The Faces of Shiva (1)

March 12, 2019 / 9 Comments

(Montage image by the author. See base of post for source of Shiva element)

Brahma creates the world. Vishnu sustains it so that it might achieve its potential. Shiva destroys it when its positive energy has been exhausted. The ‘world’ might be everything, or, for the initiate of old, it might just as well apply to anything created by the mind – large or small. In other words a system.

It should make us think…

The ancient Hindu triumvirate describes a deep and recurring motif in spirituality: that there must be a threefold process, which necessarily involves the sweeping away of that which has served its purpose; has ceased to support the structures it built to achieve its purposes; has ceased to draw upon the positive (expansive) energies that sustained its coming-into-maturity.

We could be forgiven for thinking that this ancient myth accurately describes what we are experiencing in the world economics, politics and technology.

At the heart of it is the question: does the ordinary human have any intrinsic value?

We take for granted that we have value – that human life has value. We are at the top of the food-chain. We are intelligent. We created machines that appear to think, at least well enough to solve problems. Yet we are surrounded by recent and powerful changes that are sweeping away the consensus of ‘human worth’ that have sustained our civilisations for centuries.

Even a decade ago, we could have counted on an unwritten agreement that human life had value among the powers that control. Now, I’m not so sure. On both sides of the Atlantic (and elsewhere) what was supposedly put to bed at the end of the age of Fascism (World War II and its surrounding periods) is being attacked by either ultra-rich or fanatical forces.

In Britain, we have a crumbling national identify, divided by the hatred generated by Brexit and the advancing power of the political ‘right’ whose vision sweeps away thirty years of social thinking. Thugs from the ultra-right have been empowered by Brexit’s implicit racism and feel justified in threatening and even killing members of parliament who promote social and inclusive agendas.

In America, there is a President who is adored or hated in seemingly equal measure; a head of state who openly rewards the super-rich – that one percent of the elite that owns ninety percent of the wealth.

This kind of approach is applauded by those who espouse the supposed ‘trickle-down’ effect of wealth at that top; yet detailed studies on both sides of the Atlantic have shown that the tricking down of such wealth is non-existent. Many of those who voted for Brexit admit they did it to ‘spoil the party’ of the better off.

On holiday, last November, we met and had dinner with an American couple from Arizona whose company we liked but whose values were very different to ours. The personal possession of guns was one of the issues, but we were able to discuss it in a friendly manner. I learned a lot – particularly from the man’s statement that the police were incapable of responding to armed burglary in time to do anything, and so anyone not armed was vulnerable… He was appalled when I said that, in the UK, I would be committing a serious criminal offence if was caught with a pistol in public. I won’t be – I don’t like guns, but it pays to listen to other people’s views…

We did not fall out. Both sides of the table listened, and we continued to understand each other in more depth. Most telling was what the husband of the couple said to me as we were preparing to leave. He said that we should not believe this ‘bullshit’ that the average American middle-class family was prosperous. In his view this entire layer of American society had become substantially poorer over the past twenty years – the period that the super rich had hoovered up the available wealth – particularly after each financial crash.

The same is true in Britain, where the supposed ‘middle-class’ has seen its prosperity whittled away by the politics of ‘austerity’ since the financial crash of 2007. As a close friend of mine – a very working class man – said, “None of the ****ing bankers were put in prison, yet we’re all a lot poorer through having to bail them out… and the rich seem to be a lot richer, despite this.” In our case, this rage came home to roost with Brexit – changing the face of Britain, possibly forever, and destroying an economic coalition of European countries that had prevailed since the end of WWII.

When I worked in IT (for a Californian company) it was often said to me, in confidence, that the Europoean Union was ‘too successful at international law and too principled…’ Food for thought.

Recently, I watched a documentary in which an American billionaire from Silicon Valley was interviewed on this subject. His opinion runs counter to most of his super-rich friends. He argued that the very wealthy had only to share a little of their wealth to make the whole economic carousel continue in its revolutions; but that they didn’t see it that way, and therefore it was likely doomed…

Everywhere we look there is destruction of the old and formerly stable way of looking at things.

Back to our ‘value of the human’ consideration. I used to think that we could only fix things if we addressed the following:

There has to be a ‘society’. Former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher famously said that ‘there was no such thing as society’ – prompting outrage at the time. Collectively, perhaps, we need to re-learn where society comes from and how its values stay strong. The Scandinavian countries seem the best at doing this, and they willingly pay the higher taxes needed to sustain it.
We have to believe that politics both works and matters. To have politics we have to have real choices. If, say, a victory for either side in a two-party state actually results in a the same economy-controlled decisions, then that is not a choice – it’s a fake choice. Following WWII, Britain voted out an astonished Winston Churchill in favour of a radical Labour Party that proceeded to carry out an exhaustive and effective overhaul of British social provisions. That was only possible because there was belief that change could be achieved.
There has to be education about the issues. Brexit is a case in point. Even hardline pro-Brexit voters now admit they had no comprehension of the complexity of what they were voting for. They may not want to change their minds, but they agree they were misled.
Technology – particularly social media – needs to be brought under a unified regulatory structure, even if it means extending the present laws to accommodate the uniques. The abuse of this mechanism was widespread in the Brexit referendum – and in the last US election. An English software company – Cambridge Analytica (about which I wrote at the time) – was chased to ground and had to ceased trading, but that’s proving to have been the tip of the iceberg. The origin of some of the vast sums spent with the social media companies on these campaigns remains shadowy.

Today, I’m not sure that list is comprehensive. Much of what follows in these posts is about the gaps…

Our world is complex and it is international. Any attempt to turn the clock back to simpler days, like ‘little Englanders’ do, is doomed to swift and painful failure. The degree to which people’s prosperity is inextricably linked with the state of the rest of the world is a terrifying thing – unless you see it as part of an evolution of the human race; an evolution in which we are brought face to face with the real conditions prevailing in the rest of the planet – unable to ‘turn off the TV’.

Is the face of Shiva upon us? The speed with which these changes occurred, and is occurring; and the success of some of the most destructive forces suggests that, whatever you call it, something whose time has come is active across the planet. This may be a test of the present stage of humanity, or it may simply be an age of destruction. It’s happened before, but few learn from history.

In the next few posts, I will be writing about some of the most pressing topics around the subject of global power, economics and technology. Beginning with the degree to which western democracies are wide open to active and politically-sponsored online interference from hostile forces.

These are my personal views. I respect those of others who may not agree with them. If there is a way through these things we need to share views and talk a lot. If we don’t there may not be a future…

Please free to add your own comments.

Stephen Tanham is a director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit organisation that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.

The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.

Steve’s personal blog, Sun in Gemini, is at stevetanham.wordpress.com.

Images: The opening montage is by the author. The underlying image of Shiva is from Wikipedia under the licence detailed below.