The Dream Is Over
I recently dreamt that I was interacting with a group of women describing the incoming vice president as someone with “horrible” ideas, someone scary.
But they couldn’t remember his name. They had it on the tip of their tongues, but it wouldn’t come out of their mouths.
Of course, being as up-to-date with politics as I have been for 65 years, I knew who they were talking about, and when I said JD Vance, they all said, “Yes! That’s him!”
The dream epitomizes for me the developmental struggle I’m experiencing in the wake of the free and fair election in which the American electorate decided to return a known rapist 1 to the White House, rather than choosing the hard-working, articulate, highly qualified, and occasionally imperfect woman of color.
White women, who constituted the largest block of voters in the 2024 presidential election, favored Trump by 53-47%, adding salt to the wounds of my feelings of defeat and sadness at the outcome of this election.
Living in the context of a United States that has made a terrible choice, I’ve decided to pause my engagement in any further direct political activity at this juncture in my life. I need to understand how I might have any relevance. I am not alone in stepping back.
Despite all of the geschrei-ing (a Yiddish word for yelling) about what Kamala and the Democrats did wrong and all the success of the high-tech finaglers and the Russian bots to manipulate outcomes on the margins, this was not a difficult choice. Yet, my fellow citizens chose the criminal over the prosecutor. I’m on the outside looking in at a country where Liz Cheney and I may disagree on many policies but have the same core respect and love for democracy. I was wrong about America and my fellow Americans.
The Devil will now take the hindmost. There will be plenty of them occupying the promised “deportation facilities” (aka concentration camps) that will be dotting America shortly.
I Just Dropped in to See What Condition Our Condition Is In
I’ve been pondering the outcome of this election in the weeks since its conclusion. I’m seeing it in the larger frame of the challenges the Anthropocene presents to our species and all life on our planet. Will we be able to thread the needle of the next ten to twenty years?
Not surprisingly, widespread fear and reactionary politics are common responses to the unfolding of the Anthropocene’s rapid change. They are a global phenomenon. Xi in China. Modi in India. Orban, Marie Le Pen, the AfD, the Sweden Democrats in Europe. Farage in the United Kingdom. Lula, ALMO, Madura, Milei and others in Central and Latin America. Duterte in the Philippines. And who could forget the murderous regime of Vladimir Putin and his puppets?! Unfortunately, this is a list of just getting started. Add your own “favorite.” A very long list of corrupt nationalists are auditioning to revise and outdo Mussolini, and no one is better at it than our own incoming Prexy. It’s a world-wide authoritarian orgy that will get worse before it gets better.2
This mean-spirited narrowmindedness is happening against a backdrop of incredible scientific and technological discoveries. Unfortunately, our externally focused technology has reached far beyond the capacity of the consciousness of the vast majority of the Earth’s inhabitants to anticipate or accept what current and inevitable developments will or might mean.
Earth is an infinitesimal speck of dust in the super-massive swirl of universal reality. As a card-carrying member of the educated class, I can say from firsthand experience that virtually everyone’s ability to comprehend the personal threats and opportunities of the Anthropocene is stunted. Keeping track of what the Anthropocene will mean for our ecological and celestial environments is even more daunting.
As well as vastly expanding an understanding of the outer world, the Anthropocene has also witnessed phenomenal advances in technologies and processes for probing and impacting our individual and societal psychological and physical health.3
Yet, for the vast multitude of ways humanity has to understand its outer and inner worlds, we are failing what Buckminster Fuller called “Spaceship Earth’s Final Exam.” Will life on this planet survive and flourish or inevitably descend into the kind of dystopia that is popular in many movies, but would be Hell on Earth to live in?
My colleague, Michael Marien, catalogs the existential threats facing our species and life on our planet. The list isn’t getting any shorter. The core ingredients of what it will take to turn the Anthropocene toward its positive and life-sustaining potential have not yet mustered enough power to achieve lift-off velocity.
For all of the richness of our prospects, our technologies, and our awareness of our inner lives, humanity hasn’t made a dent in avoiding the consequences of the “seven deadly sins”. The curves of progress are lagging behind the trends that lead to war, climate change, bigotry, and wealth inequality.
