Reading material on white guilt after viewing this Integral Life segment, I came across the lyrics below which were cited in one of the articles. The lyrics are from a 1992 Leonard Cohen song called “The Future.” If ever there was an anthem for leftist-green views of white (man’s) guilt, this would have to be it, or at least near the top of the list, as it captures or suggests many of the “sins” historically and still attributed to white men, everything from authoritarianism to “stopping the wheels of heaven.” Wow, heavy stuff.

While the lyrics are coarse, bleak, and brutal, I actually like the sound of the song, which you can listen to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKwr3DDvFpw if so inclined.

Religiously, Cohen practiced Judaism throughout his life, was also an ordained Buddhist monk, and had an affinity for Christ, all without any inner conflict on his part. While that alone does not qualify him as even a borderline Integralist, it does give him some points in my book and off-sets some of the bleakness (and also might help explain some of the lyrics).

The Future

Give me back my broken night,
My mirrored room, my secret life
It’s lonely here,
There’s no one left to torture.

Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
That’s an order!

Give me crack and anal sex,
Take the only tree that’s left
And stuff it up the hole
In your culture

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and Saint Paul
I’ve seen the future, brother:
It is murder

(Refrain)
Things are going to slide
Slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure
Anymore
The blizzard,
The blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul
When they said Repent Repent
I wonder what they meant
When they said Repent Repent
I wonder what they meant
When they said Repent Repent
I wonder what they meant

You don’t know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I’m the little jew
Who wrote the Bible

I’ve seen the nations
Rise and fall
I’ve heard their stories
Heard them all
But love’s the only engine
Of survival

Your servant here
He has been told
To say it clear,
To say it cold:
It’s over, it ain’t going
Any further

And now the wheels
Of heaven stop
You can feel the devil’s riding crop
Get ready for the future:
It is murder

(Refrain)

There’ll be the breaking of
The ancient Western code
Your private life
Will suddenly explode
There’ll be phantoms,
There’ll be fires on the road

And a white man dancing

You’ll see a woman
hanging upside down
Her features covered
by her fallen gown
And all the lousy little poets
Come around
Trying to sound like
Charlie Manson

And the white man dancing

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and Saint Paul
Give me Christ or give me
Hiroshima

Destroy another foetus now
We don’t like children anyhow
I’ve seen the future, baby,
It is murder