Aug 5, 2018 | Articles, Civil Unrest, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Racism, Society In Decline, Violence |
Until we can create more equality, tend to our personal and collective pain, care for one another as much as we do for fame, fun, and money, and rebuild a community of caring for those left out, we will find the most perverse ways to belong, to feel a part each other’s lives. Ideally, we accomplish this in joy and in sustainable, shared sorrow. When we can’t, our need to belong goes unmet and we seek it however we can. One who feels dead inside kills to share and belong in the only way he can—by forcing others to feel as dead as he does inside
Jul 30, 2018 | Articles, civil liberties, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Culture, Empire, Racism, Society In Decline, Tyranny |
An entire generation of Germans, Italians, and Spaniards are aging into their twilight years right now wishing they’d had such imagination in the early 1930s.
Jul 19, 2018 | Articles, civil liberties, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Grief, Racism, Resistance, Society In Decline, Trauma, Tyranny |
As I write this article, the Trump regime wants to add one simple question to the census – Are you a US Citizen. What harm can there be in answering this simple question – if you are living here legally? If you are a citizen? I would like to rephrase the question. For me the questions is: What are the potential dangers in asking such a question, in separating people into categories based on citizenship – especially under a regime that has repeatedly shown itself as hostile to everything it deems “foreign” (generally non-European in origin)?
Jun 26, 2018 | Articles, Carolyn's Books, civil liberties, Climate Change/Environment, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corruption, Emotional/Spiritual, Empire, Extinction, Geo-Political, Grief, Options/ New Paradigm, Racism, Resilience, Resistance, Sacred Activism, Society In Decline, Trauma, Tyranny |
In 2016, Andrew Harvey and I published Savage Grace: Living Resiliently In The Dark Night of The Globe. In Chapter 1 of the book, we forecasted essentially what is happening in this moment in terms of the demise of the last vestiges of democracy and human rights on this planet. We chose the image of Kali, the Hindu goddess of creation and destruction as the symbol of our current global predicament. Two years later, we are witnessing a virulent, worldwide embrace of white nationalist, authoritarian rule. Ultimately, Kali seeks to transform the human ego and rational mind and bring us into a more permanent residence in the heart, but the process is often excruciating. Might she also want to transform the image a country or a community has of itself? “This is not who we are.”—Or is it? How shall awake human beings respond? What is our work? What is our calling? How do we reconnect with the authentic sources of meaning in our lives and the web of life itself as totalitarian rule is poised to dominate our consciousness and our countries as we stand on the threshold of the potential extinction of all life on Earth as a result of catastrophic climate change? We will be posting portions of Savage Grace in the coming weeks because it is proving itself to be prescient and empowering in this very dark time.
Jun 25, 2018 | Articles, civil liberties, Climate Change/Environment, Corruption, Emotional/Spiritual, Empire, Grief, Racism, Resistance, Trauma, Tyranny |
I have been writing about collapse for more than a decade, and perhaps you have been reading about it for even longer. While I know that it is inevitable and that in tandem with climate catastrophe it will be even more horrific than seasoned students of collapse anticipated, it matters to me how it unfolds. Throughout history, the collapse of societies has played out in a manner unique to each one. How this collapse plays out matters to me. It is poised to be violent, and my intention has always been to minimize the brutality. The first step in that project is to name what is so at this moment in time and to stop minimizing it by pointing to the myriad evils the Unites States has perpetrated on other countries in the past. Indeed, the chickens have come home to roost, and now it is our turn to deal with them.
Jun 18, 2018 | Articles, civil liberties, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Culture, Empire, Geo-Political, Racism, Society In Decline, Trauma, Tyranny |
So the fascist society — which can’t be a democracy, remember — becomes one giant authoritarian exercise is seeing just who these people that are “born better” really are. Who among them is the most cunning, vicious, and ruthless predators of all, the Nietzschean uberman, who can dominate the weak the most savagely? It usually begins like this: can they exploit the weak, the alien, the immigrant, the foreigner, the disabled? Take their wealth and belongings? Kick and punch them down? But it’s a contest now. Who will go further? Soon enough, there is someone willing to put the weak in ghettoes. Then to split up families. Then to put children in camps. And then the unthinkable happens.
May 19, 2018 | Articles, civil liberties, Culture, Racism, Resistance, Society In Decline |
It’s easy to blame the racist rants of leaders who loudly denigrate the “others, but if leaders weren’t supported by a large number of people, they wouldn’t be able to get away with it. A leader and a large number of people and their shadow/hatred/fear of the “other”- spurred on by the silence of those may not agree but are afraid to speak up – encourage their hatred to feed upon one another.
May 6, 2018 | Articles, civil liberties, Climate Change/Environment, Empire, Extinction, Geo-Political, Racism, Trauma, Tyranny |
A continued exploration of my family history and how the past can guide us through turbulent and dangerous times.
Apr 30, 2018 | Articles, civil liberties, Racism, Resistance, Trauma, Tyranny |
Shortly after Trump’s election, Yale History Professor Timothy Snyder (whose focus of study is Central and Eastern Europe and the Holocaust) published a book titled On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. The first lesson is Do Not Obey in Advance. Sometimes footprints from the past can point the way forward through a perilous and uncertain future.
Mar 17, 2017 | civil liberties, Racism, Society In Decline |
The weak, the sick, the different, the “impure” and the “inferior” are to be made to disappear: by deportation, by bans, by walls – and by dying.
