Wormelings in action and play in Latvia.

I have a new
BLOGSPOT. See: http://mywealthvirus.
blogspot.com/

Many years ago, I was active in an anti-nuke non-violent direct action group known as Clamshell. This was in the early to mid 1970s. Clamshell's centre, to the extent that it had one, was located in Cambridge, Massachusetts; its mother, to the extent it had one were the Quakers; while its Action Committee often met in my apartment at Newton Corner, Mass.

When Clamshell and I parted ways, I was conflicted about, on the one hand, the risk that non-violent direct action implied, and, on the other hand, the not so serious attitude of many of the student participants in the group. Quite a few were ready to provoke violence by going beyond peaceful protests and cut and climb fences in order to provoke the police to violent response.

I was not of the opinion that provoking violent reaction from the authorities was the way to go. IMO the mind-space of United States politics seemed like that of a Pop Culture that had swallowed a perpetual "growth" pill, rather than a society that had come to an in-depth understanding and political antagonism with regard to its delusions and profligate ways. The delusion of our Pop Culture of having a perpetual right to be a perpetual consumer at the expense of the rest of the planet were likely to rise in self-righteous wrath and smother the anti-nuke movement with accusations of violence. I was not persuaded that the time had come to test non-violent direct action to such a degree.

Wormelings in a carousel fly high over Riga.

That the establishment of the U.S. is still living in a Pop Culture environment is evidenced by the acts of its violence.

Today I noticed on Google a header that suggested that the Navy Seals who are said to have killed bin Laden are now the heroes of the more vehement sector of this culture in the U.S.

However, in the rest of the world things may be changing, and non-violent direct action may be coming of age. To better understand the point that I am making, please read the following http://www.undispatch.com/israel-shootings-and-the-start-of-a-non-violent-protest-movement-for-palestine

Incidentally, not-voting, too, is an act of non-violent direct action or what--in another series of blogs (see esoschronicles)--I have called not-violent terror. Such non-violent direct action acts as described in the above link, may indeed popularize not-voting as a tool of resistance to a democracy gone morbidly decrepid.

(This post a dupe of one posted at LatviansOnline, re: Riga as the future capital city of Europe. The reason for duping the post will become apparent when the reader reaches the words"not-voting".)

A number of Latvian populist Not-Voters (empty ballot casters) caught protesting the post-political concensus dictatorship in Latvia. Photograph taken in May of 2011.


The monopolization of Christianity by neo-Christians through the use of such methods as used by the Inquisition, gradually eliminated the human brain as residence of the bi- or multi-polar mind. [Sorry for such a heavy sentence, but once you digest it (it may not happen until you read the whole blog, the rest comes easier.]

Over the centuries—beginning with about the 9th or 10th centuries of our era (according to Anatoly Fomenko’s reconstruction of history)—multi-dimensional thought became not only a monolithic monopol, but came into the virtual physical possession of certain political groups. The successor groups to neo-Christianity (to the extent that monopolistic power allowed the concept of division of power) continued to consolidate further, even as the groups refined and sugared dogmatism to such an extent that its sour core was no longer suspect.

With time, neo-Christianity, while never losing its monopolarized mindset, nevertheless retreated in deference to power concepts even more ferocious and focused on monopolistic practices than it had been.

Paradoxically, one of the first next steps (after neo-Christian consolidation of their victory) was the Magna Charta, one of the so-called precursors of modern democracy. The process of concentrating and consolidating uni- or monopolar thought, did not end there, however.

Like the neo-Christian bishops, the princes who reduced the King to a fiction were in turn metamorphosed into bankers, and the bankers were perfected by the military.

The recent past of history shows that within the monopolar mindset there is possible (at least in its beginning) a monopol that is opposed to the princes and bankers without actually being their opponent. This virtual and unreal opposite pole of the monopole, was known as Communism. The state of the Soviet Union was most certainly a post-neo-Christian phenomenon. Interestingly, Communism dissolved before the stronger unipolar power as had neo-Christianity itself.

The clear victor and possessor of unipolar thought is what we generally know as Western thought or, to narrow it down, Western democracy. Western democracy, the monopol of Western power, resides in a slightly tortured, nevertheless, accurate sum of words, re: “free-market-human-rights”. No ands or buts, all one word.*

In Latvia the possessor of the “free-market-human-rights” privilege resides in the parliament of Latvia or Saeima. This privilege is guarded—among the several authorities guarding its well-being—by the Voting Committee. This committee allows “democracy” to be defined by the above mentioned four magic words only. No other words will do. In short, the Latvian government does not recognize the legitimacy of a ‘not-vote’ (casting a blank), which is a vote against a monopolistic concept of democracy.

As a consequence of censoring a Not-Vote, it is easy for the Latvian democracy to exclude what the members of its Saeima and public Medias call “populists”. Populists—those who are “them” vs “We”—belong therefore outside the walls of the Latvian Monopolist Democracy.

A photo of three Latvian Populist Not-Voters. While the man in the center is a known Latvian citizen, the citizenship of the two "Populist Wormelings" on either side of him is still being hotly debated issue in the Saeima. It appears that being born of a Latvian mind does not necessarily guarantee that the result is a Latvian citizen.

Interestingly, the polarization of the Latvian government on one end and the Latvian populists (virtually everyone not in government) on the other end has almost perfectly aligned itself along the axis of Monopolist Post-political Thought vs Multi-Threaded Thought Renewed. The Multi-Threaded reality, dismissed as “populism” and excluded from politics by the “law” of the Voting Committee, is the “enemy” rather than honorable opposition to the current Latvian government.

All Latvians know that the “enemy” has chosen to vote against the government with its feet by leaving the country. Not surprisingly, perhaps for the first time since the tenth century, unipolar thought is threatened with extinction through the simple expedient of a demographic crash.

This presents one with the thought that Riga may become the future capital of Europe at the expense of the Latvian people. Or may Riga become the first capital city of a multi-polarized and populist Europe? Will the members of the Latvian Saeima perhaps chose to become Populists and refuse to vote (Not-Vote) for a Latvian president in the upcoming Parliamentary elections? There is always hope.

*I owe some of the thoughts here expressed to a rereading of Chantal Mouffe on populism.