In our time, the issue that subsumes all others is the issue of the survival of the human species. The primary threats to this survival are climate change and global nuclear war. Of course the interiors of these primary threats are swarming with countless contributing secondary issues.
The most striking thing about these primary threats is that they are completely avoidable. They are being steadily approached with a startling tunnel-vision by willful participants. It can be like observing an enormous suicide ritual. We who are not willing participants can see where it is headed (destruction), but the participants seem to see something else entirely. The dominant characteristic of ritual is that it is non-conscious or at best semi-conscious. Ritual is an act designed to control reality with 'wishful thinking' carried to the point of blind determination. It is a fight to the death -- with reality. But I do not mean to trivialize such ritualized being. It is as old and deep as the species itself.
What exactly are the participants in this ritual seeking? They seek to possess and control the resources of the earth for the perpetuation of the life of a particular 'culture'. This 'culture' represents their desire for triumph over death -- reality. The goal of the ritual is escape from, triumph over, mortality. But I said it is like a suicide ritual. The paradox here contains the key to understanding what drives the participants toward fatal climate change and nuclear war.
We know in our bones that on the current path it is only a matter of time until we cross the fatal line of climate change or until the big powers of the West and East finally come face to face and engage in the death battle - the battle to culturally possess and control. We also know that no physical creature on this planet actually possesses or controls anything. It is the earth that possesses and controls. It is the earth that will lay every last creature in its grave in spite of the sound and fury of the ritual. It is this futility at the core of it all that torments and drives the participants into blind and paradoxically nihilistic obsession with cultural triumph. All this is to say that it is the fear of mortality, of death, of reality that drives the unreal/real ritual. If you wonder how the Oligarchs can possibly not see where it is all headed then you must understand that you are dealing with people who live in a ritual of reality-defiance because they are terrified of reality. And as Carl Jung said - There is nothing more dangerous than a person with profound repressed inferiority in the living grip of fear. Such a person will stop at nothing to escape their secret bind. They are in essence suicidal with the determination to take everything with them. They must be stopped.
Climate change and global nuclear war are deeply related. The people who can give us nuclear war are the same people who ignore climate change and for the same reason: to achieve the impossible triumph over reality with its face of death. Of course there are long and honored traditions of belief in 'spiritual' triumph over death in human history. But the participants in the ritual I am describing do not have any real belief in such traditions. They are not satisfied by them. They find no real meaning in them. They are consumed by the physical fear of mortality and since they cannot slough off their mortality with 'spiritual' power, they arm themselves with the ritual of material triumph. But these participants are not simply insignificant fools. They are, in their own pathological way, true signs that 'spirituality' is not enough. Material reality must be included in any sort of real human salvation. So in a way, these participants are touching on a true reality that they are just too small to deal with in meaningful way. The material world does matter in spite of mortality. But what these participants don't see is that death must be engaged and not denied. It is the difference between reality and fantasy. It is also the difference between imperialist foreign policy and benevolent (well-wishing) foreign policy.
Behind all imperialist foreign policy is the ritual of paradoxical suicide. All imperialist foreign policy moves toward climate change and global nuclear war. This is why I do not support Bernie Sanders in spite of my agreement with some of his domestic policy ideas and in spite of my good grip on the truth about Hillary Clinton and of course on the Republican candidates. Foreign policy is a revelation of where one really stands in relation to climate change, nuclear war, and the entire human family. It is not enough to just care about the well-being of Americans. Americans don't live in a separate reality. Americans are just part of the human family which is and has always been at war with itself, with its condition, its mortality, its reality. Humanity has always divided itself into warring groups as a way to escape reality. This is the war that must end now, the war of humanity with itself.
Hillary Clinton takes advice from Henry Kissinger. Bernie Sanders derides her for this and himself takes advice from William French and The National Security Network which accepts the overthrow of Assad as a viable goal if it is done properly (https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ISIL-CPC-Testimony_William-French-31615a.pdf). It's all imperialism in different costumes. They are costumes that are at war with each other as well as with the 'foreign enemy'. Bernie Sanders says he will give me single payer health care and free education and he will protect me from Russian aggression (http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-russia/). I don't want his protection. It isn't real. Reality is bigger than all these deadly games. I want the protection of the reality of the human family.
It is time for a revolution in foreign policy. American lives are not more important than Russian lives or any other lives. It is time for a world revolution. It is time to wake up from the suicide ritual and began engaging reality together. I refuse to support any foreign policy that divides the human family. There is no 'foreign'. There are only suicide rituals born of the fear of reality. We will not avoid climate change or nuclear war unless this world revolution begins. We can no longer afford to support anything less than world revolution. The issue is the survival of the human species. And if it doesn't deserve to survive, it won't.
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