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Return conversation with Alexander Adams on the managerial elite’s use of iconoclasm and progressivism to further their aims of cultural re-engineering, and why utopianism always leads to tyranny.
Part One: When State Supplants Religion (0 – 35 mins)
The attempt to restore sanity, a palace coup in Britain, relentless CRT spam, sponsored wokeness, covid authoritarianism, left & right schismogenesis, liberal by inclination, as the left goes crazy, right becomes dissident, Zer0 Books & Doug Lain, the managerial elite, a permanent control group, white savior complex, natural iconoclasts, useful values, misanthropy & environmentalism, the agenda of the welfare state, when state supplants religion, utopianism and fascism, the imposition of values, the road to tyranny, setting the agenda, social liberal media management, boys as damaged girls, Jordan Peterson & Brett Weinstein, faculty wars, Lindsay Shepherd.
Part Two: A Designated Scapegoat (35 mins – 1 hr 3 mins)
When the elite show their hand, soft control, nudge politics, Fabianism, the somewheres & the anywheres, politics & the arts, what is iconoclasm, revenge on symbols, mimesis & violent uprising, group action & diffusion of responsibility, schools as quasi-church, ideology without morality, a history of slavery, tracing back responsibility, British response to slavery, child sex trafficking, displacement onto a paper tiger of the past, how to attack white males, a designated scapegoat, mugshots of antifa, white self-hatred and father-anger, the virtue of hate, the witless foot soldiers, defund the police & BLM, abolishing crime, white antifa & black collateral damage.
Part Three: The War Against the White Working Class (1 hr 3 mins – 1 hr 39 mins)
An imaginary nation of immigrants, rejecting history, small waves of migration, tokenism in the culture, rewriting history, collective gaslighting, the road to hell, when inclusion means removal, when lack of evidence for racism = proof of racism, evolving forms of exploitation, incentivizing the marginalized, turning artists into pet monkeys, David Byrne’s American Utopia, when the oppressed gain power, the passage of liminality, when masters become servants & servants become masters, reparations, a symbolic humiliation, how to start a racial conflict, the utility of mob action to the elite, a long march through the institutions, the war against the white working class, the utility of mass migration, managing the upper echelons of police, US directed uprising, antifa as proxy army of the elite.
Part Four: The Logic of Genocide (1 hr 39 mins – end)
A left-wing chief of police, collusion & complicity, the creations of “the deplorables,” critical race theory, entryism, the National Trust’s susceptibility to anti-racism manipulation, convergence not conspiracy, long-term social engineering, when a top-down plan becomes systemic; protecting people from history, narcissism, mass infantilization, safetyism as government enforced control, from destroying icons to destroying people, Russian & Chinese revolutions, the logic of genocide, when Stalin replaced Lenin, the pendulum swings, Lloyd de Mause, washing the land in blood, decadence & stability, directing ennui, the narrative of injustice & negative identity, extinction rebellion & what’s left of the aristocracy, hyper-globalization.
Alexander’s site Alexander’s writing Publisher’s website for Alexander’s book
On the same topic: The Social Revenge Fantasist: Scapegoating Patriarchy, Generational Trauma, & the Identity Police State
Songs: “Primitive” & “Chasing Time” by Joy Zipper; “Houdini Didn’t Like the Spiritualists” and “American Childhood Trilogy I- Civil Defense” by Terry Allen; “A Minor Victory” by Monkey Warhol.
I’m enjoying listening to this podcast. However, I do see cancel culture and political correctness as simply a kind of cultural wrecking ball to counter the incredible level of egoic holding in the white middle class psyche.
The fear is always tyranny – loss of freedom and agency – but this holding pattern of “how the world should be” is anyway these things on a personal level.
I think that culturally we’re just in a process, and all the white fear is just there in the background coming up for processing.
to paraphrase the counselor, fear has no color.
That is true. However, the world we’ve been occupying for some centuries has been dominated by white men. And that’s okay. Great things have happened. But the result is also one colossal mental holding pattern, a vast ideology with huge unconscious aspects. Woke culture is showing the more enlightened, or at least mentally fluid, intellectual just how huge their personal bias is. The challenge is very useful for anyone who genuinely seeks themselves, in my opinion. And a worst nightmare for anyone who hides behind ideology.
woke culture IS ideology
A static, held mind perceives woke culture as an ideological threat because it assumes that it wants to impose an opposing vision of reality upon it… and that THAT TOO will be static.
Because this type of mind is barricading off the personal unconscious, that this is its real function, it simply seeks survival through rigidity. It lacks experience of resilience without hardening.
I followed the Weinsteins (Brett and Eric, not Harvey) in the wake of the attacks on IDW, Evergreen etc. I saw they were in psychological process, rather like participants in an Encounter Therapy group.
They came out the other side because they will have realised, in the midst of it all, the true nature of mind and that resilience can exist without rigidity.
There is no problem with woke culture.
Are those that wear the woke-folk’s cloaks growing in a different soup-bowel to the rest of us folks?
it’s also fascism.
You had me at ‘why utopianism always leads to tyranny.’
Police chiefs are appointed.
that would have been my assumption also
Woke culture is great, basically. It’s getting rid of all the rigid old intellectual white men who are hiding behind belief systems. A cultural revolution….
“I saw the finest minds of my generation, starving, naked, cancelled… crawling through social media at dawn, desperate for Twitter likes!”
You seem to have stumbled into the wrong bar, Dev: a double irony since you came via DaveO. What you will find here (among other richer brews, and if you take the time to sample what’s on offer), is a shared disdain for the ideological drive for sociopolitical pseudo-solutions & for the revenge-fantasies disguised as utopian schemes of narcissistic, trauma-generated social engineers and their wanna-bes (on all levels of the spectrum). Woke culture, with its white man guilt/self-hatred/scapegoating, is the latest mutation of the virus, but since the more a body culture rots, the more complex forms of bacteria evolve, it is also the most advanced and toxic of the bunch. Advocate it at your peril.
But there are no wokers here, praise the Lord, which begs the question of why you are you advocating for it? Are you on a mission we need to know about? Like a recently de-parted alleged Christian with a zen for fishing, your credibility is fast wearing thin.
Credibility is just the currency of an ego that disdains self-investigation. Cultural upheaval provides us primarily with the opportunity to investigate our own mental holding patterns, as we feel our vision of reality being bashed around, and defence responses activated. What you see as a virus is the perception FROM the holding pattern.
@Devaraj
>Credibility is just the currency of an ego that disdains self-investigation.
LOL; the ice you are skating over just got thinner Dev; the primary thing that this site and my work is devoted to is self-investigation, maybe to a fault; and by credibility, I meant that your reason & intent for being here invites some skepticism, from me at least, since you seem not to grok “what’s happening here, do you” (as an old hippie favorite has it).
Possible the spiritual one-upmanship of the above post indicates the sort of pack you normally run with. Fortunately your subsequent comments on “wokeness” have slightly undermined the ones that came before, which at least add ambiguity, if not clarity.
From your post below that ends with:
>Or woke culture triggering huge changes in how institutions behave.
I think this is arguable, and if we include universities in the institutions then they have partially created “woke” culture to begin with; in any event, evidence for any sort of genuine awakening, either within institutions or human masses, is scant, compared to the evidence to the contrary, this site being a small hub of such evidence.
>A lot is going to change, a lot has to change, and a lot of big hippie egos that have been blabbering on about change for decades are well pissed off that their views aren’t being listened to!
I don’t see how that’s relevant here; the first statement is so obvious its meaningless; the follow up seems directed at someone or some demographic that isn’t represented here – unless it’s by yourself? Is that how *you* feel?
