Numberless

Somewhere under redding light
something sinks into mire – becomes

the mire its sinking is.
Numberless eyes swivel down

straining to the very dark
their seeing fears.

Limbs knot to gristle
in the slippery fight to break free

but fear’s weight’s the gravity
that sucks it into me.

–

Days drift away
liquid as flame

glance back
then curl to their ends.

Weakened by numberless irrelevance
I gaze on afar

mind in close phase
wandering on empty ...

wandering     ...     wondering
what to have done

with time so spent
my face sunk, ashen, reverent.

Tyranny’s harvest

Dose anyone suffer with anxiety and panic like me this all started with the COVID-19 I’m still struggling to get well getting out alone is not easy I’ve been on different medication over 2years I would love to do all the things again like walking crafts going on a bus to town all these things I panic with been at home alone been in shops it never ends. I blame Boris  Johnson. The mental Heath are struggling to support those that need help to get there lives back. what do you think?. – Carol C.

Hi, I agree. I won't go into my political stance or beliefs but I'm struggling to get back to how life was before the whole lock down. Everything for some reason just feels different. I hope you find your normal again. – Sami S.

Till my first panic attack, I was nice and happy boy.Drinking, smoking, going out, and in perfect health,  then everything get change. Now no drinking, no smoking, only doctors and medications that made me sick. One day I was on the street enjoying, and in a moment hit my nose by accident and little blood bleak. And a one simple think passed  by my head. Im dying. I baaaam. My first panic attack. Short of bread, tight in chest, the world started to circle, I was nearly fold down. From this moment to now, doctors and medications. I understand how you feelling and wish from my heart to win this battle. And then tell me :) . If you know some manly or mixed groups, I want to join :)  My English is not so good, sorry if many mistakes in the words. Thanks :) – Spas M

Introduction

I copied the above quotes from an online neighbourhood forum. Carol C. initiated the thread with her plea for help, the other two quotes are replies that most closely echo Carol’s fears, though there were tens of other comments in a similar tone, too many to deal with here. 

For someone like me who advocates love, the fear voiced in their words is, to say the least, a challenge. This is an attempt to address it.

What chance love?

I hope it is obvious from the above that fear is not a sustainable solution for navigating society’s challenges; a life lived in fear is neither healthy nor joyous, where joy is the fruit of health. Ego – “consciousness in the service of fear” – is gifted at seducing us into distractions that so often become addictions aggressively defended, gifted at enmeshing us in tangled webs of self deception, of seeing bounty in playing the role of oppressor or victim, and so on, all to keep us safe from and unmolested by dangers lurking Out There only fear can guard against. 

Ego’s perpetual refrain might be phrased as: Life is deadly, fear your most loyal ally. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread! 

This is the reflexive-instinctive substratum state power mines in its systemic need to (fearfully) control its subjects, so as to keep day-to-day life on an even keel and itself in power. Similar mechanisms of control are used by multinational corporations and organisations. Fear is the go-to choice for stressed-out rulers and ruled alike when facing the difficult challenges of keeping an entire people on the same page, or simply making ends meet. But freed to run its course, fear leads to corruption, decadence, misery, endless power struggles, grotesque inequalities, and so on.

Love, by contrast, is very difficult to attain; it requires a lifelong commitment to ruthless self-honesty, courage, compassion, humility, ego dissolution, while avoiding collapse into escapism and victimhood. How many individuals are ready to take on this task before their world falls apart? How many peoples, nations, corporations? It is rare indeed that individuals commit to love before devastating corrective feedback forces their hand, and yet more unusual that entire nations do so. In fact I’m not aware of the latter having ever happened.

It seems covid19 has distilled this age-old and very human dilemma into painful focus for wave upon wave of people, including Carol. The coming fallout from the disastrous Russia-Ukraine war will represent another distillation of this choice, and further intensify fear, already at fever pitch throughout entire societies. 

And yet, were I to run this foundational fear-love choice past any of the three people quoted above as an invitation to a healthier way of being, how could I be sure I was not unintentionally luring them onto a road they are not ready to travel?

Whom should we blame for our messes, who should make things right for Carol? What I see beneath Carol’s fear, and beneath that of others like her, is the system that promotes and sustains it. But in truth I believe blame misses the point; only Carol can walk her unique path to health, and by walking it, create it. For all of us within a broader system that promotes and sustains such fears, however, staying true to the only path beyond often seems impossible. Indeed, most succumb to the devil they know, at best seeking help from professionals and drugs that almost never address the root of the problem. This is too familiar a lament. The work that needs to be done is too hard, too exhausting, too against the grain of The Way Things Are.

In other words, the only way out seems so hard it hardly bears mentioning; it is almost cruel to suggest it, however gently. Is a commitment to becoming love a bridge too far for frail humanity?

I feel the intense need in Carol’s words and am instantly on the other side of reality, heart and mind. How can power be so cruel, so implacably violent yet remain oblivious to its impact, grind relentlessly on as if its measures were Ultimate Good? I find no satisfactory answer, see explanations referencing sociopathy and psychopathy as cartoonish, skeletal, misleading. I watch power’s effects unfold but have a minimally detailed sense of its root cause as generalised fear teamed with ego’s comfy allures. Stunned again and again by events, I am now like a light neither off nor on, my switch stuck between two binary poles, waiting for something to make sense. I suspect many feel the same way.

Love is clearly the only way, but almost nobody dares learn what this really entails. I take stock of my own situation, of what I am and feel, and come up wanting, even though I can find no flaw in the foundations of what I flatter myself I know. I want to do something effective, anything at all, but watch on dumbly as one event seeps into the next, on and on and on.

The powers of mass manipulation humanity has acquired in pursuit of state power, of status,  stability, safety, are far beyond its wisdom. We do not deserve them, and yet we have them. We wield them relentlessly, wanting to know no better. We are The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and our world has run amok.

How cruel is love?

The cruel, stubborn thought that will not fade away is that things must be this way, that I must accept – does “accept” mean love? – the horrors we have unleashed. These horrors – something whispers to me – are the only way we can learn. Without free will there can be no learning. With free will anything can happen. To accept free will and humanity as they are is to accept horror, evil banality, the most profound corruption and perversion, long dull lives of quiet desperation … all of it. The state of the human world is necessarily and always the truest reflection, indeed embodiment, of how we are as a species.

The third quote at the top of this article is from a non-native speaker obviously struggling to find his way. He is culturally at sea here, out of place, perhaps delivered here by processes beyond his control: the ebbs and flows of history. Carol is no doubt working class, did not receive an education beyond, I guess, age 16, is of a nervous disposition and has slipped into a confused state of crippling fear. Her view of the world is shared by Sami S. There are, I’m confident, millions more like them across the UK, and elsewhere in the world. And I sense their number is growing. They are all real human beings living real human lives the broader system cannot care about. They are ‘useless eaters’ from the system’s point of view: history’s detritus. I see myself as one of them by virtue of not fitting in, of not agreeing with the system’s base value system.

History is cruel and there is no stopping it. Systems become established, enjoy some period of success, lose their way, then collapse at some speed and are replaced. When civilisational systems emerge, and when they thrive, and when they fade away, some percentage of the human beings that constitute them ‘fail’, while others ‘succeed’. How can it be any other way? 

Does it follow from this, then, that love is cruel? Yes. No. Both.

Do you really understand ‘failure’? Can you value Carol’s suffering and aching loneliness for what it is, for the rich experience of futility it delivers, its contribution to the maturation of her wisdom as soul, and thus to humanity’s wisdom generally? If we are to choose love knowingly, willingly, we need to explore and exhaust the potential of every other way of being as well. 

In the Grail legend, Parsifal easily finds the Grail (wisdom/love), but does not value it. This is the fool’s early success, beginner’s luck. Undeserving, he loses the Grail and drifts into multiple experiences of failure, of suffering. These are the trials we must complete to truly earn love, to be capable of being a vessel for its expression through us. Only after we have travelled all paths that are not love, are we are ready to find and appreciate the Grail. This seems to be how reality works, fundamentally.

Must we accept evil, then? Yes. No. Both.

Yes, in that to squash free will out of existence in pursuit of utopia would create far more evil than it attempts to defeat. 

