What it was telling me is that I have to focus on the deep, on the cultural, on living in very large, open spaces. We can’t go backwards. We can’t recreate the 1950’s (which we look to as the last relatively innocent period of our culture, but which of course was also filled with fears of nuclear war, Sputnik, the mass abuse of children by Catholic priests and others, and segregation, among other things). We can’t recreate the honor and civility that characterized our culture at its best in the preceding years. We can’t forget that we fought a Civil War, in which 20-30 million lives were ruined permanently.
Death and destruction have been the lot of humanity for most of recorded history. Most of history consists, in fact, in wars: in wars, with all the unthinkable things which attend war. People assume the worst happens on the battlefield, and in some respects that is true, but so much more follows. I was just reading the other day about how the Soviets raped millions of women when they reconquered Eastern Europe. Such people are never put on trial. They finish their service, then go home to their wives and children, and not infrequently abuse them too.
What we need are things that have never been tried before. My Goodness Movement is a stab in that direction, but it needs a lot of work. The only off-the-shelf available movement forward that I see currently is Spiritualism. There are mediums out there, today, who can manifest dead spirits such that they can talk and even touch people, or so it is reported. People like David Thompson and Kai Mugge and others, can reportedly literally make your grandfather come back and talk to you. They are, of course, untested by scientists because most scientists are idiots.
If I have not mentioned his site before, I would encourage folks to visit the website of Victor Zammit: http://www.victorzammit.com/
If one were to SERIOUSLY want to evaluate the evidence of the after-life, he is a very good initial resource. Of course, the people who most need to do so are least likely to do so. They have perfected the fear of the unknown to such an extent that they think they are open-minded and scientific. I see no fundamental difference between fundamentalist materialists and socialists who want to destroy the world to perfect it. It is the same breed of mania.
In the end, though, we must come to a generalized understanding of the spiritual nature of our world. Once we do that, all the pieces fall into place. My work will be long term, likely difficult, and quite possibly unsuccessful. I saw a good quote the other day, though: falling down is life; getting back up is living.
Ultimately, I think much of the darkness in our world begins with the moral pessimism that comes with assuming we are machines whose apparent consciousness is a lie. Our “life” is a lie.
You can attack the senselessness that comes with internalizing this truth by, as one example, focusing on a supposed “Singularity” in which our machinery is perfected. You can pretend that “society” exists, even if individuals don’t. But none of these are good solutions. They lead to unnecessary restrictions of spirit.
It occurred to me the other day that horror movies are likely tonics for many people. Once you get used to the basic idea of people being tied down and tortured, having their arms ripped off, of monsters in the dark, I think people MUST get a taste for it, since there are now thousands and thousands of titles, when once–25 years ago–movies like Halloween were aberrational. There were very few of them, at least as far as I could tell. They certainly were not culturally prominent in the way they are now.
I think people learn to manage anxiety by feeding it. I think these sorts of movies become addictive, because it is how you calm yourself down.
And I think the blackness inherent in all these movies helps people forget what they are forgetting. We are in the process of killing everything good about America, and these movies act to cover up that fact.
Barack Obama’s motto is “Backward” (his cipher is quite simple: just invert everything he says to get the truth): back to the bad old days of the commissars, economic malaise, and pervasive despair. So be it. It is up to those still alive to move forward, and work to build something new, a new home, where people can be enticed to live. There is no easy or quick way to do this, but it is the only game in town worth playing.