Failure

This is more from around the campfire series.  I have no supporting references nor laid out facts.  I am speaking to those who already have seen the honest science and who are awakened.  If you are looking for something like facts and a tenable position then move on.  This is just me telling you what I see.  I am dyslectic.  You will notice this with my poor spelling and grammar.  This was a disability growing up in school but now it is vision.  I see differently than others.  I see backwards and in this age of inversions I see things others miss.  This is just me seeing things and telling you about it.  Around the campfire there are no speakers at podiums talking to academics and scientist.  I am talking to people who are seeking out wisdom.  If that is you then read on.

I am going to do a short series on things that don’t add up.  This will be with my own life but also our current civilization.  It is my hope you see through these lies and inconsistencies and make better choices.  In my case I will explain why I do what I do even though it does not add up.  In this way you can see a key aspect of REAL Green which is acting out what does not add up but in a realistic and relative way.  This post is my reflection on this way of life that is a turning of an age.  Yea, you are right in the middle of a turning.  If you care about security, meaning, and growth then you really need to embrace failure and death because this failure is of the current widely accepted narrative of the affluence of techno-optimism.  Civilization is now a system of failures.  The abrupt change of a planet is the evidence.

Things don’t add up and I do not know where to start because everywhere I look, I see lies and inconsistencies.  You may ask who are you, Mr. Know-It-All?  I know I ask myself this too but hear me out.  If you are a degrowth doomer than you are not goal seeking affluence.  This affluence that civilization is goal seeks is more than having more affluence of a better life.  Increasingly today it is a desperate attempt to maintaining what we have against the onslaught of inflation, burdensome regulations, and competition.  Smell the coffee and adapt to the current of destructive change.

If you are a degrowth doomer than you are honest from the start with declining affluence.  When you are honest and in acceptance of this process there is a clarity when you observe.  This clarity is surreal though which makes for cognitive dissonance.  This cognitive dissonance is different from the sheeples and the elites who sense that things are not adding up but choose instead to believe in the human optimism narrative that dominates today. 

The cognitive dissonance a degrowth doomer senses comes from his purgatory of dualism.  This purgatory is embracing a life contrary to the narrative of techno optimism but also being required to live in that world of optimism that tech and knowledge will save us.  There are very few that can completely leave this world as monks and sages that go away in the wilderness in complete poverty of things.   Most are like I am trapped in this world of techno optimism of a fake growth and a life of lies.

If you are living this degrowth dualism you will have to live in two worlds.  You will need to function in both and this is difficult.   Proper spirituality but also honest science is what is needed.  Spirituality allows you to embrace failure and death.  This is done through honesty.  The truth is only possible through honesty.  Honesty that itself is wrought with failure because at a point even honesty fails to guide meaning.  At a point the truth is beyond anyone’s abilities and it is here where it is sacred.  Honest science is needed because science and tech are required for life but it is a proper wisdom of these that must be embraced.  These days almost always this means less of both science, knowledge and tech.  This is contrary to the currant narrative of knowing the very secrets of the universe.

The living of two lives is one of the hardest of undertakings because you will have to live a lie to find the truth.  This is of course an incongruous juxtaposition.  It is the paradox of this age of decline.  In such situations you must live a wisdom of insecurity which is acceptance and humility of failure and death.  This techno optimistic modern life most live in is failing and in a turning over.  Diminishing returns has hit tech and efficiency.  Corruption has displaced proper wisdom.  This life is in the process of turning into collapse but most people refuse to accept this or choice to hide from it.  It is the acceptance and humility of this process that allows you to power through the many inconsistencies and lies both from outside and within.  If you see this and decide to live the lie than you will inevitably catch yourself in lies from living the lies.  This is what is so difficult and insecure but vital and necessary about what I am telling you.

You might say “quit being so serious”, “why even dwell on these things”, and just live day by day.  I agree but my point would be to be careful because there is a fine line between acceptance and ignoring. These lies and inconsistencies are quite dangerous physically and spiritually.  I firmly believe in living in the present because this is where life really is but there is the metaphysics of it all that is the basis of spirituality that can’t be ignored.  Not everyone is outfitted to research the metaphysics of life.  It is my contention that we need shamans and sages respected by small communities to do this because without this we are blind to a pole of life which is spirituality.  Notice I said small communities this is because it is only in localism this can be found.  This is not for movements.  Movements are out of scale and prone to coopting.

