Spiritual seekers, mysticism, self-realization, ascension, yoga meditation, freethinker, libertosophy, ancient wisdom, inner transformation, self-development 2008-10-04T10:53:56Z User 576 http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v576/ OrgSpace NewsLog

It’s been some couples of weeks now since the financial downspin in the USA took a further plunge as mega-banks sought help from federal government for rescue. The closure of the Lehman Brothers and the S.O.S. by other big banks that are now in the red rocked the global stock markets to a new roun...

Erle Frayne Argonza

Magandang hapon! Good afternoon!

It’s been some couples of weeks now since the financial downspin in the USA took a further plunge as mega-banks sought help from federal government for rescue. The closure of the Lehman Brothers and the S.O.S. by other big banks that are now in the red rocked the global stock markets to a new round of instabilities and volatilities, even as the US economy is in danger of another Great Depression.
As I’ve already expressed in many articles of mine, the US financial collapse, an event that economists in many parts of the world forecast as early as the 1990s yet, is bound to happen, on account of many factors. The key factor, as this analyst and fellow ‘nationalist economists’ have been saying since 1998 yet (when I was actively involved with a group of economists in Manila called the Independent Review circle), is the widening gap between the (a) ‘virtual economy’ based on predatory finance that produces mere fictitious values and the (b) ‘real economy’ or ‘physical economy’ that produces real values.

The serial liberal economic reforms that began in 1971 yet, which saw the collapse of the gold standard and the dropping of fixed exchange rate (FER) in favor of ‘floating rate’, and onwards through the liberalization-privatization-deregulation-decentralization (structural adjustment policies or SAPs) of the 1980s, and onwards to the GATT-Uruguay Rounds that created the WTO in 1994, took its catastrophic toll on the economies of the planet, but most specially the USA’s.
The Nixon-era financial-monetary reforms and the Reaganomics (SAPs) were the policy culprits of America. They dealt the final death blows on the dirigist policies of New Deal, initiated by Franklin Roosevelt but which was inspired by dirigist policies of earlier luminaries (i.e. Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Friedrich von List), provided the impetus that created the strong, gigantic ‘physical economy’ of the country, and transformed it into a world power economically, politically and culturally. Without dirigist economics (interventionist) and the New Deal, Middle Class America wouldn’t have been possible. The neo-liberal reforms simply wiped out whatever was left of the New Deal by the 1980s, and with the liberalization of the financial –capital-monetary markets, the predatory financiers had their field day of looting the middle class purses under the rubric of portfolio capital and derivatives operations.

Had the US policy makers just labored a bit and assigned their staff to scour the world for some related experience of bank-financial collapse, their researchers could have easily ‘discovered’ the experiences of Japan in the 1990s. By the early 1980s, when Japan clearly demonstrated its sterling industrial and technological capabilities as the base for its wealth production, the Zaibatsus and the policy makers decided to go the liberalization way, confident as they were that the fruits of decades-old ‘physical economy’ build up can’t just be easily wiped out by predatory financier operators.

Japanese technocrats (both in Japan and overseas) also theorized that the key to producing a sound, healthy, mighty Japanese economy was in the realm of micro-economics more than public policy. Never mind if the policy environment will shift from the protectionist-dirigist policies of the post-war decades to liberal policies, provided that at the level of production and organization, capacity and internal potency can be demonstrated. The likes of William Ouichi’s ‘theory z’ comes to mind, or ideas that spawned strategies and tools dovetailing on quality control, team building, and decentralized operations. The world was so awe-inspired by the ‘Japan Incorporated’ model that was based precisely on the micro-economic route, and was extolling the Japanese corporate firm to the hilt as the new champion of the globalizing economy.

The USA that had demonstrated its strength on macro-economics—In the terrain of public policy—as the route to economic might, must have been seduced by the Japanese ideological onslaught at one point, that it so sonorously echoed the Japanese technocratic jargon of ‘globalization’. But when Japan’s financial system began to buckle down in 1994, which then impacted on the rest of the economic sectors, the US politicians and technocrats simply didn’t pay attention, fixated as they were to the seductive results of the ‘virtual economy’ (bubble operations) on the GDP of America.

To recall, Japan suffered miserably for the bailout mistake it pursued. Dabbed as ‘crisis management’, the state went on a binge of saving ailing banks and financial houses, the very same measures that the Bush-Paulson team is now embarking on. Alarmed at those events than in Japan, which led to a 10-year recession & almost zero growth, I began to raise howl about the ballooning portfolio investments in the Philippines by 94-95, and was among those experts who forewarned the state officials that Japan’s ‘crisis management’ was seriously flawed, was tantamount to giving incentives to looters instead of criminalizing, them, and should never be enforced in the Philippines or ASEAN in case that the portfolio bubble will burst in Manila and the region (the bubble burst in 1997).
To repeat: Japan suffered miserably from that fiasco. Recession howled like unstoppable forest fires for ten (10) years, and were it not for the high growth of East Asian markets, Japan couldn’t have risen back to appreciable growth by 2005. Interest rate was compelled to be brought down to zero percent, a precedent that many countries affected by financial meltdowns were aloof to emulating.
Bankruptcies, corporate closures and downsizing led to dislocations and unemployment. For the first time in many decades, former decent Japanese executives and employees who lose their jobs and had their remaining mortgaged properties confiscated, were rendered homeless and starving, and forced to reside in the streets as paupers and vagabonds..

Sitting with my fellows in the Independent Review circle from 1997-onwards, we took turns in exposing the maladies of the neo-liberal reforms, spoke in diverse media (TV, radio) to forewarn the public of the imminent financial collapse in East Asia (the meltdown took place beginning in June of ’97), and by 98 were of the consensus that the USA was next in line for a meltdown of even catastrophic proportions than either Japan’s or South East Asia’s (97 meltdown). The very destructive effects of predatory finance saw the decline of industry (de-industrialization), agriculture (land use conversions, decay), infrastructures (some huge infra were even privatized), S & T (low priority in budgets & education), and transport & communications in the USA. If the neglect of the ‘physical economy’ will continue for another ten (10) years, it will be too late for salving the US economy as a whole. Any catastrophic bubble burst and financial-monetary meltdown could bring the economic house down, collapse consumption, and render the US economy much like unto a Latin American economy past 2010.

