The Social Revenge Fantasist: Scapegoating Patriarchy, Generational Trauma, & the Identity Police State

Thesis statement: The toxicity of ideology that informs the current drive for “social justice” helps conceal an inchoate, narcissistic and infantile cry for personal revenge, sourced in childhood and ancestral traumas. It will not be satisfied until it has completely replaced organic existence with a lifeless simulation of its own fractured image.

Paper Patriarchy

“Keep what’s in you stuffed down and it will eat you alive. Let it out and it may just save your ass.” — Jesus to Thomas, according to some book.

Have you ever wondered why, or marveled at how, so many “social injustice” charges and arguments seem to be borderline incoherent and about as historically realistic as a Hollywood biopic? What I will here re-term (in the interest of accuracy) the social revenge rhetoric aims, like Hollywood mass product, for illegitimate emotional persuasion. It proceeds primarily by feeding, and feeding off, a sense of outrage and indignation over so-called social injustices and inequities, past and present.

“The Patriarchy” is the primary scapegoat for the social revenge fantasist (SRF), a Paper Tiger made out of memes and ideological implants that (ironically enough) have been assembled and installed by a hidden cultural elite, one that has had control over education and other systems for a very long time (see The Vice of Kings).

This cryptocratic cultural elite, as far as I can discern, has no particular racial or sexual constitution, i.e., there is no direct correlation between it (the so-called Patriarchy) and white males, per se—or at least no more correlation than it has with apparently positive aspects of culture and history. The problem—or pathogen—being identified is more than merely skin deep.

*

Admittedly, there’s a significant overlap between white men and oppressive regimes, but it’s very, very far from a 1:1 ratio. Perhaps more to the point, even if it were a 1:1 ratio, correlation is not causation. To give only one example, Brian Hayden’s work on prehistorical secret societies shows that elite aggrandizer control groups and “whiteness” have no historical equivalency whatsoever. Indigenous (brown and black) people have exploited and abused one another (and other races or tribes), in the same ways as white people, over the centuries and millennia.

This is an unpalatable fact to critical race theorists and identity police: All colors and races (and even sexes, though here we might need to narrow it down to an individual level) oppress across a class and power divide. Such a divide may then include racial pretexts, stereotypes, and prejudices, but these latter are merely a means to the oppression, and not the cause. Even class might be seen as the result of aggrandizer domination and not the cause, which remains conveniently unidentified.

All that’s really clear is that there is a certain type of human behavior that leans towards the exploitation of others, and another type of behavior that tends towards submission and compliance. Between them, these two tendencies of the human organism and psyche lead to social arrangements that are rife with inequity and injustice. But—and this is the key—the true causative agent in the oppression of humans by other humans remains, to this day, unidentified.

Worse, no one seems to be looking for it.

Aggrandizers & Opportunists: Know How to Spot Them

“Opinions are like assholes; everybody’s got one.” — Dirty Harry Callaghan

National socialism scapegoated Jews (among others) because scapegoating was central to their methodology, ideology, and, at a deeper level, to their psychology (i.e., to human psychology, cf. Rene Girard). Now Israelis scapegoat Palestinians for the same reason. All ideologies converge because they are means to an end, an end which both serves and is served by a methodology. End and means are interdependent and equivalent because they are both effects of a hidden causative agent or agency. In order not to leave this occult space entirely empty, we might call it generational traumata (cf. Lloyd de Mause).

The horrors and injustices of “history” (itself a necessarily fictional construct) are a matter of opportunity and of scapegoating. Where there is an opportunity to oppress and exploit, it is taken. The degree of successful exploitation determines the divide between strong and weak, oppressors and oppressed, rich and poor. Because of generational trauma, unhealed wounds, ancient vendettas, given the opportunity and the means, any race, sex, or class will tend to oppress another, and so become the dominator group. If we don’t find evidence of this, either we aren’t looking hard enough or the “history” we are examining hasn’t been documented thoroughly enough.

Race (and gender, and sexual orientation) is the red herring that perpetuates the fog of an endless war—one that serves hidden forces that depend above all on remaining hidden: on never being identified. One ironic result (among many) is that, as author Alexander Adams points out, social justice has now largely supplanted actual justice, something few revenge fantasists care about anymore.

