Get Smart

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Get Smart – It’s the Age of Security

With the proliferation of computerized communication technology and the introduction of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, we came to recognize that the Industrial Age was becoming history and was being rapidly replaced by something we’ve come to call the Information Age. From the simplest viewpoint – this was first as projection or the dissemination of information in a highly efficient manner; then as channeling with information flowing back as personalized data collection or what we’ve come to call Big Data; and finally as the utilization of this data to secure hierarchies of power and influence whether in marketing and business, culture and personal lives or even politically. Market forces inevitably pushed all the sciences, including the behavioral sciences, into the mix.

That’s how it works in the “free market” – the technology comes first driven by the market and only later will society interpret, judge and dissect its meaning, value and costs.

Now we need to step back away from this and take a big picture look at history – further back still and we see how the institutions of societies have, to the greatest degree, been in place to secure traditional hierarchies of power and wealth. From the simplest viewpoint, these structures are a dichotomy of master and slave. Indeed, the three estates of medieval Europe, were really better described as two estates – those of the powerful elite masters, nobles and clergy, who all came from the same families, bloodlines and power bases and on the other end the great masses called peasants and serfs.

These institutions of power are by nature conspiratorial and designed to ensure that existing systems of power either remain in place or are further strengthened through any innovations. Today is no different than the past in this respect. This may bear repeating – the powerful work to retain their hold on power and this is the same today as it has been for millennia.

Recently, we’ve heard of the efforts of the political right in the US to secure their positions of power despite the radical changes in information technology and the free exchange of ideas (and the potential for an enlightened slave). In her book, Democracy in Chains, historian Nancy Maclean argues that libertarians and the political right have conspired to sacrifice democracy for their purest forms of capitalism. In a real sense, what obscures the true agenda of the powerful is less their stealthy approach to their manifestoes, and more the distortions, historical revisionism, and the propagandizing of their efforts.

In her book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein makes this very clear. Democracy, real democracy or the rule by majority is truly incompatible with the type of capitalism practiced worldwide today – call it neoliberalism or neoconservatism. As the ignorant masses become more informed – an inevitability of the developed world in this Information Age – the power structures of capitalism and the division of wealth will become more and more apparent.

So what do the powerful do? First, simply bifurcate the economy further and push the supply-side agenda of the Chicago School personified through the political leadership of Reagan and Thatcher: privatize what is public; set the market forces free through deregulation; and reduce the burden of taxes by cutting social spending to the bone. Put simply – make the rich richer and decimate the middle-class. Go ahead and upset the old Keynesian balance – a working capitalism, in the sense of placating the masses, is no longer necessary.

The second step is get rid of democracy and prepare the world for modern demagoguery. What do we see today in the personification and indeed the culmination of these policies with Donald Trump’s presidency? Gerrymandering (including “gerrymandering” the supreme court), voter suppression; using “law and order” to criminalize race and criminalize poverty to further disenfranchise that segment of society; personifying corporate institutions; redefining freedom as an economic concept; stressing “individualism” over collectivism despite global corporatism; and most important using the tools of the modern security state especially its most potent tool: fear. All of this to be carried out along with the long-time strategies of deception, misinformation and use of evangelical and conservative social causes to retain hold of as many working class voters being left behind by this new economic reality as possible.

Naomi Klein must be given credit for also naming this sub-segment of the Information Age – she called it the Security Age and this is the age in which we now live.

For Naomi, this is the wealthiest and most powerful moving into their protected enclaves or “green zones” while the rest of us must flounder in the remnants she calls “red zones”. Indeed, security is to become a driving force in an economy that has no longer maintained its footing through grass roots consumer/working-class affluence, but through the shell game of credit and the need for security: personal armed forces; cyber and brick-and-mortar protection; surveillance equipment and software and other forms of “black operations” tools and services.

Look around you and open your eyes. You must first step back, take in the historical context and then come back to earth. What, after all, did the President of the United States use as the great symbolic promise of his campaign? That’s right – the big, beautiful Wall!

Fear has ever been a powerful force in politics and today is no different than in Weimar Germany or other times and places in world history. In America, race has always had an important sleight-of-hand function in bringing poorly educated white voters into the fold and keep them clear of the real issues – the real conflict – that of class. In July, in one of his campaign-style speeches in Youngstown Ohio, Trump took the message further. The enemy (immigrants or non-whites) weren’t just coming for your jobs, your perceived privilege and your way of life, but were coming to rape and kill your women. None of this is really that innovative from an unoriginal want-to-be tyrant working to establish his own cult of personality and personal power-base.See what’s going on and pay attention. The courts have set the stage with billions of dollars from rich donors and a Congress long-past beholden to their constituents. Civil rights era voter laws have been tossed out or left to erode; Fourth Amendment rights have been seriously compromised; and a sort of fascism called Corporatism has already seated the real power into our lost republic of America.

Things are happening too fast – combine the shock and awe tactics of modern power brokers including the Trump administration with the exponential trajectory of technology and you have nothing but disaster for freedom-loving Americans (even world-citizens).

In the last year: legislation allowing Internet Service Providers to share consumers’ online browsing history without permission; FBI warnings that smart toys can spy on your toddler; housekeeping robots mapping homes and sharing intelligence with other companies; spying TV sets; and most significantly, the revelation to many Americans of something that is called computational propaganda – one of the most powerful tools of this new Security State in the new Age in which we live.

Get it. The Security Age started on September 11, 2001 during the Bush presidency and the passage of this Patriot Act. America’s citizens gave up hard-won freedom for a security that only became necessary based on the irrational fears stoked by those exerting the most control. Snowden blew the whistle about the depths our government would sink.

This is a declaration – we live in the Age of Security and everything that entails. Certainly, this blog can’t even touch on it all – after all secrets, conspiracies, and nefarious operations are part and parcel in this age. Ask yourself if ours is a society mature enough (truly evolved enough) to really deal with what AI means. This Age relies on a new economy, re-secured politics, surveillance, and most importantly utilizes propaganda to reassert the masters’ power in ways our predecessors could never dream of. This Age is about Information and its Power. Make no mistake about that. It’s time to get smart and then to educate your brothers and sisters. Get it?

This post first appeared on the Reveille website on August 2, 2017 and is republished here with minor alterations.

The Monster in the Mirror – Part One

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OK, so 200 years ago, Mary Shelley published the remarkable novel Frankenstein. Certainly, a story for modernity and likely the first science fiction tale ever told.

Haj can not let this anniversary pass without some words – probably too many, but that’s for you to decide. Early on, Haj became a real fan of horror movies – all of them “oldies” now too. He considers himself somewhat of an expert on horror.

