[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his inspiring (and spot on) video, The End of Kings, was produced by Sustainable Human (more about that below), with the collaboration of Caitlin Johnstone, and was embedded in her most recent essay, MSM Is Getting Weirder, More Frantic, And More Desperate By The Day. This production is timely in more ways than you can imagine.
You may have noticed the Western media, led by its Anglo-American column, have given a huge amount of good publicity to the British royals over the past few decades, a p.r. fest that has attained really extravagant dimensions with the arrival on the scene of Princess Diana's offspring, the charming "democratic princes," both marrying beautiful commoners. These spectacles have whitwashed and given a boost to the toxic social effects of royalty and nobility in general, the UK in particular, and in any nation accursed by deep class divisions. The British press, as we could expect, playing to that part of the public still besotted with the idea of fairytale kings and queens, empire pomp and pageantry and what not, have a fair number of "Royal watchers", a whole cottage sub-industry in fact, chronicling the comings and goings of such privileged figures, and, as we know, the virus long ago leapt across the Big Pond to infect America, a nation whose fierce bourgeois values and infantile mentality made it particularly vulnerable to the allure of such unhealthy fantasies.
The problem with kings and such exalted figures is not that they are technically anachronistic, and for very good reasons, it's that they represent a standing defence of the past and its countless horrid traditions, including blind respect and deference to unexamined and almost always illegitimate authority. The call to get rid of kings once and for all issues from a simple fact: the past is now literally killing the future. And youth, inevitably the most seriously afflicted, are beginning to pay attention.
Not surprising, then, that the people behind the Sustainable Human project are young. And, not surprising, again, that they are asking the public to start rethinking accepted dogmas and ways of visualizing natural and social reality, like, immediately. As of yesterday. Yes, this call to action should be given top priority in our lives. Why? Because our world, our planet, for eons suffering from what we might charitably call "congenital social dysfunction" and its evil twin, institutionalized tyranny, a setup which has made life miserable for countless generations and untold creatures, is falling apart all around us, pushed into its grave by the fruits of its very sociopathic and greedy dynamic.
But, guess what folks: at the 11th—no make that the 13th hour—something wonderful is at last stirring. A new, urgently needed, consciousness is finally emerging, we see its signs all over the place (despite the frantic efforts by the establishment's apologists to render it invisible), a vision which aims to do away with the disgusting arrangements we have lived under for so long, and hopefully heal, at last, the relationship of humans with nature and with each other, whether as individuals, cities, states, nations, or species—a project impeded for millennia by the entrenched power of upper class dominance supported by the clever deployment of self-serving lies. What good ole Karl M. aptly called "ruling class ideology".
In this enormously important effort lucid non-mainstream voices such as Caitlin Johnstone deserve gratitude and recognition, and so do the people who created Sustainable Human and their ilk. Pay them forward by reading, watching, and listening to what they have to say, and carry their message to others, many others, as far as you can muster. As Caty often says, it's all about the narrative. Today's upper class narrative —as always—is vile. The values it proclaims as "natural" and legitimate have punched a hole in our biosphere, entrenched and exploited divisions in the human family, triggered a massive species die-off, created abominable levels of inequality while proclaiming respect for democracy, and now shamelessly impel the world toward a nuclear Armageddon. Time for a reset. Time to tell the kings to get lost. This time for good.
—PG
Published on Sep 4, 2018 / Written by Caitlin Johnstone
Notes accompanying YouTube presentation.
How Important Is Your Donation? Who Are We? Our Work We also host conversations with people worldwide to help bridge the connections that people have a difficult time seeing themselves on our Sustainable Human Facebook page. We use this social outlet to deliver the best quality, user-submitted, ad-free videos and articles to promote the efforts of everyday people working toward similar goals. A DEEPER DIVE What Kind Of Thinking Is Causing Our Own Extinction? What Kind Of Thinking Is Necessary To Prevent Our Extinction? How Can We Change The Way We Think? In many respects, the story of separation is crumbling all around us. The more the economy grows, the more isolated and lonely we become, and the harder it becomes to participate. The story loosens its grip over us and we become open to alternatives that are better able to help us meet our needs. Humans are social beings. We need to feel like we belong, like we matter, and we need to feel loved. This is a core human need. When these needs aren't met, we will engage in really weird and potentially destructive behaviors to try to meet them. The new stories we tell need to be grounded in the values of empathy, compassion, cooperation, and love so that people can meet these core human needs without being conned into buying some new fancy product or service.
Appendix
The Sustainable Human story: MISSION AND VISION
Why Do We Need Stories That Bring Out The Best In Us?
