Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): The more inner work you do and the more awareness you bring to your own inner processes, the more you understand how thoroughly human consciousness is dominated by mental narrative. And the more you understand how thoroughly human consciousness is dominated by mental narrative, the more acutely aware you become of how much power someone could gain over other humans by controlling those narratives.
This is one of Caitlin's more profound articles, because it tears at the meat of one of the most malevolent corruptions of our post WW2 world. Her comments expose the reality of the CIA's ongoing 'Operation Mockingbird' which exists to mold every aspect of our life's political and social perceptions, and, as very recently verified by Tucker Carlson continues to this day via paid TV and print media shills.
While I suspect there is more to the background operations going on, for example the CIA putting 'clicks' in to electronica (music) to balance the two hemispheres of the brain and ease the 'pop' or 'awakening' (meaning they're not entirely against us), when it boils down to it, the individual must choose whether they live in a benevolent or malevolent universe. If they believe all the bad stuff they read about what they're up to they'll bring it into fruition in the 'final judgement', which is us, on our own facing the dragon.
If we find the right perspective, it all looks like so much theatre. Even death is not the end. It's just a curtain call, retirement to take off the make-up, and a return to the stage the next night after a good nights sleep.
"... the individual must choose whether they live in a benevolent or malevolent universe."
Or perhaps a completely indifferent universe? Or one that is both at the same time, depending on your relation to it. Or one that started out as benevolent, became malevolent but is transitioning back to benevolent.
One of the problems of communication is our framing of questions as a dialectic - a choice between only one of two alternatives, usually framed as 'good' or 'bad.'
You constantly see this technique (Hegelian Dialects) being used to manipulate us into opposing camps, the old 'divide and rule' strategy of British Imperialism. Recognizing that, and realizing that there are more possibilities than just the strictly binary choices being offered is key to breaking free of their influence.
To get to the point where one truly breaks free of the dialectic one must face the dragon, and to do that one must be confident not only that it exists in the first place, but in the ability to defeat it when it appears.
It might be ye auld divide and rule- a relatively negative trait it might be added, but it's also a principle in the reality of this electric universe; take a cathode (negative) and an anode (positive). Out of darkness blinding light appears. Light is the most positive metaphor there is.
I would be cautious when using physical analogies like positive and negative. If you look at the atom, only the simplest atoms (H and He) contain only positive and negative charges, while the rest have a number of neutrons (no charge) which are critical to the composition of matter, which itself relies on at least two other forces, the strong and weak nuclear forces, to sustain what we call the 'material world.'
Also, when comparing electric charges such as possessed by protons and electrons, one has to account for the fact that the proton is approximately 1836 times as massive as an electron, so something other than electric charge is clearly at work there.
But yeah... dialectics is hard to break free of since we're taught to think that way from day one.
I get a prompt asking me to sign in, but with what since I'm not subscribed?
"Caitlin's article is about metaphysics."
Are you sure? "Dominated By Narrative" to me suggests a semantic level analysis. Metaphysics is a fuzzy concept that has a different meaning depending on who you talk to. Semantics OTOH seeks to nail down the precise meaning of the words we use to communicate, otherwise we risk talking past each other. Maybe Caitlin could tell us which category is appropriate here?
Sit down, Boomer. You're the same Puritan idiots who have been whining about this for 350 years in order to avoid that capitalism has priced your childish little workshop game out of existence.
Stop making up slave stories and crush more narratives.
Hey friendly little Doomer, I'm not a Boomer. But thanks for thinking I have that much misplaced confidence in the nature of my own material supremacy.
The article is linked. If you're capable of reading it, you be the judge, you've obviously extremely good at judgement, so you'll fly through it and prove it to yourself, no effort on my part. It is precisely what they were and have been doing. You just have to decide if the world is all doom and is gonna go boom, or if it'll be happily ever after the chaos the next seven to ten years subsides.
The CIA is a research and development company, not a supervillain from 1970s Saturday morning cartoons. They try a lot of weird things in their labs, in the same spirit as Xerox PARC and Bell Labs. Some pan out. Some don't.
I've worked in audio engineering. This is pseudoscientific crap.
Your complaint is nothing more than THE 400+ YEAR ONGOING Puritan totalitarian drama about any cultural ritual that doesn't enforce Christian reproduction, same as they have been excreting since the day they achieved political significance.
I'm sorry, was I complaining? I don't know what working in audio-engineering has to do with metaphysics, but you clearly need to assert some authoritah, and that's just fine. Go nuts. Are you familiar with Boards of Canada?
Do you know much about neurology or the patterns the electricity of the brain make? I've never gone too in-depth, but when I listened to certain electronic music I could read complex medical documents and astrophysics and take in much more with the background sound than without it.
In the document, if you read it, they are saying that the clicks fire up a section of the mind like a laser. Without it, the mind has the average capacity of a candle. (Some don't even have a candle.) So I had experienced this before knowing anything about the document, reading about it made sense from experience.
I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone, you can be the superior one. Funny you should mention Max Weber, I quoted him elsewhere today from his Protestant/Capitalism book wiki page. Cheerio.
