Well said. Cult thinking of any sort leads to a rigid mentality that severs itself from the richness of the world, trapping its victims in unrealities of various kinds.
Interestingly, this is unrelated, or nearly so, to specific beliefs. It is, rather, a stance towards belief.
The error people make is that they notice that 'belief X is not true, therefore the group holding X is a cult, therefore the group holding not-X must not be a cult'.
Indeed John Carter ... a profound angle on what it means to be human, rather important as general A.I. might be right around the corner ... and begs the question as to whether 'Artificial Belief" might emerge from the current A.I. 'hallucinations' (funny euphemism for 'lying with confidence'. Just yesterday, Yokosuka shi, south of Yokohama announced it was incorporating ChatGPT into its city government work flow. Fingers crossed.
Oh no. Are they already incorporating it? I played with it for a few minutes, and in the course of that time, it produced several well-written texts, full of factual errors.
Yeah, same here. Scary that "hallucinations" is making the rounds as a euphemism for "errors". My guess is that the psychopaths in charge will soon be appropriating that term for their shameless lying. A long-time common practice for politicians or businessmen inescapably guilty act of thievery suddenly become 'sick' and are hurried to a private hospital for long term recuperation. I'd bet my bottom yen that 'hallucinations' will be one of the emerging symptoms.
GPT4, on the other hand, produced some scary good results depending on how well I prompted it. For example, one of my prompts was to list those mystical traditions which organized religions tend to have in common, and it spit out a fairly comprehensive list in less than a minute. With a little prodding for details, poking at the edges of answers, and hedging meanings ... I could easily imagine the hype of being able to write a book in less than an hour.
My guess is that we will soon see a flood of books, music, and graphic arts that are largely, if not entirely, flooding the market ... and prompted by those with business interests as their priority. Unfortunately, it does not have to be great art because "good enough" will satisy the majority of people in the majority of situations. After my quick trip to the states, I thought about the difference between dining and shopping background music between Japan and the U.S. (mostly 'golden years' stuff for the snowbirds in Tucson ... and jazz/Brasil for the pretentious in Japan) ... but I cringed at the lowest common denominator of music forced into my ears at the cheaper dining spots of either country. Would rather hear the 'music of the spheres' through the chirping of crickets ... as long as they are not topping my pasta.
Again, just guessing, but the overtly human element will become increasingly important in distinguishing authentically human art as an experience from canned art as a consumer-commodity ... but that is something you are more qualified to write about in a future post. Looking forward to it Tessa.
Regarding cults, I often recall talking to serial Jehovah’s Witnesses and after a while, the common trait was that they always had to defer their answer to consulting someone higher or deeper in their web when they were confronted with a thought that went beyond their margin. Somewhere there may have been lurking the shared fear of outsiders, but this characteristic of deferring to an expert authority seemed a common feature. This resonates with your crusade against robots. The recent charade to “follow the science” was the march of the robots to follow Fauci, in favor of actual science that is always testing the hypothesis …and eschewing the traditional view, or pronouncement by self-proclaimed authority.
Apr 20, 2023·edited Apr 20, 2023Liked by Tessa Lena
I once had a brush with Scientology. I had a couple of conversations with one of their representatives. I came this close to being "audited." But it sounded like and looked like a cult. So I went no further. I decided instead to develop a moderate drinking problem. And by the way. A. A. is a cult.
Believing that one is powerless to give up a behavior or substance. Still another cult.
Smart phone users (or at least that clear majority "addicted" to the devices) - Yes, they're a cult.
another cult.
People who have ACCEPTED a psychiatric diagnosis or two or three of them. They're a cult.
The new and different and completely novel disease was transported largely via devices. If I bother now and then to talk reality to one of these entities their device tells them what's true and/or real and that I'm an unhinged conspiracy theorist. It's simultaneously tragic and absurd. We are here.
I've told everyone in my small world I have only a land line. Minutes or hours later they send me a text.
i was going to stop with the simple observation that racism was invented by slave traders and conquistadors as a justification for genocide. we talk about cultural baggage, and inheritances of trauma, so that validates your ancestral theory. is it possible that there is also a slow leak from the akashic records?
