05 18 09 In the end, we shall all be transformed into butterflies
Mon May 18 21:19:12 2009
LLAM: You were correct! The apocalypse began six years ago this month. One more person decided that the current mode of reality wasn't working and they decided that they wanted something different, something better.
ROY: Do you know who that person is?
LLAM: (smiling) Noooooooooo!
ROY: I got the sense that this wasn't a static event but that it's an ongoing process. You know, I first understood the idea of a "process" as opposed to a "thing" about 20 years ago.
LLAM: Well, there is no such thing as a "thing," everything is a process, but from a mortal viewpoint when a thing sticks around for a while, its nature as a process is obscured. When you see something every day for a year, or for ten years, you think of it as a thing.
ROY: That goes for people as well.
LLAM: (grinning) Umm, yes, you mortal folks are well-known for seeing each other as things! And even your own selves; did you not tell me that Aldous Huxley said one of the things by which people deceive themselves is when they believe that they are always the "same person?"
ROY: (laughing) Huxley said that a umber of times and in a number of ways, but he said it and he's correct. We're always and all of the time, "in process" as entities. But when you've been around for a few million years, this "processing" is more noticeable?
LLAM: Certainly. You had told me that as a child you had a powerful microscope and that you were fascinated by watching living microorganisms. I suppose you saw them die on occasion.
ROY: Yes I have. I used to watch paramecium and amoeba, euglena and other critters swimming around in drops of water. After a while the water on the microscope slide would evaporate and they would die, or at least become dormant. Even if I added water they eventually would die. Their transience struck me kind of hard.
LLAM: Someone of my......age is surrounded by transience, everything is, everything is in process. You mortals are impressed by the franatstically short duration of quantum particles; we witness this in all things.
ROY: What about yourself?
LLAM: This may come as a surprise, but the other devas and I are aware of being in a continual state of change.
ROY: Flux.
LLAM: I suppose. Good a word as any!
ROY: Are you aware of......qualities of change?
LLAM: That has a couple of answers.
ROY: Okay.
LLAM: Sometimes there is a lot of change in a short amount of time. That's not exactly a quality, but it should be kept in mind.
ROY: An explosion is a lot of change in a short amount of time.
LLAM: Exactly my point. But you're asking more about things like, "Is the current flux a cool flux?"
ROY: Huh? Cool flux?
LLAM: Yes, is it cool or is it umm, boring? Tedious, bad, uncool. You have a saying, "going from bad to worse." Lately some things seem to be going either from bad to very much worse or from bad to surprisingly much better.
ROY: I would elect the world economy as going from bad to very much worse.
LLAM: And I would agree with you. But the world economy is more of a byproduct of the current process, there is just too much information around to grasp what is going on. When a bank or a nation fails, it reinforces this like a feedback loop. And this is one of the reasons that more and more people are going to say "to hell with it!, government and civilization doesn't work."
ROY: This brings us to what Traehmlyn showed us. People will just walk away from civilization.
LLAM: That too is exactly my point. Let me ask you: has civilization worked? Do governments work?
ROY: (after a short pause) Civilization worked well enough to bring some of us to the point where we began to realize, this isn't working.
LLAM: You told me how you began thinking along these lines some seventeen years ago. Perhaps, for the benefit of our readers?
ROY: Sure. For many years I'd been studying the Christian Bible and the literature from the various cultures in those areas. Mind you, this cuts across a few millenia and dozens of cultures which came and went. At some point several thousand years ago some groups began to build cities along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia. They also built them along the Nile and Ganges, but we're concerned with the first two. The people in these cities developed a rudimentary idea which had already been around: writing. And they wrote down everything, not in books as we know them, but on wet clay tablets, marking them with a stylus. When the clay dried, you had a text. Of the myriad of texts which have come down to us, there are a number which tell what is called "The Epic of Gilgamesh." There are parts of this story which seem to parallel the Biblical story of "Noah's Flood," but that wasn't what I was seeing as I read through it. There is another section of this "Epic" which form a curious, if antagonistic parallel to another Biblical tale called "The Tower of Babel."