Caitlin Johnstone is the best remedy for the madness that passes for reality in this fascist, narrative directed world. We all need to do our part to silence these inhuman, power-crazed madmen who are drunk with their uncontrolled power.
The "We the People" t-shirt mentioned by Annie is a good start. The tyrants are tightening their grip as they lose it... so now is the time to make our voices heard in a way that leaves no doubt that the masses rule the few and not vice versa.
That last phrase must be made into t-shirt too. I don't know what it means but it looks menacing. Those fuckers will just shit their pants when confronted with a person wearing it. The front-endowed ladies should make a particularly strong impression.
"A united people" will soon be broken up driven by another NARRATIVE as offered by "other" HUMAN MINDS splitting the "united people" into splinter groups of according to the respective "tastes" of each EGO, which makes the NEW NARRATIVE more appealing to the one than to the other! It's called "divide and conquer" - knowingly or unknowingly ... and this "strategy" has been "applied" by THE CULT OF LIES since THE GARDEN OF EDEN ... where THE HUMAN MIND in its PRIDE, ARROGANCE AND HUBRIS broke with GOD ALMIGHTY - THE TRUTH, THE WISDOM, THE LIFE - instigated by EVE scared into paranoia for her offspring by THE SERPENT and out of convenience and lack of FAITH IN GOD ALMIGHTY ADAM became a co-conspirator in this whole "plot" ...
Your comment: "Silence is the language of GOD everything else is a bad translation. - Rumi" is funny... given that you shout in nearly all of your comments. There's a word for that... though I question whether it exists in your vocabulary, given your constant use of all caps!
"Kill the messenger" has been in use for millennia by TSoS in order to deflect - for itself (called denial) and for others it wants to convince to come with them - from its "annoyance" about the CONTENT of THE MESSAGE.
I am usually not so much into guesswork but for fun's sake I would guess what really annoys "Lawrence Beck" is the fact that he knows GOD ALMIGHTY exists and he is not able to admit it. There is nothing to be fearful of GOD ALMIGHTY but not to follow THE TRUTH! Have the courage to READ THE BIBLE - ALL THE BOOKS - not selective quotes - and everything is being taken care of. You not only don't have to quit your day-to-day activities but you better DON'T QUIT your day-to-day activities.
Your annoyance about other people's use of language has been taken notice of. I would not claim anything mine ... BUT especially not VOCABULARY ... but that's just an aside!
If the masses rule the few I'm going to be in a lot of trouble. Fortunately they seem to mostly ignore me most of the time, including the present, so I'll persist for a moment. While narrative (stories) are important ways for humans to organize their experiences, there are also some other organizing models, such as maps and equations.
Also, I must note that while none of us is provably in touch with absolute objective reality, most of us seem to approximate it or circle around it most of the time. The fact that there is anything to circle around suggests that something _might_ be at the center of the circling around. If there were nothing there, our cats and dogs would not bother sniffing around, would they? And they would get pretty hungry, too.
My favourite saying is 'We see things not as they are, but as we are.' This is usually attributed to Anais Nin but apparently others may have said it first. Whatever, the point is that as you say, once you realise this, you understand a few key things:
a) You're fallible
b) You're a product of your conditioning unless you consciously choose not to be (and even then, you still are somewhat)
c) Strongly held positions can change radically with reframing
d) Reframing can be quick and violent, but it can also occur over many years, like water dripping on stone
e) If you're not aware of all of the above, you will be highly susceptible to mental capture by people who are aware of the above
Rebekah Barnett: Bullshit! I dare you to go to South Dakota when it is -36 F or the Amazon jungle when it is 120F and spout such nonsense. Reality bites you in the ass in those conditions and your "conditioning" or whatever can't do a thing about it.
Haha well your lived experience of South Dakota trumps mine (presuming you've been or live there) that's for sure. But my lived experience of the Anais Nin quote isn't invalidated by your lived experience of South Dakota, and most of life for most people is not conducted in an Amazon jungle at 120F. Of course, you're arguing for a positivist/objective view of lived experience and I'm arguing for a constructionist/subjective view. The latter would contend that many people will experience the same weather in different ways, and I think this is undeniably true.
Rebekah Barnett: I have lived and worked in both South Dakota and the Brazilian Amazon jungle. Everyone in -36F is freezing off their genitalia. Everyone in 120F heat with 90% humidity is sweating off their genitalia.
There is nothing subjective or constructionist about it.
Rebekah Barnett: Don't live in your head. Live in the real world. If you have the courage.
In Belem, Brazil, I had to throw away all preconceptions in my mind (I grew up in Nebraska and when I got the 6 month Brazil job on a movie set, I lived in Seattle) I had to adapt. If I didn't, I would die.
I don't know where you live, but if you go to a fourth world place like the Amazon jungle, you will lose all of those thoughts going through your head right now.
"... but if you go to a fourth world place like the Amazon jungle, you will lose all of those thoughts going through your head right now." ....
.... AGREED, as a result with the opposite then necessarily true one can EASILY pinpoint towards the reason why "the west" (including BRICS) is mentally IIIIILLLLL ... on so many fronts that it beggars belief ... even though on full display!
