Good news…she’s dead!

MARGARET THATCHER – MESSIAH OR MONSTER?

There can’t be many events that more accurately reflect the divided state of global consciousness than Margaret Thatcher’s funeral.

Not elections – voting for political leaders tends to reveal what we THINK about things.

But we’re at a stage in evolution where thinking no longer serves us.

We have some of the best minds at our disposal.  Since the age of enlightenment, we’ve banished ignorance and harnessed the power of rational THINKING. We have unprecedented access to more and better information and knowledge.

Nothing much is changing.

Because change happens when there is sufficient energy to make it happen and for this we need some way of collectively harnessing FEELING.

This presents a great big huge problem.

Because we don’t know how we FEEL about anything. 

We’re divided.

Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power coincided with the global rise of narcissism – the rise of the individual.

“There is no society” she famously quipped – just individuals striving to make a better life; climbing the ladder of success by whatever means possible.  Selfishness is good.

“He’s one of us” was another of her sayings – thus galvanizing the “Us and Them” debate:

Us – hardworking, focused, goal oriented

Them – lazy, idle scroungers.

We now live in the culmination of these two themes – i.e. we live in a deeply divided, narcissistic society.

Obscene wealth and Debt slavery.

The news is full of the devastation caused by welfare cuts yet there’s a waiting list for five star restaurants and $200 theatre tickets.

Free and Not so free

Children can download pornography but Bradley Manning is still incarcerated for revealing truths about the military.

Obese and Skinny

The celebrity culture of ‘thin’ has led to an increasing crisis of Anorexia and Bulimia; while obesity has reached epidemic proportions.

Good food and Bad food

Vegetables that are grown organically in mineral rich soil and animals that live a normal life and are VERY EXPENSIVE.  Frankenstein foods – pumped full of pesticides, antibiotics and growth enhancers while chained in cramped conditions on a floor of sewage, which are VERY PROFITABLE.

We’re pretty much at the end of the road of this dual existence. 

Most of us will never ‘WIN’ and get to the other side where we are wealthy, healthy, free and thin.

So if Margaret’s rise to power mirrored the rise of narcissism, could her death signal the end of it?

Narcissists are very attractive people.

Being focused, they are able to achieve anything.  They are decisive and don’t waver – whether taking on Hunger strikers, Miners or Argentinians.  They don’t let any pesky FEELINGS get in the way of a good idea.

We love this because we hate indecisiveness.  And because we think ‘nice people’ are hopeless at achieving goals.

But there’s a secret about Narcissists!!

Their grandiosity is driven by shame.  They cling to the notion of themselves as ‘special’ people in order to wall off the FEELING of inadequacy.

Because they are walled off, they can’t receive REAL LOVE, so they live on admiration and applause (which they can hear through the wall.)

They can’t bear criticism because it triggers the shame, so they surround themselves with ‘Yes” men. (Thatcher’s cabinet).

Having no connection to their REAL SELF with their own inner values, they align themselves to the personalities of others – describing themselves as a bit of a Churchill or a Steve Jobs, a John Wayne or a Mother Theresa.

They use fantasy to distance themselves from the monster behind the wall, and in so doing create a monster of their own devising – the self-serving Narcissist.

Hmmm… so that’s me then.  A recovering narcissist.

The narcissist reflects the deep division or our times – they look at people who are losing in order feel better about themselves or they look at people who are winning and feel envious.

They think that if everyone was equal there would be no fun in life because winning and losing is the only game in town.

But we have to invent a new game if we’re going to survive as a species.

Margaret was a Grand Master of the game… for a time.  In the end (as portrayed so brilliantly by Meryl Streep) she lost the ultimate game – which is to love and be loved.

The sadness of the narcissist is the fact that they never know what it is to be loved and appreciated for who they really are.

With no real sense of self and no real inner values, they have to ‘wear’ their adopted values by attending the funerals of people who seemed to possess them in spades.

Why else go to a funeral of someone you don’t know personally – duh!

There is a lot of hoopla around Margaret Thatcher’s funeral. 

This isn’t just the death of an old woman – it is the death of an archetype.

The last big state funeral was that of Diana – another archetype.

People didn’t know her personally, so the mass outpouring of grief was another hoopla.  It was the death of the Princess.  The death of Glinda, the Good Witch.

Now we have the funeral of Margaret – the death of the despotic Queen, the Bad Witch.

Neither of them is true… or real.

But to transcend them we have to go Beyond Duality

Beyond either/or to both/and

Beyond the Narcissist…

To what is real.

Now THAT would be WICKED…