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GEORG FEUERSTEIN ON CONTEMPORARY LIFE,
POLITICS, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

 

Interview by Brenda Feuerstein

 

 

QUESTION: In previous interviews, we’ve talked a lot about Yoga and Yoga practitioners. What about everyone and everything else?

RESPONSE: In many ways, Yoga enthusiasts are everyone else; they are part of the malaise that, as I see it, afflicts contemporary humanity, particularly our Western humanity. They might think of themselves as special, but really most of them are rather ordinary, rather average individuals. Like nearly everyone else in this part of the world, they overconsume without realizing it; they have little interest in politics; they tend to believe the laundered news of the mass media, and they generally support the status quo. Granted, they may be a bit more concerned about their health or their looks than most other people. Over the years, I’ve encountered several thousand of them in my lectures, seminars, and workshops. So, I think I know what I’m talking about.

QUESTION: But many of them also have read your books, whichare a lot more challenging than a Stephen King or John Grisham novel. . .

RESPONSE: Fair enough. Some are clearly trying harder than others. [Chuckles.] The fact is, though, that the Yoga movement is also a movement of and for consumers. And consumerism is one of the great evils of our time. It depletes the Earth’s resources, does injustice to the poor, and suffocates our souls.

QUESTION: Suffocates in what sense?

RESPONSE: Because we can afford it, we surround ourselves with all sorts of useless stuff—stuff that we really don’t need; stuff that doesn’t contribute to our emotional or spiritual welfare. Walk into any Western home and take a look around. I’m including our own home. We have so much stuff that just stands around and has no worthwhile purpose. I know we periodically get rid of things, so that others can acquire them to overload their home. Step into any store and take note of all the various brands of cereal or shoe polish. One time, back in the 70s, I had the opportunity to visit Erfurt in what was then still the German Democratic Republic, that is, East Germany. Walking down the cobble-stone streets, I peeked into undecorated, drab store windows. There were very few items on the shelves inside. I was told that on certain days, a long line of people would form outside the neighborhood grocery store. Latecomers would often be out of luck when it came to popular items like meat.

I had the same experience during my days of fieldwork in the Middle East. Coca Cola was of course ubiquitous. When you and I were in Mexico, we also found stores that sold perhaps a few dozen items, and never quite what we were looking for. Affluent countries like Canada or the U.S. are built around consumption. People are hypnotized into believing that they must consume or perish. If people stopped overconsuming, the system would indeed collapse around their ears. “Thou must consume outrageously!” is the very first commandment of our Euroamerican civilization. To ensure that we keep this commandment, industry designs and manufactures myriads of goods that have built-in obsolescence. Advertising and marketing wizards come up with ever new angles and slogans to stimulate people’s greed for more. Corporations indulge in the most outrageous lies to blind us to the environmental and human cost of consumerism. In the world of business, cheating occurs on a large scale. Not too many moons ago, Walmart was found out to have sold regular, that is, pesticide-polluted food under the label “organic food.” Fortunately, there are some watchdog organizations looking out for us.

Consumerism is a form of greed. It is the opposite of contentment. I just remembered an incident during one of my visits to the Middle East, which I want to share with you and the eventual readers of this interview. I was in the Sultanate of Oman at the time. I was driving through the desert, in the middle of nowhere, which was one of the things I enjoyed doing greatly—in retrospect, downright unecological behavior. Miles away from the nearest settlement, I came across a young boy, maybe ten or twelve years old, who was walking by himself. I thought he was lost, and so I naturally stopped the car. It turned out that he had been herding his family’s goats and was now on his way to a relative. He carried nothing except the tattered clothes he was wearing. When I asked him why he was not at school, he told me that he would very much like to go to school but that his family was too poor. I offered him a drink of cool water, and he grateful took a couple of swigs from the bottle I had given him. Then he wanted to hand it back to me, but I told him that I had lots more bottles in the car and that he should keep it. He politely refused. When I repeated my offer, he gestured with his hands and insisted that I should take the bottle back. Then, with a shy smile, he bid me goodbye. I was deeply moved by the simplicity and contentment I had just witnessed. I often think about that encounter. It stands in such stark contrast to the attitude of greed in our own society. Perhaps I should have abandoned my car and joined him in his simple lifestyle right there and then.

QUESTION: Before you go any further with this consideration, I’d like to ask you a personal question, which readers might appreciate having answered. When I looked through your earlier writings, I didn’t find many concrete criticisms of our contemporary way of life. Then, more recently, you produced books like Yoga Morality and Connecting the Dots! and wrote essays on spiritual activism and terrorism, and so on. Readers might want to know what has changed.

RESPONSE: I changed. The situation itself has worsened as well. I’ve long spoken of a global crisis. In fact, I fancied my writings as providing a certain antidote to what I saw was happening. Some years ago, I would often experience great despair about the devastation of our natural environment. I even wrote and published a little article on Eco-Yoga. Now I regard those gestures as somewhat milk toast. I think my outrage at the Bush regime’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq galvanized a political passion in me, which I never had before. I started to look more closely at the connection between politics, corporate business, the depletion of oil and other natural resources, and the simultaneous destruction of Nature. What I saw, or finally allowed myself to see, was far worse, far more serious than anything I had pictured until then. Your own passion about the environment and about social justice was instrumental in my own reevaluation of the situation. Our numerous discussions have helped me to take off certain blinders but also to articulate my feelings and thoughts.

Today, I firmly believe that the global crisis has become a global catastrophe. I believe humanity is facing its greatest test ever, and I am increasingly doubtful that our species is capable of making the necessary drastic changes necessary for its survival. I confess I’ve become a skeptic. But I also feel more passionate than ever about our human future. I don’t at all side with those who think that humanity is a dispensable parasite and that we ought to celebrate the imminent demise of our species. I could never share such a cynical position. What I do stand for, however, is a furious rejection of our modern careless way of life. People have to understand that when I criticize them, I also criticize myself, at least all those aspects of my life that are still under the influence of our insane civilization.

QUESTION: What are those aspects?

RESPONSE: I thought you might ask me that. Well, I would point to behavior that either is unconsciously influenced by our consumer society or that I know to be unecological but haven’t been able to reform yet. You’d probably want an example, right?

QUESTION: Right.

RESPONSE: Okay, for all too many years, I never thought of switching the overhead light off when leaving a room for more than a couple of minutes. It just never occurred to me that light bulbs draw a significant amount of energy and that energy has to be generated at an expense to the environment. My main concern was that I should be able to pay the electricity bill at the end of the month. That was totally unconscious, conditioned behavior and therefore selfish. I’ve reformed my thinking and behavior on this score.

