You address the surface actors who wield power and how they do it. I would love to get your take on information highways as the new Royal roads or silk roads or trade choke points or Roman roads or Incan roads or railroads or highways. Power is now in who controls information flows and the energy sources that must sustain information systems. Techno feudalism. What are your thoughts? BTW your portrayal of Europe sounds more like Florida. Have you been to Brussels lately? There's a frantic energy of "oh s*** we need to do this on our own."
Today, more than 23 years, eight trillion dollars, and a million dead since 9/11, America has never been more insecure at home and had less power, credibility and moral authority abroad. “The U.S. is no longer the world’s policeman who will enforce the international rules based order,” one dispirited U.S. government official wrote me in 2023 after the Biden administration abandoned the 100 million dollar Airbase 201 in Niger. “We’ve instead turned into the fat middle aged crossing guard, standing there in a neon vest, flapping our arms and yelling at the side of the road for cars to slow down.”
A world where power is not justified, only exercised.
Where no one even remotely claims to speak for humanity.”
I just finished watching Ken Burns’ documentary on the American Revolution and its bleak description of the chaos of the clash of Renaissance humanist philosophy with the embedded class structure of ancient feudalism. The acute suffering of the population could,only be justified by a moral imperative inspiring focus and dedication transcending even the fear of death - “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Today, I look around for a spark of that brave moral enthusiasm and I only see signs of diseases of despair. Our government’s sadistic and cruel use of power is exactly that naked immoral misuse of power you describe. Your cynical descriptions of the immorality of the modern world’s power structures illustrates how deep this cancer has spread.
This brings up the question of how does a philosophical seed of clarity take root and prevail against harsh odds? Or, do the barbarians sack Rome again leaving only ruins and nostalgia? Are there any hints of change agents formulating clarity midst the fogs of war and inertia?
“We hold these truths to be self evident…” What evidence of Truth do you see?
There is a growing resistance and slowly, but surely, leaders are emerging. Perhaps you carrying the understanding that life robed of agency under the digital boot of neo-feudal techno-fascism sucks more than fighting the good fight.
Graeber and Wengrow (Dawn of Everything) note the extraordinary exchange between the Wendat ("Huron") Kandiaronk and the western intelligentsia. We have forgotten that human intelligence can be positive, and lost our contact with Nature.
You might be interested in the work of Philip Shepherd and his book, Radical Wholeness. He describes how we have essentially two "minds" - our rational head-mind and our intutive, sensual gut-mind. The two are linked by the vagus nerve and optimally should work in harmony. Sadly, we have created a tyranny of the head-mind and a shaming of the gut-senses and intuition. We can return to our bodies and reclaim our full integrity and wisdom. https://embodiedpresent.com/pages/radical-wholeness-book?srsltid=AfmBOop8iaDS3sBdvvNGTYRuJlnoKzQmiXMFoVmmDRJKCmCzqw6BDad6
"The better angels of our nature" refers to the positive, moral, and compassionate aspects of human character, such as empathy, kindness, and reason, that can guide us away from conflict and towards cooperation. The phrase was popularized by Abraham Lincoln in his 1861 first inaugural address as an appeal to these virtues during a time of national crisis.
Yes, we can be open and receptive to a full range of experiences, but we need some sort of anchor or compass point to be capable of making decisions and being assertive. The psychologist in me knows that prolonged despair and hoplessness does not summon our "better angels" but calls forth demons of fear. Mike's warning about the threat of moral bankruptcy and the resulting violence is very real. We, again, are in a period of national and international crisis and the status quo is not sufficient to meet the challenges.
I am intimately involved with a certain NY family who paved the way for the UN, CFR and the BMGF. You have NO IDEA how the cake is already baked. Like I said. Try to find the Joy in the last years of quasi-freedom.
Trying to decode this. Your "certain NY family" has switched recipes? Or are you implying the UN was itself a false front for more sinister undertakings?
The world is certainly not a paradise but its a much more peaceful and prosperous world than it was 50-60 years ago for much of the world.