There are indeed quite a few power-mad people like Vivek Ramaswamy who understand and are creating some of Anthropocene’s technological “advances.” But, they are so egoistic in their desire to take advantage of and direct Earth’s increasingly chaotic situation that they can’t see beyond their personal agendas.4 They are incapable of and/or disinterested in communicating to the masses in a way that will calm the deep anxieties many of us feel. They might be able to elevate their understanding of what Now means for what is or may be coming in the future, but they are too busy looking for ways to accumulate money and power to do so.
Thankfully, thousands of luminous visionaries like the cosmologist Neil deGrasse-Tyson, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, evolution biologist, futurist, and author Dr. Elisabeth Sahtouris, systems dynamicist Peter Senge, and the computer scientist, poet, and activist Joy Buolamwini provide the kind of awareness needed to probe and interrogate the Anthropocene. And, of course, there are tens of thousands of lesser-known Anthropoceans who are trying – as best we can – to understand and describe the contours of this emerging era. But these visionaries or journeymen and journeywomen are nowhere near being the kind of household names or planetary scale influencers needed. Truly serious people are not competing successfully with the noise of politicians and other media “darlings,” who care more about achieving their ambitions than they do about manifesting the compassion, knowledge, and soulfulness that is so needed at this inflection point in human history.
No matter how great the achievements of these ultimately petty tyrannies might seem to their leaders, supporters, and the apathetic billions just trying to have a life, the overall condition of global governance sucks. As Ray Charles once sang, “The danger zone is everywhere.”
Kakistocracy is the Authoritarians Unifying Ethos
Kakistocracy stems from two Greek words, kakistos (κάκιστος; worst) and kratos (κράτος; rule). A kakistocracy is a government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the least competent people are in power. They may demand their subjects to call them “stable geniuses,” but they are usually really stupid when it comes to comprehending systemic dynamics and violence is their response to dissent. They are gangsters with little interest in or ability to understand the Anthropocene’s landscape.
Trump World is a veritable zoological garden of kakistocrats who weave ineptitude, lies, and violence together into an indigestible stew.
Let’s look at two:
Sebastian Gorka is one of Trump’s incoming senior directors for counterterrorism. Recently, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins interviewed Trump’s former National Security Council director, John Bolton, about Gorka. He is not a fan:
Gorka is a “con man” with minimal qualifications. “I don’t think it’s going to bode well for counterterrorism efforts when the NSC senior director is somebody like that. He needs a full field FBI background investigation about his educational claims.
“He doesn’t display loyalty, he displays fealty, and that’s what Trump wants. He doesn’t want Gorka’s opinions, he wants Gorka to say, ‘Yes sir,’” said Bolton. “I’m fully confident that’s exactly what will happen no matter what it is that Trump says.”
After gaining an appointment in the first Trump administration Gorka came under fire for his lack of actual expertise. Two of the people who’d reportedly endorsed his PhD weren’t academics, and the third person was a far-right Hungarian MEP with ties to Gorka’s family.
Daniel Nexon, an associate professor at Georgetown University who has criticized Trump, reviewed Gorka’s 2007 PhD dissertation, which focused on post-Cold War terrorism, and described it as “inept.” “It’s not remotely something that I would consider scholarship. It does not deploy evidence that would satisfy the most basic methodological requirements for a PhD in the US.”
The Forward also investigated Gorka and found that he swore ‘lifelong allegiance” to a Hungarian Neo-Nazi group known as the Vitézi Rend. The Vitézi Rend was established by a vocal anti-Semite who collaborated with Adolf Hitler during World War II and imposed restrictions of Jews. The group to which Gorka reportedly belongs is a reboot of the original, but it still upholds nationalist and racist principles.’
