The Marxists have seemingly been after the family unit and religion for some time. Hence, that horizontal transmission of "values." Family and faith are two of the strongest pillars holding together our societies. It has been increasingly difficult for many to maintain parental authority, when the education system is run by a generation indoctrinated into Marxiist principles. Many of us raised in earlier decades recognized the slippery slope, but were relegated to hurried whispers, expressing our displeasure behind closed doors, as many younger educators and administrators embraced what was setting off red-flags. E.g., political correctness gone amok, such as "thou must preach the religion of climate change," whilst big companies were given permits to dump raw sewage or take spring water to bottle from communities that were suffering drought (Ontario). Then, there was the march in the education system toward "encouraging" children they could be any gender they liked, in the name of "inclusion."
Fast forward a decade. In 2020, the world watched in disbelief as Portland burned, and a CNN reporter stood in front of the burning chaos reporting on a "mainly peaceful" protest. Family businesses, including Black-owners, were distraught, seeing their life's work destroyed. Calls to defund the police ensued, and many of us knew then, that this would not end well. Nothing made sense.
Now, Australians are under siege and not a chirp from the MSM. And despite the gaslighting, we know that what we are experiencing across the Western world is the destruction of society from the inside out. Small businesses have/are being destroyed, and families are being torn apart by the new religion: The Cult of Covid. The injections are preached as the "saviour," with the Pope going so far as to call getting inoculated, "an act of love." God, please deliver us (and I am Catholic).
The societal implosion appears to have been in the works for some time. Regardless of personal beliefs or faith, I think most would agree that a person who believes in a higher power (in my case, the God of Christianity) is not so easily broken or enslaved. And a family that is tightly woven together, will not be so easily torn apart.
I've had a good run - I believe growing up in the 70s was one of the best of times. But I despair for the children, including my own, while I remain grateful for all of the warriors, like Mathew, who continue to push against those who are driving this societal destruction.
Re-reading this posting as Mathew just posted it on Twitter, your comment was most observant in September 2021. Unfortunately months later, in April 2022, it is more accurate and even worse. These people are awful.
I saw an edition (in a library) with a number of points summarising the work on the cover, and my impression at the time was that it was just another propagandistic tool of the already powerful to consolidate their power by framing the alternative warned against of leading to the very serfdom that they are already practising or seeking to practise. Was I wrong?
I'm perplexed by the widespread veneration of “faith”. Do you mean the maintenance and inculcation of a belief regardless of whether or not it's true, and disdain of attempts to falsify it (and social penalties for those who, genuinely open to the possibility of its succumbing to falsification, attempt to falsify it), in contradistinction to all other beliefs, thereby making an exception (on what grounds?) for this one belief?
What exactly do you mean by “a higher power”? One who, despite having failed to do so yet, will eventually deliver us (or some of us?) from all ill?
I used to believe in such a power, but after many decades I finally plucked up the courage to question it, and found that its wheels and wings fell off before it even got to the runway. Nevertheless I remain unbroken and tenaciously resistant to being enslaved. Why would I (or anyone) fall for enslavement to a “higher power“ (or to belief therein) instead? I see the propagation of this idea as just another doorway to tyranny. The good that “Christianity“ did in the first and second millennia was in SPITE of the idea of impending salvation.
I suspect that esteem for the cultivation of “faith” arises from the belief that only fear of posthumous punishment can motive people to be prosocial (moral)*. But how prosocial is the dictation by superiors of what to believe? What are the ramifications of enforcing “faith”? Keeping the facing of reality from all but a powerful few is tyranny writ large, regardless of what that reality is.
________
*For the record I do NOT believe that only fear of posthumous punishment can motivate people to be prosocial. It is, with only rare exceptions, pro SELF to be prosocial. Human life is far, far from a zero-sum game. No invocation of a reckoning after death is needed to make it so.
It's hard to explain. I guess that is why in my church, the line "The mystery of faith" is included. I've always had it, as far back as I can remember, even though I was a rotten teenager, and I've done my share of sinning (sorry Mom and Dad). I had wide-exposure to different Christian faiths as a child, and I am now RC. In my post-rebel (without a cause) years, I did a lot of reading/learning re: mysteries of the universe. I really enjoyed "The Reason for God" and "The Code" (was on Netflix but no more). When I learned about the very basics of DNA and how our bodies work, that too left me in awe. I can't remember which book it was where I read this, but the probability of life springing up and evolving/differentiating to where it is now, is billions to one. Have you seen the mating ritual of the Japanese Pufferfish (more math)? I've read the New Testament twice. The Word speaks to me in a way that defies explanation. I've also had some very spiritual experiences that bordered on supernatural. These are just a few of my thoughts. Here's an analogy: Could you teach algebra to a cat? No, of course not, because they are limited by their biology. Likewise, we are limited by our physical bodies/human senses, but the Holy Spirit can transcend this gap and invite us to the table.
The Malthusian mind virus is key to explaining the behaviors of elites, but more important is explaining why the "underclass" constantly fails to organize and rally for an alternative. We do not actually *need* the elite in order to bring about a new and better system, we need a substantive consensus around a moral method of governance. What blocks this are various mind viruses concocted by state-sponsored charlatans ("philosophers"), e.g. the alleged is-ought gap and utilitarianism, which claims that moral principle is beyond the reach of reason. If that is so, then brute force is the only possible ultimate arbiter, and guess who benefits most from such conclusion? The status quo.
