Was a freak, am a freak, will ALWAYS be a freak...until my last breath. For too long, I thought *I* was the weird one, that something was WRONG WITH ME.... Looking back, I am thankful that I finally realized I WAS the sane one in an insane world... a huge step to self-acceptance. Now, reading/hearing Caitlin, Hedges, Street, Schmidt, Zinn, Chomsky, et al. "keeps me keeping on."
I would recommend Gabor Maté and Robert Sapolsky to read too; their insight on the psychological and behavioural impacts of a broken world on humanity, from a clinical and academic perspective are quite illuminating.
Good for you, glad you have found a way! But. There are no sane ones. There is no truth. There are only people unlike you, and, if you are lucky, people enough like you that you can connect with them.
The fact that so many informed, intelligent and empathetic people I know cannot let go of some of the bullshit they’ve been indoctrinated with is something I find so frustrating and excruciating. But we still have to keep trying to get them to see reality.
I'm in the same boat, for what it's worth. I know people that are first in line to console and support others when something goes wrong - but are aggressive, dyed-in-the-wool zionist/capitalist/empire apologists.
I can guarantee that you're carrying around a shed load of bullshit too. It's not your job to point out anyone else's. Only to become more aware of your own.
If you think I've said something that is bullshit, don't give me your bullshit by accusing me of speaking bullshit without even saying what you object to! See how silly humans can be?
don’t get your knickers in a knot please denise! I’m not saying you’re talking bullshit. I’m saying we’re all talking bullshit. It’s when we think we’re enlightened, or ethical leaders or able to see through the propaganda about everything that we can be sure we’re not.
My knickers are quite smooth thank you! Well that's your interpretation. I'm not speaking on everything, so again, please be specific so I can know where to adjust if it is warranted. You can't just use broad brush strokes. Of course nobody can see through everything. By mere use of this language we must admit we are in the spell. But there are degrees of getting out of it and one way that I've found is making every belief conscious and analyzing it. I've done a lot of thinking which few people do. It's like if you study something, you know more about it, usually, but of course not necessarily. That's why we must be specific so we can all learn and keep growing.
Yes but we can't just wait till they become compus mentus. We need to be doing something ourselves. Talking about what to do is the first stage because we don't want to be bossed around again by a small group. I say let's start by adopting a secondary calendar, adopting a local currency and adopting another consensus system. We could also stop paying interest on bank loans. But all this we must do in a collaborative way.
Not me....I no longer have the energy or goal of changing the minds of those...WILLFULLY stupid and/or selfish....or evil. For me, ipso facto....the evil intent and actions...should be beyond apparent.
Then you will join the ranks of inertia and will not use energy to intercept the momentum, until perhaps you see others change first. Yes, it takes effort but it also takes effort to abide by the demands of the status quo.
Nope. I'm old. I'm tired. Been there. Done that. I've garnered enough wisdom over ALL these many years to RECOGNIZE and act upon, where, when, how to extend personal effort...propping up, supporting, showing up, empowering the opposition...US, the people....trying to change the "minds" [ sic] of maggots, rumpers, rePUKElicans is, would be, a monumental WASTE of my time and energy. Thank you.
I'm 84, grew up fucked up but at some point, clarity found me in a simple path, that is different for everyone but with the same core principle: live with compassion. This means aligning with our evolutionary legacy as egalitarian, sharing, non-violent and cooperative beings who find love among strangers on the same journey. Living with compassion does NOT mean living without fighting for justice; in fact, it demands fighting to correct wrongs. for when we live with "love" in the sense of compassion, we will also live with anger and hatred, anger at injustice which fuels our struggle to overcome it and hatred for acts of cruelty, rooted in love for the victims of evil treatment.
For me, with a long stretch of dysfunctional emotional turmoil behind me, I cannot separate this commitment from a plant based diet, non-violent resistance, anti-war activism, gun law reform, and a strong support for democracy in the true sense of rule by the people, based on equality and consent. If you find yourself out of line in any of these areas , I suggest a period of quiet reflection and what it would mean to live with compassion without borders, undivided by nationality, ethnicity, or gender or species. In other words, speaking for myself after a painful youth and middle age, a kind of outcast, my rebellious nature finally found a foundation in rejecting violence (force to stop violence is NOT violence) at all levels.
This commitment throws us into the struggle for sanity and justice, at odds with our society and the ruling class. But as Camus wrote, "Peace is the only thing worth fighting for." And the paradox is that, at least for me, it was entering that fight as a pacifist, as a vegan, and as a person living with kindness in the midst of the fight for peace, it was this battle that brought me inner peace.
Some will hate you for this kind of journey, but to them, I say, with all due respect, fuck that noise. And so I tune it out as the heckling of those unable to overcome their indoctrination. I make these comments not out of a sense of superiority but out of a sense of humility, a downto earth, grounded sense of NOT being superior but rather, instructed by a life of hard lessons learned, understanding later in life that a life of (attempted, I fail every day) compassion begins at home but tears down walls that imprison us and keep others out. My 2 bits worth.
I enjoyed the essence of your message. But to solve any problem you must first identify it as such. Are we really supposed to be all that is good when the fact remains that in nature , at least in general, it a survival of the fittest agenda?
John, please reread my post: it make clear that a life of compassion requires that we identify evil and fight it. Your Social Darwinist view of nature and evolution is refuted by the fact, as Darwin noted, that it is not the strongest who survive but those most able to adapt and cooperate: "Cooperation is the highest stage of evolution. Cooperation is based on understanding each other and acting as allies, based on compassion or empathy. I also made clear that using force to stop violence is not violence, and that we MUST fight for peace. I sense you did not read my post with clarity and had a kneejerk reaction based on a misunderstanding both of my concept of living with compassion and the requirements of survival.
When I refer to a survival of the fittest agenda in natural environments, I am not advocating that humans should act within that condition, only that it exists as a default condition in nature.
My point is that if we can recognize our propensity for survival, we can perhaps act with that in mind. Fir example, the culminating result of that condition for humanity is the existence of nuclear weapons, a whose usage will probably bring about the extinction of our species.
While you are correct in identifying cooperation as a factor of survival, it is only one factor and not exclusive for survival. A fast cheetah will likely eat if a scarcity of food is present while the slow one will die. And there no cooperation there.
I am actually advocating what you propose, but also pointing out that the survival syndrome of nature is responsible for the production of weapons of extinction.. know your enemy is a mantra, and in many cases we are the enemy.
Cheetahs do cooperate for survival." cheetahs often form "coalitions"—usually 2 to 3 brothers from the same litter, but sometimes unrelated males join.
These coalitions cooperate for life, and they:
Defend territory together
Hunt cooperatively (though not always simultaneously)
Share kills, even if only one made the take-down
This boosts survival and mating success—coalition males hold better territories and get more chances to breed."
But more importantly, in understanding how cheetahs cooperate is to realize we are NOT cheetahs, not natural predatory carnivores who exist by killing (not naturally). We are closer to chimps and bonobos, one violent, the other peaceful. And as we share 90% DNA with Cheetahs but not the carnivore (that means hunting and eating raw meat as diet) part, we share much more with the other descendants of the apes: "98.8% of DNA with chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
~98.7–99.6% of DNA with bonobos (Pan paniscus). So what we organically most are like are the bonobos (tho undermined by institutions of inequality and violence), who live by the motto of Make love, not war.
That is our deepest legacy, embedded in our DNA but undermined by institutions and norms that have fucked things up royally. I is not to late to change...for the key to survival is not speed or strength or willpower but adaptation through cooperation. I would note that the philosophy or ideology that most embaces a reclaiming of our inherited legacy is democratic socialism or libertarian socialism, which seeks to eliminate the concept of private property, state rule, and instead promote cooperative ownership and control thru democratic egalitarian norms.
I chose cheetahs, I could have chosen crocodiles. I don’t know about alligators, but cooperation is probably not high on their list of survival conditions. Male bulls or male anything that has hooves can usually lead to head confrontations. Anyway, whether the legacies of survival involve cooperation or I did yak skills, the fact remains that we have created nuclear arsenals that if used would probably end human existence.
We cooperated to make these weapons, and many of the individuals who make these weapons probably attend religious services. The point is if we can recognize that our mental strength has morphed into one of the greatest dangers humanity has ever faced, a
Nuclear war, acting to curb our innate predisposition to survive against an enemy could save us from nuclear annihilation.
You need to factcheck your assumptions: even allegators cooperate to survive: "Examples of Alligator Cooperation:
1. Coordinated Nesting (Females)
Female alligators sometimes build nests close together.
This offers mutual protection of eggs and hatchlings against predators.
They may even tolerate hatchlings from other nests, helping some survive.
2. Group Hunting
While usually solitary hunters, alligators have been seen congregating at fish bottlenecks, especially in droughts or at weirs.
They don’t actively plan or share prey, but tolerate close proximity while exploiting the same food source.
This is passive cooperation, not strategic like in dolphins or lions.
3. Parental Care
Female alligators guard nests and carry hatchlings to water.
Some studies suggest they’ll protect unrelated young if they’re nearby—]" But again, we are not allegators, with a significantly different environment and evolution: We share about 25% of DNA with allegators, so if you want a real parallel, it is the bonobo with 99% shared DNA.
