All very true, but the paradox it seems to me is that it's really only social media that has given us a clear view of what's really going on in the world. There was no way that legacy media was ever going to do that.
You make a tremendous observation, and I'm sorry I had noT responded to it months ago.
The hackers who discover and transmit truth will always tap into all available mediums.
Social media will likely be reborn in a more productive format in the best world we might imagine. It will be less centrally controlled and manipulated, and the world will look so much better that it will shed most of its toxicity naturally.
It depends on what you mean by "social media." The social media oligopolies (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and such) have mainly contributed to the construction the delusions and Dunbar hacking of Fauci, Trump, Biden etc. The smaller the social media platform and more independent of corporate control, the more that platform has contributed to awakening. So Bitchute, Gab, Brighteon, BrandNewTube, Odysee, substack, Rokfin have provided platforms that are smaller but more capable of remaining independent.
Rumble and Locals are an interesting case. They started out completely independent, but Rumble has now cracked the door open. Will it remain independent, or will it go the way of the Intercept, which was clearly corrupted by 2017, when Jeremy Scahill seemed to have a mild TDS infection, or January 2019, then it published biased hit pieces on Tulsi Gabbard? For now, Rumble is continuing to counter mass formation, but independent thinkers must remain vigilant.
Guido and 20@20 can both be correct. For some - me included - alternatives like this substack, are alternatives to the captured corp media and captured academia to who are open to rational discussions and having their minds changed.
For those who're unable to separate the signal from the noise, yes, you either identify with your team of choice (Blue no matter who, Back the blue, whatever, pick your team) or stop listening save for the headlines 'technology' has curated for you. If you back a team, social media is happy to curate info you need to see, to confirm your biases.
Tristan Harris was on Rogans pod a few weeks ago. Even Tristan had fallen prey to being misinformed - he'd never heard of something that Rogan brought up. But Tristan was aware enough, in real time, to attempt to process new info, and changing his mind. Tristan is rare, IMO
Captured celebs face a variation of the prisoner's dilemma, don't they? If one changes their mind the others will destroy them. Rewards are favorable to those who continue to self-destruct with the pack.
is not that our choice - to be open enough to let in new info while holding firmly enough to what we believe we know to maintain a foundation? being open to being wrong but trusting in our process and our decision making?
i suppose resiliency vs rigidity (hard) or pliability (soft).
it seems fear keeps so many from being resilient. or perhaps it is also comfort seeking. maybe ignorance is bliss, at least in the short term?
I have been very educated by your posts. I have been watching Joe Rogan and Tristan Harris. I am not buying his excuse for why these platforms have the algorithms they have based on hits.
If that was true they would not be censoring legitimate tweets (don't do twitter or facebook so my terms suck) facebook or youtube posts about covid by those researchers and doctors that scientifically question the CDC/FDA HHS big pharma etal narrative. Those posts get lots of hits. That is the very reason he says these platforms do what they do. Then they sensor honest tweets etc that go viral. Really? How does he justify that with the business model he justifies. So I feel Tristan is disingenuous. He also points out that giving people truth is not the various platforms business.
I haven't got to the point where he processes new info. Thanks again for your clear writing and thinking
I think I get it. But I have to read it again. But yes, I think we are being socially engineered via MSM and Social Media and we definitely need to find out way back to real life. On the other hand, as much as I would like to find real world contacts that believe as I do in the Nuremberg Code, etc. I cannot, so online is my curremt support.
I feel I should answer a question you didn’t ask through my subjective experience.
Why do people feel the need to make a choice/decision/judgement?
To merge memory of the past with the memory of the future. They are indistinguishable.
How to avoid making that choice?
By Being in the Present.
How to Be in the Present?
By expanding your working memory/attention span.
What is the biggest limitation of your working memory/attention span?
Mistaking mental models for memories, and mistaking memories for the future.
How does the ruling class rule?
By giving their subjects mental models depriving them of their attention span, while poisoning them and wasting their time until they become incapable of attention altogether.
How to break that rule?
By giving people enough time, care and attention.
Gen 3:9-11 King James Bible
9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked?
This might be your most important essay. It at least resonates with me. Right now I’m turning over in my mind what I might be able to do to get people within my circle at least to read it.
I think the implications here are that there aren’t any answers to this problem on a mass-scale since it’s the mass-scale of civilization that causes this problem. What you’ve outlined are the bandaid attempts to keep it all afloat, by simulating the interpersonal dynamics of a smaller tribe. Ultimately, this facsimile will fail and the empire will fall, as they always do. And then smaller factional communities will form, independent and decentralized, eventually giving rise to loosely affiliated confederations, until we work our way back to a version of the current framework… if history is any indication.
That may sound defeatist, but it doesn’t have to be. Our technology has created the illusion that our world is a small place, that can be conceptualized and dealt with on a grand scale. It isn’t and approaching it in such a fashion is the delusion at the core of these mental health issues, I suspect. We’d likely all be better off producing our own food and shelter in small groups of people that we all personally know. We may have to keep up our sense of grandeur, but in return, we may find lives with actual meaning.
The fear is that the mandarins will leverage themselves (a small cohesive group) by use of AI machines to capture and enslave the masses who will be denied social cohesion or community. The current global empire may be the first to survive the normal degenerative processes and remain intact indefinitely by using the architecture of integrated machines to keep it's structures intact. We'll see.
