Topic: The world is in crisis

[Michael]

The world is in crisis, never experienced before in the history of our species. Humanity has grown from disparate groups of survival-oriented early ancestors who understood their vulnerability, and their absolute necessity to work closely with both the natural world and their own community. For thousands of years that was the imperative they lived within, and that legacy is embedded deep within our modern-day collective unconscious. But along the way an idea was bred, that personal survival and power can dispense with collective identity and our conditional relationship to the other species, with which we share this finite living space upon the planet. This has led to a crisis where the very survival of our own species has now reached a threshold – we have become the parasite which kills its own host.

The indelible collective memory of our conditional existence is now in a war with the new individual arrogance of personal procurement and self-satisfaction. The outcome of this war will decide whether organic life on the planet’s surface survives or is sent back to restart again, without us. Make no mistake, the planet itself will carry on regardless of the outcome – that is not in question. What is in question is whether humanity itself can survive. Without the natural world supporting us, and a moral realisation of our collective responsibilities, our species will die.

The battle lines are clearly drawn: those for a beneficial future for all members of our species and all other species on this beautiful planet, verses those who care only for themselves and their own family. The spirit of sharing verses the spirit of greed.

It is too late to hide, to keep your head down and hope the war will pass over your head. There will be nothing left if humanity chooses brutality over friendship, sectarianism over global citizenship. Resources are fast diminishing, and there is only one question remaining: do we come together to find a mutually sustainable future, or do we kill to be the last one standing? The killing has already begun, so rest assured you will be called upon to choose before the morning comes.

We as a species have become a plague – pollution, overpopulation, clearing of forests, suppression of dissent toward those in power, manipulation of minds, stealing of wealth from the vast number of precarious humanity, and lastly, Global Warming which is the great tsunami that will sweep all our petty pretences away, in a devastating legacy to our children of horrific suffering.

Where are the youth! You are ones who must face this desiccated future. Those power-hungry people who spin stories of aspiration and economic wellbeing for all, are criminals who will be dead with their booty by the time you have to struggle for survival in a world full of desperation. Where is your anger? It will be too late if you wait.

Don’t you realise your generation has been bound down in the enchantment of self-interest? You are not alone in this fight. There are many in the older generations who are striving to leave a world of beauty and abundance to you, but the youth of today must awaken and get out onto the street! If you do not become active for your own survival, there is little your wiser elders can do, because the reins of power are held in a vice-grip by the forces of greed.

The time has come for all who see the crisis facing humanity and the planet, to stand and be counted. Cowardice or courage? Where do you stand?

What are you doing to foster that primordial memory of belonging? What are you doing to activate the ancient ‘increase for all beings’ ceremonies, which our ancestors practiced as an essential obligation for dignity and selfhood within this life?

Which side are you on: love or money?
Open hand or closed fist?

[Michael]

I’m deadly serious about this. It is not a game. The younger generations are facing a catastrophe. They are so talented these days, aware of so much from their modern education, so, where are they? Why aren’t they demonstrating on the streets? Do they not realise their future has already been sold down the drain to make a small group of wealthy people even more wealthy? Where is their spirit? It’s not as if it hasn’t been done before, for reasons far less extreme than what is now at hand – politicians of all countries are terrified of the power of the youth.

Look, let’s face it, older generations have too much invested in the status-quo for the sake of their own comfort. And who can blame them? Everyone, as they age, naturally seeks financial and social security for their remaining years, and thus have little interest in rocking the boat to its foundations. Even if they live to see the ship go over the edge, they simply don’t have the fire in the belly to stand up and confront the criminals who are steering. Their passion has gone, their conscience sedated by clever words.

If you are younger than thirty-three, you are a fool to think your elders have your best interest at heart, so you can go off and play. This doesn’t take a lot of brains. If you have a car problem – you ask the mechanic, a tooth problem – you ask the dentist, a house subsidence problem – you ask the engineer, a computer problem – you ask the qualified technician. When over 95% of the qualified technicians who study of the earth’s atmosphere tell you the diagnose is terminal, what kind of idiot would you be to trust in the 5% and go off blithely to the night club or a holiday?

