Yearly Archives: 2017

Magic Never Died: The Sacred is Still Alive

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By Kingsley L. Dennis

Source: Reality Sandwich

God is alive, magic is afoot
God is alive, magic is afoot
God is afoot, magic is alive
Alive is afoot, magic never died
Leonard Cohen

 

The sense of the sacred does not require any image of the gods. There will be no more gothic cathedrals built to exalt humankind to the heavens; no more prophets to lead humankind to the divine; and no more Holy Grails to entice humankind upon the Quest – we now have the sacred suffusing us en masse, manifesting as both the tangible and intangible. Our cultures are being finely renewed from the inside-out by a subtle vibration that has come to us through a myriad of emanations in different forms. Look at the conversations we are having today with each other; look at how many creative projects around the world are being instigated and led by young people. The generations before us were not discussing transcendence or the technologies of the soul so openly and publicly. Our era has brought the inner world out into the open world and into focus. The sacred is not a concept but an experiential understanding, of life beyond our limited selves – of transcendence and immersion simultaneously. Only two or three generations before us there was no inner world to explore publicly. Before the rise of the psychological sciences there was no cultural language to explore the subconscious. The inner landscape of the human being was quietly explored and navigated by the mystics, seers, adepts, shamans, and initiates that kept their traditions away from the masses – away from persecution.

For millennia the sacred arts were defiled, harassed, and discriminated against. The magical arts also fell into this tarnished category. And yet magic and alchemy are found worldwide, in all traditional cultures, in remarkably similar manifestations. Spiritual realization has never been a mass pursuit; usually pursued by those few individuals often classed as outsiders. And so the presence of the sacred in our societies has always been unperceived, operating unseen and under the radar. It has always been present and operating, only not in ways suspected by humankind. Magic too has always been present in its various guises – magic is afoot, magic is alive, magic never died. Magic, in its original form, is that which concentrates and radiates the mind; it is a deep penetrating force-field of compassion and communion. Our reality-matrix is composed of energy; everything within it is a form of energy in various states. Those states can be modified, like the fine tuning of an instrument to create a more harmonious sound. The wisdom traditions, the perennial philosophy, speak of how a human being, by their own spiritual ascent, is able to also animate and raise up the world around them. The emanation of the sacred energies furthers the spiritual realization within material reality.

Most of what is today labeled as supernatural is but the residue of the sacred which is inherent in humankind and the world, no matter how we ignore or discard it. Unbeknown to us we recreate this sense of the sacred through our pursuits and pastimes. Magic may shock the profane, yet it has existed as a core experience long before we had any sense of what it actually was. As historian and scholar Arthur Versluis notes,

The reason that magic is not in good standing in the West is that it is based upon the fundamental unity of man and cosmos and so is in conflict with the inherent dualism of the modern outlook. But magic will be in existence long after the modern era has disappeared: it cannot be otherwise, for magic is the physical expression of the eternal, inner, spiritual transmutation. 1

When it comes to the ‘eternal, inner, spiritual transmutation’ there are no absolute laws, just the continual unfolding. As human beings we each interact with the world differently because we perceive the world differently. In interacting differently we each contribute to creating a different world. The sacred reality understands that we exist as part of a participatory cosmos. It is this sacredness without a name that infuses the human condition. To be a human being is to be inherently imbued with a spiritual force that animates us in ways we are largely unaware of. And yet through this animated force we see the world around us – it cultivates our worldview, our values, and is the source of our quest for meaning. And a civilization’s worldview is its most precious possession.

Everything proceeds from this primary perception – a collective gaze of wonder…or of limitation.  The basic, fundamental understanding is that we cannot observe the world without changing it. And the presence of the sacred is so crucial in our lives that without it our human status itself is in question. The sacred order of the past existed at a time when the world was different, when its needs were different. At each moment we articulate the human condition in the context of our times. The sacred energies, the spiritual impulses, are a medium – and a means – through which we come to learn of and express the human condition. And these expressions are in response to a shifting and unfolding understanding of the cosmos and of our reality-matrix. Before the emergence of structured religions the human condition articulated itself in ‘pre-religious forms’ of spirituality. Whatever the times, the sacred impulse attempts to be known. For great periods the sacred impulse was almost invisible within human societies, as we struggled with the raw energies of brute materiality ‘red in tooth and claw,’ and cloaked in mechanical rationalism. Yet now the sacred impulse is raising its head again in new cultural forms, expressions, and mediums.

Magic has a role in helping to give shape and substance to our meanings. Magic teaches us that the way forward, the way to heal the rift in our reality-matrix, is by the uniting of the spiritual and the profane, the celestial and the mundane. In our reality, each day lived is an expression of the spiritual and the sacred existing through us, invisible as a silent breath. And yet the magic never died; magic is still alive, magic is afoot (to paraphrase Leonard Cohen). For us now, ‘the greatest danger to us shall arise, not because of “magic,” but rather if true magic, true transmutation, should disappear.’2 The world is becoming an exciting, magical, and mysterious domain once again. And within this domain technology is likewise moving from its position as a brute, mechanistic hardware to a fluid, almost seamless, magical part of our augmented reality. The world is reviving its sense of being a Misterium Tremendes, a sacred place to dwell in. To live as part of the sacred is about living that which comes through us – as beacons we must pass it on as well as lighting up the way for each traveler upon the path. The truth is a spiritualizing force that actualizes through us. The sacred impulse is also the creative and dynamic force of transcendence. And yet it must be a sacred energy for our times. It must be alive and relevant, otherwise it becomes another relic to be idolized and venerated rather than lived. The sense of the sacred is of a living work.

Our physical global body – our systems and structures – are responding to this need by shifting from top-down structures to decentralized networks. As this unfolds we need to meet this transformation by changing the ways we think; by altering the ways we do things; by allowing consciousness and the sacred energies to flow into the world – to flow through us. That is, to manifest the qualities, attitudes, and our presence in the world that will most effectively receive, hold, and transmit this consciousness. This responsibility is also a part of our living work right now. The days of working in seclusion are over – the new sacred energy does not support monasticism. The sacred strives to connect fluidly between our inner and outer worlds; it is not a monastic endeavor but exists within the active avenues and marketplaces of life. High castles, priestly enclaves, guru sanctuaries, etc, are edifices of the past where a different energy was contained. The sacred revival of today is a nurturing, feminine energy that comes alive through people. The sacred revival stands as comfortable with the spandex superhero mutants on our screens as it does with the appreciative touch, the supportive word, the reassuring glance that we each can weave into our lives. This is the sacred impulse for our times – that which is a part of the living substance that comes through us. It is a living soul that holds within it the species body. As Meister Eckhart said – ‘The soul is not in the body; the body is in the soul.’