Remember when leftist activists cared about US foreign policy or the underclass? Now they are too busy virtue-signaling and moral-outraging and posturing and platforming to build a better world—or a bigger soapbox from which to assert their version of history and reality. And in the process the underclass has become the enemy, a legion of deplorables (how exactly did that happen? See an upcoming chat with Adams on The Liminalist). Meanwhile, behind all the posturing, the hidden forces of aggrandizement continue to exploit, oppress, and recruit, and no amount of revolutions bring us any closer to escaping the roulette wheel of history. The House always wins.

*

The real issue which the social revenge fantasist raises and brandishes like a flaming sword of infant boo-boo is emotional and personal, not social or political. They are offended and chagrined, and that is the issue. All charges consist of a personal charge, and behind every call for social justice is a (deeply narcissistic) emotional demand. If we accept the charge, we are instantly placed in a no-win position, because anything we say to qualify our error (to assuage whatever may have given offense) feeds the illusion that the “charge” has meaning.

What seems to work better is, not to double-down, but to be the opposite of apologetic. To grovel does not elicit mercy from the social revenge fantasist but only satisfaction. It confirms their righteousness, and our guilt, in their eyes. And since nothing will satisfy the gnawing hunger at the core of the offended infant psyche, the punishments continue to rain down upon us the more penitent or compliant we become. When zombies want brains, reasonable discourse will not deter them.

Put differently, the only thing that can dispel fantasy is reality. The more we succumb to a runaway delusion the more we feed and fortify it. The narcissistic and infantile ego cannot tolerate reality, and the zombie virus cannot live without brain food.

The Best Defense is Zero Offense

“Resist not evil.” — Some guy who gets misquoted a lot.

It would be a mistake to think that it is the injustice that causes the outrage of the SRF. Rather, their latent sense of outrage seeks justification by finding evidence of injustice, and then puffs itself up with a mission to rewrite history and remove all traces of racism, sexism, etc. Since history is seen as an affront to their sense of rightness, it must be redacted to wipe away the stain of Patriarchy. Ironically, the same energy that wishes to punish the white man tries to do so by redacting all his sins? How ironic! Cui bono, one may justifiably ask.

The irony is virulent rather than redemptive, however, because canceling every element of culture in order to correct its course only perpetuates the need to find more injustices to justify (and feed) the sense of outrage fueling the sacred purge. Remember the Inquisition? This gnawing hunger for revenge can never be satisfied by hollow cries for justice, or by any amount of social reforms. Only blood and bone (and brains) will satisfy it.

Any attempt to force reality to conform to a deeply-held delusion requires constant renewal—and ever increasing levels of violence—because reality is what never goes away and will always encroach upon, and threaten to dispel, the delusion. Hence, the social revenge fantasist is forever doubling down and finding new causes for outrage, in exact proportion to the demand for the destruction of evidence of old ones.

*

And now for the good news: to defend against the charge of the social revenge fantasy brigade requires no defense at all. A delusion is no threat to reality. Zombies move very slowly so the main thing is not to stumble blindly into their midst.

All that’s required when faced with the SRF (and this includes especially the SRF within) is a heroic non-reaction, a willingness and ability to resist the urge to dance to the mad piper’s tune. When met with neither groveling nor indignation, the social revenge fantasist’s attack is a soap bubble that barely makes it past those angrily puckered lips. Without an echo chamber to reinforce it, the delusion dissolves on first contact with reality.

Not that a SRF, frothing at the mouth and waving their fists, demanding tolerance and compassion, can simply be ignored. Like cancer, and like a horde of zombies, ideological insanity is virulent and requires close watch when it enters into our field of engagement. The best response is to Keep Calm and Ask Difficult Questions (or even simple ones). Any halfway sensible question will expose the emptiness of the jargon that is being employed to deliver the “charge” of outrage (the jargon is the hoop that creates the toxic soap bubble). This leaves the SRF with nothing but those same inchoate feelings (the trauma-affect of the ancestral load) that all their arguments have been constructed to deliver.