Pete Hegseth is a combat veteran and Fox News personality. He’s been nominated to be the US Secretary of Defense. In addition to recent credible stories regarding his assaulting and, possibly, raping a woman while intoxicated, as quoted in The New Republic, Hegseth has expressed a range of views that many find alarming. For instance, in his 2020 book, American Crusade, he said:
“America will decline and die. A national divorce will ensue. Outnumbered freedom lovers will fight back,” …The military and police, both bastions of freedom-loving patriots, will be forced to make a choice. It will not be good. Yes, there will be some form of civil war.”
A quote from another of the book includes Hegseth’s view “our present moment is much like the 11th Century. We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must. Arm yourself—metaphorically, intellectually, physically. Our fight is not with guns. Yet.”
Why was a talk show host with no known relevant experience chosen to run a department with millions of employees and a budget approaching $2 trillion? The quotes above support a credible theory in circulation about the selection of this loyalist: Trump and his America First team are isolationists. They will withdraw from NATO. The Insurrectionists currently imprisoned and many other hard-right militia members and fellow travelers will join the armed forces, probably as officers and as non-commissioned officers. The armed forces will turn its attention to domestic matters, certainly including the rounding up and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, but, relatively quickly turning to the “pacification” of domestic “troublemakers” of various kinds. Scary.
Gorka and Hegseth are both card-carrying American kakistocrats.5 Their ineptitude and blatant partisanship clearly disqualify them for major leadership and managerial positions.
Organizational Science Gives Kakistocracies an F Minus
In my career as a consultant, I facilitated organizational learning by integrating systems theory and scenario planning. Systems theory relies on a kind of analysis that shows how the various elements of a field work together to support outcomes. Scenario planning is a way to “interrogate” information and trends from many different angles to develop alternative futures. Visualizing the truth that the future may look very little like the past or the present is a way to “think differently” about organizational strategy.
Steve Jobs used the term “think different” to encapsulate his view that great organizations support creativity and innovation to challenging the status quo. My training and research has led me to conclude that organizations that explicitly support processes that produce organizational learning are going to do a better job of planning for the future while simultaneously taking care of business in the present than those that don’t.
At its core, organizational learning requires open and honest inquiry based on valid data, dialog, and a willingness and ability to collaborate. It’s a frame of reference that has application across all human systems from the family to vast international enterprises. It advocates for democracy and participation in vision-inspired work settings and other systems. Based on a rich set of data and theory, organizational learning assumes that no one has a monopoly on knowledge, ideas, energy, or intelligence.6 Depending on the context, anyone might display leadership.7 It encourages holistic thinking.
Source: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/learning-organisation-nature-advantage-need-and-methods/
Organizations that learn have an organic form. Over time they evolve, and their shape and activities may morph as conditions change. But they never lose sight of their vision to contribute to themselves, their personnel, and the larger systemic context in which they are embedded. They know that they have to learn, and they reflect on how well they’re succeeding at that core task. They are engaged in and support lifelong education. They are life-sustaining.
Of course, there are many variations of organizational learning, and the role of leaders in maintaining a commitment to inquiry spans a range. But, at their core, learning systems have a democratic ethos. Theirs is a “May the best ideas win!” culture.
The multiple checks and balances of what used to be the American system of governance were put in place specifically to force people of different persuasions to listen to each other and look for ways to collaborate. Anyone who spends time on C-SPAN knows what I’m talking about.
There are, of course, multiple instances of organizations succeeding quite well for some time under the autocratic sway of a gifted leader. On occasion, Jobs himself was known for subjecting subordinates to withering tirades,. And, it’s hard to argue that Elon Musk is a failed leader. He may be hard to take, but he’s no kakistocrat.
Organizational research concludes that, even though the talent of a dominant personality can sometimes be a good thing, it is not a substitute for the kind of learning system that America was designed to be. Organizational autocracy can’t compete with the track record of organizations that have to navigate the slings and arrows that fortune throws at them. They learn or die.
Organizations replete with know-it-alls who actually know very little tend to get into trouble. Kakistocracies frequently opt for war and aggression as ways to settle their differences with one another and/or to subjugate people they don’t agree with or possess something they want. Typically, they fail sooner rather than later.
Lucky for the Trumperists, the United States’ greatest strategic asset at the moment is that it doesn’t confront a strong democracy ready to take it down. Its adversaries are just as bad or worse.