I think you list some of the elements, but there are many.
There is constant implicit blackmail. Some of this blackmail comes in the form of system monopoly or maintenance. If the kunlangeta disappeared all at once one day, we could be sure that there would be plenty of resulting chaos before order was restored. Many deaths.
That's part of the reason Game B is essential. We need to be building parallel society beneath the current one.
My point was that if "Game B" does not include (1) articulating specific, truthful, and complete moral and political fundamentals and (2) gathering a consensus around them then your "parallel society" will be plagued by the same kinds of problems as the original.
We have seen this failure mode many times throughout history: a semi-thoughtful reaction to frank and obvious tyranny, that refuses to frankly address moral fundamentals in order to create a "big tent", and then in spite of a promising start ultimately goes "poof." To quote Durant “Our political movements are conceived in impulse and developed in emotion; they end in fission and fragmentation because there is no thought behind them.”
What are these fundamentals? For starters, exactly what our status quo denies: there is such a thing as moral truth, justice, and the "objective" means of knowing these, namely reason, which employs empiricism, logic, and a complete openness to the whole truth (integrity). Rational civics must be rooted in a real "consent of the governed", not mob rule.
"My point was that if "Game B" does not include (1) articulating specific, truthful, and complete moral and political fundamentals and (2) gathering a consensus around them then your "parallel society" will be plagued by the same kinds of problems as the original."
We agree on the basic level. There doesn't need to be a universal protocol just yet, but communities need to be working as closely as possible on a fundamentally stable platform that incentivizes cooperation and production.
Yes on avoiding mob rule. In fact, I think that's explicitly part of the blackmail of the kunlangeta who study how best to provoke the zombie mob.
The establishment of commonly shared truths is needed, though it should always be understood that true science and reason might lead us to rearrange a few bricks in Chesterton's fence, but after the storm.
The storm never ends, this game of reacting to artificial emergencies goes on decade after decade. Some time and mental space should have been reserved for addressing the actual root problems; constantly kicking the can down the road just leads to more and more emergencies down the road.
You have a pyromaniac setting fires to your village, and I am saying we need to stop him, and you're saying you're too busy putting out fires to stop him, but after you're finished putting out the fires then maybe you'll consider it. In the end you'll have no village.
"..Trained into blindness regarding the roots of The Great Flattening, the Malthusian Mandarins never shake the mind virus. Their distorted perception congeals into mass psychosis. This in turn leaves them viciously blaming the underclasses, whom they self-train to abuse, and looking for ways to replace them with centralized automated technologies that result in actual GDP collapse." - Truer words have never been spoken. This paragraph makes me incredibly sad.
"roots of the Great Flattening" I thought I had a fairly good handle on this but Mathew is alluding to something beyond the consensus rationale? (I confess I believe/d it all to do with too much capital chasing too little productivity; a flaw in capitalism brought about by excessive financialisation)
We could put multiple economic/mathematic variables (more or less of each) into the equation (capital. productivity, financialization, etc., e.g) and try to dig deep into the roots of the flattening. Sure, there are tests to measure psychopathy and other disorders Malthusian Mandarins suffer from, too (if we could get CEOs to test). We could put all variables into the statistical mix and come up with numbers. But I'd rather view this through the psychological lens of collective trauma. The feeling of lack (all sort of lack) is a deep trauma reflected in every individual and collective pore. That's why we equate every upward curve with progress. And progress, increasing GDPs, and alike is good, right? Or is it? I'm just saying that growing GDP and continually "improving" technology doesn't always mean well-being. And we are seeing more and more of it as we speak...
"I'm just saying that growing GDP and continually "improving" technology doesn't always mean well-being."
Certainly GDP is not the true measure of the utility curve. It has been the best proxy during the "ordinary spans" of the fiat era, but the better future will include better proxies (or we'll be so wealthy that it will seem silly to stop and measure that). First, we may even be able to measure trauma (or at least pay it attention), which is currently something like an externality that the Malthusian Mandarins are tasked with both measuring and managing while pretending to ignore it. The breaking point we're headed toward now represents a lot of traume generating quickly between the gears of the machine.
The problem right now is that they've designed the system to blow up if we do that.
There is no solution that does not involve building a civilization right underneath theirs. At that point, it's simply a matter of time until they self-destruct. They have poisoned their own ability to understand economics. They depend on slave labor, and even with vast amounts of it (all that money printing sucks up the value of labor in Asian, South America, and even the flyover states). This is why they're in freak-out mode now. The blockchain world threatens their power entirely, and they're losing the dollar while spending accrued value of slave labor sucked through it on...projects to make the system keep working.
It's going to fail.
It's going to be painful, but it will be least painful to those who start building now (or yesterday).
So it seems they're destroying the nuclear family and undermining our faith as a way to replace vertical influence with horizontal influence, giving them their control and power. And, you're saying the idea of a parallel society (Havel?) is our only chance to defeat it. Blockchain technology not only gives us parallel monetary structures, but can also give us parallel social, media and educational structures as well, that can be totally decentralized and not censorable.
Do you think there are many who realize the enormity of this idea and can help bring it about, thru their own actions or thru their influence? Is it happening at any significant rate, and is it inevitable?
