Enlightenment vs. Endarkenment, or Missing the Obvious...

http://www.youtube.com/user/MaxKeiserTV#p/f/3/jLn2K7zGj9w

Vrabel says late in the segment that we need a modern day Thomas Jefferson.

I would suggest that the difference between now and Jefferson's times is that there were a lot more Jeffersons then, than now. Madison and Hamilton and Franklin and many, many other people all through the original 13 colonies were able to intelligently discuss and write to one another about the concepts of liberty, commerce and what they actually desired for themselves. (By the way, in reading books of letters from these guys, no one thought banks were a good idea...) I would also suggest that assassination was not as refined then as it is now. To me, it looks like anytime we have had anyone in the last 100 years who was able to speak on behalf of the public with the authority of a Jefferson, they were murdered, right in front of our eyes. How is that for refining the art of assassination?

But here's another aspect to it - none of these guys alive 240 years ago were just 'one thing' like so many in our society today: he's a nurse, she's an accountant, he programs, she cooks, etc etc...
These dudes and dudettes were pioneers, the original multi-taskers, if you will. That statement alone will reveal that they knew how to either grow their own food, or hunt for it, or both. They knew how to make clothes or shoes or both. They knew how to build houses as well as wagons. They knew how to care for animals as well as babies. They read and wrote more than one language. They were able to adapt within their own relatively small population and deal with Natives, Quakers, Anarchists, Baptists, Catholics as well as be alone. They also understood the significance of their lives on the rest of the world, an understanding that is in very short supply in America today.

Isn't all of that ironic? How can we look into the past, see how people lived, and then look around our world today and feel we have advanced? Some hedonists (myself included) would say that plumbing has seriously improved over what it was in the past. But not really, the Scots had running water, the Romans - we're not so leading edge there. Anyone who wanted it for himself could build it. And there we start to see where it all separates. How many of us would have hot and cold running water if we had to bring it into the house ourselves? Hmm?? How many of us would have our feces carried outside somewhere automatically if we had to build it ourselves??? One of the ironies about the back-to-nature types and their freely published plans and lifestyles is that they shit in buckets for the most part. Have y'all noticed that? Lots of videos on youtube of people carrying their shit out to a compost pile, to proudly wait a year or two for dirt. Irony rocks!!!

A septic system is a pretty simple thing. An aqueduct is a pretty simple thing. Gravity does most of the work, all a person has to do is build the framework to enable gravity to do its job.

Why are we the way we are? Many here have commented upon this very thing and here I am doing it as well...

We have been maneuvered into being specialists in society, and the reality is that a competent citizenry needs generalists who understand how systems and ideas work within larger patterns. For those who have followed the current societal stereotype by specializing in a field with honor and dignity, there is an assumption that the rest of society has accepted and gained competency in their individual specialty.

There is an obvious flaw in this assumption. Namely - if we have all specialized, how would we know if another specialist in another specialty is competent? How do you as an individual know when the specialty that your specialty depends upon is being effectively executed? We have been compartmentalized and segmented away from one another and the reality is that we each live in the world on a 'need-to-know' basis. Doesn't that sound like a spy agency? A quasi-military operation?

We can see this in evolver if we are honest with ourselves as well as one another.

Some of us have responded to what we collectively observe in society by focusing on one or two aspects of society. For some the hot buttons are environment or politics. For others it is commercialized spirituality and religion. And still others are oriented to how we have all been cheated and manipulated out of a more liberated lifestyle simply by the suppression of technological advancements that would empower the general population.

The deeper truth is that humanity has been coercively manipulated by all of these varied aspects, and more, of our world. It is a multi-front attack on the many by the few, and this is plain to see when one steps outside of the cultural hubbub.

Vrabel suggests that there may be no way out of an 'endarkenment' period, that a decline may be inevitable. Implied within the context of what he is saying is the clear reality that the vast majority is not even aware of our true situation today.

People overwhelmingly believe that our authority figures, whether they be politicians, scientists in the academic world or the media generally speaking are telling us 'the truth'. They believe this because of the assumption that there is some specialist 'out there' checking up on the details. There's also been collective belief that these figureheads and institutions have our best interests at heart, which seems to me to be gradually losing it's hold upon the public-at-large. The funny thing is that people who believe in the system and the specialists who check up on things is that when the specialist speaks up and says, 'Hey!', they think he's full of shit or crazy.

It is simply too obvious to deny anymore. The blatant support of the few as opposed to the many is increasingly undeniable. From the banking industry fiasco (that is still ongoing and in fact worsening on all fronts. Note to readers of business news: have any of you seen reports on the coming crisis in municipal bonds? This will directly impact your town and state.) to waived regulations within the oil industry to the surprise(ha!) announcement that Afghanistan is actually an incredibly rich land of many different resources, we see with increasing levels of insight how these individually anecdotal events and situations all tie in together.

One thing I've wondered about through the years is this:
How many of us are really paying attention? For example, I go to Max Keiser's youtube channel and within a few days of a video posted there may be a 4 or 5 thousand views of one video. If you scroll through his archive, maybe a handful from the last 3 months or so have above 30,000 views.