Spirituality is where the sacred is.  The other pole is science.  Science is where knowledge and tech are.  It is physical and material.  This is not religion I am talking about.  The pursuit of the sacred without dogma and a priestly class which is civilization is what I am hinting at.  Our modern dogmas and priests are deceived and now the problem.  Religions are no longer competent because civilization is now worshiping science and tech even within religions.  Affluence is the real worship and science and tech are the tools to affluence.

Ignoring is not wisdom but honest acceptance is.  It takes wisdom to find a human happiness of spirit.  This is true even in failure and death.  One example of the interplay with lightness and deepness of spirit is how often great comedians are very serious.  My point would be two-fold.  Point one is spirituality takes commitment to the truth regardless of where this takes you.  Point two is if you are truly going to free yourself from the debilitating cognitive dissonance which manifests in so many neuroses then you need to fully embrace the seriousness of life.   To find salvation of spirit which we all crave requires a seriousness of purpose.  This is meaning and meaning gives calm.  Meaning allows lightness of spirt to laugh and love.  All seriousness is just as dark as all play.  There is a point where lightness and deepness intersect.  This is contentment of spirit.   It is here you should set your internal compass for.  The journey is both serious and playful.

You can’t ignore meaning long.  You can’t live a lie long.  This is adapted with REAL Green by living a lie to leave the lie.  This is the case today when you must live the narrative of optimism when the reality is the pessimism of failure and death.  It is only here where real optimism is found.  I want to reiterate death I am speaking of is the end of all those abstract things related to the civilization of today.  Our mortality is a given in any age of man but now death is with systems, networks, and economies.  They will be gone as we know it very soon.  This could be a generation or two because this process does not operate in human time.  These human constructs are dead men walking because of net energy decline, systematic bifurcations, and planetary systems in abrupt change.

The primary lie today is with human affluence.  Keep in mind I am a middle-class American guy in his late 50s who is semi-retired.  You might think I have it made and I would if my body and mind were not in decline.  I am now older and in decline but I was once like many of you who are young but you will soon be like me.  What I do have is richness of experience that has come from a hard life of both failure and success.  You might ask why is success a hard life?  It is because success is fleeting.  Success is not a place it is a spot in a process.  I have lost many things and gained some back.

There are billions who are poor.  Yet, also keep in mind of these billions that are poor there is a subset that live closer to the truth of life and as such really the blessed ones.  They have just enough and they are blessed with family and live in nice places.  These places are places of beauty.  I would say there are maybe one billion in this class.  These billion who are poor but living properly are far ahead of the 1 billion middle class whose life is really precarious in an unsustainable affluence that is not resilient to change.  We are in abrupt change that is destructive and nonnegotiable so those who are considered wealthy by worldly standards are most at risk

Most of the wealthy 1BIL are city dwellers because cities are where the wealth is.  Cities have no future as-is.  Cities of the future will be a small fraction of what they are now.  The elite are worse yet.  The .01% are in a category all their own in pathological lies.  The elite have the furthest to fall and this is the reason for the global elite class seeking obedience and control of the great reset.  These technocratic authoritarians want to rule over the serfs in feudalism because they sense the end of affluence.  Their goal is not altruistic as they pretend with woke and NetZero, it is about wealth and power preservation.  In China this deception is the lie of a divine mandate.  In the west this devine mandate is just been westernized in the great reset.

The elites are the most deceived and today to get to the top psychopathic behavior is required.  They must fully live the lie or they will not remain elite.  This is filtering down into government in the form of the administrative apparatus and all those support personnel like lawyers, accountants, and civil servants.  Further it is with academia that is fully unhinged today and scientist who no longer follow science but instead worship it through scientism.  This is an inverted pyramid.  This mirrors life which is in an inversion.  This is why if you want true meaning you must embrace failure and death the inverse of growth and optimism.  The paradox is you must live this inversion to find order.

