A leaked Pentagon memo on Tuesday revealed that top Department of Defense (DOD) officials have been planning for the possibility that the military could be dealing with a “globally-persistent” coronavirus pandemic well into 2021.
The memo, obtained by Task & Purpose, also warned of the “real possibility” that a vaccine for COVID-19 won’t be available until “at least the summer of 2021.”
“We have a long path ahead, with the real possibility of a resurgence of COVID-19. Therefore, we must now re-focus our attention on resuming critical missions, increasing levels of activity, and making necessary preparations should a significant resurgence of COVID-19 occur later this year,” it read.
When reached by The Hill, a Pentagon official said they could not find a version of the memo as reported by Task & Purpose and could not confirm it specifically.
They did confirm that the department “continues to develop plans that address operating in the COVID-19 environment,” and some versions of such plans had similar language as the reported memo, but none have been approved.
“Senior DoD officials have discussed the development of a plan to reduce Health Protection Conditions around the world and continue the 2020 summer move cycle safely,” they said. “The plans have not been approved by senior DoD leaders yet, and we’re not going to discuss what might be in the final version of those plans.”
“We will deliver, by the end of this year, a vaccine, at scale, to treat the American people and our partners abroad,” Esper said at the White House.
The Pentagon later clarified that Esper was merely announcing a goal and was not promising a vaccine by the end of 2020.
The administration’s push for a vaccine in such short time has been met with skepticism from health experts, who have said the development of a new vaccine can take 12 to 18 months at least.
Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, has said it’s possible a vaccine will be ready in January. He has cautioned, however, that there is “no guarantee” a given vaccine will be effective.
The new memo — which was unsigned but reportedly prepared by Kenneth Rapuano, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and global security — adds to the skepticism that a coronavirus vaccine will be ready by early next year.
“All indications suggest we will be operating in a globally-persistent COVID-19 environment in the months ahead,” the memo read. “This will likely continue until there is wide-scale immunity, through immunization, and some immunity post-recovery from the virus.”
The document called for increased testing as well as a registry “to track and closely monitor outcomes of those infected with COVID-19.”
The memo also contained an outline for how the military could eventually reopen, including the return of training exercises and the movement of forces.
Defense officials have said the coronavirus will be an obstacle to the military at least until a vaccine is developed, with Esper earlier this month acknowledging that the Pentagon is “preparing for a second wave and maybe more” of the illness.
“We don’t know what the trajectory of this virus will be. So my view has been that we’ll be at this for a number of months, at least until we get a vaccine,” Esper said during a visit to U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, adding that he doesn’t see social distancing “easing anytime soon.”
Rebel Wisdom What can we trust? Why is the ‘information ecology’ so damaged, and what would it take to make it healthy? This is a fundamental question, because without good sensemaking, we cannot even begin to act in the world. It is also a central concern in what many are calling the “meaning crisis”, because what is meaningful is connected to what is real. Daniel Schmachtenberger is an evolutionary philosopher – his central interest is civilization design: developing new capacities for sense-making and choice-making, individually and collectively, to support conscious sustainable evolution. To get access to more exclusive content and to join this evolving conversation, become a Rebel Wisdom member: https://www.rebelwisdom.co.uk/plans You can listen to a podcast versions of our films on Spotify or Apple Podcasts by searching ‘Rebel Wisdom’ or download episodes from our Podbean page: https://rebelwisdom.podbean.com/ We also have a Rebel Wisdom Discord discussion channel: https://discord.gg/RK4MeYW For more from Daniel, he blogs on these topics at https://civilizationemerging.com/ He’s also the director of Research and Development at Neurohacker Collective https://neurohacker.com/ethos
Rebel Wisdom In War on Sensemaking, Daniel Schmachtenberger laid out why the ‘information ecology’ was so broken. It was a hugely popular film, with over 125,000 views in a month. In this sequel he talks about how information is weaponised by all sides, and how to survive in an environment where nothing can be trusted. War on Sensemaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lqao… Daniel will be at the Rebel Wisdom Festival in May 2020 – see here: https://www.rebelwisdom.co.uk/festival You can listen to podcast versions of our films on Spotify or Apple Podcasts by searching ‘Rebel Wisdom’ or download episodes from our Podbean page: https://rebelwisdom.podbean.com/ We also have a Rebel Wisdom Discord discussion channel: https://discord.gg/RK4MeYW