LLAM: You're saying it seems to tell the same story but from different viewpoints?
ROY: Only in certain gross features. In the "Tower" story, people gather on a plain named "Shinar" and begin to build a city, and in this city they start erecting a tall tower. Now the fact is, many of the ancient cities in this area did have such towers and they were used as astronomical observatories. But the folks who wrote the "Tower" story ascribed a kind of infernal pride to the city-dwellers, They said that the tower was being built to reach up into heaven.
LLAM: You mean, up to where the god of the Bible was supposed to live?
ROY: Yup. And this afrontery was met by said deity making each person speak a different language and thereby inhibiting the completion of the Tower.
LLAM: An odd tale, I must say.
ROY: It would be odd to a person who lived in a city. But the moral that seemed to leap out at me was, "It's wrong to live in a city. Humans were meant to live nomadic lives."
LLAM: What does the story in the clay tablets say?
ROY: It mentions nothing of a tower or a dispersal of the builders. As I said, there are gross features which struck me. Now with that moral I imagined in mind, the Gilgamesh story has an episode in which a man named Enkidu makes appearance. He's shown as a wildman, someone who lives with and communicates with animals. He is drawn into the city culture by a priestess who is intimate with him. After their liason, the animals want nothing to do with him, and he goes to live in the city, eventually becoming friends with the king, Gilgamesh. In other words, he becomes civilized.
LLAM: I am not wrong, then, in assuming that each story pokes at the way the others live. To the nomadic peoples who wrote the Tower story, city dwellers were proud and arrogant and were punished by the deity. In Gilgamesh, it sounds like the nomads were depicted as little more than wild animals. Are those the only parallels?
ROY: No. In the Tower version, the city dwellers are made to say, "Let us make a name for ourselves." In Gilgamesh, after Enkidu becomes civilized, he bewails the fact that no-one will remember him after he dies. He too wants to be immortal in the memories of those who live after him. And both are preludes to the story of a vast flood which destroys most of humanity.
LLAM: The Tower version sounds rather anonymous. I mean, there is no-one like Enkidu or Gilgamesh in that story, correct?
ROY: Correct. There is one other little factoid. In the Tower version, up until the time when the Tower was halted, everyone spoke the same language. Afterwards everyone spoke a different tongue. Now we know from other clay tablets that the people in these earliest cities came from all over the known world, as it was known then at any rate, and there is an impressive list of ethnicities in these texts. There is another tale in clay, "Enmerkar and the King of Aratta," in which just the opposite is told: everyone spoke different languages, but the god Enki got them all to magically speak the same tongue.
LLAM: But, what a strange punishment! As if no-one had ever used hand-signs, or could no longer learn another tongue! Or draw pictures in some fashion!
ROY: It was likely that there were several language families represented in the region. It is apparent that people from India and Egypt traded with these dwellers on the Tigris and Euphrates, and it is likely that there were traders from Central Asia, the Caucasus, parts of eastern Europe, possibly even China.
LLAM: I do not know much specific information, but I am aware that mortal humans began exploring the world after the last ice age. It seemed to be a very "in" thing to do: set out on a caravan or ship and see where they wound up. Now I have noticed something in these ancient stories and wondered if you had as well.
ROY: Hey, Llam, I often miss the obvious! (grins)
LLAM: (drilly) Do tell. What I see in the stories told on the clay tablets is that the visitors to these cities had learned at least the basics of the local languages, and that it likely the natives of the cities learned at least some of the languages of the visitors and merchants.
ROY: You're right! Hadn't thought of things that far! But it also asks a question, one for which we may not have an answer. Which group, what part of the city's society, provided the impetus to understand other languages? You might choose between the merchants, the spiritual or royal hierarchies or the military.
LLAM: As I have observed humanity, cities are dependent upon trade, so I would say the merchants would have spearheaded the notion.
