by Donald Croft Brickner
We now live in a Fallen World.
Most of us, however, don’t know it.
Yet.
A Fallen World is one whose ethics and morals have slipped into, what — “rot,” let’s call it.
Problem is, we not only aren’t yet ready to embrace our down-dated new status (which, BTW, isn’t hopeless), but the objective and anecdotal evidence isn’t sufficiently enough-in-our-faces to support such an observation — by our media, our schools, our scientists, our pop culture, or our government.
Again: Yet.
* * * * *
Our planetary cultures are circling the drain, prior to sliding into a full downward spiral.
Once you hear that figurative “glugging” sound — similar conceptually, say, to a flushed toilet’s soiled water level dropping beneath the drain opening at the bottom of the bowl (apologies!) — our free fall into “Fallen World” will by then already have passed every conceivable fail safe point which might have at least impeded it — and we’ll then re-emerge on a Crashed World.
At such a moment, being in a state of “toast” — where we are, right now — transforms into being in a state of soppy, fibrous goo. Suffice to say, that’s worse than toast.
Forget about mile markers. We won’t even be able to see them any longer on our new chosen path.
Yes, I did use the word, “chosen.” Seriously — can anyone pose a substantive argument that the inhabitants of Earth at this moment in time are victims here? Nossir: We brought this on ourselves — only we’re not yet ready to admit that, either. (Some of that which we brought we “allowed” to happen. Doing nothing is, itself, an action — one which we still perform daily.)
Put another way: it’s time to wake up. There’s nothing more annoying than the prospect of hearing helpless screaming voices nearby whining their way downwards in a circular free fall.
Me, I far prefer being around courageous people during unique and devastating crises.
It’s not like we haven’t had our fair share of warnings — which should have kicked in (if it was going to) the very moment President Barack Obama took office a year and two-thirds ago.
Unfortunately, our talented, bright and mostly-well-meaning new president had a major call to make — and in a very short space of time: Save the Piggy Piggy Piggies who brought us all to this point through greed, hubris, ambition, insulation, entitlement and arrogance, in the first place (…and thus save whatever American jobs might possibly be saved that January — which was several months after the collapse of markets first began)..? Or: just let the whole house of cards tumble, and allow whatever bottom awaited us then to arrive — splat! splat-splat!! — replete with its probable boundless array of human tragedies?
President Obama’s decision should have been, in retrospect, to just let the whole damned economy splinter into smithereens along with all of the Too-Big-To-Fails — and be done with it.
But he couldn’t: our Fallen World Justice would have impeached him, and maybe added some jail time as an added kick in the backside — by the very same then-power-challenged political thugs largely responsible believe it: we’re going to end up just fine for insisting on saving more free money for the decadently rich they so-o adore. Talk radio and character-defects-driven Fox News, et al, took care of the rest: blind, plump-plus, hate-spewing followers remain in abundance. Mister Obama’s was an impossible decision, both then and now. The Piggy Piggy Piggies saw to it.
(As an aside: when’s the last time you ever heard, oh, a Republican apologize for anything? It’s just not in the party’s playbook. It’s not in BP’s, either. They’ve agreed to clean things up and pay everybody affected for their various little faux pas this summer [they won’t do either], but they’ve never once apologized — and they’ve come right out and said they’ll never plead guilty for their actions. Oil barons and other crass profiteers simply won’t be soiled by this world’s “peasants” — their word for we little people, who they detest and appear determined to crush.)
It’s take from the poor, and give to the rich. That’s their consistent calling card to watch out for.
C’mon, guys. What’s it take to get you justly riled up over the real villains here? Mister Obama isn’t one of them. Quite the reverse. He’s been lumped in with us peasants by the bad guys — and I mean, “guys.” I’d be amazed if there were very many women, if any, among their ranks.
Our fix-everything-mandated president opted to go with temporarily saving jobs (along with the existing landscape of America), and so gave tons of money money money to a bunch of Piggy Piggy Piggies.
And that’s the truth.
* * * * *
Who are the PPPs? Ninety-nine-point-something percent of Americans have no clear idea (and that includes me) — although conspiracy theories abound on the Internet.
Here’s an educated guess: While they’re not Wall Street (to include banks, credit cards, etc.) nor Big Oil nor The Military Industrial Complex, their ranks largely muscle in from those three arenas — and the Piggy Piggy Piggies have effectively infiltrated our U.S. government without yet fully taking it over. They operate out of the shadows, whispering in selected highly-placed ears. To date, no president except Jimmy Carter has dared talk back to them publicly — and you saw what happened to him.
Now, here’s some reasonably good news:
Some two and one-half years ago (way-in-advance) I forewarned of a three-tiered event I then labeled “The Great Leveling” (a phrase, BTW, used by “sleeping prophet” Edgar Cayce shortly after the stock market collapse of 1929 [!] — which is a little weird, because I’d never heard of it before I wrote about it in early 2008). We began lollygagging through Phase I — the “collapse” (a sociological and economic downward spiral ending in hitting bottom, just like materialistic addicts would certainly embrace if granted the opportunity) about seven months later.
Phase 2 (not yet here) is “standing in figurative rubble,” trying to figure out what to do next … while Phase 3, recovery, follows (which I’ve stated could begin as early as January 2013 via celebrating the entire 12 months as our first-ever Year of Jubilee). And, yes, Phase 3 is all but assured of being very good news. A big part of our task will be to get from here … to there.
