The Dying Americans

Posted on December 10, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Chad Hill

I’ve often used the term “the final solution for the working class,” in reference to the current American policy towards its vast intercoastal peasantry who, for reasons of circumstance or inclination, do not subject themselves to the decade or so of wildly expensive education that qualifies them for the remaining jobs on offer. It may be a reflection of my readership that I haven’t received any pushback. As someone who is in that same working class, I can clearly see what is happening around me, and I’m not alone. David J. Blacker, in his book, The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame, also broached the subject of eliminationism, going so far as to study the German holocaust literature of the 1930’s which calmly and rationally discussed how to deal with the problem of getting rid of the millions of excess people whom the elites determined were “undesirable” in the brave new world they were creating.

After last week, it’s hard to argue that this is hyperbole. The news that America’s white working class between the ages of 45-65 has dramatically falling life expectancy, alone against nearly the entire world, received a surprising (to me) bit of coverage. When I first read it, I assumed it would be just another footnote story that I would write about here, but would be ignored everywhere else. But it received a surprising amount of coverage: even Paul Krugman wrote about it. I suspect a large part of that was due to the fact that it was research by the most recent economics “Nobel” laureate Angus Deaton and his wife, so it was harder to ignore than if it had been from some unknown researcher.

Often times you hear about a “dieoff” due to our situation. I think this study confirms beyond a doubt that the dieoff is already happening. Yet, consider that, before this study became popularized, you would have never heard about it in the mainstream press. Still doubt the collapse is real?

It’s not people dying in the streets, though, unlike some of the more feverish TEOTWAKI peak oil predictions. From the research, elevated levels of suicide and drug abuse are the prime culprits. It’s the million little deaths that go unnoticed in the obituary columns of decaying communities all across this formerly prosperous nation. Someone overdosed in a back alley. Or a meth lab exploded. Or maybe they were killed in a car accident, or decapitated while driving their motorcycle too fast. Or they were shot by police. Or they are dying of liver failure by age 40. Or, increasingly, they are ground down slowly by the many chronic diseases such as diabetes that are symptomatic of the chronic stress and horrid (yet highly profitable) junk food diet of most Americans. It’s a dieoff all right, but it’s never framed as such. You can see it all around you: the overcrowded jails filled with unemployed people, the overcrowded hospitals filled with sick, obese people, the folks standing on the medians and freeway offramps with cardboard signs and living their cars, all while the media just goes on reporting about spectator sports and celebrity gossip as though nothing bad is happening. Ignorance really is bliss.

The obvious analogy here is Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, as many people writing about the study have pointed out: The Dying Russians (New York Review of Books). But there was no “collapse” of the United States. Or was there? Instead, we’re told by the media and politicians that everything in every way is getting better and better for everyone. Just look at the latest iPhone! Television screens are huge! Even the very poor have indoor plumbing! And you can Google anything you like, so what are you complaining about, loser?

Everything is famed as personal failure, thus the dieoff is just a million stories of individual failure with no overall pattern. Nothing to see here, more along. Study and “work hard” (whatever that means), and you’ll be okay. Certainly that fear is behind the epidemic of overwork, presenteeism and grinding hours of unpaid overtime Americans are putting in at work in the hope of not being next. It’s like being the model prisoner in a concentration camp, though. Ask the turkeys this month if being a good turkey had any effect on their ultimate fate. The Parable of the Happy Turkey (Global Guerrillas)

Up until now, Americans have been happy turkeys. Thus, they cannot comprehend what is happening to them. In America it is taken for granted that the ultimate locus of control is on the individual, and that there is no such thing as society. That belief has been heavily promoted over the past thirty years, along with the “create your own reality” and other assorted positive thinking nonsense (thanks Oprah!), and I think we can see why.

And since we see this always as personal failure and are not allowed to see it as systemic failure, the poor and formerly middle classes take it out on themselves instead of the system. After all, America is the land of opportunity; if you don’t “make it’ (whatever that means), you have no one to blame but yourself! Of course it is not true; the musical chairs job market and winner-take-all economy means that only a tiny number of people even have a shot at the middle class anymore, and a lot of that is due to geography, pre-existing social connections and luck.

They don’t have to kill you if they can get you to kill yourself.

And although framed as a tragedy, I wonder if to some extent this behavior on the part of working class males is a logical response to living in the kind of society that the United States has become. In a society that has no use for them anymore and where they have no sense of purpose and no hope for the future, it seems like suicide is a rational response. After a certain age, you realize that you have been sorted to the “losers” pile. If you live in the vast suburban flatland of Middle America, you likely live in a decrepit house somewhere in the anonymous miasma of strip-mall suburbia, buy disposable plastic crap made in China from baleful fluorescent-lit Dollar Stores, drive an older model pickup truck or SUV with a bad muffler and bad brakes over potholed streets and under rusty bridges, while all the jobs around you aside from the hospital and the university (which are mainly female-staffed) are minimum wage, dead-end jobs where you have to smile and wear a uniform. You realize you’re never going to meet the girl of your dreams since hypergamy is still baked into female mating choice, despite what some feminists claim. You realize you will never get that that great job that will allow you to be upwardly mobile and live in relative ease and comfort, and life is a bitter, hard struggle relieved only by the occasional joint and video games. Or you’re divorced and paying child support to your former wife who’s managed to keep herself presentable enough to hook up with one of the few remaining alpha-males, and half your income goes to support the kids you never see. Or your deadbeat loser children have been working multiple McJobs and living in the basement for years with no hope of even affording a one-bedroom apartment, and between them and the wife you never speak to anymore, you can’t even get into your own damn bathroom. You realize that, like most Americans, you will never afford to retire and will have to work your boring, dead-end job under your asshole supervisor until you literally drop dead. So why wait?

I mean, who wouldn’t kill themselves or anesthetize themselves with drugs and booze in an environment like this?

I once read an online commenter say that the rich are the beta testers for the lifestyles we will all be living in the future (and thus no restraints must be put on their wealth accumulation if we are to experience that future). But that commenter had it wrong. Rather, it is the poor–those living on less than a few dollars a day; those who live in ghettos marred by gangs and drug abuse; those with their heat, water, and streetlights turned off, who are the beta testers for the lifestyles that most of us will be “enjoying” in the near future. As William Gibson said, the future is already here, just not evenly distributed.

Given the above, I can’t help but think of the “Rat Park” experiment. Rats in a cage, when given a choice between water and drugs, would overdose themselves to death on the drugs, neglecting even basic self-maintenance. But a cage is a boring, repetitive, stressful environment for a rat, so you might expect the animals to anesthetize themselves with whatever was on offer. But rats living in an environment specifically designed to be pleasant and give the rats what they needed to thrive did not overdose themselves to death; they preferred healthier behaviors instead. It’s worth noting that most of the drugs we use today have been known for hundreds or even thousands of years, but were not abused by the native peoples who discovered them. That is reserved for modern, “advanced” societies. The Rat Park experiment (io9)

I once wrote that if you wanted to intentionally design a social environment to drive a primate insane, you would develop something pretty much identical to modern-day America (advertising, chronic stress, inequality, separation from nature and each other, boring, repetitive work, constant surveillance, and on and on…). It’s pretty obvious how Rat Park parallels life in twenty-first century America with its ubiquitous television, concentration-camp schools complete with metal detectors, freeways and cul-de-sacs and landscapes of Applebees™ and Walmarts; along with a steady diet of Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. It’s hardly an environment designed for human flourishing, is it? Rather, it is designed to maximize “economic growth” at all costs. The results of that experiment are as plain to see as they are predictable.

Most people who are still relatively comfortable are content to write off the people who are living in deprived circumstances among them right now, especially in the United States where so many of those poor are African-American. But more and more, whites are experiencing what they had previously dismissed as “black problems” due to their racist attitudes: the hopelessness and despair, the unemployment, the sociological pathologies; the drug abuse, divorces, domestic violence, youth gangs and so on. It’s not race, it’s environment, as Rat Park showed. Given a certain environment, an animal–any animal–will behave a certain way. Its totally predictable. We know this, but why do we pretend it is not true? Instead we reliably chalk it all up to “the Cult of Personal Failure.”

But this leads to an even larger question, one that gets to the heart of our modern predicament. We have to ask ourselves, what kind of society are we creating where so many people see death as preferable to living in such a society? In what kind of a society do people see life as so miserable that they prefer to kill themsleves, either slowly or immediately? That is, why is this the end result of hundreds of years of supposed “progress?”

Fundamentally, how do you feel about this society? Do you feel good about this society? Do you feel good about the school-to-prison pipeline? Do you feel good that there are more prisoners than small yeoman farmers? Do you feel good that it is a felony to show us how our food is produced? Do you feel good about students mortgaging their future for jobs that won’t exist by the time the bill comes due? Do you feel good about hospitals treating chronic diseases taking the place of farming and making things as basis of the America’s rural economies? Do you feel good about police armed with body armor and and tear gas? Do you feel good about wall-to-wall advertising preying on our weakness and insecurities? Do you feel good about the atmosphere of incessant adversarial competition against everyone else for the shrinking pool of jobs on offer which pay enough to afford rent?

If so, why?

This puts a crimp on the Panglossian “everything in every way is getting better for everyone,” rhetoric that you hear so often in the media. What I find amusing is that this rhetoric used to come from the Left–that the welfare state would eliminate poverty, racism, that everything was under control and circles of cooperation would get larger and larger, and so on. But now, I mostly hear the Panglossian rhetoric coming primarily from the Right, whose preferred God is the unregulated “free” market. It’s in the Right-wing propaganda now that I constantly hear how wonderful everything is, and that those who are complaining are either delusional misfits or just jealous. Here is a prime example from the Right-wing National Review:

Good news abroad, and good news at home: In 1990, there were 2,245 murders in New York City. That number has fallen by 85 percent. Murders are down, often dramatically, in cities across the country. The overall rate of violent crime has fallen by about half in recent decades. U.S. manufacturing output per worker trebled from 1975 to 2005, and our total manufacturing output continues to climb. Despite the no-knowthings [sic] who go around complaining that “we don’t make things here anymore,” the United States continues to make the very best of almost everything and, thanks to our relatively free-trading ways, to consume the best of everything, too. General-price inflation, the bane of the U.S. economy for some decades, is hardly to be seen. Flexible and effective institutions helped ensure that we weathered one of the worst financial crises of modern times with surprisingly little disruption in the wider economy. Despite politicians who would usurp our rights, our courts keep reliably saying that the First Amendment and the Second Amendment pretty much mean what they say. I just filled up my car for $1.78 a gallon.

The world isn’t ending.

The world is healthier, wealthier, and less hungry mainly because of the efforts of millions of unknown investors, entrepreneurs, farmers, workers, bankers, etc., all working without any central coordinating authority….There is much left to do: We have unsustainable fiscal situations in the Western welfare states, irreconcilable Islamist fanatics originating in points east but spread around the world, environmental challenges, and that tenth of the human race that still needs lifting out of hardcore poverty. But we have achieved a remarkable thing in that unless we mess things up really badly, in 50 years we’ll be having to explain to our grandchildren what a famine was, how it came to be that millions of people died every year for want of clean water — and they will look at us incredulously, wondering what it must have been like to live in the caveman times of the early 21st century.

Liberal Democracy and Free Markets, Take a Bow (National Review) Or better yet, strap on flight suit and hang up a “Mission Accomplished” banner.

Yes, for the folks on the Right, it truly is a Golden Age. There are a few flaws in the ointment like those pesky welfare states and all that but, hey, gas is cheap! Can’t you just feel the bright, shiny future ahead? Here’s a another sampling from The Wall Street Journal:

The trajectory of the world doesn’t justify this pessimism. People are living longer on every continent. They’re doing less arduous, backbreaking work. Natural disasters are killing fewer people. Fewer crops are failing. Some 100,000 people are being lifted out of poverty every day, according to World Bank data.

Life is also getting better in the U.S., on multiple measures, but the survey found that 55% of Americans think the “rich get richer” and the “poor get poorer” under capitalism. Sixty-five percent agree that most big businesses have “dodged taxes, damaged the environment or bought special favors from politicians,” and 58% want restrictions on the import of manufactured goods.

Has the World Lost Faith in Capitalism? (WSJ) Silly people, how dare they “lose faith!” Once we stamp out every last vestige of “socialism” we can restore that faith.

