by Donald Croft Brickner
And so, we enter The Storm.
The early anticipatory stages of Downward Spiral have arrived.
The Gulf Oil Crisis has proven itself to be our first fully-manifested Trigger Event of America in Collapse. It is but the first of several highly probable Trigger Events to follow, as early as this summer.
Ergo: here we go. It is now semi-officially Showtime.
Everybody hang on to your ballcaps.
* * * * *
We need not turn this extensive process into some operatic or melodramatic Cecil B. DeMille production — with a total “cast” figuring into the hundreds of millions — but given our penchant and appetite for End Times, 2012 and literally thousands of (mostly silly) YouTube videos,.our sense of deportment in reaction to ongoing crises appears unlikely … which is to say, improbable.
At the same time, no effort is being made here to downplay the severity, and even loss of life, that actually is going to be featured by our media during this otherwise mostly environmental, economic and psychological downward spiral. We are, after all, the creators of the axiom, if it bleeds, it leads.
Oh, and don’t we just love our Little Melodramas these days!
What is going to be called for on all fronts in the months ahead will be clarity, rationality, empathy and context. It is the latter category that will prove to be most commonly MIA.
Hysteria has already begun to grab center stage here in the U.S.
It’s going to get far worse.
* * * * *
Don’t think for a second that I’m making light of the tragedies already well underway along our state coasts in the Gulf of Mexico. There’s a marked difference between real and imagined.
Those I’m referencing above are this nation’s doom-and-gloomers. This is their time to shine.
* * * * *
My efforts from here on will increasingly begin to narrow down to context, all but exclusively.
I’m not going to be receiving a lot of meaningful assistance in this endeavor, either. That’s mostly because we don’t view our nation’s “philosophical resources” (what there are of them) as amounting to more than a hill of beans — and so even those prospective resources sought early employment elsewhere (surprise, surprise). We simply don’t “do” philosophy in America!
Where’s the profit in that? Regardless of differences in their points of view, most philosophers would insist that we begin to Speak the Truth. Or, at the very least, we begin to try.
Only we don’t. We still largely suck at truth-speaking. It may be because we’ve forgotten how.
Just ask some Masters of Business Administrations — and we’ve got an overflow of such folks — what the forthcoming financial collapse will mean to the rest of us. Good luck with that.
I will, however, promise you that in the days ahead, this hill of beans will show up dependably.
That may not seem like much of a promise, I know — but what-the-hay, there you have it.
* * * * *
Please believe me when I tell you that I am constantly reading and re-reading my own essays even years after they’ve been published (all online). It’s a way I have of gauging what I seem to be good at, and what I might best be advised to drop by the wayside. There are no guide books to follow, goodness knows. And for sure, I’m at my best as a prognosticator when I stick to The Big Picture.
I’ve long been aware of my talents in this regard — and I strive to avoid overshooting my limits and abilities. Sometimes I fail in that regard. I ask you to please cut me some slack, when it’s appropriate.
I rarely, if ever, waffle in my Big Picture “anticipations,” however. When I do waffle — and I am usually sorry about it, in retrospect — I end up returning to a perspective I first introduced, but then had put aside, for whatever the reason. One of these, not too long ago, appeared in the second in this series of essays, America in Collapse, Mile Marker 2: the Split Widens: https://www.groundreport.com/Opinion/America-in-Collapse-Mile-Marker-2-the-Split-Widens_4/2909499.
While the intended focus of that essay was apt, and continues to be — the ever-/still-widening gulf between the far right from the far left politically (and, more importantly, sociologically) — I strongly suggested we were right on the cusp of a period of explosive violence in America.
Yet in a subsequent essay, I broke away from that position, at least in terms of severity. What evidence I had seen to support my making such an observation to begin with appeared to depart the premises. Only recently have I come to see, however, that I was probably right in the first place:
As a sub-topic beneath the subject of hysteria, mentioned above, major violence is coming.
And I’m not being frivolous at all when I caution you strongly to stay-the-hell out of its way.
This category five tornado, after appearing on our various news screens, will blow itself out in due time. Relatively speaking, that won’t be too long. It will simply run out of participants.
There is a Big Picture reason to “justify” its existence — but we’ll not get into much of that now.
The good news is, however, once this dark energy dispels itself, it will finally be expended.
It needs to be. It’s just been left hanging around in the air, unaddressed. And, yes, we do have to go through this.
All of this stuff — and I mean, all of it — are hoops to be jumped through on our joint pathways toward our ultimate cultural embracement of Humility.
Our young people deserve a far better future than the one we’ve brought to them.
We’re nowhere near either a bright future, or Humility … yet.
I did mention this was a process, didn’t I?
* * * * *
Encounters with the Unanticipated:
What’s becoming apparent is the realization that Tributary Trigger Events — in “Probability Theory-ese” — are very, very difficult to diagnose in advance. Tributary Trigger Events are those that result from Primary Trigger Events, exemplified nowadays by the Gulf Oil Crisis.
