Part 4

Neoliberalism on Steroids: 
Is COVID a Vehicle For an Orwellian Sci-Fi New Order?

The World Economic Forum and the “Great Reset” Agenda

As we saw in Parts 2 and 3, just as neo-liberalism straddles the divide between red and blue, it straddles the divide between the “market” and “state” too. Neoliberal capitalism isn’t just government and isn’t just the market either – it is both and more: it is a larger, complex behemoth, that envelops both within its nexus of power, and extends beyond it. In its unabashed drive for “limitless” growth, it grows to subsume all other actors, capturing all within its order, subjecting all to its dictates.

It operates most directly, though, through particular international engines like the IMF, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum, a network of assorted “independent” billionaires, who nevertheless act in tight concert for their own common interests. The WEF, the super-wealthy jet-set who meet in Davos every year to set the global elite’s agenda, was also a major player at Bill Gates “pandemic simulation game” (Event 201) in October 2019, putting forth a plan they call the “Great Reset”. The “Great Reset” was designed to steer the future direction of capitalism, especially in response to the “predicted” COVID pandemic (the timing of the actual pandemic, only four months later, can certainly raise eyebrows, but we won’t go into that here!)

The “Great Reset”, as one might expect, given who designed it, is a vision of growing control by the elites, a tightening-up of their power to re-direct all aspects of our society, including population control and surveillance, genetic modification, geo-engineering, biometrics, robotics, etc. This would be an increasingly controlled and surveilled high-tech world, under their design and command, with no mechanisms in place for public consent or approval – in short, a techno-totalitarian state, with democracy thrown out the window. In the greatest sleight of hand of all, it is framed as a great “re-set” correcting the crises capitalism has induced (now too obvious to deny) but in fact it is only taking it to a higher order.

The super-wealthy technocrats are calling all the shots now – and unlike the traditional state, which has mechanisms in place to preserve democracy and human rights, they have no such mechanisms in place, nor any compunction about enforcing their own dictates, throwing public consent (and public interests) by the wayside. Indeed, why should they do otherwise? – in a capitalist, deregulated world, where money buys the ultimate power, they have become as gods, accountable to no one. These men are not elected officials – they have simply taken power in their own hands, dictating the course of our evolution, and are turning us into robots, mutants, without even the will to protest.

This is no conspiracy theory, or hidden agenda – it is all clearly laid out.  As the WEF itself attests, this is the window of opportunity for the Great Reset, that has been in the planning for years. And they will waste no time in seizing it: rush through the vaccine, at warp speed, backed by digital, biometric and eventual under-the-skin surveillance, let the chips fall where they may. They have no hesitation about using us all as guinea pigs – willing or unwilling – for their experimental, sci-fi technologies that alter our very RNA, genes and those of all future generations.

Those who, like Bill Gates, bridge both the IT and medical industries (though curiously, he has no medical training!) have hit the jackpot with the pandemic. It’s given them free rein to create a new digital/medical infrastructure, inextricably fused, to call the shots (literally) for the whole world -- tearing up, in one fell swoop, all the old social contracts, and profiting mightily from it. In this way the pandemic has become the perfect vehicle for the Great Reset…not accidentally either, for both have long been in the planning.

This is a perfect example of how the free reign of the super-wealthy in a so-called “free market” economy allows them to totally grab the reins, dictating a future for all of us that none of us would choose. So much for democracy – for late-stage capitalism, as we have seen, cannot co-exist with democracy -- in fact, by its own internal logic, cannot help but destroy it, veering into a fascist facsimile in its final stages.

Because the Neo-Liberal Consensus Has Shifted the Whole Political Spectrum Rightwards, Few Are Left to Protest This

Because the neoliberal consensus has shifted the whole political spectrum rightwards, few are left (in both senses!) to protest now as it launches into full blast. The pandemic, in addition, has provided the perfect catalyst, with most of the population lost in fear, shock and confusion, rendering them more vulnerable than ever to manipulation. Because so many have already long been sold the neoliberal bill of goods, it is easy to sweep them up now in its full-scale agenda, with only the far wings left to contest it.

As we have seen, since the 1980’s, the neoliberal consensus has shifted the whole political spectrum rightwards, taking most of the population with it. As its trajectory peaks now, this has left only the fringes to protest – the far-right, and the (now so-called) “far”-left (those stalwarts who actually haven’t shifted, but held true to the values the left once represented, resisting the general shift rightwards.)

What was once the “right” and “left”, then, have converged in a neo-liberal common ground, leaving only the far-right and far-left at the “far ends” to protest. Ironically, the “far”-left (which used to be the ordinary left) sees the present “centrist” consolidation of power (the “Great Reset” of the WEF, Bill Gates, the WHO, the corporate technocrats) as a dangerous intensification of neo-liberal capitalism, while the far-right sees it, conversely, from the other end of the spectrum, as a socialist/communist plot! Interestingly, both are dubbed “conspiracy theories” by the neo-liberal consensus, even though they come from opposite perspectives -- just to thicken the pot of confusion!

The Great “Conspiracy Theory” Debate – Sorting out the False from the True

The obvious contradiction between these two narratives (the Great Reset as a socialist plot or an amped-up techno-capitalist one) -- and the fact that both are dubbed, equally, “conspiracy theories” -- is indeed at first extremely confusing; until we realize that the WEF has deliberately masked their high-tech, re-doubled neo-liberal agenda under socially-conscious and “green” jargon, to enlist in its fold the (once sceptical) liberal/progressive left. So while it appears quite “progressive” on the surface (and thus the target of the far-right’s ire) it is really neo-liberalism on steroids (and thus the target of the ‘far’-left.)