Make no mistake: the aim of ideology is to turn bodies into hosts for non-sentient programs. This methodology (which is ancient) depends on manipulating charge, deeply buried emotional content; like buried plutonium, the charge is highly reactive and only needs the correct “trigger” to be attached in order for it to blow up in our faces.

Critical race theory (recently in the MSM for being targeted by the Trump administration as “unAmerican”—oh the irony!*) is just one of a number of ideological “disciplines” (memeplexes) which the education system (at least since the Fabian Society—see The Vice of Kings) acts as a Trojan Horse to install in the collective psyche. The ideology of identity politics, intersectionality, CRT, etc, acts as a language-and-concept-matrix to hijack the cognitive and perceptual faculties of the host body (human beings) and redirect its energy down specific channels. The plutonium of ancient ancestral and childhood trauma is wired and weaponized, then made to either explode or irradiate, on command, in carefully directed ways. It is a controlled demolition of the human bio-system.

At the deepest level, a collective harvesting of humanity’s life force energies is being geared and levered towards the feeding of the-Great-Satan-by-any-other-name. This technocratic AI memeplex of ancestral insentience is designed to provide organic landing points (host bodies) for hordes of hairy, hungry ghosts to zero in on. Like a swarm of intergalactic tics, they graft themselves onto the body of the Earth to suck it dry of every last drop of its vital essence, using humanity as the plug-in points.

And all this under the auspices of peace, love, and social justice? Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

*****

*Here the irony, which is by schismogenic design, means that, by mentioning CRT, the author can be branded as a Trump supporter.**

**Ironies multiply: for the ideologically blinkered, the above can be read as suggesting that I am anti-Trump, or, even more onerous, pro-Biden. Regular readers know that I have no skin in the game so far as what sort of human-suit a Reptilian wears.

See also:

White Male Edgeman: Liminality, Group Identities, and Authoritarianism Left & Right

Nazis on My Doorstep? The Advanced Incoherence of Identity Politics

46 thoughts on “The Social Revenge Fantasist: Scapegoating Patriarchy, Generational Trauma, & the Identity Police State”

  1. And they are all reptilian at the top. An excellent read, thank you.
    I notice, and hear from friends that people are becoming verbally abusive here in our little village. They would likely be the zombies I’d need to navigate past to get my business done.
    You are right. They do move slowly…seem to have all the time in the world with which to spew their pea soup….haven’t seen any head spinning yet.
    A zombie I kind of knew a while ago said he hoped I would die. I told him I would. Claimed I was selfish. I said “maybe.”
    How ironic that this would become practice for disarming zombies in the twenty-first century. I’ll need to see if it will work today.

    Reply
      • Yes, It did. I found that the last half dozen interactions I encountered were brief, closer than six feet, likely because they forgot the newest golden rule, and accusatory.
        I spoke softly,( A kind word turneth away wrath.) stating that I have a medical exemption. That was it. They didn’t ask me what it was. I didn’t offer.
        If anyone were to ask me they would likely be stunned into silence by my disclosure.
        I haven’t had to use that yet.

        Reply
  2. “At the deepest level, a collective harvesting of humanity’s life force energies is being geared and levered towards the feeding of the-Great-Satan-by-any-other-name. This technocratic AI memeplex of ancestral insentience is designed to provide organic landing points (host bodies) for hordes of hairy, hungry ghosts to zero in on. Like a swarm of intergalactic tics, they graft themselves onto the body of the Earth to suck it dry of every last drop of its vital essence, using humanity as the plug-in points.” – Well, duh.

    “Since history is seen as an affront to their sense of rightness, it must be redacted to wipe away the stain of Patriarchy. Ironically, the same energy that wishes to punish the white man tries to do so by redacting all his sins? How ironic! Cui bono, one may justifiably ask.” – Excellent point, I’ve never heard it mentioned before.

