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Page added on June 11, 2017
The Cultural Sickness That Needs To Be Named
All over the world there is a feeling that something is deeply wrong. It is often felt more than seen, an unnamed darkness that keeps millions (even billions) of people disconnected from the reality of authentic life-affirming experience. Too many of our so-called leaders are asleep at the wheel — they talk about economic growth at all costs as the only viable solution to mass poverty, wealth inequality, the climate crisis, and other planetary-scale crises humanity must confront in the 21st Century.
Those with a spiritual bend might say that a shadowy presence has shrouded much of the Earth. People are sleeping through the same nightmare, unable to awaken within the dream. They are like Mr. Anderson and his peers in The Matrix movies, plugged into a cultural system that feeds on their bodies and souls while keeping them unaware that they are living in a dream world.
What if the pain so many of us feel is caused by the same cultural sickness? How might we diagnose it? What are its root causes? And most importantly — how do we heal ourselves and the world around us?
These are deep questions. Spiritual questions. They are questions asked by seekers of truth in a time when discernment is desperately needed. And now is such a time. Our dominant consumer culture is built on the dark side of human nature — the propensity for greed that employs tactics of division to stoke fear as a system of control.
This culture tells us that humans are selfish and greedy. It says that we are nothing more than individual islands of ego floating in a sea of chaos. It is the Great Myth of Separation that takes many forms. We’ve seen it as humans apart from nature, reason divided against emotion, body separate from mind, one tribe distinct from another. This mental tendency to categorize the world according to its separations is the root cause of illness in the world today.
And it has a name. It’s name is Wetiko.
Continue reading this article here
By Joe Brewer Art + Marketing
14 Comments on "The Cultural Sickness That Needs To Be Named"
onlooker on Sun, 11th Jun 2017 11:56 am
Very good article. Yes what has gone wrong is we have evolved along a far too materialistic, self-centered, uncaring and divided manner.
Northwest Resident on Sun, 11th Jun 2017 12:29 pm
Cultural sickness is exactly what America and much of the developed world is suffering from. We have been induced by mass advertising, propaganda and manipulation of all varieties to succumb to consumerism, greed and “keeping up with the Jones’s” competition. Obesity and sexual deviation are now glorified. Intelligent women wishing to give birth are forced to decide between career and income needs versus a life of solitude and hardship raising their children in an economic environment where children are more of an economic and legal liability than they are a benefit to society and to preservation of the human race — leaving mostly the stupid and unemployable women to produce the next generation. Local community and the support and security that humans derive from it has been seriously eroded. Our values have become warped beyond recognition. Politics has become a sordid clown show, reflecting the reality of the collective citizenship that those politics are meant to govern. But that is all about to change. The hardships that are coming with economic collapse will work to weed out the weak and unadaptable, will pressure cook the human race once again to filter out the waste. It’s going to be ugly, but no uglier than continuing on the path that humanity has been on these last couple hundred years.
joe on Sun, 11th Jun 2017 1:11 pm
As went Sparta, so goes the West. As wealth is centralised so it must be that the liberalising of western women must imply fewer children, thus the decreasing and enriching of the most advanced people. We are like a fire, burning ourselves out. Don’t judge it too harshly cause it was always going to happen. Empires fail, there are no exceptions.
Apneaman on Sun, 11th Jun 2017 1:36 pm
Heroin Use Continues To Boom, Costing The US $51 Billion A Year
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/heroin-use-continues-to-boom-costing-the-us-51-billion-a-year/
Go Speed Racer on Sun, 11th Jun 2017 4:42 pm
Wetiko ??
That sounds like a good brand name, for cans
of crankcase additive for marine diesel engines. Yeah add it to the twin diesel
engines on my 65 foot cruiser yacht. It burns
14 gallons an hour when we are out weekends
with the executives from marketing & finance.
IPissOnMyself on Sun, 11th Jun 2017 5:46 pm
There is a reason why there is so much violence in the insect world and there is a reason why there is so much violence in human history.
Violence is used by nature (some will called it GOD, creator) to purge existing system and install a new system in place. You are seeing violence now cleaning up Mexico, Venezuela, Ukraine, Argentina, Middle East.
Similar to a forest fire that is burning everything to the ground to restart a new forest, this civilization will be burn to ground with blood to restart something.
I did not make the rule, it is just an observation.
makati1 on Sun, 11th Jun 2017 6:53 pm
Well said, NWR. Well said.
Jef on Sun, 11th Jun 2017 7:16 pm
You danced all around it NWR but the common thread throughout the ills you lay out is money.
No money = you die!
A little money = you live like shit!
Moderate amount of money = you are a slave with all of what life has to offer just out of reach.
A bunch of money = you get to work a job you hate, spend money you don’t quite have, buy tons of stuff you don’t need, impress people you don’t like.