The reason, then, that the Great Reset can be attacked from opposite sides is because it itself is two-faced, presenting a different appearance depending on from where one is looking. Its supercharged neo-capitalist agenda is masked by a liberal, “do-good”, socially-conscious façade, which allows it to be attacked as a “socialist” plot from the right, and a neo-capitalist one from the left!

Whichever way we slice it, however, it is not repairing the ills of capitalism – as it tries to pretend – but taking it to a whole new level.

The Great Reset is framed as course-correcting the flaws of capitalism, but in fact is taking them to a whole new order: the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This plan, with which the WEF explicitly aligns itself, far from reversing the ills of the earlier stages of capitalism, ramps it up even further – to a global techno-totalitarian order.

Ironically, if they succeed, this “new” world order could very well be the world’s final one, at least of civilization as we know it –– capturing, and crushing underfoot, the entire globe, people, planet and all. The scenario is not a pretty one, with climate catastrophes, fires, floods, pandemics, and endlessly “advancing” technology chasing the tail of its own disasters, right to the death – possible near-term extinction of the human species, along with the countless others we have already taken.

Critiques of the Great Reset, as of its allies Bill Gates and the WHO, are censored, as we have seen, by the social media, or smeared (along with some genuinely crazy agendas) as “conspiracy theories.” Left or right, right or wrong, all narratives except the neo-liberal consensus, are tarred with the same brush. Yet we need to take heed of the perspectives that take a critical eye to the present one. More than ever, we need to separate out the wheat from the chaff, the legitimate claims of real threats to our freedom, from the paranoid delusions and wild fantasies generated by the fear and chaos of the pandemic (not unexpected when people know something is terribly wrong, but don’t know what it is!)

 
As we have said earlier, this is not a question of red or blue, which otherwise appear to be so divided. Both sides have been contending for a takeover; totalitarianism of different stripes, but scratch those stripes and underneath is one tiger or another!  One could say that red and blue are contenders for that takeover, and, yes, we have our preferences – but the truth is that without a much deeper change, we will not avert disaster, both social and ecological. (In other words, it should not just be a question of which ship we want to sink with -- capitalism itself is the maelstrom.)

How Neoliberalism Is Spawning Rebellion from Both Ends of the Spectrum

Just to re-cap, and go deeper, there are three important points we need to recognize, to disentangle the current confusion:  1) Since the 1980’s, the whole political system has moved rightwards, with both the erstwhile liberal left and the conservative right converging in the neo-liberal capitalist agenda. (Though it began on the right, the liberal left quickly joined in, compromising their scruples for the soaring profits it promised and, apart from some progressive mavericks -- fortunately growing now -- they have never looked back).

2) Now that, with the pandemic, the neo-liberal agenda has intensified into the medical-martial surveillance state represented by Gates and the Great Reset, it has spawned protest from both ends of the spectrum, the far-right and far-left. Both are smeared equally by the neo-liberal centre as “conspiracy theories” – but in fact they are attacking it from opposite positions, the right-wing of the spectrum seeing it as a socialist/communist plot, the left as a neo-liberal capitalist one, ramped up to a higher order. (One sees it as an amplification of government control, the other of private interests – and in fact, as we have seen, they both are true – because there is no longer any difference!)

3) This, bewildering as it seems, has come about because the “Great Reset” itself is two-faced: framing itself in a do-good image of socially-conscious, sustainable green memes to placate the left, while in reality a wolf in sheep’s clothing – a beefing-up of the original neo-liberal project towards a global martial/medical police state. It is private corporate business interests, dressed up as stronger government for the welfare of the people – all moving in an ominous direction of high-tech control and surveillance, and loss of rights and freedoms of movement, free speech, protest, the right to make our own decisions over all aspects of our lives.

So, yes, we do need a “new normal” – but not this one – which is only the old normal (that led up to the crises in the first place) on steroids -- reinforced, re-branded, and ramped up to a whole new order!

As we have noted, what rebellion there is is coming from the fringes – the far-right and what is left of the left…but both of these are also now growing…For the pandemic, and the fault-lines it has exposed, have also incited new movements of protest, bursting out of both sides of the spectrum. The question is: will it swing us still further rightwards, or can a new left, with bold new vision, wide and inclusive, healing and revitalizing, emerge?

Part 5

War on Life, Or Serving Life? –
A Global Medical-Martial Police State, or a World of Care and Regeneration?

In the first half of this series, we were busy disentangling some core illusions that have led to the present crises. Now in the second half, with a clearer vista before us, we will look increasingly at the clues as to where we will find solutions. (Please bear with me, however, as we continue to disentangle some more illusions, because the two -- deconstructing the old, and reconstructing the new -- actually go together: stripping the old veils away, and revealing both the perennial truths behind them and new vistas for our future.)

We need to face our crises head on, in order to move forward with clarity and integrity, with open minds and hearts – reclaiming our powers of critical thinking, our freedoms and rights, determining the directions of our lives, individual and collective, in harmony and cooperation with each other and the natural world we are part of.

The truth is that the new global techno-capitalist martial/medical state on the rise now bears an alarming resemblance to plain old-fashioned right-wing fascism – only worse, because turbocharged to a whole new order by the highly sophisticated technology at its fingertips. Technology is both its cover (always dubbed as “progress”) and its passport to a total takeover, in a way that was never before possible. At the same time, it is also covered by a smooth, assuaging neo-liberal (and faux socially-conscious) façade -- strong-arm tactics cloaked in a benevolent, paternalistic veneer of caring for our well-being, that is at once transparently opportunistic and an Orwellian nightmare of a transhuman, dystopian future.