ROY: And I would agree. Without mercantile trade, cities are nowhere. And this has a peculiar pertinance to our stated theme.
LLAM: Are you still thinking in terms of historical occurrences, or are you talking of the present day?
ROY: Well, I have another historical document in mind. The last book of the Christian Bible is called "The Apocalypse."
LLAM: That's the one where that god destroys the world.
ROY: Yes, it is. And there is one great city, called Babylon, which gets it worse than any other place. The writer was probably thinking of Rome. But the hapless citizens of this dying world are mourning the loss of this great mercantile city.
LLAM: Sounds surprisingly current. Are not economists saying how difficult it will be for the economies of the world to stabilize and recover? In that sense then, the apocalypse has already happened.
ROY: At the end of the Tower of Babel story, everyone left and went in different directions. Which is kind of what Traehmlyn said was going to happen.
LLAM: (grinning) Now I have a question for you about this! Are we really witnessing an economic apocalypse or are you yourself seeing one through the lens of this story?
ROY: Hmmm! At best you could say that I'm seeing some similarities between what is happening now and what I know of these Biblical stories. One thing which I wish to make clear is, I am NOT saying the "prophecies" in the Biblical Apocalypse are either true or are happening today. If you look into the history of Western society, at any date, any point, you could legitimately say that the Biblical apocalypse was occurring - but without the return of Jesus. Between wars and the black plague, roughly 13,000,000 people died in Western Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries CE. But what we are seeing is certainly apocalyptic: economies around the globe are tanking at an alarming rate. What is unique this time is the global nature of this, all over the world there are nations in deep economic trouble - and the information becomes immediate, thanks to the Internet and all. Every nation has taken an economic beating in some form.
LLAM: Some of your mortal economists talk of "failed nations" and "failed economies." Sounds pretty grim, even from my viewpoint. Does this mean that a "failed nation" can no longer function as a nation?
ROY: That is the end result if no action is taken to keep the structure of a country going. No police, no military, no medical care, no education. It's a system failure. Money literally disappears from a country because banks go out of business and must pay back what ever they owe to creditors. They do this before even thinking about people, ordinary people who have put their money into these banks.
LLAM: That is quite grim. Go on.
ROY: The current system is based upon what you might call capital worth. In American terms, a company which makes ten billion dollars' profit has at least that much capital worth. At the same time, much of this "profit" goes to paying back loans to other organizations which have helped the company get to where it is; and some of it is paid to organizations which have invested in the company.....this is a little different from a loan, in that an investing company can decide to pull out of the investment. Employees must be paid, taxes paid, supplies for whatever it is the company does must be paid for. So the real profit of such a company may be much much less than ten billion dollars. If they are late in loan repayment, they usually have to pay a default penalty, which is usually quite severe. Now, should this company have a couple of bad sales quarters, where they are suddenly not making a lot of profit, that's how it starts. Loans are paid late at penalty, then workers start getting fired or laid off, buildings sold, cutbacks made. And it's happening all over; it has not been this bad for many decades. Simply put, a company's capital worth can easily evaporate or become totally meaningless.
LLAM: To my mind then, would not this leave some kind of void? If your ten billion dollar company was supplying some kind of demand, simply because they went out of business - "tanked," as you say - that would still mean that there was a demand for that.....thing, whatever it was, that they produced. Is this so?
ROY: Yes, it is, and this is where economic pictures can change radically. Other groups, companies, try to fill that void. But this time the situation is different. If a company goes out of business, the nation where it makes its home has, in the past, had a decently stable economy and a new business could take up where the failed company had to leave the market. But that's just it. Too many nations are in deep financial trouble. No-one wants to lend money to others unless there are absolute guarantees of payback. Never mind penalty payments, never mind sale proceeds from the breakup of a company should it fail. The attitude is this, "You will get no money unless you already HAVE money with which to secure your loan."