No, in the sense that evil leads to terrible suffering, and the only path towards a healthy relationship with suffering is the one that appears before us as we dedicate ourselves knowingly and willingly to love. The wisdom of accepting that we do not control all outcomes, all decisions, all emotional reactions Out There does not preclude encouraging love in ourselves and others, as our means allow. ‘Failing’ to be The Shining One who defeats evil for all time is no failure at all, no cause for self-doubt, self-hate, feelings of impotence, no reason to slip back into fear. 

Love is as cruel as we want it to be. While we yield to ego, to fear’s easy seductions, love seems idealistic, foolhardy, reckless, even terrifying. When we give ourselves in humble service to love, we learn through very difficult challenges that the rewards and outcomes of our service are fruits whose goodness is beyond our wisdom to know (for some unknowable length of time). This is a very difficult lesson to learn and its pains are directly proportional to the power of our fear, our determination to cling to what we think we know, to old comforts, ideologies, habits of thought and emotion.

It follows, then – if I am right in this –, that my own pain in the face of the world’s horrors is just that. I have yet to learn how to let be that which I cannot change so as to remain calm and effective for those things I can. No doubt most of us experience some version of this challenge. It is a very human state of being to be stuck in; nothing could be more ordinary.

Conclusion

Perhaps love is too much to ask. Perhaps this is true, but also false. Perhaps love’s daunting, unsurmountable challenge, rooted in its unconditionality, is precisely why we finally choose to walk willingly towards it, and delight in how it evolves within us as we learn.

God/love is the sole ‘perspective’ – state of being – from which we, while humans, can get a tiny sense of how it might be possible there is nothing to forgive, there are no enemies, nothing to fear. Human successes in this spiritual endeavour are fleeting; it is a state of being that cannot be sustained for very long in our realm, the realm of opposites. 

Love has no opposite. God has no opposite. From the human perspective, then, there is a cruelty to our situation, not only from the real pain our (necessary?) suffering creates, but also from the teasing potential each of us has to evolve into our maturity, grow closer to love while somehow never quite making it. Perhaps attainment of this state of being really is impossible in this realm. If true, this is precisely why we need guidance and faith, and, equally importantly, patience with ourselves and each other.

To the degree that there is evil, or even an entity we call Satan, that entity or quality of being is not God’s opposite. Ego/Satan wants desperately, compulsively to demonstrate it is indeed God’s opposite – and therefore equal – and so with luck prove that the real God is Ego/Satan. But God/love is beyond this dualistic hubris, this oppositional state of being. Ego is therefore barking up the wrong tree, fighting a futile war, a war whose battles can all be ‘won’ yet deliver ‘total defeat’ when all is said and done. And yet the battles are real and humanity carries their burden, reaps the mounting harvest of fear, that quality of being ego serves.

Humanity is necessarily embedded in, is perhaps a function of, dualism, but perhaps precisely in order to earn the quality of wisdom needed to progress beyond it, to evolve into whatever follows. Some argue this scales to a cyclical collective process, and talk of ages progressing one to the next until collapse back down to the beginning of the next cycle, with each iteration delivering vital lessons. Why this must be so will remain mysterious until we shed our bodies and reside fully in the non-physical, the non-dualistic, but I think it safe to say our incarnations on earth are not pointless; if they were, I’m sure incarnation in the physical realm would not happen. Something about what we go through on earth as physical beings positively affects the quality of how God/love evolves, it being eternal and ever changing in its fundamental changelessness. This paradox can only resolve for us when we are once more fully soul or spirit no longer thickly veiled by our humanity, when we can again know All That Is fully open to its splendid riches.

As humans, then, we need faith to have a chance of ‘accepting’, however briefly, what history delivers – history, that is, as the experienced manifestation of human evolution, an evolution irremediably shaped by the realm of opposites which is its sacred host.

Cooking on gas

[Edited "Credibility gap" section in hope of improving clarity, 27 Jan 2023] 

They wouldn’t spend all this time lying to us if our opinions didn’t matter. – Robert Barnes.

Never let a good crisis go to waste. – Winston Churchill

Introduction

Germany knows who sabotaged Nord Stream 1 and 2 but will not disclose this information, citing national-security interests. So reports Alexander Mercouris of The Duran in response to a question from his partner Alex Christoforou at The Duran earlier this week. 

I’ve failed to find a press report confirming this news, but trust both Christoforou and Mercouris enough to take it as true. By way of supporting evidence, it follows an announcement from the Swedish government that its own findings are too sensitive to be shared with the world, and further that no joint investigation into the event will take place. It looks like the entire geopolitically critical affair is going to be quietly dropped. 

Were Russia guilty, would that news be too sensitive to share?

The West has unobtrusively let it be believed Russia blew up its primary bargaining chip with the EU, albeit without giving any substance to that argument; Russia could have simply turned off the gas supply at source. In fact, the “Russia did it” narrative is a very difficult, perhaps impossible, sell. For example, Anthony Blinken has in a matter of days switched from asserting the attack was “in no one’s interest” to it being a “tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come”. Opportunity for whom?

What does this nakedly suspicious handling of the sabotage event imply? What are the implications of the horrifyingly low-quality leadership on display across The West as its peoples are lulled towards a precipitous economic downward spiral, and perhaps ruin? 

Credibility gap

Cui-bono logic tells us clearly the US was responsible for the attack. The US has been implacably against any geopolitical/economic partnership between Germany and Russia for decades, and was particularly troubled by the advent of both Nord Stream 1 and 2. Biden stated publicly in February 2022, with Germany’s Chancellor Scholz standing quietly at his side, the US would end Nord Stream 2 should Russia invade Ukraine. As if to confirm this, Blinken reasons this “tremendous opportunity” as a plus precisely because it ends Germany’s dependence on Russian gas. 

Obviously, Germany’s dependence has yet to miraculously resolve itself; Germany has nothing like sufficient internal gas reserves under its own soil. On whom will Germany now depend? Well, a cursory analysis suggests the US will make up the shortfall, albeit at eye-watering prices; liquid natural gas (LNG) is far more expensive than pipeline gas. However, Turkey’s recent deal with Russia to become the EU’s gas hub could well turn Turkey into Europe’s lone gas middleman, seeing as Turkey would be able to compete on price against US LNG. That said, Germany’s industrial competitiveness globally is over without cheap Russian gas, whether it is replaced by US LNG or Turkey-distributed pipeline gas. This of course means the EU’s strength as a bloc is also on a downward spiral. And the last thing Germany should want is to be at Turkey’s beck and call.

And yet despite knowing that it has been economically emasculated by its ‘loyal friend and ally’, Germany is meekly accepting its fate as US lapdog. What Germany’s people would think of all this might well diverge from what its political overlords are prepared to swallow, but active divergence will depend on whether ordinary Germans are given clear information on the matter, actually proceed to act decisively on that information and oust said overlords.

So the EU’s doe-eyed loyalty to US diktat now looks certain to reduce it to an economic backwater. If this transpires, the globalists’ dreams of a one-world technotopia will have revealed themselves as hot air. (The UK is in equally perilous shape.)

Unless, of course, this is all part of the theorised globalist plan to use the BRICS’ imminent ascendancy over The West as a mechanism for installing the UN, with its Agenda 2030, as the cohering entity binding all nations on earth to the BRICS’ “fair world order”; the BRICS block repeatedly swears fealty to this UN agenda.

If this nefarious plan is real and afoot, The West’s demise must be exploited to secure The West’s willing embrace of what it has for decades been conditioned to hate: Russian and Chinese power. To succeed, the plan’s conspirators must be in sufficient control of an astounding number of variables, including: the powerful Western MSM that is currently engaged, with all its hundreds of thousands of employees, in virulent opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; the entire internet through ABC-Google and its censorship activities; current and future anti-globalist populist leaders, such as Bolsonaro, Gabbard, Trump; all The West’s current political parties; street-level political sentiment in the US as Ukraine’s chances of victory visibly diminish; etc. And all of these exceedingly complex domains of control must jointly steer The West into an engineered cultural denouement of apocalyptic proportions, one that would destroy its self image, and with it, potentially, respect for all institutional authority. 

