Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): You dive down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, searching for the man behind the curtain. You’ve seen enough to be convinced that everything you’ve been taught about the world is false, and now it’s just a matter of finding out who’s really responsible for making such a mess of things.
Every time I think Caitlin has outdone herself, she posts something like this. There is no better description of current humanity. The backdrop of our lives reflects the ancient struggle of good against evil.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Also one of my favorite quotes “sure I brought peace and prosperity , to United fruit company” -Smedley Butler
"We’re going to figure things out eventually. Consciousness keeps expanding. The light keeps getting brighter. "
Too linear? How about the yin/yang perspective that the brightest light contains within it the seed of subsequent darkness, in exactly the same way that the darkest night contains the seed of a new dawn? And in any case, the universe unfolds as it must.
"Because the people who are most adept at obtaining massive amounts of wealth/power are those who are sufficiently lacking in empathy to do whatever it takes to obtain it, we naturally find ourselves ruled by sociopaths. "
Begins with the brainwashing of religion. Having stumbled on "The Keepers", on Netflix, I was reminded that the rebellious attitude toward sanctimonious priests of myself and other NYC street urchin friends was hardly the broader societal norm during my teen years. The acquiescence to psychological manipulation and rape by high school girls portrayed in the series laser-focused on the pure sociopathy of the Catholic hierarchy and how mindbogglingly thorough was its inculcation of sociopathic priests, so as to engender the level of submissive mind control depicted. Brainwashing? Neither the advertising industry nor political prevaricators could come close to the nearly complete control of the adolescents' fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality, society, good and evil. Make all the arguments you like about religion's positive value. For me, they fail miserably when weighed against the ability to twist very young minds away from what are necessary aspects of human cognition: observation, critical assessment, open discussion, articulation of objections to the degradation of other lives — all accomplished while maintaining an air of moral righteousness and superiority. Catholicism may be particularly bad, but many religions attack individual autonomy at such a fundamental level that they prepare perfectly functional minds to become soldiers in the armies by which those sociopaths rip us from the rest of Nature and from genuine loving embrace of one another. Looking for crimes against humanity. Suggest you look no further.
"Because the people who are most adept at obtaining massive amounts of wealth/power are those who are sufficiently lacking in empathy to do whatever it takes to obtain it, we naturally find ourselves ruled by sociopaths. "
It's so sad, and kinda amazing, that so many self-styled progressives believe the U.S. lies about the background to the war on Ukraine, given that the U.S. lied about the wars in Vietnam, Indonesia Latin America, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia (yes!), Syria, Libya, and elsewhere. Of course the U.S. is lying about the war in Ukraine!
Good article until halfway through, went sideways with this:
"You discover in your own experience that there is no such thing as a separate self; that what we refer to linguistically as “I” and “me” are psychological delusions which underpin most of the suffering and dysfunctionality of the human species"
This is demonstrably false. I get you are attempting some form of a hermetic concept, ( hopefully not world brainish) and to a degree it is true for the physical body, but your premise that this is a delusion and THAT is what underpins most human suffering is simply off base.
We are individuals with individual proclivities, imaginations and souls. The body is a vessel, I, like yourself, am a passenger in this body. Our physical bodies have their own intelligence, which is what can give your statement some validity, as we are indeed connected in a way that mere mortals may never understand. Metaphysics aside, you negate individual agency, the important evolutionary mechanism of free will which creates anti-fragility for our species. One does not have to believe in a soul to understand how free will has affected human evolutionary biology. We would have already gone extinct if it were not possible for us to think abstractly and outside of the collective. We have lasted because of this, and embracing it is our only way out of our current predicament. Humans have been biohacked. We have been reduced to communal bees in a glass hive, no mind just action. We have been deceived into our current social and economic reality and nothing from the modern world and its hyperreality is a testament to our current status as a species.. because it is all artificial. We can thank the trash science of sociology for synthesizing this world for us on behalf of power.
Also, there are people behind the curtain, they just cannot be easily identified due to the fact that this international power structure you correctly point out is hidden from public view because it is a "national security state". Call it what you want. Inverted Totalitarianism. Technocratic surveillance state capitalism. Cryptocracy. Doesn't matter,, your opening section was completely correct. The common man, even to a degree major public players, do not really control anything. Just because you cannot Google OZ and find their Wikipedia page ( so much irony.. like not knowing facebook was LifeLog) does not mean they aren't there. Thinking what we are witnessing in the world including the designs of the self protecting and self perpetuating power structure is just a random occurrence is, using your own words, first adulthood thinking. With that being said, It is very difficult , and dangerous, to identify them publicly. ( this is one place the conspiritainment industry really tires hard to obfuscate) I no longer concern myself with that, but I do advocate for transparency which would be a necessity for any real progress for human civilization.
We live in a manufactured reality. Mass society is a complex hyperreality full of reality tunnels that do not threaten the status quo. Everything is either highly managed or straight orchestrated by the power structure. Governments, are indexing firms for that power. There are, as there have always been, people behind the curtain..
