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| Grigori Maiofis |
It turns out the processes of secularization and technological progress have raced ahead of civilization’s collective consciousness.
People were summoned to explore the heavens, they were promised universal prosperity, a world without borders, gender equality, and a third gender, and a fourth, and a fifth, and watermelons that taste like raccoons, and raccoons with the hair of mermaids. But people wanted a hug, warm tea, summers in the country, and to spend time with their relatives.
The idea of globalization has turned out to have been privatized by large capital, which needs a market of 300 million consumers, 500 million, a billion…
But the people just want somebody to buy their rutabagas, and that’s it.
“But thanks to globalization, everyone gets to develop—the little homesteads, the individual entrepreneurs, the hired hands…”
Sure, yeah. Sounds good. Pardon me while I hit the snooze button one more time.
“But we must open our borders to all those who are suffering and wandering forlornly. As a nation, we were formed of those who came here from all sorts of different parts of the world…”
How very true! Hey, look, there is this dude with funny hair saying that we can build a wall and live behind it! Wouldn’t that be nice? It would be safe and secure, living behind a wall, warm and comfy.
That’s why The Game of Thrones is such a popular success. There, the world changes rapidly within a constant set of constraints established once and for all. In that world there is no militant atheism. That world was created once, and then everything happens within its borders.
Meanwhile, our contemporary world changes in dastardly ways as far as the people are concerned. Investments lose value, pensions are cancelled… Let’s just hope that there isn’t a war, that goes without saying.
And every day television tells us whom we should love. One day it’s Israel, the next day it’s Britain, or Hillary Clinton. But people just want to love themselves, and those around them.
The stress of all this is simply unbearable. The world, which consists of people, can’t cope with this postmodernism, and so it is quietly crawling back into its conservative lair. The idea of building a wall is clear to all. Yes, it’s a populist daydream. But it is easy to understand, and expressed in human language. Global competitiveness and market share, on the other hand, is the sound a woodpecker doing it with a dead tree.
You can’t fool people, at least not over the long term. People sense where there is true humanity, and where it’s just dogs barking at the moon.
Right now humanity is like a cement airplane that’s been fitted with the most powerful engines in the world. It was washed and waxed, fueled it up, throttled up—and the engines sheared off and flew away in different directions. And the airplane rolled down the airstrip for a bit, stopped and went to sleep.
It is dreaming of the open sky, and a bird’s eye view of the Earth, and a world without borders, and the eternal brotherhood of all peoples, and a common currency, and various other things that are pleasant only in your asleep.
A Dark Age cometh. It may not be particularly dark, but it is sure to be endless.
Dmitry Samoylov
Original post
10 comments:
It's ironic that just as the Globalisation lobby urges us to join hands and singalongaCoke ad style from the 1970s imagining no borders there is ongoing a campaign to privatise vast tracts of common lands, post expulsion by fair means or foul (more likely foul) occupiers unable to demonstrate "title" as defined by the elite's army of scriveners, the useful fools de nos jours. The real struggle against the rapacity of the rich will involve the use of wire cutters and sledgehammers.
As an aside, what a shame that the career of Michael Cimino - RIP- can now safely be discussed by the same presstitutes who allowed themselves to be co opted into uniformly trashing his great movie about the rise of the US robber baron class "Heaven's Gate." The herding of the "critics" coincided with the emergence of the neocons in 1978/79.
Ultimate metaphor for this (other than a concrete airplane): lackluster sales of so-called "Internet of Things" devices, a.k.a. "Make Stuff Pwnable." Turns out, people aren't rushing out to buy Smart Toasters and so on.
I have to agree with Mr. Samoylov. It is glaringly obvious to me that our "leaders" all over the Western world are almost entirely devoid of sense, reason, true compassion (not pity - there's lots of that) and most of all, competence. I've been a critical thinker since early childhood, but 9/11 and the completely insane official story that was swallowed up by the public was what initially opened my eyes to the magnitude of our collective delusions. As a Canadian, reading last week that my Liberal government is sending troops to the Baltics puts the writing on the wall that things could go south in a hurry. I sent off the obligatory complaint to my clueless Member of Parliament, and am expecting to get the hollow boilerplate response about freedom and justice any day now. The direction the gaggle of buffoons in Ottawa choose to take the country is 100% beyond my control, so aside from the conscience-soothing e-mail to the MP, I'm content in knowing that preparation is a better option than a futile attempt to stop the inevitable, and orders of magnitude better than denial.
I have enough land and more than enough knowledge and practical skill to be fully self-sufficient indefinitely, albeit my comfort level will no doubt decline. I've been trying to focus on the things I can control (building a house heated with wood, building up over an acre of fertile organic garden, building a small greenhouse and a root cellar). I've chosen not to worry about the things I can't, like what the outcome of severe climate disruption, nuclear fallout or all out war in my backyard might be.
If it gets so bad in my neck of the woods that I need to start shooting people to defend my survival I guess I'll decide how to proceed from there, but I have no fear of death and no dependent children so que sera, sera.
In the wize words of Ruby & the Romantics:
"Our day will come
And we'll have everything.
We'll share the joy
Falling in love can bring..."
And for the rest of us -- blacked-face like Al Jolson or not -- we're simply wait'n
on the Robert E Lee to tie up on dem pillin's and carry da cotton away...so dat
we can return to massa's fields with our banjos syncopating, humm'n and saway'n,
with Ephraim and Sammy but two steps ahead of the Captain and his crack'n whip.
Given that the Robert E Lee was never on time and shuck'n and jiv'n have become
the (US of A) national past-time (while we're await'n on the Levy), I've found that
I can't watch the movie "Body Snatchers" any more. It's become a documentary in
real-time and we are confronted daily with the utter disappearance of the soul-
within-the-body of our brethren.
"Join that shuffling throng..." is what they're all sing'n and humm'n.
Dmitry, does Russia have a banana belt?
Alfred 1860 , As a fellow Canadian I couldn't agree more. Trudeau is the prime minister for our time. All style no substance. Every Canuck knows you never poke a bear. Where abouts in this vast country do you abide ?
Humanity is a concrete jet plane slowly rolling down the runway with the world's most powerful engines that have shot off into the sky, yep that just about covers it.
This post was pretty good.
I'm hoping you will post more Quidnon progress sometime soon.
Neocons and progressive (¿?) globalitarians are the last rotten cherries from old cherry tree (christianism), promising heaven in Earth but bringing only HELL. The system works...for the elites and high-middle class hipsters.
One of the oddities is that the beneficiaries of the system based upon money which has no value is that the winners are eager to wipe out the losers without a second thought, and not only that those soon to be designated as losers are even more eager to wipe out those who have lost. To add insult to injury America's Christians are ever more filled with fear and loathing and more and more of the worlds Muslims seek only blood.
So blood it will be. Eventually on a scale beyond imagining and nobody will be able to imagine why. If nature is the reaper or war or purges or clensings matters not.
The very saddest part is we, the winners and near winners have it so very very easy but there is no appreciation, only hate.
It's funny, "The Internet of Things" goes way back to the 90s. I remember my new IBM Aptiva (a pretty good computer actually) coming with some "X.10" gadgets to control things like lights etc in my house, and at least theoretically enable their control from distant points, via the internet.
I kind of see "The Internet Of Things" being like video phones, which we all thought we'd see by now, but the truth is, the average person doesn't want to have their boss or some telemarketer see their "morning face" not to mention the whole answering the phone while naked thing.
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