Would the peoples of The West trust their respective globalist cohorts after impoverishment at their hands, when those cohorts proffer the UN and the BRICS as The West’s bright new saviour? Will there be any existing homegrown and trusted authority left standing to spotlight as having been right all along about the ‘pandemic’, the ‘vaccines’, the Russia-Ukraine-NATO war, digital IDs, digital currencies, The West’s financial future, etc.? I imagine an institutional wasteland, trust as dust blowing away over the horizon, impossible to retrieve, impossible to reconstruct.

Or – this assuming this plan is indeed afoot and proceeding as hoped – will the shock be so great that the then broken peoples of The West, lost between worlds with no viable alternative in sight, will only be able to weakly accept the “fair world order” presented to them?

In truth I do not know. Theorised plans of this enormity seem highly improbable to me, but things have become so bizarre I simply cannot rule it out. My own sense was of a push towards global totalitarianism on the back of a managed ‘pandemic’, which afforded a narrative simple and coherent enough to sustain, with measures economically destructive enough to initiate a manageable financial crash across a nominally ‘unified’ world. That seems to have failed, or to have been an erroneous assessment on my part.

A more complicated narrative has an even lower chance of success, in my view. Russia’s war against Ukraine muddies the narrative waters considerably, delivers too much hardship in defence of too tenuous a vision – ‘Ukraine, the underdog bastion of Freedom!’ – and risks hobbling the very financial infrastructure the globalists will need to erect their technotopia, even if their CBDC system is up and running in the next few months.

So, if Russia has indeed pitted itself against what Putin calls “neoliberal totalitarianism”, and in so doing set in motion a sequence of events that is critically demoting The West’s, and in particular the US’, standing in the eyes of the rest of the world, and if this sequence of events is organic (not planned), then we are looking at the fall of one civilisation to the benefit of two or more others. In this case, how The West responds to this is up to The West, and not a coterie of sinister plotters who have been in control all along.

Either way, we in The West are facing what I’m calling a credibility gap. If this whole affair is indeed about to burst, if indeed our leaders and all our institutions are about to be exposed as rank failures when Russia secures unconditional surrender in Ukraine in coming months, as the UK and EU sink into severe recession or even depression with no obvious way out, how will any existing power structure maintain control with their credibility in irredeemable tatters?

At stake

Putin’s recent answer in Astana to a journalist’s probing questions as to the future of the Ukrainian state was revealingly open ended. Russia had had no plans to end Ukraine as a state, but now, well, Ukraine did attack Crimea’s water supply and the Kerch bridge to the Russian mainland. Things have changed. His answer did not make any definitive statement or announce any change in policy, but it did not rule out Ukraine’s imminent demise as a state at Russia’s hands. 

The West’s ability to militarily support Ukraine is quickly drying up. Russian mobilisation is almost complete, its defensive lines are solidifying and holding well, repelling Ukrainian attacks at great cost in hardware and human life to Ukraine. Russia has spent the last eight days destroying about a third of Ukraine’s power infrastructure. Financial crisis looms in that sorry country. For all these reasons, both troop and civilian morale in Ukraine is apparently declining.

In the US, the ruling party looks sets to incur something of a wipeout in the upcoming mid-term elections. The UK just witnessed the sacking of its new Chancellor of the Exchequer, a mere six weeks in the post. Prime Minister Truss’ position looks lost to fate, and she has been in her post for the same short period of time. Macron has no parliamentary majority. Scholz’s party (SPD) is haemorrhaging support. Europe is facing economic meltdown, as is the UK, despite what temporary upward blips in currently volatile markets might suggest.

The West’s ability to support Ukraine is at the end of its rope. I have no doubt that Kiev and Moscow know this full well. We may well see one last desperate push into Kherson by Kiev as Zelenskyy’s time runs out.

At stake, as argued above, is the collapse of The West as global hegemon should Russia win. This likely outcome is set to transpire despite the belligerent and bellicose fervour with which The West demonised Russia and promised Ukraine certain victory. All of it to win far, far less than nothing.

Is this what the Davos/WEF crowd wanted? Is this the bloody royal road to the global technotopia of which they dreamed? It doesn’t look like it to me. It looks like a typical hubris-driven comeuppance, at great cost in blood and treasure to Ukraine.

Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou of The Duran suggest that Germany’s and Sweden’s tightlipped handling of the Nord Stream sabotage means the US has given up on its ambitions to deconstruct Russia and China. If true, this leaves the US with the EU and UK as its prize, which it already had anyway, though now a broken EU and UK not really of all that much utility. And with Turkey in control of whatever gas makes it to the EU/UK, how effective would the US’ control be [edit: with reserve currency and petrodollar gone?]? Would some sort of impoverished technocratic-superstate vassal to the US be a fun or satisfying outcome for all future US leaders after all the fine work put into accomplishing so much more?

Mattias Desmet was recently in conversation with Tucker Carlson, a one-hour conversation I highly recommend. He points out – and this is of pivotal importance – that totalitarian elites are first and foremost ideologues. They are not cynical pursuers of total power, spoilt rich overlords with nothing better to do. They passionately believe in some ideology so unshakeably they are prepared to do and risk anything to see it installed. He shares with his host Carlson that Hannah Arendt predicted as far back as 1951 that the ultimate totalitarian system would be technocratic/bureaucratic. The ideology driving dreams of a technotopia (my word) is materialism, or rationalism, the atomist worldview that is modernity’s paradigm. The totalitarian state predicted by Arendt in 1951 is the logical outcome of that paradigm: a perfected global system of perfected humans in perfectly run cities and businesses. 

Only fervent belief in a vision of this kind can drive people to risk everything as ‘incompetently’ as we currently witness happening in The West. The question is, does the rest of the world, and do, in particular, the BRICS nations, share this cultural fervour for technotopia? This question has driven the probing articles I’ve published here since I started addressing the Russia-Ukraine war. I suspect the answer is a soft yes on the part of Russia and China; I’m not sure how deep that sympathy for utopian dreams goes, especially considering Russia’s deep Christian Orthodoxy and China’s Confucian reflexes. But I am simply not sufficiently informed to hazard a guess beyond my intuitive sense that life – which is not mechanical in essence – wins out in the end. Hence, to whatever degree the BRICS bloc and the Global South share in materialist reflexes, and however solemnly their leaders may advocate Agenda 2030, no pure rationalist/materialist impulse can produce a healthy society, just as this applies to The West.

Conclusion

Things are quickly coming to a head. My own read on what is taking place is firming, but events change so incessantly it is impossible to keep up. 

Nevertheless, love, not fear, is always the answer. If Desmet is right that speaking out inhibits the depth of any given mass-formation process, I will continue to speak out in support of love and free will, and in so doing play my small part, come what may.

While materialism dominates, love, as I express it at this blog and elsewhere, will continue to seem like a ninny teenage fantasy of minimal utility. But if we humans do in fact despair when lonely, and if in fact we do hunger for meaningful lives, if we love to love and earnestly want contribute to the health of all those around us, then love is the path we will have to turn to sooner or later. Of this I remain sure, and on this point I will continue to write for as long as my fingers allow!

Let's not let this crisis go to waste.

Taking stock II: Fitting in

 Introduction

This is a short-form article fitting geopolitical realities to the worldview I have been developing for over a decade. A non-academic exercise to be sure, on several levels, but for what it’s worth an attempt to test its explanatory power. As I have laid out in recent articles, my confidence in my position has weakened considerably over the last few weeks, though certain events in my personal sphere, and others of similar intimacy elsewhere, strengthen it again. 

Key points

1. Scarcity, cultural differences and specialisation
2. Love and consciousness evolution toward global consciousness
3. Love and acceptance
4. Right, wrong and moral relativism
5. Kittens

Scarcity, cultural differences and specialisation

Cultures evolve within defined territories, whether geographical or ideological. So separated, they diverge. Languages, traditions and customs differ to varying degrees, making empathic/sympathetic communication between cultures challenging, while dehumanisation/demonisation is a significant temptation in times of tension, when scapegoats are sought. Tensions develop over some combination of perceived scarcities and said communication problems.

Advanced social specialisation exacerbates this; only a tiny percentage of any people can become ‘expert’ in alien cultures. This makes the rest easy to manipulate in times of tension, hence the irresistibly attractive tool of dehumanisation for those who stand to gain from escalating tensions war.

If we want prevent war, surely we must address these issues. But how?

