Thanissara, a beloved Ecodharma teacher, invited me to guest teach in a series of teachings at the intersection of facing the polycrisis and spiritual growth. The first of the eight sessions in this series hosted by Sacred Mountain Sangha is at 10 am today (Sunday). Thanissara set up the stage for this series of teachings by writing a post. Here are a few abbreviated excerpts form that post.
According to William Robinson, a political economy professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, global capitalism is undergoing a crisis. The system has reached saturation, markets are maxed out, labor exploitation has plateaued, and planetary resistance to extraction is rising. In response, capitalism is mutating. Unable to sustain itself through production and consumption alone, capitalism has turned to repression, surveillance, and organized abandonment as new sources of profit. What we are seeing is not breakdown, instead, it is a calculated shift from growth to control, from exploitation to extermination.
This is systemic and strategic exclusion of those no longer deemed economically useful. This is not passive neglect, but the active abandonment of humanity itself. For capitalism to survive, entire populations need to be rendered disposable, managed through war, displacement, incarceration, and state-sanctioned terror. Forever wars, genocide, and mass imprisonment are no longer peripheral; they are central to how the system functions and survives, how it turns all of life into profit for the very few who intend to weather the storm in their already built bunkers and super yachts.
This, Robinson names the global police state, an emerging transnational capitalist ruling class, and the order they want to impose, where militarization, digital surveillance, and authoritarian repression become the tools of economic governance. In the haunting words of Aaron Bushnell, who sacrificed his life for Palestinian freedom, “This is what the ruling class has in mind for us.” A system that once extracted life is now structuring itself to discard it.
If we truly care about Sudan, the Congo, and all the other regions devastated by war and oppression, then that concern should deepen, not deflect, our solidarity with Gaza. At the very least, let us not invoke “what about Sudan, Congo, and so on” as a shield for silence. Gaza is not an isolated atrocity, it is a mirror. It reflects, with devastating clarity, what the ruling class is willing to inflict on any population deemed disposable.
Gaza is ground zero for the machinery of empire, where there is no red line, no bottom, no threshold of horror that has stopped it. Gaza has become a profit engine for the military-industrial complex that primarily operates in the shadows. Every bomb dropped, every AI-guided strike, and every surveillance system deployed is not only an act of state violence–it’s a sales pitch. Weapons and tech tested on Palestinians are marketed as “combat-proven,” driving up global arms sales and investor returns. U.S. and EU military aid fuels this cycle, channeling public funds into private profits. Gaza, in this light, is not just a war zone; it’s a laboratory for empire, where genocide is monetized and human suffering is converted into dividends–income for shareholders.
In all of this, somehow, we have to accept the truth that the ruling class has no future for us. When we accept this, we will see that we’re not aiming for reform; instead, we need to aim for disruption. What’s required is a civilizational pivot: an awakening from the spell of empire that ignites both revolution and rebirth. This moment demands a paradigm shift in reality, spirit, perception, structure, and strategy fueled by collective imagination and alignment. This is the work of warrior-ship, of shamanic transformation. Not sedation, but initiation: a descent through fire, grief, and dismemberment, calling the soul back from exile so that a new vision can rise. Only then can we walk the path of sacred duty in service of the generations to come.
To face empire is to remember who we are, not as isolated individuals, but as people woven into a sacred web of interdependence. Every prayer, strike, blockade, ritual, and act of truth-telling becomes part of the counter spell needed to break down the walls of empire.
We come from the same earth that calls us to rise up as part of her immune system.