Machines can't repair themselves. That is why there is this move to transhumanism. So that we can be augmented humans and used like machines. One of the definitions of life is autopoiesis. Machines of any kind can't at this time or in the foreseeable future match the efficiency of life or be able to replicate themselves. Humans are and will be necessary to build and maintain machines including AI. There is no magic.
Slavery was the solution in the past and will be again. Reduce the population and dumb it down, transhumanismize it and you have a truly compliant slave. No Spartacus in the future. But the "blob" as it is called else where on substack will have all the trappings of gods.
I like your comment. Have you ever heard of John Taylor Gatto. He was a teacher in the New York Public school system. The Ultimate History Lesson is a interview by Richard Grove of John Taylor Gatto. You can watch it here;
I think that you’re probably correct that some of the technocratic class is counting on that, but like efforts at immortality, I would bet heavily against it. Of course if I’m right, there will be no infrastructure to pay out ;)
I again suspect through our history and perhaps more importantly what is considered “mythology” that these efforts to stave off elimination are also a key part of a larger cycle. The technology may change (though maybe not as much as we think), but ultimately the powers that (used to) be will build their Tower of Babel.
Man plans and God laughs. Or to quote a famous philosopher, “do not be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”
Much you say is true. I am not sure I understand what you mean by "keep up our sense of grandeur". If people live the way you suggest, we are immersed in grandure of Gaia. The Gaia of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis.
whelp, I wrote 'separate signal from the noise.' I didn't write in ratio as I'm unable to tell if the signal is 50 and the noise if 50, or it's 1 in 10 signal to noise. It's a problem ... as there's limited time to ramp up, and in some cases, it's very hard to even be exposed to the signal.
Just listened to Ross Barkan and Sherwood Strauss pod talking about access to newsmakers. They spend a lot of time worrying about saying something negative about a source and losing access to that source. In these cases, there's zero signal re items that the press doesn't share - just so they can continue having access so they can pay their bills.
Dunbar’s number breaks down when it comes to autists. As an autistic myself, despite having a larger brain than the average human (at least according to the doctor who said I have a mild macrocephaly) the number of meaningful relationships I am capable of handling can be counted on one hand.
Because I lack an implicit theory of mind I psychologically view all people in my relationships, unless I consciously remind myself otherwise, as parasocial NPCs. On the other hand my mind is equipped for handling parasocial relationships in a way that the neurotypical mind isn’t, since they psychologically process them inappropriately as real relationships the same way I inappropriately process real relationships as parasocial.
This hypothesis, summarized by these sentences, makes SO much sense. I 2nd what another commenter said, this is probably your most meaningful essay.
We see evidence of pushback to both the Prussian model (typical libertarians) and the 'don't appeal to the credentialed by default' being espoused by a number of folks across the spectrum. But this essay pulled these pieces together very well.
My sense is that if we look at the 'smarts' bell curve, there comes a point where the appeal to blindly be safe seems to overwhelm the capacity of folks to reason. So they default back to that appeal to authority (the corp news, gov officials ) as they cannot reason or unpack subjects in a 1st principles ish way. That will be your next challenge, looking at a population and identifying the persona(s) why cannot, or won't be able to unpack 'technology' and just plug in their "leader of choice" (votive candles for Mueller or Fauci , Trump or AOC idolatry anyone? ) and become fans just like "I've always been a Ford man" or "How bout them cowboys".
"The Pavlovian training of the Prussian educational model is just the priming. Once a subject accepts routine programming from the outside, the trick is to tell them who are and who aren't leaders and experts. In other words, the messages are sent from anywhere, but through a trusted network, and into the minds of the programmable humans, substituting a chosen leader/expert image into the appropriate Dunbar slot "
Lol. Coming back to this article after a year, when I started it but got distracted by whatever else was happening at the time. Evidence of the veracity of the article I suspect!
Anyway, it strikes me that this is where lockdowns have been particularly effective: isolating individuals who then have nothing better to do that scroll through social media posts (guilty) and turn to the TV for their daily dose of “the one source of truth” emanating from our various governmental podiums of odium.
No doubt this observation is not new, but hey, I have too many ongoing distractions to be distracted once more by scrolling through EVERY comment!
Finally, is it really possible that it was as cynical as putting a “C” in front of “Ovid”? That really does seem beyond coincidence...
For a control group on this, try using HFA's (High Functioning Autists, i.e. people with Asperger syndrome and no cignitive deficiency).
I have some twenty years experience with teaching young adults and adults with that condition (socially impaired but normal to highly intelligent otherwise) I have noticed that they on the one hand want and require social interaction same as anyone, but on the other hand also are very aware of all the different mechanism which to them seem random, unfair and arbitrary - such as why some kids at school are "cool" and others aren't, and that this seems to be a completely random and unknowable process, the HFA's having retarded intuitive capability regarding social hierarchies et c.
(By the way, please don't be offended if some words are outdated or such, I'm translating from my native tongue as I write, so all terms are intended as technical descriptors, nothing else.)
What it boils down to: HFA's can see all what you are describing as outsiders - as anthopologists really - and can also learn to manipulate the system. Their trouble is in experiencing it as real and true, not artifice. If you are friends with someone who fits my description, have a sit down. Ask them about the stuff in your article. Have them explain their perspective on human interactions. I can virtually guarantee that any HFA have at some point pondered exactly the musings you have above - unfortunately, most simply reejct them and limits themself as a coping mechanism, social interaction causing so much stress and anxiety by its perceived randomness.
