Great piece, Gary. I believe it is so important to articulate the unfolding of this nightmare that we feed with our collective and individual trauma responses. I love how you bridge these themes.
We can't just reject the reality which the parasite class have foisted upon us, because we, the parasitized, helped create that reality. Unlike the Matrix, we can't just pop a red pill and live outside of the virtual reality which non-humans created. Our reality is created by us, humans. What we can do is stop giving our energy to that reality, stop allowing it to feed upon us, start thinking and acting as much as possible independently of that reality, and then our actions, thoughts, feelings and intuitions will feed back into society and the Collective Unconscious to start breaking down that reality. Once critical mass is achieved, that dissolution will come surprisingly quickly and I don't think critical mass necessarily involves a huge majority, maybe just a significant minority.
This gels with what Mattias Desmet says - we only a smallish percentage of people continuing to speak out to prevent the worse excesses of a mass formation psychosis. I guess this is also the case in having enough people leading by example.
Jaime what is doing us in are people who's growth and development is arrested , and they are stuck in stages that are parasitical because they are immature . A person who has autism , and I speak from life experience , as my father had undiagnosed aspergers , is stuck in a state of infantile expectation , and although might learn to "pass" they are essentially still children needing and sucking from others . These arrested developmental stages carry forwards inside of sociopathy , which is the nursing infant who needs to "bite and eat " the mother , the narcissistic personality disordered who needs to "Kill" the mother to be able to self identify , the sex addict who needs to permanently strut their stuff , and the glutton , which can be consumption , or monetary , or land ownership , but its that stage of infancy when that toy is "MINE" -- that they just never got past . Because you are into climate change - The deal is is that people are not what they seem , and there really are very few Renaissance ( Re Born ) human beings , people who are not caterpillars chewing on the green . This is just a fact , must be faced and managed . It is difficult to believe , but there it is . The way we are raising our kids is not allowing them the chance to experience the full range of freedom that will permit them to attain complete cycles and move onto the next stage .
Ooo! This is good. Not only upvoted, but followed on the spot.
I prefer Lobaczewski to Desmet, and you just articulated very well part of my reasoning. Whether by childhood trauma or genetic predisposition, those in the predatory class are indeed in a state of arrested development, but they do seem to have a big advantage.
While we more neurotypical majority depend on a largely subconscious, empathy driven behavior by default, by necessity, the predatory class depend on keen observation skills, mimicry, and deception to impose their will. I agree with Gary in that eventually, it is self-destructive ... but in the short term, I would say, that like predators vs. herbivores in the wilderness, they tend to be more 'intelligent' by typical definitions of 'intelligence' ... a point on which Lobaczewski and I differ.
Thank Gary, we just need to create the world we want by our daily actions. Lovely article. I'm struggling with waking others though, to this current and future hell scape. I've come to the conclusion that if you are trying to convince someone, you are wasting your time. I remember how I came round; it was after suggestion by a friend years ago about 9/11. I was interested, so did the rest for myself. What is nice though is when you meet someone and drop in a little seed to see if they take the bait, then you know that someone is on the journey already. These situations are wonderful because these people are sometimes feel isolated by their perception of the world and are desperate to talk about it. It happened to me the other day and I now have a new great friend, which makes up for the not so real friends that appear to be avoiding me now 🙃.
Yes, we can't help people who don't want to be helped. Using facts and logic just doesn't work, this just drives people into defensive nervous system states, or left-brain hemisphere over-activation at which point they become unreachable. Maybe we have to look to how the psychology of good coaching methods, NLP or even confidence tricksters work. Governments have arrayed Nudge units against us, so maybe it is time to use the same tools for good. Maybe asking questions works better than providing answers? I like your seeds ideas.
Although it's written from a political standpoint, the to do list is very reasonable and looks like it might be worth a try. The '$5 per gallon of gas' comment is amusing to those of us who already pay something like double that. Maybe I should move to America.
Yes it is not by chance that one of the first thing that authoritarians do first is ban or kill off the comedians. Satire is like you say anathema to them, probably because humour and metaphor wakes up the right brain hemisphere like nothing else, allowing the people to see the big picture.
This was Jacob Boehme's recommended response to the devil's assaults and recriminations. "Hey, Lucifer, looks pretty dark where you are! Didn't you used to live in the light, not hiding in the dark like some cowardly pest?"
