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I accidentally hit "send" while still editing the story, my apologies for the typos!!! I updated it on this page.

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Well written and powerful parable. It's message seems timeless. There will always be swindlers trying to come between us and our possessions. And there will always be those who buy into their crap and those who see through it. P.T. Barnum told about this. The main question is, has been, and always will be, how do we get people to see before they are actually taken advantage of by these predators? As you say, time seems to flush out the rats, but it's painful to watch, and seemingly so unnecessary. I wish we could teach kids in school to be more skeptical, but at least some of us continue to practice healthy skepticism. Maybe a required course in skepticism as a prerequisite to graduation?

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I think it boils down to the senses. Logic is easy to disable, developed senses and a pure heart are a good weapon against swindlers. But I think that pure-hearted people need to be "immunized" against swindlers, too, in their own way. What I think works well is balance, which is something that is earned.

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Such an important question you raise! However I think that emotions are easier to manipulate than logic. In the parable, it was envy that was exploited. By the rules of logic, everything needs to be reversible. So the same question of "Should you be able to take the elder's nicer house" also means that everyone should be able to take a house they want, including yours. The 'immunity' against being manipulable is, imo, rules that are tests of clear thinking, understanding and naming rhetorical tricks, and the touchstone that I am no better than anyone else. Then you're not needing to decipher the motives of the person, only the sense of their words--which need to be challenged even when the motives are pure but the logic is muddy.

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Emotions, I agree. They can be manipulated. But senses are not the same thing as emotions. Senses are what allows us to "see" what's going one, they are the eyes of the soul. Logic is good, too, but there is inner logic to about every construct, even acts of a psychopath. In my experience, developed senses is the strongest defense against the predatory types.

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I hadn't felt the need to respond, Tessa, because you and I agree in all the important ways. But during my morning meditation, I found myself thinking more about it. If there's a lesson for me in all of this in-fighting, it's to really and truly give up on the idea that there's some prestigious man out there who's going to recognize the genius of what I'm saying and launch me into having an audience. What I'm saying will be heard when the time is ripe for it and not a moment sooner. Thanks be to the great choreographer!

I look at you, Jessica Rose, Margaret and Meryl Nass (four who are top of mind) and see women without ego searching for what's true. In the same way that you four have science, my own superpower is logic, the Mr. Spock of spirituality, economics, raising children, human nature, domesticity, geopolitics. We think of rationality as the domain of men (especially economics). And so no one challenges the twisted logic of the systems empowering the parasites (one of my readers has been pointing out the value of predators in nature, so I'm trying a new metaphor ;-)

Anyway, I just wanted to send that message to you, sister to sister. Logic may be the master's tool, but it can also dismantle the master's house.

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Tereza, you are very kind, and also very modest!! Your intellect shines. You are brave and outspoken, and this is just wonderful!!!

In case this contributes to your inner thinking process: https://tessa.substack.com/p/parasites-and-mind-tricks-a-story

https://takecontrol.substack.com/p/mind-controlling-parasites

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Oh the post on Mercola is fabulous! I'll never eat again. It's the last day of my paid sub to him but I may need to re-up to keep access to it.

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A deep thank you and hugs to you, Tessa. And excellent! Like minds are thinking! I'll cite these in a new post on parasites not predators ;-)

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Understanding yourself. All of your inner psychology could help to understand what is going on in other humans - the good, the bad, the ugly and therefore help yourself to become wise to yourself and wise to others who want to swindle you

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yes! "know thyself".

if you don't face the monster within, you will see him without, whether he is there or Not! you may even manufacture a self fulfilling prophecy .

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how are the "senses developed" ?

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logic is a good foundation, knowing the fallacies, a real harmony of mind comes from knowing what is truly beautiful to you, what is just to you what is timeless truth in your observations of reality. this refines you, and tells you what you would sacrifice for, because we all must know this. many people do not get this until they have children. all of a sudden, the world means something very eternal. IMO that is far too late.

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‘But I think that pure-hearted people need to be immunised against swindlers too, in their own way.’

