Who worries or cares today?
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Have you noticed the increasing amount of concern being expressed overseas of late? The linked article by Col. Andrew Bacevich is just one of many starting to appear regularly on the more main stream alternate media blogs in the US and Europe. The increase in internal US cultural stressors, particularly evident in the current implosion of the Mueller debacle and the continuing increase in identity politics fragmentation, coupled with the need for the US military to start looking at having to recruit 16 year old youths, triggers some anxiety. Additionally, the increasing proliferation of gun related massacres in the US is frightening.
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This of course is not isolated to the US. The recent revelations concerning the Malaysian Government rejecting the professional conduct of the MH17 joint inquiry, seems to put a previous and current Australian Foreign Minister in a somewhat embarrassing position.
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Poor Old Blighty also seems to be in a real pickle, what with teetering government, then a new Executive after a bloodbath massacre of the old Theresa May crew and, the ongoing BREXIT fiasco.
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Additionally, an article penned by Roberto Savio in Italy The Precipitous Barbarisation of Our Times also doesn’t skirt the issues.
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All of the above of course is only talking about the antics of “squabbling politicians as reported mainly by scavenging newspaper scribblers”
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The critical thing is, who cares, who even takes any interest these days as long as there is a perception that there is still something to get out of the trough?
I guess that I am too old not to remember that not so many decades ago there was an idea that was current in society, that in life, it is better to live for a purpose greater than oneself.
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The collapse of religious meaning in Western European culture of both Catholicism of the Roman rite and Protestant variants of Calvinist persuasions is finally realistically looking as if heading into a terminal phase.
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Take a moment to read the linked articles and see how good an argument you can mount to counter Bacevich’s and Salvio’s assertions.

Propaganda lies to the Authors as much as the Audience
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Crashing through the Everglades he stood there in the quagmire, detritus of our times.
Fuming I had to go around him forcing me to then enquire …
What of this hell does have you standing here … here in my fastest drive through door way?
Highways of detritus and doggy type food tins hither thither. No plastic bags though, an improvement now I suppose, but as I look over this trash, it says more about you there stuck in this stuff.
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And here is a winner, a Bi-Line Newspaper head line …

I am here to see if anyone is at least now aware of what we in particular; westernised, globalised, militarised, capitalistic conquerors of all, went along with in pursuit of this most gloriously fed wealth stream. Only for us, the wealth of nature and what other men, women and children have done to plan and work for their existence in the future, which after the plunder will exist no more?
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This is my virgin trial as I am a visitor as such, with no prior contamination from the hoards that are here. What it took in life times of other peoples to destroy, the westernised, plagiarised, militarised, criminalised torturers lot have done to these others in an instant almost, while singing with “purity of voice and message” the hypocrisy of which, one would have to be here to appreciate.
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And then back home they go to a civil society with a sense of morality and honour and propriety of respect toward one another. Do they realise they will need to become aware of how to prepare should depravity and loss of respect for their humanity occur, when conscience and a deep sense of the preciousness of life vanishes, if the enormity of their sinfulness strikes?
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Within a greed and debt ridden, moral-less mentality, how can the governors prepare a way out to encourage strength in an individual to continue to hold their countenance for a love of the land and all the creatures one and all that inhabit it?
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In the rising levels of chaos, is a blind faith enough to know how to be a true expression of the life force that creates all?
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Only the hubris of the exceptional and/or elect seems to make them think so!

