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Afterword
In the middle of the Canadian film The Barbarian Invasions, which won the Oscar for best foreign film at the 2004 Academy Awards, the audience observes a television broadcast of the attack on the World Trade Center. A commentary on the significance of the tragedy follows in which the September 11 attacks are compared to the first barbarian incursions into the core of the mighty Roman Empire. These audacious assaults by uncivilized tribes against the invincible Roman heartland appeared foolhardy and insane. Yet these raging heathens were united in their hatred of the most dominant economic and military power to overrule the world. Such a comparison may well be considered hyperbole, or perceived as a thought-provoking perspective. I am sure the Romans never imagined that those early raids would lead to the collapse of their empire. Similarly the American public seems unworried despite the dire predictions of those seeking to capitalize on the situation. Two months after the September 11 violence, however, the International Herald Tribune newspaper polled 275 opinion leaders throughout the world seeking their reaction to the horrific events. More than two thirds of the foreign responses agreed that it was 'good that Americans now know what it's like to be vulnerable.' More than half supported the conviction that many or a majority of individuals believed that 'American policies or actions in the world were a major cause of the September 11 attacks.'
In preparation for writing this Afterword to this book I read several recent books on American and world history, politics, and philosophy to gauge the flow of world events. A profoundly adept insight into the world situation is provided in: Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy, by Benjamin R. Barber. The author expands the definition of Jihad beyond the traditional Islamic meaning of 'holy war' to include a 'disintegral tribalism and reactionary fundamentalism.' Similarly his definition for McWorld includes the 'forces of integrative modernization and aggressive economic and cultural globalization.' Even though these forces flow from a variety of nations, Barber contends they follow a distinctly American template. Economic observer Amy Chua goes further, perceiving a heavy-handed U.S. promotion of crude capitalism:
....terms such as "market economy" and "market system" refer to a broad spectrum of economic systems based primarily on private property and competition, with government regulation and redistribution ranging from substantial (as in the United states) to extensive (as in the Scandinavian countries). Yet for the past 20 years the United States has been promoting throughout the non-Western world raw, laissez-faire capitalism — a form of markets that the West abandoned long ago. The pro-capitalism measures being implemented today outside the West include privatization, the elimination of state subsidies and controls, and free-trade and foreign investment initiatives. As a practical matter they rarely, if ever, include any substantial redistribution measures.
Barber claims that the true victim in the clash between Jihad and McWorld is democracy itself. He portrays this conflict quite poignantly in the following paragraphs:
... the spiritual poverty of markets — may bear a portion of the blame for the excesses of the holy war against the modern; and [that] Jihad as a form of negation reveals Jihad as a form of affirmation. Jihad tends the soul that McWorld abjures and strives for the moral well-being that McWorld, busy with the consumer choices it mistakes for freedom, disdains. Jihad thus goes to war with McWorld and, because each worries the other will obstruct and ultimately thwart the realization of its ends, the war between them becomes a holy war....Reasoned communication between the two is problematic when for the partisans of Jihad both reason and communication appear as seductive instrumentalities of the devil, while for the partisans of McWorld both are seductive instrumentalities of consumerism....
Should would-be democrats take their chances then with McWorld, with which they have shared the road to modernity but that has shown so little interest in them? Or try to reach an accommodation with Jihad, whose high moral purpose serves democracy's seriousness yet leaves but precious little space for its liberties? As it turns out, neither Jihad nor McWorld — and certainly not the quarrel between them — allows democracy much room.
The conflict which Barber eloquently describes is a global phenomena. And yet, any U.S. citizen who has spent considerable time abroad can recognize that an American fueled economic ideology and power dominates the world as thoroughly as do our military forces. This power and ideology stresses free market capitalism with little or no government regulation. Under the influence of this ideology the world economy has increased on average 2.5% over the last ten years. In that same period the number of impoverished people has increased by 100 million. The top 1% earn as much income as the bottom 57% of the world's population. And the disparity is increasing.
The three most powerful forces propelling economic globalization are the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. The leaders of these organizations are appointed rather than democratically elected and thus not accountable to the citizens of member nations. These organizations conduct most of their business behind closed doors and are dominated by the U.S. and routinely recite its corporate mantra of 'free markets.' The dogmatic attempts to convert everything in our lives into commodities for sale in these artificially rigged 'free markets' has produced absurd scenarios worthy of a Mark Twain or Tom Robbins.