Rebel Wisdom How do we play the Infinite Game? And how will that help us make sense of a world in chaos? In the hit film ‘War on Sensemaking’, Daniel Schmachtenberger laid out how the information ecology was profoundly broken, and how impossible it was to act if we didn’t know what was true. In this response, flow expert Jamie Wheal outlines his answer to Daniel’s question, outlining what the ‘Infinite Game’ looks like, how we might uplevel human consciousness and what a ‘Game B’ society might look like. Rebel Wisdom are now running regular Q&As with the interviewees from our films for our members, including Jamie on Wednesday January 29th, check out: https://www.rebelwisdom.co.uk/plans You can listen to podcast versions of our films on Spotify or Apple Podcasts by searching ‘Rebel Wisdom’ or download episodes from our Podbean page: https://rebelwisdom.podbean.com/ We also have a Rebel Wisdom Discord discussion channel: https://discord.gg/RK4MeYW
The radical idea that everything is conscious has a small but growing following in Anglo-American philosophy. What could this really mean? Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad delves into two much older systems of thought – from Indian philosophy – which made the same claim and how this can be entirely consistent with our experience of the world.
The Speaker
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad is the Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University. His research focuses on Indian religions and comparative phenomenology, epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of religion.
This video was recorded at the Institute of Art and Ideas’ annual philosophy and music festival HowTheLightGetsIn. For more information and tickets, visit https://howthelightgetsin.org
IAI TV videos are for personal use only. For commercial or educational licensing please contact the IAI.
Carol Carter, H.W., M., long-time student and teacher in The Prosperos passed away on May 3, 2020 in her Tulsa, Oklahoma, retirement home. Carol was born in Kansas City, Kansas on February 11, 1936 and was living in New York City when she connected with Thane and The Prosperos.
She lived for many years in the Los Angeles area, being part of the infamous “Co-op 69” household at one point. She was also a starring member of the equally infamous Clapsaddle Chorale and played opposite the late Mary Ritley, H.W., M. in a very funny skit about two elderly ladies happening across a 25-cent-per-view porn video and Carol, in her old lady voice, loudly calling out: “What is HE doing to HIM?!?”
Carol later studied psychodrama and became its chief proponent in the school, going around the country presenting weekend Psychodrama/RHS events. I attended two of them in San Francisco, one of which, held at the home of Frank Syster, was a life-changing experience for me.
Psychodrama/RHS also became the center around many of the annual Prosperos Assemblies held while Thane (founder and late dean of The Prosperos) was still alive and for many years subsequent to his passing.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Peter Gabel helps us understand why a social change movement must create and sustain a feeling of deep connection to each other and to the experience of being recognized by each other if it is to have any chance of success. A fuller development of his themes is in his book The Desire for Mutual Recognition–very important to read and study. And if you agree with him, but wonder what are the next steps, my book Revolutionary Love provides some guidance in how to build such a movement and Cat Zavis’ Spiritual Activist Training will give you the skills to be an effective activist for social transformation. –Rabbi Michael Lerner rabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com]
The Bioenergetics of Authoritarianism
When we fully enter into each other’s presence, when we fully recognize each other in our sacred humanity, we actually experience the energetic flow that connects us. We emit an invisible but palpable radiance linking the poles of our Being as we come into connection and experience one another as here, as here together embraced in each other’s sight. This kind of encounter—occurring sometimes in two-person encounters and ubiquitously in the “rising” period of liberatory social movements as this mutual recognition ricochets into a powerful social force—is inherently egalitarian. No one is experienced as above or underneath anyone else, but rather we all experience each other as fully present together in the same space, on the same solid ground of Being. We form a real and felt “we”, not an imagined “we” “out there” that we imagine we are a part of.