Humanity has become increasingly disconnected, aggressive, and apathetic towards one another. The corporate media does its best to keep us in a state of shock, confusion, and overwhelm. What we need is to know our true place in the interconnected, natural world.We are visionaries who create stories that will inspire positive social awareness and change. We believe that human beings are inherently good and when invited to do so, will participate in creating more meaningful and purpose filled lives. Our stories are an invitation to all generations to invest in creating the more harmonious and interconnected world our hearts know is possible.
Your recurring monthly donation will be used to create stories that will touch people in their daily lives all over the world. The governments, politicians, and corporate leaders are not going to save us. If we want to create a future of cooperation, collective engagement, and empathy, it will take stories like ours to help humanity understand one another again, and understand some of the most complex issues of our time.
We are soulmates who were brought together by universal synchronicity in order to help humanity awaken. Dawn Agnos is a highly sensitive empath, intuitive clairvoyant, sage and visionary who has overcome extraordinary challenges in her lifetime and has achieved incredible success. Chris Agnos is an Industrial Engineer with a Masters in Sustainability Management from Columbia. You can read more about his life experience in the attachment below. Both Dawn and Chris have corporate and entrepreneurship backgrounds.
My Life Resume
Our stories help people relate to the world around them in a much different way, inviting them into a new way of being. We cover topics like money, investment, family, interconnection, death, economics, keeping secrets, new approaches to solving problems, human nature, and many others. One of our videos, "How Wolves Change Rivers" has been seen nearly 40 million times and is being used by conservation scientists and teaching environments around the world to illustrate how interconnected the world really is.
How Do Stories Affect Our Behavior?
Every culture has told a story that influences the way we think by helping its members make sense of who they are, why they are here, and how the world works. We use this information in order to figure out how we can best meet our physical, emotional, and communal needs. Depending on the dominant story that is told, people will behave in radically different ways to do what they believe will better meet their real or perceived needs. Sometimes our efforts succeed and we experience true bliss and contentment. But if our story is too limiting to provide outlets for its members to meet their true needs, the entire society will eventually break down. The takeaway here is that every human behavior, whether benevolent or malevolent, is an attempt to meet either a physical or emotional need and that the stories we believe greatly impact our ability to do that.
Modern civilization is based on a kind of thinking that believes that human beings are separate from Nature. This story, which is reinforced through religion, economics, and science says that Nature is basically dead matter with no inherent purpose of its own which allows us to do whatever we wish to it without remorse. Because we don't see ourselves as part of Nature, we think that any harm we cause to it won't affect us. We treat Nature as a limitless supply of raw materials to fuel our economy with a limitless capacity to absorb our waste as we aim to keep growing the economy indefinitely. This story of separation is not new. It has been with us since the birth of agriculture some 10,000 years ago. It's only been in the last century that our impact has gotten to large for the planet to absorb. From this story of separation, anything that inhibits growth of the crop (or the economy today) is bad or evil and must be overcome. In this narrative, environmentalists become progress or growth inhibitors. All of this stems from this fundamental belief that humanity is separate from Nature.
We need to shift this underlying story to one that is based on the truth that humanity has always been and will always be part of Nature. We are dependent on the sun to provide energy to grow food. We are dependent on the air to live which is created for us (for free) by tiny little organisms in the ocean. We are an integral part of this community of life with the ability to observe and replicate healthy patterns that help life in all of its diversity to thrive. When we realize that Nature is also part of us, we will easily see that when we destroy it, we also destroy ourselves. Ecocide is just as illogical as suicide because they are one in the same. When we live from a story in which humans are part of Nature, we will become not only sustainable but regenerative. Because our current stories tell us the opposite, many people living today do not understand this simple truth that all life is interconnected.
This really is the most important question. Past conquerors have used the method of "believe my story or die" but I don't think that will work too well with modern humans. We kind of like our freedom to choose. Often, we will even rebel against ideas that are good for us if we receive them by force. The only way to change the way we think is for us to individually and voluntarily choose to think in a different way. Think back in your own life at a time when you changed the way you thought about something. Usually, we have some kind of experience that our old way of thinking can't explain. A new way of thinking was required to understand what happened to us. Our global story changes when enough individuals can no longer accept that story and begin living from another one.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Some say the (robber) barons, ie oligarchs have often been the real opressors.
Webster Tarpley makes the case that the Magna Carta was a license for the oligarchs to perform private war and Tarpley points out that 61th entry in the Carta is often left out by historians to hide the dark truth about the Carta.
Today there is no lack of robber barons.
Watching the video one is reminded “why” the Counterpunch boys are so threatened by Caitlin Johnstone’s work. While the CP boys provide endless variations of psychic pablum amounting to essentially a fake “leftist” critique – Caitlin preaches revolution!
The link below to a recent OffGuardian post is an excellent analysis of how the Nobel Peace Prize is used to “control the narrative.” Well worth reposting here.
https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/06/the-nobel-peace-prize-in-support-of-war/