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…
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