The Thin Veneer of Civilization

Carl Panzram once said that he wished that humanity had one single neck so that he could strangle them. Carl would have been very comfortable with the Bush administration, the same way that Ted Bundy was comfortable with the Young Republicans.

Bad leaders don’t scare me nearly as much as humanity does. Bad leaders come and go but humanity manages to continue to be small minded junkies no matter what happens. It’s like an endless sheet of Formica laid over a seething caldron of fear and self-interest.

You don’t get Valens and Valentinian or Bush and Cheney without a choir in the background. It’s like the audience I saw on Limbaugh’s television show some years ago; doddering, self-important Nimrods.

This is the reason that the press lies and why they don’t teach you to think in school; why ‘dumbing down’ is a very real process. People want to be led and asking too many questions will just leave them feeling low for finding out something they didn’t want to know.

I’ve been in crowds that panicked and I’ve seen what people are capable of when they become afraid. It’s not pretty and it shows an unfortunate truth. It shows how thin the veneer is that overlays civilization. The capacity to remain calm is a much underrated virtue. Panic leads to the kind of thing a mouse runs into when, in fear of the cat it leaves its hidey hole where it is already safe. Sure, you have to think and react sometimes. Poise in the face of danger is often a good protection against avoidable pain.

The period of time between 2002- and 2012 is a time of great transformation for the human race and these might prove a little dense reading for many; see ‘dumbing down’ previously mentioned. But I include these links just to show that this period is under discussion in a lot of places. Google will show you just how many. Even Nostradamus had a whole lot to say on the subject; you can make a lot of assumptions from Nostradamus and so I don’t spend any time trying to translate just exactly what he was saying.

The point is that a lot of people are aware of this time period and have been for hundreds of years and furthermore, you are right here inside of it and surely you can see some of what is going on. It appears that there may well be a ‘destiny that shapes our ends’. However, it is equally important to remember that, ‘a wise man rules the stars.’

I don’t want to spend this time talking about the stars or predictions. A rare handful actually possesses the ability to read the course of the heavens and fewer still have ever predicted anything the way it actually turned out. But we are all seers to a certain degree. Any of us could predict that if we keep walking toward a ledge we will fall off of it if we don't stop. We stay alive every day due to judgments made about predictions and the possibilities of rash actions. Larry Craig and Ted Haggert and many others knew the possibilities that could happen from their actions.

We’re just not very bright as a collection and being real bright is no protection against being stupid; if that makes any sense.

Religious anthropomorphism; sexual attraction, the will to power, the will to gain, the call of the wild are all conditions that contain potential for ruining your life and, unfortunately, the lives of others as well. You see it every day. Many of us can look at people and predict some of what they are going to run into if they keep going the way they are going. It shouldn’t be a stretch to look at humanity and make fairly accurate predictions as well.

Depending on the collective mix of the generations at any particular time you are going to get a certain kind of leaders. Sometimes it is better to go away somewhere while humanity goes through whatever it is facing. A lot of us want to get up on soapboxes and save the world. None of us are going to accomplish that in any universal sense. When people get stupid and greedy and self-involved it becomes necessary for them to go through certain things to wake their ass up. The same goes for humanity as it does for the individual. Having the right kind of self-interest under such circumstances is a precious commodity.

I can predict that barring the appearance of Al Gore that Hillary Clinton will be the democratic nominee. I can predict that, regardless of the pains being taken by the press and powerful interests behind the scenes, that Ron Paul is going to have a much bigger impact than the general public presently assumes and I can predict that that may well lead to an unfortunate event. I can predict that Americans are going to get even fatter than they are now and that their general health is going to get worse. I can predict that things are going to get worse in the Middle East before they get better. You can probably predict all of this too.

The cost of the political adventurism of the stupidest and most venal president in American history is going to be greater than many people realize. Hundreds of thousands of men and women are going to be coming back to America at some point and they are going to be suffering from various maladies running the gamut from exposure to depleted uranium to mental problems. Some of them are going to go postal.

I don’t have the space here to list the complications that are going to arise from the lies and profiteering at work during this administration. Life is not what it once was. The positivism that existed previous to this sad spectacle has been transformed into uneasiness and apprehension. Comparisons could be made about the weather generated by collective humanity and how natural weather conditions also behave according to their composition.

This is a dry and clinical; antiseptic essay. It’s intentional. Numbers do not contain emotion. Tragic periods of history look like so many words on paper when seen from a distance. Like you, I often wonder, “What were they thinking? Where did they think they were going?”

Nations have destinies just as individuals do. Is there a mysterious force that molds them or is character fate? Probably some of both and certainly something more as well and it will remain as indefinable and incomprehensible as it always has. We don’t seem to learn. We just shift from one theater of experience to another and go on swallowing transparent lies in exchange for being allowed to muddle on.

You can feel the texture of the dream that contains us. It sweeps along like a river, sometimes wide and lazy and sometimes narrow and roiling. You wanted something out of your life. You held some things in your hands for a time and you worked and struggled for something that never showed up the way you imagined that it would. You look back at the choices you made and you wonder about them. You wonder if it all really happened the way you remember it. You might even- some few- wonder who and what you are, because you still don’t know the answer to that.

I wish you luck humanity. I hope something wakes up in the heart of you and that you will get better leaders and address more care to all of the little incidents that compose your life. I’d like to think that you make your way out of this. Forward we go and no matter where we go it will always be right now except in our minds.

Visible sings: ♫ It Always Breaks Your Heart ♫
Lyrics (pops up)