There’s No Good News in the Unfolding of Armageddon

By Caitlin Johnstone
Global Research, August 30, 2024
Caitlin’s Newsletter
Theme:

The decay of western civilization is unfolding in real time right in front of our eyes.

Israel has ramped up its assault on the West Bank with an incursion the likes of which has not been seen since 2002, at the same time we learn that the Biden administration has been scrambling to increase its weapons shipments to Israel. Haaretz reports that August has been the second-busiest month for weapons shipments from the US to Israel’s Nevatim Airbase, second only to October 2023.

This is the same Biden administration that Americans have been assured is working “tirelessly” and “around the clock” for a ceasefire in Gaza. They’re committing genocide and lying about it while laughing and grinning and celebrating the “joy” of the Kamala Harris campaign.

Meanwhile in the UK the government is going insane arresting critics of Israel’s western-backed atrocities for speech crimes. Prominent pro-Palestinian voices Richard Medhurst, Sarah Wilkinson and Richard Barnard have all been targeted by counter-terrorism police in recent days under the British Terrorism Act on the allegation that they have been too supportive of forbidden groups in their expression of political opinion about recent events in the middle east. They join British journalist Kit Klarenberg and former British ambassador Craig Murray, who came under attack for speech crimes under the same law last year.

Something similar is happening in Australia, where high-profile journalist Mary Kostakidis faces charges of violating the Racial Discrimination Act for two retweets about Israel and Hezbollah which offended the Zionist Federation of Australia. This move came shortly after the Australian government appointed its first “anti-semitism envoy”, a move many feared would lead to crackdowns on speech that is critical of Israel.

And in France President Emmanuel Macron has refused to honor the results of an election, which saw the left-wing New Popular Front alliance win a plurality in July, by appointing a new prime minister. Many have accused the president of orchestrating a coup, and Macron’s actions are being widely cited as proof that the so-called “centrists” of western liberalism will always side with fascists to stop any movement toward socialism. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who leads the largest party in New Popular Front, recently vowed to recognize Palestine “as quickly as possible”.

While all this is happening, the Russians are warning of a third world war as the western empire’s proxy war in Ukraine continues to escalate. Zelenskyites have been citing the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk as evidence that Moscow has been bluffing about all its red lines, saying the largest invasion of Russia since the second world war proves that the only real danger is NATO’s unwillingness to escalate further with more attacks deeper into Russian territory.

Sure, throw all caution to the wind and keep on ramping up brinkmanship with a nuclear superpower. What’s the worst that could possibly happen?

So what’s the good news? 

There is none. 

There is no good news to be found in the unfolding of dystopia and armageddon. Expecting otherwise would not be reasonable.

This doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be happy about, or that there’s no joy or beauty to be found in our world. Joy and beauty can be found everywhere you look. You’re just not going to be made happy by reading the real news stories about the times we are living in.

We live in an unfathomably beautiful world, and happiness is the default position of human consciousness underneath all the madness and egocentricity we’ve heaped on top of it. All it takes is a little inner work and inner clarity and you can experience as much happiness and beauty as you can stand in any moment of your waking life. 

There is stunning beauty to be found on the crest of the wave of the apocalypse. The seagulls and crows fighting over the fast food garbage on the road. The rising smoke from the factories. The smell of the exhaust fumes and the frenzied din of traffic and capitalism. It is all so beautiful.

We’ve each been blessed with the gift of human life, and every human lifetime is an opportunity to experience more enjoyment than we ever would have dreamed possible if we can just learn to pierce through the illusions of ego and duality and start perceiving life as it’s actually showing up in each moment. All it takes is some sincere looking and curiosity about the true nature of mind, the true nature of self, and the true nature of perception.

And if we can open our eyes in this way, as an added bonus we can come to recognize that things aren’t hopeless for humanity after all. That while all the systems of our society are completely locked down to prevent health and change in every meaningful way right now, we all have within us a vast potentiality that we had previously never accounted for. That the human brain can actually transcend the unwholesome relationship with mental narrative which has allowed it to be propagandized and psychologically enslaved to the status quo this entire time, and begin moving with real freedom within our world.

All of humanity has the potential to awaken from its deluded propensity toward imbuing mental narrative with the power of belief. If it can happen to an individual human (and it most assuredly can), then it can happen to humanity as a collective. This potential sleeps within us all, waiting to be awakened.

Every species eventually hits an adaptation-or-extinction juncture at some point, where it must adapt to changing conditions on this planet or vanish into the fossil records. Humanity is arriving at such a juncture today. We’ll either awaken the potential which rests dormant within all of us to become a truly conscious species, or we will go the way of the dinosaur. We have the freedom to go either direction.

In the meantime, life is beautiful, and life is joyful, even on the precipice of the existential abyss. All we need to do is wake up enough to enjoy this fact.

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Articles by: Caitlin Johnstone

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