
by Kingsley L. Dennis
April 24, 2025
from
KingsleyDennis Website

'Hope, when bold, is strength.
Hope, with
doubt, is cowardice.
Hope, with
fear, is weakness.'
G.I. Gurdjieff
During the six months of winter-spring 2010-2011, I was busy writing
what would eventually become my book
New Revolutions for a Small
Planet - How the Coming Years will Transform Our Lives that was
published in 2012.
I had spent six months of full-time writing on a
book that I felt was my most complete (and longest) work yet.
The book was released and... immediately sank
without a trace.
There was no publisher promotion or support; in
fact, the publisher neglected the book entirely.
I later learned that my book was a victim of
publishing wrangles as the company owner at the time (Stuart Baird
Publishing) was about to collapse and they sold Watkins to an
American publisher (Osprey Publishing) and my book fell through the
cracks during the turmoil.
Well, that is what I was told. And that's just
another publishing tale from within the industry (and there are many
more similar tales).
Despite only a handful of people having read
the book (my thanks go to the five of you!), I still come back to it
time and again for how prescient it now appears.
Here are the first two paragraphs from the
opening introduction:
Humanity is in the midst of great
transformation across the globe.
This is now apparent to even casual observers
of some of the changes happening on the planet at this time.
Most of what we see in the daily news reports informs us of
dramatic Earth changes due to climatic disruption:
earthquakes,
floods, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, etc.
We are also witnessing a surge in people
protest as decades of corrupt or inefficient social systems are
taking their toll.
Yet within this outward surge of turmoil and
disruption other shifts are occurring,
such as the transition
from the modern mind of the industrial-globalization model of
the last two centuries into a life-sustaining,
ecological-cosmological worldview.
We are seeing a change towards fostering
values that will be inherited by the world to come.
During the current and upcoming years,
humanity, on both an individual and collective level, will have
an obligation to re-adapt itself to a world in revolution.
The revolution we are currently undergoing is not only of the
physical kind, with struggle, strife and exertion.
There are
also revolutions now in our perceptions and worldviews -
revolution in our collective psyche.
Yet it doesn't stop there, as a revolution
not only suggests a change or substitution in socio-cultural
systems, a change in conditions, but also implies a complete
orbit or rotation as well....
I suggest in this book that,
life on planet
Earth is undergoing all three types of revolutions:
-
physical
-
psychic
-
cosmological
I had recently moved into my new home in
Andalusia, southern Spain.
I had acquired a rustic house in March 2010,
surrounded by uncultivated gardens, mud, and an orange grove. Whilst
working on developing the grounds and planting vegetables, I was
busy writing what I thought at the time was an important book.
So, there I was, adapting to a life in rural
Spain, learning the lingo, and writing about humanity's
dark night
of the soul.
Part Two of the book begins with Chapter Four - 'The
Dark Night of the Soul - The Death Throes of the Old' where I began
to explain how the next 20 years cannot be the same as the last 20
years:
'Change is upon us rapidly, even if we are
not aware of its pace.
The world is now more starkly divided
between regions that are resource sinks (importing energy) and
resource sources (exporting energy) as our civilizations push
towards overshoot.'
In the next chapter, 'Caught in Plato's Cave - The
Final Trick on the Old Mind,' I suggested ,
'before humanity
comes out from this darker patch (our metaphorical initiatory
period), the vestiges of our "old mind" will attempt to increase its
grip on power and our social lives.
In this chapter I examined the 'increasing global
(in)security and surveillance, and the creeping systems of social
control in modern societies.'
And in Chapter Six - 'End of an Era - A New Cycle
in Gestation' - I explored the notion of cyclic change and renewal,
looking at cosmological influences.
Here is a short extract from Chapter Five:
In today's more modern social setting this
has been replaced by fluid and pervasive control environments
that permeate most aspects of our lives and integrate with our
own behavior patterns.
As philosopher Michel Foucault noted, the
mechanism for creating and sustaining power should be able to
exist independent of the body exercising the power; i.e., the
people under the sway of power should be caught up in the
situation so that they render themselves as bearers of the power
structure.
Thus, the ultimate dystopian future, for
example, could be described as:
It will not be a universal concentration
camp, for it will be guilty of no atrocity.
It will not seem insane, for everything
will be ordered, and the stains of human passion will be
lost amid the chromium gleam.
We shall have nothing more to lose, and
nothing to win. Our deepest instincts and our most secret
passions will be analyzed, published, and exploited. We
shall be rewarded with everything our hearts ever desired.
And the supreme luxury of the society of
technical necessity will be to grant the bonus of useless
revolt and of an acquiescent smile. 1
We should be careful, therefore, to note that
the illusion of liberty can be used as a powerful form of
control and domination.
For example, the democratic 'right' to free
and fair elections is provided as an illusion of our liberty...
yet the,
'free election of masters does not
abolish the masters or the slaves'. 2
This is all part of maintaining the illusion,
of keeping society under control as cracks rise and the façade
begins to break down.
Many writers before me have alluded to the
allegory of
Plato's cave.
Whilst this reference is not new, our current
times make it seem more relevant than ever. I referred to this
allegory as the 'Shadow Fire' that serves to maintain our illusions.
This is what I wrote back in 2010:
This is the illusion - the shadows from the
fire - that is maintained as the 'reality' we should ascribe
meaning to.
And the illusion of distraction will gain
momentum as the cracks in the material system begin to manifest
in more obvious ways.
People will be increasingly persuaded that
everything that is happening,
-
the collapse of financial markets
and currencies
-
increasing political and corporate corruption
-
interventionist wars
-
terrorist fears
-
mounting surveillance
-
the loss of civil liberties,
... are all part of the essential
and 'natural' growth of social infrastructure in the modern
world.