Rich = you get to worry about how it can all go away in the snap of your fingers so you must always be geting MORE!
All in all a great system to bring out the worst in people.
DerHundistlos on Sun, 11th Jun 2017 7:43 pm
Thanks for reminding us about heroin use in the US. Now what do you recommend? Continue to build more prisons to lock-up non-violent drug offenders? That’s what the Trump administration believes. The new AG, Jeff sessions, reinstituted Mandatory Minimum Drug sentencing after the Obama administration disposed of this draconian law. This is awesome news for the Prison-Industrial Complex and the prison guard unions.
Funny thing, while drug abuse does exist in Colombia as it does everywhere else, the society has no interest in non-alcoholic drugs. Maybe because it’s so easily available? It’s the Americans While attending any variety of social event in Colombia, not once did I see or smell mary jane (as we called it back in my military days) nor coke nor H. Xtacy is popular among rave enthusiasts.
The biggest problem now is Americans and extranjeros traveling to Colombia to engage in pedophilia.The people are too damn trusting. I constantly warn that if a stranger shows up in your neighborhood bearing gifts for children and young teens, it is usually for a bad reason. If persons want to provide gifts, it should be done through an accredited NGO. The government was recently forced to erect signage in the airports warning visitors that sex with underage persons is a crime and will be prosecuted (maybe).
Apneaman on Sun, 11th Jun 2017 9:33 pm
DerHundistlos, I recommend not doing heroin and especially not doing it while 3 days into a rum binge like I did in 1990 and woke up the next morning at Vancouver General Hospital and was told if the Ambulance guys had got their a few minutest later they would not have been able to revive me. I only recommend that for those who wish to remain living. Apparently many don’t given the reckless abandon and wish to check out early many humans have in these sad times. It’s a lot less painful way to off yourself than slitting your wrists or harikari. Painless in fact.
Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see…
That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
I try to find a way to make
All our little joys relate
Without that ever-present hate
But now I know that it’s too late, and…
The game of life is hard to play
I’m gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I’ll someday lay
So this is all I have to say.
The only way to win is cheat
And lay it down before I’m beat
And to another give my seat
For that’s the only painless feat.
The sword of time will pierce our skins
It doesn’t hurt when it begins
But as it works it’s way on in
The pain grows stronger… watch it grin, but…
A brave man once requested me
To answer questions that are key
Is it to be or not to be
And I replied ‘oh why ask me?’
‘Cause suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
… and you can do the same thing if you please.
Suicide Is Painless – JOHNNY MANDEL & MICHAEL B ALTMAN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-BtquTKw78
Cloggie on Mon, 12th Jun 2017 3:22 am
I recommend not doing heroin and especially not doing it while 3 days into a rum binge like I did in 1990 and woke up the next morning at Vancouver General Hospital and was told if the Ambulance guys had got their a few minutest later they would not have been able to revive me.
Now that would have been a terrible loss!
You are a hardcore nihilist who can hardly carry his own weight. You need your excessive climate change poison as an expression of your own inner depressed state.
Googling for climate change doom is your daily fix. You are pure poison.
Davy on Mon, 12th Jun 2017 5:57 am
“You are a hardcore nihilist who can hardly carry his own weight. You need your excessive climate change poison as an expression of your own inner depressed state.”
Clog, and your stale Euro agenda with delusional optimism chasers is what we are supposed to drink instead? I think I will drink from the glass with the vinegar of truth. Climate change is based on science. That is pretty real. I am not sold on the particulars but the generalizations are hard to argue unless you are a delusional optimist or a stupid American conservatard. Your drink is climate change denying, Euro history revisions, conspiracy pulp fiction, and nouveau American civil war news. I enjoy your alternative energy comments but you have been going off the deep end elsewhere.
Sissyfuss on Mon, 12th Jun 2017 10:31 am
Humanity has now become a yellow-eyed alcoholic who dies if he continues to drink or dies of toxic shock if he quits drinking. We should have sobered up years ago but technology kept conjuring up new drinks that we couldn’t put down. If I wasn’t a teetotaler I’d go get drunk so that modern life would make perfect sense.
Apneaman on Mon, 12th Jun 2017 11:30 am
clog, I’m a “hardcore nihilist”? What is the difference between a hardcore nihilist and a regular everyday nihilist? Is that like dead vs hardcore dead?
So what if I’m a nihilist, what is it to you? If I am a a nihilist it’s not the ‘all about me’ violent 19th century euro political kind, but existential. You are the political one with the ideas of utopia through destruction. I don’t prescribe like you, I just describe…and mock. Perhaps it disturbs you because you know I’m right? Truth hurts and all that.
Davy has you pegged to accurately and all I’ll add is that you are a little deceiver (self and others) and couldn’t go a day without lying if you were paid.