    Reply
  3. I am a citizen of the U.S., which means I have been stuck here while all of this lunacy unfolds. I am reasonably well read on historical matters and human psychology. And, all I think about, day after day, is the fate of Poland during the WWII years. Hemmed in by avaricious tyrants on both sides (Stalin in Russia, Hitler in Germany), from 1939 forward that country became nothing more than grist for the mill of those nations ideologies and aggression.
    These days all I see is an eventual police state; either the Woke zealots or the Alt Right lunatics. I have never, in my entire life, been as fearful of and disgusted by my “fellow” citizens than I am now.
    It is nice to know that there are still persons out there who understand this tragic illusion; this shell game; (yourself obviously.) But, speaking honestly, all I can think about these days is fleeing. If only I could imagine some place in the world where this disease couldn’t reach me.

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  4. There is no better example of humanity’s deft skill with cognitive dissonance then the Epstein case. Anyone who takes even a cursory look at the facts can see the likes of Donald Trump and the Clintons, (as well as a host of celebrities, corporate power houses, and politicians), all palling around with him. And, there is no way that anyone who spent any significant amount of time around him would not have known what he was doing.
    And, yet after the furor subsides, everyone goes on acting as though none of that information came to light. They make no connections, and do not see the obvious.

    Reply
    • get used to it Steve; do you expected animated characters on your TV set to react to the weather outside?

      best to focus on individuals; the mass has its own momentum.

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      • “Getting used to it” is a stage I am long since passed. You can’t accept, ignore, or get used to what is threatening your life and freedom.
        The state that you refer to is the one that I spent the majority of my life in. Knowing, even without the input of specific crypto-historical speculation, that I was surrounded by mindless zealots and self-obsessed predators. But at this point, I can no more get used to what is going on than a Jew in Nazi Germany could get used to what was on the horizon for him.
        Speaking honestly, Mr. Horsley, I very much take issue with your reply. Which struck me as both flippant and carrying the implication that I was some naive adolescent just now becoming aware of the real state of the world.
        Truth to tell, I very likely have more direct experience and knowledge of the wheels turning behind the scenes than most of the people who post on forums like your own. I was raised in a family where inter-generational occult abuse was present. And, was also very likely the subject of some kind of MK type experiments.
        As you yourself once observed, during your confrontation with Christopher Knowles, I came here, posted here, because I thought you, of all people might be capable of understanding the isolation I am feeling. My mistake, I guess.
        A final word. Your dismissive comment of “getting used” to this travesty is likely informed by your largely passive views these days. In my opinion a direct product of you succumbing to the empty ‘spiritual’ placebo of your guru, Dave Oshana.

        Reply
        • “Christopher Knowles, I came here, posted here, because I thought you, of all people might be capable of understanding the isolation I am feeling.”

          To clarify this, I refer to what you described; the emotional pain you experienced when Mr. Knowles seemed to go from inviting your opinions to attacking and dismissing both them and you.

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        • Hey Steve,

          With this medium of text on a white screen it is very easy and also pretty common to misread a person’s intentions. Very common. I think Jasun was basically agreeing with you in using the phrase, “Get used to it……” , as in he recognizes the situation you describe as pretty widespread. Hence the reference to animated characters being incapable of seeing the reality of the “weather” outside. That’s the way I took his response to you. BTW, this kind of misunderstanding is “always” happening on web forums, blogs, etc. I’ve been through quite a few of them myself, until I came to realize all there really is in this form of communication is the text on the screen. Absolutely everything else, feelings, reactions, insights, etc., is a product of my own imagination.

          Best
          zen

          Reply
        • “A final word. Your dismissive comment of “getting used” to this travesty is likely informed by your largely passive views these days. In my opinion a direct product of you succumbing to the empty ‘spiritual’ placebo of your guru, Dave Oshana.”

          Ouch Steve! Fallacious reasoning will only frustrate re-entry into the gene pull. Old men no longer wrestle with impudent cocks. Look before the expunge.

