Reversing the Reset

stuck in the muddle with you!

With the consequences of the Great Reset becoming evident, even though those affected don’t want to see it, what's the most helpful thing we can do? I give the perspective of A Course in Miracles, having just finished the 670 pp manual once again. It advises that we have only one job and that’s forgiveness. I give an example of a heartfelt story of

… how life often unexpectedly forces us all to revisit why we are here in ways far deeper than we’d been willing to explore before. What an incarnational experience this is! I’d like to say especially now (and i still think this is so—we are all meant to be here now and I think we chose to be, to help co-create and welcome in the new in a time of collapse) but I think human life has always been a rich learning experience. It’s such a gift to be here. I say this as a reminder to myself! But I know it is true.

The outcome of learning to suspend judgment, according to the Course, is

… a world in which there is no fear, and everything is lit with hope and sparkles with a gentle friendliness. Nothing but calls to you in soft appeal to be your friend, and let it join with you. And never does a call remain unheard, misunderstood, nor left unanswered … The soft eternal calling of each part of God’s creation to the whole is heard throughout the world this second lesson brings. [647]

How do we bring about a world that’s ‘lit with hope and sparkles with a gentle friendliness’? My feeling is that we need to go small with self-governing micro-communities. I look at The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow for an anthropology of anarchy, and find that rule without rulers has been the norm and not the exception for millenia.

For the last 5,000 years of human history … our conventional vision of world history is a chequerboard of cities, empires and kingdoms; but in fact, for most of this period these were exceptional islands of political heirarchy, surrounded by much larger territories whose inhabitants, if visible at all to historians’ eyes, are variously described as ‘tribal confederacies’, ‘amphictyonies’ or (if you’re an anthropologist) ‘segmentary societies’—that is, people who systematically avoided fixed, overarching systems of authority. [382]

Graeber and Wengrow write about the Olmec, who are considered the first great Mesoamerican civilization or ‘mother culture’ that emerged around 1500 BCE. They featured royal residences, pyramid-temples, ball-courts and gigantic basalt-carved busts of sports champion-kings. In a society that grew out of the Olmec, a 752 AD Yaxchilan staircase depicts the Mayan king Bird Jaguar the Great striking a huge rubber ball containing the bound and broken Jewelled Skull, a noble from a rival city. Yet for all of their violent pageantry and ‘politics as sport,’

… there is little evidence that the Olmed themselves ever created an infrastructure for dominating a large population. So far as anyone knows, their rulers did not command a stable military or administrative apparatus that might have allowed them to extend their power throughout a wider hinterland. … they are probably best defined as seasonal versions of … ‘theatre states’, where organized power was realized only periodically, in grand but fleeting spectacles. [386]

Without the mechanisms of systemic and hierarchical obedience, ‘disorganized’ states were impossible to conquer because they didn’t stay conquered—by the time that the last territory was defeated, the others were rebelling. This history bodes well for the dismantling of today’s empires.

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I address whether Vladimir Putin's ‘special operation’ in Ukraine is part of the Great Reset by looking at his June 17th address at St. Petersburg, reproduced by a Substacker called The Great Kanekoa. Putin gives an astute analysis of Europe and the US, with economic policies for Russia that support small business and home ownership, including deferred insurance payments and subsidized mortgage rates:

Once again, the economic blitzkrieg against Russia was doomed to fail from the beginning. Sanctions as a weapon have proved in recent years to be a double-edged sword damaging their advocates and architects just as much, if not more.

… European politicians have already dealt their economies a serious blow all by themselves. We see social and economic problems worsening in Europe, and in the US as well, food, electricity and fuel prices rising, with quality of life in Europe falling and companies losing their market edge.

According to experts, the EU’s direct, calculable losses from the sanctions fever could exceed $400 billion this year. This is the price of the decisions that are far removed from reality and contradict common sense.

These outlays fall directly on the shoulders of people and companies in the EU. The inflation rate in some Eurozone countries has exceeded 20 percent. I mentioned inflation in Russia, but the Eurozone countries are not conducting special military operations, yet the inflation rate in some of them has reached 20 percent. Inflation in the United States is also unacceptable, the highest in the past 40 years.

Of course, inflation in Russia is also in the double digits so far. However, we have adjusted social benefits and pensions to inflation, and increased the minimum and subsistence wages, thereby protecting the most vulnerable groups of the population. At the same time, high interest rates have helped people keep their savings in the Russian banking system.