I spent a lot of time around older adults growing up, many in their 70s and 80s. Mostly cogent, lucid, the largest denominator was a sense of perspective, more ingrained than perception. After growing up and becoming preoccupied with my own life; without knowing the impetus, I noticed subtle changes. Most of them were gone; but the next group seemed less assured, less independent, maybe less optimistic. It’s only gotten worse; the more freedom they relinquish, more is taken. The more they go to the doctor, the worse they get. More shots; then nursing homes, independence slips away. Everyone’s so tied up doing busy work, there’s no one there to reap the benefit of their experience. We have an experience gap, or chasm that only benefits those in charge.
My unsophisticated view of narratives and the mind differs from Caitlin’s in that I believe that we all require stories to make sense of our world, and no narratives can make a home in our consciousness without our active participation. So as a result, we collude with the predators who fraudulently sell us snake oil. This perspective has been useful for me in finding acceptable narratives. Some people refer to this process as having a bullshit detector.
I think that if children are raised to understand that narratives are how we all make sense of our world, then judging and breaking down all stories becomes second nature. This approach is anathema to our corporate elites. They really have been so well served by ubiquitous, strategic lying, that many intelligent and successful people are functioning tools.
I honestly believe that education in America is a revolutionary endeavor, and btw, that’s why Caitlin’s writing is so important.
"I believe that we all require stories." - I FULLY AGREE, I believe that we ARE ACTUALLY AN ESSENTIAL PART of THE META-STORY - THE TRUTH - and at the same time we are "observers" of THE META-STORY with all its the subsets of its "micro-stories".
And what is often referred to as "the predators/perpetrators" are simply "other" victims of their individual LIE if REALITY with the respective "tools" - money, power, insight of the mechanics, access to channels of mediation - available to force "their mental prison cell - their micro-story" - onto a larger set of HUMAN MINDS pulling them along with THEIR LIE about REALITY. And the more HUMAN MINDS participate in each one of the madnesses - micro-stories sold as THE META-STORY - the larger it gets and the more global the lies become and the more global the respective madness becomes.
Which is why I believe THE META STORY is unfolding exactly as it has been prophesied, based on the observable REALITY by a single HUMAN MIND. Which in and of itself is a MIRACLE and at the same time proof that THE META STORY is true ....
Which as a consequence means - those who are not rooted in THE META STORY - THE TRUTH - are going to be throw around like mice by a tiger and wander in THE DARKNESS IN ETERNITY created by THE DARKNESS as the "perpetrators" are equally wandering in THE DARK believing they are "enlightened" while they are actually bound by their own DECEPTION .... the inmate being the prison guard and vice versa continuously building an ever prettier PRISON COMPLEX OF LIES!
" ... having a bullshit detector." - Harry Frankfurt's book "On Bullshit" is a great read to learn about this mechanism. Noam Chomsky - Revealer - ,Edward Louis Bernays - Perpetrator - are two examples of the same craft ....
I'd guess he reasoned out the probabilities based on the evidence available to him at the time, and concluded that the probability of benefit outweighed the probability of harm. Of course, he might have decided that he already knew everything already -- plenty of people take that approach.
Manufacturing consent would be the phrase to look for ... and of course your reference regarding this same HUMAN MIND - Chomsky - is just further proof - I never intended to deny but actually pointing it out wherever deeming it appropriate - that EVERY HUMAN MIND can become possessed by THE DARKNESS OF PRIDE ARROGANCE AND HUBRIS and the more "gifted" with INTELLECTUAL POWER - not to be confused with INTELLIGENCE~WISDOM - the more likely the chances that DARKNESS takes over given the relevant moral and worldly circumstances .... which doesn't say anything about THE INDIVIDUAL at all but simply about THE MECHANISM/DYNAMICS between THE TRUTH vs THE LIE EVERY HUMAN MIND is subject to!
"... who fraudulently sell us snake oil." - exactly the way every SALESMAN does as he BELIEVES this is the way to act - due to the fear invoked by his lack of FAITH - ... as he himself cannot "see" - believing in "the good" he does by selling whatever he/she sells - THE LIE he is selling. I can attest to that seeing it first-hand from the lowest "snake oil"-sellers to the BIGGEST/MOST POWERFUL. Without going into details but it "starts" at home as a three year old raised by parents not "knowing" better and it ends as the "master of the universe" .... being uprooted from THE META STORY - THE TRUTH - being the ONE AND ONLY/ROOT CAUSE!
Dear Caitlin, I've done much of the inner work you describe, and you are so in line with all that I've learned, experienced, seen about the little self/mind/ego and how badly it's programmed. Thanks so much for all that you do and write about! 💖
I will never understand this ‘inner’ work metaphor! I tend to think that questioning our presuppositions might be a better way to think about it.... anyway, yes, Caitlin, great work to question how MSM is creating a straight jacket of propaganda.
Or one could just use existing metaphors that's been present in religions for ages. But atheists keep looking for their own wanting to be so unique and different...
All heroic cultures are compulsive liars. Any religion that descended from heroic cultures is a waste of time and only those who have experienced intentional or circumstantial torture at a psychologically sensitive time find this nonsense believable.