I think you’re right. There is a bit of spiritual one-up-man-ship in there, fair point. I will reflect upon that. But for myself I don’t really bother so much with credibility. I like to investigate stuff without concerns about who wrote it, where feasible. That has worked well for me.
In your replies you also seem to often allude to some background majority of people who are somehow in agreement with you or take the form of some arbitrative body… the “background consensus” debating strategy as I’ve heard it called. Or Hidden Consensus.
All the background consensus strategy does is indicate that the person utilising it clearly is nowhere near as confident of what they say as they’d like to make out. And that’s okay. But of course if you do it, it is blood in the water to the more predatory debater.
I agree that we don’t know the final impact of “woke” culture – much or little. But I do find it of immense value as a dialectical wrecking ball, hammering into the unconscious identified positions of myriad Western intellectuals. As such I salute it. The fact that it’s coming from myriad mostly young Western self-avoiders is not important to me. Life isn’t fair, and that’s good.
hi Dev; I will cop to your cop,
thanks for manning up and for pointing out this “background consensus” as debating strategy – I had not heard of it before but I was wrestling with an awareness of it while wrestling with you here; what I was (in part) trying to say was, it might help to be more familiar with the mores, values, and interests of the tribal space you have entered, & that not being so could lead to unnecessary (or uncreative) frictions. At the same time, I was aware that part of me just wanted to say, fuck off and bone up on my output so you know who you are talking to, what we are talking about, and what the accepted position is – just the kind of cult leaderish position that I find abhorrent (as you point out, “the person utilising it clearly is nowhere near as confident of what they say as they’d like to make out.”)
Since we are getting more open and potentially vulnerable I should say I am not confident dealing with points of view I find abhorrent, and I was already predisposed to be wary of you because I saw that you’d commented favorably on an essay on Medium about the supposed “racism” of the embodiment conference, an essay I found repugnant, and exemplary of the toxic narcissism, ignorance, and arrogance of “woke culture.” Anyone who gave the thumbs up to that execrable screed, I felt, has no place here. (Intolerance breeds intolerance.)
All that confessed and off my chest, I do disagree with you, maybe fundamentally, that this critical race/gender studies SJW BS is anything more than a socially engineered schismogenesis by Machiavellian hidden forces exploiting traumatized psyches locked into narcissistic rage patterns. As I mapped in the recent post about the social revenge fantasist, I see no evidence that it’s causing a loosening or a levelling of the Western intellectual mindset or “patriarchy,” but only increasing the polarization and accelerating the downward slide into Girard’s zombie apocalypse of mimetic violence. This is not pretty and to want to celebrate it would seem perverse. That said, I do have a similar tendency, and feel that “better out than in” applies to the Great Shaitian as well as every other psychosomatic disorder. So maybe there are areas of agreement even in our dis-ing.
> As I mapped in the recent post about the social revenge fantasist, I > see no evidence that it’s causing a loosening or a levelling of the
> Western intellectual mindset or “patriarchy,” but only increasing the > polarization and accelerating the downward slide into Girard’s
> zombie apocalypse of mimetic violence.
Well, I guess time will tell. You may be right. I may be wrong. In the face of the latest SJW outburst on Twitter, feeling the times my hackles are raised, I do try to investigate what actually is feeling threatened right now. As opposed to just going with my mind’s justification of outrage.
> and I was already predisposed to be wary of you because I saw that > you’d commented favorably on an essay on Medium about the > supposed “racism” of the embodiment conference, an essay I found > repugnant, and exemplary of the toxic narcissism, ignorance, and > arrogance of “woke culture.”
Thanks for owning that. As I recall, that piece, or its Twitter version actually upset at least one woke type. I pointed out that, whilst many native people undoubtedly brought embodiment practices to Western culture, they themselves often claimed that the practices were channelled, or had related spiritual origins. Thus, they themselves were not seeming to need to be represented in events like TEC.
So whoever it is that knocks something over is better than those built it up? Weirdly (for these pages) unargued statement. Here’s another one in reply. I think you just like watching car crashes, thinking it’s better than the traffic that got you down.
I don’t think that woke culture is better than the existing established intelligentsia. I see it as a cultural wrecking ball that swings around periodically, bashing weaker positions away. a kind of intellectual grim reaper.
https://youtu.be/x7CxM1anfPE
LMAO: https://youtu.be/x7CxM1anfPE?t=49
That is brilliant. Maybe it’s satire that’s the grim reaper, or least inspires the reapers. ‘Satire’ is latin a term for self-hatred right?
i think this is wishful thinking of an ideology that demonizes people with different perspectives. also, how much self loathing must you have to write such things? the “woke” have been mislead by false narratives.
….i think this is wishful thinking of an ideology that demonizes people with different perspectives. also, how much self loathing must you have to write such things? the “woke” have been mislead by false narratives….
Well, I just see woke culture as a reaction to the intellectualist status quo. People with an investment in the status quo feel threatened by it, as I have done at times. But it’s a process and fundamentally a good one if you ask me.
For sure, it’s not coming out of awareness, but that does not necessarily matter because not all positive change is mediated at that level, especially on a global or cultural level. Our culture has been very stuck for a long time and so these kinds of huge shifts are inevitable as I see it.
I react to woke culture at times but I find it better to investigate what actually is being threatened within me.
@1 hr 49 min – 1 hr 51 min.
It was a shame you got cut off because this was getting into a very tricky and interesting area. From what I heard I would align with Alexander’s (subtly different) take more than Jasun’s.
Jasun: “the lack of the plan for me is evidence of the plan / how effective it was”
What springs to mind for me is that correlation is not cause. What about all the historical social engineering intentions that haven’t been successful? Why has this succeeded where others haven’t? I would think because the social/environmental/psychological/historical/etc, etc conditions were right for it to succeed. You might even say the Fabian’s simply aligned with something that was ripe for happening anyway (which doesnt mean we shouldnt condemn their intentions of course) Ultimately the viewpoint that actually all this *is* the direct cause of certain groups’ intentions I find distracting to the bigger picture of how we have ended up where we are…. I think people that go and find evidence that it is a direct cause are sympathetic to that idea from the start and can be guilty of confirmation bias (as you acknowledge yourself (“perceptual bias”)…
I suspect that Heinrich’s “WEIRD people” concept is a lot more relevant in the current upheavals than is presently being discussed. Right now, people are triggered and so the tendency to ascribe more simple models of agency predominate.
Western peoples seem to be the first to have a sense of self strongly divorced from family or tribal links, and more forged through self-perception and self-investigation. Whatever benefits have accrued from this, they are set against the inevitable manifestation of a psychological underbelly driven by a deep need to avoid the feeling of guilt.
Accountability crises can thus easily be triggered. It only takes a small push and whole, previously solid, authoritarian regimes will quickly do whatever it takes not to feel “guilty.”
Thus we see Covid, arguably a relatively minor health crisis, creating extreme worldwide measures. Or woke culture triggering huge changes in how institutions behave.
That makes sense but think it’s delusional conceive of the woke thing as a culture. — Whilst the term may have originated in the articulation of an expanded social conciousness (?) it has since become just another disembodied, narcissistic, self-righteous, ideology that ultimately perpetuates the Separation it reportedly wants to overcome…
For sure. I mean, even the term “woke” implies that some level of final awareness has already been achieved! It’s also a huge projection – blaming the outside rather than investigating the inner woundedness. But people, in their twenties in particular, have done this for centuries. We all have teflon-coated egos at that age. Each generation pounds the one before it.