As I recall then, we experts from the Independent Review circle strongly opined that the ‘crisis management’ tactic was immoral and extremely perverted. How in the world could the state ever reward criminals at all? The bankers and financiers looted the Japanese purse by probably worth trillions of dollars, they should have been criminalized for their sordid crimes, and yet they were even rewarded! Unbelievable! This is one excellent narrative for the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!
Fortunately for the Philippines, there was no large-scale bailout of any bank as a result of the 1997 Asian meltdown. Those realty and construction companies affected by the crisis, affected precisely because they over-exposed themselves to ‘hot money’ foreign portfolios that simply dried up as the same portfolios were pulled during the first month of the meltdown, were immediately able to cope up by retooling and re-engineering their strategies and tools. Interest rates were lowered, excess liquidities were flashed out in well managed manner that deserve our central bank accolades from the Bank of International Settlements. In less than a year after the meltdown began, we were back to consumption patterns like there was no recession at all. We didn’t take the Japan route, luckily. By 2001 and onwards our growth patterns were back to appreciable growth, and the local bourse moved up as well.

Today, all over the ASEAN + China-India-Korea (minus Japan), the Asian meltdown seems like an ancient event down memory lane as things have been moving fast. We just can’t believe that our mighty economic partner, the USA, didn’t learn its lessons from the 2001 recession there and from the flaws of the Japanese bailout. ‘Bailing out the rich’ isn’t the issue here, but rather ‘bailing out the criminals’ which is a gross disincentive for the legitimate SMEs and other market players that didn’t receive the same favor.

If we were to seriously search for appropriate short-term tactic for salving ailing financial institutions, the answer lies in a proven approach to corporate ailments: bankruptcy reorganization. The economists Robert Reich (former US secretary of Labor) and Lyndon LaRouche (Executive Intelligence Review) have been airing this solution very strongly, and I am myself bent on accepting this micro-economic short-term solution as an exemplar for the rest of the world. I would not be surprised if the eminent economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman would air a similar advisory, and they should better air their counsel strongly.

The entire planet today is watching the horrific bailout in the USA, almost forgetting that this copycat bailout already flattened Japan for a decade at least before. Each one of us should look at our own backyards and make sure that our respective states won’t emulate the rather devious and insane bailout of Japan Incorporated and the Bush-Paulson team.

[Writ 04 October 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila.]]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v576/__show_article/_a000576-000128.htm 2008-10-04T10:53:56Z 2008-10-04T10:53:56Z

In a preceding article, I articulated about the pervasiveness of the Demonic Mind, which had given rise to the spirit of the Anti-Man. I also echoed the revelation in certain articles that the Anti-Christ had embodied in the physical plane, its direct presence here thus reinforcing the growth of t...

Erle Frayne Argonza

In a preceding article, I articulated about the pervasiveness of the Demonic Mind, which had given rise to the spirit of the Anti-Man. I also echoed the revelation in certain articles that the Anti-Christ had embodied in the physical plane, its direct presence here thus reinforcing the growth of the Anti-Man and/or Demonic Mind.

Following from the contentions raised in those articles, this social scientist-development consultant-yogic mystic advances the cogitation that in the current context, to be able to ‘bring back the balance’ and pave the way for high-level constructive engagements, the playing field must be leveled to allow for the ascendancy of the ‘rule of Transcendent Love’ or Divine Love that is reinforced by the Christ Consciousness or ‘cosmic consciousness’ in each one of us.

The limits of the ‘rule of law’ had already been breached today. The Enlightenment, which is actually largely a Western experience, had already done what it can to contribute to that balance. The Enlightenment’s contributions to humanity are well accepted, and nothing else can erase those contributions to make civility possible. But time has come to fold up the Enlightenment, and replace its ‘rule of law’ moorings in the public sphere with the ‘law of Transcendent love’.

There are those in the social responsibility circles, both from the academe and the practitioners, who are of the opinion that the ‘rule of compassion’ must now supercede that of the ‘rule of law’. They have practically declared the same thesis that I am raising now, except that their contentions were delivered from the narrow confines of the lifeworld of lebenswelt. I have drawn my conclusions from reflections on both the planetary and cosmic contexts. But I am happy that the convergence is clear: that cosmic or divine Love must pervade life.

To move my thesis further, let it be declared:

• The ‘rule of law’ serves the purpose of an ascendant Demonic Mind, and is bound to enforce total control over human behavior.

• The ‘rule of law’ can re-ascend only to the extent that it will serve the narrow interests of the global oligarchy or elites. Such interests desire no less than the total control of humans.

• A ‘world rule of law’ follows from the said cogitations, which will be enforceable in a context of global governance, with a planetary state in place as regulatory mechanism of the minority ‘power elites’ or oligarchic subalterns.

• The ‘world rule of law’ is the rational-legal base of a global totalitarian police state, which will be employed to justify more aggressive pursuits and war deaths, all done to preserve Order of the highest degree.

• The ‘rule of law’ is also the justification to control populations. Population control’s aim is the reduction of world populations by as much as 80% from present levels, through Malthusian means of expediency, wars, diseases, death camps, eugenics, chemicals, thermonuclear blasts, and induced earthquakes and meteorological catastrophes.

The reversal of such events can be traversed precisely by an effective replacement of the ‘rule of law’ with the ‘rule of Transcendent Love’. Transcendent love generates the highest values, enables the conscience of each individual to recognize the need for Order, and empowers both institutions and individuals. When pervasive in the public sphere, the ‘rule of Transcendent Love’ will pave the way not only for stronger institutions of governance but also for the rise of the new economy—the Giving Economy that will replace the Hoarding Economy (capitalism, state socialism) of evil greed.

The ‘rule of law’ serves the narrow interests of global elites and their mercenary professionals, whereas the ‘rule of Transcendent Love’ serves the broad interests of all humanity. The ‘rule of law’ justifies the Mad and the Berserk, serves the highest ends of the Fasci or group-thought, whereas the ‘rule of the Transcendent Love’ justifies civilization and harmony, and serves the interest of enlightened individuals and love-giving communities.

Enough with the Rule of Law! To all Light Helpers of the world, advance the Rule of Transcendent Love in all spheres. Do not be cowed by the Demonic minds and fascistic beings’ intimidations and harassments. Do not take sides in their hate campaigns, wars, and pursuits of destruction of madness and barbarism.

You shall overcome! Carpe diem!

[Writ 20 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila.] ]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v576/__show_article/_a000576-000127.htm 2008-09-30T00:01:35Z 2008-09-30T00:01:35Z

For this moment let me share some notes about the quality of mind that has ascended today: the Demonic Mind. Earth is a Fallen Planet, sure, and this reminds us that it hardly warrants to stress our attention of the demonic mind at all. I also confirmed in a previous article that all of us possess...

Erle Frayne Argonza

Magandang umaga! Good morning!

Well, there seems to be nothing good this morning if you measure ‘good’ in terms of the absence of wars and hostilities, crimes and killings, or any massive destructive engagements the world over. There are still many positive things happening today, and so amid the darkness that is now blanketing the planet, the Light remains steadfast Above and, hopefully, Within us.

