I agree. It's a transhumanist cult trying to impose itself on us. It seems to me that these folks are every bit as faith-driven and deluded as any other cult. We're not going to vanish into the ether in the singularity or whatever it is these people believe. They no longer recognise how primitive they really are. Just animals.
Yes, the attack on Eros also applies to the way the performing arts have been forced onto Zoom--no nasty sweaty performers dancing or singing in front of packed together (unclean! unclean!) germ-ridden audiences. Not to mention that porn is the biggest money-maker on the internet, and set to be even more so. The whole thing disgusts me. I'm tactile too, and kinetic, and human (well all, animal, plant etc) bodies have an energy that cannot come through a digital medium.
But this tendency cannot have come about merely due to the panicdemic, it was already latent--hence things like OCD disorder and the fear of intimacy that living in economically precarious times has exacerbated. We have to stop this.
Thanks Tessa for a dose of joy and sanity! I used to think that Europeans and Canadians had more freedoms and more sensible governments but now I am oddly grateful to live in the US where the crazy is not quite as bad and individual liberties are still valued, albeit more in some places than others.
I've been thinking lately about the WHY of all this. If this is indeed a religious reform, and it sure seems like it, what is the religion? It can't be entirely new or externally imposed; for this to work they have to be pulling the strings on religious beliefs that are already inside of most people. This has led me back to the concept of the religion of Progress - that modern set of beliefs shared by much of the world that views humans as masters of our own destiny, emerging from a brutish, disease-ridden past toward a glorious, transhumanist, technological future.
If you're interested, I would encourage you to read my latest series of posts.
A Crisis of Faith. What is the religion of Progress, and how can it help to explain our crazy overreaction to Covid-19? http://www.luterra.com/blog/?p=1286
An Apostate from the Religion of Progress. My own story of coming to terms with Progress-based delusion in science, after working in the field of alternative energy research. http://www.luterra.com/blog/?p=1294
Sustainable Growth is Impossible. Examining more closely what beliefs are central to the religion of Progress, and why they are incompatible with living sustainably and harmoniously on this planet. http://www.luterra.com/blog/?p=1309
The Shape of Our Future. Debunking the common myths of infinite progress and sudden apocalypse, and examining the peak and impending decline of our civilization as we use up available resources. Also examining the way in which progress is ending at different times based on our position on the economic ladder, with elites increasingly maintaining progress for themselves by directly extracting wealth from lower classes (i.e. feudalism). http://www.luterra.com/blog/?p=1313
Grieving the End of Progress: A Social Theory for Strange Times. Examining our crazy world through the lens of collectively moving through the five phases of grief. The Great Reset from this perspective is decline marketed as progress: a way for the elites to extend their extraction while offering a vision of the shiny new technofuture that we still want to believe is ahead of us even as per-capita resources are beginning to decline. http://www.luterra.com/blog/?p=1301
"If this is indeed a religious reform, and it sure seems like it, what is the religion?"
Interesting question Mark L. But does it matter? There really is only one religion as they are all the same at their core. All of them employ the same root deception. Why not lump them all together here in one grand stinking pile and set fire to it? **lights match**
This root deception is simply human belief in a concept, an idea, a notion having no basis in reality. As we all know, persistent belief in a lie cannot help but manifest in our lives in the form of malaise, discordant relations, self-destructive tendencies— really all manner of human misery. When great masses of people constituting an overwhelming majority are fervently and zealously entranced by this lie then what we are doomed to experience is nothing short of a major meltdown at the reactor core.
In the religious mind, the deception is promoted and maintained by The Church Of The Great Lie. (my name for it)
In the non-religious mind, the exact same deception is used by The Authority Cult. (same)
Religious or not, all believers bow down and worship at the Altar Of The Lie. Enshrined there is an imaginary deity of some kind or a photo of a political “leader”, national flag, statue, etc.
This imaginary deity/leader/nation is held in the mind of the believer as all-wise and all-powerful and superior to all the rest. One can only obtain the so-called “benefits” of being a believer as long one worships and obeys “The Word”, “The Way” or “The Law”.
In order for the deception to work, it is required that the believer disregard what is seen through ones’ own senses, ignore what is comprehended by ones’ own mind, and in its’ place install The Great Lie.
What is this great lie? Nothing much, really. When I tell you, you are going to either be angry (ignorance, denial) or you will feel stupid (realization, destruction of the lie).
Okay here it is:
Someone else is better than you. They know things that you don't know. They are good, you are bad. They are smart, you are dumb. They are brave, you are afraid. They are strong, you are weak. They are wise, you are foolish. They know what to do, you do not have a clue, etc. etc. Poor sad you. The only thing you can do is listen for your masters' voice.
