An extremely disturbing new study published in the American Journal of Public Health finds that suicides have replaced car accidents as the leading cause of injury-related death in the U.S. This is partly because deaths from automobile accidents are down — that’s the good news.
End the Fed! Sue the Fed! March on Washington! Vote the bums out! Take up arms! These are not actions, but reactions triggered by the confusion of the moment. Not only are they single minded responses that lack the strategy and logistics inherent in a successful counter-offensive, but such cries ignore the other devious culprit responsible for our national heartache; ourselves.
Many of us just turn off when confronted by looming predicaments, and why not? What in the world can we do? Quite a lot, says Carolyn Baker. Not to save civilization, but to prepare, in our hearts and minds, for its possible or impending decline.
In older, more traditional civilizations preceding our own, one finds a remarkable capacity for embracing paradox. In fact, paradox inhabited the psyches of indigenous cultures as if in their DNA, as exemplified in their art, literature, stories, and other cultural artifacts. It was not until the dawn of modernity, greatly facilitated by Rene Descartes’ dualistic perspective which became increasingly predominate in Western intellectual tradition, that either/or thinking triumphed.