Women Population and Living In the Future

I was reading “Capital in the Twenty-first Century” by Thomas Piketty (when it first came out I did not have the capital to buy it and had to wait for the prices to fall to paperback level), and I became fascinated with Piketty’s discussion concerning trends in population growth.  He says that it is difficult to gage future trends in population because so much depends on the decision making processes of the women involved, and men to a lesser degree.  What was refreshing was that, at least so far in the chapter I am reading, he did not mention what all the other Experts seem to invariably mention – that Population Growth Declines Wherever Women Are Educated.   I had recently commented on such an assertion on some YouTube video.  I am almost completely certain that the Mechanism involved here that influences women to abstain from,  postpone, or limit their Child Bearing is involved with their concerns for their Incomes and Careers.  Yes, we are told that Standards of Living are going up in the Developing World, but how much of this is due to the fact that now it has become the New Normal for each Family to have Two Breadwinners.   To be cynical about it, where Traditionally each family only had to sacrifice One Slave, the Man, to the God Mammon, now they must sacrifice two.   Now, with all it must take in order for a Household to pay its bills and make its way in a Consumer World, the idea of taking the time off from Work and budgeting for the expense of having, raising, and educating children… well, we can see how any practical and economical woman would hesitate to have as many babies as her mother had before her… a Mother who may have been very well educated but who didn’t Have To Go To Work.   So it is not about Education.  It is about Women having been Coopted by Capitalism.  Ironically, Women have been Enslaved by their “Liberation” – Orwell would have loved this one.

But, yes, for all of us who are worried about the Health of Planet Earth and Sustainability, it may have been reassuring to somehow believe that Well Educated Woman would somehow develop a repugnance for babies, and think of becoming mothers with a level of distaste.   But once we wake up to the nonsensical sound of such a proposition, then it occurs to us that IF we can somehow break our chains and struggle free of Capitalism and establish an Equitable World in which we can all modestly prosper, and where neither Men nor Women are any longer Enslaved and forced to make desperate survival choices, well, we could probably expect the Birthrate to Skyrocket.  The fact is that, generally speaking, Women Like Babies. 

I think it would become  unavoidable that some Institutional Limit would have to be placed on the number of Babies being output.   But we would still have to address the Issue of Satisfying Women’s Needs for Maternal Fulfillment.  So, let’s think about that for a while.    I have heard that in Wolf Packs, only the Dominant Female Wolf is allowed to have litters, but that All Adult Female Wolves are invited to participate in the Family.  Each Pup has a number of loving and caring ‘Aunts’.   Now, for an example involving Humans – not many people know, but the Nuclear Family as the Primary Social Unit has not always been the case.  Before, and in many parts of the World still, the Extended Family was the Primary Social Unit.  Husbands and Wives were not isolated together and forced to live apart from Society.  The broader Extended Family must have been Great for the Children, since they had so many Role Models to choose from, for, in the instances that their own Mothers were nervous wrecks or something, or their fathers mean hopeless drunks or whatever, then the Children could focus on those in their Family Compound that were obviously Better Respected and had higher appraised Social Status, and then grow up to be just like Them.  Oh, I had heard in regards to Biblical Translations that it is very misleading to suppose that Jesus had so many ‘brothers’, since in Aramaic the word “brother” is the same as for the word “cousin” which tends to signify that at one time the Social Unit was indeed the broad Extended Family – where children were so mixed together that it was considered insignificant as to exactly which of them came from the same mother.  Oh, and in primitive tribal groups and small bands, the Men lived apart in their own huts and tents (smoking, drinking, gambling and cussing to their hearts content) while the Women took up their own quarters, and, again, where the children of all the Women were largely mixed together.  Remember the saying that comes from somewhere “It takes a Village to raise a child”.

Well, in our Bright and Sunny Future World we might have to replicate what had been so successful in our past, along with what we can learn from the Wolves.  We can re-organize the way in which we take up Residence.  Honestly, Men are not happy living with Women, and Women are not Happy living with Men.  The Decline of the Family is mostly the fault of its inherently flawed assumption that Men and Women SHOULD find each other agreeable on a long term basis.   Yes, of course there is Love.  But Love between Men and Women flourishes on their being Separated for the better part of the time.  Love is Best during the Time of Dating – when Men and Women could see each other when both were most calculating to present the best manners and appearance.  Remember the adage that “familiarity breeds contempt”.  How many marriages crumble because of words said while absently irritable and grumpy, which never would have been said during the 4 or 5 hours dedicated to Being On One’s Best Behavior for a Date. 

Oh, I remember a somewhat amusing tale from my college days – we were studying the Spartans and how they had separate quarters for Men and Women, and one of the students wondered “How could they have Babies?”  Well, most of us just laughed, since, even as young as we were, we already knew, or suspected, how relatively easy it is to ‘sneak sex’.  But in a household, where over familiarity has somewhat poisoned the well of Good Feelings, then couples who Live Together can often go months without having sex, or so I have read and friends have told me, etc.

So, yes, even if the number of Children are limited in the Future, well, we would have to arrange that All women who would like to could participate in the Maternal Fun – that Babies become an integral part of the Residential Schematic for these Women…. And that Men can visit only when they are presentably dressed and on their best behavior – in order to be the Best Possible Role Models – little boys, and the little girls who think they are little boys, should not know about smoking, drinking, cussing and gambling before they know algebra and world geography.  At least in their formative years, children should positioned in a way so that they are lead to have respect for men, as that might go a long way towards assuring that they almost automatically grow up to be Respectable.  As it is today, in order to be Respectable many of us have to largely deconstruct out Childhoods.  As a Society we should be able to do better than that.                                  