Absolutely vital, as we don’t need an anti narrative micro mass formation group, focusing only on one portion of their reality, no matter how true it is. A balancing act indeed. Fantastic story. Many thanks.👏✍️

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I lived my own version of this in the woke takeover of the underground cabaret scene I was part of in 2017. I have been Hoping for this same outcome but have yet to see evidence of it! I keep asking the angels for more evidence my prayers are working 😂❤️

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Wow, I'd love to hear more about the woke overtake of underground cabaret!! At one point, one of my bands was considered to be "dark cabaret" but then it became all to cliche and I started doing something else... and here we are. :)

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Yeah I was disgusted by the woke police punishing everyone’s behavior and turning the scene into a “safe space” when it was always meant to be playfully confrontational and intentionally un-safe!

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nope. can't do that anymore, .... sorrrrry

You might hurt someones feelings🥹 and for sure you are being elitist and racist, I suppose🙄

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Haha!! You're exactly right! I was a racist!

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if edith piaf was alive today she'd be banned everywhere.

but keep writing songs - we're going to need you when this is over!

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Definitely! One thing that kept me going after I got cancelled was the example of all the artists throughout history! My experience revealed to me that most of the people weren't artists at all but posers/ opportunists / influencers. Real artists are in service to their art and their integrity is more important to them than going along with what the conformists are saying.

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through beauty, we find our true selves, and what has real meaning to us, and this must include truth, always.

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Jan 2, 2023Liked by Tessa Lena

But it's clearly no longer a village story and many highly qualified opportunists have become gainfully employed in an attempt to corrupt and claim the entire world: https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/the-media-matrix-full-documentary?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=725827&post_id=94227128&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

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I'm saddened by this as well. The bullies have appeared to winning for a very long time.

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Sharing some related thoughts I wrote down this morning:

It seems to me that, as the year turns, the world hangs in the balance at this time. It feels to me that 2023 will be the tipping point. We could either continue to descend in to a nightmarish everlasting dystopic tyranny of the transhumanist technocrats, or emerge into a new enlightenment, and evolve as a society and possibly as a fully biological, natural species.

In my current view, the determining factor seems to be whether we are going to afford each other dignity and grace, or not. Here, by dignity, I am meaning: "the right of a person to be valued and respected for their own sake, and to be treated ethically", and "the state or quality of being worthy of honour or respect". By grace, I am meaning: "courteous goodwill".

One possible path being laid for us in 2023 is the vicious circle of the maximal with-holding of dignity and grace from one another. This is the chosen route the anti-humanist, transhumanist, technocrats have in mind for us. It seems to me, from everything they are telling us and actually doing, they would rather have us hold each other in maximal suspicion and contempt. In this way, they are attempting to shift the blame for the ills of the world on to us, and to keep us divided and at each other’s throats.

The alternative path is the virtuous circle of affording each other the maximal benefit of the doubt, freely granting dignity and grace to the vast majority of humans, and helping each other to live up to being worthy of this. In this framework, it is not individual humans who are scourge on the face of the earth, far from it, but it is the very powers that be that want to shift the blame onto us. It is the big powerful corporate entities and enabling governments who are doing all the damage, and who are putting humanity in a bad light.

The greatest danger I see for the coming year, is that not enough people will follow the virtuous path of resistance, and the plans to drag us down the vicious path the elites have planned for us will come to pass. We need more people to wake up, but too many are still turning eye to the manipulation.

To be continued, in the next part we will look at the concept of “psychological blindness” which explains why so many are still refusing to see, and how we can try to help.

On my part, in 2023 I resolve to keep writing in support of the side of the light, keep speaking out against the psychopaths in control, keep trying to fully recover from a chronic disease, to show that this is possible, and continue to work on becoming a better, calmer, more dignified and graceful perso

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Thank you, Gary, you put it very beautifully!! xo

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Jan 4, 2023·edited Aug 19, 2023Liked by Tessa Lena

Hi Gary,

I am watching the Darkhorse podcast you linked in your Jan. 3rd (I think) post. Maybe the best Darkhorse podcast I've seen ... the interview with Dr. Aseem Malhotra. Now at 1:09:00 on high speed, and taking notes, but cuts close to the quick of Lobaczewski's book regarding psychopathic nature of the individual and state as fractals of each other.