What I find more interesting is why it is having such an effect now. I think we’re really in fin-de-siecle situation bigtime. A lot is going to change, a lot has to change, and a lot of big hippie egos that have been blabbering on about change for decades are well pissed off that their views aren’t being listened to!
@Bonce
>What springs to mind for me is that correlation is not cause. What about all the historical social engineering intentions that haven’t been successful?
serendipitiously enough, all these questions are addressed in the latest blog post
I noticed that you touched on this during a quick skim read of said post but I didn’t want to dig too deep into that before a) : reading 16 maps (just purchased) and b) : reading the original Des-Re’ ….
>Ultimately the viewpoint that actually all this *is* the direct cause of certain groups’ intentions I find distracting to the bigger picture of how we have ended up where we are….
I don’t quite understand how identifying a central element in understanding how we got where we are can also be a distraction from it; truth is truth regardless of how it affects us & or what we do with it; would it be fairer to say that you don’t know what to do with that possibility, or about it?
I think the difficulty believing that we have been manipulated for centuries, and that both society and ourselves are the end result of those manipulations, is itself the result of those manipulations and, in a complementary fashion, of a privileged & sheltered life in which we never had to see, or be on the receiving end of, the raw power of these forces when they assume a less soft form of totalitarian control. Maybe ask Cedomir – who grew up in Serbia after generations of being on the blunt end of that instrument – what he thinks of the idea that the empire has terraformed the landscape of the human organism inner and outer since time began & you may get a less rosy-glasses viewpoint.
I think we are largely clueless how absurdly easy to manipulate we are; conspiratainment is part of the problem not the solution, sure, but the evidence it incorporates into its controlled counter-narrative is nonetheless compelling and finally irrefutable (I never hear it being refuted except with blanket & vague statements).
Out of curiosity, have you listened to the audio from 1988, referring back to a 1969 speech, “The New Order of the Barbarians”?
https://archive.org/details/New_Order_of_Barbarians_remaster_tapes_1to3/New+Order+of+Barbarians+%5Bremaster%5D+tapes+1+to+3.mp3
transcript: https://100777.com/nwo/barbarians
Thanks. I’m on board with the idea it is part of the picture and worthy of investigation (ultimately to free yourself from the need to) but as for it being a “central element” of how we’ve ended up here: — I guess I’m still agnostic about that… no doubt my own biases are part of that but that doesn’t neccesssrily mean I’m “wrong” to be open to the possibility that it is more “correlation”/symptom of something deeper than directly causative and central…
Will continue with an open mind…
What if it is a symptom of something deeper but that deeper something is also by design?
This needs some unpacking, and comments section possibly not the best forum. If you mean successful social engineering is a symptom of a broader, co-ordinated plan by elites (going back centuries) that still ignores the fact that elites act within a holisitc context that ultimately was not designed by human groups. I guess ultimately the context is the eco-system… (Whether non-human entities have had a hand in the design of the context/backdrop that elites operate in is another question entirely .. (at a metaphorical/mythological level I could go along with that)…
I wasn’t referring to more ancient human groups; possible side discussion: is metaphorical postmodern-lingo for metaphysical?
Put another way: the intentions of elites obvs have a degree of influence on the holistic context (catalysing and building on pre-existing features for example) but that influence is not *central* in shaping the context — it may ultimately be unknowable whether or not he trajectory of the context is guided – but that idea makes for good mythology…
the number of the beast is the number of a man
is metaphorical postmodern-lingo for metaphysical?
I’ve possibly bitten off more than I can chew already so I’ll leave that one to others!
That is very interesting though. (Back in the day they would have been the same thing)….
Sorry if I’m being a bit slow but you are saying something like we are possessed as a species and that thing that has possessed us has intentionality (hence “design “) ?
I’m raising the possibility yes.
So wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that *this possession* is a central element in where we are, as opposed to the central element being the plans of elites (those plans that are successful simply being some of the detail of the big picture (one of the manifestations of this possession)
can there be more than one central element, as in a Venn diagram?
the human factor is surely central simply by dint of being human?
Maybe. But the possession thing highlights the fact that the influence is diffuse across the species rather than chiefly emanating from the plans of elites… you want to say, the fac that the fact that the influence is diffuse is proof that elites plans are working- but that is an unnecessary (and to my mind unproven) extra step (hence “distracting”)
we seem to be talking in circles & now you are putting words in my mouth to provide fodder for your arguments – a sign that this is turning into an intellectual circle jerk; I’ve been consistent throughout my output; you’ve been around for a while now. all you’ve convinced me of so far is that you havent been reading/listening closely enough; not to be dismissive but a researcher has only so many hours in a day; those who dont get it get left behind
Fair enough. I agree you’ve been consistent on this. I’m gunna read 16 maps so maybe that will clarify things for me. I was inviting you to explore the possibility that you are somewhat dogmatic/reductionist on this particular issue – mainly because I agree with and enjoy so much of your work…
I mean, the explanatory gap in ape-human evolution has prompted a lot of theorising over the years. Why did we develop higher mental skills, if there wasn’t the short term use to stimulate natural selection? But it’s a bit blind watchmaker. Still, it also could have been alien or extra dimensional intelligence – factory farming.
Relating to this, and the chat about the value of language, there are other possibilities of what thinking is really all about.
Julian Jaynes was studying early religious texts and theorised that 10k years ago thoughts manifested as ‘commands from God.’
Then we had the AgRev and thinking and talking could be used to cement social bonds and tribal links.
Now we have Heinrich’s WEIRD hypothesis where thinking has become very self centered. (See Dennett centre of narrative gravity)
In this you could argue a progression from external notions of God to direct self inquiry.
Macro level, humanity could be being used as some form of consciousness accumulator.
Macro level, humanity could be being used as some form of consciousness accumulator.
The first matrix failed cos it was too perfect…
The second one.?… Too much chilli in the stew, John?
> The first matrix failed cos it was too perfect…
> The second one.?… Too much chilli in the stew, John?
Well, the old “brain in a vat” scenario was disposed of by Dan Dennett some years before the Matrix franchise even began.
But there might still be some higher purpose in getting people more separated from each other and interacting through zoom.
They use Game Theory for a lot of useful stuff these days – economics, politics, psychology. Be cool to see someone use it for conspiracies and see what comes up.
It’s Moloch Getting Covid Yet?
https://devaraj2.substack.com/p/is-moloch-getting-covid-yet
Optimistic ending; I sometimes wonder the same; I think at the higher levels the social engineers believe they are saving humanity/doing what is necessary; don’t the worst of men always have the best of motives? Reptiles I can’t speak for.
It doesn’t really resonate with me the way the conspiracy pros – Icke, Jones, etc – always veer to the negative. Icke has changed his endgame view over the years to fit in with where events seem to be flowing towards, always bad. But if we just got rid of the cabal we’d be fine.
I suspect that this negative hyptothesising does fulfil some deeper social-spiritual function. Whatever Deep State-type negative groups might exist, the widespread adoption of conspiracy theories alluding to their activities would no doubt empower more progressive elements within those orgs to effect change…”Grand-wizard… we must turn down some of these rituals. It’s all over the internet now!”
But, this aside, if extra-dimensional entities had the intelligence to implant thought-forms into early hominids, would they necessarily be driven by a desire to create an evil technocracy, or reducing us to some Hunger Games type scenario for their amusement? And, if they had this level of advanced intelligence, wouldn’t it be game over by now? I’m not convinced.