For example the 'free' market zealots in these organizations and multi-national corporations consider even the water people drink to be a resource that should be exploited through private ownership. An American corporation persuaded the Bolivian government to allow them to privatize that nation's water supplies. Water is often scarce there due to the high and and dry mountainous terrain. The price of water soared by 50%, threatening the economic survival and health of many subsistence farmers and their families. As the profits rose ever higher, the insatiable corporation then pressured the Bolivian government to prohibit any person from collecting rainwater because it would be 'unfair competition.'
The dominance of U.S. economic power and its hidden manipulation of organizations and governments is reflected in our birthchart most strongly by Pluto in the Second House of money and finances. Pluto's placement here amplifies the abundant resources for material success and the powerful karmic lessons summoned by its obsessive pursuit. In addition, the U.S. Pluto also resides in the sign Capricorn, an Astrological sign related to material ambition. Earlier in chapter four I discussed the force and the below the surface maneuverings of this Astrological factor. At the time of the writing of that chapter the scandal at Enron was current news. We Americans have since learned that that scandal was just the tip of an iceberg of American corporate greed and malfeasance.
What has become ever more clear to me now are the global repercussions of American Plutonian power and obsessiveness. The Astrological array of Plutonian financial obsession coupled with a Sagittarian Ascendant self-righteousness and a Seventh House of Martial aggressiveness in relationships has produced an economic imperialism so pervasive that 50% of the world beyond our borders feel that "American policies or actions in the world were a major cause of the September 11 attacks."
In Jihad vs. McWorld Barber does acknowledge the benefits of capitalism as an effective and efficient means of production. Capitalism's primary motive and focus is on its bottom line profit motive, however, which does not engender social justice, sensitivity to the needs of the environment, or a deeper spiritual quest. Many of my friends in Europe suggest that the world needs 'socialism with a brain" combined with "Capitalism with a heart." They feel that governments practicing socialism without a brain and capitalism without a heart have caused a great deal of social and economic misery. I think, however, that these systems are becoming irrelevant as we head deeper into the emerging paradigm of the Aquarian age. Aquarius is a sign of equality and brother/sisterhood. It is also a sign of group consciousness. I see both communism and the rise of multi-national corporations as early, primitive responses to the incoming energies of the Aquarian Age. Hilarion predicted that the reason Communism would fail is because men will never recognize that they are truly brothers until they can acknowledge they have a common father. Indeed the only times that Communism seemed to create a sense of comradeship among its citizens was when they were led by a strong father figure such as Lenin or Mao Tse Tung. These human "fathers," however, inevitably fail in the larger task of unification of people at the transpersonal or soul level.
Corporations embody a group consciousness that extends beyond individual identities and national borders. Although their pursuit of profit is often detrimental to spiritual and social values, corporations and their international marketing are inexorably advancing a global consciousness and awareness. Corporations present us with the paradox of horrification at their devouring McWorld appetite for ever larger markets and programmed consumers balanced against a deep appreciation for their encouragement of the emerging global consciousness. As awareness of how humanity is deeply interconnected spreads, the corporate model of group consciousness demonstrates how people can cooperate and operate independent of national borders and self-interest.
Another excellent book I have been reading since writing the first edition of this book is: The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders, by Jacob Needleman. The author evokes a resonance with the American Soul. He states that America is the only nation in the world which is based on philosophical ideals. America is not based on a "tribal, ethnic or racial identity."
Needleman delves into the minds and hearts of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, to discover an honoring and appreciation for what America was based on and could yet become. He presents commentary and prose from Walt Whitman, especially the "Democratic Vistas" which Needleman says "May justly be considered the most powerful manifesto ever written about the meaning of American democracy."
I say that our New World democracy, however great a success in uplifting the masses out of their sloughs, in materialistic development, products, and in a certain highly deceptive superficial popular intellectuality, is, so far, an almost complete failure in its social aspects, and in really grand religious, moral, literary, and esthetic results. In vain do we march with unprecedented strides to empire so colossal, outvying the antique, beyond Alexander's, beyond the proudest sway of Rome....It is as if we were somehow being endow"d with a vast and more and more thoroughly appointed body, and then left with little or no soul.
I wonder how Whitman would regard our present state of affairs. The materialistic malaise portrayed here by Whitman more than a century ago is interpreted by Needleman as a disease of the mind which is starved for ideas and which can only lead to despair. Needleman chastises the failure of America to live up to its potential mission. He points out that America is not superior to the rest of the world. He calls America a "conduit for the forces of modernity," whose duty is to provide a safe haven for these transformative energies.