Very interesting reading but I have an urgent concern. Can anyone refer me to a 1-2 page description of covid vaccine safety in children? Parents are under massive pressure to vaccinate their children. They receive information from “credible sources” like the CDC and FDA, and local health professionals who minimize known safety issues. We need an accurate, up-to-date, report that can be read by busy parents in 5 minutes and hopefully get their attention. I’m working on my own summary but if something already exists, it would be helpful for everyone interested in passing on accurate, clear, and balanced information as quickly as possible.
The reality of busy people - no spare time. My own internist had never read the Pfizer and Moderna clinical studies nor any other health professional I've asked. Fortunately, I'm retired:).
To really understand the level of control our hidden masters exert on the human race, there's an excellent documentary called "Human Resources". Folks like the Rockafellers were perfecting behavioral psychology a hundred years ago.
"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select — doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors." - John Watson
If you've ever wondered how a politician can be motivated to act so contrary to the interests of not just his constituents, but his own descendants, look up the term "Brownstone Operation". It's a reference to the type of activities carried out by the Mossad in Rep Barney Frank's Brownstone condominium. Which brings us to the subject of Epstein. "Epstein didn't kill himself" is a common refrain, but seldom do you ever hear anyone say "Epstein isn't dead" - https://youtu.be/9FeoeupYPBI?t=72
Speaking of Mr Tedros, Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO, who, as Health Minister, presided over the "disappearance" of 2.5 million ethnic rivals in Ethiopia, here's a window into the private life of this sort off elite. Granted, it's no brownstone, but it's typical of the double-life they lead, and which the media prevents us from ever seeing- https://youtu.be/lLFhhEbqtes
(I was at one point convinced this was a deepfake, but since coming across this high resolution version and contemplating the upward camera angle, and the disco lighting running across his face, I'm now confident this is authentic. You'll note he spots the camera recording him and is unfazed)
I was first exposed to the Malthus mind virus in 1970 in elementary school. The scholastic reader featured a story asserting desertification of the breadbasket states in the USA and zero oil by 2000 with food riots and mass deaths plus some mumbling about pollution killing everyone else. Nice work, pushing fear porn on 2nd graders. So I showed it to my dad who was a physics professor at the university of Kansas. He said it seemed like predicting the future wasn't very easy.
A few years after the Club of Rome came out with their garbage I was inoculated by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Robert Heinlein, and Keith Henson and the L5 Society. I realised that not only does technology break Malthus, but the space frontier lets us access the energy and resources of the Solar system to solve problems here. A little later it became obvious that the places to mine and refine to build a civilisation beyond the Earth are themselves beyond the Earth.
I read Malthus as a 15 year old in 1967, from my parents' Britannia Great Books. I did not have a mentor to dispute the thesis, and my father's side came to Ontario from County Antrim during the potato famine.
I still mourn the passing of Jerry Pournelle and have not seen any evidence of a useful reactionless space drive.
I'm not sure how to understand your thoughts here. I held an SF convention in Houston in 1993 and Jerry was guest of honour. I didn't understand the extreme animosity that came from the Houston fan community at the time. Still don't. It's probably not Jerry's fault about the reactionless drive. He was in a very bad way in 2016 when we talked at the worldcon in Kansas City. But we got a bit of time to say goodbye. I pray for his soul in Purgatory. Please pray the prayer of Saint Gertrude the Great for the holy souls in Purgatory. It helps.
I can be a bit terse and obscure. It took me some decades to understand that situations change, sometimes even improve, and reexamine some Malthusian concepts.
I hassle the local municipal council occasionally about their "Net-Zero" anti CO2 programme. Population has increased from 1 to 8 billion over 140 years due to oil- we live on energy and most of our food requires diesel.
I would love to have access to a reactionless drive. Having had my travel "privilege" removed, I think of James Blish's "Cities in Flight" as a potential solution to the present globalist ambition.
You must cherish your personal meetings with Dr. Pournelle. Someone else will have to invent the drive.
Your analysis continues to be fascinating and well thought out. I've been reading The Gulag Archipelago and it's fascinating how this offers a great view of how thinking can go massively wrong similar to the book.
> The role of intellectual property law in preventing vast amounts of investment in the growth and spread of technology, which in turn drives economic growth ...
I'm curious to hear your thoughts about intellectual property law.
This is possibly the topic about which I am most radical. The three pieces to IP law that I consider are: Patents, Copyright and trademarks. If it were up to me, I would eliminate the concepts of patents and copyright after a ~2 year sunset period during which no new patents would be awarded. I have less objection to the concept of trademarks; particularly where trademark enforcement is used to prevent fraud.
My chief objection is the straight-forward point that IP law attempts to regulate the flow of ideas as though it were a flow of matter, which it is not. States should never have been given legal right to regulate the flow of ideas in the first place.
That isn't to say that there aren't arguably up-sides to IP law for a nation. But that isn't sufficient justification for policy that takes away peoples' freedoms -- after all, there's also arguably an up-side (for most people) to murdering a quarter of the population and divvying up their resources.
Thinking of, or acting on, an idea (e.g. a new technology or a new movie) first should not give you any legal right to control the distribution of that idea or how it is used.
Very thoughtful, as always. I agree about the power of mind viruses and memes. Population rate has slowed but overall population has grown and every person's life is powered by energy of some form. You might find this interesting. It takes quite a few years and lots of money to build the nuclear plants needed. Not sure we can bridge the gap between where we are now and what would be needed to power our civilization. So called renewables aren't going to do it, that's for sure.
