Journey To End Of Empire

The fool will be servant to the wise of heart

The Sack of Rome by Visigoths, Joseph-Noël Sylvestre

The collapse of US empire and the descending AI dystopic panopticon will inflict ontological shock across the cultural spectrum of the capitalist West. Auguries for the US, and, in particular, its harried and vexed citizenry, already suffering an incipient nervous breakdown, portend the possible outbreak of societal psychosis.

If, as all signs, flashing warning red, point to, the following revelation may serve to shatter the nation’s collective psyche: the US citizenry have been conditioned to base their self-image in relation to where they stand in and what they contribute to the capitalist order by way of their vocation. i.e., in stark terms, the manner their labor maintains and expands the (obscenely bloated) fortunes of economic elites. In turn, said economic elites regard the debt-enslaved underclass with contempt, as embodied by the very emblem of elitist arrogance, Henry Kissinger’s declaration that the general public were comprised of “useless eaters.”

The Nobel Peace Prize winner war criminal Kissinger was wrong, as always: a submissive workforce has proven useful in the extreme for the economic predators of the privileged classes. But what kind of societal shitstorm will rage when AI renders a significant sector of the US workforce useless?

Up to the present, the arrangement has been thus: The rabble can fatten themselves on the bounty of the Republic Of Applebees as long as they surrender the fleeting hours of this finite life and provide their life's blood to vampiric oligarchs. With the coming collapse of the economic order and the rise of AI feudalism, a feudal order without a need for serfs, the citizenry's worldview will be reduced to detritus, dust and ashes.

The citizens of declining empires fear facing the realities at hand but the danger lies in the refusal to do just that.

In such times, what is crucial is character; what isn't, is the piss-take known as your image. Your image is a far different and a far lesser matter than the cosmos of imagery that lives and breathes and constructs the human psyche.

Your heart will not deceive you; your misapprehension of its lexicon will. Allow the heart's imagery to become your teacher. The heart's roots delve deep into the rich loam of the Soul Of The World (Anima Mundi) and its wings soar over the heads of time-sucking fools and into the precincts of Mundus Imaginalis — the living realms within, the landscapes and poleis of vital imagination, that are bastions of inspiration as well as sanctuaries providing respite.

The Transfiguration, William Blake

Outside of the societal erected prison walls of the conformist mind stretch the vales and skyways of the heart. The capitalist/consumer state's defining creed i.e., the (obsessive, frenzied, maniacal) pursuit of happiness will leave its true believers and hapless dupes clutching a handful of dust.

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." — The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Vanity’s fires, in short order, become smoke dissipated in the winds of eternity. Conversely, life devoted to the pursuit of living itself, the entrance point to the throne room of the Soul, transforms mammon into manna. Pray for the type of grace known as endurance -- not superficial and fleeting score keeping. Withal, the manic pursuit of profit is destroying the beauty of Creation. The “bottomline” is a psychical pit of hell wherein the imps of success gibber and snarl. Be warned, when MAGA's "Liberation Day" inflicts economic collapse, the fool's parade of capitalist's verities will threaten to become a fascist melee.

In such times, it is imperative we must all choose what we love deeply enough to fight for. Material goods are sand castles on the beach at high tide. A seawall of the heart must be constructed of a love of things just, beautiful, and true.

If the economic elite (and the political class who act as their bagmen) cannot govern their most base compulsions (e.g., the insatiable craving to possess more wealth than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes) how can they be relied upon to govern a republic?

Tell me what you desire and I will tell you who you are. The oligarchic class evince all the dignity of monkeys raised in a meth-house. Thus is the collective mode of mind of an empire in exponential decline. From Babylon’s Nebuchadnezzar to Rome's Nero to the US's present day, would-be (high-chair banging, juicy, juice flinging) Emperor, a vanity-rancid, fake tan lacquered maniac has clamored and connived into the highest seat of power. We are ruled by a klavern of ambulatory shitbags who regard themselves as golden gods, gracing us mere mortals by their presence. Ass kissing replaces counsel. A bonfire of shitwit rages. History reveals, in direct correlation, the ego of empire’s elites swell and bloat as the empire recedes.

