Rules for the shit storm
Don’t be surprised as chaos grows
by Mike Meyer
The shit’s getting pretty deep. Sorting through it all is not a pleasant job unless you are really into shit sorting. As happens in this type of thing when people start throwing shit at each other everything gets splattered.
This has now reached a point where it’s hard to know from which direction you may be hit. The only working strategy now is to eliminate or at least avoid all assumptions. That probably needs a little explanation.
Despite what you have heard there is no easy target of blame for this situation. If you’ve been thinking there is then you should stop that. At any point now a large turd will be launched at you and you will be outraged at its source. At this point I’m not using any labels but if you don’t realize this is happening seriously on what use to be called “the left” and that’s where you live, be warned.
There are a quite a number of people, and I’m one, who have been writing about the paradigmatic shift that our species is facing. This is a complex nonlinear problem and that is not something we have ever managed to handle successfully except on a very limited scale. We are now facing this on a planetary level.
Fundamental revolutionary change, another way of saying paradigmatic shift, has been studied seriously for fifty years and frantically for the last twenty. The last four years has ramped this work up to panic speed as the affects are rippling through human systems around us. This has triggered the collapse of capitalism, the violent resurrection of feudal nationalism, attacks on democracy, new racism, misogyny, general stupidity, etc., etc. But these problems don’t even have the courtesy of being complete failures. They just don’t do what they are expected to do anymore or they aimed strangely.
This is now why your assumptions about who’s side you are on and where the shit storms are coming from is descending into chaos. If you thought the insanity was caused by neoliberalism and international trade you’re both right and wrong. If you thought it was caused by right wing and white supremacist propaganda, you’re both right and wrong. If it’s all identity politic’s fault, same situation. Assumptions like these were made on the basis of the old paradigms that worked for the last three or four hundred years. They no longer apply.
Nothing is what it seems and people are stumbling into that realization. If you thought that the insanity was because of emotional manipulation of people frightened and angry about what is happening and the fact they can’t understand it anymore, congratulations, you’re more right than wrong but you’re not there yet.
When the old rules (another term for paradigms) breakdown people wake up and find themselves in bed with their enemies and suddenly find they agree on something. People who went to bed together in comfort wake up with a stranger who doesn’t speak the same language.
This causes things that were bad to get worse. Welcome to planet Earth in 2018. Our challenge is to take the pieces piled around us along with the people struggling to pull themselves our of the rubble and put everything back together with the best of the old and all the new concepts needed to make this work.
In America and Europe (EU) the last two years have been subjected to nonlinear chaos with sudden and random intensity. One note of solace, it’s not just us that fucked up. It’s happening to everyone on this planet with those farthest back in the process of change will be hitting a condensed and even more brutal version of this. Everyone will be faced with the disaster of mentally challenged opportunists who see an opportunity for their nastiest and ugliest desires attempting to gain control and, sometimes, succeeding. Trump is an example but otherwise just a symptom. They will make it worse and extend the suffering. We just didn’t prepare for this although some places, nations (smaller ones), cities, regions, will do better than others.
Where are we? Depends on where you are. The old USA is disappearing. But the newer metropolitan regions and the older cultural areas are rising to take its place. But what about the shit storm? And where are we going?
Hang on and throw out all of your assumptions. We need to reconsider everything and that is hard. We need to put fast thinking and emotions behind us. We need to define our words before we talk, If you try you will discover how much of what you think and do is based on your family, friends, preferred associates and the assumptions that you share. Throwing your assumptions out will open you up and maybe some others around you. But it will definitely piss off a bunch of others who will call you an asshole and traitor to the cause.
I don’t have the answers because this is a process that is sorting us out as a species. My own feeling is that we must establish some order first at the level of what is acceptable and what is not and that will be based on logic and the best of our scientific skills at defining the best rules for the new order (also a paradigm).
There are things that are already coming clear because of their logic and rationality. We do have a good tradition of knowing what is right and what is hateful and destructive to the planet and our fellow inhabitants. Carefully try putting trust in those things and see how it works. No assumptions. These must be proved case by case.
Maybe we are farther along than we think.
