"Progress Debunked", Debunked

Philosopher (or, as he prefers to call himself, a recovered philosopher since his mystical experience years ago) Samuel Thomsen currently has a new book titled, Progress Debunked:  The Creation-Destruction Balance and Ancient Wisdom's Primacy.  And it is not merely the usual cynicism about progress that we hear ad nauseam in so many circles these days, since his thesis is actually quite intelligently formulated and articulated.  However even up-and-coming intellectual giants like Thomsen can still be fundamentally incorrect overall even if partially correct in some ways.

His thesis can best be summed up as follows:  1) The idea of progress, especially global progress, is logically incoherent and inconsistent, 2) what he terms "ancient wisdom" (i.e. our oldest traditions) has far more to offer than modern science and philosophy does, and 3) that "animate life thrives on a fertile balance of creation and destruction, joy and suffering, good and evil", as one reviewer succinctly and eloquently puts it.  He believes that our civilization will inevitably collapse for a variety of reasons, just like every other civilization before us.  And granted, he does indeed make some good points here and there.  But the one point that he misses turns out to be the most crucial one of all--the influence of patriarchy and the "dominator" paradigm that goes along with it.  The entire knowledge base (both ancient and modern) that is the foundation for his thesis orignated during a time when MEN have been in charge, and is thus tainted as result.

Garbage in, garbage out.  And a lot of linear thinking.

As Riane Eisler has noted in her book The Chalice and the Blade, patriarchy and the "dominator" model was NOT always the way.  In fact, it can be seen as a sort of aberration for the past few thousand years that is not at all timeless.  It has a beginning, a few thousand years ago, and it has an end, which will be coming very soon.  William Bond has further studied and refined the ideas of this development, as has Guru Rasa von Werder, along with others as well.  As all of the futurists are saying now, the future belongs to Women.  And Women will soon reclaim their rightful place as the new leaders of the free world.  Either that, or we all go extinct, basically.

And the late, great Buckminster Fuller, the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century must really be spinning in his grave due to Thomsen's tome as well.  Not only did he believe that Women should (and ultimately will) rule the world, but also that a world of abundance for all is certainly possible under what he calls the "feminine paradigm of leadership".  And the resources and technology to eradicate poverty worldwide, and with no further harm to the environment, certainly do exist, but the mostly male oligarchs in power now simply choose not to do so.  In their capricious zeal to use artificial scarcity to "lord it over" the rest of us, these oligarchs are willing to literally let the world burn before they share the wealth. As I like to say, mechanization is no match for the Machiavellian machinations of the moneyed elites.

And lest anyone worry about the possibility that eradicating poverty worldwide will lead to a lack of natural selection and thus accumulation of deleterious genetic mutations, to that I say, just look around you.  There is clearly no shortage of candidates for Darwin Awards, and most of them seem to be above (sometimes well above) the poverty line.  Natural selection may be different, but it will most certainly still exist--as long as individual rights exist, at least.  (Self-determination can sometimes lead to self-termination.)  In fact, it reeks of first-world privilege to even consider worrying about such a thing at all.  And to quote Charles Darwin himself, in fact:

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

And those institutions, we have learned, are the very brainchildren of patriarchy:  capitalism, tyranny, oligarchy, and the scarcity mentality.  The latter of which especially, which rather ironically coexists with capitalism and patriarchy's addiction to growth for the sake of growth, the ideology of the cancer cell which eventually kills its host.  That includes both population growth (from treating Women like brood mares) as well as economic growth (from treating men--and often Women too--like work horses).  It is literally the logic of a Ponzi scheme, and those historically don't end very well.

The problem is quite literally man-made.  And now is NOT the time to give up on progress, since we can no longer afford to continue with the same obsolete ways of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.  Progress may not be linear, but it is literally our best (if not only) hope for the future.

So what are we waiting for?  Let the planetary healing begin!

