Civilization, The Edifice of Thought, and "Economies of Scale."

If there's to be any useful change we must acknowledge that the whole thing is corrupt.

What we consider to be civilization is our perception of The Edifice of Thought. It has always been heading toward its only possible Apotheosis: self-destruction and global Ecocide. It has never been “about” any of the attributes we always proclaim. It has always been about the pursuit of Power. The “Rises and Falls” of civilizations have always been the result of the way each power-center created and ran with an increasing imbalance, destroying its “outside” to enrich the center. Up until now this has had regional consequences for the most part. The Twentieth Century was a warning. Two “World Wars,” and a global “Cold War,” showing us that we were reaching what economic thought calls an “Economy of Scale” regarding the breadth and reach of the destruction made possible by the pursuit of power.

The most salient impression I’ve gleaned from the past few months has been the depth and breadth of a willful blindness we’ve carried into a truly dangerous and increasingly accelerating destructive situation. There seems to be no limit to how much we are willing to ignore and misrepresent to shore up our beliefs in the stories civilization, The Edifice of Thought, has planted within us.

At the heart of this denial is a refusal of any introspection that might cut too deeply and expose our hypocrisies. On every side, no matter what the “political allegiance,” every position held is defended by the insistence that there is an other to be held apart and to be blamed for what we have all conspired and colluded to bring about.

On every side.

Some appear more obvious to some of us. Some we refuse to acknowledge no matter how much our own words and actions betray us. Every “political position” is bolstered and propped upon the need to justify the persistence of this impulse to dichotomize, to put some on the “other side.” This creates the appearance of striving after a “better world.” It’s just a shame that, “They can’t see it!” Everyone says about their favorite other.

Thought comes down to the idolization and supremacy of the lie that through finagling the illusions of power “We” can have nice things. “If only they would let us!” This has been the story civilizations have always told to justify their predations and glorify their destructiveness. Civilizations; The Edifice of Thought that surrounds us and fills our minds with blinding tales; have insisted that everything “good;” everything that “lifts us above the beasts;” belongs to it and would not exist without it. It projects all of its faults and the destruction it inevitably wreaks onto the ultimate “other,” Barbarism. It expends every effort to blind us to its faults and sends us off to destroy anyone still beyond its reach by claiming that they are Barbarians and deserve what’s coming to them.

Today we have competing claims over who the Barbarians are. It’s telling that now that The Edifice of Thought dominates the entire world that most of these perceived Barbarians are actually other flavors of civilized people. The End-Game of a project of favoring fantasies of power and self-aggrandizement has always been a turning on itself in a final fury of self-destruction. Hubris has no other possible end than to succumb to Nemesis.

From within each “camp” it is clear how the “others” are failing to see what should be so clear. It is also increasingly impossible to ignore that within each camp no effort is, or will be, spared to anesthetize its followers and maintain a total blindness to our own shadows, our blind spots, our hypocrisies. In a time of signs and revelations this might just be the most terrifying one.

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Loyalty.

This term has such a charge. It has been wrapped up with concepts like trust and truthfulness. What has to be coming to be a solid heuristic is that whenever we are expected to rush past some problematic point to land on a defense that relies on a conflation we are deep in the realm of an abusive dynamic. Familial abuse survives on this one trait/habit-of-thought more than any other. Whether civilization grew out of an ancestry of familial abuse taking on that famed economy of scale or whether the eruption of power-seeking agglomerations led to widespread familial abuse is probably impossible to sort out. But, what is clear is that they all work via the same techniques and mechanisms passed down through the generations and infecting mind with what we here call Thought with a capital “T.”

Loyalty, seen as a demand and a duty, may be a toxic-simulacra of Love. Outside of the poisoned precincts of The Edifice of Thought Love exists. Inside it has been replaced by Loyalty.

Love does not make demands or claim any duty. What one does within Love is freely given and expects no quid-pro-quo. Loyalty attempts to codify Love. What it accomplishes is the destruction of any possibility of Love. Loyalty, as an accepted concept, demands that we give up any possibility of Love and bind ourselves to a lie: That “Good” can be codified and enforced. Too bad for anyone who disagrees with us as to what “Good” might encompass!

