US Economic Collapse, Camping, and Spiritual Rage

(Holy Fire triptych by Alex Grey)


Uh oh. I found a crazy article on Dave Pollard's post "Links for the Week -- September 23." I spent 30+ minutes reading a speech given by Dr. David Martin, a US economic analyst. He says that there is a very high probability that the US economy will collapse if major changes do not take place before Basel II is implemented on January 1, 2008. As far as I understand, he is a highly awarded, sought after, and successful economist. Of course he might be wrong. The evidence he cited made it seem like he knew what he was talking about. His basic argument is that, when Basel II comes to law and all banks will have to be able to provide quantitative data that shows that they have enough to capital to give out loans and maintain their current policies and procedures, essentially none of the American banks will have any idea how much capital they have because their methods of measuring it have become increasingly detached from any sort of realistic measurement. I'm not an economist, so I didn't fully understand the speech, but I more than got the idea. I'm making my Dad read it and we're going to hopefully do more research.

Click here. It may just be the best financial decision you've ever made. Time will tell.


I went camping at Enchanted Rock from Friday night to Saturday afternoon this weekend to celebrate one of my friend's birthdays. It was another adventure filled with camping, good conversation, rock climbing, and hiking. Life becomes profoundly simple and beautiful in nature, especially in places that awe you like Enchanted Rock. It reminds me that our entire lives our surrounded by and indebted to the world of the unnatural and artificial. As soon as an industrial technology (aka anything that we produce in a lab or factory - like this futon I'm sitting on or my guitar - almost anything you can think of) becomes an obligation instead of an advantage, it should be immediately and uniformly discarded. Due to the unfortunate events that led to the rise of the corporate/industrial/governmental marriage, we are essentialy force-fed increasing amounts of industrial technology. For example, Alternative health practitioners are continuously sued, threatened, and discriminated against.

With the rise of capitalism and industry came the concomitant rise of the standard of living in most areas of the world, but that doesn't mean everything we have made since was progressive, even though products still claim that they are in the "name of progress." Capitalism in my mind says that, if you make something that you can convince people to buy, you have a right to exist and make money. Capitalism took off like wildfire because wherever people had money, there was more money to be made. With noble declarations made by the intellectual elite, capitalism was here to usher in a future of prosperity and joy for all. Indeed, in many ways this was true. But the problem with capitalism and the rise of industrialism was that, at the time, there were few ways to assess the negative manifestations and the externalities. Technologies were new and initially often life changing. This a very huge and complex set of issues, so I can only stab at making a few points and not accurately portray the evolution of science, economics, and society in the past few hundred years. My point is this: we have arrived at a collective state of myopia that accepts industrial technology so blindly and thoroughly that almost none of the American (and beyond) population understand any of the realities of production. The realities of production are all the inequalities that exist that we pretend to talk about seriously. We give money to organizations, we cheer when a company tries to address a social issue, we hate certain corporations and exonerate others. My people, this is a global biopsychological dysfunctionality that is manifested and perpetuated in social structures, the very fabric of society. It is in a way very simple. The inability to address major contradictions and sufferings in the individual mind results in a lack of intelligence and will-power to address any collective issue with enough seriousness. This may sound vague and unconvincing, but I could get into the actual psychological and neurological evidence, and I plan to do that in the future. For now, suffice it to say when you marry narcissism, capitalistic ideology, and power, you get corruption, social injustice/exploitation, and violence. Welcome to now.

Getting back to where I started...We are so deluded by the sensorial overload of consumerism that we are unable to find the sacredness, beauty, and peaceful simplicity in nature. As Durkheim said, the history of secularism/ modern society will be the history of the wringing out of the sacred in society. The people that perpetuate the consciousness and power of rationalism (which I'm connecting with capitalistic ideology) will destroy the world if more psychologically evolved people do not stop them. And guess what stage is above the rationalistic? The relativistic, who are trying to convince the world (in its dissociated, not differentiated form) that everyone is right. They fuel narcissism and amorality even more, as Ken Wilber has thoroughly discussed.

To be integral is to be an avenger. Us integral folk must create the vision, or the space in the noosphere, for a greater, deeper, more connected, more transparent, and above all, more free world. It is in the space of freedom (that I strongly believe almost no one knows) that eros really starts to dance. There must be a rage, a fire, that burns in the heart and cries out, "I must raise my fellow brothers above what they have sunk into (not talking about transcending stages of consciousness, but making all stages healthy and instilling value systems that are integrally informed). I must teach them how to rise!" This is the bodhisattvic journey. This burning cannot be created, it spontaneously arises and tends to increase through deepened spirituality. I call this spiritual rage. It is the esoteric law of POWER = LOVE through WILL. It is to see the confusion of another man, with the collapsing world he has built, and kindly but forcefully show him how to change (only those with steady, wise minds, and spiritual rage are ready to do this job properly and earnestly). Unfortunately, this rage has almost always been authoratative, violent, and tremendously unjust. The great men we still talk about, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Lao Tzu, etc...are really the men with authentic spiritual rage (Think of the symbolism of Jesus knocking over the merchants' tables). I believe that is why religious practice was the same as any addiction to Jiddu Krishnamurti; you can pray all day, or meditate, or chant, or serve people all day, but if the fire is not there, if that tremendous rage against the weakness of mind and continuous compromise is not there, one will essentially stay the same. Spiritual rage is contagious and it is transformative (as the evolutionary principle of consciousness). It is the only true religion. In this so-called fire, nothing less than unconditional love resides. Only in this total love, that is not attached to anything but love itself, can truth be exposed. I do believe that a deeply enough liberated man, with blazing spiritual rage like Jesus supposedly had, is powerful enough to stand next to the most deluded man, the greatest doubter, the most ignorant, and bring him to his knees and make his heart explode into sorrow and forgiveness. I believe that there is an actual electromagnetic (and pre-EM) energy produced by a body so deeply spiritual that it actually can influence any human's nervous system to great degrees. All bodies have EM fields (which are merely magnetic fields produced by electric current), but I think the future of human evolution has to do with the evolution of the nervous system. Whew...

So I got a little ahead of myself...this kind of stuff probably won't happen for hundreds or more years...or not? Anyways, I am trying to tell you that unless deeply rooted psychological issues that have resided in the human psyche for tens of thousands of years are not delt with and re-integrated into the being, the world will continue to suffer and falter, even amidst great joy and so-called technology and "progress." Some of the greatest crimes of humanity have been commited by religion. This is not religion. This is mass pyschological derangement and low levels of psychological development (consciousness). Until spiritual rage is born within a small army of men, the world will continue to create tremendous violence and deep suffering. May all of us rise in the heat of God, in the pure passion of pursuing truth. Not tomorrow, not in a year, not when we think we will be ready. The only space we can meet God is now. I wish I could continue, but I have to go to class. It's actually called Religion and Society. Ha.

May the world not suffer so much
May we work tirelessly to free ourselves and others
May we create the space for eros to rise
And may the fire
Of spiritual rage
Be born

Much love and peace to all.

(picture to come later today)