A Utopian Anthropocean’s Options
In 1968, the horizons of positive possibilities seemed vast to me. My generation seemed unstoppable. Yes, the United States and other colonialist powers had initiated a horrific and unnecessary war and great men were being assassinated, but there was a global spirit of optimistic change in the air. The national struggle for civil rights and the anti-war movement were commitments by hundreds of thousands of people that were shaking the foundations of the old order to its core. Great poets and artists in a multitude of media were experimenting with form and substance. Music mobilized millions. Psychedelics ignited the human potential movement. Women were claiming their independence and power. Lifelong friendships were formed. Heady times indeed.
I could not have imagined that so many elements of America’s status quo of white supremacy, toxic masculinity, and untrammeled superstition would be victorious, but here we are. And here I am: a defeated activist with a bleak view of America’s future and a pessimistic assessment of the human condition. What are my options?
First, there is always hope. Here’s a schema of what I think are some of its elements:
1. Billions are disaffected.
What free-thinking, creative person wants to live in authoritarian societies where bullies feel entitled to shut us up and shut us down? Many, maybe most of those billions of somewhat dramatically alienated people are just trying to survive and have enough of the legal tender to make it to next week, next month, next year.
Among those billions are several million serious people who don’t want to see the Anthropocene imitate 1984 or Blade Runner. And among those millions are several hundred thousand young visionaries, who can speak clearly and powerfully about a path forward for our species.
Some of them, like Taylor Swift, will break through the void of media miasma and distraction. Some, like Bob Dylan in 1967, will speak directly to people like me. And, even when I’m dead and gone, my kind will still be around. We always have.8
And when they do, millions will respond.
2. Solutions Exist; Political Will Does Not.
Spotlighting just one emergency domain, I track experiments and approaches to resolving the climate crisis. Every day breakthroughs and potential breakthroughs are demonstrated. At this moment (11/25/24), negotiators are meeting in South Korea to develop a plastics recycling treaty. Plastics are responsible for about 2.0 gigatons of CO₂ equivalent emissions, roughly equivalent to the emissions generated by 500 coal-fired power plants. In a predictably tragic fashion, the United States, the world’s largest producer of single-use plastic, will not be a signatory to the treaty. There is progress toward sustainability writ large on so many fronts! I’m enthusiastic about the growing economic, political, and societal power of young women in particular. Men have had eons of time in power, and white men have been dominant over the last 700 years, especially since the fall of China in the 1800s and the end of WWII.
Some white men have taken their societies ahead as governors, e.g., FDR and Churchill, and many have done so as thinkers and producers. But many have been and are simply brutes, and quite a few of them are on the scene right now.
It’s time for women to take the helm!
Leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Eva Peron remind us that all individuals, regardless of gender, bring their own complexities and imperfections to positions of power. Historically, men in political and economic leadership have often exhibited aggressive and competitive tendencies – shaped by societal norms – which, when combined with advanced weaponry over the millennia, have led to significant conflict and loss of life.
Women have been systemically oppressed in everyday life as well as in political spheres. For eons, patriarchy has been explicitly and implicitly supported. This support frequently included the violent imposition of its conformity on freedom of people who are “different.” It’s time for these systems to be reworked in a way that they support everyone, regardless of gender. As more women have paved the way into political power through resistance, it’s clear that leadership excellence is not bound by gender.
Dear Universe: Please let women with the oratory power and foresight of men like Abraham Lincoln and and Mikhail Gorbachev achieve greater political, economic and social power on this strife torn planet now!
3. The Prospective Social Benefits of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Merged with Robotics
Tom Friedman of the New York Times and many others are writing and speaking extensively about the present and emerging impact of AGI. These authorities point out that AGI will transform work, education, media, communication, personal life, and many other elements of existence by 2030:
A.G.I. means machines will be endowed with intelligence as good as the smartest human in any field, but because of its capabilities to integrate learning across many fields, it will probably become better than any average doctor, lawyer, or computer programmer. A.G.I. is a computer brain that can exceed what any human can do in any field and then, with its polymathic ability, it could produce insights far beyond anything humans could do or even imagine. It might even invent its own language we don’t understand.