So what’s going on here? Listening to the Right, one gets the appearance that things have never been better, and that people are just totally irrational and determined to complain no matter how good they have it, despite voluminous scientific literature portraying optimism bias as the default cognitive condition for most people.

I think it stems from two areas – the Neoliberal experiment has clearly been an unmitigated disaster, so the literature constantly has to portray a rosy picture for those still living in the elite ideological bubble by cherry-picking data: Cheer – Inequality is Falling Globally!! (and similar nonsense) (Pieria). It’s much like the “happy peasant” literature that prevailed on the eve of the French Revolution and during early Industrialism to convince upper-class readers that their efforts were actually for the good of all, not just themselves; it’s just that the feckless peasants were too short-sighted to realize it. The elites, for some reason, have a need to believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that the free-market fundamentalism they subscribe to is making everyone–not just them–better off. Perhaps it is a remedy for cognitive dissonance and a guilty conscience.

The second agenda might be to cover up the agenda of eliminationism referred to above.
Going back to the original topic, it’s fairly clear that getting rid of the lower classes is, as The Joker put it in The Dark Knight, “all part of the plan.”

Now that might seem a bit paranoid, but consider this – the governors of many states are withdrawing basic social protections for their poorest citizens, and actually paying for the priviliege! Here’ Kevin Drum:

…the states that refuse to expand Medicaid are denying health care to the needy and paying about $2 billion for the privilege. Try to comprehend the kind of people who do this.

The residents of every state pay taxes to fund Obamacare, whether they like it or not. Residents of the states that refuse to expand Medicaid are paying about $50 billion in Obamacare taxes each year, and about $20 billion of that is for Medicaid expansion. Instead of flowing back into their states, this money is going straight to Washington DC, never to be seen again. So they’re willing to let $20 billion go down a black hole and pay $2 billion extra in order to prevent Obamacare from helping the needy. It’s hard to fathom, isn’t it?

Red States Spent $2 Billion in 2015 to Screw the Poor (Mother Jones)

Last week, McClatchy documented the unnecessary pain being inflicted on red state residents by their elected Republican representatives…Roughly 260 million Americans (roughly 85 percent) already have health insurance provided by their employers, the government or through individual policies they purchased. In places like Oregon, Colorado, New York, California and other, mostly Democratic states, governors and state legislators accepted the expansion of Medicaid to provide free health insurance for those earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty (FPL). For those earning between 138 and 400 percent of the FPL, the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies will help them purchase insurance in the private market. But in the states where Republicans said “no” to the expansion of Medicaid, the picture is much different. As the AP explained the coverage gap:

Nearly 2 in 3 uninsured people who would qualify for health coverage under an expansion of Medicaid live in states which won’t broaden the program or have not yet decided on expansion.

The resulting Republican body count is staggering. Thanks to the GOP’s rejection of Medicaid expansion, 1.3 million people in Texas, 1 million in Florida, 534,000 in Georgia and 267,000 in Missouri will be ensnared in the coverage gap.

Health Insurance “Coverage Gap” Coming To A Red State Near You (Crooks and Liars)

That’s right, Republican governors are blowing a hole in their budget just to remove social protections for the poor. Often times, “unaffordability” is cited as a justification, but clearly this is not at work here. It’s pure ideology. But what is that ideology? Here’s more detail:

American conservatives for the past several decades have shown a remarkable hostility to poor people in our country. The recent effort to slash the SNAP food stamp program in the House; the astounding refusal of 26 Republican governors to expand Medicaid coverage in their states — depriving millions of poor people from access to Medicaid health coverage; and the general legislative indifference to a rising poverty rate in the United States — all this suggests something beyond ideology or neglect.

The indifference to low-income and uninsured people in their states of conservative governors and legislators in Texas, Florida, and other states is almost incomprehensible. Here is a piece in Bustle that reviews some of the facts about expanding Medicaid coverage:

In total, 26 states have rejected the expansion, including the state of Mississippi, which has the highest rate of uninsured poor people in the country. Sixty-eight percent of uninsured single mothers live in the states that rejected the expansion, as do 60 percent of the nation’s uninsured working poor.

These attitudes and legislative efforts didn’t begin yesterday. They extend back at least to the Reagan administration in the early 1980s…

Most shameful, many would feel, is the attempt to reduce food assistance in a time of rising poverty and deprivation. It’s hard to see how a government or party could justify taking food assistance away from hungry adults and children, especially in a time of rising poverty. And yet this is precisely the effort we have witnessed in the past several months in revisions to the farm bill in the House of Representatives. In a recent post Dave Johnson debunks the myths and falsehoods underlying conservative attacks on the food stamp program in the House revision of the farm bill.

This tenor of our politics indicates an overt hostility and animus towards poor people. How is it possible to explain this part of contemporary politics on the right? What can account for this persistent and unblinking hostility towards poor people?

Why a war on poor people? (Understanding Society)

Let’s restate this to be clear to make sure the point is not lost: these states are willing to lose money in order to make sure their poor die quicker. Clear enough? And we’re not even talking about things like the outright cold-blooded murder of the homeless by police, the breaking up of homeless encampments, the mass incarceration, and return of debtors’ prisons, and so on. It’s expensive to be poor in America. We do everything by the Matthew Effect from jobs to education, and wonder why class mobility is nonexistent. Yet we’re still told that everyone wants to be an American, that it’s the land of opportunity, and that things have literally never been better.

Thrown in jail for being poor: the booming for-profit probation industry (Guardian)

Much of the well-funded efforts of plutocrats and their allies has been to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which was designed by Right-wing think tanks), not to reform it or replace it with something more effective, but to return to the predatory status quo ante. Now, businessmen may be greedy, short-sighted and sociopathic, but they are not stupid. They surely know that the American System is wildly more expensive than any other place on earth, but they are willing to lose billions of dollars in profit just to make sure people don’t get health care! Think about that. A European friend said to me once that he didn’t understand why American businesses seemed to want sick, insecure employees who either don’t have access to health care, or are worried about going broke trying to pay for it. It seemed totally irrational to him. But it’s only irrational if you don’t understand the underlying ideology of eliminationism. Some societies actually want to kill off their own people, as Nazi Germany and other tragic examples have shown.

And it’s of a piece with the withdrawal of mass education that Blacker documents in his book. The elites are disinvesting from society in every way because they just don’t need us anymore. And their propaganda mills are dedicated to making sure the blame is squarely placed on individuals so that we will internalize learned helplessness which has prevented any effective resistance. Or their mills are insisting that it’s just not happening, and everybody is really better off, as we saw above, except for a few churlish losers who have no one to blame but themselves (and are probably looking for a handout).

Who turned my blue state red? (NYT). A great explanation of America’s crab mentality.

I’ve featured the analogy of horses that some economists use before. Human beings may have found other jobs (which is debatable), but the population of horses just went down in line with the work that was available for them to do. I think it’s obvious that this is a good analogy for what’s happening.

…Similarly, one could just as easily have said, a century ago, that: “Fundamental economic principles will continue to operate. Scarcities will still be with us…. Most horses will still have useful tasks to perform, even in an economy where the capacities of power sources and automation have increased considerably…”

Yet demand for the labor of horses today is vastly less than it was a century ago, even though horses are extremely strong, fast, capable and intelligent animals. “Peak horse” in the U.S. came in the 1910s, I believe. After that there was no economic incentive to keep the horse population of America from declining sharply, as at the margin the horse was not worth its feed and care. And in a marginal-cost pricing world, in which humans are no longer the only plausible source of Turing-level cybernetic control mechanisms, what will happen to those who do not own property should the same come to be true, at the margin, of the human? What would “peak human” look like? Or–a related but somewhat different possibility–even “peak male”?

Technological Progress Anxiety: Thinking About “Peak Horse” and the Possibility of “Peak Human” (Brad DeLong)

Off to the glue factory with the middle class, then. As long as it’s kept diffuse enough, it will never be picked up on; “Work Makes You Free” hangs in the air over our heads instead of over the entry gates. Perhaps we should just inscribe it on the Gateway Arch.

So, all told, the self-destructive habits of the middle-aged white poor are hardly irrational. Rather, it seems to be to be the most rational response to the type of world we’ve created. The only question is, why do so many of us apparently want to stay on this path?

Counterculture: The Rebel Commodity

Posted on November 29, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By James Curcio

Source: Rebel News

Let’s talk about being a rebel.

Everyone seems to want to be one. But it’s not entirely clear what it means. Does it take camo- pants? A Che T-shirt? A guitar? Is it just doing the opposite of whatever your parents did? “Be an individual, a rebel, innovate,” so many advertisements whisper. They’d have us believe that True Revolutionaries think different. They use Apple, or drink Coke. We signal our dissent to one another with the music we listen to and the cars we drive.

There’s something very peculiar going on here, something elusive and deeply contentious.

In the 1997 book, Commodify Your Dissent, Thomas Frank laid out a thesis that may appear common sense to those that have watched or lived in the commodified subcultures of the 90s, 00s, and beyond. A New York Times review comments,

… business culture and the counterculture today are essentially one and the same thing. Corporations cleverly employ the slogans and imagery of rebellion to market their products, thereby (a) seizing a language that ever connotes “new” and “different,” two key words in marketing, and (b) coaxing the young effortlessly into the capitalist order, where they will be so content with the stylishly packaged and annually updated goods signifying nonconformity they’ll never so much as consider real dissent — dissent against what Frank sees as the concentrated economic power of the “Culture Trust,” those telecommunications and entertainment giants who, he believes, “fabricate the materials with which the world thinks.” To have suffered the calculated pseudo-transgressions of Madonna or Calvin Klein, to have winced at the Nike commercial in which the Beatles’ “Revolution” serves as a jingle, is to sense Frank is on to something. (After reading Frank, in fact, you’ll have a hard time using words like “revolution” or “rebel” ever again, at least without quotation marks.)

The urge to rebel fuels the same system they ostensibly oppose. Whether it’s in arms trade, or far less ominously, manners of dress and behavior, there are dollars to be made fighting “The Man.” And maybe making money isn’t always an altogether bad thing. But it is certainly a complication, especially for those espousing neo-Marxists ideals.

As Guy Debord observed, “revolutionary theory is now the enemy of all revolutionary ideology and knows it.” Rebel movements are a counterculture, regardless of what they call themselves.

Rebellion is Cool

We’ll begin with a quintessential icon of the branded, shiny counterculture. The Matrix. We’ve probably all seen it. Even as an example it’s a cliché, and that’s part of the point. Here’s a framed sketch of the first movie, for those that haven’t: when it first ran, it was a slick take on the alienation most suburban American youth feel, packaged within the context of the epistemological skepticism Descartes wrestled with in the 17th century. Taken out of the cubicle and into the underworld, we witness the protagonist “keeping it real” by eating mush, donning co-opted fetish fashion, and fighting an army of identical men in business suits in slow motion. The movie superimposes the oligarchic and imperialist powers-that-be atop Neo’s quest of adolescent self-mastery. A successful piece of marketing — you can be sure no one collecting profits or licensing deals let their misgivings about “the Man” keep them from paying the rent.

This is not to point an accusatory finger, but rather to show the essential dependence of the counterculture upon the mainstream, because counter-cultures are not self-sustaining, and every culture produces a counter-culture in its shadow, just as every self produces an other. Any counterculture. Punk, mod, beatnik, romantic, hippy, psychedelic, straight edge, or occult. Even the early adopters of Internet culture started a group of outsiders that shared a collective vision,

The computer enthusiasts who could only dream of an open, global network in 1990 would go on to staff the dot-coms of the next decade. The closed networks that once guarded forbidden knowledge quickly fell by the wayside, and curiosity about computers could no longer be imagined a crime.

Our cyberspace today has its share of problems, but it is no dystopia — and for that, we must acknowledge the key part played by the messy collision of table-top games, computer hacking, law enforcement overreach and cyberpunk science fiction in 1990.

This article explores the strange history of Peter Jackson games, TSR, and the FBI. But it wasn’t the only one. Shadow Run, another popular cyberpunk RPGs of the 1990s, presented one of the more seemingly-improbable of cyberpunk futures, where you could play a freelancing mutant scrambling to survive in an ecosystem of headless corporations connected through cyberspace. Sound familiar? The Matrix just represented the final translation of these and similar fringe narratives into the mainstream.

