Friday, January 18, 2008

Apocalypse Now. Definitely Maybe.


"The promise of a recovery of a long-lost Golden Age reverberates through countless myths. The heart-chord it strikes has inspired visionaries and idealists from time immemorial. As well, it fuels a healthy discontent – the flip side of modern anxiety – that refuses to believe that this is the best we can do. It is an indignation, a muted outrage that can be allayed temporarily by comforts and luxuries, that can be subdued, temporarily, by survival anxiety, that is always strongest in the young, and that lies latent in all of us, ever-ready to be roused into a crusading idealism, though often coopted toward the perpetuation of the very conditions that give it rise. It is my purpose, dear reader, to give voice to your indignation and to reaffirm your intuitive knowledge that life is meant to be more."

From "Waiting for the Big One" by Charles Eisenstein, Reality Sandwich

Continuing from yesterday's post, I simply had to draw attention to another really great pick from the web magazine Reality Sandwich, which puts the current spike in 2012 and apocalyptic fervor into perspective.

I'd like to say Eisenstein offers good news. But he doesn't. At least, not exactly. What he offers is hope and a certain 'realistic' or 'grounded' line of approach to what he believes is the inevitable: the breakdown of life as we know it. Which would be pretty darn depressing if he didn't also add the following:

"Today we already can catch a glimpse of the technologies-social forms as well as paradigms of material production-of a future in love with life, which encompasses the love of being alive as well as the love of living beings. They are the technologies of sun, soil, and water, of bioenergy and rhythm, light and sound, word and touch, mind and dreaming, matter and information. All of them arise from and embody a different understanding of self and world. Just as present-day social forms and technologies both spring from and reinforce separation, 21st century technology will be both a cause and an effect of separation's reversal-a very different understanding of the universe articulated on every level from psychology to cosmology. As our crises intensify we will be faced with new choices and new possibilities. Let us recognize the full ramifications and full power of the choices that will soon open up to us."

You can read the full article here.

Oh, and on a not-so-very-related note (my Aquarius Mercury and Mars apologise), earlier this evening I learned (via the excellent NorthNodeastrology blog - checkitout) of a good place to go if you want to do something about the apalling suffering of women in sexual violence-ridden Congo. You know exactly the sort of despicable and cruel acts I mean - rape, mutilation and murder. In light of this ongoing barbarity, please consider going to Women for Women International, which is an organization committed to providing "financial and emotional" support to women "on the margins of hope", either to make a donation or sponsor an individual rape victim directly.

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