LLAM: You have discussed barter as a means of trade and payment with some people. But what can be, could be bartered between individuals? Never mind companies, although I think it would be interesting to see a company based solely upon barter! (grins)
ROY: In certain areas, barter was a means of commercial business in America at the beginning. While the European settlers often just killed off my Native ancestors, not all of them were so barbaric. Some set up trade methods with the Native peoples of this country. You would often see a place in a town called a "trading post," where people would bring things to trade for other things. Hunters might bring in meat and animal hides and trade them for home goods, gold, whiskey or tobacco. A whiskey distiller might bring several barrels of his brew and trade them for meat and the like. What was fair about this was that both parties had to negotiate what each felt was "fair value" for the things involved, umm, whiskey, meat, gold.
LLAM: I do not think that can happen today.
ROY: Well, not in the traditional ways! (smiles) I can't go kill a few deer and take them to the local supermarket and trade them for stuff. We in the mortal world have all but eliminated barter because we manufacture so many of the things we need and want. If we want something, anything, chances are good that someone, somewhere, makes it.
LLAM: What I see in this that I find disturbing is that much of your food could be considered to be "manufactured." City dwellers do not keep animals for food - well, not in the West, at any rate - and few are in a position to grow enough of their own fruits and vegetables. Should food producers have economic setbacks of a major kind, food would rapidly become scarce. I am, of course, speaking of the Western cultures, but food is already scarce in much of the world. Thousands of people starve to death every day. These same starving people also are plagued by a lack of clean drinking water, lack of housing, medical care and education.
ROY: There is in your picture a serious imbalance, it could even be called an evil. Here I am living well, shall we say, while others aren't. Even in the Community there are people who don't have enough to eat and have serious medical problems which are not being attended. And they live in North America. I shudder to think of what is going on across the globe.
LLAM: Counter to this are the many fine people who give in some manner to help those in need. This is one of the shining examples of human merit. I think it belies the claims of anyone who goes around thinking or saying that humans are basically evil.
ROY: Mmmm....yes. Unfortunately, many give to those who do NOT need.
LLAM: What do you mean, "do not need?"
ROY: Name one religion, one spiritual group to which you would want me to give money?
LLAM: Absolutely none whatsoever! The principle of "giving" as we have established it since we came on line is a viable one. If someone does something good for you, you in turn do something good for another person. In that manner the giving is spread abroad. While there are, of course, some things for which you ought pay, "payback" limits generosity and transforms it into a debt. I can say with delight that our policy of not charging anything for anyone for anything the Community offers is a good one. We are not processing large amounts of money or goods.
ROY: I think the fact that spiritual groups are forced to become "businesses" is in itself a serious drawback.
LLAM: A church might own it's church building; a home for the spiritual leader; a means of transport, usually a car for that person; an income for them as well. When we had approached you with this idea of "doing it all for free," it was that you, as the mortal representative of the ethereal world, would not be encumbered with such cares.
ROY: You told me from the beginning that anything we might need in the way of material things would fall from the sky. This has happened exactly as you declared, even down to the computer with which I'm writing this.
LLAM: As we assessed who you all were in those very first hours after our meeting, it became apparent that we might create what is in a practical sense, an anachronism. From an eternal viewpoint, there is so much that modern humanity could do without! I would include automobiles, governments, laws - you didn't have these things ten thousand years ago! But I'm not a dummy, I know that your whole world is built on these things and that they are not going to go away. You cannot dispose of any of them. By introducing this modestly different model upon which Outlands is based, we have an alternative way of doing things which is operating along with the current methods of buying and selling.
ROY: I don't want to get into what you guys knew or did not know, three or four years ago, but I'm just remarking, it seems pretty prescient that we've established "our way" before the destruction of the world's economies began in earnest.
LLAM: Although you are hardly an economist, I would ask your opinion on the subject. In what condition do you see the global economy?
ROY: Money has either been seriously injured or outright destroyed and there will be no easy fix. In economic terms, this is a post-apocalyptic era.