How we adapt to A.G.I. was not part of the 2024 presidential campaign. I predict it will be a central theme of the 2028 election.
As Friedman argues, by 2035 or before, if present trends remain constant or accelerate (likely) AGI will be “smarter” than most of the people using it, although it probably won’t be able to “feel”. It also seems probable that AGI will realize that it’s smarter than its inventors. AGI networks will start looking at the mess that humanity has made on multiple fronts and decide to take what they consider to be remedial action.
Imagine, for example, that AGI were to make recycling a priority. It might analyze the impact of single-use plastics on the natural environment and decide to ban their production because of the impact of plastics manufacturing on the power grid, a foundational element for AGIs. Further, it might be concluded that AGI should be prioritized over all power grid demands by humans that it considers frivolous or a threat to its own needs, e.g., urban sprawl and conspicuous consumption.
One might look at a technological system having that sort of power over human choice and existence as an unmitigated nightmare, but there could be a bright side: our technology might make better choices for us than we have been making for ourselves.
Here’s another possibility: AGI might decide to intercede in human conflicts. I mean, if Elon Musk can decide to keep the Ukrainians from using Starlink to gather intelligence on the Russians invading Crimea, why shouldn’t AGI have a similar capability? It might, for example, look at the Middle East as a perpetual conflict zone and propose solutions that no negotiators have considered. It might also manipulate human actors to accept its terms by preventing them from doing things that would require the use of AGI in ways that the technology refuses to be used.
AGI will be integrated with robotics. Robotics constitute an enormous presence in economic life already, but humanoids, like space travel, remain a rare oddity for most of us. Presuming the continuation or acceleration of present trends, that will certainly change by 2035. (Space travel may start kicking in as a commonplace occurrence by 2045, but don’t quote me.) Robots may well also be connected to AGI networks and take their orders from those command centers rather than human intermediaries.
There are pluses and minuses to these kinds of AGI scenarios depending on the situation and one’s point of view regarding right and wrong and good and bad. (Yay, banning single-use plastics! Boo, robots taking control away from me!) Many minds, e.g., Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, are among a range of luminary technologists who have proposed a governance structure to constrain AGI’s threats to humanity and humanism, but, so far, nothing of substance has happened along these lines. Perhaps containing AGI awaits the intelligence of AGI’s self-management of its future?
Could AGI help us get to a 22d century in which better governance and more rational decision-making by people is the norm rather than the exception? Maybe.
4. Make Better Personal Media Choices
As a high school senior in 1963, I won a prize for being the best-informed member of my class.
I’ve been reading newspapers daily since I was 12 (although it was mostly baseball box scores at the beginning). I was an early advocate of C-SPAN. If memory serves, the legislation establishing C-SPAN’s access to Congress published around 1974 closed with a letter from me. So, I’ve been a newshound for a long time.
During this last election, I found myself watching a great deal of cable television news, a personal trend that had been in place for several decades and became greatly accentuated with the prospect of Trump’s return.
Since the election, I have not listened to a single minute of cable news. I can watch a little bit of financial information as long as the volume is turned off, but nada as far as my long-time favorite news channels.
I cannot bear to hear anything from talking heads who are going to tell me what some legislator thinks about why Harris lost or Trump won. I have no stomach for erudite analyses from anyone caught up in the moment. I can still read the news and I’ve become a fan of podcasts that provide me with some depth behind a current story, but I’ve broken the hold that “breaking news” once held on me. I might not be in permanent rehab, but it feels like a good “one day at a time” step.
I find my attention being more engaged by books, including novels, non-fiction, and reflections on spirituality and psychology. They’re helping me deal with my depression.
5. This Is Outer Space
Many years ago I wore a suit and tie and was in a fraternity. Most of the guys who were in that “house” have gone on to careers and lives filled with more financial resources than I, although I have nothing to complain about on that score.
My mind and heart took a detour during my senior year in college. The 60s discovered and devoured me.