Future vision has some effect on future reality, both in the identities we imagine for ourselves and the technologies we choose to explore. They almost always have unexpected consequences. Now we carry the networked planet in our palms, granting near instant communication with anyone, anywhere and anytime, and your intended subject isn’t always the only one listening.

We shouldn’t be surprised by this feedback loop. Without laying the material, mythic, and social groundwork for a new society, counterculture cannot be a bridge; it almost invariably leads back to the mainstream, though not necessarily without first making its mark and pushing some new envelope.

This even presents something of a false dichotomy — that old models of business can’t themselves be co-opted by countercultural myths. Yesterday’s counterculture is today’s mainstream. What better way to understand the so-called revolution of iPads or social media?

Our cultural symbols and signifiers are never static. Psychedelic and straight edge can share the same rack in a store if the store owner can co-brand the fashions, and people can brand themselves “green” through their purchasing power without ever leaving those boxes or worrying about the big picture. AdBuster’s Buy Nothing Day still capitalizes on the “rebel dollar.”

Rebellion is cool. “Cool” is what customers pay a premium for, along with the comfort of a world with easy definitions and pre-packaged cultural rebellions. This process itself isn’t new. The rebel or nonconformist is probably a constitutive feature of the American imagination: original colonies were religious non-conformist, the country was founded by rebellion, the frontier, the civil war, the swinging 20s, Jazz, James Dean, John Wayne, Elvis, the list goes on. The non-conformist imagination is as paradoxically and problematically American as cowboys and indians, apple pie and racism.

The territory between aesthetic, ideals, and social movement is blurry at best. But the most well-known expression of this trend in recent history is the now somewhat idealized 1960s, a clear view of which has been obscured through a haze of pot-smoke and partisan politics. Though this revolution certainly didn’t start in the 1960s, there we have one of the clearest instances of what good bed-fellows mass advertising and manufacturing make when branded under the zeitgeist of the counterculture.

When people bought those hip clothes to make a statement, whose pockets were they lining? It’s a revolving door of product tie-ins, and it all feeds on the needs of the individual, embodied in a sub-culture. The moment that psychedelic culture gained a certain momentum, Madison Avenue chewed it up and spit it back out in 7up ads. That interpretation of what it meant to be a hippie, a revolutionary, became an influence on the next generation. The rise of Rolling Stone magazine could also be seen as an example of this — a counterculture upstart turned mainstream institution.

While advertising and counterculture get along just fine, authenticity and profit often make strange bedfellows. But they aren’t necessarily diametric opposites, either. As movements gain momentum, they present a market, and markets are essentially agnostic when it comes to ideals.

There are many examples of how troubled that relationship can be. The Grunge movement in the 90s, before it was discovered, was just a bunch of poor ass kids playing broken ass instruments in the Pacific Northwest. This was the very reason it struck disenfranchised youth — the relationship between those acts and the aging record industry in many ways seemed to reflect the relationship of adolescent Gen Xers with their Boomer parents. They retained the desire to “drop out,” as Timothy Leary had preached to the previous counterculture generation of Laguna Beach and Haight Ashbury, but without the mystical optimism of “tuning in.” Hunter S Thompson maybe presaged this transition in the quotation from Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas that’s now rendered famous to the kids of 90s thanks to Terry Gilliam’s film adaptation,

We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60’s. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling “consciousness expansion” without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously… All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create… a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody… or at least some force – is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.

I don’t think it’s a great stretch to imagine the suddenly-famous bands of the Grunge era as a part of this same legacy. Alice In Chains or Nirvana songs about dying drugged out and alone weren’t oracular prophecy, they were journal entry. And it became part of the allure, because it too was “authentic.” The greatest irony of all was that the tragic meltdowns and burn outs that followed on fame’s heels became part of the commodity. (Not that this vulture economy is new to tabloids).

Our narratives about authentic moments of aesthetic expression or innovation often depict them like volcanic eruptions: they build up and acquire force in subterranean and occluded environments, before erupting in a momentary and spectacular public display of creativity. It is telling that this quote from On The Road has become so popular, very likely cited in the papers and journals of more rebellion-minded American teens than any other from that book, “… The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, Cobain… the 27 Club is big. And quite a few more could be added if it was “the 20-something club.” Are the public self destructions of so many young, creative minds informed by this myth, or do they create it?

Maybe a bit of both. The Spectacle, in the sense Guy Debord uses it, disseminates its sensibilities, styles — a version of the truth. The particular moves ever toward the general, as facts gradually turn to legend and, eventually, myth. Mainstream appropriation is the process in which aesthetic movements affect broader society and culture. The ideals need a pulpit to reach the people, even if invariably it is fitted with guillotines for the early adopters once that message has been heard.

YOUR FATASS DIRTY DOLLAR

A message is a commodity, or it is obscure. Capitalism survives so well, in part, because it adapts to any message. If we instead think counterculture is an ideal that exists somehow apart from plebeian needs like making money, then countercultures will forever hobble itself. It doesn’t matter that these ideologies have little in common. It is the fashion or mystique that gets sold. Anti-corporate ideology sells as well as pro-. When all an ideology really boils down to is an easy to replicate aesthetic, how could they not?

Where do we draw the line between idealism and profit? The question is how individuals utilize or leverage the potential energy represented by that currency, and what ends it is applied to. Hard nosed books on business by the old guard, such as Drucker’s Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices say exactly the same thing, in a less epigrammatic, Yoda-like way: profit is not a motive, it is a means. This much, at least, doesn’t change with the changing of the (sub)cultural tides. Within our present economic paradigm, without profit, nothing happens. Game over.

Those who position themselves as extreme radicals within the counterculture framework just disenfranchise themselves through an act of inept transference, finding anything with a dollar sign on it questionable. To this view, anyone that’s made a red cent off of their work is somehow morally bankrupt. This mentality generally ends one way: howling after the piece of meat on the end of someone else’s string, working by day for a major corporation, covering their self-loathing at night in tattoos, and body-modifications they can hide. That is, unless they lock themselves in a cave or try to start an agrarian commune. None of this posturing is in any way necessary, since business rhetoric itself has long since co-opted the countercultural message. For instance, this passage from Commodify your Dissent,

Dropping Naked Lunch and picking up Thriving on Chaos, the groundbreaking 1987 management text by Tom Peters, the most popular business writer of the past decade, one finds more philosophical similarities than one would expect from two manifestos of, respectively, dissident culture and business culture. If anything, Peters’ celebration of disorder is, by virtue of its hard statistics, bleaker and more nightmarish than Burroughs’. For this popular lecturer on such once-blithe topics as competitiveness and pop psychology there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that is certain. His world is one in which the corporate wisdom of the past is meaningless, established customs are ridiculous, and “rules” are some sort of curse, a remnant of the foolish fifties that exist to be defied, not obeyed. We live in what Peters calls “A World Turned Upside Down,” in which whirl is king and, in order to survive, businesses must eventually embrace Peters’ universal solution: “Revolution!”

“To meet the demands of the fast-changing competitive scene,” he counsels, “we must simply learn to love change as much as we have hated it in the past.” He advises businessmen to become Robespierres of routine, to demand of their underlings, “‘What have you changed lately?’ ‘How fast are you changing?’ and ‘Are you pursuing bold enough change goals?’” “Revolution,” of course, means for Peters the same thing it did to Burroughs and Ginsberg, Presley and the Stones in their heyday: breaking rules, pissing off the suits, shocking the bean-counters: “Actively and publicly hail defiance of the rules, many of which you doubtless labored mightily to construct in the first place.”

Growth on its own is never a clear indicator that the underlying ideals of a movement will remain preserved. If history has shown anything, it is that successful movements spread until core message becomes an empty, parroted aesthetic, as with most musical scenes and their transition from content to fashion; or that core is otherwise so emphasized that the meaning within is lost through literalism, as we can see in the history of the world’s major religions. One version of early Christian Gnostic history — of “love thy neighbor,” “all is one,” and scurrilous rumors of agape orgies — were replaced by the Roman Orthodoxy and the authority provided through the ultimate union of State and Religion. The hippies traded in their sandals and beat up VWs for SUVs and overpriced Birkenstocks. The relationship between ideology and act is far to complicated to enter into here, but the counter-history of Communism when viewed against the backdrop of Marxist ideals is perhaps equally insightful.

Enantiodromia, the tendency of things to turn into their opposites, is as much social observation as psychological. It oftentimes seems that succeeding too well can be the greatest curse to befall a movement. When the pendulum swings far in one direction, it often turns into its opposite without having the common decency to wait to swing back the other way.

As we’ve seen, this was part of the supposed downfall of counterculture in capitalism: “suits” decided they could deconstruct an organic process and manufacture it. They could own it from the ground up.

But this isn’t necessarily so. The branding of Cirque Du Soleil points toward a third option — arts movements will be dissected in the jargon of marketing, and they must succeed on those grounds to be taken seriously or accomplish anything.

Burning Man isn’t suddenly opening its gates to the wealthy. Yacht Communism has been a part of that movement ever since it gained some mainstream appeal, likely before. Seen as an arts and cultural movement, it has been vastly successful. Seen as an example of how to create a true egalitarian society, it would be an utter failure. But that was never the point.

Two weeks at Burning Man might be fun, even transformative, but spend two years there and you’d find out what hell is like.

Buddhism and the Brain

Posted on November 22, 2015 by Reid Mukai

Many of Buddhism’s core tenets significantly overlap with findings from modern neurology and neuroscience. So how did Buddhism come close to getting the brain right?

By David Weisman

Source: Seed Magazine

Over the last few decades many Buddhists and quite a few neuroscientists have examined Buddhism and neuroscience, with both groups reporting overlap. I’m sorry to say I have been privately dismissive. One hears this sort of thing all the time, from any religion, and I was sure in this case it would break down upon closer scrutiny. When a scientific discovery seems to support any religious teaching, you can expect members of that religion to become strict empiricists, telling themselves and the world that their belief is grounded in reality. They are always less happy to accept scientific data they feel contradicts their preconceived beliefs. No surprise here; no human likes to be wrong.

But science isn’t supposed to care about preconceived notions. Science, at least good science, tells us about the world as it is, not as some wish it to be. Sometimes what science finds is consistent with a particular religion’s wishes. But usually not.

Despite my doubts, neurology and neuroscience do not appear to profoundly contradict Buddhist thought. Neuroscience tells us the thing we take as our unified mind is an illusion, that our mind is not unified and can barely be said to “exist” at all. Our feeling of unity and control is a post-hoc confabulation and is easily fractured into separate parts. As revealed by scientific inquiry, what we call a mind (or a self, or a soul) is actually something that changes so much and is so uncertain that our pre-scientific language struggles to find meaning.

Buddhists say pretty much the same thing. They believe in an impermanent and illusory self made of shifting parts. They’ve even come up with language to address the problem between perception and belief. Their word for self is anatta, which is usually translated as ‘non self.’ One might try to refer to the self, but the word cleverly reminds one’s self that there is no such thing.

When considering a Buddhist contemplating his soul, one is immediately struck by a disconnect between religious teaching and perception. While meditating in the temple, the self is an illusion. But when the Buddhist goes shopping he feels like we all do: unified, in control, and unchanged from moment to moment. The way things feel becomes suspect. And that’s pretty close to what neurologists deal with every day, like the case of Mr. Logosh.

Mr. Logosh was 37 years old when he suffered a stroke. It was a month after knee surgery and we never found a real reason other than trivially high cholesterol and smoking. Sometimes medicine is like that: bad things happen, seemingly without sufficient reasons. In the ER I found him aphasic, able to understand perfectly but unable to get a single word out, and with no movement of the right face, arm, and leg. We gave him the only treatment available for stroke, tissue plasminogen activator, but there was no improvement. He went to the ICU unchanged. A follow up CT scan showed that the dead brain tissue had filled up with blood. As the body digested the dead brain tissue, later scans showed a large hole in the left hemisphere.

Although I despaired, I comforted myself by looking at the overlying cortex. Here the damage was minimal and many neurons still survived. Still, I mostly despaired. It is a tragedy for an 80-year-old to spend life’s remainder as an aphasic hemiplegic. The tragedy grows when a young man looks towards decades of mute immobility. But you can never tell with early brain injuries to the young. I was yoked to optimism. After all, I’d treated him.