Gary, the cultic nature of what you describe is harrowing. It is a culture that exchanges reality for a world of simulation. I call this, The Spectacle of the Real- https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/the-spectacle-of-the-real. There is a pattern that I have identified that matches what you describe. It is simple. In the “simulation”, we are “seduced” by our human desires for whatever the simulation produces. This is the nature of pornography. It’s range goes beyond sex, to consumer products, politics, sports, celebrity cancellations, etc. There is no limit to simulation’s manipulative seduction of us. The promise is -name it- fulfillment, pleasure, liberation or any purpose that can easily be used to seduce us. The result is a “false consciousness” that makes us believe in the religious cult-like experience of the simulation. The ultimate goal of this sequence of simulation-seduction-false consciousness is “control” over all aspects of our lives. I go into detail of this “thing” in a series of articles on simulation - https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/the-culture-of-simulation-series. The challenge for us is to not be trapped into thinking that we can fight this culture of simulation on its terms. Instead, we simply need to reclaim reality for our lives through direct experience and direct encounters with people.
The type of things you highlight all strike me as being the things which give us the bad type of dopamine hits - the dopamine rewards without the effort, that lead to addiction and anhedonism?
What I'm not clear on, is do we find ourselves outside the simulation when we do this -reclaim our reality directly - or are we in a new and malleable simulation we can create within? (I think of the metavese as a simulation within a simulation.)
Great question. Let me respond first with a quote by Jean Baudrillard in his essay The Murder of the Real(1999), and then my counter to him.
"For reality is but a concept, or a principle, and by reality I mean the whole system of values connected with this principle. The Real as such implies an origin, an end, a past and a future, a chain of causes and effects, a continuity and a rationality. No real without these elements, without an objective configuration of discourse. And its disappearing is the dislocation of this whole constellation.
Let us be clear about this: if the Real is disappearing, it is not because of a lack of it—on the contrary, there is too much of it. It is the excess of reality that puts an end to reality, just as the excess of information puts an end to information, or the excess of communication puts an end to communication. We are no longer dealing with a problematic of lack and alienation, where the referent of the self and the dialectic between subject and object were always to be found, supporting strong and active philosophical positions. The last and most radical analysis of this problematic was achieved by Guy Debord and the Situationists, with their concept of spectacle and spectacular alienation. For Debord there was still a chance of disalienation, a chance for the subject to recover his or her autonomy and sovereignty. But now this radical Situationist critique is over. By shifting to a virtual world, we go beyond aliénation, into a state of radical deprivation of the Other, or indeed of any otherness, alterity, or negativity. We move into a world where everything that exists only as idea, dream, fantasy, utopia will be eradicated, because it will immediately be realized, operationalized. Nothing will survive as an idea or a concept. You will not even have time enough to imagine. Events, real events, will not even have time to take place. Everything will be preceded by its virtual realization. We are dealing with an attempt to construct an entirely positive world, a perfect world, expurgated of every illusion, of every sort of evil and negativity, exempt from death itself. This pure, absolute reality, this unconditional realization of the world—this is what I call the Perfect Crime."
If the simulation had become as totality, I don't think we could even talk about it. We could not objectify it. We'd be like fish in water, "What's water?" For many people, they can't see the simulation because they lack the skills for looking at their lives and their world in a rational, dispassionate way. To do so means that I can respond and adapt to the simulation that is not simply conforming, but instead, the opposite, personally affirming. For me, what this really means is that reality is the context where our agency as human beings is realized. We can take action to create impact. Impact is a change that we see as making a difference. How many things do we do where this is the case? The simulation erodes our sense of individuality. Reality is where we rediscover it.
I have a bit of an advantage because .... my dad had aspergers and my mother is bipolar - between the two - I learned about systems , which is what autism is all about , and bifurcation , which is what bi polarism is . I myself , well , Bruce Lee -- be water young grasshopper ... but early on I realized that one must differentiate between what is the system and what is running through the system . You can have pure water running through lead pipes , and you can have sewer water running through copper pipes . Sounds so simple , right ? I did not send my children to the schooling system , caught hell for that and have four wonderfully functional adults to feel proud of . / There is no "Them" ... they are we , we are us . And Us is Me and You , The propoganda is a system , built to make believe that the schism is real , that there is no actual way to contradict the confusion , that it is out of your hands . It is not . In every single decision you make as to how to spend your day , you are building the world that you want to live in and leave behind for others . In my opinion , you are a great statesman for the newly ordered world - keep up the excellent work . We are making progress .