A major driver of the Great Reset on the horizon is artificial intelligence, being developed in laboratories beyond our ken, out of sight, by Big Tech and big business interests, eclipsing our own human wisdom, rights and democratic powers of decision over our own lives. We are conned into thinking this is best for us – but is it? Let us take a closer look…

Slaves of Artificial Intelligence – Or Masters of our Own Human Nature?

Artificial intelligence, in particular, is by definition unnatural; it is also inhuman, and as such easily veers towards the inhumane -- for how can what is inhuman conduce to the good of humanity, in harmony with our true nature? Are we already so addicted to (and distracted by) technology that we can no longer see this? Have we given our smarts to our “smart-phones” (and our “smart-cities” and “smart-homes”), already cyborgs (half-humans, half-machines), already so dumbed-down we can no longer see how we are allowing our humanity -- step by numbing, dehumanizing step -- to be sucked dry, sacrificed to our ignorance, our apathy and our greed?

Have we given over our human intelligence to the IT experts, nerds and robots – the twilight zone of AI -- and kissed our own good-bye? Have we forfeited our connection to the innate inner wisdom with which nature endows us, and handed it over to IT geeks and artificial technologies, that are totally out of touch with life, indeed on a warpath to conquer and destroy it?

In fact, they may try to conquer nature, but in the end she will have the last word. They may try to bend nature to their will, but she won’t break – she’ll fight back – and quite possibly break us in this process. Whose side do we want to be with this – hers or theirs? This is not something to sleep-walk into – it is high time to wake up: to reclaim our minds, hearts and lives, reconnecting with the wisdom and bounty that nature naturally bestows on us.

Synching Our Human Intelligence with Natural and Cosmic Intelligence

The subject of “intelligence” – human, artificial, natural, where we derive it from and how we use it – is a fascinating one, and one we would do well to give our full attention at this pivotal point in our evolution.  Some in the “transhuman” movement, a guiding direction behind the Great Reset and Fourth Industrial Revolution, would have us eventually downloading our human intelligence (the contents of our brains) into artificial intelligence (computers), making our physical human bodies and our dependence on nature redundant. (For more about the many other ways transhumanist aims are central to the Great Reset, you can get it straight from the horse’s mouth, the World Economic Forum website.)

This is not only a nightmarish scenario, but one that can only lead to a grotesque future, devolution, deformation and extinction. For it is exactly the other way we need to go – reconnecting our small human brains to the larger intelligence of nature, that has created them in the first place, and continues to inform and evolve them in infinite ways – if we are only open to receive them. And this takes an about-face in the modern Western conception of our relationship with nature, and our intelligence with hers -- whether we use it to try to conquer her, or learn from her, and expand into far greater knowledge of ourselves and the universe in the process. (Note that I say “modern Western” cultures – indigenous people have always known this intricate, intimate relationship with natural and Cosmic intelligence, and had rich, sophisticated “inner technologies” to cultivate and evolve it.)

Western scientific materialist culture thinks of “intelligence” as something contained in the human brain, but there is another “distributed intelligence” embodied by the whole of nature, the whole of the Cosmos – of which our human intelligence itself is only a subset, a tiny part. Yet this human heart-brain, if properly trained, is like a holographic node of that Whole, which can tune into the whole of natural and Cosmic intelligence, downloading it, moment by moment. This what shamans, sages, yogis and mystics have been doing for millennia in non-Western cultures. Their outer simplicity belies the profound intricacy of their connectedness with the higher intelligence of nature and the Cosmos; in fact, it is part of what allows it (a crucial point we Westerners, with all our material excess and clutter, would do well to take to heart.)

It is outer simplicity at the material level that allows us to develop the deep inner technologies that help us access nature’s own templates, accelerating our true evolution, the highest reaches of consciousness. Indigenous, Eastern and ancient cultures did not have complex outer technologies, but the complex inner technologies that outer simplicity gives ground to, and direct contact with nature, that feeds and informs us in subtle, infinite ways, both perennial wisdom and the evolutionary templates for our future. They understood a point we Westerners must learn now, about the relation between outer and inner growth: just as, at a certain point in adolescence, we stop growing physically but continue to mature inwardly, so we, the human race, as a collective, must now learn to do that.

This means we have to learn from nature, not try to conquer it with our own tiny brains, so blinded by their own short-sightedness and self-centredness, but enlarge them by opening,  wider and wider, to her Cosmic intelligence.  Actually we are always connected to that -- the quantum field that pervades us and all of nature at an energetic level -- but our minds are disconnected from it, off in their own stories, stuck in a past that no longer exists and a future that is only imagined. We Westerners have much to learn from indigenous and traditional cultures about how to engage our hearts and minds with the deeper fields of universal wisdom – spiritual, energetic, ecological, social, economic – that can re-connect us with each other and all life, and can guide us towards a truly regenerative future.

The Techno-Capitalist War on Life -- Our Bodies and Our Planet

The way the techno-capitalist system treats our bodies is exactly the same way it treats the Earth. Blitz them with chemicals, hack them and frack them, destroying the balance of nature by endless manipulation and extraction – then meeting the disasters caused (climate crisis and pandemic) with still more aggressive and unnatural interventions (gene-altering vaccines, geo-engineering, the grafting of nature and human beings to artificial intelligence).  In this most diabolical of vicious cycles, the more damage that is caused, the more profit is extracted -- spinning the spiral of escalating crises faster and breathlessly faster.