War In Heaven and the Demons Win Chapter Two

Back on February 7^th 2018 I wrote a blog “War In Heaven and the Demons Win”.   Well, apparently I am not the only one who is being pushed towards such a conclusion.  I was just talking online and was told of a recent Dream experience by somebody where he or she heard a voice coming from the middle of their head which said “We Waged War on them and We Won”.  Of course such a phrase is vague with its none-signifying pronouns.   But if we look around at the World today, could we have possibly missed the Triumph of Good over Evil?  But what if we suppose that Evil had won out, would we be as able to as easily find any counterindications?  Yes, there are still some instances of Goodness, but that may be of the same order as scattered refugees after a Lost War leaving their Blasted City and just trying to find a new corner to settle in – yes there is still some Goodness but it is a defeated Goodness in a World and even a Spiritual Realm that Glories like the Vampires at Sunset and celebrate the Dawn of Darkness. 

Anyway, this new suggestion of Defeat got me to thinking about what I had said before, just last February, about the Warnings of the Marian Apparitions, and then it occurred to me that there are some details about the Fatima Apparitions that may apply to our situation here.  It seems that the Six Months that spanned the Fatima Apparitions almost completely overlap the Russian Revolution, and that Our Lady seemed very concerned with Russia.  Of course the intuitive understanding of Catholics would be that Our Lady was absolutely shocked and appalled at some Godless Russian Revolution, but it may have been more complicated than that.   You see, the Russian Revolution presents a Moral Paradox – Communism as an Ideology was about relieving the Suffering Masses from the Exploitations and Unbounded Inequalities inherent in an ostensibly Evil Capitalism.  For Our Lady What’s Not To Like about Communism?  Well, it seems that the Bolsheviks retained from the Bourgeois French Revolution the virulent idea that Religion would be invariably Reactionary, and so they set themselves as stone cold Materialists.  Well, the problem with Materialism with its Pure and Sterile Science, is that there can be no possible Explanation or Justification for Morality.  Morality must either come from a Religious Based Mythology, or it must come from a sense of Aesthetics, but Scientific Materialism would be hostile to Morality from either source.  So we could expect that Our Lady of Heaven would have a kind of Love-Hate Relationship to the Russian Revolution.

She promised the World that there would be Peace if Russia could be Consecrated to Her.  This was one of Prophecies that had been entrusted to Lucy, the one Child at Fatima who had survived the World Wide Epidemic of the Spanish Flu that had swept the Globe in 1919.  One of the other Prophecies that Lucy had passed on to the Vatican was in regards to World War II which apparently already been inevitable at that point  (indeed, I believe that future generations of Historians will eventually merge the two World Wars together).  Anyway, when the Second War occurred just as per the details that Lucy provided, well it made the Vatican much more cognizant of the Russian Prophecy.  Note, that Russia only needed to be Consecrated or Converted, and nothing was said regarding enshrining Capitalism, making Greed a Virtue and withdrawing the ancient religious proscriptions against Usury, which are the bedrock of Capitalism.  Indeed, when we look back at the History of the Marian Apparitions of Warning, are they not in parallel to the rise of Capitalism and the growth and development of both Industrialization and the purely Financial Markets (where Money is made simply by trading Ownership Certificates, but no Goods or Services are Produced, Bought or Sold).   As Capitalism grew there was of course the accompanying avalanche of misery on the common people? It must be more than a coincidence that the ever darker view Mary held for the prospects for Humanity were in direct proportion to the rise in the Inequality of Wealth – a sure sign that the World was encouraging and rewarding Selfishness over Charity and Compassion.    

Well, the Vatican got so nervous about the prospects for Nuclear War that they went ahead without the Soviet Union’s permission and Consecrated it, ceremonially, to Our Lady.  Well, there was no Nuclear War, but there would also be no “Peace”.   It seems that the Soviet Union’s Problem with Materialism’s rejection of any basis for Morality would come back and kill them.    You see, we remember Stalin for all his Gulags, and the popular propaganda is that Stalin just sent Political Dissidents to them, but the truth is that far more Upper, Mid and Lower Level Party Officials had been sent to the Gulags for Corruption (bribes and Black Market involvements).  When Stalin died in 1953, there was a Reform and all of these Corrupt Officials were set free, and they were either pulled back into the Party Apparatus or they were allowed to unofficially partner up with Party Managers of Production and Distribution to build up a Black Market.   After a few decades the Black Market vied with the Official Economy in size and breadth.  What finally brought the whole structure tumbling down was that the Last Premier, Gorbachev announced that that he would put an end to Corruption.  Well, Gorbachev was brand new in office, and he had not yet consolidated his Power, that is, establish a network of mutual Loyalties throughout the Party with Officials who would support him and obey his orders (he must have taken it for granted that he had dictatorial powers, but it never works like that).   Well, fearing a crackdown on Corruption and a return to the Gulags, the mostly corrupt Party Apparatus panicked and  went  into instant revolt, and they handed the Keys to the Nation over to the Black Marketeers.   So, the Soviet Union did not collapse because of any inherent problem with Communism, but because of its Materialistic Moral Failure – Party Officials had no compelling reason, after the Death of Stalin, to not engage in corruption – theft and appropriation of Public Goods for their own Profit … really, a kind of Unofficial Capitalism is what screwed over the Soviet Union.

