The submerged mind of Empire

“One thought alone occupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era.”

J.M. Coetze, Waiting for the Barbarians 

But things which can’t continue, won’t.  These include not just the U.S. empire but, looking to the whole developed world, our luxurious way of life and complex industrial society.  We usually assume the era of our empire over the earth will be prolonged to some vague future extent that is not relevant to our present personal plans – which is to say, prolonged indefinitely.

It’s time to wake up and notice the desperate measures we are undertaking to get the fuels we need to keep it all going, the dust storms, the storm surges, the paralysis in the Capital, the inanity and surreality of our public discourse.  The end of our misbegotten and predatory empire is at hand.  By the middle of this decade tremendous strains will be even more evident than today, and by 2020 our outlook will be quite different.  There are too many reasons for this to explain in detail, so in this post I will touch upon only a couple of them and in (alas!) a qualitative way.

If this is true, shouldn’t we start investing our hopes and lives in what will soon follow?  Assuming we care about our children and grandchildren.  Major changes take time, and we have very little of that, so we had better get started now.

Now is the only time in which action ever occurs (though our power of making promises can extend it), but “for now” what I mean is that this is something that each should start taking care of this week, and every week after that.  Most of us in the U.S. live a cave of political ignorance and inexperience, so we don’t know what to do or how to proceed.  We may even think we participate in a democracy because we vote!  The first steps we take will brighten our path, as long as we keep going.  The country we thought we had is lost, so it will be a brave new world, regardless.  The biggest question is whether we are brave enough for it, which means first and foremost overcoming the ingrained and enforced selfishness of consumer society...

more > The submeged mind of Empire at Forget the Rest