- Home
- Commentary
- Preserving our sanity amidst the consuming madness of the times
- Removing the mask of the insecure babyman
- The internet: from digital democracy to digital dementia
- Doubt as an asset, certainty as an affliction
- Fascism, collective insanity and ourselves
- Navigating disinformation, uncertainty, individualism and the poison apple of conspiracy
- If nothing changes nothing will change: the Voice referendum
- What can we learn from disaster communities?
- New year, a time to embrace the uncertainty of it all
- We could be non-binary
- Adaptive resilience vs safety paternalism
- Left wing, right wing? What just happened to politics?
- Covid, class and the addiction to certainty
- Neoliberalism, the Life World and the Psychopathic Corporation
- Democracy is about our bodies, not just our minds
- What’s your motivation: is it yourself or the change you’re making?
- Mind over matter: The world of abstraction is driving us to destruction
- The real threats to our liberty and survival
- Avoiding the abyss of conspiracy theories
- The difference between a legal system and a fantasy novel
- What’s a conspiracy and what’s just common garden variety corruption?
- Unpredictability, humility and an emerging anthropandemic
- The trilemma – climate change, economic collapse, and rising fascism
- Happy New Normal for the decade ahead
- The race to the bottom in australian politics
- Fires, liars and climate deniers
- Talking about lock-on devices – an article in ‘The Conversation’
- The Ponzi scheme is teetering
- Regenerative culture a key part of the blockade experience
- Staying sane in the late Anthropocene
- Extinction Rebellion
- Major parties have failed on climate, it’s time to rebel.
- Elections In The Late Anthropocene
- It is the Greens that are defeating the Nats and it’s all about your preferences
- Australia’s powerhouse of democracy and innovation is in the Northern Rivers
- Is identity politics a problem for the left?
- The climate emergency and the awful state of Australian politics
- Democracy and rights under threat in corporate police state
- Liberty, freedom and civil rights? Do any of us understand these things anymore.
- The forest wars are back, time to mobilise
- …more commentary
- Workshops
- News & Events
- Media
- A Flood of Emotions – Sydney Ideas Event
- Participatory democracy in the COVID era – SCU podcast
- Activism educator Aidan Ricketts explains how and why protests can be peaceful
- Bob Brown Is Taking “Shocking” Anti-Protest Laws To The High Court
- Anti protest laws could arrest nannas, seize tractors
- “They blinked first”
- Colin Barnett quick to protest against ‘activism degrees’ – The Australian, 16/10/2014
- ‘Degrees in activism’ put brake on growth – The Australian, 15/10/2014
- Magistrate throws out vexatious police case against CSG protesters
- Outrage over school PR ‘by stealth’- The Northern Star
- CSG clash a certainty
- Communities use new tactics
- Gas group attacks lecturer
- …more media
- Activist Resources
- Reviews
- Menu Item
I like these sites
Community Organisations
- Code Green Tasmania
- CSG Free Northern Rivers
- Friends of the Earth Melbourne
- Generation Alpha
- Huon Valley Environment Centre
- Lock the Gate Alliance
- Nature Conservation Council NSW
- North Coast Environment Council
- North East Forest Alliance
- Plan to Win
- Rainforest Information Centre
- Save our Foreshore
- Still Wild Still Threatened
- The Change Agency
- The Wilderness Society
Preserving our sanity amidst the consuming madness of the times
Whilst never having been a fan of US global hegemony, interventionism or the neo-liberal duopoly of US politics, this latest descent from neo-liberalism towards fascism takes us from the frying pan into the fire.
It is so saddening to see that the impoverishment, collapse of government services, and loss of trust in institutions that was an inevitable result of decades of right wing (neo-liberal) policies since Reagan and Thatcher has finally culminated in a population so enraged and confused that it somehow imagines that a sudden lurch even further to the right is somehow an answer.
Whatever the question, fascism is never the answer. Fascism is always a product of collective insanity and always results in state sponsored bullying of the most vulnerable. Ironically, despite the promises of resurrecting the glory of the fatherland, fascism always demolishes the societies in which it takes hold.