The next day Mr. Logosh woke up and started talking. Not much at first, just ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ Then ‘water,’ ‘thanks,’ ‘sure,’ and ‘me.’ We eventually sent him to rehab, barely able to speak, still able to understand.

One year later he came back to the office with an odd request. He was applying to become a driver and needed my clearance, which was a formality. He walked with only a slight limp, his right foot a bit unsure of itself. His voice had a slight hitch, as though he were choosing his words carefully.

When we consider our language, it seems unified and indivisible. We hear a word, attach meaning to it, and use other words to reply. It’s effortless. It seems part of the same unified language sphere. How easily we are tricked! Mr. Logosh shows us that unity of language is an illusion. The seeming unity of language is really the work of different parts of the brain, which shift and change over time, and which fracture into receptive and expressive parts.

Consider how easily Buddhism accepts what happened to Mr. Logosh. Anatta is not a unified, unchanging self. It is more like a concert, constantly changing emotions, perceptions, and thoughts. Our minds are fragmented and impermanent. A change occurred in the band, so it follows that one expects a change in the music.

Both Buddhism and neuroscience converge on a similar point of view: The way it feels isn’t how it is. There is no permanent, constant soul in the background. Even our language about ourselves is to be distrusted (requiring the tortured negation of anatta). In the broadest strokes then, neuroscience and Buddhism agree.

How did Buddhism get so much right? I speak here as an outsider, but it seems to me that Buddhism started with a bit of empiricism. Perhaps the founders of Buddhism were pre-scientific, but they did use empirical data. They noted the natural world: the sun sets, the wind blows into a field, one insect eats another. There is constant change, shifting parts, and impermanence. They called this impermanence anicca, and it forms a central dogma of Buddhism.

This seems appropriate as far as the natural world is concerned. Buddhists don’t apply this notion to mathematical truths or moral certainties, but sometimes, cleverly, apply it to their own dogmas. Buddhism has had millennia to work out seeming contradictions, and it is only someone who was not indoctrinated who finds any of it strange. (Or at least any stranger than, say, believing God literally breathed a soul into the first human.)

Early on, Buddhism grasped the nature of worldly change and divided parts, and then applied it to the human mind. The key step was overcoming egocentrism and recognizing the connection between the world and humans. We are part of the natural world; its processes apply themselves equally to rocks, trees, insects, and humans. Perhaps building on its heritage, early Buddhism simply did not allow room for human exceptionalism.

I should note my refusal to accept that they simply got this much right by accident, which I find improbable. Why would accident bring them to such a counterintuitive belief? Truth from subjective religious rapture is also highly suspect. Firstly, those who enter religious raptures tend to see what they already know. Secondly, if the self is an illusion, then aren’t subjective insights from meditation illusory as well?

I don’t mean to dismiss or gloss over the areas where Buddhism and neuroscience diverge. Some Buddhist dogmas deviate from what we know about the brain. Buddhism posits an immaterial thing that survives the brain’s death and is reincarnated. After a person’s death, the consciousness reincarnates. If you buy into the idea of a constantly changing immaterial soul, this isn’t as tricky and insane as it seems to the non-indoctrinated. During life, consciousness changes as mental states replace one another, so each moment can be considered a reincarnation from the moment before. The waves lap, the sand shifts. If you’re good, they might one day lap upon a nicer beach, a higher plane of existence. If you’re not, well, someone’s waves need to supply the baseline awareness of insects, worms, and other creepy-crawlies.

The problem is that there’s no evidence for an immaterial thing that gets reincarnated after death. In fact, there’s even evidence against it. Reincarnation would require an entity (even the vague, impermanent one called anatta) to exist independently of brain function. But brain function has been so closely tied to every mental function (every bit of consciousness, perception, emotion, everything self and non-self about you) that there appears to be no remainder. Reincarnation is not a trivial part of most forms of Buddhism. For example, the Dalai Lama’s followers chose him because they believe him to be the living reincarnation of a long line of respected teachers.

Why have the dominant Western religious traditions gotten their permanent, independent souls so wrong? Taking note of change was not limited to Buddhism. The same sort of thinking pops up in Western thought as well. The pre-Socratic Heraclitus said, “Nothing endures but change.” But that observation didn’t really go anywhere. It wasn’t adopted by monotheistic religions or held up as a central natural truth. Instead, pure Platonic ideals won out, perhaps because they seemed more divine.

Western thought is hardly monolithic or simple, but monotheistic religions made a simple misstep when they didn’t apply naturalism to themselves and their notions of their souls. Time and again, their prominent scholars and philosophers rendered the human soul exceptional and otherworldly, falsely elevating our species above and beyond nature. We see the effects today. When Judeo-Christian belief conflicts with science, it nearly always concerns science removing humans from a putative pedestal, a central place in creation. Yet science has shown us that we reside on the fringes of our galaxy, which itself doesn’t seem to hold a particularly precious location in the universe. Our species came from common ape-like ancestors, many of which in all likelihood possessed brains capable of experiencing and manifesting some of our most precious “human” sentiments and traits. Our own brains produce the thing we call a mind, which is not a soul. Human exceptionalism increasingly seems a vain fantasy. In its modest rejection of that vanity, Buddhism exhibits less error and less original sin, this one of pride.

How well will any religion apply the lessons of neuroscience to the soul? Mr. Logosh, like every person who’s brain lesion changes their mind, challenges the Western religions. An immaterial soul cannot easily account for even a stroke associated with aphasia. Will monotheistic religions change their idea of the soul to accommodate data? Will they even try? It is doubtful. The rigid human exceptionalism is cemented firmly into dogma.

Will Buddhists allow neuroscience to render their idea of reincarnation obsolete? This is akin to asking if the Dalai Lama and his followers will decide he’s only the symbolic reincarnation of past teachers. This is also doubtful, but Buddhism’s first steps at least made it possible. Unrelated to neuroscience and neurology, in 1969 the Dalai Lama said his “office was an institution created to benefit others. It is possible that it will soon have outlived its usefulness.” Impermanence and shifting parts entail constant change, so perhaps it is no surprise that he’s lately said he may choose the next office holder before his death.

Buddhism’s success was to apply the world’s impermanence to humans and their souls. The results have carried this religion from ancient antiquity into modernity, an impressive distance. With no fear of impermanent beliefs or constant change, how far will they go?

How Do You Prepare a Child for Life in the American Police State?

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By John W. Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“Fear isn’t so difficult to understand. After all, weren’t we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It’s just a different wolf.” ― Alfred Hitchcock

In an age dominated with news of school shootings, school lockdowns, police shootings of unarmed citizens (including children), SWAT team raids gone awry (leaving children devastated and damaged), reports of school resource officers tasering and shackling unruly students, and public schools undergoing lockdowns and active drills, I find myself wrestling with the question: how do you prepare a child for life in the American police state?

Every parent lives with a fear of the dangers that prey on young children: the predators who lurk at bus stops and playgrounds, the traffickers who make a living by selling young bodies, the peddlers who push drugs that ensnare and addict, the gangs that deal in violence and bullets, the drunk drivers, the school bullies, the madmen with guns, the diseases that can end a life before it’s truly begun, the cynicism of a modern age that can tarnish innocence, and the greed of a corporate age that makes its living by trading on young consumers.

It’s difficult enough raising a child in a world ravaged by war, disease, poverty and hate, but when you add the police state into the mix—with its battlefield mindset, weaponry, rigidity, surveillance, fascism, indoctrination, violence, etc.—it becomes near impossible to guard against the toxic stress of police shootings, SWAT team raids, students being tasered and shackled, lockdown drills, and a growing unease that some of the monsters of our age come dressed in government uniforms.

Children are taught from an early age that there are consequences for their actions. Hurt somebody, lie, steal, cheat, etc., and you will get punished. But how do you explain to a child that a police officer can shoot someone who was doing nothing wrong and get away with it? That a cop can lie, steal, cheat, or kill and still not be punished?

Kids understand accidents: sometimes drinks get spilled, dishes get broken, people slip and fall and hurt themselves, or you bump into someone without meaning to, and they get hurt. As long as it wasn’t intentional and done with malice, you forgive them and you move on. Police shootings of unarmed people—of children and old people and disabled people—can’t just be shrugged off as accidents, however.

Tamir Rice was no accident. Cleveland police shot and killed the 12-year-old, who was seen playing on a playground with a pellet gun. Surveillance footage shows police shooting the boy two seconds after getting out of a moving patrol car. Incredibly, the shooting was deemed “reasonable” and “justified” by two law enforcement experts who concluded that the police use of force “did not violate Tamir’s constitutional rights.”

Aiyana Jones was also no accident. The 7-year-old was killed after a Detroit SWAT team launched a flash-bang grenade into her family’s apartment, broke through the door and opened fire, hitting the little girl who was asleep on the living room couch. The cops weren’t even in the right apartment. Ironically, on the same day that President Obama refused to stop equipping police with the very same kinds of military weapons and gear used to raid Aiyana’s home, it was reported that the police officer who shot and killed the little girl would not face involuntary manslaughter charges.

Obama insists that $263 million to purchase body cameras for police will prevent any further erosions of trust, but a body camera would not have prevented Aiyana from being shot in the head. Indeed, the entire sorry affair was captured on camera: a TV crew was filming the raid for an episode of The First 48, a true-crime reality show in which homicide detectives have 48 hours to crack a case.

While that $263 million will make Taser International, the manufacturer of the body cameras, a whole lot richer, it’s doubtful it would have prevented a SWAT team from shooting 14-month-old Sincere in the shoulder and hand and killing his mother.

No body camera could have stopped a Georgia SWAT team from launching a flash-bang grenade into the house in which Baby Bou Bou, his three sisters and his parents were staying. The grenade landed in the 2-year-old’s crib, burning a hole in his chest and leaving him with scarring that a lifetime of surgeries will not be able to easily undo.

No body camera could have prevented 10-year-old Dakota Corbitt from being shot by a Georgia police officer who tried to shoot an inquisitive dog, missed, and hit the young boy, instead.

When police shot 4-year-old Ava Ellis in the leg, shattering the bone, it actually was an accident, but it was an accident that could have been prevented. Police reported to Ava’s house after being told that Ava’s mother, who had cut her arm, was in need of a paramedic. Cops claimed that the family pet charged the officer who was approaching the house, causing him to fire his gun and hit the little girl.

Alberto Sepulveda, 11, died from one “accidental” shotgun round to the back, after a SWAT team raided his parents’ home. Thirteen-year-old Andy Lopez Cruz was shot 7 times in 10 seconds by a California police officer who mistook the boy’s toy gun for an assault rifle. Christopher Roupe, 17, was shot and killed after opening the door to a police officer. The officer, mistaking the Wii remote control in Roupe’s hand for a gun, shot him in the chest.

These children are more than grim statistics on a police blotter. They are the heartbreaking casualties of the government’s endless, deadly wars on terror, on drugs, and on the American people themselves.

Not even the children who survive their encounters with police escape unscathed. Increasingly, their lives are daily lessons in compliance and terror, meted out with every SWAT team raid, roadside strip search, and school drill.

Who is calculating the damage being done to the young people forced to watch as their homes are trashed and their dogs are shot during SWAT team raids? A Minnesota SWAT team actually burst into one family’s house, shot the family’s dog, handcuffed the children and forced them to “sit next to the carcass of their dead and bloody pet for more than an hour.” They later claimed it was the wrong house.

More than 80% of American communities have their own SWAT teams, with more than 80,000 of these paramilitary raids are carried out every year. That translates to more than 200 SWAT team raids every day in which police crash through doors, damage private property, terrorize adults and children alike, kill family pets, assault or shoot anyone that is perceived as threatening—and all in the pursuit of someone merely suspected of a crime, usually some small amount of drugs.

What are we to tell our nation’s children about the role of police in their lives? Do you parrot the government line thatpolice officers are community helpers who are to be trusted and obeyed at all times? Do you caution them to steer clear of a police officer, warning them that any interactions could have disastrous consequences? Or is there some happy medium between the two that, while being neither fairy tale nor horror story, can serve as a cautionary tale for young people who will encounter police at virtually every turn?