This is so simple it is almost impossible for many.  Keep in mind this is only an aspect of life now.  In a different age and possibly the new age at hand the inversion will end and a world of light will be the new reality.  In this current time what I am speaking of will have to adapt to life and growth.  We are now in a winter of discontent that is an extinction process.  Life is dying as well as civilization.  This is important because we don’t know when this age will be over and the new one in place.  Likely this will be a process of rolling back over as a new-age rights itself back up much like a buoy will always float up to its natural buoyancy.

I must also be fair and point out a significant amount of the population is too young, too old, uneducated, or mentally handicapped to even have the opportunity to embrace this truth of the lies and inconsistencies.  Maybe 2BIL are too poor and struggle just to live.  I am not worthy to speak of these peoples but feel sadness for them.  They deserve what I have and may never have peace of mind or enough food to eat.

I want to also speak of those too smart, educated and wealthy to find a spiritual calm because the more affluence and narrow knowledge specialization you have the harder it is to thread the needle of a spirit quest.  The meek will inherit the earth.  Here the inheritance is not physical but spiritual.  It is the meek and honest that will find the grail of meaning.  Meaning is where lightness and deepness intersect.  If you are meek the baggage of affluence will be less in the way of the attainment of the grail of calm which is salvation of the spirt.

This means many people have no option but to live the narrative of lies that all will be ok because many are trapped in darkness.  In their case it is because this is what they are told by their betters.  There is a mechanization of the living going on with modern civilization with delocalization and transhumanism.  These anti-life forces are the meatgrinder of darkness and we are in the age of darkness. 

Many of people are truly deserving of compassion and empathy.  They are the ones who deserve better.  Instead, they are often tempted and destroyed by the elites who deceive and lie to control and direct them.  It is these people you should be a servant to if you are awakened.  Always be gentle and supportive to the honest of spirit.  Be harsh and firm with those who seek to destroy and enslave these children of the spirit.

If you are one of the few who has been gifted with vision and the opportunities to grow through education and development then you have what it takes to be awakened.  The awakened are the servants of this new age.  This power comes directly from the planet which is the nearest of these greater powers.  It is likely the planet is part of the galaxy projecting this power but my point is the planet is where the tires meet the road for a human being. 

Stay scaled to find balance.   Too often today man is far from his local in academic abstractions.  Delocalization of spirt is similar to the delocalization of our daily lives physically.  It is unsustainable and lacks resilience in both cases.  In regard to the spirit, it is spiritual drift and this leads to darkness.  Scale properly which is in localism and permaculture.  Permaculture is required because true spiritual happiness only comes by connecting to the planet.  Only dirt and water allow spiritual life once the light of truth shines upon it.  The reason this has become the age of death is this is the age of mega cities.  These are death traps.  Here soil is asphalt and glass.  The light of meaning is hard to find.

If you embrace this truth, life will support you.  It will support you by you living the proper life that is one of failure, decline, and death of an age.  This is both global man but also the Epoch of the Holocene.  It is important to understand this.  The turning is not only with man’s world but also the planet’s world.  This is complete and whole and there is no escape as in earlier times when man could migrate in a stable age.  There is nowhere to go now.  This is the end times for this way of life so if you embrace this reality, you will make proper decisions. 

This is the wisdom of insecurity.  In another life this wisdom could be other.  In fact, once this current world completely turns over, wisdom will adapt and be less of failure and more of growth.  This might be a world of growth and life but this is not for us to know now.  This could be extinction so that must also be embraced.  Planetary acquiescence is the ultimate force for man.  The planet has its own frequency not a human frequency.   The human frequency dwells within the planetary frequency.  The frequency of life works in this way but unfortunately not in your human time.  It is likely this is the end days that will unfold over generations so embrace the wisdom of insecurity now with what is at hand.  You can reflect on a coming golden age but this is just for reflection.  Now you must live in the dark age of death.

What this means now is you are in the midst of the unravelling of the narrative.   The skill needed is a type of judo.   This is a wisdom of using the narrative to leave it.  Find places where you can engage in constructive growth that is freed up where the general narrative is breaking down.  This false narrative is breaking down opening up new ways of living. The reality is these new ways of living are the old ways we left and rejected for increasing affluence.  This is just ecology 101 because this is how life on the planet works when in succession.  Mirror this and life will support you.

