By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Chances are that you’ve thought a bit about your own mortality this week. If you’re empathetic in the slightest, the news that thousands of global citizens were suddenly swept away by a tsunami not only takes the breath away but turns the inner eye toward self and survival. Compound that with a global nuclear crisis in the hands of corporate hacks and frightened government lackeys. This is the stuff that makes End-timers foam at the mouth and claw at their eyes while average citizens run for potassium iodide and load up on bottled water and batteries.
Is this a global emergency, we wonder? We find ourselves unprepared for a worst-case scenario. Since the end of the Cold War, concerns such as these have been replaced by Disney-esque portrayals of asteroids colliding with earth or the dark, apocalyptic vision of Glenn Beck advertising his dire, three-hour radio pronouncements as “the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.” Is there something we’re supposed to be doing? We ask the question of the government and get a mix of science and smoke. We’re advised to remain calm. Nothing to see here, move along.
The president told us this week not to panic over the nuclear situation because his experts tell him there’s no immediate danger to the United States. (And by the way, I think it’s likely Obama believes this. I recall my shock when he took his wife and kids to visit the Gulf in Summer 2010, both swimming and eating the seafood; something I’d never have done.) Government tends to rumble into overreaction when the locals go hinky, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to keep things calm. It seems disingenuous for those in the know to keep mum about these things, but “need to know” has always tilted toward the inner circles of power. Think of yourself as the outer circle, then, attempting to connect these dots in some cogent manner. If you don’t regularly read Planet Waves and suddenly become aware that the whole world seems to be holding its breath, life quickly gets a good deal more confusing.
Now, poised as we are on a supermoon — some of us prepared to bark at it — we may be looking around to see what everyone else is doing. Some do the hard work of discovery, gathering facts and weighing options that others have no desire to hear. Some attempt to be mindful consumers, pursuing healthy food choices and green solutions in a world thick with denial. Others try to maintain normalcy by relying on social diversions and the number one prescription in the United States, over 230 million written yearly: antidepressants, otherwise known as “calm in a bottle.” But things speed up when the right circumstances come together, explosion occurs, and windows of experience blow open to let in fresh air. Denial ain’t what it used to be.