Modern industrial civilization has developed within a system of convenient myths. The driving force has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on grounds that private vices yield public benefits in the classic formulation. It has long been understood that a society based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist with whatever suffering and injustice it entails as long as it is possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource and that the world is an infinite garbage can. At this stage in history one of two things is possible. Either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests guided by values of solidarity, sympathy and concern for others, or there will be no destiny for anyone to control. As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy for the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole, and by now that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elites should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must, namely to impose necessary illusions to manipulate and deceive the "stupid majority" and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured, they may well be essential to survival. -- Noam Chomsky

 

--ISHQ-- One arrives in a place that defies description, a space that has a feeling of being undergound, or somehow insulated and domed. One meets entities as well. I describe them as self- transforming machine elves. These entities are dynamically contorting topological modules that are somehow distinct from the surrounding background which is in itself undergoing continuous transformation. These beings are like fractal reflections of some previously hidden and suddenly autonomous part of one's own psyche. What they're doing is emitting sounds like music, like language. These sounds pass without any quantized moment of distinction from things heard into things beheld. One hears and beholds a language of alien meaning that is conveying alien information that cannot be Englished. Right here and now, one quanta away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien. I call it the Logos. This dimension is not remote, and yet it is so unspeakably bizarre that it casts into doubt all of humanity's historical assumptions. These experiences strongly suggest that there is some latent ability of the human brain/body that has yet to be discovered. It seems to me that either language is the shadow of this ability or that this ability will be a further extension of language. Perhaps a human language is possible in which the intent of meaning is actually beheld in three-dimensional space. As nervous systems evolve to higher and higher levels, they come more and more to understand the true situation in which they are embedded. And the true situation in which they are embedded is an organism, an organization of active intelligence on a galactic scale. This means that the contents of shamanic experience and of plant-induced ecstasies are the source of novelty and are the cutting edge of the ingression of the novel into the plenum of being. -- Terrence McKenna--

George Kennan, in 1948, in a "Top Secret," since declassified and oft-quoted document, said, "We have about 50% of the world's wealth, and about 6.5% of the population (now it is more like 65% of the wealth and 4% of the population). We have to devise policies that will allow us to maintain this position of disparity. We must dismiss sentimental daydreams such as international altruism and world benefaction. The time is not far off when we will have to deal in straight power concepts, and the less we are hampered by idealistic slogans about the raising of living standards, human rights and democratization, the better."

We now have a president who seems unsure as to whether global warming is real, and is far more concerned with increasing power and profit production than with worrying about trifles like the collapse of the globe's natural terrestrial ventilation systems and temperature control mechanisms. -- Jim Matus