Get back to the basics.  Reduce affluence and find dignity in this process of increasing poverty of things because this is where meaning is.  Downsize now and do this with a peace of mind and happiness of heart that comes from spiritual fulfillment.  This means a stoic and ascetic life because this is what declining physical affluence is all about.  Yet, since to do this, you must live in the current dominant narrative of affluence this means adapting in a relative and realistic way.  You will likely not be able to change as much as you would like but do what you can.  Understand even the attempt to live right is going to hit the brick wall of limits of change.

The key point to having the strength and the vision to live right is acceptance and humility.  There is no substitute so if this does not appeal to you then move on.  Many can’t embrace this because it is contrary to the age.  Failure and death are ahead for the narrative that is techno optimistic, believing knowledge power will save us.  We will not save ourselves from ourselves.  We are the problem and we will destroy ourselves at least the life that humans have currently.  You can save yourself from yourself but not society.  Society is over so let go of it and save yourself. 

This is a hospice mentality of terminality and with this there is a relief and comfort of acceptance.  It becomes a life boat strategy by embracing constructive growth physically.   This acceptance and humility of a failure of our great human ship allows you to build your life boat. 

Those who have experienced failure know that it is here where your best learning and growth is.  Nothing proves right living better than failure.  Success is very deceptive because it involves affluence.  Failure involves loss and shame which is the best motivator.  It is the harnessing of failure and shame that allows proper wisdom to go forward with a hard-won experience.

Choose simplicity over complexity.  Downsize over growth but keep in mind you must embrace constructive growth or else you will not eat or sleep with a roof over head.  Accept failure and go forth in wisdom of the insecurity of this failure.  This hard-won experience will map out the way forward.  This ultimately means embracing death and mortality because this is the basis of life.  This includes letting go of our urge to immortality.  Our egos crave immortality.  It is not so much there is no immortality but instead there is a place where the sacred resides where an unknowable immortality may be.  This can’t be known so embrace mysticism if you can.  Here is the mystic way:

“in the first degree the higher power enters into the soul and she turns inward into herself. in the second she ascends above herself and is lifted up to the higher power. in the third the soul, lifted up to the higher power, passes over altogether into Him. in the fourth the soul goes forth on the higher power’s behalf and descends bellow herself”

This is an anonymous quote and rightly so.

This is critically important for you and your journey.  I am not asking you to leave you spiritual home.  I am not asking you to embrace what I just said as a religion or new age spirituality.  You must realize and come to understand your limits of change.  The limits of change of your nature and nurture.  The limits of change of your people and place.  What I am asking you to do in a realistic and relative way is seek out within your spiritual and physical world what I told you above.

There are some religions that should be left because their basis is a lie.  This is especially true of scientism and its atheistic positions.  The transhumanism and delocalization of this religion of the privileged in science and academia is anti-life.  It is a mechanization of life by machines and unrestrained knowledge.  It is these people that are driving the destruction of the planet.  The technocratic elite and their administrative soldiers are the henchmen of evil. 

I leave you with some C.L. Lewis and some Alan Watts:

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin”.  The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens love to paint.  It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps.  In those we see its final results.  But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.”

and

“Picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passion of envy, self-importance, and resentment”.

“The Screwtape Letters”  C. S. Lewis

“Someone or something beyond conscious control must overthrow the Devil at the right moment, for, being an archangel he can read thoughts and is always aware of the intention that precedes the act.  He can be defeated only by an act without prior intent. “let not your left hand know what your right hand doeth.” Now in Christian terminology this “someone or something beyond conscious control” is called the grace of God, and grace is held to be the only means of overcoming the machinations of the Devil, that is, of the vicious circle into which self-consciousness can lead us.  God as the giver of grace has therefore the same function as the guru, or spiritual guide, in Hinduism, and thus “the means of grace”….upaya. But it does not seem to have occurred to most Christians that the means of grace might include trickery—that in his cure of souls the Lord might use placebos, jokes, shocks, deceptions, and all kinds of indirect and surprising methods of outwitting men’s wonderfully defended egocentricity”

Allan Watts 1964