No matter what you say, there can be no avoiding the hands-on lessons being taught in the schools about the role of police in our lives, ranging from active shooter drills and school-wide lockdowns to incidents in which children engaging in typically childlike behavior are suspended (for shooting an imaginary “arrow” at a fellow classmate), handcuffed (for being disruptive at school), arrested (for throwing water balloons as part of a school prank), and even tasered (for not obeying instructions).

For example, a middle school in Washington State went on lockdown after a student brought a toy gun to class. A Boston high school went into lockdown for four hours after a bullet was discovered in a classroom. A North Carolina elementary school locked down and called in police after a fifth grader reported seeing an unfamiliar man in the school (it turned out to be a parent).

Better safe than sorry is the rationale offered to those who worry that these drills are terrorizing and traumatizing young children. As journalist Dahlia Lithwick points out: “I don’t recall any serious national public dialogue about lockdown protocols or how they became the norm. It seems simply to have begun, modeling itself on the lockdowns that occur during prison riots, and then spread until school lockdowns and lockdown drills are as common for our children as fire drills, and as routine as duck-and-cover drills were in the 1950s.”

These drills have, indeed, become routine.

As the New York Times reports: “Most states have passed laws requiring schools to devise safety plans, and several states, including Michigan, Kentucky and North Dakota, specifically require lockdown drills. Some drills are as simple as a principal making an announcement and students sitting quietly in a darkened classroom. At other schools, police officers and school officials playact a shooting, stalking through the halls like gunmen and testing whether doors have been locked.”

Police officers at a Florida middle school carried out an active shooter drill in an effort to educate students about how to respond in the event of an actual shooting crisis. Two armed officers, guns loaded and drawn, burst into classrooms, terrorizing the students and placing the school into lockdown mode.

What is particularly chilling is how effective these lessons in compliance are in indoctrinating young people to accept their role in the police state, either as criminals or prison guards. If these exercises are intended to instill fear and compliance into young people, they’re working.

Sociologist Alice Goffman understands how far-reaching the impact of such “exercises” can be on young people. For six years, Goffman lived in a low-income urban neighborhood, documenting the impact such an environment—a microcosm of the police state—on its residents. Her account of neighborhood children playing cops and robbers speaks volumes about how constant exposure to pat downs, strip searches, surveillance and arrests can result in a populace that meekly allows itself to be prodded, poked and stripped.

As journalist Malcolm Gladwell writing for the New Yorker reports:

Goffman sometimes saw young children playing the age-old game of cops and robbers in the street, only the child acting the part of the robber wouldn’t even bother to run away: I saw children give up running and simply stick their hands behind their back, as if in handcuffs; push their body up against a car without being asked; or lie flat on the ground and put their hands over their head. The children yelled, “I’m going to lock you up! I’m going to lock you up, and you ain’t never coming home!” I once saw a six-year-old pull another child’s pants down to do a “cavity search.”

Clearly, our children are getting the message, but it’s not the message that was intended by those who fomented a revolution and wrote our founding documents. Their philosophy was that the police work for us, and “we the people” are the masters, and they are to be our servants. Now that has been turned on its head, fueled by our fears (some legitimate, some hyped along by the government and its media mouthpieces) about the terrors and terrorists that lurk among us.

It’s getting harder by the day to tell young people that we live in a nation that values freedom and which is governed by the rule of law without feeling like a teller of tall tales. Yet as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, unless something changes and soon for the young people growing up, there will be nothing left of freedom as we have known it but a fairy tale without a happy ending.

The Reason You Work So Hard to Participate in the Rat Race

Posted on November 15, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By M.J. Higby

Source: Waking Times

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “A man in debt is so far a slave.” Money has no intrinsic value yet we spend our days damaging our health and spirit in order to obtain it. Why do we sacrifice our well-being for it? Is it the cliché that “we just want to provide a better life for our kids than we had?” Is it just way of the civilized world? The most important question to ask, however, is what power do we have to change this way of thinking and living? The reality is simple: money is a vehicle for social control. Debt makes us good, obedient workers and citizens.

The traditional workweek started in 1908 at The New England Cotton Mill in order to allow followers of the Jewish religion to adhere to Sabbath. With the passage of The Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, the 40-hour workweek became the norm. Data from the 2013 American Community Survey showed that the average commute time in America is about 26 minutes each way. According to a Gallup poll, the average workweek in America is 34.4 hours, however, when only taking into account full time workers, that average shoots up to 47, or 9.4 hours per day during a 5-day workweek. Keeping averages in mind then, between commuting, working and figuring in an hour for lunch (usually less), that puts us at approximately 11 hours and 40 minutes for the average full time worker. If you have a family with young kids, just add in another few hours for homework, baths, etc.

When the day is done, how much time do you have for yourself? To exercise, meditate or otherwise unwind the way that all the healthy living gurus preach? And how much of yourself, your presence of mind, is left to devote to family? We give the company the heat of our most intense mental fire while our families get the smoke. Yet Jeb Bush, the 2016 GOP presidential hopeful, says we need to work more.

The answer to why we put ourselves through this daily grind is multifaceted. The most pervasive reason is workplace and societal pressures. We are raised in a matrix of sorts. The cycle starts around the age of five when we are expected to adhere to a regimented 8-hour day of school. At this age, we don’t have the intellect to question why, so we mechanistically follow the path that’s laid out. This daily path becomes engraved in our minds and becomes as automatic as the sun’s daily journey. Our school system is adept at churning out working class individuals en masse. We are taught along the way not to question authority, again adhering to the working class mentality.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are those in power. They are the ones that like to color outside the lines. Many books abound with titles such as The Wisdom of Psychopaths that illustrate how people with psychopathic traits, ones who don’t tend to follow rules, are often found in managerial roles such as CEOs all the way up to presidents of countries. With these rare manipulative, coldhearted personalities in place and the rest of us following like good sheeple without questioning, the stage is set for compliance.

If you have been in the working world long enough, then the following statement should ring true: if you work extra hours, you are a great worker; if you decline, you’re useless and apathetic. In the work world, there’s typically no in between. The pressure to succeed for the pride and benefit of the company unfortunately supersedes that of the pressure to be a good parent, sibling, son or daughter. According to a study done by the economic policy institute, between 1948 and 2013, productivity has grown 240% while income for non-managerial workers has grown by 108%. To make up for this discordance, pride of doing what’s best for the company has been employed as a motivational tactic. This tactic has been used as a sharp IV needle that’s been inserted into our veins and we have willingly ingested the contents that are injected through it. Pressure to conform toward achieving the company’s goals has overcome our will to be compensated accordingly.

The other side of this pressure comes from society as a whole outside the education/workplace. A close friend of mine works for a state court and makes about $40K/year. He is also a self-employed business owner on the off hours. I estimate that he works about 70-80 hours a week. He owns a home in a well-to do neighborhood and he drives a seventy thousand dollar luxury car. This crystallizes the saying ‘big hat, no cattle.’ But when a lie is told over and over, the lie becomes the truth.

When we look at someone who drives a luxury car and lives in an upscale part of town, we see this as success because of how often that visual of it has been pounded tirelessly into our minds. We fail to see that these are nothing but symbols of success and false ones at that. They appear real because as a society, we have been conditioned to see them this way by the advertising industry. In the book, The Millionaire Next Door, the authors annihilate this illusion. Numbers don’t lie and the statistics show that most true millionaires, those with a net worth of over one million dollars, do not own those luxuries that we typically associate with success and wealth. They view them as the reality of what they are: a depreciating liability. According to the book, the typical millionaire owns a home in the two to three hundred thousand dollar-range and a non-luxury automobile. If something goes wrong with either, they have the cash reserves to fix it. On the other hand, the commonplace owner of the luxury home and car can’t afford the roof and the tires respectively without going deeper into debt if they should need replacing.

Ownership of these symbols of wealth becomes a self-perpetuating illusion to satisfy the psychological need for acceptance. Unfortunately, human behavior dictates that emotional needs often override logical thinking. It’s been said that the borrower is slave to the debt-owner and with luxury items, debt is the rule, not the exception. Debt is healthy for those in power and contributes to a needy and thus obligated worker.

The current wisdom of slave, spend and save for retirement has only one destiny. That destiny can be summed up in three sentences. Spend your healthiest and most productive years working to support a life of materials and thus illusions of success while elevated stress damage your health. During this time, be sure to save enough money for retirement so you can enjoy those years of the subsequent poor health. And lastly, do it in the name of pride for your company and country.

I take pride in being American, as I’m sure most Americans do, however, if you’re reading this you’re likely smart enough to see the holes in the daily grind. It saps our creative potential and our physical, as well as our spiritual energy. We don’t need any studies to tell us how stressed we are and subsequently, how unhealthy we are. The physical manifestations of stress such as obesity, hypertension, heart disease, increased risk of cancer, depression, anxiety and many others tell us all we need to know. They tell us that we need a better work/life balance. They tell us that the pendulum has swung too much in the direction of work and away from life. Fortunately, there’s a way that we can take it back.

The most important way to restore this balance is to realize the power that we, as consumers, hold. Tyler Durden, the protagonist in the film, Fight Club said it best…

“…advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”

The marketing and advertising industry know, more than anyone else, what motivates the human mind and how to tap into those instinctual drives. To defend against this industries seductiveness, we need to journey within ourselves and bring to light what’s really important to us. What most of us will find is that experiences and time well spent, not materials, are what makes us happy. In the book, aptly titled Well Being, the authors Tom Rath and Jim Harter discuss how experiences have been proven to make us happier than material posessions.

We revel in the anticipation of the experience, we enjoy the experience itself and we look back on it fondly for as long as we live. We do this while the expensive car or house that we borrowed money long ago to obtain falls apart causing us to borrow more money. If we live according to the rule that everything we purchase, with the exception of a home, is acquired by cash, then we fail to become slaves to debt and by extension, work. We no longer relinquish our power to creditors.

Oscar Wilde was famously quoted as saying that anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination. Materialistically speaking, living by this notion will bind us with shackles to a life of debt servitude. When we rip those shackles of debt from our wrists, our minds become clear and we see what truly makes us happy. We spend more time with friends and family. We focus on our passions and hobbies. In essence, we get back to the foundation of what it means to be human. After all, none of us will ever arrive upon the mountain of our last moments of existence wishing we spent more time at the office. We will instead arrive wishing we completed that book, that painting or that experience with those we love most. For those can be purchased not with debt, but with time. And there is no more cunning, covert and deceitful thief of time as that villain we call debt.

About the Author

M.J. Higby practices medicine in Phoenix, AZ. He is passionate about martial arts, most notably Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He enjoys writing about mental, spiritual and physical well being and questioning the methods by which we attain it. You can reach him on Facebook and Twitter @MJHigby

Life in VALIS

Posted on November 13, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Kingsley L. Dennis

Source: Reality Sandwich

VALIS is a 1981 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. The title stands for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, which in some respects is very close to the living intelligence I discuss in this series of essays.[i] A living intelligence also suggests a non-local field view of reality. The latest findings in the quantum sciences (notably quantum mechanics and biophysics) posit a field-view understanding that is said to underpin the construction of our universe, and hence the nature of our reality.

In the past, various people — mystics, psychologists, and consciousness researchers — have alluded to this intelligence field by a variety of names: cosmic consciousness, superconsciousness, transpersonal consciousness, integral consciousness, etc. All these descriptions share common themes; namely, a heightened sense of intuition and empathy, a feeling of greater connectivity to the world and to people, a sense of ‘inner knowing’ (gnosis), and the realization that humanity exists and evolves within a universe of intelligence and meaning. Forms and intimations of these new consciousness patterns are already emerging in the world, but as yet they have not become a part of our accepted paradigm.

As Dr. Richard Bucke stated in his work Cosmic Consciousness, the early signs of this new evolutionary development have been appearing within humankind for some time:

The simple truth is, that there has lived on the earth, ‘appearing at intervals’, for thousands of years among ordinary men, the first faint beginnings of another race … This new race is in the act of being born from us, and in the near future it will occupy and possess the earth.¹

Such signs — or evolutionary mutations — have included, for example, visionaries, mystics, artists, psychics, and a smattering of young gifted children. I would posit that social and cultural events have occurred throughout world history that have served to seed higher functioning into human consciousness. Such events would have taken the form of artistic movements; scientific innovations; faith movements; cultural/social revolutions; architecture; fraternities; myths and legends; sporting fixtures, and more. All such socio-cultural impacts affect human consciousness in a way that prepares the human mind for periods of development and change. Within these seemingly random occurrences lie the components that act as the ‘technologies’ for developing human consciousness. In recent years we have seen the rapid expansion of our informational flows, and thus human awareness in general.

