Monday 13 April 2015

The first anniversary of Mike Ruppert's death

Remembering Mike Ruppert
Seemorerocks




As I sit here it is one year exactly since Mike Ruppert chose to depart from this life.. 

I have been wondering how I would commemorate this and will admit from the outset that it is much easier for me to talk about rapid climate change, near-term human extinction and the collapse of the human, industrial society than it is to talk about this complex man and what his contribution.

I wouldn't even deign to talk about him about what he achieved in revealing the truth about what he came to talk about as "the powers-that-were". It is quite beyond me to be able to do this and only what remains of history in the "Great Unravelling" will tell.

No, all I can talk about is what Michael Ruppert meant for me and the role he played in my life.

There is no such thing as "objectivity". We can only ever see things through the lens of our own experiences and the society in which we were brought up.

I have to say first up that I live in another country and never had the opportunity to meet Mike in person, or even to speak to him outside the medium of email and Facebook (although I did listen to him on a group Skype conference once). So I cannot relate in any way, as a non-American, to the set of experiences that made him who he was, except for those that bind us all as human beings.

I guess the word that comes to mind is "resonance"

I must have been looking round for some credible explanation to the meaning of life in the post-9/11, post- 2008 financial meltdown.  Quite by accident, I stumbled on a small segment from the movie Collapse,  where he says, "Bermie Madoff is not a ponzi scheme; the whole economy is a ponzi scheme".

Quite what it was about what he said, or the way he said it, resonated with me and I ended up following every lead I could. I booked in to see the movie Collapse, which was coming to Wellington in the 2010 film festival.  I could not wait the few weeks before seeing the movie and listened to his talk in Vermont  and found out from that that he was setting up CollapseNet.

So what was it that drove me to find everything I could to find out what Michael C Ruppert had said, and what he stood for. In some ways as well as a resonance with his explanations it must have, in some ways been inexplicably linked with the power of his personality and the power and passion of what he was saying.

He was simply for me, the right person at the right time.

Hearing others, it seems that this was by no means a unique experience. When I finally came to watch Collapse the experience was electric. This was a person who not only had swum against the current of the Mainstream to reveal the reality behind the pretence of how things are run. This was a person who was also so totally involved in this endeavour, one could not separate the two and in the process revealed much of himself and was not against revealing his own vulnerability.

I have seen and heard people talking about things and perhaps with greater balance and clarity but with Michael C Ruppert this was who he was, although as we have learnt, despite the prodigious amount that he revealed about himself there was an equal amount that he kept hidden.

But who amongst us is going to reveal previous attempts at suicide (as he did once to me in an email) or talk about this and his experience with Alcoholics Anonymous?  This side of Michael Ruppert, the willingness to talk about the darker sides of his own life, that kept me going at times when others might have walked away several times.

There were times when I was the butt of some very cruel retorts that help me to begin to understand who it was that he fell out with so many people long the way. Despite this,after fuming for several days (and boycotting his Facebook page) I would return to my usual role of researching and scouring the world press for stories.  In most case there was a very sincere apology from Mike for flying off the handle over the ether.

Despite all appearances, I never put Mike on a pedestal. Still less was I a 'fan' or a Mike Ruppert groupie.  I could see that frequently he was very wrong about things, especially it came to predicting how things would turn out, and his need to always predict this sometimes mystified me.

Still more, I was irritated by the people who pointed this out and yapped from the sidelines about how he had 'got it wrong' and yet were too lazy and weakwilled to do the research and come up wtth something credible of their own.

Despite his tendency to prognosticate about events that 'even a cavemen can see' but didn't quite work out in the way that he said they would, I have never met a person who could see so clearly the total corruption of the world that we live in and the ultimate reasons for this - a paradigm that centres around the myth of 'infinite growth'.




Some personal reflections

It is clear to me that Mike was beyond exhausted with carrying the burden on his shoulders of what he knew and was ready to put down this burden by ending his incarnation in this particular bodily form.  He believed, as I do, that life in a human body is not the end.

He also had a strong vision of the warrior and saw the ending of this life as a sacrifice for all who are fighting the same struggle.

No one who sees the full truth of the way things are can be anything other than on the outside of the mainstream culture. Having a knowledge that the way the world is run is so completely different from what we are led to believe presents us with a burden - not only in the grief that we feel for humanity as a whole and for the whole planet.

There are times when I feel like (as Mike must have countless times) like putting down the burden but until some momentous event comes when I no longer have the physical means to fight any longer I will live with these feelings.

That is how I feel on this evening just a few hours after the time that Mike left us.
.......

I would like to conclude with the song that Mike chose as a farewell to his listeners on his final broadcast on the Lifeboat Hour


Lyrics to "Calling All Angels"

Santa Maria, Santa Teresa, Santa Anna, Santa Susannah
Santa Cecilia, Santa Copelia, Santa Domenica, Mary Angelica
Frater Achad, Frater Pietro, Julianus, Petronilla
Santa, Santos, Miroslaw, Vladimir
and all the rest

Oh, a man is placed upon the steps, a baby cries
and high above you can hear
the church bells start to ring
and as the heaviness, oh the heaviness, the body settles in
somewhere you can hear a mother sing

then it's one foot then the other
as you step out onto the road of hope
step out on that road
how much weight? how much?
then it's how long? and how far?
and how many times oh, before it's too late?

calling all angels calling all angels
walk me through this one
don't leave me alone
calling all angels calling all angels
we're tryin' and we're hopin'
but we're not sure how...

ah, and every day you gaze upon the sunset
with such love and intensity
why it's ah, it's almost as
if you could only crack the code
then you'd finally understand what this all means

ah, but if you could...do you think you would
trade in all, all the pain and suffering?
ah, but then you'd miss
the beauty of the light upon this earth
and the sweetness of the leaving

calling all angels calling all angels
walk me through this one
don't leave me alone
calling all angels calling all angels
we're tryin' and we're hopin'
but we're not sure...

calling all angels calling all angels
walk me through this one
don't leave me alone
calling all angels calling all angels
we're tryin' we're hopin'
we're hurtin' we're lovin'
we're cryin' we're callin'
cause we're not sure how this goes

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