Hello, fellow coworkers. I want to introduce into this discussion a Great American Hero, Col. John Boyd. Some of you have probably heard of him and his influence on 20th Century military thinking and well beyond, but many more have never and likely won't ever, Col. Boyd was a great systematic and practical philosopher without having the "credentials" of the academic who worked in designing the F-16, had a hand in the A-10, and was an unbeatable master of aerial combat. He had a penetrating and amazing mind and was able to condense some of the most far-reaching innovative concepts of the early 20th Century —the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems— into an eight page thesis document, titled "Destruction and Creation" that helps to understand in simpler terms why there will never be a Total System of All-Knowledge and why all learning and growth comes from a dialectic of openness and outwardness rather than a turn inward and away-from. I cannot do it all justice, but please start from this (https://www.goalsys.com/books/documents/DESTRUCTION_AND_CREATION.pdf).
One of the most significant things Boyd developed was his idea of the oodaloop, a conceptual tool for understanding, grasping, and controlling how concepts become actions. Essentially, the oodaloop describes an embodied mental process going from Observing to Orienting to Deciding to Acting —the OODA loop, but Boyd pronounces it as one quick word. While the simplified versions of his idea present this as four stations you pass through, the more complex version Boyd actively worked with in teaching (and living out) this model shows that the process is non-linear, interactive, constantly engaged/engaging —it is how we live if we are curious, inventive, dedicated, and wilful. Boyd presents this in the context of an entire metanarrative of "winning and losing", as a particular way of approaching all "patterns of conflict" whereby one competes with another for limited resources/time/space, at both individual and societal, even as species, levels.
What Mathew describes as a mind virus with its debilitating features works alongside Boyd's oodaloop account.
Our observations are what we make of our environment, but they come to us through our bodies as well as through our conceptual frames, and these conceptual frames are both given to us and developed by us. They are given to us through our culture, our educators, our social values, our role models, and in a reflected way from those who motivate and challenge us as our own "recipients" —the people whom we teach, whom we are models for, who learn from us, whether the little ones in our lives or the coworkers coming onto our shifts, in how they respond and react to what we are doing, saying, choosing. We also inherit these frames, literally: we are our families' previous choices and the choices parents, grandparents, greater-grandparents, ancestors made in the context of challenges pushed upon them, choices made over the entire history of our family, our race, our ethnos, our species.
We are never simply passive in making observations, but we are also engaged in orienting ourselves within the world and within these frames. We make a judgment about what to engage with, how long to keep that engagement, when to receive and when to interact, and how to perform those interactions. Orienting ourselves is more than just knowing where you are locally, but also extends backwards and forwards, inward and outward, through spacetime for as much as you deem relevant to the context of those observations. This is why I can look at a data plot of COVID-19 statistics and it looks like fancy dots and lines but Mathew can look at it and quickly conclude things about not only what is being presented about the data but also *the intentions and framing* of those who compiled and presented the data: his conceptual space for orienting himself among the observations is vast compared to mine. But there will also be cases where, perhaps, my conceptual space is vast compated to his: orientation is not *simply* "subjective" but it is one of the essential and defining aspects of who and what we are *as* subjects —we are each of us the protagonist of the narrative of our lives.
So once we have reckoned ourselves with our observations, we must make decisions about what we are observing and how meaningful it all is: we must decide what to do, even if our decision is to ignore, go passive, think about dinner, or proofread someone else's comment. Our decisions, again, are not simply something that arises inside us but occur within a conceptual space that informs what a decision even *looks like* or *feels like* for us. If you are not even aware there is a decision you could make, you won't ever recognize that it is an option for consideration, for something you could decide to do. A culture constrains the choices and options for its people, but this is not always a Bad Thing —if you agree with Mathew's consistent use of 'kunlangeta' as a model for thinking about psychopaths amongst us, you already agree that there are choices and options that need to be constrained if our culture is to remain *a culture that's ours*.
And so once you have made your decision, it is nothing until you act —but not all actions flowing from a shared decision will look the same. A husband deciding to marry his wife has a made a similar decision to his wife deciding to marry him, but both of them will act out that decision in different ways, and, again, in ways that are as much rooted in those physical bodies they have defining them as 'husband' and 'wife' as they are grafted into social bodies constructed by these labels 'husband' and 'wife'. We are (at least) both physical beings and virtual ones existing within societies, and our societies exist in physical ways having thermodynamic limitations and efficiency tricks. How one performs action involves all those ethical, social, practical, physical, fiscal, spiritual, &cal dimensions, some of which are consciously involved in the action itself but perhaps most of which are felt as the "intuitive" background for why we did what we do —"Your honor, it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time."
