[dropcap style=”font-size:100px; color:#992211;”]B[/dropcap]elow the armament-bristling surface, and at the dark heart of the subterfuge of one percenters’ yawns this abysmal psychology:
If an individual insists on existing in a fortified tower of the mind, the truths of his own heart, as well as those arriving from the soul of the world, will appear to him to be acts of sedition.
The longings of his own heart for compassion will be misinterpreted as signs of weakness and emotionally displaced as a malignant, paranoid fantasy in which his own desire for resonate human contact will seem to be the attack of an invading army of rebels.
Paranoid actions
By reflex (mirrored outwardly in the modus operandi of the one percent against a rising, global chorus of political protest and social unrest) he will attempt to block out and silence the admonitions of his own besieged heart, doubling down on his paranoid actions, until the fortifications in and around himself (the mass psychology of a national security state) have grown to titanic proportions.
An inhuman system that has come to stand for little but the empty perpetuation of itself, according to the metaphoric lexicon of the ancient Greeks, is tantamount to approaching existence as a Titan – and they did not mean the metaphoric designation to be taken as laudatory: The Greek poets believed an evincing of titanic traits was an anathema to human life and an affront to the gods.
According to Homer, after returning from a long military campaign, the reluctant warrior, Hector, who upon seeing his young son, Astyanax, for the first time, in a misguided attempt to bestow a hug on his son, pressed the boy, with too much force, to his armored breastplate, causing the child to cry out in pain.
Upon noticing his son’s distress, Hector eased the pressure (an act of sensitivity; conversely, some father’s never notice the agony they inflict on their sons in their wrong-headed attempts to show their love).
Then Hector held the boy skyward and offered him to Zeus. We should all be so lucky.
Zeus, after all, is the father of the gods; therefore, Hector granted his son the right to choose his own unique destiny; he was given free will.
Titans of the corporate/militarist state
In contrast, at present, the collective fathers of this culture have given us – and we now give our own children – to the Titans of the corporate/militarist state. Titans, who, as Titans are prone to do, eat their young.
According to Greek mythology, human beings could not exist on earth until Zeus banished and imprisoned his father, Cronus, a Titan, and the other Titans to the depths of Hades.
In human terms, we call this an uprising.
At present, daily life has become defined by the caprice of titanic forces (forces that devour our humanity). Fellow human beings, we are long overdue for this: The hour has arrived to demand an end to the destructive reign of these self-serving elites who have proven, time and time again, they care nothing about the suffering they bring to humanity nor the damage they inflict on this living planet.
In our time, when feedback loops of methane gas are melting arctic ice at an exponential rate, yet the powers that be continue their pursuit of ruthless agendas that perpetuate this death-worshiping trajectory, it is evident that politics as usual has failed.
Incremental change will not slow a runaway train. Awareness and action might. In our case, at this late date, if the corporate elite, who control the agendas of the state, are not challenged and brought to heel, and soon, then there is little else left for us to do, other than become hospice workers for our doomed species.
Even the notion of (much less the cultural imperative) of constant, endless growth causes one to feel diminished. Resultantly, the imagination seeks to fall in love with limits – a process we mislabel as depression, a form of repressed grieving that brings feelings of powerlessness, but when tweaked by an active participation in confronting malignant power can be transformed into a life-vivifying vehemence to bring meaning and structure to an overly complex system.
“All around us, the fundamentals of life are crying out to be shaped, or created.” – Joseph Beuys
Insecurity and emptiness
Conversely, personal devotion to a fear-bulwarked, habitually self-serving egoism, as opposed to embracing a soul-infused selfhood, creates a catastrophe of malignant greed–a disastrously narrow, resonance-bereft approach to consciousness that alone cannot carry the multiverse of the self into the world.
Hence, a selfish man’s relentless obsession to possess the bounty of our planet can never assuage his sense of insecurity and emptiness, not even if all the plundered riches of the ravaged earth were laid before him for his taking.
Illustration by Dan Booth not to be reproduced without his express prior permission
Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City.
Yet a bio amounts to dharma for dimwits: It defines a human being in the same manner and degree of veracity as a restaurant menu describes the various slabs of meat offered … commodified things that were once living beings.