I think your views on Russia and China are product of MSM brainwashing. The Chinese have never been free and many are much better off than the Mao years and warlord era that preceded it and Russia is not the expansionist beast we have been told and its people are much better off than the Yeltsin years when they were “free”. Its war with Ukraine was due to US mischief in Ukraine attempting to turn it into a NATO puppet state. Imagine if China did the same to Mexico
Europe has been faltering since being duped into forming the undemocratic EU . This was also a longstanding US assisted initiative. Much easier to control 1 government than 27 separate states. That said, life is much more pleasant than in the US for most, especially in the states still adhering to Democratic Socialist principles
The Middle East has essentially been conquered by US and now consists of puppet governments or states crippled by occupation/sanctions while Israel butches its non-Jewish population in illegally occupied territories with US blessing
Much of the instability in Latin America stems from US mischief.
If the US can be fixed the worlds outlook need not be so bleak
Its important to remember for almost all of human civilization there was no freedom in the modern sense of the word, and everybody served a higher power except the King or Emperor. Classical Liberalism and Representative Democracy is a recent phenomena beginning first is Slave Owning America which went on to genocide and its native American population before putting the survivors on reservation and then fighting a horrific Civil War. We then went on to become an Empire by conquering states to our South and in Asia for our Corporations before joining in WWI for reasons nobody could explain except to make sure our JP Morgan could collect on loans issued to the British. During the war Americans lost many of their rights.
Arguably, America as a moral nation only began sometime during FDR reign in the Depression but during WWII we refused entry to Jews fleeing the holocaust, incarcerated Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor (there is evidence we may have let it happen to gain support to enter the war), dropped atomic bombs on 2 cities in Japan despite their willingness to surrender.
After WWII while things were pretty moral at home if you ignore the racism and Red Scare witch hunt we committed atrocities in Korea, over threw the Democratic government of Iran, deported Mexicans with great cruelty in Operation Wetback and of course Vietnam and the Phoenix Program
We did manage to get our Civil Rights issues under control but by the time we became moral, after Vietnam War ended, our Corporate Elite decided we had too much Democracy (see Powell Memo and Trilateral Commission Crisis in Democracy) and they moved to take control over Government and correct it. Flash 50 years. Mission Accomplished
Ukraine as a NATO puppet state? What, in your mind, is the problem with NATO? You object to having an alliance against Russia? There are good arguments about various US military actions. But against anything NATO has done? My dad knew the retired Supreme Allied Commander of the late '50s and early '60s, who was strongly against the Viet Nam war and excessive CEO compensation (being, in military retirement, a CEO himself). Ukraine is less a threat to Russia than Cuba is to the US. NATO, unlike Russia, has never launched an offensive war.
I have no problem with NATO as originally conceived and operated during the Cold War. With the breakup of the Soviet Union and end of Communism the US promised Russia NATO would not expand east toward Russias borders. NATO’s original purpose to contain Communism and the Soviets was gone. NATO then convened an offensive war on Yugoslavia during the Yeltsin years without UN authorization, designed to break up Yugoslavia under the cover of humanitarianism. When Putin came to power he declared NATO expansion to Russias border was a Red Line. Understandable IMO.
I don't see Russia as the military threat others see. Less than 1/5 the population of NATO countries and only able to conquer a territory about the size of NJ in 4 years. Russia at one time actually wanted to be part of EU and many Russians at one time including Putin identified more with Europe than Asia. But NATO needed an enemy to justify its existence, so that was rejected
As for a NATO backed Ukraine being less of a Military threat to Russia than Cuba is to the US thats ludicrous, but when the Soviets placed missiles and bases on Cuba we were prepared to go to war, even nuclear war if they were not removed.
Pete, What's wrong with this statement? "The NATO war on Yugoslavia, known as Operation Allied Force, was a 78-day air campaign from March to June 1999, launched by NATO to halt the humanitarian catastrophe and ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by Serbian forces under President Milošević." You find Milošević's well-documented atrocities something we should have tolerated?