Potential Tributary Trigger Events off of that include destructive dents to the environment, the health of our Gulf coast residents, prospective lost housing and unemployment, among a litany of other possibilities.
Probability Theory (don’t bother looking it up; I’ve yet to fully dot its I’s or cross its T’s) insists that Tributary Trigger Events remain in a fluid, or non-manifested, state — even after a Primary Trigger Event itself has manifested in its early stages.
Non-manifested Trigger Events include, for the time being, anyway, the Euro “credit crunch” in southern Europe and Greece. All it took to shift that Trigger Event into a quiet Collapse-Held-in-Abeyance was a statement by the Chinese government that it wouldn’t call in its debt chips.
Don’t believe for a moment, however, that that prospective Trigger Event has been resolved. And there are others that have yet to even show up on our horizons.
We are already in the chute, downward-spiral wise — and we’re not even close to our one-week-long free fall into splat: hitting bottom. That bottom still remains nowhere in sight — for the time being.
Compare “us” to a bunch of very angry (or very goofy) active alcoholics. We’re still good and plastered, thank you very much — and still pretty mindless about how much trouble we’re in.
Or what we’re going to be in.
* * * * *
Because forthcoming Trigger Events will at times remain invisible to us, up until the time they are ready to erupt (note the similar symbolic, Gaian-esque “language” etched into our planet’s current physical disruptions … which one day could likely prove to be a reflection of us, its so-called [and would-be] stewards), there will be little we can do to ameliorate these events.
That’s not a mistake — on God’s part, or anyone else’s.
These “invisible” Trigger Events are in a state of fluidity now so that they can’t be circumvented — even by our cleverest-of-the-clever Wall Street movers and shakers, who have come up with everything they can dream up to maintain the status quo, and enable those of us afflicted into remaining in our addictions to money, materialism or whatever-else.
What will become clearer as this process increasingly manifests is that something — some thing — will appear to be “operating” from behind the scenes of our reality, “causing” all of this to happen. It’s an assumption that is apt to become pretty popular down the road, at least out here in the field.
Don’t expect it to be embraced, much less covered, though, by secular news agencies.
Even now, most of our media are in a knock-down, drag-out battle over purported “relevancy.”
Not all of these sources will survive, it should go without saying.
We’re in the process now of pruning our journalism trees.
That’s going to continue for quite some time.
* * * * *
How wrapped-up in our relentlessly attention-grabbing melodramas will we become?
We’ll be so-o distracted, that when x-number of UFOs cease to remain unidentified (in a few years; or less), we’ll characterize their arrival — and even “first contact” — as anti-climactic!
* * * * *
…Oh, what.
* * * * *
That isn’t to imply any of this will prove to be a mirage, either, however. We have so much to learn in the days ahead!
I’m becoming increasingly confident now in making such a statement.
Hell, we’re in the chute!
Downward Spiral is no longer just a theory. This initial singular Trigger Event is herein on the Nightly News — at least until the majority of us come to grow sick over hearing about it.
We do that sort of thing, too.
Does anyone think the worst environmental disaster in U.S. History is just going to go the way of the hula hoop?
Folks: this is real history. We’re living it!
* * * * *
New Orleans is a curiosity in the middle of all of this. That it’s proven to be ground zero now in two unrelated life-changing events already is worthy of some notice.
My very strong guess is that that’s going to continue to be. Only I’m not sure why.
I had a remarkable dream almost 30 years ago in which New Orleans was the focal point in an America that had been forced to declare bankruptcy (…and keep in mind, there is no law requiring that our federal government be required to maintain a balanced budget; not like our states, counties and cities). So if it ever does go bankrupt, one suspects it will do so as a best option.
In that dream — what I remember of it, which isn’t much (…I lost most of it upon awakening!) — one way our federal government got “off the hook” from its temporary bankruptcy predicament had to do with … water overflowing, or pouring down, from Lake Titicaca in Peru … and some nation actually buying — and thus owning — something like a chunk of the wetlands off of New Orleans! … whose residents appeared to be healthy, and otherwise getting on with their lives!
I was being shown all of this … by whom, I have no idea.
To this day, that remains the most otherworldly dream I’ve had in my life. It had substance.
When I awoke, I recall being both amazed at all of the ingenuity I was being shown, along with being flooded with a lot of “correct”-sounding and complex information and sights — all of which I lost almost immediately.
Now some of it is beginning to make sense. And I get pieces of that dream back in teensy dribbles.
…That, or via some other source. I don’t lose sleep over what it may or may not be.
* * * * *
Listen: whatever changes we opt to embrace in the years to come won’t be about our absorbing new “facts.” It will be more like growing up from our adolescence.
And, you know what?
I find I just keep ducking away from the obvious, here — in part so as to not alienate agnostics and atheists who may be reading this:
Let’s just call this whole scenario an historic “Spiritual Happening,” and be done with it.
We won’t be far wrong, if we do.
That’s a clear-headed promise — from your friendly neighborhood philosopher.
Why that‘s so, however — the “clear-headed” part — I have no bleeping idea.
It simply is … what it is.
And frankly, so is this gig.
# # #