Posts Tagged globalrevolution
You Say You Want a Revolution?
Posted by sillymickel in activism, authenticity, Class, Culture, globalrevolution, Politics, psychology, spirituality on January 8, 2014
The problem with conspiracy theories is that it satisfies an age-old desire for revenge by finding individual actors culpable for what is wrong. This makes folks feel in control because they think they can fix things by going after individual actors — be they reptilian, alien, or whatever — and by eliminating them, solve the problem.
The situation is far worse than that. The true monster is the corporation. It is an entity with no morals and — like the monster in the movie, “Alien” — only one single desire motivating it: survival — which translates to profit and greed. It does not care whether the world and all life die within decades in an environmental apocalypse, as long as one extracts the maximum profit of the situation in the meantime. It does not care if women and children die in endless wars, as long as it is making money on the weapons used.
But who is to blame, then? The people making the decisions in the corporation are the kinds of folks you know next door (or you!). They are operating in tiny little worlds, disconnected from the whole, making efficient decisions with the aim of profit (in small areas) which, cumulatively, create the “monster” — the corporation.
So, the real situation is one where what is wrong is the system itself. And that is something that conspiracy buffs cannot handle, for it leaves one feeling helpless and hopeless: The real monster cannot be attacked by placing blame on individual actors and is not deterred by having one’s rage directed upon any particular target.
No. The real problem can only be addressed through a global revolution. And a true global revolution cannot be successful unless it is different from everything that has come before: all the revolutions that have failed. It can only succeed if it is using new tactics, built upon a complete revamping of the individual — that is, each and every one of us. (See “The New Hero’s Cycle Involves Surrender Not Struggle, Sacrifice Not Slaying, Compassion Not “Toughness,” and Silliness Not Stoicism,” for example). The global revolution can only succeed built upon the first ever, complete and comprehensive, consciousness revolution. And your guns, by the way, thus make you part of the problem, not the solution, you see.
This global revolution does not give you allowance for revenge, and you do not get to scapegoat any illuminati (or such) for things that are inside you. This global revolution starts with you and requires you work more on changing yourself than on changing others. And then the system itself needs to be addressed: It must be confronted on a societal and political level, as well as one must stop feeding it (corporations) in one’s personal life.
There are bad people, of course. There is treason, yes. (Bush and Cheney, for example.) And crimes against humanity should be investigated and punished to prevent their reoccurrence. But one should never forget, the real culprit is everywhere and yet in no particular persons. And it is partly in you. So the real battlefields are in your personal lives — the lifestyles you adopt, the consciousness transformation you seek for yourself, the consciousness raising you work to share, and the mass movements for complete and total change you give your bodies and minds to.
So, though you must relinquish your rage and scapegoating desires, in the end, you have more power to do something about this problem. But the responsibility lies upon you.
I was asked, “How do we dismantle the corporation?”
Here is my answer, taking off from my post on “The Monster Is the Corporation, Global Revolution Starts With You.” What do *you* think?
the short answer: “the lifestyles you adopt, the consciousness transformation you seek for yourself, the consciousness raising you work to share, and the mass movements for complete and total change you give your bodies and minds to”
OR
1. choose your life to live outside the corporate matrix as much as possible, starting with your job … just don’t do it! ( corporation)
2. choose ways of eating, purchasing, behaving, and recreating that are outside of the corporate matrix …. (without us, the monster dies)
3. work on yourself to look inside and resolve your issues from the past so you are not part of the problem, too.
4. help to raise the consciousness of others on all this (and not use social media to spread right-wing disinformation that threatens life)
5. at least don’t do wrong (like actually voting for a Republican/tea-bagger), but put your energy to mass causes (like occupy) which seek to address these problems as part of a massive change, … not incidental issues.
These things alone are plenty to do. And if you did the minimum you will be part of the solution, not the problem, at least. And with enough people doing just that (and some others, doing more), we can change the world.
***
When all is said and done — when the environment has collapsed apocalyptically, half the species no longer exists, radiation is killing everyone and their children, the oceans have risen and are covering the land, and extreme temperatures and fierce winds are beating upon everyone and taking out the frail — the corporate men and women whose day-to-day decisions made it happen, the Koch Brothers and other major misinformers, who led everyone astray, and the Tea Party and other climate/environmental troglodytes, who ridiculed and harassed all of us who tried to help, will all be up in arms, angered and enraged, looking all about and challenging,
“Why didn’t somebody DO something?!!!!!”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR, Michael Adzema. Video below … interviewed by Michael Harrell
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https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/2mm9OBbYjRE
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— Related: See also other published versions of these ideas….
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*Dance of the Seven Veils I* (2017).
At Amazon at
*The Secret Life of Stones: Matter, Divinity, and the Path of Ecstasy* (2016).
*Falls from Grace: The Devolution and Revolution of Consciousness* (2014).
*Apocalypse NO: Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious* (2013).
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*Culture War, Class War: Occupy Generations and the Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths”* (2013).
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Culture War, Class War book released. Occupy Generations and The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths.” now available. Order Information
Posted by sillymickel in activism, allegory, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, economics, Generations, globalrevolution, History, individualism, nonconform, occupywallstreet, Politics, psychology, spirituality, US on November 2, 2013
Culture War, Class War released.
3rd Book by Michael Adzema now available –
Culture War, Class War: Occupy Generations and the Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths.” Order Information.
Culture War, Class War, the third book – of the four being published in October-November, 2013 – is now completed also.
This book can be ordered now.
Click below to order.
http://www.amazon.com/Culture-War-Class-Generations-Obvious/dp/1492864021
OCCUPY GENERATIONS. THE RISE AND FALL OF “OBVIOUS TRUTHS”
- What is the American Awakening?
- How have Americans become so dumb, so that they have so often voted against their self-interest? Or did they?
- What exactly are the Millennial Generation, Generation X, Yuppies, Boomers, the Fifties-Eisenhower, and the World War Two Generations? What do the drugs they use have to do with the events and the America they have helped to shape?
- Everyone knows what happened in America in 1963 and 1980 that changed its direction. But what happened in 1971 that did the same thing, and much more profoundly? How is it continuing today? And why do you not know about this?
- Has there ever really been a conservative backlash in America? Were Yuppies former hippies? Did Boomers become conservative as they became older?
- What of Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, the Tea Party, and the Wisconsin union movements?
- What is the Matrix? What are the things you know to be obviously true that are not? And why is it you think that way?
- Why is there now, suddenly, hope for America and the world?
Class War is disguised as Culture War. The 1% foment Culture War among the 99% to distract and cover their real economic motives.
This book looks into why America’s “privileged class” — its “royalty,” “blue bloods” — started a “culture war” against the middle class, working class, the poor … and the educated, artists, and humanists in the early 1970s. We discover how their fear of Sixties activism panicked them into an all-out assault against elements that threatened their wealth and privilege in all institutions of American society — media, education, medicine, government, politics, publication, religion, especially higher education — and restructured them for their ends.
Culture War, Class War—Occupy Generations and The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths” is about how that reversal and restructuring happened and what has transpired in the last fifty years to bring us to this crisis. We see how Americans’ minds, personalities, beliefs, and their daily lives were orchestrated to a tune not theirs any more, but one that was sweet and harmonious to the profit-takers.
We see how this culture war, class war continues today: blatantly so in the Tea Party movement, the Republican Party, the Wall Street giveaways at the expense of jobs, tax cuts for the “filthy rich” and corporations, budget battles and cuts in government services and entitlement programs, rampant anti-environmentalism, and anti-minority, anti-immigrant laws and attacks.
Finally, we behold a worldwide global awakening. As the strains of war and financial oppression increase to a point no longer bearable, the American mind reawakens, beholds the obvious lies that have created the matrix of their lives, and sees more clearly….
About the Author
Michael Adzema is a writer, activist, teacher, and psychotherapist. In addition to Culture War, Class War, he has authored the books, Apocalypse Emergency; Primal Renaissance; Apocalypse NO; Experience Is Divinity, and Falls from Grace, which is listed as a reference on prenatal and perinatal psychology. In the last decade he authored and managed the popular blogs and websites, Culture War, Class War; Apocalypse No; and Things That Want to Be Said, among others. In the early Eighties, working as an anti-nuke activist with Oregon Fair Share, he was one of a small group of people whose actions led to the lawsuit that ended nuclear plant construction in the United States. He was the editor of Primal Renaissance, a professional journal of primal psychology, and was the first person in the United States to teach prenatal and perinatal psychology at the university level, which he did at Sonoma State University in the early Nineties. Culture War, Class War: Occupy Generations and the Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths” is the first volume in Michael Adzema’s Return to Grace series of ten volumes, of which four are currently in print and six more scheduled for publication in 2014 and 2015.
Apocalypse NO released. Book by Michael Adzema now available. Order Information
Posted by sillymickel in activism, authenticity, Class, Culture, economics, Generations, globalrevolution, History, individualism, life, meaning, nonconform, occupywallstreet, philosophy, Politics, psychology, science, spirituality on October 15, 2013
Apocalypse NO released. Book by Michael Adzema now available – Apocalypse NO, Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious. Order Information.
Apocalypse NO, the second book – of the four being published in the next four weeks – is now completed also.
This book can be ordered now and will be available, is available ….
Amazon: Immediately
Expanded Distribution channels: 6-8 Weeks
in Kindle it has been available already….
More information coming, as I have it.
Click below to order.
These are the strangest of days. We live in a time in which ending our species in our lifetime, even eliminating all life on this planet, are very real possibilities. The awareness of this acceleration toward an “end of days”—while so horrifying we hardly speak it—hangs over us and affects us in ways singular and fantastic.
Apocalypse NO, Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious awakens us to the unconscious influences erupting into our world which are changing the Earth and us in radical ways. Herein is revealed the underbelly of our modern life and the impetus behind our self-destruction. We see primal forces arising and exposed. Finally, we can direct our attention to the roots of our drive to apocalypse and reverse it.
More than that, this awakening provides a way of transformation. For in the heart of this darkness lies the most incredible opportunity for taking a leap beyond what we think of as human nature. This time calls for a new hero’s cycle—one that leaves behind the thuggishness of the old one. We are lifted beyond ourselves in a higher calling and a transcendent yet deeply rooted spirituality.
We realize that the necessary answer to the dilemma of apocalypse or Earth rebirth lies, not only in the resurrection of a new Earth, but in the dawning of a new self as well.
About the Author
Michael Adzema is a writer, activist, teacher, and psychotherapist. He was the editor of a professional journal of primal psychology and was the first person in the United States to teach prenatal and perinatal psychology at the university level. In the early Eighties, working as an anti-nuke activist, he was one those whose actions led to ending nuclear plant construction in the United States. In addition to Apocalypse NO, he has authored the books, Falls from Grace, which is a reference on prenatal and perinatal psychology; Primal Renaissance; Experience Is Divinity: Culture War, Class War; and the companion volume to this one, Apocalypse Emergency—Love’s Wake-Up Call.
Love’s Wake-Up Call and Why We Must Give Our All: Apocalypse Emergency
Posted by sillymickel in activism, allegory, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, economics, Generations, globalrevolution, History, Humor, individualism, life, meaning, nonconform, occupywallstreet, philosophy, Politics, psychology, spirituality, uniqueness, US on July 30, 2012
Apocalypse – No! Chapter Two: Love’s Wake-Up Call – Apocalypse Emergency
Love’s Wake-Up Call: Your Child Will Die … How Can You Turn Away?
There are topics you will rarely if ever ear in the mainstream media. It is not that they’re not true; it is that these true things are…well, is there such a thing as too true? Truth that the vast majority of people will either not hear, or will distort, will deny, will conveniently find hard to understand—that is, they will retreat into confusion—and so many other things. Obviously, by the title, you already know the kinds of truths I’m referring to.
Your Child Will Die, How Can You Turn Away?
Our species has never been confronted with such truths—facts about the inevitable demise of our entire species in short order, unless something on a massive scale is done. And it seems our systems have no capacity for it. 
For indeed such an event has never occurred on our planet in its entire multibillion year history. [Footnotes 1 and 2]
So the fact you are even listening, fully aware of the title, proves you are one of the few who 
are opting to know the truth—however disturbing—rather than turn your head, as an unbelievable number of people are currently doing, to the likelihood of apocalypse….sorry, that’s not something people want to know. But ecocide, planet death, apocalypse will be a certainty unless people get the courage to do something, which necessarily of course starts with LOOKING at the problem! 
OK, I’ll try again, this isn’t easy for me either. The cumulative scientific evidence relating to the fate of this planet has been accelerating in the direction of there being little to no hope that there will be much, if any, life on this planet, at some point only twenty to fifty years from now. So as I was trying to say above, many people are currently turning their head to the likelihood that we will all be dead in what will probably seem the fastest decades ever.
What makes this likelihood so disturbing is that many people know this and yet don’t care. Some even get a charged up thrill, or sense of power at the prospect. And many others just can’t wait! 
Sadly they have certain misguided religious beliefs—for example, “the rapture”—that have rationalized and made desirable this most abominable thing—wiping out the efforts and strivings and occurrences of billions of years and almost eight billion human souls alone in current time, and negating the passionate struggles of billions of humans prior to us who wanted more than anything else to leave the world a better place. But take a cynical—maddened—generation or two, and they may as well never have lived.
Why am I saying this? If you have children, or grandchildren, even if you might not see it, what kinds of parents exist now that blithely turn away from 
the trillion-alarm fire that is already waging, which will consume their beloveds in ways too horrible to contemplate? I do not understand it; for in any other situation where they would be threatened, 
wouldn’t many even risk their own lives?
I need to say this because, despite the madness surrounding us in the minds of people stressed with problems of all kinds that are now at unprecedented levels, I have faith in God and in the nobility of humans at their base. I believe that more and more will not only face this horrible darker-than-night cloud looming and rushing us from the horizon, but will deem it to be the one worthy thing left to do, whichever way it goes. I am using my God-given skills of communication and intellect, along with a lifetime of study into the human mind and its healing, to try to reverse our current plunge. [Footnote 3]
I know there are others like myself right now attempting to wake up the noble spirited, the heroic among us, who once convinced will add whatever unique qualities God has blessed them to this once in a multibillions chance to be good, kind, brave, hard working, sympathetic, heartful, strong, God-loving, life embracing, laughter-, song-, and children-loving humans again.
To be humans again, not greedy beasts of prey with green in their eyes and their blood, who have been taking over this planet for several decades now, for idiotically selfish ends. So maddened are they, we have already seen the first incredible detonation of their unconcern for this planet—all God’s creatures on it, and even their own offspring—in this collapse of an entire global economic system in what seemed practically to be overnight in 2007. So insane they, we have seen the consequences of their greedy craving in the increasing radiation of the planet, through accidents like Fukushima, and the dying of the oceans—our oxygen source—with the Gulf Oil Spill.
So when I think the media is soft peddling this dire and vital truth of the approaching death of all as if providing the opium of pleasant reverie to a sick person, instead of providing the truth and giving the person the less pleasant and more strenuous options of fighting for one’s health; when I think of them as deciding for us, as if we are dying children, who they think they are being compassionate to when saying what amounts to “you’re going to be just fine,” and such, even as we, the children, take our last breath, I think of that syrupy mealy-mouthedness, that “comforting,” as enabling us in an addiction and even covering up the suffering that might get us well. Taking a look at the media in this light, I am offended and feel disrespected. For I am not one who appreciates being pampered and protected from upset when it means that it will guarantee my death, do you?
For if a great many people do not quickly and radically reverse their lives—and no I’m not talking boy scout recycling efforts. I am talking about the gearing up and urgency that would need to be far greater than that of the last world war—how can it not be seen that the Nazi holocaust will seem a tea party alongside what’s coming?
Love’s Wake-Up Call: We Take Our Prodigal Souls Ever Home
Unity Is Our Food Our Destination Our Bliss Our Home…
But it is not warriors we need. That is part of the problem. We do need people as disciplined and caring, not just of their buddies but of all life, human and 
nonhuman, of all creation that God in his/her great love for us and all life masterfully crafted, slowly, carefully, meticulously, over a near eternity this incredible planet, as finely balanced and perfect and precise, and wondrous and beautiful in infinite ways, precisely moving in perfect harmonious exquisite synchronicity of infinite living elements through the seasons, over the years, languorous and slow and allowing for a plenitude of experience, of possibilities for joyous play, exuberant and bountiful youthful sense of power, pride, belonging—for ALL creatures, and an infinite number of them—each of them single individuals sharing with us this possibility of joy, wonder, happiness, laughter, pain, grief, wisdom….this divine adventure taken by so 
many humans even, each doing their best between the poles of the monstrous and the angelic, creating in the end, whatever the outcome, lives as different, as unique, as incomparable as any snowflake to another.
And all the while, surrounded from birth, breathing the divine. God always so close you can’t see. But in every little thing pushing you to the exquisite slow, painful then wonderful unfolding into greater and greater wisdom, goodness, love, truthfulness and loving of truth—no matter how long it takes, or even lifetimes—slowly, slowly, turning, turning, expanding, flowing ever outward in wider and wider encompassing surrounds of wisdom and love—no matter how long it takes.
And on the way the dawnings of blissful openings of being, leaving the darkness of pain and ignorance more and more at our roots. 
Just as the lotus 
grows out of the muck of the dirty swamp, feeding on that muck for sustenance. Just as our hardships, mistakes, even our cruelties lead us in time that much more beautifully and committedly loving of love, of life, of goodness, of God. And our eyes ever more aware of the beauty always there but more and more radiant as the darkness slowly dissipates, and the lotus reaches its tender shoot higher and higher into the murky water. It too in time becoming increasingly aware of light that is above and that the darkness is more and more in behind it.
Until, just as we, there is that moment of arriving on the water surface and feeling and breathing, being free and so joyous, blissful, and understanding of the marvelous divine perfection of the experience, even when it seemed hopeless, just as we.
And in gratitude and glory it unfolds its perfect, delicate pleasure in the expressions of joy that are the splendid beauteous aromatic creations that we call its many petals, but for the lotus is its song of gratitude. As much as our unfolding may open our hearts so deliciously loving and alive that we must sing to God, to Love, to the Consciousness that is the only Existing thing and equally coursing its 
wondrous way throughout all creation—lotus, Human, in the loving ministrations of all God’s creatures toward each other as we feel the attraction of like to like, of divine to divine…..
And would this wonderful incredibly sweet sound of God’s Life in us and around us, harmonizing over billions of years and to the ends of the Universe, the chorus of the divine, the harmony of the spheres, this grand, often dramatic and percussive symphony, the only reality, the only one really desired, the home of all whose sound is even telling you it is Om, where one belongs, 
where one loves and is loved and dualism-nondualism are irrelevant for equally delightful are the movements of this endless ever changing symphony, which must be separate and forgetful and also awake and one for the sheer beauty of it, for the sheer pleasure of remembering again the most wonderful truth of oneself, and then maybe again.
Of such possibilities and perceptions are the expanses outside, outside one’s skin. As one’s identity is not merely that within the gushing palpitation below the skin but expands to include spouse, family, children, others, all creatures, all beings known and unknown, with malice toward no one. As such unity is our food our destination our bliss our home…
Oh so sad and yet tender and beautiful and juicy we take our prodigal souls ever home. And more and more recognizing our brothers and sisters on the way, delighting in the exquisite separation that we will continue to enjoy until ready to release, to let go. Like a swimmer letting go of the side of the pool to sink deep into the crystal water, where it is then all the Universe that one experiences and then one becomes aware that one is just as much of it as in it.
And slowly delightfully then just not conceiving of any boundaries and the swimmer disappears to those still holding on to the delightful game of 
pretending that there is any such thing as a thing, as boundaries, as nations, as bodies… Fun, that game of thingness… for a while…
For it is just a game, a made up concocted set of parameters, boundaries, and rules. That we sit down on a pleasant Sunday afternoon to play, to enjoy the amazingly creative plays, humorous remarks, and outright belly-whomping creative utterances that 
our playmates entertain with and we enjoy also performing as things we do and say come so perfectly from, well, … it’s just there.
We just are, we can’t help be, and whether irritated or laughing uproariously or snickering secretively as we plan our next play…in sweet anticipation of the reactions, surprise! befuddlement! or knowing smiles from another…it is all unknown and to be discovered.
So who would spoil such fun by ever letting on, even, or especially, to oneself that it is all known, there is no separation. Why we even might enjoy it more if we allow ourselves to suppose 
that the stakes are real—at which point we know we have taken the wondrous forgetfulness game of humanness. One only does that to enjoy the sweetest waking of all, that from the soundest and most undisturbed of all possible dreamings.
However you conceive it, though. You needn’t buy my reverie. In fact how could you? Though you and I could be mirrors to each other it is the absolute knowing that we cannot be the same snowflake. No. You have your world, and your unique way of enjoying sweet existence.
Love’s Wake-Up Call: Who Would Want Such an Ending? Why Not a Hero’s Tale Instead?
Who Would Want Such an Ending to the Human Story? I’d Rather See People Becoming the Best Humans That Have Ever Lived on This Planet….
But is it God’s, yours, mine, anyone’s plan that this multi-billion year sweet symphony of consciousness expressing itself as beauteous Nature is suddenly, in eternal time, within the last second or two, to be stomped, crackled, and crashed by the Caterpillar boots of newbie humans? The skin-bound ones. I mean, reaaalyy skin bound.
As for me such horrible catastrophic cacophony of destruction is about as creative and delight inducing as a slow wonderfully silent drive through a countryside in late spring. 
Fragrant, aromatic…feelings of gratitude to the All That Is. And hearts overflowing in appreciation of the company of such remarkable, loving, and brilliant of friends. So slowly meandering in fragrant meadows and moisty tart forests, one just regrets that the vehicle will have to stop to be charged in a little bit.