Well, it seems that all the while that the Soviet Union existed, the Capitalist World was nervous in regards to the Revolution spreading.  So they operated on two tracks – violent suppression of any overt socialist or communist movement, but the allowance of certain concessions to the People – Unions were allowed to exist and the Capitalists did not violently overthrow the Governments when Social Programs were put in place.  Capitalism, for propaganda reasons and to win “hearts and minds”, put on a Smiley Face.  Also, with World War II, nearly the entire World effectively Nationalized their Economies, which greatly reduced Capitalist Inequality, and so the Silver Lining around the Dark Cloud of the War had been a generalized Post War Prosperity… not because of Capitalism but because it had been suppressed.

But with the 1990’s, with the Defeat of World Communism, and because the People know longer had an Ideological Choice, well, Capitalism no longer had to hide its Teeth and Claws, and off came the Smiley Face.   Under the name of Globalization, the Conquest of Capital over People went forward. 

Of course, this is All Political, but certainly we can see the Spiritual Parallels.  The New Age Movement is composed of either Capitalist Publishing Houses or small predatory entrepreneurial capitalists who equate Spiritual Connectedness with relative wealth and success in exploiting others. Both the Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church are mostly bastions of Capitalist Privilege.   Yes, Pope Francis is a nice guy, but he has not yet been able to Consolidate his Leadership – he is a Dictator that nobody will listen to (I suppose he is afraid to push the issue of his Authority – he could Fire every Bishop that opposed him, and their only recourse would be to take the Position that the Roman Pope is not the Head of the Church, but that would be the effective End of Roman Catholicism.  Would the Selfish Capitalist Bishops go that far?  Yes!, apparently that is what Pope Francis honestly believes and fears.  But, Heck! Prophecy says that Pope Francis is the Last Pope.  Let the Church die with a Bang and not a just a Whimper.)

But, yes, if Goodness has already been defeated in Heaven and on Earth, well, what choices do the remaining Good People have?  We could regroup and resist and hold out for some Miracle that could turn the Public Consciousness around, or we could all start signing up for seminars about how to swindle little old ladies in the Real Estate Market. You know, Capitalism has an appeal for a lot of people because it promotes the dream that Everyone could possibly get rich, given the right circumstances.   But that Dream is eventually bound to collapse.  The Economy will be dominated more and more by Inherited Wealth – It will be like Aristocratic Privilege returned.  And then even among the New Aristocrats, competition and accumulation of Wealth will continue on.   Capitalism is like the Game of “King of the Mountain”, and eventually there can only be One Winner, and everyone else knocked down to abject poverty. Sooner or Later the Mass of People has got to see that Satan, that One Final Winner in the Selfishness Game, is Evil and that Evil is no longer the ‘Good Thing’ that they had believed it was while they were voting Red Red Red…  

Is Fasting Good or Bad An Overall Look

From a Letter to a Friend    

It seems that your pre-occupation with Fasting, especially Dry Fasting, has worked me into a similar pre-occupation with evaluating the Pros and Cons of such Fasting.  You know, while I never dry fasted, back around 10 or 14 years ago I used to do 3 to 5-day fasts.  At the time I was trying to lose weight.  You see, before that I used to be an avid amateur runner – 10ks and Marathons and all of that, but most of it was just doing the Training.  Back then I was living in a desert community that was pocketed in mountains on all sides, and many of the mountains were cross-hatched with trails, and there were detailed geo-graphical relief maps for the entire territory, and the soil was dry and sandy and so even when wet the trails didn’t become slippery, and so it was natural to train as a Trail Runner.  I was in such good condition that I could run none stop up mountains, and then down again.  Running Down a mountain is kind of like Poor Man’s Skiing – the idea is to carry as much speed as possible, so on sections where the sides of the trail rose on both sides, one could carry speed by going back forth off the trail – traversing – one would really have to be ‘in the zone’ for that kind of rough terrain fancy footwork.   But you can imagine how many calories I was burning up doing all of that.  Then I relocated to where the trails were dull and slippery, and besides, that is when my hips began to disintegrate (osteoarthritis) and so I could take much less exercise, and so I fattened up.  Fasting was a good way to lose weight fast but still be able to eat to satisfaction on none fast days.  But since then I gradually learned to be satisfied with smaller portions. Fasting no longer seemed necessary. 

When I was fasting I did notice that it was easy to become light headed.  Almost any exercise that would cause an increase in the breathing rate would cause one to get light-headed to the point where there was a real risk of going feint or swooning (losing consciousness and falling down, and then coming to only so you could count your remaining teeth).  So you would have to be careful in taking any exercise or doing any Yogic Breathing Exercises.  I have a feeling that what a lot of Yogis attribute to Fasting in regards to Spirituality is just the ‘High’ of being that close to Passing Out.

Also, I can’t believe there is much reliable science based research on Fasting (mostly because the Universities won’t fund their own Research anymore but wait for Interested Sponsors, but since Fasting can’t be bought or sold there are no Interested Sponsors who would be willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for controlled studies).   So what we know about Fasting comes from people who may have either some indirect financial interest (New Age Hype) or an emotional interest (Fasting is my Last Hope).  And a lot of the Pro-Fasting Narrative may be propaganda from the Past.  You see, Fasting developed within Ascetic Communities and Monasteries and among individual Ascetics.  With the Individual Ascetics, their primary Work for each day would have been to go out Begging for Food.  Of course, they would meet with resistance and often be chased and teased by the village children.  So, there would be the tendency to ‘skip a day’ and relax, and since they needed to Save Energy, that would naturally blend into the idea of doing Still Meditation (all this stuff works together, you will notice).  Also, if one eats regularly every day, then one will look well fed, which makes it harder to get food from begging.  I myself often encounter Homeless People who are holding up signs that solicit for money, and I have a natural tendency to scoff at any homeless person who is fatter than I am,  since it looks as though they are actually thriving on it.  But I dig into my wallet when I see somebody who was careful enough to cultivate that “skin and bones” look.  So, the Individual Ascetics may have actually been fasting in order to create the right “look” for themselves – the ‘Look’ of an Ascetic.  Who would give money or food to anybody who did not ‘look’ the part they were playing?  Even their own self esteem would require that Lean and Hungry Look, as it might be the only thing they ever manage to accomplish in the ‘Spiritual Realm’.   