The claim that NATO promised no expansion is false. The only promise was that NATO troops would not be staged in East Germany after German unification.
A great step forward, Mike. Now, let's move on with a little imagination, a firm grip on our nature (or have we lost that entirely?). "Civilization" is over. We can return to a modest relationship with Nature, efficient and humble. First, shed the hubris, the arrogance, the presumption, using emotional maturity to measure intelligence, and fortifying Nature with every contact.
The masses are awakening. The massive population of indigenous people worldwide, ie those who got colonized and lost their voices for a time, are rising. They are all of us. They hold whatever human wisdom remains post this long running theft of land and resources by a cruel few who know nothing of humanity themselves. Those who transacted on human lives, livelihoods and homelands as if those were their birthright can destroy us all, it is true, but they can’t live without us. By globalizing and centralizing and focusing on a handful of techno masters of the universe, their machine is vulnerable. Now they must jostle with each other for? What exactly? To become the Surveillor to outdo all other surveillors? All that is valuable is in the masses. We Can live without them.
Omg, Mike, you speak so deeply to my cynical, misanthropic soul!! 🙂This is fantastic big-picture insight. I’m seeing the hazy contours of some grand mirroring of Marx’s (philosophically borrowed) critique of the division of labor leading to alienation at the national/regional level—societies trapped in their roles and unfree to just be and adapt.
"What was once a republic is rapidly becoming Lockheed Martin with a national anthem."
Sometimes I feel like the American government has been reduced to cargo cult politics; they imitate the actions of politicians of the past without understanding the meaning behind the actions, and then wait for the rewards to arrive.
Feels like the whole planet got sorted into cosmic job titles nobody applied for. America’s out here selling missiles like Girl Scout cookies, China is the world’s haunted Costco, and Europe is basically a HOA with better cheese.
But you’re right: the part that should keep us up at night is how normal the absurd has started to feel. When civilization forgets what it’s for, it doesn’t collapse, it drifts. Then one day you look around and realize humanity outsourced its soul for store credit.
A very accurate description Mike of what we have evolved into at this point of our evolution. May it be a wake up call too many to reach for the highest we are capable of.
See where that got us. The Enlightenment was a consequence of contact with native Americans (Wendat luminary Kandiaronk), but they could not bear to give them credit, instead inverting their reading to reflect their own troubled thinking and casting aspersions on "mere natives" and their hard-won understanding from a thousand years of American turbulence. They could have used a life in Nature and an ensuing adulthood of community debate with elders. A world of difference from the European experience. A new civilization will not be a push-button result of our expectations. Let's discover where naivete lies.
Please do more research on the Enlightenment, Charley. Yes, there was Native American influence on social ideas. But the science side of it was entirely European and Arabic. And the social side was largely based in the rediscovery of Greek and Roman texts, kept through the "Dark Ages" in monasteries and by Arab intellectuals.
I am familiar, and I do appreciate the context in which these bits emerged. As much as I might appreciate the Enlightenment, however, the context is telling. This was not a movement shared by people generally, but an intellectual exercise bound by privilege. I think that with the aspirational shift drawn up in American Founding documents, inspired and grounded in close relation with native Americans, we have embarked on a new path. Commentary on its incompleteness fill libraries, but it is definitely time to turn a corner on intellectual hubris and get back to our native intelligence. Indigenous people around the globe have demonstrated a sophistication our hubris does not understand and cannot stomach. Time to move on, to escape the 6th Mass Extinction.
You address the surface actors who wield power and how they do it. I would love to get your take on information highways as the new Royal roads or silk roads or trade choke points or Roman roads or Incan roads or railroads or highways. Power is now in who controls information flows and the energy sources that must sustain information systems. Techno feudalism. What are your thoughts? BTW your portrayal of Europe sounds more like Florida. Have you been to Brussels lately? There's a frantic energy of "oh s*** we need to do this on our own."