And this is precisely how the system derives its profits, to meet its imperative of endless growth -- by chasing the tail of its endless trail of destruction, as the super-wealthy rake in the billions off the suffering and devastation of people and planet.  In this way, capitalism feeds off its own crises, instead of trying to stop their causes -- for that, of course, it has little incentive. Despite its claims and pious posturing, it has no motivation to stop this deadly cycle, of endless consumption and destruction, which serves its own interests so well, siphoning off all wealth to itself, and increasingly absolute power to dictate the fate of others’ lives, and that of the entire planet.

Vandana Shiva calls this a war on life (Elisabet Sahtouris attests to the same) because it is precisely contrary to the way that life, in its natural state, flourishes and sustains itself. It is extremely ironic – for years it has been a commonplace to justify the downsides of industrial modernity by pointing to the epidemics, fires, floods, earthquakes, famines and droughts, the vicissitudes of nature, that plagued the people of the past -- but look around, we’ve got all that now – and amplified a hundred-fold, because of the very technology we have used to beat nature down! Today we are finally seeing this delusional trajectory coming to a peak, as nature hits back in a storm of fury, and the captains of technology try harder and harder to batten down the hatches (or up the ante!) wresting whatever profit they still can, in this last gasp as the Titanic goes down! (Only too late will they see that they themselves are also on it – unless, as some are planning – they escape to Mars!)

Our Bio-Systems, Eco-Systems, Ecological and Economic Systems are Inextricably Linked

We have said that how we treat our planet is exactly how we are treating our bodies (and minds as well, bombarded with toxic ideologies), in what has become a vicious feed-back loop, eroding life at all levels, both our natural and social systems. In fact our bio-systems (bodies), being a sub-set of our eco-systems (planet), are microcosms of those eco-systems and reflect the imbalances and disturbances within it. How we hack at the planet is how we hack at our bodies; how we frack our planet is how we fragment our bodies and minds, our physical systems and psyches.

Scientists say that the “microbiome” in our guts is now severely disturbed, giving rise to many diseases, chronic and acute, because they are devoid of the biodiversity of organisms that a healthy gut needs to function well. Why is this so? “As without, so within” – because that same biodiversity so essential to life has been destroyed in our environment, our land, our soils and the food we eat, likewise blitzed with toxic chemicals, herbicides and pesticides. We are what we eat – both physically and mentally – and what we are being fed (at every level, personally and systemically) is life-destroying, toxic.

In this same way, our immune systems are so weakened by artificial living and artificial medical interventions that we cannot withstand the new pathogens being released in our equally-disturbed environment, where big tech and corporate rapaciousness have breached the human-animal interface and unleashed a Pandora’s box of novel pandemics, through rampant encroachment on animal habitats and massive deforestation. In short, we cannot hope to override the highly intricate, intelligent, fine-tuned balance of nature without equally disturbing and destroying our own bodies and minds, overturning our lives at all levels, biologically, psychologically, ecologically and socially.

War on Life – or Serving Life? -- Which Future Do We Want?

The powers-that-be have justified their extreme measures during the pandemic as a heroic war against the virus, but they themselves have caused the virus with their long-standing war on life. And this is the deeper, perennial war of capitalism – for fighting life can only lead to life itself kicking back, in an ever-escalating battle of survival, where life has the final victory and we humans are defeated, having exiled ourselves from its protection. Wouldn’t we rather be on the side of life to begin with, aligned with its sustenance and support, instead of killing ourselves off through our endless greed and hubris?

Another confusion we need to debunk is that between technological and social “progress”. What would once (not very long ago!) have been considered outrageous violations of basic human rights can now take place, with barely a bat of the eye, under cover of technological “progress.” Ironically, under advanced capitalism, technological progress is itself at odds with a socially progressive vision, but few people catch this. In our tech-happy (and tech-addicted) society, any technological innovation is considered an “advance”, and its nature rarely examined, even when it is in fact eroding all genuine social progress, and pushing it into regression. In this way it technology has insidiously fostered regression to fascist authoritarianism, just under another guise -- smooth, slick and easily slipped through, unrecognized because unprecedented.

”Growth” past a certain point becomes malignant – and we have already long passed that. We cannot keep on growing, materially, financially or technologically, on a limited planet, with its own natural cycles of balance, restraint and renewal, that must be honoured and observed, without incurring our own self-destruction. We need to stop pumping up such artificial, unnatural growth, technological and economic, trying to keep ourselves afloat on a collapsing life-support system, and start putting our energies where they can make a difference: the growth of our inner wisdom, compassion and action to reverse the effects of the devastation we have caused and restore our sense of humanity, no less than our planet.

The time has come to start thinking for ourselves, to parse out the delusions we’ve been force-fed…From where do we take what (we think) we think? – or is it not what we think at all but what we’ve been programmed to think? Our ideas come from the media, the corporations and the government, who are all in league, committed to their own profits, not the people or planet’s well-being. The corporate world controls both the state and the media, and dictates what we think. We need only to think about this a moment, to wake up and take back our power – to start to think for ourselves!

Politically, economically, technologically, ecologically and biologically (coming closer and closer, right under our skin now), neoliberal capitalism is waging a war on life, an attack from all sides, at every level, both personal and societal. But deeper still, the roots of the problems are at the cultural and spiritual levels, our very worldviews, beliefs and perceptions about who we are as humanity, and our bigger relationships to the life all around us, visible and invisible.

It is telling that the virus which has so turned our world upside down is not even visible to the eye -- perhaps a deep invitation to look to further levels of life we have been previously blind to. In fact, it is at the deepest, inner unseen levels of consciousness and energy, deeper than the visible material dimension, that we find the deeper imbalance that has led to the crises, and from there that we must uproot it.