God is better than you. The State is better than you. Pick one, sign yourself into their care and forget about it because, boo hoo, you are a lesser being. You possess nothing of any great value within yourself. Left to your own decisions, going by your own thinking, your life will soon fall into the toilet. You accept that you have no choice but to follow, to obey, to be kept and owned like a slave and take your place on the farm as human livestock.
"It's okay. Don't worry about. Everybody does it."
This is why we love The Great Lie so much. It allows us to see ourselves as Inferior Beings being cared for by the Superior Being(s). We do not have to struggle thinking about things. We can forgo the difficult process of reaching our own conclusions, deciding for ourselves what to do and then taking responsibility for our choices. We can simply step outside and go where everybody else is going.
Nice and easy. Just let go and let God! Or sing the national song, pledge allegiance to the flag and pay your taxes. All will be well!
But all is never well, is it? We give ourselves over to The Great Lie and still we suffer indignities and increasingly experience (not to mention deliver) personal horrors we are hardly able to speak of. Having lots of money does not stop this, it just makes our misery a bit more comfortable.
But still we believe! It's understandable, I guess. I mean, all manner of personal and social difficulties arise when one refuses The Great Lie and chooses self-responsiblity, self-ownership, self-determination and choosing ones’ own way of thinking and living.
Why buck the tide standing up for yourself and face the wrath of these two cults? Pretty much everyone you know is a member of one or the other.
“Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.”
Life on planet Earth is an integrated organism. A single, physical body. Everything within it is necessary and contributes its’ thing, naturally. Humans are a part of life, no less or greater than any other part.
What if one of your internal organs decided that it was more important or better than another? The brain says “I can shut you all down anytime I want, therefore I am King”. The lungs then say to the brain “Just try it! I can shut YOU down if I don’t breathe.”
Is the body going to be healthy and able to thrive with that nonsense going on? The pancreas, the bladder and colon all living in fear of some crazy tyrant organs trying to control all the others.
Humanity is its’ own natural body too. Our “System”, modern civilisation, is based on the absurd notion that one type of internal organ is better than another and therefore justified in dominating the entire show with its' warped vision.
I don't think it is possible for human beings to exist without a narrative, a religion in a sense, that provides answers to existential questions like "who are we?", "why are we here?", "why do bad things happen?" etc. As you point out, most of the existing narratives are highly flawed and encourage people to give away their power to authorities.
If, as you say, "life on planet Earth is an integrated organism; humans are a part of life, no less or greater," that is in and of itself a statement of religious belief.
So I don't think it's about rejecting all belief; it's instead finding better options to replace those belief systems that are contributing to the sickness and destruction.
Thanks for your reply Mark! It's always interesting to hear back from folks who ponder greater/deeper things with a passionate perspective. Is this not why we are here? Surely Tessa is a magnet for folks like us.
"....that is in and of itself a statement of religious belief."
Is it? To me, any kind of belief, religious or otherwise, is to act/behave "as if" something we make up in our mind is, in fact, real and true. Am I creating in my mind "life on planet Earth is an integrated organism"? Or is life on Earth actually an integrated organism that really exists?
By your definition of belief, as I understand it, nothing can be known for sure, therefore nothing is real and physical existence is an illusion that requires a narrative or else......or else what? It all falls apart and disappears?
Does a cat, a bird, a lizard, need a narrative to exist? Or do they simply go about the business of being what they are? Humans are animal creatures too. Somehow we have gotten so far from ourselves, from what we are, that we need to make up stories and build silly worlds around them, worlds that endlessly increase in complexity and bog us down in their maintenance such that we forget the whole point of living. We are so caught up in our own belief crap that we have no idea how miserable we are or that what we are doing is completely nuts.
Why do humans need to tell themselves stories in order to live? Why do we make up oppressive and destructive notions such as God and Government based on nonsense like "Superior/Inferior Being"?
Why do we need belief systems? What is wrong with simply walking out into our beautiful surroundings and set about living in harmony with our natural inner sense just like every other living creature?
Clearly we have long since abandoned our inner sense of being human. Anyone alive today who has even the slightest feeling of it has either never lived in civilization or they have at great pains heroically overcome all nonsensical and destructive narratives based on beliefs brutally hammered into us from birth.
We look at the natural world (reality) and have chosen to see ourselves as being victimized by it (belief). We rise up and rebel against it. We are going to conquer it and make it do what we want. We are going to control the weather. We are going to restructure the human body. We are going to suck the teat of nature until there's nothing left and then move on to another planet where we can do the same parasitic thing.
Replacing a "bad" narrative with a "good" narrative only reinforces the idea that a human being needs guidance, control and rule. Whose "good" narrative shall be the one everyone lives by?
The "Superior Being" of course! Who else is there? Let's find this person who is greater than the rest of us "Inferior Beings" so we can fix this mess!