A conscious unecological behavior that I’m still working on modifying is to remember taking a bag with me every time I go shopping. Then I don’t have to stuff groceries in my pockets or balance a rickety box on the way home. In some European countries, you are charged heftily for a bag if you forgot to bring your own, and you also can expect verbal criticism or at least disapproving looks from the employee at the check-out register or from other customers. Rightly so, I think. However, here in Canada, like in the U.S., ecologically sound shopping practices almost don’t exist as yet. You might say unconsciousness and therefore self-centeredness prevail.

QUESTION: I know you don’t agree with people like Derrick Jensen who argue that our modern civilization should be destroyed. But what would you like to see happen?

RESPONSE: Jensen is a gifted, passionate writer, and I have found his books stimulating. But I think he is dead wrong about what we need to do. Activism, yes. Militant activism, no. I feel he often gets caught up in his own rhetoric. I certainly share his anger about the destruction of Nature, but why would one wish to add to this the demolition of human civilization? I see his policy as equivalent to killing a child only because he has broken all his toys. This kind of attitude makes no sense to me.

QUESTION: In other words, radical activism is not an option for you, right?

RESPONSE: How radical is radical? Jensen recommends that people blow up dams to allow the salmon to swim freely. Can you blow up a dam without causing death to countless small creatures who will drown in the resulting flood? Can you even guarantee that no human being will inadvertently be harmed or killed? Violent actions tend to breed violent reactions, and they often have unforeseen violent consequences. I am more in favor of passive resistance like demonstrations, sit-ins, and boycotts. To suffer being dragged into a police car and hauled off to jail is pretty radical for the person involved. To suffer being dragged before what is likely to be a very conservative judge is equally radical.

I side with Gandhi and Tolstoy when it comes to the political and social merit of nonviolence. After all, Gandhi managed to topple the British Raj in India with his nonviolent approach.

QUESTION: Jensen thinks that pacificism is a weakness. . .

RESPONSE: I feel that Jensen has conflated his childhood experience of abuse with his political philosophy. He even describes our civilization as “abusive.” He uses the word “rape” for what civilization is doing to the natural environment. I do empathize with him, but I can’t endorse his radical views. Pacificism doesn’t have to mean you take everything lying down. Not at all. I agree with Jensen that the Christian ethical principle of turning the other cheek to get struck again is pathological. Maybe it was never intended to be taken literally. Jesus himself physically threw the money changers out of the temple; in fact he whipped them, if this New Testament story is authentic.

Passive resistance can be a very effective tool. If you remember, the practice of boycott got its name from a tyrannical Irish estate agent who represented an absentee landlord. When the local people resisted his exploitation, he kicked them off the land. The situation quickly escalated and led to a general “boycott” by the entire local population. For once, the people won, and Mr. Boycott removed himself to England.

QUESTION: Given the whole unfortunate history of the crusades and the various persecutions by the Christian Church, it probably wouldn’t be appropriate to call Christianity a pacifist religion?

RESPONSE: In spite of its symbol of the dove, you mean? Let me answer this very briefly: With the exception of the incident at the Temple in Jerusalem, there really is no other evidence of Jesus having indulged in violent acts. For all we know, it may not even be true. On the contrary, his sayings, as they have come down to us, speak of kindness and forgiveness. So, I’d say Jesus was a pacifist and emphasized pacifism. Three hundred years after his lifetime, Christianity was significantly reconfigured when it was made the new state religion of the Roman empire; that was under Constantine I. At that point, Christianity became intricately bound up with secular authority. Suddenly the idea of justifiable violence became acceptable to the Christian Church. Only a few Christian sects, like the Quakers and Amish, have retained a pacifist ethics. Hats off to them! Ever since Augustine, mainstream Christianity has condoned the idea of just war. In our upside-down world, “just war” can even be an ugly aggressive war motivated entirely by self-interest and causing untold civilian suffering. I think the U.S. government has amply demonstrated how this works with its global war on terror.

Oddly enough, President George W. Bush, Jr. is a born-again Christian. His actions suggest the frame of mind of a Christian fanatic from the days of the Crusades. He certainly is full of anger, resentment, and defiance and has an undeniable penchant for violence. The problem is he also is the man who has been chosen by American voters to keep his finger hovering over the red button in the oval office. Scary, isn’t it?

QUESTION: Yes, very. Maybe that’s the real reason for Bush Senior shedding tears while giving a public talk [on June 12, 2006]? He didn’t cry for his son Jeb [the outgoing governor of Florida] but his unruly son George W., who’s led the U.S. into deep trouble. What do you think?

RESPONSE: You could be right about that. Or maybe he was crying over the predictable destiny of the Bush clan, which after the present disastrous presidency is not likely to govern again in Washington. I don’t want my readers to think that I am anti-America as a matter of principle. I am not. I am anti specific attitudes, specific policies, a specific mindset. In other words, I am highly critical of certain aspects of American society and culture, and this includes the ideology and politics of the Bush regime.

QUESTION: I’ve been wondering.What’s the difference between Bush, Hitler, and Arjuna? All three fought terrible wars and caused incredible suffering, and all three professed religious ideas?

RESPONSE: Oh, that’s a good question. Let’s look at Hitler first. Few people know that he was a Catholic all his life, but I don’t think he believed in anything but himself and his assumed God-given mission. As a political leader, he seems to have had unlimited self-confidence. He seriously believed that in persecuting the Jews he was merely following the Lord’s mandate. The German people didn’t question his religiosity even when they had proof of his absolute monstrousness. He was unquestionably a madman in power.

President Bush, Jr., too, is a committed Christian. Apparently, he too believes that he is merely executing the dictates of his Creator. He told Amish farmers that God speaks through him. People have ended up in asylums for claiming less than this. All this is on record. Perhaps posterity will not be afraid to make a judgment about his state of mind. Hopefully, it won’t be too late by then. Of course, some people might feel it’s already too late. I am thinking of innocent civilians who were brutally slaughtered by invading U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As for Prince Arjuna, I wouldn’t call him either a political leader or a religionist. He certainly was no Machiavelli. He was simply a member of ancient India’s political elite and a highly trained warrior. His elder brother Yudhishthira was the born statesman. He had rare moral qualities as a man and as a leader. Now, you have to realize that it would be misleading to regard Arjuna or Yudhishthira as members of Hinduism. Hinduism is not a religious denomination like Methodism or Catholicism. It’s the name Westerners use for an entire culture, with its own distinct philosophical systems, religious ideas, architectural styles, languages, and literatures. In fact, in some ways, Hinduism was the invention of the Bengali renaissance, especially Swami Vivekananda.

