Gotta hand it to Folktruther for chutzpah, presuming to lay-out here Life Herownself’s ‘agenda’ for “....the 21st century.”  Boy is he in for a SURPRISE!!

Nevermind the eternal/infinity ambitions Spengler recognized as the informing CONceit of “western civ,” how about about its inmates’ desperate drive to identify, isolate, concentrate, synthesize and SELL what is thought to be the “active principle” in anything and everything they can get their bloody hands and tiny minds on?  Since one good misCONception deserves another, putting “....earthpeople at the center of the universe,” no matter how satisfying to “poets,” may leave the CONceivers theirownselfs even more at a loss for sensible direction than they are already.  It’s real unlikely that’ll actually eventuate, however, in the “fightin’ 21st” or any other “century.”

Good try, though.

HokaHey!

i agree with you folktruther.  but i would say that to some degree there did have to be a natural swing to a mechanistic view of the world.  maybe it was when descartes separated mind and body that marked the tide turning in this direction.  we had just passed thru the dark ages which was a regression and nadir for the humanities.  the church had so much power and as far as medicine was concerned bloodletting was a virtual panacea.  for humanity to move towards science, rationalism, and that mechanistic viewpoint was a huge relief.  hard science, faith in numbers and formulas.  no more fairy tales from the church.

rationality does have many upsides, and our advances in science, medicine, and engineering attest. but i dont think anyone figured how irrational rationality could be.  in breaking everything down to numbers and formulas, in separating the mind and the body, in atomizing humans in the postmodern world, in objectifying and commodifying everything, we have lost something integral.  (our scientists couldnt find consciousness, they couldnt find the ghost in the machine.)  this viewpoint seems to naturally lend itself to the neoliberal, libertarian stance.  people as machines, faith in numbers.  atomization, separation, competition.  (indeed we are more than the sum of our parts.)

im not even sure if we could be where we are today without the pain and death as outrageous as that might seem.  we humans only seem to learn by extreme pain and personalized lessons.  maybe this is why history tends to repeat itself along with whatever macro or micro-cycles occur.  i think the only thing to do is look at each other and say “have we had enough yet?  havent we seen this particular trick before?  why do we keep doing this to ourselves?”

we are at a place now where we have nearly destroyed ourselves once again, and the pain, hatred, and violence seems to be ascendent.  on the bright side we have learned something as humans once again.  this is the valuable treasure we take as a collective from one disastrous period of history to the next.  and maybe people in general are sadistic and masochistic enough to actually enjoy the show.

* as an aside i would say:  idealogues understand how important it is to define what the lesson is that we have learned.  democrats might say: “we learned the lesson of the g.w.b. presidency.”  republicans might say: “we learned the lesson of not holding true enough to our principles.”  i might say that we touched the stove again and got burned.  baby has done that more than once now.  what a silly, stupid infant.  slowly but surely the baby is learning.

Tao and Folktruther,

Well and generously put. Thank you.

Tao, since you expressed your vision so intelligently and poetically, I am going to let you know what is going to happen in the 21st century.  Don’t tell anyone. 

The Western tradition began conceptually with the scientific tradition that conceptually removed the earth from the center of the universe.  this began the Western scientific tradition, which both concepually and ideologically is pathologically irrational.  It is a major reason why we are ideologically insane.  Scientists have developed the scientific tradition conceptually arse-basckwards.

If they were reasonable, and truth was formulated from the perspective of the population, rather than from the class-based power structure, people would have begun the scientific tradition by formulating first scientific conceptions of relations among people.  Because of course people are much more interested in people than we are in, say, bodies in motion, what is now classical mechanics.

After earthpeople had coneditioned the conceptual language to tell the simple holistic truth about people, that is after develooping a reasonable and morally decent social science, we could have gone on to talk holistically about biology, such as the evolution of species.  Finally those with an interest in physical reality could have developed physcial science.

But of course this isn’t the way it happened and we are taught from childhood that what happened in history HAD to happen, since we are taught to identify with mechanisitic explanations.  The scientific tradition began in those areas most remote from earthpeople.  The heavans.  It took from the 17th to the 19th century to go from physcical reality to legitmaate the evolution of species.  It was only in the 20th century that marxist theory became the first partiaqlly legitimated world social theory based on Western scientific preconceptions.