It may appear that we are on a runaway train with nobody at the helm from the perspective of a normal person. However, the engineers just have different motivations, ethics and morality than what most people consider when they look at the mechanics of events. As long as it is useful, they will run a train right over an unfinished bridge into a deep canyon. It has happened before and it is happening again.
The systems that are ‘behind the curtain’ are also a result of nature, not just human nature, but all natural tendencies of life on Earth to compete for survival and procreation. That said, we are evolving and can accelerate this evolution if we become more self aware of our oneness as organisms (not just as humans) and our ability to thrive without a fight to the death but rather collaboration and nurturing of others. It can be done but it is difficult to overcome natural tendencies. You see it in families and communities every day. We compete in sports that give us that natural bump we crave, but in the end we can find it in ourselves to love and nurture our competition after the big game is done. We can evolve.
You almost wrote something brilliant here, Caitlin, clearly you're moving in the right direction. Your political commentary is spot-on as usual, and conflating the necessity of individuals running rabbit holes to completion with the individual's potential for real psychological insight is also correct. But you have to go further, Buddhism is just one branch of Religion. And the only system of esoteric knowledge I'm aware of that gives the complete and accurate information is the Fourth Way of Gurdjieff. If you really want to grasp the ultimate (at the human level), I suggest you begin studying soon because it requires years to digest it all.
The “man behind the curtain” is us. Rogues and knaves and thugs have always existed. And when they take over, it is by exploiting the weaknesses of the masses:, greed, hatred, compliance.
As this blog has noted very often, we will not progress until there is a step change that occurs in human consciousness.
A large part of the "problem" that drives people down rabbit holes is 50 years of educational failure (civics, history) and disengagement from civic life and government in pursuit of consumption and hedonism.
People don't understand government so are ripe for propaganda and conspiracy theory.
For every rabbit hole described here, there is actually a transparent and participatory process to shape outcomes that is either unknown or lacking in participation (and I don't mean voting, I mean governing).
I guess this is an adequate description of "reality" if one accepts the passive notion that there is no human agency, "reality" is totally subjective, and there is no possibility of changing reality.
"If that's all there is then let's keep dancing" (Peggy Lee, 1969)
Rabbit Holes And Men Behind Curtains
Every time I think Caitlin has outdone herself, she posts something like this. There is no better description of current humanity. The backdrop of our lives reflects the ancient struggle of good against evil.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Also one of my favorite quotes “sure I brought peace and prosperity , to United fruit company” -Smedley Butler
Love it! Except for this last bit:
"We’re going to figure things out eventually. Consciousness keeps expanding. The light keeps getting brighter. "
Too linear? How about the yin/yang perspective that the brightest light contains within it the seed of subsequent darkness, in exactly the same way that the darkest night contains the seed of a new dawn? And in any case, the universe unfolds as it must.
"Because the people who are most adept at obtaining massive amounts of wealth/power are those who are sufficiently lacking in empathy to do whatever it takes to obtain it, we naturally find ourselves ruled by sociopaths. "
Begins with the brainwashing of religion. Having stumbled on "The Keepers", on Netflix, I was reminded that the rebellious attitude toward sanctimonious priests of myself and other NYC street urchin friends was hardly the broader societal norm during my teen years. The acquiescence to psychological manipulation and rape by high school girls portrayed in the series laser-focused on the pure sociopathy of the Catholic hierarchy and how mindbogglingly thorough was its inculcation of sociopathic priests, so as to engender the level of submissive mind control depicted. Brainwashing? Neither the advertising industry nor political prevaricators could come close to the nearly complete control of the adolescents' fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality, society, good and evil. Make all the arguments you like about religion's positive value. For me, they fail miserably when weighed against the ability to twist very young minds away from what are necessary aspects of human cognition: observation, critical assessment, open discussion, articulation of objections to the degradation of other lives — all accomplished while maintaining an air of moral righteousness and superiority. Catholicism may be particularly bad, but many religions attack individual autonomy at such a fundamental level that they prepare perfectly functional minds to become soldiers in the armies by which those sociopaths rip us from the rest of Nature and from genuine loving embrace of one another. Looking for crimes against humanity. Suggest you look no further.
"Because the people who are most adept at obtaining massive amounts of wealth/power are those who are sufficiently lacking in empathy to do whatever it takes to obtain it, we naturally find ourselves ruled by sociopaths. "
This is the kernel of The Iron Law Of Oligarchy.
It's so sad, and kinda amazing, that so many self-styled progressives believe the U.S. lies about the background to the war on Ukraine, given that the U.S. lied about the wars in Vietnam, Indonesia Latin America, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia (yes!), Syria, Libya, and elsewhere. Of course the U.S. is lying about the war in Ukraine!