Arjuna subscribed to the same basic religious and moral ideas we can glean from the ancient Sanskrit scriptures. These ideas are in fact discussed in the Mahabharata epic, which also includes the Bhagavad-Gita. The kind of religion we find in these works is best described as spirituality. It revolves around the ideal of liberation and moral integrity. As readers of the Gita will know, Arjuna initially was eager to reclaim his kingdom from his wicked cousins, but then, when he saw the damage even a just war would do, he was reluctant to fight. Krishna really had to convince him to proceed. Once he had been convinced, he fought bravely.

Neither Bush nor Hitler ever fought at the front. As a matter of fact, Hitler had been rejected as medically unfit to join the army. Bush’s military records have never been released to the public. It is known that he joined the National Guard and was trained to fly fighter planes. According to The Boston Globe, he was suspended from flight duty for failing to take his annual physical. There also are six months of unexplained absence from the National Guard. Effectively, what all this means is that President Bush, Jr., never served in Vietnam or anywhere else.

QUESTION: Should he have fought in Vietnam, then?

RESPONSE: Of course not. The Vietnam war had nothing to do even with a just war. It was a bid to stem the tide of Communism in that part of the world, which cost the lives of nearly 60,000 American soldiers and the lives of well over one million Vietnamese. So, no, Bush should not have fought in it. No one should have. From another perspective, he certainly should have been obliged to fight for his country like the tens of thousands of other Americans who had been drafted. There is no record of any medical exemption for him.

QUESTION: You seem to be angry about Bush.

RESPONSE: I am, though not in the personal way you might think. I regard his presidency as a symptom of America’s political disease, which is imperialism. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, starting with the Spanish-American war, the White House has pursued an egregious expansionist politics. Native Americans might want to argue that this unfortunate trend started with the genocide of their people even before the founding of the United States in 1776; they would have a point. Since then there have been literally hundreds of military interventions, including major wars, intended to spread America’s hegemony around the globe. Colonialism is still alive and kicking, though the name itself has disappeared.

QUESTION: I would imagine that many Americans think that there is nothing wrong with wanting to share democracy and their lifestyle with other nations. . .

RESPONSE: That’s the problem. This is, in fact, the majority opinion. But, if democracy could be said to be gloriously flourishing in the U.S. itself, other nations might be more willing to listen. If America’s lifestyle could be said to be exemplary and free from serious problems, others might be eager to emulate it. But neither is true. America’s democracy is an experiment that has not been very successful. Besides, President Bush has managed to dismantle a good bit of the Constitution that guarantees Americans all sorts of wonderful democratic rights.

And what really is America’s lifestyle? Is it the lifestyle of the over 9 million people who can’t afford to eat regularly? Is it the lifestyle of the over 40 million people who are just scraping by? Is it the lifestyle of the under 1 million people whose combined pre-tax income is 20 percent large poverty-stricken sector of the population? Or is it the self-indulgent lifestyle of the top 20 percent of the population that own over 80 percent of the country’s privately held wealth? Or is it the lifestyle of the top 1 percent of American households who collectively own over 33 percent of the wealth?

The idea of spreading “democracy” and America’s lifestyle around the globe is nothing but silly propaganda. Sadly enough, it seems to work for the political leadership in pursuing its pathological dreams of conquest and “progress.”

QUESTION: Do you see all politics as pathological. You tend to use that term quite often?

RESPONSE: Pretty much, and I’m not being facetious here. Most of the time, politics is “egotics,” that is, ego-driven manipulation. It doesn’t have any redeeming quality of ego-transcendence, or enlightenment, to it. It’s largely a matter of power play. You couldn’t even convincingly argue that politicians are self transcending because they act in people’s interest. As I see it, they are generally not motivated by compassion for others but by ideology and more often than not by self-serving agendas. Show me a compassionate politician, and I will show you a dead politician. He is either dead and safely forgotten or idealized. Or he is dead as in “dead in the water,” that is, he is practically ineffective.

QUESTION: I know you think that 9/11 was a pretext for the American government to make war in the Middle East. Why do you think that?

RESPONSE: When I heard the news about the collapse of the New York towers, I instinctively knew that President Bush would use the disaster to declare war if only to boost his public image. He had campaigned under the slogan “Compassionate Conservatism,” but pretty quickly he declared himself “war president.” As the details of the terrorist attack became known, I began to wonder about it. There were many unexplained discrepancies that had me puzzled. Even a few officials from within the government went public with their doubts. Talk about a government conspiracy was rife. Then the media backed off and settled for the official story.

The question “What if the terrorist act had been allowed to happen?” festered in my mind. Three years later, I was able to dedicate some time to investigate more. In the meantime a number of publications had come out that clearly articulated the same misgivings that had gone through my mind. They even offered very disturbing answers. I was especially impressed with Michael Ruppert’s massive and well-documented book Crossing the Rubicon. Ruppert was a narcotics detective in the Los Angeles police department. He had blown the whistle on drug trafficking by the CIA and fellow cops and has had to pay dearly for it. He ended up becoming a professional whistleblower.

Then, after having had his office in the U.S. destroyed, he fled to South America to escape the CIA apparently. Maybe he had become paranoid. Who knows? Not very long ago, he visited Canada for a brief spell for medical treatment. Anyway, the evidence cited in Crossing the Rubicon unequivocally points to the Bush regime as the major culprit behind the 9/11 tragedy. This book was published in 2004, and since then several other important publications have seen the light of day which support Ruppert’s conclusions, alarming as they are. Whether these disclosures will ever lead to anything concrete remains to be seen. But I have become convinced that they should lead at least to an objective reinvestigation of the 9/11 events, if not an indictment of the Bush regime.

QUESTION: Do you really think that the evidence is there for another investigation? The 9/11 Commission obviously didn’t think it was worse pursuing any guilt on the part of the Bush government.

RESPONSE: Did you expect anything different? The Commission’s report is clearly biased. It fails to address very important questions and disregards significant evidence. To answer your question, though, I believe the evidence is definitely there, but I doubt the powers that be will allow another, impartial investigation. Imagine if it were proven that the Bush regime allowed 9/11 to happen or, worse, had aided and abetted the so-called terrorists! This would cast the entire U.S. presidency in a very sinister light. There’d be an unprecedented public outcry—at least one would hope. The Bush regime would have to be impeached, and there would have to be serious consequences. America and the rest of the world would be watching! Give it another 30 years, and perhaps some retired government official will start talking, not being able to face death with so much guilt in his heart.

