There's no more room to sweep it under the rug. PHoto: Banksy graffiti.
Joined by wholesale environmental collapse and also by the acceleration of global climate change, the systemic collapse of western civilization is under way.
In fact, it becomes more difficult with every passing day to ignore any of these three phenomena, despite the ongoing irrelevant spew emanating from politicians and the media.
Economic recession? Check, since 2000. Economic depression? Check, since 2008. Rampant “natural” disasters? Check, with increasing frequency. Climate chaos? Indeed, only the willfully ignorant can miss it.
When it rains it pours
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is what simultaneous, systemic collapses look like. We’re awash in tell-tale interactions between climate change, “natural” disasters, and the industrial economy. A parched planet blows through major cities, obscuring the sun even as record-high temperatures are eclipsed. Fire and flood are on the rise. We used to be able to exert a modicum of control over the latter two phenomena, back when climate chaos wasn’t exploding and the industrial economy wasn’t imploding.
On the other hand, we used to contain nuclear power within nuclear power plants, too. Well, except the occasional Hiroshima and Chernobyl. Now it’s Fukushima, Fort Calhoun, Cooper, and Los Alamos, and all at the same time.
The official line — “Notification of Unusual Event” — is becoming paradoxically common. Our collective, societal ability to keep the plates spinning is no longer a justifiable assumption.
Justifying injustice
Yet we continue to take for granted the inherent justice of the unjust, absurd set of living arrangements to which we’ve become inculcated and enslaved.
There can be little doubt a system that enslaves, tortures, and kills people is wrong. Industrial culture does all this with stunning efficiency. Big Energy poisons our water. Big Ag controls our seeds, hence our food. Big Pharm controls, through pharmaceuticals, the behavior of our children. Wall Street controls the flow of money. Big Ad controls the messages we receive every day. The criminally rich get richer through crime: that’s how America works.
Through it all, we believe we’re free.
Even more strangely, we believe we’re promoting freedom around the world. Here in the land of a war-based industrial economy, we used to busy ourselves with the quaint concept of one war at a time. Now we’re committed to Iraq and Afghanistan for the duration of the industrial age. Tack on a few more oil-rich, Muslim countries — say, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia as of this writing — and a reasonably intelligent person might conclude an increasingly desperate United States is beginning to lose its global hegemonic grip.
Phenomena that formerly captured our attention every few decades now appear weekly. The new normal is a mad scramble to steer clear of nature’s wrath while ratcheting up resource wars to stay one step ahead of complete socioeconomic collapse.
Amidst the chaos, long-time political insiders warn of civil unrest.
Reality, interrupted
Meanwhile, 300 million self-absorbed Americans watch the feel-good “news” to see which models of beer and automobile are being pimped by their favorite celebrities. It seems the personal game of “who’s screwing whom” is more important to the typical television-addicted American than the international, imperial game of “who’s screwing whom.” Oblivious to the carnage of industry and the lunacy of our lives, we keep praying the stock markets go up while bickering about who’s to blame for our economic misfortune. Meanwhile, the shamans and high priests of the faith-based junk science known as neoclassical economics assure us the industrial economy is growing. And, they say, this is a good thing.
But beyond the culture of make believe and into the realm of reality, we know otherwise. Civilization precludes maintenance of a robust living planet capable of supporting human life for additional millennia.
There is another, better way to live. But we can’t be bothered. Please pass the guacamole, and don’t tell me about the horrors of globalization that allowed the delivery of its component ingredients. After all, extinction is for lesser species.
Until it’s not.
–Guy McPherson for Transition Voice
About Guy McPherson
We have laws that give us entitlement to all things “wanted.” Of course “wants” have become “needs” and the world which feels normal is actually upside down. As long as we create our own reality (laws, religion, science that benefits us) all will appear fine. This is the route civilizations take and ours is no different. The end will of course be brutal and messy but until then pop a cold one and follow the NFL lockout because this shit only happens in the past and in other places…like Detroit.
Or, as the Bard’s Falstaff cried out “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!”
Firstly, though, I am not programmed to accept that – “the genes say no” and second we are just one of the many, many forms life’s evolution has assumed since first metabolising on the planet some four billion years ago. Yeah, we’re all cousins – us, the worms, those virus, those oak trees – we just took different paths. I rather like our form and I’ll work as hard as I can to help ensure its continuance although, of course, we are constantly changing as our genes re-select and countless chance interactions occur.
Me, I’d , I do, plant trees. I’m spreading this as “5 Trillion Trees”, for that’s how many I reckon we should plant to re-establish a sustainable environment for ourselves and our co-evolvants. They’ll not all grow but enough will to “fix” sixty ppm of See oh Too. Concomitantly appropriate, sustainable biodiversity will bloom and we’ll probably be able to feed ourselves better than today.
Saw you on Keiser Report, Guy, so Hi – I’m impressed by your honesty in stepping back from the obviously seductive lifestyle. It’s hard, though, when you see 99% of the population carrying on without even noticing. Being Falstaff at best.
There is a way to liberate all human beings and end all suffering instantly. It is dharma, life of compassion and love, total awareness and attention.
The imperial empire is our current realization of modern materialism. We are all still suffering, as our conscious of human species is whole and shared by all human beings, the agony, suffering, insecurities etc. Our psyche is far too clever and cunning to be contained, for thousands of years, we have lived in miseries and violence towards ourselves.
This liberation is beyond knowledge, technology, wisdom and all of the worldly pleasure and sensation. It is an absolute understanding that is wholesome perception, choiceless and utmost freedom and happiness in all senses, both bodily and non-material.
And this liberation does not need any energy, money or indoctrinations or any of all of the intermediary mediums that man has created and worshipped. It starts with you, individually. It is your thinking, your memories and emotions from conditioning. It is your own pattern of logic that continues all of our own suffering.
It is the complete understanding of the attention that your perceive as your being, the center of yourself that is the egotistic me. Beyond this state, there is liberation, infinite energy and freedom from birth and death.
The brain consumes enormous energy in thinking, up to 80 percent of nutrient intake. This is un-necessary energy that is consumed in anilmal electrical production, the electrical processes of neural function, the biological neural chemical production of emotion and feelings.
But when come upon this understanding that you are the attention, the observer and the analyzer, the center of ego dissolves naturally, without effort or time. Thinking is understood and is removed of attention, your brain idles and releases all energy, huge surge of energy.
Beyond our physical senses lays non material senses, chakras as some calls. Beyond our thinking lays dharma, infinite energy and wholesome holistic understanding. An enlightenment state of being that allows total liberation from suffering. A state of freedom where we no longer consume lives of other innocent species, may they be mineral or plant earthlings.
This is an awareness of Oneness where we take nourishment directly from the elements, complete harmony and intercourse with Nature. The next phase of living for our specie, it is effortless and timeless, and it does not cost a thing.
This is not a fairy tale or fancy superstition. This is fact that is happening this very minute. Beings such as Ram Bomjon title “Dharma Sangha” has made the journey. There is no savior, there is no master or guru, you are the Chosen One. As there awaits utmost truth of life in total liberation, as there awaits deities and devas of non-human species to guide us to eternal happiness.
So may it be, may all beings be happy.
I think we can adapt the old Queen hit as the hym of a new era. Sing with us
“It’s a kind of Matrix, it’s a kind of Matrix….”