What our purely materialist cultures have destroyed in us, we must begin to recover – and that is not regression, but the only true progress, only true growth, that will save us. Indigenous cultures, and those that have been long oppressed and destroyed, yet retained their spiritual and humane basis, are rising up now to show the way.
 

Part 6

Without Inner Wisdom, We Lose Our Humanity – And Ultimately, Our Freedoms and Our Lives
 

Another False Dichotomy – Beyond the Materialist Blinders of both Capitalism and Communism

In addition to some of the core false dichotomies we have already dismantled, there is another critical point we have to get in order to make sense of our present crises. For even the deep divide that drove almost the entire last century -- between capitalism and communism/socialism – the “Cold War” opposition still entrenched in so many minds – is ultimately a moot one. Why might this be so? Because both sides of this dichotomy too share a common ground of delusion:  both are purely materialist, lacking any spiritual dimension. For whatever their other differences, in this both sides have been the same, and in both cases this same failing has been at the root of their downfall (communism in the 20th century, capitalism in the 21st.)
Why does an exclusive focus on matter, and none to spirit – all to outer, and none to inner – matter? In fact it is not such a mystery, but actually stands to reason. Without the richness of the inner domain to explore and be fulfilled by, people will always look to the outer domain to fill that inner emptiness, the unmet needs inside them. This in turn inevitably gives rise to greed, ambition, aggression, power-seeking and inequality, especially in a world of limited resources, for which, if some are over-greedy, we all need to compete (all the more desperately now, as they are rapidly depleting.)

We humans are, by our nature, seekers. If people are not taught to cultivate their inner growth, which in fact is limitless, they will inevitably look to limitless outer growth, which is not sustainable. This is not an inherent, irremediable fault in human nature. Whether our need for evolution and growth is a gift or a curse depends upon the depth of our culture, the worldview and education it gives us – in short, what it sees as the goal of our human journey, whether it is one of endless material acquisition or the growth of true wisdom.

When people lack both inner resources and outer resources, as is increasingly common today, they turn to violence, to scape-goating, to seizing or holding onto their sense of supremacy and privilege, entitlement, bankrupt as it may be. They take on leaders who epitomize these tendencies, who have been supremely successful at them. This is easy enough to see with Trump and his followers. They live in a country bankrupt of true values, and so have taken that fatal flaw to an extreme -- a paucity of true wisdom, along with any semblance of kindness, caring, compassion -- which cannot but lead to destruction.

Others, more moderate, in the country, may try their best to temper this, but unless their own wisdom, and depth of caring, is at least equal to the task, they cannot succeed. We need an inner revolution so profound it turns the tide – nothing short of that will do.

Fortunately, each of us has tremendous power in that regard, as only a small percentage of such people is needed to generate a critical mass. Each of us has enormous transformative power, far more than we think, if we access and express that wisdom inherent within us. Once we have cleared the boards of the delusions we’re enmeshed in, we can tap into that deep insight and guidance, see the world with fresh eyes. Only then can we apply it in action, in a way that can make a real difference, not just more of the same that has brought us to this point of crisis, but a renewal of inner vision that can bring true transformation.

If it is More Just, Equal and Sustainable, Why Has Socialism Failed So Far?

Unlike capitalism, socialism is for the people, and in its most democratic forms, of and by them too – why has it not succeeded, then, in the past, in prevailing over capitalism, offering as it does a far more just and caring, equitable alternative? I believe it may be because, like capitalism, it lacks this spiritual basis – the sense of a deeper meaning in life, and our inherent connectedness. Absent a culture that cultivates inner richness, outer greed, acquisitiveness and power-seeking take over; and there is no upper limit on this, because there is no inner balance. Capitalism fits this bill much better than socialism, and that could be why, in the run-off between two purely materialistic systems, it has so far won out. But now its time is running out too, as the resources it depends on are hitting rock bottom, the climate has gone wild, and we’re heading for catastrophic disaster.

Socialism, while in many ways more respectful of our interconnectedness, and the ethics and egalitarianism that suggests, explicitly rejects spirituality, at least in its Marxist form. And indeed spirituality, and certainly institutional religion, can be the opiate of the people, its power greatly abused. But it need not be that way, for genuine spirituality goes much deeper – into our inherent freedom, from the core illusion that only this material world exists, and that we are all only separate, disconnected material bodies. And without realizing that deepest freedom -- which is also our Oneness with all that is -- we are always in bondage, however much material wealth and freedom we may have on the outside.

Disentangling “Conspirituality”: Reweaving Genuine Spiritual Wisdom into Deep-Rooted Systemic Transformation -- a True Movement By and For the People

Many people have been bewildered by the new phenomenon of “conspirituality” – spiritual circles merging with right-wing “conspiracy theorists”, an unexpected conjunction. This trend has become particularly evident in the last months, as the pandemic exacerbates previously hidden fault-lines, and re-aligns new camps, throwing together some very strange and surprising bedfellows.

Alternative/Eastern spirituality, left-wing politics, and holistic healing (against invasive high-tech Western medicine) used to all go together; as did conservative religion, right-wing politics, and conventional Western medicine -- one seamless ideological-lifestyle package in each case. But now, under pressure of the pandemic and the extreme measures it is driving, they have split off and re-grouped, re-configured, forming new and strange permutations, e.g.: – 1) spiritual people who are right-wing but against the vaccine (and Big Pharma/Big Tech/Big Data/ the Great Reset); 2) spiritual people who are still left-wing but for the vaccine (and Big Pharma/Big Tech/Big Data/ the Great Reset) 3) right-wing, religiously conservative people against the vaccine but not generally holistic (and…you get it… etc.)