I think that the fact that we are social creatures with the ability to think and use language means that we ultimately need a narrative about the nature of our existence in order to be satisfied. Every human culture that I am aware of has such stories: creation stories, myths, parables, even scientific materialism is such a story, and it assumes far too much in my opinion.
When we were hunter-gatherer cultures, our senses and minds told us that the Earth is a living organism of which we are a part.
When we were agricultural peoples, our senses and minds told us that wild nature was threatening, where the wolves lived that raided our farms.
When we became technological peoples, our senses and minds told us that we were becoming masters of our own destiny, able to triumph over formerly-deadly diseases like plague and smallpox with antibiotics and vaccines.
As we reach the ecological limits of our planet and are forced to use less and to confront the fact that we are destroying the biosphere, we will need to craft different stories that match our new reality.
Stories can be abused and used for great evil, and every oppressive force throughout history has has justified their actions and energized their supporters with the power of narrative, with a claim to existential goodness. The Great Reset is no exception to this. And yet I still feel that we cannot live without stories.
It is helpful to look within ourselves, to reclaim our "narrative filter" (http://www.luterra.com/blog/?p=1167), and yet I don't believe that we can ever escape from narrative entirely, nor that it would necessarily be a good thing if we could. In a sense, story is what makes us human.
These are excellent Mark, thanks. Touching on a lot of things I've been thinking about lately. In the spirit of sharing, I've been enjoying this website's deconstructions of progress mythology https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/
thanks for that, you've articulated some of my frustration. (not sexual frustration, in that I of course ignored the rules when the chance was there) No, my frustration of seeing people accept the inhuman scam, just because of fear, and laziness to take responsibility for themselves. If it wasn't for the internet, I would only know one other 'denier' and I only speak to the person through the bloody internet. Anyway, good job.
Thank you!!!! Yes, the act of accepting it for longer than what they originally told us, two weeks etc, is I think a reaction to being gaslit and not knowing how (or sometimes not wanting) to deal with it!
We really enjoyed your post! Are you familiar with the work of the Berkeley shaman/performance artist, Frank Moore (1946-2013)? We (Linda and Mikee) were with Frank for many decades. When the pandemic first hit, we wondered if Frank would ever have been able to do his performances again ...
His performances involved "eroplay", a word that he created:
EROPLAY IS INTENSE PHYSICAL PLAYING AND TOUCHING OF ONESELF AND OTHERS. EROPLAY IS THE FORCE OR ENERGY RELEASED BY SUCH PLAY. IT IS ALSO THE HAPPY, PLAYFUL ATTITUDE TOWARDS LIFE THAT COMES FROM SUCH PLAY. EROPLAY IS NOT FOREPLAY, EVEN THOUGH FOREPLAY IS EROPLAY.
Here is an excerpt from Frank's piece EROPLAY written in 1989 for The Drama Review ( http://eroplay.org/eroplay/ ):
EROPLAY IS INTENSE PHYSICAL PLAYING AND TOUCHING OF ONESELF AND OTHERS. EROPLAY IS THE FORCE OR ENERGY RELEASED BY SUCH PLAY. IT IS ALSO THE HAPPY, PLAYFUL ATTITUDE TOWARDS LIFE THAT COMES FROM SUCH PLAY. EROPLAY IS NOT FOREPLAY, EVEN THOUGH FOREPLAY IS EROPLAY.
Here is another quote of Frank's that seems very relevant today from his script for his performance "Journey to Lila" ( http://eroplay.org/nyc-1989-tour-part-4/ ) written in 1988:
“WE ARE IN THE CAVE OF DREAM. WE ARE IN A BATTLE OF AN UNDERGROUND WAR AGAINST FRAGMENTATION. ART IS WAR AGAINST FRAGMENTATION. THE BATTLE IS ON ALL REALITIES. THE CONTROLLERS HAVE ALWAYS TRIED TO FRAGMENT US. FRAGMENT US FROM EACH OTHER. IMPRISON US IN ISLANDS OF SEX, COLOR, RELIGION, POLITICS, CLASSES, LABELS, ETC., ETC., ETC., ETC., ETC. THEY FRAGMENT OUR INNER WORLDS, THEY BLOW OUR INDIVIDUAL REALITIES APART, AND PLAY THE PIECES AGAINST ONE ANOTHER. THEY ARE US, OR A PART OF US.”
“THEY ARE THE CONTROLLERS, THE POLITICIANS, THE SEXISTS, THE WOMEN’S LIBBERS, THE PORNOGRAPHERS, THE CENSORS, THE MORALISTS, THE CHURCH, THE MEDIA, THE BUSINESSMEN, EDUCATORS, THE VICTIMS AND THE POWERFUL.”
