Could a breakdown of civilization be a good thing?

This kind of ties in with the recent discussion how some of us actually look FORWARD to some great cataclysm -- in form of economic crash, asteroid impact, or whatever -- happening.

Here's the thread: www.abovetopsecret.com...

I think we established in the thread that many people feel that in our current society, we're just going in circles and the situation gets worse and worse, so that some major event would be needed for us to wake up and make a complete turnaround.

I've recently read the book "Spiritual Incorrect Enlightenment," the sequel of "Spiritual Enlightenment -- The Damndest Thing" by Jed McKenna (highly recommended for anyone, BTW, who has any romanticized notions of what enlightenment is), and the author said it so beautifully that I wanted to share this with you.

In the passage below, McKenna is at a party with a group of "hip" Californians who are living "a fully integrated spirituality," basically getting off on their environmentally and spiritually aware lifestyle. When the discussion turns to potential terrorist attacks against power and water supply and the scare scenarios of what would happen then, he says the following:

***

"Well, let's say the worst stuff you can think of really happens," I interrupt, "would that really be such a tragedy?"

The chatter stops as all eyes turn to me.

"Would it really be so bad if your world broke apart at the seams?" I ask. "Cascade failures and anarchy and all that. I could see where it might be a pretty good thing. Shake things up. Get the blood flowing."

They're exchanging glances with each other in smug bemusement; seeking an explanation for, or complicity against, the jackass making this unscheduled deviation from standard themes.

"I don't know any of you personally," I continue, "but it looks like your lives are fairly predictable. You know how this storyline plays out, right? So what would be so bad if this storyline shifted abruptly to something a little more exciting?"

[...]

"I'm just playing the devil's advocate here, thinking out loud. Correct me if I'm wrong, but your lives are pretty much," I make a gesture indicating our current setting, "this, right? I mean, you make money, raise kids, socialize, fulfill your roles, just like everyone else; basically ambling in small circles toward your own graves while pretending you're not. Sure, you all meditate and do whatever spiritual practices, but you know that's not really going anywhere, right?"

A few pockets of resistance pop up, but I plow over them. Their indignation is as meaningless to me as the growls of little pink puppies. I'm indulging myself with a somewhat more forceful manner of communicating now, mainly for my own amusement, and their reaction at this stage is not a factor.

"This end-of-the-world thing of yours sounds so terrible," I say, "but maybe it would be your one real chance. You might not know it, but what you're fantasizing about is waking up; your own awakening. You've heard the Chinese saying that's both a blessing and a curse; May you live in interesting times. If you look at it, you'll see that we don't live in interesting times, but we could. That's what your terror scenario is really about, isn't it? The times becoming interesting? We'd have perfect seats for one of the greatest spectacles in the history of the world; the meltdown of an advanced technological civilization. As you've pointed out, it wouldn't take much. Food and water run out in a few days, and all pretense at decency and morality run out with them. Major cities panic and go berserk. Fire, riots, evacuation. It'd be the greatest unmasking the world has ever known. A mass awakening; millions of people getting very real, very fast. You don't think that'd be fun?"

(continued)

Total pandemonium good? That's madness, not enlightenment. No thanks, I'll stick with civilization.

[edit on 3-4-2008 by thought]

Exccerpt (continued):

They're looking at me like I'm crazy, stupid, or just unbelievably rude. [...]

"It's not improbable, I guess. Terror, nuclear mishap, some planetary event, war, a microbe, an act of God. Things change, fall apart, end. No rule against it, right? Imagine America reduced to a land of warlords and city-states; marauding bands of peevish Merlot sniffers roaming the countryside."

[...]

"Any hope of a return to normalcy vanishes. The people we call primitive are unaffected and go on about their lives undisturbed while the entire wired world descends into savagery; not in years or months, but in weeks, days. We'd see how our deeply held values stand up to an empty stomach. How many meals do you miss before you stop loving thy neighbor and slit his throat? This civilized veneer is really quite thin. Make a study of the human in extremis--prison camps, lost at sea, and all that--and you'll see it's not just the veneer of civilized behavior that's thin. Friendship, morality, honor, all disappear. Distinguishing physical characteristics disappear. And what about love? When the going gets tough, we'll steal food from our starving children. We're wired to survive and love doesn't override wiring."

This isn't going over at all well. "I don't really mean us, here, sitting at this table," I continue, "because this is all a veneer too. These cheerful, well-fed personas are just flimsy veils of consciousness laid over the animal within and don't survive even minor discomforts."

Everyone's looking down and around, and my sense is that they'd like one among them to stand up and put me in my place. "Who we think we are can be stripped away forever," I make a poof gesture, "just like that. Right now, well fed, unthreatened, we have the luxury of pretending the Donners and the Nazis and the gang-bangers are someone else, but they're not. They're us, a veil's breadth away. There are no good guys and bad guys. People are people, all the same; only the circumstances change."

[...]

"It could be the death-rebirth process, but on a planetary scale. Very interesting to think about. This whole ego-based society burns to the ground. Years of chaos and anarchy follow, but then something rises from the ashes. What? Probably another ego-based society born of might instead of fright, of rancid fear, but maybe not. Maybe something else. Heaven on Earth, right? Get ourselves back to the garden, don't you think? That's the process the individual has to go through, so why not a society? It's the kind of thing that seems like an unimaginable nightmare before and a Godsend after. The death and rebirth of Western civilization. A human evolution revolution. Pretty cool, huh?"

[...]