Most of them are intuitively very good at pattern recognition/analysis. Frighteningly so, even. This ability can be trained, and can be transposed to other areas such as human behaviour.
Anyway, awesome article. Living in a country where media is either state owned or regime loyal, stuff like this is like air to a seal under the ice.
As a high functioning autistic person I have to say that my Dunbar’s number can probably be counted on one hand. Despite this my brain, or my head anyway is slightly larger than average.
Also I feel like my brain is equipped to handle parasocial relationships in a way that the neurotypical’s isn’t, just as they can handle real relationships in a way that I can’t. Psychologically speaking I lack an implicit theory of mind so unless I consciously remind myself to think otherwise I mentally regard all people as though they were parasocial NPC’s. Which is inappropriate when you’re in real social relationship. On the other hand neurotypicals inappropriately view parasocial relationships the way they view real relationships.
Never, Mathew, have I found a single source that mirrors and expands on what I've been thinking about for a few years until now. Kudos for being able to see this pattern from within the U.S. It took decades of me being marginalized, even dehumanized, by Japanese in-groups for me to start connecting the dots.
Some other angles that have led me to similar conclusions include primatologist Frans de Waal on the roots of human morality. He includes empathy among some non-human social animals, along with reciprocity. But I think the two are different levels of abstraction, a bit like Russell's paradoxes ''the sentence within these quotes is false'.
Maybe overly simplistic and definitely solipsistic, but I have come to redefine what is 'moral' as any empathy-driven behavior, whereas once we are distanced from morality by number (Dunbar's), circumstance (the trolley car problem), or conflicting drives such as conformity or compliance to authority (Asch, Milgram, Zimbardo) ... we have to take faux-empathetic shortcuts through rationalization, what I call the 'rule-driven behavior' of habit, customs, rituals, traditions, laws, and algorithms.
My thinking is that while all families can have skeletons in their closet, and even small gangs can be led by bullies ... at least a smaller number of those in communities limits the degree to which those who can't or won't follow empathy-driven behavior ... the dark triads.
I've downloaded about 500 articles from the Academia website about those triads, and haven't even touched the surface of the dark psychology that drives them, but I know enough to realize that good parenting or education has little to no effect on most of them. It is so depressing, and I see no way for large populations to corral or control them. They are primed from birth to be quicker and more clever than the average empath ... and if I take it to one conclusion, I end up with the Morlocks and Eloi of H.G. Wells' 'The Time Machine'. Looking at history, we appear to be stuck in a forever war of mankind against its own worst nature.
By the way, about a year or so ago, I just about jumped out of my seat while watching the 6 hour long antimonopoly hearings against Zuckerberg, Bezos, Cook, and Pichai when Congressman and Committee member Jamie Raskin (Democrat, Maryland) called out Zuckerberg for deliberately targeting dark-triads to hire and run Facebook's black ops.
But back to the problem of scale ... once we exceed Dunbar's number, all bets are off. There are just too many niches in large populations for dark-triads to hide, conspire, build, and game the Towers of Babel until they drain it to the point of collapse. This reminds me of an unforgettable passage from Jared Diamond ...
Thus, Norse society’s structure created a conflict between the short-term interests of those in power, and the long-term interests of the society as a whole. Much of what the chiefs and clergy valued proved eventually harmful to the society. Yet the society’s values were at the root of its strengths as well as of its weaknesses. The Greenland Norse did succeed in creating a unique form of European society, and in surviving for 450 years as Europe’s most remote outpost. We modern Americans should not be too quick to brand them as failures, when their society survived in Greenland for longer than our English-speaking society has survived so far in North America. Ultimately, though, the chiefs found themselves without followers. The last right that they obtained for themselves was the privilege of being the last to starve.
Will pause for now as it is getting bed-time for bonzo, but I have saved this tab for repeated readings, seeing where we dovetail, and how I can pro-socially 'exploit' your insights.
Cool info covering lots of subjects. In the 1990s and early 2000s I designed leadership, team building and "360" surveys and we noticed that regardless of the detail we tried to extract and how craftily we wrote the questions - all responses boiled down to one parameter - "Do you like the person?". We definitely needed to get more info than that so I came up with a survey that had a 1-10 scale with a very positively worded description on each end so that both sounded very good and now the rater had to tell the truth because neither description sounded bad. It worked great.
Mathew I think you have picked up on several observations and each may have several different causation factors. "Income disparity" is a terrible parameter because it makes such a difference how the higher income side got there. There is a huge difference between people who are third generation of a $20 million family trust and someone who just signed a $30 million contract to play some sport. Financial education is a huge part of income disparity issues because, as I taught my daughters, it is far easier to make money than it is to manage money. I know that I am teaching them and they, in turn will teach it to their kids. Most of what I learned I learned the hard way - trial and error. While that makes them the beneficiary of what I know we have to wonder that since they are not going through the same experiences to learn, how well will it stick with them.
So, that was just a tiny example of differences - same numbers - totally different experiences. I think the macro view reveals a problem and then subdividing it into many of its components and analyzing those relationships can provide the answer. I love reading these newsletters - I hope you keep enjoying the work.
You say "as I taught my daughters, it is far easier to make money than it is to manage money."
I learned a very short version of money management. All four us children did. None of us have ever been in debt. But non of us have been more that upper middle class. Our parents grew up in the depression and here is the lesson they taught.
If you can't pay cash for it you don't need it.
and when it came to borrowing anything the question to ask yourself is? Can I afford to replace the borrowed item. If I break it can I repair it and return it to the owner in as good or better condition as I received it.
