This Is My Thesis
This Is My Thesis
We're stuck in a cycle that's going to destroy Western civilization
The line, it is drawn, the curse, it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fading
And the first one now will later be last
For the times, they are a-changin’
— Bob Dylan
Today I’m going to share something with you that I’ve been avoiding publishing for several years because every time I bring it up in conversations it sparks hostility and animosity.
99.9% of people will hate this article.
I doubt if ten people finish it.
But it’s a new year, and I’m so burdened about this growing challenge that I’m coming out publicly.
Ready?
Here it is:
The world as we know it is ending.
Notice I didn’t say:
“THE END IS NIGH! THE WORLD IS ENDING!”
I’m not the guy-on-the-street-corner-with-a-sign type.
But the world as we know it is quickly collapsing, even though most people can’t yet perceive that the times are, indeed, rapidly changing.
The order, magnitude, and types of changes we face as a global society are unprecedented and far outside the scope of a single article (or even a library shelf of books.) Today, we’ll focus solely on a quick overview of the changing economic order.
But before we can talk about the changing economic order, we need to look at the big cycle of history.
The Christonomic Cycle
The universe was created and ordered by God to operate according to a certain set of laws.
Chemistry. Justice. Biology. Truth. Gravity. Right and Wrong. Physics. The Golden Rule.
Since the beginning of man — the “eve” of “adam,” as the Genesis poems envision it — people have turned to one of two foundations for their source of truth and morality and fairness: God or ourselves.
The former is unchanging, the latter shifts more than Floridian beach sands in a September hurricane.
Throughout history, whenever civilizations have strayed from the created order, it has led to disaster.
But it’s not a straight-line progression.
It’s a cycle.
It goes like this:
Rebellion>Destruction>Renewal
A more fleshed-out version looks more like this:
Rebellion>Warning>Decline>Remnant>Destruction>Renewal
If you chart the course of all human societies, you can’t miss it:
The powerful rebel against the created order.
Prophets warn of coming destruction.
The masses ignore and the powerful silence or kill the prophets, but not before a small minority of people grasp the truth of the created order and start cultivating remnant communities.
Society declines at a compounding rate.
Society reaches a tipping point and is destroyed from within and then without.
Remnant communities plant and birth the seeds of renewal.
The Christonomics Cycle.
Where are we right now in the Rebellion > Warning > Decline > Remnant > Destruction > Renewal cycle?
You’d be hard-pressed to find a fundamentalist, married-with-eight kids, Trump-loving, crypto-fascist Southern Baptist, or a true-left, Anti-Biden, non-binary, trans, atheist anarchist who wouldn’t agree we’re somewhere in the “Decline” phase of the cycle.
And they’re both right.
We’re in DECLINE
Democracy is being corroded
So-called “democratic” governments have been taken over by the rich They’re slashing taxes for themselves, selling off commons assets, loading up the taxpayers with compounding interest public debt at all levels, and raising stealth taxes on the working poor while simultaneously cutting their services. All this is leading to steep declines in well-being. In the UK already — the so-called sixth-richest country in the world — millions of working families are now living without heat like Medieval peasants.
Money is being debased
The debasement of money caused by debt-based money-printing and fractional reserve bank lending — both caused by the interest-loving corporatists who have seized control of the state — is compounding inflation and leaving more and more people in a cost-of-living crisis and permanent poverty.
Costs are being raised
Compounding corporate monopoly profits and compounding interest on federal, state, county, municipal, and consumer debt are all unsustainable and will grind the real economy to dust, leading to poverty for millions and mass debt-peonage for billions.
Shelter is being weaponized
The financialization of shelter (along with the hoarding of land and resources) is causing growing (soon to be compounding) homelessness for hundreds of thousands and housing hardship for all.
Ownership is being stripped
The power elite’s goal is global assetlessness for the masses and total corporate reliance. Under subscription serfdom, the bottom 99% won’t be able to afford to own a house, car, furniture, and electronics. There is no economic exit from this business model on the horizon. Corporate shareholders will not stop until you own nothing and must rent everything.
So, the prophets sound the alarm.
They tell the world the truth:
That the created order abhors interest and rejoices in debt jubilees.
That the created order differentiates between just gain (value derived from creating wealth for others) and unjust gain (wealth derived from extracting value from others.)
That the created order demands land and resource rights for all, demands sound currency, demands proportionality in taxation, demands the cessation of economic exploitation so society can enjoy the resultant cessation of poverty.
Next comes the REMNANT
The world ignores the prophets (for now.)
But those with ears to hear really listen, become the remnant, and help start spreading the news. Some even start remnant communities — small groups of people committed to renewing the created order within their personal lives, families, and circle of influence.
The wider majority continues protecting the status quo because the economic predators haven’t come for them… yet.
But misery compounds as interest and rent and shareholder profits compound, until the 99% wake up in poverty and say, “How did this happen so quickly?”
Even still, they ignore the prophets, or worse yet, have the gall to blame the prophets. [Ironically, prophets are considered too “radical” (read: sensible) to lead unless their rise coincides with a massive war or economic crash/depression where people were temporarily awake enough to realize Mammonomics increases human suffering at a compounding rate as it nears the end of each destruction cycle.]
Then comes DESTRUCTION
Society reaches a breaking point.
