Ideological Lifeboats 2

Profile of a Post-Modern Outsider: Coming in from the cold

This is the second talk I gave for The Australian Broadcasting Commission's Radio National program, 'Ockham's Razor' in February 2007



In my last talk on this program, on the 13th August 2006, I discussed the relationship between an intellectual outsider and his rather bleak view of his times. I suggested that the socially disabling autism related condition known as Asperger’s Syndrome, of which I am a mild sufferer, created for me an ultimately valuable inner space that both repelled the dominant consciousness and absorbed an intensely meditative energy. This and the intellectual visions it created for me as a young man, were so terrible, multi-layered and omni-directional, I was initially overwhelmed and fell into a two to three year period of depression. Then began a long struggle to both recover and make sense of what I had seen.

When it comes to visions, Aspergers have an advantage. They so live in their heads, in places where the borderlands of genius and incompetence, prescience and fantasy, originality and eccentricity all meet. However, if they become sufficiently practiced pilgrims in these psychological borderlands, their visions can acquire an edge; a capacity to penetrate fog and to inflict the shock of recognition.

The picture I eventually completed was of a privatized and permanently mobilized totalitarian culture run by market fighting machines dedicated to protracted production warfare and systematic over-production and consumption that has and is wreaking unprecedented and crippling existential, cultural and ecological damage sufficient to eventually plunge us into the trauma of post-modern times. More, as with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, although disaster was (and is) entirely foreseeable, the momentum, megalomania and success that drives the system forward is so great, there is almost nothing anyone can do to stop, turn, or even reveal to it the imminence of its end.

Unlike the orthodox business-as-usuals, or the left wing historical optimists, Post-Moderns assume that the violence, disruption and losses incurred during the coming period of strategic adversity are likely to be in inverse proportion to the speed and thoroughness with which we unload the least portable bits from our past successes, reduce the size and weight of our present footprint, and reconstruct our visions of the future within defensible boundaries; in short, retreat, consolidate, existentially and culturally rebuild, make the necessarily massive ecological reparation while we still can and do it in a sufficiently timely fashion that will make a difference.

In my last talk, I alluded to what I called ‘The Roman Option’. The Romanized version of Christianity became not only the religion of the empire, but a militant imperial ideology that promptly counter-invaded and colonized the barbarian wave that eventually overwhelmed Western Europe. This cultural life boat was a carrier of classical memory that civilized barbarian life and nearly a millennium later, provided start up propellant for the Renaissance and the emergence of modern times.

If modern societies similarly fail, their populations will be quite literally ‘thrown to the wolves’, like their Roman predecessors. If there are to be any sort of lifeboats against such times, we need to start building them now.

In poor post-colonial, but still traditional societies, Islam is the main contender for this role because it delivers a complete package of governance, education, accountability and discipline, moral focus and spiritual coherence in societies that have failed to modernise properly. They are being forced to go back to roots that provide structure and hope where otherwise there would be none. Our problem in the West is that we are now so detraditionalized, those life boats that haven’t already been jettisoned have become derelict and leaky refuges for mainly the elderly and those so desperate, they will cling to anything that looks like it might float.

Since my youth, I have watched the virtues prized by traditional societies being systematically dismantled by people who styled themselves as ‘progressives’. Initially I thought they were just cleaning out repressive and hypocritical stuffiness from the past. It took a while to realize that their lefty liberal blandishments were also a front for the totalitarian reconstruction agenda of consumer markets; nothing less than the wholesale legitimation and mythologizing of impulsive self-indulgence and the inhibition and demonization of the discipline that enables growth out of adolescence into responsible and mature adulthood. Now into its third generation of Peter Pans and Wendys, this agenda is completely entrenched and the remnants of what predated it are dying off.