“THEY ARE US. THEY HAVE DIVIDED US FROM OUR POWER, FROM OUR BEAUTY, FROM OUR LUST OF LIFE AND PLEASURE. THEY HAVE DIVIDED US FROM MOST OF REALITY…DYING FROM LIVING…SEX FROM LIVING, SEX FROM PLEASURE. WE ARE KEPT IN BOXES OF FEAR, OF MISTRUST. WE ARE KEPT WAITING…KEPT WAITING TO DO WHAT WE WANT…WAITING FOR ENOUGH MONEY, ENOUGH SCHOOLING, FOR EVERYTHING TO BE RIGHT. WE ARE KEPT WAITING AND PROTECTING AND HIDING AND SUFFERING.”
“TIME TO DO BATTLE WITH THE BOXES.
OUR TOOLS ARE MAGIC, OUR BODIES, AND DREAMS.”
Mikee and I are in the process of organizing Frank's enormous archives, publishing books about his work and his writings. Eventually all of his archives will go the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. We thought you might enjoy checking out Frank's art. Here is his website https://www.eroplay.com/
We have also just finished a 20-part web video series based on Frank's book "Art of a Shaman". All of the episodes are available at https://frankadelic.com.
Evaluating the effects of shelter-in-place policies during the COVID-19 pandemic
We estimate the effects of shelter-in-place (SIP) orders during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We do not find detectable effects of these policies on disease spread or deaths. We find small but measurable effects on mobility that dissipate over time. And we find small, delayed effects on unemployment. We conduct additional analyses that separately assess the effects of expanding versus withdrawing SIP orders and test whether there are spillover effects in other states. Our results are consistent with prior studies showing that SIP orders have accounted for a relatively small share of the mobility trends and economic disruptions associated with the pandemic. We reanalyze two prior studies purporting to show that SIP orders caused large reductions in disease prevalence, and show that those results are not reliable. Our results do not imply that social distancing behavior by individuals, as distinct from SIP policy, is ineffective.
While the loyal/royal subjects of the United Kingdom are waiting patiently for the day or year that it is safe and permissible to again embrace, they might feel better getting out every day for a nice COVID swab and a little light human interaction at the testing site.
Well Tessa . You have enlightened this old man but never fear I don’t play their games or follow Fauci’s guidelines. Biden and him are idiots. My dog is smarter than both of them put together.
I do not think that it is about dignity, but about ego and emotional investment. People do not want to admit that they are not Saving The Grandma And The World, but are useful idiots in a corporate power game. That would shatter their egos, and so they cling to FOR GREATER GOOD with ever growing cognitive dissonance. And swallow even bigger and more egregious lies.
As soon as people start controlling sexuality, you know you're dealing with a cult. This is classic cult behavior, from time immemorial. Sexuality is not just physical--it's a major component of spirituality. This is why rape and sexual abuse/incest is so damaging--it's a physical AND spiritual assault. Control the sexuality and you also control the spirituality. Religious leaders have always known this. Globalists, of course, think humans have no spirituality but they know what works best to control large populations. If it worked for the Church, it will work for them.
I'm sorry but ... you're talking in this piece about ... your ... 'sexuality'?
Do you have any idea how creepy to a man older in years, yet believe me, psychologically younger, this sounds? Can I suggest, and I don't wish to be impudent; - that you ask some men; - when was the last time that they had sex? You might like to publish your results?
Oh, and by way of example: - my last time was 2002, the time before that, ~ 1981. A New-York girl. Huh! I always stop to wonder how on earth, and yet how sort of privileged I was. East-side, Bronx, Manhattan? Who knows! Wow! I was in London.
And I was always a kind of good-enough-looking guy; so some chap in later years told me; - I always thought so. My last encounter was with a Nordic, a Viking daughter of boat-builders, and who held a PhD in 'evolutionary - biology'. It showed! Her lies were spectacularly sophisticated.
I really do think you should compose these articles into a book.
I'm reading 'Wildflower' by Drew Barrymore. Built upon notes.
That's the once very young-lady in Spielberg's E.T. A good read.
Some more cheerful news: the "danser encore" movement sweeping across Europe ... we did a gig in Munich on 1 May which I recorded, enjoy the human joy of singing and dancing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQXr5Vq8AWU
Sharp as ever.
Instead of saving lives the power-that-be are sucking the life from us.
Thank you!! They are trying but hopefully they will fail!
I agree. It's a transhumanist cult trying to impose itself on us. It seems to me that these folks are every bit as faith-driven and deluded as any other cult. We're not going to vanish into the ether in the singularity or whatever it is these people believe. They no longer recognise how primitive they really are. Just animals.