But when we cannot experience the true presence of the other because we have been conditioned to fear the other as a threat to our ontological integrity, when the other’s gaze seems to carry the threat of some fundamental humiliation of our being that must be guarded against, we pool up our longing for authentic human connection behind a series of roles and performances that leave us starved for true community. As we whirl in the Hall of Mirrors that keep us spinning at a distance moving through the reflected selves that are not our real selves, we long for the grace of the other’s true presence, the co-presence of I and Thou that would allow us to be here together on the same ground. Scattering out among the rotations of representations, the “center cannot hold,” and the bioenergetic force that animates us towards connection, cut off from its source of completion in and through each other, desperately seeks out some substitute way to find an outlet to express itself.
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Understood collectively, this force of blocked connection channels itself, outward from multiple poles, toward a common leader who uses this force to create a false-we, an imaginary We, that each isolated person can imaginarily feel a part of. In the reality of its Being here on the ground, the group thus formed is characterized by universal separation resulting from a circulating fear of the other, of each other. But in the imaginary, the group feels united, filling with bioenergetic passion what is missing, what is actually everywhere blocked here in the present moment. Everyone is there; no one is here.
This is what is occurring today among the avid supporters—the so-called “base–of Donald Trump. Within the base as a living bioenergetic field, everyone’s blocked energy toward real others, which is an inherently loving and mutually recognizing energy, is displaced outward onto the imaginary leader who then channels it back toward the group in a form that carries both the ideal bond of the imaginary “we”– (Make America Great Again)– and the fear of the real other that is displaced onto one or other imaginary substitute threat (in the case of Trump, immigrants, Democrats, Iran, criminals, at the moment China; but in other circumstances Jews, blacks, gays). Because each person is actually blocked and pooled up within him/herself, disabled by fear of the other from entering into the grace of the real other’s longed-for presence, the energy that would radiate toward real others is instead channeled “up” toward Trump who returns it “downward” toward the beings who constitute him. Out of the group’s passivity, emerging from the paralysis of circulating blocked connection saturated by fear, is created the leader as the active force who actually releases the energy that is otherwise everywhere blocked, creating an imaginary experience of perfect fusion, the Great America, and concomitant rage toward an imaginary Other who is perpetually threatening that perfect fusion.
In true leadership, the leader expresses the bioenergetic flow of authentic human connection; he or she does not constitute the separated “from the outside,” but rather gives voice to the common experience of radiant bioenergetic presence emanating from the feeling of true community within the group itself. But in the case of the alienated group comprising Trumpism, the leader actually “creates” the group for the group from the outside as a false-we that each person can imagine he or she is a part of without actually risking the vulnerability of becoming present to the real other. In Trump’s group, everyone is passive and he is active; whereas in the true group the leader merely gives voice to and shape to the unblocked energy passing among one another in the ricochet of our common humanity.
Through this process, from a bioenergetically binding or “erotic” standpoint, the horizontal becomes vertical. The energy that properly flows among and between us as empathy, compassion, and love is displaced, through its blockage out of fear of the real other, into an impacted vertical, top-down force expressed from an active leader “down” toward a passive, separated or serialized ensemble “underneath” the leader. And this “verticalization” of the vector of bioenergetic or erotic force is actually understood unconsciously within the entire vertical ensemble itself—that is why Trump began his leadership (or presidential) campaign haughtily riding down the escalator from an upper floor of one his palaces to a lower floor, an externalization of the inner hierarchical flow offered to the passive “watchers” of this event, to those awed “beneath”.
And this in turn gives a key to the very nature of the inner experience of hierarchy itself, in which people who are actually equal and on the same level experience themselves as either “above” or “below” someone else. To the extent that we feel “below” another—to the extent that our being itself becomes weakened by a feeling of “underneathness” and feeling less than an other—to that extent we are manifesting a withdrawal of our presence from the social field due to a fear of humiliation by real other people, and the others around us become primarily carriers of a threat to our confidence in and capacity to reveal and manifest our own presence.