We are not talking about the future of your local football team, which is open to inconsequential debate. We are talking about the very survival of civilisation as we know it upon this planet. It’s the only planet we have for God’s sake! You can’t say I’ll take the next one, like some bus to work in the morning. This is it – it’s all or nothing.

Young people must take up this battle, because they are the only ones who will wear the consequences. Older people have no right to stand against them, because they will not be around to see the results of their choices. If the older generation have any guts, they will pass this message on to every younger person they know: get out there and make your voices heard!

Awareness does not mean the crafty shuffling of intellectual ideas about the pros and cons – that is called enchantment. Awareness means action.

[Michael]

"Cars, some of them armored, were run through the streets chasing the pedestrians. They ran them down and either left them mangled on the ground or crushed them to death against the walls of the houses. I saw at once that it was the long-prepared, long-awaited and long-feared war between men and machines, now at last broken out. On all sides lay dead and decomposing bodies, and on all sides, too, smashed and distorted and half-burned cars. Airplanes circled above the frightful confusion and were being fired upon from many roofs and windows with rifles and machine guns.

On every wall were wild and magnificently stirring placards, whose giant letters flamed like torches, summoning the nation to side with the men against the machines, to make an end at last of the fat and well-dressed and perfumed plutocrats who used machines to squeeze the fat from other men's bodies, of them and their huge fiendishly purring automobiles. Set factories afire at last! Make a little room on the crippled earth! Depopulate it so that the grass may grow again, and woods, meadows, heather, stream and moor return to this world of dust and concrete.

Other placards, on the other hand, in wonderful colors and magnificently phrased, warned all those who had a stake in the country and some share of prudence (in more moderate and less childish terms which testified to the remarkable cleverness and intellect of those who had composed them) against the rising tide of anarchy. They depicted in a truly impressive way the blessings of order and work and property and education and justice, and praised machinery as the last and most sublime invention of the human mind. With its aid, men would be equal to the gods.

I studied these placards, both the red and the green, and reflected on them and marveled at them. The flaming eloquence affected me as powerfully as the compelling logic. They were right, and I stood as deeply convinced in front of one as in front of the other, a good deal disturbed all the time by the rather juicy firing that went on all round me. Well, the principal thing was clear. There was a war on, a violent, genuine and highly sympathetic war where there was no concern for Kaiser or republic, for frontiers, flags or colors and other equally decorative and theatrical matters, all nonsense at bottom; but a war in which every one who lacked air to breathe and no longer found life exactly pleasing gave emphatic expression to his displeasure and strove to prepare the way for a general destruction of this iron-cast civilization of ours.

In every eye I saw the unconcealed spark of destruction and murder, and in mine too these wild red roses bloomed as rank and high, and sparkled as brightly. I joined the battle joyfully."

Herman Hesse, The Stephenwolf

[Michael]

‘Long ago in ancient times…’, way back in the dim past of human history, back when we were small tribes in isolation within a vast and endless wilderness, there was a ritual practised where the members of the tribe stood around a fire in a circle, facing outwards. The people would sing to the wilderness, asking for friendship with all the beings of the inexplicable and wondrous world out beyond them.

But one day an evil spirit came along, so the old story goes, and introduced a modification to this ritual. It encouraged the tribe to turn around and face inwards, towards each other. From that time onwards, the early humans began to lose the friendship of the wilderness. They began to find themselves more fascinating than the great natural world. Along with this, they developed clever ways to conquer nature and convert it to their own convenience, whereby they lost the feeling of wonder and inexplicableness of the outer world. They devoted their time to the intricacies of their relationships with other members of their tribe. Their relationship with the forces and beings of the natural world withered, until they forgot that world even existed unless it violently burst through their self-obsessions, which happened not enough to change their views.