I’ll address Phase 2 again shortly, because there remains an unresolved issue in its execution that continues to greatly trouble me.
Standing around “in rubble” won’t be as easy as it implies. It will be the scariest time for most.
* * * * *
I’ve never backed away from my predictions — merely dumped “The Great Leveling” phrase as too dorky-sounding.
But the predicted conclusive free fall, en route to collapse (all part of Phase 1), and close now to (finally!) manifesting, might inspire us, at long last, to just do away with The Root of All Evil:
Money.
I can repeat that.
Why would that be a good thing? Well, for starters, we would leave all of the money money money to the PPPs — Lord knows, they’ve been focusing almost exclusively on manipulating that to their ends (never mind lying; and against all odds, re-attributing their own bait and switch characteristics to anyone they choose). Only all that money isn’t worth anything!: It never was. Even if it were backed by silver and gold (it’s not), silver, gold and jewels, in and of themselves, aren’t inherently worth anything, either. All money — promissory notes, coinage, bling and credit/debit cards, etc. — are contrivances we all pretend (and agree) are valuable.
Talk about a house of cards!
Let the printers print away, let the minters mint. We’ve always had the power to reject all of it.
Well?
Any community in America could post this sign on the outskirts of their towns and cities: “Money is not recognized here. We exchange services for goods differently.”
Put another way: the bad guys only appear to have us by the throats.
Isn’t that a hoot?
All of this time, they’ve been playing us. They’ve played upon our dysfunctional and addictive natures, and turned that into obscene profits. Oh, and they’re so proud of themselves for that!
Only they have always been dependent on our agreeing that money represented value.
We, all of us, can simply say, “ta ta,” to the PPPs and their Monopoly game money — any time we want to.
Any. Time.
* * * * *
There remains one very troubling outcome to Phase 2, “standing in rubble,” which ought best be deliberated now, however, as I’d suggested, above.
World view. Almost no one realizes how critical a (relatively accurate) world view is to the healthy growth and advancement of this, or any culture. Questions like, who are we?; where do we come from?; what in God’s name are we doing here?, etc., rarely surface except in times of major league stress.
Phase 2 will almost surely hold up its end in the major league stress-inducing department.
For that’s the time when doubts about all of the above, along with the existence of a loving creator, tend to bob to the surface — like some gigantic, enjoined, oil-slicked beach balls. The damned things won’t go away, either. Up… Down… (Up… Down…). And they can’t be punctured, or even detonated. We’ll try everything we can think of to dispatch them, but no: In fact, they all will slowly continue to inflate. (Insipid bleeping beach balls.)
There they’ll be offshore, rising up and down with the waves, growthing and groaning, “Fe-ed us.”
What, we ask? Did those stupid things just talk? And so on.
That’s the time, honest to gosh, when the relentlessly ignored field of philosophy might actually provide both some help and some hope.
Answering questions like this is what philosophy does, after all — at least after theology has had a go of it (and been found to be wanting).
The danger lies in believing in nothing. It’s not an issue about being afraid to go there — our culture has been going there a lot these days, and it only continues to empty our gas tanks.
Rather, we don’t agree on any of the rudimentary issues, and so we “go agnostic” — and “do” nothing: a “nothing” that’s almost identical, functionally speaking, to that of an atheist. We do nothing, in large part, because we don’t think we can. But in point of fact: we have all the tools necessary to philosophically back-engineer an entire pretty-damned-close-to-correct world view — right here, right now. And when Phase 2 arrives, it would be great if we had that to fall back on.
Don’t you think?
Otherwise, cynicism and nihilism, byproducts of agnosticism(!), are dressed and ready to take over center stage.
Please believe me when I tell you: we don’t want to go there.
* * * * *
Here’s my major causality theory about everything: all of our existing problems enter through two spokes (okay, topic heads) on our Wheel of Life, and come together at the hub: Healthy Psychology, and World View.
At present, we so far mostly have neither. How advanced of us.
The psychological diagnosis for our culture at this moment in time is a pretty simple one, and goes something like this: “That person sitting next to you is a whack job. And, alas — so, too, are you.” We do have the tools already on hand to correct this mega-huge problem, however.
As for world view, we don’t. All of our existing religions have what I call “low theological ceilings:” theological oversimplifications that fail to take in most of the likelihoods and facts of the nature of reality — and yet prevent those simplifications from being corrected, or pursued!
An entire field of endeavor could be created out of these two highly-complicated core topics.
(…There is one already, ontology, which has been taken over by the Piggy Piggy Piggies and transformed into, of all things, artificial intelligence..! Positivism: it needs to be sent to sit in the corner and just be kept quiet for a nice long time. Let the quantum physicists, who’ve been around since 1935, finally have their say! — and let those observations work their way into our middle schools, on up. It’s almost as if we’ve been striving to turn “dunce” into an art form!)
Too many of the wrong people are now doing most of the talking, it must be acknowledged. Our “experts” are continuously falling short of their (mostly media-generated) titles.
Somehow, some (non-violent) way, a new leadership must rise to the surface, so it can lead us all toward meaningful transition and transformation.
President Obama has all of the right tools, except one: he’s not particularly a visionary.
For now, we’re mostly frittering away our energies — energies we’re sure to desire in Phase 2.
In the meantime, this one clear fact must be embraced: The times, they are a-changin’.
So: for now, I offer this simple formula, intended to ease our first-time-ever historic transition:
Get lots of rest, yes — and don’t let the bedbugs bite.
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