The human species with its history-long monumental internecine suicide culture is now confronted with its own obsolescence. Its game has simply run out of road. If it pushes on, reality will simply do away with it in an abysmally hollow climax of violence and disintegration. The watching stars won't care. Not because the universe is indifferent, but because it has a different goal. The human species will have made itself simply irrelevant and expendable.
The universe is not indifferent to the existence of consciousness, but the purpose of conscious is not to enable the bloody catastrophic triumph of one fantasy-driven, fear-driven human culture over another. The image of a vast, silent, and composed landscape triumphantly remaining after the self-destruction of the human species is a meaningful image. It tells us that the history of the human species is a history of denying reality and choosing to live in an obsessive power fantasy. Now the fantasy-plagued species has reached its time-space limit and must awaken from its delusion or be deleted and replaced. We have met the real enemy. There is no 'they', there is only us.
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The US/NATO-Israel alliance will never succeed in ridding the world of the Chinese/Russian/Iran alliance without taking out itself as well. And what exactly is this fight over? Control of resources? Absolutely. But there is more to the game than just that. It is the desire to see oneself (individual and collective) as the triumphant representative of TRUTH. It is the compulsive desire to justify oneself and one's culture in a reality that makes one feel profoundly uncertain about everything. Mortality seems to threaten just about everything. So humans develop 'spiritual' mythologies concerning this life and the next that for the most part they have no actual experience of the reality of. They can't actually confirm the reality with direct conscious experience. They take someone else's word for it and support each other in this because it makes life more tolerable. Humans become addicted to their cultural myths (whether it be about ancient gods or about the innate superiority of America) and this addiction makes them willing to justify anything that supports the triumph of the culture. And one is born into such an addiction regardless of where one is born. The world is divided into sacred inviolable cultures. How many Americans actually question whether the global take-over by America would be a good thing?
You might say that there are many Americans who question this. But how deeply do they question it? How far are they willing to go in their questioning of it? And if they really question it then why is there no consistent visible mass rejection of what has been American foreign policy for two centuries? Why has America been allowed by the American people to become a foreign policy global monster, one of the gods of the monumental internecine suicide culture?
I still have a big white button-pin that has a red and black peace-sign on it with red letters underneath saying BAN THE BOMB. It was a fairly common sort of item in the 1960's. I still wear it from time to time and most adult people smile at it with amused, calm condescension if they notice it at all and most young people have no knowledge of its history. I have not forgotten that the Vietnam War was finally stopped in part by American people visibly refusing to support it. But that refusal only went so far in actually questioning the American relationship with the rest of the world. There was plenty of dissenting public rhetoric, but this rhetoric was almost always willingly standing on a foundation of American capitalist predatory activity in the world. All of the paraphernalia (in the deepest sense) of 60's rebel culture was produced by the same economic system that created the Vietnam War. And in the end the rebels gave up and became loyal to the American capitalism that now has us on the edge of the abyss. There are exceptions like the Black Panther Party activist Fred Hampton who was murdered by the FBI. And there are others with similar stories, but they are very rare. For the most part the people finally acquiesce again and again.
And now we have the always glorious youth rebellion again (and to be young was very heavenly!). The collective knowledge of this current rebellion about the actual history of the 1960's rebellion and why it actually failed is probably pretty shallow. I see the same basic pattern developing: demands for certain changes within the system, but very little questioning of the system itself, the system that actually has us on the edge of the abyss. These young people say that their political hero, Bernie Sanders (the 1960's had its political heroes, too) is bringing revolution to the system without apparently perceiving that the system extends directly into the whole wide world and does not end at the borders of the nation. And it is the truly controlling part of the system that exists outside of this nation, the real power of which lies in a monster military web supported by endless covert machinations causing endless 'foreign' misery (and all balancing on the tightrope of fiat money). I see lots of FEEL THE BERN buttons and t-shirts, but I don't see any BAN THE BOMB buttons or END THE SYRIAN WAR buttons. The revolutionaries are demanding that their sarcophagus god give them certain domestic improvements in payment for their worship, but they do not demand that the god stop devouring foreign children to keep itself strong. They don't demand this because they don't want to be devoured themselves. This god tolerated its hippie children for a while then threatened them with being devoured. Most of them gave in.
Whenever I think about Bernie Sanders, an image of Robert Kennedy always suddenly overshadows him in my mind. I was seared by the 60's experience and I cannot erase that scar, nor should even attempt to erase it unless I simply want to go into denial of its reality. I have to consciously transform the scar into something meaningful and even positive. This is what it means to learn and grow.
I am quite aware of the endless stream of Sanders-supporter rhetoric exclaiming the superiority of Sanders over Clinton or Trump and, honestly, it only makes me more doubtful about the depth and seriousness of these people. Better than Clinton or Trump? Whoop-de-do. It isn't American domestic policy that is threatening the species with doom, it is American foreign policy. It is American imperialism. And imperialism can be pursued by 'diplomacy' just as readily as by force. The more Bernie tries to make himself look good by contrasting himself with Hillary (and lately with Trump), the more evasive he looks to me, the more he looks like Coney Island flim-flam. The crucial issue is whether or not one has anything to offer concerning the critical global situation and if one doesn't then I don't care if one is not as low as Hillary or Trump. In our present reality it doesn't matter.
Give me a sign, Bernie, show me you are ready to take up the almost extinguished torch from Robert Kennedy's murdered hand and carry on. The CIA is not less corrupt than it was then, it is more corrupt. Us foreign policy is not less dangerous than it was then, it is more dangerous. Tell me that you want me to wear a button that says:
FEEL THE BERN-END THE SYRIAN WAR
or
FEEL THE BERN-END THE WAR WITH RUSSIA
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