Love and consciousness evolution toward global consciousness

A couple of days ago, I saw an image that was claimed to be from Hunter Biden’s laptop. I won’t elaborate on its content, but its depravity shocked me. Regardless of whether it was a fake, depravity of unimaginable horror happens. That’s one thing that should humble anyone hoping, as I do, for an evolution in human consciousness toward love. And yet the fact that it is perhaps universally perceived as horror by all healthy humans alive suggests, strongly, that love is the answer, weak as that sounds in today’s bitter turbulence.

The presence of horror, depravity, evil, etc. repeatedly throughout civilisational history suggests to many that its continuous manifesting is due to human nature. My own take is that situation is the driving factor, not biology. Biology is indeed a powerful factor, but exactly how our biology translates into action in the world, how that action is perceived, anticipated, handled, etc., is cultural. Modernity, in my view, handles ‘psychopathy’ very poorly. One example of this poor handling is the curious idea that money-profit should remain a society’s deciding measure, i.e. that ‘free markets’ governed by price discovery produce the best of all possible worlds.

The oldest ‘culture’ I am aware of is that of Australian aborigines, who have been walking their walk for 80,000 years. They fight amongst themselves, kill each other in times of heightened tension and misunderstanding, albeit in better harmony with their environment than does modernity, and with a far healthier relationship, marked by deeper wisdom, with what we think of as psychopathy, sociopathy, etc. This does not mean we moderns should seek to recreate that culture as our own. It means simply that humans are culturally adaptable, less constrained by our biology than, say, cats. This is couched, for the sake of argument, in a dualistic intellectual framework; this is meant to be brief, so I’m keeping it brief.

One of my core knowings is that love is health is wealth, that, therefore, love will prevail over time. However, the cultural impediments to the idea of global consciousness evolving toward love, regardless of the power of love as a universal truth that undergirds the nature of reality, are significant. Cultural inertia is highly significant. It is folly to underestimate it.

Love and acceptance

If we try to be loving, what must we learn to accept … Cultural inertia? Moral decay? Horrific abuse of abductees? Pedophelia? War?

When we learn to be loving, one thing we learn we cannot do is impose our wisdom on others. When we project our power onto an other and force them to “Become wise now! That is an order!”, we fail. Allowing free will the free rein to do what it must is the only way I know of in which wisdom can develop as it should. And yet…

Just as cultures steadily calcify into what they are, so too do individuals. Constraint liberates. In my conception of All That Is, our ‘physical’ reality is specifically set up to effect direct consequences. Our free will is severely constrained by the ruleset that defines our reality. We are not free to fly around at will, to walk through walls, read minds, heal our wounds at will, make that woman love us, etc. More importantly, we makes choices that become the investments in our future selves and systems that narrow and narrow toward correction. This complex of earthly limitations is exquisitely instructive (karma). Earning wisdom in this environment is instructive because its corrections are experienced so intensely.

So, what must we accept? Rephrased: Is it wise to demand perfection? Well, everything is always perfect, so must we accept that we are here to learn this truth, come what may? Jung said, “Free will is doing gladly that which we must do.” If we successfully accept this, and deeply, right through our being, what then? 

Then we learn to love our enemies, to have a better idea of how to prevent abuse organically rather than autocratically. But can we poor humans accomplish this?

I don’t know. The process is painfully slow, and very difficult; ego is at the helm for this journey until we learn the very lesson ego does not want to learn. I think this is the point, a point that is very hard to accept because it seems to require terrible suffering until we learn better.

Right, wrong and moral relativism

So, now we’re here. Out There, as I write, Russian missiles are raining down on Ukraine. My heart goes out to those suffering there, as it goes out to abused abductees, to the crippled and terminally sick. Despite all that suffering and our hunger to end it, to heal it, one way or the other we always end up here.

I do not believe that acceptance is moral relativism, that right and wrong are somehow equivalents. My wisdom is that free will teaches best, with constraints operating as structures that effect a certain immediacy, or directness, particular to our ‘physical’ reality. We cannot grow up into true maturity unless we are free to experiment, then taste, fully, the feedback from those experiments. This scales up to the reflex towards autocracy, totalitarianism … to utopias of every hue striving heroically, hysterically, to end or minimise real suffering for real people. From that messy struggle, civilisations rise – which is a bloody process – only to fall later – which is a bloody process.

“Strong men make good times. Good times make weak men. Weak men make hard times. Hard times make strong men.” But this is not moral relativism. This merely describes part of history’s rhyming, of the necessary experimentation of what works when humans try to govern thousands, millions, and then billions, of souls.

This is only part of what human reality is all about. A deeper part is that love is unconditional and foundational. Which brings us neatly to kittens.

Kittens

We have two tom kittens – born of our sole female cat, Firefly – named Ashitaka (brighter tomorrow) and Kashmir: cute little killers oblivious to the horrors of the human world Out There. My family and I abide with them, watch them playing, eating, sleeping. We are responsible for their health and love them unconditionally. One day they may torture rodents and birds to death. We will continue to love them unconditionally. Otherwise, our love would be conditional.

Their trials and tribulations reach us as endearing life lessons they must pass through. We provide the structure that enables their growth. The more freedom they have within the structure we provide, the healthier their growth will be. 

I know the ‘gap’ between humans and God dwarfs that between humans and kittens. To God, our trials and tribulations are never horrors. We are loved unconditionally. What I know through my love of my many family members, human and non-human alike, is that humans can love unconditionally. The challenge is to extend that loving embrace ever outward until we love our enemies unconditionally. But this cannot be rushed, not even by me and my idealistic fervour.

Conclusion

Is it possible that despite our humanity, we can love our enemies? Or is it human to err forever? One of my own many failings is my idealistic, delusions-of-grandeur aspiration to Save The World. Failing at this – as I must – I feel impotent. I hate to watch on as horrors occur. I become angry, frustrated, sick. It’s why I write this blog, now a journal of my spiritual journey to nowhere in particular.

(The kittens are now on my lap.)

I shall leave this open ended, which is best, I think. Love is the way, of that I have no doubt. But we travel at different speeds, scale different heights, endure different appetites and ambitions, push history relentlessly on. And cannot measure our successes and failures, or even tell them apart.

What do you want to do now?

Mood moon shift

Let me repeat that the dictatorship of the Western elites targets all societies, including the citizens of the Western countries themselves. This is a challenge to all. This complete renunciation of what it means to be human, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, and the suppression of freedom are coming to resemble a “religion in reverse” – pure Satanism. Exposing false messiahs, Jesus Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” These poisonous fruits are already obvious to people, and not only in our country but also in all countries, including many people in the West itself. 

The world has entered a period of fundamental, revolutionary transformation. New centres of power are emerging. They represent the majority – the majority! – of the international community. They are ready not only to declare their interests but also to protect them. They see in multipolarity an opportunity to strengthen their sovereignty, which means gaining genuine freedom, historical prospects, and the right to their own independent, creative and distinctive forms of development, to a harmonious process.

As I have already said, we have many like-minded people in Europe and the United States, and we see and feel their support. An essentially emancipatory, anti-colonial movement against unipolar hegemony is taking shape in the most diverse countries and societies. It is this force that will determine our future geopolitical reality.

Friends,

Today we are fighting for a just and free path, first of all for ourselves, for Russia, in order to leave dictate and despotism in the past. I am convinced that countries and peoples understand that a policy based on the exceptionalism of whoever it may be and the suppression of other countries and peoples is inherently criminal, and that we must close this shameful chapter. The ongoing collapse of Western hegemony is irreversible. And I repeat: things will never be the same. – Vladimir Putin

Hello, old friend

A while back, I wrote about the moon and the sun. Since then, I have again experienced how uncertainty of events Out There sets loose uncertainty In Here. Generally, my habit is to leave the finer details of world affairs in more capable hands, having observed that I risk obsessing over details indefinitely, further complicating the knot I was hoping to undo. Better for me, I feel, to examine the dynamics giving rise to those details, to be able to act in healthier harmony with the nature of reality as it truly is.

But an historical context emerged that suggests profound change may rise from its fiery crucible. Encouraged, I joined the hunt for key details, a peace-loving shark pivoting this way and that, confused by shoals of ever-shifting data that adopt this or that fleeting shape. My mounting failures to make lasting sense unbalance my all-too-human equilibrium. Discouraged, I flop back in my chair, remove my spectacles, and gaze out of the window.

