Once upon a time, there was the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, the Velvet Revolution, and many other events so important and disruptive that they each were given their own, unique names in history.  Now there is what I will call the Silent Crash.  

This crash is silent because the collective will not hear it, will not discuss it, and will not experience it as a group.  We, as a collective, will not know and will not remember on which day it actually occured.  Instead, each of us as individuals will go through our own slow processes until we realize it has already happened.

Just as currency, commodity, real estate, asset, and population bubbles begin to burst...our great fictional bubbles of belief systems and mental models are also bursting...one by one...until we are eventually left with only the truth of our real lives, our inner voices, and the beautiful reality that actually does surround each of us.

Politicians go through the spectacle of elections, yet democracy does not exist.  Corporations run the government to their advantage, yet we defend them with irrelevant free-market ideas from years ago.  Soldiers, full of the best intentions, dedicate their lives to their country...while Corporations, working through the government they control, use them only to loot and plunder the world.   Just as Priests have done for centuries, our "leaders" are desperately trying to prop-up a fictional belief system.  

Some people see through the fiction, but nobody really hears the sound of a crash.   

Meanwhile, we go on eating what they feed us, while this Corporate food is making us sick and miserable.  We go to Corporate doctor to get better, while the cost of health care only makes us even sicker with worry and makes us slaves to jobs that are slowly killing us.  We give the best years of our lives to a company, yet are discarded one unsuspecting Friday morning because we are no longer useful.  We watch this happen to our friends, relatives, and to ourselves.

Still nobody really hears the sound of a crash.  

Comodity prices plunge, but few know or care.  Currencies are destroyed, but only the upper-middle-class cares.  Real estate prices collapse, yet we only blame ourselves and try to cope.  Oil begins to run out, so we complain more loudly about gas prices.  Bankers rob us by looting the treasury, but nobody really understands it or does anything about it.  Billionairres silently sneak out, through the back door, to their safe islands while letting the world we know crumble.  The puppet-masters are too untouchable to pay much attention to.  

Nobody can hear the sound of a crash.  Why?

We can barely hear even the most obvious truths over the sound of all that content, all those iPhone apps, MP3 players, TV Shows, advertisements, Corporate-controlled news and debate, video games, and new promises brought to us each day from the world of Retail and Entertainment.  These industries clammor so loudly for our attention -- so desperately begging and pleading with us to listen -- that the occassional voices of truth just can't seem to find a place to be heard.  We are living in an era that is as fake as the MTV Music Video Awards.  Let's just all shout really fucking loud, bleep out all the cursing, dance like nobody has ever danced before, and laugh whether anything is funny or not.  

This party is getting boring, so let's just turn up the volume so nobody can hear the crash outside.

This is the Silent Crash.  It is the systematic destruction of anything systemic that we used to believe in.  We are each alone in this.  We are each forced to confront our own delusions on our own terms.  Our survival and happiness actually depends upon our ability to see and hear the world around us as it actually is.  

There is a simple truth in all of this: we cannot and must not trust or believe in the man-made institutions and systems that govern our lives.  If given our trust and faith, these systems only exploit us.  Even the ones that benefit us are the same ones that are collapsing or being threatened with austerity measures! 

So what do we do?  We can't avoid interacting with the world around us.  So we must understand that to take part in today's institutions is only to play a game.  We can learn to play the game reasonably well, for our own personal reasons, and with a specific and meaningful goal or purpose.  But let's not forget that it is all a game.  Play the game well and you win some comfort, piece of mind, nutritous food, time to enjoy your life, and so much more.  But none of this flows from faith in the system.  Those with blind faith in the illusion will crash under the weight of their own bad choices...they will go down with the ship!

What exactly can we believe in if the systems, rules, imagery, and institutions around us are either unsustainable or are built on lies?  Actually, there is so much that is real that we can believe in!  We can believe in ourselves.  We can believe in love...real love, not the convenient "how big is your wedding ring" and "how well does your spouse behave" kind of love brought to us by the media.  We can believe in the pursuit of truth...truth at any cost!  We can believe in kindness, empathy, and compassion.  We can believe in doing what's right just because it is right.  We can believe in pleasure...the kind of pleasure found on a beach, or in the backyard listening to the wind blow through the trees, or whatever excites us!  We can believe in freedom!  We can believe that our own inner-voices are, indeed, the voices of truth!  Let the crash be silent so we can hear these voices.

What exactly is there to be afraid of when so much that is corrupt, destructive, and harmful is silently crashing?  When we find the courage to jump ship and live on our own terms...when we live our dreams...when we do this all while playing the games required for our survival...then the future is bright.  

The Silent Crash is our opportunity to clarify our minds and listen to our hearts.