I am afraid you have totally missed my point that our 300,000 yr legacy of egalitarian, sharing, peaceful co-existence was totally undermined by the new inventions of civilization, starting with property and leading to inequality, slavery, domination, religion, and war Understanding how these institutions, now thousands of years old, have betrayed our inherited instincts of sociability, trust, and altruism, leads us to understand the remedy: a unified uprising to replace these institutions ("to alter or abolish) with institutions which affirm and align with our evolutionary instincts.
I'd like to make a point here, in that, though humans are animals, we are nothing like them. We are totally separate for whatever reason I don't know. But we are. We have hair on our heads and not on our bodies, we have a higher intelligence, we have choices of what we can eat as well as almost unlimited choices in everything else. It's funny how we are lumped in with animals when we are very different and the difference is massive and rarely highlighted.
We are animals.. just ask Israelis who view Palestinians as animals… is the rest of us who have not been picked as the Chosen any different. We do what all other animals do. We eat , shed our remains, and survive for a while.. intelligence is way overrated, most especially as a long- term survival asset.
Until the discovery of the power of atoms, intelligence served us well. If things continue to deteriorate in the ways we act however, our intelligence will have led us to nuclear extinction..
We are animals, sentient being who share emotions like fear, anger, love, and frustration, who love our young, who suffer. Any attempt to claim we are separate animals is only a description of our alienation from our non-human family, caused by vicious ideologies like speciesism and racism, with its hierarchy of both animals and human animals. It is not intelligence that will destroy our save us but compassion., or the lack of it. IN boot camp, the first job is to destroy any sense o compassion in the immature brain of the recruit. When that destruction is complete, he can be taught to kill without remorse. These are the institutions we must replace with those that reinforce our inherited trust and altruism, our social instincts that even other animals share.
We have a blueprint for how to do this: it is the Declaration of INdependence which asserts our right to armed revolt, if necessary, to alter or abolish those institutions which oppress us.
We are much like other animals, for instance, we share "98.8% of DNA with chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
~98.7–99.6% of DNA with bonobos (Pan paniscus)" We are close kin, sentient beings who feel anger, fear, joy, love, and suffering. The Big Lie of civilization includes the idea that we are separate for other sentient beings. Whether we have higher intelligence is debatable, we certainly have higher arrogance about it, but consider that the octopus has many brains, can unscrew jars, navigate mazes, solve problems, use tools and has survived and evolved for 500 million years: "Breakdown of Octopus Brains
Central brain (1)
Located between the eyes.
Controls higher-order functions like problem solving, decision-making, and memory.
Peripheral "arm brains" (8)
Each of the eight arms has its own ganglion (a dense cluster of neurons).
These mini-brains control movement, touch, and sometimes make decisions independent of the central brain.
🕷️ What This Means in Practice
Each arm can taste, feel, and react without waiting for a signal from the central brain.
Arms can even explore or hunt independently, cooperating loosely but with autonomy. " But more importantly is that if we accept that intelligence is the ability to survive, to adapt, to evolve, then cockroaches are more intelligent than we are, for they have been around for 400 million years.
" animals alive today—or their ancestors—predate hominids. Hominids (the great ape family including humans, chimps, gorillas, and orangutans) emerged only about 15–20 million years ago, and humans (Homo sapiens) are just ~300,000 years old." So if we view intelligence objectively, as the ability to survive, we are newcomers with a recent history of destroying ourselves....I would not call that intelligence but rather stupidity.
I know what you're saying, however I don't put much credence on science telling us how long humans have been here. And I think we share almost that level of DNA with flies as well. But honestly, there is no way to deny it - humans have the intelligence - true that on the whole we don't use it which makes us super dumb - but we do have more capacity that all the other animals, regardless of their special traits that we don't have. Because we have the choice to totally obliterate other creatures. I'm not happy about that but we must know that so we can keep our species in check. I see things are quite simple it's just that control confuses everything and debauches everything. We don't understand the space between matter, I refer to it as the aether. And that's where much knowledge "resides". Without seeing this other layer, we are essentially going around one-eyed and so everything is out of kilter, everything looks distorted and is because we make it that way from our lack of "seeing".
I think the intent to kill is what we need to change. Responding to someone's violence by using violence to stop them is warranted of course, however not to intend to kill them, merely to stop them. I understand that on the rare occasion, the intent must be to kill them, but that's usually when one is so much lesser abled than the aggressor and very rare. The thing is we can't have blanket rules because life is too complex however we can have guidelines that apply a high percentage of the time.
If you use physical restraint, from holding to killing, to prevent or stop violence, which implies a violation of acceptable norms, that is not violence but its opposite: anti-violence. If I hit you with a bat to stop you from hurting my daughter, that does not violate any norms but in fact enacts the norm of protecting our children. Force which violates rights is violence; force which stops that violence, is not. If it is necessary to kill a person to prevent the from killing, that is the distinction between killing (ie justified force) and murder (unjustified). We are NOT born with the intent to kill; that is learned, taught. For 300,000 years homo sapiens evolved without lethal group conflict, no wars, no massacres (only occasional individual violence in the archeological record: zero evidence of lethal group violence for 300,000 yrs that evolved a non-violent character, then betrayed with the advent of civilization, which invented war for homo sapiens.
So we are taught not to hit but when we go to the military, they have to strip off our identity, reduce us to helpless robots and then teach us to kill, which goes against both our instincts and our early training. So we have a nature that is ready to reclaim the heritage of peaceful, sharing co-existence, but we face a world controlled by war mongers and psychopaths. What they did in the old days was isolate those who sought to become dominant or violent...the silent treatment. That is probably what it will take today to reclaim our ancient birthright.....shutting out, shunning, those with the power, and it works: in 1989, 7 militarized dictatorships in Eastern Europe collapsed, without bloodshed, before the massive protests and strikes of a unified people. For the power is not in having weapons (who won the Vietnam War?) but in solidarity, for cooperation is the highest stage of evolution and when we unite, we cannot be defeated. That is the lesson of of history. And that is the message of evolution.
I completely agree including with your explanation of violence as a response to initiated violence. But now we have a situation that is totally debauched with the mindset of the many in the same condition. What can the few of us do that will change the trajectory? Money is at the crux of all dealings. That is something the past didn't have like we have today. Every time we engage with this money system, we grow violence somewhere, in the aggregate, even though we individually cannot see that. My view is that we can take our energy out of this system and leave it bereft of energy which will extinguish it. But what I see is that as more people are becoming "enlightened", they are succumbing to this money system to justify doing their "good works".
We the people, as labor, control the money, but only if we unite and use our solidarity: in Eastern Europe in 1989, a united people with massive protests and strikes, took down 7 militarized dictatorships without bloodshed. Strikes show who really has the power. The capitalists or predators depend on compliant labor force but when the people join in solidarity, their power crumbles and the people own the power. That is what history teaches.....so if we want to take down the masters of the universe, we need to unite and act in concert to show them who has the ultimate power. In the end, we need to abolish money (ie wealth that can circulate and thus accumulate and thus become concentrated, as with the 5 billionaires, all of whom grew rich exploiting tax funded technologies (internet, GPS, roads, etc), with more wealth than 3 billion (disunited) people When the tickets to obtain goods and services no longer circulate (ie they expire with use), there will be no more masters and slaves, no more billionaires and starving millions. And all it takes is for "Workers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains." 1989 proved that with precision. All it takes to bring down globalised capitalism is for workers to refuse to work.
the 'survival of the fittest' happens within a context (nature ?). humans managed to change that context. the times that the best hunter and the best gatherer had the best chances for survival have long since passed. today we produce food for 11 billion people and we're 8 billion, nevertheless people starve.
Survival is not to the strongest but to those most able to cooperate with others to adapt to circumstances. Women are not 'the strongest and yet they live longer. Today, only solidarity based on compassion and fighting for peace can help us survive. We need to replace a system which slaughters tens of millions with a system of shared prosperity and kinship.
So true Dale. But our economy and indeed our entire culture is based on the opposite of cooperation, it is based on competition, oneupmanship. That only has one trajectory and that is to sink us all.
Yes, that is my entire point, that our system, which originated with the Agricultural Revolution starting about 12,000 yrs ago, is in contradiction to our 300,00 yr old inbred legacy of equality, sharing, and non-violent cooperation. I am reading The Goodness Paradox, which seeks to explain how we are both very non-violent (99% of the time) in our internal affairs....but very violent in our external (the other, wars, etc)....which deals with our shared DNA with both violent chimps and matriarchial) and peaceful and erotic bonobos, the two sides to our actual behavior. In my view, we see both in the extreme in war: the most intense cooperation of a military organization and the most violent use of that cooperation. But war is recent, invented perhaps 5000 yrs ago, and going back beyond the advent of civilization, there is zero (nada) evidence of lethal group conflict such as massacres. Since, nothing but. What happened? When people settled down, they began to farm and have surpluses, which led to the invention of property, which led to the creation of those with it (the haves) and those without (the have nots), and this led to inequality, slavery, top-down rule, religion, and war, all interconnected institutions which undermined our inherited instinct to trust, to share, and to cooperate in a peaceful way. So we are dealing, as I view it, with a betrayal of our actual inherited "nature" and paying the price for that betrayal.
