What is Needed?
A psychedelic revolution, obviously. (More snorts, guffaws and cachinnations from the old-money Power Elite.) Yes, yes, I agree, a bottom up revolution today has little chance of even beginning, granted.1 Today's university students are too burdened with debt and fear, and LSD is not on their menu. And a middle-class revolt is even more unlikely. They too are over-burdened with debt and fear. And whatever distant outposts of revolutionary spirit that may exist amongst either group is rapidly dispersed into trivial issues. The Power Elite have seen to that. But hold on a minute. The title of this chapter is "Challenges".
I have been reading Giants: The Global Power Elite by Peter Phillips. An excellent review of the book by Robert J. Burrowes was recently published by the ICH website2 and merits a careful reading by both we commoners and members of the Elite. Here is a short excerpt from Burrowes' review:
So what are the implications of this state of affairs? Phillips responds unequivocally: ‘This concentration of protected wealth leads to a crisis of humanity, whereby poverty, war, starvation, mass alienation, media propaganda, and environmental devastation are reaching a species-level threat. We realize that humankind is in danger of possible extinction’.
He goes on to state that the Global Power Elite is probably the only entity ‘capable of correcting this condition without major civil unrest, war, and chaos’ and elaborates an important aim of his book: to raise awareness of the importance of systemic change and the redistribution of wealth among both the book’s general readers but also the elite, ‘in the hope that they can begin the process of saving humanity.’ The book’s postscript is ‘A Letter to the Global Power Elite’, co-signed by Phillips and 90 others, beseeching the elite to act accordingly.
‘It is no longer acceptable for you to believe that you can manage capitalism to grow its way out of the gross inequalities we all now face. The environment cannot accept more pollution and waste, and civil unrest is everywhere inevitable at some point. Humanity needs you to step up and insure that trickle-down becomes a river of resources that reaches every child, every family, and all human beings. We urge you to use your power and make the needed changes for humanity’s survival.’
I would wholeheartedly agree with Burroughs, however, when he doubts that such an appeal will have any measurable effect:
As I read Phillips’ insightful and candid account of elite behavior in this regard, I am reminded, yet again, that the global Power Elite is extraordinarily violent and utterly insane: content to kill people in vast numbers (whether through starvation or military violence) and destroy the biosphere for profit, with zero sense of humanity’s now limited future... For this reason I do not share his faith in moral appeals to the elite, as articulated in the letter in his postscript. It is fine to make the appeal but history offers no evidence to suggest that there will be any significant response. The death and destruction inflicted by elites is highly profitable, centuries-old and ongoing. It will take powerful, strategically-focused nonviolent campaigns (or societal collapse) to compel the necessary changes in elite behavior.
And I also have doubts that any group, or any campaign outside of the Elite itself will be allowed to materialize. If there is to be revolution, a revolution of awakening, it will necessarily have to sprout from insiders, maybe just a few as with the revolutionaries of the 60s, who then will convince—one by one, if necessary—his cohort of insiders to wake up and “find ways in which to detect the whole of reality in the one illusory part which our self-centered consciousness permits us to see.”
Insiders, Elites, remember my warning! You own the most, and therefore have the most to lose by continuing on your present course! You WILL lose EVERYTHING. Go ahead and ignore my warning, but don't pissandmoan when you can't find any cooks or butlers to wait on you in your far-north hideaway, or, for that matter, find any food. We commoners will all be long gone so your laments will fall on dead ears.
~~~~~~~~~~~
“Increased nature relatedness and decreased authoritarian political views after psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression”3 And there are quite a number of other recent studies using psychedelics to “treat” various psychological problems, or simply to study how psychedelic experience can allow and encourage a person to re-orient his priorities to find a more satisfying mode of living. Much of this research is being conducted in Europe, using the search engines will help to locate it.
Want to give it a try? Think it might show you the nature of your current course and possibilities for another? Get together with a couple of your trusted friends and offer to make a substantial donation to one of the research groups to undertake a study like this: whether members of the Global Power Elite can be brought to their senses and form a core group within, using their wealth and influence to awaken their fellows to what must be done, and soon.
But let us be clear about “treatment” of conditions. Psychedelics do not “treat” depression or any other listed psychological problem in the way that an antibiotic treats an infection—this should be evident from an understanding of this Theory of Psychedelic Experience. At most we can say that psychedelics “treat” a flat, repressed, hypoactive SN (Salience Network) , a chronic and self-reinforcing slide into the hell of seeing little “meaning or purpose in life,” experiencing little if any of that “nature-relatedness” that the above mentioned study motivated in patients or test subjects. All (or almost all normal) people know the importance and desirability of nature relatedness, and recognize the sorry state of current society that is libertarian-authoritarian oriented, but life in that kind of society essentially forces obedience to it, which then enforces false beliefs in the person despite drawbacks, that it is the most rational, perhaps only choice. Only with psychedelically-assisted SN amplification can such a person break the illusions. Depression in this sense is a person deeply knowing the unsatisfactory nature of his life and sensing that there is a better way to live, but finding day-to-day no escape. A psychedelic “treats” this condition only indirectly.
