We live in the Kali Yuga or Dark Age where Truth has only one leg to stand on. Such has been mankind's fate for thousands of years and, according to bona fide spiritual masters, it will not end anytime soon in man-year terms. The classic conservative complaints voiced many centuries ago in India sound awfully familiar to our post-modern ears. Many of them were voiced during the Forest Exile as recorded in the MAHABHARATA. Unfortunately, during our era of the Kali Yuga, we do not have the advantage of the forest as a viable alternative, especially now that the Central Park Service plans to prohibit hiking to save the endangered mosquito. Nevertheless, setting our own era aside for a moment, we shall paraphrase the ancient complaints. First of all, since ladies come first in matters of courtesy if not in fact, it seems that wives no longer considered their husband to be gods, which is hardly surprising given the deplorable behavior of most husbands at the time. Indeed, women felt a definite aversion towards their husbands, whom they preferred to choose for themselves. Wives refused to obey their husbands' commands, and verbally abused them with sharp tongues. The best of husbands were abandoned for the worst of men, even for menial servants. It appears that relations back then were based soley on sexual passion--oral sex was reportedly a favorite pastime, sex with juveniles was commonplace, and even bestiality was engaged in. Hordes of juvenile delinquents were therefore produced as a matter of promiscuous course. Incidentally, Kali Yuga women resorted to sulking and weeping to get their way--how can men resist when severe sulking might result in the loss of wives by suicide? More generally speaking, it appears that women were addicted to lying to achieve their deviant ends. But perjury was not limited to the fair sex, nor were the dominant men to be outdone in any immoral domain. Patriarchs were addicted to lying and to illicit sex as well. Furthermore, litigants were addicted to perjury--perjury is most likely to succeed in Kali Yuga, so how can we moderns blame the old liars for the habit? Tax evasion ran rampant then--of course, taxes were exorbitant, so liars justified lying. Moreover, educators hid the truth under elaborate fabrications in order to maintain their false qualifications, citing 'reason' as their authority; nobody listened to them anyway, except to get a set of spurious credentials themselves. In sum, Kali Yuga is an age where the right hand deceives the left and the left hand mirrors the right accordingly. Now then, that might badly be, as vulgarity usually is, but what of the highest class of men, the holy men whose code of ethical conduct requires them to renounce ignorance and forswear addictive substances both physical and metaphysical? Well, they were too busy making a living to comply with the professed standards of their ilk, too busy pursuing wealth for themselves and their cults to attend to their essential duties. They had abandoned Truth, and Wisdom fled from them. They even neglected the required sacrifices to the Highest Good. They turned their universities of liberty into business schools. They served the most contemptible of interests under the badge of religious authority. In fact, the holy men began to serve their former servants and even to call them 'sir' (Arya)! Due to the degradation of the priestly class, religion become a synonym for hypocrisy. Even worse, the lower classes were corrupted by bad example; for example, "Renouncing the gods (during Kali Yuga), men will worship bones and other relics deposited within walls." And those dead things were replaced by other dead things such as ivory and gold. Yes, thing-worship, rather than worshipping the god represented by the thing, was the order of the day. Such a practice suits the Kali Yuga economics of unrestrained, unfair free trade. It embraces the all-consuming competition, the deceptive trade practices, the big-fish-eat-little-fish operations in the Sea of Terrors. From the chaos of fear and greed, from growing animosity and mutual contempt, arises the organized greed of monopolies and other ghoulish corporations administered by zombies gorging themselves on the living dead. These outfits are horrible domains of violated and broken trusts, of rapaciousness responsible for the "destruction of gardens", domains of cowardice, ignorance, unwitting slavery, and general viciousness led by gangs of Thugs. Furthermore, according to our revered sources, in Kali Yuga people who thrive on bribery live long lives, having the best of care while honest people suffer and die for want of it. Even Soma, the nectar of the immortal Aryan gods, cannot relieve the silent suffering and quiet desperation of the dehumanized zombies. Of course, informed 'Aryans' insist that Soma was non-alcoholic in the good old days; however, Kali Yuga is an age of addiction to intoxicating substances--we suspect that, whatever Soma was, it better not show up today in a locker or urinalysis. What we have thus far observed--the foregoing being merely paraphrases of the ancient texts--are symptoms of a general dissolution of society wherein moral authority is practically non-existent. Note well that friends and relatives are abused and neglected; the population is constantly shifting due to immigration and internal immobility; homelessness is widespread. Yet there is a global order to the dissolution, there is "one common order without distinctions." Since the Kali Yuga still endures, the ancient texts serve as an indictment of our own deplorable state of bare existence devoid of spiritual inspiration. Many people are benumbed in the same bewitching Sea of Terrors. Most do their best to "adapt" and "adjust" to the "inevitable", while the big shots throw the dice, just as their ancient Aryan precursors threw the dice, betting their kingdoms, relatives, and friends on the outcome. The small-fry gambling addicts are thrilled too, but the stakes must mount if they are to get a good fix. A few men in positions of power, although they may not gamble much themselves, rather enjoy the view of the grand casino from their advantaged perches in the wings. For instance, on April 13, 2000, United States Senator Phil Gramm, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, testified rhapsodically that, as he strolled by Wall Street one day, he was awestruck by the sudden revelation that Wall Street is a "holy place." He said Wall Street evoked in him a feeling of great reverence for the political-economic leadership of the United States. So let us bow our heads in humble adoration of our Great Nation as it rushes the New Economy into the New World Order, into, namely, Paradise. Indeed! Gamblers are certainly addicted to the constantly accelerating change of Kali Yuga: "change passeth over all things, and even over those who live through many yugas must change also," declares the MAHABHARATA. Undoubtedly the good Republican senator from Texas sincerely adores the Wall Street casino where conservatives would invest the social security of their less fortunate constituents. The Wall Street casino is a colossal amusement park with a debit-credit teeter-totter for everyone, not to mention that exhilarating roller-coaster rides. In this monstrous gambling hall everything swings grandly about the great central free-market deity who classically controls destiny with His Invisible Hand. There should be only a bare minimum of human regulation, just enough to maintain the ritual worship of the Lord's majestic Invisible Dice-Hand, for anything more would result in "moral hazard", the financial immorality caused by bad boys who think Big Daddy will bail them out of their losing positions. Thus we hysterically sail the economic Sea of Terrors. The Invisible Hand of the captains belongs to their Patriarch, the god of Chance. Unrestrained, all boats seem to rise with the mounting praise of the mammoth deity; each navigator has lost his true compass, however, and has gone stark raving mad on the ocean of false enthusiasm. Sooner or later the market bursts; the poor sailor realizes his boat is a capsized illusion as he drowns in a worthless sea of digits--the captain was the first to abandon ship. Only the house of mirrors remains standing for a while longer, yet it too is sailing into oblivion. When things are going well, the high priests will take full credit; but when fortunes fall precipitously, a fateful woman must blamed. Hail Kali! Instead of wanting to invest the public fortune, our social security, in a ship destined to sink along with its most precious cargo, we might be better off placing our bets on Kali, Divine Mother of gods and heroes. For the paradise promised by the secular authorities is another version of Hell on Earth not only to professional pessimists, but to the masses who in quiet desperation constantly suffer under the yoke of Kali Yuga.