What might be behind this? I believe it may be because what has dropped out of the equation is the traditional “left”. Many spiritual people have gone to the right, because the left has no more place for them – first of all, because there is so little left left, with any kind of inspired vision, and secondly because even the left that does still exist, resists or rejects spirituality. The neo-liberal absorption of the left has driven a wedge between spirituality and leftist politics, which were, in the 60’s at least, much more closely aligned, in a vision of higher consciousness that also transformed our systems. Now all that has gone by the wayside, and some spiritual people, by default, are aligning with right-wingers, who, at least like them, are against the mainstream system (though spewing up alternatives that, unfortunately, are even more deluded and dangerous.)

The left – those who genuinely care about the welfare of people and planet – must embrace the spiritual dimension, must itself expand its horizons, if it is not to simply disappear into oblivion, or be overrun by the right. And it need not do so in terms of conventional religion or spirituality, but essentially a deep consciousness of our oneness and interconnectedness – with each other, nature and the whole web of life, visible and invisible, that sustains us -- the heart of true spiritual wisdom, whatever name it goes by.

What is Our Choice?

We need a grass-roots movement, perhaps even a global referendum, bringing together the people, from all walks of life, to make the decisions that serve us, and serve all of life -- do we want this “Great Reset” that Gates, the WHO and the WEF are foisting on us, without our consent, while suspending our democratic rights and freedoms – or do we want to choose what we want, for our lives and our future, for the sake of humanity and all life on Earth, for now and for all time to come?

It is our choice to make, but we must take it, before it is taken from us.

The Covid pandemic, and an election that offers tepid hope at best, as we careen into a disastrous future – is an enormous wake-up call. But are we hearing the alarm call? Most, it seems, are just pushing the snooze button, over and over, hoping it will all just go away, brushing off the whistle-blowers dismissively as “alarmist.” This moment has been rightly called a window of opportunity – but for what, opportunism, or renewal?; a forced mutation of our genes by those who have themselves lost their humanity, or a genuine evolutionary leap, a quantum jump in human consciousness and the systems we live by? We must make that decision now, and come together to act on it -- before all our rights of decision and action are taken from us forever.

De-Colonizing Our Minds and Hearts to Make Our Own Free Decisions

“Information technology” is framed as being empowering, making information available to us so we can make our decisions with more choice and more freely, but in fact it is getting information on us, all the time, and using it to constantly manipulate our thinking, addicting us, unawares, to both depending on it to dictate our beliefs and desires, as well as the actual products it gets us to buy in the process. The “smarts” of our “smart-phones” are at the expense of our own, diminishing our ability to think for ourselves, to make our own decisions; the “smarter” they get, the stupider we do. We ourselves become the robots they surveille and control, every aspect of our bodies, minds, lives, dictated and monitored by command central, ourselves no less robotic than the devices they work through.

Our “smart-phones” are smart because they spy on us all the time, as will our “smart-homes” and “smart-cities” – a state of inescapable surveillance and control, in both the most public and private settings -- and we are pretty dumb if we don’t see this! We need to take back our power before we become complete automatons in their hands -- or, with their devices actually implanted in our hands, cyborgs, so fused with them we can’t see the difference.

 
The truth is many are already too dumbed-down to see where we are heading – their smart-phones having already blasted their brains with distraction, denial, confusion, information overload, fake news, equally biased “fact-checks” injecting us with the approved party line -- the fallout of our digitally- engineered, deliberately-induced era of “post-truth”. There is no scale this vampirization won’t reach to, from the very DNA in our cells (already being genetically modified by the vaccine) to our devices, homes, cities and the entire globe.

The Internet – which was supposed to be a platform for democratic free speech – is fast becoming an Orwellian Big Brother, telling us what we should think and censoring what we shouldn’t. First it sowed a perfect storm of confusion -- so we could no longer think for ourselves -- and now it tells us exactly what to think -- reining us in, with suppression and fact-checks, battening down the hatches, tauter and tauter, as we go down on its megalithic global Titanic.

Being Beacons of Light in the Darkness

This is a huge turning-point – which way do we want it to turn, for us or against us? It is up to us not to turn away, not to turn our eyes, but decide – to bring light into the darkness that is descending so quickly now, or allow it to consume us. The events that take place in our lives and our world are outer representations of what is going on in our souls; and either way, there is no place to hide. Which way do we want to go with this – self-deception unto death (not only of our physical lives but our humanity and freedom) or true liberty, of spirit, body and mind, taking our fate in our own hands?

When crises reach this magnitude – but also the larger unseen forces carrying us – it is actually easier to rise to them than sink with them, struggling, fighting, flailing – and a lot more exciting, inspiring, even joyful too! As we come together to support each other in this, we can transfigure ourselves and our world…an evolutionary explosion of the light that lies deep within us -- love, compassion, caring, freedom and true wisdom. Whether it is our last gasp, or a whole new beginning (and it may well be both of the two) we can meet it with magnanimity, courage, strength of spirit, grace and beauty – it is up to us to choose.

 

Part 7

Science and Big Tech are Not the Solutions – Holism Is, and Natural Wisdom

Science and Big Tech are, patently, not the answers to the crises they’ve caused – they will only cause more of them! The answer, just as patently, lies in holism, and nature’s own deeper wisdom, that drove evolution successfully for billions of years before we humans interfered with it (the tragedy – though still salvageable – of the Anthropocene!)

Science dissects, divides and attacks, hacks, fracks and jabs – holism heals, balances and unites, unifying diversity in synergy. Holism also embraces the science and knowledge that is useful, benevolent, that serves life rather than destroys it. As we have said earlier, technology itself is not the problem, it is how it is used, for what motives and in what larger political/economic context. A holistic perspective does not deny science, but takes what is sustainable; what is genuinely helpful, what honours, cooperates with and supports nature. We would call this, in broader terms, the science (knowledge) of holism, which embraces all knowledge that serves life with reverence and sacredness, and helps it grow and flourish.