The sacred is already affecting us, infecting our thinking patterns and consciousness whether we are aware of it or not. Our perspectives on the world and the cosmos have been changing dramatically over recent years. Most of us who have thought deeply about life and the cosmos have come to the realization that we do not exist as part of a dead universe. Even our sciences, our telescopes, have begun to point their attention toward intelligent life in the cosmos. We are unfolding – slowly metamorphosing out of our cocoon of cosmic quarantine. The human being too is forced to transcend beyond the conditioned cocoon we sleep within – to continually transcend every station we reach. A part of our transformation is the recognition that the human being is a sacred particle in a sacred universe.

Enchantment has been humanity’s natural state for aeons. The innate state of humanity is to feel integral to all life. This continuity has only been disrupted for a number of centuries, whereas our state of enchantment has been with us for millennia. It is time we return to that enchantment, and to a re-connection with a source of meaning. Those streams of significance, those waters of wisdom, have always been with us. It only depended upon whether we wished to get our feet wet or not. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke says, ‘we are the bees of the invisible’ and our task as individuals is for each of us to be a channel for the transmutation of the familiar things of this world into the transcendent. The sacred impulse works through the planet, the living species, and also each individual. As we come together, increasingly so through the medium of our technologies, we each can bring a spark into the burning flame of the living workof our transmutation. As Sri Aurobindo understood, our sacred revival (what he considered as a spiritual age) must ‘be preceded by the appearance of an increasing number of individuals who are no longer satisfied with the normal intellectual, vital and physical existence of man, but perceive that a greater evolution is the real goal of humanity and attempt to effect it in themselves, to lead others to it and to make it the recognised goal of the race.’3 The antithesis of the sacred revival, those whom attempt the reverse of leading others toward transition, seek their power in the sorcery of psychological control and manipulation, also now on a mass scale. Yet the call of the sacred impulse beats within each one of us – yet for some it is louder than others.

The sacred presence is a reflection of the individual soul as well as the world soul. The integral communion of the soul is between the inner world of the individual (the individual soul), and the physical world outside of us. It is a synthesis which gives us meaning. If we do not renew our task daily – reflect upon the soul – we do an injustice to ourselves. And yet this is no easy task. No other relationship can be achieved that is higher than the one you have with the sacred essence within yourself. Life must have meaning for us before we can bring authentic meaning into the lives of others. Maybe Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said it best when he said that sacred human becoming is not only ‘open to a few of the privileged nor to one chosen people to the exclusion of all others’ but rather is ‘in a direction in which all together can join and find completion in a spiritual regeneration of the earth.’4

Our ancestors were aware that they lived in a sacred cosmos, where the physical world existed in communion with the unseen dimension which ensouled and sanctified it. There was no rigid line drawn between what was the inner world and what was external reality, because both domains were in correspondence. The individual human soul was a part of the greater sacred reality. And just as the sacred is an instrument of the human, so the human is an instrument of the sacred. The sacred worldview is one that accepts not only the metaphysical but also the magical and the mysterious – the magnificent wonder in everything and all. As the Greek Orphic Mysteries of 2,500 years ago spoke: ‘I am a child of earth and starry heaven, but my race is of heaven alone.’

 

References

1 Versluis, Arthur (1986) The Philosophy of Magic. London, Arkana, p129

2 Versluis, Arthur (1986) The Philosophy of Magic. London, Arkana, p125

3 Aurobindo, Sri (1999/1950) The Human Cycle: The Psychology of Social Development. Twin Lakes, WI, Lotus Light Publications, p263

4 Cited in Davis, Erik (1998) Techgnosis: myth, magic and mysticism in the age of information. New York, Three Rivers Press, p317

 

Adapted from Kingsley L. Dennis’s forthcoming book, The Sacred Revival: Magic, Mind & Meaning in a Technological Age, to be published October 24th, 2017.

Policing for Profit: Jeff Sessions & Co.’s Thinly Veiled Plot to Rob Us Blind

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By John W. Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle — a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism. It is the aim of the Bill of Rights, if it has any remaining aim at all, to curb such prehensile gentry. Its function is to set a limitation upon their power to harry and oppress us to their own private profit.”— H.L. Mencken

Let’s not mince words.

Jeff Sessions, the nation’s top law enforcement official, would not recognize the Constitution if he ran right smack into it.

Whether the head of the Trump Administration’s Justice Department enjoys being the architect of a police state or is just painfully, criminally clueless, Sessions has done a great job thus far of sidestepping the Constitution at every turn.

Most recently, under the guise of “fighting crime,” Sessions gave police the green light to rob, pilfer, steal, thieve, swipe, purloin, filch and liberate American taxpayers of even more of their hard-earned valuables (especially if it happens to be significant amounts of cash) using any means, fair or foul.

In this case, the foul method favored by Sessions & Co. is civil asset forfeiture, which allows police and prosecutors to “seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—all without so much as charging you with a crime.”

Under a federal equitable sharing program, police turn asset forfeiture cases over to federal agents who process seizures and then return 80% of the proceeds to the police. (In Michigan, police actually get to keep up to 100% of forfeited property.)

This incentive-driven excuse for stealing from the citizenry is more accurately referred to as “policing for profit” or “theft by cop.”

Despite the fact that 80 percent of these asset forfeiture cases result in no charge against the property owner, challenging these “takings” in court can cost the owner more than the value of the confiscated property itself. As a result, most property owners either give up the fight or chalk the confiscation up to government corruption, leaving the police and other government officials to reap the benefits.

And boy, do they reap the benefits.

Police agencies have used their ill-gotten gains “to buy guns, armored cars and electronic surveillance gear,” reports The Washington Post. “They have also spent money on luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.”

Incredibly, these asset forfeiture scams have become so profitable for the government that, according to The Washington Post, “in 2014, law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did.” As the Post notes, “the Treasury and Justice departments deposited more than $5 billion into their respective asset forfeiture funds. That same year, the FBI reports that burglary losses topped out at $3.5 billion.”

In 2015, the federal government seized nearly $2.6 billion worth of airplanes, houses, cash, jewelry, cars and other items under the guise of civil asset forfeiture.