That's an excellent point. The notion of "race" is also very American. Prejudice is a universal one, "race" seems to be very American. And the fact that it was invented by the ones in power to prevent the black and the white dejected people from uniting says it all.
Apr 20, 2023·edited Apr 20, 2023Liked by Tessa Lena
we all tend to be tribal animals but "race" is actually a british invention. fine-tuned as a divide-and-conquer scheme in south africa too - as hannah arendt mentioned, apartheid was a big influence on the nazi regime
Yes. And sadly, one of the biggest influences on the Nazi regime, and I don't know why it should be an uncomfortable topic to discuss, was the early U.S. and the "handling" of the people who lived in the Americas before Europeans. High-level German Nazi studied it carefully and admired it.
That's not entirely accurate. While the specific racial labels currently in fashion indeed originated in the Americas, the word itself has long been used to refer to distinct ethnocultural breeds, and awareness of the difference in appearance and behavior between groups goes back to the beginning. Herodotus, for example, is full of such observations.
Sometimes I output pain, and sometimes I get culty, I've been in some of them, radical atheism, radical scientism, radical anti-covidianism.
I try to learn from this.
We all fail, and it's best to be humble, to be honest about what's going on inside with the right people, so that we might outgrow the shackles of our current cult.
If someone can't listen, then let them be.
They may know more than you realize, and choosing to be in a cult is a decision that I cannot understand, but I've come to realize, it is not mine to make.
Maybe people join cults because they lack self confidence, but prefer the security of being part of a group? Perhaps this is a throwback to the hunter- gatherer days, where you had to be part of a group in order to survive....
Well said Tessa. Awakening to what is really going on in the world and who is responsible for it takes some effort and time but the more difficult task is how to deal with it all once you are aware. And that is where your work is so valuable for me and I certainly do appreciate your efforts Tessa.
I found this message in a bottle that must've been floating in the ocean for decades, maybe even since before WWII. The message sounded like it came from someone in distress who was in hiding from some awful brutal repressive beasts. The message said: "Always be suspicious of any political ideology, or mass movement which asks you to abandon your critical thinking skills and your gut intuition; we were naive and didn't know...."
Apr 20, 2023·edited Apr 20, 2023Liked by Tessa Lena
Some people, who are unsure of themselves, anxious, feel a bit inadequate, can be readily sucked into cults by the big, affirming welcome into the family...
Then they get chores, and more chores, and have to pitch-in, of course...
In college I moved one friend out of an apartment with another friend in about 90 minutes one night.
They were both my friends from freshman year, and both had been my roommates, but one needed my help, and I understood.
Couldn’t agree more on your views about cults,you are a gem when it comes to intelligent,witty writing,a breath of fresh air in the very poor media landscape,much love and joy to you,thanks for your efforts 🙏
I'm in agreement ethnic prejudice is disgusting and I believe it stems from pride. Most ethnically prejudice folks are full of anger and dislike even those of their own ethnicity. As you stated it's a hatred for different beliefs at the core where they generally have no idea the traumas from their ethnic background could be possibly affecting them today. Thank you for leading with love.
Excellent observations. If you haven't read it, "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer is an excellent short book on people's proclivity to join whatever "new thing" is out there. When I read it, I was shocked at how often in my life I had unknowingly, more or less, joined a "cult". NEVER AGAIN.
Any mass society is by definition a cult. What gives it the appearance of coherence? It certainly isn't Dunbar's Number. It isn't kumbaya sung around a campfire among a group of intimates. From Hammurabi's Code to the Holy Bible to the UN charter of this and that, a mass society can only cohere around a handful of narratives. Call them laws or doctrines or policies or edicts or protocols or regulations or whatever. That's how it works.
