Will there be any survivors to write the history of the Earth and its flora, fauna, and people? People have been shouting that the sky is falling for a great many years now, and yet life seems to be going on. The Second World War was over before I was born, so it was always just History to me; I had no sense of its reality or relevance. Vietnam was a wake-up call for me, but then my studies of History taught me that war is just the normal and natural state of the human race, as the planet goes on being ravaged with the turmoil of endless war, including unimaginable human rights abuses (not that any of that is new; a book detailing the most horrific acts of cruelty in the history of the world would run to a great many volumes ~ I hope no one wants to read such a book; the Celebrated Crimes series by Alexander Dumas is bad enough). But the accelerating collapse of our ecosystem and our biosphere has finally begun to cause a few people, here and there, to sit up and take notice.
Many people have concluded that this cruelty and propensity for war just represents the natural state of human nature. For most of the world’s history, war has been the defining occupation for a man. It has always seemed ironical to me that the only occupation suitable for a “gentleman” was warfare. War was always noble and glorious, but to engage in Trade or some Profession were to abandon your position in society.
No, warfare is not the natural state of a human being; it is just one of eight possible states of spiritual consciousness; there are states both higher and lower, better and worse. Below war (Orange aura) there are the acts of violence, fraud, deceit, and aggression (Red aura), which are never done by a gentleman, who engages only in “honest war.” The counterpart to this, of course, is the oppression, rape, and pillage suffered by the victims of such attack (Purple aura). Below that is death (Black).
So in a world where the soldiers of war are the good guys, killing each other in fair fight, while the less principled are raping, killing, and pillaging whenever they hope to get away with it, it is clear that the message of Buddha offered a very great advance in spiritual consciousness, describing a wonderful vision of peace and serenity (Blue) that few people in this life ever get to experience. It is useless to discuss any levels of consciousness above this, as people can have no conception of what is so far above and beyond their own experience.
One of the themes of my understanding of philosophy is that center of perfection where all good things converge. As you go up higher and higher in spiritual consciousness, and you get closer to that point, everything in your life gets better and better ~ your health will improve, your personal affairs will prosper, and you will find more and more peace and love and joy in your life. But when it goes the other way, all bad things seem to happen at once, too. Increasing sickness pervades the land, which no longer supports life the way it used to. Both land and people are assaulted with toxic drugs and chemicals of every description. The ecological collapse of our biosphere is related to all of the current social, economic, and political woes of the planet. In fact, it is clear to me that it is precisely this collapse of our biosphere and the destruction of the Ancient Forest that is the underlying cause of all the other problems plaguing the human race at the present time. The living aura of our planet has been in the range of the Red and Purple for a long time now, and it is sinking rapidly toward Black (otherwise known as the “flat-line”).
As the fertility of our planet plunges down under tons of micro-plastic waste, and reels under the constant plundering and exploitation which have been going on for millennia, the planet has been falling collectively into ever increasing poverty. During times of poverty, of course, everyone closes ranks, and life gets harder and harder for everyone. The more that the total wealth and value of the planet declines, the more that the remaining wealth (and the accompanying power) becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. This is an inevitable natural law.
This is it. We are experiencing the decline and death of our planet, and we can expect increasing climate change catastrophes, accelerating widening of the gap between rich and poor, increasing war and threats of war and rumors of war all over the globe, increasing migrations of displaced persons, poor and hungry, increasing social, health, and criminal problems ~ and, on the other hand, increasing resistance (“circling the wagons”) from the conservative core of those holding what remains of the wealth of the planet. The irony, of course, is that the more extremely the wealth and power is finally concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, the less any of it is worth, because they can’t take it with them, and we’re all going to die, because the vitality of the earth is exhausted.
That is why it is the holders of wealth and power who should be at the forefront of the Revolution (and not the other way around, like the French Revolution, which is the prevailing paradigm for revolution), because they are the only ones who have any chance of saving the earth. If they want to “protect their investment” they must institute radical change immediately in order to make a last stand trying to reverse our planet’s very obvious slide unto death.
So, how do we accomplish all of this? I thought you’d never ask.