If you study the so-called Illumiinati, they were hardly all bad guys.
you may have been influenced by Icke, but I certainly wasn’t; (tho I was by the “Illuminati”); once again I suggest you get a bit more familiar with my output and background; inside knowledge & makes all the difference
@ Bonce: >I agree you’ve been consistent on this. I’m gunna read 16 maps so maybe that will clarify things for me. I was inviting you to explore the possibility that you are somewhat dogmatic/reductionist on this particular issue – mainly because I agree with and enjoy so much of your work…
thanks; things is, I can’t pretend not to see what I see or try and un-know what I know; you can call it dogmatism if you want, but from my end I am working with facts, not theories. It’s true that you or Greg looks at the same facts and come up with a different interpretation, and I think this shows that intellectual cognition is limited to how much we are connected to our bodily sense of reality, which is itself dependent on releasing trauma.
My last five books present the evidence for something that, with hindsight, I have known since I first arrived on this mudball and that I never quite managed to fully forget. But as recent exchanges show, they aren’t especially effective in persuading anyone who isn’t ready to go into the trauma that blocks this awareness.
For some, reading the book allows that to happen; for the rest, they may just be mind candy. Those who do grok the books and have an experience of cathartic release, or at least Aha!, have probably already moved past the questions we are discussing here – if they were ever relevant. I would guess that is because they know what I am talking about from having been on the receiving end of it. (When you have a personal direct experience of being trauma controlled, you instinctively know that societies/groups can also be managed this way.)
It’s sobering to realize that people can read my books and still not get over this first hurdle. Yes, Bonce, we have been colonized for time immemorial, & society is what it is by design, it is a farm, it is a matrix – get over it and get on with the unplugging. Ironic that you say it’s distracting when you may be distracting yourself by reducing something to an intellectual/philosophical dialectic when I am writing about my life here, and by extension yours. I am out here on life AND limb. But thanks for making me think about it more!
PS. My wife & I have been watching a Mexican TV show called An Unknown Enemy that shows how the CIA and the DFS (Mexican secret police) brought about a coup that was partially dependent on coopting the student protests and the international Olympics to oust one president and get their own man in place. It’s very well-done and seems historically responsible (I haven’t read up on it). This was 40 years ago, in an under-developed country, and yet the level of malevolence combined with ruthless efficiency – and success – is chilling.
What occurs to me is that most “privileged” folk look at these slices of history and they think they show how undemocratic certain countries are, or were, how brutal and unjust. But this is only because our own societies have been so effectively managed, shaped, and controlled that these coarser methods are no longer required, so we have the luxury of believing we are free, and the bliss of livestock ignorant that they are raised in an abattoir. Possibly since I was raised to be an abattoir manager, I was never deceived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Unknown_Enemy
> When you have a personal direct experience > of being trauma controlled, you instinctively > know that societies/groups can also be > managed this way
“Trauma control” doesn’t strike me personally as a coherent concept.
In unraveling my own fairly traumatic childhood, at some point I realised that what happened was pretty secondary really. What made the difference was how I dealt with it, the survival strategies I adopted. The hiding and avoidance or the opening up.
It seems that all cultures use conditioning to try and perpetuate themselves. In a certain sense, American culture has been so successful in the world because the conditioning went in later than most other cultures.
To illustrate, in Reichian terms – schizoids, orals and endurers are created pre-egoic. They’re good for workers in top-down control cultures but they lack the ego to drive a culture forward.
The US created plenty of those but also a lot of rigids and aggressives. These are post egoic. The rigids manage. The aggressives go out and dominate new markets.
>In unraveling my own fairly traumatic childhood, at some point I realised that what happened was pretty secondary really. What made the difference was how I dealt with it, the survival strategies I adopted. The hiding and avoidance or the opening up.
Yes – and/but that’s a hairsplit to hide a chasm: for an infant there is no choice about “how to deal with it” – choice doesn’t enter into it; shaping/coopting survival strategies is what I mean by (using shorthand because I think Bonce knows what I am talking about/has read the books) “trauma control.” It’s also why/how the flip side of conspiracy is complicity, from day zero on. It also sounds like your own trauma was relatively mild comapred to what I write about; a survivor of organized ritual abuse is unlikely to view it this way.
Are you familiar with The Inner World of Trauma by Donald Kalsched, or When God Becomes a Trauma by Greg Mogensen? They were key texts for me in forming a cognitive model to help approach, dialogue with, and heal the affect
> for an infant there is no choice about “how to deal with it” – choice doesn’t enter into it;
Yes, that’s true. We have extremely limited agency at that age. But survival strategies appear to become available at the age specific forms of traumatic conditioning are liable to come in at. Dissociation, for example, is often believed to begin in the womb.
> It also sounds like your own trauma was relatively mild comapred to what I write
I mean, when I was doing a lot of therapy many of us would subtly compete as to who had the “most traumatic childhood.” With abandonment, abuse, and near infant death I could hold my own in that game. But what I realised was that there are two stages to infant trauma. The traumatic acts themselves and associated survival strategies, and how our mind choose to process them later on when higher cognitive facilities became available. I chose to withhold affection to gain power and to blame the outside. These I had to change in therapy.
> about; a survivor of organized ritual abuse is unlikely to view it this way.
There are 2 basic categories of trauma – withdrawal and invasion. Abuse is the latter. Abuse from people supposed to be care givers usually results in extreme distrust of authority. There’s a huge charge of anger stored in the body.
> Are you familiar with The Inner World of Trauma by Donald Kalsched, or When God Becomes a Trauma by Greg Mogensen? > They were key texts for me in forming a cognitive model to help approach, dialogue with, and heal the affect
I’ve not come across those. There weren’t really any books in the scene I did therapy with. We were just in the group room putting stuff out, often for days at a time.
At some point, most of the charge was out of the fascia and muscle system. Then you just have to improve your attitude. I’m still working at that.
Thanks for the detailed response Jasun.
Intellectual jerking, circular or otherwise doesn’t serve anyone but agree that that is the route I went down so fair cop (tis also true to say that this particular pod was one of those more intellectual ones)
I should have stuck with the feeling I had when you said “the lack of a plan for me is evidence of the plan”… it didn’t resonate. My intuition told me something was off and I wanted to put that on the table and look at it — instead I took the carrot dangled by my false identity to fumblingly go down a “convincing” route (it even crossed my mind that it was ironic that “entryism” was defined in this pod).
But to briefly engage in a bit more jerky.
What I don’t like about the language in the statement: “we have been colonized for time immemorial, & society is what it is by design, it is a farm, it is a matrix” is that it too easily fits in with the narrative that there are some bad guys that are running things, if we just got rid of them everything would be ok — when I know *you* aren’t trying to propagate that message…
> it too easily fits in with the narrative that there are some bad guys that are running > things, if we just got rid of them everything would be ok
In my experience, a lot of conspiracy theorists either overtly or subtly put this message out and it’s a scam. I spent the first twenty years of my adult life blaming stuff outside of me for my life – authoritarian structures, capitalism, 9-5 working rat-race, my traumatised childhood, women! It felt easy and it meant I didn’t have to take responsibility for who I was.
After the next decade, in therapy, I came to realise that, actually, it didn’t matter what had happened to me as a child. It was whether I was willing to take responsibility for it, in an adult way, or not.
“the lack of a plan for me is evidence of the plan”… it didn’t resonate.
Taken out of context i can see how it wouldn’t; the context was, because when the plan is to indoctrinate people and turn them into latahs they will then carry out your plan for you with no further planning needed. People always seem to extrapolate from this the narrative of an all-powerful elite controlling everything. I say they just haven’t dug deep enough into reality (their own felt sense) to understand what I am saying and so they latch on to pre-existing Ickian narratives out there and assume I said something I havent said.