According to USA Today, “Anecdotal evidence suggests that allowing departments to keep forfeiture proceeds may tempt them to use the funds unwisely. For example, consider a 2015 scandal in Romulus, Michigan, where police officers used funds forfeited from illicit drug and prostitution stings to pay for …  illicit drugs and prostitutes.”

Memo to the rest of my fellow indentured servants who are living through this dark era of government corruption, incompetence and general ineptitude: this is not how justice in America is supposed to work.

We are now ruled by a government so consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population that they are completely unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.

Our freedoms aren’t just being trampled, however. They’re being eviscerated.

At every turn, “We the People” are getting swindled, cheated, conned, robbed, raided, pickpocketed, mugged, deceived, defrauded, double-crossed and fleeced by governmental and corporate shareholders of the American police state out to make a profit at taxpayer expense.

Americans no longer have to be guilty to be stripped of their property, rights and liberties. All you have to be is in possession of something the government wants. And if you happen to have something the government wants badly enough, trust me, their agents will go to any lengths to get it.

If the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.

Here’s how the whole ugly business works in a nutshell.

First, government agents (usually the police) use a broad array of tactics to profile, identify, target and arrange to encounter (in a traffic stop, on a train, in an airport, in public, or on private property) those  individuals who might be traveling with a significant amount of cash or possess property of value. Second, these government agents—empowered by the courts and the legislatures—seize private property (cash, jewelry, cars, homes and other valuables) they “suspect” may be connected to criminal activity.

Then—and here’s the kicker—whether or not any crime is actually proven to have taken place, without any charges being levied against the property owner, or any real due process afforded the unlucky victim, the property is seized by the government, which often divvies it up with the local police who helped with the initial seizure.

In a Kafkaesque turn of the screw, the burden of proof falls on the unfortunate citizenry who must mount a long, complicated, expensive legal campaign to prove their innocence in order to persuade the government that it should return the funds they stole. Not surprisingly, very few funds ever get returned.

It’s a new, twisted form of guilt by association, only it’s not the citizenry being accused of wrongdoing, just their money.

Motorists have been particularly vulnerable to this modern-day form of highway robbery.

For instance, police stole $201,000 in cash from Lisa Leonard because the money—which Leonard planned to use to buy a house for her son—was being transported on a public highway also used by drug traffickers. Despite the fact that Leonard was innocent of wrongdoing, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the theft on a technicality.

Police stole $50,000 in cash from Amanee Busbee—which she planned to use to complete the purchase of a restaurant—and threatened to hand her child over to CPS if she resisted. She’s one of the few to win most of her money back in court.

Police stole $22,000 in cash from Jerome Chennault—which he planned to use as the down payment on a home—simply because a drug dog had alerted police to its presence in his car. After challenging the seizure in court, Chennault eventually succeeded in having most of his money returned, although the state refused to compensate him for his legal and travel expenses.

Police stole $8,500 in cash and jewelry from Roderick Daniels—which he planned to use to purchase a new car—and threatened him with jail and money-laundering charges if he didn’t sign a waiver forfeiting his property.

Police stole $6,000 in cash from Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson and threatened to turn their young children over to Child Protective Services if they resisted.

Tenaha, Texas, is a particular hotbed of highway forfeiture activity, so much so that police officers keep pre-signed, pre-notarized documents on hand so they can fill in what property they are seizing.

As the Huffington Post explains, these police forfeiture operations have become little more than criminal shakedowns:

Police in some jurisdictions have run forfeiture operations that would be difficult to distinguish from criminal shakedowns. Police can pull motorists over, find some amount of cash or other property of value, claim some vague connection to illegal drug activity and then present the motorists with a choice: If they hand over the property, they can be on their way. Otherwise, they face arrest, seizure of property, a drug charge, a probable night in jail, the hassle of multiple return trips to the state or city where they were pulled over, and the cost of hiring a lawyer to fight both the seizure and the criminal charge. It isn’t hard to see why even an innocent motorist would opt to simply hand over the cash and move on.

Unsurprisingly, these asset forfeiture scams have become so profitable for the government that they have expanded their reach beyond the nation’s highways.

According to USA Today, the U.S. Department of Justice received $2.01 billion in forfeited items in 2013, and since 2008 local and state law enforcement nationwide has raked in some $3 billion in forfeitures through the federal “equitable sharing” program.

So now it’s not just drivers who have to worry about getting the shakedown.

Any American unwise enough to travel with cash is fair game for the government pickpockets.

In fact, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been colluding with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and local police departments to seize a small fortune in cash from American travelers using the very tools—scanners, spies and surveillance devices—they claimed were necessary to catch terrorists.

Mind you, TSA agents already have a reputation for stealing from travelers, but clearly the government is not concerned about protecting the citizenry from its own wolfish tendencies.

No, the government bureaucrats aren’t looking to catch criminals. (If so, they should be arresting themselves.)

They’re just out to rob you of your cold, hard cash.

Think about it for a moment. You pay a hefty fee just to be able to walk free. It’s called income tax. As former presidential candidate Ron Paul recognizes, “The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.” And if you refuse to pay any of that so-called income tax, you’ll be severely fined and/or arrested and put in jail.

One more thing: you don’t really own your property. That is, your house or your land. Even when you pay off the mortgage, if you fail to pay your property taxes, government agents will evict you and take your home.

This is not freedom.

There was a time in our history when our forebears said “enough is enough” and stopped paying taxes (a pittance compared to what we are forced to shell out in taxes today) to what they considered an illegitimate government. They stood their ground and refused to support a system that was slowly choking out any attempts at self-governance, and which refused to be held accountable for its crimes against the people. Their resistance sowed the seeds for the revolution that would follow.

Unfortunately, in the 200-plus years since we established our own government, we’ve let the corporate elite and number-crunching bureaucrats pilfer our bank accounts to such an extent that we’re back where we started.

Once again, we’ve got a despotic regime with an imperial ruler doing as it pleases.

But what if we didn’t just pull out our pocketbooks and pony up to the federal government’s outrageous demands for more money? What if we didn’t just line up to drop our hard-earned dollars into the corporate collection bucket, no questions asked about how it will be spent? What if, instead of meekly tolerating the government’s ongoing efforts to rob us blind, we did something about it?

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if the government can just take from you what they want, when they want, and then use it however they want, you can’t claim to be anything more than a serf in a land they think of as theirs.