If I go to youtube or google and search out spiritual videos, not just the whacky alien ones that put out a hodgepodge of spiritual info interlaced with fear, but real people explaining real spiritual concepts that all could resonate with, they may have 100-200,000 views at the very most, some of the best have only a few hundred hits. If I go to videos explaining about the various conspiracy scenarios that are ongoing, they may go up to 4 or 5 million hits. But as some of these videos utilize the same melodramatic techniques that modern television use, to me it seems obvious that a lot of people just like to watch stuff that scares the shit out of them. It may be a weak argumentative point, but I would point out the ongoing success of zombie movies in our world to support this argument. What I am saying is that some watch some films, not to be empowered, but to be scared and then afterwards watch Seinfeld with their favorite snack before sleeping. Even if every hit on every video was from a sincere individual who is trying to grow beyond what she was raised in, how many do we actually have who are taking advantage of these alternative sources of information? And beyond that, how many are actually actively maneuvering their lives to one of more holistic integrity? Is it 10 million unique individuals doing so? or is it 200,000 watching the same things over and over? or 20,000? How would we know?

I guess where I'm going with this is to point out that pot smokers who believe everyone in America smokes pot or spiritualists and new agers who believe everyone is waking up, are wrong. Not everyone smokes pot. Not everyone is waking up. Not by a long shot. Self-empowerment and sustainability are nice words to say and terms that have been integrated into many different categories of jargon. But simply adding words to a vocabulary that is expressed in 30 second public service announcements is not enlightenment.

The problem of awakening is simple on an individual level. It only takes the individual attention, focus, will and desire of one.

The problem of collective awakening on a societal level is much more dense and convoluted. It requires a large system at peace with itself. It requires systemic support of the individual. It requires thoughtfulness and dialogue on a level that is not justifiable according to the bottom line.

I hate to be the spoilsport here, BUT - we are ruled, still and perhaps even more so, in this society, by the bottom line. We apply the bottom line in our own individual lives. There is no one to help you awaken your community, you're on your own because, well, people are busy dammit!

You may be fortunate individually to live in an enhanced community, one where local sustainability is a concept that is out in the open and supported by all, even your community leaders. The larger probability is that you do not live in such a community. The likelihood is that your town, if it is small enough to be a town, is run by the 4 or 5 biggest corporations or families in that town that own the key properties and resources of that community. And the increasing realities of towns and cities across the USA and Europe is that the really big banks have enslaved even these local kingpins and their associated populations through 'alternative' means of investment and financing.

Are you as an individual aware of this? Or are you like jam band fans everywhere who are surrounded by other jam band fans who think everyone smokes pot and drops X, convinced that you and your 10 or 20 closest spiritually hip friends are representative of billions?

I do not know how to tell any individual what is necessary in their life in order to change things. I do not know how to avoid societal 'endarkenment'. In my experience, most individuals start to achieve spiritual growth and a sense of connectivity when they reach rock bottom personally. Their path downwards to that moment of bottomness might have started with their childhood traumas - emotional neglect is common. Emotional abuse is common. Sexual abuse and confusion are common. We have lots of stories available to us all, even in the popular media, of people who have worked their asses off only to wake up one day and realize that it is meaningless. This is a great moment because it catalyzes something new in an individual.

But is that enough to avoid 'endarkenment' on a societal level?

As the old gnostic saying goes, 'as within, so without'. Waking up as an individual will provide clues to what is going on in our societies. It will also point the way forward for us as we engage with society.

But I think we must observe that people who wake up to the lies that define society today, without waking up to how those lies have been integrated into their own sense of individuality and identity, are unempowered to enact true change.

This is what we can observe in our world today. We have 'Tea Parties' and world-wide organizations who demonstrate against the G-20 or some other thing. They get a lot of press, but there is no concise, consistent explanation of what the Tea Party movement is or can be. They are just sticking their head out of the window describing how angry they are. Or they cry out and ask why we can't just love one another. They say they aren't going to take it anymore but they don't really have any idea how to deal without a city water system. Nor have they as individuals or groups learned enough about self to be able to have a child and NOT repeat patterns instilled within their own dysfunctional upbringing. They say they are going to throw the crooks out of Washington but they don't know how to make biscuits without a can label to give them direction. Nor do they understand that when they look at their neighbor they are looking at themselves.

I do not want to be a downer. But I have written all of this to ask these questions:

Can we evolvers sit down with someone from a diametrically-opposed perspective and share a dialogue without egotistical, emotional manipulations or reactions?

Can someone who believes we really are all one sit down and share a meal with a Southern Baptist preacher and have a calm discussion about the Oneness expressed in Ephesians 4:4-6, without raising your hackles or those of your preacher friend?

Can someone here who believes that we are unjustifiably at war sit down with another who believes in protecting American interests abroad and have a constructive discussion, without giving that person reason to believe you are anti-American, without you feeling like you are speaking with a Neanderthal?

In short, can we evolvers engage with those who have no idea of evolver or the ideas it represents and not piss them off? or be pissed off?

If we are unable to develop ideas with people for whom these ideas are foreign, then this isn't really a movement, is it?

Peace,
Steve