More Roots Of Pathological Anti-Authoritarianism
Taking A Cosmic Point-Of -View
THE 100 - 24,000 MILE POINT OF VIEW
We denizens of the Earth don’t often think about the really high altitude view - that obtained by our high altitude tools - the satellites - and by our creative license and imaginations.
And the educations we are indoctrinated by do not furnish us with really useful perspectives at all.
If there is ever going to be a real and meaningful civilization it will be one in which inquiry-based education based on free speech and mutual respect is developed.
From the very first the agriculturists who developed large civilizations were out to lord it over all of the rest of us.
Civilization is marked by large buildings which endeavor to reach toward the sky - as if architecturally at least - man is building monuments which rise far above the perspective of we as humans.
The more advanced the civilization the more the architecture seems to try to move beyond the human and natural - as if mankind is in some kind of competition with the creator.
We are simply not prepared as normal citizens of our civilizations to think outside of the mental blinders provided by our institutions.
At this point after many thousands of years of civilizational progress the concept that we could break out of these blinders is rather Pollyanna-ish in character.
Yet the real thinkers and paradigm breakers in every civilization are misfits who never fit into the prescribed molds.
If a thinker is really impressive in scope and magnitude - a mercurial mind which seeks frontiers way beyond the limitations of the prescribed mindset - frightens the hell out of most everyone.
It is only at rare and dynamic times such as these when everyone begins to question everything they thought maybe they once knew.
The question on the tip of everyone’s mind is - are we - as humans - going to be capable of making the jump to this new consciousness we believe we can glimpse just beyond the horizon?
Because the number of nimble and intelligent humans it will take to break free of the mindset which has held us in the grip of these stratified and hierarchal systems for what seems like forever - is going to really challenge us all.
For those of us in the so called boomer generation - those who were born to the parents who had fought WW II - and to grandparents who had fought WW I - and many great-great grandparents who had fought in the Civil War, the Revolutionary War and the all the others - we arrived in the midst of the biggest attempt at suburban idealism of any other generation.
The 1950’s - for all they were to evolve into the possibly more independent mindset of the 1960’s - were marked by a stultifying conformity - marked only by the refreshing evolution of popular music.
We as children seemed to recognize the energy and more dynamic mindset of these evolving musicians.
The music seemed as if it were trying to gain some altitude and dynamics to counter the terribly confining blinders of the 1950’s mindset.
All kinds of things burst into the scene in this music - and the evolution of radio helped send the rapidly changing art form into the awareness of every kid’s environment.
Music became an essential component of every pre teenager’s life - with tunes eagerly shared with others.
Music transmitted some pretty dramatic and paradigm-breaking new thinking for those who were attuned.
Parents were properly and formally outraged - and predicted a hellish future for those of us who loved it.
What we heard in the music was something our parents just could not fathom or comprehend.
The business and politics as usual accepted by former generations began to seem pathological to us children - those who had spent our childhoods diving under our desks during air raid drills to “survive” a nuclear holocaust.
We were guided through readings of such revelations as Gravity’s Rainbow and The Catcher and the Rye.
We seemed to absorb by osmosis a sort of contrariness and cultivated a sense of weirdness and individuality.
As far as nuclear war went - we understood - from early on - that such an event would not be survivable and experienced a decided philosophical break with our parents right then and there.
But 1950’s conformity took a toll on our impressionable psyches.
We wanted none of the Tupperware parties and suburban conformity our parents were too patient with.
Whether it hit us then or not - we understood - with a kind of fore sight that we would most certainly be involved in the coming apocalyptic age of planetary totalitarianism.
We felt - rather than articulated - this essential uptightness of our uncivilized civilizations - as children do.
We felt - rather than voiced - the terrifying truth which was revealed in the 20th century world wars.
Limitations on thinking, being, doing were placed on our forming psyches before we could even talk.
Along with the music which burst forth joyfully from our radios we began to question everything.
And questioning everything anyone ever assumed they formerly knew or understood was precisely what would be required by the new world we felt rising into being all around us.
And now - for those of us who continue to survive this fascistic totalitarianism which grips the world - it is this consciousness transmitted between us by the music which comes to help us understand the spiritual and cosmic sea change we are now formally part of.
And it is unsurprisingly Holden Caulfield himself who will have the last word here:
Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them— if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.
Page number : 111
But then if we understood Holden Caulfield at all we know he would want the Grateful Dead and Thomas Pynchon and Bob Dylan to get the very last word:
Interesting article, although the music of your youth was more connected to the CIA than you'd probably be comfortable with. Only Dylan admitted his career is not his making. The boomer rebellious youth was satiated by the destruction of the dollar
According to the Buddha, even consciousness (vijñāna [Sanskrit], viññāṇa [Pali]) feeds human craving & clinging, which is at the root core of human suffering, pain, unsatisfactory-ness (duḥkha [Sanskrit]). Therefore, one ought to neither identify with nor attach to vijñāna, viññāṇa. Therefore (again), striving for (so-called) “higher consciousness” is wrong headed. Better to strive for a complete escape from the karmic cycle of samsaric rebirths from one form of consciousness to another.
I’m looking forward to the complete destruction of this present-day iteration of global civilization. The human family has gone through several cycles of civilizational creation and development and destruction. This one is ripe for destruction. It cannot happen soon enough. This destruction will culminate in a planetary catastrophic natural disaster. This disaster cycle is also cyclical, happening approximately every 12,000 years. The earth will be cleansed from the iniquity of this current terminally ill civilization.