It’s up to “We the People” to demand reform.

These injustices will continue as long as we remain silent.

As American journalist H.L. Mencken observed:

The American of today, in fact, probably enjoys less personal liberty than any other man of Christendom, and even his political liberty is fast succumbing to the new dogma that certain theories of government are virtuous and lawful, and others abhorrent and felonious. Laws limiting the radius of his free activity multiply year by year: It is now practically impossible for him to exhibit anything describable as genuine individuality, either in action or in thought, without running afoul of some harsh and unintelligible penalty. It would surprise no impartial observer if … the goddess of liberty were taken off the silver dollars to make room for a bas-relief of a policeman in a spiked helmet. Moreover, this gradual (and, of late, rapidly progressive) decay of freedom goes almost without challenge; the American has grown so accustomed to the denial of his constitutional rights and to the minute regulation of his conduct by swarms of spies, letter-openers, informers and agents provocateurs that he no longer makes any serious protest.

In other words, make them hear you.

And if they won’t listen, then I suggest it’s time for what Martin Luther King Jr. called for when government doesn’t listen: “militant nonviolent resistance.”

Right to Burn

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Free-market economics gives the poor equal rights to substandard housing

 By Siddhartha Deb

Source: The Baffler

At the very end of the film High-Rise, Ben Wheatley’s 2015 adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel from the seventies, we hear a familiar authoritarian voice extolling the virtues of capitalism. Against the backdrop of the high-rise building that is in many ways the protagonist of the film, the camera closes in on a young boy sitting on a jerry-rigged structure made up of discarded tires, a golf bag, a hockey stick, and a profusion of wires that have allowed him to tune in to the wisdom of Margaret Thatcher. “There is only one economic system in the world, and that is capitalism,” Thatcher says, and the only remaining argument is whether this is to be a form of state capitalism, “where there will never be political freedom,” or if capitalism is to be “in the hands of people outside State control.”

The fire last month that killed eighty people in Grenfell Tower, a twenty-four-story high-rise for low-income, mostly minority Londoners, is a stark example of what that Thatcherite vision looks like when carried out to its logical extreme. Built in the seventies in what can now be seen as the last great wave of public housing in Britain, a trend that started under the post-war Labour Government with the New Towns Act of 1946, Grenfell Tower steadily came under assault from the market forces unleashed by Thatcher. Located in London’s wealthiest borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the upkeep of the building was outsourced by the borough council to the ingeniously named Kensington and Chelsea Tenants Management Organisation, a body that steadfastly ignored, and sometimes used lawyers to threaten, tenants protesting about safety concerns.

The cladding newly installed on the exterior, apparently more for the purpose of making the building appear attractive to private buyers of available units than for reasons of maintenance, was found to be highly flammable and responsible for spreading the fire throughout the building. Other “refurbishment” work left the building with just one staircase and exit, and that too partially blocked. In the aftermath of the fire, when the Conservative party prime minister Theresa May visited the site to talk to members of the emergency services, she avoided meeting residents of the building. The borough council, meanwhile, at first refused to admit residents and media into its “public” meeting. Then, when ordered by a court to allow the media to attend its proceedings, it cancelled a scheduled session.

When Ballard’s novel was published in 1975, Thatcher was merely a rising star in the Conservative Party, still four years away from occupying 10 Downing Street. From there, she would go on to use every lever of the state to promote her vision of state-less capitalism, a ferocious ideology of elite self-interest that would ravage Britain and, promoted across the Atlantic by her American counterpart Ronald Reagan, blight the United States. Given a massive boost by the end of the Cold War, this worldview received regular technocratic updates from the Anglo-American leaders who succeeded Thatcher and Reagan, the old piss always managing to find new bottles—Tony Blair’s New Labour, Bill Clinton’s New Democrats, George Bush’s New American Century and so on, all the way to Barack Obama and David Cameron until we reach what now looks like the terminal point of that blight, the endgame of Theresa May and Donald Trump.

The rhetoric of neoliberalism was that, with a market society taking root in Britain and the United States, the model could be exported to the world at large. Grenfell Tower shows, instead, that it meant turning Britain, the so-called home of free markets and democracy, into a banana republic. The same could be said of the United States, where crises in infrastructure show a similar trajectory, including in the cost-cutting measures that led to the presence of lead and other toxins in the drinking water of Flint, Michigan, in the very town that, as portrayed by Michael Moore in the documentary Roger and Me, was once home of the nation’s largest General Motors plant.

In London, this transformation was achieved, by successive Conservative governments as well as by Blairite New Labour types, through a relentless stripping away of public housing in favor of private residences for the extremely wealthy. Thatcher, in 1979, had introduced “Right to Buy,” allowing tenants in public housing to buy their units at discounts of up to 50 percent. Initially reluctant at the idea of providing a state subsidy to buyers, and nudged into the populist move by other Conservative politicians, Thatcher was nevertheless the one who endowed Right to Buy with an aspirational flavor that everyone could become middle class. The buyers, however, tended to be the most well-off among the tenants, and although the units were initially meant to be lived in, they were eventually often sold at market rates to private landlords, in effect a privatization carried out with the help of public money. It is a process similar to what has happened to Mitchell-Lama housing in New York as buildings have steadily been acquired by private investors, including a building in East Harlem where seven died in a fire in 1987 and that, once purchased by a company backed by a Morgan Stanley investment fund, saw long-time minority residents harassed to make way for new, wealthier tenants.

The resulting housing crisis in London has been accompanied by an evisceration of services, as in the cuts in fire services and policing pioneered by May as home secretary. And all this has been achieved swiftly, accompanied by a technocratic jargon that appears utterly self-referential. Among these are words like deregulation, outsourcing, and, especially, “austerity,” as if what has been going on is some kind of secular Ramadan, a communal fasting to be followed by an iftar party, rather than a refusal by elites to provide basic services to citizens of the sort depicted, recently, in Ken Loach’s film, I, Daniel Blake.