          Reply
  5. Overwhelming mask compliance[and in-group policing, strangely low-volume but humming powerfully as if on a hive wavelength] could not be possible right now without the feedback loop of white liberal guilt set in motion at the end of the sixties, which has finally killed rational thought with its endless demand for prostrate Maoist self-flagellation as a response to their Goldstein, Trump. he is the centrifuge he generated this perhaps by no intent of his own but this is a COINTELPRO presidency

    and the loop won’t stop looping until long after after Great Reset Communism has finally imploded in a few decades from the sheer writhing mass of feckless commie welfare recipients. until unemployable white Christians are burning their own churches in demonstrations of allegiance with The Party. only when there is no one left to be offended because no one is publishing grievance studies because intellectualism itself has been abandoned because people are too bloody hungry to care

    sociologically speaking they are force-franchising a class of white untouchables
    which will not work unless they legally enforce public schooling to punch in the programming starting right now. the media likes to generate the controversy because reactionary outrage(read: white tears) is keeping this evil fed which I believe you are implying heavily. however the very notion of the logical consequent of all this minority agenda-seking- white erasure- is only delicately dismissed so as not to give its truth any energy

    honestly the culture-jamming game doesn’t seem that long and lockdown entropy will keep the New Order from re-forming the institutions in Their Image. It’s more likely that real supply chain breakdown will continue to be fabricated in order that the wage-earning workforce is crippled beyond repair

    this isn’t the end, it’s the embryo stage of authoritarian rule- these Marxist droids in government and media are the useful idiot generation who despise everything and win social status by tearing down institutions. nothing they think is of any lasting consequence by nature of their manufactured purpose- by necessity, even. they are indeed the walking dead. yet what comes next as as result of their trademarked colour revolution will be not post-truth but post-thought.

    the real genius would be in vilifying critical thinking of any kind and distributing dopaminergic drugs door-to-door

    “Exterminate all rational thought.”

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  6. I agree that the best approach is no reaction. It’s the reaction that is the gust of wind that fuels the forest fire. And you cannot reason with a flame. I slowly keep opting out of societal norms and institutions as much as possible. Everytime a part of my identity detaches and withers. I have never felt more alive and more myself.

    Reply
    • thanks Mac; he seems unusually sentient. If he come son The Liminalist, I’ll really start to believe him when he says he hates Hollywood.

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  7. Riveting read. Fiercely intelligent, multidimensional, nuanced diagnosis and critique, hinged on a mixology of concise metaphors, carefully weighed words, and leveraged perspectives. I’d like to hear some woke folk push back on this.
    Double dog dare u.

    Reminders that hiSTORY, as perceived = fiction, & that what seems social/objective= the deflected/dejected reflection o/t personal/subjective: . A vital call-back to come to our senses, for all too often do we lose our-selves in the bigger picture of our trivial (and traumatically driven) pursuits. Escape hatches out of history often hatch new historical escapades.

    The fierce focus w which you banish bullshit & purposefully plow thru this mindfield, detonating triggers w/o yourself winding up shellshocked is impressive. The ensorcelling linguistic contortions gracefully maneuver the reader like Catherine Zeta Jones thru a crisscross of tripwires w/o setting off the alarm—

    —Into a clearing, w a better “view” o/t unknown/unidentified forces beyond our control & understanding that regale in the shadows of our innermost penetralia.

    Leaving this x-factor blank is a strength in how it acknowledges the limits of language, while simultaneously (stealthily) (as if to outwit the unspeakable with clever deflection tactics) using it as a finger pointing directly at the ( ). However, this blank spot may be mistaken for a chink in your argumentative armor by opposing forces hell-bent on defining and hailing verbal identification as supreme truth. They may point to the abstraction and vagueness of claims like “satan-by-any-other-name” and other allusions to The Unidentifiable (on-the-forked-tips-of-our-twisted-tongues) and try to use it to dismember or invalidate your stance. In the land of the blind the cyclops *would* reign supreme, had not his eyeless subordinates lost the concept of seeing altogether. Some folks are so woke, they’ve lost the ability to dream. (non-sequiter shoutout at “the old seeers”!)
    I wish them good luck.

    I wholeheartedly hope this coming year offers you more opportunities to splash and ripple through more mainstream media platforms, to test the integrity of opposing views.

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    • a felicitous and dexterous, slydexic (opp. of dyslexic) mini zip-essay, gymnastic at a Ninja level. I hope to unpack it & respond to the extracted innards manana. In the meanwhile, I will turn a blind eye to the pillow, keep the other half-open for cyclops, and slide thankfully & hopefully mindlessly into the gap.