This hits right at home with me. Practice radical self love and empathy for others and our negative thoughts will stop creating the monsters that devour us.
The “just desserts” line is so well crafted. Reminds me a preacher I knew that would say “Life isn’t just. Life just is.”
I’m starting to see a few Substackers starting to write more hopeful articles like this that focus on elevating consciousness over “doom porn”, “revenge”, “punishment”... It is so long awaited for and welcomed. Thank you, Gary.
My go-to thinker is Charles Eisenstein. And although Caitlin Johnstone tends to write about war mongering, she often sneaks in concepts about conscious evolution and her poetry is superb. Kathleen Devanney and David Huber tread in awareness and cosmos waters as well. And Toby Rogers definitely contributes to the hope of a more beautiful world with some enlightened posts. I oscillate between doom porn and unapologetic faith in humanity. But I try and lean into hope.
You could add your own stack to the list. Even when highlighting the dystopia, that light of hope is present in your creative expression. Thanks for the mention.
"But I try and lean into hope." Yes, I always get that.
Gary, this is so perceptive, and important--thank you. The only thing I would add--and I suppose also where I differ with your take on resistance and solutions--is that the assumption that we can counter this systemic awfulness through individual action is one of the main things that continues to pave the way for us being consumed in the way you describe. The system teaches us that it's all about individual action, when in fact it's only through organizing and collective action that we have any chance of turning this around--we can only resist and change systemic evil with action at the same scale, i.e. systemically. Or so I'd say...but it's not just me, this has been shown over and over in sociological and anthropological work. To take one example, we didn't get the 40 hour work week, weekends, and workplace safety regulations because individuals communicated or protested individually--it only happened through careful, planned, collective action at a scale that matched the scale of the "system."
That the fundamental truth of the need for organizing and collective actions is so little recognized these days is to my mind a testament to the power of the individualist propaganda we're endlessly fed.
Yes, I agree that working on ourselves individually is just the starting point, and we will need collective and co-ordinated action. This includes speaking out collectively, civil disobedience etc. I have recently been watching interviews on the Richard Vobes youtube channel of folks from various "sovreignty" groups, talking about various forms of collective action
Thanks for this, I will have a look at Vobes. On civil disobedience, as well as the magnitude of system awfulness (or evil...though I'm not too fond of that word myself), are you familiar with Chris Hedges writing? He has a pretty extraordinary body of work at this point. He writes weekly for scheerpost.com and also has several books.
There's also a substantial literature under the umbrella of "Treadmill of Production" theory that might be of interest. It's a very helpful framing of how the problem is not consumption at all, but production--by the machine that, as you say, is actually consuming us. (I'd call it Marxist-informed, or maybe just Neo-Marxist, although they avoid that language, which is so stigmatized in some quarters).
Of course, there's also the trauma piece, as something both produced by the megamachine and enabling it in profound ways. Hello, from a fellow Vagus Study Group devotee btw. ;) Nice to see you popping up elsewhere, and thank you again for this very interesting and helpful article!
Good point, and I agree about collective collaboration (as opposed to 'conspiracies'), but with a couple of small hedges.
1 — The collectives need to be small, probably Dunbar's number or less, otherwise rule-driven hierarchies are necessary, and necessarily vulnerable to corruption.
2 — Even small groups must be constantly striving to remain close to an empathy-driven morality. Many a dysfunctional family or street gang can be ruled by dark-triad bullies.
Thank you, Gary. It is, indeed, a rude awakening to the fact that our entire lives have been mapped out for us, beginning with (at least here in the States) medicalized birth and the birth certificate, by a bunch of pathetic, unintelligent, death-culty, psychopathic, creepy copy-cat clowns who know only to deceive, to steal, and to torture so that they may achieve and retain the fake "power" that they crave constantly.
Since it is our LIFE ESSENCE that they must vampire in order to exist here, they surely know full well that as each of us awakens to this repulsive fact, they are losing one after another source of life-force and are thus facing the reality of having to return to entropy once and for all.
And if "Earth resets" such as I have read about are real, then these wayward wizards must be the ones causing them so that they can continue to not have to pay their VERY LARGE karmic debts.
Stay strong and courageous, my friend, and please keep doing the work you do!💝🗡
Yes, a Demonocracy, that one word sums it up best.
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You wrote “We start with small acts of daily resistance and disobedience in our own lives, in our own hearts, in our own minds, and in our own bodies.”