See, I can't do all this justice and condense this down to something less than all these paragraphs. But the point of all this: a mind virus is a way to disturb the entire reasoning, deciding, acting process by breaking off an agent's oodaloop and disturbing the flow of it or otherwise constraining it. Having to respond to or address the viral in another uses up resources of your own, for your own conceptual flow through your own oodaloops. Competition and battle is about *tempo*, and someone with a very fast or tight oodaloop (which is not to say someone who thinks in *small loops*) will outperform and emerge victorious when in competition with someone with a very loose or degraded oodaloop. This is easy to understand with kinetic warfare, where if I can draw my gun faster than you I'll getcha, but you can also think about how someone with a "quick mind" can beat you at chess or checkers before you ever realize you've lost the game five moves ago. Psychological warfare —the infamous "psy op"— requires disrupting oodaloops by feeding into them false or conflicting information, constraining opponents' choices into pre-selected dead-ends or indefinite/indeterminate cycles (ever notice how trying to decide where to eat by running through all the options and tradeoffs and values takes so long that you end up either making a bad choice or none at all?), while also surveilling opponent reactions and responses through preemptively gathering together patterns of their choices. You can work quickly or slowly through the many historical examples Boyd uses to draw out this concept in fascinating ways in his "Patterns of Conflict" —where the sections on guerrilla warfare might be of great importance in understanding how a sovereign nation loses itself to an occupying force or how a decadent Empire collapses through concerted, parallel action. You can find this essay here (https://danford.net/boyd/) or there (https://www.coljohnboyd.com/static/documents/2018-03__Boyd_John_R__edited_Hammond_Grant_T__A_Discourse_on_Winning_and_Losing.pdf).
"Destruction and creation" gives a short synopsis for seeing that uncertainty causes a loss or a failure when it *turns the doubtful inward*, making them question their observations or their place in society or a world, thus closing off the flow, inward as well as outward, of information. Anxiety and alienation closes a person —or a people— off, from their friends, their history, their culture, their environment. At the same time people were removed from their workplaces and enclosed in homes they could no longer afford, they were also removed from the history of themselves as a people —all the good and bad, lessons and moral wisdom accumulated, from the ugly and the beauty of who they were and will be. Entropy increases in a closed system, forcing systemic derangements and breakdowns as the poop from the loop becomes the feed coming into it. Obsessions, delusions, greater divergence from reality: these are the products of a refusal or relucatance or retreat or regression from engagement with externalities that cannot be controlled, accepted, understood, *even conceptualized*. (Don't forget that your own history is part of this *external* environment: it is an aspect of reality which you cannot control, cannot deny, cannot erase without severe disruption to your ability to orient and decide!) As the products of disordered, destructive thinking and acting, delusions, obsessions, anxieties inevitably destroy the system producing them.
A psychopath is inherently incapable of sustaining their own lives because they are disconnected and removed from the larger orientation within which they have their life and their being —not just the social world of others but the physical planet beneath them and the starry heavens above them. All psychopaths inevitably self-destruct and implode when they pursue their choices, as brute force cannot overturn the dialectical engine or keep it running. But they can survive for long enough, just as sick and diseased forms of life, being a part of nature, participate in it long enough to become the food and homes for evolving forms of life. Only openness, thoughtfulness, humble but wilful engagement with the social and the physical (as well as the spiritual, the formal) will encourage growth and evolution and life —or find a way to reconcile peacefully with the inevitability of death and destruction. The systems created and sustained by the psychopaths *are breaking down*. That is why we see the poop accumulating everywhere. The outlandish push for control will fail —but for some of us not in our lifetimes, as others have already suffered and many are currently suffering and an even greater number have finished in their suffering altogether.
A push, well-placed, well-timed, well-orchestrated and delivered with the confidence of one's convictions, can definitely help. This is obvious to the psychopaths who are quite intelligent enough to know who their enemies are. This is why the boots have begun marching and stamping upon the faces of the world. But we who are guided by Love for them, for others, for what is to come and what was, we must make great use of what we have observed, know our places and this moment in history, decide to do what is effective in concert with others of similar Guidance, and act.
The Marxists have seemingly been after the family unit and religion for some time. Hence, that horizontal transmission of "values." Family and faith are two of the strongest pillars holding together our societies. It has been increasingly difficult for many to maintain parental authority, when the education system is run by a generation indoctrinated into Marxiist principles. Many of us raised in earlier decades recognized the slippery slope, but were relegated to hurried whispers, expressing our displeasure behind closed doors, as many younger educators and administrators embraced what was setting off red-flags. E.g., political correctness gone amok, such as "thou must preach the religion of climate change," whilst big companies were given permits to dump raw sewage or take spring water to bottle from communities that were suffering drought (Ontario). Then, there was the march in the education system toward "encouraging" children they could be any gender they liked, in the name of "inclusion."
Fast forward a decade. In 2020, the world watched in disbelief as Portland burned, and a CNN reporter stood in front of the burning chaos reporting on a "mainly peaceful" protest. Family businesses, including Black-owners, were distraught, seeing their life's work destroyed. Calls to defund the police ensued, and many of us knew then, that this would not end well. Nothing made sense.
Now, Australians are under siege and not a chirp from the MSM. And despite the gaslighting, we know that what we are experiencing across the Western world is the destruction of society from the inside out. Small businesses have/are being destroyed, and families are being torn apart by the new religion: The Cult of Covid. The injections are preached as the "saviour," with the Pope going so far as to call getting inoculated, "an act of love." God, please deliver us (and I am Catholic).
The societal implosion appears to have been in the works for some time. Regardless of personal beliefs or faith, I think most would agree that a person who believes in a higher power (in my case, the God of Christianity) is not so easily broken or enslaved. And a family that is tightly woven together, will not be so easily torn apart.
I've had a good run - I believe growing up in the 70s was one of the best of times. But I despair for the children, including my own, while I remain grateful for all of the warriors, like Mathew, who continue to push against those who are driving this societal destruction.