For this moment let me share some notes about the quality of mind that has ascended today: the Demonic Mind. Earth is a Fallen Planet, sure, and this reminds us that it hardly warrants to stress our attention of the demonic mind at all. I also confirmed in a previous article that all of us possess an Inner Demon which congeals in our ‘double’ or ‘doppelganger’, this being our dark facet that persistently moves us to the brims of destructive engagements.

What I wish to stress is that today there is this characteristic growing divide between essentially two sections of our world population: on the one hand are those people whose respective Inner Demon has become ascendant, and whose own Higher Selves had ceased to operate effectively; on the other hand, are people whose own respective Christ Self (or Love Self) has been permeating so strongly the ego and effectively clipping the dark facets of the self.

For simplification, let us refer to those whose dark facet is ascendant as the Demonic Type or ‘demonoids’ or Anti-Man, while those whose Light facet is ascendant as the Human Type or ‘humans’ or Man par excellence. What is lamentable is that the broad world context had shifted or has been shifting in impermanent state and had consequently led to the re-ascendance of the demonoids over the truly humans. The spirit of the Anti-Man is ascendant, reinforced as such by the pervasive spirit of the Anti-Christ, personified by Ahriman himself who today has an embodiment in America.

When both Anti-Christ and Anti-Man are ascendant, Dark Age will prevail. I am confident to raise this thesis, as there were contexts in the past when counterveiling forces can checkmate such an ascendance and bring back humanity to the sanity track. When both Anti-Christ and Anti-Man are on the ascendant, insanity or madness becomes the common, accepted modality of living.

In the private sphere, the Dark ascendance (to shorten Anti-Christ & Anti-Man) is reinforced by the rationalizations embodied in the cliché ‘evil is cool’. You can very easily verify this just by reviewing the video games that kids play today, where violence, sex, killings, and anger are practically celebrated like life trophies. Check out on the forms and levels of criminalities and madness today, combine the facts you derive from the broadsheet and tabloid news, and you can paint a broader canvass of madness on the ascendant.

In the public sphere, more so in the global sphere, there is now the growing penchant for a ‘rule of law’, the climactic zenith of which is a ‘world rule of law’ in a ‘pax U.N.’. Because the Dark Ones (global elites) have already galvanized their plans of fomenting anarchy and chaos everywhere, it has become easier to make people kowtow to the cliché of a ‘rule of law’ that will make Order sacrosanct. It is precisely this acceptance of a ‘rule of law’ that will allow the mass to accept totalitarian regimes in both their national backyards and the global arena (eclipsed in due time by a global state arising from the UN).

Why this context had come about can be simplified as follows:

• Across epochs, Light Beings—embodied as saints, rishis, yogi-Christs, yogis, mystics—have come and gone. Their immense work have left indelible marks of the ascent of the Christ consciousness within those folks who were most amenable to Higher Lessons of wisdom and truth.

• Having done their tasks, the same Light Beings effected the crystallization of an energy grid called the ‘Christ Grid’ in the electro-magnetic field or EMF of the planet.

• With the completion of the Christ Grid, there is now a readiness for a leap in consciousness. Those who are most permeable by Light will increasingly clip their own dark facets and become Light Workers and Light Helpers.

• Necessarily, by way of the Law of Polarity, the said developments had ignited forces that will counterveil against the permeation of Light on the self and the galvanization of the Christ Grid on the EMF.

If the Christ Grid is up, then the Christ has ‘returned’, and so the law of duality/polarity will necessitate a balancing of the context with the embodiment of the Anti-Christ on the first plane. This development follows cosmic or ‘natural law’ actually. No matter how alarming the new situation has become, it is a natural consequence of the cosmic laws.

Where does each one of us stand during these moments of ascendancy of the Dark Side in the physical plane? Note that this is just in the PHYSICAL PLANE, or the ‘biophysical plane’, in as much as the Christ Grid is positioned solidly in the ‘other side’ or EMF of Earth. Again, Fellows, where do we stand, where are we situated?

Where do you go from here?

[Writ 20 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila.] ]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v576/__show_article/_a000576-000126.htm 2008-09-29T23:58:31Z 2008-09-29T23:58:31Z

Prof. Erle Frayne Argonza, sociologist & economist, was interviewed anew by the team of the Kapuso program of GMA7. The Kapuso is hosted by Jessica Soho, and operates the 9:30-10 pm block time every Saturdays. The topic for the September 27 episode, where Prof. Argonza appeared, was about g...

Prof. Erle Frayne Argonza, sociologist & economist, was interviewed anew by the team of the Kapuso program of GMA7. The Kapuso is hosted by Jessica Soho, and operates the 9:30-10 pm block time every Saturdays.

The topic for the September 27 episode, where Prof. Argonza appeared, was about gender and beauty expectations. The title “Kontra-Losyang: Why Is This So?” aptly describes the interview segment for the resource speaker.

Prof. Erle Argonza explained first of all that there is this age-old expectation, in gender relations, that the woman must indeed maintain a beauty demeanor, use beauty kits as part of wellness sustenance, and must delay aging or look young before her husband.

The behavior has both cultural (anthropological) and relational (sociological) factors involved in it. It has become part of human adaptation (anthropological), while it reinforces the power relations between man and woman.

While the old notions of beauty and ‘kontra-losyang’ are still around, Erle Argonza clarified that there is an emerging trend today for men to exude a similar behavior. Young and middle aged men of today are more conscious of their grooming, skin care, hair care and physical wellness than before, and the behavior has to be sustained so as to delay aging and reinforce the marital bond.

As concepts of gender parity become popularized, alongside the increasing paradigm of wellness (health-related), both man and woman must consciously practice skin care, hair care, oral care, physical care, and dress well before their respective partner. Doing otherwise could have a downgrading effect on the self-esteem of any spouse, which could strain marital relations later.

Incidentally, the socialization processes and opportunities for both genders to follow the mutual expectation are well built as early as adolescence when a man or woman begins to practice looking for choices of mate. The older ages, seniors included, are also adapting to the behavior modification patterns, as the new trend picks up pace.

[A & A Consultancy, 28 September, 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v576/__show_article/_a000576-000125.htm 2008-09-29T23:54:33Z 2008-09-29T23:54:33Z

‘Late’ capitalism, this current phase that replaced the ‘monopoly’ capitalism of the pre-war era, is now DEAD. As elucidated by Jurgen Habermas, thinker of the Frankfurt school, capitalism was able to move to its present state but only with massive state planning/intervention. State intervention h...