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Cynical.
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My personal favorite cynic now is Diogenes, “Diogenes was a Greek philosopher best known for holding a lantern to the faces of the citizens of Athens claiming he was searching for an honest man.”
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What if you are that man Gary? Remember, Diogenes needed to find only one true man, one honest man, not all men. The Encyclopedia Britannica claims he was never successful and that it was just a metaphor for his search for truth and virtue.
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Or perhaps you are Diogenes. Searching for truth and virtue.
How funny. Those were my exact thoughts on "The Economy" yesterday when I caught and heard a glimpse of PM Roland Rat talking about the state of it yesterday. I thought, how strange to be talking about it as if it, itself, was a thing that performed this way or that when in fact, it's simply the aggregate productivity of the whole country. In other words, anyone can go produce something that someone else wants at any time and if they create something useful, they will create economic value. Of course, this would be a lot easier (and more productive) if the Government just stayed completely out of the situation.
May I toss in possibility of human cloning into the mix..oh but under the radar and out of public scrutiny..now where would be the ideal place for that to occur be? From a consumable. The technology is there, it is just a matter of neutralizing er... exterminating the host organic material so that the clone can grow and develop..similar in effect to a parasite.
Yes today cages are cages weather constructed of steel and concrete or from the fabric of the mind Like all experiences , both freedom and slavery are registered in the mind.Most of the young are being captured by the spectacle on the i phone that surrounds them on 24/7 world."Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is'' ERICH FROMM .Money the parent of slaves.All the best and keep yourself to yourself
I fully agree with both your vision - horrifying, but so accurate - and your proposed solutions. As we, individually, tap our own agency and reconnect to our sovereignty, we drop the victim shit and recognize we are already free. Yes, free in a prison system, but nonetheless, free. It's a claim, it's a fact, and it's freely available to all of us. Once it's owned and embodied, you will simply not go along; won't support the enslavers, won't spout the lies, won't live in that world. That can only expedite the enslavers end, IMO. We need to turn the whole thing on its head and put them in their ever smaller, ever less relevant place. Thanks for the post. Nice to find like-minds. Doom and gloom is unempowering - it's what "they" want. Fuck them.
Thank you. I am also thinking we need to build parallel systems which just bypass and ignore them. This is what I have done with my recovery from chronic illness, and helping others overcome the nocebo diagnosis of hopeless situations. At first, I went up against the medical system, and was calling out doctors, but this just lead to push back, and I was working up against the learned helplessness and indoctirnated trust people had in that system, so people could not hear what I was saying. I softened my approach, and started to ignore the medical paradigm, and just gave others different information, while remaining under the radar of vested interests.
So agree. Together we can come up with new systems that make them increasingly irrelevant. Imagine as we pull our energy, support, and money from them, and redirect them into what we want to see, how quickly we could reclaim our lives. I say to people all the time, Why are you paying taxes to a government that does not represents you? That's the deal - taxation in exchange for representation. If enough of us did it - they would have to meet our demands. (It's a tough one though, people are really afraid of the IRS)
Substack is a great place to see what free minds are up to, which will generate ideas that inevitably lead to new systems. Your experience with reclaiming your health is a perfect example. Thanks.
Great piece, Gary. I believe it is so important to articulate the unfolding of this nightmare that we feed with our collective and individual trauma responses. I love how you bridge these themes.
Yes, I think trauma, especially childhood trauma, is indelibly intertwined with the world we are creating.
Dystonia Dystopia
I agree.
I actually like what Jon Rappoport says about this. To paraphrase:
"If the parasite class can create reality for me, then I can create my own."
And when a herd world reclaims individualism and imagination, God help the parasite class! Their destiny is to be ivermectined.
lol I had never thought of that link before. Yes, we need to find in the soil a Nobel Prize winning anti-parasitic-class drug to ward them off!
We can't just reject the reality which the parasite class have foisted upon us, because we, the parasitized, helped create that reality. Unlike the Matrix, we can't just pop a red pill and live outside of the virtual reality which non-humans created. Our reality is created by us, humans. What we can do is stop giving our energy to that reality, stop allowing it to feed upon us, start thinking and acting as much as possible independently of that reality, and then our actions, thoughts, feelings and intuitions will feed back into society and the Collective Unconscious to start breaking down that reality. Once critical mass is achieved, that dissolution will come surprisingly quickly and I don't think critical mass necessarily involves a huge majority, maybe just a significant minority.
