I am a Canadian, your sister....and my heart aches for you and your country...in our hearts we are all one country. Your Scriptural quote this morning was very powerful. Thank you.
“Goliath’s Curse” is upon us already. Both national and global governance are broken, failed systems. What we call government is organized crime.
See the speech made last week at the UN by Prime Minister Maria Amor Mottley of Barbados. She not only quotes Bob Marley, but Tacitus, who quoted an ancient Scottish chieftain who said this about Rome:
“They plunder, they butcher, they radish.
They make it a desert and they all it peace.”
Prime Momoster Mottley and all of the poor people and nations of the world know why
At so many peoples and other species of life on earth have known for a very long time.
We are committing ecocide.
We thrive only by slaughtering and butchering the one delicate and sacred fabric of life on planet earth.
It is harder and harder to hide this reality from ourselves, even as the genocides grow more numerous and obvious.
Now the genocide has come to the homelands of empire. The elites devour the poor and attempt to devour one another.
As we observe collapse unfold, we do well to love one another as best as we can.
I appreciate Sarah Wilson’s perspective in a recent TEDx Talk.
We ah e been spending so much effort to make a broken system work. We have been spending so much effort to “save” Mother Earth.
What if Mother Earth in her “formidable wisdom” is saving us?
Sarah Wilson counsels us to consider whether or not the real question we each need to ask ourselves is “who do I chose to be?” amidst the maelstrom that is upon us.
I believe that we have been lulled into believing the false patriotic narratives of necropolitics empires. There are no Christian nations, nor are there any noble global empires. What we have a an entangled mess of competing elites who are all deeply in the grip of organized crime.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro Urrego also spoke at the UN last week.
He noted that the crime syndicates that smuggle cocaine into the USA from South and Central America are based in Florida.
Illegal trade in armaments, drugs, and humans all have long-standing ties with the military industrial complex, various intelligence agencies, banks and businesses.
Last week, Nate Hagens (The Great Simplification) interviewed two noted researchers on psychopathy about the “Dark Triad” set of characteristics that dominate our culture - malignant narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. We have cultivated these traits in our leaders in every part of civilization and culture.
I suggest that we do a much deeper analysis of our civilization. If we do, we will come to the same conclusion that Jesus came to: empires collapse because of their own corruption. Only love never fails.
Nate Hagens also recently interviewed Luke Kemp, from the Center for Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University and author of Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse”.
Luke Kemp describes history as inlcuding many civilizations that rise and fall because they become corrupt, heavily-armored “Goliaths” - and so vulnerable to all kinds of internal and external stresses.
I suggest that today we have a Global Goliath that is composed of an over-abundance of competing corrupt elites that make it impossible to organize in a way that will bring about a peaceful transition to a life-generating civlization.
There have been some sustainable civilizations - but they too are vulnerable and eventually die.
I suggest that our primary need to day is to admit that we humans are collectively not in control, but rather are thrashing about on the planet wreaking havoc.
The first will be last. The last will be first.
If we choose to live in beloved community with Mother Earth, we will be very vulnerable. But this is also the only way to open ourselves to salvation - come what may.
I suggest that our theology does not really deal with individual death or with species extinction at all. In this way our religions “white wash” and “green wash” and (someone recently suggested) we “pleasant wash” what is really happening. This kind of spiritual bypassing keeps people bound to the ecocidal and genocidal civilization we have come to accept as. Or,Al.
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton recently passed away. He wrote that we have come to accept place of “malignant normality”.
We have normalized malignancy in our globalized civilization.
I suggest that we do some self-examination with an intention to talk about the actual collapse that we humans have wrought upon ourselves and planet earth.
Our churches need to honestly assess what it means to be beloved community within the context of a collapsing civilization within a mortally wounded biosphere.
I do not predict the extinction of all life on earth very rapidly, but the environmental scientists tell is that we are leaving the Holocene and scientists studying existential risk also tell us that human civilization itself is collapsing.
Love is the only antidote to the terminal disease we share.
I am a Canadian, your sister....and my heart aches for you and your country...in our hearts we are all one country. Your Scriptural quote this morning was very powerful. Thank you.
Some furloughed, some fired.
Our federal government
is failing to serve.