Well, here I am again. And it hasn’t been so very long since my last episode.

Hello, Confusion, what is it you have to teach this time?

The same old song

Listen for that which speaks no language, whose patterning is your rude imposition. Know your imposition misleads.

“What am I?” is a deceptive question, an enticing question. 

Like everyone else, I don’t know. I’m finding it increasingly difficult to care. I have gained a variety of impressions, looked for confirmation, but come up with very little certainty. Very little, that is, but the delicate intuition that my reflexive escapism into delusions of grandeur should be excised and discarded. I can never be in a position to know my value, nor know with certainty what to do with that value; it is too shifting, too momentary, too subjective. Looking for it harms, empties, defiles whatever that value ‘really’ is. 

“Teach us to care and not to care, teach us to sit still.”

Listen for that which speaks no language. Give it voice unmolested by that which seeks control.

The same old song is a fumbling to avoid the same old song. The true song comes when you become surefooted in your uncertainty, in the off-balance manner you must learn to sustain as you walk toward the horizon of your unique wisdom.

Elements of confusion

Like everyone, I don’t know.

Out There, somewhere, maybe everywhere, big-beast players I’ve never met drive history on more immediately than I, or anyone I know personally, can. For me, this is a necessary function of diversity in the human domain; people are differently abled to a dizzying degree, possessed of wildly differing appetites and ambitions. To change this successfully is to end life.

Big-beast players are not bosom buddies, and even bosom buddies have divergent interests; sibling princes wage war, each against each; power wants more power, money wants more money. Perceived scarcities, clashing sensibilities and eddies in history’s river all drive the powerful into conflict. Treatises are shredded, loyalties forgotten, peace abandoned. We see it again and again.

Is this how it must be? Is it the fate of we far smaller beasts to suffer the fallout of big-beast power plays? Or do these qualifiers, “big” and “small”, deceive in some important way? Is an ant truly an irrelevance, a mountainous mind really all important?

A few days ago, Charles Eisenstein published an article entitled There’s No One Driving the Bus. In his elegant style, he argues that history – “the bus” – is steered by no one. It just kind of goes where it happens to go. I disagree. We all drive the bus, we each have our own personal steering wheel and pedals, but our respective control sets enjoy very different degrees of influence. Bill Gates’ control set, for example, has far more say over where the bus goes than does mine. Putin’s may have yet more influence than Gates’, and so on. In other words, I think it reasonable to assert that our collective steering of history’s bus entails very varied degrees of influence, rather than some indecipherable mix of equal controls that equates to There’s No One Driving the Bus.

And yet, how we understand the bus – how we structure the elements of societal organisation – structures how our control sets function, individually and collectively. This is for me still an important point. I feel a new mode of social organisation is both possible and under pressure from history to be born. I feel this new mode will be anarchic/organic rather than institutionally hierarchical. For me, hierarchical dynamics self-propagate and self-sustain within the organic/anarchic, not in opposition to it, and are thus ultimately subject it. But it is when the former become inflexible institutions that history prepares itself for profound change.

I feel this still, but I am increasingly uncertain as to how to weight this conviction, this deep sensibility. 

My ‘thesis’, in cartoonish simplicity, runs as follows: Energy, money and power projection constitute the infrastructure of power-over. Power projection is synonymous with “controlling the narrative” combined with having the requisite military might to back that up. 

If you have decent control (influence) over these things, you have decent control over history. What I mean by “you” is some collection of groupings whose interests both coincide and diverge, organically. Because control is never complete, history is ‘free’ to shift this way and that, often with conflicts erupting in consequence.

Assuming we want to, how do we break this wheel?

The challenge is to have sufficient harmonious ‘control’ of energy, money and power projection. With regards the latter, we now have the potential of the internet, though its full potential is directly proportional to our collective wisdom. Right now, humanity’s wisdom falls far short of its technological prowess. While we remain infantilised and afraid of growing up, the internet is as much our enemy as our path toward a healthy, humane and loving future.

Harmonious ‘control’ of energy supply and distribution across the planet is equally challenging. An energy source that would permit such control is unknown to me; even renewables do not lend themselves to this vector change (rare earths, for example, are not evenly distributed across the planet). I’ll just mention in passing the relative desirability and sustainability of consumerism, permaculture and homesteading as determining factors for calculating how much energy we need/want.

Money is the least of it. Either we don’t need it, and learn this is so, or we do and invent a money type – or types – that serve abundance systemically. It would be trial and error, but here I’m confident humanity has the required chops.

So, wisdom would make the internet the power leveller it could be. What stands between humanity and a leap in its wisdom is a mass consciousness awakening. The chances of that are anyone’s guess. What stands between humanity and harmonious local control of energy supply and distribution is that very same awakening.

In sum, then, and because of how history’s twists and turns seem currently to favour the continuation of big-beast powers – not all of them, but some successful set thereof – the imminence of some global awakening seems to me to be as far beyond the horizon as ever. Energy considerations and wisdom are both pivotal; the former is securely in the hands of the big beasts, the latter in the lap of the ineffable, and more importantly our relationship with it.

Humility, Grasshopper!

I thought historical events currently underway were uniformly global to the required extent, simply because some agglomeration of power groupings had sufficient confidence that grabbing history by the scruff of the neck and shunting it onto its preferred vector was a sufficiently safe bet. In other words, I thought this agglomeration included Russia and the BRICS++ nations. The recent destruction of Nord Stream 1 and 2, Putin’s recent speeches, and Western suicidal belligerence in hating Russia come what may, all suggest no such global agglomeration exists.  

Nevertheless, globalists mad enough to think they can sow the storm without reaping the whirlwind have set events in motion nobody can reverse. What happens over coming months is anybody’s guess, but it does not look pretty. The ancient Greeks coined the word “hubris” for a reason. Ordo ab chao is a poetic phrase, but can it be realised when it really counts? As I’ve said before, I don’t care how powerful you are, you cannot control life.

(Yes, despite recent Ukrainian gains and blogger hysterics across Russia in their wake, I am still persuaded that Russia will ‘win’ this conflict. Putin has deftly balanced the interests of the various stakeholders in the historical outcomes this war will yield, a successful balancing act we see variously evidenced in the strength of the Russian economy and the ruble despite unprecedented sanctions, and in how the global south are steadily turning away from Western powers towards BRICS++. Russia is positioning itself as the one country capable of ushering in multipolarity, stability, and prosperity for the non-Western world, and those who stand to benefit appear to like what they see; e.g. Saudi Arabia / OPEC+ oil-production cuts help Russia by driving up oil prices, which harms The West.)

Being thus knocked off balance reminds me forcefully, yet again, of what my years writing this blog up to 2015 taught me. Grass does not grow faster when you shout at it. Love does not force, it frees. Free will is sacred. Success and value cannot be measured. There is far more to reality than egoic perception, fear, and desire would have us believe.

Humility, Grasshopper! 

If you’re like me – a ‘flawed’ human being –, you too may feed on the thrills and spills turbulence can deliver: the best and worst of times. In a way, I am addicted to turbulence. It stimulates when life gets too domestic, too routine. There are still deep lessons for me to learn in its territory.

“Teach us to care and not to care, teach us to sit still.”

It has all been said before, across all cultures. Now, we imperfect humans have a rich opportunity to learn to apply what we feel when still, still enough to hear the inexpressible truth that murmurs within, to listen carefully, openly, without imposing on its content. As a rule, no one can be rushed into this stillness, though historical crucibles such as this can sober minds, while destroying perhaps many more.

In times like these, we learn or we perish. This is how it is. 

Alternatively, events Out There are but a storm in a teacup, soon to blow over, and we’ll welcome our old friend, Old Normal, with open arms, all sins forgiven. 

Inconclusion

Peak oil or not, the EU and UK now face a critical energy crisis. This is so real it is almost impossible to believe. It rises before us, a ghost mountain gathering solidity as we careen toward it unprepared. Whether you hate or support Russia, this is where we are, we vassals of US hegemony. For me, this bizarre tension between EU/UK interests and those of the US, the genuine desire of the rest to break free of the latter’s hegemonic control, dwarfs the totalitarian ambitions of those who gave us The Plandemic. Globalist ambitions are as insane as they always were, but the desperate historical situation that drove whomever to set them in motion drives them to further gambits, ever more desperate, ever more reckless. Either they get their way, or they’re taking us down with them.

