ONE of Karl Marx's quotable quotes includes his comment that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. So much of the twentieth century will be remembered as tragedy. So much of the last century will also be seen as farce.

This is because while we had two world wars, we then followed them by a cold war and the idea of a mutually assured destruction which was supposed to ensure the peace. Is it any wonder that one of the hit comics to come out from the 1950s was Mad with its farcical mascot Alfred E. Neuman and the incessant intrigues of “Spy vs. Spy” an espionage spoof.

From the quasi-serious and stylish early Bond films to the movies becoming caricatures of themselves in the 80s, and in the epitome of the cold war which culminated in a sense with the farce/slapstick of Austin Powers: you knew something bizarre was afoot in the mass psyche.

Ultimately, the whole idea of a nuclear sword of Damocles masquerading as an ‘umbrella’ meant to keep the peace (sic), was meant by the controllers of our world to initiate planet earth into an armed camp scenario. The manifesto of the 20^th century is clearly the perverse obverse side to the Orwellian axiom 'war is peace', where peace would also mean war in some form.

We also had the revolutions of the 1960s which resulted in a kind of change that descended into drugs, riots and assassinations throughout the world of various leaders. The global stage was fast becoming a multifarious drama aptly expressed by Polonius as “tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral” and whatnot.

But we took it some steps further. War is peace and peace is war. We started to wage peaceful war and have war within the ambit of peace. We started blind material obsession, profit mongering and a death-wish driven consumerism (in the background, like music from the Doors, were many so-called low intensity conflicts of which Vietnam was a highly intense one).

Yet we became sophisticated. Our consumer death-wish would see us decide to ‘shop till we drop’ and have euthanasia via ‘death by chocolate’. We would allow our unbridled appetites and destructive individualism to be manipulated by the media and legislate politically various ways to allow ourselves to die (politely called ‘pulling the plug’). We also took experimentation with execution ranging from hemp rope, bullets and electricity, to chemicals with lethal injection.

We used the knowledge gained from biological and chemical warfare from world wars to start poisoning one another. Logically, it meant we ended up using stuff like DDT in pesticides and called it progress: what was used to kill other humans in battle zones seeped into the food chain and destroyed not only various life forms and upset the ecological balance, but also had a nefarious effect on people. Yes, malaria and other diseases need control but do we have to harm ourselves as well?

In the name of science and progress, we have the mash up of big capital with scientific endeavour and academic research, and we discover that scientifically – regular and extensive use of synthetic chemicals in our food (and continued mass use of pesticides) are good and profitable. Any attempts to criticize any of this is a sign of unscientific irrationality. We learn that smoking doesn't necessarily cause cancer, and radiation from electrical equipment, hand phones and worse, microwave ovens, are not only profitable with the correct perspective but anyone against it lives in the dark ages.

The point is we are in the dark ages, the age of  Kalki as the Hindus would call it. We have reached the point where we believe that science and technology are in themselves an amorphous new Acropolis of human civilization while becoming completely cut off from our spiritual roots, and we wonder why the world is the way it is. This is farce-slapstick and well beyond Polonius's combinations.

But what takes the fruit cake is our belief that the vacuous ideology of Democracy is the ultimate goal of civilization. The West will even go to war to not only defend but spread it like a virus. This is where we come to the point in the 21^st century where we go beyond Marx's dictum and have evolved our history inexorably into slapstick.

Make no mistake, slapstick is appropriately defined as that which involves “exaggerated violence and activities which exceed the boundaries of common sense”. If that isn’t a defining characteristic of the world, nothing is.

Despite all the fuss over elections in so-called democracies, the millions spent on advertising and marketing, media commentaries, stump speeches, and all sorts of promises, are people really better off?

Curiously, things are worsening economically and politically worldwide. The counterpoint to this is that the change in the Middle East is a sign that even there one finally encounters limits to what people will take. It shows just how low things have gone that people are starting to rise up in places they normally don't against their regimes anyway. This is only the beginning.

The reason is that despite the rhetoric of politicos the world is governed, not by politicians (though they may think they are in charge), but by vested interests that actually determine to a large extent (for the worse) how things go. We mean here the international banking cartel and their families and children in the form of mega corporations and defence industries world wide: most born out of wedlock.