QUESTION: If nothing can be done about it, what good does it do to read books like Ruppert’s or to know that one’s government has been involved in a dirty plot against its own citizens?

RESPONSE: I see this as reality therapy. People ought to know what’s going on around them. They ought to know what their government is up to, because they have voted officials into power. We the people are co-responsible for the political actions of our elected officials. If we are not sufficiently vigilant and proactive, we can find ourselves in the kind of nightmarish situation that the Germans had to experience after voting Hitler into power. I think politics is dirty business at the best of times, but things can always get worse.

QUESTION: By now you’ll probably have lost some of your American readers. They might dismiss your comments as little more than conspiracy mongering. . .

RESPONSE: Yes, I might have offended some readers. To those readers who are still with me, I’d just like to say this: I have no political or other agenda in wondering about the U.S. government’s involvement in the 9/11 affair. I’d like nothing better than for the available evidence to point away from the White House and for Ruppert and other whistleblowers to be completely wrong. It doesn’t look like it, however. The evidence is overwhelming. The weirdness factor is too high for a more comforting interpretation of all the available facts about 9/11.

The U.S. government has a history of concealment and deception, especially the Bush regime. Curiously, even those who think that politicians are mostly scumbags are understandably reluctant to assume the worst of their elected leaders. They ought to look at leaked government documents and top-secret documents made available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act! Bless the censors who were either asleep on the job or had their own personal agenda in releasing incriminating documents. Some of this is blood-curdling stuff.

QUESTION: Do you think that a decent human being would ever go into politics?

RESPONSE: Oh, sure. An idealist would. The real question is: Will a person leave politics the same way? Or is it like taking a bath in grimy water?

QUESTION: What about someone like Dag Hammarskjöld?

RESPONSE: I grant you, there are exceptions to every rule. Hammarskjöld was definitely the best man the United Nations ever had. Judging from Markings [his only book], he was a closet mystic with high ideals. As a writer, I have to say that he was also a writer with a rather obscure style. On the political side, though, I have to give him five stars. It’s regrettable that his life and reign at the United Nations ended prematurely in a plane crash. If Bishop Desmond Tutu is right, this was no accident but an assassination; politics at its worst. He seems to have evidence for his claim. The problem is that assassinations are frequently difficult to prove. No Western government wants to draw attention to the fact that this sort of thing happens quite often. Assassination has been part of Washington’s secret political arsenal. Although in the 70s the U.S. government banned assassinations of foreign leaders during peace time, the relevant executive order [#12333], if I understand it correctly, doesn’t really prohibit such nefarious actions altogether. All it takes to go ahead with an assassination is for the U.S. government to perceive a threat on national interests. Well, we know from the “preemptive” wars initiated by the Bush junta that threats are easy to come by when there is general paranoia.

QUESTION: Why are you paying so much attention to American politics these days?

RESPONSE: With the disappearance of the Soviet Union as a world power, the U.S. is at the moment the single most powerful nation on Earth. It is also the most affluent. And money plus power plus paranoia make for incredible instability. Let’s just look for a moment at the ideology behind the Bush regime. The key notion is the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine: America has been placed in the lead of all nations, and now it must secure its military superiority come what may. Even preemptive war and unilateral action against possible enemies are justified.

The world learned of this dangerous ideology from a document that was drafted by Paul Wolfowitz and leaked to the public. Wolfowitz has since “resigned” from the Bush government and was made president of the World Bank. Although his infamous document was somewhat rewritten later on, the basic tenets have clearly survived. They are part and parcel of Bush’s ongoing aggressive foreign policy. President Bush continues to pursue imperialist dreams, and as long as Washington persists in this disgraceful fantasy, America is a danger to the rest of the world.

Are you surprised that America’s image overseas is at an all-time low? Other nations are genuinely worried that there is another Third Reich in the making. One of the most outspoken critics of Washington’s foreign policy is the former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. In his recently published memoirs, he mentions how President Bush’s frequent claim to be “God-fearing” during their meeting filled him with “suspicion.” It fills me with forebodings. At least Joan of Arc was no bumbler and even made it into the Vatican’s gallery of saints. But first the Church burned her at the stake. To be a saint, you have to be safely dead.

QUESTION: But life goes on, right?

RESPONSE: Exactly! The ties between countries can be very tight and twisted even when individual politicians don’t seem to get along. But, I think, the world is watching nervously what President Bush is up to next. You cannot alienate so many foreign leaders and nations as he has done during his reign so far and not expect a reaction back. Afghanistan is destroyed, though American corporations are making money now on rebuilding its structures. They cannot rebuild the millions of wounded hearts. Anger and hatred against America will linger on. Iraq is likewise destroyed and demoralized. There, too, anger and resentment flourish. As an acquaintance from the Middle East told me once, Arabs are like their camels: they don’t forget and, generally speaking, they don’t forgive. I believe that the Bush regime has managed to fan the fires of militant fundamentalism in the Muslim world, which is one reason why the president’s war on terror is destined to fail.

QUESTION: What other reasons are there?

RESPONSE: Okay. Another reason is that no nation can exploit others without someone pushing back sooner or later. A third reason is that the people of many nations, who have been watching television and Western movies, are envious of America’s opulence. Baywatch and Dynasty don’t reflect the life of most Americans. But based on television programs like these two, Third World people now mistakenly think that everyone in the U.S. is living in luxury. Naturally, they would like the same for themselves. Instead, they might learn that American corporations have been plundering their country’s natural resources and devastating their local environment. Greed quickly turns to resentment. Like the Roman empire, the American empire is hungry for raw materials, especially oil. In fact, it’s insatiable.

QUESTION: In what way is America an empire?

RESPONSE: First of all, I’m not using the term “empire” casually. Doesn’t an empire have an emperor, a dictator, you might ask? Well, even Rome had a senate, but the head of state—the emperor—pretty much dictated the melody his senatorial choir had to sing. Those who didn’t want to fall in step were quietly or sometimes quite blatantly removed from office. I believe the American presidency has become such a dictatorship. The Bush regime has dismantled a good part of the Constitution. Even if it’s argued that George Bush, Jr., is not necessarily the one who is making the policies but is merely doing the bidding of men like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, he is still de jure president, or, as I am arguing, emperor.