The term "heroic societies" was first coined by Munro Chadwick about a century ago, which briefly fell into disfavor until archaeological discoveries began to support it. There is a short checklist of heroic notions in Part I of https://davidgraeber.org/papers/culture-as-creative-refusal/ along with a theory of how they have come to inform our politics, and, as I interpret it, caused the waste of tens or hundreds of billions of years of labor power on useless dramas and trifles.
It's a middle class metaphor for interior design. It isn't especially robust, I agree, but it's the one the New Age movement in this capitalist container culture has chosen.
"After a while you start to understand that nobody is seeing reality as it actually is — including you."
And that's the gist of why things get so screwed up on this planet. We all claim to know what's going on, but never express the humility that we should when we realize how we're each experiencing reality in our own unique way. We're all basically, loners without a shared vision. Someday that might change and we'll start sharing the same vision of reality at the same time. Then we will have peace and harmony. Until then, it's going to be a bumpy road--or should I say a narrative with a lot of twists and turns and not necessarily a happily ever after.
Hmm... My organs are "inside" and what I see in the mirror is on the "outside", so why can't humans have an "inner consciousness" to match our external form?
I am fine with Caitlin using the term “inner” metaphorically. I use it that way, too, to refer to soul or spirit. Materialists will reject such terms as philosophical or religious, so they have to use a material narrative, generally neuroscience or biochemistry. I’m okay with those scientific efforts, too, even though, imo, they are dead ends, because consciousness is not material. My point is that whether we approach the “inner” self with philosophy, psychology, religion, or neuroscience, each of these has to be mapped onto a narrative. But, as Korzybski noted, the map is not the territory. Worse, it seems inevitable that all narratives/maps are eventually captured by the powerful to misguide us. Narratives can be useful, but they can also control us. So maybe “inner work” is about getting beyond all narratives.
I began doing 'inner work' more than 40 years ago. I had long since lost faith in prayer and when I first heard mention of mediation I thought it must be another form of useless prayer. But then I studied what th eBuddha had said a bit and thought it sounds useful. And it has been useful for my clarity of thought.It amazed me to find that you can't think your way to inner clarity but you can find it by emptiness which still feels like a bit of a contradiction to me in my 95th year -but it does work.
So very true... as a blogger I have learned the very issues we should be addressing are the ones excluded from the narrative. Our societies are defined by ruinous ideologies operating simultaneously in the background. The fact that they are never discussed or the damage they do exposed is the tyranny that we live by and the anarchy imposed. War, imperialism and neoliberalism are just three examples.
Also, "enlightenment" is kind of a ruse in my opinion. Yes there are people who understand the spiritual, inner dimensions better than others. They are inhereitors of spirtual technology (a kind of spiritual aristocracy) that is really the common birthright of humanity, but they aren't necessarily "more enlightened" than anyone else, anymore than people with more money are better than poeple without money.
Almost all gurus if you look into them have a darker, seamy underside. and often turn out to be predatory, spiritual vampires Like the Tibetan Llamas or that one yogi guy who was all over youtube for a few years who many say killed his own wife and then made up some bullshit story about how she "chose to die".
Don't get caught in the ruse of "enlightenment". It's ultimately just another story -- a red herring to keep people stuck in a bag of shit, unable to see their way out. Your average bum on the street is every bit as likely to be "enlightened" as some guy who's spent his entire life meditating in a monastery somewhere.
Prevailing mythology. There is the surface myth of the moment, but also the Myths that go back centuries and millennia that shape people's thoughts; the thought manipulators of the present are only the latest technicians on the scene. "Science" became "Religion" under the Covid Regime, for example. To an unknown but certain extent, the individual's consciousness is already shaped by myths and stories that lead to certain cognitive interpretations of events that will tend to reinforce the original, a priori, bias. Not the biggest fan of Plato here, but he was on to something with his Allegory of the Cave (Plato as philosophical "cave man"?)
Plato presumably created those ideas with the intent that they be propagated and accommodated widely. Except among the army of labor. Nobody wants an overeducated serf, least of all King Arthur as played by Graham Chapman. And except for the two motifs that underlie the Greek episteme, Unity and Subordination. Tell people that and they'll figure out it's all fan fic.
This is one of Caitlin's more profound articles, because it tears at the meat of one of the most malevolent corruptions of our post WW2 world. Her comments expose the reality of the CIA's ongoing 'Operation Mockingbird' which exists to mold every aspect of our life's political and social perceptions, and, as very recently verified by Tucker Carlson continues to this day via paid TV and print media shills.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/10/14/how-the-cia-paid-and-threatened-journalists-to-do-its-work
While I suspect there is more to the background operations going on, for example the CIA putting 'clicks' in to electronica (music) to balance the two hemispheres of the brain and ease the 'pop' or 'awakening' (meaning they're not entirely against us), when it boils down to it, the individual must choose whether they live in a benevolent or malevolent universe. If they believe all the bad stuff they read about what they're up to they'll bring it into fruition in the 'final judgement', which is us, on our own facing the dragon.
If we find the right perspective, it all looks like so much theatre. Even death is not the end. It's just a curtain call, retirement to take off the make-up, and a return to the stage the next night after a good nights sleep.
"... the individual must choose whether they live in a benevolent or malevolent universe."