“Science” as the Solution -- Another Delusion We Need to See Through

We are being told now, especially with respect to the pandemic and climate crises, that “science” is the solution. People are either “pro-science” (i.e., “rational”) or “anti-science” (“irrational”), the latter being dangerous or fools. But there is a lot to parse out here too, as we have seen with the other cases of black-and-white polarities so common today. Follow what “the science” says, we are told -- but first of all, what do we actually mean by “the science”? Because (though science is meant to be “neutral”) lots of scientists say different things, and often it is related to their own economic position and political views, and the economic forces funding them (or, in other cases, when their conscience grows louder, that they have the courage to break with).

“Listen to the science”, as the great climate-heroine, Greta Thunberg, says, can indeed be used as a clarion call to the truth, especially in the context of the climate crisis, to repudiate climate denial. But science, and the high-tech, high-carbon world it has given rise to in our hyper-rapacious capitalist system, has also given rise to the crises, destroying the balance of nature and throwing it into chaos. Even the vast majority of scientists (previously reticent) are now acknowledging that, with the evidence, studies and graphs to prove it – and in that sense, yes, absolutely, we must listen to the science.

But notice that basically here science is saying that its own by-product, big tech, has been the cause of the crises! So as far as solutions go, it becomes another question – more high-tech, geo-engineering, etc., clearly is not the answer, will only spin the spiral of already-escalating crises faster, racing in the same direction that has already brought us to the brink of disaster. Why should we listen to the science, and the same high-tech technocrats, who have engineered (wittingly or unwittingly) the crises in the first place? To do that is truly irrational, spinning the vicious cycle of tech-solutions causing deadly problems, calling forth even more deadly solutions, faster and faster, ever more disastrously, spinning out of control. That is truly unscientific -- given what we already know, to act like we don’t know it!

So we need not to be either just “pro-science” or “anti-science”, point-blank, but parse out, in each case and context, what it actually means -- what it is actually saying, and the role it is playing, whether for good or the opposite, beneficial or deleterious; whether it is for public well-being or simply private profits. We need to unpack what different scientists are saying, and for what reasons, in what contexts, and what motives lie behind them. “Science”, depending on how it is used, can be used to support left-wing causes, right-wing causes, and certainly the causes of mainstream neo-liberal capitalism, and everything in between. In this way, “the science” is theoretically neutral and “objective”– but in practice, very rarely so!

This is true as regards the pandemic too, even especially so. For the pandemic, as part of the climate crisis, was also caused by high-tech’s violent disruption of nature’s balance, through rampant deforestation and human encroachment on animal habitats, driving pathogens like the coronavirus across the animal/human interface. Yes, valid science attests to this, yet now again we are looking to more science and high-tech solutions – synthetic, gene-altering vaccinations, amped up tracking, invasive surveillance – rather than stopping the causes, which have come from high-tech’s supremacy in the first place! Why is it that we are not learning our lessons – or is it that certain forces profit from us not learning them, and turning to them, helpless, for their answers, instead?

One of the reasons for all the confusion is not only that the issues themselves have become, as they mushroom, much more complex – but that public relations techniques and technologies have become incredibly sophisticated (technically and psychologically), and especially adept at insidiously co-opting the jargon and memes of the other side to the purposes of their own agendas. Black-and-white polarizations, with each usurping each other’s memes, is especially powerful rhetorically for sowing confusion, and getting people to act, unknowingly, against their own interests – and many latch onto them easily, desperate for a life-boat in the midst of all the complexity (some of it itself very genuine, and some deliberately engineered to those ends!)

Scientific Materialism, Capitalism and Big Tech – A Lethal Alliance in the War against Life

Many look around today and see only chaos, but there is a very logical progression that has led us to this stage. (One could also say “inevitable” -- and that indeed has been loudly proclaimed -- but only inevitable within the logic of capitalism, not in life or nature itself -- whose logic is actually quite opposite!)

This fatal logic of capitalism is in fact dead-simple. Capitalism demands perpetual growth, which demands perpetual innovation, which demands perpetual de-naturalization. That means capitalism is in perpetual war with life, an ever-accelerating battle against life, which it can only win by destroying itself, and as much of life as it can in the process – ultimately, the human race waging that battle loses everything, and life itself wins out (in whatever forms survive the fray, or revive when humans are out of the picture.)

Sounds grim, and hopeless, you might say…and yes, if we continue on our present course, this scenario may indeed be inevitable.  But, as I say, it need not be so – if we learn our lessons on time, lay down our arms, and come over to life’s side – holism: honouring the whole of life, in celebration of our interconnectedness, cooperation and communion, joy and beauty.

Holism is the Most Powerful Healer – Biologically, Ecologically and Socially

The other side of this absolute supremacy of white male Western science and technology is a lack of respect, indeed active repression, of holism and holistic healing, and other forms of knowledge (“science”, etymologically, means simply “knowledge” or “knowing”). Holistic solutions for the coronavirus (and there are many, preventative as well as curative) have not only been ignored, as if they don’t even exist, but actively censored. This has been true of “science’s” (and the Western medical industry’s) relationship to holistic and natural healing in general, but even more aggressively and dramatically in the pandemic.