It is then that we tend to seek out the bioenergetic release of our energy through transferring our own energy into the higher one “above” us who brings us into a pseudo community-of-the-separated under his or her force field, his or her command. As in the case of Donald Trump, always this leader must idealize the group’s unity because of the unconscious common awareness of this unity’s vacuity, and always must he or she convert part of the borrowed energy to rage and direct that rage toward demonization of the threatening Other, the more or less randomly designated displaced object of the group’s actual circulating fear.
Resistance and revolution, or better, overcoming through conscious or intentional evolution, comes from drawing enough energy away from the gravitational pull of the hierarchy and toward the movement of desire toward each other, toward genuine empathy, compassion, and love through mutual recognition, to emulsify the “hold” that the leader has upon the group-as-a-whole. Because this hold is built upon a fear of the other that tends to reinforce itself by the sense of pseudo or imaginary community that the hierarchy’s distorted, displaced eros provides, the movement must move into it with a loving bioenergetic radiance of equality and oneness that incarnates increasingly into a ricochet, properly undermining fear’s “grip” with a dissemination of presence palpable enough to overcome the fear of humiliation attendant to its vulnerability. This very ricochet of social presence is what makes the movement “move”. The movement moves the social Being of the group itself from the frozen withdrawn space of reciprocal fear to the co-present “forward flow” of authentic mutual recognition, experienced as a recovery of here, of being on the ground right now with one another rather than lost “in” a dissociated mental space of an imaginary and paranoid world.
How can we each help to initiate or participate in thawing the frozen circulation of fear and releasing the forward flow of desire? How can we contribute to giving motion to the liberating movement toward one another, and toward transforming the social field around us? Apart from seeking to continually manifest the grounded presence toward the other that we have access to within ourselves, we can shift toward a spiritual approach to politics that nurtures the confidence in ourselves and others that a socially connected world is possible. As we call for external aspects of the world to be changed in a just and egalitarian direction (health care for all), so also we must elevate the interhuman harmonium so as to prefigure through a bioenergetic awakening the lived world that we hope to bring into being (in which actually caring about each other’s health rather than merely insuring each other’s bodies becomes the animating force).
Such a spiritualization of collective political action, because it releases eros into the social field, helps to covert social change efforts into social transformation efforts, into transformations of the social space between us so as to “jolt it” with the radiant energy essential to its spread. And in addition and equally important, this intentional spiritualization of our social and political efforts helps to accumulate within consciousness a conscious knowledge of what we are trying to make happen in the interhuman environment.
Liberatory social movements of the past have foundered in part upon their failure to actually grasp in reflective knowledge the internal transfiguration of our interrelatedness that we in those movements were directly, pre-reflectively, experiencing and seeking to bring about. That lack of internal knowledge made it very difficult to intentionally re-create what had been experienced more or less spontaneously in our liberatory outbreaks, in our “up-risings”. While one purpose of bringing an intentional spiritual dimension to politics is to intentionally release the bioenergetic longing for connection itself, an equally important purpose is to enable us to gradually grasp in reflection what was originally undergone in experience. Growing confidence in this knowledge increasingly allows us, a group-coming-into-connection, to fend off our internal saboteurs responding destructively to the legacy of fear in our midst, within ourselves and acted out within the group, and to intentionally develop practices that strengthen our internal bond while pursuing the elements of our larger transformative agenda.
On May 22nd, 2020 we have a New Moon in Gemini. The New Moon is at 2° Gemini and forms harmonious trines to Saturn, Jupiter and Pluto.
What’s very special about the New Moon in Gemini in that the ruler of the New Moon, Mercury, is exactly conjunct Venus retrograde at 20° Gemini.
Mercury (direct) goes ahead doing his Mercury thing. He explores. Tells stories. Gets curious. But Venus takes the information and quickly disappears to do her Venus retrograde thing.
You may actually see the two stealing a kiss on May 22nd in the dusk sky, 75 minutes after sunset – for a few minutes only – before they disappear under the horizon.
Similarly, just when you think you know what’s going on, and that you have it all under control, something happens.
There is a twist in the plot.
Both Mercury and Venus are square Neptune in Pisces. When Mercury and Venus square Neptune, we long for something that doesn’t even exist, that cannot be expressed in words.
