The beginning of the end of Civilization 1.0 began when the Mediterranean super-volcano, the island of Thera (now Santorini) blew up 3,635 years ago. That caused a global ‘volcanic winter’ and disasters that ended the great Minoan civilization and devastated many others. Then, devolving through centuries of super-traumatic distress, came the more violent, mostly patriarchal dominator/conqueror cultures and Civilization 2.0, now ending. The link below will take you to the revised handbook (with a huge collection of resource links) for creating the next phase of global civilization. The preprint draft is available for review and comment or, potentially, for more collaborative expansion and/or co-editing.

Civilization or Dystopia (v.6b, posted 07/18/2020)

Today, almost exactly 2 months after beginning work on my “Beyond the Gates of Eden” I finished “So Lucky” (my 38th lyric work of post-Gonzo eco-poesy).
> It’s now listed & linked @ my Projects page.
> Now, since my new little works have received such underwhelming response, I did my best to make “So Lucky” a mostly happy, uplifting piece of celebratory Rockabilly doggerel. In fact, though I was going to post it yesterday, this AM I realized that I needed to make it even more like a wildly joyous Jerry Lee Lewis rock classic (especially the finale). Hope you enjoy the Heck outa it.
> FYI: I also changed 1 word of Beyond the Gates of Eden (in verse 2). I hope you appreciate that at least half as much as I do.
> Best of luck, etc.

More News of the Day:
As usual, awakening this AM led to the newest song: Social Disease – linked @ MichaelLucasMonterey.com/projects
It’s a light, very danceable lyrical comedy for an Old School R&B Rock nano-operetta. I think y’all may enjoy it.

FYI: Also did a potent bit of revision on “Rotten Meat” (another sardonic lil’ ditty of post-Gonzo eco-poesy). Your feedback & reviews will be generously rewarded, hera & here-after, inside & out, etc. So, enjoy ~

<a href="http://https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:share:6825874858761588738" data-type="URL" data-id="<iframe src="https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:share:6825874858761588738&quot; height="1319" width="504" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" title="Embedded post">A candid call to action by an effective global alliance

A socio-psychological analysis of ecocidal mania, pandemic authoritarian personality disorder, etc.

by Michael Lucas Monterey, 2020, December 23

Abstract:  This brief thesis analyses the causes, contributing factors, circumstances, symptoms and possible treatment of the pandemic socio-cultural illnesses plaguing humanity and the biosphere. The work provides a critique of inadequate approaches and earlier theory, with a bio-ethical approach to realist ontology, psychology, sociology and cultural anthropology of civilization. The thesis begins with relevant introductory content, followed by sections on socio-psychological triage, diagnosis, possible options and prognoses, then concluding discourse on therapy and recovery. Supporting data, links, and citations are provided.

The 7 page document can be accessed via this link: Trump, Hitler, Freud, and Monstrosity

Note: The current draft is a preprint copy, posted for review and comment.

Why unite & cooperate?

July 19, 2020

As the Buddha realized, one of our worst problems is thinking that we have time. Yet, now is the time to create our best possible quality of life, if we start now, or shortly hereafter. Naturally, as always, human life is still more about quality of life than quantity of stuff. So, since our quantity of life is destined to diminish, the call to alliance and action (@ the link below) is all about how we could ensure our best possible quality of life.
> Alliance or Dystopia: Why we should unite

Greenland Meltdown News

Report, Cryosphere, April, 2020

Nine Maxims of Bioethics

December 3, 2018

The bioethical paradigm of the Global Community Development Alliance (GCDA) and its Global Community Credit System (GCCS, establishment & launch process pending) integrate the 9 maxims listed below:

1. Do for other beings as you would have them do for you.
2. Help other beings as needed, without harm.
3. Give and share as generously as feasible.
4. Foster and support personal & cultural wellness.
5. Foster and support lively commonwealth.
6. Foster and support political ethical integrity.
7. Foster and support personal ethical integrity.
8. Foster and support communal sustainability.
9. Foster and support robust ecological diversity.

As you can See, those Nine Maxims of Bioethics encompass and express all the intrinsic principles of a healthy communitarian cultural paradigm. So, if each member of a culture understands, appreciates and lives in the Way of Community enabled by the bioethical paradigm of cultural sanity, then the outcome will be optimal. Otherwise, since causes always precede results, the quality of a culture’s outcomes will be determined by the degree to which it accords with or deviates from the Way of Community.

Hence, obviously, a civilization worth sustaining must have a positive, nondestructive socioeconomic paradigm supporting a bioethical monetary/credit system. That makes counteracting any negative, debt-for-profit currency system designed to cheat people and communities out of their cultural commonwealth, freedom, self-reliant interdependence and optimal evolutionary potentials.

The GCDA and GCCS are designed to enable that.

HotFuture threads

November 30, 2018

Coming soon ~

Elites vs. Trust

November 29, 2018

I considered changing the title to Elites vs. Humanity, but leaving it as is seems to highlight the root of The Problem. Consider the following paragraph from today’s Gaurdian article Why We Stopped Trusting Elites, by William Davies:

>> The biggest scandal of 2012 was a different beast altogether, involving unknown men manipulating a number that very few people had even heard of. The number in question, the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, is meant to represent the rate (of interest) at which banks are willing to loan to each other. What was surreal, in an age of complex derivatives and high-frequency trading algorithms, was that this number was calculated on the basis of estimates declared by each bank on a daily basis, and accepted purely on trust. The revelation that a handful of brokers had conspired to alter Libor for private gain (with possible costs to around 250,000 UK mortgage-holders, among others) may have been difficult to fully comprehend, but it gave the not unreasonable impression of an industry enriching itself in a criminal fashion at the public’s expense. Bob Diamond, the CEO of Barclays, the bank at the centre of the conspiracy, resigned in July 2012 (as a result). <<

I italicized portions of Davies’ text and my parenthetical addenda to highlight what the author acknowledges as being surreally mystifying to him and a vast majority of us. First, the mention of unknown men means men and women who know how to manipulate the world’s totally irrational financialist bubble economy without being prosecuted or punished. The trick hidden in plain sight is the assumption that the top executives and shareholders really meant to represent the notional rate of interest at which banks have a desire to loan money of unknowable current value to each other, as if banks are rational human decision-makers. That is surreal mainly because the daily estimates declared are simply estimates based on unpredictably fluctuating arbitrary values of all currencies and assets determined by speculators (gamblers) and major manipulators. Accepting all that is not a result of trust, but of ignorance, denial and normalized bamboozlement. That a handful of brokers could and would conspire against everyone else is hard to fully comprehend proves my previous statement.

Verily, verily I say to you, quoting the late Carl Sagan, “one of our worst problems is that a majority of us are too easily bamboozled; and, the longer and worse we’re bamboozled, the less we want to know about it.”

The very worst mass-bamboozlement, that fuels and funds all the others, is the subversion and perversion of the meaning of ethics, goodness, honesty, virtue, value, credit, money, wealth and success. Until we restore the ethical essence of our cultural paradigm, modern civilization will keep declining into worse kleptocracy and ecocidal mania. Results have causes, and causes always create outcomes, inevitably. After all, trust depends on belief based on knowledge of good and evil, what has life-enhancing value and what may decrease our quality of life. Being confused about value and ethics prevents wise decisions.

Money vs. Life

November 24, 2018

A call to action: This is a link to a great video on money as an  ecocidal psychosocial illness, which I’ve been saying since 1990, online since 2008. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMbeYJgH_6g&feature=youtu.be&t=1650