Yes, the attack on Eros also applies to the way the performing arts have been forced onto Zoom--no nasty sweaty performers dancing or singing in front of packed together (unclean! unclean!) germ-ridden audiences. Not to mention that porn is the biggest money-maker on the internet, and set to be even more so. The whole thing disgusts me. I'm tactile too, and kinetic, and human (well all, animal, plant etc) bodies have an energy that cannot come through a digital medium.
But this tendency cannot have come about merely due to the panicdemic, it was already latent--hence things like OCD disorder and the fear of intimacy that living in economically precarious times has exacerbated. We have to stop this.
Unfortunately, yes, a very old trend, centuries in the making!!
Thanks Tessa for a dose of joy and sanity! I used to think that Europeans and Canadians had more freedoms and more sensible governments but now I am oddly grateful to live in the US where the crazy is not quite as bad and individual liberties are still valued, albeit more in some places than others.
I've been thinking lately about the WHY of all this. If this is indeed a religious reform, and it sure seems like it, what is the religion? It can't be entirely new or externally imposed; for this to work they have to be pulling the strings on religious beliefs that are already inside of most people. This has led me back to the concept of the religion of Progress - that modern set of beliefs shared by much of the world that views humans as masters of our own destiny, emerging from a brutish, disease-ridden past toward a glorious, transhumanist, technological future.
If you're interested, I would encourage you to read my latest series of posts.
A Crisis of Faith. What is the religion of Progress, and how can it help to explain our crazy overreaction to Covid-19? http://www.luterra.com/blog/?p=1286
An Apostate from the Religion of Progress. My own story of coming to terms with Progress-based delusion in science, after working in the field of alternative energy research. http://www.luterra.com/blog/?p=1294
Sustainable Growth is Impossible. Examining more closely what beliefs are central to the religion of Progress, and why they are incompatible with living sustainably and harmoniously on this planet. http://www.luterra.com/blog/?p=1309
The Shape of Our Future. Debunking the common myths of infinite progress and sudden apocalypse, and examining the peak and impending decline of our civilization as we use up available resources. Also examining the way in which progress is ending at different times based on our position on the economic ladder, with elites increasingly maintaining progress for themselves by directly extracting wealth from lower classes (i.e. feudalism). http://www.luterra.com/blog/?p=1313
Grieving the End of Progress: A Social Theory for Strange Times. Examining our crazy world through the lens of collectively moving through the five phases of grief. The Great Reset from this perspective is decline marketed as progress: a way for the elites to extend their extraction while offering a vision of the shiny new technofuture that we still want to believe is ahead of us even as per-capita resources are beginning to decline. http://www.luterra.com/blog/?p=1301
Thank you again for sharing your articles. I love how you examine things!
"If this is indeed a religious reform, and it sure seems like it, what is the religion?"
Interesting question Mark L. But does it matter? There really is only one religion as they are all the same at their core. All of them employ the same root deception. Why not lump them all together here in one grand stinking pile and set fire to it? **lights match**
This root deception is simply human belief in a concept, an idea, a notion having no basis in reality. As we all know, persistent belief in a lie cannot help but manifest in our lives in the form of malaise, discordant relations, self-destructive tendencies— really all manner of human misery. When great masses of people constituting an overwhelming majority are fervently and zealously entranced by this lie then what we are doomed to experience is nothing short of a major meltdown at the reactor core.
In the religious mind, the deception is promoted and maintained by The Church Of The Great Lie. (my name for it)
In the non-religious mind, the exact same deception is used by The Authority Cult. (same)
Religious or not, all believers bow down and worship at the Altar Of The Lie. Enshrined there is an imaginary deity of some kind or a photo of a political “leader”, national flag, statue, etc.
This imaginary deity/leader/nation is held in the mind of the believer as all-wise and all-powerful and superior to all the rest. One can only obtain the so-called “benefits” of being a believer as long one worships and obeys “The Word”, “The Way” or “The Law”.
In order for the deception to work, it is required that the believer disregard what is seen through ones’ own senses, ignore what is comprehended by ones’ own mind, and in its’ place install The Great Lie.
What is this great lie? Nothing much, really. When I tell you, you are going to either be angry (ignorance, denial) or you will feel stupid (realization, destruction of the lie).
Okay here it is:
Someone else is better than you. They know things that you don't know. They are good, you are bad. They are smart, you are dumb. They are brave, you are afraid. They are strong, you are weak. They are wise, you are foolish. They know what to do, you do not have a clue, etc. etc. Poor sad you. The only thing you can do is listen for your masters' voice.
God is better than you. The State is better than you. Pick one, sign yourself into their care and forget about it because, boo hoo, you are a lesser being. You possess nothing of any great value within yourself. Left to your own decisions, going by your own thinking, your life will soon fall into the toilet. You accept that you have no choice but to follow, to obey, to be kept and owned like a slave and take your place on the farm as human livestock.