Ballard’s novel captures all this quite perfectly, including the arc from enlightened self-interest to enlightened dementia as his high-rise, which starts out as a self-contained utopia for the professional classes, descends steadily into a small-scale civil war. It ends, as emphasized by the opening passage of the novel where a character eats “the roast hindquarter of the Alsatian,” in a man-eats-dog free enterprise society. With its forty floors, thousand apartments, supermarket, swimming-pools, bank, and school, Ballard’s high-rise, one guesses, has been at least partially funded by taxpayers’ money. It is built, after all, in a reclaimed area of London’s “abandoned dockland and warehousing along the north bank of the river.” Once completed, however, one of five such towers, it looks out with a glance every bit as predatory as the wealthy in Kensington and Chelsea eyeing the property values near Grenfell Tower, at the “rundown areas around it, decaying nineteenth-century terraced houses and empty factories already zoned for reclamation.”

But if Grenfell is a working-class, minority other to Ballard’s tower, ravaged from the outside by predatory capitalists rather than a gated community devoured from within, it also provokes something that is not to be found in Ballard’s prescient work. The tenants who voiced concerns about safety, including two minority women who went missing in the blaze, exemplify a social vision quite different from Ballard’s crazed professionals turning upon each other. In the continuing protests of survivors and their allies asking to be let into the closed meetings being conducted by the borough council and in the demands made by the Labour party leader  that empty residences in the borough, owned by absentee rich landlords, be used to house survivors, we see the inverse of Ballard’s psychotic elites competing to the death. Corbyn’s proposal stirred a Tory writer to ventilate about his “true, disturbing nature,” as if he were beginning a class war. But in Corbyn’s bringing to life a moribund Labour party in the face of a relentless media campaign against him, in the votes his party received in the recent general elections, especially from the disenfranchised young, the working class, and minorities, there is a profound stirring of hope, the beginnings of a refusal of Thatcher’s diseased world of man eats dog in a gutted tower.

 

Biological Annihilation on Earth Accelerating

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By Robert J. Burrowes

Human beings are now waging war against life itself as we continue to destroy not just individual lives, local populations and entire species in vast numbers but also destroy the ecological systems that make life on Earth possible.

By doing this we are now accelerating the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history and virtually eliminating any prospect of human survival.

In a recently published scientific study ‘Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines‘ the authors Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich and Rodolfo Dirzo document the accelerating nature of this problem.

‘Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more severe than perceived when looking exclusively at species extinctions…. That conclusion is based on analyses of the numbers and degrees of range contraction … using a sample of 27,600 vertebrate species, and on a more detailed analysis documenting the population extinctions between 1900 and 2015 in 177 mammal species.’ Their research found that the rate of population loss in terrestrial vertebrates is ‘extremely high’ – even in ‘species of low concern’.

In their sample, comprising nearly half of known vertebrate species, 32% (8,851 out of 27,600) are decreasing; that is, they have decreased in population size and range. In the 177 mammals for which they had detailed data, all had lost 30% or more of their geographic ranges and more than 40% of the species had experienced severe population declines. Their data revealed that ‘beyond global species extinctions Earth is experiencing a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.’

Illustrating the damage done by dramatically reducing the historic geographic range of a species, consider the lion. Panthera leo ‘was historically distributed over most of Africa, southern Europe, and the Middle East, all the way to northwestern India. It is now confined to scattered populations in sub-Saharan Africa and a remnant population in the Gir forest of India. The vast majority of lion populations are gone.’

Why is this happening? Ceballos, Ehrlich and Dirzo tell us: ‘In the last few decades, habitat loss, overexploitation, invasive organisms, pollution, toxification, and more recently climate disruption, as well as the interactions among these factors, have led to the catastrophic declines in both the numbers and sizes of populations of both common and rare vertebrate species.’

Further, however, the authors warn ‘But the true extent of this mass extinction has been underestimated, because of the emphasis on species extinction.’ This underestimate can be traced to overlooking the accelerating extinction of local populations of a species.

‘Population extinctions today are orders of magnitude more frequent than species extinctions. Population extinctions, however, are a prelude to species extinctions, so Earth’s sixth mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume.’ Moreover, and importantly from a narrow human perspective, the massive loss of local populations is already damaging the services ecosystems provide to civilization (which, of course, are given no value by government and corporate economists).

As Ceballos, Ehrlich and Dirzo remind us: ‘When considering this frightening assault on the foundations of human civilization, one must never forget that Earth’s capacity to support life, including human life, has been shaped by life itself.’ When public mention is made of the extinction crisis, it usually focuses on a few (probably iconic) animal species known to have gone extinct, while projecting many more in future. However, a glance at their maps presents a much more realistic picture: as much as 50% of the number of animal individuals that once shared Earth with us are already gone, as are billions of populations.

Furthermore, they claim that their analysis is conservative given the increasing trajectories of those factors that drive extinction together with their synergistic impacts. ‘Future losses easily may amount to a further rapid defaunation of the globe and comparable losses in the diversity of plants, including the local (and eventually global) defaunation-driven coextinction of plants.’

They conclude with the chilling observation: ‘Thus, we emphasize that the sixth mass extinction is already here and the window for effective action is very short.’

Of course, it is too late for those species of plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects and reptiles that humans have already driven to extinction or will yet drive to extinction in the future. 200 species yesterday. 200 species today. 200 species tomorrow. 200 species the day after…. And, as Ceballos, Ehrlich and Dirzo emphasize, the ongoing daily extinctions of a myriad local populations.

If you think that the above information is bad enough in assessing the prospects for human survival, you will not be encouraged by awareness or deeper consideration of even some of the many variables adversely impacting our prospects that were beyond the scope of the above study.

While Ceballos, Ehrlich and Dirzo, in addition to the problems they noted which are cited above, also identified the problems of human overpopulation and continued population growth, as well as overconsumption (based on ‘the fiction that perpetual growth can occur on a finite planet’) and even the risks posed by nuclear war, there were many variables that were beyond the scope of their research.

For example, in a recent discussion of that branch of ecological science known as ‘Planetary Boundary Science’, Dr Glen Barry identified ‘at least ten global ecological catastrophes which threaten to destroy the global ecological system and portend an end to human beings, and perhaps all life. Ranging from nitrogen deposition to ocean acidification, and including such basics as soil, water, and air; virtually every ecological system upon which life depends is failing’. See ‘The End of Being: Abrupt Climate Change One of Many Ecological Crises Threatening to Collapse the Biosphere‘.

Moreover, apart from the ongoing human death tolls caused by the endless wars and other military violence being conducted across the planet – see, for example, ‘Yemen cholera worst on record & numbers still rising‘ – there is catastrophic environmental damage caused too. For some insight, see The Toxic Remnants of War Project.

