Starry Gordon: Yes, but unless one discovers the truth of what he/she wants and then looks into themselves to see if they are strong enough to attain it, you will never be at peace. "A man's got to know his limitations." Dirty Harry.
But "knowing your limitations" might be yet another fable. In many cultures, some or all of the young are put through testing rituals, which might be an attempt to find the truth of the matter -- if it exists an any available way. It's not unknown for people to go beyond themselves.
Right! Our entire culture is built around stories. Stories I suppose are also lies, but is this always a bad thing? Should we always spread truths even when it’s hurtful? ‘There’s no Santa little boy!’ ‘No grandma, he didn’t die peacefully, he drowned in his own fluids, dying is not a peaceful process!’ ‘There’s probably no heaven to go to when you die’, ‘America is not the land of freedom and opportunity’, ‘Many of our heroes are villains’, ‘Our wars were never helping others’...on and on. I suppose it depends on the intent of the story whether it’s worth playing along.
Thank you Caitlin, a superb and thought provoking piece. The acceptance for for the majority of people to see this will be very hard to achieve, we have been brainwashed and manipulated for so long, I hope it spreads from the young as maybe their world view is less cluttered with false premises for I think you are correct for our survival and ultimate happiness and peace, we have start again.
Somehow, somewhere deep inside us, before we are tainted by this murderous extractive "system", there is the realization of the necessity for la verità. Although it's sixty years ago, I still recall the contrast between myself as a wide-eyed ingenuous high school freshman being impressed by some inscribed motto stating, "the truth shall set you free", and the realization, 4 yrs later (2 yrs. after the assassination of JFK), satirizing that inscription with my classmates as "the truth shall make you blush". Sixty years later, that blushing over my country's lies has morphed into a sense of resignation over its hopeless demise into the biggest purveyor of manufactured untruth in the history of human "civilization".
"he biggest purveyor of manufactured untruth in the history of human "civilization"."
Sadly untrue. I'd say 'business as usual.' Don't forget the good old days when they told the people the king was divine. This persisted all the way up to 1945 Japan. Then there's modern day North Korea where the people believe they are the most mighty and prosperous nation on Earth. It's incredible what goes on there.
"True" or "untrue" is a bit of extreme judgment, if one makes that judgment contingent on outcomes. Those extreme adjudications are far too easily tossed around in this society; sorry you feel the need to do so. Divine right of kings, an intimate offshoot of the divinity fable sold to humanity in general was yet another method of enslavement and justification to wars that certainly caused a lot of misery and death. North Korea's atrocities are real but their impact is limited. However when I consider how globally consequential have been the lies of US empire by comparison to these other examples, I find little comparison. No, I don't have an exact count of how many million global lives the lies have ruined or ended as a consequence, but it's surely been far more consequential than the examples you mention. Blame modernity, blame technology, blame whatever you like, that's the reality. And of course it's business as usual, but with the advent of 18th century technology and beyond, that business has taken on far more destructive overtones. Perhaps I should've said the biggest purveyor of globally consequential manufactured untruths, but that's a rather long chain of modifiers and I generally don't like to write that way. Or maybe a ratio: lives destroyed per lie.
While humanity is experiencing a seemingly inescapable downward spiral into chaos and destruction, Caitlin dissects the propaganda driving our descent and shows the way out, bringing hope instead of despair.
"widespread forceful rejection of the entire system can only come through truth."
Not really - it can also come through lies and many are now seeking that outcome. They need to be called out and lies exposed and replaced by truths, or else the system collapses and is replaced by something even worse.
All too likely. This is what drives the censorship regime (which I like to call The Octopus of Truth.) The countervailing idea is that things will get better after the worse period. History shows that this often works. Things don't stay stuck at suck forever. However the get better period may be one hundred years later.
I wish liberal democracy would return to the USA, but there is almost no movement in this direction. 1% maybe.
"Helping people to understand that they’ve been lied to their whole lives about their nation, their government, their society and their world will help shake them free from their propaganda blinders, so that they can begin to figure out what’s true."
That's partially true, just like the famous line: "love is all you need". Sounds great, but you know you need more than love!
Truth is a bundle - awareness and understanding are just a part of the package. Truth requires engagement in reality - action - to be realized.