Then we come to the Ascetic Communities and the Monastic Institutions.  Anytime we have a number of people gathered together it is likely that eventually Somebody will take charge.  Especially this is true of the Monastic Institutions.  In many Societies the Monasteries, whether they at first wanted to or not, became the dumping ground for Illegitimate Babies (a young maiden would have an ‘accident’ with the stable boy and it would be decided to keep her under wraps until her baby arrived and then she could go back to being a Virgin again, but something would have to be done with the baby.  Poorer people would simply ‘nose pinch’ it and toss the body into the river, but well to do people would find placing the baby in a monastery with a modest endowment would be less traumatizing for the young girl involved).  So many Monasteries turned into Warehouses for people.  In these times and economies the Orphans were orphans for life – without extended family connections there would be nowhere to go and nothing to do.  The Cities were as yet not the dumping grounds for extraneous Humanity that they have become in our Era, and vagabonds would likely be enslaved.  So child Orphans would become Adult Monks and Nuns.  This also applies to many of the Monastic Institutions across Asia.   Well, the Administrators of these Monastery Orphanages were necessarily on tight budgets.  And food must have been one of the scarcities.  So of course it would be discovered that people could actually go for days at a time without food without it killing them right there and then.  And then, if these Inmates were perpetually malnourished, then they would endeavor to save their energy, whereby they would make much less trouble.  Again, we would have the development of Still Mediation, which must have started as just staring at the walls in a state of blank lethargy, but from that it evolved into being a positive Virtue, much like it’s original cause – the Fasting.

Yes, of course Fasting was not honestly presented as a Fiscal Necessity (or a Fiscal Convenience for Administers who might have thought of skimming the savings into their own pockets).  The Narrative was created that supposed that Fasting had Spiritual Benefits.  That Narrative has since been adjusted to fit with Today’s more secular thinking by saying that Malnutrition is somehow the Healthy Choice.  But that is easy enough to refute.   We can suspect that the historical Slave Owners and the Early Industrial Factory Owners experimented with Money Saving Fasting but it obviously proved to be detrimental to their “Human Capital” and so feeding schedules were set up to maximize productive potential and longevity in their ‘assets’.   That meant that Slaves and Workers were assured of eating several times day.  So it seems that the only Interested Groups in History that think that Fasting is good are those who are in the business of warehousing people from cradle to the grave, and who would actually tally up benefits if the Life Expectancy of their charges could be significantly reduced.

Oh, but, yes, apparently there is some anecdotal ‘evidence’ that Fasting can be “cleansing”, particularly ‘Dry’ Fasting where water is withheld.  Dry Fasting is obviously a fad of new creation.   Water has never historically had the price or scarcity of Food and so there could not possibly have been any interested incentive for making people unnecessarily thirsty.   But I have heard it said that depriving the body of water somehow reduces Inflammation.  Now it makes me wonder whether this reduction in the Body’s tendency towards Inflammation isn’t what is meant by the vague term “cleansing” or appearing to have been “cleansed”.  Well, Inflammation is not necessarily a Bad Thing.  Indeed, Inflammation has its beneficial purposes.  Inflammations fight off the vectors of Disease, and often inflammations at imperceptible levels will swoop in and destroy nascent Cancer Cells – as soon as a Cell’s chromosome structure distorts enough to make it appear to be more Foe than Friend, then an Inflammation will set upon it like a pack of hounds and destroy it, accompanied by only the slightest of fevers.  Oh, and I read of studies that said that people who go six years without complaining of getting the Cold or the Flu are twice as likely to come down with a Cancer.  So it seems paradoxically that Only Healthy People Get Sick!  The Body has to have Healthy Reserves in order to retain a Working Immune System that is capable of putting up Intense Fights every now and then.  They used to say that one of the first Symptoms of AIDS (an immune deficiency disease) would be a long spell of extraordinary ‘Good Health’, and only when Foreign Pathogens had made severe and unchallenged inroads into the Body would the ‘Illness’ begin to show, but still with no ‘Fever’.  The Patients would die from being too Healthy.

Also, of course there have been no studies about this, but when we just think about it, haven’t a great many of the Ascetic Saints died of Cancer.  Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna, Sai Baba of Shirdi.  But yes, the Fat Spoiled Predator Gurus (the Smirking Buddhas!) are mostly smitten with Diabetes (There is a God!).

Now, particularly about Dry Fasts, well, the Kidneys tend to clog if there is no positive fluid flow through them, and these ‘clogs’ constitute ‘damage’ and more times than not I have heard the doctors say that “Kidney Damage is Irreversible”.   Of course I am not a Doctor, but we only have to look around to see how relatively common it is for people to somehow end up on Dialysis Machines for the rest if their lives.  But even if you do not outright blow out a kidney or two, there is the real danger that by restricting your fluids that you will be inviting Kidney Stones, which I have heard is the closest thing to the pains of Giving Birth that a man can experience, but then Kidney Stones don’t come with any much awaited happy ending… except for the relief to be back to the same normal condition they were at before they stopped drinking enough water.  