Or perhaps a completely indifferent universe? Or one that is both at the same time, depending on your relation to it. Or one that started out as benevolent, became malevolent but is transitioning back to benevolent.
One of the problems of communication is our framing of questions as a dialectic - a choice between only one of two alternatives, usually framed as 'good' or 'bad.'
You constantly see this technique (Hegelian Dialects) being used to manipulate us into opposing camps, the old 'divide and rule' strategy of British Imperialism. Recognizing that, and realizing that there are more possibilities than just the strictly binary choices being offered is key to breaking free of their influence.
To get to the point where one truly breaks free of the dialectic one must face the dragon, and to do that one must be confident not only that it exists in the first place, but in the ability to defeat it when it appears.
It might be ye auld divide and rule- a relatively negative trait it might be added, but it's also a principle in the reality of this electric universe; take a cathode (negative) and an anode (positive). Out of darkness blinding light appears. Light is the most positive metaphor there is.
Not sure what you mean with the dragon metaphor.
I would be cautious when using physical analogies like positive and negative. If you look at the atom, only the simplest atoms (H and He) contain only positive and negative charges, while the rest have a number of neutrons (no charge) which are critical to the composition of matter, which itself relies on at least two other forces, the strong and weak nuclear forces, to sustain what we call the 'material world.'
Also, when comparing electric charges such as possessed by protons and electrons, one has to account for the fact that the proton is approximately 1836 times as massive as an electron, so something other than electric charge is clearly at work there.
But yeah... dialectics is hard to break free of since we're taught to think that way from day one.
Caitlin's article is about metaphysics. That's the angle I'm speaking from.
"Creation by mere thought! Why haven't I seen this all along?"
https://youtu.be/f2BYyeS-fIU?feature=shared
I get a prompt asking me to sign in, but with what since I'm not subscribed?
"Caitlin's article is about metaphysics."
Are you sure? "Dominated By Narrative" to me suggests a semantic level analysis. Metaphysics is a fuzzy concept that has a different meaning depending on who you talk to. Semantics OTOH seeks to nail down the precise meaning of the words we use to communicate, otherwise we risk talking past each other. Maybe Caitlin could tell us which category is appropriate here?
>CIA putting 'clicks' in to electronica (music)
Sit down, Boomer. You're the same Puritan idiots who have been whining about this for 350 years in order to avoid that capitalism has priced your childish little workshop game out of existence.
Stop making up slave stories and crush more narratives.
Hey friendly little Doomer, I'm not a Boomer. But thanks for thinking I have that much misplaced confidence in the nature of my own material supremacy.
The article is linked. If you're capable of reading it, you be the judge, you've obviously extremely good at judgement, so you'll fly through it and prove it to yourself, no effort on my part. It is precisely what they were and have been doing. You just have to decide if the world is all doom and is gonna go boom, or if it'll be happily ever after the chaos the next seven to ten years subsides.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5.pdf
The CIA is a research and development company, not a supervillain from 1970s Saturday morning cartoons. They try a lot of weird things in their labs, in the same spirit as Xerox PARC and Bell Labs. Some pan out. Some don't.
I've worked in audio engineering. This is pseudoscientific crap.
Your complaint is nothing more than THE 400+ YEAR ONGOING Puritan totalitarian drama about any cultural ritual that doesn't enforce Christian reproduction, same as they have been excreting since the day they achieved political significance.
https://davidgraeber.org/articles/manners-deference-and-private-property-or-elements-for-a-general-theory-of-hierarchy/
I'm sorry, was I complaining? I don't know what working in audio-engineering has to do with metaphysics, but you clearly need to assert some authoritah, and that's just fine. Go nuts. Are you familiar with Boards of Canada?
Do you know much about neurology or the patterns the electricity of the brain make? I've never gone too in-depth, but when I listened to certain electronic music I could read complex medical documents and astrophysics and take in much more with the background sound than without it.
In the document, if you read it, they are saying that the clicks fire up a section of the mind like a laser. Without it, the mind has the average capacity of a candle. (Some don't even have a candle.) So I had experienced this before knowing anything about the document, reading about it made sense from experience.
I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone, you can be the superior one. Funny you should mention Max Weber, I quoted him elsewhere today from his Protestant/Capitalism book wiki page. Cheerio.
Caitlin Johnstone is the best remedy for the madness that passes for reality in this fascist, narrative directed world. We all need to do our part to silence these inhuman, power-crazed madmen who are drunk with their uncontrolled power.
The "We the People" t-shirt mentioned by Annie is a good start. The tyrants are tightening their grip as they lose it... so now is the time to make our voices heard in a way that leaves no doubt that the masses rule the few and not vice versa.
El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!
That last phrase must be made into t-shirt too. I don't know what it means but it looks menacing. Those fuckers will just shit their pants when confronted with a person wearing it. The front-endowed ladies should make a particularly strong impression.
It's a Spanish phrase, used in anti-imperialist protest, meaning: "A united people will never be defeated!"
Lawrence Beck: The Confederacy was defeated.