In the context of the pandemic, “listen to the science” means only one thing – get the vaccine: vaccines are the solution, along with whatever other draconian measures are needed to impose only Western, high-tech approaches on the public, whether or not they agree to it (and many individuals, and cultures, do not – or would not, if they were given any choice!) (This is not even to mention that if we’d been following holistic approaches in the first place, in our ways of treating our bodies and the land, we would not have had this pandemic at all, much less be subjected to such authoritarian, invasive “solutions” – yet most just meekly bow their heads, go along and take their “jabs” like sheep!)

Holistic approaches are predicated on keeping the balance, or bringing back balance when it is disturbed, to interconnected systems, the bio-systems of our body and our wider eco-systems. They recognize and work with the inherent inter-relatedness, wholeness, of all life – that our bodies and our planet, our bio-systems and eco-systems, work in symbiosis and synergy, with each other and indeed all other forms of life, human and non-human, in webs of personal, planetary and even cosmic influence and connection.

Holistic modalities are all about restoring balance, while Western high-tech medical and environmental approaches seem hell-bent on destroying it, perpetually throwing that balance out of whack, ostensibly for humans to gain the upper-hand, their own advantage. But life does not work that way, and we are part of life -- so our efforts to subdue her boomerang; we hoist ourselves on the petard of our own greed and hubris.

There are two simple laws of life: the more you defy nature, the more she will fight back; the more you cooperate with nature, the more she will support you. This is natural because we are part of nature – you can’t fight against yourself without getting defeated. We want to be on our own side, not make an enemy of our own nature.

At this point, nature has had it – she will no longer submit to men’s will. We shoot ourselves in our own foot when we try to bite the hand that feeds us – nature, the very source of life, without whose balance and wisdom we cannot survive, even exist in the first place!

Balance, Wisdom and Holism

If we drop into them deeply enough, all dualities and divisions dissolve into holism, and holism itself is not uniform, monolithic, but unity-in-diversity. In a healthy holistic system, the whole sustains the parts and the parts sustain the whole, in a reciprocal flow between essence, at the core, and all its own diverse forms in their expression and evolution. Unity and diversity celebrate each other, in an infinite flow of creation, dissolution and the emergence of new potential; an infinite flow of pure potential taking ever-new permutations, in a spiral of life that is mutually nourishing, generative and regenerative, limitlessly creative.

We have spoken throughout this piece about the polarities that divide us. If we see life through the lens of separation and division (as Western perspectives often do, whether scientific materialism; competitive, self-profit driven capitalism; white male supremacy, etc.) we drive these polarities ever faster and harder on a path of self-destruction, precisely to the breaking point we have arrived at today. If, on the other hand, we see life through the perspective of holism and interconnectedness, we seek to join together with others to find the common ground that can make life flourish for us all, and the greater web of all life.

Two sides of a duality do not have to clash in conflict, but can meet in a way that is mutually transforming. Whenever there are two sides, there is a third wider space that can see both and engage them, find the common ground or allow the synergy between them to play, or in which the edges between them meet and melt away. In this lies both the dissolution of the conflict, and the potential solution. Sometimes the solution arises as a new emergence, sometimes it rests in the dissolution itself; either way there is new freedom, freshness – an openness to the vastness of life, its potential and kinetic energies, recycling into each other in infinite permutations.

We can also see that dualities exist on a multiplicity of scales, and that they can also be seen, in this way, as nested wholes of unity-in-diversity, always inviting integration and balance, synergy and union, at a higher level. Seeing them in this way gives us a much greater space to play in, widening the freedom of movement, elasticity, expansion and growth of our identities and relationships, allegiances and alliances, beyond their fixed divisions and boundaries, opening up the potentials for new alignments and movement.

This is true even of the polarity, the tension, happening in these tumultuous times, between destruction and creation themselves. In a sense, the new creative possibilities of these times lie within the destruction that, like seeds broken open, allows new possibilities, new horizons in our evolution, to blossom.

Extreme polarization, fragmentation, can lead either to self-annihilation, a dead-end, a hole; or holism, renewal, a return to the Whole. In fact it can, paradoxically, lead to both, for one calls forth, makes space, for the other. There is a symbiosis and synergy even between creation and destruction, birth and death, mystery and revelation, a cycle or spiral of evolution, circling between and weaving together its own play of oppositions, dualities. An alchemy, transmutation, can emerge from this crucible, the fire of extreme creative friction -- a Phoenix of new life, rising from the ashes of death (or perhaps we should say near-death, because nothing in this universe is ever totally destroyed, just transformed into new forms, new permutations, fractals of the hologram of the Cosmos.)

A cycle is over, a rise and fall, itself a natural rhythm. And, as in nature itself, something else can rise from this – what it is depends upon our vision and our choices. Let us take the uncertainty, the unknowing, of the present moment, dive deep into its centre, the eye of the storm, and retrieve from it renewed potential, the possibility for a new and very different future. Knowing that it is in the in-between spaces, between the frames of reality we take (and make) as true – that the deepest meaning, and the greatest changes, can arise and break through.

 
(And for those who despair, there is also great grace in knowing that, whatever happens, the return to the Whole is inevitable -- perhaps the only thing that is, besides taxes and death! – because ultimately we have never left it, and our evolutionary journey is to that revelation itself! This is not, let it be said however, a grounds for passivity, a failure to play our part in the Whole because ultimately it doesn’t matter; but rather an invitation to the deepest ground of our being and of the Whole of creation, energizing our highest desire to serve that Whole, fuelled by the knowledge that we are that Whole, as well as of our own role in it, unique and co-creative.)

This recognition of holism, balance and interconnectedness -- the reciprocal flow between the parts and the whole -- and its fundamentality to the survival of life, much less its thriving --  applies at every scale, every level, but its most fundamental basis is spiritual, in our very consciousness. This is perhaps the level we can least afford to ignore; as we shall see in Part 8.