Collapse comes in increments -- then all at once. The ills of the day lumber forth as the spindling heads of a hissing hydra. Cut off one head — new heads replace it. Inconceivable to both empire's elite and hoi polloi, the world beyond moves on. Time and time again throughout history, the story unfolds, the wise, in futility, evince alarm and posit dire warnings as the willfully deaf and belligerently ignorant, in their imbecilic parade, strut and preen all the way to the howling edge of the abyss.

Yet it is not advisable to avert one's gaze from the raging stupidity, dangerous folly, and mortifying ugliness of one's time. At empire's end, the culture lapses into an inferno of noxious inanity. Why? The collective mind of a cratering, authoritarian culture, as embodied within its precincts of power, acts in the manner of a dimwitted, voracious giant.

The complaint of the giant Nimrod, William Blake

A giant (e.g., late stage capitalism’s oligarchs) devours the bounty of the landscape, dwell above the clouds, as all the while, caressing its ill-gotten golden goose. The magic beans, in this case, must be planted in the rich soil of one's humanity. The giant will crash to earth. Only empathy and imagination will restore the suffering, famine-stricken land. Yes, I have related a fable. Yet the storyline is more plausible than believing in the giant's lie (and it is a giant lie) that the beneficiaries of capitalist economic exploitation and perpetual war-making hold their lofty, insular positions of power with the intent of serving the interests of the citizenry.

Yet cynicism is but another dismal pit in the inferno. A person cannot be of service to the world unless they view the world as the face of the beloved. Of course, one will at times engage in a lover's quarrel with life. That is one means lovers learn about the nature of the other. The discourse proves propitious if there is deep devotion at the core of relations. It is only by love we endure. Love is blocked from reaching its limits when empathy and imagination are shunned.

Moreover, it is not necessary to strive to seek the heart of the living moment. Its location is the hidden landscape where, through Eternity, you have always existed. The main barrier to freedom of mind is the prison of concretized belief. The prison's cruel guards' names are willful and belligerent ignorance and the accommodationists of conformity.

In Christian mythos, Jesus Christ was born in a dung-stipple barn owned by a greedhead rube in the sticks. Eastward, the Buddha, as a youth, walked away from a soul-defying life of highborn luxury to dwell among the lost and the desperate. There, in the remote and shunned regions of your psyche, the terrain outside of vanity's crumbling empire, the seeds of hope brood. Those who cannot or will not envisage such realms within...have already lost. They have lost the thread of the eternal tale.

Yes, sanctuary exists within yet one must risk the world, in its grandeur and banality, its pleasures and suffering, its momentary and passing triumphs and ego-leveling, and even inspiration-bestowing defeats...to come into propitious destiny. The wandering fool shambles into the ruined castle, housing the dying king, oblivious to where he is and that he has happened upon the healing grail.

Limbo is teeming with people who have allowed a pathology-rancid culture to define them; thereby leaving them bereft of the resolve to wander, to seek the transforming grail within.

Of course, these sorts of proclamations have been posited throughout the ages -- but it takes a wounded heart and attendant sense of desperation to commit oneself into leaning into the mysteries that transfigure one's psyche. Thus, take heart, your wounds become the womb by which novel possibilities are born.

It goes without saying paradise has been lost and will never again exist on earth. But the cosmos, generous force that it is, sent us the Muses -- forces bestowing the ability to create things funny, beautiful, and true.

The Christian image of the daemon i.e., Jesus viewed as the Christ, during his time on this suffering earth, spent his hours with the afflicted, the wretched, the lost, and the fallen. Not with Roman militarists, the political class, accommodationist elitist priests, and those who prospered by the imperial exploitation of the many. Appropriating the Judea/Christian lexicon in the form of breathing metaphor, the New Jerusalem rises from within. (Certainly not in stolen and occupied Palestine.)

Today's economic elite and the political class that does their bidding -- that is, those who cling to the present order -- will inherit the wind. Those, as averred above, who love the World as they do the face of their beloved will inherit the earth -- because the meek do not believe their own bullshit. Ask yourself, in what manner can I act as a midwife to the creation of a (possible) better society to come and not act as an obstructionist or underminer.

The New Jerusalem Descending, William Blake