Orrery

Of Cycles, Epicycles,and Contracycles.

                                           (**)

Wheels turn.
Pendulums swing.
Ripples expand.
Everything's in constant motion, forever interacting and canceling out, and adding to...
This is evident in the Physical World, from small to large...from Particles, orbiting, colliding, merging...to Planets, Galaxies...Clusters and Super-Clusters...
History, as a Lived Experience, has it's Cycles, too.
With our mere Century, at the outside, of Time in the World...it can be exceedingly difficult to grasp the broader movements of events, in which we, ourselves move, and interact.
It's even more difficult, when we keep our heads down, hard at work at the task at hand, for most of our ephemeral existence.
Humans tend to live out their lives in a subjectively eternal NOW...with just a little thought given to our own, personal history...and with even less tangible thought given to the unknowable Future.
Many of our secular would-be Prophets(economists) expend considerable effort to predict what comes next...and many Historians, or their future oriented analogs(Futurists)...build models, follow Trendlines, and otherwise attempt to divine the shape of things to come.
Science Fiction writers have had much success in this endeavor...predicting most accurately when they are writing about how things can go horribly wrong...creating Dystopian Worlds to serve as a Warning:Don't Go There!
...too often ignored, it turns out.
Let us step way back, to a shack on the Moon (in the Mare Crisium)...and sit on the Porch, and think about where we are,and where we've come from, and where we're going...

There appear to be Cycles within Cycles, as in any complex System...whether Natural or Created.
It seems to me that we are at the convergence...or very near it...of several Cycles...economic, geological,climatological,ecological,historical, and social.
For all the hollering against the very existence of these Cycles...and all the disinformation and lies, the willful Ignorance, and practiced Blindness....the insistence on a Static Universe, where it's the End of History, and we have entered the Secular Heaven of Democratic Capitalism, world without end....
For all that, and in spite of it, there are Great Changes afoot.
I'll take them in order.

Neoliberalism is a euphemism used to denote...or rather, point to...a complex extension of what used to be called Oligarchy. It is neither New, nor Liberal.
It grew out of the ideas surrounding Capitalism, but went several miles beyond.
It is a method of Harvesting wealth from the great mass of humans, and hoarding it for the benefit of the few. Aristocracy on Steroids,wearing a toga, waving Cross, and a Flag...forever invoking “The People!”, as it hoovers up the produce of the Endless Growth that it requires to survive.
But the petri dish is Finite..it has walls.
We've already Grown up to those walls, and the Neoliberal Machine turned around, and started eating Us...in the form of Serial Bubble Blowing...Tech, Housing,etc. The International Labor Arbitrage.
Derivatives.
One doesn't engage in such Cannibalism unless there's no other choice.
This Theme, of Petri Dishes and Cannibalism will recur with disturbing regularity.

This Neoliberal Machine needs fuel...like any organism...
The most important Fuel is that derived from Hydrocarbons...Fossilised, long ago, from the remains of Carboniferous Jungles and Swamps, and Algae Blooms...
The “Bank Account” of these substances, globally, is of course Finite....there's only so much of it. The Carboniferous Period only lasted for so long, and then the massive amounts of Carbon in the air, at the beginning of that period, had been used up...incorporated into Plantlife, and sequestered into the rocks the Plants became embedded in.
A quite remarkable species of Ape(that's us, btw), learned, at long last how to use these Hydrocarbons...and use them, we did...to replace the animal and unfortunate Human Slaves. The byproducts, we used to fuel agriculture, and materials science, even medicine.
A focus on the Short Term(due to our short term life span, relative to ...say Trees...Tortises...or the Earth, herself)...led us to have no care for the Finite Quality of these resources. There was so much of this stuff! Just stick a straw in the ground, in the right place, and up it came.

Until it didn't.
...which is where we are , now...going after the dregs, in deep water, in the coldest places on earth, the most inhospitable...pumping enormous amounts of water and other fluids, deep into old oil fields, to scour out the remaining Juice.We go to War in sandy, used up places...in jungles...and in some of the most pristine wildernesses left to us...all to suck up the dwindling remainder of this Carboniferous Substance, this Lifeblood of Civilisation, this accidental endowment, given to us by Ancient Plants.
In the course of this path of wanton Industrialism, we have inadvertently Released much of that bound up Carbon...back into the atmosphere...making that bubble of air that surrounds us more Carboniferous than it's been since the Period of that name.
This has the predictable effect of changing the conditions of this planet, back into what they were, way back then...hot and stagnant.
Many scientists...more and more, every year since the 40's, at least...have warned us, scolded us...but we, instead, listened to the Mouthpieces of the Neoliberal Machine....who told us, “No. We are Infinite. The End of History. Fear not, and Enjoy Our Largesse.”
But the Walls of the Petri Dish loomed before us....and the admonitions and comforting distractions of the Machine grew less and less believable.
Species died out...whole ecosystems died out.
We knew about it, because of a remarkable communications web that had been built by the Machine to distract us.
It did, indeed , distract us...but it also connected us, in new ways, that the Machine, and even ourselves, did not expect.
The Mouthpieces of Machine withered...for now, anyone could be a Reporter, an Observer, a Combat Photographer.
Scientists no longer had to have the blessing of the Machine to disseminate their Findings.
The Hubris of the machine led it to, on the one hand, attempt to Capitalise on this new development...and, on the other, to attempt to Control it...with the time worn tools of Authority; Fear, and Hatred and Ignorance.
Very busy, uneducated people were encouraged to Fear and Hate, and Remain Ignorant...and , what's more, to Enforce such Fear, Hate and Ignorance.
To sell such enforcement as “The American Way”, as Tradition, as Patriotism.
As “What God Wants”.
But cracks appeared in the Edifice.
Daylight crept in.
...and the Political/Philosophical Pendulum, that had been so artificially Stuck for so long, was dislodged.
Instead of Hypercompetition and Struggle...of Dog Eat Dog, Cannibalistic Frenzy...another way is forming...or at least appears to be.(near certainty in such things requires Hindsight)
Things like Altruism, Cooperation, and the proverbial Brotherhood of Man...for so long suppressed and denigrated as Hippy Dippy Communistic Fantasies..as Irrational, and Dangerous, even as Evil, itself....now seem rational to many...even Good, better than the old way.
Machine, at this moment, is busy sticking it's many fingers in the Dike...plumbing the leaky pipes, duct-taping the frayed cables, grinding smooth the cracked wheels and pulleys...
Turns out there may be Hope for Mankind, after all...and another Kinder way of doing things.
The great myriad Problems are still there, of course...the Petri Dish is still Finite...but, contrary to what's been hammered into the hearts and minds of Humanity,( TINA,there is no alternative)... there Is an Alternative(TIAA).
This is the Struggle...the Agon...we find ourselves in, today...can we take the reins of our fate...and find a more humane and sensible method of Powering Down to a more reasonable, and sustainable...and, yes, Kinder, way of living on Earth?
Or are we fated to follow the Machine into Cannibalism,and Death?

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The Trolls, minions of the Machine...whether they know it, or not...would have us lose Hope, and keep killing and gorging and despising one another.

I choose the Former...in spite of them...
Have the Courage to Hope, all the way to the End.
I Love You All.


(**)from the Dark Crystal.