Science and creeping secularity have also done their work. Once cosmology, astronomy, geography, biology and history were unified under theology, i.e.; heaven and hell were real places above and below a flat earth on which the life giving all powerful will of The Almighty Creator held historical sway. Modern Times have all but destroyed this view; not deliberately, but as a by-product of their operations. Fragments of the wreckage still provide pious solace, but only in places where faith and reason no longer meet, or if there is limited access to modern knowledge

It is interesting to note that flat earth advocates who could still speak of ‘The Copernican Heresy’ were still around in Mecca in the middle 1960s, probably as much for wont of a modern education as a wanton refusal to face the facts. In the West, Creationism continues to flourish because it is the only way of forcing reason under the ambit of faith and the untrammeled authority of Holy Scripture. After all, if bits of it are rendered as allegorical and not literally true, where does that stop? In the face of an almost overwhelming secular instrumentalism, don’t most of its larger claims become ‘allegorical’, or worse, superstition? What is left is a choice between faith that undercuts reason or reason that undercuts faith. Either is crippled for the lack of the other.

Yet no matter how precarious the status of the sacred is, the plain fact is we do not live by bread alone. We still need to be constructed as secure, loving and robust characters. We have to build social relations that are stable enough to withstand the tests of time and trial. We need to learn enough from our own lives to be able to mentor the young in theirs. The cultural software that delivers these outcomes and the existential sensibility that results from them are precious artifacts that embody much of our real wealth.

The more that is prudently invested in this form of capital, the richer the fabric of life becomes. If these account lines have no regulatory, standards or enforcement infrastructure and are under or inappropriately capitalized, poorly maintained and badly managed, they will undermine the broader balance sheets, later the profit statement, eventually cause cultural insolvency and severely damage entire generations of people. In such circumstances, rising affluence merely provides additional leverage for undoing its beneficiaries.

Illicit drug use, promiscuous sexuality and amoral opportunism trace this process exactly. It is irresistibly bubbling through the mainstream society as a consequence of weakened or broken family, community and civil structures, worn out and incoherent adult values frameworks and the taking to extremes of the impulsive consuming passion; i.e. the quick, easy and pleasurable fix.


He was a stud. She was a porn star. It was sex at first sight across a crowded bar, one stoned and drunken evening. They couldn’t wait and hit the road without much rubber. It was too wet. They skidded, slid down the slippery embankments of desire and rolled voluptuously, wrapping themselves around the tree of life. They exploded onto the screen like stars contracted to perform as a nightly inferno; but sadly they cooled, dribbled down the drain and drifted. During a dark and tempestuous journey, they were washed down the rapids of disappointment onto the rocks of despair, and on, into the river of indifference. Eventually he dried out to become a bed of stones. She filled out into a clump of spinifex. He could not quench their thirst and she could only struggle vainly in the hot winds that blew her children away. The rains never came. Death came instead; a gusty sigh, a puff of dust, a fluttering twig.


Getting out of the quagmire we have plowed ourselves into is neither rocket science nor a matter of blindly clinging to irrational beliefs. First we dump or sell down the dilapidated and soiled remains of liberal laissez-faire values and replace them with wealth creating virtues and practices that will enable us to rebuild our psychological hinterlands. Then it is just a matter of valuing, looking after and maximizing our cultural wealth in exactly the same way as our monetized capital. All the necessary organizational, marketing and advertising tools to make this happen are at hand. Beyond that, all we have to do is pay attention, focus effort, divert resources presently going elsewhere, invest them carefully and work hard until success is achieved.

By such recapitalization of the psychological and cultural interior, we can drastically reduce our calls upon the natural environment as we switch from an extremely aggressive and ecologically damaging toys, games and indulgence economy into one that values and profits from a shift to a more balanced wealth portfolio. We will have thrown away the trash in our lives and brought into them the gold that is to be found in any good quality software.

This para-economy is a vital business sector and it needs the same kind of supporting infrastructure as any other type of enterprise. It needs pro-competitive anti-monopoly regulatory powers in place that prevent the Old Industrial Economy from yet again marginalizing this sector, then looting and squandering its accumulated wealth reserves.

