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Lately I've been posting a lot about my friend that is in the process of dying. I am amazed at how much mindshare this has taken up. Then again, no one in my family has ever died slowly - it's always been heart attack, stroke, or auto accident.
This has been a slowly steepening curve towrd oblivion for the last 2+ years. I knew it was trending this way then, and I thought I was ready for it. Nope.
The fact that I've been hard core unemployed for 16 months has both helped and hindered. It's like my professional life won't pick up until I have sent my friend on around the wheel. I knew this, too, about a year ago, but not that it was definitely this friend - I though it might involve my remaining grandmother.
I have to laugh when people say the "recession" is over. Companies are still downsizing massive numbers of people. We are in a depression, and it is deepening, and soon we'll have Bush's fucking war to pay for too, with our taxes and our (or our kids') lives. More death.
The whole 9/11 thing basically accelerated the death of freedom in this country. Like my friend, it isn't dead *yet*, but close. Just like the economy.
The final death: hope. Like N's life, US freedom, the US middle class, and peace itself, my level of hope for the world is in that "drain circling" mode that all the rest is. It hasn't quite gone down the drain totally, but it sure isn't staying in the basin.
It seems that the last few companies I worked for have all died, or are dying, slow, lingering, drain circling deaths.
The economy has been circling the drain since 2000, getting slowly, and inexorably worse.
The political climate, and the consequent trashing of liberties, has become more dominated by the Religious Reich and the politics of wealthy special interests. The 2000 selection was a major symptom of this.
The middle east mess has been getting worse on the same kind of curve.
My friend has been declining since about then too.
Is it a psychic malaise that permeates our entire world, that somehow affects the sensitive worst, in their area of most vulnerability?
How do we stop the death slide, or at least bring flowers out of the ashes? Where is our Phoenix essence, that we can bring beauty out of destruction and chaos? What magic do we need to work, within ourselves and in our world, to change the "dying mind" that stalks the zeitgeist and pushes our acquiescence to the slide into chaos, repression, abuse, poverty, and haterd?
How can all of the mages, witches, shamans, psychics and other "aware" people change it, without trite little "love ins" and "meditations on global peace" (that obviously haven't worked)?
What can we do, every day, just with ourselves and our close friends, to counter the galloping slime of futility and hopelessness that is dragging the world into oblivion?
It's not just a single issue, or a separate set of issues. It's all intertied, and I've been seeing glimpses of the horrible pattern (and pattern of holes that comprises it) for the last two years. I haven't got a big enough stopper for the drain alone.
From: (Anonymous)
Death, dying, maliase and mayhem
Synchronicity is remarkable, innit? Luckily, I still have a job for the time being, though I won't know if it'll continue past February at this point (last minute reprieve from layoff notice given for 1 October). Meanwhile, I've been watching most of the other computer geeks I know either get laid off or be terrified they're next on the layoff list. Being union doesn't seem to help either (even if you're one of the rare geeks who is). Things are bad all over and the totallyspiffindifilousrecovery the media and the government have been promising us is happening seems nowhere in sight.
'Psychic malaise'? Well, to an extent, certainly. You take X-amount of people, put Y-amount of them into financial distress, add a heapin' healthy dose of McCarthy-ism...er...excuse me...'terrorist menace', over-season with media hype and stir until boiling. There's enough sh*t floating around the ambient at this point, I'm surprised anyone can function.
Then there's all the other sh*t 'psychically sensitive' people are putting out there. There seem to be a lot of 'confusion to mine enemies' workings on both sides, and I'd hazard to guess that several of them are cast / run by folk who're not awfully bright or known for forethought / consideration of likely consequences of their actions.
The media concentrates hard on hyping events to the point of insanity; scaring viewers as hard and as often as possible, pimping for ratings, its stories like overworked whores who they just keep beating harder the more tired and dragged-out they get: Your child is in danger! Watch our show! We'll tell you all about the danger later in the broadcast! But first, these commercials.... The evil terrorists are coming! The evil terrorists are coming! Where could the next bomb be? Or the next anthrax-laden envelope? Could *YOU* be the next victim? We'll have more on that later. Meanwhile, a word from our sponsors....
So yes, there's a 'psychic malaise' out there. And it's getting worse.
From: (Anonymous)
Death, maliase, and mayhem
And yes, the United States is dying, too. Constitution and much-touted 'freedoms' eroded away by decades of keeping ahead of the 'Russkies', its people well-trained not to question anything their government does in the name of 'national security', it needed a new menace when its current arch-enemy, the Soviet Union, collapsed a decade ago. For a while it was 'War on Drugs!', a virtual reinstatement of the Volstead act, which has only reaffirmed what the public learned in the 'Twenties: Prohibition doesn't work. It only makes matters worse.
But the 'WoD' did manage to erode the Constitution even more. And now we've the evil terrorist menace, which takes the place of the evil communist menace, and all the superannuated cold-war horses in the second Bush administration are recycling the old 'communist menace' scripts and braying them from D.C. as loudly as possible.
"Why do they hate us so?"