Businesspeople know, of course, that a high key rate clearly slows economic development. But it is a boon for the people in most cases. They have reinvested a substantial amount of money in banks due to higher interest rates.

This is our main difference from the EU countries, where rising inflation is directly reducing the real incomes of the people and eating up their savings, and the current manifestations of the crisis are affecting, above all, low-income groups.

The growing outlays of European companies and the loss of the Russian market will have lasting negative effects. The obvious result of this will be the loss of global competitiveness and a system-wide decline in the European economies’ pace of growth for years to come.

Taken together, this will aggravate the deep-seated problems of European societies. Yes, we have many problems as well, yet I have to speak about Europe now because they are pointing the finger at us although they have enough of their own problems. I mentioned this at Davos. A direct result of the European politicians’ actions and events this year will be the further growth of inequality in these countries, which will, in turn, split their societies still more, and the point at issue is not only the well-being but also the value orientation of various groups in these societies.

Indeed, these differences are being suppressed and swept under the rug. Frankly, the democratic procedures and elections in Europe and the forces that come to power look like a front, because almost identical political parties come and go, while deep down things remain the same. The real interests of people and national businesses are being pushed further and further to the periphery.

Such a disconnect from reality and the demands of society will inevitably lead to a surge in populism and extremist and radical movements, major socioeconomic changes, degradation and a change of elites in the short term. As you can see, traditional parties lose all the time. New entities are coming to the surface, but they have little chance for survival if they are not much different from the existing ones.

The attempts to keep up appearances and the talk about allegedly acceptable costs in the name of pseudo-unity cannot hide the main thing: the European Union has lost its political sovereignty, and its bureaucratic elites are dancing to someone else’s tune, doing everything they are told from on high and hurting their own people, economies, and businesses.

His last statement seems like a direct reference to the Great Reset, while his own policies are in direct opposition to their goals of dispossession of home- and business owners. I don’t know if his economic advisor, Sergei Glazyev, had a hand in these but I suspect so because they’re the practical, sensible policies of any leader who wants their people to thrive.

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Lastly, I apply Glazyev’s principles of fostering self-reliance and productive ownership to the micro-communities we may have an opportunity to start when economies in the West come crashing down. I start with how we can repossess the mortgages, through eminent domain or a 3% fixed rate that will be increased by .1% per quarter for new mortgages until it reaches a ceiling of 5%. A rising interest rate will lower the cost of housing, driving speculative investors out of the market and leaving housing for those who live and work there.

In addition, I look at repossession of college campuses by cities and towns, and why education is wasted on the young when it should be a lifetime endeavor where we all travel and study for three months at a time. I suggest five years when everyone stays home and uses the mortgage-backed local currency (carets ^) to make their hometown into a place where people want to visit and stay, a learning center with shared passions and specialties. At the same time, those wanting to travel-study should develop skills that will make them an asset to the community they want to visit.

As a third example I look at healthcare based on my favorite model, Cuba. There medical school is free for anyone who qualifies, does the work, and agrees to work in a community-in-need for a number of years. I think all of our communities are in need so, instead, I would put in a maximum wage. A maximum wage is better than a minimum wage because it reduces the competition over housing. And in Cuba every neighborhood has a healthcare advocate, who has your best interests at heart and isn’t motivated by insurance or pharmaceutical profits.

In this way, recovering from the reset could end up better than we ever dared to hope.

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For those willing to join me in envisioning a new future, here’s Build a New Model:

Buckminster Fuller said that to change things, you can’t fight the existing reality. You have to build a new model that makes the old model obsolete. This episode outlines ten universal principles of a new model, including the purpose of government, how to measure its success or failure, what community wealth really is, how to protect and proliferate it, the intergenerational transfer of wealth, and paying your debt to society backwards and forwards. I begin by talking about the spiritual and metaphysical obstacles that keep us from imagining a new model and how to remove them in your own psyche. Based on my book, How to Dismantle an Empire, I end with the three powers that communities require in order to control their own labor: debt, tax & cash.

and Are YOU Ready to Save the World?

Looks at undoing empire-thinking as a spiritual practice. A Course in Miracles says that God only ever asks one question, "Are you ready yet to help me save the world?" I look at why our answer is "not yet" because of our attachment to our own superiority. Our message to one another should be "You are magnificent" and "Here's why I think you're mistaken," using facts, logic and consistency. I connect the comments of three magnificent viewers and convey the views of four magnificent writers on Ukraine—Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Caitlin Johnstone and Andrew Bacevich. I end with hearing from the horse's mouth, Putin.