To me, this looks like turning darkness into light. I don’t think there has ever been a time in human history that looked as dark as the present day, with climate change, international economic and political instability (euphemism for chaos), and a raging maniac in the White House all converging at the same time as this pesky virus. And yet, it could all be turned around in a moment.
Well, perhaps this may aually take a few hundred years or so to turn around ~ only a geological moment ~ but al the more reason to get started immediately, while we still have a choice about how the rest of it unfolds.
Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down
May, 2020
Oh, these are crazy times, and we haven’t seen anything yet. It is becoming evident that the looming world-wide economic catastrophe wil surely dwarf the current public health crisis in severity and long lasting negative consequences. But what else can we do? No one wants to die.
I remember in earlier days I had taken the position that endless deficits and ever lengthening debt will inevitably undermine economic stability, leading eventually to insolvency and bankruptcy, whether we are talking about personal debt, corporate debt, or government debt. Now it is the fashion for governments to shovel out money in buckets to all comers as
“fiscal stimulus,” and the chorus of economists are loudly exclaiming that, yes, yes, governments can just create money by the trillions of dollars without fear of inflation or the boogeyman, so pump it up and keep those checks coming.
There seems to be abundant evidence, or at least a general consensus, that such a fiscal policy can aually restore produivity and prosperity to a lagging economy. Perhaps my earlier criticism of such profligate spending needs to be reconsidered.
But the discussion seems to present the matter in overly simple terms
~ “Is massive government spending, in times of economic crisis like the present corona virus, an effeive and useful tool ~ or not?” But that entirely
misses the crux of the whole problem ~ how the money is spent! I return to my ideas about “reality economics” to seek clarity on this matter. So long as this massive government spending is al going down the toilet ~ or worse, much worse ~ it will only lead inexorably to continued economic decline.
The biggest white elephant in the room is endless foreign wars. The U.S. government has spent astronomical trillions of dollars fighting wars all over the planet, blithely tossing the bills onto the back of the National Debt.
All of this military aivity has only increased the widespread opprobrium which most of the world feels towards the capitalist adventurers and their wars. The formula for success is very simple ~ the more American capitalists can ratchet up the levels of international tension on every front, the more business accrues to American arms manufaurers (which are about the only produs Americans make any more, apart from airplanes, white elephants with wings).
However, this is a very shaky hand to play, as it keeps American taxpayers shoveling more and more money into the maw of the Pentagon for their war games, which not only risk economic upheaval and ruin, but they risk escalations of conflis all over the earth that threaten the survival of life.
No, if we want to have the massive spending of government money to have positive benefits for the economy, as well as for the quality of life of its citizens, their expenditures must stop promoting international confli, and they must also stop passing out goodie bags of money to their fellow wealthy plutocrats who already have most of it, anyway, but don’t want to stop until they have it al .
No, all of this massive government spending and “fiscal stimulus” must be carefully direed into valuable projes that will enhance the prospes for the survival of life, instead of inhibiting them. To me that means, of course, planting trees everywhere. There is no excuse for anything less than 100%
employment of every healthy and able-bodied man and woman who wants to work. Of course, the entire Green New Deal can be fully funded, to the enormous benefit of everyone, stimulating the economy as well as enhancing the quality of life and the prospes of survival. There are no limits to the numbers of workers who could be profitably employed planting trees all over the planet. And still, every available shoulder to the wheel may yet not be enough to stave off the extinion of the human race.
So, go ahead, my dear government ~ go ahead and spend those trillions of dollars. Just be sure you spend that money on projes that wil bring favorable consequences, instead of wasting it on projes that bring us ever closer to the brink of disaster, collapse, and death.
Sometimes capitalism and big industry seem to keep things humming along pretty well, so no one dares to obje too much about the system, even though the side effes of the destruion of our human habitat are pretty severe. It is true, of course, that this “pretty well” business only really applies to those on the top of the pile. However, the lower down you are in the wealth pyramid, the less your opinion (or your life) matters. I hate to break the news, but Black lives don’t really matter much, which isn’t news to the Black community. (I am being ironical here, in case explanation is needed.) But it is during such an alternative reality as the present public health crisis that the utter failure of free market capitalism to control unfolding events in the world effeively becomes blindingly apparent. What is needed
now is the total opposite of what we have. We need the whole earth to be cultivated as a garden, and we need it now.
The people of the earth can no longer tolerate having our world run by the Sharpeners. We must set up a world-wide government to prote the entire earth and its biosphere. The Sharpeners and their Corporations must be restrained from their rampage. Not only must their wealth be taxed to fund the cultivation of the earth and the feeding of its people, but a vigilant application of resource depletion tax must inexorably wind down their ongoing destruion of the earth as soon as possible.
During a public health crisis like the present, no one should have to worry about having to work to feed their family and (or) pay their rent.
Everyone should simply stay at home, while the government makes sure everyone has access to food, while they are trying to contain the virus and find vaccines and treatment. Food distribution and other essential services have to be maintained, and volunteers who perform those services must earn generous hazard pay. Even a restoration of the “new normal” (less human conta than ever before) will only happen once all outbreaks are contained and there are both vaccines and treatments available.
None of these mitigation measures for spread of the virus should be mandated by law and enforced at the point of a gun. [ update, uly 2020: I gueſs if Americans are too ftupid to wear a maſ in public, then perhaps it ould be legally mandated. ] It is the responsibility of public health departments to provide information as accurate and up-to-date as possible. If everyone understands the scale of the problem and wants to survive, one will want to curtail as much conta with other people as possible, at least during the hottest part of the pandemic. There will be very few persons seeking social
conta in places of entertainment (or worship). The few who do turn out for any public gathering will probably maintain as much distance as possible, so that the “new normal” will be nothing like the “old normal,” and probably far less contagious, if not as much fun. Virus outbreaks will rise and fal along the way of the world finding its way along the edge between fire and ice (a pretty literal metaphor).
Everything I have written in response to climate change is all just as appropriate for mitigating pandemic outbreaks. The true causes of this virus spreading so quickly out of control can be easily identified ~ the airplane and
the automobile. If most people remained in residence on their family or community farm, growing most of their food, limiting their typical mobility to a day’s bicycle ride, any outbreak of epidemic anywhere in the world would be easily and quickly contained.
I am not advocating that we return to 1885 ~ what I am suggesting is a careful review of all the changes that have been happening since then. I want to retain all of the real improvements which have been made, such as laptop computers and unprecedented world-wide instant communication.
But I want to reje those innovations which turn out to be hazardous to the survival of life. Certainly flying around the world in airplanes is great fun, but when we consider the cost to the earth, we must lay them down.
The bicycle has been greatly improved since 1885, so let us keep the bicycle (and a few other useful things) with us as we go back to grandfather’s farm.
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Albert Fitch Bel ows: The Village Elms (Sunday Morning in New England), 1878.
Take Away Their Guns
June, 2020
The solution just hit me ~ take away their guns! I share the growing disgust at the egregious use of excessive force by the police departments, and I applaud the decision to “abolish the police department,” as some local communities seem to have done. But, while that may be a satisfying ventilation of anger, it isn’t really going to be an effeive solution to the problem. In one way or another, problems are going to arise, drunks will get into fights, men will beat up their wives, and con artists will fleece the gullible. This isn’t going to stop, and there’s no way to suggest that we can do without some organized intervention.
But what about taking away their guns? As a first step, I think that would, at a stroke, end the assassinations and murders of Black people, and everyone else ~ at least by firearms. Plenty of recent murders have been effeed without shooting the viims, so taking away all police guns would not total y stop police violence and brutality, but I suggest that it is an excellent place to begin. Of course, there will always be some special forces who will continue to carry guns; I understand that, as a realist, but the everyday cop on the beat should go about his duties without anything more lethal than a club or stick, similar to what the London police bobbies relied upon (many years ago, but within my memory), not carrying firearms at all.
In fa, that was what gave me the idea of “taking away their guns.”
The train of thought began from the guns ~ for better or for worse, the Constitution pretty well guarantees the right of citizens to bear arms, so any efforts to restri the prevalence of guns run into a substantial brick wall.
But taking the guns out of the hands of the police may be the best foot forward in the campaign to restri the use of guns from everyone else. The pressure against guns, in defiance of the Constitution, must inevitably be a very slow grind. There are plenty of restriions and limits and waiting periods and registrations that can be applied on the one hand, and significant penalties for improper use of firearms on the other.
But, if the guns can be taken out of the hands of the police, forcing them to rely upon human solutions to problems rather than blunt force, it could pave the way for an understanding of society in which guns do not play a part. Police may say that they would be afraid of their lives if they go into a brawl without carrying a gun. But they should be afraid! If they are afraid of their lives, they are more likely to deal with a problem in an appropriate and even handed way. Again, remembering the earlier example of the London police, where there were very stri penalties for killing a policemen, the force worked very effeively to curtail criminal elements. When the police begin carrying arms, the criminal classes carry arms as well, and incidents of violence and murder go up. Of course, the police are not voluntarily going to give up their guns, but I think it can be a far more effeive expression of public outrage for local municipalities to pass legislation denying policemen the right to bear arms! Suppose the police in Detroit, or anywhere else, have to go on their rounds of intervention without carrying firearms at all? We will see how they like it.
At the first sign of inappropriate use of force by the police, just take away their guns, and let them walk around naked for a while, just for an adjustment of consciousness (a gun is a famous phallic image). I think it would be a hundred times more effeive than simply voting to abolish the
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police departments. Where the police departments are abolished, the out-of-work police can just sit back, smugly, and wait for the people to come back to them, cap in hand. But if the police are forced to continue performing their funions without carrying guns, it will teach them a lesson they will never forget.
Fiat Currency
July, 2020
I have been reading over my earlier essays, preparing a new colleion (One lanet akeover), and I seem to discover an apparent contradiion.
On the one hand, I ridicule the career of the Almighty Dollar, as the American government fearlessly prints up more money by the trillions of dollars, leading to a National Debt somewhere in the neighborhood of $26
trillion dollars, and, in these days of the Pandemic, growing at a rate of multiple trillions per year, while, on the other hand, I seem to be advocating the most extreme version of fiat money ever proposed.
But there is a very big difference in the way I envision Big Money playing out, and the way the Big Banks want it to continue. Under the present system, the Bankers are the final masters of the universe, and all money comes and goes through them. Whenever money is currently
“created,” it is a machination of the Banks in which all the money is based on debt, held by the Banks. So, the more money pumped up into the system, the more it is all owed to the Banks, which just get richer and richer as everyone else wallows in poverty and confusion, not really understanding the swindle, a kind of carnival shell game, in which the Banks always win. And, anytime the Banks don’t win, the American government is so paralyzed with fear that they “bail out the banks” to the tune of as many trillion dollars as it takes to keep the monster from devouring them. They are hooked on the swindle, and don’t know how to get the monkeys off their backs. All of this money shared by the Banks and the 1% comes from the debt piled onto the
account of a piece of fiion invented for the purpose: The United States of America, whose taxpayers will be the ultimate losers when the Crash comes.
Under my system, however, the banks would have nothing to do with this process at all. The Government Bank would simply create money by fiat unabashedly, and owe nothing to anyone from the process. The money would be simply created to pay for all government projes ~ the planting of trillions of trees, the funding of the Free Farms, paying farmers for the food they grow (which they supply to the free farms as well as distribute through non-profit food stores), funding inner city transit, health care, education, infrastruure, and anything else deemed to be appropriate for the general welfare. All they have to do to keep the game legit is to tax enough of this money back from the wealthy, up to whom most of this money gravitates by a sort of natural law, so that the supply of money in circulation maintains the value of the currency at its targeted value. (The taxed money would be simply annihilated, whence it came.)
I just consider how much better this system would be to deal with the problems of the New World of the Pandemic ~ the government could simply distribute money to replace whatever is lost from the absence of economic aivity. As I understand it, the Banks (of course) and the Big Tech firms are raking in money in unprecedented amounts these days, so there will still be plenty of money which could be taxed to balance the books.
What is missing from my vision is the role of private banks at the center of all this money creation, like spiders at the centers of their web. To paraphrase Dylan, “Flies, when you gonna wake up?” Or, “We don’t need no stinking spiders!”
Sex Metaphysics
ext: John XIII: 34-35
July 2020
The analogy of sex to the mysteries of philosophy, metaphysics, and theology is not accidental. There is something about ife that is about as fundamental as it gets.
The mysteries of philosophy have been matched with the numbers of mathematics ever since Pythagoras pointed out the correspondence. So, for example, the First and Original Mystery is associated with the Number One.
Sexually, it corresponds with Solitude or Death, depending upon your frame of reference. I have otherwhere described this state as typical of the Priest, the Magician, or the Madman.
The Number Two, the second of the primary mysteries of philosophy, corresponds with the pair bond, which has altogether different physical and metaphysical properties from Solitude. This primary pair bond is the foundation of all of life. The infinite pervasiveness of the properties of yang and yin, ſolve et coagula, are the basis of everything we know in the universe.
The Number Three, the third of the primary mysteries of nature, philosophy, and metaphysics is the number of magic, error, and change ~
the gateway to the infinite potential of the cosmos. Sexually, the number Three is a triangle, intentional or otherwise, and the consequences are magnified exponentially. Three is the number of change, but this potential
for change is the key underpinning the mystery of the phenomenon of being
~ ontology: how is it that there is any universe here at all, instead of just nothing?
In terms of the sexual relations between people in some triangular relationship, the potential for change can go rapidly or slowly towards ongoing manifestation. As the changes go more slowly, the status tends to move from a binary polarity into a more complex field of energy. As the changes go more quickly, the status moves rapidly through accelerating change toward a tipping point of explosion into chaos, or back to the stability of the binary pair bond.
From the point of view of social dynamics, the most important distinion is between solitude and bondage. Even though persons related in triangular bonds are vastly different, socially, from the more common pair bonds, the gulf between anyone bonded in any way and those who are alone is orders of magnitude greater than any bonding variations. Solitude is home to a very unique state of consciousness, but it is not for everyone, and, for the most part, it is best and most effeively experienced in moderation.
After all of this preamble, here is the thesis ~ that there are far too many people in this world who are alone! Solitude is at the root of a large part of the suffering and violence in the world today. I think that it is the single most important social issue, world-wide. In other words, for all of the endless manifestations of social problem, in almost every case the problems may be more quickly and effeively ameliorated by evolutions away from solitude than by any other approach. This can even be applied to problems on a global scale. Wherever in the world there are intense social problems, there is it most important to facilitate the matching up of single persons into
pair bonds. At this level of sex metaphysics, of course, the same patterns wil be seen regardless of the genders or ages of the bonded pairs.
As we have elsewhere detailed, there are seven different patterns of the pair bond, comprising the range of consciousness described by the Hermetic alchemists as the evolution from Lead to Gold, so, for the amelioration of social problems, we look for pair bonding in the upper half of the aura sperum ( ide: he olors of the ura, and he etaphycs of ex).
As to the elevation of status from the pair bond to the triangle, that depends upon the advisability of encouraging or retarding the potential for change, bearing in mind that a state of rapid change can either go up or down; it can get better, or it can get worse.
From a geo-political or geo-social point of view, it appears that the current rapid state of change is riding us very hurriedly to Hell ~ towards death, destruion, and chaos. So the most urgent thing to do, while we are planting 300 tril ion trees, is to promote the pair bonding of single people as high up in the aura sperum as possible.