It is our right, as I read in the Declaration of INdependence, to rise up and throw off oppressive institutions that are not based on equality and consent (the essence of 300,000 yrs of homo sapien evolution) and "alter or abolish them."
So this is our challenge and our task: to rise up and alter and abolish the dominant concepts that have created a world in which the institutions which mold and control us violate the very heritage we all inherit as a birthright through our DNA, which has selected traits that bring peace and sharing. That is our mission: to work for justice and peace, equality and autonomy. And there is joy in this work.....if we can ever accept that it is necessary and liberating.
Thank you for a well-written summary of your POV. I wish it were the whole picture.
"our evolutionary legacy as egalitarian, sharing, non-violent and cooperative beings"
That's only part of what exists, and I fear you believe this primarily because you are, still, in reactive mode. If so, please widen your reading, and include those that challenge your beliefs, with an open mind. It's not all "noise".
What exists today is a betrayal of our 300,000 yr legacy of egalitarian, sharing, non violent co-existence, as I tried to make clear. With the advent of what we call civilization, that legacy, which is imprinted in our DNA (neuroscientists have found that trust is inborn, distrust learned, etc) , undermined that legacy with the new institutions of property, haves and have not, inequality, masters and slaves, a master ruling class, religion to justify its monopoly of violence, and war to seize resources. At 84, I have a world class education from the world's top universities and scholars, a lifetime of reading (currently reading The Goodness paradox) and a creative mind that rejects reactive reasoning such as your post exhibits. Any actions which block a creative and open approach is noise. Your post is noise. And you know how I feel about that...so adios, amigo...I have no time for shallow shouts that seek to block the path forward.
I do hope you are not censoring your spar partner? Censorship is almost as lowly as intentional physical harm because it is our only tool in this campaign against the colonist minded. It actually threatens all our lives, including your own and mine so I must always call it out. Please reconsider if that is what you did. If you don't want to spend time on him, just scroll by. I want to hear what he has to say so we can influence each other to get back to the existence that you seem to want as well.
We live in a total fabrication of beliefs - the belief that we buy land, the belief that money is time, the belief that adults have various statuses above or below other adults, the belief in a central god, the belief in worship, the belief that the earth is like a vending machine, and many more. This distorts everything we do. Even if one person sees the light of it, the people surrounding them wear these beliefs as though they are reality.
Why suggest I would censor? Why lecture me on censorship? My goal is to expand our view of possibilities and I only disagree with those who argue to limit them. I will not reconsider for in no way did I censor anyone (disagreement is not censorship but its opposite, the exercise of free speech). I dont get you at all so I will ignore you.
Hysterical, Caitlin, because I’ve achieved so many of the suggestions on your list!
Different? Understatement.
Fail to achieve your potential? Hey in my defense, I DID graduate from high school!
Disappoint your parents? Check. My brother’s a retired MD; my sister’s as retired psychologist. I’m a retired…gardener 😂
Was I well paid? FUCK NO! Do I have a pension, a 401k? Nope and nope. But how many of the poor slobs stuck behind their desks get to enjoy spring, summer and fall in the great outdoors every workday?
What's that quote? "In an insane world, a sane person will seem insane?" That's where we're at--been at for some time really. Stop trying to fit yourself into this lunatic asylum and be yourself!
Blaze your own trail. Unlearn everything. Write your own rules. Find your own truth. Set your own values and priorities. Define your own idea of success. Define your own idea of sanity. And live in the moment--each one of them. You never know when it will be your last one.
St. Antony the Great: "A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like us.'"
Thanks. Makes me want to crack open those enlightening little books still collecting dust on my shelves. Jiddhu K was definitely someone off the beaten track of philosophy.
Did Jiddah K suggest to accept that opinions can differ from your opinion and still be ok? If yes, then maybe you need to take a refresher course in Juddhu K.
We are all clinging to a rock hurtling around in a space we know nothing about. No one gets off this rock alive and our time here is so short. The majority of this rocks inhabitants just want a happy healthy life , enough money to live on and surrounded by love from those closest to us . Our rock is covered in marvels in the form of natural beauty and extraordinary life forms . So why do a small minority want to destroy all of this and why do the majority allow them too. It's the old age good vs evil and where is Buffy when we need her?
Thank you, Caitlin, for taking a well-deserved break from the most pressing issue of the genocide. But what you are talking about in this post are the underlying causes of all these world problems - people just falling in line. Many entire populations, such as in USA, seem to exist as if they are mere gut microbes in the belly of the Imperial Monster and abstain from their own moral agency. Wake up, sheeple - any 10 people can change the world!
Exactly. We need to network and discuss. This is the phase for that. Actually at this phase, just talking with each other of the reality of things is a revolutionary act. Because the mind is so powerful and they have mind controlled us since forever. Now it's time to break free of that.
The life you describe Caitlin is exactly the reason why millions of people suffer from mental illness or commit suicide. It’s not a life we were ever meant to live, abiding by the distorted and deviant rules of lunatics!
CJ>>"If you want to really live an awake and inspired life, you’ve got to blaze your own trail. You’ve got to unlearn everything you’ve been told about what a life properly lived would look like, and write your own rules. Because the rules everyone else has been playing by were written by madmen."
Caitlin, I consider those to be some of the BEST words of WISDOM I have come across.
Being older than most, I always believed that the world we had before WWII was a valued one. Simple interests, no all consuming technology controlling each life, with music, art, education all seen as meritorious pursuits.
Can't turn back the clock. It's true.
The turning point was WWII. The power that the USA was able to keep following their well prepared and well stocked weaponry meant the end of the previous hegemony, England, as it was then. Now, of course, as the United Kingdom, it is far less united than it was then. A past Empire.
In the meantime, to consolidate that new role, the envied all powerful industrialist, while capitalising on a dollar given a value then far more that was justified, made investments that paid off, subsidised foreign connections with a valuable currency and embarked upon the grand plan to spread their wings and to become the new empire ruler. They just didn't know when to stop and now, sporting 750 military establishments around there globe, have become arrogant enough to think that this is a true representation of the good life and that what they have, they deserve.
They have no friends. If anyone cares to research the comments made by Henry Kissinger in relation to the way the USA is regarded, their attitude to others, it paints a dismal picture. In my opinion very realistic.
But....and here is the rub, they have created a climate where war is normal. That in turn has created a false need for the many acolytes to think they are all threatened by enemies and therefore need the services of a militarised state to protect them, justifying one last quotation attributed to Kissinger, but with some question as to its authenticity..... to finish my ramblings........
"Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries."
'Depopulation', caused by wars and more wars, by any method required. The USA does not care for humanity, its constant wars have shown that very clearly.
'Inceasing amount of minerals'...add to minerals, foodstuffs, oil, gas, military bases, colonial expansions as per the UK in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The undisputed object........controlling the world.
Well said C33! I concur with most of what you say above. I still have questions around the 'depolulation narrative' you suggest. It does hold merit, but I'm not yet completely convinced of the 'rationality/end-result' of such an agenda for TPTB.
I see too many systems-level flaws in all such 'depopulation' narratives (and there are a number of variations of it). It could be an interesting (though prolonged) tangent to think about, though for the present I wish to stay focused on challenging the U.S. Empire and its supporters.
A very worthy objective indeed. But while you're at it, give God's chosen people, some of your attention as they continue on in their shameful acts of violence.
They have nothing to commend them as a hated on-going inhumane people, now known as the PARASITES, living in the stolen state of Palestine, infecting bit-by-bit the very weak American houses of government, a.k.a the USA Knesset, as they, in turn, enthusiastically fulfil the role as the HOST, supporting in every way possible their parasitic freeloaders, snipers, rapists and US passported IDF mercenaries.
The greatest shame of the 21st Century and for which every American will pay the price, one way or another.
What's interesting about the 'God's chosen people' narrative is that it reeks of a deep 'inferiority complex' that these supposed 'God's chosen people' seem to have. I'm no psychologist/psychiatrist, but I'm sure these 'Israelis and Zionists' would present an EXCELLENT 'case-study' on the subject of 'inferiority complexes and the narratives created to ameliorate such complexes'.
I've observed that some of the most 'insecure people' often have some of the 'grandest of narratives'. Could this possibly be a 'human-defense' mechanism of sorts working behind the scenes? Israelis sure do come across as quite insecure people/society/culture that need the narratives they do to present a kind of 'fake bravado or fake superiority' to mask their 'many failings' and psychopathic/sociopathic flaws.
A nagging question at the back of my mind remains, though - how much of a responsibility do the Western nations bear (in times past and present) for creating 'such insecurities' in a whole population? Anyways, I digress.
This is exactly what I’ve been thinking for quite a very long time now, as well… in general terms… one huge collective chip on their shoulder (how I’ve described it to others).
“The rules everyone else has been playing by were written by madmen” .
Not so. Darwin explained well that a survival of the fittest was the environment in which we were born. He was right, and quite sane. The trick is not to call everyone else insane, but to try and differentiate the good from the bad….
