The World of Unreality Created by Capitalists and Their Lackeys
	Kardashians
Etc., etc., etc.

    The term "civilization" can only accurately be applied to humans and human cultures, since it refers to a prototype or Form of human behavior. Civilization is an ideal to which persons and cultures aspire.

    Persons can be described as civilized to the degree that they fulfill the characteristics of:

• Engaging in humane civility
  
• Practicing moral self-discipline
  
• Appreciating beauty in all its manifestations
  
• Developing an autonomous self which is able to think and act on its own initiative
  
• Seeing through the current social myths and diversions
  
• Acting to improve the human condition
  
• Understanding the necessity of life-long self-improvement

  
  

"A man, or a society, is civilized if truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace are the dominant qualities, and if these five qualities are exhibited in all phases of experience." A. H. Johnson. Whitehead's Philosophy of Civilization

    A human culture can be described as civilized if it contains a significant number of civilized humans. As such, there have been very few civilized societies, but quite a number of civilized individuals. Historically, certain persons or groups have been called "civilized" to set them apart from barbarians, savages, and primitive peoples. Using the criteria we've set forth, we can say that only these groups have been civilized:

• Fifth-century (BCE) Athens (Socrates, Diotima, Plato, Aristotle, Xenephon)

• First through second century (CE) esoteric gnostic Christian groups (Jesus, Paul, Clement of Alexandria, Marcion, Valentinus, Origen)

• Third through fifth century (CE) Neo-Platonic groups (Ammonius Saccus, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Plutarch, Theon, Origen, Porphyry, Theodorus of Asine, Syrianus, Hypatia, Proclus, John Philoponus, Damascius, Olympiodorus of Thebes, Erennius, Simplicius, Boethius)

  

• Fourteenth through seventeenth century (CE) Renaissance groups (Ficino, Gemistus Pletho, Cosimo de' Medici, Pico Della Mirandola, Giordano Bruno, Paracelsus, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Thomas More, Nicholas Cusanus, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Erasmus)

• Eighteenth-century (CE) Enlightenment groups (Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, George Mason, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Sebastian Bach, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, George Frideric Handel, Ludwig van Beethoven)

• Twenty-first century (CE) conceptual and realized prototypes:
  • Cooperative Commonwealth Communities

  • Saving Remnant

  • Transformative Groups

  • Enlightening Groups

"We create a civilized world by giving precedence to rational persuasion over force." Plato

Civilization Has Been Repeatedly Destroyed by Tryanny

    When we say that capitalists have destroyed civilization we refer in general to perpetrators of the dog-eat-dog ideology from the beginning of the capitalist economic system--an owner, looting class and an oppressed worker class--from the dawn of human history. But in specific current terms we refer to the group that in the early decades of the twentieth century formed themselves into an international capitalist cabal through which they have seized control of the economic, political, and social systems of power in the United States and throughout the world. This criminal gang has systematically substituted its own ideology of greed and egomania for the ideals of civilized human behavior.

    The ideals of civilization were similarly destroyed in the Dark Ages (fifth through fifteenth centuries CE) of European history by the tyrannous ideology of Roman Catholicism. As in the current destruction of the ideals of civilization by capitalism, the Roman Catholic church substituted for the Form of human civilization its own demonic archetype:

• Humans as in essence depraved sinners

• Humans requiring a controlling religious hierarchy

• Human life as necessarily requiring unquestioning faith in Roman Catholic dogma

    Throughout the centuries, the Roman Catholic Church has destroyed the minds and lives of its "supplicants," and in 2013, with the election of the first Jesuit Pope, the devastation of human life will be increased and broadened.

      Since sub-human brains are mere combinations of infantile beliefs and emotional patterns, they can be easily programmed and controlled. The word "sub-human" has been used by various groups as a mindless term of rejection: the Nazis depicting other European peoples as sub-human; some cultures referring to women as sub-humans; Hindu society depicting untouchables as sub-human, and so on. I am using the term only in a descriptive manner, referring to certain people as sub-human who have lost the ability to think critically, who possess no desire to understand the truth, and who have no compassion for their fellow-humans. Since those and other qualities are essential in true humans, their absence from these people renders them sub-human.

". . . The philosophy of the day represents the conclusions of men, who . . . are still rudimentary in respect of the spiritual consciousness, and fall short, therefore, of their spiritual and true manhood--the manhood which belongs to the highest plane. Being to such extent not human but subhuman, and ignorant of the meaning and potentialities of man, they confound form with substance, and mistake the exterior and phenomenal part of man for man himself, and imagine accordingly that to gratify this part is necessarily to benefit the man, no matter how subversive of the real humanity the practices to which they have recourse. Out of this condition of spiritual darkness the Gnosis lifts man, and, giving him the supreme desideratum--which it is the object of all divine revelation to supply--a definition of himself, demonstrates to him, with scientific certainty, the supremacy of the moral law, and the impossibility either of getting good by doing evil, or of escaping the penalty of the latter. The attempt to get good by evil doing only puts him back, making his fate worse." Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, The Virgin of the World, 1884

Capitalists Are Sub-Humans

Capitalists are brilliantly depicted as Henry Potter in "It's A Wonderful Life" and the untransformed Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Capitalism is a murderous economic system. A recent example of insanity practiced by a billionaire capitalist is Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldmann Sachs, ranting against workers' right to retirement. Blankfein was exposed by Bernie Sanders    Sub-human capitalist spokesman Henry Kissinger is fomenting nuclear armageddon in 2013.     All capitalist-created exposés are merely brainwashing scams.