(continued)

Excerpt (continued):

"Now compare that to these bland little lives you're dozing through. What are you really doing? Crawling toward cancer and heart disease and prolonged agonizing deaths. Am I wrong? Oh, one or two of you might get lucky and die in a car accident or have a heart attack in your sleep or be murdered by your spouse, but that's really the best you can hope for. None of you seem self-determined enough for suicide. Compare that cheery outlook to this worst-case scenario of yours. Sure, you probably won't last long, but what a way to go! A world in flames! But you people don't want that because--what? You got something more important going, I guess. Like what? Your plans? Your careers? Your future? Your children? Your children are just less developed versions of you and their hope of breaking out of the cycle of denial is no better than yours. And if it were, that's no reason. The only reason is fear. Your fear gives birth to your denial and your cozy, insular delusions of permanence and continuity. Look at yourselves, getting together so you can reaffirm each other's self-image fantasies and tell scary stories about the big bad wolf would huff and puff and blow your world down. 'Wow, we really dodged a bullet there,' you say about this terror thing, but what you dodged was your own lives. Sorry to be such a bore. Got any cake?"

He sure is a highly provocative guy, but I think he's got a point. The premise of the books, I might add, is that he claims that he's enlightened... which doesn't mean, he says, to be in a state of neverending bliss or some such New Agey notion, but to simply wake up from the dream everyone else is caught up in. He basically describes it like everyone is sitting in a theater with their eyes glued to the screen, watching the characters in a movie go through their little dramas and believing they're real. When you "wake up from the dream," he says, you're able to leave the theater altogether and arrive at a state of "no-self," which according to him is the real truth and reality of our existence.

Thus it's kind of understandable that he views such "horrific" things like war, terror attacks, the downfall of civilization, etc. as just another one of the petty dramas that occupy mankind and keep them from waking up to the higher truth.

That just as an explanation.

So what do you think? Let's hear it!

Squares can be filled with color, but it takes time for them to be manipulated into circles.


Yeeeaaaaahhhhhhhh.


Hippies.

Just my opinion but the author sounds full of hate and appears to have been hurt emotionally somewhere down the road he's come from.

My suggestion to him and to you is to put yourselves in a life/ death situation and then come back and tell us your thoughts.

Somewhere on our earth there are people that are living in fear of their lives. They are hungry, thirsty, ill and wondering if they will live through the night.

Visit a third world country. Make your stay at least 30 days. Next time there is a hurricane predicted to hit the US sneak your way into the evacuated area. Make it your plan to visit as many natural disasters as possible and volunteer to help the survivors.

Believe me it will give you a first hand knowledge of how we humans react in extream times. You might be very surprised. I know I was as I've been in every situation I proposed you attend.

Love does not become null and void. If anything it becomes stronger. Those few that would do evil things and take advanttage of others are the same people that were evil before the event took place.

Just my opinion but the author sounds full of hate and appears to have been hurt emotionally somewhere down the road he's come from.

My suggestion to him and to you is to put yourselves in a life/ death situation and then come back and tell us your thoughts.

Somewhere on our earth there are people that are living in fear of their lives. They are hungry, thirsty, ill and wondering if they will live through the night.

Visit a third world country. Make your stay at least 30 days. Next time there is a hurricane predicted to hit the US sneak your way into the evacuated area. Make it your plan to visit as many natural disasters as possible and volunteer to help the survivors.

Believe me it will give you a first hand knowledge of how we humans react in extream times. You might be very surprised. I know I was as I've been in every situation I proposed you attend.

Love does not become null and void. If anything it becomes stronger. Those few that would do evil things and take advanttage of others are the same people that were evil before the event took place.

[edit on 3-4-2008 by dizziedame]

I think I understand where the OP is coming from.

Do we sit around and compound our errors, or wipe the slate clean and start afresh learning from our previous mistakes?

The event is not beyond belief and could be on the cards already.
What would cause it? Financial ruin, war, disease.
All of them are strong possibilities.

Financial ruin = look at the world credit crunch biting all major Western countries
War = It’s only a matter of time before everyone will have to choose a side to fight for
Disease = one small slip of that test tube…..

Will it be good for humanity? Yes. We need to start new, get things right.
Will it be easy? No. There’s going to be a lot of pain and death
Is it avoidable? No.
Do I want it to happen? No.

I like the post and have starred and flagged it.

While there does seem to be a natural cycle that forces us to start from scratch now and again, and it may be necessary and beneficial from a much larger point of view, it’s hardly something for the individual to look forward to from a personal perspective. Death is part of the natural cycle too, but I’m not trying to hurry that along. It is hard to deny that evil is prospering more and more, and is now in almost absolute control. Time for a cleansing, and while I'm prepared for it, I'm really not looking forward to it.

As history shows constantly, it is easy to destroy, but to build...... We are living in "interesting times" already. And our civilization is on self-produced destruction course already (in my opinion). So to try and destroy it "prematurely" will do no good. A lot of people will die sooner then needed, we still have at least several generations after all.
And i do not believe in doomsday threads .....

I can kind of see where this ambiguous hope for chaos, destruction pandemonium followed by renewal and reconstruction could come from. I see the news, the TV, magazines, movies, music and other media and I see what our society has come worship. Vapid, rich w*ores are what many little girls aspire to unknowingly. They see Paris Hilton and Heidi Montag and other MTV created wrecks and think that they lead good, admirable lives. Many children think that ignorance is "keeping it real," while being educated and smart is something that sellout losers aspire to. Our society basically puts on a pedestal negative attributes and barely pays lip-service to intelligence, honor, discipline, and honesty. I can see where people think that only a sudden and total societal collapse can "change things." I am, however, not one naive enough to think it would necessarily be a good thing after all. I mean if generations of steady "progress" have us stuck in our current mire, it'd take a big leap of imagination to think that humanity's leftovers after a total cataclysm would suddenly right years of decay. It's extremely naive to think that only the good would survive. I have a personal interest in not encouraging disaster, too. I am not a survival expert. I've never even fired a gun. I'd have to do a lot of learning on the fly to be one of the survivors.