Today, more than 23 years, eight trillion dollars, and a million dead since 9/11, America has never been more insecure at home and had less power, credibility and moral authority abroad. “The U.S. is no longer the world’s policeman who will enforce the international rules based order,” one dispirited U.S. government official wrote me in 2023 after the Biden administration abandoned the 100 million dollar Airbase 201 in Niger. “We’ve instead turned into the fat middle aged crossing guard, standing there in a neon vest, flapping our arms and yelling at the side of the road for cars to slow down.”
“So here is the reality, stripped of euphemism:
We are not drifting into a multipolar world.
We are congealing into an amoral one.
A world where power is not justified, only exercised.
Where no one even remotely claims to speak for humanity.”
I just finished watching Ken Burns’ documentary on the American Revolution and its bleak description of the chaos of the clash of Renaissance humanist philosophy with the embedded class structure of ancient feudalism. The acute suffering of the population could,only be justified by a moral imperative inspiring focus and dedication transcending even the fear of death - “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Today, I look around for a spark of that brave moral enthusiasm and I only see signs of diseases of despair. Our government’s sadistic and cruel use of power is exactly that naked immoral misuse of power you describe. Your cynical descriptions of the immorality of the modern world’s power structures illustrates how deep this cancer has spread.
This brings up the question of how does a philosophical seed of clarity take root and prevail against harsh odds? Or, do the barbarians sack Rome again leaving only ruins and nostalgia? Are there any hints of change agents formulating clarity midst the fogs of war and inertia?
“We hold these truths to be self evident…” What evidence of Truth do you see?
There is a growing resistance and slowly, but surely, leaders are emerging. Perhaps you carrying the understanding that life robed of agency under the digital boot of neo-feudal techno-fascism sucks more than fighting the good fight.
Graeber and Wengrow (Dawn of Everything) note the extraordinary exchange between the Wendat ("Huron") Kandiaronk and the western intelligentsia. We have forgotten that human intelligence can be positive, and lost our contact with Nature.
You might be interested in the work of Philip Shepherd and his book, Radical Wholeness. He describes how we have essentially two "minds" - our rational head-mind and our intutive, sensual gut-mind. The two are linked by the vagus nerve and optimally should work in harmony. Sadly, we have created a tyranny of the head-mind and a shaming of the gut-senses and intuition. We can return to our bodies and reclaim our full integrity and wisdom. https://embodiedpresent.com/pages/radical-wholeness-book?srsltid=AfmBOop8iaDS3sBdvvNGTYRuJlnoKzQmiXMFoVmmDRJKCmCzqw6BDad6
No. There are no hints. Prepare. Try to find Joy on a day to day basis while you can.
"The better angels of our nature" refers to the positive, moral, and compassionate aspects of human character, such as empathy, kindness, and reason, that can guide us away from conflict and towards cooperation. The phrase was popularized by Abraham Lincoln in his 1861 first inaugural address as an appeal to these virtues during a time of national crisis.
Yes, we can be open and receptive to a full range of experiences, but we need some sort of anchor or compass point to be capable of making decisions and being assertive. The psychologist in me knows that prolonged despair and hoplessness does not summon our "better angels" but calls forth demons of fear. Mike's warning about the threat of moral bankruptcy and the resulting violence is very real. We, again, are in a period of national and international crisis and the status quo is not sufficient to meet the challenges.
I am intimately involved with a certain NY family who paved the way for the UN, CFR and the BMGF. You have NO IDEA how the cake is already baked. Like I said. Try to find the Joy in the last years of quasi-freedom.
Trying to decode this. Your "certain NY family" has switched recipes? Or are you implying the UN was itself a false front for more sinister undertakings?
Nope, this old hippie is going down fighting. The ostrich approach does not work for me.
No global power speaks for humanity. Tragically it seems that the voices who do are “blowin’ in the wind.”
The world is certainly not a paradise but its a much more peaceful and prosperous world than it was 50-60 years ago for much of the world.