...
Care, public practice.
Truth-telling, spiritual.
Read this faithful prayer.
“Goliath’s Curse” is upon us already. Both national and global governance are broken, failed systems. What we call government is organized crime.
See the speech made last week at the UN by Prime Minister Maria Amor Mottley of Barbados. She not only quotes Bob Marley, but Tacitus, who quoted an ancient Scottish chieftain who said this about Rome:
“They plunder, they butcher, they radish.
They make it a desert and they all it peace.”
Prime Momoster Mottley and all of the poor people and nations of the world know why
At so many peoples and other species of life on earth have known for a very long time.
We are committing ecocide.
We thrive only by slaughtering and butchering the one delicate and sacred fabric of life on planet earth.
It is harder and harder to hide this reality from ourselves, even as the genocides grow more numerous and obvious.
Now the genocide has come to the homelands of empire. The elites devour the poor and attempt to devour one another.
As we observe collapse unfold, we do well to love one another as best as we can.
I appreciate Sarah Wilson’s perspective in a recent TEDx Talk.
We ah e been spending so much effort to make a broken system work. We have been spending so much effort to “save” Mother Earth.
What if Mother Earth in her “formidable wisdom” is saving us?
Sarah Wilson counsels us to consider whether or not the real question we each need to ask ourselves is “who do I chose to be?” amidst the maelstrom that is upon us.
Here is a link to her talk.
https://youtu.be/l7Ay73HHHrE?si=znreVHXM32AqD0zG
I believe that we have been lulled into believing the false patriotic narratives of necropolitics empires. There are no Christian nations, nor are there any noble global empires. What we have a an entangled mess of competing elites who are all deeply in the grip of organized crime.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro Urrego also spoke at the UN last week.
He noted that the crime syndicates that smuggle cocaine into the USA from South and Central America are based in Florida.
Illegal trade in armaments, drugs, and humans all have long-standing ties with the military industrial complex, various intelligence agencies, banks and businesses.
Last week, Nate Hagens (The Great Simplification) interviewed two noted researchers on psychopathy about the “Dark Triad” set of characteristics that dominate our culture - malignant narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. We have cultivated these traits in our leaders in every part of civilization and culture.
Here is a link to that interview:
https://youtu.be/XnHSRCN1iAY?si=PmIykI1ZKhbWylg6
I suggest that we do a much deeper analysis of our civilization. If we do, we will come to the same conclusion that Jesus came to: empires collapse because of their own corruption. Only love never fails.
Nate Hagens also recently interviewed Luke Kemp, from the Center for Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University and author of Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse”.
Luke Kemp describes history as inlcuding many civilizations that rise and fall because they become corrupt, heavily-armored “Goliaths” - and so vulnerable to all kinds of internal and external stresses.
I suggest that today we have a Global Goliath that is composed of an over-abundance of competing corrupt elites that make it impossible to organize in a way that will bring about a peaceful transition to a life-generating civlization.
There have been some sustainable civilizations - but they too are vulnerable and eventually die.
I suggest that our primary need to day is to admit that we humans are collectively not in control, but rather are thrashing about on the planet wreaking havoc.
The first will be last. The last will be first.
If we choose to live in beloved community with Mother Earth, we will be very vulnerable. But this is also the only way to open ourselves to salvation - come what may.
I suggest that our theology does not really deal with individual death or with species extinction at all. In this way our religions “white wash” and “green wash” and (someone recently suggested) we “pleasant wash” what is really happening. This kind of spiritual bypassing keeps people bound to the ecocidal and genocidal civilization we have come to accept as. Or,Al.
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton recently passed away. He wrote that we have come to accept place of “malignant normality”.
We have normalized malignancy in our globalized civilization.
I suggest that we do some self-examination with an intention to talk about the actual collapse that we humans have wrought upon ourselves and planet earth.
Our churches need to honestly assess what it means to be beloved community within the context of a collapsing civilization within a mortally wounded biosphere.
I do not predict the extinction of all life on earth very rapidly, but the environmental scientists tell is that we are leaving the Holocene and scientists studying existential risk also tell us that human civilization itself is collapsing.
Love is the only antidote to the terminal disease we share.
Amen.