"By living under different systems, I have observed that when broken people can’t compete financially, they start competing for moral superiority, and that’s worse."
That's a profoundly important insight, and it helps complete the idea that most problems have both top-down and bottom-up explanations. So that when disenfranchised people start fighting each other ideologically rather than fighting their oppressors, it's not entirely the fault of the media/politicians/etc. for creating divisive propaganda. It's also, to some extent, a natural outgrowth of their condition: a natural tendency for people to want to declare themselves "better than" when their lives are continually dealing them financial hardship and insecurity.
I'm not entirely sure what we can do about that, but fighting the propaganda and building a movement around fundamental human respect and dignity seems like a good start.
Remember David Icke, who stated we were ruled by lizards?Icke has predicted the future better than most. Maybe it takes a psychotic to understand sociopathology. Read the letters& emails of Western leaders today. Notice their emotional shallowness., their lack of intelligence. It is difficult to even imagine Bezos having a limbic system.Our state designed enemies:are a diffenent sort entirely. Putin, Xi, Khamenei aren't stupid and while they may be evil, they aren't sociopaths. I am sure that Putin has read & understood Dostoyevski, just as I'm sure Boris Johnson hasn't read Dickens and couldn't understand him if he did. This honestly gives me hope. We must keep alive some of the culture &traditions we inherited or we will be trampled by this empty monoculture. Which appears itself highly unstable. We must relearn the full depth of what it means to be human.
https://www.masslive.com/coronavirus/2021/02/holyoke-soldiers-home-resident-says-covid-vaccine-saved-his-life.html Hi Tessa, Sorry to hear about your mother. Person in article a Vietnam vet exposed to Agent Orange -rec'd chemo 3 yrs. ago -1 week later developed sepsis; was placed in semi-coma for 3 weeks -to rehab then Soldier's home...had bee drinking alkaline water for years -is now cancer-free & may be able to live independently in an apt. (walker/wheelchair). Expensive H2O but there's a machine that alkalizes & adds electrolytes which person owns but cannot utilize in group living situation. The South Asian guy who recommended says while Chlorella OK he thinks the H2O alkaline factor 7-9 caused cancer remission in our friends case.
it looks to me like what you've noticed. Normal people can be fucked up by The System, but they still retain their empathy.
Sad to hear that you've lost your source of income. I do not recognize this donation link you've posted and I'm extremely paranoid ;) but would like to chip in. Do you have PayPal?
So, I ask myself, what is this world I find myself in, now? I suspect even the powers that be are impressed with the results of their propaganda, so what could keep them from doubling down? Nothing I am aware of. What's their goal? Control, total, it would seem. PCR tests, case counts, variants, the SARS COV-2 virus, HCQ? A mountain of mis-, dis- , and simply bad information garbage strewn all over some truths. My current take is that the virus is real, of synthetic origin, pretty weird but generally not so dangerous to those under 60, that Ivermectin really works, that the perfidy of the PTB can be no more perfectly exposed as by the suppression of information regarding Ivermectin's protective potency. The flu is down because it is counted as COVID. Dialing down PCR tests cycle counts will result in a correspondingly drop in reported cases, but more dangerous variants are likely real, however intentionally managed for the benefit of the PTB. Cancel culture, censorship, and the growing snitch movements? How easily we are led so afoul. Where to from here? The double down can be prosecuted in so many ways. I saw something about Taibbi defending Substack. Blackout of Substack and all other potential independent information/thought would be entirely collimated with the currently evolving patterns. Scary, but sadly true. As for broken people, I think power lust is lavishly woven into our DNA, so the path to a better world is only as obtainable as is the recognition that one person's pain is not another's gain. What we literally need is for all of us to have to walk in each other's shoes. Not sure how we can manage that.
The corporate-run world hides behind flags and -ism's, but any system that creates great inequality is sustained by bribery, conformity and disinformation because it is so unnatural, undemocratic and anti-life. It detests the individual spirit.
"What do we mean by “authoritarian personality”? We usually see a clear difference between the individual who wants to rule, control, or restrain others and the individual who tends to submit, obey, or to be humiliated. To use a somewhat friendlier term, we might talk of the leader and his followers. As natural as the difference between the ruling and the ruled might — in many ways — be, we also have to admit that these two types, or as we can also say, these two forms of authoritarian personality are actually tightly bound together.