Money
July, 2020
It’s always about the ierarchy of Importance (q.v.). This planet is raging out of control with many absolutely fundamental errors, so that the trajeory of this fragile biosphere is visibly crashing into chaos. The immediate problem is the biological collapse on every hand ~ the loss of the trees, the loss of the topsoil, marine necrosis, layers of toxic pollution everywhere, raging consumption of fossil fuels, and continuing deforestation when the only hope is the most accelerated replanting possible ~ the whole planet is literally burning up, while Nero fiddles. Donald Trump is certainly a basket case, but he is just one of many raging idiots on this planet who have no idea of what is going on. Everything and everyone is rushing on by inertia, and, as everyone knows, that force is very hard to stop. Whether it is a long standing addiion to crack cocaine, or the addiion to running the planet as a war game for profit, winner take all, the inertia against any change in direion, or even the rate of change, gets harder and harder the further you get into the drug.
So the immediate problem at hand is the collapse of the biological integrity of our planet. Is this a technological problem, or what? Oh, no ~
there are plenty of people who could tell you what needs to be done, and, while the answers range around a number of approaches to the problem, any of these programs for solution would be a whole lot better than just to follow the present inertia. Overcoming the inertia, then, is what has to happen
before we can turn this planet around. So how do we do this? The roots of the problems are not technological, they are political and economic.
I know this keeps going around in circles, but we can’t advance the argument very much at all until we can finally sort out the political problem on the planet and achieve some sort of political unity. We just have to do it.
There is no excuse for such chaos on the earth at this date. A thousand years ago we didn’t expe any better, but by now we really have to deal with this, or go down to defeat as a failed species.
I have long seen the problem as a question of the source of authority, and I have always thought my solution was praically uniquely effeive for providing an institution that could reliably produce an effeive trustee for the planet. The argument that the authority would come from God is not offered frivolously ~ any student of energy dynamics, from whatever school, will clearly understand what I am trying to do here. “God” is an abstra
idea whose meanings and process will be progressively illuminated and revealed as the students of the Seminary pursue their studies. Anyone who has no idea what “God” means, or who suggests, naïvely, that there isn’t a God, and neither is there Time, Gravity, Money, or the Sandman, may simply watch the progress of the Seminary, and learn all about it.
But that’s not today’s idea ~ that was all just by way of review.
Moving right along, today’s idea is that, suppose we have our Advocate, or Avatar of God, instal ed on his or her athedra ~ now what does one do?
How does one exercise one’s mandate to corre errors as one sees them? I speculate about the astonishing folly expressed daily all around us, reading the News. During all of this time, with multiplying crises raining down upon us, everyone seems to be rushing around perpetuating the most
egregious follies imaginable, and there is no mechanism to corre any of this. So, where to begin? I could even suggest dozens of places where I might suggest a political intervention, but I won’t even go there, not on this trip ~ the idea is that by making use of that Universal Abstraion, Money, then the Steward, Advocate, or Avatar of God could work out al the problems on the globe, without addressing, direly, any other political problem.
Money is the Problem, so obviously money is the solution. The problem is that oney determines the struure of the economic and political system in place on the ground, everywhere on the planet.
Absolutely everything happens in pursuance of the profit motive. And we see where that has led us! This is not to deny that the profit motive has a very useful funion in society, but it should not be the overall struure of the living system itself. Just think of what sweeping changes could be made simply by direing the flow of money! The basic program is simple ~
money would be put out everywhere to encourage everything useful. We could hire all available workers to plant trees; we could pay every farmer for the food they produce wherever the market price isn’t enough for the farmers to prosper; we could set up free farms where anyone can live for free who doesn’t have any better alternative; and then we could tax money off the top from whichever players are gathering up the most of it. That means that everything would be free for almost everyone on the planet. Everything useful would simply be funded ~ education, health care, public transit, etc.
Private enterprise would be free to funion on its own, subje, of course, to the resource depletion or pollution tax.
When I have said earlier that the only tax needed would be a simple property tax, I now want to expand my interpretation of that to mean al property, including assets of any kind, not just real estate. Taxes could begin above a million dollars of personal wealth, and they could progressively increase up the scale. However, even billionaires would hardly feel the pinch
~ taxes below the first few billion might be moderate enough, but then would begin to rise pretty sharply up there somewhere, so fanciful agglomerations of wealth would get taxed pretty heavily. But why should they care? Anyone taxed in those æthereal elevations would already enjoy pretty remarkable advantages in this world, so they will cheerfully pay their tax, and pray that nothing changes. The other one wil get them in the end, anyway.
Everything else would sort itself out. Sure, drive your roadster around the town all you please to impress your girlfriend (or your boyfriend). At $10,000 for a gallon of gas, there are still plenty of people in the world who could afford to do that. The elericity to run an eleric vehicle around is going to be a lot cheaper, but still pretty hefty, until renewable sources of elerical generation can begin to meet the demand. As for hiring a private airplane to take you across the world for $80 million a trip ~ well, some people have important affairs on hand, and they need to travel quickly. The rest of us will take bicycles.
And once we get under way setting up free farms everywhere, starting where they are the most needed, then everyone in Yemen, or Syria, or Chicago, or Portland will simply leave their guns at the door and just eat and sleep in peace until their consciousness very gradually begins to recover, and begins to rise once again. And if we guarantee to give every able-bodied
man or woman a job planting trees, with very high salaries for professional guidance and direion, we will sort out this climate crisis pretty rapidly ~
maybe even within a few centuries. Once we are on the right road, it may turn out that we will manage to survive, after all.
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A Renaissance of Democracy
August, 2020
I just don’t understand. There is only one Way Out in this dilemma, and Confucius had it all figured out long ago ~ he ay Out is ia the oor.
But the long term problem is that the political system in the United States is heavily bogged down with baggage that has been accumulating and festering these last 300 years. Both political parties are a sham circus put on for the entertainment of the masses, ‘οι πολλοι. It is the same entrenched Money and Power that is in control of both expressions of the Business Party
~ there is only One Party here, though they don’t want you to figure that out. It’s a shell game. They pretend they are giving you choices, but the game has been rigged from the beginning.
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I must have mentioned the solution to this problem half a dozen times in my writings by now, yet no one seems to have taken any note. It is
“Ranked Voting,” or “Instant Run-off Eleion,” in which each voter may vote for up to five choices, in a ranked order of sequence. I think somewhere I enthused that it could lead to a whole Renaissance of Democracy, opening up a Pandora’s Box of third parties, which would be exhilarating! I am not mixing my metaphors here ~ I understand that Pandora’s Box wil cause massive disruption to the ftatus quo. But Business as Usual needs to be substantially shaken up. In the present context, if you have five votes, you can vote for four other better candidates before saving your last one for Joe Biden, without losing any votes, after all, and Biden will still win the Presidency over Trump (who will be ridden out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered), but a whole lot of other voices will be heard, indicating some surprising new ground gradually unfolding.
It is just so much wasted energy worrying about any other social protest or aivist agenda until we can finally break up the constipation of both major political parties, and get some of that shit moving out.
And then make way for something new! It is the only hope for the human race to pull it out of the fire in time ~ or at least for that experiment in Democracy called the United States. The United States isn’t the only country falling apart these days, but, because of its weight, it can do the most damage, thrashing around.
A Larger Perspeive of Racial Strife
September, 2020
I am old enough to remember the March on Washington of 1963.
Not only has racial strife been going on relentlessly all of my own lifetime, and all over the world, not just in the United States, but these have been “the good days,” representing a huge advance over the days when slaves were considered personal property to be bought or sold.
This problem is of monstrous proportions, and I have no solutions to offer here ~ what I want to do is to clarify the problem. As I see it, race is just one part of the whole equation, and I want to look at the problem from a larger perspeive. Basically, there is a hierarch of Privilege, Wealth, and Power, but it is not at all so simple as Black and White.
Just running out an idea here, I look at five qualities, all of which are just as important in the equation as “the color of one’s skin.” Each quality runs along a continuum, so I can just list them as ~
1. Healthy ~ Sick 2. Rich ~ Poor 3. Young ~ Old 4. Beautiful ~ Ugly 5. Intelligent ~ Stupid
If we allow a maximum of twenty points for each of these qualities, we end up with a range of 0 ~ 100 points. Now, if we graph the hierarchy of Privilege, Wealth, and Power using these numbers, the result will not at al be a simple color divide. Lots of other qualities could be added to the list ~
Educated ~ Empty; Talented ~ Helpless; Us ~ Them (which is particularly insidious), if we wanted to extend the concept further.
Aually, I do have a solution to this problem. For about fifty years now I have had the idea that the best way to deal with hungry people is to feed them. I propose that a system of free farms should be publicly funded where anyone could live, eat, and sleep for free.
That wouldn’t solve all of the problems, but it would solve most of them.
Evolutionary Leap Now
September, 2020
The rate at which the world is going out of control is accelerating. I have long observed that most people just don’t seem to have any conception of the possibility of Change. Everything has always been this way, and it’s never going to change. When change does happen, it seems to take a very long time for people to adjust to the new reality, which won’t change, ever again. Suddenly the planet is hitting that point of an exponential curve where the slope starts heading up towards the vertical. What this means is that we no longer have the time, anymore, for orderly and ponderous planetary and human evolutions. What might ordinarily take one or two millennia sedately to evolve into a sustainable world now has to happen overnight. “Overnight” in this case means half a dozen years at the most.
There are overlapping causes of our planetary collapse. There is the confluence of deforestation, overpopulation, climate change, economic and political chaos, and, finally, the pandemic, all of which has produced a nexus point of catastrophic change from which devastating disaster is almost unavoidable.
For a while now I have been imagining the levels of consciousness in terms of the corresponding aura color, and I have had the idea of creating a web site (aiaura.com) that would map the consciousness of the world in this way by color. It would be pretty interesting to see a map of the world laid out according to the aura colors indicating the state of consciousness
pervading each local region, but it really becomes dynamic when you might be able to see these aura color representations as they change over time. If historical levels of consciousness were eventually entered into the database, you could set up various videos showing the evolution of consciousness over time, for the whole planet or for any smaller part. (reative and vionary programmers needed; alſo inveftment capital.)
I won’t review the whole idea here, but anyone may consult the olors of the ura for a discussion of the application of the aura colors to states of consciousness (corresponding to the planets and metals of astrology and alchemy of traditional ancient philosophy, along with the primary trigrams of the I Ching). So if there were a map of the earth showing the eastern seaboard of the United States on November 11, 2001, one might see a predominantly Orange aura over most of the coastal region, and then suddenly there is a large splash of dark Red with a Black center right over New York City. The Dark Red is accompanied by the corresponding Purple, in waves (iolent ttack ~ ppreion of the iim).
In the same way, and even more dramatically, the entire year of 2020
would show a plunge of consciousness world-wide. The co-incidence of the effes of climate change (e.g., the California fires, which are still raging out of control) along with this pandemic and the resulting collapse of social, economic, and political stability, has created plunging levels of consciousness reminiscent of Oober, 1929 in the stock market. This crash in consciousness is direly responsible for all of the social unrest, protests everywhere from Hong Kong to Portland, escalating cold war rhetoric, and hot war eruption all over the planet. It’s only going to get worse from now on, not better.
There is no particular agenda that can address this situation. Sure, we need a Green New Deal, and aually we need reforms significantly more radical than that, but the underlying issue here is the woefully low levels of human consciousness, which is now way down in the lower reaches of the Red and Purple almost everywhere on the planet, causing endless negative spirals downward into chaos and death (Black). So, along with specific plans to ameliorate the collapse of our biosphere, such as planting trillions of trees, we also have to address the consequences of the appalling levels of consciousness prevalent world-wide. It is all of a piece. The collapse of the biosphere of the planet drags everything down at once. If we want to see levels of consciousness way up in the Blue again, not to mention the higher regions of Yellow, Green, and White, we need to restore the entire planet to fertility again first. Where the land is healthy, the plants, animals, and people will be healthy. nd where not, not.
In order to turn this planetary collapse around, there is so much that has to change within that same “overnight” framework. First of al , the entire planet must be united into a single organic economic and political whole. That is so obvious and fundamental that it hardly needs to be discussed, yet it still causes hostile reaion on almost every hand. But the problem of climate change is a political one. As long as the wealthy and powerful elite of the planet own all of the land, all of the money, all of the resources, and the economic and political control of the planet for the perpetuation of their own supremacy of wealth and power, there can be no hope whatsoever for the survival of life on earth. People have persistently tried to revolt against overlords with more or less success, but it is very much harder to revolt against the economic control, which is just another aspe of the same ball of wax. Whether you are political diator of the land or
whether you simply own all the money amounts to about the same thing, as Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines will be happy to explain to you.
Somehow, we must take away the direion of the earth’s resources from the cabal of the wealthy and powerful. Once this is done, there is a huge program of remediation ahead of us before we can restore the land of the earth to fertility (more trees, fewer people, etc.). A new world government could immediately arrange to set up free farms for the feeding and housing of the indigent. Next they could offer full employment to anyone willing and able to work by planting trees or doing anything else of value to the program of planetary survival. Then they fully fund education and health care. This would all be funded with a tax skimmed off the top of the most wealthy.
But in order to get to that point where the problems, immense as they are, can at least begin to be addressed, we must first effe the transition to a single world-wide living organism that can supervise the renovation of the earth (the dvocate for the ree of the hurch of the iving ree might be considered a priest of Gaia). If it seems to be beyond impossible to imagine shepherding all of the various people of the earth, all of the different languages, races, religions, customs, and world-views, into a one-size-fits-all New Solution, that is entirely the problem that must somehow be addressed.
But we have to do something. Not to do something, or uneſs as ſual, is to doom the earth and its flora, fauna, and even people to the extinion of life as we know it.
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I keep waiting for someone else to suggest some path to a solution. I have suggested a whole program, but I will be very interested to examine any other possibilities out there to save the planet. How are we going to condense two thousand years of evolution into the next four or five years?
This is the scope of the problem that so far only a few visionaries like Greta Thunberg seem to have grasped.
Let me dispose of an alternative possibility that I do not favor. ax Orbis errarum at the point of a gun is not going to cut it. There has to be a voluntary solution. That narrows it down quite a bit! Also, economic restruuring is indispensable. In fa, wrenching the Power away from the Wealthy is the central issue of the whole problem. It can only be accomplished, not by any redistribution of the wealth, but by redefining the basis and meaning of money in the first place. Money must be created and spent as direed by the stewards of the planet, as I have elsewhere described in more detail ( ide: iat urrency, oney).
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Oh, well, here we are on the decks of the Titanic, and the band is just striking up again, so pass the absinthe.
One World Government
October, 2020
I look back at a very early publication of mine, he orld nion
ompany, printed in San Francisco in 1980, including a reprint of heophany, complete with the original color plates. An early presentation of what would become he hurch of the iving ree, it laid out a whole program of planetary renovation. If we had started it back then, things might not be as bad as they are now. Will we wait another 40 years? If you think it’s bad now, in another 40 years the shit is really going to be hitting the fan.
One of the starting premises, referencing Einstein, Teilhard de Chardin, Bertrand Russell, and H.G. Wells, was that nothing further could be expeed, in the way of planetary evolution, until and unless the whole world were politically unified. The Jungle of Warring States model is just no longer adequate to deal with the current problems on the earth. Everything I was describing 40 years ago has gotten a whole lot worse. Instead of beginning a massive program of tree planting, countries like Brazil continue to burn off their forests, so they can get a season or two of rape and pillage before moving on to new forests to clear. Climate change, the burning of the earth, floods, famines, tropical storms, even the pandemic, are all prediable consequences of a planet long gone out of control.
Once again it is becoming inescapably evident that there is no hope at all, given the present political state of the planet. The only hope for the survival of life on this planet is to get the whole thing under view at once,
with a plan for the whole earth. Everything is breaking down ~ social and political unrest has been intensifying all over the globe over the last few decades. This pandemic is just the icing on the cake, one final straw on the camel’s back, one bright red cherry on top of the sundæ of life, as a dying planet clings to survival as long as possible. (Sorry to mix my metaphors ~
two of those are, of course, ironical.)