That’s pleasant to me, maybe it is or isn’t to you. 
But who among us would wish for the ride, the symphony, the song, the journey, the adventure, the whatever’s finale to be a split second of angry irritation and then an all too easy wander off of the freeway home? Such that before one is even aware, oneself and one’s friends and God’s delightful chorus is composed…. the ending, sixty miles per hour, six friends, the unmovable concrete of an overpass’s supports kissing all six’s bloody bags of waters, water-balloon style erased on the slab.
And the percussive sounding to mark the end, over before you even realize it’s begun. 
But when you in your awestruck wonder slow it to single frames, that sound…that sound so hideous, containing so many others within its one-second elapse. But you hear there are billions. You hear, trillions, more, infinite. Crashing, metal, but within it mixed…why, that is that hell that some speak about. 
All those voices crying out in loss, in anger:
“How have you the right? Why have you robbed….?” And all creatures that have ever lived here crying out in pain at the same time.
Such things well… not fun… not, well… anything.
It seems we were even given the warning so that we could come up with a much better drama, more fun for all for every place in consciousness throughout the Universe. For the Universe has already experienced such a bummer of a symphony, which is now just a red planet…. 
It was much more fun, filled with life, creative divine noises, and manic whacky Chaplinesque movements, sounds, color, laughter, laughter, laughter. Not fun that one. [Footnote 4]
Why not a hero’s tale; no solitary hero, but billions and billions of heroes. Showing the Universe the story of the impossibly death-defying grasping at life, even as being thrown over the cliff. 
The solidarity in flesh, as united as in divine state, grasping single-handedly a bit of root protruding from the very edge above the abyss. And with mighty, united, happy, joyous, then singing, mighty and strong, pulling up, scraping knees, chins, shins, no matter, such incredible unity of peoples around the Globe as hasn’t been seen since the time before that Tower, that time called Babel. 
That was a time when flesh decided to really stray from remembering and to really become solitary and alone, creating the darkness, which the light is so 
much sweeter by. Creating the horrible endless times of struggling, of violence, of ego over ego, with no one hearing, no one listening. But every one simply babbeling out THEIR world, their sounds, “The song must be like this!” “It is my song.” “I am divine, who the hell are you to sing while I’m composing my next chorus!?”
And so it began, with the blissful knowledge of Unity with All That Is turning psychotically into
I AM the Unity, I am all that is. I am hardly experiencing the flows of consciousness that you are. For I AM the only consciousness. How could you be? You don’t look like me; yet I am conscious and I am the Decider. So since I look like this and I act, and you look different, as different as I
look compared to a pile of rubble, so you must not feel. You must be props for me to use.
And yet you jabber on, even as I am thinking, ever more, always thinking. I can’t stop this thinking; I don’t remember the world too well. That must be the price of being the only real living feeling existing thing here.
So it went. I don’t know why. But then there is that thing about it all being about greater wisdom.
And perhaps, I think this a better story than a one-second sounding of the Universe in Pain…. For nowhere in that Universe would there be a being saying,
Now that was one great species! Really so godlike. Incredible. They lasted for one nanosecond and then simply slammed their entire species—even taking with them every other of the millions of different kinds of beings that Consciousness was tripping around with, in checking out.
No. I don’t see our ending that way as being any more entertaining or enlightening than the shortest of all short stories about a man who walked across a busy freeway. Cleverly he avoided every car. He got increasingly adept and nimble. In his happiness he jumped to safety and stabbed himself to death with a knife. I told you, pretty dumb story.
I’d rather see people becoming the best humans that have ever lived on this planet at one time. 
And working together, not knowing even if they would make it, but knowing that the laughter of children depended on it. That laughter of children would be never again. And, in fact, who can say that it ever existed really?
Love’s Wake-Up Call: America Earth Criminal and an Auspicious Worldwide Craving for Truth
There’s Hope in That Never Before Has There Been Such a Worldwide Jonesing for Authenticity
Why Not Create a Story Together That Would Thrill God Herself?
So, if you feel like I do. If you would rather write, together with eight billion others, a story that will thrill God Herself, won’t we be thrilled and never forget: How we took the best they had. They misinformed, spent untold huge amounts on those whose souls could be bought. And many there were, to deny, to repress, even when the rest of the world was waking up and looking to us for leadership.
America… Earth Criminal
And America did not merely back off and, inexplicably, turn to throw back at the world a big ol’ middle finger salute, grimacing, then turn and walk away. America, the wealthiest country in the world at that time…. Well at least its rich elite made it so, for its standard of living was getting lower by the year since the institution of the new slogan of democracy which was redefined in the early 1980s as, “of the people, by the people, to benefit the rich.” America left the rest of the world to suffer and meet and discuss.
And all the time the world knew that they were like employees having a meeting without the boss showing up…. Nope, more like they were like the citizens who lived in a beautiful lake area, which had once been a pristine lake. But now the lake was dead, there were no fish living, lots of gooey seaweed though.
And sure they all contributed something to polluting that lake they did. But what was going to be done having meetings that had no representatives of the 
lumber milling company that sat on a good stretch of lakeside frontage and mindlessly had been spewing the most god-awful chemicals in the lake? It was going to be sickening the citizens soon. But this lumber operation also confused any deliberations that might have been fruitful by its habit of tossing around such huge gobs of money at selected groups of citizens.
So that’s us, the fat bastards.
Apocalypse Is Real
I put whatever energy I can towards educating people about the dangers leading to apocalypse. [Footnote 5]
I am trying to help folks to understand they are not really believing apocalypse because it is too huge to comprehend. I try to get people to see that though they do not want to entertain the thought of apocalypse, it is real. Apocalypse is as real as your child suddenly lurching out of your hand to rush into the street just as a car is speeding there and getting killed.
Worldwide Craving for Authenticity
I am hardly the only one saying this. For, there are lots of people now, more than ever before, who are fed up of being coddled from the truth and manipulated by lies and misinformation. Having been water boarded so many gallons of lies over Bush’s eight years, they are showing the starvation they’ve been feeling for truth. Folks are painfully jonesing for something authentic in a number of ways.
Most spectacularly, Americans showed their craving for authenticity in the overwhelming 2008 turnout for Obama. At the time, Obama, over everyone else, was someone radiating realism, accountability, and authenticity.
Tea Party Ducklings
More recently we see this desperation pushing people to the Tea Party. Though sadly lacking in facts, fed misinformation by moneyed groups, manipulated, and directed to action by forces arrayed against their interests, Tea Party folks are newly birthed into politics following a burning knowing that something is terribly wrong and that they are being lied to. Like newly hatched ducklings, they are bonded to their corporate Mommies,
who they follow blindly, fighting against those who would help them. On the other side, we see this eruption of truth-valuing in that, despite Tea Party’s misguided actions, the polls show that Republicans, the party of organized deception in allegiance to interests of a global clique of “filthy rich,” are seen to be more like fools than as credible opponents. [Footnote 6]
Love’s Wake-Up Call: What Planetmates Say … Would You Respond You Are NOT “Stupid Ape”?
What Would the Planetmates Say…and Would You Respond You Are NOT “Stupid Ape”?
Still, facing the facts of the likely End of All Time, Doomsday, or Apocalypse—however you choose to phrase it—is not in anyone’s hardwired capacities to handle. 
We are like ants suddenly confronted by a huge lumberjack’s boot about to come smashing down on their meticulously created universe of AntHill. I doubt they, let alone we, have ever been programmed for such contingencies. [Footnote 1]
But humans are supposed to have the capacity to reason, to go beyond pure instinct, and to be able to prepare for the totally unprecedented. So far, our much-vaunted rationality is seeming like a pretty convenient rationalization to enable us to kill without conscience, for any reason we choose, the other species on this planet. How would our planetmates see it? Perhaps something like:
Humans Adopt Superiority Over All, Basing It On Their Inability to Keep Their Psychotic Minds from ever Stopping the Onslaught of Mental Verbiage. [Planetmate Views. Nowtime. Everyplace, Earth.]
Humans have created a bizarre separate and solitary view, which keeps them from seeing Reality, let alone God, who is directly before them. But they are committed to this psychosis of generating such a mental screen of words, which they mistake for actual reality.
Living in their self-imposed tortuous hell of verbal-mental realities, having nothing to do with reality, they neither see God, nor us planetmates, nor do they really hear each other. For humans pretend to listen but are really thinking of what they are going to say when it is their turn. So humans come away from conversations having only heard themselves. And now, their delusion is having them kill themselves all off; and they are not even all that concerned.
Unfortunately, they are taking ALL the rest of us, planetmates, indeed everything alive on this planet, down with them. Many of our fellow planetmates, in light of this, are questioning our compassion for their sorry half-born asses and our tolerance over the past twenty-five millennia.
You don’t believe our planetmates? Natch. Didn’t expect you to—sprung on you like that. But if what the planetmates say just for a moment pisses you off enough 
to say “NO, We are not stupid ape.! We are rational!” Then you cannot be consistent without using some of that, ahem, ahem, so-called “reason.” For before you can say NO to Apocalypse you have to let yourself KNOW Apocalypse. Now, how many of you have the cajonies or ovaries for that?!
Sting sang, “We could be heroes…just for one day.” Wow, that just occurred to me. It also occurred to me that being heroes just for one day never made any sense to me until just about, oh, like two seconds ago.
Well, I’m no hero. I just fucking care. Sorry if caring offends people so much they have to put down feeling people by saying “kumbaya moment.” Sorry if caring offends so much they have to put down people who have hearts by saying “bleeding hearts.” Or even when we have a President who sheds a tear and says in all sincerity, “I feel your pain,” the cynical have to rake him over the coals for it and put it down in the history books as a calculated, planned, political move.
I’m 
sorry for people like that who have no felt connection with others. Such kitty-drowners and butterfly-mashers have no hearts and so do not understand those of us who do.
Before I took my personal journey inward and opened up to my feelings and eventually to the love that lie deep inside, I was more of a mental machine than a man. 
Now, I am happy to be flesh and blood and feeling and organic—I cry, fart, burp, laugh uproariously sometimes, actually, rolling on the floor. I see, hear, and notice people and think they are just fascinating. I can’t imagine life back in the world of the machine-minded, bragging how they can multi-task, so they can fuck up more things at the same time. But never can such automatons focus on one thing at a time and completely take it in, in all its complexities.
But this isn’t about the ones who will never hear me. It is about those who are just as much flesh and blood as I. 
You are the ones who will understand that I do this because, 
I just, well, really love.
I’ve got a young god-daughter; she reminds me what being straight and honest is. She also reminds me what love is, and how tender is the simple appreciation of one being for another. In my mind, my god-daughter is beautiful inside and out and talented and sensitive. She is God’s work of art. I don’t think there is a parent alive who doesn’t know those kinds of feelings.
So, I don’t know about other people, but with her in mind, among many others that I 
love, 
I find it hard to simply ignore the things that the scientists are saying are happening on this planet. Perhaps the most horrible for me to comprehend is the predicted massive extinction that is underway and is expected to reach a fifty percent die-off (forever, folks) of species on this planet in twenty to fifty years. You thought the bees disappearing was news!? Only if you can understand it as the canary in the coal mine.
Love’s Wake-Up Call: Love Demands We Give Our All…Where We Find Hope in All This
If we must, without the support of the media, rise to the biggest challenge of all, would we not be better to face it?
We Got Too Many Species Anyway…And Other Stupid Denial Tricks Against Ecocide
A fifty percent extinction of life-forms on this planet within a few decades, many of which have been around for millions of years. 
And, are you thinking, hell, we got way too many species anyway? I know, dumb! But someone actually said that to me during the Q & A after a presentation I gave on this. And many in the audience seemed to think she had a point!! [Footnote 7]
Well, the planet is an ecosystem; it is like one giant life form. And it was once really healthy, perfectly balanced, like I said, a wonderful creation of God. It was an exquisite creation, reminding us that God is well, really, I mean, really, really, good!
Nope, not being facetious; just making my point in response to the general idea out there about God.
That is, this insane prevailing notion that God is Infinite Goodness and Mercy beyond all human understanding, yet this Good God would create a hell where all but a lucky few would live, without being able to die, in hideous unbearable agony forever. Christ! I just heard myself realize that and if I were a kid I would’ve pooped my pants!
Ok, finishing up here. If you care about what’s going on and think we should wake up, naturally you’re discouraged at how little consciousness there is 
about an environmental collapse that has already begun. But there is hope at least in certain things. I’ve mentioned the craving for the real and the true. This powerful urge has toppled Bush, birthed an awkward tea-party movement, and shown the light on right-wing idiocy, in this country.
Around the world this explosive force manifests along with its correlates, the needs to express and share this truth in free speech and to have human rights to not be punished for that, as well as to have power for 
one’s truth to effect one’s life and circumstances, so there is the need for democracy. So in the Mideast and North Africa we see dictators being confronted and overthrown, and in China and similar totalitarian systems we see people risking and sacrificing their lives rather than be living beneath a cover of lies, behind a matrix of the contrived. Perhaps the most powerful way of all, this force is flowering worldwide as an occupy movement, encouraging everyone to Occupy Earth, among many other things. [Footnote 5]
As to where this effort will lead…. Well, the hopeful question is: Who knows how many others are also feeling like we don’t have a second to lose, and it might already be too late? Who knows what kind of actions might be needed to be done, and what kind of word might need to get out, or whatever?
So, if you care, we might as well start making that network now. And I know there are others. But there can never be too many connections bringing together all of us who care.
Don’t forget we’re going up against a bunch who DON’T care, but who are, as they termed them, not me! “Filthy Rich.” And great power they have indeed for you know how many there are who are for sale and how cheaply souls are going for these days. But we have, if we choose it, the power of solidarity, truth, and—if we can awaken enough people—the power of great, great, grand numbers on a scale that also has never been possible before.
So, I urge everyone to remember that they are in the midst of a trillion-alarm fire. The emergency is upon us; unfortunately it is not being broadcast. 
But some of that is because it is too dire for the media to want to touch. So it is up to us.
We must remember that it has always been the common people of the world uniting in great numbers that have accomplished the things of greatest value to the world. 
If we must once again, and without the support even of the media, rise to the biggest challenge of all, then why would we not be the better ones to face it? For the elite have already shown that they care little for anything but their profits. 
Whereas it is the common people of the world, taking their pleasure in their pride of work, and especially their families, who have put themselves always on the line. 
We need only remember that it is not for us, or even for all the innocent creatures of the world—though that would be huge motivation for many—but if only so that our children and grandchildren will not suffer, will get to live, and hopefully will be awarded at least the chance that other generations got for a full life, we must give our all. 
I cannot believe that the masses of people in the world, were they ever to come to understand the true consequences—the life and death ones—for their immediate family—would not do everything including risking one’s own life, for something so precious—the continuation of family…the laughter of children, the innocence of a babe, and above and beyond everything, the continuation of Love, sweet, sweet, ever growing and expanding Love, under the blessings and grace of The All that Is, whose substance is just that—Love.
Future Earth Rebirth—the Primal Landscape
Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Three:
A Conversation on the Eve of Apocalypse
Return to Apocalypse – No! Chapter One: Eight Billion Neros Fiddling … It’s a Trillion-Alarm Fire, Not a Boy-Scout Litter Campaign
Footnotes
1. On the subject of not being able to handle such a huge concept as mass extinction, a correspondent of mine phrased it this way:
The psychology of tragedy—Extinction? I’m afraid haven’t got time for it. Mar 20, 2010 2:18pm by Open Intelligence.
“The economy works by making people selfish. Mass extinction is merely collateral damage.” The link shared—to an article by Simon Barnes writing for The Sunday Times, of London, on March 20, 2010—reads:
Species are going extinct because humans can’t see it happening, and therefore we can’t believe it is happening. It is as simple as that.
Believing that the elephant will no longer be around is like believing that one day the sun will rise in the west and the stars will fall as rain. We can only really get a handle on the short-term. A generation at most. Long-term planning means the next year or two. Our minds can’t cope with anything longer.
That’s why we choose to govern ourselves by means of a comfortable timescale. Four years, five years: that’s Politician’s Time. Extinction is a happening thing, as I have pointed out more than once before. But it is happening in slow motion: you don’t see a monkey turn into a man, and you don’t see an animal go extinct. It’s just that one day you notice that they haven’t been about for a few years.
The current rate of extinction is one species an hour, Which brings us to the disaster of Cites…. [return to text]
2. The idea that there was no other time where any human lived knowing of the very real possibility of ending our species in its lifetime was criticized as follows:
No other time has been like this, but there have been plenty of times in the history of the human species where we have been met with the ability to and possibility of our ending—from when we were a few dozen leaving the mythological savanna of Eden to the discovery of the forging of Bronze to the hypothetical Event that led to the Dark Ages, the Apocalypse has been Nigh. It ain’t happened yet.
I responded: I have no idea of what time in our evolution that, other than modern times, our species even knew that it was a limited species on a limited globe and had any idea that its actions could wipe out what it thought of as itself as a species when we did not conceive of ourselves as a limited species in any of those time you speak of. We, with our science and technology are able to know of those times and ourselves. But hell, only in the last five hundred years did we find out we lived on a globe or lived in a solar system! Before that how could anyone in any culture know where either their ability to roam ended or their species no longer existed!
So you miss the point, which is, “no other time” did humans live “KNOWING” that THEY could bring, not only themselves, their families, or their cultures to an end but THEIR ENTIRE “SPECIES,” to an end “in”…their “lifetime” (not to mention the other estimated five-hundred million species).
3. I wrote a considerable amount on this in the Nineties, including at least one online book directly taking up the topic titled Apocalypse, Or New Age? . Another book, available online, Primal Renaissance: The Emerging Millennial Return is extremely important to this topic, and Falls From Grace (a published thesis as well as online book) is also relevant. It is no coincidence that at that time, the Nineties, we had a Democrat in the White House.
But since Obama has come in to office alone I have put up a number of sites to help raise awareness on this and related issues. I have been setting up and working on websites for purposes of education and support (Apocalypse Emergency , Apocalypse-NO at apocalypseknow.wordpress.com , The Great Reveal by SillyMickel & the PlanetMates at angelsinnature.wordpress.com, Apocalypse Know, SillyMickel’s Calling the Noble in Spirit: Wake Up Sounds). And I’ve been expressing these ideas in blogs (SillyMickel’s Blog of the Obvious Unspoken Things at sillymickelsapocalypticwakeupcall.wordpress.com, SillyMickel’s Blog: Things That Want to Be Said , Truth Will Out , and Sillymickel’s Journal—The Things Nobody Seems Willing to Say). But I had been writing about these things on SillyMickel MySpace Blog and Facebook .
I’m quite active, especially lately, tweeting about this and related topics on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sillymickel. And since the 90s I’ve been discussing these issues on my oldest website Primal Spirit, where I have been trying to raise awareness.
I have a youtube channel where I place videos to educate on this–SillyMickel & The Planetmates http://www.youtube.com/user/sillymickel. I have got seventy-plus online audio casts in several Hark collections where I take up this subject: the aforementioned SillyMickel’s Calling the Noble in Spirit: Wake Up Sounds, as well as SillyMickel’s Mystic Crystal Revelations; The Once and Future News; History Unspun—the Smoke, Lies, and Revelations; “Look at Us! God’s ROFLHAO!”; and Michael Jackson and the Authentic Life.
In addition to places mentioned, I’m discussing the spiritual aspects of the changes we need to make on the sites, Primal Spirituality and Falls From Grace; and the philosophical paradigm shifts needed are scattered in the various places as well as, specifically, at Matter Matters – It Just Ain’t Material.
The political perspectives on these changes are found on a number of sites mentioned, as well as on Culture War, Class War; Smoke, Lies, and Revelations; and Culture War . Eventually the websites Primal Return, and Natural Self will contain the resources that we have in mind for them as well.
Join with me or not as you will. I mention my efforts only to indicate the efforts of one person who has been awakened to this horrifying vision. Keep in mind there are others doing far more than me, for a longer time, and at greater risk.
Volunteers working with Greenpeace, Earth First, and similar organizations place their bodies directly in front of the attackers in a manner just like those prodemocracy activists living under dictatorial and totalitarian regimes who, Ghandi-style, stand in front of tanks and place their bodies before onslaughts of anti-aircraft weaponry (as happened not long ago in Libya and is ongoing in Syria).
There are others whose work also deserves more attention than mine, and in other places they are and will continue to be mentioned. But for purposes here, you get the point: No one can know how great are the forces of light arrayed against those of darkness on this issue, for the moneyed interests do not find it at all helpful to their side to allow the media to broadcast or highlight these efforts.
Rather, the media will exaggerate the activities and viewpoint of the opposition to these efforts, those that support the continued march toward Doomsday whose road they collect heavy tolls from people on which make up the obscenely exorbitant and evil profits they receive. They blow up the activities, viewpoints, and (mis)information in the exact same manner as in recent years they have, for example, amplified attention of, even promoted, Tea Party rallies attended by, mostly paid, hundreds while ignoring true grass roots action, as in Wisconsin, where a rally of two hundred thousand barely was mentioned. This is perhaps the meaning of the saying, “The revolution will not be telecast.”
In this obscurity of our efforts and its results lies our hope. For we simply will not know until later, maybe not even until an “afterward,” assuming there is one, just how great are the efforts of the unheralded numbers involved in this undertaking.
Finally, looking over my efforts alone, one might even be thinking I am overdoing it. But consider that I believe what I’m saying: A trillion-alarm emergency, the lives of my loved ones at stake. Now, if you knew what I knew, would you do less?