Apr 21, 2023·edited Apr 21, 2023Liked by Tessa Lena
Dear Tessa, another beautifully written Substack essay. I think we just have to accept that all gained knowledge begins indeed with “individual personal experience.” And that all of us shape our own reality-bubble, our (ancestral) wounds included. To me, the world we might head towards is the one coming straight out of computer gaming for boys. And or the ones J.K.Rowlings brought to life in Harry Potter. Sometimes I think too many people game and Harry Potter became too much part of our imaginary world and so these fantasy worlds too moulded the world we are at right now. Because Thought Become Things. I also find the global 'oldfashioned-greedy-paternalistic-old-men-cult-world we live in now misses an important element: an end vision, a well defined definition of the world they see for themselves. I do find the satanism visual and ideological language boring and frankly utterly stupid. Esthetically it is hollow, unlayered and uninteresting. What do the elites want in the end, when all of us are killed, shot, starved? And the rest of us 'enslaved'. Enslaved for the purpose of what? I mean, we won't have any jobs anymore - robots - will do it, so enslaved to do what? And what kind of life will they live when all the rest is gone? Which kind of buildings will they live in, what kind of architecture, which kind of architect do they like? What kind of leisure will be included in their lives when all is conquered and killed? Hugging a genetically modified tree? What's the point in modifying a tree anyway? Will it make them happier when the tree is modified? How will they relate to each other, these elites, when all is gone? How will they deal with each other? Will they give hugs to each other and display respect and love? What is the ultimate endgame here? Sex and joy for life? The whole thing seems a joke to me, all of it! But I do think that us, we, the people can learn lessons here; We have to do what they don't do: we have to start to define in detail the world WE WANT TO LIVE IN. And to do that we first have to stop feeling we are victims. (This last one helps me personally a lot to get myself through the days).
Well said. Cult thinking of any sort leads to a rigid mentality that severs itself from the richness of the world, trapping its victims in unrealities of various kinds.
Interestingly, this is unrelated, or nearly so, to specific beliefs. It is, rather, a stance towards belief.
Yes!!!! You said it perfectly. It's a stance toward beliefs, and it seems to happen in all schools of thought!!
The error people make is that they notice that 'belief X is not true, therefore the group holding X is a cult, therefore the group holding not-X must not be a cult'.
That sounds right. And it is critically important to distinguish between the topic of debate and the way people go about that debate.
Precisely so.
The Holy Bible is in a sense for Dummies. The
More you read it the less complicated it is.
John 1:1
The Word Became Flesh
[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Indeed John Carter ... a profound angle on what it means to be human, rather important as general A.I. might be right around the corner ... and begs the question as to whether 'Artificial Belief" might emerge from the current A.I. 'hallucinations' (funny euphemism for 'lying with confidence'. Just yesterday, Yokosuka shi, south of Yokohama announced it was incorporating ChatGPT into its city government work flow. Fingers crossed.
steve
Oh no. Are they already incorporating it? I played with it for a few minutes, and in the course of that time, it produced several well-written texts, full of factual errors.
Yeah, same here. Scary that "hallucinations" is making the rounds as a euphemism for "errors". My guess is that the psychopaths in charge will soon be appropriating that term for their shameless lying. A long-time common practice for politicians or businessmen inescapably guilty act of thievery suddenly become 'sick' and are hurried to a private hospital for long term recuperation. I'd bet my bottom yen that 'hallucinations' will be one of the emerging symptoms.
GPT4, on the other hand, produced some scary good results depending on how well I prompted it. For example, one of my prompts was to list those mystical traditions which organized religions tend to have in common, and it spit out a fairly comprehensive list in less than a minute. With a little prodding for details, poking at the edges of answers, and hedging meanings ... I could easily imagine the hype of being able to write a book in less than an hour.
My guess is that we will soon see a flood of books, music, and graphic arts that are largely, if not entirely, flooding the market ... and prompted by those with business interests as their priority. Unfortunately, it does not have to be great art because "good enough" will satisy the majority of people in the majority of situations. After my quick trip to the states, I thought about the difference between dining and shopping background music between Japan and the U.S. (mostly 'golden years' stuff for the snowbirds in Tucson ... and jazz/Brasil for the pretentious in Japan) ... but I cringed at the lowest common denominator of music forced into my ears at the cheaper dining spots of either country. Would rather hear the 'music of the spheres' through the chirping of crickets ... as long as they are not topping my pasta.