Everyone fears the One World Government, but I fear the United States of America even more. This planet is not safe as long as there are rogue nations like the United States rampaging around, wreaking destruion. I think people are worried about the idea of a One World Government because they envision some dystopian hegemon finally conquering all, whose leaders live in luxury while the common people are enslaved in misery. Could you imagine the likes of Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin ruling the world? Pass the absinthe again!
But it doesn’t have to be this way. I have put together a whole vision of how the planet can be restored to biological health again, but what real y troubles me is that I don’t see, anywhere, anyone else coming up with any plan for survival, at all.
If anyone is aware of any other plan for the survival of life on earth, please bring it to my attention.
Pearls Before Swine
November, 2020
“But in the end it wasn't enough to mollify fears of an ascendant left hell bent on entrenching itself in power and enaing institutional reforms that would enable it to lead a moral, political, and cultural revolution.” -
Damon Linker, he eek
Fears?? Fears that sleepy Joe Biden is a Trojan Horse for Bernie Sanders and Creeping Socialism? For Heaven’s sake ~ the only possible chance this world has of surviving the next ten or twenty years is for an ascendant left hell bent on entrenching itself in power and enaing institutional reforms that would enable it to lead a moral, political, and cultural revolution. Nothing short of that will be of any use at all. The times are a-changing, and if you can’t lend a hand, please get out of the way.
And by the way, for many years I have been harping on the Ranked Choice Voting issue as representing the only possible salvation for Democracy as a political institution. And then I see that it is aually currently in use in Maine, and was even on the ballot in Massachusetts! But they voted it down! There it was, presented to them on a silver platter as the solution for constipated politics by entrenched and constipated old men ~
Ranked Choice Voting, and suddenly every voice can be heard! But they simply trampled it under their feet, pearls before swine.
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“Oh, good! I’m ſo glad we oted down that ommunift plot called anked
oting! Oh, no; we certainly don’t want any more hoice going on in our eleoral politics! verything is juft fine the way it is.”
This is the ncien egime
December, 2020
What does it mean that the Stock Market goes roaring on in the midst of a horrible pandemic and a catastrophic economic col apse going on all around us? It means that the divergence between the wealthy few at the top and the impoverished many on the bottom has never been so great since the
ncien egime which preceded the Revolution in France.
This is one of the hallmarks of the end of a State’s political run, along with increasing military involvement as the solution to problems. People are beginning to notice this (underftatement alert), but no one seems to have any clue about what to do about it, or what to do next. I was reading one of the liberal columnists who was saying that all we can do is to oppose the establishment in any way we can, trying to bring it down, in hopes that something better will follow.
Oh, yes; the present establishment has to come down, all right. The de fao basis of authority and power anywhere in the world is Capital, Money, and it is destroying our world. But it seems to me that it is a good idea to have some alternative in mind to propose before you advocate for demolition.
The root of the problem is that the struggle for money continues to play out it’s merry game using capital in the same way that the jungle of warring sovereign states has historically used military might. The wars of
Power and Money continue to rage all over the planet, pummeling it into dust under the heel of so much violent commotion. Yes, the Masters of the Universe keep increasing their advantage at the tables of the stock market, while soldiers continue to die infliing mayhem and devastation all over the earth, and many people are going hungry.
The Global political landscape is bleak. All over the planet there are insane pockets of depravity, with sovereign states ruled over by severely psychotic despots, like the recently dethroned basket case in that sorry United States of America. We would need a pretty big basket to hold all of the lunatics running around in charge of national governments.
Among the problems facing the world, the most critical one is the collapse of our biosphere as the planet dries out, burns up, and blows away while we speak or write. The current pandemic is merely a distraion taking our attention away from the truly existential crisis that faces us over our changing climate ~ dying oceans, toxic sludge replacing lost topsoil, deforestation of our planet, increasing storms and fires all the time, until Man, after destroying the habitat for everyone else on the planet, finds himself facing a rapidly degrading habitat of his own. These problems are just too serious to let everything coast along by inertia, leaving the Wealth and the Power to go on raping what’s left of the planet, oblivious to the consequences of their depredations.
Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil should be shot at dawn, along with the direors of Monsanto and other malefaors, or at least they should all be tarred and feathered and run out of town on rails, the way they are doing to Bolsonaro’s northern counterpart. A Change has got to come, and it can’t happen soon enough ~ how about Tuesday ?
x athedra ~ All deforestation must cease forthwith. A massive program of tree planting must be implemented immediately, world-wide.
All usage of fossil fuels must be so very heavily taxed so that bicycles will become the primary vehicle of locomotion, and airplanes and rockets to the moon must be entirely phased out. We must have an immediate network of free farms for the indigent where anyone can live for free, anywhere in the world.
There is a lot more that needs to be done, but those are some of the main headings. I have written elsewhere of how all of this can be implemented, so I do not repeat it here.
Agenda
March, 2021
The genda follows the hierarchy of importance, whether the point of view is that of an individual, family, business, community, state, nation, or planet. In every case, the first point is always ſurvival. From there it unfolds according to the particular situation. But the agenda of any microcosm is impaed by the agenda of surrounding microcosms. So, inevitably, the point of view must rise higher in scope until the largest field of vision be prospeed. That would be the point of view of our little Planet. There may come a day when alien invasions from other galaxies may require a larger frame of reference, but, for now, I look at the prospes of biological survival of the planet Earth.
It seems to me that there are so many ways in which the conditions on Earth need to be radically altered and improved. In order to make some order out of the current chaos, we use the hierarchy of importance to arrange our agenda. The most pressing problem, superseding even the biological renovation and restoration of the planet itself, is all of the ongoing damage and destruion caused by that noxious vermin, the human race. Something must be done to mitigate the rapacious damage caused by this pestilential species. In the last century, the capacity of this species to destroy the Earth has greatly advanced, not only through destruive commercial praices raping and ravishing the Earth, but even the development of pure armature
~ devices whose whole purpose is large scale destruion on ever increasing
scale. We might even speak about the explosion of armament development in the last century, to use a term which graphically represents the problem.
So the most important item on our genda is to circumscribe the rampage of these terrifying creatures who are destroying the biological viability of our planet as we speak. This is not going to be easy, but the planet has run out of time. We are no longer talking about trends which wil eventually compromise our planet’s integrity at some future date ~ we are now in the throes of the biological collapse of our planet, and urgent steps must be taken immediately to halt this accelerating collapse.
Before we can propose some new international institution for supervising and regulating the aivity of residents of the Earth, we must first agree on a program of planetary management which will most quickly and effeively curb the depredations of human aivity. The three most important projes are, in order, the restoration of Tree cover on the planet, the establishment and maintenance of Free Farms all over the planet where anyone can eat, sleep, and live for free, and a total overhaul of the economic basis responsible for regulating both money and power.
As to the planting of trees, this is the most urgent and essential task in defense of our mother Earth. Anyone who is looking for work should be immediately and generously employed in planting trees, under the direion of the most knowledgeable tree scientists, who will map every square meter of our planet according to existing vegetation and tree cover, the potential of improved vegetation and tree cover, and the difference in value between them, so that aion can be prioritized to the restoration of regions where the most important and effeive advantages may be made to ameliorate the problems of erosion, desertification, and climate change.
Next, the time has come to end world hunger once and for all by finally setting up a network of Free Farms all over the Earth, where the poor and hungry may be given food to eat and a place to live for free. This would, at a stroke, solve so many social problems in the most effeive way. So much theft, deceit, murder, and war is caused by the needs of personal survival all over the Earth. The institution of Free Farms would eliminate so many of the causes of social problems and internecine strife, and do so at negligible cost. This will not even be hard to do, and an enormous dark cloud over the human race and the Earth may begin finally to dissipate.
Next, the reinvention of the meaning and role of money will allow for a rapid movement towards economic equilibrium everywhere. The essential idea is that the government should provide services benefitting the masses of the people, especially the poorest, while being paid for by a tax on the wealthy. I consider the problem of economic stimulus by government spending. It is pretty widely understood that government spending, indeed, spending by anyone, anywhere, will stimulate the economy, but some people don’t seem to consider the form in which such stimulus spending takes place.
In the short term, any kind of spending will achieve an economic stimulus.
It may hardly seem to matter, in the short term, whether the spending is planting trees, supporting health and education, improving civic infrastruure, or military spending ~ weapons, bombs, and the outfitting of armies of soldiers marching off to war. However, the longer term prosperity depends very much upon the value received for the money expended.
Whenever spending money is put to good uses, it will enhance the overal prosperity of the planet; where money is used, on the other hand, for the negative consequences of destruion and war, it will drive the planet into poverty, exacerbating tensions which will lead to more war, and the
continuing cycle of ongoing destruion leading rapidly to chaos and the biological death of the planet.
Spend money wisely and well, expanding tree cover and financing the rapid development of alternative renewable resources, for example, and pay for it with a tax on the wealthy. By following this agenda, the world may literally and figuratively cool down, and life may go on.
quod erat demonftrandum.
Solution to the Question of Deficit Financing
April, 2021
Money is such an absolutely fundamental concept that a proper understanding of how it works is essential. I hear a lot of commotion about President Biden’s recent spending initiatives ~ a few trillion here, a few trillion there ~ and a lot of people are wondering how that’s going to work.
Is it a meaningless question to ask, “how are we going to pay for that?”
Well, here is the way money works, in a nutshell, so pay attention ~
To ask questions about deficit financing in a vacuum is useless, because the most important faor is left out of the equation. Every piece of money spending can have an expeed return faor, which would include all of the very long term consequences as well as the more obvious short term ones.
The more positive benefits, the higher the return faor. Spending on reforestation, renewable energy, schools, healthcare, and the like come to mind as having very high return faors, while spending money for bombs which are intended to kill people and destroy the struure and cohesion of civilization, along with the whole program of soldiers and airplanes to escort the bombs, will calculate out to very high negative numbers in the expeed return faor.
There it is. That’s it. The more money spent on projes with a positive return value, the better ~ go ahead and pile on those trillions, Joe!
Any spending proje can be rated by this expeed return faor. As long as any State, Nation, or Individual ſpends his money with high expeed return
faors, the economy will be healthy long-term, barring problems of short term fluuation.
So, just to be clear, if you’re trying to finance a war by deficit spending, it is probably not going to work out, but if all of your spending is direed towards projes with a high expeed return faor, then your future looks rosy.
Almost all of Biden’s spending proposals pass the test.
The Failure of Democracy
May, 2021
The political organization of our country is an inefficient mess. In fa, the political process seems to be slowly just grinding to a halt, as more and more of our world just gets further beyond our control. The problem, at least in the version of democracy that currently governs our country over here, is that there is no real authority, anywhere. All of the careful “checks and balances” are designed, of course, to prevent the abuse of power, but that power itself is so spread out into confusion that the system stagnates badly.
The whole government of our country is a horse trading convention, in which power brokers buy and sell their way to their own best advantage.
Political figures are beholden to their constituents (a euphemism for their financial backers), whose motives are almost exclusively about financial advantage for themselves. It is so hard for anything to get done of any importance when everyone is just focused on his own best financial advantage. No one has any attention to the interest of the country, its residents, or its planet. There is no political incentive anywhere for any objeive point of view about such frivolous matters as the survival of life on earth. The humans will be among the last to go ~ other species are dying off fast. Perhaps there will yet be some species of rats, birds, bugs, and worms that will outlast the human race for a while, but if sentient life ever grows back again, it will surely be very much different than this time around.
But other enterprises going on in the world surprise me. I can easily understand why the Israelis want to get rid of the Palestinians. There is nothing at al surprising about that ~ it is the oldest story in the book ~ they want the land, but other people are living on it, so the other people have to go. (And, as I have previously mentioned, there were other people living on the land when “God gave it to Abraham.”) But what I want to know is how and why people ignore the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians? Who defends them? It would be kind of embarrassing for the United States to be critical of Israel about this problem of theirs, since that is just exaly what they did with the local indigenous inhabitants of North America. (Who gave it that name, anyway? Perhaps they should have asked the local residents what the name of their continent was.) I keep wondering when the Israelis are going to try the old ploy of giving free blankets to the Palestinians, infeed with the smallpox virus.
So perhaps it is a matter of no one wanting to throw the first stone, since squashing your opponent is about the only thing every beast on the planet can relate to. The game of King of the Mountain has only one simple rule ~ the strongest party wins, and the Devil take the hindmost. But do we really want to live in such a world?
This aw of the ungle describes the World as a Whole, and it also describes the United States government, but it doesn’t necessarily describe the political institutions of every other country. The countries of the world sort themselves out into two main camps ~ those which are control ed by a tyrant of some sort, some dominant political figure who dires all aivity, whether for good or ill (mostly ill, as it happens, but you knew that), or they are governed by some sort of working system, like a modern parliamentary
democracy. The United States is neither modern, parliamentary, nor a democracy, of course ~ it is a strange beast that is turning into a monster in its old age. A parliamentary democracy would be a big improvement on the current mess in the United States. The age of the Constitution is really showing.
Take the matter of American support for the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. Today we read that Israel receives “foreign aid” to the tune of an annual $3.8 billion. Almost the whole of that, however, is in the form of credit tokens for American arms manufaurers. So, essentially, what this means is that the United States government is giving, free and clear, all the bombs and weapons that the Israelis are using to bomb and distress the Palestinians to the point where their civilization totally collapses, like what happened to the native “Americans” over in our neck of the woods.
So what else is new? Are the Turks going to wag any fingers at the Israelis, after their own genocide of 1.5 million Armenians back in 1920, who endured their own rail of ears? This is just what people do, after all.
Hitler just crossed a line, being way too blatant about it. I keep getting this idea about a Huge Cloud of Negative Karma descending on the planet back then, and leaving indelible imprints everywhere it struck. You know how the man who gets yelled at by his boss at work goes home and yells at his wife?
And then the wife yells at their older son; and the older son yells at his little brother; and the little brother goes out and kicks his dog, and the dog chases the cat and the cat chases the mouse and the mouse eats the cheese, which is great stuff until the trap closes. We need some more experience of Positive Karma, like the Summer of Love in 1967.
So the only way I can process the Israeli determination to resort to the
inal olution in the case of the Palestinians is that there is some way in which this horrible cloud of negative Karma is erupting like a cancer or a neurosis, which is ultimately caused by their own historical trauma. The only way to break the chain is for a Messiah to come to the Jewish people who will lead them to the Love of God, and they will embrace their long lost Palestinian brothers and spend the foreseeable future rebuilding what they have spent the last century destroying.
And, back in the United States of America, Congress can simply decide to terminate the $3.8 billion annual financial gift to the Israelis (don’t worry; it won’t be the first time that an agreement has not been honored ~ it happens all the time). Then they might award a similar $3.8 billion annual aid to the Palestinians, and ask the Israelis to cover it. And that way everyone would be happy.
But this only works, of course, in the event of the Advent of the Messiah. In the meantime, standing on one foot is to be preferred over holding your breath.
But I just got carried away ~ I wanted to compare the horse-trading gridlock confusion of the Yankees with the Chinese in their Smoke-Free Rooms, deciding how to play their hand in the unfolding Game of Thrones on the world’s stage. Once they have decided what they want to do, then they can exaly do it, in a super-efficient manner. A focused leadership of the One or the Few instead of the Many. The Rule of the Many is like a Monster without a Head. Perhaps the Oligarch is the happiest alternative, the Middle Way.