But this isn’t about me, I am only mentioning my work alongside the fact that I felt finally like I could speak out in this country only when Obama was sworn in as President. Who knows how many efforts are going on, how many kinds of things people are doing to stave off this Unthinkable Nightmare? Now, not with Bush in power, when finally we have the world and its efforts, however difficult they still will be, at least not being actively undermined by a Bush administration, we have a time where we have more hope that our efforts will succeed based upon the good will of the participants, without worrying excessively that the mighty U.S. will at some point either secretly or overtly throw the grandest of all monkey wrenches in to shatter the work of the good people of the world working heartily on the side of Life. [return to text]
4. To glimpse the unimaginable future past the time that we kill off ourselves and all life on this planet and become like Mars, I offer this fantasy around a musical scrap: “About our extinction. We’re gonna eliminate 50% of 500 million earth species in 50 yrs & we’ll be alive. Ha!“
This is an original song-chant—written and composed by SillyMickel Adzema.
All rights reserved. Copyright © 1993 by Michael Derzak Adzema:
It is a Requiem for Earth, a metaphysical view, an eerie emotional raw sound. It is sung by two of the last survivors of Earth—from all appearances it would have been the composer SM Adzema and his beloved wife, Mary Lynn Adzema—obviously not professional singers—but heartfelt nonetheless, giving us a glimpse into the profound sadness that must have hung over those last survivors after it became clear that Earth’s ecological balance so shattered, there would be no life at all to survive the strange behaviors of what Earthologists have begun calling “the suicidal ape”—referring to the species that alone brought down the entire planet.
Indeed this song, as an electronic scrap mixed in with an island of Earth debris discovered by spacepreuners hurtling swiftly through the Verse not far from the star system’s outer reach—the one that had once contained the 
fabled Earth—is one of the few very rare looks into the hearts and minds of those people as they watched, helplessly, as their planet’s delicate life sheath imploded with a gathering rapidity. Some who have heard this musical scrap claim that it supports the more radical theory of this event of a planet murder-suicide—the theory that the suicidal ape was divided on this global murder-suicide, with a goodly number of this species working furiously to save the planet even as stronger, more powerful forces, for reasons still not understood, continued their secretive sabotage of the other side’s efforts, ensuring the downfall of all, including the saboteurs themselves.
At first hearing, this song seems to be expressing an awareness of the sadness that would accompany such a horrific event, at odds with the stories of “suicide ape’s” gleeful festive behavior in the midst of the massive killing and suicide.
“Requiem for Earth / We Are Stones.” A Song-Chant Relic by SillyMickel Adzema.
Sung by SillyMickel and Mary Lynn Adzema Click link above for the audio site, or click the audio player below to listen to it here.
http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=wrbjcmgycy
5. Consider the timing: Only three years ago we had a change in administration in Washington away from a deranged Republican administration that was staunchly anti-environmental. While I’ve worked on these issues for thirty years and I was one of those who brought nuclear power plant construction in the US to a halt in the early 80s (http://bit.ly/BL-an , http://bit.ly/OB-an , http://bit.ly/AN-an , http://bit.ly/PT-an ), I did not feel hopeful about working on these issues again until the Democrats gained the US presidency and there was hope for progress again.
6. An example of this came out in the wake of the Fukushima reactor blow-ups. Republicans said a number of stupid and insensitive things, which were widely shared and roundly ridiculed. Among those tidbits of foolery was Ann Coulter’s public statement that “Radiation is good for you.” Ann Coulter: “Radiation Is Good For You” at http://front.moveon.org/ann-coulter-radiation-is-good-for-you/?rc=fb.fan
7. Earlier versions of this piece have been posted on these sites, Apocalypse Emergency, Primal Spirit, Apocalypse No!, Truth Will Out, and Things That Want to Be Said. The unrevised version of Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth? (titled Apocalypse, or New Age?) is at http://www.primalspirit.com/emerging_perinatal_book.htm .
Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Three:
A Conversation on the Eve of Apocalypse
Return to Apocalypse – No! Chapter One: Eight Billion Neros Fiddling … It’s a Trillion-Alarm Fire, Not a Boy-Scout Litter Campaign
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Eight Billion Neros Fiddling … You Didn’t Really Believe Petition Drives Were Going to Stave Off Apocalypse, Did You?
Posted by sillymickel in activism, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, economics, Generations, globalrevolution, History, individualism, occupywallstreet, Politics, psychology, spirituality on July 28, 2012
Apocalypse – No! Chapter One:
Eight Billion Neros Fiddling … It’s a Trillion-Alarm Fire, Not a Boy-Scout Litter Campaign
A Trillion-Alarm Fire—You Don’t Stop at the Grocery on Your Way Home!
I compare what is happening right now to cause planetary death in the relatively near future to a trillion-alarm fire with everyone looking the other way. I say you need to respond to this with the urgency of being in a world war, marshaling all available national and world resources to bear on it, and not with the complacency of a boy-scout litter pick up campaign.
When you get a call at work that your house is on fire, you rush home worrying about whether your family is alive or dead, what, if anything, remains of your precious keepsakes, and so on. And you don’t, this time, stop on the way home to have a short visit with your mother at the nursing home, grab a few things at the grocery store, or even fill up your tank at the gas station! YOU GO STRAIGHT HOME AND TRY TO SAVE YOUR FAMILY AND HOME!
What follows, from May of 2010, is an example of the attitude of dealing with global apocalyptic events as if, like in this case, they are of similar importance to a plane going down. My point, of course, is that we should be dealing with them will all the urgency of a “trillion-alarm fire” happening. For each of these are disasters contributing to an ongoing catastrophic ecocidal process, the tip of which, only, we see in the Fukushima reactor blowups and the Gulf Oil Spill:
Matthews: “four-alarm fire” in Gulf! Landrieu smirks. Matthews: There are ways to suck up oil…it is a US emergency not just a BP business problem
May 25, 2010. Today, Chris Matthews likened the Gulf Oil Spill to a four-alarm fire. While Senator Mary Landrieu smirked, Matthews said, “I don’t know what the legality of this is, but the President of the United States has got this challenge, not just BP.
BP has got a business challenge; we have a national challenge. North America that we inherited and would like to pass on to our future generations is in big trouble.”
Earlier, in answer to a question by Matthews as to whether there’s “anybody in the world that can come and collect petroleum…that’s out there in the Gulf right now…anybody that can collect it?” Landrieu responded saying, “Well, first of all, Chris, just let me say this: If Delta Airlines…plane goes down, I don’t think we necessarily call all the airlines to come in and help in this very specific way. Now, I will tell you, that all the oil companies have been helping since day one, informally….”
Are you as concerned as I am hearing that kind of cavalier attitude about human life?
Oil Spills and Reactor Blowups
“Where is the fierce urgency of Now?!!!”
I can’t believe the nonchalance around the huge environmental catastrophes that have gone on in just the last two years alone—specifically, the Gulf Oil Spill and the Fukushima Japan nuclear disaster. When the BP disaster was ongoing and gushing devastating amounts of oil into the Gulf, Donna Brazille, frustrated with the Obama Administration’s response to the Spill, fumed aloud, “Where is the fierce urgency of Now?!!!
But these hugely unprecedented environmental catastrophes, daily spreading the damage to our planet, are just two canaries in a coal mine.
We are just beginning to understand the immensity of the damage to our planet the Fukushima disaster did. We will probably not be told the degree of radiation exposure from it we are receiving until long after people have been dying in droves from it.
The BP oil spill of 2010 is, similarly, presenting ongoing planetary damage, which, like the Japan nuclear disaster, is, as I speak, not being reported. At this moment, in fact, dolphin and whale carcasses in the hundreds are washing up on Gulf beaches, birds are dying and 
some are simply dropping dead out of the sky, and we know for sure of at least one dead zone caused by the BP oil spill—a dead zone being an area in the ocean where nothing can live for lack of oxygen—which is a hundred miles long and twelve miles wide. I have heard reports of other dead zones cropping up in the Gulf, and it has been said they are growing in size with time. Beyond these we have to wonder how many more there are, yet unknown, and how great is the ongoing damage.
But none of these dire events are being mentioned much in the media. We hear the reports, but then the media directs our attention to something else. 
When Fukushima was being actively monitored by the media not long ago, I heard reported on CNN some very apocalyptic developments occurring there. Immediately afterward, CNN directed our attention to some in-depth reporting on a snake that had gotten loose in New York City. Now that snake made me sooo scared, I don’t know why!? *sarcasm*
So we cover our eyes to what is going on. *sigh*
We dismiss these events assuming that someone higher up than us is surely attending to the problem (dream on!). 
Though we would never admit it, we take comfort in thinking that people more in the know and influential—people with more status, degrees, power—are on the front line and will certainly make better decisions than we ever could. So doing, we blind ourselves to the fact that these people in charge are blinded and made stupid by their greed and self-interest. 
They see dimly, if at all, through that screen at the dire prospects they are juggling with. With such tunnel vision, they are hardly capable of seeing the interests of humanity, let alone acting on them. Furthermore, they console themselves with the thought that someone else higher up—or not, often just someone other than them—is “certainly” taking care of “the big things.”
Ultimately, people are passing the buck ALL the way up…to God. Seriously, this theological cul-de-sac is the ultimate, most reliable, place of retreat for the theistic as well as most of the non-theistic, if people were to be honest about their thoughts. But this is the most comforting of cop-outs and the greatest excuse to carry on acting recklessly out of all-too-trivial motivations of unhinged greed and blind self-interest.
What is worse is these things are only the tiny beginnings of much more that is bound to happen. If we do not listen up, and wake up, we’ll be just as unprepared and helpless when the even more dire and apocalyptic events unfold. This is not a time to curl up under the covers.
What We Are Doing Makes the Nazis to Be Mother Theresas by Comparison
Die-Off of 250 Million Species in Under Fifty Years…And You Really Think We’ll Be Here?
OR, Have You Heard the New Version of the 12 Days of Christmas? It Ends With “8 Billion Nero’s Fiddling.” But No One Lives Long Enough to Finish It… Ever.
Scientists are saying we will see a fifty percent die-off rate, extinction, of species within the next twenty to fifty years. That is to say, within that time half the species we see now—well actually about five years ago—will be gone forever. [Footnote 1]
To think that we will be around after that, even to watch video games of the wildlife that once was, is the same as a doctor saying to someone: “Sorry, within twenty to fifty years, half of the organs in your body will be gone. 
They’ll die and ‘fall’ away, and you’ll be DISABLED” (! hardly just “disabled” tho).
OK, now you tell me how we’re going to be alive to even see what happens after that kind of extinction?! Does no one realize how much death that means? Does no one see any interconnections between us and planetmates? 
The world will come to an end if bankers don’t get money, they tell us. And if they did away with roads, or trucks…it’s Mad Max time, right? Well, how about when the bees didn’t show up? One species out of a scientifically estimated five-hundred million species and our economy was going ape shit! What happens with two-hundred-fifty MILLION species gone forever?! [continued after video]
Tom Waits – “Earth Died Screaming”
Tom Waits sings, “The Earth died screaming, while I was dreaming… dreaming of you….” [Footnote 2]
Ecocide
Global, Universal Death/Extinction Isn’t Just Death, Suicide; It Is MURDER, Of a Kind So Evil, Nazis Look Like Mother Theresas by Comparison
Concerning extinction of species—ourselves and other species—which is going on, an idea was put forth to me that we are assuming death is evil. This person intended, considering the context, for this to be taken spiritually, philosophically.
Re: The Psychology of Extinction: Murder of Untold Billions Through Greed, Laziness, Egotism…Well, I say, EVIL!
My reply was: You make the point that needs to be considered as it sits deep down in the hidden center of this particular wordpool. It’s a mind-bender and mind-stretcher when you stray down your road for sure. But after having been down it a fair number of times, both on my own as well as with companions, I find one tangible, unshakable thing, only, to still and focus my vision and guide my stance, actions, and position with surety. It is this:
I, for one, am not assuming death is an evil. I do not believe death is evil at all, quite the contrary. Death has always been a part of life, and all the religions have it as a sublime culmination of a life well lived. But that is a spiritual perspective. And that is a perspective about death in its essence.
It is a vision from a spiritual stance—rooted in science, philosophy, and Eastern mysticism—as well as from a traditional religious view, where it is held that one’s life in the body is only a try-out for a better, “real” life in “heaven.” [Footnote 3]
However, you are mistaking, as analogy, the beautiful precise utility of a finely honed and balanced knife—metaphorically speaking—with what is really important and what is so hard to look at or fathom or even let into one’s thoughts: That is, the horrific, ghastly, unbelievably bloody and messy, grotesque, garish…infinitely hellacious and mind-drippingly insane scene that is right in front of all of us: 
that of the angelic young girl and her vulnerable innocent and kind-hearted mother, 
their bodies slashed, cut up, stabbed, gouged, even chopped and minced, and strewn widely and randomly in this ungodly lake of blood framed within this just recently homey, comforting surround of simple comfortable living room furniture and accouterments,
which now, however, are awash and stained and forever nightmarish as they record in blood, guts, and other of that ilk, ![DeepwaterHorizononfireafterBPoilspil[1]](http://apocalypseknow.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/deepwaterhorizononfireafterbpoilspil1.jpg "DeepwaterHorizononfireafterBPoilspil[1]")
but of which we do not want even to know, the violence, wild aggression, horrible pain, fear, terror, and trauma of the event—the murder… the murder that was so precisely perfect in its nightmarishness as it was aided in its perfect horror by such a beautifully crafted, finely honed, exquisitely and marvelously sharp, perfectly balanced and joyous to feel, hold, and use KNIFE.
What I am saying is, OK death is beautiful, in essence. And going back to God is, my belief, the highest accomplishment and culmination of a life lived well. 
But we are not talking about my death or your death. We are talking about you and I deciding, by refusing to fight back the apocalypse—which could be taken up merely by changing some of our greedy, wasteful, egoistic ways—the death of untold trillions of other living conscious beings, indeed, of conscious things that we are not evolved enough to even be aware of. We are deciding that THEIR death, because of our actions…well, that’s not so evil, eh?
Well, that’s easy for US to say. But how about them? Don’t you think they might be a tad upset that we would be deciding this FOR THEM…(Jonestown-style)?
So, you bring up the point that needs to be addressed before we can really commit ourselves to the fight and the struggle to change that is being required of us. But I offer that I have never found anyone able to shake or even threaten the principle I have found to stand on: God’s creation, which includes death, in Her (His) time and in the way He (She) would have for each of us, is beauteous perfection. But, MURDER…that is, MY deciding…or ANYONE (but God) deciding for another that death is good, well… well… Is not that what Hitler did? What the Nazis did?
Death—not evil—may be beautiful.
Murder of untold multi-billion-trillions through greed, laziness, egotism, hubris, and extreme lack of empathy and feeling for the feelings/consciousness of those others…. well, I say,
EVIL!!!
Evil beyond all imagining. Evil beyond anything ever conceived or acted ever 
before in the billions of years of existence of this planet.
EVIL! Even the killing of the planet—its systems so perfectly balanced, so far beyond our understanding—of a nature that is beyond our comprehension, which, for all we know, is akin to a higher consciousness, a deva, a god, goddess.
Yes, EVIL to murder. Incredibly evil to bring to an end such things so far 
above and beyond our understanding that we cannot even comprehend the magnitude of that evil.
Now, that is my conclusion. I deem that murder on a scale so huge as to be inconceivable, of numbers of beings so great we have no way of knowing the hideous magnitude of the crime, not to mention eight billion alone of our own species, and laying to waste the dreams, efforts, and results of multibijillions of past lives on this planet of all species IS EVIL!
That is something I do not want to ever think I helped to happen…. Indeed it is EVIL so huge that I think I would not feel 
right, ever again, in the consciousness forever after this life and after my death, if I did not expend every ounce of my energy while I still can/could to try to prevent, to try to stop, to work against, to struggle to keep it from happening.
I think that consciousness cannot be destroyed—so death is not “evil.” But as we stand on the precipice of this planet murder and hugest crime of all time as far as we know before us and with us, as a species, being the cause of it… Well, I can only say the worst thing that I can imagine is having an eternity of consciousness knowing that I could have been part of the solution, but I trivialized it, I used a convenient spiritual belief/teaching/awareness to rationalize it so that I could continue asleep and unaware of the horror I participated in as I chose, through being afraid to look at the immense suffering involved, to blind myself with distractions—the perfect knife, the death that is not evil. 
And so instead of an eternity of peace knowing that I stood against the greatest evil ever known and fought as hard as I could, although we failed… instead it could be an eternity of regret and loathing not being able to be unaware that I was a part of the horror, the monster, participated in the killing, and helped others to also, by 
participating in the feel-good cover-up, the blinding of eyes, the zombification of brains. As the deepest darkness ever known gradually but unmistakably arose on the horizon and came toward us, increasing in speed, becoming more fiercesome, detailed, clear, unmistakable, unavoidable, 
and ever harder to be blind to, ever clearer in its brutality and the suffering, and unimaginable pain in its aftermath. And so I would spend an eternity knowing, not being able to not know that I WAS it, that I became it, helped it…that I was, er, 
“part of the problem”… and I didn’t have to be.
And for everyone else I would ask: Care to choose what you’d like to have sitting around in that imperishable unending forever consciousness we’re “blessed” with?
Species-Suicide Bombers – How Dare We Sink to Becoming the Biggest Mass Murderers of All Time, by a Multi-Multi-Trillionfold?
The End of the World
A correspondent of mine emailed me to recommend a book by John Leslie titled, The End of the World.
More People Living Now Than the Grand Total of Humans Who Have Ever Lived!
She said the book makes a disturbingly solid case for our extinction, saying that we are among the last generations of humans. Part of this reasoning involves a complex mathematical determination of our trajectory, which includes the interesting calculation that there are twice as many humans alive, right now, THAN THE GRAND TOTAL OF HUMANS THAT HAVE EVER LIVED. That last is a provocative finding, to say the least.
Now, I haven’t read the book, but just his premise got me to thinking. Of course, what I know confirms his conclusions in spades, but I couldn’t help feeling irked by his all-too-familiar perspective. For, to me, it is not just about our species. It is not just about our extinction. It is not just suicide, but murder. My correspondent, “Open Intelligence,” has used the term, “ecocide,” to make this kind of point.
Ok We’re Commiting Species-Suicide;
But How DARE We Become Species-Suicide-Bombers Killing All OTHER Life With Us
Recently, I checked on the actual number of species that currently are on our planet, and the number was estimated at five-hundred million SPECIES. 
I think the whole problem IS that we only see “life” in terms of “our” life—our species. Indeed, some people think in terms of life being only for those of their religion, nation, social group, tribe, family, or even just oneself—all of which aid the murder of those who are “not life.”
So, Leslie is apparently thinking along the lines of many others who are not seeing the tragedy we are perpetrating to those other than our species, which is a milder form of the bigotry and prejudice we hold for one human against another type of human. I think that is a shame. [Footnote 4]
But then we cannot seem to even wake people up to saving themselves or their children, so how can we get them to empathize with the trillions upon trillions of other lives and the multi-hundred-millions of other life forms we share this planet with?
I guess that is my problem with his approach: It comes from my feeling that –Ok, we are committing suicide, but maybe we fucking deserve it. 
But how DARE we “blow up”—like a species suicide bomber—without a second thought for their pain or their lives—which we are only too dumb, and ego- species-centric, bigoted to see, let alone empathize with—as simple “collateral damage,”
innumerable multi-bijilliion-trillions of innocent souls/ life forms and hundreds of millions of other entire species of them with us. That is murder of the highest degree, and an evil that this planet has never imagined before this time.
But, again, I see the point of talking to people where they are coming from as a starting point, as Leslie is doing. But shouldn’t we try to raise as much awareness as possible of, to me, the much greater evil that we are committing, ![DeepwaterHorizononfireafterBPoilspil[1]](http://apocalypseknow.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/deepwaterhorizononfireafterbpoilspil11.jpg "DeepwaterHorizononfireafterBPoilspil[1]")
for those who can hear it? I say, if we want to kill ourselves off, fine. But how dare we sink to becoming the biggest mass murderers of all time, by a multi-multi-trillionfold? We are currently making the Nazis look like Mother Theresas by comparison. If there will be a history of our species by an alien race after we are gone, I do not doubt that the words “Fukushima” and “Oil Spill dead zones,” will have the same kind of black potency that “Auschwitz” and “Dachau” currently have for us.
Apocalypse Emergency: We’ll Either Be the Most Heroic Humans Ever or Be known Throughout the Universe as “Suicidal Ape”
Suicidal Apes and Our Future as Mars
If you care about your children, you’ll “man up,” “woman up,” “cowboy up,” whatever…anything but cover up…and face the horror, become the noble humans we are capable of being, and join with others to pull off the most heroic actions of all time…
Or else we’ll be deemed throughout the Universe as “suicidal ape,” and our portrait will be no different from Mars.
The better angels of our beings urge us to pay attention to what is being said in the audio clip and writing below.
Consider the Topic and then that By the Ending I Was Feeling Euphoric,
Having Just Stared Deeply Into the Most Horrible Likely Future Conceivable.
MEANING:
Either you really should be checking this out…
Or I Should Be Getting Checked Out… but seriously folks…
Now you’d THINK this would be a morose piece. I am the author and I fully expected this to be a wake-up call that only the brave or the Goths would listen to. But honestly, I have to confess that the writing that came out of me and that I then expanded upon further in the reading over of it afterward was beautiful and led to a conclusion that inspired me (that’s not supposed to happen!) and left me feeling calmer than I have been for a long time.