Civilization’s stories will quickly take any questioning of its foundations into a short-circuit: “Well, without civilization; how could x number of people thrown into an aggregation and removed from any actual relationships with each other and everything be able to survive and not kill each other?” In the face of this bald lie hidden behind half-truths we instantly acquiesce. “OK.”

But here we are! We are finding that no number of “select” can or will survive and we are, all of us, killing it all including our selves.

Within familial abuse; if it is to maintain its hold over us; there can only be one answer to this conundrum. Suppression. “Stop looking at that! Don’t ask that question!” Most of us have been there and have done what was expected of us. We suppressed our doubts and considered any “alternative” just too impossible to achieve and too risky to count on.

Years ago I would have balked at claiming “most of us.” Surely familial abuse couldn’t possibly be nearly universal!

Today; the evidence of the universality of suppression as a failed response to trauma; gives me no alternative than to consider that civilization-al abuse must reach down into most, if not all, families.¹

Thought insists on division. The antidote to Thought’s domination of us is our ability to discover insights into the holographic nature of everything. The Universe, that cosmic homonym for everything, is holographic. Everything is in everything and what manifests at a macro level has rhymes at every micro level. Of course, there cannot be a system of widespread cultural abuse without there also being a widespread system of familial abuse, and every other form of relational fracture.

Strength; which is actually real as opposed to the fantasies of power; comes to us whenever we gain an insight into universality and then take its implications to heart.

Strength allows us to set aside the pull of manufactured urgency whose only intent is to derail us from finding relation, sending us back into habitual division and the blindness that defends it.

Those chasing power care for no-one and no-thing. They are lost in delusion. None of them will lift a finger to actually change anything in ways that break the cycles of escalating destruction. None of their systems, institutions, norms, practices, expectations of efficacy will work at anything other than accelerating the destruction. No “news source.” No “platform or media,” including this one. Will, in the aggregate, do anything but defend the principles of divide and conquer. The sooner we learn this and find ways to work outside their limits and bounds the better.²

Aggrandizing.

Every story civilization has told relies on an acceptance of aggrandizement. Its size. The power of its rulers. The spread of its influence. Everything about it must be over-sized. Growth; a concept fundamental to life within its cycles; hijacked to mean a never-ending aggrandizement.

This is central to the pathologies of Ego at the heart of Thought. Even humility can be seen as a potential source of self-aggrandizement. Building empires upon stories embroidered around figures of profound humility. Successfully short-circuiting true humility and ensuring…, loyalty.

This is no more than a sketch, a delineation of broad outlines. We each need to develop a capacity to think as opposed to always looking to find what Thought has laid out for us to consume. It’s more than a lack of capacity or ability on my part. This is an intentional unwillingness to replace one set of regurgitated thoughts with another.

I’ve found it central to my own journey that I have not been able to “process” thought in the ways most of us are used to. I have obvious deficiencies regarding memorization, replication. I can’t recite….

These may have been innate. They may have been the result of falls and concussions as an infant. Who knows? They have also been essential in my finding my way. Including finding a way to break the cycles of abuse I found myself born into.

Many of us are “damaged.” Perhaps those suffering the worst damage are those who most insist on their perfection. I don’t know. But it does seem increasingly clear to me that most of what we perceive as damage in this culture of death are in all likelihood seeds for ways out of its grip.

The one voice that’s been with me my entire life and that has not led me astray has been the quiet little voice calling out, “Look!”

All I can suggest is that you look. Look at the endless cycles of abusive “logic.” Look at the traps and short-circuits keeping us in the thrall of Thought. Look at the pull of division and destruction as it insinuates itself into our core being.

Look.

And watch out for and refuse to fall for aggrandizement….

1. MAGA embraces its roots in familial abuse. Everyone rooting for the return of Daddy and his freely wielded back-hand….

2. The DNC and its “Democratic” Party have given up any pretense of caring for or defending Democracy or any of the “issues” it has fund-raised on while continually moving the Overton Window of acceptable political abuse farther and farther to the right. There can be no greater self-condemnation than their embracing and then falling on their sword over funding, arming, and facilitating Genocide in Gaza. It’s no surprise that they fail to mount even the appearance of an opposition to Musk, et. al. now that MAGA is in power.