In this country, absolutely everything happens in consequence of its free market value. But certain things just cannot be regulated on the basis of financial interest, and health care and the survival of life on earth are just two of them. The Health Care Industry in the United States is all wrong, run, as it is, as a business for profit. There is, in fa, no health care system in the United States, at all. When the pandemic hit, no one had any idea of what to do. Everything is left to the promoters of the drug companies.
So the whole point at which to apply the lever of change is to shift the Source of Authority from Financial Interest to Earth Stewardship. And, no, I don’t envision any pax inensis any more than I imagine a pax mericana.
The Chinese are very clever, but they still have much to learn from the rest of the world. Perhaps the Chinese are simply living out their own clouds of negative Karma ~ and what are they doing with the Uighurs? Is that the same old story, I suppose? So the Chinese, too, need a Messiah. Another Confucius, or, better yet, another Lao Tzu. If only someone would explain the Way of Heaven to the current generation of the rulers of China!
The End is Near
June, 2021
he current drought “is on track to become the worft that we’ve ſeen in at leaft 1,200
years,” said athleen ohnſon, a paleoclimatologift at the Univerty of alifornia, Irvine.
Well, go ahead and wring your hands in despair. The destruion of our Earth should have been addressed sixty years ago, or two hundred years ago. Even now, when the walls are caving in al around us, most people of the earth just stupidly plod along, worrying more about the arrangement of flowers on the coffin than the survival of life on earth. The world is not only hotter and drier; it is burning up. Who is going to affe surprise when the coming fire season again ravages the Southwest?
As I have said in earlier articles, all of the unrest and commotion currently raging on the earth can be traced to the declining levels of vitality remaining to our sorry and dying planet. And still the band plays on as the Titanic sinks. Oh, it is a badly overworked image of the vacuousness of the response to catastrophe, but it states the case rather starkly ~ we are going down, and not only does no one know what to do, but most people just shrug it off as inevitable.
But what visionaries find most frustrating is that there aually are possible, or at least reasonable, approaches towards the amelioration of the worst of the calamities facing us. The problem is that what is needed is a
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more radical transformation of every aspe of life on earth than has ever been attempted or considered before. And we are not talking about the gradual evolution of life on the planet over the next one or two thousand years ~ we are talking about the implementation of a radical program that should begin by next Tuesday, if we can wait that long.
I am not just talking about everyone ignoring my own proposed solutions to the problems ~ to my dismay and unbelief, I find no one, anywhere, suggesting any possible direions towards any other possible solutions! “C’mon, man!” At the very least, let us set up some international commission to consider the problem and come up with some possible plans to address the problems going forward. Planting a billion trees here and there is fine, but they are drops in the ocean ~ we need trillions of trees planted ~ every year from now on, for as long as life might persist.
Droughts and Floods
July, 2021
Here I am in California, very worried about the extreme drought, the scorched earth, and the raging wildfires ~ and this is before the main “Fire Season” has really begun! And yet, while we are baking under this preview of Hell, worried about our springs drying up, our plants parched, our earth cracking up, with barely enough water for laundry or showers ~ and then we read about the catastrophic floods in Europe, and we wonder what’s going on in the world.
And yet, there is no mystery about it. For as long as I can remember, I have understood that the only hope for the survival of life on earth is to plant more trees! It’s not just about the carbon storage ~ trees retain water during the rainy seasons and gradually give it back through springs during the dry seasons. With the trees gone, the rains come with increasingly devastating force, causing catastrophic flooding and soil erosion, and then when the dry seasons come there is no water to relieve the parched earth. The whole earth is a single ecological system ~ the floods in Europe and the droughts in California are all related, and both problems could be ameliorated (over the course of perhaps the next thousand years ~ an ecosystem can be destroyed in a decade or two, but it might take a millennium to restore that ecosystem back to health) by planting trees by the millions, by the billions, and by the trillions.
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And nothing else will do much good. So go out and plant some Trees, or start preparing to meet thy God.
Afghanistan Solution
August, 2021
“Know when to hold ’em, when to fold ’em, and when to walk away.”
The war in Afghanistan has been the most egregious folly from the very start. As I think I said somewhere earlier, “Ask the British or the Russians what they think of fighting a war in Afghanistan!” The primary point is that neither the British, the Russians, nor the Americans have any business whatsoever meddling in Afghanistan! No matter what you think of their society, their politics, or their treatment of women, the intrusion of the Yankee Finger just mucks up the mud without accomplishing anything worthwhile, whatsoever. Sure, wouldn’t it be nice if Afghanistan were run by choirs of angels instead of the Taliban? Wel , for that matter, choirs of angels would certainly do a better job of governing this country than the United States Congress! In fa, the dysfunion of the entire United States political establishment shrieks the case that it is time to re-evaluate the whole system, but that’s another issue, which I have already addressed previously, and more than once.
However, as a praical matter, the intrusion of the Yankee Finger into the affairs of Afghanistan have only exacerbated the problem (“hen the
ankee inger gets involved, it ****s up”). Oh, I said that the whole adventure has had no positive benefits whatsoever, but that depends on your point of view and the definition of “benefit.” I think some of the editorial news commentators have final y begun to express the fairly obvious fa that there have been some “winners” in the whole confli ~ American arms
manufaurers! I have mentioned that before, too, and it is an obscene and very frightening obituary for Democracy. As long as the mainstay of the American economy, arms manufaurers, make piles of money from wars and rumors of war all over the world, you may confidently predi that such wars will continue until Hell freezes over.
But I return to my primary point about the wargame adventures ~ they are counter-produive! We are beginning to see the return of partisan confli in Afghanistan with the suicide bombers at the Kabul airport. Here we have ISIS-K s. the Taliban. As long as the Yankees have a single boot on the ground, everyone in Afghanistan unites around the common enemy.
But once those damned Yankees finally get the Hell out of there, then business as usual will once again supervene ~ the endless confli of one faion against another, with tribal warlords and jihadists battling themselves into the dust. Al the Americans have to do is ftep ade, and the problems in Afghanistan will take care of themselves! What a simple idea! What an effeive idea! What an incredibly cheaper idea (sorry, ye American arms manufaurers)!
So all we have to do is stifle the war and weapons lobby ~ let the American arms manufaurers beat their swords into plowshares, or re-tool their faories to manufaure bicycles, or something equally useful, and give the rest of the world a break.
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I Need an Editor
Oober, 2021
I wish I had the energy to re-write all of my scattered writings. Over the years I have written up brief articles on one or other of the two main themes that have occupied most of my attention. I had the idea that, taken altogether, they comprise a considerable treatment of those two topics. I thought that if someone were to read over the entire assemblage they would see how all the parts fit together into a whole and lucid presentation of those two topics.
On the one hand, there was the abstra metaphysics and theology that held my attention since my very earliest years, and, on the other hand, there has been a colleion of ideas relating to the sorry state of the Earth and what to do about making essential changes so that life my not only survive on this planet, but that it might even flourish and grow. Both of these themes were interwoven somewhat randomly as I set them down, with no order or sequence about them. When I prepared two books for publication, with a third in preparation ( he aughter of od, 2009: ISBN: 978-0-945303-24-4,
ore aughter, 2018: ISBN: 978-0-945303-25-1, and till aughing, in preparation), I simply strung together those essays like beads on a string, assuming that the attentive reader might make sense of them all. I followed a sense of urgency that I must, at the very least, express all the ideas in writing so that some future editors might go over it all and prepare a more orderly presentation of the ideas such that they might express the essential ideas with greater clarity than my own writing has yet managed to do.
What really needs to be done is to take the entire body of work and re-write the whole thing into two entirely new presentations in which the ideas might follow a logical progression, making points systematically, leading to a clear vision of what I have been trying to say. Two such books would be required, one for each of the topics of my interest. At least I have finally managed to separate the essays into two colleions, which I make available on the website as free e-books ( eleed rticles: etaphysics and heology, 1989-2019 (www.tree.org/Seleed Articles.pdf, and One lanet akeover, 2020 (www.tree.org/One Planet Makeover.pdf). These colleions offer some improvement over the random assemblage of the original writing, but there is still much work to be done. I understand that preparing a serious book is a major undertaking, not to be tossed off cavalierly as I have done, leaving it up to the dedicated reader to make sense of it all.
I don’t know which of my two topics is in more urgent need of revision, but both projes represent an enormous piece of work, and I just do not have the energy to devote the attention which such an effort would require. I feel like the philosopher Wittgenstein, who wrote his raatus
ogico-hiloſophicus, which no one could understand, leaving it to future editors to explain the import of his writings.
In my etragrammaton, 2009, I have put together what I have called the eys to the rcana, comprising mostly a serious of piures, but I need a systematic explication of the ideas behind those Keys. This is a tall order, as the ideas are famously hard to pin down in words. I have tried to take up Lao Tzu’s challenge: e who ſpeas does not now; he who nows does not ſpea.
In many places, and only partially, I have tried lifting the veil with some feeling of success, but I cannot yet say that the whole heory of verything is
entirely tied up with a ribbon and a bow. The final (or Original) Mystery I cannot manage to reduce to words, even though I have tried very hard, and I must final y admit, with Lao Tzu, that it is, indeed, ineffable. he hand pointing to the moon is not the moon.
So I need an editor. Preferably I would like to find a col aborator within my own lifetime, so that I might perhaps assist with the effort.
Sometimes I feel that I could really do it all myself, if only I were forty years younger and had a ten year’s paid sabbatical in which to accomplish the work. Otherwise I must leave it to some nebulous or hypothetical future editor who might be able to piece together the whole vision from what I have left behind, or not.
But the proje is so urgent ~ here we are on the brink of cataclysmic calamity as the earth slides into chaos, darkness, and death, and yet the airheads in positions of power just fiddle while Rome burns. It takes an aware and visionary child like Greta Thunberg to realize the overwhelming importance of what is happening to our world, and why, and the scale and urgency of the necessary response. lah, blah, blah just won’t cut it anymore.
The fundamental problem, as I am sure I have explained in my recent writings, is that absolutely everything that happens in the world happens in accordance with someone’s profit motive. We must re-align this world on some basis other than the Profit Motive, the Law of the Jungle, and King of the Mountain. That is an enormous task ! It means nothing less than a total world-wide revolution. I believe that it may be possible to manage this revolution amicably, if only the various players would understand what is at stake.
It is a very sad fa that visionaries who recognize urgent problems are faced with intransigent stumbling blocks whose idiocy threatens the very basis of life itself (I don’t need to mention any names, here . . . ). The whole idea of “Conservative” is entirely inappropriate for the current state of the world. Trying to hold on to a past which is rapidly fading into distant memory as our planet descends into chaos is such a drag on any hope of progress. Somehow, persons in power must realize that, willy-nilly, we muft embark upon a whole new basis of civilization, world-wide, or die. Of course this is very frightening to most people who simply want to live their lives the way they are used to. Somehow, all these people who are obstruing the way forward must be made to understand that some very radical changes must be happening in the very near future, and, as Dylan says, our old road is rapidly agin’. leaſe get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand, for the times they are a-changin’.
And the metaphysics and theology are just as important as the plans for re-organizing the planet. Education is the key ! If only everyone could learn everything I have been trying to teach about Hermetic philosophy and the Colors of the Aura, then perhaps there could be a rapid acceleration of consciousness expansion world-wide, followed by serious concerted aion, while there is still time (assuming that we might have any time left at all to reverse this slide into chaos before we hit irreversible tipping points).
And, speaking of Consciousness Expansion, I have suggested before that a great place to begin would be to make substantial doses of LSD
(perhaps 250 mcg) freely available to everyone on the planet ~ men, women, and especially children. It could greatly accelerate the process, and bring the laggards up to speed quickly. It is not too much to say that the expansion of
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consciousness is the sine qua non before anything further of any substance can happen.
I do not even shrink from the emphasis on Theology. If anyone doesn’t yet understand the importance, nature, and meaning of God, such revelation would greatly contribute to the more rapid assimilation of the program. God is not eus ex achina ~ God works through His people ~
the people of the planet ~ those who are on His side and understand that their participation is required. Those who love God, the planet, its plants, animals, and people, must understand what is required and do their part to bring about the clarity of consciousness without which nothing of any consequence can happen fast enough to be of much good to those of us who are still alive on this dying planet, to say nothing of generations yet unborn.
Money, Sex, and Power
November, 2021
Nothing new here ~ I’ve said it all before.
Money, like Sex, is an illustration of the Primary Mystery of Philosophy and Life. Power is another one, but I think Money is the more primary, more abstra theophany. To fully understand the meaning of Money, Sex, or Power is to see God. I remember my early Statement on the founding of the hurch of the iving ree, in which I was thinking of some Authority to hold the Power in the world, vested, perhaps, in the Advocate of the Seminary of the hurch of the iving ree. But my latest thinking has shifted to Money as the focus of attention. Money is the éminence griſe underlying Power. Forget military expressions of Power ~ it’s al about the Money. Whoever has the Money, has the Power. The Chinese seem to have figured this out; perhaps the Americans haven’t.
I imagine a whole new definition, meaning, and system of this universal abstraion we call Money. The present day expressions of monetary philosophy are distinly Medieval. The whole system of private banks and all money based on debt is a very primitive way of managing the energy of money. I want to define the political Authority (vested for example in the Advocate of the Seminary of the hurch of the iving ree) as the source of Money. What that would mean is that my hypothetical Advocate would create Money ad libitum, and use it to pay for all expenses, in pursuance of whatever policies the Advocate or Steward wishes to
promote. For example, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, parks, free farms, and local transit would all be direly underwritten in funding from the Advocate, as managed through the Bank. In addition, a large army of tree planters would be put to work planting trees, under the direion of professionals in land use and forestry, according to priorities of importance.
Anyone who is otherwise unemployed could always be hired to plant trees.
The Bank, basically a huge computer system, would put out all of this money for all of these projes, along with any other aivities that they wish to promote.
With the climate change emergency which is currently threatening our world, there should be no question of raising money to pay for the costs of ameliorating the effes of climate change. An Advocate who creates Money as needed could simply do whatever needs to be done, and issue the Money to pay for it. What makes the “money” have any value is that it must be used to pay for rent and taxes, and as much rent and taxes will be taken from the people as needed to maintain the value of the Money within its targeted range.
In my original presentation of ideas relating to all of this, to offset money expended I was counting just about entirely on a universal property tax as the simplest and most fundamental source and basis of wealth, the land of the earth, and the easiest to administer, worldwide. In addition to this, I imagined a system of taxes or fines relating to any resource depletion or ecological degradation ( e.g. , carbon tax). As I have explained previously, all “money” received from taxes and fines in this way would be simply extinguished, as it would only serve to regulate the value of the money disbursed. I imagine that everyone would have an account at the Bank, with
some universal identifier, hexa-decimal number for every individual on Earth (oh, yes ~ here is that terrifying meme that everyone must have a number).
Certainly any land owner who would have to pay rent would have to have an account at the Bank, as would anyone receiving funds from the Bank for any reason. Instead of a multitude of banks and bankcards and endless numbers, everyone could simply have a single number and a single account card and I.D., perhaps with a biometric identifier to be sure that the cardholder is the authorized holder of the account.
This account could be used for all purchases from anywhere, to pay fines and taxes, and also to receive funds from the Bank or from any other person. Whenever you buy anything from any merchant, they would have a card reading machine through which you could transfer funds direly, customer to vendor. You could also use any of these machines to access your account, send or receive money to or from anyone, see balances, charges, etc.
All money would transfer at once, like a debit card, direly from customer to vendor, or from employer to worker. Suddenly a whole whirlwind of financial transaions through private banks would all become unnecessary, as all transaions would happen immediately.