We applied the lessons. Non of us ended up in the poor house. Most folks don't apply the borrowing lesson, so now we have rentals companies.
Brilliant, insightful, informative, educational... what don't you do, Mathew?
My jaded side, with two kids I did my best to educate alternatively, wrestles with the fact that the system is so intent on dumbing them down, and treating them with social rewards for being dumb, that I can barely get through any more. My friends agree, our kids want the jab, and prefer to remain ignorant of the consequence, The threat looms so large and the promise so great, and they have no knowledge of history or the theft of their birthrights that they think nothing of ceding it for candy-coated-popcorn, peanuts, and a prize.
Wow Gort, well said. My wife and I experienced the same with her kids. She is Korean and had three children when we met.
I don't have the page in the book but Lynn Margulis PhD pointed out that the bacteria in our guts have a great deal to say about what we eat and what we think. They have been around for 3.5 billion years. So as James Lovelock has commented we may well be their constructs as their habitat for escape from the oxygen apocalypse. And these micro organisms may be using us to re-engineer the Earth to a climate more like the past in which they thrived externally.
With that in mind, think of your children, what books they read, the radio they listened to, the TV they watched, etc. If it is all corporate then they are the corporations children rather than yours. You and your wife ( i am guessing your the dad) are merely the nannies.
We tried our best. But the youngest already had been formula fed, as his mom had so much to do (before we met) that she had no milk. His babysitter was the TV. That is why they see the world the way they do. At least that is my theory.
Altering perceptions and shaping worldviews has traditionally been the purview of the CIA and the various agencies they have their tentacles in, working on behalf of the elite. Their goal is to make the world seem threatening, destroy communities, trust in others, to destroy the relationships between the sexes, and now to destroy the family and the individual.
It ramped up in the 60's. Here's a horrifying "stranger-danger" PSA from the LA county Sheriff's office- https://youtu.be/EenEcnmBY9k
And countless other false flags, school shootings, public trials, serial killers, etc.. Though the general public will likely never accept the facts, I think the most important thing is to identify the false realities and take pains to not reinforce the notion they are or were ever real.
You've nailed it with the magician and metamorphosis allusions I think. There is some pre-Enlightenment magical thinking process subliminally going on here. Advertising, according to my most briliant ever professor, magnetizes the deeper evolutionarily earlier magical thinking aspects of ourselves. I get the sense these last few days that the reasonable idea that omicron may be the vaccine for the unvaccinated, may end the pandemic as it follows usual viral evolutionary strategy (more transmissable, less virulent), etc. is being countered with the pulsing of the idea of necromancy, the subliminal insinuation that a monstrous chimera, like Frankenstein, has arisen from nature. This began with the metronymic hammering about the number of mutations. (Numbers have become trance-inducing, like a swaying cobra) And now it continues in the insinuation that some predatory amalgamation of delta and omicron might rise via the incantations delivered silently by the unvaxxed. The subliminal transmissions are pumping everywhere. from CNN: We're really just about to experience a viral blizzard," Osterholm told CNN's Erin Burnett on Thursday. "In the next three to eight weeks, we're going to see millions of Americans are going to be infected with this virus, and that will be overlaid on top of Delta, and we're not yet sure exactly how that's going to work out." Something super-natural is afoot. Time to burn pagan herbalist women for 300 years!!!
Notably, "mutations" are framed by corporate media and science bureaucrats as automatically evil phenomena to be feared, preying on lack of popular awareness of viral evolution, that their changes trend toward more infectious and less pathogenic. Mutations, when natural, should be welcomed by the "experts." Their reflexive signalling of terror and fear betrays their ignorance or malintent.
That these actors still have any credibility after their hard-earned track record of getting everything wrong tells us the general population is not rational. I think they can be awakened by gently introducing contrary information in small bites in very non-confrontational ways. We have to help people to start asking questions.
All very true, but the paradox it seems to me is that it's really only social media that has given us a clear view of what's really going on in the world. There was no way that legacy media was ever going to do that.
You make a tremendous observation, and I'm sorry I had noT responded to it months ago.
The hackers who discover and transmit truth will always tap into all available mediums.
Social media will likely be reborn in a more productive format in the best world we might imagine. It will be less centrally controlled and manipulated, and the world will look so much better that it will shed most of its toxicity naturally.
check out video at this link;
https://my.fsf.org/join?mtm_campaign=summer21&mtm_source=banner
I think it points in the direction you are indicating
Nostr?
Honestly look into HIVE, the blockchain that forked the founders, its blocks are big enough to hold social media content. DARPA most probably controls those satoshi keys. I host my blog on it: https://peakd.com/hive-174122/@ecoinstant/something-has-to-change-but-democracy-is-dead
It depends on what you mean by "social media." The social media oligopolies (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and such) have mainly contributed to the construction the delusions and Dunbar hacking of Fauci, Trump, Biden etc. The smaller the social media platform and more independent of corporate control, the more that platform has contributed to awakening. So Bitchute, Gab, Brighteon, BrandNewTube, Odysee, substack, Rokfin have provided platforms that are smaller but more capable of remaining independent.
Rumble and Locals are an interesting case. They started out completely independent, but Rumble has now cracked the door open. Will it remain independent, or will it go the way of the Intercept, which was clearly corrupted by 2017, when Jeremy Scahill seemed to have a mild TDS infection, or January 2019, then it published biased hit pieces on Tulsi Gabbard? For now, Rumble is continuing to counter mass formation, but independent thinkers must remain vigilant.