This sequence of science, legitmated by great scientific revolutions, will be inverted conceptually in the 21st century.  People will appear in the foreground, than organisms, than bodies in motion, or particles as they are now called.  And we will return to a more primitive, and rational, worldview.  Only instead of conceiving the earth as the center of the universe, we will conceive earthpeople as the center.  And return to what the poets have always demanded, that the major study of mankind is man.  And women and children.

yes TAO, stockholm syndrome.  humans are some funny creatures.  but i guess it makes sense in a way.

Call it what you will, the intense concantenation of events and circumstances shaping-up so rapidly here seems finally to be getting tame Two-leggeds’ attention off their their own silly “selfs,” in their make-believe virtual world-o’-hurt, and back on the Whole Living Arrangement of our Mother Earth….where it will be so much more beneficially “invested.”  It’s a good thing the place of Humanity in Her Life doesn’t depend on people being able to “conceptualize” that….anymore, for instance, than a Heart has to have a grand scheme of ideological/institutional/electro-mechanical CONstructs in order to fulfill its organic function within a Living body.

Sure, remembering their function in Earth’s Living Arrangement, and returning to the FORM in-keeping with it, will help Human Beings to do it more effectively, to the mutual benefit of ALL….but DO IT they will, like-it-or-lump-it, in awareness or ignorance, so long as any of us remain among Her Children.  At-the-moment, due to a “program” of immune-suppression instigated by un-dead entities not Native to Earth, She is having to meet their final assault on Her Natural Vitality somewhat weakened.  That She is resorting to alterNative “therapies” to restore the balance our tormentors intend to upset, permanently, is only to be expected of any Living Being.

Tame Two-leggeds here, having been co-opted by these retro-viral “energy” addicts, have their “selfs” taken-on the wannabe parasitical “ethos” of their captors….an apparently common occurrence between abuser and abused.  Not to worry, though, as the Medicine our Mother has prepared, in concert with Her own “Peers,” is even now being administered and is already showing signs of efficacy.

So take Heart, Sisters and Brothers, since Humanity itself is in-fact an “active ingredient” in the Remedy.  Us free wild Native Peoples ain’t lost anybody yet, and we don’t AIM for our captive Human Relations to be the first.

HokaHey!

Cyrena, Falicity—marterialism (in the vulgar sense; no one so far has accused the philosophical materialism of marxism as being anti-intellectual) accompanies anti-intellectualism as the ruling class of a society becomes increasingly rich and powerful, and its exploitation becomes more despotic.

As Adam Smith stated more than two centuries ago, both employers and workers unite to promote their economic and power interests, but since employers are fewer and richer, they will unite faster and become stronger.  The marxist model was based on this factor.

As the oppression becomes more severe, it is increasingly necessary to disguise it with delusion, distractions and complicated coverups.  Ergo the corruption of the intellectual truth tradition.  It is to prevent the population from learning the historial reality-based truth about what is happening to them.

By felicity, March 6 at 5:55 pm #
•  “From my old college text book (published in 1950) the observation is made that “historically, prosperous nations seem to inevitably drift into materialism and anti-intellectualism with almost predictable disastrous results.”
WOW felicity!!
Obviously, this is a clue to the fact that we’ve ‘known’ this for a really long time, eh? Historically, prosperous nations DO seem to inevitably drift into materialism and anti-intellectualism, and of course the predictable results are always disastrous.
But, I’m still trying to find a way to explain how these two (materialism and anti-intellectualism) almost ALWAYS go together. I can’t even think of a time when they haven’t. Well, wait a minute, at least in the ‘roaring 20’s’ there were some intellectuals hanging about.
Anyway, your college textbook of the 50’s was on the money, and we’ve managed to reproduce the concept in a few of today’s college text books as well. So, what happened? Not enough of us got to read them, or those who did just blew it off.

I’m still recommending Lawrence Weschler’s “A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers” (just because I think it’s good reading for our times, for the very reasons you’ve already suggested – we’ve gotta drift, (more like tear our asses) away from the edge of the cliff, and back to the center of community.)