Er...well, we've been playing International Superpower Thug since the USSR bagged it, withdrawn from several strategic treaties on the grounds that "we're the biggest, baddest military force on the planet - we can do whatever we want and nobody can stop us", threatened to start using tac-nukes both on the battlefield and as first-strike weapons (and there's the little thing about us having a history of using 'Da Bomb' against civilian targets), and then to top it all off, the Bush administration starts issuing statements telling the rest of the world that it's decided it has the right to replace 'terrorist' governments, and in other statements neatly defines 'terrorist' governments as the government of any nation which the US sees as opposing its (our) international interests. Go figure.
"They're jealous of our freedoms!" Er...no. That one didn't work for the USSR, and it doesn't work today. In fact, we're far from the 'Most free nation on the planet' or the 'Beacon of freedom lighting the darkness to show the rest of the world the way', despite the frequent speeches, press releases and media hype assuring us we are. In fact, most of the world views us more as a brutal, steroid-inflated thug who keeps trying to hold the rest of the world at gunpoint, whether militarily or financially. Truth is, we're actively working hard to take over the rest of the world - economically - and bind it to our control via finance. We've traded military warfare for economic warfare, but we're actually more aggressive than we've ever been as a nation, even in wartime. *That's* why the 'planes hit the WTC along with the Pentagon. Because unlike the American public, the rest of the world knows that it's economic imperialism they have to worry about far more than military imperialism, where the US is concerned. Oh, and for the record, I don't believe the fourth plane was headed for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It was , IMO, probably headed as a backup for the Pentagon. Yes, I could be wrong. So could you. So could the US government.
So yes, there's a lot of sh*t flying around out there, no 9/11 puns intended.
From: (Anonymous)
Death, maliase and mayhem
What can we do about it? Well, now, that's a good question.
There's the generic granola-and-brown-rice attitude that we should all work together to bring love and harmony to the planet (despite all evidence to suggest that the planet wouldn't function well, if at all, if it knew nothing but love and harmony). More love-ins and attempts to levitate the Pentagon. I'll pass.
Then there's the *Anarkizt D00dz!* mis-conception that if we all only got rid of government and commerce, we could all live utopian lives and no-one could tell any of us what to do. And the world would be a better place. Really. We'd still have access to medical care, and good food, and electricity and heat, and running water, because 'someone' would want to keep all those things going while the rest of us played 'Brave New World'. We'd still have all the benefits of civilization, without actually having to participate in its upkeep. That would all just happen magickally, and we wouldn't have to worry about it. Riiiiight. So let's all smash a couple'a windows at Starbucks, and whine about how the bourgeois, capitalist pigs are keeping us all down. Then we'll stop by Bi-Mart or some other discount chain store to buy oil (D00d! It's ch34p3r th3r3!) for our decrepit old VW microbuses which are covered with 'save the planet' and 'Earth First!' bumper stickers, yet belch and wheeze more pollutants into the sky than a whole fleet of WW-II era battleships with their smoke-screen generators set to 'impenetrable'. Twits.
Okay, okay, so we're Witches, Neo-pagans or Heathens. So what can *we* do?
I dunno. (Sh*t, I'm starting to feel like I'm Michael Moore - all screaming about the problem and no ideas for solutions.)
For ourselves and our close friends? That one's easy. Start living sensibly. More sensibly. Don't buy into the media's ideas about what you should and shouldn't have in your life, and especially don't believe what the commercials tell you you 'deserve', just for being born. Don't carry an outstanding credit balance if you can at all help it. Live well within your means, by old-fashioned standards, not by modern ones.
Be aware of what's *really* going on in the world - It's highly unlikely that your kids are going to be shot, abused, molested or kidnapped. That doesn't mean it *can't* happen, just that the media is lying when it tries to convince you it's constantly lurking in the shadows all around you.
Be aware of the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) the US government is feeding you. Realize that we haven't been the land of the free and the home of the brave for decades now. Pick your battles carefully, not impulsively. Government idiocy needs to be opposed, but protesting also makes you a target. Don't ever forget that. Be smart about your opposition, and remember the government holds all the cards. Play your hand accordingly.
Also, if you're going to work magick / energy / &c. to try and affect the situation, be smart about that as well. Sometimes things have to fall apart, so they can be put-together again better than before. Perspective helps. Life, the universe and politics tend to work in cycles. Remember that. The world was very much like this back at the start of the VietNam era. It's not the first time we've had either an idiot or a tyrant in office, though Bush II may be a new high (low) on the scale for each. And for the Gods' sakes, don't go off half-cocked every time things look like they're taking a turn for the worse. There are enough idiots out there with magickal ability, an affinity for panic and hair-trigger reactions. Don't be one of them. We're in the middle of a storm. Realize it, batten down and ride it out. The first priority is to keep from sinking. The second is to hold a decent course. Don't confuse the two, or you won't live to see the other side of the storm.
Support each other, for godssakes. We're all stronger that way.
Bush and company *will* get LARTed. It's only a matter of time. Protest if you can afford it. Be outraged at them, certainly. Inject what sanity you can into the ambient.
Meanwhile, be patient, and pay attention to details. It may still get worse before it gets better, and I don't like that fact any better than anyone else.