Erle Frayne Argonza

‘Late’ capitalism, this current phase that replaced the ‘monopoly’ capitalism of the pre-war era, is now DEAD. As elucidated by Jurgen Habermas, thinker of the Frankfurt school, capitalism was able to move to its present state but only with massive state planning/intervention. State intervention had since the early 70s been relaxed, via globalization, but this only created monstrous predatory finance that hastened the collapse of the system.

As already elaborated in previous articles, the system is now DEAD. In the late 1990s yet, we Fellows of the Independent Review (a circle of economists and experts in Manila) were of the opinion that the system will be dead in couples of years. The ‘virtual economy’ based on magical statistics, speculation, fictitiously valued investments, and conspicuous consumption, can never be sustained, and is bound to crash and die. It was just a matter of time, as we all noted in 2000 (the last time I met the Fellows), before the bubble will burst somewhere (we forecast it will the USA) and the global economy will come crashing down…And it did, beginning last 2007 yet. That descent to the marshes of death is still going on today.

As I also declared in some previous articles, capitalism can still survive, though no longer the ‘late’ capitalism of state planning-to-globalization era. It will be a capitalism in an era of state terror heretofore unparalleled: ‘technotronic’ capitalism in the aegis of global police-state. Nation-states are enemies of the global oligarchy which will re-engineer the world by destroying nations (aftermath of attritious World War III and synarchy) and replacing them with city-states and region-states.

If corporate social responsibility or CSR will survive the times, it must be re-tooled at this juncture when the tumultuous changes are gathering winds. Failure to do so, many CSR pursuits will disappear in time, while only those CSR platforms of the most powerful and wealthy oligarchs can survive. All the CSR formats of today can last in relevance maybe till 2040 at the most, after which my forecast is their relevance will have reached its end.

By the year 2050, when populations will have leveled down to a census target of 2 Billion warm bodies, a figure that will be more manageable to the global elites, every member of society will be chipped and provided for. By that time, there will be no further need for ideological movements as Pied Pipers of the new system. Everyone else will be programmed by the system, from cradle to grave the chipped Manchurian Candidate or MC will be provided for. Poverty will end by then, the Millenium Development Goal of the UN will be finally met (the UN will be transformed into the tyrannical global state headed by a global Bonaparte, armed with its own police/military forces), and then will end the ‘sustainable development’ or ‘social development’ pursuits of ‘late’ capitalism.

The chipped Manchurian Candidate or MC will be half-human half-machine hybrid, and will be well provided for as mentioned. Population will be totally controlled, weak and senior members of the population will be ‘oven-baked’ or eliminated, natality will be controlled following China’s pattern of today, criminality will be almost nil, and no one will ever be poor again. Hybrid-human behavior can be easily modified using those advanced cybernetic prototype programs past 2050, and so nobody can fool around with the system.

Tell me, fellows, in a situation such as that coming context of advanced cybernetics or ‘technotronics’ (machine-controlled humans), what need will there be for CSR? Maybe CSR will go back to Victorian Era philanthropy practices, whereby wealthy sponsors will fund the theaters and chipped performers whose performances will be perfected all the more by cybernetics. The staff of the CSR formats of that era, if indeed applicable, will be chipped as well, like those outfits that will be funded because they will perform before the oligarchic-intellectual crowd by then.

When that next capitalist system comes, there will be no more activists or revolutionaries save for those who will proclaim Hallelujah forever to the radically altered, new system. Libertarian activists will be the species of yesteryears, the CSR proto-activism of today will be consigned to history, and anybody who will go against the system will be easily eliminated by sentinel robots of the most advanced prototypes.

Let me end with the challenge: CSR better retool now and reshape its image if it desires to exceed its institutional career. Now is the time.

[28 August 2008,Quezon City, MetroManila]]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v576/__show_article/_a000576-000124.htm 2008-09-26T07:55:20Z 2008-09-29T13:17:22Z

Asians put greater stress on ‘becoming’ as a category more than ‘being’ (Westerner’s granite category), that is why we Asians are inclined to see positive reformations of things or beings whose evils may be irredeemable. And this I can say of CSR: it is an ideological deodorant for Big Business gr...

Good afternoon from Manila!

The late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippines’ most brilliant and deviously cunning chief executive, was so elated one day during his tyrannical incumbency. The reason for the unusual elation was this: his soldiers captured Bernabe Buscayno, the first national head of the Maoist insurgent group New People’s Army or NPA, who was a prized catch for the strong man. After some military interrogation, Buscayno was directed to be brought to the presidential palace to face Marcos, who at one point in the encounter, asked Buscayno for a remark.
Obliging like a school boy, Buscayno replied that “no matter how evil a person can be, s/he can still be transformed into a good person.”

The enormously witty man Marcos was dumbfounded by the witty remark from the Maoist rebel, for that comment made its mark so clear: Marcos is evil, yet he can still be reformed. Probably pissed off by the stubborn rebel, who never the least conceded to defeat so as to bow in obeisance in recognition of the chief executive, Marcos made sure that Buscayno will suffer miserably inside the prison cell.

You see, I cited that story of Buscayno, as a matter of reflecting on the rationale behind Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR. Buscayno, who has been active in the cooperative movement in the Philippines after his release from prison in 1986 (the year Marcos was overthrown), could very well repeat his witty line when asked about CSR, with a curt reply that “CSR, no matter what evil may be behind it, can be reformed.”

Asians put greater stress on ‘becoming’ as a category more than ‘being’ (Westerner’s granite category), that is why we Asians are inclined to see positive reformations of things or beings whose evils may be irredeemable. And this I can say of CSR: it is an ideological deodorant for Big Business greed, but somehow it can be reformed. To use Organization Development language, it can be ‘re-engineered’.

CSR is already a re-engineering of philanthropy in fact, and belongs squarely to ‘late’ capitalism. Old fogey philanthropy operated with a Victorian underpinning: I possess the money, and you recipient are a Beggar who came to me. You are lucky enough because I am giving you part of my purse, for I have none reserved for you folks save for the theatres, performers and socialite circles thay may the better be served by my extra monies for posterity’s sake. …

Well, Big Business was able to re-engineer its image precisely by reformatting old-fogey philanthropy (which was a reformatted version of medieval charity of the pretentious church Orders or ‘corporations’). CSR appropriated the ‘social development’ practices (social technologies) of NGOs and peoples’ organizations or POs, stressed the supposedly core element of ‘compassion’, and voila! CSR was born! How effable, how sweet, how infinitely Angelic and Godly is this ‘new way’ of helping people by the Gods of Corporate World! Hail capitalism! Hail beneficent Gods!