Apocalyptic Wake-Up Call – video presentation by SillyMickel Adzema
You REALLY might want to listen to the video above. It is a loose reading of this “Apocalypse Emergency”; is more entertaining than simply reading the text; is more conversational; contains extra information; and is framed by the feelings of the author/ audio presenter. I think it is altogether more accessible than the text alone, and I think an easier and more fun way to take in this part. The text for it appears in Chapter Two of Apocalypse-No! the book, as well as some of the posts.
What’s in the Video?
Ok, Ok, so you want to know what’s in here, especially the video? I’m tempted to say “grab bag” and split, figuring to let Higher Power decide who gets to hear this. Sure this is in me; but there is more here in this video than I, well at least thought, was in me.
No, I’ll give you the poop: It’s about a frightening global predicament that everyone seems to be aware of, but which few people are giving the attention and seriousness it deserves. I liken it to a thousand-alarm fire going off right now, with everyone looking away. I talk about why people would do that, why the media would be inclined to shy away. Basically it’s understandable because we simply have no way of comprehending the magnitude of what is happening and how fast, since no living thing on this planet in its multibillion year history has had to face what we are. [Footnote 5]
I Found Compassion, Not Blame.
I use spiritual fantasy and real world analogies to help us get a handle on what we’re facing. In jumping into these “waters,” I expected to be emotionally beat up. 
But instead I came to many understandings, and found I saw 
the positions of many who aren’t helping right now somewhat through their eyes, and found compassion, not blame.
Now that I think of it, I am having the realization that the reason for my 
serene, compassionate, and loving feelings while doing this parallels why I felt there was hope in the end.
I realize that facing dire challenges—and this being the most dire of all—brings out the best in Humans. It always has. Though this has been put off so long we might not do anything substantive till it’s too late, I realize that a political change away from the 
George W. Bush debacle in Washington may be having unknown but positive ripple effects around the world. In essence, it is only now that either Americans or those around the world can feel they can apply themselves to tackling this biggest of all challenges, for the previous US administration was disheartening and disillusioning to people of the globe who cared about the crisis, and of course to us in America, who felt that any efforts we could make would be quickly outswamped by the massive anti-environmental policies (sneakily disguised in environmentally positive sounding labels).
Not that everything has changed and corporations are back on their heels in their attempts at thwarting our wills to life; still, when Bush was US president, it was hopeless. It is very disheartening when your own government seems to consider your life completely expendable when it comes to short term gains for the Bushie’s—the corporate and “filthy rich” FOB’s.
The Ending Lifted Me.
As for the ending which lifted me up in a way that I haven’t felt in a long time on this matter, I can only say that my long term study of humans—as a depth psychotherapist and as a student of other cultures across all time periods, that is, anthropology—informed my conclusions, shaped them, and took me to visions of possible futures that I did not expect, but seem, if not as likely, then at least as worthy of the human spirit as we deserve.
We’ll Be Tested and Found Worthy…Or Deserving of Our Grave.
And for all we’ve done it seems we have called down upon ourselves to be tested and to be found either worthy, or deserving of the grave we’re digging.
I’ve said too much. The piece is complete in itself, and if you dare, you may find yourself strangely invigorated. At least I hope you get some, if not a lot, of the benefits and positive attitude adjustment that I received.
“We’re All in This Together.”
I left the piece feeling so much love and unity with all humans and living things, for I knew that at no other time in the history of the world was the truth of the saying “we’re all in this together” more patently true.
“Apocalyptic Wake-Up Call” – video presentation by SillyMickel Adzema
Apocalypse–No! Intro:
Reversing Babel
“Apocalypse Emergency”—the audio and text of it, as in the upcoming chapter—is the preface to my book, Apocalypse—No! which is completed and available here but is being revised and expanded at the present time.
The unrevised version of it is titled Apocalypse? Or Earth Rebirth? Some of it was published in 1999 in the book, Apocalypse, or New Age?
Apocalypse—No!
Apocalypse—No! goes back and forth between the horrors that are possible and, well, let us say, this unique situation with the potential so strong to bring Humans to raise themselves up and be led by their better angels more than any other time. What it will mean could be exciting and triumphant beyond belief as humans come out of their puerile adolescent phase and become united and shaped for millennia by this great struggle. We could also die trying our mightiest, which has a nobility to it.
Currently we are looking like the stupidest beings ever to dream the dream of thingness and duality.
It’ll be scary and interesting, and you’ll be helped if you have a strong faith in a Higher Power.
Beyond that, it will be the biggest adventure that the entire globe ever faced together, and the outcome could be just about anything.
Reversing Babel
But don’t get the popcorn, you won’t be sitting for this one; no one will. Indeed, if we succeed, we will look back at such terms as “couch potato” and wonder at the lost, unfulfilled lives they describe, which will seem a strange thing in a future that will require all of us to come together in a way that we haven’t seen since before—metaphorically speaking of course—The Tower of Babel.
So success could be wondrous beyond all belief; at the same time the odds will be against us, and even certain segments of humanity will want to monkey wrench our positive efforts.
Continue With Apocalypse – No! Chapter Two: Apocalyptic Wake-Up Call
Apocalyptic Wake-Up Call – video presentation by SillyMickel Adzema
You REALLY might want to listen to the video above. It is a loose reading of this page, more entertaining than simply reading the text, is more conversational, contains extra information, and is framed by the feelings of the author/ audio presenter, so is altogether more accessible than the text alone, and I think an easier and more fun way to take in this upcoming chapter.
Footnotes
1. While the severity/seriousness of our predicament is considerably watered-down and glossed over for the sake of consumption in the following report, it is instructive nevertheless. It shows the extent to which our precarious situation is known—and even communicated among the educated—albeit in a manner as to not threaten or scare the audience (into action to stop it!):
Has Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Already Arrived?
ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2011)—With the steep decline in populations of many animal species, from frogs and fish to tigers, some scientists have warned that Earth is on the brink of a mass extinction like those that occurred only five times before during the past 540 million years.
Each of these ‘Big Five’ saw three-quarters or more of all animal species go extinct.
For more: ScienceDaily
2. Lyrics for “Earth Died Screaming” by Tom Waits:
Rudy’s on the midway
And Jacob’s in the hole
The monkey’s on the ladder
The devil shovels coalWith crows as big as airplanes
The lion has three heads
And someone will eat the skin that he shedsAnd the earth died screaming
The earth died screaming
While I lay dreaming of youWell hell doesn’t want you
And heaven is full
Bring me some water
Put it in this skullI walk between the raindrops
Wait in Bug House Square
And the army ants
They leave nothin’ but the bonesAnd the earth died screaming
While I lay dreaming of you
There was thunder
There was lightning
Then the stars went out
And the moon fell from the skyIt rained mackerel
It rained trout
And the great day of wrath has come
And here’s mud in your big red eyeThe poker’s in the fire
And the locusts take the sky
And the earth died screaming
While I lay dreaming of you
3. Last year I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room and watching CNN reporting on the Fukushima reactor developments. I heard this sort of “religious” viewpoint from a stranger. 
We agreed on the magnitude and severity of this Fukushima event and that of the Gulf Spill, among others. We agreed even on the cause of such events and the way we are being misinformed on them—partly as patronizing misdirection, partly as cover-up. But where we disagreed was on whether it was important or not to do anything about them. As he put it, in his superior but cynical tone, “What can you do? We can’t do anything about it, besides it doesn’t matter anyway, it’s not THIS that is important…but only after death,” pointing heavenward at that. (*sigh*)
4. On the subject of not being able to handle such a huge concept as mass extinction, my correspondent phrased it this way:
The psychology of tragedy—Extinction? I’m afraid haven’t got time for it.
Mar 20, 2010 2:18pm by Open Intelligence. “The economy works by making people selfish. Mass extinction is merely collateral damage.”
The link shared—to an article by Simon Barnes writing for The Sunday Times, of London, on March 20, 2010—reads:
Species are going extinct because humans can’t see it happening, and therefore we can’t believe it is happening. It is as simple as that.
Believing that the elephant will no longer be around is like believing that one day the sun will rise in the west and the stars will fall as rain.
We can only really get a handle on the short-term. A generation at most. Long-term planning means the next year or two. Our minds can’t cope with anything longer. 
That’s why we choose to govern ourselves by means of a comfortable timescale.
Four years, five years: that’s Politician’s Time.
Extinction is a happening thing, as I have pointed out more than once before. But it is happening in slow motion: you don’t see a monkey turn into a man, and you don’t see an animal go extinct. It’s just that one day you notice that they haven’t been about for a few years. The current rate of extinction is one species an hour….
5. The idea that there was no other time where any human lived knowing of the very real possibility of ending our species in its lifetime was criticized as follows:
No other time has been like this, but there have been plenty of times in the history of the human species where we have been met with the ability to and possibility of our ending—from when we were a few dozen leaving the mythological savanna of Eden to the discovery of the forging of Bronze to the hypothetical Event that led to the Dark Ages, the Apocalypse has been Nigh. It ain’t happened yet.
I responded: I have no idea of what time in our evolution that, other than modern times, our species even knew that it was a limited species on a limited globe and had any idea that its actions could wipe out what it thought of as itself as a species when we did not conceive of ourselves as a limited species in any of those time you speak of. We, with our science and technology are able to know of those times and ourselves. But hell, only in the last five hundred years did we find out we lived on a globe or lived in a solar system! Before that how could anyone in any culture know where either their ability to roam ended or their species no longer existed!
So you miss the point, which is, “no other time” did humans live “KNOWING” that THEY could bring, not only themselves, their families, or their cultures to an end but THEIR ENTIRE “SPECIES,” to an end “in”…their “lifetime” (not to mention the other estimated 500 million species).
Continue With Apocalypse – No! Chapter Two: Apocalyptic Wake-Up Call
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The Consciousness Revolution They Don’t Want You to Notice. It’s Inconvenient for Them, Initially Hard for Us, and Hopefully Not Too Late: Healing Crisis, Part 6
Posted by sillymickel in activism, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, Generations, globalrevolution, History, individualism, life, nonconform, occupywallstreet, Politics, psychology, spirituality, US on July 26, 2012
Getting Sick to Be Well, Part Six: The “Inconvenient” Revolution – Unacknowledged Consciousness Evolution from the WWII Generation to the Millennials … More Suffering, Less Killing
Different Levels, Different Defenses
It is instructive at this time to note that Arthur Janov once compared the defenses that characterized the youth of the time—the late Sixties, early Seventies—with those of their parents and older people in general and came up with findings that amplify my own assertions here.
“Mind’s Made Up, Don’t Confuse Me With the Facts!”
Specifically, Janov found that older people—clients of his as well as others of whom he was aware—were characteristically more repressed, more split off, 
more prone to dissociation, more defended and, most importantly for our uses here, tended to use defenses of denial and obfuscation against inner information and impulses. Correspondingly, they tended to use drugs that repressed and blotted out reality, such as alcohol and nicotine; and they tended to be sexually repressed. They were also more compulsive. They tended to suppress their tension and hold it in for all their worth.
“How Can You Have Any Pudding if You Don’t Eat Your Meat?”
Truth was greatly feared, and all attempts were made to fend off incoming information that might threaten the delusional reality set of the conscious mind. This left them open to the characterization: “My mind’s made up! Don’t confuse me with the facts!” which was leveled at them by anti-Vietnam War protesters. In more recent years, it is no wonder they have engaged in a war against education and against Hollywood, as really they are at war with new information. Consequently, Janov found that the dominant mode of reaction, when threatened, was to act out aggressively against the supposed “oppressor.” Like prenates up against an overpowering womb, they are in constant war with overwhelm.
“Peace, Out.”
On the other hand, he found that his youthful clients—under 30—tended to use defenses of excess, release, and addiction, or to be unusually lacking in defense mechanisms. They were more impulsive. They tended to have weak barriers to incoming information, to be open to negative unconscious content, even at the expense of their self-esteem, and to be tension expressers. They were therefore more likely sexually promiscuous than repressed, and they tended to drugs that opened them to information and unconscious knowledge – such as 
marijuana and LSD.
Consequently they were less split off from their unconscious truth…though it made them uncomfortable…were less repressed, and, if anything, used defenses of masochism, self-denial, and self-inflicted aggression or depression. Truth was more important to them than emotional comfort. They tended to go out of their way to dig up negative information about themselves, and they accepted the low self-esteem and sense of self-worth that came with that kind of openness to truth.
Their delusional reality set — if it could be called that — entailed taking on the worries and cares of the world as their own, since their openness to their own cares and worries allowed them to empathize with others in obviously 
similar situations. When triggered into their pain, their dominant reaction was to take it inward and to take it out on themselves causing depression. In doing so they showed they would rather hurt themselves than hurt another.
Generation Gaps … Again
I don’t believe you need to be a rocket scientist to see that Janov was discovering an historical — one might say millennial — ”changing of the guard” as regards access to the unconscious, openness to personal truth, and lessening of the tendency to act out early trauma in 
violent or belligerent ways. The older generation had more tendencies to blame others, to find scapegoats for their ills, and to act out violently on them. The younger generation had more tendencies to look inward and to blame and punish themselves … and to prefer to hurt themselves before hurting another. They would more likely cut themselves than cut another; they would more likely commit suicide than kill.
The youthful generation might also become alcoholic, addicted to drugs, or do something else to injure themselves…rather than act it out on another.
Less Wars, More Suicides
And this “acting in,” as opposed to acting out, is indicated as well in the rise of teen suicides in recent decades. So you might say that the tradeoff we are currently getting is a reduction in the use of wars and racism to solve problems—that is, a reduction in the tendency to act out one’s Pain on others and to scapegoat. But, since the perinatal trauma is still there, and one is even more conscious of it, we have increased suicides. We have not had a world war or dropped a nuclear weapon on people since World War II; but we suffer unceasingly from relatively less loss of life in regional conflicts and the self-inflicted harm of air, water, and food contamination and from radiation poisoning from nuclear power plants. We have not had millions killed in genocides or purges since World War II, but we have suffered lesser loss of life in uprisings for democracy in China, Iran, Syria, Southeast Asia, and the Arab world. We have not had lynchings and racial riots have ceased, but we have suffered less lethal damage from culture and class wars, increased incarceration, creeping fascism, and struggles for economic justice.
Overall then, less death, more suffering. Less killing in wars, more suicides. Less large scale atrocities, more depression. On a collective level, we are taking our conflicts increasingly inward.
As deMause pointed out,
Those considered ‘neurotic’ in each age may often be a higher psychogenic mode than those considered ‘normal,’ only they must stand the anxiety of not sharing the group-fantasies of the age. [Footnote 1]
Away From Hubris: Nature Balances HerSelf
In this part on healing crisis, we have seen how perinatal acting out can be of two kinds: totally unconscious and trance-like, or semi-conscious with at least some access. We have looked at how a progression to more access to one’s perinatal underbellies has led to more acting in than acting out. We have seen how it has led to less violence and more depression.
Suffering Beats Dying.
At this point, one could make the point that the tradeoff is worth it: That individuals suffering more emotional pain and trauma is preferable to the horrors of world war and nuclear or genocidal holocaust…put bluntly, suffering beats dying.
But we are still looking at the situation from the microcosmic scale. We are talking and acting here like we are the only ones on Earth that matter.
This is natural of course, in that this is always the way we have thought of things—that is to say, as if all things were to be considered around the concerns of humans. This is called anthropocentrism—a form of species-centrism—in which Homo sapiens is considered the reason for the existence of the rest of the Universe.
With the Universe as awesomely and unimaginably large as it is, one might wonder at our hubris in our considering things in only this way—that is, from our perspective.
Likewise, with a mind-boggling number of species living or having lived on this planet alone—species numbering in the hundreds of millions, if not trillions—again one might question the validity of choosing the perspective of our species alone in making our analyses.
How ‘Bout We Step Outside?
Yet this is the way we have always done it. And this is the way I have been slanting my perspective so far in this book.
But now let us do something radically different. Let us walk out of ourselves — figuratively speaking — and seek to stand upon that Archimedean point from which we might view the events currently transpiring.
From such an attempted non-species-centric viewpoint let us view this emerging perinatal unconscious as it is currently manifesting in humans. However tenuous our attempt, let us at least try such a new-paradigm viewpoint. For certainly all old-paradigm ones—containing all the hubris of anthropocentrism that they do—have failed in their attempts to save our species and indeed have contributed to such a likelihood.
Let us attempt to see through the eyes of Gaia, now—from the viewpoint of Earth itself—as we look at how the current human predicament may in fact be an example of Nature balancing HerSelf. With both perspectives in mind, we can have a complete picture. We will return then to look at where there is cause for hope, what we are doing wrong as well as where there are positive trends and forces at work, and how we might let go of the self-defeating and instead apply ourselves to fostering the forces of good going on in global consciousness and the globe itself.
Footnote
1. Lloyd deMause, The Foundations of Psychohistory. New York: Creative Roots, 1982, p. 143.
Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Twelve: Through Gaia’s Eyes – Nature Balances HerSelf
Return to Of Goths, Gen X, Anti-Abortionists, Pacifiers, and a Hierarchy of Healing … You Make It When You DON’T Fake It: Healing Crisis, Part 5
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The Fifty-Year Campaign to Gain Wealth and Advantage Through Totally Concocted Untruths … Creating an American Mind and Personality … Why Americans Are Confused, Passionless, Dumb
Posted by sillymickel in activism, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, economics, Generations, globalrevolution, History, individualism, life, meaning, nonconform, occupywallstreet, philosophy, Politics, psychology, spirituality, uniqueness, US on July 6, 2012
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Eight:
Creating an American Mind
Creating an American Mind – The Fifty-Year Campaign to Gain Wealth and Advantage Through Totally Concocted Untruths
“Obvious Truths” — The History of the Republican’s Fifty-Year Campaign to Gain Wealth for Their Benefactors Through Totally Concocted Untruths
“Obvious Truths”
This series—“Obvious Truths”—delineates the history of the American Republican’s incredibly disciplined, relentlessly persistent, and amazingly cohesive–seemingly coordinated–nearly fifty-year campaign to gain advantage and wealth for their benefactor corporations and the “Filthy Rich,” through totally concocted untruths. These falsehoods were introduced carefully, slowly, and therefore invisibly, over time, one-by-one with persistent, relentless repetition replacing reason or rational persuasion; along with a coordinated campaign whose goal was the creation of an American Mind eroded of rationality and confused and made fertile and desperately receptive to these fabrications seamlessly portrayed as truths.
These “obvious truths” were employed together with an exact and strategic use of misinformation precisely targeted and measured for the achievement of specific ends. These were combined with their campaign to physically and financially weaken the American public 
through the simultaneous, and equally slow, meticulous, and perfectly coordinated introduction of policies, which though not invisible were cleverly packaged and perfectly timed to confuse the obvious step-by-step and year-by-year connections of these policies with their cumulative, increasingly successful results.
The intended goal was the castration of the power of all Americans except for the “filthy rich” and the Republican leadership, their lackeyed public faces. 
Coincident with this goal what was sought were the lessening of Americans’ power to act constructively to alleviate even their clearly felt and increasing suffering; the slow but comprehensive elimination of rational thought and ability to reason in the American Mind; and the creation of an American consciousness clouded and afog in confusion and thus forgetful of its past as a point of comparison.
What was desired was an American personality splintered and disintegrated and desperate for something however irrational to cling to. Along with such a fractured and weakened psyche, the campaign sought the dismantling of any solidarity of Americans on any large scale. They reasoned this disunity of purpose would be the natural consequence of the average person’s confused state and its inability to discern obvious aspects of reality which, otherwise and in times prior to the campaign, would have been obvious organizing principles giving rise to passionate resistance.
In the past, passionate engagement in action to change one’s circumstances could occur because of the former unconfused clarity in witnessing big events and pervasive, blatant, and universal patterns of change and making the obvious and easy correct interpretations. This clarity created conviction in one’s beliefs, rooted in first-hand observation. And in the past these convictions were reinforced virtually universally by the great majority of Americans, who also witnessed the obvious same things and made the apparent and doubtless interpretations that cried out from them.
In contrast to the former American personality, this campaign by an American, and increasingly global, elite worked to create an apathetic, neutered American easily manipulated to the ends of wealthy overseers.
Our Fifty-Year Invisible “Family” and Cracks in the Dome of Unreality – Creating an American Mind
Creating an American Mind – Our Invisible “Family” and, Finally, the Cracks in the Dome of Unreality
Our Invisible “Family”
This reveals the fifty-year invisible family and community that surrounded all Americans and affected every aspect of their lives, including, and intentionally, the basic components of one’s personality, and the erosion of reason, Soul, and independent thought or action.
I explain how only because of increasingly cocky and greedy acts and extreme over-reaching “in broad daylight,” before the entire world, did this malevolent surround become visible. 
These brutish and thievish over-reaches displayed an incredible disregard for, disrespect of, indeed, an actual literal inability of the “Filthy Rich” and their Republican puppets to SEE American People, who were the recipients of these attacks.
Together these reveals—displayed unintentionally however blatantly and unknowingly by the Republicans and the “Filthy Rich”… and before the entire world—disclosed to the masses of Americans some “cracks,” “stains,” or textures in the “dome” of unreality they’d existed in, which had made them blind to Reality itself, and had kept them in a near zombie-like dream reality.
As this awakening continued, some began remembering events, the memories of which had been “bleached” out of awareness until just then, and then with remembering they realized how they’d been trained like animals their entire lives for the uses, whatever they’d be, of the “Filthy Rich,” and been trained then to forget that.