"It's okay. Don't worry about. Everybody does it."
This is why we love The Great Lie so much. It allows us to see ourselves as Inferior Beings being cared for by the Superior Being(s). We do not have to struggle thinking about things. We can forgo the difficult process of reaching our own conclusions, deciding for ourselves what to do and then taking responsibility for our choices. We can simply step outside and go where everybody else is going.
Nice and easy. Just let go and let God! Or sing the national song, pledge allegiance to the flag and pay your taxes. All will be well!
But all is never well, is it? We give ourselves over to The Great Lie and still we suffer indignities and increasingly experience (not to mention deliver) personal horrors we are hardly able to speak of. Having lots of money does not stop this, it just makes our misery a bit more comfortable.
But still we believe! It's understandable, I guess. I mean, all manner of personal and social difficulties arise when one refuses The Great Lie and chooses self-responsiblity, self-ownership, self-determination and choosing ones’ own way of thinking and living.
Why buck the tide standing up for yourself and face the wrath of these two cults? Pretty much everyone you know is a member of one or the other.
“Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.”
Life on planet Earth is an integrated organism. A single, physical body. Everything within it is necessary and contributes its’ thing, naturally. Humans are a part of life, no less or greater than any other part.
What if one of your internal organs decided that it was more important or better than another? The brain says “I can shut you all down anytime I want, therefore I am King”. The lungs then say to the brain “Just try it! I can shut YOU down if I don’t breathe.”
Is the body going to be healthy and able to thrive with that nonsense going on? The pancreas, the bladder and colon all living in fear of some crazy tyrant organs trying to control all the others.
Humanity is its’ own natural body too. Our “System”, modern civilisation, is based on the absurd notion that one type of internal organ is better than another and therefore justified in dominating the entire show with its' warped vision.
Is it any wonder we are sick and dying?
I don't think it is possible for human beings to exist without a narrative, a religion in a sense, that provides answers to existential questions like "who are we?", "why are we here?", "why do bad things happen?" etc. As you point out, most of the existing narratives are highly flawed and encourage people to give away their power to authorities.
If, as you say, "life on planet Earth is an integrated organism; humans are a part of life, no less or greater," that is in and of itself a statement of religious belief.
So I don't think it's about rejecting all belief; it's instead finding better options to replace those belief systems that are contributing to the sickness and destruction.
Thanks for your reply Mark! It's always interesting to hear back from folks who ponder greater/deeper things with a passionate perspective. Is this not why we are here? Surely Tessa is a magnet for folks like us.
"....that is in and of itself a statement of religious belief."
Is it? To me, any kind of belief, religious or otherwise, is to act/behave "as if" something we make up in our mind is, in fact, real and true. Am I creating in my mind "life on planet Earth is an integrated organism"? Or is life on Earth actually an integrated organism that really exists?
By your definition of belief, as I understand it, nothing can be known for sure, therefore nothing is real and physical existence is an illusion that requires a narrative or else......or else what? It all falls apart and disappears?
Does a cat, a bird, a lizard, need a narrative to exist? Or do they simply go about the business of being what they are? Humans are animal creatures too. Somehow we have gotten so far from ourselves, from what we are, that we need to make up stories and build silly worlds around them, worlds that endlessly increase in complexity and bog us down in their maintenance such that we forget the whole point of living. We are so caught up in our own belief crap that we have no idea how miserable we are or that what we are doing is completely nuts.
Why do humans need to tell themselves stories in order to live? Why do we make up oppressive and destructive notions such as God and Government based on nonsense like "Superior/Inferior Being"?
Why do we need belief systems? What is wrong with simply walking out into our beautiful surroundings and set about living in harmony with our natural inner sense just like every other living creature?
Clearly we have long since abandoned our inner sense of being human. Anyone alive today who has even the slightest feeling of it has either never lived in civilization or they have at great pains heroically overcome all nonsensical and destructive narratives based on beliefs brutally hammered into us from birth.
We look at the natural world (reality) and have chosen to see ourselves as being victimized by it (belief). We rise up and rebel against it. We are going to conquer it and make it do what we want. We are going to control the weather. We are going to restructure the human body. We are going to suck the teat of nature until there's nothing left and then move on to another planet where we can do the same parasitic thing.
Replacing a "bad" narrative with a "good" narrative only reinforces the idea that a human being needs guidance, control and rule. Whose "good" narrative shall be the one everyone lives by?
The "Superior Being" of course! Who else is there? Let's find this person who is greater than the rest of us "Inferior Beings" so we can fix this mess!