In addition, the out-of-control methane releases into the atmosphere that are now occurring – see ‘7,000 underground gas bubbles poised to “explode” in Arctic‘ and ‘Release of Arctic Methane “May Be Apocalyptic,” Study Warns‘ – and the release, each and every day, of 300 tons of radioactive waste from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean – see ‘Fukushima Radiation Has Contaminated The Entire Pacific Ocean – And It’s Going To Get Worse‘ – are having disastrous consequences that will negatively impact life on Earth indefinitely. And they cannot be reversed in any timeframe that is meaningful for human prospects.

Apart from the above, there is a host of other critical issues – such as destruction of the Earth’s rainforests, destruction of waterways and the ocean habitat and the devastating impact of animal agriculture for meat consumption – that international governmental organizations such as the UN, national governments and multinational corporations will continue to refuse to decisively act upon because they are controlled by the insane global elite. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane‘ with more fully elaborated explanations in ‘Why Violence?‘ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice‘.

So time may be short, the number of issues utterly daunting and the prospects for life grim. But if, like me, you are inclined to fight to the last breath, I invite you to consider making a deliberate choice to take powerful personal action in the fight for our survival.

If you do nothing else, consider participating in the fifteen-year strategy of ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth‘. You can do this as an individual, with family and friends or as a neighbourhood.

If you are involved in (or considering becoming involved in) a local campaign to address a climate issue, end some manifestation of war (or even all war), or to halt any other threat to our environment, I encourage you to consider doing this on a strategic basis. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

And if you would like to join the worldwide movement to end violence in all of its forms, environmental and otherwise, you are also welcome to consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World‘.

We might be annihilating life on Earth but this is not something about which we have no choice.

In fact, each and every one of us has a choice: we can choose to do nothing, we can wait for (or even lobby) others to act, or we can take powerful action ourselves. But unless you search your heart and make a conscious and deliberate choice to commit yourself to act powerfully, your unconscious choice will effectively be the first one (including that you might take some token measures and delude yourself that these make a difference). And the annihilation of life on Earth will continue, with your complicity.

Extinction beckons. Will you choose powerfully?

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding
and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in
an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a
nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘
His email address is flametree@riseup.net
and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

—
Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68
Daylesford
Victoria 3460
Australia
Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:
Nonviolence Charter
Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth
‘Why Violence?’
Nonviolent Campaign Strategy
Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy
Anita: Songs of Nonviolence
Robert Burrowes
Global Nonviolence Network

The Warmongers Handpicked By Deep State

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The Security Council met to discuss the alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike on 4 April in the Khan Shaykhun area of southern Idlib, Syria. Nikki Haley, United States Permanent Representative to the UN and President of the Security Council for April, addresses the meeting.

By State of the Nation and Antonius Aquinas

Source: State of the Nation

There’s a very well established pattern of appointments of women and/or minorities to 3 powerful positions in the US Federal Government.  This calculated hiring policy has been trending since the election of Bill Clinton.  The American people have seen a number of these highly placed individuals quickly morph into warmongers shortly after their terms began.

Why women and minorities are routinely selected for 3 key positions in the US Gov’t

The Secretary of State, US Ambassador to the United Nations and Attorney General positions have been quite deliberately filled with either a woman or person of color. This tactic has been executed by purposeful design.  When they stand up in the United Nations to advocate war, or speak to the nation from their high office, they are not suspected to be the warmongers that they truly are.

KEY POINT: The primary reason that so many women and minorities are put in these powerful positions is that they are utilized to deceive the world community of nations.  The world has already seen enough rich white man selling war over the centuries, especially during the age of colonization.  Foreign governments will more readily accept the push to war from this highly deceptive group of Deep State agents. (All of them have been carefully programmed over the course of their professional lives.)  Women and minorities are also much easier to manipulate in that most will never get the opportunity to rise to such heights.  Hence, turning them into warmongers is as easy as dressing a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”.

What follows is a list of the more notorious warmongers who have occupied these critical posts.  They are listed in chronological order beginning with the most recent.

Nikki Haley — US Ambassador to the United Nations

Samantha Power — US Ambassador to the United Nations

Hillary Clinton — Secretary of State

Susan Rice — US Ambassador to the United Nations

Zalmay Khalilzad — US Ambassador to the United Nations

Condoleezza Rice — Secretary of State

Colin Powell — Secretary of State

Alberto Gonzales — Attorney General

Janet Reno — Attorney General

Madeleine Albright — Secretary of State
(Source: Why Highly Flawed ‘Minority’ Leaders Are Always Chosen To Greatly Advance The NWO Agenda)

Of course, there was also Barack Hussein Obama who, as POTUS for 8 long years, wreaked havoc across the entire planet.  That’s why they chose such a “smiley face”: to promote war to the many countries who incorrectly saw him as a peacemaker.  Which is also why TPTB cynically gave Obama the Nobel Peace Prize that he did not deserve.  Even the Nobel Peace Prize committee has admitted to the deception.

Nobel Peace Committee Wants Obama To Return Peace Prize

The article posted below lays bare Deep State’s latest disastrous selection of Nikki Haley for the UN ambassadorship.   However, the real question here is: Why did President Trump fall for such a transparent ploy, especially in view of his promises to make peace, not war?

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Nikki Haley: Warmonger Extraordinaire!

Antonius Aquinas

It must now be a prerequisite of those who become an American ambassador to the UN to possess certain characteristics and traits, the most important of which are rabid warmonger, child killer, and outright liar.

Remember it was Madeleine Albright when asked about the US blockading Iraq which prevented medicine and medical equipment from entering the country that resulted in the estimated death of a half a million children who coldly responded: “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”  Then there is Colin “Weapons of Mass Destruction” Powell who told a bald-face lie about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities which paved the way for the US destruction of the country.

In her brief tenure as UN ambassador, Nikki Haley is fulfilling these requirements quite nicely.  Her latest crazed outburst came on the heels of the bizarre White House press release about another supposed Syrian government gas attack which warned President Assad that he would “pay a heavy price” if carried out.*

While the State and Defense Departments were apparently caught off guard by the White House action, Ambassador Haley was not (probably given advanced notice) and issued an even more provocative tweet:

“Any further attacks done to the people of Syria will be blamed on Assad, but also on Russia & Iran who support him killing his own people.”*

— Ambassador Nikki Haley

Not only has Haley appointed herself judge, jury and executioner of the Assad regime, but her wild accusation includes reprisals to the neocons’ ultimate targets of Russia and Iran.  Her ridiculous statement has now given Syria’s enemies the green light to conduct another gas attack which will be blamed on Assad and his allies, Russia and Iran.  Nice work, Nikki!

