Transiting to the Next Paradigm. How do we do it, Tom Paine?

By: Michael_T_Bucci

It seemed to me as far back (or as recently) as 2003 when DSL first arrived in this rural area of Northern New England and two years after blanket dragnet surveillance by NSA became clandestine state policy, that the prospect for the development of a "technological totalitarianism" in American society seemed assured. Even the most savvy and intelligent winced at my words when they didn't openly condescend. Today, it is here and I estimate 90%+ of the American population know about it and 90%+ care little about it. Acquiescence by the "great silent majority" enables it and gives sanction to our ever-expanding political suppression, oppression and to the myriad forms of unConstitutional governance that have emanate from the "war on terror". Wince at my words, but don't blame oppressors entirely; also include the people.

If the population inside of America cares little about personal privacy; cares little about the number of innocent deaths caused by its unbridled military unleashed throughout the world; cares little about how their economy is hijacked by big money, Wall Street and the military-industrial complex; supports assassination programs and Gitmo torture without a moral reflex; cares little about Constitutional and international law, then the world outside of America must know that people do care about one or more of these topics and they do live in this country. Their numbers come from disparate political backgrounds, income and education levels, careers and sets of ideals; but, alas, do not have sufficient power to enlighten the "mass mind", the collective consciousness shaped and formed by habit, custom, and by a powerful inculcating mechanism called media, which includes the internet. In a sense, these thinkers and writers are "the underground" movement of today and are, at the same time, over-ground by virtue of the extent and volume of information they produce and is disseminated.

Yet, how many in the general population venture out beyond the safety zones of mass media and niche politics to learn their opinions or read their essays and articles? How many newspapers and magazines print Letters to the editor that strike against the conventions? How many people don't read news at all or watch local TV stations only for sports, entertainment and the weather? How many can't find Ukraine on the map or even Beijing? How many of those able to survey the opinions of other nations toward their own through internet explorations prefer self-censorship instead? How many are walking billboards of their political party and believe the only thing to fear is the "other party" winning an election? Of those watchers of domestic network and cable news, how many are paralyzed from editorialized spins fashioned to cripple independent thinking by omitting analysis, research and objectivity while stigmatizing dissent? How many are purposely incited toward fear, anger and hate for the underhanded purposes of amassing political votes and subsidizing merchandising? At a time when the greatest amount of information is available to the greatest number of people, the people fail to expand beyond conventional narrowness; beyond blind acceptance of authority; remain mired in worn and discredited nationalistic myths; and promote least enlightened leaders to solve grave national and world problems of which they remain only marginally aware and informed, and too often remain unaware and misinformed. So it seems, no matter how many essays and articles are disseminated by astute and responsible minds regarding the state of the country, economy and world, in the common interest of building an "informed electorate" based in diverse viewpoints and "truth finding", the point of ever-diminishing returns has been reached. If the great masses of Americans are unreachable, are willfully and stubbornly uneducable, they are prisoners of what English poet William Blake called "the mind forged manacles". Their own!

In attempting to understand how new knowledge is conveyed, perceived, accepted or rejected within the collective society and culture, allow me to divert to basic metaphysical facts that every Big Brother social-engineer at Google, Facebook, NSA and CIA affirm and exploit. "Thought" is a real thing. When combined with other thoughts creates a mass that also is a real thing. Mass-thought is fashioned and strengthened by consensus and takes the projected mental form of what we call reality. This form is as real as smog over Los Angeles but remains invisible to the empirical self and to mental/rational cognition. It has been measured by science. This "reality creation" mechanism is at the heart of all collective human beliefs, knowledge and behavior, and one that architects of political and social movements utilize, albeit without necessarily understanding it. The overarching reality created en mass through consensus and volition is stronger than individual thought and will power. Propaganda creates realities in the mental realms that may or may not be true, but are from which later actions are based and justified. Once adopted by the greatest number, these realities are considered real and true by consensus. To alter created collective reality by an individual is nearly impossible. To expect one to be free of it while remaining in it is incongruent and false. Freedom of thought, therefore, requires degrees of solitude and isolation from mass influences. Once gained, such freedom can heighten insights and solutions which are to be carried back into the collective reality for judgment. To be absorbed by the mass-mind requires openness, something that propaganda defends against and ultimately attempts to abort. The stronger the resistance the nearer to collapse is the collective reality. Once injected and accepted, the nature and form of the collective realty alter. It is a natural cycle and an evolutionary one. Evolution revisits the past but from a graduated level - it is not a circular return to the past but a revisited past experienced from a higher plane on a spiral. If a strong defense prevents the entry of any new thought threatening its paradigm, matters are aborted or at least remain inchoate until such time they become accepted. Understand that the "mass mind" today is under unprecedented control by strong external forces that primarily operate to prevent its own demise and ensure its perpetuity. To repeat: The stronger the resistance the nearer to collapse is the collective reality. Meanwhile, "Reality Creation" through technics now pursued by military/intel agencies of government allied with corporate partners using the global digital network as a base and platform is a mere replica of this natural process and will not work.