The psychedelic experience encourages the person to re-order priorities, to make changes in life he already knows are the “cure” to his condition, but by force of habit is incapable of making unassisted. The person “cures himself”. But only because the catalyst enables him to judge the relative importance of different pathways, and the necessity of following a better, more satisfying one.
Psychedelics actually break habits and patterns of thought. They actually cause individuals to inspect the structures of their lives and make judgments about them. — Terence McKenna
Similarly to being clear about what a psychedelic experience “treats,” we should not allow our psychedelic experience to convince us of the independent reality of the “spiritual” be it contemporary religion, shamanic events, alien beings, or whatever. All these manifestations, realizations, visions, or existences are figments of our own personal outlook, explicit and implicit, accessible and unconscious, perhaps even transpersonal, derived not from the drug but from past experience, learning and prejudice, much of it totally hidden from our everyday consciousness and some of it owing its existence to important but forgotten events from early life. As with the saying, The only Zen you will find on a mountaintop is the Zen you bring there: If a psychedelic experience should convince me suddenly of the existence of Jesus Christ whereas before I was a non-believer, we may not say that a psychedelic drug thus proves the existence of JC! If I should take a dose of LSD and at the peak of the experience I experience an earthquake (see chapter 2), this does not demonstrate the drug can cause earthquakes! This is not to deny the reality or actual existence of any such creed or person (or earthquakes for that matter)! It is only to insist once again that the psychedelic experience reveals nothing independent of the experiencer. The psychedelic experience merely provides a pathway, through the radical increase in salience detection, to our own interior being and our best judgment.
Salience Amplification and Habit Routine Suspension. Try it, you'll like it. Then tell your friends. Organize and finance a research project in... perhaps Switzerland or the U.K.. Keep it all very quiet at first, let the awakening spread from person to person as an insider's secret. But hasten, we've no time to waste. I tempted you with the thought: The most to gain? Obviously.
Targets
Considering that WAR is the #1 guilty party in climate degradation,
The money misspent on the Iraq War—a war for oil let's not forget— could have purchased the planetary conversion to renewable energy... The Pentagon uses more petroleum per day than the aggregate consumption of 175 countries (out of 210 in the world), and generates more than 70 percent of this nation's total greenhouse gas emissions, based on rankings in the CIA World Factbook.4
And considering that the #1 perpetrator of war on the planet is the USA, we may quite logically conclude that to avoid total climate meltdown and probable extinction of most life forms, the ability of the USA to continue its Masters of War strategy must be rapidly and radically reduced, i.e., eliminated. Warfare must be our first target, for all other measures to ensure continued survival, even taken together, if warfare continues, will not meet with overall success.5
And considering that those who now wield power in the USA have not the least intention of reducing war at all, much less radically and rapidly, it is therefore imperative that a newly invigorated, well-financed, anti-war movement be a primary project for all biophiles, those who love life. So where is the anti-war, peace movement today? Submerged in protests for a dozen comparatively unimportant issues, I fear.6
Environmentalism, many philanthropic initiatives, which include general conservation, preserving/restoring ocean health, transportation electrification and fighting climate change, planting trees, saving rain forests, protecting animals, cleaning up the oceans, reducing coal use and CO2 emissions, wind farms, solar electric, electric cars,
NONE OF THESE, EVEN TAKEN TOGETHER, WILL ACHIEVE THE NECESSARY GOAL UNLESS THE NUMBER ONE THREAT IS FIRST STOPPED: WAR.
You may say, "Oh, but I feel that it's important to promote recycling, veganism etc. etc., surely that will help." OK, granted, but only like bailing out a sinking Titanic with a thimble. The Global Power Elite and their Masters of War at the Pentagon are not content with the devastation so far produced in this new century. They have bigger plans: Bipartisan panel: US must prepare for “horrendous,” “devastating” war with Russia and China7 The article concludes,
The American ruling class is entirely committed to a course of action that threatens the obliteration of not only much of the world’s people, but of the American population itself... This is not the madness of individuals, but the insanity of a social class that represents an outlived and bankrupt social order, capitalism, and an equally outlived political framework, the nation-state system. And it can only be opposed by another social force: the world working class, whose social interests are international and progressive, and whose very existence depends on opposing the megalomaniacal war aims of American capitalism.
Yet again, the appeal for a bottom-up revolution that is impossible.
If there is to be a planet-saving revolution,
it will have to be an inside job this time.
The odds of this are only marginally better than zero, but as far as I can see, there is no other possibility other than the spaceship-full of extra-terrestrials mentioned previously.
