The Failed Nature of the Idea of “Mechanical Causality”.

The Failed Nature of the Idea of “Mechanical Causality”.

Around the time of the failing Vietnam War, especially among those whose job was to spin the Narrative in a profitable direction, … they often thought that the international dangers (threats to American commercial interests) in Asia could be aptly named “the domino effect”. If Vietnam falls, the dread “communism” would overrun Asia, one domino falling against the next, and on and one and on.

In my view an honest assessment of what actually happened is that Capitalism won. Even dictators and drug lords have to deal with “money”, a main contributor to personal status and power. Money goes through banks. Even if you own the banks, governments and competitors have their fingers in the pie, each one wishing to taste their share.

This is the Capitalism described as follows: “Capitalism is the vain belief that the vilest of men, for the vilest of reasons, might accidentally benefit us all.”

The domino effect is an idea with the quality of “mechanical causality”. Social events running like some kind of program in a machine. In the Covid-Nightmare, we have a similar idea rooted in the illogical function “mechanical causality”. A tiny germ can invade your organism, and you …. opps, may, will, might, certainly, who the F knows, but at the least be scared stupid.

Most people in the world, even with this momentary spike in numbers, will die the usual ways: heart attacks, cancers, bad food, bad water, bad soil, bad air, impassable borders, and inadequate access to Walmart stores, or jobs at Amazon.

The new homeless … socially, in the sense of the insanity of government response, … being frightened to death justified dismantling the economic engine. The bottom turns out not to be the bottom. American cities yet don’t teem with millions living on bad water, and without other creature comforts normal to the middle class, like indoor plumbing, running water, and electricity. At the same time, the “lock-down” displaced workers (and their families), ruined permanently many small businesses, and … the new homeless. The dwellers in Nomadland. The Army of the unemployed.

What then would spiritual causality look like? What would the Covid-Nightmare look like if we could capture the “spirit” of it.

In shaman school the last lesson is the hardest. As much as you might like, you can’t fix the world. Fact is you can barely manage your corner of the collective sandbox. What purpose then the apparent madness?

Make a short mental list of what in your mind might be most missing. For example: truth, beauty, and goodness. Freedom, equality, fraternity. Or, what really are UFO’s and Crop Circles?

Imagine you are the star child, as pictured by Stanley Kubrick in the movie 2001. You are an empty seed, seeing the world from beyond the world. Everywhere life. Everywhere wonder.

Back on earth, in your own little corner, … torment? And joy? People and situations pulling at you. Demanding time. A house to clean. A diaper to change. Drugs to score.

There is grace there, which can be bestowed by you. Not grace in some abstract sense, but a participation in the moment. Can/dare we imagine someone in circumstances harsh, a drug dealer, for example? Still, there is a person there. Born, will die. Raised by wolves? Lost in a jungle full of vipers, and carrion eaters.

Modern scientific materialism (all is matter, there is no spirit) assumes that if we master the mechanical intricacies of the gray matter, the secrets of “consciousness” will be revealed. The mechanics of nerves and ganglia, which are biological, somehow secrete thought and perception. Mind, as an independent feature of the human creature, is/was supposedly completely engineered by a random and chance based “evolution”.

A main feature of the Covid-19 contagious plague is social – fear of death is heightened, in the extreme for some. Anyone you meet could infect you with a deadly disease.

News readers give us breathless warnings of the danger. Every day numbers going up up and away. Experts appear from the field of study called: epidemiology, … which is statistical analysis for purposes of predicting the further spread of an “infections” disease. Best guesses basically.

The Media asks the politicians why they haven’t fixed everything yet. Give me a minute to check with my experts, sings the pubic office holder. When the best guessers are asked, they must speak of the potential for this plague to be quite dire. Crucial to appear knowing, and make guesses as if the worst could happen.

Every institution, business, medical, governmental and media wants the same thing: find a way not to be blamed for the aftermath-mess. After all we warned folks, did we not?

The best that can be done, as far as materialistic medicine is concerned, is lock-down, social distancing, and masks. Followed by promises of vaccinations, and herd immunity to save us all from super-spreaders. Unless you are “essential”, which is going to be completely arbitrary, and just more best guesses.

A crucial factoid: I recently saw a major media news reader announce that the world had crossed a horrible threshold in numbers of deaths: three million. My heretic mind, checked some numbers, and found perspective (media never reflects).

In our Now, three million plague deaths out of seven billion population. In the epoch of the “Spanish flu”, there were 50 million deaths out of a population of 1.8 billion.

I suspect that in the future we will know that as this “plague” unfolded, a billion people lost their prior connection to the world-economy. The lock-down locked down the economic engine, of produce, distribute, and consume.

In the first world, folks got a time out … could not go to work. Could not leave the house. Delivery businesses did well. So did electronics, as folks turned to using live “video”, via the Internet, to maintain connections, and – in some cases – continue to work from “home”.

In the third world, a mother might still be walking ten miles everyday, with a tin can full of water balanced on her head, or back, or both.

The plague’s fears forced social changes, which social “new-rules” also resulted in psychological changes. Murders and suicides go up. Teachers point out that the lock-down is harmful to children. Jobs are lost as businesses fail.

Some people, having decades of good reasons, do not trust the government, the Media, and major corporations, all of whom routinely lie. In Media, major media like the evening News, flogs the official Narrative … without questioning any of the claims made by such wonderfully perfect institutions as the Center for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, and the Food and Drug Administration.

There then arises a kind of “counter-culture”, on social media, that dissects the official Narrative. Meanwhile, the world – socially – invents some new ways to be against itself, be creating such ideas is “anti-vaccers”, for folk who think giving a child 50 to 60 vaccinations shots by the time they are three for four, might not be healthy for the child, however profitable it is for the pharmaceutical Goliaths.

There is no stopping a “plague”, for as much as it affects our biological – life or death issues – the plague’s primary effect is upon our psycho-spiritual existence.

In effect, the whole world of human beings is going through a spiritual Rite, whether we know this consciously or not. The Rite is internal to the individual, and has some rather complex factors if we want to get into details.

We are born, we die. Life passes by one day at a time, a repeating cycle of night and day. Yet, for consciousness, there is only the Now.

No individual biography is like any other. We are generally born into a “family”, a culture, a religion, a language. Many of us will have had mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins … endless blood relatives. Yet, only we have the specific composition of temperaments, karma, – even in the family, we are a “center”, and individual node of consciousness.

All of us are survivors. Just being alive is proof enough of that if we reflect on the places/times/and folk we don’t want to remember, whose influence we yet “survived”. Each individual has their own personal trials to endure. Life in this sense is an alchemical crucible, in which are true nature is being forged. We are clay, sculpting ourselves, one aspect at a time.

To the Mystery, we are Their children. The school of hard knocks and shared pain is individualized as well. She, via Her arts we label “divine providence”, touches us all, while Her Son helps us navigate the arts of karma. This is always true.

We all are the right person, in the right place, at the right time.