All of this assumes, of course, that you have a positive balance on your account. But what if you default? Well, if you run out of money, of course the Bank would allow some grace period carrying a negative balance before stopping the card. But, finally, there must come a point at which the Bank stops authorizing payment for charges, at which point the holder of the card and the account can either live with friends or relatives, with their support, or else go to live on one of the Free Farms, where everyone is welcome to live for free, all paid for by the Church.
There would be a lot less criminal behavior, since it would no longer be necessary. Who wouldn’t rather just go to the Free Farm than commit criminal or violent as to get food or money or a place to sleep at night?
And for most of those charged with criminal behavior, they could simply live at a special Free Farm designed for that purpose, like Free Farms dedicated to single parents or other special groups. Anyone requiring greater constraint than that would either be social failures or insane (pretty much the same thing), and would be treated compassionately as such. But a safe and free resting place of last resort must be made available to everyone on the planet who is still alive. This ultimate cushion would relieve a lot of the stress and social problems plaguing people all over the world. Just the relief of food insecurity would obviate the need for most wars.
The Bank could make automatic deposits to the accounts of persons with special needs ~ the elderly, the sick or injured, mothers, even children up to a certain age could receive a regular stipend. But then, as soon as you leave school, the stipend would cease, and you must earn your keep until you are old or infirm.
Employers would always look to the Free Farms to find people looking for a place to get back into the world again, so the Free Farms wouldn’t just be modern debtor’s prisons, with no way out. If someone goes bankrupt, they probably need more than a loan ~ they need to make some wholly new arrangements about their life. Going to a Free Farm and living in close social conditions of dormitories and cafeterias would provide people with an opportunity to form new social conneions and new direions.
In terms of Power and Control, if the Bank were able to dispense money as needed, they would be more omnipotent than Lily Tomlin and he
hone ompany [okay ~ my jokes date me ~ ask your grandparents]. And so, instead of relying upon maintaining some big arsenal of weapons and bombs to maintain social order, the power to dire Money in any direion, would exercise control over just about every important aspe of life. There will be very little need for police forces, and none at all for armies and warfare. It’s another example that the pen is mightier than the sword.
The amount of money that must be taken from the money supply every year to maintain the value of the currency doesn’t all need to come from rent, or from taxes on property. A tax on total wealth could replace current taxes on income; i.e., the meaning of property would be expanded to include all sources of wealth, so it is total wealth that would be taxed, not just income or real estate.
[ Metaphycal coffee brea: It is the nature of Money that it rises up in a pyramid formation, with the value distributed according to the principle that it funnels ever upwards to the Few wealthy at the top and the Many poor at the bottom. ver ſee this pattern before, anywhere? It is misleading to say that this is a piure of God ~ Heraclitus knew what he was saying when he said that nothing could be defined without its opposite. So you might say that this pattern of Money illustrates not only God, but God and the Devil. In order to know God, you must know Error.]
So, if you look at the world from the perspeive of the hurch of the
iving ree, you could easily take all of the funds needed to balance the equity books exclusively from the ranks of the most wealthy. The most wealthy are the ones who can most easily pay these taxes, and they should be willing to ~ after all, anyone billed for taxation at that very rarified altitude of wealth must be among the wealthiest people on the planet (and wealth
equals power and privilege), and should pay the tax graciously. The traditional tax on real estate would serve to spread out the remaining tax among the less wealthy. The poor receive services and pay nothing. The middle classes pay nothing except a tax on property. The wealthy class pays most of the tax burden required to offset all expenditure of the Church.
Everything discussed so far, as in the overview of the hurch of the
iving ree, omits entirely all of the commercial aivity otherwise going on, which is none of the Church’s business. There are commercial projes going on al the time, al over the world, and, with the exception of the fees and fines relating to damaging our environment, the Church would have no interest in any interference with the free management of anyone’s commercial projes, or other affairs. That is, the Government would only exist to provide services, leaving everyone perfely free to live their lives as they wish.
My whole plan to re-organize the social, economic, and political arrangements of the Earth is, of course, fundamentally authoritarian, which is as widely considered as unquestionably bad as free market democracy is considered unquestionably good. Well, free market democracy and other incarnations of the Law of the Jungle has been ravaging our world for millennia, and one candidate for the fundamental problem underlying civilization is the absence of any final source of authority, leaving the Earth exposed to the ravages of that famous law of the jungle. The solution to this problem is to understand that the problem is not “authority” itself, but the source of that authority. In theological terms, the chaos on our planet which has been increasingly ravaging our fragile earth these past few centuries is a consequences of the loss of the presence and influence of God. What I want
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to do is to establish an institution that will encourage the manifestation of an avatar of God on Earth. Authority must come from God, and there must be some institution that could vest this authority in a spokesperson (“Advocate”) who would incarnate the word of God for the benefit of the planet.
A Seminary of students representing an alchemical vessel would be sure to produce the desired Avatar of God ~ it is a dire expression of classical magic, which any student of magic or Hermetic philosophy should understand. If such a Seminary were to be established, I would expe that, after about twenty years, the incarnation of an Avatar of God would be immediately obvious to everyone, and the world would be transformed on a dime as soon as God returns to the Earth. Kingdom of God? Return of the King? Garden of Eden? We must return to the Garden. Plant those Trees!
All of the most common causes of human misery could be transcended, such as hunger, poverty, and ill health. No one would have to lie or steal or assault anyone ~ if you run out of luck and/or money, just go to the Free Farm and retire for a while, until something else comes along.
Health is the greatest good, of course, and the least we can do is to make health services free.
Most of the money required to pay for all of the expenditures of the Bank could probably come from a tax on a small group of the wealthiest persons on the planet, since the operation of private commercial enterprises consumes such a large part of the world’s energy. If most of the funds needed to offset expenses could come from the extremely wealthy, then lower rates could apply to the tax on property, reducing the burden of taxes for the less wealthy.
From an abstraed view, I could imagine a whole new world going forward with natural trees and gardens as the basis of the health of the Earth. We might see the rapidly diminishing use of fossil fuels, a transition to eleric vehicles, and the rapid evolution toward the sustainable and greener sources of power like solar and wind. I want to see ocean going sailboats instead of airplanes. I am sure that new technological designs utilizing both wind power and solar energy could produce very fast and efficient boats to replace the use of airplanes. Bicycles must replace the motorcar for most uses, and fresh food must be grown locally.
And we can see our poor ravaged and denuded Mother Earth finally growing a new suit of clothes. All of the Trees which have been lost on our planet must be re-grown, and the whole planet must be cultivated as a garden.
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And life could go on, merrily. Within one or two thousand years we might be able to repair much of the damage caused by the last few generations of humanity. Our planet, drying out, burning up, and blowing away, might be nourished back to health and vitality by supporting living systems instead of rape and pillage. Instead of the pattern of alternating droughts and floods, we must have healthy forests of Trees to maintain the ecology of our planet, and to provide us with food.
Nuts. nd this al be to you for food. It’s a better way than to eat the flesh of animals.
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Two Economic Fal acies
November, 2021
Other people are beginning to notice that the world as a whole, and the United States in particular, is falling apart. I see it in abstra terms as the whole world engulfed by a descent into chaos. The colors of the Aura are darkening from Orange into the ever darker colors of Red and Purple, forming the image of a whirlpool spiraling down into Black. The prognoses for the future of patterns of energy expressing this pattern are not good.
This is what the visionaries have been warning us about for many years, but the Future is finally here. Now the only hope for survival is radical change back to the higher energy of Orange, on the way up to the Blue and Green in the distant future. Otherwise, it just gets worse and worse, falling apart as it goes down. Inertia is against us, so we must seize the reins of this runaway horse and guide it back to the path before it falls off the cliff.
So, during these very trying times, it is too bad to see the decision making process hinging on two very bad economic fallacies. The first one is most regrettable. It is the inevitable axiom that “the sitting President takes the fall” during hard times. Such has been the case throughout ten thousand years of history, but it is based on a primary misunderstanding. The problem is that whenever an administration expresses a Policy of any kind, whether financial or anything else, it will usually take about twenty to thirty years before the effes of that aion will be evident. Thus, sitting Presidents suffer for their predecessors’ mistakes, going back many years, yet any benefit from better policies will not be seen for another generation.
But the second common fallacy about economics has to do with the effes of inflation and debt. I thought I clarified this whole issue some time ago (olution to the ueftion of eficit inancing), but some people haven’t noticed. This is particularly insidious right now as President Biden is trying to get some important spending initiatives going on in the face of a headwind of inflation. Everyone seems to think that with Inflation becoming more of a problem, then massive spending is going to just drive us all over the edge. But it doesn’t work that way at all. Spending money generates prosperity, as long as the money is spent in “high expeed return faor projes,” to use the terminology of the previous article. Spending money that just promotes useless waste is just flushing that money down the toilet. The more money is wasted instead of being spent wisely, the more the economy collapses and inflation supervenes.
So all the wrong questions are being asked in Congress these days.
Instead of asking what something will cost, ask what wil that proje
produce in return? The faster money is spent on good projes, the faster an
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economy will prosper. So, staggering around, afraid to spend any money, is not the answer here. There is so much that needs to be done, so let’s do it.
United States Congress
Tree Planting Jubilee
November, 2021
No one seems to be getting it yet ~ high gas prices are the only way it’s going to go forward. That’s what Climate Change is all about. Shutting down fossil fuels isn’t going to be easy ~ the obvious consequence is that the price of oil will be going up, pricing itself out of use. It will be most heavily taxed, so that, like coal, it will just stop being used.
At a certain point in the explosion of the human race in population and technology, the deleterious effes of its presence on the earth exceeded the capacity of the earth to absorb it, leaving severe effes on its biological balance and climate. Human life on earth will have to voluntarily release the earth from its grip, and allow it to grow back to life. It is People who are responsible for disturbing the biological balance of the planet. Either the human population of the earth will have to be very greatly reduced, or they will have to change their ways. They have to pull back in a great many ways, and help the earth to grow back. The long historical slide of cutting down Trees to make way for more People, has got to reverse ~ it is people who will have to give way for the trees. If they want to remain on this planet, along with the Trees, they will have to work on their part of a symbiotic arrangement. If people would take care of planting and maintaining Trees wherever the earth is insufficiently covered, then those Trees will repay that effort a great many times over. The Trees will take care of our planet, if we take care of our Trees.
It is not very comforting to hear that “the rate of deforestation is slowing down” when what we need is a world-wide ree lanting ubilee. In the midst of this planetary crisis, I cannot understand how people in Brazil are allowed to just burn and pillage the last holdout of Trees on the planet.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. We are living in the arden of den. And this is what we have done with it. If the planet be seriously cultivated as a garden worldwide, it should grow back to health within a millennium, give or take a few centuries.
So when I read about how everyone is up in arms about the rising price of gas to feed our restless feet, I can only think that right here is the nexus of the issue. It is appallingly wasteful for people to burn off millions of years’
worth of accumulated organic process residue as fuel to run their cars around, and to fly around the earth in airplanes. One or two generations witness this consumption of the planet’s biological heritage, and then it is over, and the value of the remaining organic carbon residue on the planet will be far too valuable to be burned off as fuel. The last couple of centuries have sacked the organic heritage of our planet, and left it in ruins. It remains to be seen whether or not future generations will be able to keep the flame of life alive on this planet. We are very much poorer without the Trees, and soon we may not even have much of the oil left over from their memory.
The transition to eleric vehicles will happen as fast as the transition away from incandescent light bulbs. Cars running on the internal combustion of gasoline will soon join the etirement uſeum along with vinyl phonograph records and other curiosities. So, get used to it ~ the price of gas, the price of meat, the price of a ten minute joyride into space ~ it’s all going to go up. And the elericity to run all those eleric cars and trucks
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and busses is going to become very expensive for the foreseeable future, until they are able to roll out enough windmills and solar farms to keep up with the demand.
The best solution for personal locomotion is to ride a bicycle.
I had an idea of imagining a cost value for everything, much as they calculate carbon costs. Cement is wonderful stuff, but it turns out to have a very high carbon cost. If you could come up with a calculus for the total cost of anything, bicycles would come in with one of the highest negative cost numbers. First of all, the cost to produce a bicycle compared with the number of miles you can cover with it, and the value of its use, is negligible.
But when the value of the health benefits shows up largely on the other side of the ledger, it turns out that it costs a whole lot less than nothing to keep and ride a bicycle. Compared with this, the total cost per mile for an automobile, counting it’s construion cost, operating and maintenance costs, consumption of gas and oil, and faoring in its environmental cost, would be stratospherically higher.
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I have already suggested to Elon Musk that he invest in the development of hybrid-eleric sailboats, powered by any configuration of solar, wind turbine, battery, sailcloth, or dancing Indians, depending on the weather. As soon as airplanes are grounded, our eleric wind-up boats may inherit the market for trans-oceanic travel. But I guess he gets too many such suggestions to take much notice.
Babies for Sale
December, 2021
One of my most radical ideas a long time ago was the notion that it should be permissible to sell unwanted babies. There should be some limits
~ babies might only be sold, for example, before the age of six months. Of course the market would be carefully regulated, and all purchasers would have all of the obligations as well as all of the rights of natural parents. This has always seemed to me to be a better way of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy than having an abortion. Abortions might still be legal, since most parents might prefer to carry their child to term and then sel it than to have an abortion (depending on the expeed price of their baby). Why should any child have to grow up in a family where one is not wanted?
I can’t really think of any objeions to this idea, so I don’t know how to refute them. It seems to me that it would provide a great relief for many families and women who really don’t want another child, yet would stop short of having an abortion. If they could simply sell the unwanted offspring to persons who wanted one, it would solve most of the problems around abortion. Some women whose babies might be expeed to fetch a high price might deliberately conceive children just to receive the income.
Far more radical would be the idea of allowing parents to sell a child of any age up to the age of majority. The threat value alone would be worth a lot. “You’d better behave, or we’ll sell you to the Gypsies!” Perhaps any child over the age of six years or more might have to approve of any sale.
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The speculation is that any child whose parents decided to sell one would most probably be much better off with the new parents.
What would happen if the baby market were to bid up the prices of some available babies? Something of the sort would seem to be inevitable, and the market would find its levels. I have never understood the objeions to this idea. It seems to solve a problem.
In Honor of Jesus Christ
December, 2021
In honor of Jesus Christ, I want to review the eight layers of consciousness, represented by the series of planets and metals of astrology and alchemy, the trigrams of the I Ching, and the colors of the aura. The familiar quest of the alchemist was to transmute lead into gold, as represented by the following sequence of colors.
On the bottom is Black, solitude or death, depending on your frame of reference. Nothing to see here. Then, from the view of the bottom of the whirlpool into Black, we see the struggle for life between the anger and violence of Red and the oppression or defeat of Purple. For a large part of the human race, this is the horizon of consciousness ~ dog eat dog, and rat eat rat, as people strive to get ahead of others by theft, deceit, or violence. At a higher level than that, there is Orange, confli or engagement, which may be anything from war to market struggle, or any work involving close interaion. At a far remove from all of that, above the fray, there is the peace and rest of Blue, where everything is in harmony with Tao. This is the obje of Buddhism.
As the horizon of consciousness rises, it includes the earlier layers, but each layer is only aware of those at that level or below. Levels higher than the ideals of Buddhism are hard to find, but there are two more levels above
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the Blue, not counting the union, White, at the top ~ Yellow and Green, love and grace. Yellow expresses the radiance of positive energy as love, and Green expresses the blessings of the grace of God.
The most important lesson to be learned from this alchemical sequence of the transmutation of lead into gold is that everything gets better as the level of the consciousness rises. If everyone would understand this, everyone would want to raise their consciousness as high as possible. Jesus Christ is the most famous advocate of this level of consciousness, and this is the foundation of his message. The theology of the Christian Church has been developed by later scholars, but his foundational message coincides exaly with the secret tradition of alchemy which studies the transmutation of lead into gold.
new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye alſo love one another.
y this all al men know that ye are my diſciples if ye have love one to another.