Those who "know", know. It is a time for reorientation for most and retreat for some. It is a time to withdraw energy from concentrating on the sins of the old Paradigm and spend it discerning and cultivating the next Paradigm. The mass of people are followers, not leaders, but must be taught to discern truth from falsehood in order to advocate leaders of true merit and integrity. It is up to "knowers" to begin building for themselves the world they wish for themselves, for others, for their country and for the world by mentally building that world within and around themselves first, APART from the mass mind and its suffocating envelopment. Because, in time, that model (those models) you create for yourself could become one for others and become one for your world to emulate. It is such that the Next World, the new paradigm, begins WITHIN THE INDIVIDUAL first.

* * * *

Has anything changed in America? In the 1960's the "New Left" stood outside of the Democratic party and the "New Right" stood outside of the Republican party; both were shunned and given no seat at the table. In election years of that decade - 1960, 1964 and 1968 - "party candidates" won: JFK, LBJ and RN. The people rejected Barry Goldwater as an extremist and war-monger in 1964, and ignored the intense vocal and active appeals of the Left in 1968 by endorsing Richard M. Nixon. Selling politicians like soap was the theme of Joe McGuinness's groundbreaking best seller, The Selling of the President, exposing how Madison Avenue extensively shaped political campaigns and public perceptions during the 1968 election. Vietnam, "the television war", raged in Southeast Asia but few questioned it at home ("My country right or wrong" was the battle cry framing protestors as unAmericans). Norman Mailer - always a bane to conservatives - wrote Why Are We In Vietnam? How many today can answer that question? The Watergate break-in occurred shortly before RN won a second term and was reported only on the back pages of the Washington Post amidst scattered news trivia. News editors avoided covering controversial and minority opinions about issues prescribed and set in stone by national policy. They conformed then and conform today. RN's police state ran amok at home and the CIA's throughout the world. Today, we add a militarized police state, NSA, fusion centers, Homeland Security, et. al. Protestors were vilified in print, beaten with clubs by hard-hats and self-styled patriots, went to jail for acts of "civil disobedience" and "conscience". Rock, sex and drugs came of age. Americans transited from Rebel Without a Cause and Death of a Salesman in the 1950's to "reformers with a cause" and Silent Spring in the 1960's to OPEC oil shocks and Broadway reruns in the 1970s to finally resolving upsetting antagonisms over war, civil rights and the counter-culture through diversions into consumerism, materialism, career advancement, MBA's, American Express cards and personal "wealth management" in RR's 1980's. In the 90's Bill Clinton encouraged young people to adopt the "information super highway" and gifted Wall Street with repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. But the new Century, our own, has witnessed the terrifying ascendancy of twin evils: wonton aggressive military wars in the world and an economic system having become so predatory it is destroying nations, peoples and the environment of this planet. But without an act of God, the Space People or a sudden reminder by Karma (sowing and reaping), will the people of America remain unmoved, loyal and complacent? Or will it be the world-at-large that alters this Empire?

* * * *

Never one for omitting personal details of my life that might serve to clarify or illustrate, allow me a tangent. In 1969, age twenty-two and just out of college, I enjoyed my first humble job working in a bookstore at Harvard Square in Cambridge. It was a dynamic time with bright promise for my future and the future of our society and country despite a raging Vietnam War and civil rights struggles, which both seemed at the time resolvable. For a moment, standing with a stack of books in my arms to place on shelves, I was struck and overshadowed by premonitions. I saw forty years into the future. I learned three things within seconds: 1) my life would not be an easy one; 2) a great catastrophe would engulf America after the turn of the Century; 3) and was given a glimpse of my life and the underlying context of that period.