Amazon.com Review

“When individuals are being tortured and everyone knows about it and no one seems able to do a thing to help,” Lawrence Weschler writes, “primordial mysteries at the root of human community come under assault as well.” Overthrowing oppressive regimes is not enough to resolve the crisis; the persecutors must also acknowledge what they have done. “True forgiveness is achieved in community…. It is history working itself out as grace, but it can only be accomplished in truth.”

A Miracle, A Universe brings together two long nonfiction pieces, originally published in the New Yorker, which examine how citizens of Brazil and Uruguay have worked to “settle accounts” with their former torturers. Weschler uses historical background to supplement his powerful eyewitness reportage and interviews, bearing witness to those who seek to break through official denials of government atrocity. The efforts to build a democratic society in which people can have faith have rarely been portrayed with as much immediacy and insight as Weschler brings to these articles.

altlic, no matter how philosophical or intellectually curious as to “what next” it is inevitable that each of us will worry about our sons, daughters, grandchildren—hell, I even worry about our horses in case husband and I are both killed in a horsewreck or some less desirable way because in this economy horse rescue shelters are full and someone would probably decide to eat our little herd. “Pass the popcorn” is fine but if you have hostages to fortune you have hostages to fortune. (And what would life be without them?)

David,
not to worry
these things come and go
this year is an especially important year in the aztec calendar and you were no doubt influenced by the hub bub of the great cycle which ends this year
according to some calendrists who play things loosey goosey here are only fourteen cycles and some sort of apocalyptic amageddon is to ensue
while others claim to find in the works of Sahagun and Diego Duran and others that there is a fifteenth cycle and additional cycles. 
There is a change but it does not have to include a nuclear reality

—
Mic Jordan

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

http://sites.google.com/site/apolloguide/

...Obama who? or when? or NO! not another Leo actor like Clinton.  Are you feeling jived? yet?..

Yeah, its gonna be quite a ride.  With the passage of a foreclosure legislation those people on the cusp or about to have their mortgage reset, will skip the next payment or two or three and see what they can get.  Why even those in better shape will take a chance——remember until the sheriff comes to physically remove you from the premises you can always pay what you owe and all is well!  Governments handouts are wonderful——how do I get one??!!

Good advice and perspectives.  Reading these great comments I realized how much time I spend worrying about my son’s future, feeling ashamed even!  Duuh!  I mean, which would I rather have: a life of civilized incrementalism, or a life where civilization is doing an insanely convoluted, epochal maneuver with hugely divergent possible outcomes?  Not that life isn’t always in (the) balance.

I am trivializing the situation but, as howie bledsoe said here, “pass the popcorn”. We may be on the verge of getting sucked, en masse, out of our cineplex seats and into the movie.  Better than 3D!

I’m not sure apocalypse is the right “a” word to use in this case, since we’re still here to whine about our troubles in our own peculiar, navel-gazing, American way. My suggestion is “anomie”—yes, that’s much better. Webster’s defines anomie as: “social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values.” Perhaps it’s anomie first, then comes the apocalypse. Mistah Kurtz, he dead.

Well, then, what has ended? Certainly the economic paradigm of neoliberalism—deregulation, debt-fueled growth, and speculation—is deader than a doornail. And the era of American military and political global hegemony seems to have been terminated, as well. Good riddance!

Sirota’s correct to suggest that if we don’t wake up and shape the new reality in a way more to our liking than the old, we’re definitely not going to like what the gobbling greedheads of Gomorrah have in store for us—if we leave them to their own devices. And isn’t that our Original Sin in all of this? Giving the evil ones the reins?