Frankenstein is likely one of the most influential works on Haj’s life too. One aspect that is so critical to this piece is the isolation of the creature and its commentary on the human condition.

A recent reading of the extraordinary and wonderful Truman Capote and his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, offered a poignant passage from one of its characters (Randolph), “…we are alone, darling child, terribly, isolated each from the other; so fierce is the world’s ridicule we cannot speak or show our tenderness; for us, death is stronger than life, it pulls like a wind through the dark, all our cries burlesqued in joyless laughter; and with the garbage of loneliness stuffed down us until our guts burst bleeding green, we go screaming round the world, dying in our rented rooms, nightmare hotels, eternal homes of the transient heart.”

So what follows is the first of four parts of an exploration of Shelley’s novel that Haj actually prepared while completing his belated undergraduate degree December 12, 2008 and that he called, “The Monster in the Mirror”.

The Monster in the Mirror: Death and Dystopia in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, weaves a metaphorical tale that works, often ambiguously, on a number of levels. Critics have since pondered how an 18 year old English girl could write such a powerful and complex tale. Whether she had more than editorial assistance from her talented paramour Percy; drew inspiration from her pedigree and upbringing; or was the right woman in the right time to combine these advantages from a place that Yeats might call the Spiritus Mundi. Whatever her inspiration, the novel did draw from the well of civilization’s most powerful myths and stories, most obviously from Milton and Ovid, while something prophetic and starkly modern was being crafted. The gothic novel Frankenstein presents a secular retelling of the story of a fallen humanity’s search for redemption. 

After assembling the necessary raw materials, Mary Shelley imbues her creation with the spark that seems to give the narrative a life of its own. Like her creature leading its master, the story tirelessly drags the reader into an abyss of inevitability. Echoing a timeless literary theme, Fate, it seems, will be fulfilled (Sutherland, lec. 1).

Even before the story begins, the reader is warned of the relationship between knowledge and a “fall” with the evocation of the two important creation myths of western civilization – the theft of fire by the Titan Prometheus suggested in the novel’s subtitle and the epigraph that quotes Milton’s influential epic retelling of the loss of innocence in Eden. Ambitious desires for an unearthly and secret knowledge bring about the downfall of Frankenstein and all that he loves. Pandora’s Box is opened, death enters the garden, and knowledge is exchanged for a soul.

Mary Shelley’s reconstituted dire warnings of intellectual ambition have resonated since they were first published in 1818. Europe was at a critical crossroads when the novel was first conceived. War and revolution had wracked the continent, Britain was beginning to industrialize, and firmly established Christian orthodoxy and entrenched Scholasticism were already being challenged by the Enlightenment. George Levine, in “The Ambiguous Heritage of Frankenstein”, places the novel where “the central dualities of a culture in which reason and science were displacing religion as the centers of value” (29). In “Frankenstein as Mystery Play”, Judith Wilt is more provocative by describing the novel as “painfully acting out under the nose of the Enlightenment a long line of expunged doctrines – Justification, Creation, Damnation – and unspeakable sacraments – Holy Orders, Confession, Communion” (32). The institutions of the past along with their beliefs would steadily be replaced with the steely spires of “a diseased ‘technological society’” that Frankenstein seemed to foreshadow like no other work of its time (Levine/Knoepflmacher xii).   

Mary Shelley and her poet-companions in the summer of 1816 – Percy Shelley and Lord Byron – are said to belong to the Romantics. Romanticism was a direct reaction to Enlightenment thinkers and their claims of truths grounded in the material universe. The Romantics would view imagination, sensation or emotion as qualities as valuable (or possibly even more valuable) than Enlightenment rationale. Charles Woodard in his essay “The Archetype of the Fall” summarizes the Romantics as those who found “the present uninhabitable” and who believed “a more habitable world exists somewhere either in time or space” (580). As described by John Sutherland in his lectures “Classics of British Literature”, the Romantic revolution returned poetry to a primal and natural state (lec. 26). These artists, poets and thinkers dreamed of lost and mythical places of an idealized past or of the beauty and peace of nature unspoiled.

The explorer Walton and scientist Victor Frankenstein not only represent the Enlightenment’s search for truth in the material universe, but also demonstrate Romantic idealism. For scholars Michael Manson and Robert Scott Stewart writing in their essay “Heroes and Hideousness: ‘Frankenstein’ and Failed Unity”, artistic and scientific genius was linked through a “concomitant attribute of creative imagination” (231). Walton and Victor represent the Romanticism of the Enlightenment or the dreams of the scientific age. Victor is “a sublime quester” for Paul Sherwin who finds the connection of “Romantic faith in the omnipotence of thought” with “the scientist’s baleful drive for manipulative control” in his essay “Creation as Catastrophe” (894). Walton, whose narrative forms the outer layer of the novel, heads to the north pole searching for something “surpassing in wonders and beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe” in “a country of eternal light” (6). Victor, whose interest he himself terms “metaphysical”, searches “with a gladness akin to rapture” for the elixir of life – a reclamation of the fruit from the tree of life and the secret of creation that represents the key to the “physical secrets of the world” (36, 53). The enlightened explorers of Frankenstein, it seems, have inherited the dreams of their superstitious forefathers.

As Charles Woodard describes in his essay “The Archetype of the Fall”, a chasm that had opened between humanity’s unique capacity for reason and the more brutish sensations of a primeval existence would be “suddenly greatly widened by the special extension of the rational processes in the sciences” (579). All too human desires were to set overreaching humankind up for a second Fall. Walton wonders of Victor, “Do you share my madness” (24)? Indeed, both Walton’s search for an Arctic Xanadu and Victor’s god-like quest for eternity are realized as nightmares – of barren icy seas and the murderous plague of a demon.

While the intellectual Milton might wish to somehow excuse the theft of knowledge as humanity’s original sin, Mary Shelley’s story of a modern Prometheus permeates with the idea that “sorrow only increased with knowledge” (157, Sutherland lec. 12). Manson and Stewart argue that the “illusions of divinity” propelling the entirely modern “would-be” genius of the Romantic scientist/artist were “limited and constrained by the very finite conditions it tried to escape” and were doomed by the finitude of their medium – the imperfections and limitations of nature and their own place in a natural world (231). The Earth and all its denizens remain trapped in the mortal confinements of limited time and space. All of the artifices and creations of humankind are likewise imperfect and flawed. Visions of angels and demons, immortality and paradise are only dreams, after all.