Free the Wage Slaves with Universal Basic Income

I had just been reading an opinion piece published by the Federalist and written by Brad Polumbo.  The gist of it was that the crisis regarding the avalanching level of defaults with Student Loans, was all the fault of the Students for not having all majored in some valuable work related vocational kinds of Studies.  In short, he argues that Education should be focused on its Value to the Capitalist Ruling Class and that the actual students should repress any sentimental urge to study anything for the mere sake of some selfish notions about Personal Development, or, God Forbid, the Pursuit of their own worthless Happiness.    Okay, now it’s all out in the open – that the Ruling Classes now, and probably have always felt, that the Public involvement in Education has been about cultivating more productive Wage Slaves.  The Common Masses exist for one reason only and that is to make the Rich richer.

The problem for the Greater Society is that if the Ruling Classes should be able to find Faster, Better, Cheaper replacements for the Wage Slaves which they now recruit from out of the Common Masses, then it is likely they would then let the Common Masses all waste away and starve.  They would use the same basic argument as Mr. Polumbo used, that it is the Common People’s own fault that they are poor and starving because their Great Great Great Grandparents didn’t get rich when they all had the same opportunity that their own Great Great Great Grandparents had.  

Yes, on the practical level, since we are all starving and must eat, I can see why we all should be scrambling to fight over any crumbs that fall from the Rich Man’s Table, that is, every student in the World should major in whatever the Capitalists say they need Today… which, if Mr. Polumbo would have thought about it, would simply glut the field.  I am sure that more than a few Students in recent decades have picked a burgeoning field of Enterprise and then studied 7 years to become Masters in it, only to find that the Fields of Gold had long since gone over to some new Fad Specialty.   We all learn how to Pick Cotton just as they invent Polyester.  But in the present day we are now looking at a darkening horizon that portends a greater evil then just all of us simply fighting each other for the same few jobs, for now we are facing the rise of Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Robots and an All Knowing and All Learning Net Intelligence.   Not just Blue-Collar Labor will be replaced, but also Career Professionals – the Luxury Car Crowd!  Whatever needs to be Done, robots can do it.  Whatever needs to be Thought and Decided, Net Intelligence can do that.  The only thing we are waiting for is for costs to come down.  How long will that take?  The first commercial calculator in 1972 cost $150, but in ten years they were all under $20.  We’ve seen the same curve over and over again with the cost of Black and White TVs, and then Color TVs, Mobile Phones, Home and Office Computers, then Laptops, and then Smart Phones.   It makes me wonder why we aren’t already replaced.  Maybe we are all just lucky that the Human Resources (“H.R.”) Departments are dragging their feet because they know that it would simply make sense that they should be the first to go.

So, anyway, what are all of us Common Masses waiting for?  Do we need Capitalism and a Ruling Class?   Remember that the Owners are only sucking money out of the System, and that all the Work, both in terms of Management and the Execution of the Corporate Business, is done by Salaried People – from the highest to the lowest.  The Owners do nothing but Own, and the People could do that!  My God!  Even I am as qualified as anybody on Earth could be to be an Owner and then just sit back and enjoy watching the Wealth grow up from under my feet and between my lazy toes.   

If it is inevitable that the Robots will take over all the Work, and the Networks take over all the Thinking, then We the People should move Now to assure that these Machines are Working for Us, and not for Them.  We know that if we miss our chance, then we will simply be turned out to starve.  Look at History!  Can we believe that the Misery of the Dark Ages can’t be repeated?... especially since all of these basically Ignorant Owners and Vocationally Trained Capitalists honestly believe that their Wealth – in the Billions of Dollars – is sufficient to get them through any ‘rainy day’.  If we leave it all up to Them, then we are certainly Doomed.

But if we can all get lucky, that is All of us from all around the Globe, for the Multi-National Corporations and Global Capitalists and Banks must not be allowed any corner for escape where their vast purchasing power could be used to put the rest of us all under siege, but, yes, if we can manage to wrestle away the reins to the Means of Production, then we could stipulate some Universal Basic Income for us all.  And then we could set up a New Model for Public Education which goes beyond being Vocational Schools for Slaves, but would instead aim towards Educating up our Humanity with the view of lifting every possibility in the Arts, Media, Literature and Culture… and, yes, Science too, since I suppose the Nerds will always be with us no matter how much the rest of us tease them for it.  

Material Revolution Precedes a Spiritual Revolution

I was watching a YouTube© video from Vanessa Ooms (March 16, 2018  “Feeling Worried/Lost”), who is a young woman who had a spectacular Kundalini Awakening several years ago, and she has been giving the World a record of her evolving, or devolving, experiences with her videos.  I don’t know from what condition she started from, but my perception is that she is going downhill.  We can notice that the title of her most recent video isn’t “Smiling So Much It Creeps People Out”.  Her big issue now is feeling Worried and Lost.   One of the points she made is that we should use our Spiritual Perspective to support us and that we should resist worrying because the torments of worrying are constrictive and deadening.  

Well, my first thought is that often people in the most desperate situations have good reason to worry.  ‘Worrying’ is simply what we call the process of thinking of all the negative possibilities inherent in a situation which gives us the opportunity to then think of our contingency plans if any of those horrible possibilities should ever actually occur.   I heard a joke from some Stand-Up Comedian – “they say that 90% of the things we worry about don’t happen.  You see, It Works!”