What they have in common, what defines the essence of the authoritarian personality is an inability: the inability to rely on one’s self, to be independent, to put it in other words: to endure freedom.
The opposite of the authoritarian character is the mature person: a person who does not need to cling to others because he actively embraces and grasps the world, the people, and the things around him. What does that mean? Children still need to cling. In their mother’s womb they are — in a physical sense — one with their mother. After birth, for several months and in many ways even for years, they remain — in a psychological sense — still a part of their mother. Children could not exist without the mother’s help. However, they grow and develop. They learn to walk, to talk, and find their way around the world which becomes their world. Children possess two skills, inherent to the individual, which they can develop: love and reason.
Love is the bond and the feeling of being one with the world while keeping one’s own independence and integrity. The loving individual is connected with the world. He is not frightened since the world is his home. He can lose himself because he is certain of himself.
Love means recognizing the world as an emotional experience. However, there is also another way of recognizing, understanding with the mind. We call this kind of understanding reason. It is different from Intelligence. Intelligence is using the mind to reach certain practical goals. A chimpanzee demonstrates intelligence when he sees a banana in front of his cage but cannot reach it with either one of the two sticks in his cage, then he joins both sticks and gets the banana. This is the intelligence of the animal, which is the same manipulating intelligence that we usually call understanding when talking of people. Reason is something else. Reason is the activity of the mind which attempts to get through the surface to reach the core of things, to grasp what really lies behind these things, what the forces and drives are that — themselves invisible — operate and determine the manifestations.
I have given this description of the mature, i.e. the loving and reasoning individual to better define the essence of the authoritarian personality. The authoritarian character has not reached maturity; he can neither love nor make use of reason. As a result, he is extremely alone which means that he is gripped by a deeply rooted fear. He needs to feel a bond, which requires neither love nor reason — and he finds it in the symbiotic relationship, in feeling-one with others; not by reserving his own identity, but rather by fusing, by destroying his own identity. The authoritarian character needs another person to fuse with because he cannot endure his own aloneness and fear." ~ Erich Fromm
I am sorry to hear about your mum and I hope for a speedy recovery.
Adam Curtis latest attempt to make sense of current chaotic state the world "Can’t Get You Out of My Head" opens and closes with a uplifting quote form my favorite anthropologist, activist, anarchist and all around nice guy, the late David Graeber.
“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.”
We could just choose to do things differently, like our ancestors did for thousands of generations. It is really that simple.
We just have to remember how to work that human social muscle that we haven't used for a very long time.
You are, quite honestly, one of the best writers of our time. Insightful, prescient, soulful. Really love your work. Just donated. Prayers for you and your Mom.
"educated folks would come to the village and yell at peasants for their backward ways." Kind of synchronistic, but threw together a small piece on peasant wisdom (a few hours ago, actually), if you're interested to check it out: Peasant Wisdom #1. First and only post so far ;)
I was born in Poland in 1975 and I live there (still). Therefore I can remember some of the communistic time, and I know something about the communists, mostly from the parents' stories and reading books. I know also about the DDT issue and other 'scientific' improvements, which eventually turned out into big mistakes... So I fully agree with your observations. The 'vaccination propaganda' and other covid related communication looks for me like propaganda of the communists' visions of rebuilding the society.
Thank you, Tessa; helpful thoughts that stimulate further contemplation... I also think of broken-ness when spirits are depleted; i.e., the American Indians and the Trail of Tears, which I have heard is part of my ancestry. I imagine the cognitive dissonance that they must have faced; that their living in harmony with nature and taking only what is needed could have been so supplanted by the evils of "the New World".
James Delingpole had an interesting interview with one of Boris Johnson’s former lovers, who insisted he was rather intelligent and decent. Obviously he was forced to go along with the elite’s insane agenda and didn’t last terribly long. It seems likely that any US or UK leader who doesn’t go along with their program will end up like JFK
"By living under different systems, I have observed that when broken people can’t compete financially, they start competing for moral superiority, and that’s worse."