Bitchute is no longer what it used to be due to succumbing to pernicious zionist leverage.
Wasn't aware of that. Thanks for pointing it out. Will be on the lookout. Still better than YouTube?
It is OK as far as it goes, and works reasonably well. However, notices may pop-up re: not available due to hatred, racism, your country, etc.
I think Gab does not do that!
I wondered why Rumble seemed to have rocketed past Bitchute for second place behind YouTube. Bitchute should reconsider, as this is likely the cause.
You don't mention 4chan. Why is that?
We all have our blindspots. Small platforms imply too many to keep up with individually. Thanks for suggestion.
But it comes with a price too costly for society as a whole. Lies and mistrust rise with the speed of sharing.
Guido and 20@20 can both be correct. For some - me included - alternatives like this substack, are alternatives to the captured corp media and captured academia to who are open to rational discussions and having their minds changed.
For those who're unable to separate the signal from the noise, yes, you either identify with your team of choice (Blue no matter who, Back the blue, whatever, pick your team) or stop listening save for the headlines 'technology' has curated for you. If you back a team, social media is happy to curate info you need to see, to confirm your biases.
Tristan Harris was on Rogans pod a few weeks ago. Even Tristan had fallen prey to being misinformed - he'd never heard of something that Rogan brought up. But Tristan was aware enough, in real time, to attempt to process new info, and changing his mind. Tristan is rare, IMO
Captured celebs face a variation of the prisoner's dilemma, don't they? If one changes their mind the others will destroy them. Rewards are favorable to those who continue to self-destruct with the pack.
is not that our choice - to be open enough to let in new info while holding firmly enough to what we believe we know to maintain a foundation? being open to being wrong but trusting in our process and our decision making?
i suppose resiliency vs rigidity (hard) or pliability (soft).
it seems fear keeps so many from being resilient. or perhaps it is also comfort seeking. maybe ignorance is bliss, at least in the short term?
Gooday TK plus,
I have been very educated by your posts. I have been watching Joe Rogan and Tristan Harris. I am not buying his excuse for why these platforms have the algorithms they have based on hits.
If that was true they would not be censoring legitimate tweets (don't do twitter or facebook so my terms suck) facebook or youtube posts about covid by those researchers and doctors that scientifically question the CDC/FDA HHS big pharma etal narrative. Those posts get lots of hits. That is the very reason he says these platforms do what they do. Then they sensor honest tweets etc that go viral. Really? How does he justify that with the business model he justifies. So I feel Tristan is disingenuous. He also points out that giving people truth is not the various platforms business.
I haven't got to the point where he processes new info. Thanks again for your clear writing and thinking
I think I get it. But I have to read it again. But yes, I think we are being socially engineered via MSM and Social Media and we definitely need to find out way back to real life. On the other hand, as much as I would like to find real world contacts that believe as I do in the Nuremberg Code, etc. I cannot, so online is my curremt support.
I think there will be a period of finding the tribe online, then sorting back to local, for many people.
Hello,
I feel I should answer a question you didn’t ask through my subjective experience.
Why do people feel the need to make a choice/decision/judgement?
To merge memory of the past with the memory of the future. They are indistinguishable.
How to avoid making that choice?
By Being in the Present.
How to Be in the Present?
By expanding your working memory/attention span.
What is the biggest limitation of your working memory/attention span?
Mistaking mental models for memories, and mistaking memories for the future.
How does the ruling class rule?
By giving their subjects mental models depriving them of their attention span, while poisoning them and wasting their time until they become incapable of attention altogether.
How to break that rule?
By giving people enough time, care and attention.
Gen 3:9-11 King James Bible
9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked?
Best Regards,
That is comforting. Thank you.
This might be your most important essay. It at least resonates with me. Right now I’m turning over in my mind what I might be able to do to get people within my circle at least to read it.
I think that's it is one of them. I hope others will see it that way as well. I hope that I have written well. I got tired at the end.
Yes. I've noticed in lots of books the author seems to rapidly end the book indicating fatigue.
This essay made me a paid subscriber.
Thank you.
I think the implications here are that there aren’t any answers to this problem on a mass-scale since it’s the mass-scale of civilization that causes this problem. What you’ve outlined are the bandaid attempts to keep it all afloat, by simulating the interpersonal dynamics of a smaller tribe. Ultimately, this facsimile will fail and the empire will fall, as they always do. And then smaller factional communities will form, independent and decentralized, eventually giving rise to loosely affiliated confederations, until we work our way back to a version of the current framework… if history is any indication.
That may sound defeatist, but it doesn’t have to be. Our technology has created the illusion that our world is a small place, that can be conceptualized and dealt with on a grand scale. It isn’t and approaching it in such a fashion is the delusion at the core of these mental health issues, I suspect. We’d likely all be better off producing our own food and shelter in small groups of people that we all personally know. We may have to keep up our sense of grandeur, but in return, we may find lives with actual meaning.
Absolutely it will fail. Every civilization rises and falls. See Ophuls' Immoderate Greatness. ~70 pages boils it down.
The fear is that the mandarins will leverage themselves (a small cohesive group) by use of AI machines to capture and enslave the masses who will be denied social cohesion or community. The current global empire may be the first to survive the normal degenerative processes and remain intact indefinitely by using the architecture of integrated machines to keep it's structures intact. We'll see.