Two premonitions have been validated. (1) America underwent a national trauma and tragedy after the turn of the Century (World Trade Center, Patriot Act); and (2) I was struck with multiple sclerosis at age 36 and lost my beloved soul-mate and wife to cancer at age 51 making almost half my life "not an easy one". The context underlying the third premonition is most important but has yet to materialize: the emergence of a new national and global paradigm.

Which leads me to a question: If Thomas Paine was alive - a mature, intelligent and talented man - what would he do and say about the American "Crisis" of today? He was a Thetford, England descendent ignored and trivialized by his countrymen, and a man whose contempt for the evils of monarchy, wealth and religionists found no outlet until Ben Franklin found it for him - in The New World. Paine's avocation of building small model bridges materialized in grand form as he helped build the model for the Declaration and "bridged" the complacent people of the colonies to support the cause of independence. Jefferson is understood to have written the Declaration; that may be so, but Paine was the author. What would he do and say today? What would this nation's early pamphleteer and master motivator write? Who would he vilify and why? What would this early abolitionist say about the state of racism in America today? Or about the expanding division between rich and poor? Or about the control of government by special interests? How would he feel if asked to relive his colonial role again remembering he was left to the guillotine in France by his own fellow-founders; demonized by American newspapers and wealthy industrialists upon returning home; and called a devil by Puritan religionists and their righteous children of the Bible at the end of his life?

Would Thomas Paine say this?

"I am a citizen of the world and my religion is to do good. The well-being of the entire planet is my priority, and the universe next; not the nationalistic goals of any one state or country. This makes me a universalist. Today, it is nation against nation, brother against brother. Tomorrow, it will be global citizens knowing fidelity to the common good of all and will require a Declaration yet to be envisioned.

"I was not a politician. I believed in and taught the rights of man—not of any special set of men, but of universal man. My work was for the benefit of the common people—the oppressed. Their oppressors then and now do not want better conditions for them, and by one sophistry and another, they persuade them that proposed reforms in their behalf will reduce them to abject slavery and to the condition of paupers; and thus, these people are held to be their very own enemies.

"Good friends, go on and let the world know where you stand. Let your light shine. What if people are blind—ignorant—will neither see nor hear? Some there are who, seeing your light, will gladly be illuminated thereby, and you will be all the more happy that you have led some poor souls through the darkness to light and peace. And I would say to you that I have no use for a moral coward. I love to see men and women stand for what they are—nevertheless there are times and conditions when and wherein it would seem useless, and even unnecessary.

"When the world develops to a higher plane and utilizes its energies for the development of man, and not for money, then they will bring forth generations of children, women and men, who will dwell on earth unselfishly and in peace." (1)

* * * *

Mankind: Today and Tomorrow (2)

Mankind will make alterations to the world of a grand and sweeping degree.

No longer will money, power, status, possessions, competition, or materialism control the affairs of men. Material factors will, of course, be important since life will continue its focus on the physical plane.

But materialism will be seen as a false idol and shunned in favor of personal spiritual growth and awareness. Economic systems will see a revamping of their purpose – away from impersonal and seemingly blind management, to one where money, production and supply will serve the greatest good of the greatest number. Should any man starve today it is unnoticed, but not in the future-world.

Individualism has created diversities amongst nations and within societies; there is every reason that this shall continue. But no longer will one preference control or dominate another; each will be seen as a unique expression, but essential to the whole.

What purpose will competitiveness between men serve if each man must recognize that his good depends upon another’s good?

Why should man occupy his time in meaningless work which gives neither satisfaction to the worker, nor meaning to the user, nor purpose to the effort?

How will governments change? Can leaders of higher spiritual values be allowed to lead? Will the sheep return to their true shepherd?

* * * *

The fetus of the Next Paradigm was conceived
at the time when America and the world
begun their descent into the current period of darkness.

It is alive. It is from the spirits of the air. It is a gift.

It will not be aborted. It cannot be aborted.
It will be born.

* * * *

Notes:
(1) Thomas Paine remarks were inspired by books of William W. Aber.
(2) "Mankind: Today and Tomorrow" is from White Book: Cerithous. Michael T Bucci. Answers Publishing.

By Michael T Bucci

Contact: mbucci@michaelbucci.com

(c) 2014 Michael T Bucci. All Rights reserved.

(Note: responses to emails might be delayed or not met.)

Michael T Bucci is a retired public relations executive from New Jersey presently residing in New England. His essays have appeared at The Market Oracle (UK). He is the author of nine books on practical spirituality including White Book: Cerithous.

© 2014 Copyright Michael T Bucci - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

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