It is clear that the “filthy rich” had an absolute certainty of their success because of their unmitigated power. What is also evident is the absolute inability of the “Filthy Rich”…which was the shocking thing they’d carelessly let out and therefore displayed to the World…the absolute inability of the Republicans and the “Filthy Rich” to actually notice—let alone view or act towards—Americans as any thing even living or having sentient ability, let alone as humans, people, or individuals.
And as for the term “fellow Americans” often employed by Rich-publican politicos in addressing the masses, if that thought even crossed
your mind for a second as being anything but a device, you are not fully appreciating just how literally I mean for my words to be taken. You may very well, in fact, be deeply dreaming and have missed the crack in the dream state that had shone the light in the eyes of a sufficiently large segment of the world population as to cause them to come out of trance and begin to untie their formerly invisible bonds, so that they could try looking around, which led to the realization of the reality that had been blocked from view, and the beginnings of investigations into the real truths of their existence, and to this series of expositions, among others, delineating the actual, formerly invisible profile of the actual actors in Americans’ lives and their processes of control, as well as the things in their lives that were determined for them by the “Filthies,” though ordinary folks thought they had been making decisions for themselves.
And the last aspects of this series delineates the real factors in our lives and the outlines of the real intentions for us these puppet masters have had, and have even now in mind.
The Power of Money to Persuade…When You Happen to Be Poor – Creating an American Mind and Personality
We Were More Likely to Question Authority When We Lived in Prosperous Times – Creating an American Mind and Personality
“The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths’” discusses the history of the American Republicans’ incredibly disciplined, relentlessly persistent, and amazingly cohesive, seemingly coordinated nearly fifty-year campaign to gain advantage and wealth for their benefactor corporations and the “filthy rich” through totally concocted untruths.
Changing the World?
This started when I was reading over another post I had made. The title was relevant, and it triggered this whole thing. The title was “On Cultural Change, Consciousness, and Music.” And I described it as so: “The perfect confluence of context, moment, and person makes history…Obama’s astonishing rise to the Presidency, for example. But the perfect alignment of a nation’s or world’s deep mood, the moment, and a musician or artist can change the world forever. For example, The Beatles.”
Times Weren’t Always Like This
After reading that, I imagined someone else viewing it, and I considered how chances are it would be someone younger than me-—for I am old enough. That is part of what this is about. I am old enough to have seen some things and I remember some things that people growing up in this day and age would have no conception of. Those more recently coming of age are used to a particular American setting somewhat different than the one I knew. Growing up in a particular context, naturally they would think that is the way things are and how they have to be; they could not know any differently.
“Obvious Truths” Is About How I Saw Things Change
I was born in 1950, so I am aware of other ways that America has been. This part of the book, on “Obvious Truths,” is a lot about how I saw things change. Specifically, I look at the changes in the way we view ourselves, our lives, and authority; I have yet to hear anyone else mention these kinds of changes.
But, Really, Change the World We Did
Getting back to that younger person reading that description, I imagined this other person seeing what I wrote about the Beatles and all that, about changing the world…changing the world! In the harsh light of their cold-hearted reality and the comfortable assuredness of their beliefs, I figured they would consider me naive, if not more. How could that person understand? But, really, change the world we did.
Music’s Power to Persuade
Addressing that younger person, I started writing, “If the title’s claim sounds silly or trite to you then you are operating out of a social prejudice we carry from childhood, particularly around status. And you haven’t stopped to evaluate and compare.” Now, I know that sounds kind of harsh, but it comes together you’ll see.
For one thing, leaders and politicians, even great ones, can only alter the course of events slowly and meticulously. Sweeping changes cannot happen by fiat as they depend on the people’s passionate involvement, which you cannot create. In the case of a dictatorship-—for example, Hitler’s Germany, or Kim “Big Little Man’s” North Korea of the present-—that passion might be faked, probably it would need to be faked. Still, even in a free society, politicians can only use words; and no matter how stirring those words, they can reach only so deep inside. It is with great difficulty that political leaders try to move the soul of a nation; most of that mood is untouchable to them.
Sergeant Pepper
Meanwhile music, in particular, more potently than any other art form, has the capacity to alter consciousness. I will explain that later; it is an area I have done a lot of study in. It is a part of my profession.
Anyway, music affects your feelings and so it affects your consciousness. So its effects will really stay with you more than words will. Music is a more powerful thing, and it has been used consciously to try to sway the spirits of humans ever since the times of shamans.
But music is a much more powerful thing when the perfect combination of mood, context, and music come together. If you think music is not so powerful then explain why music is required at virtually any social gathering…particularly, when there is involved any attempt to persuade the feelings of the attendees. Have you ever noticed that? What is truly shocking is how music can even be more powerful than vast piles of money put against it.
I said, can be. In talking about music’s power to persuade I am reminded of political rallies and such.
The Persuasive Power of Money … When You Happen to Be Poor
On the other side from the power of leaders’ words of inspiration, which is limited, of music’s more effective persuasions, and the potency of passion and heartfelt feeling naturally arising in people, consider the power of money. Money in the hands of the “filthy rich” is used in a variety of ways and obviously has tremendous persuasive powers of its own.
And here is what I am getting at: Money, as arrayed against music, passion, and social movements is especially more powerful in a situation where the people have been put in financial jeopardy because of the prosperity of the rich. As an aside, I remember a time in America’s past when people were more prosperous and confident about their abilities to manage their lives. I do not believe it is a coincidence that in those days money wielded by the wealthy had less power to persuade and people were less easily bought than today. It was said that people then were wont to question authority more than they were likely to bow down to it. I will get back to this later.
Anyway, these are the things I was thinking about when this started.
Related Post: Awakening Millennial Generation Occupy Global Revolution Awakening Millennial Generation Occupy…
“Obvious Truths” – The True Sounding Untruths – in the Creation of the American Mind
The True Sounding Untruths: Precise and Strategic Use of “Obvious Truths” in the Creation of the American Mind
The True Sounding Untruths. (Hell! It’s Obvious the Earth is Flat!)
Then I started thinking about that: the “filthy rich,” specifically, the power of the “filthy rich” and their money. I began to consider it more deeply. Remember this is called the rise and fall of “obvious truths.” I was drawn to looking into those commonly accepted truisms-—truth-sounding but not true; let us call them “obvious truths.” Not true but sounding true: Think of how correct it must have sounded at one time to hear that the Earth is flat. So, an “obvious truth” is something unthinkingly accepted as true but is not actually true when thought about or looked into. I considered some of these errant habits of thinking and looked at where and why they arose and why they would take hold and have power despite having no foundation in reality.
Doing so, I came up with this description of “obvious truths” and the context birthing them:
These untruthy truisms arise out of the American Republicans’ disciplined, relentless, persistent, cohesive fifty-year campaign to gain advantage and wealth for their benefactor corporations and the “filthy rich” through totally concocted untruths, which are introduced carefully, slowly and therefore invisibly, over time….
Just accept my word for it for now; I will explain….
These untruths are introduced carefully, slowly and therefore invisibly, over time, one by one, with persistent, relentless repetition replacing reason or rational persuasion, as part of a coordinated comprehensive campaign whose goal is the creation of an American mind eroded of rationality and confused and made fertile and desperately receptive to these fabrications of the Republicans seamlessly portrayed as truths.
Precise and Strategic Use of “Obvious Truths” in the Creation of the American Mind
I know this is sounding pretty wild. But, you’ll see. Hang in there and see if I can support it. As I was explaining,
Their Goal
The Republicans’ goal, to be precisely and inexorably attained, is the creation of an American mind eroded of rationality and confused. And this mind is to be shepherded by the exact and strategic use of misinformation specifically targeted and measured for the achievement of specific ends. This seeding of minds is to work dialectically with their campaign to physically and financially weaken the American public with the simultaneous and equally slow and meticulous and precisely timed introduction of policies….
I said, I can support this….
Their Means
This introduction of policies, which though not invisible are cleverly packaged, is to be perfectly timed to confuse the obvious step-by-step, year-by-year connections of these policies and their cumulative increasingly successful results.
Now, again, bear with me….
Their Intended Results
These results are the castration of the American…of Americans in general–except for the “filthy rich” and the Republican leadership which are their lackey public faces. So, the intent of this long campaign, employing “obvious truths” as munitions, is the crippling of Americans’ power in particular to resist even the inexorable increase in the clearly felt suffering heaped upon them as these years went by.
I’ll give you a hint, alright? I remember living in a time that was not so economically depressed. I watched it slowly get worse, and worse, and worse; and I saw people suffering more, and more, and more, ok? But I did not hear people complaining more, and more, and more. That’s a hint.
Their Vision
Ok, so what we have is Americans’ power monkey wrenched through policies directed at them and sustained by “obvious truths” pushed by Republicans whose purpose is to diminish people, to reduce their power, and ultimately to bring them down financially while raising the wealthies higher.
Recipe for The Matrix: Misinformation, Repetition, Impoverishment
Recipe for The Matrix: Reduce Financial Resources, Add Copious Amounts Misinformation, Repeat (Endlessly)
Weaving the Matrix
Getting back to the truisms themselves, remember, as I said, these totally concocted untruths are designed to be surreptitiously introduced-—carefully, slowly and therefore invisibly over time-—one-by-one. They are to be planted through persistent relentless repetition, not by rational persuasion, and are intended to replace reason and independent thought.
They are meant to do their work within an invisible matrix as part of a coordinated campaign whose purpose is the construction of an American mind lacking in its ability to reason and confused. Lastly, this mind is to be made fertile and desperately receptive to these fabrications seamlessly portrayed as truths through the exact and strategic use of misinformation precisely targeted and measured for the achievement of specific ends.
Alright? I said bear with me, I’ll be able to give you some examples of this…or I’ll make a fool out of myself, that’ll be your choice…
These specific objectives are also to be brought to fruition through a massively funded, all inclusive, and strategically targeted campaign to financially weaken the American public through incremental changes in national fiscal policy as well as-—note this-—in national culture. National policy changes are to be achieved through the simultaneous and equally slow meticulous and precisely timed introduction of policy initiatives. Though these national initiatives could not be invisible, they are to be cleverly packaged as well as sneakily introduced and are to be perfectly timed to confuse the obvious step-by-step, year-by-year connections of these policies and their cumulative, increasingly successful results.
Ok? I’ll get into the policies, soon. But I am starting with a conclusive statement, and it might seem over the top. You may think it too bold, but I think I can back it up.
Again, those sought for results include the emasculation of the average American through sabotage of her or his powers to act in an effective way in any and all aspects of their lives. 
To be achieved at the same time is the fortification of the power and wealth of the filthy rich puppeteers and their lackey public faces in the Republican Party.
Instrumental in strengthening the wealthy class of insidious directors is the weakening of the remainder of the population’s abilities. And in particular and ultimately the intention is to cobble the ordinary person’s power to get out from under or to alleviate for very long the inexorable increase in their clearly felt suffering as the years go by. For this suffering and the helplessness about it is crucial to the directors’ success.
Bear with me…
The Creation of Confusion, The Stifling of Conviction and Thus Passion: Making America’s Matrix
Making the Matrix in America: The Creation of Confusion, The Stifling of Conviction and Thus Passion
The Creation of Confusion, The Stifling of Conviction and Thus Passion
Now, the key to all this being brought about is the creation of an American consciousness clouded in fog and confusion and thus forgetful of its past as a point of comparison. In this way splintered…we’re talking about the American mind…splintered, and disintegrated it is desperate for something however irrational to cling to.
Along with or coincident with the orchestration of the American mind was the dismantling of any solidarity of Americans on any large scale. 
This follows, because of the confused state that the average American would normally have and its inability—the person’s inability or the American mind’s inability—to discern obvious aspects of reality and distortions of it (lies) which in times prior would have provided obvious organizing standards around which would be passionate resistance. This is what could and would happen in times previous to the Republicans’ campaign.
For example, I went through a time where people would go into the streets and there were people who complained. Recently we’ve talked about Bush…there’s a book out about how Bush actually created a dictatorship during his eight years.
It’s amazing to me that we all knew that, the corruption was so rampant it was like on a daily basis we were hearing things that in a former time—the Sixties, the Fifties, anytime—would have caused Bush to be tossed out on his ear. This time, somehow, it’s like there was nobody in the streets. People went about their lives as if ignoring what was going on … Ok, so there I’m giving you a taste, alright? anyway…
So, I said that in a previous time there would have been passionate, a passionate response. Now I say it’s passionate because of the former unconfused minds’ clarity in witnessing big events and pervasive, blatant universal patterns of change and making the obvious and easy correct interpretations. 
So what I’m saying is clarity of thought creates sureness of action and sureness of one’s feelings, whereas confused minds lends itself to apathy or misguided self-destructive acts. In just a bit I’ll get into how these minds get confused and I think you’ll begin to see some of those things inside of yourself because I think we’re all feeling some of it.
Anyway, so this clarity, of seeing these things happening, created conviction in one’s belief which was rooted in first-hand observation.
I have in other parts shared some of my first-hand observations of events, especially those happening in my formative years. The conviction of my thinking is rooted in such events.
At the time, I also experienced much confirmation and affirmation of my views on these events. So, in general, in times previous to the one we’re in, this clarity and conviction born of first-hand observation was reinforced virtually universally by the great majority of Americans around them who also witnessed the obvious same things and made the apparent and doubtless interpretations that cried out from them. 
An example, ok. America once had a president who was much despised, though he was actually not as bad as Bush.
But the American people were unfettered in their feelings about this president’s actions, and their refusal to put up with his despicable acts caused Nixon to resign.
So, first off, we have former American minds capable of seeing obvious wrongness, injustice, illegality, untruth, deception, or worse. In our example, this might be the the suffering and/or death of innocent young men or the unspeakable horror being inflicted on the bystanding innocents in the conflict they are engaged in.
Once with clarity seeing, then about it gathering with great conviction—undoubting and unconfused conviction—and passion in large numbers and in solidarity and sameness of purpose to right these obvious wrongs, or their like.
It all starts with clearly identifiable rallying points in obvious view of the great masses of Americans, however.
Too many people are unaware or forget that there was a great union movement in America, there was a great antiwar movement in the country… ok? You don’t see much of that action these days. So, this is what I’m getting to, there’s been a change.
So when these great masses of American were clearly in solidarity about things they saw were obviously wrong they effected change. Think about it. Go back to the Depression. People knew they were poor and they put Roosevelt in power. Ok? They did something about it.
Anyway, so in times past you might have this clarity of what’s wrong and of your own suffering around it. You are not confused about blatant happenings in the reality around you. And the people around you, they see it as well. And they confirm it in you. Then you’re pretty sure what the heck’s going on. I mean it’s hard to deny your own reality. But it’s even harder to deny it when other people see it too, and they’re experiencing the same thing. [Footnote 1]
The Media’s Capacity to Confirm, Or Deny…Any Wonder Why Americans Are So Confused, or Dumb?
Wonder why Americans Are So Confused, or Dumb?
The Media’s Capacity to Confirm, Or Deny…
We have former American minds capable of seeing obvious wrongness, injustice, illegality, untruth, deception, or worse:
Once with clarity seeing, then about it gathering with great conviction—undoubting and unconfused conviction—and passion in large numbers and in solidarity and sameness of purpose to right these obvious wrongs, or their like. The examples I gave were the union, antiwar, suffragette, and civil rights movements; we could add the Revolutionary War itself and the abolitionist movement. And I mentioned how people rose up for a New Deal and elected Roosevelt during the Great Depression and how Nixon was hounded out of office, yet Bush the Dubya’s crimes—far worse, including “dictatorship”—were not enough even to bring people out into the streets.
It all starts with clearly identifiable rallying points in obvious view of the great masses of Americans, however. In times past you might have this clarity of what’s wrong and of your own suffering around it. You are not confused about blatant happenings in the reality around you. And the people around you, they see it as well. And they confirm it in you. Then you’re pretty sure what the heck’s going on. I mean it’s hard to deny your own reality. But it’s even harder to deny it when other people see it too, and they’re experiencing the same thing.
The Media’s Capacity to Confirm, Or Deny
But what if the media is saying that it ain’t happening? Does that said familiar? At all? It ain’t happening? How about an economic collapse that began years before anybody publicly mentioned it. I remember at the time it was being called a “goldilocks” economy. Yep, not happening. Right now I’m not going to say a lot about this as it will appear in a big way beginning with Chapter Seventeen.
So anyway, in former times, though, people came together in solidarity and sameness of purpose to right obvious wrongs, or the like. They had clearly identifiable rallying points visible to the great masses of Americans. These things were talked about in the newspapers, on TV, there was no denying what was obvious.
Now, with solidarity of purpose… and this is the important part…solidarity of purpose, with Americans united, feeling the same way, wanting change, their feelings were powerful and so significantly altered major events.
You even see that recently. We have a Democrat, Obama, elected to the presidency of the United States. But, look what it took: eight long years of Bush! Wow.
So anyway, solidarity of purpose gives ordinary people combined strength equal or greater to that of the “filthy rich.” The “filthy rich” are the would-be puppet-masters, the deciders and initiators of the events that have been witnessed so widely, including by the masses. These egregious acts, happenings, or developments brought the masses together in singleness of purpose to decry the source of the wrongs. Crucially, they needed to know the perpetrators of unhappy happenings; it needed to be clearly pointed out who were those responsible for the wrongs universally observed and condemned.
These things known, the result could be the massive gathering of intentions, a movement, perhaps a great social movement, united in purpose, against the observed wrong, seeking justice on the perpetrators and some sort of social or cultural change that might possibly or would definitely prevent future events of the same or similar sort of wrongness.
Now, these things did happen in America, folks. Not long ago in historical time but before our day in America food used to come out from corporations and got people sick or dead. So Americans created a Food and Drug Administration to remedy that. People created a government entity to represent them as a counterweight against the power of the corporations.
Why did this happen? It was because people were pissed, and it was because it was obvious what was going on.
But when things aren’t obvious and you have massive lies being told and you have comprehensive, pervasive media exposure to those lies—those untruths in direct conflict with people’s own observations—people can get confused. Confused, people’s power gets dissipated.
So I’ve kind of told you part of it, haven’t I? I just felt I was giving you too much and without any grounding.
Now let’s take a look at how the minute daily elements of our American way of life were orchestrated for ends not our own.
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Nine: Creating an American Life
Return to Culture War, Class War Chapter Seven: Cultural Rebirth, Aborted
Footnote
1. On how people are made confused, intentionally, so they can be used for the profits of others, at EXTREME, dire cost to themselves.
This is a fantastic video. I encourage everyone to wait for it to get past the cigarette stuff at the beginning. That is only used to make a much bigger, more profound point a little further in..
This is actually about climate change…and what they are doing to confuse people about it, which will end up killing billions at least, if not all life on this planet, imo. (is that important enough for ya?)
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part One
an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema
Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form below, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths,’ Part One,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the link below for and audio audio player.
http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player.swf?1305835355
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Nine: Creating an American Life
Return to Culture War, Class War Chapter Seven: Cultural Rebirth, Aborted
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America Since Its “Pleasantville” Fifties: Cultural Rebirth Aborted, Changing of the Guard Denied, The Elders on Life Support, and the Abomination Fills the Land
Posted by sillymickel in activism, allegory, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, economics, Generations, globalrevolution, History, individualism, life, meaning, nonconform, occupywallstreet, philosophy, Politics, psychology, spirituality, uniqueness, US on July 3, 2012
Culture War, Class War Chapter Seven: Cultural Rebirth, Aborted
It’s a (Not So) Wonderful Life…for the World War Two Generation Compared to Their Boomer Children
War Compelled the Dashing of Dreams for WWII Gen Youth – It’s a Not-So Wonderful Life
Sixties Youth Ideals of Freedom – So at Odds with Their Parents Lives of Heavy Responsibilities
The paramount theme in “Pleasantville”—which is that thinking for oneself and following one’s own unique path and being open to the change that comes with that brings “color,” truth, and aliveness to one’s life—is truly a Sixties Generation idea. 
Again, it is not that it has never been thought of before. All great ideas have been thought before, but that does not mean they have been implemented on a sociocultural, macrocosmic level. Many ideas have remained in the realm of the solitary pursuits of philosophers and mystics and been exemplified only in individual lives. But the Sixties was such a time of turmoil because the values of individual freedom, personal passion, feeling and experience, questioning authority, and thinking for oneself were shared by so many Baby-Boomers and were so contrary to the values of the generation in power.
It’s a (Not So) Wonderful Life
An excellent example of how opposed the Sixties values are to those of the WWII Generation is found in that beloved movie of all time, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” starring Jimmy Stewart. 
In that film, the main character is prevented by circumstances from following his dreams. One event after another keeps him from leaving his home town. His story might be called “The Truman Show” in reverse for he comes to accept the loss of his dreams. He is rewarded for giving up his yearning for adventure with the warmth of a loving family and friends.
Nonetheless, he has been reduced to someone who simply follows a script or role and when it appears that he might fail in that role he considers killing himself.
Reassures a Generation
The movie is beloved and timeless, no doubt, because it reassures an entire generation and all those who have had to give up their dreams for whatever reason that their sacrifices were for a higher good and that it is a wonderful life after all.
Will never know what might have been.
It provides a rationalization against the painful feelings of knowing that one will never know “what might have been” by pointing out the truth that one’s life affects others and has meaning regardless of whether or not one has been fortunate enough to actualize one’s deepest desires, talents, aspirations, and dreams.
War Compels Dashing of Dreams
As mentioned, “It’s a Wonderful Life” calls out to and epitomizes the experiences and attitudes of the World War Two Generation in particular. They were called upon to 
fight a war, after all, which no doubt would derail many a young man’s (and woman’s) dreams. As in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the circumstances that arise to prevent their following through on their dreams are imposed from the outside–the state of being at war and being called upon by a draft to enlist or else be enlisted. For the women, as well as the men who stayed behind, the war’s influence on their lives and the carrying out of idealistic schemes and dreams are only a little less pronounced. For, as in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the war created a society heaving with needs and pain, which only the truly heartless (who wouldn’t have any dreams anyway) could not help but feel compelled to respond to.