I like to apply the terms ‘evolve’ and ‘involve’ to describe this old story’s theme, as a basis to understanding the direction that the human species is travelling. Evolution includes the principles of turning and unfurling – like a spiral that expands outwardly, and with each turn the spiral core is within while the unfurling expands into the outer world. Involution is the same process, except the direction is reversed, and travels, with each turn of the spiral, further and further away from the outer – each turn becomes an infolding within greater layers of reflection. Like seeing through a window reflected in a sequence of mirrors. This involution is what we humans are doing. We are becoming entrapped in reflections of reflections of our own fascinations with ourselves, growing increasingly distant from the vast infinity outside – a form of collective mental illness in which we are losing the instinctive grasp of reality, where truth becomes a token of our desire for power over each other.

We have become enchanted within our own reflections, such that even the most caring and intelligent of us are rendered powerless, because we have lost our species reference point with the outer universe. Every beneficial act we do becomes ultimately fruitless, as the intentions are sucked up and reversed upon us in a maze from which we have forgotten how to exit.

That evil spirit in the old fairy tale sits back and laughs at our powerlessness, the futility of our aspirations and courage Because the one ingredient that could make it all effective is missing: we have lost the friendship of the planet.

The only solution is to reverse the spiral, and once again face outwards. Renew our awe and wonder at the inexplicable wilderness, not through images on our TV and devices, not through intellectual understand, but through actual physical and emotional immersion into that bewilderness.

Unfortunately, every opportunity that remains we have stamped with our own investment. Instead of swimming in the ocean we swim in a pool, instead of walking through the snow we ski down purpose-built skying slopes, instead of running across the open countryside we run in football and athletics, and then we sit in our houses watching others run in sports. Instead of feeling wet, hot and cold, we insulate ourselves from the weather. We never actually touch a world that has not in some way been modified by humans for our own purposes. Thus, even when we seek the wilderness we still find ourselves within our own reflections. We as a species, are suffering from a silent loneliness.

There is a growing movement to break through this enchantment and escape the maze. Many people are finding the remaining places in our natural world which still exist for their own sakes, not ours, and they are entering into it with open eyes and hearts. This movement is critical to our species survival on the planet. There is a crucial need to regenerate our withered relationship to the other species with whom we share this world of such potential for beauty and fulfilment. Only with that balance rejuvenated can we unearth our true species’ purpose in the universe, and sing new songs of friendship with beings out there beyond our borders.

Who is willing to turn around and face outwards again?

[Doubting Thomas]

I tried to imagine how these posts would look like to a person searching for truth. The presented narrative/discourse belongs - without a shadow of a doubt - to an environmentalist-socialist slot and the tired seeker may whisper: 'Of well, it's one of these...' And he or she may think about many people from Al Gore to Greta Thunberg.

In these post-truth, post-authority times it is a virtual death sentence to all the energy put in these words and the message voiced all over the place. One can effortlessly find tons of graphs and endless texts written by sceptics arguing the opposite. Easily.

So where is the truth and is there a way to find it?

There is. The truth is out there. Watch the nature.
Do seasons look normal to you? Are there as many birds in the forest or on a sea shore as there used to be? How about sparrows in the town you live in? How about the fish in your fishing river or stream? How about bumblebees or bees on the flowers in your garden?

I have watched these things for years and by now the transpiring change and its direction are obvious.  You do not have to believe somebody's thoughts - you may, but don't have to - just believe what you see.

And then look into your soul and listen to it.

[Michael]

Yes, the truth is plane to see - now doubt. But Thomas, you raise another question:

Why should a person intent upon a personal spiritual path be interested in how humanity has stuffed the surface of the planet?
To be honest, the answers to this are not easy.

Far simpler to answer the converse question: why should a person intent upon action to heal the environment and the social world be interested in personal spirituality? This question is often considered (fleetingly) by community and environmental activists.