Indefinite Hiatus

I have decided that this blog, The Chalice and the Flame, will be taking an indefinite hiatus for the time being, for the following reasons:

1. I have been busier than usual lately with many different things in my life and have updated this site very erratically if at all, to the point of recycling old posts just to have something to post every month.
2. I need to devote more time to my other blogs as well, which I had neglected for a while and just started ramping up in recent months.
3. I have already posted at least 95% of everything useful I have to say about the topic of the transition from patriarchal dystopia to Matriarchal utopia.  Anything that remains can be found on my other blogs as well.
4. While the Women's Movement in general has been largely headed in the right direction overall, nevertheless, several factions within that movement in general, and within the Matriarchy movement specifically, appear to be headed in a rather questionable direction.  This calls into question much of the movement's conventional wisdom and illustrates a need to step back a bit to regain any lost wisdom that may have inadvertently fallen by the wayside as of late.
5. Overall, as current events so clearly illustrate, most of my work in this movement is either done, almost done, and/or redundant at this point.

Thus, it may be a while before I update this blog again.  Until then, feel free to leave comments on this blog and also to check out my other blogs, True Spirit of America Party and Twenty-One Debunked as well.

In solidarity, 

Ajax the Great

VIVE LA FEMME!  VIVE LE DIFFERENCE!

Happy Mother's Day!

First, I would like to wish a Happy Mother's Day to all of the wonderful Mothers out there.  You are, after all, literally the reason why the human race even exists at all, despite the fact that the work you do is grossly undervalued in so many way by our twisted capitalistic and patriarchal society.  In other words, your beautiful feminine energy is essentially what keeps the rest of us alive.  Thank you.

I would also like to note and lament how, for all the shallow platitudes America likes to throw around about "Mothers and apple pie", we are still a nation that perpetually continues to screw over Mothers and pregnant Women in so many ways.  Recently, Guru Rasa von Werder shared a poignant and in-depth article from Vox with us that illustrates the various ways in which that is true.  This article should be food for thought indeed.  Our patriarchal and capitalistic society clearly has a "cult of motherhood", in which the "ideal" of motherhood is so highly vaunted, worshipped even, but in practice actual Mothers themselves get about as much genuine respect as Rodney Dangerfield.  Both during and after pregnancy, so many Mothers are routinely discriminated against, overworked, underpaid, and even outright criminalized in many cases.  And meanwhile, there is to this day a powerful faction of mostly male politicians that is doing everything in their power to deny Women their right to choose whether or not to get (or stay) pregnant in the first place.  Indeed, the rank hypocrisy of our misogynistic and pharisaical system is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Meanwhile, old Buckminster Fuller (who, not coincidentally, believed that Women should rule the world) must be spinning in his grave right now.  With today's technology and innovation, there is literally no legitimate reason why we as a society need "everybody and their mother" (literally!) to "work for a living" unless they really wanted to.  There are more than enough resources in the world for everyone on this planet to live like a millionaire, but the greedy oligarchs who control such resources apparently don't want to share.  Combined with the outdated scarcity mentality that men tend to favor (as opposed to the abundance mentality that Women tend to favor), those same oligarchs have also done everything in their power to sabotage any alternatives (i.e. free and renewable energy) to their own evil system that they force upon the rest of us.  So why make them even richer?

Additionally, just as we should "dispense with the absolutely specious notion that everybody needs to earn a living" (in Bucky's words), so too should we jettison the equally specious and outdated idea that everybody must procreate as though it were a civic duty.  Not only does today's technology make much useful human labor redundant, but the world is grossly overpopulated and will only get more so in the coming decades, and despite the abundance of the world's resources we are chewing through them like there is no tomorrow while destroying the planet.   And the main cause of that overpopulation is--wait for it--MEN.  Because they are the ones who, both historically and today, force, coerce, deceive, and/or brainwash Women to have kids that they otherwise would not want or are not yet ready for.  Men like to "get 'em while they're young" and then use them as serial breeding slaves, essentially, and all the euphemisms in the world do not change that fact.   It is really no coincidence that the two most effective (and ethical) ways to reduce overpopulation and excessively high birthrates are 1) female empowerment and 2) poverty reduction, while everything else is a mere sideshow.  Because when Women actually have a free and genuine choice on when or whether or not to reproduce, they usually make the right choices overall.  After all, they are the ones who have the most "skin in the game".  So let the planetary healing begin!

MAMASTE