Which is a consequence of a lack of connectvity. Our side of the equation focuses on competition and given the size of the population and the power of the feedback mechanisms brought to bear, it does leave a vast majority squeezed to the max. Which goes very deeply into our cultural system.

Predatory lending, debt and slavery were all deeply connected in the Ancient world. We really only limit the legalized forms of slavery, not the effective forms. People are material and product to the system.

I’ve tried making the connection between that top down monolithic authority figure and the mechanisms of capital extraction in fairly simple terms, in this essay, because it gets to be a fairly historically and conceptually complex subject very quickly. Which makes it easy to sweep under the rug, in a media environment that has effectively been doing just that since the dawn of recorded history.

Yet we are suddenly at a time when that whole system is showing its age and limitations, from increasing religious corruption and/or intolerance, to the systemic failure of an economic system that has no other tricks than printing more money and feeding it through the same bad actors, to a political system which seems to be out of some zombie movie and now a massive social implosion, brought on by a pandemic, that should have been as predictable as climate change, given the various epidemic forerunners.

So humanity has three choices, more of the same, collapse, or something new. Though the first two really are the same.

If we are going to have a reset, how far down into the collective psyche do we dig?

The fact is that our mind perceives as a function of distinctions, so we see the separations and this object orientation goes to the heart of Western thought. Even theoretical physics is determined to describe everything as digital, even space and time.

Yet our thought process is one of making connections between all these points of reference and that goes to the Eastern, relational view of reality. The networks giving rise to and tying together all the nodes of focus.

Clarity and connectivity are two sides of the same coin, but we only see one or the other.

Though trying to raise such observations and questions in anything resembling an academic setting starts stepping on career toes and we go back to that primordial defensiveness, of a competition based society…..

Crazy mess.