All these not only operate in the dark, with as much lack of transparency as possible and have produced and proliferated a scientific-technological dark age. These efforts are abetted by our ignorance and unwillingness to face up to many truths about the world. Science, tainted by self serving ego and big money is sadly the willing handmaiden of corruption in its many forms.

This is the high end dark age where we have reached the point of no return and must find our way back into the light. And it is going to be a struggle. Why would the dark age perpetrators make it easy for anyone to escape their clutches? This is still not the funny part, but here it comes.

With each successive 'democratically' elected government you have the same situation which is unemployment, deep emotional imbalance in homes and the work force, divisiveness and resentment expressed through high-tech means, the rich getting richer (though some get their hands duly burnt) and the poor spreading everywhere. Even to be middle class now is to be poor in some way. Global currencies are generally running on empty and the US dollar is a joke (trying not to use 'farce' too often).

No one government dares to challenge and upset the banking and corporate cartel because they are either hostages to them or are party to their intrigues (sometimes a combination). How many governments dare to tell banks and corporations to get their act together, enforce discipline and ensure transparency in their activities unequivocally? Until laws are changed to make banking and corporate institutions accountable to governments and the public, they will never serve the interest of the people.

For governments to actually act like governments would be to risk the banks and businesses telling some governments to take a hike (and give somebody else their tax hikes, like the people), as they threaten to go pack up their stalls and go to some other market place (when some do so, experts call it 'globalization'). In other words, governments – especially democracies – shiver in their pants when confronted by the dark spirit Mammon who says it, and it alone -- the guiding spirit of the money changers of the world who are always uniting -- is responsible for the circulation of money and work opportunities for the measly citizens.

Marx was wrong in that it was not the spectre of communism that was haunting the world as it was already possessed by the dark forces of capitalism. And as in the case of most exorcisms, it isn’t secular stuff that is going to rid the world of incubi that have impregnated the world with the money changers’ teachings of neo-classical economics, greed, constant sense of lack, mindless competition, and fear mongering. Sometimes a war or two are thrown in at bargain prices.

Despite pomp and circumstance of political office as in that of the President of the United Corporations of America (USA), for instance, you see in action those who are impotent to effect any real change. Whatever change that is enacted must result in confrontation with the money changers and then who cares what your title/post is? You can talk and shout all you want in congress and parliament, but you know bloody well who runs things around here.

Democracy today is the hiding place of fear. It is the fear and subjection of people and their elected representatives in not angering too much the money changers. We have bamboozled ourselves to thinking we are in charge and that democracy means freedom and a whole lot of other niceties: but ask yourselves – how much has really changed?

Don’t be fooled by the ‘human nature’ argument. Sure, the inability of humans to govern their emotions has resulted in their having to elect others to govern them; the inability of humans to have self control has resulted in their surrendering their moral conscience to institutional religion and corporations. We even have to surrender our sense of ethics to nebulous and harmful notions of ‘corporate social conscience’ (here farce turns into slapstick) and thinking that what causes harm to humans and the planet can actually do good to one and all.

It’s like killing all that’s good in one part of the world and then going to some corner and planting a fruit tree, which in turn gets killed etc, and there will be no amount of fertile earth left to make reparations for the ambition of the money changers.

We can travel into outer space and get involved in the pornographic details of nano technology but are unable to create sustainable, healthy, ethical and abundance sharing enterprises (guess why?).

There is something wrong on Earth.

We have reached such a point of pathology that we can listen to the mainstream media with all its amorality and immorality as stories flit from heinous crimes and acts of brutal violence, to royal weddings and scores of football games. We have become so desensitized that we can discuss the destruction of a human being’s life or reputation and with aplomb switch to the weather and what stocks to invest in.

This schizophrenic tendency which is regarded as normal today, also sees in democracies huge amounts spent on annual dinners, official openings of events and launches of some damned thing or the other; but all the time we have people who are in need and want.

Here comes more farce-slapstick, where you don’t know whether your tears come from laughter: we can even use scripture to deviously say, ah, but there will always be the poor. Must we deprive others of a good time as there will always be those in dire straits. Come on and think of all the money that is splashed around, what? This is scientifically proven by economics as ‘Growth’.