Deodorant, pure deodorant! Take a look at Lucio Tan, who at one time was the top landlord-capitalist oligarch in the Philippines. A one-time Marcos croney, Tan made enormous fortunes from Marcos’ time to the present, probably with start-up capital coming from the dictator’s purse (but which Tan refuses to admit in public). Tan’s fortunes made him land in the Fortune 500 (world’s richest), yet he was also found wanting in the manner of paying taxes. His unpaid taxes may be worth P80 Billion (almost $2 Billion) today, and is still growing, yet not a single cent was paid to the state by this notorious oligarch for those ‘tax evasion’ cases…Yet Tan has captured the eyes of fund recipients from his CSR give-away items, even as he is fondly regarded as an angelic patron by the same armies of beggar recipients. (Beggar here means not the literal beggar, but the condescending image of oligarchs on recipients: filthy Eaters, ‘useless eaters’).

Capitalism is a system that is founded on greed and hoarding, and no sagely or wise personage, or the most evolved beings could ever rationalize capitalism as a system that will sustain the drive towards Nirvana or represents the final liberation of humans from their subhumanizing hovels of dense life. Besides, this current phase of capitalism—‘late’ capitalism—is now DEAD, and the dead system is rapidly crashing down. Only those materialistic ‘eaters’ whose perceptions are as delimited as their own astigmatic perceptions of reality principles can ever justify that capitalism is still working, for the reality we have today is that of ‘virtual economy’ of the most perverted, evil greed of all.

If CSR would have to survive the times, as ‘late’ capitalism is now DEAD, then now is the time to refurbish its image. Because its life is deeply embedded in the corporate purses, this image-change is hard to imagine at all. But being of the Asian-yogic way of life, being a mystic and development expert at the same time (though now in the twilight of social development engagements), I wish to give CSR a chance and see it grow along the trajectory of the hereafter that was declared by Buscayno: transformed from ‘evil’ to ‘good’.

I’d end this piece by clarifying to you a reality we know among mystics: demons can also return to the Path of Light. Yes, Fellows, those Belzeebub abominations, those Asuras or Demonyos, those Diaboli, or whatever term you may use for the same species of evil demented beings, many of those abominations have already returned to the state-of-balance and are now taking the Path of Light back to the Almighty I Am Presence (God)! Yes! CSR can!

[28 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila] ]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v576/__show_article/_a000576-000123.htm 2008-09-26T07:52:51Z 2008-09-26T07:52:51Z

As you read this piece, please take a cursory glance at yourself. For you are among the last humans of the non-chipped prototype. We non-chipped humans’ lifeline will soon end, as we are only co-terminus with ‘late’ capitalism. ‘Late’ capitalism will crash down into total destruction. As alre...

Erle Frayne Argonza

Magandang hapon! Good afternoon from Manila!

As you read this piece, please take a cursory glance at yourself. For you are among the last humans of the non-chipped prototype. We non-chipped humans’ lifeline will soon end, as we are only co-terminus with ‘late’ capitalism.

‘Late’ capitalism will crash down into total destruction. As already advanced in some previous articles, ‘late’ capitalism or ‘the system’ is now DEAD. No more can this system be revived, it is beyond repair. What you see, feel, smell, sense right now as ‘the system’ is merely a semblance of a once thriving and growing system of post-war interventionist capitalism, whose international trade conduct was partly regulated by fixed exchange rate and a gold standard. The reality you see today is only illusory, ‘virtual reality’ of a once mighty and envious system. To repeat, IT IS DEAD!

This terminal phase of capitalism will be marked by aggressive attempts to revive it. During these aggressive attempts (aggressive = World War III, synarchy, destruction of nations) the prototype of the future human is being experimented on in laboratories of the North. That prototype will be constructed, based on the principles of Phase 3 Cybernetics. To familiarize yourself with cybernetic’s phases, note this briefer:

Phase I: Perfecting and packaging systems theory in simplified form, made the computer possible.

Phase II: Integration theory made possible the integration of the computer to the machine, producing (a) automation and (b) artificial intelligence or AI. Simultaneous with nano-technology.

Phase III: The machine-human organism divide will be broken, thus enabling the creation of the ‘cyborg’ or cybernetic organism. This is integration of mathematics, systems theory, bioinformatics, biotechnology, infotech, sociobiomedicine, psychology, and bio-physics.

Phase IV: Further advancements in cybernetic principles will enable the infusion of intelligence into machines. Cyber-sentinels (machine cops, armies) for Earth and space mission purposes will arise. These prototypes can fly space ships across vast spaces, and conduct R&D in heavenly bodies of choice destination.

Let me stop at that point. Cybernetics can still go a long way, up to that point where computers as huge as a 3-million square mile country can be created. That’s as big as Canada, or China, or the USA of today. Bigger and bigger machines (robots) will be created which, incidentally, will be more unstable…But let me stop here.

In its future revived form, capitalism will take off as the new-generation ‘technotronic’ capitalism. Prior to the full galvanization of the new system, a transition period will be experienced. During that period, which could last for a quarter of a century, the micro-chipping of humans will have been perfected. That microchipping or simply chipping of humans will enable the production of the hybrid human variety.

That hybrid variety is in fact being experimented today. The Verizon Corp, a gigantic company based in the USA, has been given the franchise to research, develop, and install (using known biomedical operations, whether surgery or mere intravenous means) prototypes called the VeriChip. Couples of rationalizations were advanced in order to justify the VeriChip mandate. Among the supposed advantages are that of (a) getting easily tracked so that cuts down the possibility of retrieval if one gets lost along the way home or travel to work, and (b) tracking or monitoring one’s health and wellness condition.

As early as the last quarter of the 20th century, the divide between sanity and madness, between ‘good’ reasons and demonic reasons, were already shattered. Rational economics gave way to mad economics, and so on. Likewise was shattered the divide between the visible benefits of chipping humans and the invisible benefits to the ‘new world order’ of controlling humans. Do take note of these developments, as we’re moving in future contexts where rationality and madness’ synthesis will be perfected even more. Integration theory works wondrously for the oligarchic system, remember.

Those chips that will be implanted in you, in case you are among those who volunteered, can indeed be for your personal benefits. But never make the presumption that the chips won’t be used to at least build an intelligence dossier on you. The information mega-databases are already existing today in the USA and EU, so right at this juncture it is facile to keep track of people at least. How those chips will be convertible for purposes of mutating you into a Manchurian Candidate or MC is the current R&D problem of the scientists involved in them.
In a post-War (World War III) scenario, when nations will have been abolished save for some few exceptions, more ‘final solution’ to the demographic dilemma (of ‘overpopulation’) will be executed, thus bringing down population to probably as low as 2 Billion people by 2050. Remember that World War III will take as long as 30 years, it could be a new 30 Years War, so if this coming war will begin in 2009, then expect it to end around 2039.

