The exposure of the illusion that is our financial markets has ruptured the very core of the American Reality. The macro-disaster of a system whose tendrils reach into the very hearts and dreams of the individual has created slowly expanding fissures in the perception of every person whose belief system is based upon acquisition, accumulation and maintenance of the American facade. The American Dream is to live in a dream that is constructed by the materials of a consumer-based economy. Who you are is subservient to whom you appear to be.
If we are no longer able to acquire, what then is our purpose as a culture? If we are no longer have the tools to maintain our skyscrapers of sand, then what is the individual to do?
The societal neurosis that has been placated through the numbing effects of consumption and informational inundation will now be left unfettered. If this process is left unchecked, the behavior of the society will most certainly devolve into manifestations of the uncontrolled subconscious: acts of violence and the inevitable reaction to these acts.
A new reality must supplant the illusory kingdom. A reality that is based upon being human, not trying to be a concept of what we think a human is supposed to be. A new community must be formed from the fragments of the self-serving, predatory and competitive social structures we see crumbling before our eyes. Look what the old ideals have wrought: economic bubbles, irreparable environmental damage, and exponential mental deterioration.
There must be no more ideals. There is nothing to strive for. There must only be the examination of what is. And what is? Relationship: the relationship we have with ourselves, with our neighbors and with the world at large. Only from this starting point can we hope to create a society that is capable of sustaining itself.