We have allowed an over-producing and anti-life junk economy to completely colonize and anesthetize us in goods and services solutions to the point we can no longer imagine life without it. It has turned us into the most abject feedlot slaves. We should no longer have to live such miserably diminished lives or do so much ecological damage in having our routine needs met.

Repair and restoration of our environment and our cultural infrastructure will require a new generation of entrepreneurs to drive a scaled down and re-directed suite of Old Capital and New Industries. These would include education and lifestyle packages designed to turn peoples’ lives around, build their para-wealth in measurable, replicable and quantifiably satisfying ways.

Softwell Trust Inc is the network marketer for the Softwell Plan™. It delivers superior levels of life performance through a graded structure of achievement second to none. It empowers individuals, families and communities to maximize and balance their wealth over the whole living cycle. It offers a wide portfolio of vehicles to provide the foundations, growth, maintenance and enhancement of personal and collective software.

The Softwell system of training, mentorship and constructive values, individual, partnering, friendship and community building, competition, assessment and constructive feedback, recognition, promotion and widening opportunity horizons; it constantly engages, challenges and rewards Softies with the deepest satisfactions a human being can have.

The Softwell Person™ believes that it is what we can invest in each other that makes us truly rich. Every day, in all their actions, Softies model and spread this powerful message to every corner of the globe.

Our aim is the Softwell Society™; one that makes a constant effort to bring people together in an inspiring wealth producing compact to take humanity to the next level.

Softwell grows rich by enriching others more than it enriches itself. Softwell is run by and for Softies™ whose highest aim is to make the Softwell Plan™ work for you.

Join Softwell. Make a difference.

You will know the world has really changed when you sit down to a Softwell meal with friends

At the head of a small group sitting around a table, a woman raised her hand to get the silent attention of her guests. “My dear friends, before we eat, let us think on our fate as it is weighed between the frailty and the strength of the life force within us and without.” She picked up a glass of water and started to drip part of the contents into a large dish in front of her. “These are the tears shed for the suffering and death that we must all endure.” She put this glass down and picked up a glass of wine. She slowly decanted part of it into the dish. “This is the blood of the life force that is sacrificed for us so that we might live.” She put down the wine, took up again the glass of water and poured it over the wine. “These are the purifying and renewing waters that wash away wounds and loss.” She then took bread and broke it up into the dish. “The earth absorbs all that we do to it”. She then got up and took the dish around the table, giving a piece of soaked bread to each guest and saying, “thus the earth turns suffering into a living feast.”

When she had finished she added some more bread. Then, out of a miniature automotive oil decanter she poured over it a black mixture of vinegar and bitter herbs. She then took the plate around the table again, saying, “Whatever evil we put on or into or above the earth eventually comes back to us as a bitter harvest. Let the acridness stay on your palate as long as it lasts, for in the struggle with evil we must endure its effects until its force is spent.” She sat down again and with all the guests reflected on the little ceremony that had just been performed. At last one of them looked up and said, “It is over and I am free.” Each guest repeated the words in their own time until everyone had spoken. Refreshed in spirit they then commenced their meal.

At the end of it, when it was time to go, she went round the table again, giving each person a piece of fruit and she said,

“Go therefore in the peace that is to be the fruit of your love’s labor. Eat of it freely, for the more you partake of it, the more it grows and the better it tastes. It can never cost you too much, for its value is priceless. It will enrich all of us while you live and it will be the most substantial part of whatever you bequeath to your successors. Bless you all. May the warmth, comfort and love you and we give to each other, keep and hold us all our lives, and down the generations.”

Each person ate the fruit of goodness silently with their eyes cast down in meditation. Then they got up, embraced each other and departed.

Truly beautiful wealth can survive anything and grow with the love and devotion lavished on it over time. The more difficult the times, the more valuable it becomes, for it is the one refuge that cannot be confiscated. Even the corrupted, the thugs and gangsters will come to feel its virtues and be drawn to its warmth and refreshment, just as the Barbarians were fifteen hundred years ago.