The main characteristic of an empire is that it constantly wants to expand its sphere of influence and control over other nations. This is definitely a prominent feature of the United States. Under the shibboleth of “democracy,” America has fought hundreds of so-called “interventions” overseas since the country’s creation. Its annual military budget of around 500 billion ensures that this imperialist orientation can be maintained. Did you know that this amounts to roughly the same amount spent on military expenditures by all other nations combined? The active and reserved armed forces of America comprise over 1.5 million personnel. I checked this out. This is a little under 1 percent of America’s population. The percentages for China and India, the two most populous nations on Earth, are very low [something like 0.4. and 0.6 percent respectively]. There are well over 600 American military bases in more than 40 countries around the globe. The United States has way more military aircraft and aircraft carriers than any other country. It has an arsenal of nearly 6,000 active nuclear warheads. If that doesn’t sound like an empire, what does?

As for removing dissident voices, governments that by their own admission have indulged in assassinations of foreign politicians cannot be trusted at the home front either, wouldn’t you say?

QUESTION: What happened to turn a republic into an empire?

RESPONSE: I think there are all sorts of answers to this question. My own view—and I am not a political scientist—is that America’s economic and military superiority allowed a ruthless elite to take the arrogant step toward empire building. Behind the bid for American hegemony, I see a nervous concern over the country’s future as natural resources, especially oil, are running out.

Really, oil is the big issue nowadays. The catchword is “peak oil.” What this means is that the demand for oil is now greater than possible production levels. My attention was directed to this problem by Richard Heinberg’s excellent book The Party’s Over [subtitled Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies]. Apparently, oil companies had been grossly exaggerating the figures for available oil reserves, presumably to manipulate the market. It turns out that the available reserves are a fraction of what governments had assumed. So, now every industrial nation is scrambling for oil. There’s no viable alternative to oil, and our modern civilization would come to a grinding halt without it. In fact, from realistic estimates, we can expect something like this within the next two decades—unless an alternative to petroleum can be found and developed quickly enough. It doesn’t look like it.

Of course, governments are slow to admit all this. They want to avoid a huge panic. But the American government, for one, is clearly preparing for some sort of catastrophe. The Bush government has been dismantling the Constitution bit by bit. It has given unprecedented power and funds to agencies like FEMA and Homeland Security. FEMA has been conducting super-realistic exercises in towns, with the public left ignorant of the actual nature of what was going on. I’ve seen one documentary that showed citizens being harshly rounded up. People were confused and angry; school children were scared and crying.

Another documentary I watched included shots of gulags that the government had built at great expense to house tens of thousand of inmates. Apparently, there are over 100 of these concentrations camps around the country. Some estimates are as high as 800, which may be exaggerated. Who are these prisons intended to house? Muslim terrorists? American dissidents? Innocent citizens? Remember, during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the military rounded up over 100,000 perfectly harmless and utterly scared American citizens of Japanese descent and put them behind bars. The U.S. government’s human rights record isn’t great. What, I ask you, is Washington expecting to happen? FEMA scares the heck out of me, and the Department of Homeland Security makes me shudder. The CIA is equally sinister and chilling.

QUESTION: What will happen when oil has run out?

RESPONSE: Well, oil is presently running out. This is a gradual process, and we must expect growing difficulties in the years ahead. The crude oil price will keep going up and consequently so will gasoline prices. Manufacturing and the transportation of goods will become more expensive. Agriculture will also become more costly. All that means is that prices in general will keep rising. People have to realize that oil isn’t just converted into gasoline. Oil is also used to make plastics, resins, lubricants, solvents, detergents, and so on. It helps make cars, farm equipment, asphalt, and fertilizer, as well as clothes, carpets, furniture, and medications. As time goes by, we will get less and less for our money. To be sure, the rich will get richer, and the poor will get even poorer. Governments will struggle to keep the economy going. They’ll be forced to take drastic measures, including forceful population control, as conditions deteriorate. This is not a happy forecast, but it is one that is shared by more and more specialists in various fields of expertise.

At this point in time, however,it’s more important to ask “What can and should we as individuals do now?” What can we as private citizens do to stop governments from behaving like ravenous wolves preying on other, weaker nations? How can we reduce our own reliance on oil? Simplifying our lifestyle is definitely in order. Preparing for meager economic times is a good idea. Assuming responsibility for the way we live is clearly imperative. Not least, we must educate our children to adopt a sustainable lifestyle and become politically savvy, and we must do so by our own example.

A growing number of researchers have become convinced that civilization as we know it will comparatively soon cease to exist. Some are giving the patient one or two decades at the most. Some talk of years, not even decades. As I said, when the oil stops flowing, a great many industrial processes on which our civilization has depended thus far will clearly come to a halt. No one knows, of course, when and how this eventuality will come to pass. But oil is running out. The problem is very real. Governments are doing next to nothing to prepare the population. If anything, their ostrich-like politics of concealment is ensuring that the inevitable social catastrophe is likely to be worse than it needs to be. Perhaps the political leaders, if they are aware of the looming crisis at all, which some are clearly not, think that ignorance is bliss. Their policies are almost designed to breed a population that is increasingly uneducated and incapable of understanding what’s going on.

QUESTION: That’s what I guess, you have Charlotte Iserbyt’s book [The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America] in mind . . . The stupefaction of Americans?

RESPONSE: Right. In the early 80s, Iserbyt was employed by the U.S. Department of Education as a senior policy advisor. She shows in her book that for decades now the government has been systematically undermining public education by what one can only classify as fascist policies. The evidence she cites is overwhelming. It’s easier to rule ignorant, conformist people than people who think for themselves and uphold universal values rather than the kind of values that make for a good consumer in the global economy.

In his recent books The Twilight of American Culture and Dark Ages America, Morris Berman argues that we are on the threshold of a new Dark Age. With more than half [60 percent] of American adults never having read a book and half [53 percent] of them being ignorant of the simple fact that the Earth takes one year to travel around the Sun, this is completely believable.

QUESTION: It seems to me that what Iserbyt has shown is that the U.S. wants an education system that favors globalization. . .

RESPONSE: That’s exactly it. The capitalist system requires a continuous expansion of markets. To make more money, you need to create more consumers. As number one capitalist nation on Earth, the U.S. has a vested interest in spreading its economic tentacles into every country, city, and village on Earth. That’s really what economic globalization is about. That is President Bush’s declared “One World” agenda. It’s a wonderful thing that people from all over the world can now talk to each other through modern communications technology. It’s promising that they can learn from one another. But that’s not what interests U.S. government leaders. Their only concern is to have a so-called “free” market economy everywhere, to melt the nations of this planet into a single vast hypermarket governed by a U.S.-controlled élite. They have no higher purpose in mind. They couldn’t care less about creating a peaceful, cooperative, and sustainable world.