Mary Shelley’s creation, like the Creature that moves through it, is “another ‘imperfect animation’” (Sherwin 898). Sherwin claims that the Monster’s “principal virtue is virtuality” for it is “a kind of wandering signifier” that ignites meanings that “multiply endlessly” (890). The novel is the Creature, the writer is the creator, Frankenstein is an artist, and the reader intimately participates in the “self-alienating labor that constitutes authorship” or the unholy reanimation of the dead (Sherwin 891, 894, 898-9, Woodard 580). As Levine and Knoepflmacher state in the preface to the volume The Endurance of Frankenstein, the images and story “enter both our private and culturally shared store of dream, fantasy, and myth” (xiii). Art, science and language are all the imperfect artifices of an imperfect humanity.

Language, for the Creature, is seen as “a godlike science” that is mirrored in the necromancy of Victor’s science and “for the first time in the novel Mary Shelley links language to the creation of the monstrous itself” (Lamb 312). For Wilt, the novel is the recurrence of “the same ecstatic despair before the old aesthetic paradox” of art and of Frankenstein’s science – in striving to achieve beauty the poet has only loosed upon the world “an image of death” (44). As John Lamb explains in “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Milton’s Monstrous Myth”, while language is presented as some “transcendental” medium that can allow one to “master the monstrous” and escape the finitude of the mortal life, it is actually and ironically monstrous itself – language limits and is spawned from the limiting definitions of its “cultural hierarchy” (312). So as literature relies on the trickery of metaphor, irony and ambiguity, the Monster is defined by a culture that has not found a place (or a name) for him – he is either Adam or is Lucifer (Lamb 312, Sutherland lec 4). The consequences are not a mastery of the self, but the mastery of the self through the cultural forms pre-existent in language (Lamb 312). Monster, creator, and language can not be freed from the bonds or labels of an all too imperfect mortality. It is in his name – ‘Frankenstein’ is a “free rock” or the “free-unfree man” (Sherwin 894).

More to come – part one of four parts

To Be a Christian Today

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To be a Christian is to defend the oppressed, the poor and the defenseless. Why is this a faith for slaves and not a faith for masters? Yet the masters have long ago taken the faith for their own and have used it as an arm for their oppression and for the enslavement of the faithful. This is what they call Christianity, but it is corrupt with evil and the ways of a world of utter wickedness.

In America, those of African descent have been enslaved by the forces of evil and subjugated to the injustices of the ruling demon masters. White devils sing songs together in Sunday churches and then give power to a world of violence, enslavement and coercive dominance.

The victims of this society are lynched, whipped, denied respect and human rights and forced into systems of poverty and into jails to be reformatted as criminals vulnerable to more oppression and exploitation.

Where are the true Christians? Do they stand with the rich, the powerful and the masters who push away the stranger and the sinner? Do they hold whip in hand and take whatever they can for themselves?

Our society has bifurcated along with our economy. Tones of gray are being crystalized into black and white. Those who claim the mantle of the chosen ones stand above the masses of sinners – the heathens, heretics, infidels, and those impoverished through a lack of grace from God. Who are those that move in these high places? Are they Christians as they claim? Would a true-believer place oneself above the rest?

The Son of Man came to give us knowledge and show us the way. He is to lead us to a better life and to lead us back to the garden of this holy Earth. The summary of His gospel is two words rich in simple meaning: “Follow Me.” The truth of his Word was to set us free, but ignorance rules this unholy world.

Being Christian means to live in peace and love and not to live a life of violence and hatred. Make no mistake about this. To live otherwise is to fall in the trap that Satan has set for us. It is easy to fall, but difficult to climb above.

To believe Christ was a warrior or a general or a master or a white supremacist or a devil or a fornicator or a murderer or thief or hater or like the worst in all of us is to believe the whisperings of the father of lies. We must remake ourselves in His image. To do the reverse is an abomination.

Children of God who have heard the secret knowledge that we are all His children, every one of us, every living creature, know that we must live in His light. He is Love. He is Peace. He is the true King.

Racism is evil. Hatred of others is anti-Christian. War, murder, killing and flesh-eating are abominations that breed death and darkness. Greed and the worship of the self lead to strife and destruction. This is not God’s kingdom or His world. Remember, this is Satan’s world…a world in which the strong take and exploit and oppress and steal and destroy and who ultimately worship death.

So in a society of oppression, ignorance and hate that has been built by Satan and is ruled by his demons, we have been shown the way out. We must defend the oppressed, the enslaved, the imprisoned, and those that this world hates. In this way it is no different than our calling during abolition. We stand by all people and especially by those who have been cast aside – black people, brown people and all people of color. Especially we must stand by the poor and destitute and by all who are oppressed by the unrighteous hypocrites – the queer, the stranger, the sick and any others denied a sinner’s grace.

We don’t stand with the righteous for righteous they are not. We are sinners, so our place is among the sinners. We stand by the weak, not the strong.

We are Christians. We are Marxists. We are revolutionaries. We are here to change this world. We are vegans. We are pacifists. We oppose all war. We oppose all oppression. We abhor slavery in all its forms. We love every living creature. We are sinners. We are Christians.

We stand with all of our brothers and sisters…all of them…except those who separate themselves. That is the only exception and it is the exception that they make for themselves, not exceptions we place upon them. When they repent, in this life or the next, and simply step forward and back within the circle of every living creature, we will welcome any of our brothers and sisters with loving embrace. We especially welcome sinners.

All of the world’s religions are wanting and have been corruptly routinized by the established systems of society. There are no exceptions. This is not God’s kingdom, it is Satan’s world.

This is a “war”, but it is a war between war and peace between harmony and oppression. This is not a war between one power and another or “Christians” and “Infidels”. Those who march for peace will be armies of those formerly called Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, scientists and from all of the faiths of the world.

Be strong my brothers and sisters. We shall prevail by the holy truth and grace of God the Father of us all.

This post originally appeared on the Reveille website on June 15, 2017 and is reprinted here with slight modifications.

WHY YOU MATTER Pt. 2: Identity and Meaning

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Identity & Meaning

“Before” the Big Bang there was the existence that we might call the “causeless cause”. Indeed, “before” becomes only relevant with the Big Bang or the creative moment, if you will, since time and space did not even exist until matter began to move.

Even if the Big Bang was not the first generative movement of spacetime and there were other universes that preceded it or that were or remain beyond our scope, then we would still be discussing a “big bang moment.” Either the physical universe is eternal – a direct contradiction of how spacetime defines itself through its very finitude; the physical universe comes from nothing at all – if not a logical impossibility certainly too improbable a theory to hang one’s hat on; or matter in motion comes from a non-physical and supernatural reality. This takes us back, once again, to the Big Bang and what existed before this event or what caused this event to take place?

