Monday, June 3, 2013

Principles for the Swift Transformation of Systems That Are Out of Time

Principles for the Swift Transformation of Systems

That Are Out of Time


Part One:  The Need for Positive Subversion

There are presently abroad in the world forces of negative subversion, of creeping nihilism, that recognize no concern as legitimate, unless it be one of business; that keep no trust, unless it has a large enough lobby; that honor no profit, unless it is larger this quarter; whose surety is the submissive individual, and whose unshakeable faith lies in the manipulation of global markets and the current fads of econopolitical crisis management.
 
We live in a society of institutions, which, having replaced individual responsibility, assume the individual irresponsible, and so, by means of fear, seek to repress the depravity that fear itself creates.
 
Neurotic fear is the subconscious result of insufficient self-realization.  Self-realization is the responsibility of each person, and negative subversion is the result of many persons shirking their responsibility, by identifying the self with the society, rather than identifying the society with the self.
 
The neurotic fear which allows the individual to relinquish his or her responsibility to institutions is that which allows him or her to defend them with blind ferocity, despite their increasing abuse of his or her individual rights.  We live in a society fractioned by special interests, together playing a zero sum shell game, which serves the purposes of preserving the status quo and the illusion of individual freedom at the same time.
 
The economy is the basic institution of a society whose basic drive is material possession, for people strive to possess matter when they do not possess what matters; material possession is the impoverished surrogate for self-possession.  Our economy is based on the premise that humanity’s resources are limited, while their desires are unlimited, and that this situation, by manipulation, can be kept this way.
 
The most profitable manufacture of our economy and its media are the illusions that more is better, that novelty is progress, that competition is the best means of survival, and that the individual is powerless in the face of institutions.  We are thereby conditioned to be so chronically discouraged and distracted, that we fail to work for desperately needed social change.
 
We have become a society of neurotic, materialistic monads, who believe that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and that eternal vigilance means always looking out for Number One; who believe that freedom is the ability to choose between thirty brands of toothpaste, rather that the ability to self-determine and fulfill one’s own obligations in harmony with the greater whole.
 
Technology, the mere replication and amplification of human faculties, threatens us by its possibly exceeding and replacing them and us.  We then, having fear of our own higher faculties that mere technology cannot readily replicate, feel further threatened by the sudden need to use them in resolving the global crisis that technology itself helps to create, then distracting ourselves with technological toys.
 
For the first time in recorded history, human society, through the agency of technology, is dominated by one international complex of institutions:  the global governmental/military/industial complex.  This international cartel, in trespassing beyond the boundaries of nations, has also trespassed beyond the boundaries of manageability and morality.
 
We are lulled dull by goods and services, until more goods’ production is no service, and services provided are no good.  We have equated quality of life with quantity of what we can possess.  We do not value what we have — we now consume it, consumed by greed that feeds on gripping fear.
 
Well we should fear, when we, the earth’s “elite”, feed on the stark starvation of humanity, both in the poorer nations and within ourselves.  Perverted by our ruthless lust for power, we in blind arrogance have raped the earth, and she now brings forth evil prodigies, gross national products of our false economy.
 
When one person slays another person, it is called murder and punished; if many people kill many other people, it is called “war” and honored.  If one race exterminates another race, it is called “genocide”: if an international arms race destroys the human race, it is called “national defense” and condoned. 
 
There is strength in numbers, whenever humanity does not count.  We, in our ignorant knowledge of nature, have become so separated from our own as to forget that all of the power and wealth of the world is not worth the price of one human life.  We, who of truth have made trite travesty, have thereby made of miracles a myth.  Such miracles are what we greatly need, if those of our own making are not to destroy us:  not those that shake the earth, but shake our hearts; not those that create wonder, but are wonder.
 
We have taken everything on the earth, but the responsibility for destroying it.  We, who have created this evil, must with divine help destroy it, before it destroys us.  The evil must end where it began:  within each of us.  And our acknowledgement of the negative within is useless, unless followed by positive action withal.  There is no difference between those who do evil and those who do nothing, assuming that good will take care of itself.  Good will take care of itself, if evil does not take care of it first. 
 
We, who have in alienation planned the obsolescence of goods, must together plan the obsolescence of evils, or suffer soon an obsolescence that was never planned.
 
Continue Reading At ....... http://nowisthetime.us/positive-subversion/