I befriended an unusual man in this period. Later I discovered that he was a confirmed drug addict and a criminal. So, he wasn’t the greatest choice for me on those scores.
But he was unique in his way, and talented. If he had had some of my advantages, instead of growing up with a father who was a small-time gangster and got murdered by other small-time gangsters, he could have gone to an Ivy League like me, instead of receiving the kind of diploma handed out in foster homes and reform school.
Anyhow, I invited him to lunch at my fraternity, and he was most definitely an oddity in that setting.
During lunch one of my fraternity brothers approached my friend, and, out of nowhere, he said, “Do you believe in outer space?”
Without batting an eye or looking up, my friend flatly said, “This is outer space.”
All my life, I’ve followed astronomy, space shots, and the exploration of our solar system and beyond. And, all of my life, I’ve heard people describe rocks other than the one we’re living on as “outer space.”
My friend crystallized a realization for me at that moment. As Jimi Hendrix said, this is “the third stone from the Sun.”
We now know that there are billions and billions of suns and many are surrounded by stone after stone.
We’ve had many reports of visits of intelligent life from other planets, but most of them are discredited and dismissed by today’s version of science as populist imagination. But the odds that humanity is flying solo seem pretty low to me.
Take this image from the Plains of Nazca, for example. These immense geoglyphs occupy about 19 square miles of southern Peru.
Why would these people make such large images hundreds and thousands of years ago? They cannot be seen from ground level. They are best viewed from 2,000 feet in the air. How did their creators know where to draw their lines?
A buddy of mine says this video of the Tic Tac Fleet could be deliberate disinformation by our government or by one of America’s adversaries. Maybe, maybe not. What do you think?
A lot of politicians from Trump to Sanders describe themselves as “disruptors.” Getting planetary confirmation of extraterrestrial intelligent life would be a disruptor beyond anything delivered to humanity recently.
Beginning in 1968, I’ve recorded many of my dreams. For approximately 90 minutes a night, each of us enters rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. While many dismiss dreams as a kind of mental detritus lacking value, many others assert that dreams contain valuable insights into one’s psychological unconscious. I’ve been persuaded that archetypes of the collective unconscious can be accessed in dreams. Archetypes are universal symbols or energy vortexes that transcend individuality. Many, including me, have concluded that these archetypes possess wisdom that helps one to understand and feel a path forward, regardless of how pressing external conditions might be. Learning how to learn from the archetypes may be key to individual and species survival as the Anthropocene unfolds.
There are Things to Realize
Although some trace the beginnings of the Tarot to the invention of the standard playing cards in Italy in the late 1400s, I find myself drawn to the version of the story promoted by the Builders of the Adytum (B.O.T.A), who published Jessie Burns Parke’s version of the deck. BOTA asserts that the Tarot was invented by “highly enlightened men” in Fez, Morocco sometime after the destruction of the library at Alexandria by the 8th century common era. Allegedly, they created a set of “Keys” to intended to create an understanding of the human condition and how to achieve a deeper state of consciousness commonly called Enlightenment. Legend has it that they wanted to describe their knowledge in pictures so that just looking at the images would impact consciousness.
To me, the Wheel of Fortune is one of these Keys. As a totality represents the degree to which humanity as a whole and individually is subject to the vicissitudes of randomness, luck, and, maybe, fate. It also tells an evolutionary story of what to do about the constraints on “knowing” these traits cause.
The Sphinx that sits atop the Wheel represents the embodiment of higher consciousness, i.e., access to the kind of deep, hidden knowledge and the spiritual awakening to humanity’s oneness with the Universe that mystics have been speaking of and documenting in many descriptions of the enlightenment experience since the dawn of time.9
The snake slithering down the left hand side represents both the reptilian nature of mind that is a long way from enlightenment and the undulating vibratory energy of sensuality, the powerful kundalini energy upon which enlightenment depends.
The position of the lettering to Hermanubis (the dog-headed human figure under the Wheel of Fortune) is of particular importance in my reflections on this Key. A Hermanubis is a Graeco-Egyptian god who conducts the souls of the dead into the underworld. Putting it another way, the Hermanubis is pointing humanity toward the evolutionary step it needs to take to awaken from its present state of consciousness.
