John Michael Greer's voice has permeated my consciousness quite deeply for the last couple of years. I've been following his blog for as long, and in that time I have read four of his books and I'm about to start reading the latest "Apocalypse Not." As far as I can tell his influence on my life has brought great balance through advanced philosophical thinking tempered in a reality that's hard to find elsewhere. I first ran into JMG by stumbling across his blog due to my interest in Peak Oil. That journey started for me in 2007 when I found myself in a local Books A Million searching for a new book to read. I was in the "Social Events" section and James Howard Kunstler's "The Long Emergency's" spine caught my attention as it was no doubt designed to do.
I was just looking for a good read as related to current affairs in our world. At the time I was at the end of a five year journey through the conspiracy theory as pertains to the projection of society. That particular adventure landed me in the controlling propaganda of one Alex Jones. Mr. Jones uses a lot of truth to convince his listeners that the Illuminati, a group that supposedly traces their lineage all the way to the "Knights Templar," and then clear up to the eye of the All Seeing Eye on top of the pyramid featured on the United States Dollar and hidden beyond the 33 degree of Free Masonry. This group supposedly also has ties to the Zionist Jew's who seek to control the world completely via their ties with Satan's plan which will culminate in the Christian Apocalypse. All of this got started in earnest with the conspiracy of 9/11, which no doubt was a conspiracy, but more on the part of psychopathic Oligarchs who compose the 1% that the Occupy Wall Streeter's are so pissed at. Their group of cohorts is wrapped up almost entirely with the Bilderberger's which further delineates into the Council on Foreign Relations, Nato, the United Nation's, the World Bank, World Health Organization, and the IMF which all conspire to formulate the NewWorld Order that Bush Sr. was supposedly talking about. All of this conspiracy theory makes a lot of sense, especially if you are Christian. No doubt this particular superbly crafted conspiracy theory lends itself to the Christian mind quite nicely. After all, if you believe in Heaven, Hell, Satan, God, Jesus and Revelations than this is all a reality that gets it's roots from the foundation of your beliefs about reality. If you believe in all of the requirements of Christianity than believing in a cabal such as the Illuminati is really no stretch.
I got wrapped up in all of this because of a dream I had which was brought on by the viewing of "The Passion of the Christ." It was a brief dream in which I experienced what I felt to be the incarnation of pure evil. It scared the wits out of me and I found myself briefly descending into a concentrated study of Christian end times. I quickly became a "Revelation's Scholar," and found myself deep in the bowels of the conspiracy theory mentioned above. If nothing else it's extremely entertaining and meaningful where applied to the view of the world that expounds from Christian belief. This theorizing about Satan's own conspiracy provides a deep seated house for man's age old belief about good and evil. This great binary is actually a fiction; albeit a widely believed fiction. One I fell victim to. For me it provided a meaningful framework for how my life had turned out. As I have said, if you believe in Revelation's than believing in this conspiracy theory is no great leap. In fact it's written into the very narrative that the Bible provides. That same narrative springs from our evolutionary method of thinking that is so deeply implanted in our brains. That conspiracy theory is the final product of thousands of years of connecting the dots in a Christian world. In that world the conspiracy is indeed true, but that world is not true. That world is a black and white, good and evil, dualistic binary split. It is not the product of reality but the product of fantasy. It has nothing to do with reality beyond the religious imagination so ubiquitous in our world. However, that world was the world I was to begin climbing out of with the discovery of James Howard Kunstler's "The Long Emergency."
What I knew was that something was drastically wrong with the world I was living in. TLE provided me with a realistic out from the conspiracy world I was living in. However, Peak Oil, true as it is, still functions very well in that world of binary thinking. In this new picture Peak Oil became good and all of the populace who had no idea about it provided the evil. I had escaped from the religious overtones but not from binary thinking. This is where John Michael Greer enters in to provide the final exercise in thinking that would exercise me from that binary world. First, however, he provided me with a meaningful response to the draconian ramifications that Peak Oil created. The "Green Wizard Project," launched shortly after I became an avid follower of "The ArchdruidReport, John Michael Greer's weekly blog, provided the outline for that response. The basic message he was disseminating was that Peak Oil was true, and definitely had drastic consequences, but not necessarily apocalyptic ones. In his brilliance, he did not just come right out with the message that nobody in the Peak Oil movement wanted to hear; that message is that Peak Oil does not spell the end of humanity. It does not spell Mad Max, or complete anarchy in an epidemic ravaged world where only lone survivors in cabins in the woods can weather. His message was a slow message starting with "The Long Descent" and continuing on into his present message. The present message finally focuses our sites on his most controversial role as a leader within the Peak Oil movement, Magic.
Indeed, the irony of John Michael Greer is that he is the most logical and realistically down to Earth voice in the Peak Oil literature while at the same time filling a position of an Arch Druid in the Occult world of magical thinking. Surprisingly enough, with a blog titled "The Arch Druid Report," he still managed to dodge what should have otherwise been cause for nobody taking him seriously, and he did it in plain site. He could have titled his blog something completely unrelated to that kooky, fringe thinking world of Occult Magic, but he didn't. Again, this turns out to be a testament to his brilliance as a writer and social critic concerning matters of the near and distant future of mankind. For many years his position as an Occult leader was never addressed in his blog concerning the realities of Peak Oil. Now he is purposefully and adeptly transmitting the message which emanates from his position as an Arch Druid. Whether this was his ultimate goal can only be known by him as of now. Now, however, he has found himself in a position to address the issues of Magic in a world of thinkers who should have distanced themselves from him from the beginning due solely to the title of his blog.