Or no one is driving the bus. Or we are all driving the bus, all equally blameless, responsible, culpable. It hardly matters. One way or the other, the accelerating solidification elucidated by Guénon in The Reign of Quantity continues to corner us, each of us trapped by our own circumstances, frozen immobile as our debts come due. 

The courage we need to let go into our penitent redemption is hard to find, like relaxing peacefully under a terrible weight. Could it be that its weight is precisely our fearful struggle? My own struggle is between action and acceptance, and a feeling I cannot discern one from the other. How to act effectively, what to accept as unchangeable? What am I? What is my value?

I have no answers. Perhaps yielding into that looming moony openness is my only path to clarity…

The optics of it all

The coming midwinter will bring a reckoning. Western governments must either invite economic misery on a scale that would test the fabric of democratic politics in any country, or face the fact that energy supply constrains the means by which Ukraine can be defended. – Helen Thomson, Cambridge University, Professor of Political Economy [My emphasis]

Introduction

In my previous article, I took an unflattering look at some of The West’s many geopolitical entanglements, arguing that they drive its rapid unravelling into stubborn incompetence and metastasising dysfunction. Its descent, I reasoned, emboldens the rest of the world to seize its chance to create a multi-polar order that can supplant US/Western hegemony. 

The recent turn of events in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which is perhaps the expression par excellence of The West’s decline, casts fresh light on The West’s prowess at using PR optics to nudge history where it will. This light offers us an opportunity to attempt a finer grained analysis of where humanity stands right now.

A shallow reading of my position as an advocate of idealism – everything is consciousness – might suggest I would be a fan of optics. After all, everything is perception, right? Not exactly. Our earthly existence is a consensus ‘illusion’, not a solipsistic one. So, though a nation or civilisation may be adept at and possess sufficient resources to powerfully influence the optics around any particular event, those optics need to tally closely with the actual details of that event if they are to have a lasting effect. And while I believe it is indeed feasible to nudge history in a direction counter to the needs and wishes of a people using optics management, if that direction runs counter to common sense and health, there will be an inevitable correction to a healthier state, at some cost, at some point.

If, on the other hand, those optics-based strategies nudge people in a healthier direction, then their effects will prove longer lasting and be more beneficial.

(What I am a fan of is authenticity, honesty and love. These principles are synonymous, in effect, with health, where by “health” I mean a homeostatic health of all interdependent systems.)

The Russia-Ukraine war, as all wars, involves optics, tactically and strategically. Wars are fought on the battlefield primarily, but also on the field of perception through how battlefield events are reported. I understand that Churchill said that in times of war, truth is so precious it must be hidden behind a fog of lies. 

A nation’s capacity to prosecute a war to victory depends on many things, one of which is its people’s belief the war is winnable. Optics influence their sense that victory is within reach, and therefore influence a nation’s capacity to support its troops and endure hardships on the path to victory. Optics are thus very important.

It is said that The West is masterful in optics manipulation and management, with Russia lagging far behind in this regard. This article looks at the possible long-term consequences of this cultural difference, and also examines how my steep learning curve concerning this conflict has informed my interpretation of what is going on globally.

The realities

You can’t win a war with optics alone. Even if country A has a militarily impregnable press but no army whatsoever, while country B has a shoddy, recalcitrant press but first-class army, sensible money would bet on B’s quick and comprehensive victory. A’s people would see one thing in their newspapers and on their TV screens, but learn quite another from the reality on their streets and in their homes. 

On the other hand, in the case of evenly matched armies between A and B, with A boasting vastly superior optics management, sensible money would bet on A.

What can we say about Russia and The West? 

For a start, it is of course far more complicated than the stick-man sketch above. The US may possess superior military technology and a larger war machine than Russia, but can it deploy effectively in Ukraine, even if geopolitical circumstances were to permit US boots on the ground? Russia borders Ukraine, the US does not. 

NATO could deploy EU/UK military might (less than Russia’s by all accounts), but again, not with the ease with which Russia can deploy its military assets. 

So, in terms of what can be deployed quickly on the ground, Russia has the advantage regardless of the relative strengths of the combined forces each group of combatants has on paper. (I’m ruling our nuclear war in this assessment; in that case all bets would be off.)

As I argued in my previous post, it boils down to the devilish details of the pragmatics that define the very complex situation that is Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Firstly, Russia has not declared war. It is conducting what it calls a “Special Military Operation” (SMO). This is essentially a list of objectives constrained by specific terms drawn up by Putin and issued to Russia’s military. The terms stipulate that Russia will not acquire Ukrainian territory, but rid Ukraine of its fascist elements, protect the Russian-speaking peoples of eastern Ukraine and enable them to function as independent republics free of threats and danger from Ukraine. 

Whatever your view of the sincerity of this contract, Russia has stuck to it quite rigidly, by all accounts (until Sunday 11 September 2022, more on which below). My understanding is that part of this SMO’s appeal to Putin is as a hearts-and-minds campaign to win over as many countries of the global south as possible. Success in this objective would help the BRICS nations advance a multi-polar global order to replace US global hegemony. If Russia had deployed its full might against Ukraine from the start, it would have appeared unpredictably aggressive to the rest of the world; the Russia-BRICS ambition could thus have been dead before arrival. Russia may well have defeated Ukraine more quickly, but might have been isolated internationally.

Secondly, Russia has no interest in further antagonising the Ukrainian people against them. Wars (and SMOs) end at some point, and peace negotiations begin. Were Russia to have wantonly destroyed civilian architecture, bombed all Ukraine’s major cities to rubble and caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, it would have transformed Ukraine into a time bomb, thereby only postponing its threat to Russian territorial security.

Thirdly, full war against Ukraine risks full war with NATO. With regards peace negotiations that always come at some point, the risk of collapsed relations with The West is not something Russia particularly lusts for. (Now that Russia’s trust of The West has been severely damaged, the initial importance of this point may have expired.)

In other words, Russia probably hoped to complete its SMO quickly and clinically, and then begin negotiations that would have had genuine potential to effect a lasting peace and so secure Russia’s security going forward. Such an eventuality would initially have been more attractive to Putin than prosecuting a horribly destructive war of highly uncertain global outcome.

But – and it’s a huge but – NATO and The West want to maintain US hegemony; US hegemony is, in a sense, their identity, their raison d’etre. Russia’s and the BRICS nations’ ambitions are a direct threat to that hegemony. Of that bloc, Russia represents the biggest threat, has the most enticing resources and is the easiest to dismantle (in The West’s estimation). Ergo, The Wests’ and Russia’s respective situations have driven them into bitter conflict over Ukraine. 

In sum, this is an existential, last-chance-saloon situation for The West. For Russia, this is also an existential, last-chance-saloon situation; it cannot advance its preferred historical vector, protect its territorial integrity, and not supplant US hegemony. I’m confident both sides see this. 

Hence, the SMO may well be cynical, but not 100% so. It may be that Putin calculated some low chance that Russia could wrap things up quickly – Russia made overtures early in the operation to agree peace terms with Ukraine, but these were scuppered by Boris Johnson – and walk away from the affair with all sides happy, before the operation escalated to war. Worth a shot, right? 

Up until now, a confluence of factors has kept Putin true to the SMO. That changed with the Kharkov offensive, which saw Ukraine make large territorial gains in a very short space of time – albeit immaterial gains from what I understand. The West then finessed this into a succulent optics victory for Ukraine, one that has reinvigorated support for their cause and triggered further tranches of aid from Ukraine’s Western backers. Prior to Ukraine’s success in Kharkov, The West had been losing interest, and facing an energy crisis with nothing positive to show for its imminent sacrifice.

Perhaps under political pressure at home on the back of this optics win, Putin has deviated from the terms of the SMO and struck civilian infrastructure. This may well be the opening overture in an escalation from SMO to an “Counter-Terrorist Operation” (CTO). Speculation has it that Russia may soon officially declare Ukraine a terrorist state. Such a declaration would ‘legally’ authorise Russia to attack more civilian infrastructure as well as the Zelenskyy regime’s command and control infrastructure.