This gels with what Mattias Desmet says - we only a smallish percentage of people continuing to speak out to prevent the worse excesses of a mass formation psychosis. I guess this is also the case in having enough people leading by example.
Jaime what is doing us in are people who's growth and development is arrested , and they are stuck in stages that are parasitical because they are immature . A person who has autism , and I speak from life experience , as my father had undiagnosed aspergers , is stuck in a state of infantile expectation , and although might learn to "pass" they are essentially still children needing and sucking from others . These arrested developmental stages carry forwards inside of sociopathy , which is the nursing infant who needs to "bite and eat " the mother , the narcissistic personality disordered who needs to "Kill" the mother to be able to self identify , the sex addict who needs to permanently strut their stuff , and the glutton , which can be consumption , or monetary , or land ownership , but its that stage of infancy when that toy is "MINE" -- that they just never got past . Because you are into climate change - The deal is is that people are not what they seem , and there really are very few Renaissance ( Re Born ) human beings , people who are not caterpillars chewing on the green . This is just a fact , must be faced and managed . It is difficult to believe , but there it is . The way we are raising our kids is not allowing them the chance to experience the full range of freedom that will permit them to attain complete cycles and move onto the next stage .
Ooo! This is good. Not only upvoted, but followed on the spot.
I prefer Lobaczewski to Desmet, and you just articulated very well part of my reasoning. Whether by childhood trauma or genetic predisposition, those in the predatory class are indeed in a state of arrested development, but they do seem to have a big advantage.
While we more neurotypical majority depend on a largely subconscious, empathy driven behavior by default, by necessity, the predatory class depend on keen observation skills, mimicry, and deception to impose their will. I agree with Gary in that eventually, it is self-destructive ... but in the short term, I would say, that like predators vs. herbivores in the wilderness, they tend to be more 'intelligent' by typical definitions of 'intelligence' ... a point on which Lobaczewski and I differ.
I was reminded of the cunning predatory thinking of the would-be god-kings while listening to a video in "The Forgotten Side of Medicine" ... https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/why-does-the-government-cover-up
Cheers from Japan Jennifer,
steve
Three clips from Rich Roll's podcast. that I think show us why were are where we are.
Max Fisher - https://youtube.com/shorts/1QrYZqXrZ_s?feature=share
- https://youtube.com/shorts/VEqpZygP7pc?feature=share
Anna Lembke, MD - https://youtube.com/shorts/c6qR3Cy7nAs?feature=share
This is a place to start a discussion about what you are presenting Gary.
I will watch the Max Fisher ones. Have already seen the Anna Lembke one, in fact reviewed her book and its implications here https://garysharpe.substack.com/p/book-review-dopamine-nation-finding
Great! Going to go read it now.
Love that.
Rappoport is one of my favorites. For me he exemplifies individualism in creativity and expression. He's a sparkling gem.
Thank Gary, we just need to create the world we want by our daily actions. Lovely article. I'm struggling with waking others though, to this current and future hell scape. I've come to the conclusion that if you are trying to convince someone, you are wasting your time. I remember how I came round; it was after suggestion by a friend years ago about 9/11. I was interested, so did the rest for myself. What is nice though is when you meet someone and drop in a little seed to see if they take the bait, then you know that someone is on the journey already. These situations are wonderful because these people are sometimes feel isolated by their perception of the world and are desperate to talk about it. It happened to me the other day and I now have a new great friend, which makes up for the not so real friends that appear to be avoiding me now 🙃.
Yes, we can't help people who don't want to be helped. Using facts and logic just doesn't work, this just drives people into defensive nervous system states, or left-brain hemisphere over-activation at which point they become unreachable. Maybe we have to look to how the psychology of good coaching methods, NLP or even confidence tricksters work. Governments have arrayed Nudge units against us, so maybe it is time to use the same tools for good. Maybe asking questions works better than providing answers? I like your seeds ideas.
I came across this article recently in American thinker about how to change people's minds
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/08/ten_ways_to_change_a_liberals_mind.html
Although it's written from a political standpoint, the to do list is very reasonable and looks like it might be worth a try. The '$5 per gallon of gas' comment is amusing to those of us who already pay something like double that. Maybe I should move to America.
This is good, and I think has some useful pointers. Thanks.
"We direct our disdain, dissent, despite, derision, and contempt at them..."
Absolutely. And a double-dose of derision is advised. Mockery is practically demon-repellent, like garlic to vampires.
