02-02-2011, 10:49 AM
Quote:Protracted Collapse
No wonder then that the chief fear of Western intelligence agencies and corporate risk consultants is not that mass resistance might fail to generate vibrant and viable democracies, but simply the prospect of a regional "contagion" that could destabilize "Saudi oil fields." Such conventional analyses, of course, entirely miss the point: The American Empire, and the global political economy it has spawned, is unravelling not because of some far-flung external danger, but under the weight of its own internal contradictions. It is unsustainable already in overshoot of the earth's natural systems, exhausting its own resource base, alienating the vast majority of the human and planetary population.
The solution in Tunisia, in Egypt, in the entire Middle East, and beyond, does not lay merely in aspirations for democracy. Hope can only spring from a fundamental re-evaluation of the entire structure of our civilization in its current form. If we do not use the opportunities presented by these crises to push for fundamental structural change, then the "contagion" will engulf us all.
This just about sums it up, I think.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14