Chickens Running in All Directions (VII)

As the desacralization and deconstruction of Latvia’s sovereignty continues apace, Latvia may already no longer be a nation, but an area under the administration of proxies working for foreign banks.

Two of the proxies doing the administering are already in place and easily identifiable. One is the President of Latvia, Andris Berzins http://www.planetrulers.com/latvia-president/ , while the other is Latvia’s Finance Minister Andris Vilks http://www.mk.gov.lv/en/mk/sastavs/vilks/ .

Both of said men are former employees of Swedish banks. Both men support the “system” of neo-liberal economics, even though that system is arguably a manifest failure. Both men are among the core of men and women who have the privilege to put Latvia on its feet, but who instead stand for abysmal failure of example. Indeed, today a public example from the leadership may be the only thing that may inspire the despised ‘populists’ (re people) to endure as Latvians.

The difficulty facing Latvia as a sovereign nation is touched upon by Imants Lancmanis, director of the Rundale Castle complex in the Zemgale region. http://ltvzinas.lv/?n=video&id=4903 [Interview is in Latvian. The part relevant to this text begins at the 3:12 min mark.] However, this writer is not persuaded that the ‘new generation’, which the director mentions, will bring about anything more than continued deconstruction of the community and cement a naked money based secular administration more securely in place. Some will say, well and good, because, after all, all of Europe is in the process of being denationalized. Perhaps so.

However, the answer of those who are not persuaded that fiat money is able to create a community that lasts and can endure an economic crisis through the strength of its communal bonds is to point out that a pseudo community necessarily worships exponential growth.  Dependency on such growth necessarily leads to a catastrophe and collapse.

While the world of our culture is only at the beginning of its final catastrophe, the event is of a nature more felt than critically perceived. The situation brings about an intensification of mimetic rivalry, because in better days an increase in such rivalry was said to give rise to progressively more elaborate and humanized forms of culture. In other words, while a complete rollover in exponential growth has not yet occurred, but tremors and quakes of it are clearly felt, many people continue to opt for frenzied exponential growth in personal ‘liberty’ in the mistaken belief that it may prevent the crisis or that it does not even exist.

Alas! Exponential growth of “humanized forms of culture” (human rights as absolute rights), when such growth is based on debased former cultures and fiat money, cannot escape the moment at which it must reverse direction. It is at the peak (the hour of it no one knows) of this phenomenon that our fiat culture must either launch the societies under its umbrage into wars of surrogate victimhood that re-found or allow for changes in said culture or in order to avoid war, it must find a re-founding mechanism that allows for the substitution of mass victimhood with a reconciliatory event.

The reconciliatory event however must be an event of death (a symbolic death can be stretched only so far), because only death has sufficient charisma to impress and persuade the skeptical.

The least damaging death to all concerned is a single death. As Rene Girard points out in his work (“Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World”), such a death in past societies was discovered by seeking and finding a victim who was then stoned and killed. Indeed, the scapegoat or victim enabled through his-her death to increase the time necessary to think things over. Thus, a re-conciliatory death (a delay or cessation of the death threat) encouraged from times way back, both, a growth of the human brain in a child and development of human culture itself.

In the previous blog [Chickens Running in All Directions (VI)], I suggested that in spite of the fact that a surrogate victim may be found by the lottery method [Adolfs Buķis http://www.politika.lv/508/did/16931/ , a publicly unacknowledged self-sacrifice, may serve as an example if we allow that chance may become a synonym of the unexpected], Latvia now has the opportunity to substitute the unacknowledged man with two well known men, President Berzins of Latvia and the mayor from Ventspils, Aivars Lembergs. Both men are millionaires. Occasionally people call both men oligarchs. However, in terms of money, the President of Latvia is worth a few million, whereas the Mayor of Ventspils is said to be worth a few hundred million.

If the story that Lembergs had the first and last word as to who was to be Latvia’s next President (after the incumbent Valdis Zatlers was passed over) is true, it becomes intriguing to learn whether the voting public will side with Lembergs http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/245657  in his choice of who is to be Latvia’s surrogate victim and reconciliator (the President of course), or is the President of Latvia going to be able to foist the cadaver onto Lembergs.

Some people may mistake blood money for blood and blood in office for prestige, when in fact the option may be that 1) that a certain sum of money from the Ventspils mayor will to go to the restoration of the North Vidzeme Biosphere Region (starting with a 200 million lats contribution), and 2) the President of Latvia will resign from (sacrifice) the Office of President lest he be impeached by the new Saeima.

Incidentally, the election of the new Saeima is less than two months away on September 17, 2011.