And helping people to understand they've been lied to and that the system is corrupt and broken - without engagement - can lead to nihilism or passive observation, just the opposite of truth.
"Helping people to understand that they’ve been lied to their whole lives about their nation, their government, their society and their world will help shake them free from their propaganda blinders, so that they can begin to figure out what’s true."
Helping others helps you see things without blinders, too. As we help each other shake free of the propaganda, we unite into a stronger force for truth and goodness. Let's continue to share truth and together we will overcome the propagandists. Power To The People!
We are socialized to believe that voting for the right candidate with the right package of goodies will solve the problem. And we believe that even when all the right candidate is prepared to do is blame someone else, preferably another system or country. It is we and our system that has to change. That is the main truth of the situation.
Countering the lies won’t be easy, when such powerful forces spread them to get support for what they intend to do.
One example is the neocon plan to dismantle Russia into smaller units to weaken its resistance to NATO, US, and British influence and take its vast natural resources. They tried to take it over using banks after the fall of the Soviet Union, but we’re not successful.
The official lies began when Germany, Ukraine, France and others signed the Minsk Agreement with Russia, when they in fact only signed it to give Ukraine time to beef up its army to take on Russia (as was recently disclosed by Angela Merkel). The lies continue years later with “the success of the Spring offensive” and the “fight for democracy” amidst the massive corruption with our funds and war weapons given to Zelensky. Most people don’t know or care.
"They tried to take it over using banks after the fall of the Soviet Union, but we’re not successful."
I'm told they were largely successful but the Rs managed to reverse the process. The Rs did things like force Dutch Royal Shell to sell out its natural gas facility in Sakhalin. With that cache of nuclear weapons the West had to think twice about putting the hammer down.
"... and (for now at least) we do have the ability to share the truth about what’s going on with each other."
The key phrase there is "for now at least". For a while now they have been increasing censorship and repression proportionally to their perception of danger. So it's unclear what the resulting trends are.
I am a boomer from near Chicago, the tipping point for me was when friends started demanding censorship. Some pigs are more equal than others- The Prophet
"widespread forceful rejection of the entire system can only come through truth."
Unfortunately history does not bear this out. Rejection of a system comes through widespread suffering combined with a loss of confidence in a system's ability to provide for the peoples' needs. That rejection can be based on complete nonsense and result in a reversion to barbarism and superstition.
This is definitely on the right track. But the truth is tricky. It can scare the hell out of people and be quite painful. The resulting fear shuts down the brain, rendering any account of the facts essentially powerless. Propaganda is effective because it also plays on fear. The opposite of fear is actually love. So to open people's hearts and minds the truth is most effective when accompanied by love.
"They fear love because it creates a world they can't control."
"For the individual, you can’t generally come to inner peace and a harmonious way of moving in the world until you’ve done a lot of inner work and gotten extremely real with yourself about your experiences, your relationships, your ways of thinking about things, your behavior patterns, and your motivations."
This is fantastic article and I am in complete agreement with it. But I think left out of the idea expressed in this sentence is enough emphasis on getting extremely real about your own personal character defects and wrongdoing. The importance of this cannot be overstated. The necessary actions are is expressed well in steps 4 and 5 of Alcoholics Anonymous. Coming to terms with your own personal flaws and wrongdoing is absolutely crucial to finding inner peace and harmony.
But truth is hard and often elusive, and fables are so seductive.
mix a little Truth
into our Fables
& There ya Go!
.
own the Narrative
or it'll Own
your Ass.
Beautifully said.
Starry Gordon: Yes, but unless one discovers the truth of what he/she wants and then looks into themselves to see if they are strong enough to attain it, you will never be at peace. "A man's got to know his limitations." Dirty Harry.
But "knowing your limitations" might be yet another fable. In many cultures, some or all of the young are put through testing rituals, which might be an attempt to find the truth of the matter -- if it exists an any available way. It's not unknown for people to go beyond themselves.
Starry Gordon: One's limitations are soon discovered on the sports field and elsewhere.
Right! Our entire culture is built around stories. Stories I suppose are also lies, but is this always a bad thing? Should we always spread truths even when it’s hurtful? ‘There’s no Santa little boy!’ ‘No grandma, he didn’t die peacefully, he drowned in his own fluids, dying is not a peaceful process!’ ‘There’s probably no heaven to go to when you die’, ‘America is not the land of freedom and opportunity’, ‘Many of our heroes are villains’, ‘Our wars were never helping others’...on and on. I suppose it depends on the intent of the story whether it’s worth playing along.