QUESTION: So, as far as you are concerned then, globalization is undesirable?

RESPONSE: Years ago, I thought that globalization would be magnificent: to bring together all nations in a grand symphony of collaboration. But that’s not what is happening. Globalization is an economic strategy used by Western governments and corporations to foster their hunger for power and their greed for wealth. All this has become quite transparent since 9/11. The Bush government has inadvertently spilled the beans. While Americans are still largely ignorant of the reality of the situation, the leaders of poor nations have taken careful note. That’s why the negotiations at the 2003 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Cancun collapsed. Helped and pressured by nongovernmental organizations, Third World representatives put their feet down and refused to make deals that would hurt their own people. More resistance can be expected. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which are agencies of U.S. capitalism, have also come under constant fire. Economic globalization, which has McWorld for its goal, has increased world poverty and contributed directly to the suffering of other nations. We must resist this trend and its underlying pernicious ideology.

QUESTION: It seems to me that the world is shrinking and that people are brought together by technology. Even if economic globalization were not the case, this trend would still continue.

RESPONSE: I agree. Nor can I foresee that multinational corporations are going to willingly abandon their globalization strategy. If there is enough resistance to them in Third World countries, however, they might have to change their tactics and develop better manners, so to speak. Or go for all-out domination, if necessary by military means with the help of the U.S. government. In 2004, the International Forum on Globalization came out with an interesting report in which the map out alternatives to economic globalization, which would create a win-win situation for everyone. The report, which is available in book form, explains ten fundamental principles that are meant to create sustainable societies. These principles include things like respect for the right to self-determination by individuals, communities, and entire nations; ecological sustainability; equity between people, which would reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, and the use of precaution in implementing programs so as to minimize undesirable side effects. All this is plain old common sense, which is a rare commodity in economic and political circles. As this kind of thinking become more prominent, we should see globalization proceed in a better way.

QUESTION: But is better good enough?

RESPONSE: I have no idea. Re-visioning an approach is one thing, implementing it is another. I’d also want to know what will happen to any more sustainable policies when the crunch comes, when the oil crisis is fully manifesting. I suspect it will be abandoned as soon as the survival instinct kicks in. I wish we could ask a reliable clairvoyant. [Chuckles]

QUESTION: Apart from America’s imperialism and economic globalization, what do you see as the major issues confronting us today?

RESPONSE: That’s a big subject. There are innumerable problems associated with modern life. The good folks at the Union of International Associations have identified no fewer than 30,000 global “issues.” To compile this catalogue must have been a rather depressing undertaking! I find it disconcerting to read about even two or three environmental problems in the daily news. But to answer your question: I’d say the key issues that need to be handled urgently are overconsumption by so-called developed nations, overpopulation, the Sixth Mass Extinction, environmental pollution, deforestation, global warming, global justice, nuclear proliferation, and war.

QUESTION: Could you say something about each of these problem areas?

RESPONSE: I’ll try. Let’s start with overconsumption. The problem here is that overconsumers don’t generally realize that they are overconsuming. It is a fact, however, that according to conservative estimates, the wealthy industrialized nations account for 80 percent of the world’s total private consumption. This comes at a huge cost to the environment. Consumers absolutely have to become aware of the unsustainability of their lifestyle, which is ransacking and polluting the Earth. Each and everyone has to examine his or her consumption patterns and make major changes. One way to look at this is to think that every unnecessary consumer product takes vital energy away from men, women, and children in poorer countries. I have come to regard our Western lifestyle as a form of vampirism. It must be stopped, or the carpet will be pulled out from underneath everyone. This is likely to happen anyway when oil has run out. But it can happen either dramatically and with a great deal of suffering to all of us or more gradually and gracefully. If we are unable to curb our greed, we will experience economic and social chaos.

One of the causes of our present-day crisis, or catastrophe, is overpopulation. Paul Ehrlich saw this very clearly back in 1968 when he published his controversial book The Population Bomb. Unfortunately, many of his colleagues off-handedly dismissed his work, and political leaders have thus far conveniently ignored it. But, as the years and decades have rolled by, his various analyses have become increasingly convincing. Some scientists have suggested that the Earth could easily produce enough food for 20 billion people, but their arguments are really quite silly and don’t take factors like pollution or global warming into account. At present, there are 6 billion people, and that’s already far more than the Earth can sustain. The evidence for this is everywhere around us. In other words, overpopulation is a problem; in fact, it’s an enormous problem. There is no doubt in my mind that humanity will have to voluntarily limit population growth. If we don’t do so voluntarily, Nature herself will reduce our numbers. It’s happening already. Diseases like typhoid and cholera, which modern medicine thought it had wiped out, are coming back with a vengeance. More and more, our immune system is unable to handle the pathogens occurring in Nature thanks to planetwide pollution, and so allergies are pandemic. Now, totalitarian nations like China have started to implement rigorous measures to attain zero population growth. This is done at the expense of basic human rights. . .

QUESTION: Isn’tthe Chinese government forcibly sterilizing women and even aborting late-term pregnancies?

RESPONSE: Sad but true. China’s human rights record is dreadful, and it should be vigorously addressed rather than mostly ignored by the United Nations. China’s trading partners in the West should demand real change, but then nations like the U.S. would have to first improve their own human rights record.

QUESTION: Do you think that it is even possible for governments to introduce population control without infringing on human rights?

RESPONSE: Probably not. However, as long as people will not assume full responsibility for their actions, governments will adopt a parental role. Everyone wants to have all sorts of rights, but few people actually understand that with greater freedom comes greater responsibility. Democracy is a fine ideal but it works only with intellectually and emotionally mature citizens. This is a very sensitive subject, and I’d like to leave it alone for now.

QUESTION: Please continue with your comments on key global problems. The next one is environmental pollution.