Growing up too fast
In one way or another, the situation in the Forties, with the war effort and afterwards, created a generation who, except for the rare individual or one of unusual circumstances, was called upon to step up into mature responsible tasks long before the idealism of their youth would have preferred that they do so. And their generation is scarred for having missed this opportunity. They are individuals deserving of our sympathy; yet crippled they are nonetheless.
We Are the Centaurs (My Friends)… The WWII Generation’s Sacrifice Made the Idealism of Their Children Possible
The WWII Generation’s Sacrifice Made Sixties Visioning Possible
Mashing Butterflies and Drowning Kittens
This is not to say, however, that the generations before the WWII Generation were allowed their dreams and that the WWII Generation is unique in being crippled in its development. For we know that earlier child-rearing modes required the submission of children and youth to parental wishes (again, see “The History of Childhood As The History of Child Abuse” by Lloyd deMause). Therefore, dreaming or envisioning an adventurous life was not the norm. For much of the history of the world and in most cultures, indeed, even the selection of one’s spouse was decided by the parents. So much has our history–in both Eastern and Western cultures–been marked by the assassination of youthful dreaming, idealism, and choice that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet can be said to be a revolutionary work in even depicting that this assassination of dreams is a tragedy!
Roaring Into Life
Still, the WWII Generation can be said to have been especially affected by this slaying of self, for they did, after all experience the heady freedom of the “Roaring Twenties” and the dreaming that preceded the Great Depression. In the Twenties, victorious in World War I and with it now put behind, America was coming into its youthfulness and was heady with its achievements. Unbelievable accomplishments and inventions in all areas of life were speeding up sociocultural change causing some to believe that a new era was around the corner, just within reach, an era unlike anything the world had ever known. This was the atmosphere in the Twenties when the WWII Generation were in their childhood or adolescence. It couldn’t help making a very strong, because of its being early, imprint on their expectations.
Suddenly Depressed
However, these dreams would be dashed in the Great Depression, during which time they would be adolescents and young adults, and they would be harnessed into struggling like their parents had to earlier and were now again struggling.
Getting a New Deal…Light at the End of a Tunnel
Still, as time wore on the dreams of a new world would be reignited with the idealistic union movement and the Franklin Roosevelt changes in the social contract that rescripted the relation between the society and the individual, creating a symbiotic one which enhanced them both as champions of each other. 
Folks would magnify the power of the person when united with others. They would dream of a fairer world in which the rich did not dominate with their wealth because the poor could balance the scales with their strength in numbers, adding to their individual power by joining in unions and by combining their votes in elections. They could begin to envision the light at the end of the tunnel of the Great Depression in which they might realize the freedom and adventure they’d glimpsed around them as children in the Twenties.
War. Shot Down Again.
So it is understandable that they would not wish to enter World War II when it began. And Pearl Harbor Day, when their fate was inevitably forged, when it became clear that for the second time the light of individual freedom would be extinguished, would become an important marker in their lifetimes–a day almost as much to be memorialized as their birthdays.
We Are the Centaurs (My Friends)
Sitting on the Shoulders of One’s Ancestors
For this we can pity the World War Two Generation. As in John Updike’s The Centaur, the World War Two Generation is depicted as a generation that was required to give up its dreams and do its “duty,” above all. It was required to carry out a script given to them by their society, not allowing them to follow their natural youthful ideals. And as in Updike’s novel, they are beaten down in a life that is regimented and has no “color,” spark, life, idealism, or dreams. They have become the robot-like residents of “Pleasantville.” But Updike points out in his novel that their sacrifice, despite the personal tragedy of it on the individual scale, is both necessary and noble in that it makes possible the realization of dreams by the generation that they gave birth to.
Prince in Exile and Hundredth Monkey: Good Old Boys Are Always the Last to Learn in America’s “Pleasantville”
The Hundredth Monkey: Good Old Boys Are Always the Last to Learn in America’s “Pleasantville”
The Sixties Generation Arrived
It is significant that the protagonist of change in the movie “Pleasantville” would be a young male, Bud (David). This is in keeping with legends of old where a young prince comes bearing the new knowledge. But in postmodern style, wonderfully so, he is drawn only reluctantly into this role and we see that it is women who are the real instigators, the least threatened by change. At first, David/Bud opposes his sister and argues for the status quo, maintaining that his sister, who is actually the first one to “break the rules” and thereby to bring color to the town, must abide by the script.
The Prince in Exile
The Prince is Schooled in Tradition
The “young prince” knows the rules well. This fits with legend, where the new ways are brought by a prince who is not ignorant of tradition; in fact the prince is the one who has excelled in training in traditional ways. (See also, Common Themes from Myth and Mythology in Modern Fiction, Prince in Exile.)
In the movie, David is in fact a Pleasantville trivia whiz. He knows exactly the way things are supposed to unravel, the way events are supposed to go.
The Prince Is Reluctant to Break with Tradition
So when his sister first introduces color by introducing sex, he admonishes her. And when he also is tempted to a change in the “script,” he refuses at first. This is when Bud is offered homemade cookies by the young woman who would be his romantic partner. He refuses because he knows that, according to script, it is another young man who is supposed to get the cookies and end up with that particular girl. Despite his attraction for the young woman, his strong sense of maintaining the status quo, not rocking the boat, causes him to try to refuse the cookies. It takes a great deal of forcefulness on the young woman’s part to get him, reluctantly, to accept the cookies that he actually does want. So, again, it is a young, significantly “colorized,” woman who tempts him into a change in the script.
The Prince Brings Change, Without Realizing It, Just Being Himself
It is not that the young man does not have the makeup for accepting change. In fact, even before his sister blatantly brings about change, and therefore color, by rebelliously introducing sex, 
he has already sown the seeds of change, although unconsciously, when he suggests to his boss, Mr. Johnson, that he think for himself, instead of following a rigid script. This he does unconsciously and out of selfish motives in that he by nature is different from the character he is supposed to portray and so he does not play his role exactly as it is “supposed” to be played. Specifically, because he is not really the robot character he has replaced, he ends up being late for his job–which heretofore was a totally unheard of event.
The Hundredth Monkey
It is also significant that it is the young that are the first ones in the town to become “colored.” As in the hundredth monkey phenomenon, it is first the young, especially females, who are open to new experiences, ways, and ideas. Then it is adult females–in this movie exemplified by Betty Parker, the mother of Bud and Mary Sue—who are next to consider alternatives and new ways. Adult males are the last to turn to color, but among them it is the sensitive of heart, exemplified by the artist/soda-jerk character, Mr. Johnson, who “turn on” initially.
Good Old Boys, the Last to Learn
Last to become colorized—i.e., to be open to change and thinking for oneself—are the “authorities” of the town, in this instance, those on the Chamber of Commerce. And among these the most recalcitrant of all is their leader, Big Bob, played by J.T. Walsh, in his final film role before his passing away. Though Big Bob displays a pleasing and affable persona on the surface (for this read “good old boy”), there is an insidious Hitleresque quality to him which provides the suspense at the climax of the movie where he presides over the fate of the artist, Mr. Johnson, and the “young prince,” David/Bud.
Abortion of Cultural Rebirth Always Begins With a Conservative Backlash by The “Religious Wrong”
A Conservative Backlash by The “Religious Wrong”‘ Attempts to Abort the Generational Changing of the Guard in America’s “Pleasantville”
“You Can’t Legislate Morals”
With the support of the Chamber of Commerce, we know Big Bob has the power to do whatever he will with the two on trial. 
And since the events preceding the trial has included mob actions which have included a book burning, the attack and destruction of the malt shop, and the cornering, physical intimidation, and physical attack of “coloreds” by gangs—images common to modern times which has seen these sorts of events in actuality occurring in the civil rights and anti–Vietnam-War movements, and currently in democracy and freedom uprisings in the Middle East, America, and throughout the world in the Occupy movement—the fate of the prisoners is imagined to include the ultimate penalty of death.
“Conservative Backlash”
Indeed, this ominous possibility is promoted by the actions of the soda-jerk Artist who, at the trial, pitifully pleads for a compromise. This is pitiful since we know that his art is his life, that it is the one thing that has truly enriched his life and made it worth living.
Sitting at the Lunch Counter
We know of its importance in that, even after the attack on his malt shop, he defied the “rules” laid down by the town’s authorities which outlawed art and color by working with the Prince through the night to produce a colorful mural on the outside wall of his shop depicting the current events of the town and the feelings swirling about inside its residents.
This defiant act by the artist is reminiscent of antiwar demonstrators, who got fired upon at Kent State, of civil rights demonstrators, who police attacked with dogs, and of Tiananmen Square demonstrators, who were rolled over by tanks, shot, and killed, and most recently of all the courageous men and women of the Middle East risking their lives for freedom and of the Occupy heroes throughout the world putting their bodies in front of the most dire, widespread fascism ever to exist.
Since this character, recently so courageously defiant, is intimidated into pleading for a compromise in which he would be willing to use only certain colors or where he would submit for approval by the Chamber’s leader his ideas for painting beforehand—a compromise which his body language and facial expressions show, wonderfully acted by Jeff Daniels, is one near up against the very death of his soul—we know he fears for the loss of his physical life.
“Just Sign This Confession.”
The compromise is too much like the compromises we have witnessed being offered and come to expect being offered to some of the Tiananmen Square and other 
political prisoners of recent times wherein they are required to do something along the lines of admitting their guilt, apologizing to the State for the trouble they have caused it, and promising to never again to engage in such activities…and only in the most benevolent of circumstance being allowed to continue anything like their former activities but if so only under the supervision and with the approval of authorities with veto power over their proposed actions.
The Religious Wrong
So Big Bob and the Chamber of Commerce represent in the current social framework the Religious Right (sometimes referred to as the “religious wrong” and sometimes 
about which it is noted that the Religious Right is neither). 
Big Bob’s Chamber of Commerce represents Republicans, Tea Partiers, and those in general in our society who have succumbed to the rewards and threats of the World War Two Generation to live a regimented robot-like unfeeling passionless life; to become one of J. D. Salinger’s “phonies,” to abide by their misconstrued idea of “family values,” and above all to “behave” and not do anything to rock the boat of the status quo which might threaten the privileges of those currently enjoying power and wealth handed down, mostly, by heredity.
Civil Rights Movement
It is highly significant that in the courtroom scene the “colored” would be sitting in the balcony, above the black-and-white men. One might say this represents their status as being an elevated state, something to aspire to, and yet not on the level where matters are decided. But even more so, this scene is important in that it is a near exact replication of the courtroom scene in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” wherein the balcony of the courtroom is filled with Blacks, another kind of “colored.” 
This makes it clear that when the movie is dealing with the conflict between the adult males of the town and the “colored” it is referring to the Civil Rights movement.
Revenge of the Octogenarians and the American Tienanmen Square – Culture War
Abortion of Cultural Rebirth, Aborted Changing of the Guard – The King Refuses to Die
The American Tienanmen Square—Culture War
The events in China’s Tiananmen Square more than twenty years ago so affected and still affects some of us here in America because we know at some level that we have experienced it before. What happened in China two decades ago is so much like what happened here four decades ago, somewhat less graphically, around the Vietnam War demonstrations. Let me explain.
Standing Before Tanks, Flowers in Barrels
For one thing, the images of the demonstrations in China, e.g., the lone man standing in front of the tank, were so like those of Sixties demonstrations, e.g., Sixties youth blocking the paths of soldiers and placing flowers in their gun barrels.
Revenge of the Octogenarians
And the result of both was the same: In both cases the opposition,
the youth movement, crushed— violently in China, subtly and behind the scenes in the US—at the command of an octogenarian generation, clinging desperately to power as much as to their waning physical frames.
The King Won’t Die
Assassinations—Character and Otherwise
We see the same pattern of violent versus subtle played out in the US as well where we no longer assassinate our president as we did with JFK, we 
character assassinate instead, as we did with Clinton and which the Tea Party and the wealthy right are trying to manufacture against Obama. One might say the WWII generation in America has gotten more finesse, with practice, in its beating back sociocultural change not to their liking and that the Chinese geriatric set didn’t have as much practice with it.
The King Refuses to Die
Nevertheless the results in both countries are the same. They involve the ultimate victory of sociocultural change in both instances being delayed until the dying off of an elderly generation in power—a generation refusing to die or hand over the controls at the proper time like the generations before them. Simply, the king won’t die!
Time is Running Out.
Time is running out for the octogenarians and ninety-somethings on either side of the Pacific.
The expected, supposedly inevitable defeat of the WWII Generation—their dying off—is portrayed in “Pleasantville” by Big Bob, head of the Chamber of Commerce, ending up fleeing the scene in the courtroom. (Strange coincidence, the actor actually died after making this film.) There are many ways his defeat could have been played out in the movie. I think it is highly significant that he runs away, never to be seen again, just as in the current context the dying off of the WWII Generation is a literal leaving of the scene, not an outright defeat, or some other means of change of power.
The King on Life Support and The Consequences of an Abomination: America Since Its “Pleasantville”
America’s Aborted Changing of the Guard and The King Propped Up Mechanically: Since “Pleasantville”
With these factors in mind, what have we experienced in the last two decades, as the Sixties Generation finally got its turn? As expected, it was at first quite different from what the WWII Generation had been serving up during its forty-plus years’ reign.
The Nineties
We saw the beginnings of cultural enlightening and progress during Clinton’s term in the Nineties. In retrospect it was a colorful time; it was an enthusiastic time.
The Nineties were bookmarked between the economic wreckage left by Reagan-Bush and their voodoo economics throwing money at the rich leading to a huge recession and a financial scandal—S&L Scandal—that involved, for that time, an extraordinary price tag for the country. And the other end was the assignment by the Supreme Court of the election to George W. Bush over Al Gore—a battle of a Sixties Generation member against a WWII Generation paid-for concoction, the W.
A Culture War Raged
In between those two markers a war was waged, a culture war, whose battles—economics, abortion, sexuality, cultural expression, war/peace, child abuse, spouse abuse; and whose personalities—Clinton, Gingrich, Lewinsky, OJ Simpson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Brown, Ross Perot—were detailed and rehashed endlessly via the daily news mills.
The W
At the end, the installment of the W represented a resurgence, in typical Culture War style, of the dominance of WWII-type oppression and manipulation of the masses.
The King Propped Up Mechanically
It was the abortion of the changing of the cultural guard that was naturally occurring. It was the King propped up mechanically, robot-like carrying out the dictums of those who once lived but were no more. It was an abomination of the natural order.
The Consequences of an Abomination
And its consequences during the first decade of the Twenty-First Century were exactly what would be expected from an abomination like that.
Monsters Don’t Really Die in Horror Flicks
The WWII Generation—like the endings of horror flicks, which leave always a hint or part of the monster living on somehow, thus setting up a possible sequel—left behind part of itself in the form of the Eighties Generation clones and the Fifties Generation. And these folks ain’t going away any time soon! They are here in the Tea Party; they are here in the wealthy right; they are here in the ownership and guiding principles of the mainstream media, now become principal propagandist of the American patriarchy (the “filthy rich”).
Millennium’s Second Decade—Same Old Culture War
Currently, in the second decade of the new millennium, the Culture War has erupted in Nineties fashions, pitting Obama now against the cultural regressives.
The Wisconsin-style anti-cutback, pro-union uprisings and the worldwide Occupy phenomenon have brought the lingering issues out into the open in a style not much different from the rebellious Sixties.
It is the same old culture war/class war, now brought to furious and fiery life, as a struggle suppressed by a decade of domination by untruths would be, as it emerges even angrier for having to wait.
The King’s Gotta Die Sometime! Dangers and Prospects, Zombie Apocalypse vs the WWW
The King’s Gotta Die Sometime! Prospects and Dangers in the Post-WWII-Generation World
However much we cannot know the future, and despite the seeds of WWII Generation values left incubating in the minds of Eighties and Fifties Generation members and emerging under tea-bag hats, we can hope that the vision of “Pleasantville” will eventually hold out.
Hopeful News
People Fight Harder to Keep What They Have…For Good Things They’ve Experienced.
Just as in the movie when after everyone has experienced color there is no semblance of a wish to return to a black-and-white world, so also we might hope that as our society turns more and more away from war-making, selfishness, race- and sexism, ecological destruction, and all the other WWII Generation evils left behind, and turns more and more toward economic prosperity, peace-keeping, loving our children and having honest relationships, and the reclaiming of our natural environment and ecological balance, there will be fewer and fewer who wish to turn back the times to the unreal black-and-white world of the “Blue Meanies.”
Reason for Hope
We see evidence of this in both the election of Obama and the high popular ratings for him since in office. Earlier we observed it in the great support for Clinton even during the assassination attempt on his character.
People of Hope
The approval ratings of both of these Sixties-side-of-the-Culture-War Presidents certainly is not comprised only of Baby-Boomers. Sixties Generation values are infectious because they offer so much hope. African-Americans of all ages supported Clinton overwhelmingly; of course they support Obama. We can certainly see that our black population would not wish a return to the black-and-white world that included discrimination and violence against them.
Women of all ages, for the same reasons, would not be expected to wish a return to a less individualistic status, to a subservient state. And the young will always be idealistic if they are shown any ideals, which is what we can expect the Sixties Generation to be doing for them, as they continue taking their seats in the Wise Elders section of the parliament of sociocultural creation.
Last Ditch Battle
We have seen examples of this change all around us. In fact the current frenzied attack from the Right can be seen as a desperate last ditch battle in a war they will inevitably lose. That is the good news.
.
Bad News
How Bad the Aftermath, The Devastation Left Behind
The bad news is that, similar to the way the Republicans cleaned out the Treasury and left huge deficits and several wars on the desk of the incoming Democratic administration in 2009, thus hobbling it before it began, we have no idea how great will be the destruction left behind from these culture waging, albeit waning, authoritarians in the current context.
Heavy with Gold
With their gains in stealing from all classes of society below them in their last dying clingings of a dying old guard, a king who simply won’t die, they are heavy with gold. They have the means to buy much more influence than their numbers.
Their Power Is Magnified
The multitudes are growing in size against them, but with their wealth and with the technology and science available now multiplying further their abilities, their capacity to control the minds of much of the population is magnified beyond anything previously and beyond anyone’s abilities to calculate or foresee.
Zombie Apocalypse?
So despite the trends toward a natural evolution like we have seen in the past, we might witness a strange aberration-—a zombie apocalypse created out of the 
thinking of a time long gone comprised of sick ghostly fantasies of a black-and-white golden age that never was. Such things have happened before; cultures have indeed stagnated for hundreds and even thousands of years. The Middle Age is one such example of stagnation beneath an oppressive deathly authority that would never renew.
Still, despite the scientific and technological monkey wrenches that might permanently upset a natural order of progression, it is more likely that things will work out as they have most of the time than that we will see an aberrant development. There is, after all, at least as much technology and science catalyzing progressive change as is not.
The Positive … Good News?
And the evidence for a natural development is there for all with eyes to see. With so much change needed, it is easy to forget how much has changed for the positive since the Sixties. Still, with no inclination to see it, no amount of listing of the evidence will bring them into view.
What might be helpful, though, is to note some other analogies from the movie “Pleasantville” which can provide insight as to what may be on the horizon or at least be considered food for speculation:
It Takes a Village; We Are a Global Village.
Whereas the black-and-white Pleasantville ends at the town’s borders and turns round again to the center of town, the post-color Pleasantville roads continue going, connecting Pleasantville with the rest of the world. Thus, with color and by inference imagination and thinking for oneself, Pleasantville has become part of a larger world, one in which Pleasantville citizens can participate and in which they can travel and take up residence. This represents the global village, the coming together of the interests of all nations–the emerging “global economy.”
We Have What Really Brings Down Tyrants – The Power of Individuals Is also Magnified by Technology.
But perhaps most of all this connection to a larger world represents those factors of modern telecommunications and travel that have made the world open to the eyes of all, which is the real reason the Iron Curtain fell, the real reason apartheid was overthrown, the real reason democratic revolution is coming to the Middle East and may yet be causative in bringing democracy to places like China and Iran, despite their oppressive propped-up elder-archies, their kings who will not die, their frozen non-renewing social processes.
The W’s Legacy Finally Overthrown by the WWW?
And the most potent analogy of all: the World Wide Web, bringing together all peoples of the world into a collective consciousness sharing ideas and together shaping a world, not just a neighborhood, with true democratization of information, uncontrollable by any wealthy elite of any country or any generation.
Stay Tuned.
Finally, the image at the end of “Pleasantville” is the most apt for what we may next expect: The only thing we know for sure is that it will be different.
Continue with Culture War, Class War, Chapter Eight:
Creating an American Mind
Coming Up: The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths”–How The Big Lie Continued; The Fifty-Year Invisible Family and Community That Surrounded All Americans and Affected Every Aspect of Their Lives Including, and Intentionally, the Basic Components of One’s Personality, and the Erosion of Reason, Soul, and Independent Thought or Action.