Neptune will ask us to restructure our reality – so we can find a higher order, a superior meaning, a more elevated reason for our existence.
The story that the New Moon in Gemini will reveal is not the ‘real’ story. It is part of a bigger picture. A bigger picture that you’re only starting to grasp.
This New Moon in Gemini makes me think of 1001 Nights. “1001 Nights”, also known as the “Arabian Nights”, is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales.
The king of that time, Shahriar, discovers that his wife has been unfaithful. To take revenge, he decides to marry every day a different woman and then execute her the next day.
One day, he marries Scherezade.
On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade begins to tell the king a tale, but she does not end it. The king, curious about how the story ends, is forced to postpone her execution to hear the end of the story.
The next night, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins another one, and the king, eager to hear the conclusion of that tale as well, postpones her execution once again. This goes on for one thousand and one nights.
Scheherazade’s tales varied: historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques, erotica. Some of these spirit-enhancing and magic-inducing tales depicted jinns, ghouls, apes, sorcerers, magicians, and legendary places.
Aladdin’s Lamp or Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves are some of the most famous tales that have been included later in the collection.
After 1001 nights, Scheherazade runs out of stories. But the king was already under her spell. Enchanted by her storytelling gifts, he falls in love with her and spares her life.
Scheherazade found a way to keep love alive (Venus) by telling stories (Mercury). Seducing and mischievous, she created anticipation by telling the king just half of the story and revealing the outcome only one night later (Venus retrograde).
Storytelling, curiosity, having a beginner’s mind, being verbally articulate – are all Gemini qualities, and at the time of the New Moon we will all be more willing to embrace them.
Mercury conjunct Venus retrograde square Neptune suggests there is a bigger puzzle in the making. You may think you know what the puzzle is about. But when Mercury and Venus are square Neptune, you can bet you don’t.
The best approach for the New Moon in Gemini on May 22nd is to let your curiosity and inner storyteller take the front seat.
Because sometimes the great things in life are not the end goals, or great achievements. The great things in life are in the searching, in the possibilities that can emerge only from a place of genuine curiosity and anticipation.
You may not know what’s around the corner, and that’s ok. Instead of choosing your path, let the path you’re already on, guide you to places that are perhaps, even more enchanting.
You may not know where you’ll end up, but the journey of exploring what’s possible will be totally worth it.
“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (August 28, 1749 – March 22, 1832) was a German writer and statesman. His works include: four novels; epic and lyric poetry; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; and treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. Wikipedia
It’s the biggest revolution you’ve never heard of, and it’s hiding in plain sight. Over the past decade, Silicon Valley executives like Eric Schmidt and Elon Musk, Special Operators like the Navy SEALs and the Green Berets, and maverick scientists like Sasha Shulgin and Amy Cuddy have turned everything we thought we knew about high performance upside down. Instead of grit, better habits, or 10,000 hours, these trailblazers have found a surprising short cut. They’re harnessing rare and controversial states of consciousness to solve critical challenges and outperform the competition.
New York Times bestselling author Steven Kotler and high performance expert Jamie Wheal spent four years investigating the leading edges of this revolution—from the home of SEAL Team Six to the Googleplex, the Burning Man festival, Richard Branson’s Necker Island, Red Bull’s training center, Nike’s innovation team, and the United Nations’ Headquarters. And what they learned was stunning: In their own ways, with differing languages, techniques, and applications, every one of these groups has been quietly seeking the same thing: the boost in information and inspiration that altered states provide.
Today, this revolution is spreading to the mainstream, fueling a trillion dollar underground economy and forcing us to rethink how we can all lead richer, more productive, more satisfying lives. Driven by four accelerating forces—psychology, neurobiology, technology and pharmacology—we are gaining access to and insights about some of the most contested and misunderstood terrain in history. Stealing Fire is a provocative examination of what’s actually possible; a guidebook for anyone who wants to radically upgrade their life.
(Goodreads.com)
Consciousness, sexuality, androgyny, futurism, space, the arts, science, astrology, democracy, humor, books, movies and more