It’s all relative really. End of Waht World, the one where wars are started over Oil? Where the Rich get richer and the poor starve? Where Politicians work for Corps and not ‘For the People’?Where access to healthcare is reliant on your incomeinstead of your need? Where what kind of car you drive is a testiment to your worth, instead of what you give? Where religion oppresses and comdemns those who don’t follow their Dogma?Where shooting wolves from planes just to get a foreleg is more admirable than saving drowning polar bears….
Really you are worried all that may come to an end? The Delusional fear mongers onthe Right want you to think ‘Revelations’ is about the End of Earth, but perhaps it was more about the End of their Reign of Terror on Humanity.The Nazi Pope just had the audacity to criticise the Pres for lifting the ban on a Stem Cell research- something that could improve and prolong peoples lives. Why is it life only is of ‘value’ when it’s still in utero, but not afterwards.People who not only have begun their lives- but have touched and benefited others.
Perhaps it is the apocalypse of the Brick and Mortar which has enslaved humanity - Gov’ts, Religion, Corps and their propagandaist (MSM). Perhaps it is the Dawn of Humanity’s dominance over them - since they were all created by Us to be JUST Tools, not masters.
Americans have now lived through a dictatorship- and outright rejected it’s continuation in Nov (Mr. “I Know” McCain). We’ve finally reailzed that Corps have been sucking US dry and using US as their endentured slaves. We are finally able to Say to ANY Religious leader “Go fuck Yourself’ and not be burned at the stake.And we have stopped allowing Media personalities to force feed US Crap information and outright lies.
We have Reseized our Democracy - proving the masses can win elections.
We have Corps and Wall Street cognizant of the Fact that if We don’t buy- they go hungery and extinct
We have the Holy rollers twisting themselves into pretzels trying to explain exactly how their doctrines promote ‘Love thy neighbor’
We even have the 4th Rider scampering to find out what we will watch or listen to, even willing to apologize for offensive material.
These were the four horseman, but the villagers have got them on the run. We have politicians (smart ones) willing to give up their mantras to satisfy Our demand for Solutions, We have Corps dropping prices and asking what we want, not telling Us want we need. We even have a Nazi Pope hoping to find reconcilation and redemption before the World calls him out on what he really is. Media has finally given a show to a lefty female moderator.
“Good Bye Cruel world” does not mean the death of the Person or the Earth….just the end of the Cruel world.Perhaps this is what is also meant by the ‘Rapture’, through this chaos we will all be lifted up to a better way fo life. Be a Buddhaist, Not an ‘End of Dayer’

DavidPeace- If you don’t see the extinction of humanity as an apocolypse, I can see why you are depressed.  Perhaps you’d feel better if you helped try to prevent it?

Paul_GA:
The long spiral downward wasn’t started by Little George. He just made it more obvious.

Ignorance is truly bliss. I deal with people on a daily basis who aren’t able or aren’t willing to see what’s going on around them. I see all this and more and just keep feeling depressed. I can only see really bad times ahead, but no apocalypse in the classical, English dictionary sense; although the Greek idea of revelation seems somewhat appropriate. As one poster mentioned, the Earth will go on long after we’re gone and can do so quite nicely without us. We, humans, aren’t essential to life on this planet as billions of years revealed by palaeontology have shown.

Another interesting thing to note:There have been mass extinctions on the planet before and we are somewhat “due” for the next one.

Excellent point, Folktruther—the country itself may yet survive, but the State (or “power structure”) is on its way to wreckage. Things are going to be nasty in the next few years, that’s for sure. Bush started the country on its way to decline, and Obama may be the one who reaps his predecessor’s foul harvest.

CHristoopher Scheer—The term doesn’t refer to the American people, it refers to the American power structure.  The traditional American power structure is being destroyed.  This has been mythocized on the right religiously as End Times and is now being mythocized politically on the left as apocalypse.

Actually there has already been a poltical counter revolution in this country when the Bushites seized power, but it is only beginning to be recognized now.

Because our journalists don’t tell the American people what is happening to them- I mention no names.

this is a beautiful time.  what do those talking heads call it?  creative destruction?

apocalypse seems a bit too heavy a word to describe our situation…altho lobbin’ the nuclear big ones is an apocalyptic possibility.  coloradokarl seems to have the best attitude about it all.  google “dimitry orlov” to sharpen your survival skills.

Mr. Scheer, I doubt this country is merely “stumbling”—I think it may finally have reached the end of its “day in the sun”. No country can bestride the narrow world as a Colossus forever, after all. As Roman emperor (and Stoic philosopher) Marcus Aurelius wrote, “Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.”

