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?
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 😂❤️
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
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
"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. "
""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:
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.
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.”
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I accidentally hit "send" while still editing the story, my apologies for the typos!!! I updated it on this page.
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?
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 😂❤️
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
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
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
"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.
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.
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.
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.
spot-on example of how psychopaths mirror their victims. next step is divide and conquer. but you said it more poetically than i can
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.
Bay Area and California, you are here:
“… citizens without wisdom are chaotic and prone to crime…”
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.
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.
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.