"A united people" will soon be broken up driven by another NARRATIVE as offered by "other" HUMAN MINDS splitting the "united people" into splinter groups of according to the respective "tastes" of each EGO, which makes the NEW NARRATIVE more appealing to the one than to the other! It's called "divide and conquer" - knowingly or unknowingly ... and this "strategy" has been "applied" by THE CULT OF LIES since THE GARDEN OF EDEN ... where THE HUMAN MIND in its PRIDE, ARROGANCE AND HUBRIS broke with GOD ALMIGHTY - THE TRUTH, THE WISDOM, THE LIFE - instigated by EVE scared into paranoia for her offspring by THE SERPENT and out of convenience and lack of FAITH IN GOD ALMIGHTY ADAM became a co-conspirator in this whole "plot" ...
Your comment: "Silence is the language of GOD everything else is a bad translation. - Rumi" is funny... given that you shout in nearly all of your comments. There's a word for that... though I question whether it exists in your vocabulary, given your constant use of all caps!
"Kill the messenger" has been in use for millennia by TSoS in order to deflect - for itself (called denial) and for others it wants to convince to come with them - from its "annoyance" about the CONTENT of THE MESSAGE.
I am usually not so much into guesswork but for fun's sake I would guess what really annoys "Lawrence Beck" is the fact that he knows GOD ALMIGHTY exists and he is not able to admit it. There is nothing to be fearful of GOD ALMIGHTY but not to follow THE TRUTH! Have the courage to READ THE BIBLE - ALL THE BOOKS - not selective quotes - and everything is being taken care of. You not only don't have to quit your day-to-day activities but you better DON'T QUIT your day-to-day activities.
Your annoyance about other people's use of language has been taken notice of. I would not claim anything mine ... BUT especially not VOCABULARY ... but that's just an aside!
If the masses rule the few I'm going to be in a lot of trouble. Fortunately they seem to mostly ignore me most of the time, including the present, so I'll persist for a moment. While narrative (stories) are important ways for humans to organize their experiences, there are also some other organizing models, such as maps and equations.
Also, I must note that while none of us is provably in touch with absolute objective reality, most of us seem to approximate it or circle around it most of the time. The fact that there is anything to circle around suggests that something _might_ be at the center of the circling around. If there were nothing there, our cats and dogs would not bother sniffing around, would they? And they would get pretty hungry, too.
My favourite saying is 'We see things not as they are, but as we are.' This is usually attributed to Anais Nin but apparently others may have said it first. Whatever, the point is that as you say, once you realise this, you understand a few key things:
a) You're fallible
b) You're a product of your conditioning unless you consciously choose not to be (and even then, you still are somewhat)
c) Strongly held positions can change radically with reframing
d) Reframing can be quick and violent, but it can also occur over many years, like water dripping on stone
e) If you're not aware of all of the above, you will be highly susceptible to mental capture by people who are aware of the above
Respectfully, I believe the saying is, "We see things not as They are, but as we are"
Oops I mis-typed. Thanks, will edit.
All 5 points: 👌🏾
Rebekah Barnett: Bullshit! I dare you to go to South Dakota when it is -36 F or the Amazon jungle when it is 120F and spout such nonsense. Reality bites you in the ass in those conditions and your "conditioning" or whatever can't do a thing about it.
Haha well your lived experience of South Dakota trumps mine (presuming you've been or live there) that's for sure. But my lived experience of the Anais Nin quote isn't invalidated by your lived experience of South Dakota, and most of life for most people is not conducted in an Amazon jungle at 120F. Of course, you're arguing for a positivist/objective view of lived experience and I'm arguing for a constructionist/subjective view. The latter would contend that many people will experience the same weather in different ways, and I think this is undeniably true.
Rebekah Barnett: I have lived and worked in both South Dakota and the Brazilian Amazon jungle. Everyone in -36F is freezing off their genitalia. Everyone in 120F heat with 90% humidity is sweating off their genitalia.
There is nothing subjective or constructionist about it.
You're missing my point, but I understand yours.
Rebekah Barnett: Don't live in your head. Live in the real world. If you have the courage.
In Belem, Brazil, I had to throw away all preconceptions in my mind (I grew up in Nebraska and when I got the 6 month Brazil job on a movie set, I lived in Seattle) I had to adapt. If I didn't, I would die.
I don't know where you live, but if you go to a fourth world place like the Amazon jungle, you will lose all of those thoughts going through your head right now.
Yes I get it, you’re missing my point. It’s ok!
"... but if you go to a fourth world place like the Amazon jungle, you will lose all of those thoughts going through your head right now." ....
.... AGREED, as a result with the opposite then necessarily true one can EASILY pinpoint towards the reason why "the west" (including BRICS) is mentally IIIIILLLLL ... on so many fronts that it beggars belief ... even though on full display!
Timmy: Based on your provision of perspiration details whatever that movie was it must stink at least in some aspects.
I spent a lot of time around older adults growing up, many in their 70s and 80s. Mostly cogent, lucid, the largest denominator was a sense of perspective, more ingrained than perception. After growing up and becoming preoccupied with my own life; without knowing the impetus, I noticed subtle changes. Most of them were gone; but the next group seemed less assured, less independent, maybe less optimistic. It’s only gotten worse; the more freedom they relinquish, more is taken. The more they go to the doctor, the worse they get. More shots; then nursing homes, independence slips away. Everyone’s so tied up doing busy work, there’s no one there to reap the benefit of their experience. We have an experience gap, or chasm that only benefits those in charge.