The increasing manifestation of a collective human consciousness — or rather a collective of minds accessing the living intelligence — is most likely to be in line with certain evolutionary necessities. Preparation has been necessary through a succession of events that form an overall pattern of mutually reinforcing stimuli aimed at raising humanity’s psychic awareness. This includes the expansion of intellect, psychological awareness, social development, humanitarianism, empathy, and creativity. These developments have also served to stimulate human intuition. In other words, there have been moments throughout recent human history that helped prepare the ‘mental soil’ for new patterns of consciousness to slowly seed and grow. According to one well-placed commentator on this subject:

The human being’s organism is producing a new complex of organs in response to such a need. In this age of the transcending of time and space, the complex of organs is concerned with the transcending of time and space. What ordinary people regard as sporadic and occasional bursts of telepathic or prophetic power are…nothing less than the first stirrings of these same organs.²

Similarly, the revered Persian poet Jalalludin Rumi stated,

New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity/Therefore, O man, increase your necessity, so that you may increase your perception.[ii]

On the whole, socio-cultural and material forces are slow to react to changes in expressions of human consciousness. Yet this is nothing new, as throughout history there have been individuals who, feeling the need for transformational change, have been caught up in social-cultural upheavals. These events and human efforts, according to Gopi Krishna, indicate a stirring of the human evolutionary impulse:

I can safely assert that the progress made by mankind in any direction, from the subhuman level to the present, has been far less due to man’s own efforts than to the activity of the evolutionary forces at work within him. Every incentive to invention, discovery, aesthetics, and the development of improved social and political organizations invariably comes from within, from the depths of his consciousness by the grace of … the superintelligent Evolutionary Force in human beings.³

I would further add that in order for continued human development to occur there are particular periods of human history wherein humanity becomes ready, or in need of, the activation of particular faculties — our evolutionary potentials. During such transitional periods humanity will acquire — or be coerced into developing — new capacities for accessing consciousness (a.k.a. the living intelligence). As in all paradigm shifts, old energies must inevitably give way to the new.

In the years ahead a new wave of young people will be manifesting a consciousness that is simultaneously open to spiritual impulses as well as to the latest in scientific research. A new generation will be growing up with the desire to develop a collective sense of wellbeing, connectedness, empathy and creative vision. What we refer to as the ‘nonlocal’ will to them be the same as integral interconnectedness, and will feel natural and normal. New patterns of thinking and a stronger sense of intuition will also be a sign that greater access to the field of living intelligence is occurring. This access is the same as, in our older language, direct interaction with nonlocal and non-ordinary states of consciousness.

The experience of direct nonlocal consciousness used to be the domain of experienced practitioners (shamans, mystics, psychics) who would have undergone rigorous and lengthy training. Our ‘everyday consciousness’ of the local view of the universe has been until now largely unprepared for the realms of non-ordinary reality. In Western civilization especially, the nonlocal mode of perception (subjective experience) has not been encouraged, or even recognized. As such it has lain dormant, atrophied, and largely left to the province of the esoteric sciences. The myopic, linear, and rational view of reality has resulted in the dominating values of competition, power, ego, and greed. A nonlocal, intuitive sense of reality, however, will be one that embraces the values of Connection ~ Communication ~ Collaboration ~ Consciousness ~ Compassion. It is my view that the new generation(s) of young people in the world will be the first to embody these values in a widespread manner — thus ushering in a new epoch for the development of human consciousness.

Connected to Living Information

It appears that the Earth is now receiving different forms of energetic impacts — especially electromagnetically — which will alter the Earth’s resonant energy signature. As the Earth’s magnetic field is not a static shield, but rather like an oscillating wave, fluctuations in the field are known to affect living systems upon the Earth. Biological bodies, being electrical energy units, are sensitive to external energetic and atmospheric variations, though usually these reactions operate at a subconscious level. Likewise, magnetic variations can have unusual effects on human consciousness. Our sciences are now understanding more and more how human life – our thoughts, emotions, and behavior — are affected directly by fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field.[iii] As the energetic resonance of the Earth alters over time, this will undoubtedly affect how human DNA calibrates itself as a newborn child enters into the world.

The knowledge that human DNA can be influenced and modulated by frequencies (sound, light, language, and thought) has been utilized by various spiritual traditions over the ages. This can be seen in the variety of exercises that utilize thought focus (prayer), sounds (music, chanting, singing), light (both natural light and produced light, such as in stained glass), and language (specific recitations such as a mantra and zikr). Similarly, various shamanic practices have alluded to the notion that DNA can be accessed through deliberate, conscious intention.⁴DNA appears to function, therefore, not only as a protein builder (the minority function) but also as a medium for the storage, receiving, and communication of information.

If we understand that information is processed by us on a neurobiological level, then we can accept that our nervous systems are channels for information. Since we know that DNA is present throughout our cellular structure, we can be sure that our complete physiology is involved in and related to external energy fields — electromagnetism, gamma bursts, solar rays, as well as consciousness fields.

It appears that part of our human DNA ‘energetic signature’ can be re-calibrated in our lifetime through exercising various techniques, as in a range of meditative practices and associated stimuli (as described above). For many people, these are the exact practices that have guided them through their lives. It may be that in past epochs direct intervention — such as wisdom teachings, mystery schools, and the like — were required in preparing individuals to access the living intelligence as the current environment alone was not sufficient to provide the catalytic trigger.

This situation, I speculate, may now be changing. The young children being born today appear to be already more connected with a form of intuitive intelligence. Contact with one’s own intuitive intelligence is another way of saying a person manifests a degree of gnosis. And true gnosis is a form of transceiving of information; that is, the receiving as well as transmitting of nonlocal information. Such gnosis is likely to be in the form of informational exchange between the human nervous system and living intelligence, which together in-form the body consciousness field. A more coherent connection between a person and the living intelligence field suggests greater potential/capacity for a self-initiated awakening, without the need for external teaching environments. It may be the case that humanity has just been waiting for the establishment of an energetically conducive environment. And that time may now be at hand.

Fields of Resonance

In preceding years the human socio-cultural environment was not conducive to individual development on a large scale. For this reason many wisdom teachings or streams of perennial wisdom had to operate quietly, or as clandestine operations. And yet the human capacity to access consciously the living intelligence field is without doubt an in-born natural ability. Only that for most people this capacity has lain dormant as, like an under-exercised muscle, it was never properly used. As one source recently pointed out — ‘The information you need is encoded in the structural makeup of every single cell in your body. Contact is there.’⁵The same source also noted that:

When you are aware of your totality, the Life-impulse will transmit to you everything that you need to know in any given situation. Its message will always come as your first spontaneous impulse. Be attentive.⁶

We now know that the entire genetic information for a human body is contained in each of the body’s many trillion cells. It may be the case — only speculative at this stage — that accessing the living intelligence also operates through connection/communication with the information that is en-folded in these communicating fields of energy. That is, our human physiology — DNA, cellular structure, nervous system, etc. — acts as a whole, coherent, transceiving apparatus that filters our consciousness from the nonlocal intelligence field. The bodily ‘transceiving apparatus’ resonates with the various energy fields that originate literally under our feet as well as above our heads.

Geologists are developing their understanding of how Earth energies are transmitted both along the surface of the crust as well as within the core of the Earth. Latest research indicates that the Earth’s core behaves more along the lines of a crystalline structure, rather than as the molten mass that many of us imagine. In 1936 it was discovered (by the seismologist Inge Lehmann) that the Earth has a solid inner core distinct from its liquid outer core. This solid inner core was deduced by observing how earthquake-generated seismic waves were being reflected off the boundary of the inner core. Likewise, the outer core was found to be liquid, as earlier suspected. However, more recent observations have shown that the inner core is not completely uniform. Rather, it contains large-scale structures indicated by seismic waves that pass more rapidly through some parts of the inner core than through others. It has even been suggested that the inner solid core is formed from iron crystals. What is known by science is that the inner core, through its dynamo action, plays a significant role in the generation of Earth’s magnetic field. Similarly, the crust of the Earth is known to support a network of energized, or ‘magnetized’ paths — variously called ley lines, Earth grid, pilgrimage routes, etc. It appears that the Earth manifests particular tracks, or routes, of increased energy upon which it is said many ancient temples, ceremonial sites, gatherings, and the like have been based. Indeed, many gatherings and buildings today continue to be based upon certain accepted energized ‘hot spots.’ Quite literally, the energy fields of the Earth pulsate under our very feet. In addition to this, above our heads the Earth’s magnetic field, interacting with solar and cosmic rays, envelopes humanity in a bubble of fluctuating energy.

The latest findings in science tell us that the Earth’s electromagnetic field is a sensitive membrane that responds to solar activity such as sun spot cycles, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and solar winds. We also know from neuroscience that human brain activity creates small electrical charges. Further, the human heart is now understood to act as a vibrant generator of electromagnetic energy. Collate this with a human nervous system and cellular structure that communicates as a coherent quantum field, then we have intrinsic resonance between human biology and our terrestrial, solar, and cosmic environments. We are literally living amidst a VALIS – Vast Active Living Intelligence System.

This understanding connects us with notions of a nonlocal field of consciousness that has been referred to over the years as the noosphere (Teilhard de Chardin; Vladimir Vernadsky); Overmind (Sri Aurobindo); and the world sensorium (Oliver Reiser). We can also consider this ‘noosphere/overmind’ — a.k.a. living intelligence field — as emerging as a form of planetary consciousness. If this is the case, then humanity may be instrumental in facilitating the emergence of a single planetary organism with a shared living intelligence (i.e., consciousness). A collectively aligned conscious and aware human civilization could become a physical channel for this living intelligence. This suggests that, as a species, we would have arrived at the point where we now needed to interiorize the evolutionary process for further development to occur.

The manifestation of consciousness through humanity appears to be undergoing an increased psychic compression that may serve to synchronize life on this planet. This process, in fact, is nothing ‘esoteric’ as it has been part of human civilization from the first day our ancestors began to worship an external presence. The convergence of human consciousness/thought patterns takes place in ceremonial worship, and is central to human prayer. If we look at the salah practice of formal worship in Islam (it constituting one of the Five Pillars of Sunni Islam), we see that this ritual prayer obliges the worshipper to pray five times a day facing Mecca. These specifically designated times of concentrated states of consciousness create an intense convergence and focused stream of energy across the globe directed toward the geographical location of Mecca. We have many other forms of consciousness convergence (or mental synchronization) upon this planet, throughout a myriad of socio-cultural-religious-spiritual ceremonies, events, gatherings, etc. For example, the ‘Global Consciousness Project’[iv], established by Roger Nelson at Princeton University, has demonstrated how human consciousness becomes collectively coherent and synchronized at moments of global emotional release. In the past, however, heightened synchronization in the human collective consciousness field was induced by external triggers[v]. It is to be speculated whether a change is underway upon this planet that will result in supporting greater coherence in the human consciousness field. If this is the case, we may suspect that this will facilitate a clearer contact between the human transceiving apparatus (the human body) and the nonlocal living intelligence field.

It is my own sense that the coming generation(s) will be among the first to awaken en masse to an era of instinctual gnosis. That is, a generation of instinctively aware young children who inherently feel an intentional connection and communion between their ‘self’ and the living intelligence. This contact will be a young person’s primary contact in their life, providing trustful feelings and instinctual guidance. This, we can hope, will assist in making our epochal and monumental planetary transition less turbulent and more coherent. The 13^th century Persian poet Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī – known in the West simply as Rumi – suggested this intentional coherence when he accurately wrote about the distinction between acquired and instinctual intelligence:

Two Kinds of Intelligence

There are two kinds of intelligence: One acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through the conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead

from within you, moving out.⁷

This ‘second knowing’ which is the ‘fountainhead’ within us corresponds to the source of living intelligence – present within our very cells. Through accessing this contact/communication we are likely to find ourselves actively engaging with a developmental impulse unfolding upon this planet.