Now, what is important for that figure of 2 Billion world population, which the global oligarchy has already projected, is that it is a more manageable, controllable population. Chipping all 2 billion people remnants of the old population will be very easy by then. Part of the conditions for reconstruction, reparations, and succeeding prosperous life for the individual would be to chip him/her.

Thus shall be born the population of MCs, who will be quasi-autonomous individuals. The MC can still think for himself/herself, though many facets of the MC’s behavior will be modified. And, behavior modification will be enabled chiefly precisely because of the chips inside one’s body, thus making trainings and/or capacity building less costly. Life span will also increase, as the chips will have the effect of monitoring ailments quickly, and intervention will be easier than today. Primary health care will be done right on the computer and will be quick, instead of the tedious and protracted processes that we clinically undergo today.

However that hybrid prototype, which we will label HYBRID for simplification, will only be the transitory prototype as the ‘final prototype’ will be perfected in the labs. That final prototype, the CYBORG (1st generation), will be a radically different variety altogether from the hybrids whom they will replace. Being one whose personality, chromosomal structure, and capability grids will be fully programmed via advanced computer prototypes and advanced biomedical-sociobehavioral expertise and intervention methods, the CYBORG will be one of longer life span (past 100 years), longer productivity (at least 75 years of productive utility), higher intelligence (mental, emotional, related intelligences all programmed), higher knowledge-absorptive capacity (mental files will be erasable, new knowledge can be uploaded to the brain via computers), and better health (lessening or eliminating health care costs) than the HYBRID.

So, fellows on Earth, let’s better face it, WE ARE ALL PHASE-OUT PROTOTYPES. Let’s better accept that now. Yes, capitalism can survive as already explained before, but look at where capitalism is going. In the era of full ‘technotronic’ capitalism, you will be a total chattel of the system. I don’t mean YOU today who will die in some decades ahead without the chip, I mean the YOU as the people after the war reconstruction.

For those pro-capitalist folks of the world, please don’t grieve for the death of ‘late’ capitalism. Yes, capitalism in its present form is now DEAD, but a new form will rise and replace it, thus rendering capitalism like unto a phoenix. As an ending, are you ready to be chipped today? VeriChip is waiting for thee.

[23 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila] ]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v576/__show_article/_a000576-000122.htm 2008-09-22T11:33:05Z 2008-09-22T11:33:05Z

I am sharing to you a segment of a book by David Wilcock, an American mystic, whose works you can find at: http://divinecosmos.com. The portion contains the astronomical reports released by the scientific community (astronomers of America particularly), summarizing the various planetary changes go...

Erle Frayne Argonza

Cryptic evening to everyone!

I am sharing to you a segment of a book by David Wilcock, an American mystic, whose works you can find at: http://divinecosmos.com. The portion contains the astronomical reports released by the scientific community (astronomers of America particularly), summarizing the various planetary changes going on in the solar system and in the Sun as well.

The astronomers discovered the astounding fact that the changes going on in our planet today, which the sloganeering eco-fascist ideologues spread as the disinformation line of ‘climate change’, isn’t just confined to our planet. The changes are going on in the entire Solar System!

The caption is contained below. Better read the scientific logs for yourself, and conclude whether a Big Lie has been committed by the oligarchic Establishment and its blabbermouth ‘environmentalist’ Pied Pipers (eco-fascists). A cover up has been going on, and one may ask why the oligarchic circles have been concealing to the planet’s peoples the facts about changes that are caused by dynamic forces beyond our own planetary realm.

[22 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
========================================================================
What is Ascension?

Is It Real? If So, Am I Gonna Make It?

By David Wilcock 9/26/03

Is “all this Ascension stuff” for real, or is it just the imbecile fantasy of people deeply divorced from reality? Here is what the media never tells you, at least not all at once.

We all know that the Earth is experiencing global warming and other changes, whether the petroleum giants like it or not. Just read the headlines.
What we may NOT know is the following:

SUN: The Sun’s magnetic field is over 230 percent stronger now than it was at the beginning of the 1900s, and its overall energetic activity has sizably increased, creating a frenzy of activity that continues to embarrass NASA’s official predictions.

VENUS: Venus is now glowing in the dark, as is Jupiter’s moon Io.
EARTH: In the last 30 years, Earth’s icecaps have thinned out by as much as 40 percent. Quite inexplicably, just since 1997 the structure of the Earth has shifted from being slightly more egg-shaped, or elongated at the poles, to more pumpkin-shaped, or flattened at the poles. No one at NASA has even bothered to try to explain this yet. Link to full article at NASA.

MARS: The icecaps of Mars noticeably melted just within one year, causing 50-percent changes in surface features. Atmospheric density had risen by 200 percent above previous observations as of 1997.
JUPITER: Jupiter has become so highly energized that it is now surrounded by a visibly glowing donut tube of energy in the path of the moon Io. The size of Jupiter’s magnetic field has more than doubled since 1992.

SATURN: Saturn’s polar regions have been noticeably brightening, and its magnetic field strength increasing.

URANUS: According to NASA’s Voyager II space probe, Uranus and Neptune both appear to have had recent magnetic pole shifts – 60 degrees for Uranus and 50 for Neptune.
NEPTUNE: Neptune has become 40 percent brighter in infrared since 1996, and is fully 100-percent brighter in certain areas. Also, Neptune’s moon Triton has had a “very large percentage increase” in atmospheric pressure and temperature, comparable to a 22-degree Fahrenheit increase on Earth.

PLUTO: As of September 2002, Pluto has experienced a 300-percent increase in its atmospheric pressure in the last 14 years, while also becoming noticeably darker in
color.

Everything you have just read is referenced from mainstream media sources, and the full list of relevant links can be found within chapter eight of Divine Cosmos. The whole key to mass media control is to ensure that these facts are never seen all at the same time. It becomes “all too weird” once we add in the ever-increasingly stressful socio-political events on Earth, such as a “perpetual war against terrorism,” with the smirking Bush as Wild-West-Messiah-In-Chief playing “Bring ‘em On for Armageddon,” along with the fulfillment of many other ancient prophecies, including those of the Judeo-Christian Bible.

Here at DivineCosmos.com, we have freely published a compelling scientific case for there being a Convergence, Shift of the Ages, dimensional shift or Ascension now underway. When this solar-system-wide process is complete, estimated to be within the timeframe of 2010-2013, we can expect an “Omega Point” event that is literally “beyond our wildest dreams.” The changes in the Solar System are only the more obvious and physical result of these changes, where the energy of consciousness itself is being upgraded, causing mass evolution to occur.

