Oh What A Lovely Domesday Machine

Image by Leslie Parke

“Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality,” trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” Arundhati Roy

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“Elders fall into the category of things that are made, not born. An infant becomes a child simply by aging, but a person cannot become an elder by simply becoming older. Old age alone cannot make the elder, for the qualities most needed involve something more than physical change. Becoming an elder is not a “natural occurrence;” there is something meta-physical involved, something philosophical and spiritual that is required…

In traditional societies the old people became the guardians of the mysteries and keepers of the higher laws of life. Having grown both older and wiser they knew best what needed to be preserved and remembered in order for human life to be noble and meaningful and in tune with nature. Those “old enough to know better” would become living depositories of wisdom for the next generation to draw upon; if not, everyone would suffer a loss of knowledge and greater disorientation in the world.”

- Michael Meade, “Fate and Destiny”

We are crying out for wisdom now. We have created a world where wisdom keepers are ignored or killed. We are determined to rush right off the cliff, and we won’t let anyone stop us. The Fates may however, have different plans. Our current pandemic is a surprise, but humans are working diligently to resume their former ways. They can’t wait to light up their cultural crack pipe again and carry on as if nothing happened.

It will take time for the new normal to sink in. An opportunity presents itself to reconsider our ways to plot a better way forward. I’m not sure we will be allowed to commit suicide so stupidly. There seem to be underlying intelligences in the fabric of existence that we don’t see. In our modern world we can’t see a lot of things. We…