If we really wanted to make our nations ‘great again’, to restore home ownership, to build safety nets for all, combat environmental decline, and correct the obscene wealth disparities on display, the answer would lie in a return to wealth redistributive policies of the left, but alas that is not where we are currently positioned.
Instead we are in an upside-down world of propaganda where the fraud, rapist and liar can position as a victim, where a club of billionaires and nepotists with control of vast media and internet empires can portray themselves as pushing back against ‘elites’, and whatever was left of the checks and balances of constitutional governance is portrayed by rising tyrants as a malevolent deep state that they alone can liberate us from.
The source of the collective insanity that has led to the collapse of reality-based politics is not only economic, it is also technological. Just as the invention of the printing press spawned upheavals from popular revolutions through to frenzies of witch burning, the advent of the internet and social media has precipitated a collapse of reason, a loss of respect for expertise, and a visceral intolerance of opposing views that is tearing societies apart.
The collective madness is so overwhelming that it is almost impossible to develop a coherent political strategy in response. I am left feeling that the best we can do in the immediate term is reach for what is sane, solid and still sacred in our lives and communities. We need an Archimedian place to stand back and watch the madness unfold. To try too hard to understand the madness, or to become any angrier or any more desperate is to actually succumb to it.
So what can we do?
Firstly we need to find some acceptance. Maybe ultimately this is a collapse that we can’t avoid.
Secondly we need to find some solidity and resilience inside ourselves to be able to continue to function humanely in inhumane times.
I firmly believe that a key underlying element of our collective descent into madness is that we live in an age of disembodiment. The cult of the disembodied mind is something I have written about before.
Everything about modern culture has elevated the disconnected human mind over the more humble and grounded realms of the body, the feelings and nature.
The capitalist economy, of disembodied corporations pursuing perpetual growth on a finite planet, propelled by imaginary metrics of the stock exchange is disembodied and earth destroying madness. Our philosophical traditions from Descarte (I think therefore I am) through postmodernism (language creates reality) to transhumanism (our minds can merge with technology to become immortal) all tend towards the supremacy of the ego mind over the beautiful messy and vulnerable and mortal body.
Worst of all our technologies have literally propelled us into ‘virtual reality’ psychotically disconnected from reality.
There is a link between disembodiment and fascism. In Phil Shephard’s book ‘Radical Wholeness’ he tracks how the cultural conditioning inside ourselves that imposes the tyranny of mind over body translates in the outer world into the supremacy of disconnected thinking over grounded wisdom. Which explains the subjugation of indigenous perspectives, the feminine, our bodies and of nature itself.
The collective madness is so intense at the moment that the first step in coming to terms with the civilisational collapse we are witnessing is to first secure the ground we stand on. It is essential that regardless of what external mayhem we will be called upon to endure that we first find our feet on the earth, our presence in our sacred bodies and our place in the great timelessness of the universe.
We cannot hope to play a part in helping to survive this epoch if we lose our own bearings within it.
Another book I recommend is Savage Grace: Living Resiliently in the Dark Night of the Globe by Andrew Harvey and Carolyn Baker. This book counsels us that we may indeed be required to endure a great darkness of humanity, but that the best we can do is hold close to what is real and sacred in ourselves and nature.
Stay present, stay grounded, stay close to the earth, to your loved ones and to community. Reduce your exposure to the rage bait of social media. Let go of your rage against others and drop into an acceptance that history is rarely ever a comfortable ride. Bear witness to whatever insanity surrounds us but hold connection to the real the physical and the sacred. Give your troubled and confused mind back to the safekeeping of your body, back to the earth and back to the universe for healing. This is going to be a difficult journey and we need to be able to support each other.
I am sorry not to be able to offer hope nor strategy at this point, but only from a place of grounded sanity we will be best positioned to move forward again when the opportunity arises.
This article was first published in the Nimbin Good Times, December 2024