Dark Age America: The End of the Old Order | John Michael Greer

[Tace]

Sept. 17, 2014 (Archdruid Report) -- Lately I’ve been rereading some of the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. He’s nearly unique among the writers of American horror stories, in that his sense of the terrible was founded squarely on the worldview of modern science.

He was a steadfast atheist and materialist, but unlike so many believers in that creed, his attitude toward the cosmos revealed by science was not smug satisfaction but shuddering horror. The first paragraph of his most famous story, “The Call of Cthulhu,” is typical:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

It’s entirely possible that this insight of Lovecraft’s will turn out to be prophetic, and that a passionate popular revolt against the implications -- and even more, the applications -- of contemporary science will be one of the forces that propel us into the dark age ahead. Still, that’s a subject for a later post in this series. The point I want to make here is that Lovecraft’s image of people eagerly seeking such peace and safety as a dark age may provide them is not as ironic as it sounds. Outside the elites, which have a different and considerably more gruesome destiny than the other inhabitants of a falling civilization, it’s surprisingly rare for people to have to be forced to trade civilization for barbarism, either by human action or by the pressure of events. By and large, by the time that choice arrives, the great majority are more than ready to make the exchange, and for good reason.

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http://worldnewstrust.com/dark-age-america-the-end-of-the-old-order-john-michael-greer

[The Magistrate]

1. Not Bad At All, Sir

This gentleman is often well worth reading.

[Tace]

2. I Agree

I often enjoy his perspective on things. --Tace

[phantom power]

3. Well said, but this meme clearly goes back at least as far as the Eden myth

Human progress has always struggled against a contingent that thinks We Aren't Meant To Know this thing, or that thing.

[Tace]

4. It Looks Like He's Planning To Address This More Specifically In A Future Column

"It’s entirely possible that this insight of Lovecraft’s will turn out to be prophetic ... Still, that’s a subject for a later post in this series."

I'll look forward to it. --Tace

[Hestia]

5. And there are things we shouldn't know (you can never unlearn anything) and things that have

been released before their time have gotten out of hand, which was the fear in the first place.

One is the bible - it is the darkest of grimoires and should never have been released into the wild because of what has happened - slavery to a book and it has given power to those who knew/know how to use it as such and are still doing it. You think this is by accident? Nah...

The other is metalworking - yes, we have plows for agriculture but we also have coinage and swords. Again, not by accident.

For every advancement the reverse of it is twice as bad and it is almost always ways to enslave others...

==

Funny you use the Great Mother Goddess Eve and Her Consort and the destruction of the Goddess through the bible in its very first chapter.

[Prophet 451]

6. Think about that story again

What was it the serpent gave us but knowledge that we should know good and evil? He gave us the power of moral self-determination, the capacity to make our own judgements, to go from "thou shalt not" to "I will not". When you re-examine the story of the Garden, the serpent becomes the hero, the Promethean figure who wanted us to be something more than Yahweh's pets. As a Luciferian (yes, I worship the devil; no, it's nothing like the movies), that's why we venerate the serpent as an avatar.

[AverageJoe90]

7. Honest Review: About 20% interesting insight, but 80% nonsense. As is the usual with this guy. nt