I decided a few weeks ago to start communicating through Substack and YouTube. When I made that decision, I agreed with myself to remain apolitical. I stand by that. I'm not going to get into left/right election cycle politics, as I think it's a distraction and basically trivial. Two wings, one bird.
My core message is about resilience, life-building, removing filters, and the incredible power of music. I don't think you can begin such a discussion without acknowledging the seismic changes that are rippling through western culture. I am a lifelong musician. I am also a lifelong student of the culture. My career required me to deep dive into the political and economic structure of the western world, specifically the United States. I’m guessing at how these changes might play out, but it is an educated guess.
An interesting cloud formation is on the horizon. This is an overview; I can't speak to the entire cultural landscape as that would require a book. Maybe I'll write it. For our purposes here, let's take that cringey “thirty thousand feet look”, as the business-y types tend to say.
Academia is dying. The money is drying up, there is less and less interest both from the kids that might attend and from their parents. Academia is less relevant than it has ever been in my lifetime. Disclaimer here - I was all about academia in my youth, completing grad school. It served me very well in my time. But that time has passed.
The influence of academia has up to now been ubiquitous and, in many ways, stultifying. That influence is waning, and will continue to do so, with profound implications for the culture in general, and for the power structure in particular. Academia has been a potent means of consolidating power through institutional authority. I expect that system to disintegrate over the coming decades.
The fall of academia doesn't indicate a lessening of intelligence, or of learning. Thirst for knowledge is at an all-time high. There are new ways to educate oneself, completely outside of the old mandarin system. The modern intellectual has no need of a university system.
Science is evolving. Science has been based on Cartesian materialism for centuries. That view is rapidly giving way to the more holistic concept of a living, conscious universe. Materialism as a philosophy is dying. Materialism has served humanity very well, driving life-altering advances in our ability to live well. Clearly, there is an underlying reality to material form and, in the sense that materialism drives physical development, it will continue.
However, materialism will not be the philosophical underpinning of the updated culture. Reality dictates that humanity entertain a more comprehensive understanding of our place in the great isness of the is. One driver of this is likely to be some form of disclosure about that “other”, whoever it is, which shares space-time with us. Such a realization has already begun to occur. I predict it will be punctuated with a startling set of revelations in the not-too-distant future. The powers that be have known about this other form of reality for decades, possibly centuries. For their own murky purposes, they have occulted the knowledge of it. The secretiveness is under pressure, and likely will not hold.
Many of our colleagues have yet to adjust to this new reality. They will be thrown into a hall of mirrors. There will be adjustments. There will be some overwhelm, and some craziness, as the old worldview melts like an icee at a theme park on a hot summer day. This will, of course, have a profound impact on the structure of our culture. Anything is possible in response.
Oh and by the way, what's up with the moon?
The economy is transforming. Western culture is experiencing a shift in how we distribute value. The US dollar may or may not “crash”, the EU may or may not fly apart. They will almost certainly become less and less relevant over the next few years. Transactions have already begun to occur through complicated networks of gold and silver indexed to bitcoin, and I see this only accelerating. DeFi is a real thing, and it isn’t going away. It is likely the avenue by which the economy transitions to some type of digital currency. Whether it leads to a surveillance state or a libertarian nirvana is an open question.
To pile on to the economic craziness, commercial real estate debt and consumer credit card debt is a time bomb. Housing prices are almost certain to fall by as much as half. Deflation, not inflation, is the big issue of the day. Even as AI is removing jobs from the labor “market”, western nations continue to import potential labor from around the world in the form of immigration. The competition for the deflating dollars, the disappearing dollars, is heating up in ways we scarcely imagined.
Some form of UBI will almost certainly soon come on board. It almost has to, because demand is going to otherwise fall off the cliff, which is absolutely a non-starter given a growth-model economy. I see the government as being the first level of support for the demand economy, and its safety net. That's not a great situation, to say the least. I suspect the growth model will undergo serious revision toward a more steady-state approach over the next decades, but that is another topic for another time.
Hierarchy is out. Piling on yet further, we see the centuries-old hierarchy of power and influence falling apart before our very eyes. They can pull the levers of power but with less and less effect. The media can weave a tall tale but virtually nobody is listening. The “glue” that held the culture together has become brittle and stale.
As their influence wanes, we see the established powers, “the 1%”, “the deep state”, becoming crazier and crazier. To hang on to their alleged power, they are likely to cause mischief. There will be wars and rumors of wars, as a famous person once said. But in the longer term they are diminished; they will ultimately wither away like a dry weed in a pavement crack. What takes the place of the failing hierarchy is entirely up to we the people. Are we wise enough to birth a fair and just society? We’ll see.
The BRICS alliance becomes more and more relevant. That said, I don't see the US going away in any real sense. The US has massive economic and military power and will continue to be a major player in the world game. But it might not have as many friends as it did. And it may not be able to rely on its unique financial arrangement much longer. It may have to actually produce something. But, as Warren Buffett said decades ago, I wouldn’t bet against the US. Probably a bad bet.
So, between economic and political upheavals around the world, the devolution of academia, the evolution of science, and the overall sense of dissolution among the peoples of the world, I think we have a set up for a very interesting time. Drink the Kool-Aid at your own risk. It's laced with acid.
As I mentioned, the ultimate reason for starting this page and other pages I'm operating in is to explore the idea of living without filters, of establishing a unique oneness with all of life, all of consciousness. This exegesis may feel like a departure from that. I am certain, however, that transcendence requires understanding.
I don't wish to dwell on these topics, but I think we have to understand the forces that are swirling around us. A wise person once said that if you can't meditate in a wind tunnel then you really can't meditate. And I hear that. Still, I'm going to describe the wind. Inner knowing requires outer knowing.
Oh yeah, and what's up with the moon?
