We are currently living in the modern era of the COV - ID - 19, panic-stricken and ‘social distancing’, unsociable society in a ‘civilized’ world that has been propounding the ideal of ‘globalization’ for as long as I remember (and I am not that young to boast a short term memory capacity!). The enemy has been described as the ‘invisible killer’ threatening to wipe out large masses of population and it has landed upon us without notice, out of the blue and totally merciless. Initially our concern was directed to watch out for our elderly loved ones, then we were told it might also affect middle-aged to younger fellows until very recently when the sobering news of children deaths drove the message home. And we are staying at home to protect the NHS and save lives…because what else is a common mortal, ‘average’ fellow supposed to do when they are brainwashed every minute of the day that ‘they are killing people’ by following their instinct and natural inclination to be sociable and enjoy the outdoors? We ARE staying at home, which is not so much of a home eventually as of a prison cell because, as Sir Edward Coke put it in 1628, ‘… a man’s home is his castle’, and this castle has been ‘furloughed’ by the greedy, power-addicted and ego-centered political leadership of the developed nations of our times.
‘Did you ever ask yourself how it happens that government and capitalism continue to exist in spite of all the evil and trouble they are causing in the world?’, Alexander Berkman wrote in his essay “The Idea Is the Thing” in 1928. ‘If you did, then your answer must have been that it is because the people support those institutions, and that they support them because they believe in them.’ Was Berkman making a valid point? As long as most citizens believe in ideas that justify global capitalism, the private and state institutions that serve our corporate masters are incontestable. When these ideas are smashed, the institutions that support the hegemonic class shrink and collapse. The battle of ideas is infecting the surface and it is a battle the corporate state is steadily losing as an ever-increasing number of people start realizing it. They recognize that we have been deprived of political choice and our most basic and cherished civil liberties, and live under the gaze of ‘The Big Brother’ of the most intrusive security and surveillance machine in human history. For your safety and security, they cajole us, while approximately one third of the world lives in poverty and many of the rest of us, if the corporate state is left unperturbed, are highly likely to join them. The truths can no longer be hidden as the virus – and I am not talking about the coronavirus – is rapidly gnawing away at the shell of political correctness and control freakiness, and popular revulsion for the ruling elite is in the process of becoming the real universal pandemic. It is certain now that a popular revolt is coming, and the only question revolves around which ideas will capture the public’s imagination.
History has taught us that revolution usually explodes over events that would, in normal circumstances, be considered meaningless or minor acts of injustice by the state. However, once the kindling of revolt has accumulated, as it has in the new millennium of recurring economic recessions and digital monsterology, an insignificant spark easily ignites popular rebellion as the tip of the iceberg. No single person or movement can ignite this timber and nobody can tell where or when the eruption will take place or the form it will take, but we can sense in our skin now that a popular revolt is coming. The refusal by the corporate state to address even the minimal grievances of its citizens, along with the dismal failure to remedy the mounting state repression, the chronic unemployment and underemployment, the massive debt accumulation that is crippling more than half of westerners, and the loss of hope and widespread despair over the loss of transparency, means that retribution is inevitable. “Because revolution is evolution at its boiling point, you cannot ‘make’ a real revolution any more than you can hasten the boiling of a tea kettle,” Berkman wrote. “It is the fire underneath that makes it boil: how quickly it will come to the boiling point will depend on how strong the fire is.”
When revolutions erupt, they appear to the elites and the establishment to be sudden and unforeseen. This is because the real work of revolutionary ferment and consciousness is unseen by the mainstream society, noticed only after it has largely been manifested. Throughout history, those who have sought radical change have usually had to first discredit the ideas used to sustain ruling elites and construct alternative ideas for society, ideas often encapsulated in a utopian revolutionary myth. The articulation of a humanistic collectivism based on spiritual mindfulness as an alternative to corporate tyranny is, in my opinion, paramount. Once ideas shift for a large portion of a population, once the vision of a new society captures the popular imagination, the old regime is kaput. A revolution that is sterile of ideas and vision, such as the current response behaviour to the global pandemic-pantomime on the part of the majority of corporate citizens, is never a palpable threat to ruling elites. Social upheaval without clear definition and direction, without inspired ideas behind it, edges onto nihilism, random violence and chaos, and self-destructs. This, at its core, is why I disagree with some elements of the frantic response of my fellow citizens, who do not understand that decisions taken within a fight or fly mind frame are not authentic predilections. I believe in strategy stimulated by alignment with our core self-actualization needs and translated into a workable manifesto that serves a self-sustainability agenda for all humanity. By the time ruling elites are openly defied, there has already been a nearly total loss of faith in the ideas – in our case free market capitalism and globalization – that sustain the structures of the ruling elites. And when enough people are “vaccined” against complacency, a process that could have taken years, the slow, quiet, and peaceful social evolution becomes swift and militant, and evolution becomes the Invisible Revolution.