Yes it is not by chance that one of the first thing that authoritarians do first is ban or kill off the comedians. Satire is like you say anathema to them, probably because humour and metaphor wakes up the right brain hemisphere like nothing else, allowing the people to see the big picture.
This was Jacob Boehme's recommended response to the devil's assaults and recriminations. "Hey, Lucifer, looks pretty dark where you are! Didn't you used to live in the light, not hiding in the dark like some cowardly pest?"
Gary, the cultic nature of what you describe is harrowing. It is a culture that exchanges reality for a world of simulation. I call this, The Spectacle of the Real- https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/the-spectacle-of-the-real. There is a pattern that I have identified that matches what you describe. It is simple. In the “simulation”, we are “seduced” by our human desires for whatever the simulation produces. This is the nature of pornography. It’s range goes beyond sex, to consumer products, politics, sports, celebrity cancellations, etc. There is no limit to simulation’s manipulative seduction of us. The promise is -name it- fulfillment, pleasure, liberation or any purpose that can easily be used to seduce us. The result is a “false consciousness” that makes us believe in the religious cult-like experience of the simulation. The ultimate goal of this sequence of simulation-seduction-false consciousness is “control” over all aspects of our lives. I go into detail of this “thing” in a series of articles on simulation - https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/the-culture-of-simulation-series. The challenge for us is to not be trapped into thinking that we can fight this culture of simulation on its terms. Instead, we simply need to reclaim reality for our lives through direct experience and direct encounters with people.
The type of things you highlight all strike me as being the things which give us the bad type of dopamine hits - the dopamine rewards without the effort, that lead to addiction and anhedonism?
Watch this Rich Role podcast with Max Fisher author of The Chaos Machine,
https://youtu.be/NpJ1IhNq4BM
Thank you - will read now...
Well said. Fully agree.
What I'm not clear on, is do we find ourselves outside the simulation when we do this -reclaim our reality directly - or are we in a new and malleable simulation we can create within? (I think of the metavese as a simulation within a simulation.)
Great question. Let me respond first with a quote by Jean Baudrillard in his essay The Murder of the Real(1999), and then my counter to him.
"For reality is but a concept, or a principle, and by reality I mean the whole system of values connected with this principle. The Real as such implies an origin, an end, a past and a future, a chain of causes and effects, a continuity and a rationality. No real without these elements, without an objective configuration of discourse. And its disappearing is the dislocation of this whole constellation.
Let us be clear about this: if the Real is disappearing, it is not because of a lack of it—on the contrary, there is too much of it. It is the excess of reality that puts an end to reality, just as the excess of information puts an end to information, or the excess of communication puts an end to communication. We are no longer dealing with a problematic of lack and alienation, where the referent of the self and the dialectic between subject and object were always to be found, supporting strong and active philosophical positions. The last and most radical analysis of this problematic was achieved by Guy Debord and the Situationists, with their concept of spectacle and spectacular alienation. For Debord there was still a chance of disalienation, a chance for the subject to recover his or her autonomy and sovereignty. But now this radical Situationist critique is over. By shifting to a virtual world, we go beyond aliénation, into a state of radical deprivation of the Other, or indeed of any otherness, alterity, or negativity. We move into a world where everything that exists only as idea, dream, fantasy, utopia will be eradicated, because it will immediately be realized, operationalized. Nothing will survive as an idea or a concept. You will not even have time enough to imagine. Events, real events, will not even have time to take place. Everything will be preceded by its virtual realization. We are dealing with an attempt to construct an entirely positive world, a perfect world, expurgated of every illusion, of every sort of evil and negativity, exempt from death itself. This pure, absolute reality, this unconditional realization of the world—this is what I call the Perfect Crime."
If the simulation had become as totality, I don't think we could even talk about it. We could not objectify it. We'd be like fish in water, "What's water?" For many people, they can't see the simulation because they lack the skills for looking at their lives and their world in a rational, dispassionate way. To do so means that I can respond and adapt to the simulation that is not simply conforming, but instead, the opposite, personally affirming. For me, what this really means is that reality is the context where our agency as human beings is realized. We can take action to create impact. Impact is a change that we see as making a difference. How many things do we do where this is the case? The simulation erodes our sense of individuality. Reality is where we rediscover it.