There is no reason for us not to celebrate and be happy. It always helps to smile and show kindness to people around you as that tends to generate a similar response. But in public life there must always be a sense of balance, decency and morality to know that you can’t throw state money on banquets when your citizens are going through difficult times. Some call this is disgraceful, most call it democracy.

Is it any wonder then that no matter who you vote for, things are the same? Unless things actually become worse as is happening now and as it will continue. Some resolution must be in the offing as this state of international debt and swindle is obviously reaching critical mass.

Instead of clinging on to worn out and failed ideas like democracy, which hide the grip of the money changers of the world, we need to look at new ways and ideas of empowering citizens. Democratic practices in the use of elections and ensuring a broad representation of citizens in decision making will be a necessity. This will tend to provide the ethical leavening necessary to raise some sort of system that serves people and life in general. It might even reduce wars.

The changes needed to initiate most of the positive aspects indicated here involve not changes in the poorer countries, though it helps. The world changes and bringing about a just, fair, and ethical grounding to local and international affairs starts with the democracies. They are the source of so much of the world's trouble. Once the democracies change, the world will follow suit. If the people in democracies do not push for change through citizen activism and new ideas on governance and economic practice, then things are going to get a lot rougher.

And this would also require visionary and moral leaders, and those who are not afraid of the money changers. None at present seem to exist that any of us are aware of in a manifest manner. We need leaders who realize that there’s more to life than protecting one’s bank balance. We need citizens who realize that they have to stand up for what is right and that they need to let go of fear and stop allowing themselves to be kept in perpetual thralldom by the money changers.

Which also means that if you fear adversity, you will fear change. No one wants unnecessary hardship but unless we speak up and act now, difficulties can only mount.

The solutions to many of these problems are spiritual ones which involve not only acting from conscience, but understanding that there is divine purpose to everything. That when faith, compassion, common sense, forgiveness and daring are mixed judiciously, the people of the world will finally be able to chase the money changers out of the temple once and for all.

But it starts from chasing out fear from the temple of our hearts.

We are fast approaching the event horizon in history where we will have to create and adopt a new way of living that safely takes us into the time and space of post-capitalism and post-democracy.

To end, I must mention a joke from many years ago about how in the Soviet Union scientists managed to revive the embalmed Lenin (this is actually miraculous as the man’s brain and all his organs have been removed as part of the preservation process).

Vladmir Ilyich was then sequestered in a comfortable room to acclimatize to the world he was living in. As the days went by, he asked for and read voraciously many newspapers to catch up with what was happening in the USSR and the world. After several days of this routine, his handlers entered the room as usual to bring him his tray of food. But the man was gone.

There on the table, was a note: ‘We must begin again!’

We have to put aside all preconceptions and ideologies and, most of all fear, and open ourselves to the truth we have always known within but have refused to acknowledge, that indeed – we must begin again.

 

 

Dear Friends

Some interesting and timely extracts from Stud Terkel’s famous book Working where various people were interviewed in the early '70s on what they thought about their work.

Till today, being ethical in daily life seems difficult to ground into ‘reality’.

Nick Lindsay (Carpenter/Poet)

[page 520]

“…It seems like the vast comedy of things when a Yankee come and got us to build their H-bomb, part of the fine comedy that she should come and give us the first living wage since the War of Northern Aggression – for this.

In Bloomington, Indiana, I saw a lot of women make their living making bombs. They had a grand picnic when they built the millionth bomb. Bombs they’re dropping on people. And the students came to demonstrate against the bombs. Maybe these women see no sense in what they’re doing but they see their wages in what they’re doing…

…Work’s quite a territory. Real work and fake work. There’s fake work, which is the prostitution. There is the magic of payday, though. You’ll say, ‘Well, if you get paid for your work, is that prostitution?’ No indeed. But how are you gonna prove it’s not? A real struggle there. Real work, fake work, and prostitution. The magic of payday. The groceries now heaped on the table and the new-crop wine and store-bought shirts. That’s what it says, yes.”