From a diplomatic perspective, the entire affair was bungled and amateurish, confirming once again that the Trump Administration is out of its league in conducting foreign policy.

That Haley was even chosen to become part of the Trump Administration has been odd from the beginning, but as things have unfolded quite telling.  Haley was a vociferous critic of the future president.  She, and the likes of another war-monger and Russophobe, Lindsey Graham, were consistently attacking candidate Trump for being “soft” on Russia and his immigration stance especially his wildly popular border wall proposal.  To Haley and Graham, Donald Trump was out of step with the Republican Party’s values such as diversity as represented by Haley who, herself, is of Indian heritage.

Yet, despite all of the vitriol heaped at candidate Trump, the newly elected president, in a surprising and ominous move, decided to make the South Carolina governor, UN ambassador.  This, and a number of other selections to foreign policy posts, signaled that President Trump would abandon his promises and vote-garnering campaign talk of peaceful coexistence with Russia, a reduction of US presence in the Middle East, and in other hot spots across the globe.

While Haley has been an ardent warmonger from the start, President Trump did not have to select her for the post.  There were other more competent and surely less belligerent candidates available.  More than likely, the choice was probably a nod to his “advisor” daughter Ivanka, to curry favor among feminists.

While President Trump’s pick of Haley was an implicit betrayal of a large segment of his base, his foreign policy actions since becoming chief executive have been an explicit rejection of putting America first which he spoke of at his inaugural.  From escalating tensions with puny North Korea, dropping the mother-of-all-bombs on Afghanistan for no apparent reason, to making multi-billion dollar armament deals with the despots of Saudi Arabia among other troubling endeavors, Trump’s foreign policy is little different than his infamous predecessors.

While it looks like President Trump may have won the war, at least temporary, over the press and the anti-Trump Congressional forces about the fake Russian election involvement, he and his bellicose UN ambassador are now using the same underhanded methods to instigate a conflict to depose President Assad.  While the alternative media rightly showed how the mainstream press and politicos made up and manipulated stories to undermine President Trump, it should now be intellectually honest and call out the president and his UN ambassador for what they are doing in Syria.  In doing so, it may prevent the outbreak of WWIII.

*Tyler Durden, “Syria Denies Plans For A Chemical Attack As Russia Slams US Warning As ‘Unacceptable.’”  Zero Hedge.  27 June 2017 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-27/syria-denies-plans-chemical-attack-russia-accuses-us-provocation

**Ibid.

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https://antoniusaquinas.com/2017/07/03/nikki-haley-warmonger-extraordinaire/

The Status of the Global Oligarchy

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By Francesca de Bardin

Source: Global Research

The term oligarchy is derived from the Greek words meaning “rule or command by a few.” The term is generally used in the derogatory sense to describe a tyrannical system that practices oppression to ensure obedience. While oligarchies are generally associated with antiquity and as being localized, many of today’s larger democracies can justifiably be called oligarchies. The following is a brief discourse on how modern oligarchs manage control over societies, using power exercised through economic and political means. Today the global oligarchy is controlled by a few hundred families.

Many modern democracies are systems where the actual differences between political rivals are very small, and in these systems the oligarchic elite impose strict limits on what constitutes an acceptable and respectable political position. As for the “politicians”, their careers depend heavily on unelected economic, political, and media elites. Therefore, we have the popular saying, “There is only one political party.” An oligarchy, as we know, is a governing structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, education, corporate, or military control, and so on. In these governing structures control is maintained by a few prominent families who typically pass their influence from one generation to the next. But, inherited power is not the only means of transference.

While oligarchies are often controlled by a few powerful families whose children are reared and mentored to become inheritors of power, this power is not always exercised openly, and most oligarchs prefer to remain “the power behind the throne,” so to speak. Perhaps the best example of such a family, the Rothschild’s continue the long tradition of innovation based on a steady accrual, over more than two centuries, of expertise, experience, and immeasurable wealth. Their businesses continue to be at the forefront of global financial and commercial activities.

There are other “oligarchs” also in control however, but in addition to the “old money” influences, the oligarchs have now created a “new money” cabal of influencerswho play an ever-increasing role economically, politically, and at the structural level as well. “Unlimited” money, whether it is old or new, exerts a massive force. As an example of how money plays a role in the American system, a radio interview on the Thom Hartmann Program in July 2015 featured former president Jimmy Carter saying that the United States is now an oligarchy in which “unlimited political bribery” has created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.” According to the former president, both Democrats and Republicans, Carter said, “look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves.”

President Carter is not alone in his assertions. Other contemporary authors have also characterized current conditions in the United States and Western Europe as being oligarchic in nature. One, Jeffrey A. Winters, PhD Yale, 1991, professor of political science at Northwestern University and author of Oligarchy, argues that

“oligarchy and democracy operate within a single system, and American politics is a daily display of their interplay.”

Of course, there are many others among today’s great thinkers who profess oligarchs essentially rule us. Through the watchful eyes of independent media and academics willing to voice their dissent, the reality of the global oligarchy comes into view. While most people have always understood that the rich rule, most shy away from believing in a truly Orwellian control conspiracy. The fact is, oligarchies exist in small towns, large cities, and in countries today, and we really do have an alliance of oligarchic dynasties that is global.

Not only do these modern oligarchs exert control over the governmental tiers, they also influence the philosophy and ideas nurtured in academia, through social institutions, and especially the policy institutions of the world. One example was recently outlined by Author Steven MacMillan, who’s editor of the Analyst Report, who went so far as to suggest that institutions like the Council on Foreign Relations, are in fact “part of a shadowy network of private organizations that stretches across the globe to influence policy of most nation states.”

While the mainstream insists anti-oligarch voices are merely conspiracy theorists, hundreds of experts are now revealing the truth of this “1984” system bent on complete takeover. In a Guardian piece from 2015, author Seumas Milne framed the argument that:

“Escalating inequality is the work of a global elite that will resist every challenge to its vested interests.” 