I have a bit of an advantage because .... my dad had aspergers and my mother is bipolar - between the two - I learned about systems , which is what autism is all about , and bifurcation , which is what bi polarism is . I myself , well , Bruce Lee -- be water young grasshopper ... but early on I realized that one must differentiate between what is the system and what is running through the system . You can have pure water running through lead pipes , and you can have sewer water running through copper pipes . Sounds so simple , right ? I did not send my children to the schooling system , caught hell for that and have four wonderfully functional adults to feel proud of . / There is no "Them" ... they are we , we are us . And Us is Me and You , The propoganda is a system , built to make believe that the schism is real , that there is no actual way to contradict the confusion , that it is out of your hands . It is not . In every single decision you make as to how to spend your day , you are building the world that you want to live in and leave behind for others . In my opinion , you are a great statesman for the newly ordered world - keep up the excellent work . We are making progress .
This hits right at home with me. Practice radical self love and empathy for others and our negative thoughts will stop creating the monsters that devour us.
The “just desserts” line is so well crafted. Reminds me a preacher I knew that would say “Life isn’t just. Life just is.”
I’m starting to see a few Substackers starting to write more hopeful articles like this that focus on elevating consciousness over “doom porn”, “revenge”, “punishment”... It is so long awaited for and welcomed. Thank you, Gary.
Even if I say so myself, I liked that line too :-) . Any substackers you recommend posting this kind of material?
My go-to thinker is Charles Eisenstein. And although Caitlin Johnstone tends to write about war mongering, she often sneaks in concepts about conscious evolution and her poetry is superb. Kathleen Devanney and David Huber tread in awareness and cosmos waters as well. And Toby Rogers definitely contributes to the hope of a more beautiful world with some enlightened posts. I oscillate between doom porn and unapologetic faith in humanity. But I try and lean into hope.
You could add your own stack to the list. Even when highlighting the dystopia, that light of hope is present in your creative expression. Thanks for the mention.
"But I try and lean into hope." Yes, I always get that.
Well, it’s contagious when you all do it. 😂 thanks, Kathleen. 🙏
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Gary, this is so perceptive, and important--thank you. The only thing I would add--and I suppose also where I differ with your take on resistance and solutions--is that the assumption that we can counter this systemic awfulness through individual action is one of the main things that continues to pave the way for us being consumed in the way you describe. The system teaches us that it's all about individual action, when in fact it's only through organizing and collective action that we have any chance of turning this around--we can only resist and change systemic evil with action at the same scale, i.e. systemically. Or so I'd say...but it's not just me, this has been shown over and over in sociological and anthropological work. To take one example, we didn't get the 40 hour work week, weekends, and workplace safety regulations because individuals communicated or protested individually--it only happened through careful, planned, collective action at a scale that matched the scale of the "system."
That the fundamental truth of the need for organizing and collective actions is so little recognized these days is to my mind a testament to the power of the individualist propaganda we're endlessly fed.
Yes, I agree that working on ourselves individually is just the starting point, and we will need collective and co-ordinated action. This includes speaking out collectively, civil disobedience etc. I have recently been watching interviews on the Richard Vobes youtube channel of folks from various "sovreignty" groups, talking about various forms of collective action
Thanks for this, I will have a look at Vobes. On civil disobedience, as well as the magnitude of system awfulness (or evil...though I'm not too fond of that word myself), are you familiar with Chris Hedges writing? He has a pretty extraordinary body of work at this point. He writes weekly for scheerpost.com and also has several books.
There's also a substantial literature under the umbrella of "Treadmill of Production" theory that might be of interest. It's a very helpful framing of how the problem is not consumption at all, but production--by the machine that, as you say, is actually consuming us. (I'd call it Marxist-informed, or maybe just Neo-Marxist, although they avoid that language, which is so stigmatized in some quarters).
Of course, there's also the trauma piece, as something both produced by the megamachine and enabling it in profound ways. Hello, from a fellow Vagus Study Group devotee btw. ;) Nice to see you popping up elsewhere, and thank you again for this very interesting and helpful article!
Hi Daniel.
Good point, and I agree about collective collaboration (as opposed to 'conspiracies'), but with a couple of small hedges.
1 — The collectives need to be small, probably Dunbar's number or less, otherwise rule-driven hierarchies are necessary, and necessarily vulnerable to corruption.
2 — Even small groups must be constantly striving to remain close to an empathy-driven morality. Many a dysfunctional family or street gang can be ruled by dark-triad bullies.
