It’s time for me to wind down this blog. I intend moving to a new domain (individuated.org) early in November where I will be setting up a few new blogs where I can carry on my navel gazing. But why? I’m closing this blog because, to me, it is inextricably linked to the Bush presidency and the US election in November (regardless of which way it goes) will signal the end of the US Neocon Empire that has risen and fallen over the last eight years. The About page of this blog quotes an anonymous aide of Pres Bush from 2002, at the height of the Neocon adventure as follows:

Your judicious study of discernible reality … is not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now.
And when we act, we create our own reality.
Anonymous aide to President Bush, 2002

No other statement made in the last eight years more clearly captures my sense of the world that we have been living in. Since 2000 our world has been dominated by a new type of aggression, one which is driven by the firm belief that the US can save humanity if it can only show those barbarians and fundamentalists and Chinese and Russians and Third World children that the American dream is what we should all be striving for; a Starbucks frappucino, a big car and an entourage of paparazzi.
On November 4th 2008 that era will end. We may then enter a time dominated by China, or by Islam, or (most likely) by climate change, but regardless of where our accelerating ball of flaming death[1] heads next, the time for thecages will have passed.

Another reason for my decision is that I’m planning to move to Austin TX in 2009 leaving behind (for a period) Cape Town where I’ve, coincidentally, lived for the duration of the Bush presidency. My time in Cape Town has been massively transformative for me as an individual. I’ve become something entirely different to what I was in the 90′s (the Pretoria years). Of course that’s not true – I’m very much still the same person I was in my early twenties, or teens for that matter. But the last eight years in Cape Town were a catalyst in my developing a fundamental belief in Individualism. I’m moving to individuated.org because that is what I’ve become – individuated. I’ve also developed in other ways, I’ve become an atheist[2], a husband and a father – but none of that has been as fundamental as my individuation.
And so, in farewell to thecages I want to write three more posts on topics that I feel the need to still document.

R.E.M. – The lost years

The 90′s were, to me, about only two things; learning social survival[3] and R.E.M. But, boy, they suck. Looking back on my six year obsession with Athens GA I frickin’ cannot believe that I fell for it. Michael Stipe is a frickin’ lightweight poseur, and yet I retain a deep connection with some of their songs. I hope to write a look back on that time and what I retain from it.

Cape Town – The psychedelic years

I learned many things in my years in Cape Town but only a few of them were transformative. There are one or two of these learnings that I won’t mention now, but three of these personal ‘truths’[4] have informed this blog. Firstly, the world we can experience is a natural reality[5] which we describe through mathematics, physics and chemistry – there is nothing that we can experience outside of the physical. Secondly, nothing is more important than becoming an individual – our world works best when we are all strong, confident individuals who respect each others’ individuality. And lastly, there is no god, there is no father figure on which you can offload your reality, there is no afterlife to which you can postpone your serenity – our world would work so much better if we could accept that there is no help from above.

Thecages – Death Rollercoaster

If there’s only one thing that I read in thecages[6] it’s that the first era of the new millennium has been about only two things: acceleration and death. The internet has brought about an unmatched acceleration in our world, for the first time we can see several generations of revolution in one human lifetime. Can you remember how the world worked before email? Can you imagine that it could ever again work without MySpace, Facebook, blogs or Google? And as for death, globalization[7] and climate change is for the first time showing us daily proof that humanity is killing itself. We’re hurtling along on this flaming death rollercoaster and it’s fun and wonderful and horrific – as it has always been.

Bath time sweet cages, soon we’ll be off to bed.