A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE

      snow flame



Close to the end of January and we still haven't had winter. The temperature gets down to freezing and hovers back and forth over the freezing line; above during the day, below at night. However, I dare not jump to any conclusions, because the big one dumps snow on us in late March, when all the blizzards of the past have occurred. So far we've had a couple of quarter inch snows. We don't mind a mild winter at all, except wondering what lurks ahead. With oil prices ascending to out of reach, it's a good thing the winter is mild for the people on fixed incomes and working class wages, especially the people out of work.



I'm feeling a need within for a change . The change I think is staying home more. Every time I go to town, it costs money. Of course, I only buy things I'll need next week if I don't get it this week. Food, gas, utilities, etc, gobble up everything and not much is left. None, in fact, is left. I've come to where I don't even think of it as money any more. A certain number must come in so a certain number can go out. I'm just the transfer agent, a messenger, passing it from one account to another. It comes and it goes, all in the same day. For me, it's nothing. Yet, because of it I'm able to eat more than I need, drive anywhere I want, within reason, live in my house. It's always been the way. Intake - exhaust. Take the nourishment and pass on the leftover.



In my school years we had a collective notion about civilization as a great thing we held up high. By now, as a result of science, 30 years of greed cut loose, increased communication with every part of the earth, wars for the sake of wars, seeing how wealth tramples poverty, seeing how Christians don't care much for the poor, don't like them, don't want them around, don't want to see them. "Anybody that wants to work can find a job!" So afraid somebody (an African-American in particular) might take advantage of food stamp programs. Somebody poor might get something for nothing. Can't let that happen. It's their own fault they're poor. Time has come, it appears, for karmic debt collection. The pursuit of the American Dream has turned its back absolutely to the poor, pretending to be Christian going to church, smiling all the time like a Zoloft commercial, but when somebody poor walks by, nobody notices the unmentionable buried in denial. The way capitalism is going, the middle class is soon to be the peasant class down there with the working class, those people that wear white socks. I believe the karmic thing is when you got it and you overlook the ones without, you won't have it long.



The USA has been a monument to Self, self-interest held high. It's the western divide of self-first-others-last, in relation to the eastern part, others-first-self-last. I've an idea in this time of rapid change in civilization, one of the major changes occurring is the people of the east taking more interest in self, and people of the west taking more interest in others. Coming into balance. I'm seeing these changes occur collectively around the planet, watching films made in every part of the world, seeing changes they're going through in rural Italy, Istanbul, Bangkok, Beijing, every country, both urban and rural. I'm seeing that all the rest of the world is going through the same changes from generation to generation as we're seeing here in the Appalachian mountains. The old people that are in nursing homes now wore the bibbed overalls, work boots and a hat with brim all the way around. The women wore long dresses and had long hair. Next is the guys in tshirts, bluejeans and workboots, the girls in tight bluejeans Barbie girls. Next, the ones that dress like kids in California, white guys with pants slung low, looking like tv, the girls a legion of Britney Spears look-alikes. It's all around the world now.



The 20th century was a traverse through the unknown. Ever since the 1950s we've all accustomed ourselves to living in a world that can go Big Bang any minute. and the time we're in now, even more. It's like the unknown is in the past and we're off into quantum space, anti-matter, words we have no understanding of, concepts unimaginable a few years ago, entire ways of seeing changed. My grandparents grew up listening to string band square dance music. My parents listened to big band orchestra dance music. I grew up listening to rock & roll in the 50s when it was dance music. These are the changes forecast in the prophecies down through time telling of a new world entirely unlike the world before. We're close. My guess is that when the sequence of events is such that it's time to have a big clean sweep of all that went before, the event called Armageddon evidently will be the climax of the change.



After that, a thousand years of peace. Armageddon will be the end of capitalism too, because there can be no peace in the world involved in the capitalist economic system. I'd say capitalism is doomed on that alone. If we're to have a thousand years of peace, it will have to be an entirely different economic system. We'll have money, but a more realistic vision of it as a tool, a utility. Capitalism is not the god America has made itself a shrine to. I imagine in a time of peace that many years, following a time of war that goes all the way back to before we left the trees, will be a major shift in how we humans view our world and each other. I can't imagine what it will be like. People relaxed toward one another. A great reduction in population will get the numbers back to where it was before oil and electricity.



A thousand years of peace would mean tremendous collective devotion to God after having our collective consciousness raised to such a place that we who are able assist the ones unable to care for themselves, allowing them a reasonable quality of life. No need to punish them for being unable. Where'd the crime go? Empty prisons could be altered into regional art galleries, theater and dance complexes with schools for all the art forms. I imagine an art boom like the entertainment boom we're in now, a balance to this time where nobody much knows anything about art. Today on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, a Saturday radio show with people from the audience and people by phone answering questions about events in the news over the last week, the stumper was a question about the vision of the Fauve school of painting. Everybody was stumped. Nobody knew what Fauve was. Long silence. Too long for On Air. Finally, the questioner explained and gave the answer. I imagine in the thousand years of peace everyone will know the answer. The art of the 20th century will be the classical age for that time.

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