      Reply
    • Promised exegesis of MA’s twirling derv-review:

      1st para: the praise that prises its way deftly into my psyche, offering prizes. Deftly combines adverbs & adjectives that come in pairs into the Auti-ark by virtue of their apparent compatibility (these compliments may proliferate!). Ends with a challenge aimed at readers unlikely ever to hear it (i.e, arrive at this blogspace; MA hopes otherwise, see final para).

      2nd para: Beginnings of exegesis, summing up the article’s premise, that history, if not reality, is hi-ly subjective & hence an endless cause for objections (yr honor) & projections (& a culture of cinephilia). Ends with a worthy MA-ism: Escape hatches out of history often hatch new historical escapades. Pithy, precise & pointed, a little too coherent for a Zen koan but worthy of secreting within a fortune cookie from the Oracle at MA’s Buffet Perilous. A variation on “Solutions tend to make the problem worse, historically speaking,” and good to know this is a discoverable subtext of my piece, since I am always saying words to this effect.

      3rd para: the word “fierce” makes a return appearance, previously joined with intelligence now with focus (adding alliteration, as continued with next two couplets, bullshit banished for purposeful plowing). “Detonating triggers w/o yourself winding up shellshocked” is a great metaphor, or continuation of one in the piece. It suggests a kind of mad gonzo mission of clearing a minefield by charging through it deftly enough to ride the shock waves of each blast to safety, until all charges are neutralized. As such, it makes me sound quite heroic; luckily for my ego, it’s followed by casting Catherine ZJ in the movie of my life and not Tom C. Well fair enough: the former is Welsh (like my mother was) and the latter is, well, Thetan, clear?

      4th para: the pay-off? Not clear, possibly, the brief and colorful lingo causes this linguician to hesitate before calling it a day; let me check with those penetralia and see how they are regaling. Have you better located your own cultural or plant-based implants, MA?

      5th para, the biggie: the blank, the space between, seems to be the key formula inside this cracked cookie; to acknowledge the limits of language while using it as a finger to point at the spaces that lingo cannot breach ~ sounds like Mission Accomplished. Is the safe cracked, and the philosopher’s stone the Masons rejected returned to its proper place? Is Indy safely outside the death chamber with an Ayahausca headache, remembering nothing?

      Some folks are so woke, they’ve lost the ability to dream. (non-sequiter shoutout at “the old seeers”!)

      Even without the parenthesis, this would be a ballsy & succinct shout-out to ancient forces who have found ultra-modern (hi-culture) finger puppets to distract us from the crumbling Moon, in all its hellish gwory (inside joke for ark-dwellers)…

      Last para: I dunno, MA. There are pros and cons of cooking in a bigger kitchen; many more palettes to test the recipes on, but probably a lot more complaints too. (See certain comments at this post) Should wisdom really be made to fit inside a fortune cookie? I leave it to you.

      Reply
      • Reviews of reviews, analysis of analysis, till it’s Tuttle* territory “from the bottom to the top” (to toss a Byrnesism into the mix—Dave, not Gabe 😉 ).
        Talk about an echo chamber or a Möbius trip feedback loop!

        *clearly this is supposed to say TURLTES but the Freudian slip generator “shines”: another “overlooked” kuBrick in the wall, all in all. You tweeted that I make you “work for your praise” to which I say: Good thing the work is *words*work, and invites word*play*, without which Jack would be a dull boy.

        Had me lol-ing a few times at the implied Scientological tale-spin, and the ref to my “buffet perilous”. Bravo! (I hope you caught the CZJones reference–a famous scene from “Entrapment”, where her booty skillfully and seductively dips under the trip-wire laser-line limbo. It recently circulated the web as a meme with the caption “making memes without offending anyone in 2020”. How apropos!)

        The recurring use of the word “fierce” has to do with your unflinchingness in the face of difficult/challenging subject matter, as if to hold firmly in-sight the constellations of sense-making tools at your disposal (I touched upon these in the Paper Tiger book review). This focus burns a clearing through the fog. I say “constellations” because I believe you navigate by the light of these trusty, structural tools, much the way a sea-captain orients himself by celestial configurations in an otherwise aimless expanse of emotional waves.