Information will be carefully manipulated to present
inconvenient truths as convenient lies.
The control over the flow and content of
information will become essential to the maintenance of power
within technologically dependent societies.
Any culture that is moving towards increasing digitization will
need to put in place ever-restrictive measures for the effective
management of people's social lives, privileges and identities.
To a large degree,
the manufacture of social
control is about the management of information...
To this extent there will be an increased
dependency upon 'data-basing' the individual, with most
lifestyle choices (travel, purchases, insurance, health, etc.)
being digitally collected and stored.
This scenario relies upon various
technologies of,
...to track objects and people.
Already a general array of surveillance
mechanisms are in place including the,
-
satellite tracking of
individual cars
-
video auto-identification of physical features
-
monitoring of all electronic communications (including
switched-off mobile phones)
-
data-referencing all credit card
transactions...
What I wrote fifteen years ago has not only come
to pass:
it has now accelerated at a pace few of us could have
envisioned...
Within the same chapter, I then went on to explore what I referred
to as Terrifying Peace, which is the rise of martial societies
(societies under martial law).
I wrote:
It appears that there is a maneuvering
underway towards an increased militarization of the civil
sphere:
collapsing the binary notions of 'friend/enemy',
'civil/military'...
Our various so-called 'open societies' are
fast becoming the playground (i.e. operations field) of the
military, in which every citizen is deemed a 'potential
terrorist'.
In this way a perpetual war can be
orchestrated that deems ordinary peacetime to be the battlefield
for potential terror.
This old-mind strategy seeks to keep the
focus upon the need for control and security and, in
Plato's
analogy,
to keep the heads turned towards the wall and away from
the fire.
There is no better way to construct societies
of control than through the notion of a terrifying peace...
A perception of permanent war and terrifying
peace allows the creeping emergence of martial societies - i.e.,
societies where military rule and social/civil law have
effectively merged.
It also allows for the powerful
infrastructures of politics, industry and the military to
dominate... the increasing shift towards martial societies, in
which the notion of terrifying peace becomes the norm,
represents the dark part in our transitional period.
Yet during this 'transitional period' we will
also see the 'veil of illusion' being lifted 'on our global
financial systems, to reveal their duplicity and unworkable schemes.
Not only people but nations are 'going broke'...
And here we shall see
the struggle to keep the illusion in place as more and more people
begin to gain clarity and to perceive through the shadows:
Yet as our social, political and economic
edifice shows further signs of cracking and decay, those in
power in the Western nations especially will seek to increase
their regulatory control.
The edifice of illusion cannot be allowed to
fall: or rather, those of us chained in
Plato's Cave cannot be
permitted to turn our heads and view the source of the shadows
upon the wall - the real fire.
The final trick upon the old mind is to keep
it focused on the illusion of the old 'reality' (the shadow
fire) whilst the world around starts to tear apart at the seams.
Distractions will be provided to keep the old
mind occupied:
these will include increased fear and insecurity,
media stories that focus on negativity, financial worries,
credit debts, global climate politicking and general ongoing
propaganda campaigns for continued public passivity.
However, this darkened period is, as I have
explained, the trial of our passing.
And so, what I was describing fifteen years ago
was our coming trial - our metaphorical passing through the
underworld - and our re-emergence into the world as renewed through
experience and adversity.
I had also quoted from a Taoist philosopher:
In adversity, everything that surrounds you
is a kind of medicine that helps you refine your conduct, yet
you are unaware of it.
In pleasant situations, you are faced
with weapons that will tear you apart, yet you do not realize
it.
Huanchu Daoren
Taoist philosopher, circa
1600
As I was writing these passages, I was myself
trying to understand, and to give context, to how periods of
adversity are also catalysts for our growth and development, if we
respond to them in the appropriate way.
Pleasant situations rarely polish our tools of
perception, unless we make a conscious and disciplined effort.
Yet
times and periods that rub against us and make us uncomfortable are
able to develop capacities within us that we were largely unaware
of. And through this heightened cognition we become aware of nuances
and subtleties that previously evaded us.
In this state, we may then understand that what
we are witnessing are not forms of dominant power but acts of
desperation.
I ended Chapter Five by writing the following:
In this period of darkening, lower energies
are becoming more manifest, not because they are gaining
ascendency but because of the very opposite - they are waning.
It is, in effect, the years of the last gasp
for the once dominant material power structures.
The cycle of peak gross materialism is now on
the descendent and finer, more subtle energies of human
consciousness are beginning their ascendancy.
It is for this very reason, I propose, that
there is such open and visible material conflict in the world
today:
material power structures are now openly fighting for
their final gasps of air.
Such old-energy power structures are
attempting to hold back new incoming and ascending conscious
energies
A new era is on the rise...!
We are currently in the gestation of a new
cycle; a cycle of rising consciousness and material awareness,
as the next chapter begins to explain.
For us, the next chapter does not lie in a book.
It lies where it has always been - within us.
This is our initiation.
This is where we make our choices.
This is
when we either grow or stagnate.
In autumn of 2023 I returned to some of this material in
New Revolutions for a Small
Planet to create a musical project.
Working with my colleague Moin (Dedfela), we
managed to put together a 5-track EP that we called 'Initiation,'
based upon this idea of the 'dark night of the soul' and our
experience of the shadow fire of Plato's cave...
Musically, we took inspiration from the 'dark
jazz' genre, which we felt was fitting for this material. The full
EP can be found on most online sites, including here on Bandcamp.
To coincide with this essay, I am releasing the
full album/EP as a below video that comes in at less than 20
minutes:
References
-
Ellul, J,
The Technological Society, 1964, Vintage Books
-
Marcuse, H,
One-Dimensional Man - Studies in the Ideology of
Advanced Industrial Society 2007/1964, Routledge, p10
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