Good article until halfway through, went sideways with this:
"You discover in your own experience that there is no such thing as a separate self; that what we refer to linguistically as “I” and “me” are psychological delusions which underpin most of the suffering and dysfunctionality of the human species"
This is demonstrably false. I get you are attempting some form of a hermetic concept, ( hopefully not world brainish) and to a degree it is true for the physical body, but your premise that this is a delusion and THAT is what underpins most human suffering is simply off base.
We are individuals with individual proclivities, imaginations and souls. The body is a vessel, I, like yourself, am a passenger in this body. Our physical bodies have their own intelligence, which is what can give your statement some validity, as we are indeed connected in a way that mere mortals may never understand. Metaphysics aside, you negate individual agency, the important evolutionary mechanism of free will which creates anti-fragility for our species. One does not have to believe in a soul to understand how free will has affected human evolutionary biology. We would have already gone extinct if it were not possible for us to think abstractly and outside of the collective. We have lasted because of this, and embracing it is our only way out of our current predicament. Humans have been biohacked. We have been reduced to communal bees in a glass hive, no mind just action. We have been deceived into our current social and economic reality and nothing from the modern world and its hyperreality is a testament to our current status as a species.. because it is all artificial. We can thank the trash science of sociology for synthesizing this world for us on behalf of power.
Also, there are people behind the curtain, they just cannot be easily identified due to the fact that this international power structure you correctly point out is hidden from public view because it is a "national security state". Call it what you want. Inverted Totalitarianism. Technocratic surveillance state capitalism. Cryptocracy. Doesn't matter,, your opening section was completely correct. The common man, even to a degree major public players, do not really control anything. Just because you cannot Google OZ and find their Wikipedia page ( so much irony.. like not knowing facebook was LifeLog) does not mean they aren't there. Thinking what we are witnessing in the world including the designs of the self protecting and self perpetuating power structure is just a random occurrence is, using your own words, first adulthood thinking. With that being said, It is very difficult , and dangerous, to identify them publicly. ( this is one place the conspiritainment industry really tires hard to obfuscate) I no longer concern myself with that, but I do advocate for transparency which would be a necessity for any real progress for human civilization.
We live in a manufactured reality. Mass society is a complex hyperreality full of reality tunnels that do not threaten the status quo. Everything is either highly managed or straight orchestrated by the power structure. Governments, are indexing firms for that power. There are, as there have always been, people behind the curtain..
It may appear that we are on a runaway train with nobody at the helm from the perspective of a normal person. However, the engineers just have different motivations, ethics and morality than what most people consider when they look at the mechanics of events. As long as it is useful, they will run a train right over an unfinished bridge into a deep canyon. It has happened before and it is happening again.
If you agree that the world works the way Caitlin describes here, then ask yourself just one question:
Why do you think corporations spend billions of dollars on lobbyists, lawyers, scientists, and PR firms?
The systems that are ‘behind the curtain’ are also a result of nature, not just human nature, but all natural tendencies of life on Earth to compete for survival and procreation. That said, we are evolving and can accelerate this evolution if we become more self aware of our oneness as organisms (not just as humans) and our ability to thrive without a fight to the death but rather collaboration and nurturing of others. It can be done but it is difficult to overcome natural tendencies. You see it in families and communities every day. We compete in sports that give us that natural bump we crave, but in the end we can find it in ourselves to love and nurture our competition after the big game is done. We can evolve.
Christ I hope you're right Caitlin! It's getting more and more challenging trying to keep sane while uncovering such vile and evil.
As we all heal, maybe empathy will develop where it needs to. This gives me hope sometimes.
Sounds like someone just finished the last episode of 'The Prisoner'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQb37kSe8sE
Or maybe JRN...? : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o66FUc61MvU
You almost wrote something brilliant here, Caitlin, clearly you're moving in the right direction. Your political commentary is spot-on as usual, and conflating the necessity of individuals running rabbit holes to completion with the individual's potential for real psychological insight is also correct. But you have to go further, Buddhism is just one branch of Religion. And the only system of esoteric knowledge I'm aware of that gives the complete and accurate information is the Fourth Way of Gurdjieff. If you really want to grasp the ultimate (at the human level), I suggest you begin studying soon because it requires years to digest it all.
Great post!
The “man behind the curtain” is us. Rogues and knaves and thugs have always existed. And when they take over, it is by exploiting the weaknesses of the masses:, greed, hatred, compliance.
As this blog has noted very often, we will not progress until there is a step change that occurs in human consciousness.
A large part of the "problem" that drives people down rabbit holes is 50 years of educational failure (civics, history) and disengagement from civic life and government in pursuit of consumption and hedonism.
People don't understand government so are ripe for propaganda and conspiracy theory.
For every rabbit hole described here, there is actually a transparent and participatory process to shape outcomes that is either unknown or lacking in participation (and I don't mean voting, I mean governing).
I guess this is an adequate description of "reality" if one accepts the passive notion that there is no human agency, "reality" is totally subjective, and there is no possibility of changing reality.
"If that's all there is then let's keep dancing" (Peggy Lee, 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCRZZC-DH7M