Re-reading this posting as Mathew just posted it on Twitter, your comment was most observant in September 2021. Unfortunately months later, in April 2022, it is more accurate and even worse. These people are awful.
I've been reading Hayek and quite a few others lately. It's certainly enlightening...
Hayek is an essential read.
Please post link or suggest reading material for the uninitiated.
Enjoy!
https://mises.org/library/road-serfdom-0
I saw an edition (in a library) with a number of points summarising the work on the cover, and my impression at the time was that it was just another propagandistic tool of the already powerful to consolidate their power by framing the alternative warned against of leading to the very serfdom that they are already practising or seeking to practise. Was I wrong?
Yes. And an unforgettable Chapter 10: Why the Worst Get on Top.
So well said! Thank you for this articulate comment!
I'm perplexed by the widespread veneration of “faith”. Do you mean the maintenance and inculcation of a belief regardless of whether or not it's true, and disdain of attempts to falsify it (and social penalties for those who, genuinely open to the possibility of its succumbing to falsification, attempt to falsify it), in contradistinction to all other beliefs, thereby making an exception (on what grounds?) for this one belief?
What exactly do you mean by “a higher power”? One who, despite having failed to do so yet, will eventually deliver us (or some of us?) from all ill?
I used to believe in such a power, but after many decades I finally plucked up the courage to question it, and found that its wheels and wings fell off before it even got to the runway. Nevertheless I remain unbroken and tenaciously resistant to being enslaved. Why would I (or anyone) fall for enslavement to a “higher power“ (or to belief therein) instead? I see the propagation of this idea as just another doorway to tyranny. The good that “Christianity“ did in the first and second millennia was in SPITE of the idea of impending salvation.
I suspect that esteem for the cultivation of “faith” arises from the belief that only fear of posthumous punishment can motive people to be prosocial (moral)*. But how prosocial is the dictation by superiors of what to believe? What are the ramifications of enforcing “faith”? Keeping the facing of reality from all but a powerful few is tyranny writ large, regardless of what that reality is.
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*For the record I do NOT believe that only fear of posthumous punishment can motivate people to be prosocial. It is, with only rare exceptions, pro SELF to be prosocial. Human life is far, far from a zero-sum game. No invocation of a reckoning after death is needed to make it so.
It's hard to explain. I guess that is why in my church, the line "The mystery of faith" is included. I've always had it, as far back as I can remember, even though I was a rotten teenager, and I've done my share of sinning (sorry Mom and Dad). I had wide-exposure to different Christian faiths as a child, and I am now RC. In my post-rebel (without a cause) years, I did a lot of reading/learning re: mysteries of the universe. I really enjoyed "The Reason for God" and "The Code" (was on Netflix but no more). When I learned about the very basics of DNA and how our bodies work, that too left me in awe. I can't remember which book it was where I read this, but the probability of life springing up and evolving/differentiating to where it is now, is billions to one. Have you seen the mating ritual of the Japanese Pufferfish (more math)? I've read the New Testament twice. The Word speaks to me in a way that defies explanation. I've also had some very spiritual experiences that bordered on supernatural. These are just a few of my thoughts. Here's an analogy: Could you teach algebra to a cat? No, of course not, because they are limited by their biology. Likewise, we are limited by our physical bodies/human senses, but the Holy Spirit can transcend this gap and invite us to the table.
"What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.". ― Mark Twain.
“ if you I don’t read the news you’re uninformed; if you read the news you’re misinformed“ -Twain I think
Cut the Gordian knot by skipping the news completely, and go closer to the source, like our dear host here.
The Malthusian mind virus is key to explaining the behaviors of elites, but more important is explaining why the "underclass" constantly fails to organize and rally for an alternative. We do not actually *need* the elite in order to bring about a new and better system, we need a substantive consensus around a moral method of governance. What blocks this are various mind viruses concocted by state-sponsored charlatans ("philosophers"), e.g. the alleged is-ought gap and utilitarianism, which claims that moral principle is beyond the reach of reason. If that is so, then brute force is the only possible ultimate arbiter, and guess who benefits most from such conclusion? The status quo.
I think you list some of the elements, but there are many.
There is constant implicit blackmail. Some of this blackmail comes in the form of system monopoly or maintenance. If the kunlangeta disappeared all at once one day, we could be sure that there would be plenty of resulting chaos before order was restored. Many deaths.
That's part of the reason Game B is essential. We need to be building parallel society beneath the current one.
My point was that if "Game B" does not include (1) articulating specific, truthful, and complete moral and political fundamentals and (2) gathering a consensus around them then your "parallel society" will be plagued by the same kinds of problems as the original.
We have seen this failure mode many times throughout history: a semi-thoughtful reaction to frank and obvious tyranny, that refuses to frankly address moral fundamentals in order to create a "big tent", and then in spite of a promising start ultimately goes "poof." To quote Durant “Our political movements are conceived in impulse and developed in emotion; they end in fission and fragmentation because there is no thought behind them.”
What are these fundamentals? For starters, exactly what our status quo denies: there is such a thing as moral truth, justice, and the "objective" means of knowing these, namely reason, which employs empiricism, logic, and a complete openness to the whole truth (integrity). Rational civics must be rooted in a real "consent of the governed", not mob rule.
"My point was that if "Game B" does not include (1) articulating specific, truthful, and complete moral and political fundamentals and (2) gathering a consensus around them then your "parallel society" will be plagued by the same kinds of problems as the original."