Again, just guessing, but the overtly human element will become increasingly important in distinguishing authentically human art as an experience from canned art as a consumer-commodity ... but that is something you are more qualified to write about in a future post. Looking forward to it Tessa.
Cheers,
steve
To be fair, factual errors in government texts are already rather common... ;)
That, too. :) But I was not even talking about propaganda-type errors. I was talking about things that were blatantly made up with no seeming benefit.
So was I 😂
Tessa,
Regarding cults, I often recall talking to serial Jehovah’s Witnesses and after a while, the common trait was that they always had to defer their answer to consulting someone higher or deeper in their web when they were confronted with a thought that went beyond their margin. Somewhere there may have been lurking the shared fear of outsiders, but this characteristic of deferring to an expert authority seemed a common feature. This resonates with your crusade against robots. The recent charade to “follow the science” was the march of the robots to follow Fauci, in favor of actual science that is always testing the hypothesis …and eschewing the traditional view, or pronouncement by self-proclaimed authority.
That's a failing of the individual, not of the ideology.
I once had a brush with Scientology. I had a couple of conversations with one of their representatives. I came this close to being "audited." But it sounded like and looked like a cult. So I went no further. I decided instead to develop a moderate drinking problem. And by the way. A. A. is a cult.
Believing that one is powerless to give up a behavior or substance. Still another cult.
Smart phone users (or at least that clear majority "addicted" to the devices) - Yes, they're a cult.
another cult.
People who have ACCEPTED a psychiatric diagnosis or two or three of them. They're a cult.
Yes, you may be right, Tessa.
Smart phone users vs smartphone users: the former sure don't deserve the cult label 😏
The new and different and completely novel disease was transported largely via devices. If I bother now and then to talk reality to one of these entities their device tells them what's true and/or real and that I'm an unhinged conspiracy theorist. It's simultaneously tragic and absurd. We are here.
I've told everyone in my small world I have only a land line. Minutes or hours later they send me a text.
“ I certainly don’t owe anybody a lobotomy. ”
❤️✊🏾
i was going to stop with the simple observation that racism was invented by slave traders and conquistadors as a justification for genocide. we talk about cultural baggage, and inheritances of trauma, so that validates your ancestral theory. is it possible that there is also a slow leak from the akashic records?
That's an excellent point. The notion of "race" is also very American. Prejudice is a universal one, "race" seems to be very American. And the fact that it was invented by the ones in power to prevent the black and the white dejected people from uniting says it all.
Had to look up the name of the records!!
we all tend to be tribal animals but "race" is actually a british invention. fine-tuned as a divide-and-conquer scheme in south africa too - as hannah arendt mentioned, apartheid was a big influence on the nazi regime
Yes. And sadly, one of the biggest influences on the Nazi regime, and I don't know why it should be an uncomfortable topic to discuss, was the early U.S. and the "handling" of the people who lived in the Americas before Europeans. High-level German Nazi studied it carefully and admired it.
what they liked best about it was how effective the genocide against the indians was. blankets infected with smallpox, etc.
plus indian reservations were a model for the death camps.
Yep
That's not entirely accurate. While the specific racial labels currently in fashion indeed originated in the Americas, the word itself has long been used to refer to distinct ethnocultural breeds, and awareness of the difference in appearance and behavior between groups goes back to the beginning. Herodotus, for example, is full of such observations.
I try to absorb pain and return love.
Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the shadows.
Sometimes I output pain, and sometimes I get culty, I've been in some of them, radical atheism, radical scientism, radical anti-covidianism.
I try to learn from this.
We all fail, and it's best to be humble, to be honest about what's going on inside with the right people, so that we might outgrow the shackles of our current cult.
If someone can't listen, then let them be.
They may know more than you realize, and choosing to be in a cult is a decision that I cannot understand, but I've come to realize, it is not mine to make.
With that, I agree. "Getting along" does not always mean "living together."
Maybe people join cults because they lack self confidence, but prefer the security of being part of a group? Perhaps this is a throwback to the hunter- gatherer days, where you had to be part of a group in order to survive....