Machines can't repair themselves. That is why there is this move to transhumanism. So that we can be augmented humans and used like machines. One of the definitions of life is autopoiesis. Machines of any kind can't at this time or in the foreseeable future match the efficiency of life or be able to replicate themselves. Humans are and will be necessary to build and maintain machines including AI. There is no magic.
Slavery was the solution in the past and will be again. Reduce the population and dumb it down, transhumanismize it and you have a truly compliant slave. No Spartacus in the future. But the "blob" as it is called else where on substack will have all the trappings of gods.
And yet the mandarins at core believe in magic and cast fairly successful spells such as the recent scamdemic.
I like your comment. Have you ever heard of John Taylor Gatto. He was a teacher in the New York Public school system. The Ultimate History Lesson is a interview by Richard Grove of John Taylor Gatto. You can watch it here;
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL463AA90FD04EC7A2
Mr. Gatto explains in great detail how the magic trick is done. And has been done for thousands of years.
Be well
I think that you’re probably correct that some of the technocratic class is counting on that, but like efforts at immortality, I would bet heavily against it. Of course if I’m right, there will be no infrastructure to pay out ;)
I again suspect through our history and perhaps more importantly what is considered “mythology” that these efforts to stave off elimination are also a key part of a larger cycle. The technology may change (though maybe not as much as we think), but ultimately the powers that (used to) be will build their Tower of Babel.
Man plans and God laughs. Or to quote a famous philosopher, “do not be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”
Yes. Psalm 2 backs this up.
Which was the point of his circle vs. Amoeba-like illustration.
Much you say is true. I am not sure I understand what you mean by "keep up our sense of grandeur". If people live the way you suggest, we are immersed in grandure of Gaia. The Gaia of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis.
I do share your hope as path.
Personally, I like to reflect on Tocqueville: He predicted 'mass formation' almost two hundred years ago.
I'm sure you meant to say the signal to noise ratio is very low, or that the noise to signal ratio is high. Otherwise
whelp, I wrote 'separate signal from the noise.' I didn't write in ratio as I'm unable to tell if the signal is 50 and the noise if 50, or it's 1 in 10 signal to noise. It's a problem ... as there's limited time to ramp up, and in some cases, it's very hard to even be exposed to the signal.
Just listened to Ross Barkan and Sherwood Strauss pod talking about access to newsmakers. They spend a lot of time worrying about saying something negative about a source and losing access to that source. In these cases, there's zero signal re items that the press doesn't share - just so they can continue having access so they can pay their bills.
Dunbar’s number breaks down when it comes to autists. As an autistic myself, despite having a larger brain than the average human (at least according to the doctor who said I have a mild macrocephaly) the number of meaningful relationships I am capable of handling can be counted on one hand.
Because I lack an implicit theory of mind I psychologically view all people in my relationships, unless I consciously remind myself otherwise, as parasocial NPCs. On the other hand my mind is equipped for handling parasocial relationships in a way that the neurotypical mind isn’t, since they psychologically process them inappropriately as real relationships the same way I inappropriately process real relationships as parasocial.
I think jabs in our lives have made all jabbed people at least partially autistic and or immune compromised...all.
This hypothesis, summarized by these sentences, makes SO much sense. I 2nd what another commenter said, this is probably your most meaningful essay.
We see evidence of pushback to both the Prussian model (typical libertarians) and the 'don't appeal to the credentialed by default' being espoused by a number of folks across the spectrum. But this essay pulled these pieces together very well.
My sense is that if we look at the 'smarts' bell curve, there comes a point where the appeal to blindly be safe seems to overwhelm the capacity of folks to reason. So they default back to that appeal to authority (the corp news, gov officials ) as they cannot reason or unpack subjects in a 1st principles ish way. That will be your next challenge, looking at a population and identifying the persona(s) why cannot, or won't be able to unpack 'technology' and just plug in their "leader of choice" (votive candles for Mueller or Fauci , Trump or AOC idolatry anyone? ) and become fans just like "I've always been a Ford man" or "How bout them cowboys".
"The Pavlovian training of the Prussian educational model is just the priming. Once a subject accepts routine programming from the outside, the trick is to tell them who are and who aren't leaders and experts. In other words, the messages are sent from anywhere, but through a trusted network, and into the minds of the programmable humans, substituting a chosen leader/expert image into the appropriate Dunbar slot "
Lol. Coming back to this article after a year, when I started it but got distracted by whatever else was happening at the time. Evidence of the veracity of the article I suspect!
Anyway, it strikes me that this is where lockdowns have been particularly effective: isolating individuals who then have nothing better to do that scroll through social media posts (guilty) and turn to the TV for their daily dose of “the one source of truth” emanating from our various governmental podiums of odium.
No doubt this observation is not new, but hey, I have too many ongoing distractions to be distracted once more by scrolling through EVERY comment!
Finally, is it really possible that it was as cynical as putting a “C” in front of “Ovid”? That really does seem beyond coincidence...
I now call them shutdowns. I refuse mandarin speak.
For a control group on this, try using HFA's (High Functioning Autists, i.e. people with Asperger syndrome and no cignitive deficiency).
I have some twenty years experience with teaching young adults and adults with that condition (socially impaired but normal to highly intelligent otherwise) I have noticed that they on the one hand want and require social interaction same as anyone, but on the other hand also are very aware of all the different mechanism which to them seem random, unfair and arbitrary - such as why some kids at school are "cool" and others aren't, and that this seems to be a completely random and unknowable process, the HFA's having retarded intuitive capability regarding social hierarchies et c.