He goes on to briefly outline the dysfunctional systems these oligarchs have set in place for decades now, but what’s significant about his report is the ever increasing greed of these elites. As world systems, markets, and resources contract and become depleted, the oligarchs feel the pressure to extract still more from us. The simple way of putting this is to frame them as “addicts of growth”, or insatiable tyrants when all is said and done. When solutions for rising inequality are suggested, those in power balk at every turn these days. Austerity, increased tax burdens on the middle and lower classes, still more borrowing at the national and corporate level, even war with Russia over resources seem to be on the table to prop up this oligarchy. Many experts contend that it was this global elite’s unrealistic response to the changing global landscape that caused most of today’s geo-political crises.

There is some good news however. Although the global oligarchy aims to have total control of the world, it has not yet reached that goal. This oligarchy is not monolithic, there is competition among them and turf warfare. This can be seen in the competition for resources and wealth worldwide, and especially in the new anti-Russia propaganda. The oligarchs are infighting in many cases, the Ukraine situation represents a good case study for this. So, this infighting, along with individual opposition via economic and political factions, tends to block the global oligarchy from cementing full control. Furthermore, grassroots citizen movements are attempting to oppose these modern aristocrats as well, and together the movements have the ability awaken the greater citizenry and challenge the oligarchy.

Anxiety Dream

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By Miya Tokumitsu

A 1636 Dutch print depicts a tender domestic scene: a father in his nightdress walks to and fro, soothing a wakeful baby while mom gets some well-deserved sleep. The accompanying verse is equally sweet, assuring us that God, like this kindly father, will comfort us when we become gripped with anxiety and cry out in the night.

But when we wake today, heart pounding at the recollection that we have a big presentation in six hours, many of us might find a last-minute cancellation more conducive to recovering sleep than the idea of a loving God who cradles and sings to us. Adding to our anxiety is the knowledge that the loss of every minute is setting us back. There seems hardly to be sleep enough to go around, much less to share with our loved ones. We know the stats: most Americans sleep a paltry 6.8 hours per night, less than the recommended eight hours. The litany of sleep deprivation consequences is also familiar: obesity, depression, anxiety, loss of libido, and heart disease, among others.

We also instinctively understand that we have a stake in each other’s sleep. In addition to immediate hazards, like overtired drivers taking the wheel or bleary-eyed colleagues gumming up our beautiful spreadsheets, we know that widespread depression and worn-out immune systems affect society broadly, and over the long term. And yet we often understand our sleep in terms of pure individual choice.

For that reason, wilful sleep deprivation remains a cultural ideal. This you-snooze-you-lose mindset was recently captured by internet-marketplace Fiverr’s advertisement poster, which, alarm-like, blared “SLEEP DEPRIVATION IS YOUR DRUG OF CHOICE . . . YOU MIGHT BE A DOER.” After all, what is the condition of sleep, if not an absence of motivation to chase the $5 gigs the company peddles? In this same vein, a 2012 Business Insider slideshow fawned over “19 Successful People Who Barely Sleep.” Marissa Mayer, Yahoo! CEO, got pride of place as slide number one. Slide number three was Donald Trump.

An equally individualistic pro-sleep discourse does exist, primarily in click-bait articles nestled within chum boxes, which limply scold us for watching Netflix in bed. Entering this soporific terrain, sleep-evangelist Arianna Huffington urges readers of her book, The Sleep Revolution, to sleep more, prescribing rituals to maximize its quality, including pre-bedtime soaks with Epsom salts, and counting one’s blessings.

As with our wakefulness, our slumber too is motivated and shaped by anxiety. Those who do protect their eight hours often do so because it helps them perform better at work. It’s no wonder that Huffington, a boss, approves of this motivation for sleep, writing, “It would actually be better for business if employees called in tired, got a little more sleep, and then came in a bit late, rather than call in sick a few days later or, worse, show up sick, dragging themselves through the day while infecting others.”

It may appear that as a society we have conflicting sleep ideals, but really, we’re not so much of two minds as we are fumbling around, trying to work out the role that sleep plays in a prosperous life. We want to get sleep right because we know that doing so is essential to thriving individually—indeed, Thrive is the name Huffington chose for her wellness company—but we fret over the quantity, preparatory rites, and timing of our sleep because sleep lies at the juncture between the private and the social, the biological, and the cultural.

Sleep is intensely private: where, when, with (and without) whom, and how we dress and prepare for sleep are intimate and emotional decisions. But sleep is also social: we modify our behavior and expectations on the assumption that those beyond our immediate domiciles—neighbors, colleagues both local and time zones away—are slumbering at certain hours. And although sleep is private, we do want social reassurance that we are sleeping the right way and look down upon those who choose other arrangements. Just mosey over to the comment section of any website discussing infant sleep, and you’ll find accusations of “baby torture,” and remarks like, “You may think you are fine, but no. You did hurt your baby.” Just as eating habits often come with a moral or ethical motivations that imply—or outright state—the absence of such morals and ethics of those who eat differently, sleep helps constitute our identity, something we generally like to have affirmed.

Enter the market. There are seemingly endless ways to buy yourself some sleep—books like Huffington’s, herbal teas, white noise machines, Ambien, melatonin, ear plugs tucked into earplug cases, therapy. And if you want to put sleep off—stimulants from espresso to cocaine, late night TV, alarms, gyms that open at 5 am.

Contrary to Huffington’s claim to revolutionary momentousness, it seems someone’s always been around to sell sleep optimization. Historian Sasha Handley writes in her book Sleep in Early Modern England that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the panoply of goods deemed ideal for proper sleep by Brits counted breathable bed linens, thermometers to help maintain ideal room temperatures, bedclothes including nightcaps and nightcap liners, even ventilators. “No other daily activity was so heavily governed by principles of good health,” Handley writes, “nor consumed as much time, money, and labour as did sleep.” Yesterday’s silver-gilt ventilator has today become a whole range of electronic devices to track your sleep and analyze which components of your psyche and environment need correction.

We may scream at each other over the “correct” way to sleep, but the truth is that where we come down on these questions—and, indeed, whether we even have a choice at all—is largely a matter of our financial resources and anxieties. As with parenting, there are multitudinous dictums competing over how to do sleep right, but few resources to actually achieve our cultural ideals. For well-to-do families, whether to co-sleep with babies may be a considered choice. No such luck for households that cannot afford a bassinet or crib. Coffee-fuelled all-nighters are technically a choice, but usually one coerced by negative economic consequences for missing a deadline. And what can Huffington say to readers who don’t have a bathtub or even a private bedroom from which to banish their phone?