In my humble opinion, this is where we are headed and I do not say this because I am a supporter of a revolution without cause. I would rather support the fractional and incremental reforms of a functioning democracy and a system in which our social institutions permit the citizens to peacefully dismiss and responsibly elect those in authority. I prefer a system in which institutions are self-governing and not captive to corporate power. Alas, we do not live in such a system and the Invisible Revolution is the only option left. Of course, history has shown that ruling elites, once the ideas that justify their existence are dead, resort to force as it is their final resort to maintain power. I propose an intellectual popular movement supported by enlightened humans with high emotional and spiritual intelligence that is able to ideologically disarm the bureaucrats, civil servants and corporates, so that a non-violent, Invisible Revolution is born out of the ashes of failed globalism. Violent revolutions usually give rise to revolutionaries as ruthless as their opponents. ‘Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster,’ Friedrich Nietzsche wrote. ‘And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.’
What we are witnessing now is that corporations, freed from all laws, government regulations and internal constraints, are prone to stealing as much and as fast as they can on their way down. Corporation executives are hiding behind the deceptive appearances of government tyrants and no longer care about the effects of their loot. What is worse, many anticipate the systems they are looting to fall apart, blinded as they are by personal greed and hubris. They rely on their obscene wealth to buy them security and protection. Perhaps they should have spent a little less time studying management in elite business schools and a little more time studying human nature and human history. They are digging their own graves as the new world order has dawned on mother earth and is resonating the loud voices of dissent from awakened souls of this living kingdom.
The universal shift to corporate totalitarianism, like the shift to all forms of totalitarianism, has been stealthily incremental and cleverly packaged in the promises of the dream of abundance and free will. However, history has taught us that totalitarian systems ebb and flow, sometimes taking one step back before taking two steps forward, as they erode democratic liberalism. Is this process now complete, as the ‘consent of the governed’ is becoming a cruel joke? Governments cannot defy corporate power any more than international welfare organizations can, such as the WHO, for example, which has tragically failed to protect citizens from the coronavirus panic. We, citizens of the world, who have been law-abiding and tax/national insurance payers in return for a non-existent state of providence, understand the destructive roles they played and are playing. They must be seen as far more cynical and far more complicit in the destruction of the world as we know it and the fabrication of FEAR – False Evidence Appearing Real, as Ralph Smart puts it – as the most profitable commodity of our times. Democratic politicians speak in the familiar ‘I-feel-your-pain’ language of the liberal class while allowing corporations to strip us of personal wealth and power. They are effective masks for corporate power, just like the coronavirus masks our ‘trusted and elected’ governments are now obliging us to wear for our health and safety under the threat of monetary fine. As Goethe put it, ‘None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.’
The corporate state seeks to maintain the fiction of our personal agency and pseudo-freedom of participation in the political and economic process, which keeps us enslaved. As long as we believe we are participants, a lie sustained through massive propaganda campaigns, endless and absurd election cycles, and the pageantry of empty political theater, the corporate oligarchs rest easy in their private jets, boardrooms, penthouses and mansions. As the bankruptcy of corporate capitalism and globalization is exposed, the ruling elite are increasingly nervous. They know that if the ideas that justify their power die, they are finished. This is why voices of dissent — in the form of spontaneous uprisings such as the ones springing up currently all over the world — must be heard loud and clear, and resonate the dawn of the New Order of the awakened human souls who take serious ownership of their lives and defy the corporate state. As a good friend of mine says, and to paraphrase slightly the words of Robert Edgerton, societies without deviation are sick societies and now more than ever this collective deviance is urgently needed.
In the words of U.S Andersen, ‘One ant alone does not topple a rubber tree plant. Only the concerted effort and teamwork of thousands of ants make this feat possible; and the energy and effort of one human being is nothing by itself, but is everything when it proceeds from the source of all energy, for then it is attuned to the tides and forces of the cosmos, becomes in a manner an irresistible force, a kind of infallible action.’ The Invisible Revolution is being born in the midst of the COV-ID-19 doom and gloom propaganda. Are you in?