So “In the beginning” there must be this eternal and non-physical being or infinite existence. This is a simplicity of being in that it is neither one nor many, but a singularity that contains the possibility of multiplicity – all possibility. It is only “zero” when compared to the physical universe, but it is really infinite or existence that is beyond the mathematical limitations of the physical universe. So, although this may be self-evident, it bears repeating, infinity and the non-corporeal is something beyond all mathematical computation. This reality is not one, but it is nothing in the physical sense and yet it is all possibility.

Without anything to reflect upon, this pure being is in a sort of dreamless sleep of unconsciousness. Without anything to contemplate it is thoughtless and absolute quiet. Without anything to compare or contrast itself to, it is indefinable. As Hegel has described, this state of being is Mind without consciousness or awareness. It is simply pure existence and potentiality. It is what we may term “essential existence”. Without movement and the matter of the physical universe it simply “is.”

The most important point to stress is that it is, despite its lack of physicality, thought, movement, consciousness or reflection it is “something.” It is being without definition, without boundaries and without limits. It is the infinite and eternal existence beyond the limitations of time or of space. It is beyond our perceptions and beyond the “universe” itself. Its potentiality contains all the potency that is and ever will be. Indeed, it is all powerful, yet at rest and exerting no power whatsoever, so it is purely potential potency.

So this invisible, non-corporal existence of physical nothingness is the eternal existence that was before there was “a universe”, before there was any thought, before there was identity and before there was consciousness.

What of meaning then? In a real sense then it seems that existence preceded any meaning. While thought, self-awareness and consciousness were not actualized and only potential, any meaning would be yet unrealized as well. In a real sense any meaning had to be discovered or realized as this existence became conscious and aware through thought and creation.

So we may consider whether meaning was somehow “embedded” as a potentiality in existence itself much like this purely supernatural existence was “pregnant” with physicality.

Once this existence becomes conscious and further aware of its own identity and its place in the cosmos, then this Being is in a position to discover or create what meaning there is. So we are considering whether we are dealing with an “absolute” existentialism or something more nuanced. This becomes a sort of philosopher’s “chicken or egg” inquiry that points to at least the possibility of meaning being embedded within eternal existence – thus our term “essential existence” or being pregnant with meaning if you will.

So this argument becomes really a matter of potentiality and inevitability. It seems that the only course available for essential existence is creation of the physical which brings about consciousness, self-awareness and eventually the discovery of this hidden meaning. To extend this argument then, existence must create meaning from its very existence just as it must create the manifestations of a physical “reality.”

Then there was light. This singular act of ultimate power was little more than the humble thought of the infinite Mind. This simple act of creation was the realization of all the potential of the essential existence of the psyche and with the Big Bang the creation of the physical and finite universe. Matter moved and the physical universe came into existence.

So now there was multiplicity. There was the creator and the created. There was God and non-god. There were related opposites and the possibility of definition, consciousness and identity. With creation and the first “thought” the psyche was able to actually “reflect” on what it was through the act of “seeing” what it was not. The shapeless and formerly undefinable could be recognized and “defined” by comparing and contrasting itself against the boundaries that defined the finitude. Now the infinite “mind” could reflect upon creation and come to the first truth or knowledge – that of self-awareness.

It thought and could reflect, “I think, therefore I am.” The psyche could see non-conscious existence and come to understand that it is not non-consciousness, but indeed consciousness.

The necessity of this dichotomy of being – the relationship between God the infinite and the finite physicality – provided the means for awareness and the realization that would follow. God could see and this sight allowed Him to know first of all the only real truth that is unquestionable and absolute – “I am” or God is.

So there was identity and God became aware of who He was. God understood what He was not – the creation or the physical universe. Certainly, this creation was His doing and in a real sense a part of Him, but it was also distinct and separate as well. There had to be dichotomy and opposites for there to be identity and awareness. To see what one is and know who one is, one must know what one is not. With the understanding of Himself and His place in this universe that He created there could follow understanding and the discovery of this “embedded meaning.”

When we begin to see and to know and to finally understand this essence of life, we can finally understand its very essentiality to existence. The peaceful sleep that proceeded thought and motion was forever gone so that the conscious being had to find value and quality to this life in its self-aware and actualized state or in the state of knowledge.

If meaning was a part of this primordial state of existence, then it was life itself or as the labors of our great thinkers and the revelations of our great mystics have taught us, it is the achievement of the “good life.”

Certainly, one could argue that meaning had to be constructed, but such an argument for pure existentialism would seem to be missing an important – an even essential – component of this primordial existence. Before time, there was existence with all potential – the potential of creation and thought or sight, of reflection and self-awareness or knowledge; and finally of fulfillment or self-actualization through the meaning that was there all the time and simply had to be discovered.

Life is and there are qualitative elements to this life. Formerly, there was the peaceful ignorance and the bliss of unconscious being and then there came thought and feelings. Feelings have qualitative value – there are both feelings that are good and feelings that are bad or feelings that lead to happiness and feelings that lead to suffering.

Meaning then was intrinsic to life and really entwined within existence itself – it only had to be realized through the value or the quality of this existence. So an embedded meaning or essence that is a part of this existence would be qualitative or a condition with value (the good life or a life filled with good feelings compared to a bad life or a life filled with bad feelings). This meaning, then, is the pursuit and the realization of happiness through self-discovery, actualization and fulfillment.

This meaning, really something that could have just as easily arose from absolute existentialism, paradoxically seems to have been something wrapped up in existence itself and simply is a qualitative value that is placed on existence.

This line of reasoning then provides a necessity of understanding what the good life is and how one can attain the good life through an evolutionary path to self-actualization and fulfillment.

The equations of metaphysical philosophy are of the simplest sort. In the beginning there was “essential existence” – the infinite and supernatural being in a state of restful innocence and peace without the physical universe. To the mathematician there was only “nothingness”.

With the Big Bang the psyche, through the creation of thought and the universe, had the means to see, feel, to know and to understand – there was light. He can know who He is in relation to this created universe and begin to understand true meaning. He could become actualized and realize all of the potential of the primordial essential existence. As the great legend of western history teaches – God labored for six days and on the seventh He found peace.

This post originally appeared on the Reveille website on June 2, 2017 and is part of the Why You Matter project.