Their standard answer is that to be effective in 'making a difference' in the world, one should not be burdened and hobbled by personality complexes. It is that if you are 'below par' on the inner front, you are not much use on the outer front. I emphasise the word 'par', because community/environmental developers have little interest in exploring the potentials beyond par. They are fixated and addicted to external action, and the demands are greater than ever before.

The problem is why anyone on a personal spiritual path should concern themself with the dramas of the outer world?

I'm of the view that these types have no obligation whatsoever to distract themselves from their personal quest by engaging with the outer world problems. There are good reasons why they should, and I could explain that. But finally it is a choice, despite there being significant personal-spiritual benefits. No obligation, because the definitive path of spirit is away from the world and humanity. Yet this choice is made in the core of one's being - it is a question of destiny.

Having said that, I am exclaiming a call to all those who are devoted to personal enlightenment, to come down from the hills, out of the caves, up from their meditations to join in battle!

This is not a call to the Greta's of this world - they are already engaged. This is a call to those who have left the world, to return and take up the sword.

I can placate their minds by explaining the spiritual benefits, but ultimately, I am joining my voice to a whole tsunami of rallying cries to enlightened beings, that are echoing across the inner planes: now is the time to act - to bring light into the darkness of the sapien fate.

[Firestarter]

I was typing a whole thing and accidentally deleted it.

Young people are more awake and aware than you think. Go to tiktok. Its not just a stupid app with goofy folks posting nonsense. There are young awakened folks who are saying things which are very intelligent and they are brilliant and impressive. They know quite a bit. They know their spirituality. They are connected. They have knowledge. They grew up with the internet and have been studying things. They also have abilites to see very well. So there is some hope for them. But I know. Can they do it in time? Cause those crusty MFs in like congress and trying to run the world are ignorant and depraved. Yes we are a cancer. Gaia is trying to shake us off like fleas on a dog. But consider getting the app. You would be surprised what the young have to say. Its impressive.

[Michael]

The world's crisis is escalating almost daily. I have been seeing and reading a lot of material as many intelligent thinkers are seeking answers as to how this situation has happened. Also on what is the solution - numerous books on this are now being published, and the body of ideas is growing. Yet what really focuses my attention is the material being published on, What has gone wrong with humanity?

I'm reading a fascinating book on how morality evolved historically for our species, and why it has become incapable of addressing the problems of today. But it's another book that has excited my imagination on this question. I'm only at the beginning, still I am grasping the main theme he is pursuing. I'll speak further on this after I've digested and assimilated, though here is a snippet.

Something changed around the time of development of science and administration. This was the point where humanity shifted to the predominance of the middle-class - once referred to as the bourgeoisie, though that term has gone out of fashion since pretty well everyone have now joined its ranks. There was a simultaneous shift in the form of narratives - the stories we tell and consume, the stories that form the background context of what we see as 'life'.

In essence, we determinedly rejected the sense of cataclysm as the major force of evolution, and this was charted precisely in the field of geology, about which I had no idea it was such an enormous thing within that field over the last few centuries. We adopted the middle-class ethos of safety, reliability, stability and rationality. All very wonderful to rein-in violent dictators, seen still operative in countries where the middle-class has either insufficiently formed (Russia, Afghanistan, Burma, Turkey) or hollowed out (USA). We are all highly pleased where middle-class servility has enforced a state of sanity and predictability upon the ruling classes, so we can get about our lives with a strong measure of gradual improvement.

Two words in that last paragraph which created the stamp of our world view: predictability and gradual. Two words that no longer serve us, yet which are so embedded into our psyche that resistance to their deprecation is too powerful for us to see that our security has always been an illusion - and illusion that is now ripping us to shreds but we can't awaken from denial.

[Firestarter]

I cant speak too much on other countries. But can on the US... I think.

9-11 was a huge event that really tossed us into the lower astral. It was strange. On one end, it united us. People. But then govt started their "weapons of mass destruction" shit and invaded Irqq and you know it was to get oil.

Hey bitch, bush. Isnt Osa- you know in Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or something? 

Ok so that was a huge event. That was even right short after my own awakening. That changed the tides in this country like no other.

ok so this is a theory too.