I'm sorry, John Turcot - I haven't read your current comment - but based on multiple previous conversations with you, I'm choosing to IGNORE all comments from you (as you say - I should simplify - and I choose to do so by ignoring your comments and saving me time in the process - thus simplifying my life). Thank you for giving me the 'simplify your life' idea that helps me IGNORE time-wasting interactions with people such as yourself. 🙏
But what does that achieve? We need to challenge ideas. The time for that is now. Mention what he said that you object to so he and you both have a chance to do better. Ignoring is a form of the word ignorance. There is way too much of that today. Ignoring someone is a blow, a deliberate blow to seem superior.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to IGNORE your comments too Denise Ward. I won't go into the many valid reasons for doing so (as this is not the time or place for it), but suffice to say that based on a history of your past comments (and irrational interactions with me) have convinced me of the need to save my time/energy and be selective about who I interact with.
I would help to clarify what you mean by "fittest." In evolution it basically means the ability to pass on viable offspring." I guess that makes Elon pretty fit, but not a whole lot of others who take it to mean power and strength, "The fittest individual is not necessarily the strongest, fastest, or biggest. A genotype’s fitness includes its ability to survive, find a mate, produce offspring — and ultimately leave its genes in the next generation."
Spencer is the one who came up with Social Darwinsim, which is closer to your meaning. It, however, has no biological basis, but ascribes the ruthless as being entitled by virtue of this fictional 'survival of the fittest.'
I had this tripping experience recently where I understood that the reality we normally live, with all the stresses and grotesquery, is only a tiny slice of what is actually real, and the intellectual part of it is altogether unreal, information without substance. And beyond that, even the physical world is somewhat of an illusion, albeit one that is powerful and inescapable. Behind everything is this divine light of consciousness transcending form and the physical world, life and death, and reminds me that all of this is a foam on the surface, and the human species on Earth is a bit of a bad sideshow. All this cultural stuff is fake. Most of it is empty images. The belief systems, hierarchies etc etc are slapdash and ignorant at best.
The only thing that seems to matter, maybe the only reason we exist in this physical form is love: the ability of singular divine consciousness to break into little pieces that can then synchronize and resonate with each other revealing a higher existence. Even death is kind of an afterthought compared to this.
Back in default-land I started to wonder if I'm just bad as professional because I don't hold my tongue well. It seems silence and the refusal to get involved, moral and intellectual abdication, are the universal qualities of successful people. But just because seemingly everyone does this from Palestine to climate change, doesn't mean that the herd is actually right. It just means they are a herd, and aren't actualizing their existence as a present, passionate, and ethical human being. I think it is a worse fate to hide in soul-killing habits and superficial forms than to crash and burn as a real person.
One reality is that we were born from the confines of nature’s blessings but also from nature’s wrath. The sooner we recognize our origins, the sooner we can create our own evolution..
"the reality we normally live, with all the stresses and grotesquery, is only a tiny slice of what is actually real,"
Totally agreed. Perhaps not even that is real, as humans are incapable of knowing reality external to their own minds. For to actually *know* something requires being one with it.
"maybe the only reason we exist in this physical form is love"
Be extremely careful of who says they "love" you (or tells you *anything*, for that matter) -- whether they're your parents, teachers, doctors, religion pushers, youth leaders, self-appointed mentors, many decades of therapists**, peers, partners, employers, or literally anyone or anything else -- *including* substances you ingest. What they mean and why, and what you hear, are always two different things. And after many decades of this, it can rip you to pieces.
I was long told that "God is Love". But now I realize that God is a representation specifically of the All-Powerful OTHER, and that the only things that actually exist are godmongers (whatever they are "in reality"); after all, no recognizable "God" has *ever* stopped to "talk" to me. All godmongers (like most other "leaders", especially the chattering-class bullhorn-hoggers) really want is mental power over you (even those who fool themselves over it, while vehemently denying it), no matter how much you tell them "LEAVE. ME. ALONE." No one ever hears your screams. Ironically, this is not goodness, this is evil. I "know" THAT much. Today, people tell condescendingly smile at me that I have no idea -- yet they are utterly unable to communicate their allegedly superior knowledge of "God" or whatever, meanwhile expect me to search for (grovel, really) and believe it. Really, WTF??
And if you can't figure it out, if you persist with you questions, you are -- ultimately -- ignored / abandoned. Sink or swim. Do or die. Because 99.9% of human communication is fish-school swimming, and if you're lost, you are good as dead. (I learned far too late that "If you're in poker game [i.e. life], and you don't know who the patsy is, *you're* the patsy.") "Get the fuck outta my face, you disgusting negativity hound!" OK, suit yourself. I think everyone here understands what happens to any human being who is "dispensed with".
So much for "peace and love". It isn't just the insanity of the warmongers and rightists (the "hierarchicals", I call them), who I've *also* had plenty of experience with.
-----------------
** Contemporary Western "professional" talk therapy in their own ways, do "love simulation" fakeries as if we're in a goddam *theatre*. These are, somehow, supposed to resonate, when they are actually the deepest of insults, and can lead to complete breakdown of communication, and of one's mind itself. Certainly, psychiatry is one of THE sickest things out there, where the MOST INTIMATE has been transformed during the last century fully to the FULLY TRANSACTIONAL COMMODITIES, yet now also fully normalized. Just another piece in the capitalist system people rail about here.
I commend that Caitlin wants to talk about "the sick". So why the hell don't talk about why we still don't have a system for REAL connection to our ACTUAL communities for REAL therapy? No, the vast majority of these clowns DON'T know what "theory" they're doing; the best are basically paid friends with intimacy-simulation (i.e. acting) talent. "I'm waiting for my man / Twenty-five dollar co-pay in my hand" FUCK THIS SHIT!
Yeah, I'm definitely talking about love from a mystical sense, and not as relationship obligations or a system of coercion/control. It's actually pretty simple, the universal something that is one, breaks up into many in order to experience itself, and its favorite thing is to synchronize and resonate deeply among those parts of it that fit together and are able to meet honestly without agenda. Kind of a divine self-reflection, that has very little to do with how society conceptualizes this around attachment and ownership. I don't think that is idealism, but the actual purpose behind why we even exist at all.
I'm of mixed mind about therapy, because I think it IS generally good, but the lame thing, and also its limitation, is that it is human connection commodified. Like everything else. And you don't get to take that relationship with you into normal life.
On the other hand, people go to therapy precisely because they aren't safe or served by their actual community. I did live at Gestalt-based retreat center for a number of months and that was an example of where everyone was practicing supporting each other communally, and there wasn't much of a professional hierarchy around it. It does take training and intention to create that kind of community, and this was also one kept afloat by the money of people coming and doing retreats, so not altogether natural either.
I’ve been defying conformists all my life, starting in elementary school when I purposely perverted the forced standing and reciting of the pledge of allegiance. Defy those who try to subjugate you and even more violently against those that order you to subjugate others.
I agree with almost everything you say Caitlin, but not all parents or even grandparents support this system. I am 72 years old and from a generation in the 1960s and ‘70s that aspired to a better world but most of us sold out. I felt as you described for much of my life. I never bought into the system but it took me a long time to find a way to live that suited me and didn’t make me feel like a failure. In my forties I finally discovered satisfying work I love to do and in the last few years I have done work I am really proud of including now being a volunteer mentor for young writers in Gaza for We Are Not Numbers. I also work with refugees and in hospices. I am poor compared to most people in the UK, but unimaginably rich compared to the vast majority of people across the globe. I have a home, food, safely, children and grandchildren and I really hope they and their generation, unlike ours, can dismantle this terrible greedy cruel capitalistic world and live by the principles of mutual aid, but it feels to me that the our present leaders would rather destroy the world than let that happen. Unless people wake up and there’s a violent Revolution, I can’t see things changing. I have always been a pacifist but Gaza has changed my mind. We need to tear down these bastards by any means.
That’s a slippery slope.. It is said by some that “ Power corrupts and corrupts absolutely”. I’m thinking dictators who wrongly believe that they have the power, hence yield it in spades?
The power has to remain with each individual. It must not be given to another individual. That's when it becomes corrupted. It keeps one adult as higher and one adult as lower. Peerness is what we need to strive for now.
a lord acton said that 'power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. great men are almost always bad men ...'. it was about papal infallibility. 'power to the people' (democracy) seems the best possible antidote. if someone is to wield (absolute) power, the people seems our best bet, imo.
Was a freak, am a freak, will ALWAYS be a freak...until my last breath. For too long, I thought *I* was the weird one, that something was WRONG WITH ME.... Looking back, I am thankful that I finally realized I WAS the sane one in an insane world... a huge step to self-acceptance. Now, reading/hearing Caitlin, Hedges, Street, Schmidt, Zinn, Chomsky, et al. "keeps me keeping on."
Have always been an outsider and never worried about it.
I would recommend Gabor Maté and Robert Sapolsky to read too; their insight on the psychological and behavioural impacts of a broken world on humanity, from a clinical and academic perspective are quite illuminating.
Thank you....I will do so...
Good for you, glad you have found a way! But. There are no sane ones. There is no truth. There are only people unlike you, and, if you are lucky, people enough like you that you can connect with them.
also read peoplesideas.weebly.com
Don’t stop, now.
Yep
The fact that so many informed, intelligent and empathetic people I know cannot let go of some of the bullshit they’ve been indoctrinated with is something I find so frustrating and excruciating. But we still have to keep trying to get them to see reality.
I'm in the same boat, for what it's worth. I know people that are first in line to console and support others when something goes wrong - but are aggressive, dyed-in-the-wool zionist/capitalist/empire apologists.