LOST AND FOUND

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ART PROJECT Lost and Found Artifacts – “Take it or Leave it”  

A project started with the Reveille website in the spring of 2017 involved losing small talisman art in various locales and leading the discoverer to the Reveille website. Although this was not successful in the respect of the artifacts being found and reported on the site, the project is staged for a second phase linking the works to the We’re Wonderful website.

The 20th century Bauhaus artist Paul Klee described his paintings as evocative of lost treasures that were somehow discovered. Klee’s paintings exhibited primitivism, otherworldliness and a sense of mystical wonder. Needless to say, Haj is a great admirer of his work.

There is a contemporary movement where the artist “loses” his or her work by burying or otherwise hiding the piece, but I am unable to identify what this is called. Regardless, the discovery of this movement along with a lifelong love of Klee has led Haj to pick up this project.

The original lost artifact was called Yorick and was lost somewhere in the Vieux Carré probably in late April of 2017 (posted on Reveille May 3). A somewhat obvious quote simply attributed to “WS” was included: “Where are your gibes now?”

In a feature on Turner Classic Movies this month (October 2018) and in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein, the artist Ross Rossin said, “Every portrait I do is, to a large extent, a self-portrait”. Yes, and each work is a piece in the greater jigsaw puzzle. Yorick, of course, is a portrait of us all as, below our masks…our very skins…where we look so very much alike.

The second piece was lost in May of 2017 near one of the oldest settlements in North America and was called The Thirst of a Scarab’s Work. The image was posted on the Reveille website on June 1. This artifact included the epitaph from Adi Newton’s lyrics for Clock DVA (I am uncertain now which song and album), “In desolate dream I walk alone through the centuries of hunger.”  

Here, one of humanity’s earliest civilizations’ ancient artifact-insect is transformed by its work from the base earthiness where we all originate into fire and light. The ceramic artifact is practical and can serve as a sweet’s dish or a simple ashtray.

Here’s a detail of the piece.

 

 

 

The third piece lost sometime in late June or early July of 2017 was titled Black Lagoon and was lost in a dingy sitting by a bay in St. John’s USVI. Here’s a picture of the locale.

What more to say about the timeless image of this missing link that emerges from the murky depths to haunt our sense of divine right.

Creation and destruction are dual forces stemming from the same artistic source. Art must tap into the darkness even when it wishes to portray only light.

Finally, Haj lost this piece only called totem rot no. 16. This was lost in our home base during a march of resistance. It’s epitaph is from the great Pollock who this piece pays homage to: “there is no accident…”. Primitivism, verdant chaos and the anxiety dance may be evoked.

Stay tuned brothers and sisters.

Image of Fish Magic (1925) by Paul Klee (1879-1940) from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

DOGMA

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So the story goes that Christ was hanging out on the wrong side of the tracks and, you know, eating and drinking with the derelicts and the outcasts of society – the poor among the Jews, tax collectors of dubious background, unwashed fishermen, prostitutes and other assorted “sinners”. The high and mighty came and saw Him defiled in this filthy company and they were amazed and wondered aloud at this.

Christ gave them an answer to ponder…many of them may still be pondering this today. He said, “Look, the healthy have no need of a doctor. I have not come to call the righteous, but to lead the sinners to righteousness.”

So doesn’t this teach us a lesson of tolerance? I mean, this is the post-modern age. Can’t we express our individuality and follow our own path? Certainly, we must demand no less….

Well the answer is actually No, we really can not….

So while the spirit quest can take us along many paths, we are eventually aligned with the same path that Christ took and must follow Him in one form or another to get to our collective goal. This begins with the dogma that is irrefutable and can not be thrown out with the bathwater.

One might argue that this dogma is a tolerance for everyone’s beliefs and their lifestyles, but this idea must be refuted as entirely wrong. Some beliefs are intolerable. Does that mean we must impose our beliefs on others? No, it does not, but it does mean we can not be tolerant of certain beliefs and of certain lifestyles.

Let us look to Christ’s example you might say. Wasn’t our Savior tolerant of all and here to be with us sinners?

So this begs the question: what is this dogma that must take precedence over tolerance? It is as simple as the truth that lies at the heart of the mystery of the universe and within the knowledge that was once called “secret” knowledge. That’s the one you have figured out in your heart or are involved in figuring out now…. Do you know this truth?

There is one Father and this is God. There is one Mother and this is Earth. We are all, every one of us, children of God and each of us are brothers and sisters – every living creature.

This is the simple truth that comes from an understanding of who we are and where we come from.

Today, we see in America and indeed throughout the world old political divisions that arose from masters and from slaves or those of the “right” and the “left”. Certainly, a part of modern divisions comes from these divergent perspectives of power and of will. In part, the rich and powerful (the “masters”) have realized that in post-industrial modernity’s smaller, crowded world that their message – indeed their very control – is losing its hold upon the masses who have been duped by these masters of power for these last millennia.

Let’s call this something like post-modern enslavement or better the emergence of the enlightened slave.

In this corner, we have those who wish for an inclusive society that tolerates difference and otherness. In the other corner are the proponents of exclusion and the select. While one corner preaches harmony through diversity, acceptance and inclusion, the other praises harmony through homogeny and the stratification of an enclave society. One corner shouts universality while the other speaks of selective grace, privilege and even racial superiority.

…dogma then? Doesn’t this indicate intolerance? Yes it does, but this intolerance speaks of intolerance and is about intolerance. This dogma is indeed about being intolerant of, you guessed it, intolerance. It clearly states that these ideas of intolerance are wrong and not to be tolerated by society. Does this mean we are to impose our will? …no, in the respect that each individual is free to think as they will, but their beliefs and most certainly their lifestyles remain intolerable as long as they are intolerant of others – any others.

This is dogma that can not be negotiated. We must have an all-inclusive society as any society that accepts some and rejects others must be rejected as anti-Christian. We must accept all – including those of us who are in the most miserable state as, indeed, our compassion and empathy demands that we care for the weakest in our society and that this is not a society that is made by masters, for masters and made to exploit some for the betterment of others.

So there is a line here and it is not simply an ethical line either, but a moral stance. We are the true Christians if you will. We are the right. Those who wish to separate the good and evil, saved and damned, masters and slaves, white and non-white, or whatever else they’ve come up with to judge the quick from the dead comes not from the Father of All, but from the father of lies.

So these righteous ones, we must love as brothers and sisters, but it is their intolerance, their very righteousness, that we must turn away from.

So once you get in the right corner, sit down and give praise for every living creature. It’s time to stop the murder and eating of the flesh of your brothers and sisters. This is dogma without compromise. This brings us back to the peace, the love and the understanding of our one Father God. Get your house in Zen order brothers and sisters. It’s about time.

