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…