Not a simple cause-effect relationship (as with anything observable through the scientific process), but I remember a favorite passage from Martin Luther King Jr's. ''Letter From a Birmingham Jail'' (last two lines of the 12th paragraph) —

''Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.''

What a rabbit hole that passage leads down. I don't accept it as blind faith (how can one be 'moral' as a pure individual, isolated from a social context?), but as a great boot-strapping point to explore the relationship between the individual and collectives as both being social constructs to some degree, and extremes of each, beyond small communal social primates, lead to the anomie, isolation, and dehumanizaton of humans as social primates. Banishment from all familial and tribal connection is the equivalence of the death sentence. But if the tribe grows in numbers necessitating a complex hierarchy, inevitably, it devolves into decadence and decrepitude, much like a cancer cell feeding off its host, and then finally itself.

I still go through ups and downs regarding hope for humanity, as well as my personal fate ... and I am guessing it is the subconscious / emotional / physiological tide in me that precedes post-hoc rationalization. But on those days of low-tide, I can't help but to think the barren beach reveals humanity, perhaps every species, as emerging from the primordial ooze necessarily having the seeds of its self-destruction built into it collective genome.

Come to think of it, I remember in chatting with the bio-lab students that the amoeba, in a sense, is immortal ... forever splitting to reproduce. But since the origin of sexual reproduction, I can't think of a species that has not gone extinct (depending on how we define 'species'), and have no reason to believe homo sapiens will be the exception. Even amoeba may appear to have its limits.

I remember during a recent YouTube binge, I was watching this ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMd5PYfTGhU&t=920s ... and somewhere during this video, I was struck by the mention that the end of a species has a common conversational word ... 'extinction'. But the end of all life as we know it, does not.

Changing tracks for a moment, before I go back to my dreams ... I could not help but to see fractals in comments to Tessa's post of my own struggles during undergrad. I was a piss-poor biology student, but loved deep dives into philosophy ... trying as much to keep from committing suicide as to integrate different ways of 'understanding'. In comments, I noticed an exchange between Tessa and Tereza, who I both admire immensely, but could not help but to see Tessa coming from an almost purely empirical angle, and Tereza from an almost purely rational angle. Both have been successful in navigating roads of life I will never travel, but I can't help but to see a deeper integration of both ways of grasping it all. Certainly both are part of the scientific method of problem solving ... induction, deduction, observation, rinse, repeat, publish, refute, rinse, repeat, fine-tune, ad-infinitum — until the process is either corrupted by institutional capture, or the paradigm is too big too fail — yet dependent on too many contradictions for the current Tower of Babble, uh ... Babel ... to sustain itself. But for the time being, I will refrain from retracing my path during some dark undergrad days ... maybe in a poem of my own. It is frustrating to keep burying myself in comments to others' dreams.

(sigh) Just mumbling to myself here Gary, and wondering if I have not yet wished you an 'effective' New Year.

Your voice is a big gun for me Gary.

Keep up the good fight.

— steve

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deletedAug 19, 2023·edited Aug 19, 2023Liked by Tessa Lena
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Yes, I think there is truth in what you say.

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So beautiful and significant, Tessa. I too have been struggling to make sense of the fractious time we're in. I think you might like the one I posted yesterday on words, trying to go to the heart of the matter. I feel like there's a correspondence between this and what I was trying to say: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/when-words-die-worlds-die

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Jan 2, 2023·edited Jan 2, 2023Liked by Tessa Lena

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it-please try to believe me-unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. "

Excerpted from:

"They Thought They Were Free"

The Germans 1933-45

by Milton Mayer, 1955

https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

More with that excerpt:

""The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your 'little men,' your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about-we were decent people-and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it-please try to believe me-unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures' that no 'patriotic German' could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice-'Resist the beginnings' and 'Consider the end.' But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might."