This post originally appeared in the Reveille website on April 16, 2017.

Death is the Word: The Father of Lies and His Unholy World

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This world…not the Earth, but this world created, through the ages, by human hands… is not the Earth that God made.

Look at this world with new eyes. It is a mirror and we can see our own mortality if we stare long enough. Around us we see…a world on the brink of radioactive fiery annihilation? We could not see clearly enough though, and the truth was finally unheard beneath the roaring sun and falling stars. The urgency of this was lost as we failed to realize Hiroshima had made war utterly and irrevocably obsolete forever more.

This world of nations came closer to extinction, but old habits and institutions die hard and their death is slow and so very painful. These nation-states had been consolidating their powers too long for them to simply fade away like an autumn wind. So blindly we march into this new century without taking much pause. Faithlessly we must tread past this precipice that portents the world’s abysmal doom.

Of course, there’s more. We rape, we pillage and we leave this planet in ruins through the pandemic of vice and greed that the Counselor whispers in a sort of unholy comfort to our ears. The economics of natural selection insists on nothing less he says. Are we past the point of return? Can we renounce our love for worldly Thanatos to save ourselves and this planet Earth?

Paradise this is not. Heaven and Hell are real. They are so very real and are here and now, not in some mystical dimension invented by the father of lies, but all around us mind, body and soul.

This is Hell. Satan is its master. Make no mistake. His world this is. He is the father of lies. Believe in this world and you believe the lies…his lies.

The first law is murder. We are taught the unholy rites repeated hundreds of millions of times each and every day. In this world a farm animal is murdered every two-thirds of a second for human consumption. Only God knows how many fish and sea creatures are murdered in that two-thirds of a second.

In our arrogant hubris we fail to acknowledge the power of sacrifice as it is broadcast through the universal psyche, seeps deep down into our now fully rotten consciousness, and must drown in the tears of our blood-stained, terror-filled eyes. Awash in blood, filling our innards with corpse and decay and subconsciously aware of so many silent screams our souls become weighed with the violence…the death and the ill-ease that is our disease.

We become what we consume. We eat misery. We eat death. We are disease. We live in the pain that is our impending and real death lived over and over in thundering successions. The adrenaline that once coursed through the living veins of our victims will keep us up each night until our anxiety has brought us once again into the depths of despair and madness and constant, unrelenting fear. We drape ourselves in the fleshly skins of these victims. While we walk the earth in our own righteousness, we wear that mark on our heads and bury our hearts beneath the bloody carcasses of these unholy sacrifices.

There’s more. Slavery is a human institution as well. We have dairy farms, battery farms, feed lots, apiaries, zoos, circuses, and a long list of atrocious means to oppress and to exploit.

This darkness knows little bounds. We murder one another. In war, in crime and why not?, our supposedly free and democratic states sanction the murder of the most heinous members of our societies. The state says murder – repackaged as war, abortion, capital punishment or just a midnight snack – is acceptable under certain circumstances that are approved by law. So we claim there is justice in killing. Is it any wonder the members of this society believe the same – that in the finality of death there is some sort of justice?

This is how our nation-states handle world affairs after all – through war and violence. We experiment on one another – after inhumanely using non-human animals we turn to the world’s most poor and destitute. Racism and bigotry thrive at all levels of society. Ignorance and hatred seethe under the surface until they explode in brutal assaults.

Look around you and see. Turn your ear so that you may hear.

Life, it is most apparent, holds little value in our institutions and the people who exalt these institutions. Murder and violence is how we solve these problems, but we fail to see that a thousand more problems and disturbing woes will spring from every act of violence we perpetuate.

All our social systems are based on slavery and the coercive force of violence so that this relationship between the master and the slave has come to define the fascist states and their economies of wealth and poverty – institutions of workers and owners – or what we have come to define as the “winners and losers” in the race for material gain and power.

The free market world favors the privileged, the strongest, the smartest, shrewdest and the most charming and attractive. It most especially favors those in a position to exploit and who rarely think twice taking for themselves whatever presents itself as an advantage, a prize or a trophy. For the weak and the less fortunate or those who are unwilling to do anything it takes, not to mention those who have been marginalized due to sex or race or other unseemly attributes, well we simply leave them behind in poverty, persecution and behind bars. This is anything but a Christian society.

The nation-states of the world persecute, exploit, murder and perpetuate an egregious number of injustices on each other and their own citizenry. Amnesty International claims that in 2015, 98 states tortured or otherwise ill-treated people, at least 18 states or armed groups committed war crimes or violated the “laws of war” and 30 or more states illegally forced refugees to return to the countries where they would be in danger. War rages in the Middle East while Israel, enabled by its western patrons, illegally grabs land and carves up the Palestinian homeland in its commitment to an authoritarian manifest destiny. The list goes on: Syria, Pakistan, Russia, Angola, Gambia, Venezuela, Thailand, Mexico, Burundi, China, the United Kingdom, the United States, Hungary, Slovakia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya….

The Holocaust; the purges of the Soviet Union; Pol Pot’s Killing Fields; the genocides of Armenia, Greece, Assyria and Western Mongolia; Rwanda in the 1990s; Croatia during WWII; Bangladesh in 1971; Burundi’s genocides; the Kurds of Saddam Hussein; the Silent Holocaust of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala; Bosnia, and what is happening to the gnostic Yazidis today in Iraq.

At home in America, a growingly impoverished working class must deal with economic hardships due to the rise of corporatism and the dismantling of the welfare state. Few social services remain for the growing class of American working poor. Too many turn to street drugs and booze for psychic healing since psychiatric care or other forms of therapy are beyond reach of anyone but the most affluent.

With the highest incarceration rates in the world, the USA trebles the victimization of the working poor and, indeed, has virtually made poverty a crime itself.

Make no mistake about it. This is Satan’s world.

The holy avatar has returned to find the true self and the true meaning. This is the Way to the Kingdom of Heaven, but first the holy one must submit to God’s Will.

This is Christ’s return. He has returned to overthrow this world of our god Lucifer. Will we let him lead us back to the eternal Garden that is Mother Earth given to all of His Children by the Father God?

The image of Christ is the good shepherd carrying the lost sheep back to the fold. He will not leave any of us behind, not even the weakest among us. The first shall be last and the last first.

There is one Father – God – and one Mother – Earth – all of us, every living creature, are children of God and brothers and sisters. We must start acting like a family or, well, sanity will let you see what then. Pray His Will Be Done. Amen.

This post originally appeared on the Reveille website March 28, 2017.