That's a profoundly important insight, and it helps complete the idea that most problems have both top-down and bottom-up explanations. So that when disenfranchised people start fighting each other ideologically rather than fighting their oppressors, it's not entirely the fault of the media/politicians/etc. for creating divisive propaganda. It's also, to some extent, a natural outgrowth of their condition: a natural tendency for people to want to declare themselves "better than" when their lives are continually dealing them financial hardship and insecurity.
I'm not entirely sure what we can do about that, but fighting the propaganda and building a movement around fundamental human respect and dignity seems like a good start.
Remember David Icke, who stated we were ruled by lizards?Icke has predicted the future better than most. Maybe it takes a psychotic to understand sociopathology. Read the letters& emails of Western leaders today. Notice their emotional shallowness., their lack of intelligence. It is difficult to even imagine Bezos having a limbic system.Our state designed enemies:are a diffenent sort entirely. Putin, Xi, Khamenei aren't stupid and while they may be evil, they aren't sociopaths. I am sure that Putin has read & understood Dostoyevski, just as I'm sure Boris Johnson hasn't read Dickens and couldn't understand him if he did. This honestly gives me hope. We must keep alive some of the culture &traditions we inherited or we will be trampled by this empty monoculture. Which appears itself highly unstable. We must relearn the full depth of what it means to be human.
https://www.masslive.com/coronavirus/2021/02/holyoke-soldiers-home-resident-says-covid-vaccine-saved-his-life.html Hi Tessa, Sorry to hear about your mother. Person in article a Vietnam vet exposed to Agent Orange -rec'd chemo 3 yrs. ago -1 week later developed sepsis; was placed in semi-coma for 3 weeks -to rehab then Soldier's home...had bee drinking alkaline water for years -is now cancer-free & may be able to live independently in an apt. (walker/wheelchair). Expensive H2O but there's a machine that alkalizes & adds electrolytes which person owns but cannot utilize in group living situation. The South Asian guy who recommended says while Chlorella OK he thinks the H2O alkaline factor 7-9 caused cancer remission in our friends case.
https://freshbodymind.com/best-chlorella-supplement-brand/
I believe there is this small thing:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/04/25/the-disturbing-link-between-psychopathy-and-leadership/
it looks to me like what you've noticed. Normal people can be fucked up by The System, but they still retain their empathy.
Sad to hear that you've lost your source of income. I do not recognize this donation link you've posted and I'm extremely paranoid ;) but would like to chip in. Do you have PayPal?
So, I ask myself, what is this world I find myself in, now? I suspect even the powers that be are impressed with the results of their propaganda, so what could keep them from doubling down? Nothing I am aware of. What's their goal? Control, total, it would seem. PCR tests, case counts, variants, the SARS COV-2 virus, HCQ? A mountain of mis-, dis- , and simply bad information garbage strewn all over some truths. My current take is that the virus is real, of synthetic origin, pretty weird but generally not so dangerous to those under 60, that Ivermectin really works, that the perfidy of the PTB can be no more perfectly exposed as by the suppression of information regarding Ivermectin's protective potency. The flu is down because it is counted as COVID. Dialing down PCR tests cycle counts will result in a correspondingly drop in reported cases, but more dangerous variants are likely real, however intentionally managed for the benefit of the PTB. Cancel culture, censorship, and the growing snitch movements? How easily we are led so afoul. Where to from here? The double down can be prosecuted in so many ways. I saw something about Taibbi defending Substack. Blackout of Substack and all other potential independent information/thought would be entirely collimated with the currently evolving patterns. Scary, but sadly true. As for broken people, I think power lust is lavishly woven into our DNA, so the path to a better world is only as obtainable as is the recognition that one person's pain is not another's gain. What we literally need is for all of us to have to walk in each other's shoes. Not sure how we can manage that.
The corporate-run world hides behind flags and -ism's, but any system that creates great inequality is sustained by bribery, conformity and disinformation because it is so unnatural, undemocratic and anti-life. It detests the individual spirit.
The film Rollerball best analyzes this unevolved mindset that requires loyal subservience to its toxic communitarianism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnMHvISlrHM
"What do we mean by “authoritarian personality”? We usually see a clear difference between the individual who wants to rule, control, or restrain others and the individual who tends to submit, obey, or to be humiliated. To use a somewhat friendlier term, we might talk of the leader and his followers. As natural as the difference between the ruling and the ruled might — in many ways — be, we also have to admit that these two types, or as we can also say, these two forms of authoritarian personality are actually tightly bound together.
