The Cyclic Evolution Challenge -The New in Struggle with the Old

The Heart Sutra belongs to Prajnaparamita literature which illuminates true nature of reality which is beyond the reach of language. The essence of the Heart Sutra is contained in the well-known phrase: “form is emptiness and emptiness is form. form is no other than emptiness, and emptiness is no other than form.” Because of the depth of its insight, traditional wording of the Heart Sutra has obscured its true meaning, leading to countless misunderstandings concerning the existence or nonexistence of phenomena, and causing many generations to lose their way in 1500 years. Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Other Shore , which is a new translation of the Heart Sutra with commentaries, illustrates the point with a story:

Buddha teaches us to avoid both one extreme of nihilism and the other extreme of eternalism. Either we believe that we have an eternal soul which will live on forever or we believe we are just a meaningless collection of atoms and that when we die, we will be extinguished forever and nothing will be left. Master Thich Nhat Hanh cautions us to “avoid both these extremes of being and nonbeing. If we are wise, the Heart Sutra help us to find the middle way between the extremes.”

Because all phenomena bear the mark of Emptiness, they are not separate self-entities, therefore Impermanence is a central teaching of Buddha. That observation into the true nature of all phenomena can help us to have a better understanding of the western civilization which had came to dominate the world in the last 500 years with United States as the pinnacle of this development. A early western thinker who held this view point was Oswald Spengler – a German polymath, whose major work The Decline of the West was a two volumes work of philosophical treatise on history, presents a cyclical view of history, suggesting that culture rise and fall like living organisms challenges the linear perspective of history, advocating instead for  a view that recognizes the inevitable decline of all cultures. Another great work of similar outlook was the 12-columns A Study of History written 1934-1961 by British historian Arnold Toynbee.

Dane Rudhyar, a multifaceted and influential figure who pioneered the trans-personal astrology, synthesize the viewpoints of both Spengler and Toynbee, argued in his The Astrology of America’s Destiny, that Western Civilization “development which really began around the sixth century B.C in Greece. it has been heralded by the great and unsuccessful reform of Egypt’s religion by Akh-en-Aton, and by the also relatively unsuccessful revelation which Moses brought to his people: the revelation of a God Who declared Himself to be the very principle of “I-am-ness” – thus, of individuality in its most absolute sense. The foundation of our Western civilization indeed is the concept of the individual person, along with the assertion that this individual person has an essential “worth and dignity” regardless of its condition and circumstances of birth, and of what it can produce in and for the society into which it is born.” (P30)

Dane Rudhyar continues to say, “The story of Western Civilization is one of attempts to develop a concept of society allowing, nay encouraging, its members to regard themselves as individuals – individuals who are essentially ‘free and equal’ and as such endowed with inalienable rights in any social conditions. These attempts have been constantly frustrated; they represented a definite challenge to the foundations upon which all societies had previously been built, foundations we can characterize as the expression of the ‘trial order.’ …. it is this concept of the tribal order – and later on, of a social order based on the different abilities of human beings to produce wares, ideas or acts of service to the expanded community, kingdom or empire – that our Western Civilization has tried to supplant, or at least to polarize. The tribal and post-tribal order emphasized production and made human beings almost totally subservient to the requirements of this production. “

“… two concepts of rights easily become the foundations of two opposite philosophies of life and of social organization – individualism versus collectivism – they constant generate internal as well as external conflicts; conflicts within nations, and conflicts between ntions which, at least theoretically, have opted for a way of life and institutions emphasizing one or the other of these principles. The basic conflict even manifests in two opposite concepts of knowledge and scientific inquiry, atomism versus holism.”

“……. Western civilization at all levels has been and is based on this polarization. We see its manifestation in the contrast between the ideals of free enterprise (or laissez faire capitalism) and socialism….. our civilization is based on conflicts and that because of this it has proven to be exceedingly dynamic; but this dynamism nevertheless tends to express itself in the form of violence, violence which has become a way of life.”

” the destruction of Indians, Negro slavery, and finally the wholesale pollution of the land, water and air – plus the psychological pollution accompanying the cult of violence featured by motion pictures, television and a myriad of popular books – have been a heavy price to pay for an amazing, yet chaotic, productivity and for a life of abundance which, welcome as it is, has often turned out to be morally and biologically self-defeating because of its implications and its uneven reparation. Feverish and ruthless forms of competition, always an inch away from the boundaries between legality and crime – and often ignoring these boundaries – constitute only the shadow of the individualism and the freedom which Western civilization has been meant to uphold.”

Dane Rudhyar continue to deduced: “America is only one of the participants in the evolution of mankind on this planet Earth. It is only one factor in the development of Western civilization and, I repeat, it is this entire civilization which in this twentieth century is being challenged to show whether or not it can cure itself of all its present ills, which are legion and at the same time transform at least some of the fundamental ideas it has taken for granted and which made it both the most dynamic and perhaps the most tragic of all civilizations.” P189

At the time of writing The Astrology of American Destiny close to January 1976, the transit of planet Neptune is about to reach USA natal Ascendant at 13 degree of Sagittarius, and Pluto will reach the natal Saturn of 14 degree of Libra. Dane Rudhyar accordingly intuited an omen that the forces emanated from the transit are seeking to challenge the status quo of United States. Now looking back to the last 50 years with the benefit of the hindsight, Dane Rudhyar was spot on!