But, alas. Undeniable Solar System changes aside, isn’t this all just too good to be true, on this Bush-whacked planet? ]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v576/__show_article/_a000576-000121.htm 2008-09-22T11:29:15Z 2008-09-22T11:29:15Z

Let me go back to the question of what lies ahead of us—when ‘late’ capitalism dies and yet capitalism will be extended. I am not discounting the possibility that capitalism’s life span will be extended, but this will no longer be ‘late’ capital, just to remind everyone. You better fasten your...

Erle Frayne Argonza

Let me go back to the question of what lies ahead of us—when ‘late’ capitalism dies and yet capitalism will be extended. I am not discounting the possibility that capitalism’s life span will be extended, but this will no longer be ‘late’ capital, just to remind everyone.

You better fasten your seat belts, as the stormy days ahead will come for sure, and as this heraldry from me will sound as stormy already as those times ahead. Stormy heraldry, because (a) you will not come to like it and that (b) its impact will be so nauseating and revolting that you’d rather sedate yourself most quickly with wine, liquor, pot or anything that can reduce that revulsion. I forgot, for the fundamentalists, you’d pray for hours to allay your fears.

By the time ‘late’ capital arrived up to the current juncture, or roughly the whole of the post-Great Depression era, the following developments have come about:

• State intervention/planning was infused into the system. Post-war former colonies proceeded on their industrial development tracks along this dirigist market model. The USA and Europe were saved from collapsing, emerging markets appeared.

• Market reforms were later introduced, bringing back free market and free trade principles. Centrally planned economies China and Vietnam infused market reforms to construct a ‘social market’ model, while former socialist states folded up in Eastern Europe and 3rd world states.

• The era of ‘mad economics’ resulted from the system integration efforts of ‘instrumental reason’. The dividing line between the rational and the mad in decision-making and system maintenance was effectively deconstructed and erased. In esoteric-mystical argot, this era is the period of the Demonic Mind, the era of Anti-Christ.

• ‘Virtual economy’ based on predatory financial practices of creating values from out of money flows (rather than from concrete production) was exemplified by ‘bubble economies’. Bubble bursts were followed by destructive, catastrophic crises and shrinkages of affected economies.

• Nation-states’ economies came to be integrated into a single economy, via globalization. A planetary economy was already institutionalized, yet no planetary state exists to regulate conduct of commerce and business at a global level. The contradiction between the norms of the planetary economy and the interests of the nation-state has led in no small measure to the fragmentation of nation-states and emergence of mini-states. Globalization has been undermining the nation-state in general.

• All of such developments will hyper-converge in the months ahead in a general system crisis characterized by hyper-inflation, great depression, and total system collapse. As the economist Lyndon LaRouche correctly perceived, that collapse phase is now taking place at a rapid rate.

• Wars and hostilities are intensifying across the globe. Surrogate wars of world powers have also been rehearsed, such as the Georgia-Russia conflict. All of these conflicts will hyper-converge in a World War III or intercontinental war, the duration of which no one can forecast so easily.

So, going back to the issue, if the ‘virtual economy’ cannot be sustained and its collapse will bring the final death blow on ‘late’ capital, is it possible to extend capitalism’s life span? Yes, the possibility is very likely. But the context emerging from the resolution of the general global crisis will hardly resemble what you’ve ever seen before nor imagine.

First of all, the consolidation of the system and attempts to prolong it can never take place without draconian police state tactics. As Lenin correctly emphasized, the dividing line between liberalism and fascism is a superficial one. Neo-fascism will become the political modality in order to save capitalism and bring it to its next phase. State terror heretofore untold will unravel the old order of things and bring the ‘new world order’ into place, resulting to pogroms that will dwarf both Hitler’s ‘final solution’ and Stalin’s ‘purges’ combined.

The possibility of a global state will finally become granite rock, with the United Nations most likely the base for creating that global regulatory mechanism governed by a demonic ‘world rule of law’. This global state will have its own military and police forces, and will have no qualms in quelling dissent and enforcing global fiats in order to bring forth the ‘new world order’.

The global corporations of the moment, whose assets and revenues are already so huge that they dwarf those of nation-states’, will all the more become gigantic.
The same corporations will then declare their respective turfs among region-states and city-states that will be created from the dismantled nations. Each mega-corporation will be endowed with its own private army, akin to the British East India Company or BEIC of old, of professional mercenaries beholden to no state but to the corporation, but which can be mandated by the global state to engage hostile forces in other regions and cities.

The era of New Feudalism will then ensue from the social and urban-ecological arrangements emerging. The era of ancient Florence, Venice, or city-states with their own respective armies and ruled by powerful commercial families, will come back though in more sophisticated vogue. The competing powerful & wealthy city-states will then give rise to new conflicts in the form of ‘wars of the cities’, much akin to the ancient Greek city-states’ conflicts. Before this century’s end, no more nations shall exist, but rather a world of cities and regions integrated largely through the mediative and regulative planetary state. Weaker cities and regions will become the vassals of powerful cities and corporate groups, at a time when technology will even be more revolutionary. The New Feudalism will be based on an integration of capital and information, contrasted to the Old Feudalism that was based on land.

As soon as 3rd phase cybernetics will conclude, and probably a 4th phase will begin, which will all the more erase the barrier between human and machine, the envisioned Technotronic Society will become the manifest order. Cyborgs and machines will then become perfected and endowed with quasi-human intelligence, while those humans with weak minds will be totally controlled via perfected chips, mega-computers, and new cybernetic systems. Large numbers of subhuman ‘Manchurian candidates’ or MCs will become the docile slave labor of the day, well fed and provided for, but whose behavior will be totally programmed and re-programmable.

That technoronic society of the neo-feudal capitalist ‘new world order’, or simply Technotronic capitalism, was fitfully described and forecast in the film series Matrix and Terminator. As 3rd phase cybernetics is advancing today in laboratory incubators of the North, cybernetics that will dismantle the barrier between human and machine, the possibility of an early arrival of that dreaded machine-controlled ‘new world order’ has become concrete. The question is no longer ‘will technotronics come’, but rather ‘when will it come’? Matrix and Terminator are no film fantasies but are rather scientific extrapolations based on existing and developing cybernetic principles.

So, fellows out there, would you count yourself among the fanatical supporters of ‘capitalist life-span extension’, or would you rather opt for a new economy & society other than the ‘new world order’ that has been engineered by the global oligarchy? Or, would you rather be silent about the matter, as the ‘silence of the lambs’ means the Keynesian “In the long run, all of us will be dead!” Caput!