Indeed, the truth may be unbearable. It is certainly difficult. Hence the preference for fables.
One of your very best, imo. Simple, direct and extremely profound all at the same time.
❤️❤️❤️
Thank you Caitlin, a superb and thought provoking piece. The acceptance for for the majority of people to see this will be very hard to achieve, we have been brainwashed and manipulated for so long, I hope it spreads from the young as maybe their world view is less cluttered with false premises for I think you are correct for our survival and ultimate happiness and peace, we have start again.
Somehow, somewhere deep inside us, before we are tainted by this murderous extractive "system", there is the realization of the necessity for la verità. Although it's sixty years ago, I still recall the contrast between myself as a wide-eyed ingenuous high school freshman being impressed by some inscribed motto stating, "the truth shall set you free", and the realization, 4 yrs later (2 yrs. after the assassination of JFK), satirizing that inscription with my classmates as "the truth shall make you blush". Sixty years later, that blushing over my country's lies has morphed into a sense of resignation over its hopeless demise into the biggest purveyor of manufactured untruth in the history of human "civilization".
"he biggest purveyor of manufactured untruth in the history of human "civilization"."
Sadly untrue. I'd say 'business as usual.' Don't forget the good old days when they told the people the king was divine. This persisted all the way up to 1945 Japan. Then there's modern day North Korea where the people believe they are the most mighty and prosperous nation on Earth. It's incredible what goes on there.
"True" or "untrue" is a bit of extreme judgment, if one makes that judgment contingent on outcomes. Those extreme adjudications are far too easily tossed around in this society; sorry you feel the need to do so. Divine right of kings, an intimate offshoot of the divinity fable sold to humanity in general was yet another method of enslavement and justification to wars that certainly caused a lot of misery and death. North Korea's atrocities are real but their impact is limited. However when I consider how globally consequential have been the lies of US empire by comparison to these other examples, I find little comparison. No, I don't have an exact count of how many million global lives the lies have ruined or ended as a consequence, but it's surely been far more consequential than the examples you mention. Blame modernity, blame technology, blame whatever you like, that's the reality. And of course it's business as usual, but with the advent of 18th century technology and beyond, that business has taken on far more destructive overtones. Perhaps I should've said the biggest purveyor of globally consequential manufactured untruths, but that's a rather long chain of modifiers and I generally don't like to write that way. Or maybe a ratio: lives destroyed per lie.
Per capita vs. gross effect.
And everything of it HAD TO COME TO PASS!
While humanity is experiencing a seemingly inescapable downward spiral into chaos and destruction, Caitlin dissects the propaganda driving our descent and shows the way out, bringing hope instead of despair.
"widespread forceful rejection of the entire system can only come through truth."
Not really - it can also come through lies and many are now seeking that outcome. They need to be called out and lies exposed and replaced by truths, or else the system collapses and is replaced by something even worse.
All too likely. This is what drives the censorship regime (which I like to call The Octopus of Truth.) The countervailing idea is that things will get better after the worse period. History shows that this often works. Things don't stay stuck at suck forever. However the get better period may be one hundred years later.
I wish liberal democracy would return to the USA, but there is almost no movement in this direction. 1% maybe.
"Helping people to understand that they’ve been lied to their whole lives about their nation, their government, their society and their world will help shake them free from their propaganda blinders, so that they can begin to figure out what’s true."
That's partially true, just like the famous line: "love is all you need". Sounds great, but you know you need more than love!
Truth is a bundle - awareness and understanding are just a part of the package. Truth requires engagement in reality - action - to be realized.
And helping people to understand they've been lied to and that the system is corrupt and broken - without engagement - can lead to nihilism or passive observation, just the opposite of truth.
Well Done!
"Helping people to understand that they’ve been lied to their whole lives about their nation, their government, their society and their world will help shake them free from their propaganda blinders, so that they can begin to figure out what’s true."
Helping others helps you see things without blinders, too. As we help each other shake free of the propaganda, we unite into a stronger force for truth and goodness. Let's continue to share truth and together we will overcome the propagandists. Power To The People!