You said it here:
“we have been colonized for time immemorial, & society is what it is by design, it is a farm, it is a matrix” is that it too easily fits in with the narrative that there are some bad guys that are running things, if we just got rid of them everything would be ok — when I know *you* aren’t trying to propagate that message…
Since you know it’s not what I am saying why fit it into that narrative when you know it doesn’t fit? And if you don’t, why worry that it could be made to fit by others? I was speaking to you, and it;s true, I don’t usually speak in those terms for the reason you state above, but you must know that too. So again, what’s the worry for?
If I thought there was a real danger people would misread my work as fuel for a persecute the elite drive, I would be worried. It seems to me the opposite is the case, I haven’t stated it plainly enough so fence sitters who want to ignore the horrible truth about how we have been culturally possessed and becomes guards in our own prison can keep sitting on the fence and call me a borderline nihilist (ref: to another person on another thread; still smarting over that one).
Question is: why put what I am saying into a social context at all? I am writing about sociocultural, parapolitical realities, but that is not the context and never has been, not even when I first put paranoid pen to paper. The context is psychospiritual and somatic (sorry for the big words – it’s experiential).
It is only an unwillingness to self-investigate that creates the notion that there is something that can be corrupted in the first place.
Just as it is a willingness to self-investigate that removes that notion.
It is the myth of “Purity vs Corruption,” in its myriad forms, that lures us in.
are those thesis statements? If so, where’s the thesis?
> are those thesis statements? If so, where’s the thesis?
“Purity vs Corruption” mythologies are memes that attract those who have an energetic charge, often but not necessarily related to sexual abuse, stored in their psyche.
The meme comes in to support investigation into the presence of the personal charge.
Once the charge has gone that type of myth no longer attracts.
these are still just opinions and they may also carry charge, since they seemed to be delivered with an edge of judgment as if to win an argument. I can’t tell what point you are making in relation to my own post, since it could go either way. That’s always a risk with pithy statements.
I dont agree with the claim that purity & corruption are simply myths; they are also realities and to deny that is equally as irresponsible as turning them into projected demons that justify persecutions.
> I dont agree with the claim that purity & corruption are simply myths; they are also realities and to deny that is equally as irresponsible as turning them into projected demons that justify persecutions
I’m interested in these things and I think I find that more dialectical, pushing discussions are equally as useful as ones where’s people are trying to find agreement. For me personally they generally go deeper.
I’m not denying the reality of sexual abuse. I guess I’m trying to make an assortment of points…
* that things are not necessarily “bad” or “good” – these labels are dependent on ego orientation to hidden charge. I’m now grateful for all the trauma I received because without it I feel certain my life would have been lived without me being motivated to develop self-awareness. The idea that we should change society to make it less traumatizing is immensely complex and multi layered.
* That the stories that attract us must finally be taken highly personally. I’m concerned that your focusing on elitist control is actually way more personal to you than you currently allow.
* That there simply doesn’t exist a baseline reality created by the thinking mind. It’s all conjecture, avoidance, attempts at consensual reality and power games. Dave Snowden’s apex predator theory applies, through myriad cultural influences.
> these are still just opinions and they may also carry charge, since they
> seemedd to be delivered with an edge of judgment as if to win an argument.
Fair enough. I think, looking back over this convo, that what I should have said earlier on was that I believed, as mentioned in *2 above, that issues you are focusing on are far more personal to you.
It’s a learning for me not to dance around my judgements in future but to be more straight.
Thank you
the issues I am focusing on are personal to me yes you are right! whether more or less would depend on compared to who (or is that whom?); for some reading here, they may be even more personal questions, and when I respond to you I am also responding for others. I think you mean than for yourself, however, which is clear. I am also learning not just straightness but succinctness here. Thanks.
> the issues I am focusing on are personal to me yes you are right! whether more or
> lesss would depend on compared to who (or is that whom?)
Just to be clear, I meant personal as in relating to ones own upbringing.
I personally experienced feeling compelled to explore and write about conspiracies as the initial step to owning and uncovering aspects of my own dark childhood. It started with me feeling I was seeing something apparently obvious in the world outside.
I’m not saying you’re the same, I don’t know you enough to make a statement like that.
In a broader sense, I’m interested in the interplay between childhood dynamics, repressed charge, meme warfare and cultural upheaval. There’s a kind of “goes around, comes around” aspect that I find fascinating. And that I’m trying to formulate more principles of.
Thanks
I could’ve said the narrative that : “There are some bad guys running things, they are different to the rest of us in the sense that they do the manipulating and we are all manipulated. If we had control of society we would do things differently as we aren’t as fundamentally malevolent as them.”
Of course you can’t be accountable for others’ reactions to your words but I wanted to raise this as a talking point as I suspect I’m not the only one who enjoys your podcasts but hasn’t read your books / delved deeply into your work — but I get that there is only so many hours in the day for explaining stuff in a comments section!
why havent you read my books?
Well I’ve bought 16 maps now although I intuit the one I’d get the most out of is poi…
I think everyone here has some sympathy with the idea that “we have been culturally possessed and become guards in our own prison”… What I’m wary of is reductionist conclusions about how that situation has come about. – Specifically that it has been the intention of elites for us to become this way and so they’ve devised various plans and exploited various things in order to bring that, specifically, about (their plans have more or less worked…)
Obviously we have been exploited by elites and they have used all kinds of devilry to further their agendas. That elites have thrown money/resources, etc. the way of things that further their agendas is undeniable (eg propaganda films for military recruitment agendas).
But to say that our psychospirtual/somatic state is how it is because elites have wanted us this way and have devised and enacted plans to bring this about is reductionist. It is a side-effect of their agendas at best (I actually think that is also reductionist, but closer to the truth). It is also reductionist to posit the intentions of elites as the reason that in westernized societies we have become estranged from community, the natural world, our own bodies and what i would call wholesome ways of being and relating to the world in general.
It is this estrangement that I believe is at the root of the paranoia/dissociation/trauma/superstition which is what in turn leads us to (paranoid) reductionist conclusions that we then seek evidence for.
To trace the origins of this estrangement from nature/community/etc. we have to go back to the dawn of civilisation. Lots of books have touched on this — Wandering God for example… in the last few centuries our economic and political systems have massively accelerated the trend towards this estrangement. I could say more on all that.
Elites might have more power, but in terms of this phenomena of estrangement/disconnection — they are just affected by that as the rest of us — we’re all in this predicament together.
The designs/intentions of extra-dimensional beings I can’t speak for — I’m opened minded on that one…
I’m no stranger to paranoid awareness/reasoning/conclusions and the Stevie Wonder line I’ve heard you quote comes to mind… so part of what this is all about for me is healing…
Obviously our *capacity* for empathic, co-operative, and what I would call “wholesome” ways of being and relating to the world remains (relatively) intact. But in order to exercise and foster these things we have to push back against society as well as “de- condition” ourselves heal our traumas…
Thanks for engaging and sorry again for going round the houses….
> Obviously we have been exploited by elites and they have used all kinds of > devilry to further their agendas.
Personally, I find this a tricky point because “exploitation” is such a human concept. Animals exploit one another constantly. Chimps have even been known to torture the members of other chimp groups, apparently for pleasure.
Dominance hierarchies also exist very clearly in both animal and human kingdoms. One might say they have had a hugely stabilising effect upon human culture. Once the hierarchy is established, generally peace happens. Threats to the hierarchy inevitably manifest periodically and this is the time of greatest anxiety and upset.