I read a lot of history growing up. Primarily the history of the wars of the 20th Century, precursors, battles, aftermath. Following the counsel, "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." I read about the rise of totalitarianism in both 1930's Germany and the Soviet Union. The excerpt from Milton Mayer's book above could as well have been from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book The Gulag Archipelago. Or any number of books written about the rise of those evil regimes. Always based on deception.

I took it upon myself ot learn the methods of deception. I even clipped the following column from a local paper where I grew up in 1980 about how the US government taught its intelligence operatives how to lie, sharing my thoughts about it on this Substack piece I wrote back in August, 2022. A humorous presentation of useful information. Saved it all these years:

https://freedomfox.substack.com/p/the-credibility-of-three

I studied Soviet-era propaganda from my childhood home in Miami, Florida. Listening to Radio Moscow in the evenings, hearing the chimes that opened each evening on replays found on the internet evoke memories of olden times. I watched TASS evening news on the local PBS station that aired it nightly following the regular news hour. I'd even pick up the English-language Pravda newspaper at the local library from time to time. No, I wasn't an aspiring Marxist or seduced by the propaganda of the Soviets. I sincerely wanted to know why our main adversary had such hostility for our nation. It didn't take long for me to realize what propaganda looked and sounded like. The stories they told of our nation didn't look or feel like anything I knew and saw going on around me. (It interestingly foretold what the newscripts parrot by D's and our evening news today and have for many years now, though.) I studied Soviet-era propaganda so I would always know what it sounds like, the repetitive unoriginal lines, repeated over and over, that ask me to indulge any notions of inequity and surrender to the same urges Tessa describes in the fable. Patterns.

I learned the methods of deception and how to spot patterns so well that when I joined the US military I was approached to become a cryptolinguist. I eventually went on to study persuasion, mass media, propaganda under one of the eventual co-founders of Factcheck.org, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, decades ago when she taught at the Univ. of Texas. Those who can, do, those who can't, teach. She does both now. I also studied Marketing there, the work of Bernays. How to sell. Ideas, not just products. The idea of a product is usually much more enticing for consumers to base their purchases on than a product itself. I developed a much greater degree of political awareness and acuity than most ever had occasion to develop. And applied it to more than two decades of political advocacy and campaign consulting. Selling ideas.

I worked with public policymakers on a variety of issues, including public health policy. Working with senior healthcare industry officials, regulators, medical lawyers, practitioners of all healthcare delivery lines. And when pandemic health policies were introduced that strayed from the advice and counsel of planning guides that hundreds of billions of dollars had gone into researching and developing based on a century of medical science I knew we had entered into a major propaganda and deception campaign. And that authorities could not be trusted.

Because I studied history. And didn't want to be doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately, as Milton Mayer's book, and the rest of its contemporaries described, most people didn't and wouldn't take the time to study it. and became susceptible to the massive psychological operation that was deployed across the entire world. Reinforced by the most massive, global propaganda and censorship campaign ever undertaken to quash dissent.

During the first two years of the pandemic I went back to develop a greater understanding of the types of deceptions and manipulations we were being subjected to. It's when I discovered The Science (TM) we were told we must follow. It wasn't Natural and Medical science. It was Social and Behavioral Science. The science of fear. The science of totalitarianism.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210519003131/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/14/scientists-admit-totalitarian-use-fear-control-behaviour-covid/

I've learned the ins and outs of behavioral science, and its related field bioethics. Terms like "optimism bias," "choice architecture," and others they apply to the practice of behaviorism. The fields erect guardrails with the stated intention of protecting individual liberty while protecting collective health and safety, applying terms like "good stewardship" to their decision-making. Guardrails that were brushed aside without a blink of an eye the moment they met a crisis.

They even have a set of ethics for using deception, manipulation, lies. Ethics that state that as long as an intelligent and educated person can detect the lies it is ethical to lie. Declaring only subliminal messaging to be unethical. Our protests that we know they are lying to us are met with a chuckle as proof-positive that they've met their ethical obligations about lying. Heads they win, tails we lose. Their ethics are a farce.