The Great Heresy – Gnostics in Medieval Europe

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Languedoc in the 12th century witnessed the rise of one of the most remarkable heretical movements in the Middle Ages. These believers we have come to call the Cathars, but they probably began as little more than a lose band of believers who argued the finer points of their faith with each other.  Eventually, they would come into mortal conflict over the broader points of the world with the Roman Catholic Church.

For its part, the Church would use any number of methods of coercion against these heretics while Cathar “good men” and “good women” refused to partake in any violence at all, including against terrestrial animals and creatures as meek as a squirrel. So while the Cathars would make their case through the Christian qualities of humility, peace and compassion, the Catholic Church would resort to the ace up its medieval sleeve – brute force.

The Church had to innovate. The Dominicans, or the Order of Preachers, would be established and trained to debate the finer points of “Christian Love” with these and other heretics in the medieval town squares throughout the Languedoc. Their efforts were a massive failure, but eventually, these monks, along with the Franciscans, would man and administer the Papal Inquisition and bring heretical offenders to the gaols and pyres of the state.

Like Manichaeans, the Cathar faithful were divided into believers or “credenti” and the “perfecti” or those who taught. Cathar faith dictated that the perfecti must always tell the truth and they would die before renouncing their faith. They died. They died in the brutal crusade designed to destroy their beliefs. They died in the dungeons and on the pyres across the Occitan.

Some argue whether Cathars or even other “heresies”, gnostic or other, could indeed be properly labeled as part of the Christian faith. This argument generally comes from the vantage of established Christian orthodoxy and does not necessarily entail a real debate about the true message of Christ.

Still, there were similarities between Catharism and orthodox Christianity, for example:

  • Celibacy – By the Eleventh Century’s Gregorian Reform, clerical celibacy was strengthened in the Church. This was something that Cathar perfecti were supposed to practice as well.
  • Poverty – Monastic vows of poverty actually became more in vogue with the rise of Cathar, Waldensian and other heresies. Indeed, St. Francis and his order of mendicant Friars Minor can be seen as part of the same drive for the apostolic life that compelled heterodoxy throughout the High Middle Ages. While the Church itself, and much of the lay clergy, were anything but impoverished, Cathars seem to have forsaken much of the trappings and the wealth of the Church.
  • The Divine Humanity of Christ – The Church’s view expressed after the First Council of Nicaea was that Christ was both human and divine or He “was incarnate and was made man”. The nature of the savior was of paramount importance for this council established to decide right belief (orthodoxy) from error (or heresy). With Cathars, there were likely different beliefs – certainly many radical Gnostics maintained Christ was not human, but purely divine. It may be that the prevalent belief among Cathars was that all humans had the spark of divinity and were what was called Aeons or “angels”. One might even go so far as to argue that Gnosticism’s “secret knowledge” was this very divinity of humankind.

Of course, the differences were striking enough to compel the Church to eventually act:

  • Ecclesiastical structure – The Cathars likely didn’t have much organization until some semblance of this was deemed necessary for survival after the Treaty of Meaux in 1229.
  • Dualism – Catharism, like Manichaeism, was a dualistic belief that held that the material realm was evil while the spiritual realm was good. Radical dualism went further and held that Satan was a co-equal in power to God. While some believe that Catharism may have moved towards radical dualism in the early 13th century it is almost certain that the Church lumped all dualistic heretics into a single category. The truth may have been that the dualism Cathars debated within their “faith” was more complex than simply the “belief in two gods”.
  • Oaths – Feudal Europe itself was built on the foundation of oath-giving and the Church provided needed sacred legitimacy along with the symbols, icons and relics upon which many vows were sealed. We see a great deal of this even today, yet Cathars, and indeed many heretics through the ages, wholly rejected any oath-taking as sinful and wrong. Indeed, this became a way of identifying heretics from among the flock of the Church’s faithful.
  • Vegetarianism and Pacifism – Cathar perfecti were virtual vegans not eating any animal products with the possible exception of fish. Many early Christians, such as the Ebionites, shared this quality along with eastern religious traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Early Christians were staunchly non-violent and it seems Cathars were as well. This general pacifism likely included many of the credenti although by the time of the Albigensian Crusade (originally preached by Pope Innocent III), many Cathar believers certainly took up arms to defend themselves, their families and property. A popular test of heresy throughout the European Middle Ages was “the chicken test” where a suspect was required to kill a chicken as proof of the orthodoxy of their beliefs.
  • Sex and the Sexes – While the Church barred women from the clergy (and continues to do so), it is apparent that there were no such restrictions for Cathar perfecti. For the believers, or credenti, sexual mores seemed more liberated than with the Church. Sex within marriage may have even been considered less desirable than sex outside of marriage for many Cathars since one would not necessarily recognize their own moral faults within the (Church’s) sacrament of marriage. It is also true that sex within marriage led to procreation and it was a Gnostic tenet that procreation perpetuated the evil material realm. It has been argued that for Cathars even sodomy and homosexuality was preferable over marriage. Of course, the Church took this to their usual level of hysteria in denouncing their enemies. Cathars were accused of all sorts of sodomy and sexual misconduct. Our word “Bugger” has its roots in this hatred for the “Bogomils” or “Bulgarians” who traveled about in pairs.
  • Relics and Icons – The medieval Church believed holy relics – the bones, blood, clothing or other paraphernalia of saints’ and martyrs’ remains – held special powers. The significance of this power is very hard for modern readers to grasp, but it was critical to the Church and to its power through the Middle Ages. Cathars and many other medieval heretics went so far as to abhor the cross as the instrument of Christ’s murder. These heretics saw the symbolism of the Church as idolatry and disdained the rich trappings, the ceremony and the ritual of a corrupt Church.
  • The Resurrection of the Flesh – This belief, still held by the Church, maintained that at the end of time, the dead would literally rise from their graves in their earthly bodies. Somehow, this is made to work within the cosmology of an otherworldly Heaven and Hell that the Church made as central to their cosmology. Cathars held beliefs shared among many Gnostics – the Manichaeans and the Bogomils – as well as Hindus and Buddhists. They believed that the souls of the departed reincarnated and were born again in this world. For Cathars, it is more likely that in the end times all the Aeons would return in preparation for a sort of universal redemption. Compared with the orthodoxy of the Church, “the Great Heresy” naturally seemed much more tolerant. It has been argued that the most striking difference of all between heresy and orthodoxy was the oppressive machinations of an oppressive Catholic Church made up of edicts of negative rules that so starkly contrasted with the Gnostic positive morality that encouraged perseverance in the quest for purity.
  • Transubstantiation – This was another contested belief ridiculed by the Cathar faithful.  According to the Church, during the ceremony of the mass, the Eucharist bread and wine would literally (that’s literally) and somewhat magically transform into the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ. A running Cathar joke in the Languedoc pondered the size of the mountains of holy excrement that would result.

