If you like the topics discussed in this newsletter, you can buy a copy of my Patchwork Manifesto here.
My investigation draws on ancient teachings to explain why we stand at the edge of radical change.
It’s a challenging read. Consider this tiny manual if you are just starting your journey.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Part Two of The Big Bomb. We’re going to continue discussing how this fall marks a transition away from our drama-fest summer into a heavier time where we are all acutely aware of big geo-political and socio-economic tensions.
In Part One, we discussed domestic crime in the US, inflation and conflict in the Middle East. As we unpacked each of these issues, we came to realize that not one of these can occupy centerstage in any kind of apocalyptic narrative.
Sure, various tribes will try to spin each of these issues as the most important global narrative. But from a more advanced perspective, each of these Big Bombs appear to be micro bombs tethered together in a network. They point to a decaying fabric from which a new order will be born. They point to a general instability, including instability in meaning. After all, wouldn’t it feel so satisfying and meaningful if we could point to ONE issue and say, “That’s it! That’s the Big Bomb we need to blame!”
We were encouraged in early fall to simply bear witness to change – to accept that old forms of stability are being removed, because the network in total is compromised. Balance will be restored by simply letting go of a ledger riddled with errors, not by trying to “educate” others on what the Number One Narrative is.
Now we go deeper into the season. We’ve seen stock market rumbles, as well as infighting among Republicans, which went on for three weeks as they sought to nominate a new speaker. In addition, there continue to be schisms in liberal circles over the conflict involving Israel. Meanwhile, on October 24, the SEC charged Blackrock—the infamous company that snaps up single-owner homes—for what essentially amounts to insider trading.
In this back half of October, the decay is more blatant, and it’s no longer a matter of “bear witness to this, if you care” (as in Part One).
What you’ll find in your personal life and in headlines is that the more you attempt to look away, the more things actually do spin out of control, the more you’ll be in the path of trends that remove your true ability to choose, all while whisking you along some Candyland path that says, “You can have Netflix or TikTok, anon...see, isn’t it nice to have choices?”
Illusion is very high right now. You might think that by facing the nightmare and the cultural wasteland, you will feel out of control—but the real illusion is presenting “Netflix or TikTok” as anything other than forced, fated diminishment of your creative power.
The stakes are high, and this is a challenge being posed to us: we must choose to take a stand without succumbing to tribal politics. It’s about standing up for yourself—for your ability to choose at all. It’s a fight against complacent scrolling and the dullness that believes authentic action is a thing of the past.
More than a few of you may find yourself in a war of words (or even fists) this weekend, the more you try to sweep the “nightmare” under the rug.
The nightmare is here to be observed, witnessed, processed and even integrated.
Repressing it, ignoring it, casting it back to the shadows is what gives it power—the power to instill you with fear, with the notion that a Big Bomb is about to drop on your life and therefore you must choose between “Netflix or TikTok” because, like, well, humanity is so over.
Perception freezes the nightmare in place like a snapshot. From there, you can be critical and objective. Are those really 10-inch claws? Even if so, don’t you yourself have 9-inch claws? Is that one-inch difference really going to get into your head and make you lose the battle?
Indeed, everything surrounding ownership gets ratcheted up at this Full Moon Taurus Eclipse. Because what happens to the energy is that the more you don’t assume a sense of personal sovereignty and self-ownership, the more the energy flips, inverts, casts back on itself into a shadow form, playing with illusion.
The less you validate your ability to choose, the more you’ll see cultural debt collectors say: “That’s fine, we’ll take your ability to choose and give you the illusion of choice, between two binary camps. All is stable again.”
Here’s an example of how ownership of your creative power gets taken and subverted. Let’s say you don’t use critical perception, as in the above analogy about claws. Instead, what happens is your critical ability gets siphoned off by an impersonal third party, like a boss or a repressed sense of guilt. You will be subjected to self-criticism or nitpicking nagging from others. You could find yourself in a front of a boss with your work picked to shreds, or in front of a lover, wondering how a decision over what to eat turned into such a knockout fight.
Taurus always wants us to stand our ground and OWN something. And, without going into the infinite details of this Full Moon chart, what we’re called to own now is our own independent spirit—the ability to strike out, trailblaze, pioneer and move towards a frontier.
And yes, sometimes you have to feel a chunk taken out of you to know that you’ve got more reserves in the tank. Maybe you get a wake-up call this month: you let a little bit of your vision be sold off to the vultures, then suddenly you decide to stand up for yourself.
Of course, another inspired way to move towards a new frontier is to put your eyes on the old and the decayed—the dangerous and nasty nightmare that must be, and ultimately will be, left behind.
You cultivate a feeling of resolve and determination. “This exists to be transcended.”
Let’s dive in.
Anarchists and Pioneers
There are two types of individualism at this time: the anarchic individual who thinks only of himself and therefore conducts every behavior towards “gotta get mine before it’s all gone.” This type of person represses the nightmare and will not look at it. Because if they did, they would come to accept that there is a new frontier on the other side of decay. Instead, this person believes only in the ruins and stays there, pillaging it to the last crumb. This person is, in a word, a conditioned citizen of the (now deceased) matrix.
How great it would be if we could call this person an NPC. No, this is worse. The overlords of the matrix are no longer in the boardroom. They’ve perished and begun to rot, or have run off to some bunker where they try to eke out drops of meaning to the dazed populace. You think anyone REALLY gives a damn what a news anchor says on TV anymore? No, it’s all hyper-fractured, and so an already broken-down matrix is working on overdrive to offer people little temporary memes, each one lasting a shorter duration than the last.
