It is not a question of in-the-heart versus in-the-head. It’s both at the same time — and more. It may not be easy for us coming out of a binary-linear-thinking culture, and it’s not much better with the current trend toward branched logic, but we are wired by our Creator to operate on multiple levels of awareness simultaneously. I’m trying, but I confess that I’m not very good at it just yet.
I believe I’ve noted here before that we lack the lore and habits of mind that heart-led cultures would have considered common sense. Sometimes a realization hits my brain so hard I wanna get up and dance and shout it the world, except those times when I wanna run and bellow in terror. And just how much of that is meant for me alone? That’s the hardest part for me, and I wonder how much some of you struggle with it, too. It’s easily the biggest reason we should learn not to take ourselves too seriously.
We can offer only what we have, and folks should take only what they can use.
I believe most people see a hard future bearing down on us. And it is, but I simply can’t buy most of the warnings and predictions, at least not in any significant detail. It’s not a question of lying but a complete lack of heart-logic. They start from the wrong place, so it’s no surprise they end up in another wrong place. Or perhaps the image should be that many are in the right place but gazing in the wrong direction.
Most people can sense doom on some level, even if they just can’t connect it with their conscious awareness. The heart is never silent, but a lot of folks have been taught to ignore it, or to filter out some of the most important parts.
For example, what happens if the banking system suffers some kind of trauma? First, you have to understand that most “money” is just a virtual possession. Even cash currency is subject to fluctuating evaluations of it’s value against real property, but most of what we are told we have is really just conceptual or notional, not real. Your name is associated with some digits in an accounting system somewhere. It works — until it doesn’t. So you should expect that most of your notional “deposits” in the bank can evaporate without notice and without anything resembling accountability. When the banking system declares some kind of crisis, what the rest of us experience really depends on the individuals involved outside the banks.
Some business managers will decide they have no choice but to shut down. Others will simply do the best they can. Government officials will tend to be more uniform in declaring that they can’t stop governing but will likely cut out most of everything that resembles public service. So you and I will be caught in the middle. For the most part, almost every agency (public and private) that we depend on will deny any further responsibility to us. A lot of folks will panic, so violence is quite likely to rise initially. Some will continue because that’s what a few would do anyway were it not for the current restraints. Depending on your local culture, most will likely regret the panic when they realize the world hasn’t ended and life is still possible.
So maybe your current job will disappear and maybe not. I suspect most pensions will disappear, but some elements in the current system will be run by folks with enough sense to realize something has to keep working because nobody can afford total chaos. In other words, God alone knows what you as an individual will face. But in general, most folks will try to keep things going as close as possible to what it was before. Much of it will depend on what the bankers decide they have to do, what kind of actions they must take, because the banking system — at the top where real decisions are made — is run by people totally unlike you and I. Their calculus is very difficult to predict in the first place. They don’t typically publicize their sense of priorities, and some of the trouble coming is totally new in scale, if not in nature. However, we should never underestimate their actual power over the system.
You should start praying for a certain internal flexibility and adaptability. Because we cannot know for sure what they have up their sleeves, we have to train our brains to let the heart decide in that moment of decision what really matters.
The information I’ve seen is spotty, but there is likely some kind of binding agreements between governments and certain common carriers and utilities. That is, emergency planning is quite certain, though the contents are still secret as to what government officials won’t allow to collapse and how they plan to keep it working. I’d say: Keep your cellphone and at least one computer if you can.
I still believe that networked communications is the fundamental element of what arises afterward. The whole system is moving in that direction, and this impending chaos and partial collapse of the old will have a strong impact on where things are steered in the future. Those who are left to pick up the pieces when stuff breaks will probably have a lot to say about how it all gets put back together. For example, a major thrust within the current system is roping in as many people as possible to the existing computer network in terms of fixing their identity and amassing data. The exercise of control is the primary issue here. Even folks who are off the grid will be indexed in one way or another. It’s an unspoken necessity, a fundamental instinct of those who govern to seek a full accounting of humans in terms of assets and liabilities.
Everything is a matter of bureaucratic convenience. There is no specific spite most of the time, except as some bureaucrat has latitude to exercise a moment of leverage against resistance to their convenience. It’s all so horrifically dehumanizing that we just don’t have the words for it. But the siren song of even greater convenience through attaching as many humans as possible directly to the network is something bureaucrats can’t ignore. Whatever little humanity is possible to eke from the system will, in some ways, require that you have a networked identity, a virtual persona that the system recognizes. Whatever advantages that exist at all for you and I will likely be available only through the virtual communications network. Without a device you will receive the most negligent treatment possible.
So you should expect nearly universal device ownership, with massive efforts to commoditize and standardize things down to a very narrow range of what’s available to individual users. Automated monitoring will be obligatory and ubiquitous. The only folks left with some measure of self ownership will be the techies who know how to take advantage of the ever-present holes in any system. Technological expertise is the new “license to kill.” These will be the new class of cyber-alphas riding atop the mass of virtual nobodies.
That’s not a call for you to consider becoming a hacker. I’d much rather recommend you learn how to work with your own heart, a sort of self-hacker, if you will. Only your heart can tell you whether it matters what kind of identity you should embrace in this looming future world. And we who walk by the heart-mind will become yet more alienated than ever. Then again, I see more opportunity than ever before. That’s because the virtual world will not eclipse meat space in terms of reality, but only in terms of human perception at-large. We need active and conscious heart-led people throughout the entire fabric of society. Yes, heart-led is what God intended for the whole human race, but “narrow is the path and few who find it.”