For me, to reasonably demonstrate that an elite somewhere is absolutely in the process of forging total control over humanity, it would be important to establish that what is going isn’t simply to do with the natural activities of human dominance hierarchies or those times of upheaval as old orders shift.
There is a conversation to be had about whether dominance hierarchies “have had a hugely stabilising effect upon human culture”.
But I don’t see how it is “tricky” to posit that elites have exploited non-elites… how about the subtle and not so subtle manipulation in tv army recruitment ads (exploiting our need for meaning/belonging to a group, etc.)
> There is a conversation to be had about whether dominance hierarchies “have had a hugely stabilising effect upon human culture”.
It’s true that I don’t know of a counter-situation from which to draw comparisons.
Small examples I recall, having lived in alternative communities for years, were attempts to create non-hierarchical communities and how they usually either formed hierarchies or quickly collapsed. But I wouldn’t really consider this hard, anthropological evidence.
> But I don’t see how it is “tricky” to posit that elites have exploited non-> elites… how about the subtle and not so subtle manipulation in tv army > recruitment ads (exploiting our need for meaning/belonging to a group, etc.)
I would not deny that blatant exploitation goes on at multiple levels of our society. What I’m saying is that “exploitation,” like “fairness,” is a uniquely human construct.
Relating to the distinction “elite” – “non-elite”, these groups are also not innate. You can become highly successful by applying certain basic principles to your life. This is actually something that more trad right-wing, elite groups are likely to teach people (not that they go out of their way), than anything you would ever hear from radical-left. But, anyway, it is simply not the case that you need to kiss ass to get into a position of power.
What I’m saying is that “exploitation,” like “fairness,” is a uniquely human construct.
That strikes me as a very anthropocentric viewpoint that personally I can’t hang my hat on… but I see where you are coming from…
(Another long post I tried to keep short; all these will probably be collected into a blogpost soon, to justify my time!)
I think we can all agree it’s complicated.
People like David Icke because he makes it simple. The irony is that Icke’s view of social reality is probably closer to a true one than Noam Chomsky’s, even though Noam is smart and David is kind of stupid (which is why he has mass appeal).
Icke’s dumbed down version makes it easy for average folk to get it, but it also makes it easy for people to dabble a while in paranoid awareness and then believe they have emerged from it by adapting more sophisticated viewpoints, whether spiritualized ones or sociopolitical ones like Bonce’s. I still probably prefer Icke’s, even if it’s sort of stupid, because I think it adheres more closely to the facts.
At the same time, I think Icke probably does more harm than Chomsky ever could, and certainly seems more useful to the plans of the social engineers in furthering their schismogenetic agendas.
Fact: There exist long-term, transnational social engineering programs that can be traced back historically to specific groups and players (without being limited to them) at least as far back as Marx, Blavatsky, and the Fabian Society (same period; I am not saying they were part of a single cabal or agenda, though there are surprising convergences).
Fact: These historically traceable agendas conform, to a surprising degree, to the current configuration of society. There are many examples of this and my recent books are filled with them. To give just one example (that I don’t cover in my books): how the promotion and distribution of illegal drugs has brought about the destruction of inner cities and the creation of ghetto areas. This is a complicated subject and there are many variables, nuances, and so forth. There’s also the more simple case of a plan being formulated, implemented, and carried through to an expected, predictable conclusion. Black people know about this. White people get called conspiracy theorists for talking about it.
This example is factual, and can be shown to be the case in hundreds if not thousands of other areas of society and history. There is a plan.
Questions raised at this blog are more nuanced and perhaps more interesting, but so long as they dodge the Fact of a Plan, as outlined above, I find them to be distracting, intentionally or otherwise. First acknowledge the adversary and his influence—give the devil his due. Then we can talk about what constitutes his nature and how he can be seen to be natural, or systemic, or subtly allowing for our growth and development despite himself, secretly working for God, or whatever.
Last point and I will be quiet: When I think of a controlling elite, I don’t think of the Clinton Foundation, Bilderberg, or the Rockefellers. I think of Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, some of the “finest minds” of recent times. I don’t presume to imagine I am smarter or more far-seeing than these intellectual giants were. I may be more ethical, more conscious, more responsible, but I am certainly not more intellectually prodigious.
I recognize therefore that those who are in control of society’s development, to whatever degree, aren’t there merely by dint of ruthlessness and savagery and self-aggrandizement, but through a form of cunning, ingenuity, commitment, and sheer brilliance that boggles the mind. To refer to the elite as simple sociopaths is ridiculous and only underscores how thoroughly hoodwinked we have become.
I also allow that the end they are working towards might justify the means. How can I know, so why would I speculate? I stay focused on the means, on all the broken eggs. I don’t see the omelet, or even whether there ever will be one.
> People like David Icke because he makes it simple.
In this, Icke is just making use of the same, vaguely occult principles as his targets.
Natural selection has furnished us with what is usually called Hyperactive Agency Detection. This means that the maximum amount of physical and emotional energy is mobilised to fight simple “one agent” threats. Long, complex stories and the energy dissipates.
It’s hard to imagine many people attending a James Bond movie where the “villain” is a multi-layered complex bureaucracy with no clear head.
If we hypothesise for a moment that Icke really is the agent of some positive spiritual force, or at least counter-balancing spiritual force, they his approach is IMO very likely what they would use.
Synchronously that leads to the hypothesis human language may have originated as a spandrel – which overlaps with points made on Sunday’s live event:
https://www.daveoshana.com/events/931-the-communication-gap-betwixt-soul-body-diving-into-the-space-time-continuum-breach
i think this response is not to Dev’s tautological and wholly circular championing of DI as an avatar of positive spiritual forces in the world, which translates as “If David Icke were useful as a force of good in the world, he would be what the forces of good would use.”
I assume your (DO) response is to the comment about “Hyperactive Agency Detection.””
def spandrel: In evolutionary biology, a spandrel is a phenotypic trait that is a byproduct of the evolution of some other characteristic, rather than a direct product of adaptive selection. The term originates from architecture, where it refers to the roughly triangular space between the tops of two adjacent arches and the ceiling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)
Correct. It was related to the speculative HAD hypotheosis, as in “had ya at evolution”. There is more to be had from a speculum than from speculation. I wouldn’t touch DI with a ten foot barge pole, he doesn’t take anything emanating from his orifices seriously – which indicates infection.
> Synchronously that leads to the hypothesis human language may have > originated as a spandrel
I guess our ancestors were making sound. At some point the possibility of using that for useful communication began to direct natural selection. I think Pinker or someone similar suggested language’s original use would have been gossiping – which male was best to mate with, which one to avoid, etc. Probably better than philosophising with it.
>I think Pinker or someone similar suggested language’s original use would have been gossiping
that sounds more like a bon mot from a wag than a serious suggestion.
> First acknowledge the adversary and his influence—give the devil his due. Then we can talk about what constitutes his nature and how he can be seen to be natural, or systemic, or > subtly allowing for our growth and development despite himself, secretly working for God, or whatever.
Er, “subtly CREATING our growth”
so Satan is a creator?
> so Satan is a creator?
To paraphrase Solzhenitsyn, I’d say that the line between God and the Devil passes through each human mind. Mostly it depends where we’re looking from.
maybe provoking is a better word than allowing; let’s give him/it some agency…
To paraphrase your paraphrase, I’d say the line between God and devil is each human mind. A line of defense that makes religion accursed.
Accursed and accused are almost the same word.