Their ethics mirror the ethics of many a tyrant. As former NYT Pulitzer-prize winning writer, Walter Duranty wrote:

"“But – to put it brutally – you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

https://www.nytco.com/company/prizes-awards/new-york-times-statement-about-1932-pulitzer-prize-awarded-to-walter-duranty/

As CS Lewis wrote:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

So what can we do about it? See my next comment in thread below.

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From my perspective, the pandemic response was not a sophisticated psy-ops. It was a vulgar power grab under the guise of an emergency. How so many people could not see this, even years later, is beyond me.

Maybe we schizoids have a special sense for these things.

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The How is described in both the Milton Mayer book and excerpts. And in the ScienceAlert link. Human psychology. Herman Goering said that what happened in Germany could happen in the US or anywhere with the right amount of coordinated fear pressure applied. Human psychology. We are no smarter or more evolved than the Aztec who performed human sacrifice to make crops grow. To believe we are is pure arrogance. And evil knows this about us. Using false prophets to achieve their goals.

https://i1.wp.com/www.pilloledistoria.it/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/sacrifici_umani.jpg?fit=686%2C600

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I don't relate my experience of seeing this for what it is, with the majority's inability to do the same. How am I different to other people? I'm no student of history. I consider the field of history to be propaganda in it's own right.

I was diagnosed with Schizoid Personality Disorder, which among other things, means I'm not concerned about remaining in the good graces of social groups. In real life I know how to present a facade of common courtesy while keeping my views to myself.

I'm not saying there aren't sophisticated psyops backed by behavioral studies... but the Covid pandemic wasn't one of them.

When a majority can be hypnotized that easily, I see little hope for the future.

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Marxists don't believe in separate natural and social sciences. The Scientific Method of Rene Descartes, Roger Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton were the necessary precursors for individual freedom and liberty to emerge, leading to the very founding of our nation. When natural sciences were able to disprove the basis of many laws and rules of monarchs and religious leaders the mystical sorcery of social control practiced up until then lost its ability to control populations.

Which is why Marx and Engels saw only one science, the science of history. Separate natural sciences pose as great a threat to totalitarian regimes as separate church from state does. Totalitarians cannot permit an alternative authoritative system to exist that contradicts their edicts they impose for a "greater good" as they see it. Communism has never permitted an independent Church. Nor does it permit separate natural sciences.

The CV pandemic most certainly was/is the most sophisticated behavioral science-based psyops ever conducted in the history of mankind. Their own plans inform us of this. If you don't choose to inform yourself of this irrefutable fact then you will continue to believe an illusion.

"We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist. The history of nature, called natural science, does not concern us here; but we will have to examine the history of men, since almost the whole ideology amounts either to a distorted conception of this history or to a complete abstraction from it. Ideology is itself only one of the aspects of this history."

- Marx & Engels on the Science of History

Marx, Karl; Engels, Frederick. The German Ideology, 3rd rev. ed. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), p. 34f. (Collected Works; vol. 5) From vol. 1, chapter 1, Feuerbach, section I.1.

Note: This famous passage is crossed out in the original manuscript, and thus appears as a footnote in the printed edition of the Collected Works. It is sometimes omitted both in print and in online form.

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I'm not a Marxist, nor do I see the Covid pandemic as a Marxist plot. Science of history? There is only philosophy of history. Again, I do not consider history to be a reliable field of study. You will learn, and draw the lessons, that the biased "historian" wants you to.

Marxist ideology and its derivatives led to the deaths of tens of millions. Totalitarian systems have killed over a hundred million. Is that outcome what you would describe as sophisticated?

Perhaps to intellectuals living in fantasy land, it might...

People have to be blind not to see this. Blind, deaf and dumb. With zero values and morals.

This is where I start calling them names out of frustration. I went to school with them, worked alongside them, but do not understand them.

We choose to behave like animals. We choose to waste our potential, or allow society to deprive us of it. We have only ourselves to blame.