The sad state of humanity’s socially-engineered degradation over time...
Gene Adaway: No one listens to me anyway.
You never know when they’re listening.
Gene Adaway: I don't care if "they" are listening. Screw 'em!
Don’t give up. You never know who you’ve helped.
Gene Adaway: The Viet Cong and the Mujadeen didn't give up and they won. Why would I give up?
Action, not words. Good strategy.
My unsophisticated view of narratives and the mind differs from Caitlin’s in that I believe that we all require stories to make sense of our world, and no narratives can make a home in our consciousness without our active participation. So as a result, we collude with the predators who fraudulently sell us snake oil. This perspective has been useful for me in finding acceptable narratives. Some people refer to this process as having a bullshit detector.
I think that if children are raised to understand that narratives are how we all make sense of our world, then judging and breaking down all stories becomes second nature. This approach is anathema to our corporate elites. They really have been so well served by ubiquitous, strategic lying, that many intelligent and successful people are functioning tools.
I honestly believe that education in America is a revolutionary endeavor, and btw, that’s why Caitlin’s writing is so important.
"I believe that we all require stories." - I FULLY AGREE, I believe that we ARE ACTUALLY AN ESSENTIAL PART of THE META-STORY - THE TRUTH - and at the same time we are "observers" of THE META-STORY with all its the subsets of its "micro-stories".
And what is often referred to as "the predators/perpetrators" are simply "other" victims of their individual LIE if REALITY with the respective "tools" - money, power, insight of the mechanics, access to channels of mediation - available to force "their mental prison cell - their micro-story" - onto a larger set of HUMAN MINDS pulling them along with THEIR LIE about REALITY. And the more HUMAN MINDS participate in each one of the madnesses - micro-stories sold as THE META-STORY - the larger it gets and the more global the lies become and the more global the respective madness becomes.
Which is why I believe THE META STORY is unfolding exactly as it has been prophesied, based on the observable REALITY by a single HUMAN MIND. Which in and of itself is a MIRACLE and at the same time proof that THE META STORY is true ....
Which as a consequence means - those who are not rooted in THE META STORY - THE TRUTH - are going to be throw around like mice by a tiger and wander in THE DARKNESS IN ETERNITY created by THE DARKNESS as the "perpetrators" are equally wandering in THE DARK believing they are "enlightened" while they are actually bound by their own DECEPTION .... the inmate being the prison guard and vice versa continuously building an ever prettier PRISON COMPLEX OF LIES!
" ... having a bullshit detector." - Harry Frankfurt's book "On Bullshit" is a great read to learn about this mechanism. Noam Chomsky - Revealer - ,Edward Louis Bernays - Perpetrator - are two examples of the same craft ....
To One Existence: only Chomsky was pro jab and questioned the sanity of those enlightened enough to avoid it. What does that "reveal" about him?
I'd guess he reasoned out the probabilities based on the evidence available to him at the time, and concluded that the probability of benefit outweighed the probability of harm. Of course, he might have decided that he already knew everything already -- plenty of people take that approach.
Manufacturing consent would be the phrase to look for ... and of course your reference regarding this same HUMAN MIND - Chomsky - is just further proof - I never intended to deny but actually pointing it out wherever deeming it appropriate - that EVERY HUMAN MIND can become possessed by THE DARKNESS OF PRIDE ARROGANCE AND HUBRIS and the more "gifted" with INTELLECTUAL POWER - not to be confused with INTELLIGENCE~WISDOM - the more likely the chances that DARKNESS takes over given the relevant moral and worldly circumstances .... which doesn't say anything about THE INDIVIDUAL at all but simply about THE MECHANISM/DYNAMICS between THE TRUTH vs THE LIE EVERY HUMAN MIND is subject to!
"... who fraudulently sell us snake oil." - exactly the way every SALESMAN does as he BELIEVES this is the way to act - due to the fear invoked by his lack of FAITH - ... as he himself cannot "see" - believing in "the good" he does by selling whatever he/she sells - THE LIE he is selling. I can attest to that seeing it first-hand from the lowest "snake oil"-sellers to the BIGGEST/MOST POWERFUL. Without going into details but it "starts" at home as a three year old raised by parents not "knowing" better and it ends as the "master of the universe" .... being uprooted from THE META STORY - THE TRUTH - being the ONE AND ONLY/ROOT CAUSE!
Dear Caitlin, I've done much of the inner work you describe, and you are so in line with all that I've learned, experienced, seen about the little self/mind/ego and how badly it's programmed. Thanks so much for all that you do and write about! 💖
I will never understand this ‘inner’ work metaphor! I tend to think that questioning our presuppositions might be a better way to think about it.... anyway, yes, Caitlin, great work to question how MSM is creating a straight jacket of propaganda.
Or one could just use existing metaphors that's been present in religions for ages. But atheists keep looking for their own wanting to be so unique and different...
Or being said differently...