(By the way, please don't be offended if some words are outdated or such, I'm translating from my native tongue as I write, so all terms are intended as technical descriptors, nothing else.)
What it boils down to: HFA's can see all what you are describing as outsiders - as anthopologists really - and can also learn to manipulate the system. Their trouble is in experiencing it as real and true, not artifice. If you are friends with someone who fits my description, have a sit down. Ask them about the stuff in your article. Have them explain their perspective on human interactions. I can virtually guarantee that any HFA have at some point pondered exactly the musings you have above - unfortunately, most simply reejct them and limits themself as a coping mechanism, social interaction causing so much stress and anxiety by its perceived randomness.
Most of them are intuitively very good at pattern recognition/analysis. Frighteningly so, even. This ability can be trained, and can be transposed to other areas such as human behaviour.
Anyway, awesome article. Living in a country where media is either state owned or regime loyal, stuff like this is like air to a seal under the ice.
As a high functioning autistic person I have to say that my Dunbar’s number can probably be counted on one hand. Despite this my brain, or my head anyway is slightly larger than average.
Also I feel like my brain is equipped to handle parasocial relationships in a way that the neurotypical’s isn’t, just as they can handle real relationships in a way that I can’t. Psychologically speaking I lack an implicit theory of mind so unless I consciously remind myself to think otherwise I mentally regard all people as though they were parasocial NPC’s. Which is inappropriate when you’re in real social relationship. On the other hand neurotypicals inappropriately view parasocial relationships the way they view real relationships.
Never, Mathew, have I found a single source that mirrors and expands on what I've been thinking about for a few years until now. Kudos for being able to see this pattern from within the U.S. It took decades of me being marginalized, even dehumanized, by Japanese in-groups for me to start connecting the dots.
Some other angles that have led me to similar conclusions include primatologist Frans de Waal on the roots of human morality. He includes empathy among some non-human social animals, along with reciprocity. But I think the two are different levels of abstraction, a bit like Russell's paradoxes ''the sentence within these quotes is false'.
Maybe overly simplistic and definitely solipsistic, but I have come to redefine what is 'moral' as any empathy-driven behavior, whereas once we are distanced from morality by number (Dunbar's), circumstance (the trolley car problem), or conflicting drives such as conformity or compliance to authority (Asch, Milgram, Zimbardo) ... we have to take faux-empathetic shortcuts through rationalization, what I call the 'rule-driven behavior' of habit, customs, rituals, traditions, laws, and algorithms.
My thinking is that while all families can have skeletons in their closet, and even small gangs can be led by bullies ... at least a smaller number of those in communities limits the degree to which those who can't or won't follow empathy-driven behavior ... the dark triads.
I've downloaded about 500 articles from the Academia website about those triads, and haven't even touched the surface of the dark psychology that drives them, but I know enough to realize that good parenting or education has little to no effect on most of them. It is so depressing, and I see no way for large populations to corral or control them. They are primed from birth to be quicker and more clever than the average empath ... and if I take it to one conclusion, I end up with the Morlocks and Eloi of H.G. Wells' 'The Time Machine'. Looking at history, we appear to be stuck in a forever war of mankind against its own worst nature.
By the way, about a year or so ago, I just about jumped out of my seat while watching the 6 hour long antimonopoly hearings against Zuckerberg, Bezos, Cook, and Pichai when Congressman and Committee member Jamie Raskin (Democrat, Maryland) called out Zuckerberg for deliberately targeting dark-triads to hire and run Facebook's black ops.
But back to the problem of scale ... once we exceed Dunbar's number, all bets are off. There are just too many niches in large populations for dark-triads to hide, conspire, build, and game the Towers of Babel until they drain it to the point of collapse. This reminds me of an unforgettable passage from Jared Diamond ...
Thus, Norse society’s structure created a conflict between the short-term interests of those in power, and the long-term interests of the society as a whole. Much of what the chiefs and clergy valued proved eventually harmful to the society. Yet the society’s values were at the root of its strengths as well as of its weaknesses. The Greenland Norse did succeed in creating a unique form of European society, and in surviving for 450 years as Europe’s most remote outpost. We modern Americans should not be too quick to brand them as failures, when their society survived in Greenland for longer than our English-speaking society has survived so far in North America. Ultimately, though, the chiefs found themselves without followers. The last right that they obtained for themselves was the privilege of being the last to starve.
Diamond, Jared. Collapse (p. 276). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Will pause for now as it is getting bed-time for bonzo, but I have saved this tab for repeated readings, seeing where we dovetail, and how I can pro-socially 'exploit' your insights.
Great job, Mathew with the single T 😂!
Cheers from Japan,
— steve
Cool info covering lots of subjects. In the 1990s and early 2000s I designed leadership, team building and "360" surveys and we noticed that regardless of the detail we tried to extract and how craftily we wrote the questions - all responses boiled down to one parameter - "Do you like the person?". We definitely needed to get more info than that so I came up with a survey that had a 1-10 scale with a very positively worded description on each end so that both sounded very good and now the rater had to tell the truth because neither description sounded bad. It worked great.
Mathew I think you have picked up on several observations and each may have several different causation factors. "Income disparity" is a terrible parameter because it makes such a difference how the higher income side got there. There is a huge difference between people who are third generation of a $20 million family trust and someone who just signed a $30 million contract to play some sport. Financial education is a huge part of income disparity issues because, as I taught my daughters, it is far easier to make money than it is to manage money. I know that I am teaching them and they, in turn will teach it to their kids. Most of what I learned I learned the hard way - trial and error. While that makes them the beneficiary of what I know we have to wonder that since they are not going through the same experiences to learn, how well will it stick with them.