Well said Tessa. Awakening to what is really going on in the world and who is responsible for it takes some effort and time but the more difficult task is how to deal with it all once you are aware. And that is where your work is so valuable for me and I certainly do appreciate your efforts Tessa.
Thank you, William, and I agree!!
I found this message in a bottle that must've been floating in the ocean for decades, maybe even since before WWII. The message sounded like it came from someone in distress who was in hiding from some awful brutal repressive beasts. The message said: "Always be suspicious of any political ideology, or mass movement which asks you to abandon your critical thinking skills and your gut intuition; we were naive and didn't know...."
Yeah, we should all be so motivated. Love all your work and offerings Tessa. Gratefully.
Thank you, Amy!!
Some people, who are unsure of themselves, anxious, feel a bit inadequate, can be readily sucked into cults by the big, affirming welcome into the family...
Then they get chores, and more chores, and have to pitch-in, of course...
In college I moved one friend out of an apartment with another friend in about 90 minutes one night.
They were both my friends from freshman year, and both had been my roommates, but one needed my help, and I understood.
You are such a good person, John!!! And yes.!!
Couldn’t agree more on your views about cults,you are a gem when it comes to intelligent,witty writing,a breath of fresh air in the very poor media landscape,much love and joy to you,thanks for your efforts 🙏
Thank you Herbert!! xoxo
I'm in agreement ethnic prejudice is disgusting and I believe it stems from pride. Most ethnically prejudice folks are full of anger and dislike even those of their own ethnicity. As you stated it's a hatred for different beliefs at the core where they generally have no idea the traumas from their ethnic background could be possibly affecting them today. Thank you for leading with love.
Even the globalists are a cult and the stuff they believe in would make you sick to your stomach.
Excellent observations. If you haven't read it, "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer is an excellent short book on people's proclivity to join whatever "new thing" is out there. When I read it, I was shocked at how often in my life I had unknowingly, more or less, joined a "cult". NEVER AGAIN.
Any mass society is by definition a cult. What gives it the appearance of coherence? It certainly isn't Dunbar's Number. It isn't kumbaya sung around a campfire among a group of intimates. From Hammurabi's Code to the Holy Bible to the UN charter of this and that, a mass society can only cohere around a handful of narratives. Call them laws or doctrines or policies or edicts or protocols or regulations or whatever. That's how it works.
Dear Tessa, another beautifully written Substack essay. I think we just have to accept that all gained knowledge begins indeed with “individual personal experience.” And that all of us shape our own reality-bubble, our (ancestral) wounds included. To me, the world we might head towards is the one coming straight out of computer gaming for boys. And or the ones J.K.Rowlings brought to life in Harry Potter. Sometimes I think too many people game and Harry Potter became too much part of our imaginary world and so these fantasy worlds too moulded the world we are at right now. Because Thought Become Things. I also find the global 'oldfashioned-greedy-paternalistic-old-men-cult-world we live in now misses an important element: an end vision, a well defined definition of the world they see for themselves. I do find the satanism visual and ideological language boring and frankly utterly stupid. Esthetically it is hollow, unlayered and uninteresting. What do the elites want in the end, when all of us are killed, shot, starved? And the rest of us 'enslaved'. Enslaved for the purpose of what? I mean, we won't have any jobs anymore - robots - will do it, so enslaved to do what? And what kind of life will they live when all the rest is gone? Which kind of buildings will they live in, what kind of architecture, which kind of architect do they like? What kind of leisure will be included in their lives when all is conquered and killed? Hugging a genetically modified tree? What's the point in modifying a tree anyway? Will it make them happier when the tree is modified? How will they relate to each other, these elites, when all is gone? How will they deal with each other? Will they give hugs to each other and display respect and love? What is the ultimate endgame here? Sex and joy for life? The whole thing seems a joke to me, all of it! But I do think that us, we, the people can learn lessons here; We have to do what they don't do: we have to start to define in detail the world WE WANT TO LIVE IN. And to do that we first have to stop feeling we are victims. (This last one helps me personally a lot to get myself through the days).