THE TRUTH being hidden in plain sight by THE DECEPTION mentioned and exactly the way described in the book of THE TRUTH!
All heroic cultures are compulsive liars. Any religion that descended from heroic cultures is a waste of time and only those who have experienced intentional or circumstantial torture at a psychologically sensitive time find this nonsense believable.
I would like to know "the meaning" of "heroic cultures" as it seems to be necessary to take any meaning out of your comment....
The term "heroic societies" was first coined by Munro Chadwick about a century ago, which briefly fell into disfavor until archaeological discoveries began to support it. There is a short checklist of heroic notions in Part I of https://davidgraeber.org/papers/culture-as-creative-refusal/ along with a theory of how they have come to inform our politics, and, as I interpret it, caused the waste of tens or hundreds of billions of years of labor power on useless dramas and trifles.
It's a middle class metaphor for interior design. It isn't especially robust, I agree, but it's the one the New Age movement in this capitalist container culture has chosen.
WOW! And I thought its pedigree is the Cartesian split of mind from body - our thinking and reflections are inside our mind, the world is outside.
Our thinking and our reflections are also in the world, or we wouldn't have them.
Indeed! But many would disagree with you on this point 😎
"After a while you start to understand that nobody is seeing reality as it actually is — including you."
And that's the gist of why things get so screwed up on this planet. We all claim to know what's going on, but never express the humility that we should when we realize how we're each experiencing reality in our own unique way. We're all basically, loners without a shared vision. Someday that might change and we'll start sharing the same vision of reality at the same time. Then we will have peace and harmony. Until then, it's going to be a bumpy road--or should I say a narrative with a lot of twists and turns and not necessarily a happily ever after.
Alas, that we even have an "inner" to work on is also a narrative.
Hmm... My organs are "inside" and what I see in the mirror is on the "outside", so why can't humans have an "inner consciousness" to match our external form?
I am fine with Caitlin using the term “inner” metaphorically. I use it that way, too, to refer to soul or spirit. Materialists will reject such terms as philosophical or religious, so they have to use a material narrative, generally neuroscience or biochemistry. I’m okay with those scientific efforts, too, even though, imo, they are dead ends, because consciousness is not material. My point is that whether we approach the “inner” self with philosophy, psychology, religion, or neuroscience, each of these has to be mapped onto a narrative. But, as Korzybski noted, the map is not the territory. Worse, it seems inevitable that all narratives/maps are eventually captured by the powerful to misguide us. Narratives can be useful, but they can also control us. So maybe “inner work” is about getting beyond all narratives.
I began doing 'inner work' more than 40 years ago. I had long since lost faith in prayer and when I first heard mention of mediation I thought it must be another form of useless prayer. But then I studied what th eBuddha had said a bit and thought it sounds useful. And it has been useful for my clarity of thought.It amazed me to find that you can't think your way to inner clarity but you can find it by emptiness which still feels like a bit of a contradiction to me in my 95th year -but it does work.
An empty - beginners/curious/children-like - mind can understand everything - an expert mind cannot understand anything. - from Beginners Mind
Silence is the language of GOD everything else is a bad translation. - Rumi
So very true... as a blogger I have learned the very issues we should be addressing are the ones excluded from the narrative. Our societies are defined by ruinous ideologies operating simultaneously in the background. The fact that they are never discussed or the damage they do exposed is the tyranny that we live by and the anarchy imposed. War, imperialism and neoliberalism are just three examples.
💗
Also, "enlightenment" is kind of a ruse in my opinion. Yes there are people who understand the spiritual, inner dimensions better than others. They are inhereitors of spirtual technology (a kind of spiritual aristocracy) that is really the common birthright of humanity, but they aren't necessarily "more enlightened" than anyone else, anymore than people with more money are better than poeple without money.
Almost all gurus if you look into them have a darker, seamy underside. and often turn out to be predatory, spiritual vampires Like the Tibetan Llamas or that one yogi guy who was all over youtube for a few years who many say killed his own wife and then made up some bullshit story about how she "chose to die".
Don't get caught in the ruse of "enlightenment". It's ultimately just another story -- a red herring to keep people stuck in a bag of shit, unable to see their way out. Your average bum on the street is every bit as likely to be "enlightened" as some guy who's spent his entire life meditating in a monastery somewhere.
Prevailing mythology. There is the surface myth of the moment, but also the Myths that go back centuries and millennia that shape people's thoughts; the thought manipulators of the present are only the latest technicians on the scene. "Science" became "Religion" under the Covid Regime, for example. To an unknown but certain extent, the individual's consciousness is already shaped by myths and stories that lead to certain cognitive interpretations of events that will tend to reinforce the original, a priori, bias. Not the biggest fan of Plato here, but he was on to something with his Allegory of the Cave (Plato as philosophical "cave man"?)
Plato presumably created those ideas with the intent that they be propagated and accommodated widely. Except among the army of labor. Nobody wants an overeducated serf, least of all King Arthur as played by Graham Chapman. And except for the two motifs that underlie the Greek episteme, Unity and Subordination. Tell people that and they'll figure out it's all fan fic.
Thank you Caitlin🙏
Grazie. Caitlin!
Thank you, Caitlin. Well said.