And I want to expand Dane Rudhyar’s argument, that Western Civilization does not only refer to the geographic western hemisphere of the developed counties like United States and Western European. Since the collapse of Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the capitalist free world seem to be able to announce their victory from the cold war. United States became the polar power for some time. They successfully included China into the WTO and their capitalist market/products / currency flow. United States government did not emphasize democratic principle in this process of transition. Rather their attention was all on business and profits. In this same time, the technology of worldwide web came into great popularity. This completely change the way people communicate and the business process. Multi-nation corporation was the dominant players. Government became their complicit. The three branch system is totally broken. The Death of the Senat: My Front Row Seat to the Demise of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Bodye is a brutally honest account of the current political reality by a veteran Democratic senator from the red state of Nebraska.

And this opened the Pandora box of technocratic feudalism. Rather than the healthy small business capitalism that enable the creativity of individuals and healthy competition based on merits, state capitalism operate on monopolies and unfair access to resources and power. The CounterRevolution – How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens gave a full depth account of the scope of crisis we now face in United States: Militarized police officers with tanks and drones. Pervasive government surveillance and profiling. Social media that distract and track us. All of these, contends Bernard E. Harcourt, are facets of a new and radical governing paradigm in the United States — one rooted in the modes of warfare originally developed to suppress anti-colonial revolutions and, more recently, to prosecute the war on terror. This is very similar to the June 4 1989 Tian An Men Square CCP government suppress the student protests. Read this prediction by youtube program Truth to Power: My £100 Bet: Why Trump Won’t See Out His Term.

The modern world Economics, despite a great deal of complexity and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable. A decade old popular hit, Freakonomics is a very entertaining book which takes a new way of looking into human incentive. It covers the topics range from the crime rate and abortion, to the economics of drug deals and living in the projects, to parenting and whether cheating occurs on a massive scale in the Chicago school system (spoiler alert: it does), to the myths of campaign finance, to the telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. At the center of inquiry is how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.  Who are we, how we relate to others, and what would be a cure for this conflict.

Author of J is for Junk Economics and many other insightful books on how modern western economic operates, Professor Michael Hudson pointed out, Economist in the 19th century used to call it Economic Rents, Rent refer to unearned income. Economics polarizing to the upper 10% , what are these people doing to get these income? They are not acting productively, they don’t earn their income by investing in products or equipment, because we are de-industrializing; neither do not make these wealth by saving wages. They make it by capital gains, by economic bubbles, by banks creating a financial bubble pushing up stock market prices, pushing up bond prices, with federal reserve quantitative easing. So these 10% people owns almost 80% of all stock and bonds. That is why top economist Steve Keen calls out: Don’t Study Economics! The textbooks taught us lies for 50 years! In this episode, Professor Steve Keen, author of Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor Dethroned? and The New Economics: A Manifesto explained why textbook economics so often fail in the real world and what to do instead. From the “theory of the second best” to the Cambridge Capital Controversies, from double-entry bookkeeping to sectoral balances, they unpack how bad assumptions create bad policy, and where Steve agrees with MMT on government money creation and where he pushes back on trade.

Constitutional law defines the relations between the President and Congress and between the federal government and the states. it regulates the government’s ability to assess taxes, to build railroads or infrastructures, to maintain and deploy the armed forces, and to protect the environment. Moreover, very hot issues seems to become a constitutional question. When too much economic and political power is concentrated in too few hands, what you have is not democracy but oligarchy. President Trump packed the Supreme Court with conservative judges. These judges broke from the tradition, and took over the role of legislation by interpret law rather than strictly exercise judiciary constrain. Now just as in the 1930s, liberal and progressive are confronting a very conservative federal judiciary that is deploy hostile to exactly this sort of legislation. it is a judiciary put in place by a political party with a weakening grip on power, but a growing determination to thwart legislation and sustain minority rule by translating its vision of political economy into Constitutional law.

Anti-Oligarchy Constitution – Reconstructing the Economic Foundations of American Democracy aims to recover the Constitution’s pivotal role in shaping claims of justice and equality, speaks openly of enacting measures to distribute both wealth and political power more broadly among all the people: more public investment, social insurance, more cloud for ordinary Americans in politics and in the labor market, more taxing and breaking up concentrated wealth. Written by two professors of law, the book is a monumental accomplishment to beckon people to live up to the worthiest aspirations of multiple generations of ‘founders’ to fight of equal economic opportunity. Much of the work is required of legislation.

Now in year end 2025, When transit Neptune is at zero degree of Aries on USA chart IC, and Pluto is on 2nd House of value system, and worthiness, the stars are denoting a reflection point for the spiritual roots and self evaluation of who we are. Because there are  two kinds of evolution:  gradual evolution and catastrophic evolution. Law and Order no longer exists.

Former governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King wrote in his The End of Alchemy – Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy, “in the spring of 2011, I was in Beijing to meet a senior Chinese central banker. we talked about the lessons from history for the challenges we faced, the most important of which was how to resuscitate the world economy after the collapse of the western banking system in 2008. Bearing in mind the apocryphal answer of premier Chou Enlai to the question of what significance one should attach to the French Revolution (it was ‘too soon to tell’), I asked my Chinese colleague what important he now attached to the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the second half of the 18th century. he thought hard. Then he replied: ‘We in China have learned a great deal from the Est about how competition and a market economy support industrialization and crate higher living standards. We want to emulate that.’ Then came the sting in the tail, as he continued: ‘But I don’t think you’ve quite got the hang of money and banking yet.’ P3 Written in 2016, the book was Mervyn King’s well-reasoned response that still demands public debates in a globalization era for a more sustainable future of humanity.