We agree on the basic level. There doesn't need to be a universal protocol just yet, but communities need to be working as closely as possible on a fundamentally stable platform that incentivizes cooperation and production.
Yes on avoiding mob rule. In fact, I think that's explicitly part of the blackmail of the kunlangeta who study how best to provoke the zombie mob.
The establishment of commonly shared truths is needed, though it should always be understood that true science and reason might lead us to rearrange a few bricks in Chesterton's fence, but after the storm.
The storm never ends, this game of reacting to artificial emergencies goes on decade after decade. Some time and mental space should have been reserved for addressing the actual root problems; constantly kicking the can down the road just leads to more and more emergencies down the road.
You have a pyromaniac setting fires to your village, and I am saying we need to stop him, and you're saying you're too busy putting out fires to stop him, but after you're finished putting out the fires then maybe you'll consider it. In the end you'll have no village.
"..Trained into blindness regarding the roots of The Great Flattening, the Malthusian Mandarins never shake the mind virus. Their distorted perception congeals into mass psychosis. This in turn leaves them viciously blaming the underclasses, whom they self-train to abuse, and looking for ways to replace them with centralized automated technologies that result in actual GDP collapse." - Truer words have never been spoken. This paragraph makes me incredibly sad.
"roots of the Great Flattening" I thought I had a fairly good handle on this but Mathew is alluding to something beyond the consensus rationale? (I confess I believe/d it all to do with too much capital chasing too little productivity; a flaw in capitalism brought about by excessive financialisation)
We could put multiple economic/mathematic variables (more or less of each) into the equation (capital. productivity, financialization, etc., e.g) and try to dig deep into the roots of the flattening. Sure, there are tests to measure psychopathy and other disorders Malthusian Mandarins suffer from, too (if we could get CEOs to test). We could put all variables into the statistical mix and come up with numbers. But I'd rather view this through the psychological lens of collective trauma. The feeling of lack (all sort of lack) is a deep trauma reflected in every individual and collective pore. That's why we equate every upward curve with progress. And progress, increasing GDPs, and alike is good, right? Or is it? I'm just saying that growing GDP and continually "improving" technology doesn't always mean well-being. And we are seeing more and more of it as we speak...
"I'm just saying that growing GDP and continually "improving" technology doesn't always mean well-being."
Certainly GDP is not the true measure of the utility curve. It has been the best proxy during the "ordinary spans" of the fiat era, but the better future will include better proxies (or we'll be so wealthy that it will seem silly to stop and measure that). First, we may even be able to measure trauma (or at least pay it attention), which is currently something like an externality that the Malthusian Mandarins are tasked with both measuring and managing while pretending to ignore it. The breaking point we're headed toward now represents a lot of traume generating quickly between the gears of the machine.
Mathew this is quite an insight.
So, we can choose our response to these issues, mentally and physically. Just how do we push these people off the ice?
The problem right now is that they've designed the system to blow up if we do that.
There is no solution that does not involve building a civilization right underneath theirs. At that point, it's simply a matter of time until they self-destruct. They have poisoned their own ability to understand economics. They depend on slave labor, and even with vast amounts of it (all that money printing sucks up the value of labor in Asian, South America, and even the flyover states). This is why they're in freak-out mode now. The blockchain world threatens their power entirely, and they're losing the dollar while spending accrued value of slave labor sucked through it on...projects to make the system keep working.
It's going to fail.
It's going to be painful, but it will be least painful to those who start building now (or yesterday).
So it seems they're destroying the nuclear family and undermining our faith as a way to replace vertical influence with horizontal influence, giving them their control and power. And, you're saying the idea of a parallel society (Havel?) is our only chance to defeat it. Blockchain technology not only gives us parallel monetary structures, but can also give us parallel social, media and educational structures as well, that can be totally decentralized and not censorable.
Do you think there are many who realize the enormity of this idea and can help bring it about, thru their own actions or thru their influence? Is it happening at any significant rate, and is it inevitable?
We are not defenseless, nor is it hopeless.
Very interesting reading but I have an urgent concern. Can anyone refer me to a 1-2 page description of covid vaccine safety in children? Parents are under massive pressure to vaccinate their children. They receive information from “credible sources” like the CDC and FDA, and local health professionals who minimize known safety issues. We need an accurate, up-to-date, report that can be read by busy parents in 5 minutes and hopefully get their attention. I’m working on my own summary but if something already exists, it would be helpful for everyone interested in passing on accurate, clear, and balanced information as quickly as possible.
It is not 1 or 2 pages - but the first 1/3 gives you the most important points. Dr. Bridle had a stellar rep, 'till they came at him. He knows his stuff:https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/2021-06-15-children_and_covid-19_vaccines_full_guide.pdf
Much appreciated. Thank you.
I found the two-page summary:
https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Guide_to_COVID19_vaccines_for_parents_v5.pdf
Bridle is great. But I think that something like a 1 or 2 page flier is a solid idea.
The reality of busy people - no spare time. My own internist had never read the Pfizer and Moderna clinical studies nor any other health professional I've asked. Fortunately, I'm retired:).
Indeed. The busy family is the primary reason adults are primed for continued brainwashing after schooling is done.
Found Bridle's summary - see above.
Thanks. I can adjust this for a US audience.
Does that mean you're writing a two-pager?