Needleman goes on to warn:
The world will see that it needs this entire America, America with its soul. It does not need and will absorb, resist, imitate and dissolve an empty America. A metaphysically empty America cannot endure, it will not survive; it may keep its name and armies for a while, it may keep its Constitution and its laws and forms of government, it may keep its symbolic heroes, it may remain a place where people wish to survive physically and economically; but without the inner resonance of it ideals and values....without its American soul, America is sure to go nowhere, and, if so, where will humanity go?
Needleman further points out the necessity to note the difference between what America is and what America means. He states that we are naive:
when our feeling of hope is directed toward the outer America that we perceive with the senses, rather than the America we grasp with the mind and the heart. because this other America seems powerless or elusive does not mean it is not real. Because America betrays its ideals is no reason to reject the ideals themselves. We do not live in correspondence with the great life hidden within us; but that is no reason to deny that this hidden life exists and calls to us.
The karmic destiny of America to wield its material power in synthesis with the "great life hidden within us" is something which the approaching years will address.In 2008 Pluto will move into the sign Capricorn and will remain there until around 2025. In 2023 the U.S. will have its first "Pluto return," the return of Pluto to its natal position in our birthchart. Hilarion says that someone who is born with their Sun in the sign Capricorn is someone who has in previous lives accomplished a lot and helped others in a material way. This past life experience gives the Capricorn a lot of ambition, a desire to make something of themselves in the eyes of the world, and a lot of self-reliance. That self-reliance, however, is where the Capricorn tends to put their faith.
Hilarion states:
....because the help for others was limited to the material plane, a blindness is introduced into the make-up of the Capricornian personality which makes it more difficult than usual to perceive the reality and value of spiritual concepts and the higher wisdom.
I predict that while Pluto, that great "bringer of change," is moving through Capricorn the ability to base one's life upon exclusively materialistic goals will become increasingly difficult. The United States with its natal Pluto in Capricorn could well be a symbolic focus or primary actor on the world stage playing out this transformational process.
This material life transformation process may well be related to the fact that a growing consensus of petroleum geologists predict that global oil production will peak somewhere in the period between 2006 and 2015.When this peak in oil production occurs oil will become an increasingly scarce resource demanding increasingly higher prices. In the face of this reality the entire global economic system must come to a rude awakening. The choices we make at that time are critical to the fate of the planet.
Hilarion has predicted that a final global conflict could occur as a result of the nations of the world fighting over ownership of the Middle-East oil deposits. This is one possible response to the diminishing availability of the oil/life blood of the current world economy. Another response would be to reassess our current way of life. We could awaken to the relative insanity of lifestyles based upon the obsessive consumption of non-renewable resources in pursuit of material luxury. As our eyes cleared we could clearly see this materialistic, consumptive craving, which I compare to methamphetamine addiction. Like a drug high, it feels so good that you want to go faster and faster, while at the same time it is totally destroying all of your internal organs.
With the United States consuming 25% of the world's resources with only 5% of the world's population we are the largest symbol of this modern materialistic obsession. One commentator stated that the first Iraqi Gulf War was undertaken in defense of the "American way of driving."
In the Tarot reading I did for the U.S. on the evening of September 12, 2001, described in Chapter 9, the card for the overall outcome of the cycle of events then being examined was The Devil. Interestingly, The Devil card itself corresponds to the Astrological sign Capricorn. Capricorn is an earth sign related to the principle of mountains, which can represent a great obstruction. They make it difficult to travel from one area to another. On mountains it is difficult to raise food and physically sustain oneself. And yet, it is the reality of mountains which have always served as an inspiration for humankind to aspire towards and commune with that which transcends the world which can only be known with the five physical senses. This obstruction/transcendence is resonant with the symbolic experience of the entire physical plane and its illusion of separation. This physical identification is a great blockage and limitation of consciousness, and yet, overcoming that blockage and lifting that limitation is a tremendous liberation and spiritually empowering experience. Indeed, after referring to the difficulty for a Capricorn personality to perceive the reality of and value of spiritual concepts, Hilarion goes on to state:
Though difficult, it is not impossible, and the Capricornian who succeeds in making of his life a dedication to a higher reality achieves far more and conquers a much greater obstacle than most other souls have to contend with.
The significance of the Devil card is an initiation where you must face your own Devil, that which blocks or limits you from being who you really are and can be, seeing clearly the illusions about yourself which you have believed, but which are not really true. I hold to the hope and the faith that the United States will face its own Devil. Imagine our nation seeing clearly the illusions about ourselves and our nation which we have believed, but which we finally realize are not really true. As America regains her vision with the death of material illusion and rebirth of freedom, her success can inspire a global death and rebirth into a new age of universal love and brotherhood. The labor pains we have to endure in that process is related to our own surrender or resistance to that process.
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