John XIII, 34-35
Legitimate Political Discourse
February, 2022
What are the limits of legitimate political discourse? No, I’m not talking about the insurreion in Washington on January 6th (no need to flog that dead horse any further ~ it’s beginning to stink), I’m talking about the Canadian truckers’ protest in Ottawa.
For perspeive on my take on it, here is a story from fifty years ago in Providence, Rhode Island, home of Brown University, The Rhode Island School of Design, and Classical High School. The Rhode Island School of Design is visible from one of the major freeways, and it sports a large sign reading, in big letters, “The Rhode Island School of Design.” Well, one fine day, commuters crossing that freeway noticed that the sign had been changed. By the removal of a few of the letters, the sign now read, “The Rhode Island School of sin.” My High School History teacher at Classical told us about it, laughing at how clever it was. Of course, the school quickly restored the sign to its normal state, but then, a week or so later, it had again been changed back to the “The Rhode Island School of sin.” But this time, the same History teacher was unstinting in her condemnation of the stunt as wanton vandalism with no redeeming merit whatsoever. The first time it was funny ~ the second time it was just gross vandalism.
The lesson for the Canadian truckers’ strike is clear ~ opposition and protest are very highly valued features of a free society, putting it in marked contrast with places like China (Hong Kong) and Russia. You don’t find me
waving too many American flags (which hasn’t made much moral progress since the days of slavery, with its endless wars al over the globe), but this is one point at which I have to applaud the history and tradition of free speech.
Yes ! Speak your mind ~ make your protest ~ march around with your signs and banners ~ occupy Wall Street ~ clog the streets of Ottawa with trucks for a day or two ~ and then pack it in and go home. Disrupting the normal life of two countries for weeks on end not only exceeds the limits of legitimate political discourse, but it also begins to backfire, alienating people who may have applauded the protest in the beginning. It’s time to go home.
By the way, I’m indifferent to the issue at stake ~ at my age, I get the vaccine and wear a mask, mandate or no mandate.
Self Determination ~ Ukraine and Elsewhere
February, 2022
Human beings are such pig-headed fools. Here we are in a world on the brink of collapse from de-forestation, climate change, marine necrosis, and a raging pandemic, and instead of taking serious aion to combat these problems, the world is ready to go to war over school-yard squabbles. The situation in Ukraine is described as the most serious confrontation since the second world war, a confli that could easily spiral out of control to destroy all life on earth, as if the threats to the survival of life on earth were not grave enough without people exploding more bombs to hurry it along.
In February 1990, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev discussed NATO’s future role. Baker told Gorbachev that “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiion for forces of NATO one inch to the east” and agreed with Gorbachev’s statement that “Any extension of the zone of NATO is unacceptable.” But since when has the United States honored its agreements or treaties? Just ask the Native Americans who have seen a long string of treaties disregarded as soon as the immediate necessity which caused them to sign the treaties had subsided. (Just donate free blankets to the Indians, loaded with smallpox virus ~ that will fix their wagon!) So the United States and their Western allies have pushed ever closer to the Russian border, and now they talk about signing on Ukraine as part of NATO. Just suppose Mexico were to make an agreement with Russia so that Russia could set up military installations and bomb silos all along the Rio Grande. ~ I don’t think so.
Leave Ukraine as a buffer between Western Europe and Russia ~ this is not an unreasonable suggestion, and the Western powers are foolish to reje it out of hand.
So, all you angry blowhards, just stop all your puffing and blowing, sit down, shut up, and listen to me ~ I will solve this Ukraine problem for you in short order. The solution is to rely on the simple expedient of Self-Determination. As I understand it, the regions at the eastern end of Ukraine are inhabited by a majority, at least, of ethnic Russians who would prefer to be part of Russia than Ukraine. So what is the sense of launching an al -out war, which could easily escalate into World War III, just to maintain the
“territorial integrity” of a land whose borders do not refle the current political realities on the ground? There is nothing sacred about historical borders, which originated, in most cases, as the result of military conquest, if not marriage or horse-trading by sovereign monarchs. Simply set up referenda in all local regions of eastern Ukraine, and use the results to draw a line in the sand, to the east of which the land would be returned to Russia, and west of which would remain as part of Ukraine. So simple. I submit that this solution would be the most reasonable of all possible outcomes to this quagmire.
There are plenty of other places in the world where the existing borders are inappropriate for current political realities. I would suggest that an independent state of Kurdistan should be carved out of parts of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, the exa borders to be determined according to the results of referenda in all affeed regions. Furthermore, over in China’s neck of the woods, all nations on the planet should recognize Taiwan forthwith as an independent sovereign state ~ there is no reason why Taiwan
should be dominated or controlled by China. The same applies to Hong Kong. While it may mean arrest and imprisonment for any resident of Hong Kong to suggest it, a referendum in the city would almost certainly find that the vast majority of residents would prefer Hong Kong to be an independent and sovereign City-State than to be a vassal of Chinese war lords in Beijing. A referendum in Tibet would probably have a similar outcome, unless so many Chinese settlers have moved in as to skew the results.
I have already discussed the unconscionable atrocities committed by the Israelis against the Palestinians, so I do not need to revisit that problem here. This is just a beginning. There are plenty of regions of the globe which could benefit from a reconsideration of national borders according to the self determination of the affeed residents.
[ Update: The day after posting this article, Russia begins with its launch of a major war. All of the suffering and bloodshed to come could have been avoided with a diplomatic solution along the lines suggested above. Putin was given no other alternative but to proceed with war. Had a reasonable resolution been offered in a timely fashion, as suggested, these horrible consequences, which are just beginning, could have been avoided.]
“Why Do We Need a World if Russia’s Not In It?”
February, 2022
This is not necessarily an empty threat. As I see it, Russia is total y isolated and economically devastated, with more economic collapse coming quickly. When a wild boar (or Russian Bear) is cornered, he will turn to his pursuers and attack, regardless of his chances of survival. If Russia is facing an existential crisis, it may just decide to bring the rest of the world down with it. Yes, of course this is madness, but Russia’s attack on Ukraine can hardly be viewed in any other light. Can you imagine any possible way this present crisis might resolve in a way that would leave Russia in a better place than before it started down this path of madness? Even a total “vi~ory”
would leave Russia under the weight of the whole world’s opprobrium. Even China would not support Moscow in this, in spite of China’s desire to rub Western faces in the dirt. Russia can bask in the glory of enjoying support from Belarus and Chechnya, and that about sums it up.
I am reminded of an old story about the Middle East, which seems sort of relevant here. It seems there was a scorpion who wanted to cross the Jordan river, so he asked a turtle if he could cross over on the turtle’s back.
The turtle replied in alarm that the scorpion might sting him. “Oh, no,” the scorpion replied, “Why would I do that? If I stung you, we would both drown.” So the turtle decided that made sense and agreed to allow the scorpion to ride across on his back. Half way across, the scorpion stung the turtle. As they were both going down, the turtle cried, “Why did you do that? Now we are both going to drown!” “Wel , replied the scorpion, “this
is the Middle East.” The analogy isn’t really all that close, but it is close enough for discomfort.
As I suggested in my last article, responsible diplomacy might have prevented things from reaching this stage of madness, and now, again, responsible diplomacy may yet be in time to save the world from total destru~ion. So what can I suggest now? Well, it seems to me that Russia is by now a certifiable basket case regardless of what happens next. The West could easily offer the same terms as previously suggested (Ukraine neutrality, partition of Eastern Ukraine) without losing a thing. If the Russian Bear can be persuaded to back off and go back to its lair to lick its wounds, there is nothing to fear from the rump Russia. Putin would be forced to resign in disgrace; Russia would continue to implode; an internal revolution could even see the end of the Russian federation altogether. But forcing Russia into total annihilation risks the very real possibility that it may just bring the rest of the world down with it, as it sinks below the Jordan river, bearing the turtle (which bears the world on its back, as per ancient myth, just to sustain the weak analogy) down along with it.
I finish with one more old cliché ~ “Here lies the body of Michael O’Day, who died maintaining his Right Of Way. He was right ~ dead right, but he’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong.”
As the President of Ukraine said recently, “This may be the last time you see me alive.”
Restore the Tsar !
February, 2022
Vladimir Putin has so thoroughly disgraced Russia that there is no continuation from here whatsoever, short of an entirely new regime in Moscow ~ or, better yet, in Saint Petersburg, in honor of Peter the Great, of glorious memory. A close analogy to what I am trying to suggest is the reconstruion of Europe after the defeat of Napoleon in 1814.
Representatives of all the European states met at the Congress of Vienna to sweep up after Napoleon’s rampage. Due to the brilliant management of Talleyrand, France, the defeated nation, came out without much substantial loss, apart from Napoleon’s recent conquests. All the blame was laid onto the shoulders of Napoleon, and the other European powers felt no need to punish the people of France unduly (vide: he ives of al eyrand, by Crane Brinton). In the same way, if Vladimir Putin were packed off to the Gulags in disgrace, and an entirely new regime were put in place, Russia could, perhaps, rise from the ashes of Putin’s madness and find a place at the table once again.
The new regime needs to be entirely new (or sufficiently old), to get the taste of Putin out of our mouths. How about a restoration of the Tsar?
Perhaps the Russian people could choose to elevate the Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna as Empress of all the Russias. She might repudiate all the nonsense coming out of Russia ever since 1917, and begin the process of starting a whole new (old) identity for Russia. Russia might be welcomed once again to the family of Europe, sanions might be lifted, and life might
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gradually return to normal, with everyone living happily ever after ~ or at least living, which is a step up from current prospes.
The Congress of Vienna
World War III
March, 2022
Make no mistake ~ World War III has already begun. Ten years from now, if there are any people still alive on the planet, they will wring their hands in anguish, wishing that someone had seen it coming in time to shift the march of events away from the unimaginable Armageddon that final y overwhelms our planet. And if there are those who rejoice at the end of the world, expeing that now Jesus will come back in clouds of Glory, shepherding His Ele to their Heavenly reward ~ well, perhaps that hope will mitigate their pain as the Aura of the planet sinks down into the Black.
In my last three essays on this horrible war in Ukraine, I think I have had the right idea all along. Reasonable diplomacy from the start could have stopped this whole mess in its tracks. A few guarded analysts have mentioned the glaring fa that the United States really provoked Putin into this war by the inexorable Eastern march of NATO, in violation of clear promises to the contrary. Putin’s objeions were stonewalled, and he was backed into a corner from which he was given no other option but to proceed with his threats. None of this exonerates Putin from his egregious as of madness and war crimes, but understanding the background makes it possible to see that, from Putin’s point of view, “he had no other choice.”
Nor has he any way of backing down from here without losing face. (“Ha, ha. My mistake. So sorry. Ha, ha. My bad.” I wonder if there’s any truth to the rumor that there is a movie coming out about Putin’s war, staring Pee-wee Herman as Vladimir Putin?)
Unfortunately, the brief window of possibility that this war could have been easily stopped has passed. By now, after large parts of Ukraine have been reduced to rubble, including reckless bombing of civilians and hospitals, there is just no stomach for allowing Putin to march back to Moscow in triumph, bearing away the spoils of viory, laughing in his sleeve. No ~
reasonable solutions that would have (or should have or could have) satisfied all parties at the outset are just no longer on the table. Now the bleak reality is that Putin has no other option but to “win” this war at al costs, even if he has to escalate to bombing civilians and hospitals, further escalate to chemical or biological warfare, or go to the “Final Solution” of the nuclear option.
But these are still early days. If we want life on earth to survive, we must take aion now to guide the evolution of this war into an endgame that allows life on earth to continue, and it isn’t going to be easy. As I see it, and as I stated in my last article eftore the ſar !, the only hope for derailing Putin’s war is regime change. That is not necessarily an impossible objeive.
Russia has been very rapidly descending into financial, ethical, and social chaos. The sanions are hitting hard, leading some commentators to suggest that a default of Russia’s financial obligations could be imminent.
The ruthless and bloodthirsty invasion of Ukraine has caused Russia’s world standing to plummet to the depths, and the people of Russia, in spite of authoritarian pressure taken direly from the pages of George Orwell’s 1984, have realized the appalling atrocity of Putin’s “special military operation” and are protesting in large numbers, risking arrest and imprisonment for their heroic refusal to remain silent.
What all of this means is that Putin cannot long sustain his monstrously unpopular war (nor can he long sustain the pretense that it isn’t really a war at all). In order to force Putin’s nightmare to crumble, maximum pressure must be maintained at every point, without letup. If Americans are unhappy about the current price of gasoline (I just paid over $6 a gallon to fill my tank here in California, and that’s already out of date, yesterday’s news), let them ride bicycles, as I have been advocating for years
[hycian, heal thyſelf ~ yes, touché ~ but I live in the mountains up a very steep road, thirty miles from the nearest town]. Closer to the fray, in Europe, the effes are more severe ~ if the Europeans heat their homes with gas or oil, let them turn off their furnaces and huddle with their loved ones, wrapped up in blankets, waiting for the end of this war. This IS war, after all ~ would you rather see nuclear bombs dropping from the sky? And, hardest hit of all, of course, are the Ukrainians themselves, enduring unimaginable horror as their beloved country is systematically destroyed. In parts of Mariupol they have no other option but to eat dirt and drink dust, while trying to explain to their children what is happening, and why. They keep asking for a No Fly Zone in the skies above Ukraine, but that, of course, means that they are asking for the United States and Russia to engage in a dire military confli, which would certainly escalate, first to
“taical nuclear weapons,” and finally to the haymaker, the quietus, as they sing a requiem æternam for the dying planet.
For the moment, at least, cooler heads prevail (and, as at least one commentator remarked, “Thank God Donald Trump is not our President now!”). No, the solution to this war is not more firepower, but economic warfare. Russia should be prevented from selling one drop of oil or a cubic centimeter of gas, no matter how stark the suffering at the dry end of the
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pipeline. Just remember that if no oil or gas is flowing down the pipe from Russia to Europe or the rest of the world, neither is any money flowing back on that paral el pipeline that carries dollars and euros back to Russia. Keep the thumbscrews tightened to maximum pressure until finally Putin blinks.
That’s the way the Kremlin crumbles.
The Aura of a Dying Planet
March, 2022
It has been clear to me for some time that all the horrible news bombarding our planet (even literally) is all related. In my studies of Hermetic philosophy and the nature of human consciousness and the colors of the aura, I have observed that as consciousness rises, and the aura colors become brighter, all things improve ~ one’s personal, social, and business affairs will all prosper; one’s health will improve; one will be happier and live longer. It even affes our physical bodies ~ people with high and rising auras experience an effe of “reverse aging” as they aually become more attraive physically. Of course, the converse is also true ~ when one’s consciousness is in decline, things begin to fall apart; the aura becomes darker; everything begins to get increasingly worse ~ one’s personal life will encounter ongoing problems; one’s business affairs will suffer losses; one’s health will decline; and the person’s aging process will begin to accelerate as one sinks into the grave.
All of these notions are very direly applicable to the aura of our planet, which has been declining in overall vitality for generations, even centuries, with accelerating catastrophes hastening the descent of our planetary aura into the Black. It may not seem obvious at first that Putin’s war invading and pulverizing Ukraine, the destruion of the Amazon rainforest, the “worst drought in 1200 years” causing more and more devastating wildfires in the western part of the U.S., the pandemic raging out of control, the loss of the Trees, the death of the oceans, and the
deteriorating political problems all over the planet are all conneed events, but they are all inevitable consequences ~ and continuing causes ~ of a planetary aura which is rapidly descending into the Black. (For a review of the theories underlying these ideas, see he urvival of ife on arth, he
olors of the ura, volutionary eap ow, and In onor of eſus hrift.
