Musings on the Second Tubilustrium of 2014

There is a feeling of numbness when one makes the decision to abandon his birth-country for a final time. A recent outrageous moment for me was to hear Eric Holder as the current US Attorney General exalt over the capitualisation of the Credit Suisse Bank that “no financial institution … is above the law.” ‘Whose law?’ the rest of us could ask. Citizen-based taxation is not everyone’s law but only that of Eritrea and the US and, I’ve heard it said, North Korea.

I have alternated back and forth the last several months – from the time I was about finishing my manuscript on pagan mysticism until the 23rd of May – and have attempted at great cost in both time and finances to comply the best I could to what is being demanded and has been demanded before any of us were sufficiently made aware of the fact along with the penalties that that are being meted out because of that unawareness. Of course I cannot put into written words what I wish to say, but a last straw was finally added with the result that freedom is now to be sought within a new set of parameters. This last is not the first time for me. Under the illustration of Fritz Perls, I fled from a writing-on-the-wall scenario in 1970 – vowing at the time never to return apart for funerals. That vow was not ultimately kept, but the feeling that motivated it has once again re-surfaced.

And this dreary saga has formed the backdrop for other dire and unsavoury news – in this case involving the prospective terminality of two closely loved friends. I do not wish at this juncture to name names, but such revelations force one to focus on more important realities.

I have never been an advocate of the nation-state system that arose with the Treaty of Westphalia. Probably even less of empires. At least the focus of the nation is largely one for rectifying and enjoying within an identifiable set of borders. For the empire by contrast, there is according to Niall Ferguson, the imperative need to keep expanding those borders. (In my recent search for ancient bank statements, I came across a 2005 paper whose relevancy is astonishingly still fitting for nearly a decade later: http://michaelyork.co.uk/Domus/CV/confpapers/cp-48.html).  I myself have long preferred the city-state, and I can still envision a world confederacy of city-states. But if we truly could achieve a dominant enlightened anarchy, what would then stop the inevitable bully, mafiaso, empire or terrorist? It is clear that there are no guarantees and that under the prevailing global mind-set, fear prevents the ability to gamble without guarantees.

So if the whole of human history is, again Ferguson, the history of empires; if America is the 68th, the EU the 69th and China the 70th  empire, do we just surrender to the concept of a world government or will there always be the marginal – the homeless, the criminal, the shaman,  no longer perhaps the homosexual but still the artist, even the politician and also even the point-one-percent (POP) – not the 1% and definitely not the 10% but the POP or .1% whatever governments we achieve? And how do we accommodate not to some mainstream fictional entity but to that bulk who lives far enough from the borders to be either generally incognizant of them or to be saturated in terror for their preservation? This mass of the public are not the marginals who instead haunt these borders and move or seek to move back and forth across them. Richard’s image for that bulk mass is that of an antlered animal who belongs to nature but is caught in a tangled thicket.

I want to enter here a few website blogs that might just allow us a better understanding of what is going on. Admittedly, my biases are liberal-left, and I may be blinded by them. But these more or less comprehend the continuing drift of my thinking. On 911: http://thegic.org/video/911-best-vid-ever#ixzz32AUmgsOv. On GMO and what might be the more sinister impetus behind it: http://www.globalresearch.ca/seeds-of-destruction-the-diabolical-world-of-genetic-manipulation/25303.  On an interesting CNBC interview of Putin: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101701461. And on the consequences of another Obama fiasco: http://ericmargolis.com/2014/05/the-great-western-gas-fiasco-2/.    

I now even more than before invoke Herakles – humanity as the glory or dawn of Hera – who, among his twelve labours – for some the twelve months or astrological signs of the year, confronts the hydra: the US, Europe, China or the Jihadists. It would be a miraculous development if Western Europe could wean itself from America and link more with the Russian Federation for ultimately a European-Chinese alliance to check the world hegemonic aspirations of the United States. It would be even more miraculous if we could wean ourselves off the need for any empire and evolve a world that champions individual human dignity as well as viable regional autonomies. Casting an eye on The Netherlands, a view of a country that basically works, one in which one can walk in comfort for the most part, one in which the weather is at present favourable and delightful, a promise of possibility is to be discerned. Why do we accept that the beauty that is here is not a beauty that is everywhere?

So these have been my Tubilustrium musings. The weather against predicted expectations was instead fortuitous, and we enjoyed on the day a long leisurely walk along the Van Wou Straat and back. At one point near the furthest reach of our wanderings, we were sitting on a bench in the sun and suddenly I turned to Richard and remembered finally to say, “Happy Anniversary!”