His current project is explaining the relevance of Occult training in the tradition of magic to a world reeling in harsh realities brought on by it's own supposedly logical and scientific thinking. The worship of science over the last couple of hundred of years has brought us face to face with a potential apocalypse. The apocalypse created by our worship of cheap, abundant, and concentrated energy. A slow motion apocalypse that will no doubt equal a lot of suffering on the part of humanity. Greer does not argue that there won't be large scale austerity, but that there won't necessarily be a fast collapse of western industrial civilization. He paints a picture that features a "Long Descent" into an Ecotechnic future making it's grand appearance slowly in a couple hundred of years. This is not a dramatic portrait that we will see in our lifetimes and therefore not much fun. There is nothing sensational about a slow descent into the future which is a product of Greer's ternary thinking. What he is doing now, I believe, is attempting to coach humanity into a realistic option for addressing the realities brought on by the truth of Peak Oil. Yes, we have to address these issues, and no it doesn't necessarily mean that Satan is going to descend onto humanity via plague, starvation, and Illuminati, police state marshal law in an inevitable reduction of humanity by approximately 6 billion miserable deaths. So how are we to avoid that apocalyptic future so prevalent due to the issue of Peak Oil? That seems to be the lesson that John Michael Greer is teaching us now. I challenge anybody reading this to read the Archdruid Report and point out any lunacy therein. I understand that clearly a self titled Arch Druid of Druidism cannot possibly have any answers to be taken seriously. At least I understand how one might think that.
Is it possible that maybe your scientific view of reality has been usurped by the absence of imagination? The fact of the matter is that reality does not belong to Science alone. It belongs to the picture that emerges in the collective mind of humanity. Science does not understand that mind entirely, but it is a product of it. Followers of Science take on the same qualities as followers of Christianity. Both claim to know the truth crafted by the binary thinking so prevalent amongst both branches of reality. Both skew the truth through their chosen lens. That truth can only be viewed through either the scientific or religious lenses. Greer seeks to point out that there is indeed a third lens one can use. That lens includes the other two and synthesizes them into a new reality. A reality that just might be the best possible truth. Thesis, antithesis and synthesis. My understanding is that he is leading us down the middle path found between the dualistic extremes. What he is providing is a message that has been hidden in plain site. He is deciphering the language of reality for us. In so doing he is providing us with our own power. The power to influence the world in the best possible way. John Michael Greer is providing your evolutionary mind with an out. He's clearly outlining a worm hole that will take us into the future we will hopefully create. If it catches on, and enough of us believe in the power of human imagination harnessed by our collective will, than maybe we can craft an Ecotechnic future that will become reality. A true transcendence with enough room for hope. Without hope we are nothing worth caring about. Our future does not have to be a tragic one. That is the message and the hope that John Michael Greer is providing to those who will listen. The message, transmitted in his latest blog: "what you contemplate you imitate." I think we will do well to contemplate his message for obvious reasons. We should apply his message to Aristotle's own and at least entertain the thought. Only mankind has the ability to save him from himself. Wishful thinking devoid of any reality will not accomplish that rescue, but magical thinking? That is a divine irony in a divine-less world.
3 comments:
Here's a website which does a fairly good job at interpreting dream symbols. Even though what different signs means varies depending on their context this online dictionary still manages to be pretty accurate at decoding things I've seen on many of my own waking and sleeping dream journeys.
http://www.dreammoods.com/
I stumbled into Greer at the tail end of my own 5 yearish journey. I didn't come through 9/11 truther/conspiracy, I came through radical leftist/anarchist politics. At this point, politically speaking, Noam Chomsky is to my right. But I was also finding the whole activist framework to be a false promise, the whole thing seems to be built on the idea that if we all just think differently, then our actions will follow.
I was coming out of that on my own when I came upon Greer. One of the valuable take-aways from that experience was that a lot of the stuff Greer talks about as beginning magic practice, I have been doing for years - such as dissecting news disinformation for binaries.
I've also noticed that my writing has changed, On several occasions, I've written stuff that anticipates his weekly report that parallels what he talks about. For instance, last week, I posted this the night before his post on the death of the narrative of progress. What he calls the death of that narrative, I've been saying that things that were once unthinkable are going to become thinkable as the institutions that have seemed to be able to make sense of our reality stop being able to do so.
What is interesting is that I don't think I am anticipating him, he is anticipating me. However, it is not 'me' he is anticipating, he has little to no idea who I am. He is anticipating people like me, people who are likely to be reading his blog, like you, Hunter, me, and countless others who could no doubt give similar histories. He has gone to where the people are. I don't know much about magic aside from what Greer has been writing, but its quite a powerful dispel he is casting.
I've had that experience with JMG as well. I'll be reading a book, or come across something online during my studies of the world, and I'll write about it. Then JMG will mature it for me. It doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen enough to not be pure coincidence.
Of course now I'm actively studying Druidry so I'm sure that puts me even more in tune with where he's at and going. I've had that experience during my Druid studies that I have always been a Druid. I think I just needed somebody of his intellect to cut through all of my own programmed bull shit.
Post a Comment