If escalation is The West’s aim, its skilled optics management procured a positive outcome. But this escalation must lead to Russia’s collapse if it is to be beneficial to The West, hence the stringent sanctions that have been in place from the beginning. However, the sanctions have thus far harmed only The West. Further, the long-term effects of these territorial gains will be decided by the relative powers and available opportunities each embroiled combatant possesses.

This article begins with a quote from a Financial Times piece I find most apposite. One consequence of Russia having remained true to the terms of its SMO is that the global south has warmed to Russia and cooled to The West, generally speaking. This includes Iran and Saudi Arabia: two major oil producers. If the growing closeness between these three nations grows yet closer, and if Saudi Arabia brings OPEC with it, then The West’s access to cheap, reliable oil becomes uncertain. Its capacity to outlast Russia in this conflict would diminish perilously if OPEC’s and Iran’s strategic loyalties shift to the BRICS bloc, and this on top of Russia having switched off Nord Stream 1.

Apparently, The West’s capacity to equip Ukraine with sufficient munitions to best Russia is also dwindling; armament stocks are now too low for it to continue its largesse. Stocks must now be replenished, which takes time. Furthermore, Ukraine’s success in the Kharkov region, as well as its failure near Kherson, have proven very costly. Russia has sustained a fraction of Ukraine’s casualties. Destruction to Russia’s military equipment is apparently negligible, while Ukraine has suffered significant losses.

Taking all this together, it appears Russia’s military-industrial capacity massively outweighs The West’s; according to Western media accounts, Russia is able to launch endless torrents of artillery fire at enemy lines. If true, short on energy and dangerously low on munitions, The West has next to no chance militarily against Russia in Ukraine (again, I’m ignoring the nuclear option). Sooner or later, The West’s excellent optics management will be rendered immaterial by Russia’s superiority on the battlefield. With the EU/UK teetering on the edge of economic and societal collapse, with Russia’s economic outlook improving, The West is quickly running out of rope.

Why does all this interest Econosophy so much?

Econosophy is, in essence, an examination of the ramifications of resource-based economics. For those ramifications to be more than just idly interesting to a few oddballs, the peoples of the world must first want to pursue that vector. For the peoples of the world to want this, there first needs to be a transformation of global consciousness. This foundational requirement is why I have written so much of late on various aspects of and around idealist ontology. For me, part of what is evolving on earth in the human domain is a profound paradigm shift away from materialism towards Something Else. My bet is on some variant of idealism, but I cannot say what historians and philosophers will call it.

All of this means I felt the topics close to my heart could be reinvigorated by the mass hysteria the covid ‘pandemic’ triggered across the planet. My powers of reason informed me the hysteria was a purging preparation, a softening of the soil for radically different, counter-establishment ideas to take root and bloom. Perhaps that intuition, shared by many, is correct. Perhaps not.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict suggests not, at least not on the timescale I had hoped. And while I find the conflict itself sickening, while I find the tragically fated entanglements that bound humanity to its eruption earlier this year so frustrating, while it does not matter to me which ‘side’ wins as long as termination of this war improves humanity’s chances for peaceful cohabitation, I do want to understand what it means for us all. Two things weigh heavy in my thoughts.

First, does the complexity of global modernity require hierarchical social organisation? Or, does the complexity of global modernity doom top-down rule to messy collapse? The inflexibility on display, both on the part of our putative rulers and the mesmerised ruled, beggars belief. We westerners seem set to demand our immolation because we said we would ‘defend’ Ukraine, whatever Ukraine is, whatever the cost to us, to Ukraine, and to the wider world. We seem hell bent on hating Russia, on forbidding open discussion on the subject, and on forbidding disagreement generally: an outright absurdity. To me, all this seems a direct consequence of hierarchical rule. But only in The West? I’m not at all sure.

Second, how much must come undone before the soil of our many cultural beliefs softens enough to explore new ideas at mass scale? Confounding this question, does the amount of collapse required to effect such a softening mean we simply will not be able to do anything other than blame each other for that collapse? Will the carefully nurtured climate of paranoia, fear and suspicion so important to hierarchical rule brood itself deep into our future?

In The West, our sense of ourselves and what we are entitled to revolves around consumerism and, now, instant gratification. To what extent does the rest of the world desire our lifestyle for itself? Is the consumerist idyl beamed by The West out into the world perceived as real wealth? This is extremely hard to properly assess, but seems possible, even likely. 

If the BRICS bloc rises at the expense of The West in the zero-sum game of scarcity economics, will that rise simply import The West’s scarcity dilemma to that bloc? The West faces its demise for fundamental reasons: the end of cheap energy, the march of technological unemployment, the spiritual void of consumerism, and the systemic scarcity price-based economics requires. Does the BRICS bloc see these fundamentals as irresolvable? Does it see them at all? My guess is that if it does see them, it imagines it need only apply a few inventive tweaks to fix them.

Questions upon questions. And to make matters still more uncertain, The West is far from a single entity of hive-mind purpose. The WEF/WHO/Davos crowd advances its bizarro agenda with similarly existential determination. This group wants global control, probably because, in its view, earth’s limited carrying capacity is such that humans, with their insatiable greeds and bestial wisdom, must be tightly kept in line using the panopticon potential of AI, constant surveillance and central-bank digital currencies. Following Tom Luongo’s analysis, the neoconservatives are raining on Davos’ parade by escalating the war with Russia, and in so doing setting the BRICS off on a divergent vector.

Who will end up with what share of the pie? And how stable will that new arrangement be absent a reliable and plentiful supply of cheap energy? How stable will it be with a reliable and plentiful supply of cheap energy?

Conclusion

It seems to me, then, that this end-times battle between the various factions, each vying for its own version of how humans should live on earth, rages on precisely because each power player perceives scarcity as foundational to earthly existence, to life itself. This perception operates powerfully within and just beneath awareness to continually infuse its particular colourings into all optics, regardless of skill level involved. In this way, the mounting escalations, the skirmishes and tensions mushrooming up all over the place are driven by the power of optics to perpetuate beliefs that no longer serve us, that are taking us to the edge of catastrophe.

Human consciousness is shackled, as always, by how its imagination is shaped by culture. And, while there are multiple cultures involved, and sub-cultures within those, there is, I believe a meta-culture binding all modernity together in its conviction about scarcity, price, markets and trade, and how these ‘fundaments’ are true and unfiltered expressions of the human condition, rather than conditional to the civilisational project. 

I am still of the mind that a Civilisation 2.0 is in the offing. And yet, something about the Russia-Ukraine conflict has made it recede beyond the horizon. Watching it disappear from view is a sobering experience.

Humans incarnate to learn to become love in extraordinarily difficult conditions. Our successes and failures in this undertaking enhance the music of All That Is in ways we can but dimly understand. It is not for me to say what is going to develop next year, next week, or even tomorrow, but at the moment it looks like there is a long way to go – much breakdown to experience – before humanity develops a cohering desire to take love and health seriously, to structure its future guided by these truly foundational qualities.

[Edited ATO to CTO, "Counter-Terrorist Operation", 15 September 22]

Those whom the gods would destroy

 Russian citizens should not have easy access to the EU. At the moment, there is no basis for trust, no basis for a privileged relation between EU and Russia. – Ylva Johansson, EU Commissioner For Home Affairs

Introduction

I’m still trying to make sense of how the Russia-Ukraine war does or does not fit together with the plandemic; is the chaos Out There “all part of the plan”, The Great Reset? Or is it all a confluence of coincidences? If there is a path out of this apparent insanity – whether plan or coincidences –, it would be good to hit upon it before disaster drags us into a downward spiral. 

It’s possible, of course, that a downward spiral is precisely what the doctor ordered, but it would be wise to understand this if true, and prepare fairly solid sketches of what to do next.

The people I find most persuasive regarding developments in the Russia-Ukraine war (The Duran, Brian Berletic, Tom Luongo) persist with their assessment that Ukraine cannot win. The West, on the other hand, does not want to – cannot – permit this eventuality. 