Another word for ‘Worry’ is ‘Stress’.   Some people have High Stress Lives.  Generally, this means that they are caught at the bottom of Maslow’s Pyramid of Ascendency of Needs – their Physiological needs are not being met, or they fear for their Safety, or that they may become Social outcasts and never know Love.  You know, even people with great careers can feel a threat to their physiological needs, if they work so much they can’t eat or sleep adequately; and they may have concerns for their ‘safety’ if their employment is precarious.  There is also the Need for Social Belonging, but often the demands of Career or a confining monogamous relationship will screw up one’s social life and love life.  These kinds of conditions would create stress and worry.   Yes, worry can be a good thing, when we can do something about our condition, but often we worry from the perspective of facing a dead end with no way out.  But the Self, as a Body Organism, is instinctively driven to seek Survival and will nonetheless continue to worry – to continuously scan for some pathway for escape or some strategy for deliverance.  What happens if we suppress worry?  You know, there have been studies that show that Worrying eventually ceases when the Body gives up Hope.  The Personality can only take so much before it shuts down into a state of demoralized dejection.  Worry is replaced by a blank stupor.   Well, being in a dejected stupor is Really Dangerous for the body, in so many ways, and so the body may react with a kind of a desperate survival mechanism – a Nervous Breakdown with a Personality reconfiguration designed to Simplify Life and allay all Anxiety.  Yes, the Body’s actual precarious situation and danger may still be present after such an Emergency Personality Restructuring, but at least the Body is able to overcome the danger of wasting away to death in a state of paralyzing dejection.   William James in his classic “Varieties of Religious Experience” sets this particular schematic up as the pattern for Religious Conversion or Enlightenment experiences.   James wrote before they knew much about dopamine – the feel good neural secretion, but I would suppose that when the Body is faced with such an existential emergency, it will crank up the Dopamine which would provide for an intensely blissful spiritual experience, and probably also come up with some really cool hallucinations.   But wouldn’t the end result still be a practical Dejection, only it is a Feel Good Dejection.   The Rotten Life Conditions which set off the causative chain of events would still be present.  Or perhaps the Neural Mechanisms that shut down the crippling Anxiety also may take the sting out of Worry.  The Personality may have freedom to think of All the Possibilities, but without  the Anxiety that is wiped out by the flood of Dopamine, how could there be any Fear of Consequences?   This is perhaps why so many Religious Enlightenees have not flinched in regards to martyrdom.  Well, in the Religious Context, being fearless may seem like a good thing.  But in the day to day world the word we use for ‘Fearless’ is ‘Reckless’.   Families and Social Groups are endangered by members, and especially by Leaders, who too heedlessly court disaster, sometimes simply as a means of trumpeting some vague Principle or Point of Honor (for instance, the Survival Cultist Leader who declares  “I can’t let those police take our guns”, and so turns what might have been a few relatively minor weapons charges and some time in jail into a massacre of all the men, women and children that he or she was responsible for.)      

In regards to achieving ‘Enlightenment’, has anybody besides myself noticed that people who are able to cope well with Life very seldomly experience these kind of Crisis Enlightenments, which are actually just dressed-up Nervous Breakdowns.  I’ve heard legendary stories about Saints who have reached a state of paralyzed dejection simply from a sense of Spiritual Desolation, and that THAT would trigger a high order Enlightenment Experience.  But this would require a kind of pathological Obsession.  You see, I can understand being paralyzed in hopeless dejection because of unrelieved poverty or having somehow made one’s self a Social Pariah and somebody that nobody could love, but just being Spiritually Dejected!?  If one already has everything the World has to offer, would one really agonize over trying to possess Heaven too, or would the pleasures of the World be enough.   Even if one did attempt a Spiritual Quest it would be so easy to just say to yourself “this is something I really don’t need to worry so much about.  I am sure that God can do fine without my help.”

So often any effective and successful Pursuit of Enlightenment is facilitated by belonging to a very strict Cult.  The Demands of the Cult would have to simulate the same kind of Hopeless Dead-end Dejection that we find in the Real World of unrelieved poverty and social disintegration.  Basically, the Cult just needs to keep piling on the Stressors until the Cultist breaks.    Restricted Diet and Fasting, sleep deprivation by forced prayer times and meditation hours, forbidding any kind of sexual outlets, constant shaming in the guise of moralistic sermons, imposing impossible expectations, taking away all social status and engraining a sense of worthlessness, and imposing social isolation through enforced silence…. Pretty soon the Nut will crack.   This was the Modus Operandi by most Traditional Religious Orders – Catholics, Hindus, Buddhists, Zen – they all used to roll out the same kind of torture chambers.  And they were successful. 

But now we have the New Age which attempts to Enlighten People with weekend Seminars in 4 Star Resort Hotels over 3-day weekends.  Yes, the Vegan Buffet may drive people into a state of hopeless dejection, but nothing else would.  Such Seminars are more like Entertainment and Amusement.  The Body Organism would not be fooled by a few Inspirational Speeches, and the guided Mediations would more than likely put us to sleep.  We need to remember the Primary Rule here, and that is that as long as the Body Organism is coping and adapting to its environment and providing for its essential Needs, then there is no reason for the Personality to go through any kind of Crisis Reconditioning, which is what ‘Enlightenment’ actually is.    