Cheers from Japan,
steve
Thanks for your insightful and valuable articles Gary. Very much appreciated
Thank you, Gary. It is, indeed, a rude awakening to the fact that our entire lives have been mapped out for us, beginning with (at least here in the States) medicalized birth and the birth certificate, by a bunch of pathetic, unintelligent, death-culty, psychopathic, creepy copy-cat clowns who know only to deceive, to steal, and to torture so that they may achieve and retain the fake "power" that they crave constantly.
Since it is our LIFE ESSENCE that they must vampire in order to exist here, they surely know full well that as each of us awakens to this repulsive fact, they are losing one after another source of life-force and are thus facing the reality of having to return to entropy once and for all.
And if "Earth resets" such as I have read about are real, then these wayward wizards must be the ones causing them so that they can continue to not have to pay their VERY LARGE karmic debts.
Stay strong and courageous, my friend, and please keep doing the work you do!💝🗡
Yes, a Demonocracy, that one word sums it up best.
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You wrote “We start with small acts of daily resistance and disobedience in our own lives, in our own hearts, in our own minds, and in our own bodies.”
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Cynical.
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My personal favorite cynic now is Diogenes, “Diogenes was a Greek philosopher best known for holding a lantern to the faces of the citizens of Athens claiming he was searching for an honest man.”
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What if you are that man Gary? Remember, Diogenes needed to find only one true man, one honest man, not all men. The Encyclopedia Britannica claims he was never successful and that it was just a metaphor for his search for truth and virtue.
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Or perhaps you are Diogenes. Searching for truth and virtue.
How funny. Those were my exact thoughts on "The Economy" yesterday when I caught and heard a glimpse of PM Roland Rat talking about the state of it yesterday. I thought, how strange to be talking about it as if it, itself, was a thing that performed this way or that when in fact, it's simply the aggregate productivity of the whole country. In other words, anyone can go produce something that someone else wants at any time and if they create something useful, they will create economic value. Of course, this would be a lot easier (and more productive) if the Government just stayed completely out of the situation.
Nick Hudson on the same track. Great minds and all that?! https://pandauncut.substack.com/p/the-problem-with-centralisation
May I toss in possibility of human cloning into the mix..oh but under the radar and out of public scrutiny..now where would be the ideal place for that to occur be? From a consumable. The technology is there, it is just a matter of neutralizing er... exterminating the host organic material so that the clone can grow and develop..similar in effect to a parasite.
Very very good! Five stars! : ) Well written sir!
Thank you!
Yes today cages are cages weather constructed of steel and concrete or from the fabric of the mind Like all experiences , both freedom and slavery are registered in the mind.Most of the young are being captured by the spectacle on the i phone that surrounds them on 24/7 world."Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is'' ERICH FROMM .Money the parent of slaves.All the best and keep yourself to yourself
I fully agree with both your vision - horrifying, but so accurate - and your proposed solutions. As we, individually, tap our own agency and reconnect to our sovereignty, we drop the victim shit and recognize we are already free. Yes, free in a prison system, but nonetheless, free. It's a claim, it's a fact, and it's freely available to all of us. Once it's owned and embodied, you will simply not go along; won't support the enslavers, won't spout the lies, won't live in that world. That can only expedite the enslavers end, IMO. We need to turn the whole thing on its head and put them in their ever smaller, ever less relevant place. Thanks for the post. Nice to find like-minds. Doom and gloom is unempowering - it's what "they" want. Fuck them.
Thank you. I am also thinking we need to build parallel systems which just bypass and ignore them. This is what I have done with my recovery from chronic illness, and helping others overcome the nocebo diagnosis of hopeless situations. At first, I went up against the medical system, and was calling out doctors, but this just lead to push back, and I was working up against the learned helplessness and indoctirnated trust people had in that system, so people could not hear what I was saying. I softened my approach, and started to ignore the medical paradigm, and just gave others different information, while remaining under the radar of vested interests.
So agree. Together we can come up with new systems that make them increasingly irrelevant. Imagine as we pull our energy, support, and money from them, and redirect them into what we want to see, how quickly we could reclaim our lives. I say to people all the time, Why are you paying taxes to a government that does not represents you? That's the deal - taxation in exchange for representation. If enough of us did it - they would have to meet our demands. (It's a tough one though, people are really afraid of the IRS)
Substack is a great place to see what free minds are up to, which will generate ideas that inevitably lead to new systems. Your experience with reclaiming your health is a perfect example. Thanks.