“Barbenheimer” was such a phenomenon this summer because it’s like the shuddering cultural machine shat out a random golden egg—when that used to be the norm, day in and day out, not too long ago. Now we’re back to faux-conservatives bitching about women crying on TikTok for being tired after working 9-5 jobs, while the neo-trads jump in and say women should just have a hobby business and the very online crowd says that office jobs are stupid altogether. This meme is probably already dead by the time my newsletter hits your inbox.
And that’s what I mean when I suggest avoiding the type of anarchic individualism that just wants to roll around in the death and decay of the old world. It’s all so “me against the world.” Everything is decaying, no sprout will grow, it’s a mad rush to dig in the dust for one measly rotten apple of knowledge.
The other individual BELIEVES in lushness. Yes, belief is a keyword yet again in this newsletter, because we are still in a deep faith crisis, as we’ve discussed over recent weeks.
It’s not that you physically SEE a sumptuous apple tree bursting with fruit before you. It’s the certainty that those are coming, or already exist beyond your line of sight—and even more importantly, that you’ll know how to identify it, tend it, harvest it and turn it into a future orchard of multiple fruit trees.
This is a person who is already tasting the fruits of their labor by their faith in abundance, which springs from the understanding of natural cycles: on the other side of the nightmare, there is the garden.
This is the iconoclast, the woodworker who flows with the grain of the wood as he carves it in order to find out what he’ll be making. The journey is revealed in the course of embracing the archetype of a seeker who would like to journey.
Does this go against our current social media ethos? Absolutely, it does.
“Well, can’t I kind of like check out where the journey might be going, or if there is one at all, and then maybe I might sign up to be a journeyer?”
No, it doesn’t work like that. No sneak previews. No little TikTok teasers of what’s inside. Like a chemical reaction, the path appears at the moment that a person begins to walk it.
This tampers with our conditioned sense of metaphysics, because we assume that the path pre-exists our decision to walk it. In some ways, this potential is true. But the path is not yet fully manifest until we make that leap of faith.
You see how the nightmare will grab at this trend of emergent adventure, and try to twist it, if you don’t stand up and take ownership of it. Rumors of a U.S. military draft are a perfect example of this. Many are saying you can’t sell war to younger generations anymore, or that they’re not physically or emotionally fit for it anyways, generally speaking. But in the same breath they’ll mention that younger generations are desperately hungry for meaning, big narrative and a sense of personal heroism in a wasteland of constant social performance. Draft rumors are tugging on this emergent trend, this collective unconscious need to make a leap of faith into journey and adventure. God help us if rumor becomes fact—because then the temptation will become more manifest, and the illusion will become thicker.
So we return to the issue of perceptive criticism. We step back to objectively take in the nightmare, in order to transcend it.
That’s how we solve the paradox of faith right now: we can leap into the unknown, and find a lush adventure, when we get a little dry and logical about it all, and realize we’ve got just as much strength as what we’re up against.
Hell, even our (minor) deficiencies may be strengths and advantages, when we get granular about the nature of the beast.
Let’s keep going.
The Other Side of the Nightmare
It’s a bit of a cliché at this point, but the only way out is through. (The phrase I use in The Patchwork Manifesto is “a breakdown leads to a breakthrough.”)
Sometimes you have to validate your ability to choose a third way, in order to break on through to the other side.
The Greeks surely thought so: they thought that tragedy was being pushed to choose between two options that you did not curate and neither of which is the lesser evil.
When you are coaxed to choose between Pepsi and Coke, Israel and Hamas, Tiktok and Netflix, isn’t that the ultimate moment in which you get to exercise free will?
Each of us, at the micro and individual level can make the choice to decide on something beyond the illusion.
You might say, “But Paul, what I would choose to do is quite mundane, I just want to organize a creative clothes swap in my neighborhood…” But you know this act is connected to a bigger adventure.
If you make a leap towards an active choice, that mentality of frustration will melt away. Your efforts to create something beyond the double bind will not be done in vain.
When you leap into such a moment, you make a choice, not purely in an air of service to others, but in service of your ability to choose and act. You put faith in yourself, rather than outsourcing change to some Big Bomb.
It’ll be largely the same for all of us reading this. Maybe you don’t want to put yourself out there in the dating world. It’s all too confusing and toxic and nightmarish, right? But then you get home, watch characters on TV shows, with their cute little kissy scenes, and you groan: “How is it that by not choosing the nightmare, I still ended up choosing THIS?”
In a word, we’re being encouraged to choose in a way that allows us to be a more active character in our own life. By doing so, we break out of binary thinking and tap into our pioneer spirit.
It’s when we relinquish our ability to choose and then later realize in doing so that we still made a choice—it’s then that we feel frustration, regret and this sense of “well, I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t!” This is the psychology of the scavenger, the vulture who picks through the ruins of the old world, wanting to know where his easy Tinder dates of the 2010s went, throwing his hands up and saying, “Well, when OTHERS change, then I’ll be a ready-made Casanova!”
Instead, you can change, and upon that journey find other travelers who are ready to see what’s on the other side of this nightmare.
If you like the topics discussed in this newsletter, you can buy a copy of my Patchwork Manifesto here.
My investigation draws on ancient teachings to explain why we stand at the edge of radical change.
It’s a challenging read. Consider this tiny manual if you are just starting your journey.