I think that the fact that we are social creatures with the ability to think and use language means that we ultimately need a narrative about the nature of our existence in order to be satisfied. Every human culture that I am aware of has such stories: creation stories, myths, parables, even scientific materialism is such a story, and it assumes far too much in my opinion.
When we were hunter-gatherer cultures, our senses and minds told us that the Earth is a living organism of which we are a part.
When we were agricultural peoples, our senses and minds told us that wild nature was threatening, where the wolves lived that raided our farms.
When we became technological peoples, our senses and minds told us that we were becoming masters of our own destiny, able to triumph over formerly-deadly diseases like plague and smallpox with antibiotics and vaccines.
As we reach the ecological limits of our planet and are forced to use less and to confront the fact that we are destroying the biosphere, we will need to craft different stories that match our new reality.
Stories can be abused and used for great evil, and every oppressive force throughout history has has justified their actions and energized their supporters with the power of narrative, with a claim to existential goodness. The Great Reset is no exception to this. And yet I still feel that we cannot live without stories.
It is helpful to look within ourselves, to reclaim our "narrative filter" (http://www.luterra.com/blog/?p=1167), and yet I don't believe that we can ever escape from narrative entirely, nor that it would necessarily be a good thing if we could. In a sense, story is what makes us human.
These are excellent Mark, thanks. Touching on a lot of things I've been thinking about lately. In the spirit of sharing, I've been enjoying this website's deconstructions of progress mythology https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/
thanks for that, you've articulated some of my frustration. (not sexual frustration, in that I of course ignored the rules when the chance was there) No, my frustration of seeing people accept the inhuman scam, just because of fear, and laziness to take responsibility for themselves. If it wasn't for the internet, I would only know one other 'denier' and I only speak to the person through the bloody internet. Anyway, good job.
Thank you!!!! Yes, the act of accepting it for longer than what they originally told us, two weeks etc, is I think a reaction to being gaslit and not knowing how (or sometimes not wanting) to deal with it!
Hi Tessa,
We really enjoyed your post! Are you familiar with the work of the Berkeley shaman/performance artist, Frank Moore (1946-2013)? We (Linda and Mikee) were with Frank for many decades. When the pandemic first hit, we wondered if Frank would ever have been able to do his performances again ...
His performances involved "eroplay", a word that he created:
EROPLAY IS INTENSE PHYSICAL PLAYING AND TOUCHING OF ONESELF AND OTHERS. EROPLAY IS THE FORCE OR ENERGY RELEASED BY SUCH PLAY. IT IS ALSO THE HAPPY, PLAYFUL ATTITUDE TOWARDS LIFE THAT COMES FROM SUCH PLAY. EROPLAY IS NOT FOREPLAY, EVEN THOUGH FOREPLAY IS EROPLAY.
Here is an excerpt from Frank's piece EROPLAY written in 1989 for The Drama Review ( http://eroplay.org/eroplay/ ):
EROPLAY IS INTENSE PHYSICAL PLAYING AND TOUCHING OF ONESELF AND OTHERS. EROPLAY IS THE FORCE OR ENERGY RELEASED BY SUCH PLAY. IT IS ALSO THE HAPPY, PLAYFUL ATTITUDE TOWARDS LIFE THAT COMES FROM SUCH PLAY. EROPLAY IS NOT FOREPLAY, EVEN THOUGH FOREPLAY IS EROPLAY.
Here is another quote of Frank's that seems very relevant today from his script for his performance "Journey to Lila" ( http://eroplay.org/nyc-1989-tour-part-4/ ) written in 1988:
“WE ARE IN THE CAVE OF DREAM. WE ARE IN A BATTLE OF AN UNDERGROUND WAR AGAINST FRAGMENTATION. ART IS WAR AGAINST FRAGMENTATION. THE BATTLE IS ON ALL REALITIES. THE CONTROLLERS HAVE ALWAYS TRIED TO FRAGMENT US. FRAGMENT US FROM EACH OTHER. IMPRISON US IN ISLANDS OF SEX, COLOR, RELIGION, POLITICS, CLASSES, LABELS, ETC., ETC., ETC., ETC., ETC. THEY FRAGMENT OUR INNER WORLDS, THEY BLOW OUR INDIVIDUAL REALITIES APART, AND PLAY THE PIECES AGAINST ONE ANOTHER. THEY ARE US, OR A PART OF US.”
“THEY ARE THE CONTROLLERS, THE POLITICIANS, THE SEXISTS, THE WOMEN’S LIBBERS, THE PORNOGRAPHERS, THE CENSORS, THE MORALISTS, THE CHURCH, THE MEDIA, THE BUSINESSMEN, EDUCATORS, THE VICTIMS AND THE POWERFUL.”
