Catalysis and Social Redemption

Hello again, Chris. Thanks for responding ... On a humorous note, it almost sounds like you're living off mushrooms. ... I'm constantly playing the part of alarm clock for people around me. "Wake up! They're taking advantage of you and you're letting it happen!" Only a few people ever hear, though. I feel very much like a prophet. (Jonah to be specific.) ... I wonder sometimes whether sweeping social change is even possible anymore. Have things gone so far that the only way to have "sweeping" social change is through societal collapse? (I prefer to believe--like Jonah didn't--that people can choose to change and avoid the so-called wrath of god. That it is in our hands to repent of our ways and make a new way, thus avoiding disaster.) I lean toward Taoist belief, myself. And i wonder whether one should even make attempts to cause change...is that "going against the flow"? Or are my actions part of the flow? How can i determine which?

Hi ... Here's a brief response to the issues you mention ....

As I see it we have a relatively paradisiacal planet with an incredibly subtle climax biosphere with all manner of beneficial medicinal properties, from the life-extending and anti-cancer properties of muscadine wines and green tea, to the psychic visionary species, if we don't destroy the living bounty we coexist with through lethal planet-wide impact. We are also capable of making major technological transitions and the silicon revolution is one which brings us all much closer together, but given these we still are going to have to come to terms with how to live in a creative visionary way for millions of years to come.

The challenge to redemption seems to be more to do with the idea that human culture emerged from Machiavellian intelligence, in a Fall which creates itself a major dilemma getting from here to there, because it produces complex social systems involving a high degree of strategic bluff, accompanied by mechanisms of control, which don't easily give room for any simple transformation to an assumed enlightened age. Rather than succumb to a simple over-weaning truth of a prescriptive religious system, we have to absorb our way to any future 'golden age' through coming to the inevitable conclusion through freedom of information, astute knowledge and good sense.

Now I do believe that we can make a rapid soft transition to a kind of golden age of enlightenment and that the sort of dialogue we are having is catalytic towards this end. A lot of people become transfixed in the idea that nothing can change, that we are powerless, adrift in the larger political and social forces, often of an irrational nature, driving the zeitgeist.

My involvement with chaos and bifurcation has taught me that abrupt transformation is possible and can happen surprisingly quickly. I also really like the idea that the current social milieu is a kind of false vacuum and that a more enlightened social community could spring up as a true vacuum - a lower energy natural condition, into which the old order implodes without a violent revolution - this is all by analogy with the theory of cosmic inflation also triggering the the divergence of the forces of nature making complex molecular systems and sentient life possible.

The internet, and the global village, which makes it possible for us to have this conversation, is a potential part of such a 'tipping point' of human social networking, leading to the ability for each of us to take personal responsibility for the fate of the planet, which is what I believe we are all incarnated in the mortal realm to participate in [and what the concept of the messiah is all about].

While I think it is possible to be an enlightened catalyst for such change, I'm not sure it's conducive for a single organization to try to promote it as a movement, although I'm warmly receptive to participating in throwing the [apocalyptic] covers off reality, with others who might seek to do so as a mutually creative exercise in redemption, and to lend what experience I have of the source condition to that end.

I do 'live off the sacraments' in a kind of way. I stopped partaking once for seven years, but I kept having dreams of more and larger and more inscrutable fungi echoing with their iridescent experiences, appearing in the oddest places, until I realized it was part of the fabric of my incarnation. I only commune with the psychic species very occasionally. It's like my life is sailing up a long tortuous fjord and the visionary experiences are the tacking points, where we 'go around', trying to avoid getting 'caught in irons' and gaze into the hazy distance, from outside the inside out, to chart the next line of strategic healing 'attack'.