Make War on War
OK, but how to do it? A frontal attack on the Pentagon, even by all the New Money Power Elite, is not worth planning. We all know that only Arab hijackers can defeat the Pentagon's air defense system. The Pentagon does have one weakness, however, and it was well-exploited during the Vietnam War. Soldiers turned on their commanders, caused significant SNAFUs in their equipment and organization, and when they got home became anti-war campaigners who convinced many to burn draft cards, move to Canada, or as I did, to Mexico. A shortage of willing and reliable soldiers did have a significant impact on winding down the war, and might again. A problem now, however, is that soldiers actually volunteer to participate in war madness. They do this in most cases since they are unemployed, probably still living at home, with no realistic hope of a future livelihood or profession, family,... and the military makes big promises to them. Once they are inducted, indoctrinated, and sent out to murder in foreign lands, they are beyond reach. They fear losing even the slender rewards the military has promised them, even though they can see that the most important thing they will likely receive is a case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Causing a shortage of soldiers must start with preventing youngsters from enlisting. This might be accomplished, but it could be very expensive, and here is where the New Money Elite's main asset could be decisive. As many war veterans as possible should be hired outright to contact those youngsters about to enlist, and these youngsters too could be hired to form a sort of army of peace numerous enough to haunt the nation's enlistment centers, letting prospective recruits know the truth about the abominations they are about to take part in.
You have the cash. You could hire an army of... at least many thousands.
You own the means of spreading (true) propaganda that can convince youngsters to just say no to murder, and to let the world know what you are doing and why.
Inspiration for resistance: the Catonsville Nine8
If there are enough of you, the Pentagon's resulting counterattack will not work. They will have to offer compromise. But their offer should not be accepted, for it will be like a three-pack-a-day smoker's promise that he will “cut down”. If there are enough of you and your names are simply too big and important to ridicule, the fate of the the Catonsville Nine will not be yours. You will, quite to the contrary, be in a position to indict the Masters of War and bring their ecocidal game to a halt.
So what if you need to spend most of your fortune? As must be obvious, you were soon to lose it in any case. But you may not lose everything, you may not lose the one home we all have. IF you are successful, however.
The second part of The Port Huron Statement remains a template for what needs to be done next: Under the heading “What is Needed?” are exceptionally well thought out and highly detailed recommendations on such issues as: Universal controlled disarmament; The task of world industrialization; America must abolish its political party stalemate; Institutions and practices which stifle dissent should be abolished, and the promotion of peaceful dissent should be actively promoted; Corporations must be made publicly responsible; It is not possible to believe that true democracy can exist where a minority utterly controls enormous wealth and power; The influence of corporate elites on foreign policy is neither reliable nor democratic; The allocation of resources must be based on social needs; How should public vs. private domain be determined?; How should technological advances be introduced into a society?
Many recommendations are given also concerning mental health institutions and prisons, education, agricultural policies, the civil rights struggle...
The United States’ principal goal should be creating a world where hunger, poverty, disease, ignorance, violence, and exploitation are replaced as central features by abundance, reason, love, and international cooperation. To many this will seem the product of juvenile hallucination: but we insist it is a more realistic goal than is a world of nuclear stalemate. Some will say this is a hope beyond all bounds: but it is far better to us to have positive vision than a “hard headed” resignation. Some will sympathize, but claim it is impossible: if so, then, we, not Fate, are the responsible ones, for we have the means at our disposal. We should not give up the attempt for fear of failure.
About the only thing that has changed significantly is that The Port Huron Statement's recommendations and goals are today much more than just the right thing to do: they are necessary for survival. The Global Power Elite that in the 1960s ridiculed the Statment's goals as “the product of juvenile hallucination” is today the same clique but with new faces, but there is a new development:
They too are threatened with the results of their own policies. Has there ever been a more spectacular case of fabulous castles built on...sand?
Rats on a ship destined to sink are said to divine the future, and abandon their habitat en masse in port. But I wonder if they stand around nervously as the ship prepares to sail, waiting to see who will make the first move before collectively rushing for the exits?
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
As I finish writing these lines for first publication, December 7, 2018, a significant wave of protest is arising in my home country, France, and has been powerful enough to cause the government to reverse course on a few of its recent abusive edicts. A new May 1968 is occurring in the streets of Paris, including the violence that always seems necessary to arouse the rich rulers from their torpor. How far will this protest go? Hard to say, but one negative point is that there is little or no mention of ending warfare—this is not an anti-war movement—it seems the protests, like so many before including most of our 1960s demonstrations, are merely asking the Power Elite for a few more crumbs from its table. A bottom-up revolution can do little else unless it goes to such extremes as did one other French protest that had the power of the Guillotine to back up its demands. And today's Power Elite has enough hired thugs to squelch that possibility, so far at least.
Available at Information Clearing House and mirrored at The Psychedelic Library .
Journal of Psychopharmacology Published January 17, 2018, Taylor Lyons and Robin L Carhart-Harris.
See Philip Giraldi, America Has No Peace Movement – Blame the ‘White Supremacists’
Mirrored at The Psychedelic Library
"Resistance Is the Supreme Act of Faith" mirrored at http://www.psychedelic-library.org/THS/Resistance.pdf
One might say, had all these crazies now running the show all been dosed way back, none of this would be happening.
fyi. Research at John Hopkins. Participants wanted
https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/?ss_source=sscampaigns&ss_campaign_id=624ef3701dda454c18a88147&ss_email_id=626c0352cf9d6703ca8eed14&ss_campaign_name=Johns+Hopkins+Psychedelic+Newsletter+Spring+2022&ss_campaign_sent_date=2022-04-29T15%3A36%3A39Z