We are socialized to believe that voting for the right candidate with the right package of goodies will solve the problem. And we believe that even when all the right candidate is prepared to do is blame someone else, preferably another system or country. It is we and our system that has to change. That is the main truth of the situation.
Countering the lies won’t be easy, when such powerful forces spread them to get support for what they intend to do.
One example is the neocon plan to dismantle Russia into smaller units to weaken its resistance to NATO, US, and British influence and take its vast natural resources. They tried to take it over using banks after the fall of the Soviet Union, but we’re not successful.
The official lies began when Germany, Ukraine, France and others signed the Minsk Agreement with Russia, when they in fact only signed it to give Ukraine time to beef up its army to take on Russia (as was recently disclosed by Angela Merkel). The lies continue years later with “the success of the Spring offensive” and the “fight for democracy” amidst the massive corruption with our funds and war weapons given to Zelensky. Most people don’t know or care.
"They tried to take it over using banks after the fall of the Soviet Union, but we’re not successful."
I'm told they were largely successful but the Rs managed to reverse the process. The Rs did things like force Dutch Royal Shell to sell out its natural gas facility in Sakhalin. With that cache of nuclear weapons the West had to think twice about putting the hammer down.
Love you, Caitlin. Thank-you.
"... and (for now at least) we do have the ability to share the truth about what’s going on with each other."
The key phrase there is "for now at least". For a while now they have been increasing censorship and repression proportionally to their perception of danger. So it's unclear what the resulting trends are.
I am a boomer from near Chicago, the tipping point for me was when friends started demanding censorship. Some pigs are more equal than others- The Prophet
"widespread forceful rejection of the entire system can only come through truth."
Unfortunately history does not bear this out. Rejection of a system comes through widespread suffering combined with a loss of confidence in a system's ability to provide for the peoples' needs. That rejection can be based on complete nonsense and result in a reversion to barbarism and superstition.
"can result in a reversion to barbarism and superstition."
That's exactly where we are heading.
This is why They are resorting to oppression. I don't see that that is going to work : US citizens are too unruly.
Instead they should be trying to improve the lot of ordinary people. But that is scarcely happening at all. So down we go.
"..... heading"?
Barbarism
Mass shootings, police brutality, homeless, poverty wages, ecocide, forever wars,mass migration to name a few.
Superstition
Space aliens, astrology, remote viewing, fake moon landing, and my favorite - the flat earth.
We're already there on both counts. But that doesn't mean it can't get worse. We are being led by barbarians.
Reality is what ultimately defines Truth.
The Titanic was hailed as "unsinkable".
The Titan was considered "safe".
The reality shows the truth.
"We are being led by barbarians." Precisely what I thought of the W administration. It began when the Gingrich Rs rejected the parliamentary republic.
The USA increasingly resembles the Brezhnev USSR.
keep 'em Superstitious
poorly-schooled & Uninformed*
& they'll be Soldiers at your Command
.
make Certain
to give them
someone to
Despise.
.
*or mis- & malinformed
see FOX et al
Sounds like the description of a politician!
got to be Challenging
for Christ* flying
around with
His band-
oliers &
AR-23
.
it's Gotta weigh
Him Down
.
*Prosperity Jesus?
This is definitely on the right track. But the truth is tricky. It can scare the hell out of people and be quite painful. The resulting fear shuts down the brain, rendering any account of the facts essentially powerless. Propaganda is effective because it also plays on fear. The opposite of fear is actually love. So to open people's hearts and minds the truth is most effective when accompanied by love.
"They fear love because it creates a world they can't control."
~George Orwell, 1984
"For the individual, you can’t generally come to inner peace and a harmonious way of moving in the world until you’ve done a lot of inner work and gotten extremely real with yourself about your experiences, your relationships, your ways of thinking about things, your behavior patterns, and your motivations."
This is fantastic article and I am in complete agreement with it. But I think left out of the idea expressed in this sentence is enough emphasis on getting extremely real about your own personal character defects and wrongdoing. The importance of this cannot be overstated. The necessary actions are is expressed well in steps 4 and 5 of Alcoholics Anonymous. Coming to terms with your own personal flaws and wrongdoing is absolutely crucial to finding inner peace and harmony.