So, that was just a tiny example of differences - same numbers - totally different experiences. I think the macro view reveals a problem and then subdividing it into many of its components and analyzing those relationships can provide the answer. I love reading these newsletters - I hope you keep enjoying the work.
Good Day George Mizzell,
You say "as I taught my daughters, it is far easier to make money than it is to manage money."
I learned a very short version of money management. All four us children did. None of us have ever been in debt. But non of us have been more that upper middle class. Our parents grew up in the depression and here is the lesson they taught.
If you can't pay cash for it you don't need it.
and when it came to borrowing anything the question to ask yourself is? Can I afford to replace the borrowed item. If I break it can I repair it and return it to the owner in as good or better condition as I received it.
We applied the lessons. Non of us ended up in the poor house. Most folks don't apply the borrowing lesson, so now we have rentals companies.
Brilliant, insightful, informative, educational... what don't you do, Mathew?
My jaded side, with two kids I did my best to educate alternatively, wrestles with the fact that the system is so intent on dumbing them down, and treating them with social rewards for being dumb, that I can barely get through any more. My friends agree, our kids want the jab, and prefer to remain ignorant of the consequence, The threat looms so large and the promise so great, and they have no knowledge of history or the theft of their birthrights that they think nothing of ceding it for candy-coated-popcorn, peanuts, and a prize.
Amen brother...
Atthe mall with my daughter, her masked friends wearing gloves for fear of Monkey Pox!
Wow Gort, well said. My wife and I experienced the same with her kids. She is Korean and had three children when we met.
I don't have the page in the book but Lynn Margulis PhD pointed out that the bacteria in our guts have a great deal to say about what we eat and what we think. They have been around for 3.5 billion years. So as James Lovelock has commented we may well be their constructs as their habitat for escape from the oxygen apocalypse. And these micro organisms may be using us to re-engineer the Earth to a climate more like the past in which they thrived externally.
With that in mind, think of your children, what books they read, the radio they listened to, the TV they watched, etc. If it is all corporate then they are the corporations children rather than yours. You and your wife ( i am guessing your the dad) are merely the nannies.
We tried our best. But the youngest already had been formula fed, as his mom had so much to do (before we met) that she had no milk. His babysitter was the TV. That is why they see the world the way they do. At least that is my theory.
It's a hypothesis... 😁
But it's proving out!
Altering perceptions and shaping worldviews has traditionally been the purview of the CIA and the various agencies they have their tentacles in, working on behalf of the elite. Their goal is to make the world seem threatening, destroy communities, trust in others, to destroy the relationships between the sexes, and now to destroy the family and the individual.
It ramped up in the 60's. Here's a horrifying "stranger-danger" PSA from the LA county Sheriff's office- https://youtu.be/EenEcnmBY9k
Their fingerprints are all over things like the Manson event- http://mileswmathis.com/tate.pdf
The murder of Kitty Genovese (where 38 witnesses supposedly heard the attack and did nothing)- http://mileswmathis.com/kitty.pdf
The University of Texas Tower Shooting- http://mileswmathis.com/chaswhit.pdf
The Larry Nasser gymnast abuse case- http://mileswmathis.com/gymnassar.pdf
And countless other false flags, school shootings, public trials, serial killers, etc.. Though the general public will likely never accept the facts, I think the most important thing is to identify the false realities and take pains to not reinforce the notion they are or were ever real.
You've nailed it with the magician and metamorphosis allusions I think. There is some pre-Enlightenment magical thinking process subliminally going on here. Advertising, according to my most briliant ever professor, magnetizes the deeper evolutionarily earlier magical thinking aspects of ourselves. I get the sense these last few days that the reasonable idea that omicron may be the vaccine for the unvaccinated, may end the pandemic as it follows usual viral evolutionary strategy (more transmissable, less virulent), etc. is being countered with the pulsing of the idea of necromancy, the subliminal insinuation that a monstrous chimera, like Frankenstein, has arisen from nature. This began with the metronymic hammering about the number of mutations. (Numbers have become trance-inducing, like a swaying cobra) And now it continues in the insinuation that some predatory amalgamation of delta and omicron might rise via the incantations delivered silently by the unvaxxed. The subliminal transmissions are pumping everywhere. from CNN: We're really just about to experience a viral blizzard," Osterholm told CNN's Erin Burnett on Thursday. "In the next three to eight weeks, we're going to see millions of Americans are going to be infected with this virus, and that will be overlaid on top of Delta, and we're not yet sure exactly how that's going to work out." Something super-natural is afoot. Time to burn pagan herbalist women for 300 years!!!
Sadly true. But I pray your wrong. Pray to whom? Silence.
Notably, "mutations" are framed by corporate media and science bureaucrats as automatically evil phenomena to be feared, preying on lack of popular awareness of viral evolution, that their changes trend toward more infectious and less pathogenic. Mutations, when natural, should be welcomed by the "experts." Their reflexive signalling of terror and fear betrays their ignorance or malintent.
That these actors still have any credibility after their hard-earned track record of getting everything wrong tells us the general population is not rational. I think they can be awakened by gently introducing contrary information in small bites in very non-confrontational ways. We have to help people to start asking questions.