The Reign of Evil:  A Long-Range Global Forecast by John Maynard Keynes

“I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue. ... We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin. ...

“But beware!  The time for all this is not yet.  For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not.  Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.  For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.”
Dr. Robert D. Crane

Posted Oct 7, 2008      •Permalink      • Printer-Friendly Version
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The Reign of Evil:  A Long-Range Global Forecast by John Maynard Keynes

by Dr. Robert D. Crane  

  Among the greatest of the long-range global forecasters is John Maynard Keynes, who legitimated the concept that in order to save the real economy of capitalism, governments should create a faux economy by spending money they don’t have.  Perhaps he was not really advocating this, but he was at least forecasting this as our inevitable future, which amounts to advocacy. 

  The essence of a paradigmatic forecast much larger than Keynes is summarized in his “Last Essay,” entitled simply “The Future,” where he writes: 

“I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue. ... We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin. ...

“But beware!  The time for all this is not yet.  For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not.  Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.  For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.”

  This sounds like an “urban legend,” but it is there in the original of Keynes’ last message to humankind.  Delusion is illusion and vice-versa.  In other words, delusion is the only reality and must be embraced. 

  Keynes, who died only a quarter century ago, was coeval with the early NeoConservative movement, but he was not a NeoConservative.  In fact, Keynes’ encomium to the oxymoron known as “democratic capitalism” and his panegyric to its internal contradictions based on a deliberate reversal of truth and falsehood suggest that both he and the NeoConservatives are part of something much bigger.

  This something much bigger is recognized in every religion as “evil,” but has many names.  The essence of evil is universally defined as the diabolical reversal of truth and falsehood under the principle that, contrary to appearances, good is evil and evil is good.  In theological language this is the essence of the Anti-Christ.  This is known in Islam as the Dajjal, who, according to a sound hadith will say, “When you see cool water, stay away, because it is fire.  And when you see fire, enter into it, because it is cool water.”  Evil hides itself under false appearances and has many names in the world religions, such as the “trickster” invoked by some of the shamans of Native American mythology.

  Look for it, and you will see it.  Deny it, and you will become its victim.  Expose it, and you will suffer its onslaughts.  Counter it by offering something better, and you may render it impotent.  Pursue peace, prosperity, and freedom in the unending search for truth, and you will have the secret to compassionate justice, which is the ultimate power of and from the Creator of the universe.

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