Notes

¹Bucke, R. (1972/1901) Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind. London: The Olympia Press.

²Shah, I. (1982) The Sufis. London: Octagon, p.54

³Krishna, G. (1993) Higher Consciousness and Kundalini. Ontario, CA: F.I.N.D. Research Trust, p.166

⁴Narby, J. (1999) Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. London: Phoenix.

⁵Carey, K. (1995/1982) The Starseed Transmissions. New York: HarperCollins, p.47

⁶Carey, K. (1995/1982) The Starseed Transmissions. New York: HarperCollins, p.41

⁷Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī, ‘Two Kinds of Intelligence’, Mathnawi IV:1960-1968 (Trans. Coleman Barks)

[i] See the first part – The Rise of an Intuitive Humanity

[ii] Taken from Rumi’s Masnavi

[iii] See research material at HeartMath Institute – https://www.heartmath.org/research/research-library/

[iv] See http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

[v] Examples include the death of Princess Diana in the UK, and the World Trade Center collapse in the US.

The Crisis of the Now: Distracted and Diverted from the Ever-Encroaching Police State

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By John W. Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: culture-death is a clear possibility.”—Author Neil Postman

Caught up in the spectacle of the forthcoming 2016 presidential elections, Americans (never very good when it comes to long-term memory) have not only largely forgotten last year’s hullabaloo over militarized police, police shootings of unarmed citizens, asset forfeiture schemes, and government surveillance but are also generally foggy about everything that has happened since.

Then again, so much is happening on a daily basis that it’s understandable if the average American has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the “events,” manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from reality while the government continues to amass more power and authority over the citizenry.

In fact, when we’re being bombarded with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days, it’s difficult to stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this. As investigative journalist Mike Adams points out:

This psychological bombardment is waged primarily via the mainstream media which assaults the viewer by the hour with images of violence, war, emotions and conflict. Because the human nervous system is hard wired to focus on immediate threats accompanied by depictions of violence, mainstream media viewers have their attention and mental resources funneled into the never-ending ‘crisis of the NOW’ from which they can never have the mental breathing room to apply logic, reason or historical context.

Consider if you will the regularly scheduled trivia and/or distractions in the past year alone that have kept us tuned into the various breaking news headlines and entertainment spectacles and tuned out to the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms:

Americans were riveted when the Republican presidential contenders went head-to-head for the second time in a three-hour debate that put Carly Fiorina in a favored position behind Donald Trump; Hillary Clinton presented the softer side of her campaign image during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon; scientists announced the discovery of what they believed to be a new pre-human species, Homo naledi, that existed 2.8 million years ago; an 8.3 magnitude earthquake hit Chile; massive wildfires burned through 73,000 acres in California; a district court judge reversed NFL player Tom Brady’s four-game suspension; tennis superstar Serena Williams lost her chance at a calendar grand slam; and President Obama and Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg tweeted their support for a Texas student arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school.

That was preceded by the first round of the Republican presidential debates; an immigration crisis in Europe; the relaxing of Cuba-U.S. relations; the first two women soldiers graduating from Army Ranger course; and three Americans being hailed as heroes for thwarting a train attack in France. Before that, there was the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse; shootings at a military recruiting center in Tennessee and a movie theater in Louisiana; the Boy Scouts’ decision to end its ban on gay adult leaders; the first images sent by the New Horizons spacecraft of Pluto; and the victory over Japan of the U.S. in the Women’s World Cup soccer finals.

No less traumatic and distracting were the preceding months’ newsworthy events, which included a shooting at a Charleston, S.C., church; the trial and sentencing of Boston Marathon bomber suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; the U.S. Supreme Court’s affirmation of same-sex marriage, Obamacare, lethal injection drugs and government censorship of Confederate flag license plates; and an Amtrak train crash in Philadelphia that left more than 200 injured and eight dead.

Also included in the mix of distressing news coverage was the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custody and the subsequent riots in Baltimore and city-wide lockdown; the damning report by the Dept. of Justice into discriminatory and abusive practices by the Ferguson police department; the ongoing saga of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account while serving as secretary of state; the apparently deliberate crash by a copilot of a German jetliner in the French Alps, killing all 150 passengers and crew; the New England Patriots’ fourth Super Bowl win; a measles outbreak in Disneyland; the escalating tensions between New York police and Mayor Bill de Blasio over his seeming support for anti-police protesters; and a terror attack at the Paris office of satire magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Rounding out the year’s worth of headline-worthy new stories were protests over grand jury refusals to charge police for the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown; the disappearance of an AirAsia flight over the Java Sea; an Ebola outbreak that results in several victims being transported to the U.S. for treatment; reports of domestic violence among NFL players; a security breach at the White House in which a man managed to jump the fence, cross the lawn and enter the main residence; and the reported beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff by ISIS.

That doesn’t even begin to touch on the spate of entertainment news that tends to win the battle for Americans’ attention: Bruce Jenner’s transgender transformation to Caitlyn Jenner; the death of Whitney Houston’s daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown; Kim Kardashian’s “break the internet” nude derriere photo; sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby; the suicide of Robin Williams; the cancellation of the comedy The Interview in movie theaters after alleged terror hack threats; the wedding of George Clooney to Amal Alamuddin; the wedding of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt; the ALS ice bucket challenge; and the birth of a baby girl to Prince William and Kate.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, these sleight-of-hand distractions, diversions and news spectacles are how the corporate elite controls a population by entrapping them in the “crisis of the NOW,” either inadvertently or intentionally, advancing their agenda without much opposition from the citizenry.

Professor Jacques Ellul studied this phenomenon of overwhelming news, short memories and the use of propaganda to advance hidden agendas. “One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones,” wrote Ellul.

“Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man’s capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandists, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks.”

But what exactly has the government (aided and abetted by the mainstream media) been doing while we’ve been so cooperatively fixated on whatever current sensation happens to be monopolizing the so-called “news” shows?

If properly disclosed, consistently reported on and properly digested by the citizenry, the sheer volume of the government’s activities, which undermine the Constitution and in many instances are outright illegal, would inevitably give rise to a sea change in how business is conducted in our seats of power.

Surely Americans would be concerned about the Obama administration’s plans to use behavioral science tactics to “nudge” citizens to comply with the government’s public policy and program initiatives? There would be no end to the uproar if Americans understood the ramifications of the government’s plan to train non-medical personnel—teachers, counselors and other lay people—in “mental first aid” in order to train them to screen, identify and report individuals suspected of suffering from mental illness. The problem, of course, arises when these very same mental health screeners misdiagnose opinions or behavior involving lawful First Amendment activities as a mental illness, resulting in involuntary detentions in psychiatric wards for the unfortunate victims.

Parents would be livid if they had any inkling about the school-to-prison pipeline, namely, how the public schools are being transformed from institutions of learning to prison-like factories, complete with armed police and surveillance cameras, aimed at churning out compliant test-takers rather than independent-minded citizens. And once those same young people reach college, they will be indoctrinated into believing that they have a “right” to be free from acts and expressions of intolerance with which they might disagree.

Concerned citizens should be up in arms over the government’s end-run tactics to avoid abiding by the rule of law, whether by outsourcing illegal surveillance activities to defense contractors, outsourcing inhumane torture to foreign countries, causing American citizens to disappear into secret interrogation facilities, or establishing policies that would allow the military to indefinitely detain any citizen—including journalists—considered a belligerent or enemy.

And one would hope American citizens would be incensed about being treated like prisoners in an electronic concentration camp, their every movement monitored, tracked and recorded by a growing government surveillance network that runs the gamut from traffic cameras and police body cameras to facial recognition software. Or outraged that we will be forced to fund a $93 billion drone industry that will be used to spy on our movements and activities, not to mention the fact that private prisons are getting rich (on our taxpayer dollars) by locking up infants, toddlers, children and pregnant women?

Unfortunately, while 71% of American voters are “dissatisfied” with the way things are going in the United States, that discontent has yet to bring about any significant changes in the government, nor has it caused the citizenry to get any more involved in their government beyond the ritualistic election day vote.

Professor Morris Berman suggests that the problems plaguing us as a nation—particularly as they relate to the government—have less to do with our inattention to corruption than our sanctioning, tacit or not, of such activities. “It seems to me,” writes Berman, “that the people do get the government they deserve, and even beyond that, the government who they are, so to speak.”

In other words, if we end up with a militarized police state, it will largely be because we welcomed it with open arms. In fact, according to a recent poll, almost a third of Americans would support a military coup “to take control from a civilian government which is beginning to violate the constitution.”

So where does that leave us?

As legendary television journalist Edward R. Murrow warned, “Unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.”

Catalyzing the Shamanic Archetype

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Paul Levy

Source: Reality Sandwich

The following is excerpted from Awakened By Darkness: When Evil Becomes Your Father.

Spiritual awakenings oftentimes get precipitated by experiences of wounding, abuse and trauma, which is to say that in a genuine spiritual awakening there is often a co-joining of healthy and pathological factors. The idea is to nourish the healthy aspects of the process so that they become stronger, while allowing the pathological factors to naturally fall away as they become integrated into the wholeness of the newly emerging psyche. To quote the great Hindu saint Ramakrishna, “How to get rid of the lower self? The blossom vanishes of itself as the fruit grows, so will your lower self vanish as the divine grows in you.”

Being wounded almost always initiates and catalyzes the “shamanic archetype” to begin to form-ulate and crystallize itself in the unconscious. Shamanism is the root from which humanity’s various spiritual disciplines have issued; the earliest origins of modern psychotherapy known to history lie in archaic shamanism. When the shamanic archetype is activated, it precipitates a deeper part of the psyche to become mobilized, as people enacting the shamanic archetype journey deep inside themselves, flying on the wings of their creative imagination to become familiar with and address what has gotten activated within them. The shamanic archetype becomes catalyzed in us by a severe emotional and spiritual crisis, oftentimes organically growing out of unresolved abuse issues from childhood—this was certainly true for me.

The shamanic archetype is one of the major processes currently animated in the collective psyche of our species. We’d have to be truly “disturbed” if our emotions aren’t disturbed by the diabolic and dark shadow forces playing out their polarizing, manipulative and exploitive agendas in our world. How we hold what has gotten triggered within us as we both witness and participate in these distressing dramas determines whether the latent shamanic archetype within us manifests in service of our—and our planet’s—healing or not. Just as dreams are the unconscious’s way of balancing a one-sidedness in an individual’s psyche, the shamanic archetype is the dynamically evolving pattern of healing that is being constellated in the collective unconscious as a compensatory response to the trauma and abuse playing itself out on the world stage.

A person would never—if they were in their right mind—choose to be a shaman. It’s not the sort of thing that someone takes a weekend workshop or a class and then becomes a shaman. Becoming a shaman is a vocation, which is to say that it is something one is “called” to do; this calling is typically conceived of as coming from the spirits, i.e., from an autonomous spiritual factor deep within the psyche. Etymologically, the word “calling” has to do with hearing a voice—the voice of the other within ourselves—with which, like a living person, we develop an ongoing and deepening relationship. This inner figure has from time immemorial been referred to by a multiplicity of names—our muse, ally, guiding spirit, angel, genius and daemon, to name but a few. Attracting many names to itself is typical of something numinous; one name doesn’t quite “do it.”

If it is a true calling and we resist, however, we can fall ill, go crazy or even die; the point is that the stakes are high, and being called to shamanize is something to take seriously. It necessarily involves making a descent into the underworld of the unconscious—into the netherworld of the shadow—where we have to confront our own dark side and madness; this is why in a shamanic initiatory experience, the potential shaman looks like they’re having a psychotic break. A Siberian shaman reminds us, “If you find the spirit of madness, you will begin to shamanize.” Becoming a shaman is not for the faint of heart; the initiate typically has to go through a death experience, whose other side, if all goes well, is rebirth. The suffering involved—which is actually a purification—is intense. Speaking of what he calls “shamanic suffering,” Holger Kalweit, author of Dreamtime and Inner Space: The World of the Shaman, writes that the suffering a potential shaman goes through is “a suffering intense enough to kill.” I can totally relate; after the abuse from my father, it was as if the doors of my unconscious opened up, unleashing formidable energies that easily could have killed me.

