Systems and Structures

A stream of consciousness rant on current events

It becomes banal and repetitive to note we are in a state of crisis. Post-industrial civilization lurches inexorably from one crisis to the next, without resolving the previous crises. When were we ever not in a crisis? When I look back at my life, I recall an endless series of geopolitical emergencies — wars, diseases, environmental disasters, pollution, recession, cancer clusters, civil unrest, homelessness, gang wars, stagnation, terrorism, and so on.

Perhaps it is most accurate to define the basic characteristic of our society as one ever-intensifying, multidimensional crisis.

It does feel as if this multi-dimensional crisis is worsening rapidly, however. We may soon move toward a new crescendo of emergency, and a little beyond that, a deeper plunge into the unknown.

Why is this happening to us?

I don’t think we can ever resolve the crisis (if we can even do so at this point; I still tend to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that we can, but only by embracing an unstinting, courageous dedication to radical honesty, to truth, wherever it leads us) until we correctly answer that basic, niggling question of “why?”