"The extremity of all evil in this life consists, according to the ancients, in not perceiving the present evil and how much human nature stands in need of amelioration; and this is a part of the two-fold ignorance which Plato execrates, which being ignorant that it is ignorant has no desire to emerge, but may be compared to a body all over indurated by disease, which, being no longer tormented with pain, is neither anxious to be cured." Mary A. Atwood, Hermetic Philosophy and Alchemy, 1860

    Among others, three truly abominable features of the current capitalist destruction of the ideals of civilization stand out:

1. Capitalists have so debased the minds of most Americans--and people worldwide--that they're unable to see the counterfeit reality, therefore have no awareness of the need for the restitution of the ideals of civilized human behavior, and have no capability for reform or rebuilding.

2. Degraded humans do not recognize past and current genius and brilliance, valuing degenerate persons, objects, and institutions.

       If you think that it's impossible for political-economic-religious leaders to so control the minds of common people that these persons value, recognize, even select degenerate individuals over outstanding, excellent individuals, you might want to consider this account.

   
   

Jesus                                        Pilate                                   Barabbas "It was the custom at the Jewish festival-time for the Roman governor Pilate to release any prisoner whom the people chose. And it happened that at this time the Romans had a notorious Jewish prisoner named Barabbas. So when the Jewish mob assembled to make the usual request, Pilate asked them, 'Which one do you want me to set free, Barabbas or Jesus called the Messiah?' For Pilate knew very well that Jesus had been handed over to him through sheer malice. . . But the Jewish chief priests and elders persuaded the mob to ask for Barabbas and demand Jesus' execution. Then the governor spoke to them, 'Which of these two are you asking me to release?' 'Barabbas!' they cried. "Then what am I to do with Jesus?' asked Pilate. "'Crucify him!' they all cried. At this Pilate said, 'Why, what is his crime?' But their voices rose to a roar, 'Crucify him!' When Pilate realised that nothing more could be done but that there would soon be a riot, he took a bowl of water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, 'I take no responsibility for the death of this man. You must see to that yourselves.' "To this the whole Jesish mob replied, 'Let his blood be on us and on our children!' Whereupon Pilate released Barabbas for them, but he had Jesus flogged and handed over for crucifixion."

3. Degraded humans are totally incapable of recognizing or valuing past or current outstanding persons, objects, concepts, or institutions. Sub-humans can only recognize or value what their capitalist rulers tell them are entities worth observing and appreciating. In this way, truly outstanding, transformative persons, objects, concepts, and institutions go unrecognized, unable to improve the present decaying, murderous pseudo-culture.

    The only hope there is, therefore, is for the few people worldwide who have retained the ability to understand what's really going on to create small groups and communities that will become the basis of a new commonwealth culture.

      Such attempts to destroy cultures and civilizations have occurred before, and the ultimate victory is always won by progressive and positive persons and forces. Sooner or later, humankind re-awakens to its spiritual heritage--preserved by Perennialist sages ³ during the twilight periods of cultural decline, such as we are now experiencing.

    Building on the immortal wisdom of savants such as those depicted above, a small group of knowledgeable persons is currently working to institute cooperative commonwealth communities. Their long-range strategy is to create successful small cooperative communities and gradually leaven the larger society, helping to raise the intellectual and spiritual level of people worldwide. As persons gain intellectual acuity, they can be included in cooperative communities which the cognoscenti create, spreading these new political-economic configurations over the entire world.

"The idea of an integrated economic system co-ordinating the efforts of all for the common welfare, which is the basis of the modern state, is as old as philosophy. As a theory it dates back to Plato at least, and nobody knows how much further, for it is a conception of the most natural and obvious order. Not, however, until popular government had been made possible by the diffusion of intelligence was the world ripe for the realization of such a form of society. Until that time the idea, like the soul waiting for a fit incarnation, must remain without social embodiment. Selfish rulers thought of the masses only as instruments for their own aggrandizement, and if they had interested themselves in a more exact organization of industry it would only have been with a view of making that organization the means of a more complete tyranny. Not till the masses themselves became competent to rule was a serious agitation possible or desirable for an economic organization on a co-operative basis." Edward Bellamy, Equality

Notes:

¹ The deranged, insane world of capitalism is only one of two worlds; the other is a new world inhabited by supra-humans.

² Berman is able to see that America has entered a Dark Age, but admits he has no solution to the problem it presents. Chris Hedges, in his book Empire of Illusion, perpetuates his ongoing self-advertising by trivializing our cultural demise with popular descriptions of "world wrestling," and pornography. In her book Dark Age Ahead it's clear that Jane Jacobs isn't intelligent enough to see that America has already entered our Dark Age. She feels she can merely describe how dark ages occur, thus assisting Americans to avoid a slightly possible Dark Age ahead.

³ See the author's book The Perennial Tradition

Updates:

• 1/19/2013: Institutionalization of Tyranny