Don't waver, stay your course. Lead by example.
I can guarantee that you're carrying around a shed load of bullshit too. It's not your job to point out anyone else's. Only to become more aware of your own.
It is everyone's job to help each other grow and one cannot grow on praise alone.
I’d take the plank out of your own eye first, it helps to see the specks of dust more clearly.
Well tell me where I'm wrong. Quoting slogans doesn't really help much.
Doesn’t it depend on what is being said?
indeed, it may not be anyone's 'job', but one could still appreciate someone pointing out bullshit one wasn't aware of (and maybe return the favor).
Exactly Martin. We need specifics so we can adjust our behavior. That would be called evolve I think!
Love your conclusion.. look in a mirror..
If you think I've said something that is bullshit, don't give me your bullshit by accusing me of speaking bullshit without even saying what you object to! See how silly humans can be?
don’t get your knickers in a knot please denise! I’m not saying you’re talking bullshit. I’m saying we’re all talking bullshit. It’s when we think we’re enlightened, or ethical leaders or able to see through the propaganda about everything that we can be sure we’re not.
My knickers are quite smooth thank you! Well that's your interpretation. I'm not speaking on everything, so again, please be specific so I can know where to adjust if it is warranted. You can't just use broad brush strokes. Of course nobody can see through everything. By mere use of this language we must admit we are in the spell. But there are degrees of getting out of it and one way that I've found is making every belief conscious and analyzing it. I've done a lot of thinking which few people do. It's like if you study something, you know more about it, usually, but of course not necessarily. That's why we must be specific so we can all learn and keep growing.
Yes but we can't just wait till they become compus mentus. We need to be doing something ourselves. Talking about what to do is the first stage because we don't want to be bossed around again by a small group. I say let's start by adopting a secondary calendar, adopting a local currency and adopting another consensus system. We could also stop paying interest on bank loans. But all this we must do in a collaborative way.
“We could stop paying interest on bank loans” .. Allelua… hence to those who would rule us and destroy all of us.
Not me....I no longer have the energy or goal of changing the minds of those...WILLFULLY stupid and/or selfish....or evil. For me, ipso facto....the evil intent and actions...should be beyond apparent.
Then you will join the ranks of inertia and will not use energy to intercept the momentum, until perhaps you see others change first. Yes, it takes effort but it also takes effort to abide by the demands of the status quo.
Nope. I'm old. I'm tired. Been there. Done that. I've garnered enough wisdom over ALL these many years to RECOGNIZE and act upon, where, when, how to extend personal effort...propping up, supporting, showing up, empowering the opposition...US, the people....trying to change the "minds" [ sic] of maggots, rumpers, rePUKElicans is, would be, a monumental WASTE of my time and energy. Thank you.
I'm 84, grew up fucked up but at some point, clarity found me in a simple path, that is different for everyone but with the same core principle: live with compassion. This means aligning with our evolutionary legacy as egalitarian, sharing, non-violent and cooperative beings who find love among strangers on the same journey. Living with compassion does NOT mean living without fighting for justice; in fact, it demands fighting to correct wrongs. for when we live with "love" in the sense of compassion, we will also live with anger and hatred, anger at injustice which fuels our struggle to overcome it and hatred for acts of cruelty, rooted in love for the victims of evil treatment.
For me, with a long stretch of dysfunctional emotional turmoil behind me, I cannot separate this commitment from a plant based diet, non-violent resistance, anti-war activism, gun law reform, and a strong support for democracy in the true sense of rule by the people, based on equality and consent. If you find yourself out of line in any of these areas , I suggest a period of quiet reflection and what it would mean to live with compassion without borders, undivided by nationality, ethnicity, or gender or species. In other words, speaking for myself after a painful youth and middle age, a kind of outcast, my rebellious nature finally found a foundation in rejecting violence (force to stop violence is NOT violence) at all levels.
This commitment throws us into the struggle for sanity and justice, at odds with our society and the ruling class. But as Camus wrote, "Peace is the only thing worth fighting for." And the paradox is that, at least for me, it was entering that fight as a pacifist, as a vegan, and as a person living with kindness in the midst of the fight for peace, it was this battle that brought me inner peace.
Some will hate you for this kind of journey, but to them, I say, with all due respect, fuck that noise. And so I tune it out as the heckling of those unable to overcome their indoctrination. I make these comments not out of a sense of superiority but out of a sense of humility, a downto earth, grounded sense of NOT being superior but rather, instructed by a life of hard lessons learned, understanding later in life that a life of (attempted, I fail every day) compassion begins at home but tears down walls that imprison us and keep others out. My 2 bits worth.
I enjoyed the essence of your message. But to solve any problem you must first identify it as such. Are we really supposed to be all that is good when the fact remains that in nature , at least in general, it a survival of the fittest agenda?
John, please reread my post: it make clear that a life of compassion requires that we identify evil and fight it. Your Social Darwinist view of nature and evolution is refuted by the fact, as Darwin noted, that it is not the strongest who survive but those most able to adapt and cooperate: "Cooperation is the highest stage of evolution. Cooperation is based on understanding each other and acting as allies, based on compassion or empathy. I also made clear that using force to stop violence is not violence, and that we MUST fight for peace. I sense you did not read my post with clarity and had a kneejerk reaction based on a misunderstanding both of my concept of living with compassion and the requirements of survival.
Dale,
When I refer to a survival of the fittest agenda in natural environments, I am not advocating that humans should act within that condition, only that it exists as a default condition in nature.
My point is that if we can recognize our propensity for survival, we can perhaps act with that in mind. Fir example, the culminating result of that condition for humanity is the existence of nuclear weapons, a whose usage will probably bring about the extinction of our species.
While you are correct in identifying cooperation as a factor of survival, it is only one factor and not exclusive for survival. A fast cheetah will likely eat if a scarcity of food is present while the slow one will die. And there no cooperation there.
I am actually advocating what you propose, but also pointing out that the survival syndrome of nature is responsible for the production of weapons of extinction.. know your enemy is a mantra, and in many cases we are the enemy.
Cheetahs do cooperate for survival." cheetahs often form "coalitions"—usually 2 to 3 brothers from the same litter, but sometimes unrelated males join.
These coalitions cooperate for life, and they:
Defend territory together
Hunt cooperatively (though not always simultaneously)
Share kills, even if only one made the take-down
This boosts survival and mating success—coalition males hold better territories and get more chances to breed."
But more importantly, in understanding how cheetahs cooperate is to realize we are NOT cheetahs, not natural predatory carnivores who exist by killing (not naturally). We are closer to chimps and bonobos, one violent, the other peaceful. And as we share 90% DNA with Cheetahs but not the carnivore (that means hunting and eating raw meat as diet) part, we share much more with the other descendants of the apes: "98.8% of DNA with chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
~98.7–99.6% of DNA with bonobos (Pan paniscus). So what we organically most are like are the bonobos (tho undermined by institutions of inequality and violence), who live by the motto of Make love, not war.
That is our deepest legacy, embedded in our DNA but undermined by institutions and norms that have fucked things up royally. I is not to late to change...for the key to survival is not speed or strength or willpower but adaptation through cooperation. I would note that the philosophy or ideology that most embaces a reclaiming of our inherited legacy is democratic socialism or libertarian socialism, which seeks to eliminate the concept of private property, state rule, and instead promote cooperative ownership and control thru democratic egalitarian norms.
Dale, ,
I chose cheetahs, I could have chosen crocodiles. I don’t know about alligators, but cooperation is probably not high on their list of survival conditions. Male bulls or male anything that has hooves can usually lead to head confrontations. Anyway, whether the legacies of survival involve cooperation or I did yak skills, the fact remains that we have created nuclear arsenals that if used would probably end human existence.
We cooperated to make these weapons, and many of the individuals who make these weapons probably attend religious services. The point is if we can recognize that our mental strength has morphed into one of the greatest dangers humanity has ever faced, a
Nuclear war, acting to curb our innate predisposition to survive against an enemy could save us from nuclear annihilation.
You need to factcheck your assumptions: even allegators cooperate to survive: "Examples of Alligator Cooperation:
1. Coordinated Nesting (Females)
Female alligators sometimes build nests close together.
This offers mutual protection of eggs and hatchlings against predators.
They may even tolerate hatchlings from other nests, helping some survive.
2. Group Hunting
While usually solitary hunters, alligators have been seen congregating at fish bottlenecks, especially in droughts or at weirs.
They don’t actively plan or share prey, but tolerate close proximity while exploiting the same food source.
This is passive cooperation, not strategic like in dolphins or lions.
3. Parental Care
Female alligators guard nests and carry hatchlings to water.
Some studies suggest they’ll protect unrelated young if they’re nearby—]" But again, we are not allegators, with a significantly different environment and evolution: We share about 25% of DNA with allegators, so if you want a real parallel, it is the bonobo with 99% shared DNA.
I am afraid you have totally missed my point that our 300,000 yr legacy of egalitarian, sharing, peaceful co-existence was totally undermined by the new inventions of civilization, starting with property and leading to inequality, slavery, domination, religion, and war Understanding how these institutions, now thousands of years old, have betrayed our inherited instincts of sociability, trust, and altruism, leads us to understand the remedy: a unified uprising to replace these institutions ("to alter or abolish) with institutions which affirm and align with our evolutionary instincts.