        Gratuitous side-rant:
        I’ll continue to unpack your own zip re: my implants later—TBC or not TBC, that is the question. TBD.
        At any rate, allowing the “implants” to speak through me, I’ll say, for now, “I’m Plant”. Meant to be interpreted in the same sense that insects are the ambulatory components of flowers, so humans (often operating “in sects”) are the ambulatory parts of earthly (embodied ideas) or unearthly agendas (disembodied ideologies).
        In short, I try my darndest to keep my eye on my own shadows as they cycle past, so as not to grant the undue control, and am often dazzled by the dappled display of light that dances before me as a result.
        (End side-rant.)

        A final word, re: the reduction of wisdom to a pathos of pith. Of course wisdom can never be contained–within neither cookie nor dough ($). However, I am of the humble o’pineal that we can proverbially “dehydrate” it (like shiitake mushies), to carry on the culinary metaphor you set in motion. What remains when wisdom’s liquids are drained, if we succeed at structuring our syntax a la Escher (tessellated, with all contradictionary notions paradoxically balanced) are wit and whimsy–wisdom’s front men/personas, if you will. I suspect these can preserve the liminal ambiguity necessary for *the willing ones* to pour forth their rehydrating fluids into the cracks cleaved by cleverness (wisdom’s trickster aspect)–an invitation for the audience to add water/wisdom from one’s own “well-awareness”.

        But indeed, a wider audience would also welcome the misinterpretations by *the unwilling ones*, pouring forth venom in favor of water from the wishing-well. Just look at the toll that baptism in the mainstream took on Jordan Peterson. They sapped his substance till there was little more left than JP-jerky.

        I don’t blame you for not welcoming such unnecessary grief and aggravation, and commend you for carrying on as you were, as it were.

        Reply
        • I will try to resist the urge to keep playing in the sandbox where angels fear to frolic, and restrict this to a single correction/observation: you said not Tuttle but Turltes, which is either a typo or another play on “tall tales” (or both, with varying agencies at play); but the really interesting bit is that Tuttle territory is Brazil, as in the bureaucratic police state where the difference between a T & a B will get you killed. Which is what I took it to mean. Tut tut, Mr UM. Don’t forget to dot your eyes…

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          • That’s absolutely hilarious! Innocently enough, It was a typo (perhaps an archetypo even, the jungian equivalent of a Freudian slip). But that you somehow managed to land on that Brazil reference is just perfect.

            I’ll take it one step further into the synchrodiculous, before signing off (in triplicate, like my entendres):

            As for dotting eyes, I missed the mark. The holy mole (el topo) on my cheek is my face’s singular punctuation mark, and a tell tale (not tall tale) sign I share with Robert Deniro who portrayed that particular Tuttle.

  8. A small but related observation/ interpretation
    I always saw the gendered interpretation of the word history as knee-jerk reactionary and lazy. It is history not hisstory => it does not imply patriarchy or male dominance
    the word broken down is hi story = tall tales.
    from wordnik below
    hi hī►
    interj. Used to express greeting.
    interj. A friendly, informal, casual greeting said when meeting someone.
    adj. Informal spelling of high, often hyphenated.

    Reply
  9. While two coworkers near me were angrily arguing about the election—one pro Trump; the other pro Biden—they both asked for my input. Almost without thinking, I just blurted out “No comment.” I really didn’t know how they’d take, didn’t really care, as I was already fatigued by the whole debacle. Somehow, my anti-commentary seemed to clip the wire that diffused the bomb. Because, as is the nature of these conversations, they only result in making more concrete out of each other’s already rigid ideologies. I think the schismogenesis is so prevalent that encountering a liminal outlook really can (if only briefly) bridge that gap.

    The pro Trumper came up to me later and expressed his appreciation for how I handled that. Sadly, I think the SJF has been so weaponized by the Trump virus that there is little hope of this kind of modesty. At least, I haven’t really seen any evidence of it since 2020 was unleashed.