Well, that was not the Conclusion I was looking for when I first started this essay.   I had started with the idea of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in mind, which is often set forth as a diagram of a Pyramid which has layers of ascending ‘needs’ going from the bottom to the top in the order of Physical Biological Needs, Needs for Safety and Security, Needs for Social Connections, Love and Companionship, Needs for Self Esteem, and finally the Levels of Self Actualization and Self Transcendence at the tippy top.   It all sounds great at first, but after taking a close look at it, well, whatever Maslow means by Self Actualization and Self Transcendence couldn’t be too much of a big deal.  History has many instances of Privileged Classes that enjoyed every satisfaction – their bodies were pampered, armies would be mustered to assure their safety, their homes were the centers for High Society and they were free to relate to anybody howsoever they liked, and endless flattery assured momentous levels of Self Esteem.  But where in History do we find any ‘Self Actualization and Self -Transcendence in this Class?  We might as well look for such things in… certain current World Leaders who are famous for their relative Prosperity and their inordinate levels of Self Esteem.   Well, it was good that I put pen to paper so I could find out that I really didn’t believe what I had been thinking.

You know, one of the biggest problems I have with the Spiritual Community is with their do-nothing lethargy in regards to Social and Political Issues.  The World is systematically kept Poor and Miserable and the Spiritual Community meekly accepts it, especially those who are still ‘comfortable’, that is, the scourge of under-employment and low wages has not reached them…yet.  But even the Poor and Miserable, like Vanessa Ooms, whom we were just speaking of, would rather stifle her ‘worries’ and seek Spiritual Dejection before organizing and uniting for some political and social means for implementing a New Systematic Means for Producing and Distributing the World’s Resources and the Fruits of the People’s Labor, where everybody could be provided for fairly, equitably and most of all, sufficiently.    But what if the Spiritual Community did jump in and effectively reverse the trends towards Systematically Imposed Poverty and Social Disintegration.  Well, then we would have a World where everybody could Cope and Thrive and where nobody would feel any desperate need to do anything.  It would be the end of Spiritual Enlightenment as we know it.

But perhaps we can have the benefits of the Kundalini without needing to go through the desperate Crisis of being Enlightened.   My Kundalini, in a mellow kind of way, has been up and around now for almost 50 years and I’m not Enlightened, so maybe there is hope for us all.  While I have no spectacularly blissful experiences to tell of, still, I’ve been able to cultivate my studies over the decades – reading, writing, languages, math and music.  I am a happy man.  Maybe that is as good as being Enlightened.

Is Spiritual Awakening Life Affirming Or Not

I had written an earlier blog not long ago presenting the idea that the Material Universe is interpenetrated with a Life Force that tends towards the facilitation of higher and higher Organizations of Life, from single celled “Organisms” to very complex organisms such as Human Beings.   Now, let us wonder about what happens during a Full Blown Out the Top of the Crown Chakra Spiritual Awakening.  From what we hear about it, there is an ‘Ineffable’ Experience, in which the new Mystic insists that he or she Knows and Understands Everything while the Experience lasts, but returns to ordinary consciousness with only a New Perspective on what they already knew before, with no actual accrual of objective knowledge.  Well, what was that?  What exactly happened?

 

Well, it may be that this Mystical Experience is a glimpse at that Interpenetrating Life Force that I had mentioned before.  That would account for the vibrancy of the experience.  However, what worries me is that this Life Force is seen at its most static level – as it exists in the earth’s strata of rock, or the Earth’s molten core, the waters of the ocean, or even the vast vacuums of space – all where Life is inert and there are actually no “living” Organisms.    Well, where else is Life so thusly inert?   In Dead Bodies of course, that’s where!  So the Mystical Experience may simply be a look at the Death Condition.   It is no wonder that so many of the Mystics claim no longer to fear Death.  They may possibly even yearn for it as their experiential Ideal, even if that is not what is consciously in their mind.  The term “Death Wish” wouldn’t have much warm and fuzzy New Age appeal, would it?  So their mind finds a way to re-label it.  

 

Decades ago I had a big vibrant Spiritual Dream in which I was told that “Birth is but an Illusion and Christ is the Life in All Things”.  The prior part of the dream dealt with issues regarding personal immortality, and so I wondered for years why the Angel had not said “Death is but an Illusion” but instead used the word “Birth”.  Well, perhaps because Death is in fact not an illusion but is very very real.  Death is the Baseline for Life.  Life is Eternal only in the Collective and Universal Sense, but every Individual Life Form is ephemeral – a spark shooting up out of a flame but soon to become just a cold dark dead speck of ash.  

 

We often hear that New Mystics often have to struggle with finding some kind of motivation for Living after their Mystical Experience.   You see, nothing in Life can give them so much Bliss as they found in their Experience, and it seems to be, as I said above, a  commonly accepted ‘certainty’ among Mystics that, with their own  Bodily Death,  they will return to their Blissful Mystical Experience as a permanent state of being.  I suppose this may have been a primary reason for the Church to insist that Suicide was a mortal sin.  It makes me wonder about the Buddhists – that if they really do suppose that “Desire is the Source of all Suffering” that they all don’t just wade into the nearest lake with pockets full of rocks, for, after all, isn’t Suicide the quintessential renunciation of Desire?  If Life is Pain then isn’t Suicide the Liberation.  Both “Suicide” and “Nirvana” have 7 letters and the only common letter between them is the letter “I”.   Oh! But the Buddhists insist upon Reincarnation, which in fact is something Gautama himself insisted was one of the nefarious Brahminic Hindu Superstitions that he was trying to save the people from.  But, yes, almost from the instant that Buddha’s body grew cold the Pious Buddhists took back up Brahminic Reincarnation to insist that there could be no escape from “The Wheel of Life”, so nobody need waste time trying to find an early exit door at the bottom of their graves.   