Let me now end here. Suffice that I shared my notes about the possible extension of the favorite economy of the pro-capitalists or the most abhorred society by capitalism’s detractors. At least I didn’t fail to show you the possibilities, I being a sociologist and economist who learned from my thinker mentors the craft of social forecasting or ‘futurology’.

Till next writing! Adios! Adieu! Paalam! Farewell!

[23 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila.]]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v576/__show_article/_a000576-000120.htm 2008-09-18T11:53:35Z 2008-09-18T11:53:35Z

To all fellow men and women out there who may have deep fondness for the liberal capitalist model of economic adaptation, I hope that you can make some adjustments in your cognitive banks. Capitalism is not a permanent facet of human life, but merely one among various epochs that will come to pass...

Erle Frayne Argonza

To all fellow men and women out there who may have deep fondness for the liberal capitalist model of economic adaptation, I hope that you can make some adjustments in your cognitive banks. Capitalism is not a permanent facet of human life, but merely one among various epochs that will come to pass. Only impermanence is sacrosanct in the cosmos, so please refrain from singing hallelujah to a world system that is on its death knell as I articulated in a previous article.

And please refrain from swallowing hook-line-&-sinker the contentious propaganda of Francis Fukuyama about the ‘end of history’, that accordingly history had concluded with the galvanization of liberal capitalism, that history makes no more sense. Fukuyama’s theory is a slapstick narrative of hyper-valuation of the ‘mad economics’ of late capitalism and hypo-statization of reality that has no relation at all to the real in the world out there. Fukuyama had taken as ‘real’ what is actually ‘virtual’, and froze time much like unto a fairy tale of timelessness, of history-less Nietzschean moment that is fit more for infants than for adult humans.

Fukuyama epitomizes the ‘mad economics’ of all those Pied Pipers of the global oligarchy for whom he works, and his discourse is akin to the ‘mad discourse’ so described by the late Michel Foucault. The ‘mad economics’ of Friedman, Hayek, Fukuyama, and all those technocrats who serve as processors and bagmen for the global oligarchy, is precisely symptomatic of that colossal ailment of a world system, and as we all know, madness can never salve ailments but rather hasten the system’s death. Caput! Blow your horns, prepare dirges to this Dead One!

Unless that you yourselves have become maddened by the seemingly infinite monies flowing unto your purses as you are among the beneficiaries of ‘late’ capital, unless that you are indeed now suffering from combined maladies of sociopathy and schizophrenia, unless that sanity had departed from thee forever, please heed the last plea of your own conscience where sanity had retreated: CAPITALISM IS DEAD! No amount of propagandizing, of contorted interpretations, can ever change the course of history at this juncture, as we are all headed for a TOTAL SYSTEM COLLAPSE in the months ahead. Read that please: MONTHS AHEAD, not years ahead.

What went wrong with capitalism? I’m sure all of you fellows knew what went wrong, do I even need to answer that? Your previous thinker mentors, among economists and sociologists, forewarned you all of the forthcoming demise of capitalism, but you paid nary an attention to those brilliant minds as you were so engrossed in your ‘conspicuous consumption’, behaving more like some infantile EATERS or as anthropoids rather than as thinking and spiritually evolving humans. You are all very much human, so please consistently behave like one, and begin by listening to the Inner Voice of your conscience, for that voice is your soul’s.

Let me summarize the diagnostics, forewarnings and/or prophecies of our thinker mentors from the West, and I’d stress WEST because there are some other thinker mentors from the EAST and SOUTH whose peregrinations are so recondite they are not so easily digestible. Let me just stress the WEST as this is what is common to us all. So let me re-echo the thinkers and their theories:

• Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: The internal contradictions between the private nature of capital (ownership of means of production) and the social nature of production. The ‘crisis of overproduction’ and the ‘law of the falling rate of profit’ are attendant patterns. Social revolution results, then the alternative society will be constructed.

• Max Weber: Industrial capitalism’s granite product, the bureaucracy, led to dehumanization. He never forecast though whether this dehumanizing system can be sustained—but please read between the lines. (His contemporary Emile Durkheim had a similar observation about ‘anomie’ or normless state of urban/industrial society.)

• Thorsten Veblen: The end-phase of industrial capitalism is markedly pathological. ‘Conspicuous consumption’ is the disease of this phase, the toxic behavior from the ruling class that later filtered down to the emerging middle class.

• Joseph Schumpeter: The internal contradiction between the desire for profit and the revolutionary character of innovation. The demise of capitalism will see the possibility of the technical class taking over society and build that alternative system later.

• Daniel Bell: The ‘post-industrial’ society had already been born right inside capitalism. A distinct modality in itself, post-industrialism will eventually prevail in a system that isn’t capitalist (or money economy) but rather knowledge-based. The ‘service worker’ had arrived on the social landscape, the prototype class of the future.

• Theodore Adorno, Jurgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse: ‘Late’ capital is characterized by the pervasiveness of ‘instrumental reason’, where reason is used to justify the non-rational (‘madness’ in Foucault’s argot), where state planning/intervention was infused into a system that scorned intervention.

• Alvin Toffler: Both capitalism and socialism are based on hoarding, both are variants of the same industrial society of yesteryears, both are based on ‘2nd wave’ capital-intensive technologies and non-renewable energy sources. The ‘post-industrial’ society is altogether distinct, isn’t based on hoarding, production-consumption (‘prosumer’) is based on ‘3rd wave’ knowledge-intensive technologies and renewable energy sources, knowledge cannot be hoarded.

I need not articulate further, do I? They all converged on one theme: capitalism is transitory, it bred social maladies (alienation, dehumanization, anomie, conspicuous consumption,…), is systemically flawed, and will be dismantled at sometime in the future.

No matter how delimited their theories maybe, as they all proceeded from certain perspectives (they were all ‘paradigm’-based in the jargon of Thomas Kuhn), they all proclaimed—in either tacit or explicit fashion—the coming demise of the system. They weren’t as silly as Fukuyama who popularized seemingly ‘satanic verses’ (distorted precepts) about a non-changing, permanent economic landscape called ‘liberal capitalism’, but were rather so adroit at social forecasting that they saw a vision of the future as they were articulating on their empirical observations of the present society.

So, fellows out there, prepare for the months and years ahead. We are headed towards those stormy months, years, maybe even decades. How the future society will come to shape is not easy to forecast. “Something blurs the Force, darkens our sight of the future,” declared a Jedi Master in the Star Wars cinema fame. Let me end right here.

[Writ 22 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila.]]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v576/__show_article/_a000576-000119.htm 2008-09-18T11:48:26Z 2008-09-18T11:48:26Z