"Societal Alzheimer's"

HE life's blood of society is its religious base, its moral compass, and the guardian of our liberties is our restraint and avoidance in committing evil acts, atrocities, needless violence and harm to the innocent, the poor and the unprotected, and our willingness and ability to exhibit and encourage kindness, give assistance where needed, and generously sacrifice for the good of all.

    For all this, there must be a primary focus of our collective attention as a nation and people upon the only guide that reveals how we must behave toward one another, and in relation to the Creator who mercifully and compassionately reveals, and patiently encourages our obedience -- His commandments, statutes, judgments and laws.

    Yet, just as we have built our modern world on an economic foundation of sand that is -- in the long run -- unsustainable and doomed to implode with self-destructive sudden impact, more devastating than another world colliding with our planet, our society now stands upon the brink of a deadly abyss and precipice, while the majority remain deaf, blind and blissfully unaware of the major impediment in our collective path.

    It has often been said that hose who are ignorant of the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes and, thanks to modern entertainment myths and distractions, we are worse than ignorant; we have become a society of know-it-all, arrogant ignoramuses whose sole contribution to the survival of our species may be our sudden demise and removal from existence, to make a place for true peace, tranquility, safety and real joyous prosperity on earth at last.

    None of which will come about solely from our own free will, independent dependency on thinking and believing we are "right" in our own eyes, views, opinions and judgments, no matter how wrong, misdirected, deceived and beguiled we actually are, have become, and are becoming all the more with every passing day.

    Some, despite the ever present realities, demand proof that these things are so, but no such proof would suffice to change the minds and hearts of those who are adamantly, rebelliously, stubbornly self-righteous and a law unto themselves.

    Yet, for those few still able to see and admit the evil of which we are all capable, unjust wars against those who have done and intended us no harm, and calling innocent victims of this violent mayhem "collateral damage," should wake us up and alert us to the guilt we all bear and share for "our" taxes and government support and responsibility in not crying aloud to decry this insane, unjust, tyrannical evil of which we are presently guilty.

    In a just world, such attitudes and actions would result in the attack and defeat of our own country and, despite disbelief this could or will ever happen to us, it has happened to every dominant world power before us (Babylon, the Medo-Persian Empire, Greece, and Rome), and it will surely also defeat and finally destroy the thoroughly corrupted "American Way" in the end.

    The disease known as Alzheimer's is similar to, and often mistaken for, age related senility.   Due to a pollution of the brain's synapses with the toxic metal aluminum -- which can bypass the brain's blood barrier directly through the sinuses, when inhaled from spray-on deodorants, for instance -- short-term memory is gradually destroyed, and finally long-term memory and the brain's protective and productive functions suffer loss, leading finally to death.

    Societal Alzheimer's, however, works in the reverse, beginning with the loss of long-term memory and expanding to exclude all but short-term memory.

    There are several causes responsible for this degradation, which leads inevitably to the breakdown of social order -- and the implosion and self-destruction of a nation from within -- and the industrial-entertainment-governmental complex, guided and controlled behind the scenes by the economic-religious/political-military-multinational/corporate network are largely responsible, while we each bear a personal guilt and responsibility for this monstrous development.

    It begins with the death of each passing generation, and the loss of the general wisdom (if such it truly was), or popular delusions of the age that is passing, with only the published or recorded remnants of largely economically-politically-religiously driven dogma left to remind us of only a portion of what once was.

    Often, even these resources are eventually lost, resulting in an almost total eventual amnesia of things past.   As a wise author of scripture sagely wrote:

    "9. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.   10. Is there anything of which we can say, 'Look!   This is something new'?   It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

    (Yes, including atomic weapons, as green glass in the Death Valley, Libyan deserts and the Euphrates valley, among others, along with ancient texts in India, describing nuclear warfare from flying machines called "Vimanas," starkly and shockingly reveal to us!)

    "11. There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow" (Ecclesiastes 1:9-11).

