The Dark Age Ahead

Is it a provocative title? Yes, because the times we live in require provocative thinking. It is not an original title but that's not a fair criticism because I'm aiming to write about the familiar. Jane Jacobs wrote a book called Dark Age Ahead shortly before her death three years ago. She was 89 years old. She was not a doomsayer and neither am I. Laying out future prospects based on current trends is not fear mongering but totally rational. These predictions are perceived as crazy because they're made by non-mainstream voices, in other words, by non-state actors. Thinkers in this age are labeled conspiracy theorists, and conspiracy theorists are treated like the Barbarians in the Roman times,- they're marginalized, ignored, dismissed, laughed at, and treated as loony human beings who have nothing to offer to society at large. So warning the masses about future dangers remains a burden and a difficult task, but the culture is slowly beginning to look inwardly and acquiring new knowledge bit by bit. Jane Jacobs wrote "A society must be self-aware. Any culture that jettisons the values that have given it competence, adaptability, and identity becomes weak and hollow." We've had a weak and shallow culture for some time now. There is no vitality or any sort of vigor in mainstream, consumer society. A dark age, at least for a decade, may do the masses some good. They obviously haven't woken up from all the free knowledge on the internet and their general ignorance of the important issues of the day still remains staggering. Their enlightenment and exit out of the matrix still awaits them. I'm waiting on the other side lending out my gracious hand, for conversation, not propaganda or indoctrination.

Reform requires vision and without foresight into the future there is no vision. We must know what's at stake - and it's not our current way of life which is superficial and a result of post-WWII economic growth at the expense of the planet, and the third world population. That's not to say that genuine growth hasn't been made in the field of computers, communication and information technology, biotech, and so on, but the larger trend has been an economy based on debt, slavery, and resource depletion. So, let's get one thing straight, the consumer society was a historical phenomenon that was not supposed to last this long. We live on a finite planet, with limited amount of natural resources, and that fact must be the basis of all economic thinking. The era of economic-dominated public policy is over, and it's not coming back, no matter how much money is pumped into the system.

Fearing the future is a good thing, it forces us to change. Change is not a cheap slogan, the times will change and rulers can not put their own spin on it. They can try but they'll fail. The state controls society's mechanisms for spontaneous social action but that is not likely to persist 10, 50, 100 years into the future. Robert Klassen of Strike the Root writes:

All political governments fail. History shows no exceptions. Political governments are always founded by force and fraud, rule by force and fraud, and inevitably fail by force and fraud. Worldwide, political governments are no different, and this time they are all failing at once: Their 100% fraudulent monetary system has caught up to them.

If there is a dark age ahead, the state will not play such a large role in society as it does now. It simply can't afford to, because enough people won't pay into the system. We will probably go through a dark age, a middle age, and a renaissance all in one effort. A whole new word will need to be invented to describe the historical times we'll be in. It'll be a dark age with non-stop flickerings of light.

This is all speculation, of course, who knows what type of historical curve balls will be introduced. But one thing is clear, the past 30 thirty years are behind us and that's a good thing because they were in their own way a spiritual dark age.