I am thinking again of the potential importance of such a dramatic visual representation of this piure of the decline of our planetary aura as the proposed website GaiaAura.com, in which the whole planet of the earth could be mapped according to the prevailing (and changing) colors of the aura. I remarked in volutionary eap ow about how the events of September 11, 2001 would show up on the map as a dramatic plunge of he Aura downwards. Now, with the current horror of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine (I lay the blame on Vladimir Putin rather than Russia ~ the Russian people are simply led along by the insane diator, who allows no other narrative than his own, as in the notorious 8, by George Orwell, published in , although “the paper is still damp from the press” as if it were just published yesterday) the Map would again show a precipitous plunge of the aura around Ukraine, with effes continuing throughout the world, with only slightly lessening effes as the distance from the epicenter increases.
Such a website would be a huge proje, not only its initial construion, but also its ongoing maintenance in response to events of the earth. I think that most people are just bewildered and numbed by the ongoing rush of dystopian manifestations assailing our planet, and they just don’t know how to comprehend it or cope with it. A website and Map that would portray these effes visually would provide the all-important overview
that would help people to see the conneions between the apparently disparate events going on. And all of this, of course, is intended as the precursor to initiating some massive efforts to stop this train rushing downhill at accelerating speeds, and to begin some coordination of a plan to reverse some of this catastrophic collapse of our planet and its fragile biosphere.
I do not have the resources or the skills to accomplish such an important proje on my own, so I am calling out for some help with this, before it is too late.
“Before it is too late”? I was just reading an article today that lamented that the biological col apse of the Brazilian rainforest may be already past the point of irreversible damage, just like the melting ice caps. Is it already too late to save this planet of ours? I don’t know, but, just as the people of Ukraine continue their resistance no matter how overwhelming the odds against them are, so, too, we must make immediate efforts to halt the collapse of our planet’s ecosystem with faith and hope, whether it seems to be too late to save anything or not. If you can help, please step forward.
Gender Liberation
March, 2022
It’s pretty frustrating for me. Here I am, solving all of the problems of the world, and yet no one is listening to me ! Take the issue of gender liberation ~ all questions of transgender issues stem from one fundamental problem ~ the attitude that everyone must be either “male” or “female.” I settled this whole issue seven years ago (elix olydayl eander, 2015).
The attitude that every peg has to fit into either a square hole or a round hole, even if you have to chip away at that peg to make it fit, seems to me to violate the whole spirit of liberation. I want to celebrate individual diversity, the right of everyone to manifest themselves in any way they wish, without regard to any preconceived notions of the way things have to be.
Things don’t have to be black or white, one way or the other. When I was young and I protested against eating meat, my mother said, “Al right ~
if you want to be a vegetarian, you have to be a complete vegetarian ~ never eating any meat at al .” But that wasn’t me ~ I didn’t like eating red meat all the time, with every meal, but once in a while I might want to eat a piece of chicken or fish, and I have always loved cheese.
And then there were those who claimed that “bisexual” was just a euphemism for “gay.” As if you had to be either “straight” or “gay” ~ no in-between waffling allowed ! In the same way, I think a whole continuum should be recognized between “male” and “female.” If your little boy doesn’t feel like a boy, and he would rather play with dolls and bake bread than play
war games with the boys, he doesn’t have to turn himself into a girl in al ways ~ he can express his gender choices in whatever way feels good to him/her/one.
I can understand the objeion to someone with a boy’s body saying he’s really a girl and he wants to play on the girls’ sports team. Perhaps we should recognize a whole middle ground for in-between genders. A person with a boy’s body who considers himself a girl might play on the same team with tough, butch girls who like to pee standing up. But please don’t force children (or adults) into having to make a choice between only two alternatives. The world is full of diversity, and two gender choices are just not enough.
Then there is the foolish alphabet soup of naming LGBTQNBO
(~ non-binary, and other). I suggest that a single title should suffice to cover all non-standard-paradigm gender choices. “Queer” covers the whole territory. “Queer” means “different,” something other than the standard binary paradigm. That already includes everyone who does not or cannot identify as being on one side or the other of the binary fence. Celebrate diversity. I am queer and proud.
Putin’s Folly
April. 2022
Poor Vladimir Putin. He wanted to Make Russia Great Again, but he only succeeded in trashing what was left of poor old Russia. Russia is now more thoroughly devastated than Ukraine. All Putin can do now is to drop more bombs, killing more people and continuing the reduion of Ukraine to rubble, but he can’t win any battles, and there is no hope of ever retaining any of Ukraine’s territory for very long, let alone of returning the rodigal
on back to the fold of Mother Russia. Russia’s standing in the world is totally destroyed; its economy is ruined; its military prowess is humiliated; it is isolated and ridiculed. It is still feared the way one fears a mad dog, but it has lost all respe. Poor Vladimir Putin is like a little boy throwing a tantrum, breaking his toys in anger and frustration.
So what next for poor old bedraggled Russia? There is not likely to be much chance for any meaningful negotiation ~ no one is going to want Putin to take away any face-saving vior’s spoils. He will just continue to thrash around in his anger and madness until finally there is either a Palace Coup or someone mercifully puts him out of his misery. But this has to happen from within Russia. There can be no question of any external force, like NATO or the USA, working for regime change. No one is going to send in any hit squad to take out the villain; it must come from within Russia, by Russians, for Russians. I hope it happens soon, because there can be no forward movement until Putin be finally assassinated or packed off to the Gulag (or the International Criminal Court in the Hague).
Then what? It can only be after Putin has finally left the stage, pondering the grim treatment he will receive at the hands of future historians, that anyone in Europe or the rest of the world can begin to move forward again. For Putin’s sake, I wish him a swift and merciful death, rather than the prolonged agony of sinking into the mire of trial and condemnation. But then what happens? In an earlier article (eore the
ſar!), I suggested a parliamentary democracy under the titular head of a restoration of the Tsar, but that, while being an immeasurable advance over the reign of primitive barbarity currently despoiling the Russian people, could still be considerably improved by implementing a very old idea of mine, which I have usually proposed as an institution designed to oversee the government of the whole world (vide: ew olutions, 1992), but the same principle could just as easily (in fa, quite a bit more easily) be applied to any smaller political entity, such as Russia.
So, after Putin’s final and ignominious exit from the stage, in the ruins of what was once Russia, some visionary patriots could set up a Seminary consisting of a seleion of about thirty or forty of the best and brightest Russians from the ages of about six to ten, and provide them with the best education they can manage. Then, after about thirty years or so, they could themselves choose one of their number to hold the position of Head of State for a parliamentary democracy. In this case, the head of state would not be simply a figurehead, as any restored Tsar would have to be ~ he or she could provide the primary direion for the state, as it slowly reinvents itself. A Prime Minister could occupy the role originally envisioned for such a post, as executive management implementing the policies indicated by the new head of state (who may as well hold the title of Tsar, just for historical continuity).
Perhaps, in one or two hundred years, some of these ideas of mine may yet be taken seriously, on the off-chance that life on earth should last that long. In the meantime, go ahead and come up with a better solution.
Another Way to End the Ukraine War
April, 2022
For over 800 years, Russia has had an image problem. Russia has always seemed, at least to the more refined residents of western Europe, to be a land of uncivilized and primitive barbarians. Russia constantly tries to overcome this image and present itself as a modern, civilized country, whose inhabitants are just like everyone else, but it has been a hard sell. And now, with Putin’s rampage in Ukraine, raping and pillaging, Russia’s image has just been set back about three hundred years. Polite people just don’t a this way in the modern era. Not that Russia is alone with this regrettable image problem ~ there are some regions of Africa and the Middle East that appear to us, in the more civilized regions of the world, to be just as primitive and barbaric as Russia. And there are places near Russia, like Chechnya, where gay men are rounded up and shot (so the government can claim that there are no gay people living there), that are as hard to understand as Russia itself.
Primitive and uncivilized regions like this are really hard for the rest of us to understand. Putin’s invasion and war against the people of Ukraine seems totally senseless and baffling. Sixteen hundred years ago, roving gangs of warriors used to go around raping and pillaging, like Attila the Hun, Putin’s precursor, and this was still going in the twelfth century, but there is no place for such rude behavior in modern times. We are at a loss trying to figure out how to deal with the problem.
Noam Chomsky has suggested that there are only two ways this war can end. Either Ukraine and Russia will fight doggedly on to the death, until one side or the other is obliterated (and it won’t be Russia), or there must be a negotiated settlement. I have the greatest respe for Noam Chomsky ~ I have read many of his books, and I almost always agree with his point of view. He cuts through the malarkey and speaks truth to power and anyone else who happens to be listening. There are very few voices in the world up to the level of Noam Chomsky. And yet, in the present instance, I think he has overlooked a couple of other possible endgames to this war.
Let us begin by looking at the two endgame scenarios mentioned by Chomsky ~ as Zelensky desperately cries out for more fire power, heavier munitions, and war planes, it seems clear that there can be no favorable end to an ever worsening quagmire of death and destruion. Large parts of Ukraine have already been reduced to rubble; many thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, their bodies either dumped in shallow graves or perhaps burned in an effort to conceal the extent of the mayhem; untold numbers of women and children have been abdued and taken into Russia, much like the stories of Gypsies stealing children to augment their numbers, and still the war goes on, with no end in sight. But let us take a look at the alternative ~ some sort of negotiated settlement. The problem with attempting to work out a negotiated settlement is that Putin has already made it clear that he intends to devour the whole of southern and eastern Ukraine, perhaps using those conquests as a staging ground for further incursions into Moldova, so what sort of negotiated settlement did Chomsky have in mind? Unfortunately, anything that Putin’s Russia might accept would look very close to appeasement ~ a very unpalatable resolution of this
war. Appeasement of the Russian Bear would be like communities allowing a monster or a dragon to devour a few children from time to time so that the rest of the community could go on living ~ not very palatable at all; no.
There may have been a time, before Putin’s invasion, where some negotiated settlement might have prevented this war in the first place, but that ship has sailed, regrettably, as an ounce of prevention could have been worth many megatons of cure (if you feel a chill, the allusion is intentional).
But there are two other possible avenues to ending this war, which I want to suggest now. One of them I have already mentioned before ~
regime change ( vide: eftore the ſar ! and utin’s olly. That really seems to me to represent the only really hopeful ending to this horrible war.
But it is a fourth possible road to ending this war that I want to discuss as today’s idea. The real root of the problem is the primitive level of consciousness prevailing in Russia. Loading up the truck with more and more powerful munitions isn’t really going to ameliorate this problem at all.
I suggest a program aimed direly at raising consciousness in Russia.
I cal on LSD chemists world-wide to provide at least fifty mil ion trips worth of LSD to Russia for free or low cost distribution. Perhaps it may be overly optimistic to expe President Joe Biden to invoke the Defense Produion A to mandate and finance the produion of sufficient LSD to supply this need, but I think there are plenty of wealthy philanthropists who would gladly put up the required funds to get this proje off the ground (high off the ground). Of course it will be the young people, as always, who will lead this new psychedelic revolution in Russia. With wave after wave of Peace and Love vibes washing over the land from one end of Russia to the other, the Russian people will rise up in short order to bring down the Putin
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regime and usher in a whole new and higher consciousness. They will beat their swords into plowshares, and the Bear will lie down with the Lamb in peace and love.
Abortion
May, 2022
All the Liberals are up in arms about the pending betrayal of the Supreme Court, but it is not up to the Supreme Court to rule on this issue.
Questions about the value or morality of abortion, and even the question of whether or not a majority of the American people want access to abortion are just not relevant to the Supreme Court. The Judiciary is an altogether different arena from Legislation. As I understand the issue, the Constitution has nothing to say about any question of abortion, therefore it is simply not up to the Judiciary to rule on this issue. The problem thus becomes very simple ~ if a majority of the American people wish to have access to abortion, then it is up to Congress to address the question and pass appropriate laws. Is this so difficult? I understand that Congress is run by petulant schoolboys these days who really haven’t any interest in what is good for the country ~ they only want to serve their own interests, and the entire Republican party just votes reflexively against any legislation proposed by the Democratic administration (at great waste of the tax-payers’ money ~
how about abolishing the Senate altogether?), but, on the present question, with a large majority of the American people in favor of legal access to abortion, perhaps some Republicans might prefer to consider their chances of re-eleion rather than mindlessly rubber stamping the decrees of the Republican Party. Even without abolishing the filibuster, it ought to be possible to line up at least 60 votes in favor of a legal abortion measure.
If they absolutely can’t do it, then perhaps it is time for a Constitutional Convention to come up with a system of government that might be more responsive to the will of the people. The simplest fix would be simply to abolish the Senate entirely, as mentioned above ~ the Senators are just drones living like parasites off the body politic who serve no useful funion whatsoever ~ afte ’em.
The Price of Gas
May, 2022
As the price of gas continues to rise out of control, everyone is up in arms. President Biden is willing to sanion more oil and gas leasing on federal lands in an effort to address the problem. Elsewhere in the world, coal fired power plants are continuing in operation and new ones are being built in an effort to offset the rising costs of fossil fuels.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The price of gas has to go up ! High gas prices are very good news. Skyrocketing prices for wood produs of all kinds are very good news. This is the face of resistance to climate change. This world is suffocating (literally) under clouds of greenhouse gases largely caused by out of control use of the private automobile. The joke is that in Los Angeles, people drive their car in order to cross the street. If this world is going to recover from the onrushing climate change catastrophe, we are just going to have to get used to constantly rising fuel costs. Commuters will have to car-pool, take the train, ride a bicycle, or, better yet, move closer to where they work (so they can more easily ride their bicycle to work). And all of this flying around the world to attend some frivolous social event has got to stop. The most effeive and obvious way to change people’s habits is by direly affeing the costs of excess fuel consumption.
High gas prices ? Instead of auioning off more gas and oil leases on federal lands, the government should add another $12 per gallon tax at the pump for gasoline (OK, starting with an extra $2, and increasing annual y
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until we reach the targeted result of dramatically reducing reliance upon gasoline fueled transport).
Welcome to the new world in which we are all trying to stay alive in the face of rampaging climate catastrophe. Get used to it.
By the way, I don’t begrudge the billions of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Bill Gates. Bill Gates blazed the trail for the most incredible advance in technology since the printing press; Jeff Bezos set up a very nifty online marketplace, in which they do a lot of things right; and Elon Musk was right up front with the essential new direion for the automobile (but cash out of Space-X before the crash). But, as they requested themselves at the Davos Summit, tax them very heavily ~ they won’t mind at all. As long as a wealth tax be applied equitably, all the mega-wealthy wil still have plenty of money for their toys, and if that means a stupid big yacht, I hope it gives them pleasure. As for me, I would have more fun in an 18’ sloop-rigged sailboat.
Aual y, now that I think about it, if I had the funds, I might go a little bit bigger.
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The Chain of Love
June, 2022
There is a secret to love and sex and pleasure, and I wish more people would understand it. The secret is that the most pleasure is felt by the person giving the love (Yellow, Tui, on the wheel of eight different metals, or levels of consciousness, of Hermetic Alchemy). Receiving love (Green,
un) is a very different kind of a pleasure, a receptive pleasure, in contrast with the expansive pleasure associated with giving love.
So many people do not know this, and lead very unsatisfaory sex lives and personal lives trying to find love, by which they think they mean finding people to love them. The lesson is that if someone wants to discover al of the hidden delights and pleasures of sex, about which they have heard so many exciting rumors, all one needs to do is to find ſomebody to love, as the
efferſon irplane advised us back in 1967, so long ago. I heard them singing it live in a small club in Boston before anyone knew who they were.