> maybe provoking is a better word than allowing; let’s give him/it some agency…
French occultist, Eliphas Levi, called it “the blind force each soul must conquer.” But I never really agreed with “blind.”
A big part of it is the interaction between the paleo-mammalian mid-brain and the human higher mind. The mid-brain tries to discharge trauma from the body, the higher mind tries to hold everything together. These competing drives have created mythology.
> But I never really agreed with “blind.”
already addressed (the adversary loves it when we go in circles):
> Desilet seems to wish to believe that this mysterious anti-life force is neither seeing nor intelligent, hence of no significant threat to human destiny.
Well, he and Levi may be right. Whilst we are unconscious, external phenomena which offer to allow us not to feel the repressed charge inside will be attractive. And in that state of addiction it may be attractive to our ego to attribute agency to some malign force that controls us. When really it’s just self-avoidance.
Is being right even relevant if it doesn’t come from experience?
Eliphas Levi can kiss my goat
Rather experience than an authority in such matters.
I actually agree with, or am open minded/minimal about, all of that Jasun. But you dodged whether our experienced (yours and my) psychospirtual/somatic reality is the way it is because elites have wanted it to be a certain way — whether it has been one of their plans to engineer this specifically, and they have been successful in doing so….
That specifically is what I am calling reductionist…
*liminal [auto-correct typo]
I wasn’t aware of dodging that; if it were the case as you present it, we would not even be having this conversation, or if we were, there’d be no ostensible point to it; it would have been game over some time ago.
that would highly reductionist, I concur.
I think your question relates this what I wrote above:
>When the plan is to indoctrinate people and turn them into latahs, they will then carry out your plan for you with no further planning needed. People always seem to extrapolate from this the narrative of an all-powerful elite controlling everything. I say they just haven’t dug deep enough into reality (their own felt sense) to understand what I am saying and so they latch on to pre-existing Ickian narratives out there and assume I said something I haven’t said.
The qualifier is not all the people can be made into latahs, or all the time; but enough for society to continue to “evolve” along the tracks laid down, with unwitting engineers carrying it on to its designated end-point. Hence the cultural bondage spreads, like a wildfire, as the global village “lights up.”
OK. my hunch is you are over-stating how far-reaching this plan is, and how successful it has been – in which case my general points about paranoia and reductionist conclusions above still apply. But I’ll read 16 maps with an open mind and get back to you on that…
Time to give the analytical mind a rest I think…
Amen
> Whilst we are unconscious, external > phenomena which offer to allow us not to feel the repressed charge inside will be attractive. > And in that state of addiction it may be attractive to our ego to attribute agency to
> some malign force that controls us. When really it’s just self-avoidance.
The devil relies on our unconsciousness, and our unwillingness to take responsibility, to perpetuate belief in his existence.
Turns out I can only switch off for so long! (Dave, help! 🙂 )
….I think we can agree there is an overlap between the plans of elites/social engineering agendas and the state of our psyches — ie how society/culture has “conditioned” (or “colonized” if you prefer) us.
Of course it makes sense to me that there has been *some* direct influence there. But (circling back to my first post on this thread) given that correlation between these things isn’t always a sign of a causal link we have to be extremely careful navigating that because the reaching of false conclusions is very likely to compound the trauma in our nervous systems… that is what raised the alarm for me, and leads you to call me a fence sitter…. am I not quite sensible for being cautious?
> because the reaching of false conclusions is very likely to compound the trauma in our
> nervous systems… that is what raised the alarm for me, and leads you to call me a fence
> sitter…. am I not quite sensible for being cautious?
You can’t compound trauma in this way. Trauma is just (1) bodily holding patterns and dead zones – a held charge in the psyche. And (2) thinking and behaviour patterns that habitually avoid accessing the charge.
When I used to go see Icke back in the 90s, I found it liberating. I actually wasn’t aware just what a colossal holding pattern “history” was in my psyche.
So if it doesnt “compound trauma” how does holding false, paranoid beliefs about something affect the nervous system then? (Honest question)
> So if it doesnt “compound trauma” how does holding false, paranoid beliefs > about something affect the nervous system then? (Honest question)
It will affect the nervous system in that, considering our existing vision of the world might be false, triggers the fight and flight reflex (ANS) and anxiety. But this is only because that existing vision of the world is a holding pattern. It’s holding charge.
These things are a journey basically, rather than something we need to moderate or control (try and control) from an ego level.
Why do you consider the beliefs false and paranoid, might I ask? Personally, I don’t consider that I know the truth. And that feels mostly okay for me.
“Turns out I can only switch off for so long! (Dave, help! )”
There’s no external cure. You have to want to get well.
Aye, just a joke… the second step in curing a problem after realizing you have it is not to moan about it!
“just”?
hmm…
I also don’t consider that I know the truth and am ok with that.
But I’m not OK with believing something that isn’t the truth.
I’m just saying there exist false, paranoid beliefs that one could choose, and that is not good for one…
As long as we treat what DI says as *myths that speak to a truth* about where we are in westernized societies, then sure, it can be liberating (i think it was Martin Jolly who made a similar point in a recent pod about how conspiracy theories can liberate us from a prior sense of our role in history?). This is how the right brain might respond to Icke. What he says has to appeal to the left brain enough if we aren’t going to just dismiss him out of hand. But if we ignore the myth-making aspect and take what he says about a cabal, etc. to be literally true, it can be paralysising / disempowering – to my mind potentially damaging to the nervous system (I’m guessing part of the reason Dave says he wouldn’t go near him?)
Their could be a discussion around whether a small part of Jasun’s work is more about myth-making that speaks to a truth, as opposed to literal truth?? But clearly he is not in the same category as Icke in this regard….
On another note Dev your notion of “holding patterns” strikes me as potential useful in diagnosing our psyches….
And Dave, yes not only a joke, but just trying to cmmunicate that I am not literally in distress! Can just see how my behaviour patterns are not very “wholesome”
> (I’m guessing part of the reason Dave says he wouldn’t go near him?)
DI is not as simple, straight or honest as he might wish us to believe, nor is he consistent nor sufficiently careful with his sources. Since he talks about invisible things, such as “truth vibrations”, he could be measured and found lacking. It’s not simply paranoia-inducing information that fuels his commercial propaganda machine but untreated paranoia and anger affect. The shiny shirted “I, David” rallies tend to glorify the man himself and actually promote fictional lizards as a dissociative reality whilst making them both untouchable and farcical. The rallies do not provide a constructive release but primes a hungry helplessness that could be redirected toward destructive outcomes.
> And Dave, yes not only a joke, but just trying to cmmunicate that I am not literally in distress! Can just see how my behaviour patterns are not very “wholesome”
You use “just” so many times that either you are a justice warrior (an unfamiliar term for me but Jasun recently said he was) or are pointing away from something significant but unvoiced…?
“Pointing away from something significant but unvoiced”.
Yes sounds about right. I am avoiding going into something but this thread is already bursting at the seems with thought balloons and I not sure I want to cram any more in here so to speak.
I’ll be in touch…
Well spotted. The unending supply of conflated balloons are condoms for the soul and a barrier against vital sensation. No truth to be had there.
> As long as we treat what DI says as *myths that speak to a truth* about where we are in
> westernized societies, then sure, it can be liberating
I think myths speak to the charge in the unconscious mind. When I first read Icke, some decades ago, I felt intuitively that he was overwhelmingly correct. I became for a few years a total believer. But I realised at some point that I had huge issues with authority stored unconsciously as charge. What Icke’s vision had done was justify my non-compliance with authority and allowed me to not feel all the anger and emotional pain inside.
