The Collective
Commentary
The state and fate of the world reflect the Collective.
The Collective are ordinary folk. The trait they all share is suffering the predations of nattermind.
The Collective dobe is expressed by culture, which includes language, expressed values, and political economy. In every ethnicity worldwide, culture expresses the Collective level of consciousness.
American singer James Brown soulfully sang, “This is a man’s world.” That is because women have been subjected in societies worldwide since the advent of agriculture 13,000 years ago, when physical strength and stamina surpassed savvy as the survival edge. Men plowing fields plowed women under.
Edicts for misogyny are vividly portrayed in religious texts which became the immoral mandate of societies worldwide. Christianity and Islam are notably steeped in this tradition. Since history began, every woman has felt the sting of subjugation from men.
The effect on humanity of man’s social domination has been incalculable. The most poignant point on this score is that the incessant conflicts which have driven the currents of history would not have been if women had been running humanity’s affairs.
Cooperation enabled all the achievements that embodied the ethical aspects of civilization. With men in charge, those victories have been hard-won. This remains obvious in the dynamics of political affairs that comprise world news. The comity which comes naturally to women is a compromise to men, whose sense of territoriality and possessive appetites have made civilization a savage endeavor since it began.
The modern world is largely ruled via democracies, where the public elects how its society is governed. It is apparent that democracy translates into a political sinking to the lowest common denominator. This is most apparent in the USA and UK, which have elected leaders for decades that led only in presiding over their nations’ decay.
In 1648, Swedish statesman Axel Oxenstierna observed, “Behold with how little wisdom the world is governed.” Keen observers of current events appreciate the historical constant in that denouement. Civilization has been a continuum. Its modus operandi of exploitation and social dominance hierarchies has never altered.
Fate is cause and effect writ large. The idea of fate is antediluvian. The word exists in every language. Yet, via propaganda by authorities, modern cultures outmoded the concept.
The touted substitute for fate is a fantasy of fluidity via faith in technology and economics to quickly effect solutions. This fantastic optimism belies history.
Technology has been a great irony. Technologies brought fantastic conveniences which changed the way we live and irrevocably shaped cultures. The pollution from those same technologies has caused atrocious misery and been so dramatic as to sour the environmental dynamism of Earth itself.
“What might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind may bring about its total destruction,” presciently foresaw British war commander Winston Churchill in the middle of the last century. That destiny is now being enacted through extreme weather events which have become the norm worldwide. That the end times are upon us is obvious for those with sufficient detachment to see the current mass extinction event for what it is. The Story of Humanity: Ecology & Consequence by Ishi Nobu relates humanity’s history and fate.
The Collective are possessed by their possessions.
The human mind innately conceptualizes Nature as a diversity of objects. All human languages are object-oriented. Nouns outnumber verbs in all vocabularies. Infants learn new nouns easier and more rapidly than new verbs. Inborn objectification is integral to building the primal illusion of physicality.
Beyond object orientation is attachment to objects. People attribute ownership to object representations from early childhood.
Like many animals, humans are territorial. Materialism is the votive perspective of territoriality writ small.
For those in the Collective, possessions are a major contributor to and reflector of self-identity. American psychologist William James wrote, “A man’s self is the sum total of all that he can call his.”
American marketing professor Aric Rindfleisch got to the root of the problem: “At its core, materialism is a value-based response to insecurity in one’s life.” Rapt over physicality, the Collective try to fill their spiritual vacuum with possessions.
Collective science is artifactual.
In antiquity, science was a synonym for knowledge. Science is now used for the study of Nature.
The nature of scientific inquiry is induction. Physical artifacts and their movements are observed. Instance observations are conceptually generalized into characteristics and behaviors for an assigned system. The invariable result is a reification which Collective scientists fail to recognize as such.
Studied specimens are taken to be part of an objective reality. By this matterist assumption, Collective science is stuck in the middle.
The indisputable finding of modern physics – that matter is energy and energy is purely conceptual – is disregarded, even by physicists. In assuming artifacts as authentic, modern science is fiction.
Collective authority is exploitative.
Dominance hierarchies are seen in many animals. Authority is commonly exercised as subjugation, with subordinates serving the wants of a dominant.
Political states maintain order by force, which is implicit only until push comes to shove. This observation has been a political constant since antiquity.
Capitalism is an extension of the biological bent to dominance. The English word profit derived from the Latin word profectus, meaning “to do good.” From the 15th century, when capitalism was emergent, profit was perverted to mean “the advantage gained by owning capital.”
Plutocrats vitiated numerous words to warp culture to their worldview. Derived from Latin, the 14th-century English word equity meant fairness. Capitalists transformed equity into a property claim in the late 19th century.
The nature of plutocracy is that dominants with resources command others by providing the means for subordinates’ survival. Worker employment is a statement of subjugation. The inequities in societies and dire condition of Earth’s natural environment owe to exploitative capitalism being the engine of economic activity.
The Collective fight what they should accept and accept what they should fight.
The vast majority in modern societies struggle to survive, as plutocracy handicaps the working class. Yet, even in democracies, where people could elect moral equity, they instead vote for injustice. A generous interpretation is that they do so because plutocracy is deceptively sold as offering freedom, whereas socialism implies an unseemly societal orderliness. A more telling construal is that many do not know what is good for them.
Those with compassion hanker for justice and societal equity. They protest the evils of plutocracy.
Then there is the dire condition of Nature on Earth, which has suffered accelerating devastation since industrialization in the mid-19th century. Environmentalists lament the rape of Nature, as they have for millennia.
Alas, these crusaders for a better world are fighting for a lost cause, as history amply shows. The force of plutocracy runs deep and is not going to be remedied. Protest is mostly martyring one’s own time and energy.
The war to be won is not political. It is spiritual.
One’s purview is one’s own mind. In there, nattermind is the nemesis. Noise and negativity are dispiriting, sapping a soul of psychic energy by drowning out bliss. Such is living under the regime of monkey-mind.
The Collective accept suffering under nattermind as expectable because they consider such abuse “normal.” They pass on their inner abuse to others.
The Collective do not recognize that conscious thought robs awareness. By this theft, nattermind substitutes a poverty of abstractions for the richness that comes with beĩng in quietude.
Awareness and discipline are the essential tools for every endeavor. Living well is a skill.
Vanquishing nattermind is best done with a dual attack. Both vectors are nonintuitive, as they go against biological programming. It is because of this that elevating awareness is difficult.
1st, stop thinking. Nattermind is thwarted by discarding thought and relying on subconscious mentation (menition). This mental streamlining – living in meditation – permits full awareness to the present.
2nd, believe nothing. Innate inclination to gullibility serves ill. Practice skepticism.
There are no truths in abstraction. Skepticism acts as a solvent on falsities.
The residue of nattermind is scrubbed by discarding beliefs and assumptions. Stop being stuck in the middle. Get to the root.
The Collective do not elevate their awareness because they do not practice a disciplined regime of skepticism. They assume. They believe.
The mind is a malleable device. There is a world of difference between using a tool versus imparting mystical meaning to that tool by believing in it and thereby granting it power. You either use your mind as a tool or you are a tool of your mind.
All you control is your own attention. Every moment you either choose now or indulge monkey-mind by reveling in sentimental memories or imaginative fantasies. This is the constant battle of willmind versus nattermind. This is the fight that defines the quality of your life.