LLAM: Everything evolves, so there are new economic models in the offing. But this would, no doubt, involve a whole new kind of legal system.
ROY: (thoughtful pause) I'm listening.
LLAM: I would begin by asking, why are there laws? What laws are necessary? Are there evil laws? I am asking your opinion; I have my own.
ROY: Classically speaking laws are consensual agreements within a society by which its citizens can seek and get redress for wrongdoings of individuals. If someone bops me on the head, I should be able to go to the police and ask them to do something about it. Or if someone steals something that I think is mine, same thing. These laws have been around for thousands of years. Most nations adopt them. In so-called free or liberal nations, these laws are agreed upon at the formation, or during the evolution of, the country. In so-called despotic countries, the laws are imposed on the people with little concern for their desires or needs. In our current world these laws are written out in at least one central constitutional document.
LLAM: Perhaps it is to my advantage, being an ethereal person, that I see things in this way, but it seems that many nations have laws which are unneccesary or downright evil. I have never understood laws which discriminate one group of humans from another. How to put this......to me, you are all too much alike to be harping about your differences! (smiles)
ROY: (laughs) This is you, making your second question into a statement. Yes, there are many unneccesary laws and there are - going into your third question - evil laws.
LLAM: What laws would be essential? I'm asking you, as steward of the Community.
ROY: Oh, chee, tanks, Llam! (grins) There should be laws for when one person physically or emotionally harms others. There should be laws about theft. And really? That's my 'umble opinion. If someone willfully murders - remove them from society. If someone steals - well, the ancient model works well - pay back anywhere from four to ten times the value of the stolen goods. (pauses) Look, Llam, in thinking about this, you're asking me guided questions. They're going somewhere, you have something in mind. What is it?
LLAM: (laughing) My, you look smug!
ROY: (laughing also) Oh, yes I do!
LLAM: (still giggling) Because they discriminate between human beings, the current laws which guarantee the current legal and economic system have also guaranteed an apocalyptic scenario. When one group is outcast or becomes a scapegoat, that group will seek vengeance, psychically and in real physical terms. There is one very large group that has been created by the psychotic manipulations of multinational corporations and the compliance of those nations in which they operate. These nations are becoming increasingly fascistic. This vast group of you mortal humans, numbering into the billions, are the poor people of this planet. Those who have no food, no water, no shelter, no medical care or education. and above all, no FREEDOM.
ROY: (staring at Llam)
LLAM: I see that I have succeeded in doing what few people have. You're silent! But, you knew these things.
ROY: ......uh, yeah. I've never said it, or thought it through though.
LLAM: Watch in the days ahead. Multinationals and nations failing.
ROY: I think everyone kinda senses that. But I don't think that that is such a bad thing. I think it goes along with something I have been wondering aloud for almost three decades. I've often thought that it would not take much for the United States to become a number of smaller regional nations. It happened when the Soviet Union broke up twenty years ago.
LLAM: It is mostly a matter of when, not if, countries implode and re-organize as many much-smaller nations. There are what - roughly 200 sovreign countries? They could easily become a thousand. And then.....
ROY: ......and then, WHAT?!
LLAM: I am not certain. Like Traehmlyn I can see things, but that does not mean I understand them. Or that they will be so. But I have a couple of ideas. Mortal scientists are filled with wonder when they observe ants and bees, how their colonies are seemingly mindless but act in a "mindful" way. Or how the human body is actually in symbiosis with a great deal of "benevolent" bacteria. Imagine if an ant colony was aware of its "self." Imagine being in communication with the bacteria in your body, or with the cells that make up your body. There is a shift in human awareness coming, but I really do not know what it is. It is NOT catastrophic. Anything but.
ROY: You're not describing an apocalypse. You're describing a metamorphosis. Like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. WHOA!
LLAM: What, "WHOA!?"
ROY: Twenty two years ago, Stro told me, "In the end, we shall all be transformed into butterflies." I asked him what he meant and he just smiled.
LLAM: I dare say, we are both wearing the same smile!
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