Words cannot adequately capture or express my deep admiration and gratitude for all the wonderful people who have been working to make the world a better place.
It’s Christmas Eve today as I write this and tomorrow, after lying “dead on the cross” for three days, the sun will move one degree upwards at its noon height heralding longer days, warmth and spring. Throughout the ages, people in the northern hemisphere have celebrated this event with magnificent displays and built astonishing temples to mark the winter solstice.
Perhaps the most awe-inspiring in all of Europe is the structure at Newgrange, Ireland, about an hour north of Dublin. Built circa 3,200 BCE, this truly massive work of architecture and art is 275 feet across, 40 feet high and deploys a shocking 200,000 tons of stone and earth in its construction.
Newgrange exterior
Somehow, an ancient tribe organized itself well enough to build this enormous temple. They quarried, moved, cut, sculpted and erected thousands of massive rock blocks. In the precise arrangement of all this earthen tonnage, special features were carefully aligned with the heavens.
Among them a 60-foot-long tunnel of stone slabs that extends from the outside to an inner chamber that is only fully lit by the sun’s rays during the December 21 – 24 solstice period.
On Dec. 21, Winter Solstice, the sun beams down the chamber.
The level of observation and architectural precision involved clearly indicates an advanced level of organization and that these people grew enough surplus food to support a high degree of specialization and to pour into such an effort.
I find this fascinating all on its own. What inspires people to undertake such massive projects? How do they organize to get them done? Consider that Newgrange is over 5,000 years old and Europe had barely entered the bronze age at the time of its construction, and so the tools available were soft metals at best. How did they even do any of this in practice let alone conceive of, organize and motivate people to accomplish the project?
I am drawn to such inspiration at this time of the year, in this particular age, while facing our particular modern predicaments because Newgrange gives me hope. Humans, it would seem, can accomplish astonishingly difficult projects when they decide they are important. We need that spirit to move us now.
With a proper orientation and organization, we will get through the coming hard times as best we can. Or we might stumble and make things worse than they needed to be.
Along the way, it’s certain that we will re-learn the lessons of truly hard work and the importance of organization and mission dedication to accomplishing any hard yet worthy project.
To me, this is what Peak Prosperity and our tribe is all about. We stand here in time before a truly massive and important set of projects that cannot be avoided. An abundant and prosperous future depends on us being successful. Our projects might be different and more complicated than those of the ancient people, but no less vital or difficult or worthy of our minds and hearts.
Like them, we’ll have to dig deep for our motivation. Far down into our psyche’s – and way beyond tasks and calories and materials – we might find our inspiration arising from places of awe, reverence, and love. Instead of safe-guarding our portfolios and building soils, we might find ourselves defending freedom and taking huge physical or other risks to leave behind a place for future generations to begin their lives.
In quiet times, we discover gratitude for those things that are worth living for, and in darker times we discover what we’d be willing to give our lives to.
These are primal, primordial times. Light and dark. Good and evil.
Stripped of that which is unimportant that which remains takes on new meaning. The intellectual frauds and moral cowards are laid bare for all to see, while the true heroes and courageous among us stand out in brilliant relief.
The “defenders of the old” are clinging to outmoded patterns of inhabiting this planet and abusing their fellow humans out of greed and their own failure to develop a proper amount of humility and empathy. Their time is over, and their desperation indicates that they know this on some level.
I see a new future coming, one that I am very excited for, but which I may not live to see arrive. That’s how I see our task, to help that re-birth arrive sooner than it otherwise might. If we can even pull that birth forward by five minutes, we will have done things and lived lives worth living.
We are now passing through the darkness of the Fourth Turning. Like the ancient people, we need our temples to mark the days, to give us hope that spring will come again, and to get us through the cold and dark days that lie ahead.
To do this, our temple at least in part consists of a vision of what that better future looks like. It must be one filled with love, compassion, and a reverent connection to that which is beyond our ability to comprehend.
In the words of VTGothic (Terry) “this means we stop struggling against and start living for.” Mourn the passing of the old, as it must die, and celebrate the birth of the new which is soon to arrive.
That’s what this season is about, this year imbued with a deeper range of emotions and importance. At least for me, but I suspect many of you as well.
So, we’re not so different from the ancient people after all. We are each in that “between period” of our narratives. They marked the passing of the time of days getting progressively shorter to the days rowing longer. They were between the most important story of their time. Darkness and light. Cold and warmth. Death and rebirth.
We too are between stories. Between killing the planet and being joyful creators of abundance. Unconscious and conscious. Evil and good.
That new story has not yet been written, and we are the people writing it. How shall we do that? Who will we be? When we look back on our lives and efforts, how shall we score ourselves? These are the times that call us to be our largest and very best selves and it’s a distinct privilege to be alive and aware at such times.
I am honored to be on this journey, to have been selected to play a part, and to be on this path with you.
In that spirit, may I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year filled with meaning and purpose!
Your faithful information scout,
Chris Martenson, PhD.
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