12-21-2012. Im not trying to sound wackadoodle. But when that Mayan calendar ended, think about it. Look how shitty it all got!

Weird and more violent and media and social media and things were getting so thick.

OMG when I think I was a child. A kid. We had a channels. Then we got HBO. The tv would go off and rest. get that white noise. The national anthem would play before it.

Now? Oh shit hundreds of channels. They are trying to distract us. Internet phones tv streaming. And now this so called Meta shit that Lizard wants to bring in.

They are trying real hard to get folks to not pay attention.

But ok, as ive been around awhile and mighty observant. Folks are awakening. My theory is since Mayan calendar ended, a mass awakening took place.

But now, then those who are 'religous' per se are looking so incredibly crazy. Sometimes I will watch those evangelical  Christians preaching werd shit.

I made a joke on my youtube one day. How all those creepy evangelicals who turned Orange Stain into a messiah, prophesized he would win this last election.

Yet me and a bunch of old school tarot readers said Biden.

And in June 2020 - that far back, I said Trump would lose,and he would dispute the election. AND take folks to court.

But supposedly all these crooked evangelical folks said trump would win and then, oh he will get reinstated. And so on and so forth.

k pitiful but let me bring it back.

So yes when it comes to hope I feel that we may need a mass opening.

Now my friend Ayesha Sheeba on FB who is very reputable and powerful, beieves portals will open all over in 2024 and we can get out.

Now I know you may think her crazy but let me say this.

One day I was on FB and I saw Ayesha post. She had an offering puja. Donate $10 thats all for a blessing.

Now at time, this was during covid, and i was working, but since not getting all hours, i was actually supposed to get unemployment cash. well, it was delayed.

So I sent her ten bucks. get this.

Next day, ayesha showed to me in a dream. Powerful and beautiful. Like a goddess.

I woke up next day, checked my unemployment account.

My unemployment got approved, and deposited. For six weeks back pay..

She - is - the - real - deal.

So its hard to ignore her prophecy if you wish to call it this. That in 2024 portals will open.

Just wanted to throw that tidbit. But it may be necessary. Cause we got real issues with leaders, and blind sheep. And perhaps a pied pieper leading all those folks astray into - god knows what.

K all I want to say. I best sleep.

[Doubting Thomas]

Predictability and gradualism have indeed become synonymous with a rational worldview. The world itself, however, does not change in a gradual way, but by following other mathematical functions.

Some time ago, I discovered that it is possible that the world's population will double in my lifetime. How crazy! Tokyo, the world's largest city, is home to 37 million people. 37 million! You can put all sorts of numbers on it, but the fact is that all these people want a good, predictable life, where change is gradual.

There is a yawning chasm between desire and possibility. Where have I heard that? Ah, that's right - it's a basic tenet of Buddhism.

Living beings in this world are struggling and suffering. Especially those who are not of the species sapiens. We do what we can, but we as a species are opposed by our own desires. If the wise ones in the hills can help us overcome this obstacle, their help is much needed and much appreciated.

[Firestarter]

I just looked it up. When I was born in 1969 this was world population: 3,620,655,275

And now: roughly 7.98 billion (checked the population clock it keeps going up lol

K and these MFs in US want to eliminate abortion and get us to birth more babies? Idiots. Like the world needs a bunch more people and unwanted babies.

Right now we have about 437k children in the US in foster care. That number will go up massively if we have women having to birth children they cant raise and giving them up for adoption or foster care.

or kids being taken away and put in foster care in other situations too.

Its a disaster.

Sadguru I know Michael doesnt like him. But he has spoken that we need some sense of population control. Just slow down the births. I have been observing this for a couple decades the issue with this. If we dont do some kind of population control (not with brute force mind you but some encouragement), then its going to get worse.

Like right now there is all sorts of buzz because of various things collapsing, much talk of a food shortage. Farmers cant afford the manuer to grow crops it is trippling in price.