I'd like to make a point here, in that, though humans are animals, we are nothing like them. We are totally separate for whatever reason I don't know. But we are. We have hair on our heads and not on our bodies, we have a higher intelligence, we have choices of what we can eat as well as almost unlimited choices in everything else. It's funny how we are lumped in with animals when we are very different and the difference is massive and rarely highlighted.
Denise,
We are animals.. just ask Israelis who view Palestinians as animals… is the rest of us who have not been picked as the Chosen any different. We do what all other animals do. We eat , shed our remains, and survive for a while.. intelligence is way overrated, most especially as a long- term survival asset.
Until the discovery of the power of atoms, intelligence served us well. If things continue to deteriorate in the ways we act however, our intelligence will have led us to nuclear extinction..
We are animals, sentient being who share emotions like fear, anger, love, and frustration, who love our young, who suffer. Any attempt to claim we are separate animals is only a description of our alienation from our non-human family, caused by vicious ideologies like speciesism and racism, with its hierarchy of both animals and human animals. It is not intelligence that will destroy our save us but compassion., or the lack of it. IN boot camp, the first job is to destroy any sense o compassion in the immature brain of the recruit. When that destruction is complete, he can be taught to kill without remorse. These are the institutions we must replace with those that reinforce our inherited trust and altruism, our social instincts that even other animals share.
We have a blueprint for how to do this: it is the Declaration of INdependence which asserts our right to armed revolt, if necessary, to alter or abolish those institutions which oppress us.
We are much like other animals, for instance, we share "98.8% of DNA with chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
~98.7–99.6% of DNA with bonobos (Pan paniscus)" We are close kin, sentient beings who feel anger, fear, joy, love, and suffering. The Big Lie of civilization includes the idea that we are separate for other sentient beings. Whether we have higher intelligence is debatable, we certainly have higher arrogance about it, but consider that the octopus has many brains, can unscrew jars, navigate mazes, solve problems, use tools and has survived and evolved for 500 million years: "Breakdown of Octopus Brains
Central brain (1)
Located between the eyes.
Controls higher-order functions like problem solving, decision-making, and memory.
Peripheral "arm brains" (8)
Each of the eight arms has its own ganglion (a dense cluster of neurons).
These mini-brains control movement, touch, and sometimes make decisions independent of the central brain.
🕷️ What This Means in Practice
Each arm can taste, feel, and react without waiting for a signal from the central brain.
Arms can even explore or hunt independently, cooperating loosely but with autonomy. " But more importantly is that if we accept that intelligence is the ability to survive, to adapt, to evolve, then cockroaches are more intelligent than we are, for they have been around for 400 million years.
" animals alive today—or their ancestors—predate hominids. Hominids (the great ape family including humans, chimps, gorillas, and orangutans) emerged only about 15–20 million years ago, and humans (Homo sapiens) are just ~300,000 years old." So if we view intelligence objectively, as the ability to survive, we are newcomers with a recent history of destroying ourselves....I would not call that intelligence but rather stupidity.
I know what you're saying, however I don't put much credence on science telling us how long humans have been here. And I think we share almost that level of DNA with flies as well. But honestly, there is no way to deny it - humans have the intelligence - true that on the whole we don't use it which makes us super dumb - but we do have more capacity that all the other animals, regardless of their special traits that we don't have. Because we have the choice to totally obliterate other creatures. I'm not happy about that but we must know that so we can keep our species in check. I see things are quite simple it's just that control confuses everything and debauches everything. We don't understand the space between matter, I refer to it as the aether. And that's where much knowledge "resides". Without seeing this other layer, we are essentially going around one-eyed and so everything is out of kilter, everything looks distorted and is because we make it that way from our lack of "seeing".
I think the intent to kill is what we need to change. Responding to someone's violence by using violence to stop them is warranted of course, however not to intend to kill them, merely to stop them. I understand that on the rare occasion, the intent must be to kill them, but that's usually when one is so much lesser abled than the aggressor and very rare. The thing is we can't have blanket rules because life is too complex however we can have guidelines that apply a high percentage of the time.
If you use physical restraint, from holding to killing, to prevent or stop violence, which implies a violation of acceptable norms, that is not violence but its opposite: anti-violence. If I hit you with a bat to stop you from hurting my daughter, that does not violate any norms but in fact enacts the norm of protecting our children. Force which violates rights is violence; force which stops that violence, is not. If it is necessary to kill a person to prevent the from killing, that is the distinction between killing (ie justified force) and murder (unjustified). We are NOT born with the intent to kill; that is learned, taught. For 300,000 years homo sapiens evolved without lethal group conflict, no wars, no massacres (only occasional individual violence in the archeological record: zero evidence of lethal group violence for 300,000 yrs that evolved a non-violent character, then betrayed with the advent of civilization, which invented war for homo sapiens.
So we are taught not to hit but when we go to the military, they have to strip off our identity, reduce us to helpless robots and then teach us to kill, which goes against both our instincts and our early training. So we have a nature that is ready to reclaim the heritage of peaceful, sharing co-existence, but we face a world controlled by war mongers and psychopaths. What they did in the old days was isolate those who sought to become dominant or violent...the silent treatment. That is probably what it will take today to reclaim our ancient birthright.....shutting out, shunning, those with the power, and it works: in 1989, 7 militarized dictatorships in Eastern Europe collapsed, without bloodshed, before the massive protests and strikes of a unified people. For the power is not in having weapons (who won the Vietnam War?) but in solidarity, for cooperation is the highest stage of evolution and when we unite, we cannot be defeated. That is the lesson of of history. And that is the message of evolution.
I completely agree including with your explanation of violence as a response to initiated violence. But now we have a situation that is totally debauched with the mindset of the many in the same condition. What can the few of us do that will change the trajectory? Money is at the crux of all dealings. That is something the past didn't have like we have today. Every time we engage with this money system, we grow violence somewhere, in the aggregate, even though we individually cannot see that. My view is that we can take our energy out of this system and leave it bereft of energy which will extinguish it. But what I see is that as more people are becoming "enlightened", they are succumbing to this money system to justify doing their "good works".
We the people, as labor, control the money, but only if we unite and use our solidarity: in Eastern Europe in 1989, a united people with massive protests and strikes, took down 7 militarized dictatorships without bloodshed. Strikes show who really has the power. The capitalists or predators depend on compliant labor force but when the people join in solidarity, their power crumbles and the people own the power. That is what history teaches.....so if we want to take down the masters of the universe, we need to unite and act in concert to show them who has the ultimate power. In the end, we need to abolish money (ie wealth that can circulate and thus accumulate and thus become concentrated, as with the 5 billionaires, all of whom grew rich exploiting tax funded technologies (internet, GPS, roads, etc), with more wealth than 3 billion (disunited) people When the tickets to obtain goods and services no longer circulate (ie they expire with use), there will be no more masters and slaves, no more billionaires and starving millions. And all it takes is for "Workers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains." 1989 proved that with precision. All it takes to bring down globalised capitalism is for workers to refuse to work.
the 'survival of the fittest' happens within a context (nature ?). humans managed to change that context. the times that the best hunter and the best gatherer had the best chances for survival have long since passed. today we produce food for 11 billion people and we're 8 billion, nevertheless people starve.
Survival is not to the strongest but to those most able to cooperate with others to adapt to circumstances. Women are not 'the strongest and yet they live longer. Today, only solidarity based on compassion and fighting for peace can help us survive. We need to replace a system which slaughters tens of millions with a system of shared prosperity and kinship.
So true Dale. But our economy and indeed our entire culture is based on the opposite of cooperation, it is based on competition, oneupmanship. That only has one trajectory and that is to sink us all.
Yes, that is my entire point, that our system, which originated with the Agricultural Revolution starting about 12,000 yrs ago, is in contradiction to our 300,00 yr old inbred legacy of equality, sharing, and non-violent cooperation. I am reading The Goodness Paradox, which seeks to explain how we are both very non-violent (99% of the time) in our internal affairs....but very violent in our external (the other, wars, etc)....which deals with our shared DNA with both violent chimps and matriarchial) and peaceful and erotic bonobos, the two sides to our actual behavior. In my view, we see both in the extreme in war: the most intense cooperation of a military organization and the most violent use of that cooperation. But war is recent, invented perhaps 5000 yrs ago, and going back beyond the advent of civilization, there is zero (nada) evidence of lethal group conflict such as massacres. Since, nothing but. What happened? When people settled down, they began to farm and have surpluses, which led to the invention of property, which led to the creation of those with it (the haves) and those without (the have nots), and this led to inequality, slavery, top-down rule, religion, and war, all interconnected institutions which undermined our inherited instinct to trust, to share, and to cooperate in a peaceful way. So we are dealing, as I view it, with a betrayal of our actual inherited "nature" and paying the price for that betrayal.
It is our right, as I read in the Declaration of INdependence, to rise up and throw off oppressive institutions that are not based on equality and consent (the essence of 300,000 yrs of homo sapien evolution) and "alter or abolish them."
So this is our challenge and our task: to rise up and alter and abolish the dominant concepts that have created a world in which the institutions which mold and control us violate the very heritage we all inherit as a birthright through our DNA, which has selected traits that bring peace and sharing. That is our mission: to work for justice and peace, equality and autonomy. And there is joy in this work.....if we can ever accept that it is necessary and liberating.