I think your views on Russia and China are product of MSM brainwashing. The Chinese have never been free and many are much better off than the Mao years and warlord era that preceded it and Russia is not the expansionist beast we have been told and its people are much better off than the Yeltsin years when they were “free”. Its war with Ukraine was due to US mischief in Ukraine attempting to turn it into a NATO puppet state. Imagine if China did the same to Mexico
Europe has been faltering since being duped into forming the undemocratic EU . This was also a longstanding US assisted initiative. Much easier to control 1 government than 27 separate states. That said, life is much more pleasant than in the US for most, especially in the states still adhering to Democratic Socialist principles
The Middle East has essentially been conquered by US and now consists of puppet governments or states crippled by occupation/sanctions while Israel butches its non-Jewish population in illegally occupied territories with US blessing
Much of the instability in Latin America stems from US mischief.
If the US can be fixed the worlds outlook need not be so bleak
Its important to remember for almost all of human civilization there was no freedom in the modern sense of the word, and everybody served a higher power except the King or Emperor. Classical Liberalism and Representative Democracy is a recent phenomena beginning first is Slave Owning America which went on to genocide and its native American population before putting the survivors on reservation and then fighting a horrific Civil War. We then went on to become an Empire by conquering states to our South and in Asia for our Corporations before joining in WWI for reasons nobody could explain except to make sure our JP Morgan could collect on loans issued to the British. During the war Americans lost many of their rights.
Arguably, America as a moral nation only began sometime during FDR reign in the Depression but during WWII we refused entry to Jews fleeing the holocaust, incarcerated Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor (there is evidence we may have let it happen to gain support to enter the war), dropped atomic bombs on 2 cities in Japan despite their willingness to surrender.
After WWII while things were pretty moral at home if you ignore the racism and Red Scare witch hunt we committed atrocities in Korea, over threw the Democratic government of Iran, deported Mexicans with great cruelty in Operation Wetback and of course Vietnam and the Phoenix Program
We did manage to get our Civil Rights issues under control but by the time we became moral, after Vietnam War ended, our Corporate Elite decided we had too much Democracy (see Powell Memo and Trilateral Commission Crisis in Democracy) and they moved to take control over Government and correct it. Flash 50 years. Mission Accomplished
Ukraine as a NATO puppet state? What, in your mind, is the problem with NATO? You object to having an alliance against Russia? There are good arguments about various US military actions. But against anything NATO has done? My dad knew the retired Supreme Allied Commander of the late '50s and early '60s, who was strongly against the Viet Nam war and excessive CEO compensation (being, in military retirement, a CEO himself). Ukraine is less a threat to Russia than Cuba is to the US. NATO, unlike Russia, has never launched an offensive war.
I have no problem with NATO as originally conceived and operated during the Cold War. With the breakup of the Soviet Union and end of Communism the US promised Russia NATO would not expand east toward Russias borders. NATO’s original purpose to contain Communism and the Soviets was gone. NATO then convened an offensive war on Yugoslavia during the Yeltsin years without UN authorization, designed to break up Yugoslavia under the cover of humanitarianism. When Putin came to power he declared NATO expansion to Russias border was a Red Line. Understandable IMO.
I don't see Russia as the military threat others see. Less than 1/5 the population of NATO countries and only able to conquer a territory about the size of NJ in 4 years. Russia at one time actually wanted to be part of EU and many Russians at one time including Putin identified more with Europe than Asia. But NATO needed an enemy to justify its existence, so that was rejected
As for a NATO backed Ukraine being less of a Military threat to Russia than Cuba is to the US thats ludicrous, but when the Soviets placed missiles and bases on Cuba we were prepared to go to war, even nuclear war if they were not removed.
Pete, What's wrong with this statement? "The NATO war on Yugoslavia, known as Operation Allied Force, was a 78-day air campaign from March to June 1999, launched by NATO to halt the humanitarian catastrophe and ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by Serbian forces under President Milošević." You find Milošević's well-documented atrocities something we should have tolerated?