David Sirota, We’re swimming in the same river. It’s slightly spooky but not really surprising that so many are thinking the same thoughts. Even the weather. My husband and I are working out of Las Cruces, NM a few months (live in Northern California). At home the last couple of months people tell me the weather is incomprehensible to natives. Here, the wind has been blowing so hard and for so long I went out to the corral soothe our two horses running around trying to get out of the wind and indeed they calmed down as long as I stood there holding onto them but now they’re running around again. All fixes are temporary these days. I don’t think what our government is trying to do is soon enough or profound enough, considering that the whole world is in the same nosedive from Taiwan to Latvia and most points in between. Walked into a bookstore today to find something old and something Cheever but was met by huge promo piece for “Confessions of a Shopaholic”—wondered whether it was part of the government’s stimulus plan. On the other hand, Salman Rushdie will be speaking in the area next Tuesday and his ideas are always pertinent (usually both to past and future).

coloradokarl, we are and will be doing pretty much as you are suggesting.

arnold baruch, Obama seems to be the questing Jason, but could yet turn out to be Samson in effect if not intent. David wouldn’t have to explain this waking dream to Pharoah; a true Pharoah would understand. I also have the feeling that something like the Greek gods are toying with us, but it could also be that Norse trickster Loki, or the Native American’s oldman Coyote (which seems more likely where I am at the moment). Fadel Abdallah offers some thoughtful specifics of what ails American culture, but this is much bigger, not all about us, which also is a kind of sickness though not unique to America.

A bit of good news, arnold: apparently the ice isn’t melting as quickly as we thought; some equipment malfunction according to the scientists monitoring such things. I just hope things don’t completely go to pieces before my young grandchildren have lived most of their lives. They are brilliant, sunny, resourceful, but that’s not always enough as you and I both know.

From my old college text book (published in 1950) the observation is made that “historically, prosperous nations seem to inevitably drift into materialism and anti-intellectualism with almost predictable disastrous results.” 

We fit the category so the apocalypse may be a predictable conclusion in our history.  But we have options.  We can sit back, accept the diagnosis and wait to die or we can make history wrong by reversing the ‘drift.’

Why is everyone surprised at the level of fatalism that exists in the American death culture?  Death cannot be turned off like a faucet.  Nothing new in the understanding that those who live by death, die by it prematurely.  It began in America with the killing of Native Americans and has never ended.  What has ended is the false belief that life exists on a linear continuum and that one can commit mass death and move past it.  Now the realization that life is lived on a circular line, and that which we project will return to us has resulted in a minor awakening, but not nearly enough in numbers to mitigate through corrective actions.  So here we sit in fatalistic narcisism as the death culture blossoms fed by unending blind corruption, watching American civilization perish.

A very interesting article on the “apocalypse” feeling we are all experiencing. However, no single reason can be given as a satisfactory answer to this! Therefore, I will attempt below to highlight several points, which if taken collectively can provide a more intellectual explanation to this issue:

1. I believe that our deficient educational system has a good deal to do with this sad state of affairs we have reached. Giving up on liberal education and universal humanity studies creates consumers with narrow minded world view. This world view promotes the false notion of American “exceptionalism” in terms of values and political superiority, which leads to laxity in being vigilant about what the political and power class are doing. The political class takes advantage of this lethargy and indifference among the majority, and concentrates its energies on consolidating its powers and material benefits.

2. Hence, the preoccupation with selfish individualism based solely on greed, money and short-term material advancement and frivolous instantaneous pleasures. Within such value system, short term partisan politics and ideologies prevail over the long-term common good of the homeland, the nation and the universal human values at large.
3. Thus obsession with frivolous pursuits that consume the little precious time the average person has left after a long day of hard work. This little precious time is stolen by the entertainment industry of Hollywood, TV soap operas and idle talk shows, and professional sports entertainment. One needs only think about the millions of wasted hours the collective population waste sitting passively in front of these entertainment devises; precious time wasted just being passive spectators rather than being active thinkers and players in the political, economic and social settings of the larger world they live in. It’s during these long times of collective social slumber that the evil ones work harder to pass and strengthen their agendas and consolidate their power and material enrichment at the expense of the larger population and the values of justice.