Thank you for a well-written summary of your POV. I wish it were the whole picture.
"our evolutionary legacy as egalitarian, sharing, non-violent and cooperative beings"
That's only part of what exists, and I fear you believe this primarily because you are, still, in reactive mode. If so, please widen your reading, and include those that challenge your beliefs, with an open mind. It's not all "noise".
What exists today is a betrayal of our 300,000 yr legacy of egalitarian, sharing, non violent co-existence, as I tried to make clear. With the advent of what we call civilization, that legacy, which is imprinted in our DNA (neuroscientists have found that trust is inborn, distrust learned, etc) , undermined that legacy with the new institutions of property, haves and have not, inequality, masters and slaves, a master ruling class, religion to justify its monopoly of violence, and war to seize resources. At 84, I have a world class education from the world's top universities and scholars, a lifetime of reading (currently reading The Goodness paradox) and a creative mind that rejects reactive reasoning such as your post exhibits. Any actions which block a creative and open approach is noise. Your post is noise. And you know how I feel about that...so adios, amigo...I have no time for shallow shouts that seek to block the path forward.
I do hope you are not censoring your spar partner? Censorship is almost as lowly as intentional physical harm because it is our only tool in this campaign against the colonist minded. It actually threatens all our lives, including your own and mine so I must always call it out. Please reconsider if that is what you did. If you don't want to spend time on him, just scroll by. I want to hear what he has to say so we can influence each other to get back to the existence that you seem to want as well.
We live in a total fabrication of beliefs - the belief that we buy land, the belief that money is time, the belief that adults have various statuses above or below other adults, the belief in a central god, the belief in worship, the belief that the earth is like a vending machine, and many more. This distorts everything we do. Even if one person sees the light of it, the people surrounding them wear these beliefs as though they are reality.
Why suggest I would censor? Why lecture me on censorship? My goal is to expand our view of possibilities and I only disagree with those who argue to limit them. I will not reconsider for in no way did I censor anyone (disagreement is not censorship but its opposite, the exercise of free speech). I dont get you at all so I will ignore you.
Bravo. 👍
Hysterical, Caitlin, because I’ve achieved so many of the suggestions on your list!
Different? Understatement.
Fail to achieve your potential? Hey in my defense, I DID graduate from high school!
Disappoint your parents? Check. My brother’s a retired MD; my sister’s as retired psychologist. I’m a retired…gardener 😂
Was I well paid? FUCK NO! Do I have a pension, a 401k? Nope and nope. But how many of the poor slobs stuck behind their desks get to enjoy spring, summer and fall in the great outdoors every workday?
Was it worth it? Oh, FUCK yeah.😉
Gypsy, sounds you’ve dogged many social bullets..
John, I’ve made it a point to 😉
Kudos to you gypsy! Brava for taking the path less traveled.
What's that quote? "In an insane world, a sane person will seem insane?" That's where we're at--been at for some time really. Stop trying to fit yourself into this lunatic asylum and be yourself!
Blaze your own trail. Unlearn everything. Write your own rules. Find your own truth. Set your own values and priorities. Define your own idea of success. Define your own idea of sanity. And live in the moment--each one of them. You never know when it will be your last one.
St. Antony the Great: "A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like us.'"
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
--Krishnamurti
Thanks. Makes me want to crack open those enlightening little books still collecting dust on my shelves. Jiddhu K was definitely someone off the beaten track of philosophy.
Did Jiddah K suggest to accept that opinions can differ from your opinion and still be ok? If yes, then maybe you need to take a refresher course in Juddhu K.
Yeah… we’re in a bad situation. Thanks for being you, Caitlin. Seems like there are too few decent folks left.
what an unbelievable human mind you got! thank you Caitlin for having the courage to always write truthfully and audaciously
💕😍👍 Caitlin, you are awesome!
We are all clinging to a rock hurtling around in a space we know nothing about. No one gets off this rock alive and our time here is so short. The majority of this rocks inhabitants just want a happy healthy life , enough money to live on and surrounded by love from those closest to us . Our rock is covered in marvels in the form of natural beauty and extraordinary life forms . So why do a small minority want to destroy all of this and why do the majority allow them too. It's the old age good vs evil and where is Buffy when we need her?
I love the sentiment, but the "Buffy" bit lost me.
"All their heroes are fictional"
- Iranian cleric after the murder of Soleimani.
Thank you, Caitlin, for taking a well-deserved break from the most pressing issue of the genocide. But what you are talking about in this post are the underlying causes of all these world problems - people just falling in line. Many entire populations, such as in USA, seem to exist as if they are mere gut microbes in the belly of the Imperial Monster and abstain from their own moral agency. Wake up, sheeple - any 10 people can change the world!
That's for sure! Here's to the uppity and the fiercely independent!
Uppity folks unite! We have nothing to lose but the warmongering oligarchs' chains!
Exactly. We need to network and discuss. This is the phase for that. Actually at this phase, just talking with each other of the reality of things is a revolutionary act. Because the mind is so powerful and they have mind controlled us since forever. Now it's time to break free of that.
Yes, and in essence we don’t allow each other to voice our differences, only our agreements…
Oh ya! ✊🏼☮️🍉
The life you describe Caitlin is exactly the reason why millions of people suffer from mental illness or commit suicide. It’s not a life we were ever meant to live, abiding by the distorted and deviant rules of lunatics!
CJ>>"If you want to really live an awake and inspired life, you’ve got to blaze your own trail. You’ve got to unlearn everything you’ve been told about what a life properly lived would look like, and write your own rules. Because the rules everyone else has been playing by were written by madmen."
Caitlin, I consider those to be some of the BEST words of WISDOM I have come across.
Thank you, and much love as always! ❤️🙏
Chang,
Being older than most, I always believed that the world we had before WWII was a valued one. Simple interests, no all consuming technology controlling each life, with music, art, education all seen as meritorious pursuits.
Can't turn back the clock. It's true.
The turning point was WWII. The power that the USA was able to keep following their well prepared and well stocked weaponry meant the end of the previous hegemony, England, as it was then. Now, of course, as the United Kingdom, it is far less united than it was then. A past Empire.
In the meantime, to consolidate that new role, the envied all powerful industrialist, while capitalising on a dollar given a value then far more that was justified, made investments that paid off, subsidised foreign connections with a valuable currency and embarked upon the grand plan to spread their wings and to become the new empire ruler. They just didn't know when to stop and now, sporting 750 military establishments around there globe, have become arrogant enough to think that this is a true representation of the good life and that what they have, they deserve.
They have no friends. If anyone cares to research the comments made by Henry Kissinger in relation to the way the USA is regarded, their attitude to others, it paints a dismal picture. In my opinion very realistic.
But....and here is the rub, they have created a climate where war is normal. That in turn has created a false need for the many acolytes to think they are all threatened by enemies and therefore need the services of a militarised state to protect them, justifying one last quotation attributed to Kissinger, but with some question as to its authenticity..... to finish my ramblings........
"Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries."
'Depopulation', caused by wars and more wars, by any method required. The USA does not care for humanity, its constant wars have shown that very clearly.
'Inceasing amount of minerals'...add to minerals, foodstuffs, oil, gas, military bases, colonial expansions as per the UK in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The undisputed object........controlling the world.
Well said C33! I concur with most of what you say above. I still have questions around the 'depolulation narrative' you suggest. It does hold merit, but I'm not yet completely convinced of the 'rationality/end-result' of such an agenda for TPTB.
I see too many systems-level flaws in all such 'depopulation' narratives (and there are a number of variations of it). It could be an interesting (though prolonged) tangent to think about, though for the present I wish to stay focused on challenging the U.S. Empire and its supporters.
Chang,
A very worthy objective indeed. But while you're at it, give God's chosen people, some of your attention as they continue on in their shameful acts of violence.
They have nothing to commend them as a hated on-going inhumane people, now known as the PARASITES, living in the stolen state of Palestine, infecting bit-by-bit the very weak American houses of government, a.k.a the USA Knesset, as they, in turn, enthusiastically fulfil the role as the HOST, supporting in every way possible their parasitic freeloaders, snipers, rapists and US passported IDF mercenaries.
The greatest shame of the 21st Century and for which every American will pay the price, one way or another.
What's interesting about the 'God's chosen people' narrative is that it reeks of a deep 'inferiority complex' that these supposed 'God's chosen people' seem to have. I'm no psychologist/psychiatrist, but I'm sure these 'Israelis and Zionists' would present an EXCELLENT 'case-study' on the subject of 'inferiority complexes and the narratives created to ameliorate such complexes'.
I've observed that some of the most 'insecure people' often have some of the 'grandest of narratives'. Could this possibly be a 'human-defense' mechanism of sorts working behind the scenes? Israelis sure do come across as quite insecure people/society/culture that need the narratives they do to present a kind of 'fake bravado or fake superiority' to mask their 'many failings' and psychopathic/sociopathic flaws.
A nagging question at the back of my mind remains, though - how much of a responsibility do the Western nations bear (in times past and present) for creating 'such insecurities' in a whole population? Anyways, I digress.
This is exactly what I’ve been thinking for quite a very long time now, as well… in general terms… one huge collective chip on their shoulder (how I’ve described it to others).
