Dear people, greetings,
I am András from Europe, Hungary. I am 32 years old, I studied eastern and western philosophy in the Dharma gate buddhist univerity of Budapest. My main inspiration for this sinuous path was two event, namely a stellar and Dantean lsd trip in a forest when I was 19 and days after I found myself in the library in front of Shunryu Suzuki rather famous Beginners mind which was just another big jump into something. I started to sit from that day on and almost never missed a day. From years later I drank lot of inspiration from a guy named Hakim Bey nad I just found an article from him and I thought I share it here if you have any reflextion on this or on him or the name of the topic.
"Despite my remnant hippy flower- power sentiments I too feel this “terminal” condition (as Nietzsche called it), which I express by saying, only half-jokingly, that we have at last reached the Future, and that the truly horrible truth of the End of the World is that it doesn’t end.
One big J.G. Ballard/Philip K. Dick shopping mall from now till eternity, basically.
This IS the future—how do you like it so far? Life in the Ruins: not so bad for the bourgeoisie, the loyal servants of the One Percent. Air-conditioned ruins! No Ragnarok, no Rapture, no dramatic closure: just an endless re-run of reality TV cop shows. 2012 has come and gone, and we’re still in debt to some faceless bank, still chained to our screens.
Most people—in order to live at all—seem to need around themselves a penumbra of “illusion” (to quote Nietzsche again):—that the world is just rolling along as usual, some good days some bad, but in essence no different now than in 10000 BC or 1492 AD or next year. Some even need to believe in Progress, that the Future will solve all our problems, and even that life is much better for us now than for (say) people in the 5th century AD. We live longer thanx to Modern Science—of course our extra years are largely spent as “medical objects”—sick and worn out but kept ticking by Machines & Pills that spin huge profits for a few megacorporations & insurance companies. Nation of Struldbugs.
True, we’re suffocating in the mire generated by our rule of sick machines under the Numisphere of Money. At least ten times as much money now exists than it would take to buy the whole world—and yet species are vanishing space itself is vanishing, icecaps melting, air and water grown toxic, culture grown toxic, landscape sacrificed to fracking and megamalls, noise-fascism, etc, etc. But Science will cure all that ills that Science has created—in the Future (in the “long run”, when we’re all dead, as Lord Keynes put it); so meanwhile we’ll carry on consuming the world and shitting it out as waste—because it’s convenient & efficient & profitable to do so, and because we like it."
Hello Andras-
I get the existential angst-believe me! Below is the last paragraph of this selection:
“No matter which of the three paths one takes (or others I can’t yet imagine) it seems to me that the essential thing is not to collapse into mere apathy. Depression we may have to accept, impotent rage we may have to accept, revolutionary pessimism we may have to accept. But as e.e. cummings (anarchist poet) said, there is some shit we will not take, lest we simply become the enemy by default. Can’t go on, must go on. Cultivate rosebuds, even selfish pleasures, as long as a few birds & flowers still remain. Even love may not be impossible…”
I tend to think of Integral as a 4th option. I think it can appears to those outside that a person withdraws from the world the more someone has more awareness of more subtle states, but I think it is a better option than the three strategies mentioned here. Thankfully, I think he realizes toward the end of this perspective that there is hope for a 4th option. Because truly new nihilism is just plain old nihilism. Hopefully with Integral we can have more good days than bad days. Thanks for sharing!
1 Like
Sorry, for the delayed answer.
If you mean a raw, earned (through deeply and widely living and facing the human condition) , embodied Integral awareness, on my good days, oh I can believe in this.
But if you mean, the integral movement, I tend to doubt it.
" *“Nobody trusts anybody now and we’re all very tired.”
Films like Alien, World War Z, The Thing, I Am Legend, The Mist, Terminator, The Shining and Jaws are prominently featured in the video, with clips from them and other films perfectly strung together to reflect recent headlines, concerns and conversations. The horror and sci-fi genres, after all, have always been warning us about the worst. More importantly, they’ve been preparing us for it. And we can learn a whole lot of lessons from our favorite films.
We’re all in this together. Stay safe, stay inside, and watch more horror and sci-fi movies.
They just might save your life…"
1 Like
“Claire Colebrook’s “ethics of extinction,” as well as Patricia MacCormack’s “ahuman theory” also give us novel ways of thinking about the end of the Human Security System. Human abolition could very well represent the next stage in the elaboration of an emancipatory politics of openness. If we are to transcend closure, the right of the contingent to evade capture and instrumentalization must also be affirmed. Instead of viral eliminativism, a politics, or even post-politics of permissiveness and loving acceptance is required, without the sentimentalism that accompanies many all-too-human ethical affirmations.”
https://identitiesjournal.edu.mk/index.php/IJPGC/announcement/view/48
I would encourage you to think of Hakim Bey’s writing as a Dionysian component of Anarchism that is not sufficient by itself to create an Anarchist society. Dionysius needs an Apollo to hold together the normal operations of society while Dionysius is constantly probing for problems and improvements.
My current Anarchism is based on collectivizing the land and un-extracted resources and using the proceeds as the basis for a Universal Basic Income. This will enable every individual to have the resources they need without being forced into wage slavery. Once free from wage slavery, voluntary communities could be encouraged to form for reasons of all sorts - and not focused primarily on market success. These communities can be encouraged to form by automating and systematizing many of the functions of governance with open source software that can be easily customized and shared. Any group should be able to start a new voluntary community by running the software and pooling their UBI’s.
I also have some designs for a voluntary communist style of community I call Public Wealth Communism.
Best Regards,
Jason
3 Likes
Very interesting ! 
1 Like