A key part of the shaman’s initiation is to come to terms with evil. Mircea Eliade refers to shamans as “pre-eminently the antidemonic champions; they combat not only demons [who Eliade refers to as “the true enemies of humanity”] and disease, but also black magicians…. What is fundamental and universal is the shaman’s struggle against what we could call ‘the powers of evil.’” In my life, my encounter with the evil that came through both my father and psychiatry were the forms that my descent into the underworld took; if I hadn’t re-contextualized these experiences as being part of a deeper shamanic initiatory process, I would have been stuck in and personally identified with these experiences in their literal rather than symbolic form, possibly for the rest of my life, which would have been truly tragic. Von Franz wrote, “The symbolic inner experiences which the Shaman lives through during his period of initiation are identical with the symbolic experiences the man of today lives through during the individuation process…curing the soul of individuals and collective states of possession is really the principal task of the Shaman.” The mission of the shaman is to heal—both individually and collectively—the state of possession by unconscious psychic forces of the members of their community, as well as the community as a whole.

In indigenous, shamanic communities, the role of the shaman does not exist in isolation, but as a role that the community collaboratively dreams up for the health and sanity of the wider community. The role of the shaman is relational in nature—only taking on its meaning in relation to others as well as the surrounding environment—not something that exists independent of the field in which the shaman lives. Being a role in the field, in the ideal sense the position of shaman need not be monopolized by or restricted to one person; a shaman is a role that any and everyone can pick up as we become more creative and fluid within ourselves. In a genuinely healthy community, roles are very fluid, which is to say—in a form of “collective shamanism”—the role of the shaman can potentially be played out at various times by each of its members. Because the role is being shared by all of its members, different people can play the shamanic role without necessarily having to descend into the depths of hell; they are required, however, to self-reflectively deal with how their own unconscious darkness is contributing to the collective shadow that is getting dreamed up in and through the community.

We are all potentially “shamans-in-training,” in the sense that we are all being called—both individually and collectively—to deal with the darkness that seems to be ruling our world. The formless archetype of the shaman/healer is thirsting for sentient instruments to express and actualize itself in embodied form. Recognizing, and saying “Yes” to the deeper shamanic calling that is pulsing through our veins inspires us to breathe life into and incarnate the figure of the shaman who lives within us. We are being invited by the universe to step into our shamanic “garments” and consciously participate in our own evolution. Instead of our ritual implements being drums and rattles, however, as “modern-day shamans” our accessories might be something like the keyboard of a computer or the tools of multi-media, as we work to inspire change in the underlying consciousness of the field by a keystroke or the creative use of a video camera or website. Co-operating with our deeper shamanic calling constellates the universe to support us in our endeavor, as the universe itself is the sponsor of our calling. Assenting to our calling gets us “in-phase” with ourselves such that we become our own best ally.

The psyche is easily dissociable; due to trauma it can readily fragment into seemingly separate parts. Being wounded creates a dissociation in us, in the sense that we dis-associate from and lose connection with parts of ourselves. People of shamanic temperament, however, are able to turn the psyche’s natural ability to dissociate to their advantage. They are able to purposely dissociate, which is very different from the unconscious pathology of dissociative disorder. The shaman’s ability to dissociate, and fluidly travel between different reference points within themselves helps them to re-member their dis-membered selves, as well as to retrieve the split-off, and hence unconscious, soul of the community.

A shaman often suffers from the plight of their people. Due to their “standing” at the gateway between the conscious and unconscious aspects of their own mind as well as the community at large, they are able—like a healing enzyme—to act as agents transforming and raising unconscious contents into conscious awareness, making these contents available to the community. I think of Jung—a deeply shamanic personality—who was afflicted with dreams and visions of bloodbaths and catastrophes in Europe which he wasn’t able to understand until soon thereafter the First World War broke out, and he realized that his personal experiences reflected the collective situation that was brewing in the cauldron of humanity’s unconscious.

People going through a spiritual awakening/shamanic initiation find themselves, as if living in an archetypal fairy tale, inhabiting a deeper mythic realm where everything that happens is in-fused with deeper meaning. This deeper meaning doesn’t come from outside of us; we are the arbiters of meaning—“meaning-generators.” Instead of being mute and having no say in things, our world is always speaking to us symbolically, speaking “through” things (so to speak); this can take a little while to interpret, integrate and to learn to navigate. The goal is to bring together the two worlds so that we can fluidly travel between the everyday world of ordinary reality and the deeper mythological, symbolic realm, a dimension which is always having its say—the question is whether we recognize what is being said. This is analogous to having a fluid back and forth, give and take relationship between the conscious and unconscious minds within ourselves.

A key part of the shaman’s vocation is to be able to “see” the spirits, which is to be able to recognize and develop relationship with the forces of the unconscious. Wetiko can be thought of as having its own spirit; this is why I am continually pointing out the importance of “seeing” how this spirit operates—out in the world, through others, via our relationships and within our own mind. Seeing “the spirits,” which von Franz points out is today simply called “the unconscious” takes away their autonomy and seeming power over us, while expanding the light of our consciousness in the service of individuation. The more individuated we become, the wider is our consciousness of the realm of the unconscious which spreads out before us in, as and through the world. To wake up to the dreamlike nature of reality is to realize that we are surrounded on all sides by the unconscious; dreams themselves are the unmediated expression of the unconscious. The process of becoming conscious doesn’t banish the unconscious, but rather, aids us in developing the trust to give ourselves over to it time and again, thereby learning how to receive its gifts of wisdom. When we shed light on the darkness of the unconscious, it’s not that all of its contents become illumined; rather, there becomes a more permeable boundary for the unconscious contents to emerge into consciousness, as well as for consciousness to step into the world of the unconscious.

The shaman is akin to and a kin of the figure of the artist. To quote anthropologist Carlton Coon, “Whatever else he may be, the shaman is a gifted artist.” Mythologist Joseph Campbell draws a parallel between artists and ancient shamans when, speaking about modern artists, he says that “the whole unconscious has opened up and they fall into it.” We continually deepen our individuation only insofar as we don’t cling to our conscious experience, but allow ourselves to submerge into the depths of the unconscious however and wherever it shows up, trusting that we will be able to creatively express—and hence, become conscious of—what is moving us. As Jung points out, “The unconscious no sooner touches us than we are it—we become unconscious of ourselves.” This ongoing dynamic of falling into and giving shape and form to the unconscious, then stepping out of and contemplating what has just come through us—going back and forth between the subjective and objective domains—furthers our realization of the unconscious, both within ourselves and in the world at large. Through this process, the shamanically-oriented person is adding consciousness to and assimilating the unconscious in the field, while simultaneously metabolizing the unconscious parts of themselves that have been activated.

The shamanic personality’s ability to fluidly navigate back and forth between the conscious mind and the deep waters of the unconscious contrasts with people who fall into their unconscious and, unfortunately, become overwhelmed by the experience, losing both the ability to creatively express their experience, as well as their sense of self. The shaman learns to swim, surf and snorkel in the waters of the unconscious while the failed shaman, whatever label we call them by (schizophrenic, bi-polar, etc.), drowns in the depth of its waters. This is why it is profoundly important, as Jung realized, to have a strongly developed sense of ego when we encounter these deeper, more powerful realms, for if we don’t we can easily get swallowed up and lose ourselves. We need a strong sense of self in order to get in relationship with these powerful energies.

As the shaman travels between the worlds of the conscious and the unconscious, the boundary between these two worlds becomes more permeable. There is no clear demarcation point between the conscious and the unconscious; an un-boundaried continuum, one starts where the other leaves off. In their journey, shamans create a bridge so that the conscious mind and the unconscious can more easily pass between, influence and illumine each other, which transfigures everything. Over time these two seemingly opposite realms begin to become indistinguishable from and turn into each other, while at the same time, paradoxically, becoming more distinct from each other. Inseparably and reciprocally co-arising in their interaction, both the conscious and unconscious minds are dynamically contained within the wider totality of psyche.

The psyche is simultaneously “historical”—in the sense that its development can only be understood in the context of its personal and collective past—and “trans-historical,” which is to say that the psyche atemporally abides outside of linear time, yet simultaneously generates events experienced by humans in historical time. Though within its very structure is written the whole history of humanity, the psyche is at the same time teleological, in that it is purposeful, seeking its own actualization. Jung writes, “Anything psychic is Janus-faced: it looks both backwards and forwards.” The psyche is like a pivot through which, both on the individual and collective levels, we choose either to look backwards and re-create the unhealed past, or step into consciously participating in our own creative future evolution in the present. In a spiritual awakening/shamanic initiation, it is as if we are connecting with a healed, whole and awake part of us that, atemporally speaking—outside of linear time—has always existed. We begin to cooperate with and surrender to a deeper impulse within us, as if we are allowing ourselves to be drawn into the strange attractor that is ourselves, a process which can only take place in the present moment. By becoming aware of and stepping into this higher-dimensional part of ourselves, we are attracting this particular part of ourselves, with its corresponding universe, into materialization; this is the sacred power of dreaming.

This seemingly bi-polar process of oscillating between the polarities of the conscious and the unconscious is an apt description of the shaman’s journey between the worlds. As this process unfolds in and over time, a center or mid-point emerges, which contains, embraces and unites the opposites: this is, in Jung’s language, “the Self.” The Self is an expression of the intrinsic wholeness within us, a wholeness which already exists but is paradoxically brought forth into consciousness via this process of collaboration with the unconscious. At points this descent can be experienced as if we are just recursively playing out our unhealed abuse issues (the iteratio stage of alchemy), but is in actuality a deepening descent down a spiral, a circumambulation which ultimately illumines the center point—the Self. Transforming consciousness, the Self acts like a magnet, attracting to itself that which is proper to it. Jung comments, “We can hardly escape the feeling that the unconscious process moves spiral-wise round a center, gradually getting closer, while the characteristics of the center grow more and more distinct. Or perhaps we could put it the other way round and say that the center—itself virtually unknowable—acts like a magnet on the disparate materials and processes of the unconscious and gradually captures them as in a crystal lattice…. Often one has the impression that the personal psyche is running around this central point like a shy animal, at once fascinated and frightened, always in flight, and yet steadily drawing nearer.”

As the shaman’s accomplishment deepens, they are able to tap into and participate in the primordial, timeless source of creativity itself. A person’s ability to heal and facilitate healing for others depends upon their ability to link to the larger world of the “pleroma” (a field of abundant potential, boundless luminosity and creativity, and infinite sentience). Approaching the numinosity of the pleroma is therapeutic at its core—what Jung calls “the real therapy”—as it releases us from what he calls “the curse of pathology.” Connecting with this more expanded perspective within us alchemically transforms what seemed to be pathological into something expressing and leading us closer to the numinosum.

Archetypally, shamans take on and into themselves the illness of those they are working with, falling ill themselves. As a result of the abuse from my father, I feel like I have been sick for years, suffering under the burden of a shamanic sickness. The wetiko bug that used my father to get into me has activated my psychic immune system to go into overdrive to deal with this toxic invader. I have “taken on” my father’s pathology, which carries a double meaning: to “take on” means to confront, as well as to take within myself (so as to suffer with). I’ve been slowly transmuting the virulence of the wetiko germ that I “caught” from my father; this book is my latest attempt to shed light on—and “make light” (of)—what has gotten triggered within me. What makes a shaman an accomplished shaman, however, is that they are somehow able to work with and metabolize the illness, integrating it into the wholeness of their being and subsequently finding their way back to health; this process nonlocally helps the person(s) who were originally ill. In addition, this helps the whole universe, by eliminating that personalized quanta of sickness from the collective field—“lightening” the shadow in the collective unconscious ever so slightly.

I am in no way claiming that I am an accomplished shaman—this is true only in my wildest dreams—but what I am saying is that the archetype of the shaman—which is related to the archetype of the wounded healer—is one of the deeper processes that has shaped and given meaning to the experiences in my life. In addition, the shamanic archetype is one of the fundamental underlying patterns that is informing all of our processes, both individually and collectively, as a species. Humanity as a whole is going through a profound shamanic initiation of epic proportions, writ large on the world stage as well as within each of our hearts and minds. When we realize this, we can connect with each other so as to collaboratively help each other successfully pass through our shared ordeal. What a radical idea!

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