Think:
The fall of Greece and Rome.
The French and American Revolutions.
The two world wars that finally shattered most monarchies.
Gandhi’s breakaway of India from the British Empire.
Those with nothing left to live for are those who are willing to lay down their lives.
Usually, destruction starts from within and is finished from without. The rich so impoverish the poor that it leads to civil war, at which point the state is too weak to defend itself from outside forces. (Think: Rome at the hands of the Vandals and Goths.)
But the next destruction will be different
Unlike all previously documented Christonomic Cycles, the next destruction stage will be remarkably “other,” for two main reasons:
For the first time in documented history, the world (and especially the West) is globally connected.
The weapons of control are unfathomable to previous tyrants.
Let me be clear: Violent revolution is no longer possible.
In America, Canada, and Britain, there is no unprising that cannot be put down.
Ancient Rome could only dream of the level of power now possessed by today’s sociopathic world “leaders.”
Artificial intelligence, super-computing, robot soldiers, drones, facial recognition, CBDCs, and the digital economy.
There is no unquellable uprising.
Even a multi-year global general strike like the Roman Secession of the Plebs wouldn’t do the trick, because the global economy is now so connected — and the masses of city people no longer own land to garden/farm to see them through — that it would just lead to mass starvation.
Protest? Arrest.
Resist? Imprisoned.
Revolt? Shot.
Strike? Starve.
For the first time in recorded history, the landless weaponless masses are collectively out-resourced and outgunned.
They have nowhere to turn.
Nowhere have I seen this so starkly as when I visited North Korea. Here is a nation of 26 million souls that is operated identically to an Antebellum slave plantation with the help of a few USSR-era rifles.
The Western decline will be different as the corporatocracy plunges the bottom 95+% into serfdom of all kinds: debt-serfdom, rent-serfdom, gig-wage-serfdom. Personal ownership will evaporate. Technofeudalism will grind the real, productive, contributive economy to a halt. The masses will struggle in poverty. There will be no meaningful uprising. But the Western states will become so weak they will be destroyed. Not by a giant invasion and land war, but by the simple and insidious nature of the very monster created by Western elites — by shareholder colonialism.
Do China, the nation of Islam, and a handful of hyper-rich families really need to sack America if they can just buy all our assets and milk us for centuries instead?
Renewal if not revival is the ONLY option available to us now.
Finally cometh RENEWAL
I don’t know how long the West’s decline will last, nor how long and deep the destruction phase will last, and I especially don’t know how in the world we’ll extricate ourselves from this particular destruction phase, but I have a pretty good idea of how the world will look on the other side:
Ready for renewal.
Only at the rock bottom of the sea do drowning societies look up for air and light.
Then the prophet’s earlier predictions seem obvious and self-evident. Of course compounding economic exploitation enslaves the masses and inevitably destroys civilization.
Societies reset.
Land and resources are more equally distributed.
Houses are constructed at a record pace for reasonable prices.
Land-lorders are reined in.
Banksters and interest are strictly controlled.
Jobs that pay well are plentiful, while shareholders are few and taxed.
Government is democratic and accountable, and the services they provide are good value for pooled money.
Money retains its purchasing power.
Renewed societies rarely go all the way in reverting to the created order. Interest is seldom fully banned. For-profit land-lording is seldom fully banned. Money is rarely made righteous. The remaining rich always resist debt jubilees. But enough is done to deliver a season of reprieve, rebuilding, and growth, like the trente glorieuses following WWII.
Then, the moment the rich gain a foothold, they rebel against the created order, start compounding their wealth and power, and once again drag us into decline.
Right now, the majority is extremely hostile toward the prophets.
“Who says your way is right and not ours?”
The prophet’s answer: “Only God knows for certain.”
Thus, the need to live and let live.
The reality is that wisdom is proven right by what it produces. Every deviation from the created order has eventually ended in destruction.
It is not the prophet’s job to change the world or force their ideas upon it — it’s to simply mind their own business and get on with the work of warning rebellionists and planting seeds in the hearts of the remnant who will later renew all things according to the created order.
In that sense, prophets are the only real pluralists. If God is real, then there is an ideal way to structure human relations and we should seek to discover it. If God is not real, then nothing matters and nothing is better than anything else, so why would anyone be bothered that someone else has a different opinion? Prophets suspend judgment. Only the person who is dead wrong possesses the overwhelming need to silence opposing perspectives.
The prophets do not worry themselves about whether or not they are widely accepted by civilizations in decline. (Indeed, those who find themselves wildly popular are usually later outed as false prophets.)
Here’s what we know for sure
Debt will keep going up.
Rents will keep going up.
Housing costs will keep going up.
Taxes on the working class will keep going up.
The price of goods and services will keep going up.
Your money will continue to devalue in purchasing power.
Inflation-adjusted real-terms wages will keep going down.
Public services will continue to be eroded and sold off to for-profit corporations by their sponsored politicians.
Your rights and freedoms will continue to shrink as sham democracy is further assailed by the corporate oligarchy.
If you own rental property, public stocks, bonds, or vote for mainstream corporatist political parties, you are actively complicit in the decline and destruction of the West.
Don’t be complicit.
Be part of the remnant that plants seeds of renewal in hopes we can reverse this decline before it destroys our children’s future.