Religious reaction
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Alastair Crooke’s article is very interesting in as much as it seems to reflect amongst others, on a growing panic in the Jewish Tribe.
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Has it, at its base, a possible late flowering religious reaction to failed Humanism, which the Christian West has been going through now for the last three hundred odd years, coming to a peek in the 19th century, with the resultant cultural wreckage spreading until the present?
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Surprisingly to this observer, uninformed of development in Jewish religion and culture, is it possible that similar to the scream of Luther and Calvinism, the latter connected with Humanism in Bourgeoisie culture, is being heard here too?
The author quoted by Crooke seems well into fear and panic, that the darkness of the Luther prescription, blind faith, and the fanatical fear of sinfulness resulting in the search for the elect status of an individual is returning to Jewish culture. Albeit in the Jewish case, all of the tribe having to qualify, not just the individual – and the fracturing effect that will have.
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(“But what we can observe frightening Caspit so in his Ma’ariv pleading, is his fear that Israel may be transiting now, from liberal Zionism (of the early Kibbutzim stalwarts) back towards Yahweyism.”)
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If this is anywhere near the mark, one could see some of the underlying driving forces.
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Since the end of World War II, one could almost entertain the thought that the new Israel took roots in the U.S.A. with Palestine, being only a colony of that parent.
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The problem with setting up camp in the U.S., is that any ethnic group is subjected to the overwhelming cultural religion of “America” itself, underpinned by the secular humanist values of ego, will and reason. – A most individualistic inducing way where blind faith and fanatical literalism has long ago killed off the church base of Western religion in the Eurocentric world.
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The U.S. as the Eurocentric white world’s great hope to save Christian culture has comprehensively failed to accept that sacred vocation, irrespective of how much it tells itself that it is the exceptional nation, based on the pilgrim city on the hill. – A reference to the temple on temple mount in Jerusalem and almost a subconscious understanding now of the U.S’s. new Israel role?
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Tangentially, this is an irony when looking at the fanatical literal Calvinists in the American Christian Zionist political right doing everything they can to try and set up the Palestine colony, but in the process sowing havoc within the new Israel and doing its bit in starting to tear the U.S. apart from the inside. How can rapture happen if that comes to pass?
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The much touted demise of Islam through the overwhelming strength of U.S. led Western humanist culture where greed, comfort and plenty will ride triumphant was comprehensively answered in the negative by the catastrophe of September 11, 2001. The metaphorical/metaphysical significance of that event in both religious and cultural terms is overwhelming and still reverberating throughout the Eurocentric white world.
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And so…
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How can the Jewish Tribe continue to remain “pure” in this sort of battle between the individual versus the tribe when to some, Yahweh’s Law is being gradually diminished?
Does it mean that being Jewish in the 21st century has become ethnic cultural, and not exclusively ethnic religious – Similar perhaps to the tremendous pressures that are tearing the Western Christian religious culture to pieces?
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Probably completely off the mark but it does trigger thoughtfulness.
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Further surveying of the U.S. landscape will now be needed for signs of any other “indications” hinting of these wild thoughts.
Follow the link and see what you make of Alistair Crooke’s ideas.

Is Religion relevant in the West today?
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Within the wreckage of Western culture in which we live and the death throes of church religion as a means of carrying the wisdom needed to help chart a new course, one needs to develop a philosophy of life, coupled with listening to conscience to inform one’s own praxis. (A religion of one’s own).
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Whom one chooses as hero/heroes to use as an example to gain some insight is very important in getting in touch with the hero pattern living within the unconscious self. The world’s wisdom traditions have suggested some human ideals that can be helpful in thinking about what is both helpful and healthy.
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There are myriad numbers of people trying to sell you some idea or other, usually to benefit themselves in some way. Hence the need to address this critical aspect of living the life journey from womb to tomb; if one does not want to be a sheep, eventually being led to the abattoirs once usefulness has been sucked dry.
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You might find Janine Hartley’s following thoughts along those lines quite interesting.
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What is my religion? – Janine Hartley
Is religion a belief in a controlling power in the form of a god or gods? Is it a particular system of faith and worship? Is it cultural systems of designated behaviours and practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organisations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements? Or is it simply the word we use to describe our search for purpose and hope?
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Given the above then what is my religion? It isn’t defined by an institution, though I will take bits of the fruit that speak to me at a point in my journey. I am freer to follow my journey and explore spirituality outside of institutions and away from people who claim to have found the answer to Everything. To what extent are my morals and choices informed by an innate desire to hope the best for the tribe, so I prosper, and how much is informed by cultural ‘norms’ in order to belong?
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Are there as many pathways to God/Goddess/Spirit/Universal Consciousness as there are people? Does our hearts desire meet us where we are at on the journey in a form that we can accept? It is the responsibility of each to find a path that leads us on a journey to know ourselves, protect Mother Earth who sustains us, speak out for those who have no voice and hear the still small voice that continues to guide us on the journey. To where does the journey lead, is there a destination? Along the way we find that there are consequences to choices we make, and we also experience the consequences of choices others make for us, so we desire a world where justice, goodness and love are underpinning values and principles that inform and guide all humanities choices. We can change no-one but ourselves so we must forever seek to become better people. It’s all about me! The shadow side of this is that we have created a world where personal rights and goals have ignored the community, have disregarded consequences that are destroying our environment for our own personal right to money, fame and fortune. This too is religion, it has its institutions (corporations, education and economic systems), it worships power and greed, it has its prophets in the stock market and in politics. These prophets won’t tell you there is a cost to everything, they won’t tell you that the search for power will destroy your soul.
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What is my religion? Is it possible or necessary to define, place myself within a framework and therefore give people permission to claim they know what I believe? Is my religion defined by the path I am on? I trip on a stone on the path but pick myself up knowing that the life in me is biologically programmed for survival. Nature teaches us that there is a beginning and an end to everything, a continuous cycle of the seasons. Winter is a time of rest and reflection, but spring will arrive and the fire of new life will bring promise and hope, summer will bring new ideas and projects to fruition and autumn will be a time of harvest. That’s life and that is my religion.