The claim that NATO promised no expansion is false. The only promise was that NATO troops would not be staged in East Germany after German unification.
A great step forward, Mike. Now, let's move on with a little imagination, a firm grip on our nature (or have we lost that entirely?). "Civilization" is over. We can return to a modest relationship with Nature, efficient and humble. First, shed the hubris, the arrogance, the presumption, using emotional maturity to measure intelligence, and fortifying Nature with every contact.
Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau would argue quite forcefully that this is a naive view.
The masses are awakening. The massive population of indigenous people worldwide, ie those who got colonized and lost their voices for a time, are rising. They are all of us. They hold whatever human wisdom remains post this long running theft of land and resources by a cruel few who know nothing of humanity themselves. Those who transacted on human lives, livelihoods and homelands as if those were their birthright can destroy us all, it is true, but they can’t live without us. By globalizing and centralizing and focusing on a handful of techno masters of the universe, their machine is vulnerable. Now they must jostle with each other for? What exactly? To become the Surveillor to outdo all other surveillors? All that is valuable is in the masses. We Can live without them.
Omg, Mike, you speak so deeply to my cynical, misanthropic soul!! 🙂This is fantastic big-picture insight. I’m seeing the hazy contours of some grand mirroring of Marx’s (philosophically borrowed) critique of the division of labor leading to alienation at the national/regional level—societies trapped in their roles and unfree to just be and adapt.
Well, I am no cynic. I am romantic, writing in a cynical frame, so as to shame everyone.
Don’t worry, I don’t believe anyone thinks you’re a closet cynic 🙂 It’s hard to be a romantic in a world increasingly run by cynics. Keep it up!
Mike, I totally relate.
"What was once a republic is rapidly becoming Lockheed Martin with a national anthem."
Sometimes I feel like the American government has been reduced to cargo cult politics; they imitate the actions of politicians of the past without understanding the meaning behind the actions, and then wait for the rewards to arrive.
Feels like the whole planet got sorted into cosmic job titles nobody applied for. America’s out here selling missiles like Girl Scout cookies, China is the world’s haunted Costco, and Europe is basically a HOA with better cheese.
But you’re right: the part that should keep us up at night is how normal the absurd has started to feel. When civilization forgets what it’s for, it doesn’t collapse, it drifts. Then one day you look around and realize humanity outsourced its soul for store credit.
Blessed be the ones still looking for a center.
A very accurate description Mike of what we have evolved into at this point of our evolution. May it be a wake up call too many to reach for the highest we are capable of.
See where that got us. The Enlightenment was a consequence of contact with native Americans (Wendat luminary Kandiaronk), but they could not bear to give them credit, instead inverting their reading to reflect their own troubled thinking and casting aspersions on "mere natives" and their hard-won understanding from a thousand years of American turbulence. They could have used a life in Nature and an ensuing adulthood of community debate with elders. A world of difference from the European experience. A new civilization will not be a push-button result of our expectations. Let's discover where naivete lies.
Please do more research on the Enlightenment, Charley. Yes, there was Native American influence on social ideas. But the science side of it was entirely European and Arabic. And the social side was largely based in the rediscovery of Greek and Roman texts, kept through the "Dark Ages" in monasteries and by Arab intellectuals.
I am familiar, and I do appreciate the context in which these bits emerged. As much as I might appreciate the Enlightenment, however, the context is telling. This was not a movement shared by people generally, but an intellectual exercise bound by privilege. I think that with the aspirational shift drawn up in American Founding documents, inspired and grounded in close relation with native Americans, we have embarked on a new path. Commentary on its incompleteness fill libraries, but it is definitely time to turn a corner on intellectual hubris and get back to our native intelligence. Indigenous people around the globe have demonstrated a sophistication our hubris does not understand and cannot stomach. Time to move on, to escape the 6th Mass Extinction.
I have no idea what the hell 3I-Atlas really is. Maybe it’s the “meaning” restoration event. Who knows?
Not to mention the overarching mediocrity that such transactional nations produces.