Nora Watson (Editor)

[pages 523-24]

“A guy was in the office next to mine. He’s sixty-two and he’s done. He came to the Institution in the forties. He saw the scene and said: ‘Yes, I’ll play drone to you. I’ll do all the piddly things you want. I won’t upset the apple cart by suggesting anything else.’ With a change of regimes in our department, somebody came across him and said, ‘Gee, he hasn’t contributed anything here. His mind is set in old attitudes. So we’ll throw him out.’ They fired him unceremoniously, with no pension, no severance pay, no nothing. Just out on your ear, sixty-two. He gets back zero from having invested so many years playing the game.

The drone has his nose to the content of the job. The politicker has his nose to the style. And the politicker is what I think our society values. The politicker, when it’s apparent he’s a winner, is helped. Everyone who has a stake in being on the side of the winner gives him a boost. The minute, I finally realized the way to exist at the Institution – for the short time I’ll be here – was not to break my back but to use it for my own ends, I was a winner.

…When you ask most people who they are, they define themselves by their jobs. ‘I’m a doctor.’ ‘I’m a radio announcer.’ ‘I’m a carpenter.’ If somebody asks me, I say, ‘I’m Nora Watson.’ At certain points in time I do things for a living. Right now I’m working for the Institution. But not for long. I’d be lying to you if I told you I wasn’t scared.

I have few options. Given the market. I’m going to take the best job I can find. I really tried to play the game by the rules, and I think it’s a hundred percent unadulterated bullshit. So I’m not likely to go back downtown and say, ‘Here I am. I’m very good, hire me.’

You recognize yourself as a marginal person. As a person who can give only minimal assent to anything that is going on in this society: ‘I’m glad electricity works.’ That’s about it. What you have to find is your own niche that will allow you to keep feeding and clothing and sheltering yourself without getting downtown. (Laughs.) Because that’s death. That’s really where death is.”

Walter Lundquist (Industrial Designer)

[Pages 525-27]

“…I wanted to be at the drawing board, creative, doing something I believed in. But I became a pimp. I didn’t start drinking until I was thirty…I found I could out drink any of my clients. They got drunk I didn’t. What an absurd way to live! To make money because you could booze it up and cater to someone else’s frailty. His need for a boot licker’s comradeship, listening to his cheap jokes at some expensive bar. I got work alright, but it made me sick. I couldn’t stand it.

We had a client who was providing additives to meats and food preparations. My job was to make it into a trade publication ad. I'm sitting at these meetings with the president of the company and the sales manager. We’re out to provide a service to the meat packers so they can cheat government analysts who are going to inspect the sausages. They don’t see it as cheating. I say, ‘Why are we doing this ad for mustard?’ They say, ‘Mustard acts as a binder.’ It holds together the globules of fat the client is putting in. So we make a living selling mustard because the guy wants to put fat instead of meat protein in there. So the public's being cheated and these sons of bitches are out there playing golf…

…The turning point in my life was the death of my father. It was a funny thing. Here you’re watching a beautiful guy with white hair lying in his bed, dying of a heart attack. You hear him ramble and wander and talk about his life: ‘I was never anything. I didn’t do a job even in raising my children. I didn’t mean anything…’ You watch death. Then you say, ‘Wait a minute. What’s going on with him is going to hit me. What am I doing between now and my death? If you take actuarial tables of insurance companies, I’m running on borrowed time.’ You begin to assess yourself and that’s a shock. I didn’t come up smelling like a rose. ‘Am I going to go on forever being a goddamn pimp? What’s the alternative? Is there another way of earning a living?’

…At this moment I have a job on the drawing board that’s pretty good. This one client has some degree of conscience. It’s an ecology poster for children, given away as a premium. It’s a beautiful thing to hang on the wall, acquainting a child with the cycle of life.

…I’m struggling to survive. I’m running out of funds. I may have to pimp again for survival’s sake. But I’ll not give up the sane work. I’m scurrying about. If it doesn’t work, I may do somewhat what young people do and drop out. I’ll stop existing in society. I’ll work on a road crew. I’ll cut lumber of whatever the hell it’ll be. But I’ll never again play the full-time lying dishonest role I’ve done most of my life.

Once you wake up the human animal you can’t put it back to sleep again.”

In the twenty first century, so far, not much has changed since Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (read the uncensored original edition).

And now, for a little burst of freedom: