek myths, Cronus envied the power of his father, the ruler of the universe, Ouranos. Ouranos drew the enmity of Cronus' mother, Gaia, when he hid the gigantic youngest children of Gaia, the hundred-armed Hecatonchires and one-eyed Cyclopes, in Tartarus, so that they would not see the light. Gaia created a great adamant sickle and gathered together Cronus and his brothers to persuade them to kill Ouranos. Only Cronus was willing to do the deed, so Gaia gave him the sickle and placed him in ambush. When Ouranos met with Gaia, Cronus attacked him with the sickle by cutting off his genitals, castrating him and casting the severed member into the sea. From the blood (or, by a few accounts, semen) that spilled out from Ouranos and fell upon the earth, the Gigantes, Erinyes, and Meliae were produced. From the member that was cast into the sea, Aphrodite later emerged.<3> For this, Ouranos threatened vengeance and called his sons titenes (according to Hesiod meaning "straining ones," the source of the word "titan", but this etymology is disputed) for overstepping their boundaries and daring to commit such an act.

In an alternate version of this myth, a more benevolent Cronus overthrew the wicked serpentine Titan Ophion. In doing so, he released the world from bondage and for a time ruled it justly.

After dispatching Ouranos, Cronus re-imprisoned the Hecatonchires, the Gigantes, and the Cyclopes and set the dragon Campe to guard them. He and Rhea took the throne of the world as king and queen. This period of Cronus' rule was called the Golden Age, as the people of the time had no need for laws or rules; everyone did the right thing, and immorality was absent.
Painting by Peter Paul Rubens of Cronus devouring one of his children.

Cronus learned from Gaia and Ouranos that he was destined to be overcome by his own son, just as he had overthrown his father. As a result, although he sired the gods Demeter, Hera, Hades, Hestia, and Poseidon by Rhea, he swallowed them all as soon as they were born to preempt the prophecy. When the sixth child, Zeus, was born Rhea sought Gaia to devise a plan to save them and to eventually get retribution on Cronus for his acts against his father and children. Rhea secretly gave birth to Zeus in Crete, and handed Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, also known as the Omphalos Stone, which he promptly swallowed, thinking that it was his son.

Rhea kept Zeus hidden in a cave on Mount Ida, Crete. According to some versions of the story, he was then raised by a goat named Amalthea, while a company of Kouretes, armored male dancers, shouted and clapped their hands to make enough noise to mask the baby's cries from Cronus. Other versions of the myth have Zeus raised by the nymph Adamanthea, who hid Zeus by dangling him by a rope from a tree so that he was suspended between the earth, the sea, and the sky, all of which were ruled by his father, Cronus. Still other versions of the tale say that Zeus was raised by his grandmother, Gaia.

Once he had grown up, Zeus used a poison given to him by Gaia to force Cronus (Kronos or Kronus) to disgorge the contents of his stomach in reverse order: first the stone, which was set down at Pytho under the glens of Mount Parnassus to be a sign to mortal men, then the goat, and then his two brothers and three sisters. In other versions of the tale, Metis gave Cronus an emetic to force him to disgorge the children, or Zeus cut Cronus' stomach open. After freeing his siblings, Zeus released the Gigantes, the Hecatonchires, and the Cyclopes, who forged for him his thunderbolts. In a vast war called the Titanomachy, Zeus and his brothers and sisters, with the help of the Gigantes, Hecatonchires, and Cyclopes, overthrew Cronus and the other Titans. Afterwards, many of the Titans were confined in Tartarus. Some Titans were not banished to Tartarus. Atlas, Cronus, Epimetheus, Menoetius, Oceanus and Prometheus are examples of Titans who were not imprisoned in Tartarus following the Titanomachy. Gaia bore the monster Typhon to claim revenge for the imprisoned Titans, though Zeus was victorious. Accounts of the fate of Cronus after the Titanomachy differ. In Homeric and other texts he is imprisoned with the other Titans in Tartarus. In Orphic poems, he is imprisoned for eternity in the cave of Nyx. Pindar describes his release from Tartarus, where he is made King of Elysium by Zeus. In another version, the Titans released the Cyclopes from Tartarus, and Cronos was awarded the kingship among them, beginning a Golden Age.

Other children Cronus is reputed to have fathered include Chiron, by Philyra.

Cronos is again mentioned in the Sibylline Oracles, particularly book three, which makes Cronos, 'Titan' and Iapetus, the three sons of Ouranos and Gaia, each to receive a third division of the Earth, and Cronos is made king over all. After the death of Ouranos, Titan's sons attempt to destroy Cronos' and Rhea's male offspring as soon as they are born, but at Dodona, Rhea secretly bears her sons Zeus, Poseidon and Hades and sends them to Phrygia to be raised in the care of three Cretans. Upon learning this, sixty of Titan's men then imprison Cronos and Rhea, causing the sons of Cronos to declare and fight the first of all wars against them. This account mentions nothing about Cronos either killing his father or attempting to kill any of his children."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronus

[GliderGuider]

21. Of what?

Well, the clock says it's time to close now
I guess I'd better go now
I'd really like to stay here all night
The cars crawl past all stuffed with eyes
Street lights share their hollow glow
Your brain seems bruised with numb surprise
Still one place to go
Still one place to go
Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen
Warm my mind near your gentle stove
Turn me out and I'll wander baby
Stumblin' in the neon groves

Well, your fingers weave quick minarets
Speak in secret alphabets
I light another cigarette
Learn to forget, learn to forget
Learn to forget, learn to forget

Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen
Warm my mind near your gentle stove
Turn me out and I'll wander baby
Stumblin' in the neon groves

Well the clock says it's time to close now
I know I have to go now
I really want to stay here
All night, all night, all night

[tama]

22. As Heidegger

the Author of 'Sein und Zeit' said:
"Nur noch ein Gott können uns retten".

Why not call that one more god Time? Time is friendly, Time is good, Time heals the wounds.

Then when times of Time's Godhood, only utter fools would dare to manage and measure Time, The(ir) God.

If time of one civilization's Calendar ends soonabouts, then so be it and let times of Times' begin.

[pscot]

26. Whole lotta thinkin' goin' on

I think I think, therefore I think I am. Analysis multiplies duality.

[GliderGuider]

28. Don't believe everything you think.

:evilgrin:

[tama]

32. Not sceptical enough

Cartesian program of scepticism got through only halfway, not where the boundaries of scepticism are met. "I" does not survive the sceptical test, there is no need for "I" in the observation that when doubting, sceptical thoughts occur, or more generally, that happening happens or that observation events occur - (starting point of "phenomenology"). No need to postulate subject ("I") and object as a priori categories.