    Secondly, each succeeding generation can only absorb so much information from the past -- due largely to limited lifetimes and resources -- and must largely trust the efforts of specialists, who often have their own agendas or prejudices, and so many suppress, hide, obscure or distort the factual past through the distorted prism and lens of their often myopic, political/religious/secular and peculiar personal preferences.

    Next, our limited time to learn often suffers from competing educational/vocational/hobbyist interests, sports and other forms of entertainment, news, gossip and other conflicting (or worse, unitedly ubiquitous and pervasive) sources, each vying for our attention, along with a glut of commercial and quasi-informational, often propagandistic efforts to grab and hold your attention, by persons, institutions and businesses, often with a profit motive (these usually are selfishly directed, though made to appear altruistic, helpful and empathetic).

    Finally, the many competing charitable efforts, activities and fundraising efforts, that usually miss the mark -- many of which actually add or contribute to and prolong the evils they're intended to combat, or lend their assistance fighting and resisting -- that, along with personal family, community and political efforts absorb whatever remaining time and economic resources are left.

    As Max Planck sagely observed: "An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents; it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul.   What does happen is that its opponents generally die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning."

    Unhappily, degeneration, rather than advancement, is by far the more likely outcome of such societal Alzheimer's.

    For all this, as a society we still face the same escalating, worsening, destructive forces that have destroyed many in the past, and still threaten to destroy us all in the end, without an outside, superior, forceful but presently unseen hand to assist us, despite ourselves.

    Even so, such help will be rejected, resisted and fought to the death by the majority, who simply cannot and will not admit defeat or repent of their willfully carnal, corrupt and corruptible, devious and self-deceptive, deceived and misguided, miseducated and misled, misleading and misguided societal and individual responsibility, culpability and potential self-destructiveness and violent tendencies toward ourselves and others.

    Though we think of ourselves as mostly patriotic, our collective mania of "security" threatens to engulf us all in a heretofore unparalleled tyranny of ultra-despotic terror from within our own society, as our predations turn ever-more inward, with a burgeoning prison population and a growing freedomless inability to move, work, decide our best course of action, or place to live, and increasing oversight/intrusion into our formerly private lives, homes and jobs by our growing and proliferating militaristic governments.

    To quote orthopedic surgeon and electrical/magnetic pollution researcher Robert O. Becker: "Obviously, given the present technomilitary control of society in most parts of the world . . . sane efficiency will be immensely difficult to achieve....   Electromagnetic energy presents us with the same imperative as nuclear energy: Our survival depends on . . . break[ing] the military-industrial death-grip on our policy-making institutions" (The Body Electric, by Robert O. Becker and Gary Selden, 1985, p. 329).

    Like a societal cancer eating away at our vital institutions and organs of social order, the envious, bitter, suspicious, arrogant, domineering, deceitful and conniving among us are quickly and quietly assuming protected positions of dominance and autocratic control in our government, religious and educational institutions, and especially in our third-rail "temples" of alleged "law-enforcement" and so-called "justice."

    Our supposed "peers" are often all-too-willing to swear to the alleged "guilt" of even wholly innocent defendants, as jurors (I know about this personally, having recently suffered the loss of a year of my freedom and life as a result of a "guilty" verdict for an entirely fictitious "crime" that never happened) -- more concerned with getting back to their self-centered "bread and circuses" interests than with seeing real justice is done; even if that means overriding the errant judge/prosecution by nullifying bad laws with a "not guilty" verdict -- who fail or refuse to fulfill their real purpose as the last remaining balance-of-power protection against governmental and judicial tyranny.

    Societal Alzheimer's, like the actual disease and those individuals afflicted with it, isn't a pretty picture, and certainly is not the type of reflection we prefer to see in the mirror of public debate, but the real question is whether or not we can still recognize the actual condition of our society (and ourselves, individually, as a part of, and responsible for, it).

    Or are we already too far gone for honest, candid, insightful awareness, consideration and perception of the true nature of decay at work in ourselves and our society?   Many others, not so close to, or enamored by our self-imposed delusions, can see through us and our pretensions more clearly, and in future will more readily regret -- with a vengeance -- our destructive path.