This doesn’t mean that Icke is necessarily wrong or deluded. For all I know he may be right, though I’m skeptical. Rather I came to understand what was drawing me personally towards his vision of the world.
> (i think it was Martin Jolly who made a similar point in a recent pod about how conspiracy
> theories can liberate us from a prior sense of our role in history?).
Yes, true for me. But you have to actually believe them, I think.
> But if we ignore the myth-making aspect and take what he says about a cabal, etc. to be
> literally true, it can be paralysising / disempowering – to my mind potentially damaging to the nervous system
It sounds to me like a part of you wants to believe… but you are concerned that it will make you anxious or cause your ANS to over-fire?
> Their could be a discussion around whether a small part of Jasun’s work is more about
> myth-making that speaks to a truth, as opposed to literal truth?? But clearly he is not in the > same category as Icke in this regard….
It seems to me that Jasun absolutely believes what he writes. I could be wrong of course. I think the distinction you are trying to make between a “psychologically useful myth” and “reality” is unsustainable. Because I think we need to fully believe the myth to get any potential psych benefits. I don’t know that sitting on the fence will work.
And what is reality anyway? Interpretive reality is personal. Yes, we have consensual beliefs to support our culture to maintain itself and to help us get social needs met. But beyond this who knows? The thing with conspiracies is that they are usually quite hard to falsify. This is why they endure. I doubt anyone knows. I doubt if you asked the world’s billionaire class even they would know!
> On another note Dev your notion of “holding patterns” strikes me as potential useful in
> diagnosing our psyches….
Sure. Reichian character types. I write about this stuff and it’s my work.
Thanks for an interesting discussion.
Thanks Dev, I think I’m moving into new territory here to some extent…
Icke’s narratives may not be literally true but they speak to a truth about how we have become disempowered. When I let that hit me, it’s uncomfortable and so I focus on the fact that what he says isn’t literally true (or is at least reductionist) to stop having to feel that. Something similar might be going on with my reaction to Jasun here?
“I think we need to fully believe the myth to get any potential psych benefits”
That’s an interesting one. My take is that we can “sit with” / “inhabit” a myth and draw benefit / sense what truth that myth points to. So we can be fluid in that, coming in and out of different myths (taking something different from.each one?)
> Icke’s narratives may not be literally true but > they speak to a truth about how we have
> becomee disempowered.
Notions of being disempowered by an externality have a paradoxical quality to them.
It may be the case that, objectively speaking, you have been disempowered by something.
But if you want to become empowered, believing that any externality is responsible for this state will keep you in victimhood.
But I also think I’m repulsion by DI because he’s not presenting what he says as myth (I think this what Dave is referring to as well). So that’s in the mix as well and potentially dangerous…(previous point)
>But I also think I’m repulsion by DI because he’s not presenting what he says as myth
Maybe it could be useful for you to sit down and write out what parts of what DI or Jasun presents attract you, what parts repel you and what parts you’re skeptical of.
The aspects of the story that especially attract you may provide useful reflection into your childhood. I was a total believer. I had to really go there. Then I came to see what was really motivating me. You may not be such an extreme case!
I’ve noticed two poles in most conspiracy material that used to attract me…
1) the notion that everything was under control from another, hidden level
2) the notion that I was not responsible for my life, and the mess I’d made of it!
The key thing is not to seek to establish what really is true or not, rather what attracts you and what the personal insight from that is.
DI does not present an internally coherent myth but markets a messy contradiction of weak narratives presented as “Truth” and “Biggest Secret” that confuse. mislead and encourage unreality for those seeking an authority figure to provide an alternate reality. The issue though is in the seeker, DI is merely a baited hook to detect and distort those with the infraction. He is caught up in the dynamic that he dissembles to dissolve.
Seems there’s life in this old thread yet; thanks for picking up the slack while I gave my argument-bone a break DO, and kudos to Bonce & Dev for getting Dave to put his diagnosis of Icke and his ilk on record. Dave asked me about David on our first ever private meet, probably because he’d just read Matrix Warrior, which presents a more playful & Lizard-free description of essentially the same predicament (humans as food source to hidden intelligences).
In fact, the first thing Dave wrote about DI gets closest to my own view, while also pithiest and most cryptic/visceral: “he doesn’t take anything emanating from his orifices seriously – which indicates infection.”
I said I was not influenced by Icke; what I meant (since I have listened to quite a few hours of him talk and read at least half of one of his shorter books) was that he has not significantly influenced my beliefs about anything. When I first came across Icke, not sure when, probably in my late 20s,my response was “Oh, so he knows about this stuff too.” Later on I had an experience of two that left me thinking, “Jesus, Icke’s right even about that shit?!”
I believe what I write, and I’m not interested in creating educational myths (tho I did some of that intentionally, with Matrix Warrior and more unintentionally with my Aeolus material, but even then I believed it). I am skeptical about what I believe and always have been; Charles Fort: the products of the human mind should not be subject to belief. If I can think about it, then I know it can’t be 100% true.
I have never found shapeshifting lizards intrinsically less probable than quarks or tacyons, but that’s just me. While there may not be much evidence for either from my point of view, believing in lizards tends to derail one’s perceptions of reality and invoke strong emotions, so I choose to leave it alone (like the flat earth). Beliefs aren’t things that are worth much investing in, in my opinion.
Back to Icke: the problem with Icke is, if he is your first exposure to these possible realities, that can mess you up. This is a separate issue from whether they are true or not. Truth can come through the wrong source and it’s as bad as lies. Icke’s knowledge comes from his neck up; if he had let it all the way down to his feet, or even his gut, he wouldn’t rant and rail about it and dumb every insight down with that idiotic indignation. (I made a slightly related point about how calling the controlling intelligence on this planet sociopathic is ridiculous; they, if any “they” exists, are unimaginably sophisticated.)
Context is everything; that Icke is as popular as he is is due to his ability to turn horrifying truths into entertainment. This is not a service to humanity, IMO.
Personally, I appreciate David Icke. I don’t any longer believe all he says, not by a long chalk. But IMO he’s achieved a lot.
If he hadn’t written The Biggest Secret in ’99 and lost 95% of his audience through the lizard stories, maybe the world would look a great deal different than it now does.
He’s probably caused a great deal more human awakening than all the spiritual teachers put together too! Largely because of how our society and media now work. He knows how to mobilise and direct emotionality very well.
I haven’t seen any evidence of spiritual awakening among his crowd, nor that he lost 95% of his audience who, based on his contradictory output, have an insatiable appetite for cognitive dissonance and disorientation. There’s some relief in believing in comical cartoon villains rather than facing brutal mundane reality, but it is dissociative.
> I haven’t seen any evidence of spiritual awakening among his crowd,
What Icke does is provide a meta-narrative of modern society that both evokes huge emotional reactions and causes many to strongly question who they believe themselves to be.
He is not really mediating people’s experience in the way that a so-called “responsible spiritual teacher” might, but it is nonetheless effective. Many people have been on a deep journey with him, myself included. That doesn’t mean we end up disciples, it’s just that we appreciate him for what he’s done.
I regard him a bit like a certain notorious Aussie spiritual tantra teacher, who was in Europe for a while. He could simply awaken people’s energy very quickly. Many had utterly mad experiences, some even went psychotic. Few people would stick around his scene longer than a couple of years. But, looking back, most of his former followers did appreciate what they got from him.
Which format does DI provide to go “on a deep journey with him”?
Like I say, he just gives people a highly triggering meta-narrative, one that a lot of people buy into. For some that is enough to liberate a huge amount of held energy from the psyche.