What they have in common, what defines the essence of the authoritarian personality is an inability: the inability to rely on one’s self, to be independent, to put it in other words: to endure freedom.
The opposite of the authoritarian character is the mature person: a person who does not need to cling to others because he actively embraces and grasps the world, the people, and the things around him. What does that mean? Children still need to cling. In their mother’s womb they are — in a physical sense — one with their mother. After birth, for several months and in many ways even for years, they remain — in a psychological sense — still a part of their mother. Children could not exist without the mother’s help. However, they grow and develop. They learn to walk, to talk, and find their way around the world which becomes their world. Children possess two skills, inherent to the individual, which they can develop: love and reason.
Love is the bond and the feeling of being one with the world while keeping one’s own independence and integrity. The loving individual is connected with the world. He is not frightened since the world is his home. He can lose himself because he is certain of himself.
Love means recognizing the world as an emotional experience. However, there is also another way of recognizing, understanding with the mind. We call this kind of understanding reason. It is different from Intelligence. Intelligence is using the mind to reach certain practical goals. A chimpanzee demonstrates intelligence when he sees a banana in front of his cage but cannot reach it with either one of the two sticks in his cage, then he joins both sticks and gets the banana. This is the intelligence of the animal, which is the same manipulating intelligence that we usually call understanding when talking of people. Reason is something else. Reason is the activity of the mind which attempts to get through the surface to reach the core of things, to grasp what really lies behind these things, what the forces and drives are that — themselves invisible — operate and determine the manifestations.
I have given this description of the mature, i.e. the loving and reasoning individual to better define the essence of the authoritarian personality. The authoritarian character has not reached maturity; he can neither love nor make use of reason. As a result, he is extremely alone which means that he is gripped by a deeply rooted fear. He needs to feel a bond, which requires neither love nor reason — and he finds it in the symbiotic relationship, in feeling-one with others; not by reserving his own identity, but rather by fusing, by destroying his own identity. The authoritarian character needs another person to fuse with because he cannot endure his own aloneness and fear." ~ Erich Fromm
I am sorry to hear about your mum and I hope for a speedy recovery.
Adam Curtis latest attempt to make sense of current chaotic state the world "Can’t Get You Out of My Head" opens and closes with a uplifting quote form my favorite anthropologist, activist, anarchist and all around nice guy, the late David Graeber.
“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.”
We could just choose to do things differently, like our ancestors did for thousands of generations. It is really that simple.
We just have to remember how to work that human social muscle that we haven't used for a very long time.
You are, quite honestly, one of the best writers of our time. Insightful, prescient, soulful. Really love your work. Just donated. Prayers for you and your Mom.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the kind responses and for your support!! I am in awe of how beautiful my friends are. Thank you.
"educated folks would come to the village and yell at peasants for their backward ways." Kind of synchronistic, but threw together a small piece on peasant wisdom (a few hours ago, actually), if you're interested to check it out: Peasant Wisdom #1. First and only post so far ;)
https://rustic.substack.com
Great post. Subscribed. Will definitely read through your archive, and thank you for sharing your insight!
Sorry to hear about your mom, Tessa. I’ll be praying for her.
I was born in Poland in 1975 and I live there (still). Therefore I can remember some of the communistic time, and I know something about the communists, mostly from the parents' stories and reading books. I know also about the DDT issue and other 'scientific' improvements, which eventually turned out into big mistakes... So I fully agree with your observations. The 'vaccination propaganda' and other covid related communication looks for me like propaganda of the communists' visions of rebuilding the society.
I cite this article to everyone, almost as if I'm a Tessa-ist
Thank you, Tessa; helpful thoughts that stimulate further contemplation... I also think of broken-ness when spirits are depleted; i.e., the American Indians and the Trail of Tears, which I have heard is part of my ancestry. I imagine the cognitive dissonance that they must have faced; that their living in harmony with nature and taking only what is needed could have been so supplanted by the evils of "the New World".
James Delingpole had an interesting interview with one of Boris Johnson’s former lovers, who insisted he was rather intelligent and decent. Obviously he was forced to go along with the elite’s insane agenda and didn’t last terribly long. It seems likely that any US or UK leader who doesn’t go along with their program will end up like JFK