Scholars today understand more about the first Christianities, their diversity and they have discovered relationships with Catharism and early Christianity that seems to be absent with the later orthodoxy. In Edward Gibbon we hear descriptions of early Christians as, “offended by the use of oaths, by pomp of magistracy, and by the active contention of public life”. He goes on that early Christians held it unlawful to ever “shed blood of our fellow-creatures”.

By the Twelfth Century, a morally bankrupt Church faced a growing population of believers who thirsted for the apostolic life. The Church responded effectively enough to stave off widespread dissent for another 300 years. Simply put, through “any means necessary”, the heretics had to disappear. They represented a serious threat to the spiritual hegemony of the Catholic Church who controlled the populace through their ordained position as intermediaries between mankind and God.

The longest crusade in history was fought to erase them from the Languedoc and when this didn’t do the trick the Church perfected the machinations of the indomitable Inquisition. The majority of a recalcitrant perfecti ended up finding their end on the stake, but it would take the Church another 100 years to complete their genocide.

Was it God’s Holy Church that was anointed to persecute and eradicate the “good men and women” of the Languedoc or were the Cathars the real martyrs of an oppressive and corrupt institution at the height of its unholy evil?

Further Reading

Barber, Malcolm. The Cathars.

Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. Montaillou (highly recommended).

Markale, Jean. Montségur and the Mystery of the Cathars.

Moore, R.I. The Formation of a Persecuting Society (highly recommended).

Weis, René. The Yellow Cross.

This post originally appeared in the Reveille website on January 9, 2017 and is republished here with only minor modifications.

Greed, Lies and Power

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This has got to stop!

Is it time to finally come out and say it?

After all, don’t we live in the postmodern age? Haven’t we moved beyond the blind acceptance of the archaic manifestations of our social, cultural, economic and other great institutions as some kind of self-evident truths that we must accept and fall into line with?

What of capitalism? Despite its egalitarian claims isn’t this really a system that evolved from an aristocratic past? More social Darwinism than emancipation, didn’t capitalism evolve from a history where the strong, from their place of power, wealth and prestige, have always ruled over the weak? Isn’t the capitalist system a reflection of pre-civilized barbarity and the alchemy of the master-slave societies that followed?

What of this capitalism and who does it really serve anymore? Are the working people of the world ready to hear the truth and learn from it and actually do something about it? Capitalism formed and was created or molded through time. It has a basis in nature only as barbarity does. Capitalism was made to serve the strong and the dominant – those with wealth, power, ambition, intelligence and the moral shortcomings necessary to push others aside and take for themself – to “succeed” in the material world.

So much of the history of the capitalistic system was a walk down a proverbial tight-rope – a delicate balance between the elite and their dependents. Call this the welfare state if you will, but what happens when this balance is thrown off and the welfare state is gutted?

The lessons of the 2008 western banking crisis are still being sifted through, but one of the most telling lessons seems to demonstrate that deregulation and loss of controls opens a pathway to runaway greed. Certainly, these are lessons we’ve failed to grasp over and over again. Come on people, capitalism doesn’t just invite greed it glorifies it and gives it justification. The capitalistic system rewards the takers and punishes those who leave behind.

How did we get there? The people of the western world truly believed that the Second World War against the Axis powers was just and righteous and this crystallized the perception of a black and white world. What followed were the ideologies that would lay the groundwork for a virulent Red Scare, the Cold War and the strengthening of the belief that “what was good for General Motors was good for the country”.

Revolution was followed by a counter-revolution that relied on the cold conformity of “a silent majority” and the personification of corporations. Milton Friedman was the economic prophet of this counter movement that lauded the “freedom” of corporate collectives over those of the working consumers. By the 1980s a sort of global hegemony was starting to take form under the figureheads of the leading disciples of the Chicago school of economics – Thatcher and Reagan. In the US, Reagan democrats would became “new democrats” and by 1992 Keynesian economics had become hijacked by a more purified capitalism that was to prevail during the following decades and up to this day.

“Corporate stewardship” by the time of the “Reagan Revolution” and the years that followed had become almost completely focused on quarterly profitability and shareholder returns. Leaders squeezed every bit of money out of their enterprises and were only too happy to lay off thousands and outsource production and labor for the sake of good quarterly returns. What were formerly called employers became international or global brands. Indeed, employees had become seen as a liability and workers weighed heavily on profits and losses, better to outsource and not have to deal with the uncertainty, risks and the rising costs of human resource.

Eventually, these leaders devolved into what we saw so starkly in 2008. All the money flowing in the C-suites with their stock options, bonuses and platinum parachutes set the table for personal greed to become among the greatest forces working within our corporations and indeed in western capitalistic societies. Why not? After all, the system glorified and rewarded their behavior and atavistic baseness.

To say that we have a self-serving economy doesn’t seem far from the mark. Are we to expect some sort of altruistic utopia to come from this mix? Capitalism is Consumerism. Indeed, there seems to be a denial that this Consumer-based system depends on working class affluence or what we call a strong middle-class. Put more directly capitalism relies on a consumer with money in his/her pocket. The truth really is simple – working people are the consumers in this system.

So the system depends on a major class of consumers of the very products and services that are being provided by industry. When this class becomes impoverished, industry must necessarily suffer and suffer greatly, but in the narrower and narrower perspectives of individual corporate leaders this hardly seems to be of any concern. After all, this system of affluence does foster a culture that is steeped in Epicureanism and self-interest, so macro systems are barely understood or outright ignored for the sake of the straight-forward micro-economics of the individual immersed in wealth accumulation.

So in the end it is not so surprising what we see. A system created and propagated to serve the strongest ultimately devolves into a sort of self-pillaging feeding frenzy without thought for others, without thought for the community and society itself, and that is ultimately forced to rely on a bloated financial industry to maintain this precarious house of cards through a sort of shell-game of usury that becomes to rely more and more on the politics of force and of deception.

Step back from history and see how it got us here. We’ve evolved. Our greatest strengths lie in better ways to exploit, to take, to kill and to harm. Our greatest strengths are in how we subjugate – one another and the planet. We must either stop this or we must face the consequences of our most base impulses and desires. It’s time to stop and…well…grow up people.

Originally appeared on the Reveille website on December 2, 2016.