 

They’ve done studies with rats in which they located the area in their brains where an induced electronic current would create a Bliss Sensation for them.  So they wired up some Lab Rats and put them in cages where the rats themselves had access to the On Switch.   Well, of course, the rats spent all their time leaning on their Bliss Buttons, even to the point of wasting away without food or water.   After the Researchers would disable the circuit (pop the battery out), they found that the rats would not simply go back to Life as Usual.  They STILL spent their time leaning on their Bliss Buttons.   And so it is with many of our Mystics, that they find ‘meaning in Life’ by endlessly returning to the Meditation Mat, even when it should become apparent that “the battery has been popped out”.   It is often hidden in the Pro-Spiritual New Age Literatures, but Mystical Experiences, even for the Famous Major League Mystics, are rare occurrences – often just a once in a Life Time event.  But that doesn’t keep these Mystics from wearing out more mediation mats than shoes.

 

So, I am beginning to think that these ‘Full Blown Out the Top of the Crown Chakra Spiritual Awakenings’ may indeed be a problem – really that they are Death Affirming instead of Life Affirming.   Again, the Mystics return with no useful information or motivation from This Level of Realization.    But there is no need to be overly cynical just yet.  There are Lower Spiritual Experiences that do in fact return Information.  Some people in Meditative Trances or Vibrant Dreams encounter Spiritual Guides or Angels (actually they are all Angels but people who hate the Catholic Church have to call them something), and they come away from these ‘Lesser’ Experiences with some pretty good practical advice.   Also, while no University in the World today would dare do any research on it, there have been private studies of Astral Projection and Out of Body Travel that indicates that Objective Info is being picked up (though almost always cluttered with Subjective Content).  “Scientific Remote Viewers” got around the ‘Subjective Clutter’ trap by using an interesting methodology – a request for some objective information regarding some ‘remote’ site or person would be written up in a note, and that note would be put in a sealed envelope and a Control Number would be assigned to that envelope, let’s say “RVF-742”.  Then they would go to one of their talented Remote Viewers and simply say “give us what you got on ‘RVF-742’”.   And it would work.  Both the Russians and the Americans had their Scientific Remote Viewing Departments within their Military Intelligence Agencies.  America closed their program down when the Remote Viewers kept finding Osama Bin Laden when they really didn’t want to find him (Unfound, he was a good excuse to keep the Wars going, wasn’t he?), and then it was held against the Remote Viewers that they kept insisting that Iraq had no Weapons of Mass Destruction even when Policy insisted that they must have, or it wouldn’t have made any sense to Invade.     

 

So anyway, it does seem that the Information is out there in the Spiritual Domain.  We just have a difficult time accessing it.  That is why I have been relatively obsessed with the notion that the Kundalini Energy may have some possible utility in regards to connecting us all up with some kind of Collective Consciousness.

 

And, yes, for the Collective Consciousness to be Useful, it would have to be ‘Band Specific’.  As mentioned earlier – the Total Life Force Band of Awareness is overwhelmed by Inert Material – the Life Force in what is actually Dead Matter.  For the Collective Consciousness to be useful, we would need to be able to limit our focus to Sentient Life, and if we could get more specific towards some kind of ‘Higher Mammal’ Band, then that would be even better.    I would not wish to go ‘Totally Just Human’ because Humanity has created so many Symbiotic Relationships with certain other animal species – most notably Horses, Camels, Dogs and our special friends and equals – the Cats. 

 

But, yes, it seems that my research on this point is defeated at every instance where some very promising potential research subject pops their Kundalini out the Top of their Head and then becomes fixated on a Life of Living Death -- no longer caring anymore  about what is troubling the World or even much about themselves (and that I why I know there are so many New Age Fakes – as any Real Full Blown Mystic wouldn’t be humping so hard to Monetize their Enlightenment). 

 

And the World, or I should just say Civilization and many Species of Higher Mammals, are now in grave danger and really do require our full attention.  Selfish Evil Predatory Individuals have managed to gather to themselves a monopoly of Political and Economic Power, as well as a preponderance of Media Control which is keeping us All on track to a certain disaster.   The only Way imaginable for shifting course is if there were suddenly some Collective Awareness of the Danger and a very swift response involving an intricate and detailed Organized Restructuring of our Civilization.   Educating the World for a slow incremental Democratic Reform would simply take too long.  We would need to get directly into people’s Heads and Hearts.   And all of the people who could help us do that are now wearing holes through their meditation mats – sitting so long that their butts come to be shaped flat instead of round.  (hmmmmm.  Eggheads vs the Flatbutts).    

 

Oh, for a while, a few weeks back, I was worrying that the Collective Consciousness would be overwhelmed with the Vibes from all those Evil Predatory Selfish People.  But then it occurred to me that ‘Selfishness’ is their downfall.  Their Individualism keeps them isolated and alone.   But, the Spiritual Energy, IF it is focused within the Band of Sentient Life Organisms, is Unifying and Naturally tends towards Collectivity.  We can read how Mystics nearly always equate the Life Force with an All Penetrating Love.  This Love Energy would effectively inoculate the Collective Consciousness against the Propertied and Predatory Establishment.  Indeed, our only hope is that the Spiritual Community can use the Collective Consciousness to get into the Heads of our Enemies, subvert them to Altruism and Empathy, and bring them over to our side before it is all too late.