Saturday 13 August 2016

Sanity in an insane world....

Sanity in an insane world

Back to blogging to keep my sanity in an increasingly insane world. Not that there much to add to my previous blogs or to the outline of the New Grammar of Living. I very well know that it is futile to ever think or wish that we can rewind or regress this so called progress of human civilisation in terms of wealth, technological progress, capitalist development, bigger, faster, better in everything, although this very trajectory has brought in its wake widening inequalities, huge swathes of poverty yet to be touched by this so called magic wand of progress, violence, wars, climate change, ecocalypses, et al.

The ever deepening contours of the global developments over the past year or so only buttresses all my earlier writings, blogs and my first diaries about 50 years ago. The absurd theatre and surreal events are only becoming more zanier each day and zombie like we lurch forward.

Couple of months ago I saw some alarmist videos on YouTube which jolted my already numbed mind into this outpouring. They listed out possible scenarios in response to Obama's called for preparedness for disasters. US has set up a crack military outfit which has now spread its tentacles into maybe 200 cities to face any chaos arising from any of the disaster scenarios. The disasters they are anticipating are: massive earthquake and tsunami in California, drought and excess rainfall resulting good shortages, race riots, and the most frightful one on the collapse of the dollar triggered of by another financial meltdown.

The most devastating time bomb ticking away is that of the derivatives market and exposure of major global banks. Recently it surfaced that Deutsche Bank is saddled with $ 75 trillion derivatives which about the same size as that of the global GDP! The total size of global derivatives is a mind boggling ten times global GDP ie around $ 800 trillion. Some estimates place it at $ 1.5 quadrillion!!! This  is extremely toxic and as big a risk as that of the nuclear stockpile and proliferation and rising chances of a terror attack with dirty bombs. We are verily on the precipice.

While all this is taking us close to edge, in one of the most astonishing elections in US, two extremely unpopular candidates - Trump and Clinton are pitted against each other. Ironically this comes at the end of one of the best presidencies US ever had. Also Obama has hit his highest approval ratings of his second term since April 2016.
In view of all the confusion and unpopularity of the current candidates, there is a growing feeling that Obama should carry on for an unprecedented third term which constitutionally not possible. There is a conspiracy theory gaining ground that the US govt could engineer some catastrophe which will generate popular demand for Obama to continue as president! This could be a better option than the present two prospects. Extremely sad the candidate by far the best Bernie Sanders had to bow down to the subterfuge and machinations of the Clinton Mafia.

Violence and terror are marching forward relentlessly with daily occurrences sickening and numbing our senses. No place is safe. Humans are turning psychotic. Kids are now subjected to so much of gore and mindless violence on tv. Islamic fundamentalism wreaking havoc across the globe. Alienated mentally sick loners in advanced countries indulging in mass killings with greater regularity. Hate crimes, police brutality, race attacks....spiralling out of control.

With the proliferation of technology, media, baleful influence of TV and Hollywood, rising incomes in emerging markets, demand for all the goodies, cars, energy intensive lifestyles, crazy urbanisation, concrete jungles...is soaring especially in China and India. Now that the cat is out of the bag it's very difficult to curb the demand for the toys of doom. The developed economies (incl China) are sermonising the emerging markets that they must curb carbon emissions after they have spewed forth overwhelming majority 70% of cumulative global historical emissions. The irony lies in the fact that the industries like auto, air conditioners...are depending upon emerging markets to market their deadly energy guzzling monsters. Yes it's indeed a catch 22 situation.

With major parts of the developed world mired in deep debt doldrums, ravaging climate change related concerns, escalating violence and wars the prognosis for the world appears grim. Humans are too deeply entrenched in conditioning in all  its myriad facets (see my earlier blog on conditioning dated 5th July 14) to ever be able to wrench themselves out of the faustian fatal attraction of the so called progress of civilisation. Truly we are lurching ahead like zombies....

Swami Sarvapriyanda

https://youtu.be/Fi-XTOIxSPo