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Six: “Pleasantville” as Culture War Allegory
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“The Awakening” in America’s Not-So “Pleasantville”: Evolved Parenting Results in Authenticity Rising and Defeat of the Body Snatchers
Posted by sillymickel in activism, allegory, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, Generations, globalrevolution, History, individualism, life, meaning, nonconform, occupywallstreet, philosophy, Politics, psychology, spirituality, uniqueness, US on July 1, 2012
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Six: “Pleasantville” as Culture War Allegory
To Follow or Not Follow “the Script” in America’s Not-So “Pleasantville”
“Pleasantville” as Culture War Allegory: Thinking for Oneself Gets You “Colorized”
Not So “Pleasantville”
The film, “Pleasantville,” is a postmodern sociological allegory or fable released in 1998. It begins in then-current time against a backdrop of the usual violence, chaos, and turbulence that we are conditioned by the media to believe characterized the Nineties in America. Two high school teenagers, David and Jennifer, played by Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon are planning their evening.
A Tale of Two Siblings
David is planning to watch the Pleasantville marathon on television and to participate in the trivia contest that will be part of it. Pleasantville is a an old sitcom from the 1950s in the Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons style which has attained a cult-like following and is shown regularly on a cable channel similar to the “Nick at Nite” one that we know of which specialized in reruns of old sitcoms. 
It becomes clear that David is an ardent devotee of the show in part because it compensates for the lameness of his real life. Unlike his sister, who is portrayed as a real “firecracker” of a young woman, he doesn’t date or participate in the school scene. It is implied that he may be using the sitcom as an escape from not only a boring life but a threatening one and that he longs to live in the kind of ordered, safe, and unchallenging reality that the sitcom depicts. David is such an avid follower of the show that he is shown to be a master of “Pleasantville” trivia and is primed and eager for the contest on Pleasantville trivia. 
But his sister, Jennifer, is planning for a hot date at home…their parents being away for the weekend providing an opportunity for her to be unchaperoned with her guy—which she eagerly anticipates. 
At odds over what will be played on the TV–Jennifer wanting to watch instead an MTV concert with her date—they wrestle over the TV remote and end up breaking it. However all is not lost as at just that moment and completely inexplicably a television repairman played by Don Knotts drives up in his truck, knocks on the door, and imposes his services on them in fixing the problem.
Don Knotts—perfectly cast, in a Jungian sense, for it is often the impish or normally overlooked and unnoticed element that initiates sweeping changes in people’s lives—indeed does introduce the magical element into the film. He produces a different kind of remote control, which he claims has special effects saying, “You want something to put you right in the show!” Sure enough, in checking out the remote they hit a mysterious button and are transported into the TV and thus into the sitcom and the town that is called Pleasantville.
To Follow Or Not to Follow “The Script”
After their initial confusion, they realize what has happened and try to return, but do not know how to. David–who it becomes apparent has been thrust into the role of Bud in the sitcom–advises his sister–Jennifer who has become Mary Sue in the TV series–to go along with events until they figure a way to get home.
Since he knows all the plots of every show of the sitcom, his idea is that they act out the events as they are supposed to happen and that they do what the two characters–the teenage son and daughter of the parents in the sitcom, Betty and George Parker, played superbly by Joan Allen and William H. Macy–are known to do in the different episodes he has seen.
Essentially, then, David as Bud is advising his sister to “follow the script.” And of course it is not hard to discern at this point that we are beginning to see a metaphor for psychological realities and that “following the script” has a broader meaning for a choice that everyone must make in life in growing up, viz., to follow the script laid out for oneself by one’s parents and society in general or to follow one’s inner direction and inner guide in asserting one’s individuality and expressing one’s unique self.
The rest of the movie is the story of how these two characters–transported magically from the future as well as from the real world as opposed to a made-up TV world–introduce change into the town and thereby color.
Mary Sue, formerly Jennifer, does it consciously. Rebelling against her brother’s admonishments to follow the script, she goes on a date with someone she is not supposed to according to the sitcom script and then–horror of horrors for a 1950s world – engages in sex with him at the local “lover’s lane”–where the farthest that anyone goes, according to “script,” is holding hands. We find later that her date describes this unheard of experience to his classmates, and, like ripples emanating from a pebble dropped in a pond, her action results in a number of the school youth engaging in sex and thereby becoming, to everyone’s amazement, colorized!
The brother also introduces change, and therefore color, but it is done unconsciously at first. As mentioned, he tries to get his sister to follow the script. Still, in a metaphorically powerful scene, when he is late for work at the local malt shop–this is unheard of as well because “Pleasantville” is a world where no one is ever late for work–he inadvertently introduces change himself. In fact, he introduces the most insidious element of change because he explicitly advises–without realizing what he has unleashed–that his boss think for himself!
In this scene Bud, formerly David, finds his boss and coworker, Mr. Johnson, played by Jeff Daniels, stuck at the end of the counter, cleaning away with a wash cloth, like a stuck record, at the same spot, even as the surface of the counter is rubbing away.
When the soda jerk, Mr. Johnson, explains confusedly that the normal regimen would have required Bud to arrive at work before he, Mr. Johnson, could go on to the rest of his chores, “Bud” simply suggests to Mr. Johnson that in the future he continue with his next chore even if Bud isn’t there.
So simply in being himself, coming from a future in which people react to change by thinking out new responses and thereby adapting to them, Bud, aka David, introduces a totally new element into the soda jerk’s script. This has far reaching consequences as the movie progresses and Mr. Johnson begins thinking for himself and having ideas about other things as well. In this way, the soda jerk, soon to be artist, too ends up “colored.”
“The Awakening” in a WWII Generation World of “Blue Meanies” and “Nowhere Men” … “Yellow Submarine” … “Pleasantville”
“Pleasantville” and “Yellow Submarine”: The WWII Generation World of “Blue Meanies” and “Nowhere Men” vs. “The Awakening”
Blue Meanies
The 1998 movie, “Pleasantville,”thematically, is remarkably akin to the 1968-released movie “Yellow Submarine” put out by the Sixties Generation rock group The Beatles.
In “Yellow Submarine” there is a region ruled by the “Blue Meanies.” 
These Blue Meanies, especially their leader, are depicted as powerful and cruel, yet sniveling, insecure, weak, and selfish underneath. Their angry and oppressive personas are shown to reveal poor little whining babies behind them. Their actions are shown to be those of “big babies,” whose gruff exterior must remain intact at all costs, lest their hidden sniveling and hurt little selves be revealed. The analogy the Beatles are making to those of the WWII Generation—at that time the parental generation, those “over 30″—is impossible not to make.
“Nowhere Man”
The movies are so similar in theme that the only major thematic difference between “Pleasantville” and “Yellow Submarine” is that it is music that is not allowed in “Yellow Submarine” whereas in “Pleasantville” it is color. 
But the idea behind them both is the same: Music and color both represent deep feeling, aliveness, thinking for oneself, and change. In “Yellow Submarine,” the man without music is Nowhere Man, who “knows not where he’s going to, doesn’t have a point of view.” In Pleasantville, the men without color act in the same ways, performing the same actions, day in, day out, without change, zombie- or robot-like–like characters in a 1950s-style sitcom in which nothing unpleasant, different, new, or too emotional is allowed to occur.
And above all, the black-and-white men do not think for themselves. This is graphically portrayed in the scene mentioned where the owner of the town malt shop, Mr. Johnson, portrayed by Jeff Daniels, is left cleaning the same spot of the 
counter for hours so that its top is rubbed away because his coworker is late and the routine they use to close up cannot be completed in the way it is done, everyday, in exactly the same way. Confronted with this small change, he shows himself to be the “Nowhere Man” and like a needle stuck on a record, he is rigidly stuck repeating the same action, not having the power to think of an alternative action in response to a change in the usual routine.
“The Awakening” – No Longer a Distant Vision
The differences in the years of the release and the different artistic modes used to express the themes of these two movies have something to say as well. In 1968 the changes in culture of the New Age were a vision and a hope. It is appropriate and telling that “Yellow Submarine” was expressed in animated form. Like a dream that would take a long time to realize, it needed to be expressed in cartoon-like fashion, for the time of its emergence in reality was too far off.
By contrast, “Pleasantville” blends a fantasy world–appropriately it is a TV sitcom, which has more similarities with reality than an animation – with the actual reality of postmodern times. The advance toward reality is patent in the evolution from an animated form–indicating the change is far off, a fantasy, a wish, a hope–in the 1968 movie; to a black-and-white form involving real actors, real people; and then to a colorized version involving real people in what is supposed to be real time and real cultural reality, in the movie released thirty years later. One might say that what was a fantasy over forty years ago is, however unconsciously, being heralded as, hopefully, emerging and coming into being now–in actual, black-and-white or colored, real time and place.
Reversing the Invasion of the Body Snatchers: The Preeminence of Inner Authority – Authenticity Rising
The Preeminence of Inner Authority – Authenticity Rising:
Reversing the Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Reversing the Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Concerning the movie “Pleasantville,” noted movie critic Roger Ebert quite astutely pointed out that it was “like the defeat of the body snatchers” (from his excellent review, “Pleasantville” ). One might also say that it is one in which Holden Caulfield, the character in J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, wins out and children do not grow up to be adult “phonies.” Another analogy would be that it is a depiction in which Peter Pan stays young, when he succeeds in keeping the children from ever growing up and thereby losing their capacity to “fly”–representing the capacity to dream, to envision, to be open to new possibilities, to adventure.
What It Is That Makes One Alive
Against this backdrop of lack of real aliveness, the introduction of “color” into the town of Pleasantville through the introduction of sex is not seen as something bad at all. Similarly, in recent history, despite the increasing drum beating of the Religious Right in the last three decades, those of us who grew up in the Fifties know that the introduction of sex–in the Sixties, as in the “sexual revolution”–was a step forward from the hypocritical sameness and plodding repression of the Fifties.
Other elements introduced into Pleasantville that produce colorization in the participants include thinking for oneself (Jeff Daniels in his role as the soda jerk), intellectual passion (the sister), questioning the way things are supposed to be or, in Sixties terms, questioning authority (when the brother finally becomes colored), artistic and creative passion (Jeff Daniels again), and even the passion of honest rage (the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce). These elements arise in Pleasantville just as they arose into the collective consciousness of those of us living in the Fifties and Sixties.
Of course I am not naively saying that these elements never existed before the Sixties. 
The underlying factor that was introduced into the movie causing color and that was also introduced into our society causing all the sociocultural changes that we, usually, complain about is the factor of choosing something different than what is expected by society, than what is expected by the outside. What is introduced in the movie–as it was introduced in our culture–is the preeminence of inner authority in making decisions, as opposed to outer authority.
A New Psychohistorical Era!
In psychohistorical terms this difference is marked by Lloyd deMause as a difference in a mode of child-rearing. The black-and-white Fifties Pleasantville is a representation of a mode of child-rearing—which characterized the Fifties—wherein 
the role of the parents is to “mold,” model, and guide children along paths that the parents have deemed to be correct–called the socializing mode of child-rearing. The child is expected to be a clone of the parents, a mini-me, or at least to represent the parents’ ideas of proper behavior, ideals, and mode of living, irregardless of whether the parent models them or not. And when not, the phrase “Do as I say, not as I do” and the term hypocrite as applied to the parents are apropos. The basic nature of the child is considered to be sinful and evil or at least beastial; the classic novel Lord of the Flies depicts this view of human nature.
Therefore the child needs to become other than itself and conform itself to something outside of itself in order for she or he to be considered “good” and to receive good responses in turn from parents and society.
By contrast, the colorized Pleasantville represents the mode of child-caring that came out, big time, beginning in the Sixties, wherein the parents’ role is that of “bringing out” from and supporting, encouraging, and helping the child to discover what the child’s talents and inherent abilities, feelings, and proclivities are, and then encouraging the child to “believe in him/herself” in the expression of those inherent and inborn good qualities and values–termed the helping mode of child-caring. [Footnote 1]
This mode contains a radically new view of basic human nature. Humans are seen to be essentially good (even “divine”). It is evil and painful events impinging upon the child from the outside—family and society—that are deemed causative in taking the child from its natural state of innocence and goodness and inherent unique talents to one wherein the child is corrupted and thus becomes beastial and lacking in inherent good qualities and talents.
Therefore the solution is to protect the child from traumas coming from the outside, especially the huge one of feeling unloved through not being seen or respected as a unique individual…as opposed to being seen as a mere outgrowth or mini-me of a parental entity. 
And in so doing the parents’ role includes helping the child to discover his or her uniqueness and dispensing unconditional love, that is, love that is given freely, without the requirement, as in the socializing mode, that the child do and be what the parents want before the child is accepted or shown approval or any emotional warmth.
In representing this advanced mode of being (and child-caring) the “colorized” people in Pleasantville open themselves to possibilities that were never before considered; 
they stray from the earlier mode requiring strict conformity to parental scripts. Robert Kennedy’s Sixties quote comes to mind as expressing this: “Some people look at things as they are and ask, why? I think of things that never were and ask, why not?” This means, then, a capacity to experiment and adventure in one’s life, which, at bottom, involve a belief in questioning authority and thinking for oneself in Sixties terms or, in Sathya Sai Baba’s words, a belief that we are, each of us, “experiments in truth” in our sojourns on Earth. And just as these elements and beliefs became more and more a part of America’s collective consciousness in the Sixties and Seventies and ever since then, they also gradually develop in “Pleasantville.”
Love Uncertainty – We Need to Stop Bemoaning the “Messiness” that Comes with Freedom
What It Is About Change… Revolution Is Not a Tea Party
(But It Can Be a Tweet Party)
The “Messy” Scenery of Healing
“Love My Uncertainty”
One reviewer described the ending of the movie as “not at all easy and tidy, but rather very, very messy” ( “Pleasantville” by Chris A. Bolton). Ebert–more astutely but not quite correctly—wrote that the determining factor in whether someone became “colored” was the factor of change. The first reviewer, like someone with one foot still in “Pleasantville” or one who is still not fully colored, does not understand that the ending, wherein the characters proclaim that they do not know what is going to happen next, contains exactly the essential message of the movie. The ending can only be “messy” if one expects a particular ending.
The reviewer is very much like the critics of Occupy Wall Street who claim the protesters do not have a message, or a leader…essentially don’t know where they are going. He is wrong for the same reasons those critics are.
The whole point of change is that it is always something one does not expect. Likewise, when people act out of inner rather than outer authority, one can only expect that what happens will be unique, like people are when they are not conforming to external expectations. So there could be no pat or predicted ending. The moviegoer could not leave knowing whether Betty Parker, the Stepford housewife turned liberated woman, returns to her husband, George, or takes off with the soda jerk turned artist, Mr. Johnson, because that would destroy the uncertainty inherent in change, growth, aliveness, and so on. So the ending is exactly what it has to be.
Money Madness and the Rise of “Obvious Truths” … Around Taxes, the Wealthy, Job Creation, Democrats, Republicans, Generations, Your Life, and You: When ALL You Hear Are Lies, You Think It HAS to Be Truth
Posted by sillymickel in activism, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, economics, Generations, globalrevolution, History, individualism, nonconform, occupywallstreet, philosophy, Politics, psychology, spirituality, US on July 21, 2012
Foolin’ the People … About Money, About “Us” (The 1%), About Taxes, About Job Creation, About Democrats, About Republicans, About Generations, About Your Life, About You: Choose the Red Pill
Culture War, Class War, Chapter Fifteen: Money Madness
Tax the Wealthy, You’re Taxing Me … Foolin’ the People About Money
Obvious “Truths”—Fiscally Responsible Republicans and Tax and Spend Democrats
Obvious “Truths”:
Obvious “Truth” – Tax the Wealthy, You’re Taxing Me
That’s a Small Business?
We’re All Rich. Somehow I Missed That Memo.
Obvious “Truth”: The Democrats’ Want to Take Your Money.
Well how did it get to that conclusion when actually it’s going to lower taxes. And they were saying it over and over again, “No, we don’t even need to know what the plan is; we just know he’s a Democrat and that he’s going to raise taxes,” they would say of Obama…or for that matter of any Democrat at any time in recent history.
Now, how did that become true? Well because…he’s a Democrat and well haven’t you ever heard the term tax and spend Democrats? And there we go again.
Obvious “Truth” – Fiscally Responsible Republicans
Pointing Some Fingers Already
Alright, let’s go back. Pre-Roosevelt turn of the century initiatives so common and familiar now, such as the Food and Drug Administration, are the kinds of things Democrats brought in that added to government. Yet, Republicans spout misinformation; they get people angry about “evils” of such “big government.”
Misplaced Credit
The Democrats are the ones who brought in the FDA, worker’s rights, workman’s compensation. They’re the ones who put in Medicare. They’re the ones who put in Social Security.
Misplaced Blame
And we remember the Republicans are the ones who created the Great Depression, created poverty for everybody at that time. They’re the ones who did it again with Bush, who tripled and nearly quadrupled the National Debt under the twelve years of Reagan-Bush, then more than doubled it under George W. That’s a lot of goddamn money.
That’s a Lot of Money.
And even afterward, all Congressmen were agreeing that’s a huge amount of money, which at the time
was the biggest amount of money being spent at one time, in such a short period of time on anything. 
And how could we forget that they just took the money and did whatever they wanted with it? They paid off debts to other rich friends; they went overseas and invested in other countries.
Chase Didn’t Use the Money for What It Was Intended.
Obvious “Truths” – Tax and Spend Democrats
Social Security, Medicare, and Surpluses, Oh My!
It has nothing to do with the truth. Certainly Roosevelt benefited all Americans with Social Security and so on; certainly Medicare, brought in under Lyndon Johnson benefited the vast majority of Americans. All these things the Democrats did.
And Clinton raised taxes on the very rich a few percentage points and balanced the budget. Clinton created jobs and prosperity, balanced the budget, reduced the National Debt, and created a surplus that could have gone into creating a better America for all Americans. But, no, that was considered bad, because they said it hurt all Americans when the extremely wealthy had to give a little more in taxes.
The Fun Times Anticipating the Surplus
Never mind the facts, never mind that fact that we had a surplus that we were talking gleefully about how we were going to spend it. If you can remember, we were discussing investing in better roads and infrastructure that would have benefited even the businesses.
Stealing Home
The Wealthy Are the Creative Sector All Right … Creative in Stealing Our Money
Obvious “Truth”—The Wealthy Are the Job Creators
Obvious “Truths”:
Obvious “Truth” – Rich People Create the Jobs
Obvious “Truth”—The Wealthy Are Society’s Creative Sector.
They’re Creative All Right.
They’re the creative people, huh? Yea, they’re creative in stealing from us. They’re creative in fattening their wallets at our expense. They’re creative in getting people elected who are liars and things like that.
That’s not the kind of creativity I’d like to have. As far as creating jobs. Who creates jobs?
Excess Wealth Given to the Rich Created High Art Prices, Not High Employment.
Real Truth—The Rich Will Squander or Sit on Extra Money.
Obvious “Truth”: Non-Wealthy Folks Don’t Create Jobs, Don’t Invest Their Money
Real Truth: People With Less Money Will Sweat Over and Multiply Money, What They Can.
I saw my father do it. He is the same person making the meager fifty dollars a week at one point. And he wasn’t making much more, but he eventually got a truck driving contract with the U.S. postal service.
He was able to own several trucks and to hire several workers.
So, why did he do that? Because he didn’t have a lot of money.
And by taking those chances and becoming a businessperson, taking that little bit of money he had, he created jobs for a few other people. Because he was motivated, he was desperate. And for him it was all about a chance to raise himself out of being poor. He spent his life scanning for such opportunities till he finally came across one.
Billionaires Are Not Highly Motivated to Become Millionaires.
But Nobody Will Point This Out!
..
Makin’ People Foolish – Foolin’ the People About “Us” (The Rich)
Makin’ Foolish People – Foolin’ the People About “Us” (The Rich)
Obvious “Truths”:
Confused People Take Comfort in Stupidity
When ALL You Hear Are Lies, You Begin to Think It Has to Be the Truth.
Democrats Feel Like They’re Talking to a Wall; They’re Talking to the Weary.
And pundits wouldn’t delve into their argument, tease out its elements so as to enlighten.
So after a while a lot of these folks are going to say…I’m sure you’ve heard them, they’re Republicans and the ones who vote for Republicans…they would say, “Aw geez , that’s just a bunch of words, it don’t mean anything.”
But what the hell does that mean?
Confused People Retreat Into the Stupid.
..
..
And Burdened People Become Confused People—That’s Their Plan
We’ll Insure You, Up to the Time You Need It
It’s gotten to the point where you have insurance but you dare not ever make a claim. You live with the risk of unexpected loss to your home at any time that you can not cover, because if you make a claim you may not get it next time. You risk losing home insurance and threatening your home. What the hell kind of insurance is that? You are insured but they can deny you? They can deny your claim, or as it happens all the time, you have one or two claims, and you no longer have an insurance company.
Rational Thought Replaced With Slogans … How Can Anyone Know the Truth?
How Can Folks Unite Against Injustices Hidden From Them
That is the result of factoids, “obvious truths,” replacing reason in burdened and confused minds. So how could these people possibly, without being able to see clearly, how could folks like this ever be united against the REAL injustices against them…which they don’t even realize are happening…their minds filled with the fake stuff?
How Can Folks Protect Themselves From “Wizards” Hiding “Behind the Curtain”?
With all this, how can anybody know what the truth is?
A Rising Tide Lifts All Yachts … The Rich Are Getting Richer and the Workers Are Getting Humiliated
Increasing Humiliation of Working People, the Rich Get Richer at Our Expense
Obvious “Truth”:
Real Truth – The Rich Get Richer at Our Expense.
Life Has Gotten Harder – Real Truth
Real Truth – Our Suffering Has Paid for Even Greater Obscenities by the Wealthy.
Humiliation…Increasing Humiliation of Working People
We have these huge corporations taking over and it’s humiliating to people. I mean in times past we had the small retailer, perhaps this person had a small coin shop, bakery, drugstore and pharmacy, shoe shop, maybe a corner grocery store. Now, there aren’t any small stores like that. And where does that person end up making a living?