4. The laws of history, based on cause and effect, or the Laws of a Universal One God, as I would like to call it, is fashioned in such a way that material civilizations, worldly centers of power have a limited life-span, based on the fact that each civilization carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction, due to the recalcitrant nature of human beings. One of the Scriptures I accept its validity and Truths puts it in such way:
 
“And if WE so ordain to destroy a locality (nation), We would ordain that its affluent ones (i.e. the ruling powerful class) will spread corruption on Earth (unopposed). And as sin and evil persist, Judgment is irrevocably passed, and We destroy it utterly.” (Qur’an 17:16)

One does not need to visit the Pyramid of the Sun, overlooking Teotihuacan to see all the signs of this impending destruction- politically, economically, socially, and morally- signs which are all around us for those endowed with wisdom and understanding to see and to heed, if it’s not already too late!

This apocalypse was partially planned by the Gops, with the complicity of the Dems. The idea was to pile the gvoernemnt so heavily with debt, and cut taxes, so governement was powerless enough to drwon it in a bathtub.  It therefore could not regulate the Madoffs and Stanfords and banks who simply looted the people and the public treasury.

Obama has appointed to positions of power and committed himself to bi-partisan policies that make it impossible to change th historical trajectory.  He is not a Roosevelt with independant power of his own, but a public relations figure who is rehabilitating Bushite policies.

It is not accidental that he is giving trillions to the banks and a few billions to people losing their homes.  This is the Bushite policy with marginal changes.

This will not be changed by supporting Obama and his team, but by opposing them, by opposing the whole Dem-Gop leadership coalition.  And the first step is to tell the simple truth about what is happening historically in American power relations.  A truth Americans do not wish to know.

Grow a Garden, Get to know your neighbors, Food, Water, Generator, A Big Dog, 1 Year supply of Medicine, A Gun, A Plan for your family, These things have value money and even gold and silver do not. Homelessness taught me the survival skills that will leave the M.B.A’s in the dust. Remember division is a weakness, there is strength in numbers. Love your neighbors and they will love you back. This is raw socioeconomic Darwinism at its finest. Live Long and Prosper!!!

I really don’t want to use the word “apocalypse” to describe our present situation because of its private meaning in far right religious circles. However, I think the English language has nothing better to offer.

I am oddly reminded of the scene in Douglas Adams’ great trilogy that includes “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.” The restaurant, Milliways, is balanced at the very brink at the end (read “final destruction”) of the entire universe in the “big crunch.” Diners can enjoy the entertainment of seeing the entire universe dissolve into nothingness while they sip their drinks and dine on gourmet food. Pulling back from the brink, the restaurant is able to do this trick every “night.”

This feels to me like the mood of people in this world that live in denial of the brink at which we stand. Only, this isn’t Milliways and there is no time-space bubble that will pull us safely back. At least I can’t see one this time.

As I child I heard over and over again, that the Great Depression could never happen again, because of all the smart economic measures that our government had put in place to prevent it. I must have heard this statement dozens of times in every American history class from Junior high through College.

Apocalyse is the right word. A short word for the end of civilization, it fits.

And just like those who study the ruined civilization of The Mayans, we won’t be able to understand the reason why our civilization is coming to an end, why all our economic remedies will fail to right us.

We have come to the place in time, where we have reached the earths limit in her ability to sustain any more billions of people. Where the spike in oil, meant food was converted into fuel, which caused a huge spike in prices both in food and fuel. Which led to the collapse in credit, and so on down the line. Until the whole system went tilt.

Remember the summer of 2007, because it was only the first jolt, and there will be many more jolts like that, each one more severe.

Well, all things end just as surely as they begin…as it has been since the beginning of time and so it will continue to be.

The problem is that we conceptualize ourselves and the lives we lead as “the world” and fail to understand that the world does not need us, nor will it “end” by any apocalypse of our making.

Anthro-egocentrism is our default setting, but i -for one - welcome the new insect overlords.

I was just watching CNN and some pundit suggested that our medical system is just in need of little tweeking, not a full overhaul.

That same person probably thinks that “The Road” is a lighthearted story of a father and son vacationing together.

We are a nation of failed 12 steppers, thinking “I just have to cut back on the booze a little, and stop beating my wife.”