A recent and astoundingly bizarre set of attacks by Ukrainian forces to retake the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) illustrates The West’s reluctance to face reality. The attacks failed in grand style while a team of IAEA investigators were on hand in Ukraine to inspect the plant! Ukraine had been shelling the ZNPP, which has been under Russian control since some time in March, for weeks, if not months, perhaps to create or risk a catastrophic incident that would turn the tide of the war. The West’s mass-media outlets reported on this shelling as if it were the Russians shelling themselves. They have now left the recent attacks on the ZNPP unreported, with the pro-West IAEA declining to blame either side for the shelling in their report (ergo, it was not Russia), which apparently contains not one criticism of Russia (ergo, it was not Russia).

It is apparently the absolute top priority for the West that Russia be routed, cost what it will in treasure and human meat: Russia cannot be allowed to win this war. And yet Russia looks set to win this war. A Russian victory will cause a political, economic, societal and cultural earthquake that will likely break the EU apart, collapse UK and EU affluence, and possibly separate the US from the EU and UK for the foreseeable future. This will depend on how Russia treats Europe after victory in Ukraine, among other factors. In the meantime, one unavoidable interim cost of this war – or rather of The West’s sanctions on Russia and its visceral Russophobia – is an energy crisis in Europe and the UK of unprecedented proportions.

Now we’re cooking on gas!

For a wide variety of reasons, one of which is having exhausted all possible alternatives, the EU has become economically dependent on Russian gas via Germany’s dependence. A deal was struck with Russia in the early 2000s by then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The deal brought cheap gas to Germany and the EU via Nord Stream 1. Then, after Fukushima, Germany resolved to wind down its nuclear power plants. The consequent additional energy required by then Chancellor Angela Merkel to keep Germany, and thus the EU, globally competitive, led to lengthy, one-on-one conversations between her and Putin. The upshot was Nord Stream 2. 

Next came the Maidan ‘revolution’ in Ukraine, and with it Germany’s and the EU’s refusal to help enforce the Minsk Agreements Russia so urgently wanted upheld to keep the peace between it and Ukraine. Relations between the EU/UK and Russia, already awful, have soured considerably since then (2014). And of course the US has many fingers in Ukraine’s geopolitically pivotal pie.

For whatever reasons (self defence seems likely), Russia began what it calls its “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine in late February 2022. The EU/UK/US axis initiated harsh sanctions against Russia in response, has gifted Ukraine with treasure and weapons in eye-watering amounts, and demonised Putin as never before. To the EU’s and UK’s apparent shock, Gazprom recently switched off Nord Stream 1 completely, having been progressively reducing the volume of gas flowing through it for maintenance reasons. Nord Stream 2 has been all but abandoned. No doubt the nasty calculations of war played a significant role in shaping Russia’s decisions, but either way the EU’s and UK’s suicidally ill-considered posturing in this war against a country they depend on for their economic survival is hard to fathom. There is such a thing as pragmatics, and politicians are expected to be masters thereof. The current crop, with very few exceptions, are spineless careerists.

(If this really is indeed all part of the WEF’s Great Reset, it looks to me like a plan as boneheadedly violent as it is possible to conceive. I find it impossible to imagine – which does not mean my imagination is correct! – that Russia et al are explicitly now at war with the WEF’s and the Davos crowd’s ‘master plan’ while secretly advancing it. What seems likelier is that the latter’s global ambition is a horribly ordinary case of deranged overreach unleashing incalculable damage and suffering.)

Whatever our morality regarding war and Realpolitik, I cannot see The West’s strategising as anything other than infantile. The fact of the matter is that there is no obligation on its part to defend Ukraine “to the last man”. We are watching Ukraine lose territory and men, the Ukrainian economy implode, while simultaneously encouraging that poor country to carry on taking this nation-destroying beating to what end, exactly? Breaking Russia? Are we in a position to accomplish that?

Russia is doing well. The West is withering. Ukraine is being bled dry, literally and figuratively. Idealistic fervour and media optics are one thing, brutal life on the ground quite another. But if the economic demand The West represents implodes, what good is all this misery to the economic supply of the BRICS++ bloc (soon to include Saudi Arabia? Petrodollar and Eurodollar collapse??)? 

Perhaps this is the price they feel they must pay to be neutralise the unpredictable threat The West has become, to itself and others.

The morality of pragmatics

Again, regardless of our ideological position here, there is the far more important morality of facing hard facts as they are. I think it safe to say that The West is led by grossly over-ambitious incompetents. It is having its arse handed to it, naked and soiled, by a Russia in the ascendancy, fighting off everything thrown at it with one hand, while hosting war games with India and China with the other, watching its food prices fall and its tax revenues and balance of payments strengthen. 

Warm blood is being spilled by the gallon, real agony and real destruction of lives are happening at mass scale because The West refuses to see the world as it now is: multipolar. This is the hubristic incompetence typical of a civilisation in steep decline.

To turn this obscene tragedy to a matter closer to Econosophy’s heart, what appeal does The West exude? As far as I can tell, it’s consumerism, Hollywood soft power, and endless varieties of pleasure sliding into hedonistic mooching. The days of Western high culture are behind us until further notice (though we do still produce the odd wonder). Our legacy does seem to be dominated by consumerism, though it makes no one healthy or happy. Here our leaders are, gambling it all in mad-bull defence of trifles and addictions.

We have been faced with the problem of how to prepare for a future after cheap energy for decades. For a wide variety of reasons, not least of which being the exquisitely frustrating reality of becoming increasingly constrained by previous decisions, we chose collectively not to grasp the nettle and plan for a non-consumerist future, refused repeatedly to take steps to build a low-cost, low-energy societal and economic infrastructure that could afford such a thing. We squandered our apparent superiority on keeping our world nicely as is. 

(I suspect there was simply no other way. Perhaps we are as blameless as the weather.)

This is the challenging terrain of pragmatics: The balance between long- and short-term strategies is extremely difficult to get right. Consequently, the scope to adapt wisely to changing circumstances becomes vanishingly small. The smell of blood from self-inflicted wounds grows stronger, competitors circle for the kill. 

In the not-too-distant future, I suspect that whatever credibility the Davos crowd has left will be vaporised in an eruption of betrayed rage. How will that crowd of super-rich fantasists find trust among the survivors of the smoking ruin that is their handiwork? 

And what future would they want to build for us?

What next?

In truth, it’s impossible to say how bad things are about to get. It’s also impossible to say how much of this is planned and how much is inept mismanagement. But it is worthwhile seriously considering what we might want and what needs to be done to get it.

In my view, we need to consider non-hierarchical – anarchical – modes of governance. This does not mean lawlessness, it means non-hierarchical in the sense of preventing institutionally rigid power accumulations hell bent on ever more power. UK common law captures what I think of as an anarchic – or organic – legal apparatus. The excessive legal complexity built atop it over the centuries proliferated into being as a direct consequence of our money-based value system and the foundational scarcity that is its jealously guarded lifeblood. Add extreme specialisation and rigid hierarchical power to that mix and you end up here.

We need to break this wheel if we don’t want more of the same.

In terms of politics, then, I’d like to see regional polities facilitating self governance in ideology-free, fully transparent fora activated when small, local groupings cannot manage things above a certain scale. Regional groupings should be engaged by local groupings, not vice versa, to avoid nannying interference by those not intimately familiar with local context. I’d like to see such structures designed to be systemically incapable of producing large Power-Over groupings. I’m confident this scales to international levels.

These sorts of structuring arrangements could become desirable to large numbers of us if, before and while things disintegrate in the UK and EU, there is a sufficiently successful campaign to educate ourselves at mass level about how power corrupts and what to do about that pragmatic reality. Because political parties, civil services, justice systems and mass media have failed us in this essential duty – as checks and balances against power –, this will be quite the undertaking. We will need police and army on our side in significant numbers, as well as large sections of the judicial and business worlds. Nevertheless, we either take on that challenge, or leave our future in the hands of insane tyrants. 

Other options are not clear to me. Certainly the Old Normal is gone.

If ‘elites’ have demonstrated anything, it is that they are wildly incapable of wise long-term thinking, for the sorts of structural reasons touched on above; they strongly tend to maladaptive rigidity. To create something that effectively inhibits this dynamic – a dynamic that the BRICS++ nations will face soon enough – we Westerners would first have to leave the consumerist hamster wheel behind us, i.e., no longer want it. For us to desire that daunting socioeconomic vector, those of us who feel as I do will have to succeed in making our case while those who disagree watch their living standards seep into history’s fertile soil. 

That’s my wild hope, anyway.