RESPONSE: Yes. All too many people behave as if they never even heard the concept. However, pollution is a grim reality. We have soiled our nest. We have managed to pollute land, water, and air. By now everybody knows his, but for most people and corporations it’s still business as usual. The most serious pollution concerns the oceans and ground water. It’s a fact that the oceans are dying. We’ve turned the very cradle of life on Earth into a toxic expanse. That’s 70 percent of the Earth surface, [or about 300 million cubic miles] of toxity! It’s hard to imagine that we have done this. Nowadays, when whales beach themselves, they are declared toxic waste, and people are warned to stay away. Certain fish are no longer safe to eat, unless you want to further increase the mercury levels in your blood and organs. Industries and cities continue to dump toxic chemicals and effluents into rivers, which empty themselves into the oceans. We’re talking about billions of gallons per day. Oil leaks from ships, especially cruise liners, wreak their own havoc.

All this is bad enough. But we are also polluting our rivers and, far worse, aquifers containing potable water. Not only are we rapidly depleting our limited resources of drinking water, we also toxify them and thus make them useless for human or animal consumption. Overpopulation, overconsumption, and stupidity play into this. Considering that we will die of thirst before we die of hunger, the present shortsightedness about managing Earth’s water resources is unbelievable.

Some forecasters predict that the next world war will be fought over potable water. That’s quite feasible. China is having huge water problems. In my over 20 years of living in California, I’ve witness a number of droughts. I’ve also witnessed the ongoing angry battle over water between Southern and Northern California. The southern part of the state, which contains the greater metropolitan area of Los Angeles with its [13] million residents but no rivers of its own worth mentioning is greedy for water for households and industry. Some residents of Northern California, where the water is generously supplied by mountains, went as far as to talk about creating a separate state. They felt entitled to the water produced by “their” mountains.

The U.S. as a whole has been systematically tapping into Canada’s system of rivers. But the fact is that despite its many rivers and lakes, Canada also has a growing shortage of potable water. Agricultural pesticide use has polluted a lot of ground water. The situation in other countries is very similar, and in some nations it is a lot worse. In certain regions of India, people have to make do with the worst contaminated water for all their needs. Needless to say, epidemic diseases and death rates are on the rise. Ground water is not so easily replenished, and with the loss of forests, countries are experiencing more and more dry spells. . .

QUESTION: . . . which brings us to the problem of worldwide deforestation.

RESPONSE: Right. Every year, nearly millions of acres [40 million acres] of forest are mowed down. That’s a football field per second. I’ve seen the utter devastation caused to the rain forest on my visit to Brazil in the 90s. Rain forests are the home of millions of animals, never mind all the plants that have medicinal properties. As the forests and rain forests are destroyed, the fertile topsoil is exposed to the elements. Before long it is eroded. As a result, weather patterns change. The rains stop coming not only locally but in neighboring countries as well. Thus, what the Brazilians are doing, or allow non-Brazilian corporations to do, to their forests greatly affects countries like Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay. As should have become amply clear by now, the Earth is a fragile eco system. However, people and nations behave as if our planet were infinitely resilient. It is not. When its balance is sufficiently disturbed, it will strive for a new equilibrium. In practical human terms, this means that we must expect any number of “inconveniences” and disasters.

QUESTION: Deforestation is a major contributor to global warming, which is your next global issue. . .

RESPONSE: Yes. Forests are one of Earth’s two lungs. The other lung is made up of the oceans, which, as I have mentioned, are collapsing as well. For decades, scientists sponsored by corporations have ed proponents of global warning. The evidence is now in: global warming is an undeniable fact. It is happening far more rapidly than was previously thought possible. Arctic ice and glaciers around the world are disappearing at an alarming rate. This will predictably challenge the Earth’s fine-tuned climatic balance. Ocean levels will rise and submerge islands and low-lying coastal cities like New Orleans or Venice. This, in turn, will displace millions of people, who will have to go somewhere. We can expect mass migrations in the foreseeable future. Global warming is also responsible for so-called super-hurricanes like “Katrina,” which devastated New Orleans in 2006 and caused over 1800 deaths and more than $80 billion in material damages. Experts fully expect that the situation will get worse in the years to come.

Global warming spells global catastrophe. Climatologists tell us that even if we were to stop producing greenhouse gas emissions now, the present trend toward ecological re-balancing is already unstoppable. You simply can’t stop a juggernaut on a dime. In other words, our generation and the next few generations must prepare for the dire consequences of the past hundred or so years of glorious disregard of the Earth’s eco system. Every time, we chop down a tree or dump chemical detergent down the sink or toilet, we only make things worse for us and our children and grandchildren. We urgently need to imbibe the wisdom of Native Americans whose sages teach us to live responsibly by bearing no fewer than seven generations in mind.

QUESTION: Couldyou explain to readers what is meant by global justice, which is another significant issue?

RESPONSE: Basically, the concern overglobal justice is about global injustice. The concept refers to the huge divide between rich and overconsuming nations on the one hand and poor and starving nations on the other. This disparity is unjust and immoral at the best of times. It is especially unjust and immoral because it is studiously maintained by American-driven capitalist institutions like the International Monetary Fund [IMF] and the World Bank. The way it works is that rich nations make loans to poor nations on the condition that the poor nations allow the rich nations to ransack their natural resources. Often the loans are for vastly expensive and environmentally unfriendly projects like dams that virtually enslave the receiving nations for decades. In other words, the deals are always one sided and in favor of the rich nations. Also, in order to fulfill the obligations of those unfair deals, the corporations involved commit any number of human rights violations. So, I believe the IMF and the World Bank should be urgently dismantled, and proper restitution should be made to the countries these two organizations have exploited. America’s so-called protectionism is really a form of exploitative colonialism. It must cease. Only then is there any hope of redressing the current economic imbalance and social injustice in the world.

QUESTION: Another key problem you mentioned earlier is nuclear proliferation. Can you say something about it?

RESPONSE: Nuclear proliferation simply means the widespread production and deployment of nuclear weapons. It means a greater probability that some fanatic in some nuclear nation will press the red button and unleash havoc on another country. It also means a greater probability that some fanatical terrorist will build a so-called dirty bomb and explode it in a densely populated area. The second scenario is more likely than the first. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, any number of nuclear devices and plutonium went missing.

Every year, nuclear reactors around the world produce thousands of tons of radioactive waste. This includes highly radioactive Plutonium 239, which degrades to Uranium 235, which has a half life of 4.5 billion years, which means we are leaving a horribly lethal legacy to future generations. Every year, enough plutonium is found missing from nuclear reactors and laboratories to make dozens of atom bombs.