“THEY ARE US. THEY HAVE DIVIDED US FROM OUR POWER, FROM OUR BEAUTY, FROM OUR LUST OF LIFE AND PLEASURE. THEY HAVE DIVIDED US FROM MOST OF REALITY…DYING FROM LIVING…SEX FROM LIVING, SEX FROM PLEASURE. WE ARE KEPT IN BOXES OF FEAR, OF MISTRUST. WE ARE KEPT WAITING…KEPT WAITING TO DO WHAT WE WANT…WAITING FOR ENOUGH MONEY, ENOUGH SCHOOLING, FOR EVERYTHING TO BE RIGHT. WE ARE KEPT WAITING AND PROTECTING AND HIDING AND SUFFERING.”
“TIME TO DO BATTLE WITH THE BOXES.
OUR TOOLS ARE MAGIC, OUR BODIES, AND DREAMS.”
Mikee and I are in the process of organizing Frank's enormous archives, publishing books about his work and his writings. Eventually all of his archives will go the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. We thought you might enjoy checking out Frank's art. Here is his website https://www.eroplay.com/
We have also just finished a 20-part web video series based on Frank's book "Art of a Shaman". All of the episodes are available at https://frankadelic.com.
Thanks for what you are doing!
Linda Mac and Michael LaBash
The science:
Evaluating the effects of shelter-in-place policies during the COVID-19 pandemic
We estimate the effects of shelter-in-place (SIP) orders during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We do not find detectable effects of these policies on disease spread or deaths. We find small but measurable effects on mobility that dissipate over time. And we find small, delayed effects on unemployment. We conduct additional analyses that separately assess the effects of expanding versus withdrawing SIP orders and test whether there are spillover effects in other states. Our results are consistent with prior studies showing that SIP orders have accounted for a relatively small share of the mobility trends and economic disruptions associated with the pandemic. We reanalyze two prior studies purporting to show that SIP orders caused large reductions in disease prevalence, and show that those results are not reliable. Our results do not imply that social distancing behavior by individuals, as distinct from SIP policy, is ineffective.
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/15/e2019706118.full.pdf
While the loyal/royal subjects of the United Kingdom are waiting patiently for the day or year that it is safe and permissible to again embrace, they might feel better getting out every day for a nice COVID swab and a little light human interaction at the testing site.
Don't be lonely!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/02/england-to-pilot-daily-covid-tests-as-way-to-avoid-to-self-isolation
Well Tessa . You have enlightened this old man but never fear I don’t play their games or follow Fauci’s guidelines. Biden and him are idiots. My dog is smarter than both of them put together.
I do not think that it is about dignity, but about ego and emotional investment. People do not want to admit that they are not Saving The Grandma And The World, but are useful idiots in a corporate power game. That would shatter their egos, and so they cling to FOR GREATER GOOD with ever growing cognitive dissonance. And swallow even bigger and more egregious lies.
I think it's both... and there is always hope for truth, no matter how messed up things are. We can only hope....
As soon as people start controlling sexuality, you know you're dealing with a cult. This is classic cult behavior, from time immemorial. Sexuality is not just physical--it's a major component of spirituality. This is why rape and sexual abuse/incest is so damaging--it's a physical AND spiritual assault. Control the sexuality and you also control the spirituality. Religious leaders have always known this. Globalists, of course, think humans have no spirituality but they know what works best to control large populations. If it worked for the Church, it will work for them.
I'm sorry but ... you're talking in this piece about ... your ... 'sexuality'?
Do you have any idea how creepy to a man older in years, yet believe me, psychologically younger, this sounds? Can I suggest, and I don't wish to be impudent; - that you ask some men; - when was the last time that they had sex? You might like to publish your results?
Oh, and by way of example: - my last time was 2002, the time before that, ~ 1981. A New-York girl. Huh! I always stop to wonder how on earth, and yet how sort of privileged I was. East-side, Bronx, Manhattan? Who knows! Wow! I was in London.
And I was always a kind of good-enough-looking guy; so some chap in later years told me; - I always thought so. My last encounter was with a Nordic, a Viking daughter of boat-builders, and who held a PhD in 'evolutionary - biology'. It showed! Her lies were spectacularly sophisticated.
I really do think you should compose these articles into a book.
I'm reading 'Wildflower' by Drew Barrymore. Built upon notes.
That's the once very young-lady in Spielberg's E.T. A good read.
And, Tessa, would you mind if i post some of your brilliant pieces translated (and edited/commented a bit) in my blog https://gio.ist?
Some more cheerful news: the "danser encore" movement sweeping across Europe ... we did a gig in Munich on 1 May which I recorded, enjoy the human joy of singing and dancing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQXr5Vq8AWU
Apparently the advertising on TV feels the same. Dancing they think will allow your wallet to be spill out thousands of dollars for their products.