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They're not sophisticates. The terms used are the ones they use for themselves. I appropriate them to better understand what' s in their minds and share how they envision themselves with others. Must know adversary to defeat them, and all.

They believe themselves to be acting within a set of ethics. As they lead millions, billions to early, miserable deaths. Their ethics includes leaving a door open for those who get the information and avoid the traps they set for people to die. "We told them, they didn't listen, their choice." After preying on the minds and known weaknesses of mankind to make terrible choices. Ethics. For these people. You don't see the CV pandemic as a Marxist plot. That's ok. That's not what I believe either. I see it as both a Marxist and Fascist plot. The Authoritarians. Because it is. It's a Pact they've entered into decades ago, the first one we learned about was the Hitler-Stalin Pact. You should read up on it. Quite fascinating. Both systems have much more in common than they do with western liberal capitalist societies. Central planning, same contempt for individual freedom and liberty. They learned from history - not to break the Pact until the Bitter Clingers and Deplorables are gone this time.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234008336_The_Hitler-Stalin_pact_discussion_of_the_Non-Aggression_Treaty_and_the_secret_protocols

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In the course of my readings these past few years I came across this article written when Pres. Trump was in office feared to represent the beginning of an authoritarian regime. This article is written by a Behavioral Scientist. I find it useful to learn the means and methods of my adversaries. So I may learn how to best defeat them.

Would You Stand Up to an Authoritarian Regime or Conform? Here's The Science

ScienceAlert, October 11, 2019

https://www.sciencealert.com/would-you-stand-up-to-an-authoritarian-regime-or-conform-here-s-the-science

Providing these insights:

"They argued that human behaviour is governed by two complementary, and very different, "logics".

According to the logic of consequence, we choose our actions like a good economist: weighing up the costs and benefits of the alternative options in the light of our personal objectives. This is basically how we get what we want.

But there is also a second logic, the logic of appropriateness. According to this, outcomes, good or bad, are often of secondary importance – we often choose what to do by asking "What is a person like me supposed to do in a situation like this"?

The idea is backed up by psychological research. Human social interactions depend on our tendency to conform to unwritten rules of appropriate behaviour. Most of us are truthful, polite, don't cheat when playing board games and follow etiquette. We are happy to let judges or football referees enforce rules. A recent study showed we even conform to arbitrary norms.

The logic of appropriateness is self-enforcing – we disapprove of, ostracise or report people who lie or cheat. Research has shown that even in anonymous, experimental "games", people will pay a monetary cost to punish other people for being uncooperative.

The logic of appropriateness is therefore crucial to understanding how we can organise ourselves into teams, companies and entire nations. We need shared systems of rules to cooperate – it is easy to see how evolution may have shaped this.

The psychological foundations for this start early. Children as young as three will protest if arbitrary "rules" of a game are violated. And we all know how punishing it can be to "stick out" in a playground by violating norms of dress, accent or behaviour.

Authoritarian regimes

Both logics are required to create and maintain an authoritarian regime. To ensure that we make the "right" personal choices, an oppressive state's main tools are carrots and sticks – rewarding conformity and punishing even a hint of rebellion.

But personal gain (or survival) alone provides a fragile foundation for an oppressive state. It is easy to see how the logic of appropriateness fits in here, turning from being a force for cooperation to a mechanism for enforcing an oppressive status quo.

This logic asks that we follow the "rules" and make sure others do too – often without needing to ask why the rules are the way they are.

Regimes therefore supplement rewards and punishments with self-policed norms, rules and conventions. A "good" party comrade or a member of a religious cult or terrorist group will learn that they are supposed to obey orders, root out opposition and not question authority – and enforce these norms on their fellows.

The authoritarian state is therefore concerned above all with preserving ideology – defining the "right" way to think and behave – so that we can unquestioningly conform to it.

This can certainly help explain the horrors of Nazi Germany – showing it's not primarily a matter of individual evil. As the philosopher Hannah Arendt famously argued, the atrocities of the Holocaust were made possible by normal people, manipulated into conforming to a horribly abnormal set of behavioural norms."