There are currently over 12,000 active nuclear warheads in the world. Russia and the U.S. have over 11,000 of them! By comparison, China has just over a hundred [130] active nuclear warheads. It’s all insane. It’s even more insane when you know that there is no known neutralizer for nuclear waste. Some of the isotopes will remain radioactive for thousands of years. Despite official denials, the U.S. government has used depleted uranium in its weaponry against Afghanistan and Iraq. Large areas in both countries will be radioactive for 100,000 years. That’s also quite insane. I guess, the U.S. doesn’t quite know what to do with its over 1 billion—yes, billion—pounds of depleted uranium in storage. According to the Sierra Club, the Department of Energy is even thinking of recycling a portion of this radioactive waste into consumer goods. Already radioactivity is used to irradiate our food. That’s insanity to the nth degree!

QUESTION: This brings us to the big problem of war.

RESPONSE: Ever since the so-called Neolithic Revolution, wars have been a fairly predictable behavior of the human race. Even though our brain has evolved from its reptilian and even mammalian specialization and developed the neocortex, there’s precious little evidence that our species has become much wiser. We’re still fighting or threatening each other. We’re still inventing ever more powerful weapons to blow each other to smithereens. Or at least certain individuals choose to use their brain for military inventions and aggressive acts. Some people call them quite unjustly “Neanderthals,” because there is actually no evidence that the Neanderthals were so obtuse.

Military leaders now have the capacity to turn this planet into a glowing inferno. All it takes is one madman to start a nuclear war whose outcome is as predictable as it is irreversible. We ought to screen our politicians and military leaders most carefully for signs of psychopathology. I suspect that if we did this, we would have few politicians and military leaders left to serve. The rest would be locked up in asylums.

QUESTION: I noticed you didn’t mention terrorism in your list of global evils. How come?

RESPONSE: Terrorism is definitely a problem. If it is becoming a planetwide problem, then it’s largely due to America’s aggressive interventionism. I think that politically motivated terrorism will lessen when overconsumption and global justice are properly addressed. That implies that any lingering colonialism has to go and interventionist policies must be dropped.

QUESTION: How likely is that to happen?

RESPONSE: Not very likely at all.

QUESTION: Then we are screwed?

RESPONSE: Let me put it this way: As human beings we can be incredibly resourceful, but we can also be unbelievably myopic and egotistical. That the governments of the leading industrial nations of the world don’t want to tell people the bad news is criminal but understandable. That the media, with few exceptions, are silent about the global emergency, is also criminal but not understandable at all. Here we have the greatest, the most newsworthy story ever, and the media feign sleep.

QUESTION: When I contemplate these things, I get quite upset, and I know you do as well. Is our species flawed? Are we incapable of creating a benign world for ourselves and other sentient beings?

RESPONSE: Our present civilization is thoroughly dysfunctional. It has been like this at least since the so-called Neolithic Revolution. I think we were better off wandering about and foraging for our sustenance. Sedentary life has squashed our nomadic urge. We’ve voluntarily confined ourselves to boxes we call “houses” and “towns.” I wrote about this in my book Connecting the Dots]. All this is unnatural, but by now we don’t know any better. Still, we are a restless species. The invention of automobiles and airplanes has given us the means to rush from place to place, from box to box, giving us the illusion of our instinctive nomadism.

To answer your question, I don’t think our species is inherently flawed. But we’ve gotten ourselves into a pickle with the invention of agriculture and a sedentary lifestyle. We’re like tigers locked up in cages in a zoo. We’re pacing up and down longing for the freedom of the wilderness but are unable to return to it. So, we invent ever more ways of making our confinement as comfortable and entertaining as possible. Modern civilization sometimes seems to me like a huge machine of distraction. The joke is that we’ve been confining ourselves and are giving ourselves all these headaches by banging our heads against the self-made prison we call civilization.

As you know, I am very sympathetic toward the Deep Ecology movement. But I disagree with the notion found in the movement’s literature that the human race is incapable of a healthy response to life. On this point at least, I must side with Al Gore. In his book Earth in Balance, he criticized the Deep Ecology movement for its misanthropy. It is my conviction that human beings are as capable of love and compassion as they are of hate and destruction. I like to think that with the necessary nurturing and education, most people would choose love over hate. However, some individuals seem to be born warped. If there are so many people nowadays who have mental and emotional problems, I think it’s because they were born into a rather sick society. Of course, this is not meant as an excuse for sociopathic behavior.

QUESTION: In Connecting the Dots, you also write about humanity’s phototropic instinct. Can you say something about that?

RESPONSE: I’d love to. We need light both physically and mentally, as well as spiritually. There’s nothing like a bit of sunshine to make the body feel good. Already the physicians of ancient India and Egypt have prescribed heliotherapy for certain physical and emotional ailments. But we also benefit from the light of reason, or the light of knowledge, which is therapy for the mind. Then there is what the world’s mystical traditions refer to as “spiritual light.” We need all three forms of light to thrive. In our time, spiritual light has become obscured by our adopted materialistic ideology, and this is a major problem. We cannot tap into our full human potential without exposing ourselves to the reality of spiritual illumination. That’s what traditions like India’s Yoga are about. They give us the means to discover a brighter, nobler aspect of existence within ourselves. You could also speak of this spiritual light as the light of wisdom. That’s why I also frequently refer to India’s spiritual traditions as wisdom traditions.

QUESTION: How would you define wisdom?

RESPONSE: Oh, wisdom is what’s missing from contemporary life. [Chuckling.]

QUESTION: Maybe so, but that’s not a definition.

RESPONSE: I stand corrected. [More chuckling] In positive terms, wisdom is the kind of knowing that integrates all aspects of the mind. It is not so much a mental content, or intellectual insight, as a function of the higher mind that illuminates and pulls together all the disparate aspects of the mind. It represents a qualitative change within the mind. Wisdom is a great integrator, actually the only deep-level integrator within us.

QUESTION: Why is there so little wisdom in our society and culture?

RESPONSE: We have become consumers—consumers even of knowledge. Wisdom calls for a rather different attitude. It requires that we assume responsibility for who we are. This, in turn, requires that we know who we are. And that’s a matter of self-discipline and self-transformation. So, wisdom is preceded by a certain effort on our part. People make all sorts of efforts in life—to get a good job, to make lots of money, to outperform others. When it comes to wisdom, however, they don’t quite see the advantage of being wise. Wisdom seems old fashioned and even useless. Well, it isn’t. It’s the only thing that can restore sanity to our personal lives and the world.

Politics without wisdom is dangerous. Economics without wisdom is merely the manipulation of greed. Work without wisdom is functionality. Life without wisdom is sleepwalking, and so on. We need wisdom. 

 

© Copyright 2007, 2008 by Georg and Brenda Feuerstein.
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