Im gonna go eat something. Ill come back and write on some of this Ive been studying up on. Thanks to the P-word screwing up a lot of shit, we may be dealing with more than high gas prices.

[Michael]

The secret to climate change is Asia. The west adopted carbon intensive practices long before the 80s when the CO2 took off, but it wasn't until Asia, with its numbers, came on board the west's lifestyle and energy platform that the shit hit the fan. There is much talk about carbon footprint per capita, which is why Pakistan is wailing now about it all not being their fault. But its the numbers! not the individual.

[Firestarter]

The secret to climate change is Asia. The west adopted carbon intensive practices long before the 80s when the CO2 took off, but it wasn't until Asia, with its numbers, came on board the west's lifestyle and energy platform that the shit hit the fan. There is much talk about carbon footprint per capita, which is why Pakistan is wailing now about it all not being their fault. But its the numbers! not the individual.

There is also that carbon "credits" thing which I feel we could hear more about in the future and it could affect businesses or even people negatively so there is that.

[Michael]

The Armed Lifeboat vs the Politics of Attrition: how humanity is approaching the climate catastrophe.

It has been posited that resistance to action on climate change is not only the fossil-fuel industry misinformation campaign. But that the population of developed nations instinctively realise full and effective global action to prevent the crisis will undermine their wealth, power, status and comfortable lifestyle. Global collective action at a realistic level may hold certain moral sympathies in developed nations but the public subliminally fear the consequences to their predictable and secure personal world.

Yet they also increasingly realise earth’s climate is dramatically changing in a disastrous way. Thus, there is no way to simply ignore. If they wish to sustain their precious lifestyle in any way possible considering the sequential catastrophes, the only option is the armed lifeboat: save themselves while employing their military/intelligence/security forces to keep the international chaos from clambering onto their lifeboat and sinking it. All the while making token gestures to salve their troubled conscience.

From the developing world, a completely different attitude is growing: the politics of attrition. This concept is variously employed for different interpretations, yet the principle remains in that the masses of poor will absorb the impacts on their own, at incredible personal costs, and make their own arrangements for survival. Most likely at considerably reduced numbers, but the nature of their lives is already precarious, and they have little to lose anyway. This view sees the west’s paranoia and panic at losing their cosy security as princess-syndrome: life has always been hard, dangerous and people die every day – what’s new?

The best example of this distinction was the Covid pandemic. The wealthy, powerful nations went into meltdown over fears of everything from the virus, the vaccines, government, lockdowns, social isolation… They spent enormous sums of national wealth, fighting for access to medications, to protect their citizens, because, as it became clear, the public not only believed government had a duty of care, but fiercely held them accountable through protests and media.

Contrast that with India, where the government, with no warning, imposed a national lockdown (primarily to protect the middleclass) and almost totally ignored the millions of poor, left without their hand-to-mouth income. These masses simply did what they have always done, they absorbed the blow and walked home, infecting their villages. When the major wave came, they just died, in their millions, and the survivors carried on. This is cynical and brutal politics, but it has always been thus: it’s only the precious sensibilities of western nations who forget they are living in a historic bubble of security – the rest of humanity suck it up and those left alive find a way to survive all by themselves.

Is their any alternative? These two views are not actually opposed – they exist in separate universes. So, there is no real battle between them, but neither is pleasant, nor acceptable to the view of a small minority of intelligent and conscientious people across all nations, who are striving to find a way for humanity to resolve the crisis, and enter a new and bountiful future that is in tune with nature instead of antagonistic.

Unfortunately, the armed lifeboat and politics of attrition, currently appear to be where we are headed. That small voice of sanity and aspiration seeking a positive hopeful egress from calamity, is not impotent, but to date it has not convinced the world to change in any effective and meaningful way – the task is too enormous and the costs likewise.

[Doubting Thomas]

I understand that one of the arguments used by developing countries to deflect accusations of over-emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is to say that their (e.g. China, Inda) populations  also want to live up to the standards of Westerners.