"Few will fight Gilead after carefully weighing up the consequences – after all, the most likely outcome is failure and obliteration. What drives forward fights against an oppressive society is a rival vision – a vision of equality, liberty and justice, and a sense that these should be defended, whatever the consequences."

This return to our senses that the fable Tessa describes is how we prevail over the lies, manipulations and deceptions of our time. In the first World War of the Information Age. The battlefield is the human mind, not munitions used against physical bodies to control land.

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Freedom of the press would also help. Recognizing the wisdom of the old saw, "Two sides to every story". Learning how to critique others in a respectful abut thoughtful manner. Humility also helps, as it recognizes the limitations of one's own thinking capacity.

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Beautiful story Tessa. So many valuable lessons. ❤

I remember a time, growing up when entertainment was something you actively did, books you read and even tv PBS real journalism, family stories, good against evil. The stories had value. The cartoons had wise lessons. Now, from toddler to teen, the messages are aimed at peoples brains, to distract and subjugate people pandering to their shadows.

I love your story. It reminds me of that time, when good was good and bad was bad.

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Thank you Heidi!! I grew up on Soviet films, and some of them were philosophical treasures (while some, of course, were blatant propaganda :) There were film makers who managed to craft subversive and powerful messages using the genre of children's stories and fairy tales. Some of them really influenced me, they were really beautiful tales.

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They sound wonderful.

I can't imagine growing up in today's world. I fear what these next generations will bring to the table. They were the most harmed, so young and their health was stolen from them, and yet they are the most blind, growing up with constant propaganda, no strong foundation on which to build.

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Jan 2, 2023Liked by Tessa Lena

Another excellent article!... People wonder why there are so many problems in the world, poverty, war, crime pollution etc. etc. How did we get to this point and why are there no solutions? Humanity has always been ruled over, by the ruling class. from the beginning It is the "leaders" that have formed the ways of trading and interacting that the rest of society must live by. So! If we are looking for solutions to all of these problems, why not go to the top? You know the ones that claim to know best how society should function because after all it is there creation. All of our problems can be traced back to injustice and the resulting inequality. We are on the brink of a new day, what we are now experiencing are labor pains.

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spot-on example of how psychopaths mirror their victims. next step is divide and conquer. but you said it more poetically than i can

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Yep. And it happens on every level!! Sometimes they are very good at it, and people don't even see it until they do.

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you come home and they're sitting on your floor listening to your favorite records. and you say to yourself, "isn't this awesome we can share what we love."

right.

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That's a great metaphor :)

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Jan 2, 2023Liked by Tessa Lena

Thank you Tessa for sharing this fable. I wonder how many people will see themselves somewhere in this story. I know that I did. I certainly appreciate you sharing your wisdom and your love.

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Thank you, William!! We are living this fable. It's a fable about what is going on right now.

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Bay Area and California, you are here:

“… citizens without wisdom are chaotic and prone to crime…”

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Jan 3, 2023Liked by Tessa Lena

Reading your story, this passage from the Tao Te Ching came to mind:

27

A good traveler has no fixed plans

And is not intent upon arriving.

A good artist lets his intuition

Lead him wherever it wants.

A good scientist has freed himself of concepts

And keeps his mind open to what is.

Thus the Master is available to all people

And doesn't reject anyone.

He is ready to use all situations

And doesn't waste anything.

This is called embodying the light.

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?

What is a bad man but a good man's job?

If you don't understand this, you will get lost,

However intelligent you are.

It is the great secret.

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Jan 3, 2023·edited Jan 3, 2023Liked by Tessa Lena

This is such a important fable to understand and learn from if we are to reclaim our ability to govern ourselves wisely. Indeed a noocracy is something I explored in the podcast A Vote For Unity Consciousness (https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/discerningconsciousness/episodes/2022-08-07T03_10_49-07_00). Activists in the modern era want to see a renaissance of true democracy where we might find redemption from the forces that assail us. Yet, as in the fable, the populace has different levels of consciousness which, if not carefully discerned and accounted for, might bring down a society through ignorance or ego. The populist appeal of slick-tongued shysters telling the people what they want to hear to gain power is an effective means of manufacturing mass movements where Might Is Right. Where there is a tyranny of the majority. The wise are always in a minority.

