I want to thank both Charles Eisenstein and Paul Kingsnorth for this illuminating discussion. Though I’m tempted to say “pandemic as a prison,” the way they both speak helps to loosen the web of “mandates” and allow pondering in. Great pandemic implications are noted here by both thinkers, and not all of them are “bad.”

Especially pronounced in their conversation, the overriding force of “THE MACHINE” — conveyed as another hierarchical Tower of Babel, and not any particular conspiracy (though of course they may exist). In other words, the machine itself, and not individuals within it, is in the main responsible for what’s gone on these past two years. Their discussion doesn’t go into the medical intricacies of the covid or its “vax;” nor does it focus on Desmet’s mass formation hypnosis, but instead, on the visible and invisible Capricornian structures that humans tend to construct whenever they leave our place as participants in the interconnected web of mother nature and pretend that we can rule over her.

See all my Pluto in Capricorn posts, both here and on exopermaculture.com. Death/rebirth Pluto crawls slowly through Capricorn from 2008 through 2023-24, destroying or at least severely shaking the human-created structures we have taken for granted since the Industrial Age began.

Both men deeply appreciate the wisdom of the historian Lewis Mumford.

Another take-away for me, is a subset of focusing on the machine: if we simply think we can solve the problem of horrific corruption by just demonizing and/or getting rid of the bad guys (Gates, Fauci, etc.), then we transmogrify into the mirror-image of those who would demonize, for example, the anti-vaxxers.

What is “the solution”? That’s what this conversation tackles, and I very much appreciate that both these powerful thinkers are hesitant, and speculative, looking at bits and pieces, pondering, feeding off each other, attempting to understand without claiming that they do understand.

Another Mumford quote comes to mind. And reminds me of what we permaculturists now call “emergent design,” and it is a way of moving into the future that we in Green Acres Permaculture Village practice wholeheartedly.

In any case, I think that both men would agree that we are undergoing the birth pangs of a new era, and no matter how much we try to understand and predict how it will manifest, it remains bathed in mystery.

Much will depend on whether or not our culture can absorb this and other pregnant conversations that deepen the perspective needed as we sail forth.