    Wonderful article and the best advice one could have for navigating our times. I can’t tell you how many times people have expressed to me that they “can’t talk about (fill in the blank topic) with this person.” And this avoidance of confrontation seems to fit the bill of self-isolate, socially distance, wear a mask that hides all of your expressions.

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    • No comment is itself a comment, as the anecdote illustrates. Seems like it must have had the right tone, since it introduced liminality/calm into the discussion & depolarized it. Was there humor/lightness in it? The art of defusing conflict situations by gentle disruption of the narratives being enacted is probably the most essential skill for life during (identity) wartime. “Changed my hairstyle so many times now, I dont know what I look like.”

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      • “Was there humor/lightness in it?”

        A fake laugh, perhaps. It was like witnessing two opposing soldiers having their weapons taken away, and for a moment, the actual fighting ceased, but, even without any more words said, the indignation and righteousness was still palpable (which is really half the battle).

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      • “is this a ref to the article or my last comment, or neither?”

        To the comment section. This often obscure nonsensical wasteland of seemingly disassociated introvert commentary has given birth to an interactive communicative art form. The devil is not in the details but illumination lies herein.

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  10. Agree with most of the article but, for the sake of balance, it’s probably worth noting the rise of the alt-right. It seems to attract the same people – isolated, aimless, massively resentful and self-pitying. I’d say anyone who identifies as alt-right could just as easily become far-left and vice versa. Dogma is dogma when you all you’re looking for is an outlet for years of repressed rage.

    Another thing I think we need to be wary of is people weaponising buzzwords (e.g.”woke” “virtue-signalling”) to shutdown genuine instances of free speech. I saw someone accused of “virtue signalling” for posting a charity appeal for UNICEF the other week. I myself was accused of “Boris derangement syndrome” for the civic commonplace of criticising the prime minister. If people are going to use these terms, they need to learn where they actually go. We’re now in the very real situation where, if Martin Luther King was campaigning today, a lot of people who should know better would label him another “SJW” and click on. I also wonder what the reaction would be to the decrminialistion of gay sex in the current climate. I’ve a feeling even moderates might feel comfortable enough to dismiss it as “identity politics” without actually bothering to listening to the arguments for and against.

    Just thought I’d add that anyone. Keep up the good work!

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  11. “…the true causative agent in the oppression of humans by other humans remains, to this day, unidentified.”

    Shocking! Well let’s clear that right up then: The true causative agent in the oppression of humans by other humans is human belief in the imaginary concept “Superior/Inferior Being”.

    From this concept, “powerful and wise protective authority” or “THE BIG OTHER” is created within our minds from nothing real at all and thus our fears of the real, the unknown, of natures’ mysteries as well as unpredictable naturally occurring tragic events happening within the reality of our natural environment are (at least somewhat) ameliorated.

    In other words, the concept of “authority” makes us feel better since it allows us to imagine we know that someone (or some thing) else, the imaginary, superior “Big Other”, is “out there” in charge of things and looking after us. Whew!

    “…the only thing that can dispel fantasy is reality.”

    The reality that can dispel the Superior/Inferior being concept is simply the clear and ever-present reality of the human individual. Concepts are mental notions, non-existent but for our imaginations. Whereas the human individual actually exists and never is one of us, nor all or some of us (imaginary concepts again: “the law”, “the public good”, “will of the people” etc.), superior or inferior to another.

    Ah, but this is too scary to even contemplate! This is terrifying! This is “every man for himself”!

    It might be, but not necessarily. One is certainly free to attempt to “be an island” unto oneself. We can also choose to live together in non-fearing mutual respect of one another, cooperating (or not), working together (or not) as each of us sees fit, reaping the benefits of our cooperative efforts (or not) without the need to live within self-defeating, destructive concepts such as “Superior/Inferior Being”.

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    • Excellent addition to the non existent tapestry of opinions. What a great opportunity to check in with the reality of these words

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  12. John, I’m only dancing.
    A distortion / splitting
    Agent X is missing, in action
    Hierarchies are pissing
    In the wind that is kissing
    each and every bird, bee
    and “food chain”
    The messy webs are Living.
    and breathing
    Dunbar gets us so far.
    My big brother’s name is Scott

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