The thought is, if we lived within a horizontal democracy, we would have a better chance at being free. No masters, no rulers, and hence, no chance for power to become concentrated in the hands of a few. Yet even here, there are limitations. An individual who is ignorant has as equal a say as someone who has devoted themselves to understanding a policy issue. The two, unfairly, cancel each other out. And inevitably there are more of the former than the latter on any issue.

Not everybody is cut out for democracy. The assumption with democracy is that if we don’t participate in it, we should have no complaint when decisions are made which are not in our best interests. There are so many different ways an individual can contribute to the collective good. Some of those people are bored to tears by big-picture thinking. Yet we insist they vote. All the lawmakers have to do is appeal to their ignorance with vague claims about a better world (Hope and Change, Make America Great Again) sprinkled with false promises, and those who are truly interested in grappling with real solutions are swamped by those who fall prey to platitudes.

"The paradoxical aspect of the fable is that the success of the opportunist really depends on the people, on how developed their senses are..." Democracy is very energy intensive—for it to work effectively, the majority of the populace must be capable of dispassionately synthesizing complex issues. Historically, democracies were few in example and were fairly short-lived. Monarchies, and the like, required less collective energy as decisions were left to a small group of people (the rulers and their courts). Less energy was needed to reach a plan of action or run a nation. Democracies require a large energy investment to create a high-functioning, educated populace in order to make sensible decisions. With other things in life to focus on, is it feasible for everyone to have a well-thought out opinion on every single policy issue under the sun? Perhaps this is something we can aspire to but we certainly do not yet have the maturity.

If democracies are fragile and dynasties unfair, how can we achieve a higher-order synthesis? Something both energy-conserving and fair? A constitutional republic might fit the bill but has been shown to be deficient (the USA is an oligarchic plutocracy disguised as a democratic republic).

What we can observe is that getting a populace to agree on the best way forward has been largely impractical. We like democracy because it FEELS like we can move forward together. Even if a populace was unbiased, rational, and well-informed, the complexity of modern life means specialists are essential to understand, generate, and guide everyday complex decisions.

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Thank you, Michael!! You are raising very important points!

To my senses, the "best" (most useful, most practical) democracies existed in older cultures where the wisdom was indeed carried by the elders who specifically dedicated their lives to learning about meaning, and the cosmos, and our relationship with the spirit, and how to maintain it in a balanced way, not through lecturing but through practice. What oftentimes is not mentioned that different older cultures were very different from one another, they had personalities, some were patriarchal, some were matriarchal, some had very liberal sexual relations (in order to celebrate the spirit), and some had very restricted sexual relations (in order to celebrate the spirit). Since then, I think, we have gotten collectively pretty myopic, assuming that "good and bad" is about following the algorithm, as oppose to following the mysterious energy of the spiritual world with reverence, love, and trust. What's good for one person is not so good for another. What works in one situation, may not work in another. And before everything got oversized, urban, and empire-like, people had a better chance to live in balance. I think the big size doesn't work with people, we don't seem to posses the ability to handle empires, etc, and still stay sane.

Which is to say, yes, the real democracy is impossible with every citizen truly pursuing wisdom, and this is only possible when people are devoted to being grouded in the spirit, and not in a talking point way but for real. This has been my observation about life, anyway.

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Wordsmithing is a thing among the young global leaders of the World ENSLAVEMENT Forum hoping to create order (theirs) out of global chaos. One of them offered up the idea of full scale bankster bailouts and to call it "Quantitative Easing" back in the 2008 collapse.

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Indeed, it is a very popular genre among the deceivers of all kinds, and it doesn't matter what demographic they target and what "talking points" they use. They are very insincere, those temporary influencers.

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