I look forward to more of your writing, Chang.
“The rules everyone else has been playing by were written by madmen” .
Not so. Darwin explained well that a survival of the fittest was the environment in which we were born. He was right, and quite sane. The trick is not to call everyone else insane, but to try and differentiate the good from the bad….
I'm sorry, John Turcot - I haven't read your current comment - but based on multiple previous conversations with you, I'm choosing to IGNORE all comments from you (as you say - I should simplify - and I choose to do so by ignoring your comments and saving me time in the process - thus simplifying my life). Thank you for giving me the 'simplify your life' idea that helps me IGNORE time-wasting interactions with people such as yourself. 🙏
But what does that achieve? We need to challenge ideas. The time for that is now. Mention what he said that you object to so he and you both have a chance to do better. Ignoring is a form of the word ignorance. There is way too much of that today. Ignoring someone is a blow, a deliberate blow to seem superior.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to IGNORE your comments too Denise Ward. I won't go into the many valid reasons for doing so (as this is not the time or place for it), but suffice to say that based on a history of your past comments (and irrational interactions with me) have convinced me of the need to save my time/energy and be selective about who I interact with.
I wish you well. 🙏
I would help to clarify what you mean by "fittest." In evolution it basically means the ability to pass on viable offspring." I guess that makes Elon pretty fit, but not a whole lot of others who take it to mean power and strength, "The fittest individual is not necessarily the strongest, fastest, or biggest. A genotype’s fitness includes its ability to survive, find a mate, produce offspring — and ultimately leave its genes in the next generation."
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolution-101/mechanisms-the-processes-of-evolution/evolutionary-fitness/
Spencer is the one who came up with Social Darwinsim, which is closer to your meaning. It, however, has no biological basis, but ascribes the ruthless as being entitled by virtue of this fictional 'survival of the fittest.'
as mentioned earlier, humans (rulers) pretty much create the environment in which we are born today.
I had this tripping experience recently where I understood that the reality we normally live, with all the stresses and grotesquery, is only a tiny slice of what is actually real, and the intellectual part of it is altogether unreal, information without substance. And beyond that, even the physical world is somewhat of an illusion, albeit one that is powerful and inescapable. Behind everything is this divine light of consciousness transcending form and the physical world, life and death, and reminds me that all of this is a foam on the surface, and the human species on Earth is a bit of a bad sideshow. All this cultural stuff is fake. Most of it is empty images. The belief systems, hierarchies etc etc are slapdash and ignorant at best.
The only thing that seems to matter, maybe the only reason we exist in this physical form is love: the ability of singular divine consciousness to break into little pieces that can then synchronize and resonate with each other revealing a higher existence. Even death is kind of an afterthought compared to this.
Back in default-land I started to wonder if I'm just bad as professional because I don't hold my tongue well. It seems silence and the refusal to get involved, moral and intellectual abdication, are the universal qualities of successful people. But just because seemingly everyone does this from Palestine to climate change, doesn't mean that the herd is actually right. It just means they are a herd, and aren't actualizing their existence as a present, passionate, and ethical human being. I think it is a worse fate to hide in soul-killing habits and superficial forms than to crash and burn as a real person.
"It seems silence and the refusal to get involved, moral and intellectual abdication, are the universal qualities of successful people."
This should be on billboards on the freeways to every capital city in the world.
Great perspective, beautifully expressed.
One reality is that we were born from the confines of nature’s blessings but also from nature’s wrath. The sooner we recognize our origins, the sooner we can create our own evolution..
"the reality we normally live, with all the stresses and grotesquery, is only a tiny slice of what is actually real,"
Totally agreed. Perhaps not even that is real, as humans are incapable of knowing reality external to their own minds. For to actually *know* something requires being one with it.
"maybe the only reason we exist in this physical form is love"
Be extremely careful of who says they "love" you (or tells you *anything*, for that matter) -- whether they're your parents, teachers, doctors, religion pushers, youth leaders, self-appointed mentors, many decades of therapists**, peers, partners, employers, or literally anyone or anything else -- *including* substances you ingest. What they mean and why, and what you hear, are always two different things. And after many decades of this, it can rip you to pieces.
I was long told that "God is Love". But now I realize that God is a representation specifically of the All-Powerful OTHER, and that the only things that actually exist are godmongers (whatever they are "in reality"); after all, no recognizable "God" has *ever* stopped to "talk" to me. All godmongers (like most other "leaders", especially the chattering-class bullhorn-hoggers) really want is mental power over you (even those who fool themselves over it, while vehemently denying it), no matter how much you tell them "LEAVE. ME. ALONE." No one ever hears your screams. Ironically, this is not goodness, this is evil. I "know" THAT much. Today, people tell condescendingly smile at me that I have no idea -- yet they are utterly unable to communicate their allegedly superior knowledge of "God" or whatever, meanwhile expect me to search for (grovel, really) and believe it. Really, WTF??
And if you can't figure it out, if you persist with you questions, you are -- ultimately -- ignored / abandoned. Sink or swim. Do or die. Because 99.9% of human communication is fish-school swimming, and if you're lost, you are good as dead. (I learned far too late that "If you're in poker game [i.e. life], and you don't know who the patsy is, *you're* the patsy.") "Get the fuck outta my face, you disgusting negativity hound!" OK, suit yourself. I think everyone here understands what happens to any human being who is "dispensed with".
So much for "peace and love". It isn't just the insanity of the warmongers and rightists (the "hierarchicals", I call them), who I've *also* had plenty of experience with.
-----------------
** Contemporary Western "professional" talk therapy in their own ways, do "love simulation" fakeries as if we're in a goddam *theatre*. These are, somehow, supposed to resonate, when they are actually the deepest of insults, and can lead to complete breakdown of communication, and of one's mind itself. Certainly, psychiatry is one of THE sickest things out there, where the MOST INTIMATE has been transformed during the last century fully to the FULLY TRANSACTIONAL COMMODITIES, yet now also fully normalized. Just another piece in the capitalist system people rail about here.
I commend that Caitlin wants to talk about "the sick". So why the hell don't talk about why we still don't have a system for REAL connection to our ACTUAL communities for REAL therapy? No, the vast majority of these clowns DON'T know what "theory" they're doing; the best are basically paid friends with intimacy-simulation (i.e. acting) talent. "I'm waiting for my man / Twenty-five dollar co-pay in my hand" FUCK THIS SHIT!
Yeah, I'm definitely talking about love from a mystical sense, and not as relationship obligations or a system of coercion/control. It's actually pretty simple, the universal something that is one, breaks up into many in order to experience itself, and its favorite thing is to synchronize and resonate deeply among those parts of it that fit together and are able to meet honestly without agenda. Kind of a divine self-reflection, that has very little to do with how society conceptualizes this around attachment and ownership. I don't think that is idealism, but the actual purpose behind why we even exist at all.
I'm of mixed mind about therapy, because I think it IS generally good, but the lame thing, and also its limitation, is that it is human connection commodified. Like everything else. And you don't get to take that relationship with you into normal life.
On the other hand, people go to therapy precisely because they aren't safe or served by their actual community. I did live at Gestalt-based retreat center for a number of months and that was an example of where everyone was practicing supporting each other communally, and there wasn't much of a professional hierarchy around it. It does take training and intention to create that kind of community, and this was also one kept afloat by the money of people coming and doing retreats, so not altogether natural either.
I’ve been defying conformists all my life, starting in elementary school when I purposely perverted the forced standing and reciting of the pledge of allegiance. Defy those who try to subjugate you and even more violently against those that order you to subjugate others.
Love it!
I agree with almost everything you say Caitlin, but not all parents or even grandparents support this system. I am 72 years old and from a generation in the 1960s and ‘70s that aspired to a better world but most of us sold out. I felt as you described for much of my life. I never bought into the system but it took me a long time to find a way to live that suited me and didn’t make me feel like a failure. In my forties I finally discovered satisfying work I love to do and in the last few years I have done work I am really proud of including now being a volunteer mentor for young writers in Gaza for We Are Not Numbers. I also work with refugees and in hospices. I am poor compared to most people in the UK, but unimaginably rich compared to the vast majority of people across the globe. I have a home, food, safely, children and grandchildren and I really hope they and their generation, unlike ours, can dismantle this terrible greedy cruel capitalistic world and live by the principles of mutual aid, but it feels to me that the our present leaders would rather destroy the world than let that happen. Unless people wake up and there’s a violent Revolution, I can’t see things changing. I have always been a pacifist but Gaza has changed my mind. We need to tear down these bastards by any means.
Power to the People.
That’s a slippery slope.. It is said by some that “ Power corrupts and corrupts absolutely”. I’m thinking dictators who wrongly believe that they have the power, hence yield it in spades?
The power has to remain with each individual. It must not be given to another individual. That's when it becomes corrupted. It keeps one adult as higher and one adult as lower. Peerness is what we need to strive for now.
a lord acton said that 'power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. great men are almost always bad men ...'. it was about papal infallibility. 'power to the people' (democracy) seems the best possible antidote. if someone is to wield (absolute) power, the people seems our best bet, imo.
Thank you for the information about WANN. I too am a writer, and am contacting them to see if I can join in.
That's great, Joy. We're always looking for writing mentors.