Just imagine what a different world this might be (writing on 24 une, 2022) if Vladimir Putin had learned this lesson, or figured it out, at an early age. If only someone could give him 500 mcg of LSD, even now, it might yet turn things around. Unfortunately, Putin has a long climb ahead of him, operating, as he does, way down among the Red and Purple of Attack and Oppression, far below those of us who enjoy a more elevated consciousness.
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Plenty of people have been trying to give this secret away long before the Jefferson Airplane, starting with Jesus Christ, who, of course, was ahead of his time (old hippies will understand that the pun is intended).
Trying to figure out a way of promoting this idea, I came up with the
hain of ove. To simplify a complex problem, when people meet, the interest is not necessarily balanced or equal. Often one person may have an interest in drawing closer (boy chaſes girl) while the other person draws back
(girl runs away). This is a major cause of shyness ~ one may be afraid that the other person wil not reciprocate the interest. So the concept of the
hain of ove is not to reciprocate, but to pay it forward. One finds someone else to whom one wishes to express love, and explains that, instead of reciprocation, the person is invited to pay it forward, expressing new love to someone else of their choice.
You don’t have to pass it on just once ~ anytime you wish to express unconditional love for someone on these terms, you can start a whole new chain of love. How to express the love ? Of course that would depend upon the persons involved, but a nice dinner followed by a full body massage would be an easy way to start. Your paramour would probably feel very good, and will be motivated to pass on the chain of love. Please don’t break the chain.
Democracy in Crisis
July 2022
An NPR/Ipsos poll released in January revealed that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that U.S. democracy is “in crisis and at risk of
America’s problem is a very old and classic problem. It is similar to the dilemma of a person who is married or otherwise united to or with someone who is unsuitable for one’s present needs. One has to decide whether to stick with the one you’ve got or plunge headlong into the mysterious and unknown waters of the Open Sea in search of another, and hopefully more suitable, partner. Sometimes there is another choice nearby, clutching at one’s elbow, and sometimes one is alone and living life as a solitary fish in the sea.
The partner with whom we have been married here in America is that article of Holy Writ, the onftitution. It is getting old by now, and needs a bath, and seems to be carrying on in some confusion, quite unlike the confidence of youth. Congress has been experiencing its senior moment for decades now. But do we love her, after all, or do we send her off down the road, and change her in for a younger model ? Boy, do I play a hard game for the Devil’s Advocate ! There is that image of the shameless old man who tosses the woman out into the street who’s been living with him for so long, to trade her in for a younger woman. You want to say, “No, no ~ you don’t
want to throw her out ! Keep the old girl you know; you never know what you might end up with if you take on someone new.”
And yet here I am advocating that it is time to lay that document, reverently, to rest. On the whole, that constituting document was a brilliant achievement. It served as the backbone of the country from its inception, and, for all of its increasingly glaring faults, it aually provided a matrix out of which this country has been able to survive and prosper. But now it is just breaking down. Now that Democracy is not the only problem, dwarfed, as it is, by the more serious problems of the nuclear annihilation of all life on earth, the escalating climate catastrophe, exploding pandemics, jungle warfare, capitalist aggression, the death of the oceans, and the loss of the Trees, there is just no time left to tolerate the follies and squabbles of the capitalist class as they plunder the earth in her final moments going down.
Let’s face it ~ the Constitution is the founding document of a corporation for the profit of its members. Its members, mind you, not the Corporation itself. “The Corporation” is just the legal entity they dreamed up to hold the losses achieved in favor of the wealthy few. That twenty odd trillion dollars of the National Debt represents the pillaging of the wealthy class who have pocketed that amount, leaving the Nation to hold the losses.
All of the power in the country is represented by Money (“One Dollar, One Vote”).
While that policy works very well in the marketplace, it fails utterly when forced to serve as the final authority for regulating the affairs of our planet. The final authority for anything that happens on this planet goes to the person who pays the most money. Who pays the piper, calls the tune.
So that’s all wrong, then. Our poor Constitution is just not up to dealing with the problems of the present day ! The survival of ~ not only human life, but all life on the planet ~ depends upon some planetary evolution away from Money and Power ruling the world, in favor of some system established for the survival of the host planet. Money and Power are destroying this planet as fast as anyone is trying desperately to save it. The egregious carnage going on in Ukraine is so dumbfoundingly stupid as to beggar belief. The last thing we need is all of those bombs reducing everything to rubble while everyone ramps up the extraion of fossil fuels, accelerating the downward whirlpool of life dying out.
I have already explained the causes of inflation ~ it is really the whole question of prosperity or poverty (vide: wo conomic allacies). As long as money is spent with a high Return Faor Probability, then it is a good investment and will increase the overall prosperity. And when money is spent with low Return Faor Probability (like, in the high negative numbers) then you are on your way to losing Grandma’s farm. The obvious example of Negative Return Faor Probability is war, as Putin is learning to his cost. Both sides lose during warfare. All the amount of capital value that is vaporized into annihilation during warfare goes toward the impoverishment of the people (and the wealth of the few).
So it is not spending money that is causing inflation; it is the waste of money and resources in non-produive direions, such as war. All of that loss is being felt as inflation, high gas prices, and, in general, increasing overall poverty, all the way around. In order to cancel out the negative effes of negative expenditures, double that amount of high positive return faor expenditures needs to be made to balance it out. When the positive
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expenditures outbalance the negative expenditures, the entity moves in the direion of increasing prosperity. When the negative expenditures outbalance positive expenditures, then that entity slides down into poverty, usually experienced as an increasing polarization between the haves and the have nots.
So for every trillion dollars spent on war and the military, two trillion dollars needs to be spent on planting trees, building schools and hospitals, and services to the people. When people say, “Oh, we are spending so much money on war and the military that we really can’t afford to spend money on anything else,” that means they want the whole of the spending to be on negative projes, and nothing for making the world a better place. That’s the recipe for continuing to plunge into that downward whirlpool into annihilation that I have been describing.
So, to escape the bad effes of all of this negative spending, the solution is to spend a whole lot more in the positive direion, otherwise there just isn’t any hope. And as long as it is the people with the most wealth in the world determining how the money should be spent ( the
afters of ankind, according to Adam Smith), it is a certainty that the end is near.
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I have been saying this for thirty years or more. It is all there in my colleed writings, (One lanet akeover). The essence of the idea is to create an institution to hold the final authority to replace the plutocrats and oligarchs who have been pillaging the earth up until now. In other words, the idea is to effe the transition from the ungle to the arden, overseen by the Gardener. The Gardener would be chosen by the eminary of the hurch of the iving ree, or some other orld Inftitute of orld tudies, whose mandate were to take care of the Earth in Trust.
I’ve used this piure before, but I like it.
End the War Now
July 2022
This war in Ukraine is just the latest bleeding ulcer on this planet of ours. Yes, even the Russian invasion of Ukraine, just as much as Climate Change, the Pandemic, and the Plague of Frogs, are all caused by the collapsing levels of planetary consciousness in a devastating feedback loop that bodes not well for survival. The threat to the survival of life on earth is so great that the most desperate temporary measures have to be implemented immediately. In order to save the patient, immediate intervention is required.
This confli in Ukraine is so stupid, but there wil be no way to stop it without the intervention of a Higher Power, and there isn’t any in evidence at present, at least not on Earth. When two schoolboys fight, either one or the other is defeated, and, if you are Achilles, you hitch his body to your chariot by his heels, and ride around and around the plain of battle, with your foe’s body bouncing in the dust for all to see from both sides of the confli, in order to infli maximum humiliation on the defeater warrior.
(Homer’s Iliad is really pretty funny, a laugh a minute.) So, absent the Higher Power, the only thing to do is to withdraw from the confli on whatever terms are demanded. This will probably mean formal recognition of the independence of Crimea and the eastern Donbas provinces (or their integration into Mother Russia), as well as the stipulated neutrality of Ukraine, with no more talk of joining Europe.
But it will be a Pyrrhic viory. Russia may end up “owning” some more heares of land, but it will have to maintain them by employing a constant garrison of troops to oppose an ongoing insurgency, at great expense. The whole adventure will have cemented the rest of Europe into the strongest bonds it has ever had in opposition to Russia. What price viory? The sanions will be maintained, and the Russian economy wil struggle along, falling deeper into poverty just like the rest of the world, as the declining planetary aura drags everyone down. The cumulative cost of raging fires, tropical storms, mass shootings, melting ice caps, pandemics, and war will gradually drag down the overall prosperity everywhere, with accelerating dolorous effe. Russia will have gained nothing by its tantrums, except to be pushed down even further. This is such an explosive situation that it almost seems inevitable that it will finally go up in smoke, as Armageddon finally brings us to the End Times, and we get to discover what those end times really are. And when we die we will understand what we mean by eternal life.
No, if there is to be any hope of survival, we have to stop the warfare going on before we can begin to address the rest of the problems raining down upon those of us who are still surviving in these last days of the human race on earth. The only long term hope of turning this collapse around is to raise the planetary consciousness as quickly as possible. What a tall order!
The idea of my proposed website (aiaura.com) dramatically showcasing the declining Aura of the planet in dying color, is to make the reality of the situation starkly clear to everyone. All of the areas of greatest problem on the planet will stand out vividly by the color of the prevailing aura. But understanding the problem is only the barest beginning ~ to aually initiate a process of raising the Aura, it will take either another incarnation or Avatar
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of God, or else a great many millions of trips of LSD distributed all over the earth. Or perhaps both at once.
The One World Government Problem
July 2022
This “One World Government” business seems to be about the most red hot other of ll onspiracy heories of them all, enough to instigate a barroom brawl wherever it is mentioned. I have never understood it.
Reading in history about the slow and steady progress towards unification in all of the various princely states of Europe, it is possible to see a long view of what is going on. It was not so long ago that all of Italy, for example, was just a jungle of sovereign states and powers, endlessly warring and conspiring with each other. This process has been going on for centuries, millennia, and it has a long way to go. The inevitable teleology is pretty obvious ~
sooner or later, the entire human race must be drawn together into a single fold, as a matter of survival and growth. In every case, unified countries show greatly improved cooperation among the various peoples enfolded under their banner.
It is not as though I haven’t noticed it yet, or mentioned it ~ apart from my call to plant Trees everywhere, by the millions, billions, and trillions, this One World Government problem has been my most insistent voice. I have just looked over the October 2020 article, One orld
overnment, and it’s all there, clear as a bell. Here, and previously, I have celebrated some of the world’s greatest visionaries ~ Einstein, Teilhard de Chardin, Bertrand Russell, and H.G. Wells, all of whom have stressed the obvious and urgent necessity of completing this unity of the world, before any further progress can be made on any front. That means this has to
happen firft, before you need expect much progress on war, death, taxes, or climate change.
But what I can’t understand is why is this not clear to everyone? It takes a child like Greta Thunberg to stand up and shout, “The Emperor is wearing No Clothes! ~ and why hasn’t anyone else noticed?!” Our “Leaders” are doing nothing; and that’s the best of them; the worst ones, like Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, or Jair Bolsonaro are waving flags and sel ing hot dogs, while applauding and rejoicing in the destruction of our planet. Our world is desperately out of control on every hand, and getting worse on every level; and every time we hear about it getting worse, we are told that it is six times worse than it was thought to be before. And yet, the rampaging
afters of the orld go on partying and pillaging as fast as they can, while the rest of the population just look on, dazed, like the zombies they are, `οι
πολλοι.
What I find most astonishing is that no one else seems to be bothered about what’s going on, at least not bothered enough to suggest any way at all of dealing with the problem. It is not a matter of some world-wide conference of the various states and powers (read: wealth) of the world in which there are numbers of suggested Programs of how to progress forward, all of which are hotly contested, as no agreement can be made on which course to pursue. No. There is nothing at all. No one has a clue. Yawn.
The only choice on the Ballot is usineſs as ſual. Anyone who advocates anything different is considered a radical or a deviant (as, of course, they are).
Not that anyone’s taking a vote. It seems to be taken for granted that nothing can be done. Just keep the popcorn coming, and watch the show:
he ecline and all of lanet arth.
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I have been calling for a onvocation of the ealthy and owerful (the
afters of the orld), as the only ones who have the power to make something happen. But now I think that perhaps what is needed is a
onvocation of the ionaries. So now I cal to all Visionaries of the world ~
let us meet in onclave at the rotto, and try to work out a plan of action.
Yes, I have a great many ideas of my own, but if anyone has some better ideas to propose, I want to hear all about them.
Al Systems in the Red Zone
July, 2022
The collapse of the world as we know it shows the failure of existing institutions. We desperately need to get something new going on, and yefterday ( i.e. , last century). They tel me that the frog in the hot water story is a fake ~ any frog worth his salt will have enough sense to jump out once the water begins to get too hot. So it is just human beings who are unable to adapt fast enough to changing conditions in time to save themselves and their potential progeny from destruion.
The impression that made me take up my digital pen this morning was a vision of the earth bursting to the point of explosion with increasing tensions all over the world. I have noticed before that when a system (a single organic entity, like a person, or more complex, like a planet) becomes overloaded with tension, there will be some point of release. On a human scale, if a person has some nervous tension erupting in some organic symptom, it does no good to treat the symptom. If you stop some nervous eruption at some point on your body, the tension will just burst forth somewhere else, like whack-a-mole. The itch, irritation, or ulcer is biologically or physically necessary to disperse the accumulating tension, which is a real physical energy field. The only way really to address the problem is to resolve the underlying source of the tension. If you can reſolve the ongoing confli with your wife, then the neurotic manifeftations will ſubde.
In other words, a good orgasm is so much better than a nuclear bomb (to
mix my metaphor from a person to a planet ~ I hope you can follow the logic, changing horses in midstream).
On a planetary scale, I have noticed that the world has been constantly at war, somewhere on the planet, for the last few hundred years, at least. I have had the impression that these wars serve exaly the same funion as the neurotic eruption on a person’s body ~ the planet just needs a pressure release valve to dissipate the accumulating tension. I have also noticed that when one confli is finally restrained, or constrained to moderate rumbling instead of hot war, then a major confli will erupt somewhere else on the planet to compensate, so that the excess tension of the planet can have some point at which it can be released.
About five years ago I suggested a resolution of the ongoing tension with North Korea by holding a chess match between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump ( olution to the iaſco of orth orea). Now I suggest a match between Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin. If Zelensky wins, Putin takes his toys and goes home. If Putin wins, Ukraine gives up the Donbas and Crimea and agrees to Ukraine neutrality and abandonment of NATO aspirations. No matter who wins, Ukraine, Russia, Europe, and the world will be a whole lot better off than they are at present. Perhaps we can make the match a best of seven, in order to maximize the efficiency of releasing accumulated tension. No proxies allowed; principals only.
But, of course, a new locus of tension would quickly materialize somewhere else on the planet, so this would be a very temporary solution.
For a real and lasting solution to this problem of international tension, there must be an international solution, such as I have been recommending for the last forty or fifty years. The argument against my plan is that it is just too
enormous a design to have any prospe of realization. But my answer is that the central feature, the establishment of a new source of planetary authority, can be started immediately ~ the establishment of an international Seminary, a school of international studies, to provide the environment for an Avatar of God to incarnate. This Seminary can be established immediately as a school without any political authority at all ~ it will be up to this Seminary and their eleed Advocate to evolve into a position of increasing authority in the world. All we need is the funding for a sufficient endowment to establish the Seminary, and then let the evolution of the plan proceed from there on its own momentum. This can be done immediately, as soon as funds be subscribed. he hurch of the iving ree provides a ready-made organizational struure.