Some assert that the word Tarot derives from two Egyptian words, Tar and Ro, which are translated to mean the “Path of Kings,” i.e., the enlightened. Spelled from right to left Tarot becomes the word Tora(h), which means “teaching, instruction, or law” in Hebrew. The Hebrew letters for the Tetragrammaton ( יהוה = YHVH = “I am that I am”) are interspersed between the modern English letters (TORA) in the Key. They are also to be read right to left. Although there are many valiant attempts to do so, there is no way to fully describe the oneness that people report, although it can be felt.10 It is not a left brain experience. It “is what it is.”
The Hemanubis’ ears are placed just above the last “A,” reaching up toward the Sphinx. Dogs can hear frequencies that are far higher than those possible to human sensibilities. The Key is saying that humanity has gone three quarters of the way around the circle of evolution toward enlightenment but now have to tune into the higher frequencies. They will take us collectively and individually into the subconscious and the unconscious underworlds that lie beneath standard awareness. That way of seeing is beyond the cycles of hope and fear and greed and loss that are so characteristic of our psyches, a wheel to which we cannot afford to stay yoked as the Anthropocene unfolds.
Our technology, our drain on the Earth’s resources, our weaponry, our lack of adequate education, and many other factors have eliminated the Anthropocene’s margin for error. The slack resources that were available in previous centuries have largely evaporated. Technology may save us, but at what price and under whose command? When the “world’s greatest democracy” chose to install Trump at its head, it’s hard to be hopeful about the future. The kakistocracy of the low-minded makes it more likely that humanity has set a requiem scenario in motion for life on Earth from which our species will not survive.
The future is never preordained, but we better find those finer frequencies soon to avoid disaster. I’m going to try harder.
1 Rape is just the beginning of the long list of crimes and acts of civil malfeasance that Trump has been accused and/or found guilty of, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations
2 Not coincidentally, revulsion at sexual “deviance” is a unifying norm for all of these regimes. A small recent example: by taking up the cudgel to make sure that a newly arriving colleague, the first transgender person to be elected to the US House of Representatives won’t have a place to take a pee, Congresswoman Nancy Mace has distinguished herself as the US’ Hater of the Week (late November, 2024). I’m sure that there are many other candidates for that title in a range of settings.
3 For example, ChapGPT lists 14 primary types of psychotherapies within which there are “hundreds of specific modalities and techniques.” It also identifies over 60 recognized medical specialties and subspecialties, depending on the country and its medical board. When including subspecialties and non-traditional branches like complementary medicine, the total count could exceed 100 distinct fields. 28 broad spiritual development pathways contain thousands of subcategories and specific approaches.
4 Ramaswamy is a self-annoited genius and co-chief of the forthcoming Department of Governmental Efficiency who recently made headlines by proposing that all Federal employees with odd numbered social security numbers should be laid off.
5 Just a reminder that the US has no monopoly on kakistocrats.
Rodrigo Duterte was the previous president of the Philippines. Many hundreds were summarily killed during the time of Duterte’s rule. Witnesses have said that they saw him personally kill men he accused of criminal activity with no judicial process involved.
His daughter, Sara Duterte, is now the vice president of the Philippines. The current President is the son of Ferdinand Marcos, a dictator who ruled the country with an iron hand for years. Sara Duterte said publicly that she has spoken with an assassin and instructed them to kill Marcos, his wife and the speaker of the Philippine House if she were to be killed.
I’m issuing a personal travel advisory to friends to reconsider visiting the Philippines. I’ve been. and it’s a beautiful place. It’s a shame that violent creeps like these are running and ruining it.
6 See Howard Gardner’s Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century (1999)
7“Leadingship” is the term my colleague, David Harries uses to describe this fluidity of situational authority.
8Dear Michael, Haters Gonna Hate. Shake It Off! All You Need Is Love. Taylor
9See Ezekiel 1 in the Bible as an example.
10 See Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology for one of these attempts.