Well, he worked in retail so maybe he even ends up working for the same department store hat pushed him out of business. So what does that do to your self-esteem?
I can say I feel fortunate to have lived many years in an America quite different from what most people in America being younger than me have been growing up with.
Hippies, Yippies, Yuppies … How the 1% Diluted the Progressive Movement by Slandering Boomers to Foster Culture War Between Them and Gen Xers and to Distract from Their Own Looting
The Yuppies Were Hardly Boomers … But This Idea Supports a Right-Wing Agenda by Pitting Progressives Against Each Other … Try the Red Pill Instead
Obvious “Truths”:
Real Truth – All the Above Are Lies … Propaganda to Further the Motives of the 1%, the Filthy Rich
I can say I feel fortunate to have lived many years in an America quite different from what most people in America being younger than me have been growing up with.
I watched in the early Eighties the lies about a “Me Generation” coming out. Republicans brought that out to beat people down with. The idea was planted that people who wanted anything for themselves were selfish, for after all only the wealthy should ever benefit.
The 1% of the WWII Generation’s response to Sixties activism on campus, as I showed earlier, led to their taking over the universities in the early Seventies and turning them away from the humanities and social sciences and into career mills; I was there and observed it first hand. The success of this is what created the Yuppies in the Eighties–young upwardly mobile professionals–who were the first batch of Generation X—who are those born 1961 to 1981, who therefore left high school beginning in 1978. [Footnote 1]
So these Gen X Yuppies were coming onto the scene in the early Eighties, when the first of them were leaving the universities. The turnaround in education, away from free thinking and towards conservative careerist values, was in full swing by the time they reached college in 1978 on. And its effect on them was patent when they began coming of age. They were what the WWII Generation wanted: money-oriented and compliant…greed had been made “good” again. Standouts of this generation today are Sarah Palin (born 1964), Eric Cantor (born 1963), Rand Paul (born 1963), and Paul Ryan (born 1970).
So then the WWII Generation, fully in charge of society, could point to these yuppie spawn as examples of the obscenity of greed, thus deflecting attention away from their own, WWII Generation, me-spiritedness. To further their ends, they also claimed the origins of this unseemly greed lie in the failed, unrealistic values of the Sixties generation and their idealism.
Whereas this actual Me Generation, these Yuppies, were predominantly a bunch of reactionary young people who said to hell with this idealistic stuff, and of helping out, and kumbaya, and all that stuff. They said, we’re for money, to hell with any one else. And somehow the WWII-Generation-owned media, assisted by a Fifties Generation now in their prime, convinced folks that these careerists out only for themselves were the one-time visionaries. Of course they only pulled this off because they owned or controlled all the major organs of expression in America—the newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, education, book publishing. I’ve delineated how they did this in one of the earliest all-out assaults, after their initial setbacks in the Sixties, of the Culture War/Class War they have been waging on the 99% since that time.
The media flooded American minds with the idea that the Me Generation was My Generation (I’m “talkin’ bout my generation” here) in the Eighties. They had prepared the ground for that lie, as there had been constant slander of my generation in the press since the beginnings of our activism in the Sixties, exactly like they are now putting out against the Millennials and those in the Occupy movement today. Beginning in the Seventies, owning the publishing and media industries, they concocted the lie that there was a conservative backlash going on. (See Chapter Two: Matrix Aroused, the Sixties and The Big Lie About Yuppies Being Hippies.)
This supposed conservative backlash was merely a continuation of Nixon’s laughable claim that he was supported by a “Silent Majority,” which he had used since the beginnings of his term in 1969 and which was obviously false, as demonstrations grew in size and support swung away from him throughout this period; and eventually he was forced to resign. But Republicans always claim there are a majority of real folks out there—“real Americans” as Palin and her kind say today—who support them but are doing it secretly. (btw, lol!)
Anyway, by the Eighties the powers-that-be were able to place this idea of a selfish “Me Generation” of Sixties youth, which they had been saying for a while, as being the ones on the campus at the time or recently out, the Yuppies. It fit their narrative. But it was a lie, and virtually all my generation knew it and thought it laughable. We stopped laughing after a while as over the years, it became clearer they had done such a good job of preparing the ground and repeating the lie that it stuck in the minds of those other than my generation—the Fifties Generation ahead of us and Gen X behind us—and the right wing, who of course saw this as red meat to further their causes. The media controlled by the 1% said the Sixties generation had gone from idealism to just wanting money, thereby discrediting their opponents, us who were consistently representing the 99%. At the same time they gave credibility to their claim of the superior veracity of their own values of greed, materialism, ruthless pragmatism, ego above all, and even me-spiritedness. Also, it validated, even glorified their personal traits of conformity, hard-headedness, cynicism, compliance, and even mean-spiritedness .
The Lies About Jerry Rubin
They could only give one example, Jerry Rubin; and even about him they lied and slandered. First off, neither Jerry Rubin, or Abbie Hoffman for that matter, were Boomers or Sixties Generation members. They were Fifties Generation, born in 1938 and 1936 respectively. Boomers were born in the post-WWII baby boom from 1946 through 1960. So that is enough to discredit what they said about “my generation.” But taking it as an attack aimed at the counterculture, let’s examine it:
They said Jerry Rubin was engaged in trying to make money. And they never mentioned what he was trying to make money on…
but God forbid anyone but them should try to make money anyway. You see, what the 1% do is drive people into lowered standards of living and poverty where they experience desperation for money at times. Then they can point to that grasping to survive as proof that their values of money above all else are legitimate and that it is not possible for humans to have any other values higher than that. They create the conditions that they can use to support and validate themselves…how convenient.
But Rubin’s position in this “debate”—which was actually a discussion of different ways the Sixties values might succeed, not be overturned—was that the POOR COULD BE HELPED by promoting programs to create wealth in their communities. I quote:
Someone who knew him well, Stew Albert, said this of Jerry in eulogizing him.
And,
Does that sound like someone promoting the interests of the 1%? Or like someone just out for himself, as Yuppies really are? Remember that at the time, militant, even violent revolution had been in the air for a while—with the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, and the Symbionese Liberation Army and such. So “Yippie vs. Yuppie” was a leftist debate about tactics. Today it would be considered a discussion of liberal vs. progressive views…hardly conservative, Yuppie, or Republican views. And Jerry Rubin’s putting on a suit made him about as conservative as it made Bob Dylan a conservative when he picked up an electric guitar at the Newport Festival of 1965. Dylan got booed for what was only considered unusual alongside some very high, and strict, expectations about purism in music having nothing to do with political ideology or musical quality but simply technology. Rubin’s wearing a suit was the same kind of thing at the time he did it…and it had nothing to do with ideology but simply tactics—i.e., revolutionary technology.
Also, at the same time as Rubin was doing all this and supposedly a Yuppie, he was running a legal and civil rights office in an artsy/alternative part of L.A., Echo Park, where he also lived. When he died he was on his way to dinner in the company of Fred Branfman of the Making a Difference project, whose purpose was to bring money into poor communities by helping inner-city youth learn how to start their own businesses. Does that sound like a Wall Street careerist? Does that sound like he turned over his ideals and bowed to the god of money? So, lies, lies, lies. And these lies become instituted and they’re not challenged after a while, after you hear them for decade after decade after decade….
You have to be older to know that it wasn’t always the way they tell you it is. It helps to have lived in different times and places and to have seen things with your own eyes to be able to see through these inane “obvious truths” that people take as absolute truths. It helps to have had experience with the things they are talking about to know what are actual facts and what are complete fabrications.
Setting the Record Straight on Boomers
Boomer-Generation X Culture War
A friend who supports the Occupy movement, and who happens to be a Gen Xer, recently shared this with me,
If this person were correct, then why have the Boomers voted consistently Democratic? [Footnote 2]
The Gen X/Yuppie—Fifties Generation alliance was responsible for getting Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II elected. Boomers voted against Republicans, especially these; it’s all in the public record. Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II are the ones who did the tax cuts. Whereas Clinton—a Boomer and a Democrat—raised taxes on the 1% and balanced a budget for the first time.
Indeed, all Democratic candidates and Presidents going back to Roosevelt at least, with the one small exception of Kennedy favored and fought for raising taxes on the 1%, not cutting them, so as to relieve the burden on the 99%. The right likes to use Kennedy as an example of a Democrat seeing the wisdom of cutting taxes to improve the economy, but Kennedy’s proposed tax cut for the 1% was when the marginal rate was 91% range, not at 35% as today, and the country was prosperous. (See The Myth of JFK as a Supply Side Tax Cutter.) Also it was not instituted until Johnson began his term … which was incidentally when the huge deficits began. So Kennedy’s tax cut had nothing at all to do with the prosperity we enjoyed during his term, indeed its institution marked the beginning of increasing deficits.
Even today, it is Democrats—supported heavily by Boomers—who are opposed to tax cuts and favor reining in the greed of the 1%.
This includes Obama, who incidentally is a Gen X-Boomer cusper, born 1961. Note that he has surrounded himself with Boomers—Biden, Clinton, et al. And they are engaged in that same Democratic struggle of decades past of trying to get the 1% to pay their fair share in taxes. Meanwhile Republicans supported by that Fifties Generation (the Koch Brothers, John McCain, Dick Cheney, Mitch McConnell, et al) – Gen X/Yuppie (Palin, Cantor, Ryan, Rand Paul) alliance oppose Boomer-Democratic tax and other progressive initiatives at every turn.
So to accuse Boomers, who voted predominantly for these Democrats and their policies, of cutting taxes is grossly misinformed or a lie. And for a Gen Xer to do this blaming is either ignorant, a denial, or delusional…but is in any case a product of that misinformation I’ve been talking about.
For to address that Gen Xer’s charges of Boomer’s causing the dependence on dirty foreign oil, the Sixties Generation started the environmental movement. I know a little about this; as I explained previously, I was one of those who helped bring nuclear plant construction to a halt in America, which we did in Springfield, Oregon, in the early Eighties. We, Boomers…I was born in 1950…supported Democrats who fought for environmental legislation, alternative energies, and reduced dependence on dirty energies against Republicans, supported by the Fifties-Gen X alliance, who watered down those policies and legislated a rape of our natural resources and our environment to benefit big business, Big Oil, Big Nuke, Big Coal, and the 1%.
As for the accusation that Boomers sent our manufacturing base overseas and caused a lowering of middle class wages, how can that possibly be true alongside the more than obvious knowledge that Democrats are the ones who consistently push for and favor raising the minimum wage and are the union supporters? Can this OWS person not be aware of the parallel Wisconsin union movement which has Democrats and union folks up against Republicans and Gen X/Fifties Gen Koch-supporters? Or is he somehow unaware of the fact that Boomers have consistently voted in greater numbers for Democrats than Republicans over all these decades? [Footnote 2]
Well, this shows the amount of success the WWII Generation and Fifties Generation enjoyed in shifting the blame for their policies and their theft of the national wealth. And, by the way, it was the WWII Generation that had the greatest retirement wealth per person and who instituted Social Security and other benefit programs for themselves … making themselves the wealthiest as well as the “Greatest Generation.” Probably with the tax cuts, the current Fifties Generation who in their retirement years are raping the wealth of the country to fatten themselves, are bettering them. Whereas the Sixties Generation, scapegoated again, is facing cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and other benefits at the exact time as they need it and are facing or entering retirement—being beaten down, harassed, and scapegoated by the Gen X-Fifties Generation alliance again.
You think this is ancient information and is irrelevant to what is happening today? Remember that the comment I quoted above from my Gen X friend and fellow Occupier was from only last week. He has his sights set on my generation as the perpetrators of the problems; these ideas have caused a split between Gen X and Boomer Progressives. I can tell you that his comment is not atypical from others I hear from Gen X in their attitudes toward Boomers.
Similarly, to some extent the Millennials believe Boomers are at fault also—this is what they have been taught. They are simply misinformed and so are not so committed to the lies as the Gen Xers.
The Millennials are open to the fact they have been deceived. After all their Boomer parents are models of the fact that these “facts” are actually lies. The Millennials have been made to believe, simply, that their own parents and those of their friends are somehow just different from those “bad Boomers” out there who are really the selfish and tax-cutter ones.
Lies and toxic misinformation are not healthy, at all, for a movement that is predominantly an alliance of Millennials and Boomers, with some Gen Xers (notably, few Fifties Generation folks). After all, how do you think a progressive Boomer feels,
after fighting his entire life with his generational cohort for the changes that we are still fighting for with the OWS and Wisconsin union movements, and after hearing his entire life the made up lies, the slander, the scapegoating about himself, his generation, and his beliefs? How do you think she feels seeing those same lies being pulled out again and thrown against OWS supporters, for example, continuing therefore to throw salt into old wounds? And finally how do you think she feels to hear from her friends and allies in the movement that she has been the problem all this time, not the solution? It is disheartening, to say the least.
In this antagonism against Boomers, the other side—the WWII-Fifties Gen alliance, supportive of the 1% and their Tea Party sycophants—have won again. [Footnote 3]
For these WWII-Fifties Gen lies have thrown discord into progressive ranks. And they have thrown off the aim of our movements as to who the perpetrators are, giving the 1% a convenient fog of confusion behind which they can continue unfettered their actions against us.
Finally a most visible example of the right-wing/Republican Fifties Generation – Gen X alliance was shown in the last presidential election with a Fifties Gen, McCain, matched with a Gen X – Palin, born in 1964, coming smack in the middle of the Yuppies (1961 through 1970). This is the generational alliance and the generational values we should be targeting, not Boomers, and Progressives would do better to know that.
The “Truth Dividend” of Having Been Around
So, in understanding what might be the truth and what are obviously lies, it helps to be older, for you can know that it wasn’t always the way they tell you it is or has to be. It helps to have lived in different times and places and to have seen things with your own eyes to be able to see through these inane “obvious truths” that people take as absolute truths. It helps to have had experience with the things they are talking about to know what are actual facts and what are complete fabrications.
And with that seeing comes the knowledge that over the course of the last fifty years America descended into a deep slumber of untruth from which it could not awaken…regardless of all the righteous efforts of many true-seeing progressive activists who did their best to sound alarms.
Continue With Culture War, Class War, Chapter Sixteen: The Fall of “Obvious Truths”
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Fourteen: Better Off Than Fifty Years Ago?
The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths,” Part Three – an Audio Reading by SillyMickel Adzema
Here is an audio of the author’s impassioned reading of this part. Though it is of the first, unedited and unpolished version, and it does not contain all the detail of its current form, it does capture the flavor of it all. I offer it here for your listening pleasure. For the reading of this part, “The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths,’ Part Three,” click on the link to the audio site above or click the link to the audio player below.
http://ecdn0.hark.com/swfs/player.swf?1305835355
Footnotes
1. A lot of confusion about Boomers, Yuppies, And Generation X has been generated by the Census Bureau and main stream media. A generation, see below, is defined as a cohort of people occurring roughly every twenty years who share some common viewpoint and experiences.
This is what a generation actually is:
Meanwhile, the U.S. Census Bureau definition of Boomers is different. See Baby boomer.
Why would it be different? That is the crucial question. The Census Bureau’s definitions of Boomers and Generation X is as follows:
So why are those born 1961 through 1964 considered part of the Boomer Generation by the Census Bureau, which has informed much of the discussion on this? Why is the Census Bureau attributing only 17 years to Generation X but 19 years to Boomers, when in fact the Boomers were born in a World War II “baby boom” that had them being born in a distinctly shorter period. Whereas Generation X was born of the Fifties Generation during a more languorous, hence longer period? Why is the Census Bureaus including as Boomers those born at those end years of 1961 through 1964 when the number of births was decreasing, not “booming”?
I don’t know the answer, but I do know this decision by the Census Bureau has served pundits and right wing commentators in giving more weight to their positions by diluting the distinctly liberal voting record of actual Boomers. As I have been stating above, there was a concerted effort to scapegoat Boomers and to confuse them with Yuppie-Gen Xers. This confused definition by the Census Bureau is part of that. It has allowed pundits to slander the Sixties Generation, as I said, by attributing qualities to them that were actually a part of the WWII Generation’s Culture War Attack of creating a generation different from and more compliant than the Sixties Generation/ Boomers.
At any rate, that is why we have the discrepancy shown in this description of the Pew Report findings on “Boomer” voting patterns. Let’s look at a few relevant findings:
This supports what I’m saying about generational voting patterns. The difference lies in that this author has to differentiate between late Boomers and early Boomers. They are opposite in their voting patterns. This person wouldn’t be so confused if he placed the generational divide where it belongs, at 1961, not 1965. Boomers were born between 1946 and 1960, as shown in the chart below, which also shows Generation X beginning in 1961.
The Boom Generation defined by Howe and Strauss, as shown in the chart above, born 1946 thru 1960 are the ones who vote consistently Democratic. They are the ones who shared common events and experiences growing up and were shaped by them, notably the Vietnam War; the JFK, RFK, and MLK assasinations in 1968; the sexual revolution; the explosion of the use of LSD and pot as drugs, and the counterculture. These events were not on the cultural map that faced the ones born 1961 through 1964, for they were too young. Yet how can one define a Boomer-Sixties Generation that does not include these as formative experiences?
So this discrepancy is an example of what I’m talking about in this article. For it continues the confusion about Boomers and contributes to the scapegoating and the denigration of Boomers as being a Me Generation and Yuppies being former hippies by simply getting confusing results by including some from Gen X—some actual Yuppies.
To include those born between the four years, 1961 through 1964, you end up getting the confused results this author gets. You are including the likes of Sarah Palin and Eric Cantor, fer Chrissakes! I’ve never heard anyone mistake them for my generation. It would have Barack Obama, born 1961, categorized as a Boomer, as if there is not an obvious generational difference between him and some the notable Boomers in his administration, like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. But by seeing that Obama is a Yuppie-Gen Xer, it helps explain the differences between him and the actual Boomer president, Bill Clinton.
For more on this, see Generation Jones, which is the term given for those born 1954 through 1964. They are seen to be very different from the Boomers. They did not confront the same social realities as did Boomers. They even came of age after the Vietnam War. They missed the counterculture movement. It is ludicrous for generationalists to include these with Baby Boomers as especially the second half of these have an entirely opposite world view from Boomers. Their stalwarts include Rick Santorum (born 1958), Sarah Palin (born 1964) and Eric Cantor (born 1963)…hardly Boomers. Notice that it also includes Rand Paul (born 1963), who as expected is the son of a Fifties Generation parent with whom he is allied, Ron Paul (born 1935).
See also the write up on Generation X in Wikipedia, which addresses this confusion as to where the dividing line between Boomers and Gen X is as well.
Finally, see Baby boomer, which discusses this confusion and adds two important considerations: The person who coined the term “baby boomer” described them as those born between 1943 and 1960. So why did the Census Bureau change it? The second point discussed is that many theorists have two distinct generations during this supposed period of Census Bureau Boomers—Boomers and Generation Jones, which are said to be those born 1956 through 1964. So this latter group is not included with Boomers.
Is all this not confusing enough? Does it not play into the right wing agenda to dilute their opponents power by confusing their opponents profile, so they can lob any charge against them? Or attribute any self-congratulatory trait to them, as they wish?
Most of all, this strikes me as devious in that it allows right wingers to blame Boomers for the cadre of youth, the Yuppies, who were actually their creation—that of the 1% and those reactionary culture war forces—and were in no way influenced by, so should hardly be included in, “my generation” of Boomers, the Sixties Generation.
2. BLAM!! From the site, Gallup Politics, of May 8, 2009. Even though continuing the misinformation that Boomers were born up till 1964, going with the Census Bureau definition, Gallup Poll data still solidly support the premise that Boomers are predominantly Democrats, as well as the fact that Millennials are as well.
Notice here that not only are arbitrary birth figures used to stipulate Boomers and Generation Xers, but everyone older than a Boomer is classified as part of the World War Two Generation—”The Greatest Generation.” So they would have everyone born in the forty-five year period from 1901 through 1945 to be WWII Gen even though some were born during the war and had their coming of age after the war and in the decade of the Fifties—those born 1925 through 1945. Elsewhere this generation has been termed the Silent Generation or the Eisenhower-Presley-McCarthy Generation…I’m calling them the Fifties Generation for convenience sake. Still, the study does find Democratic tendencies among Boomers, however wrongly defined, and Millennials. And it finds Republican leanings among Generation Xers, however wrongly defined, and the Fifties Generation, however wrongly defined again, as shown by the graph below:
Now contrast what above is said in the Gallup Poll about Boomers with what is said here about “late Boomers,” or who Howe and Strauss and other social scientists would call Generation X, and I would call Gen X-Yuppies:
The article above also describes the Democratic voting patterns of the Millennials, or what they call Generation Y.
On the idea that the Millennials being the sons and daughters of the Sixties Generation/Boomers, as I continually point out, I offer the following definition of Millennials from WhatIs.com
Finally a most visible example of the right-wing/Republican Fifties Generation – Gen X alliance was shown in the last presidential election with a Fifties Gen, McCain, matched with a Gen X – Palin, born in 1964, coming smack in the middle of the Yuppies (1961 through 1970). This is the generational alliance and the generational values we should be targeting, not Boomers, and Progressives would do better to know that.
3. There is some scapegoating done by Millennials out of this misinformation. The following was published a few days ago, on June 17, 2012. It is further validation of the antagonism against Boomers regarding the issues of the movement—OWS and Wisconsin union:
Continue With Culture War, Class War, Chapter Sixteen: The Fall of “Obvious Truths”
Return to Culture War, Class War, Chapter Fourteen: Better Off Than Fifty Years Ago?
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