If you put together something like a pamphlet, please share it with me and I will happily broadcast it.
Thx. I will let you know.
To really understand the level of control our hidden masters exert on the human race, there's an excellent documentary called "Human Resources". Folks like the Rockafellers were perfecting behavioral psychology a hundred years ago.
"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select — doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors." - John Watson
https://archive.org/details/HUMANRESOURCESSocialEngineeringInThe20thCentury
If you've ever wondered how a politician can be motivated to act so contrary to the interests of not just his constituents, but his own descendants, look up the term "Brownstone Operation". It's a reference to the type of activities carried out by the Mossad in Rep Barney Frank's Brownstone condominium. Which brings us to the subject of Epstein. "Epstein didn't kill himself" is a common refrain, but seldom do you ever hear anyone say "Epstein isn't dead" - https://youtu.be/9FeoeupYPBI?t=72
Speaking of Mr Tedros, Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO, who, as Health Minister, presided over the "disappearance" of 2.5 million ethnic rivals in Ethiopia, here's a window into the private life of this sort off elite. Granted, it's no brownstone, but it's typical of the double-life they lead, and which the media prevents us from ever seeing- https://youtu.be/lLFhhEbqtes
(I was at one point convinced this was a deepfake, but since coming across this high resolution version and contemplating the upward camera angle, and the disco lighting running across his face, I'm now confident this is authentic. You'll note he spots the camera recording him and is unfazed)
I was first exposed to the Malthus mind virus in 1970 in elementary school. The scholastic reader featured a story asserting desertification of the breadbasket states in the USA and zero oil by 2000 with food riots and mass deaths plus some mumbling about pollution killing everyone else. Nice work, pushing fear porn on 2nd graders. So I showed it to my dad who was a physics professor at the university of Kansas. He said it seemed like predicting the future wasn't very easy.
A few years after the Club of Rome came out with their garbage I was inoculated by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Robert Heinlein, and Keith Henson and the L5 Society. I realised that not only does technology break Malthus, but the space frontier lets us access the energy and resources of the Solar system to solve problems here. A little later it became obvious that the places to mine and refine to build a civilisation beyond the Earth are themselves beyond the Earth.
I read Malthus as a 15 year old in 1967, from my parents' Britannia Great Books. I did not have a mentor to dispute the thesis, and my father's side came to Ontario from County Antrim during the potato famine.
I still mourn the passing of Jerry Pournelle and have not seen any evidence of a useful reactionless space drive.
I'm not sure how to understand your thoughts here. I held an SF convention in Houston in 1993 and Jerry was guest of honour. I didn't understand the extreme animosity that came from the Houston fan community at the time. Still don't. It's probably not Jerry's fault about the reactionless drive. He was in a very bad way in 2016 when we talked at the worldcon in Kansas City. But we got a bit of time to say goodbye. I pray for his soul in Purgatory. Please pray the prayer of Saint Gertrude the Great for the holy souls in Purgatory. It helps.
I don't know what to say.
I can be a bit terse and obscure. It took me some decades to understand that situations change, sometimes even improve, and reexamine some Malthusian concepts.
I hassle the local municipal council occasionally about their "Net-Zero" anti CO2 programme. Population has increased from 1 to 8 billion over 140 years due to oil- we live on energy and most of our food requires diesel.
I would love to have access to a reactionless drive. Having had my travel "privilege" removed, I think of James Blish's "Cities in Flight" as a potential solution to the present globalist ambition.
You must cherish your personal meetings with Dr. Pournelle. Someone else will have to invent the drive.
Best,
R
Your analysis continues to be fascinating and well thought out. I've been reading The Gulag Archipelago and it's fascinating how this offers a great view of how thinking can go massively wrong similar to the book.
> The role of intellectual property law in preventing vast amounts of investment in the growth and spread of technology, which in turn drives economic growth ...
I'm curious to hear your thoughts about intellectual property law.
This is possibly the topic about which I am most radical. The three pieces to IP law that I consider are: Patents, Copyright and trademarks. If it were up to me, I would eliminate the concepts of patents and copyright after a ~2 year sunset period during which no new patents would be awarded. I have less objection to the concept of trademarks; particularly where trademark enforcement is used to prevent fraud.
My chief objection is the straight-forward point that IP law attempts to regulate the flow of ideas as though it were a flow of matter, which it is not. States should never have been given legal right to regulate the flow of ideas in the first place.
That isn't to say that there aren't arguably up-sides to IP law for a nation. But that isn't sufficient justification for policy that takes away peoples' freedoms -- after all, there's also arguably an up-side (for most people) to murdering a quarter of the population and divvying up their resources.
Thinking of, or acting on, an idea (e.g. a new technology or a new movie) first should not give you any legal right to control the distribution of that idea or how it is used.
Very thoughtful, as always. I agree about the power of mind viruses and memes. Population rate has slowed but overall population has grown and every person's life is powered by energy of some form. You might find this interesting. It takes quite a few years and lots of money to build the nuclear plants needed. Not sure we can bridge the gap between where we are now and what would be needed to power our civilization. So called renewables aren't going to do it, that's for sure.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/09/26/the-march-of-folly/
Well said.
The great Asha Logos has released a new video "A Call for Parallel Institutions" revealing the psychology of those who make up the great majority of those carrying implementing this crime against all that is Good, Beautiful and True. https://video.thesetruths.com/S7q11kg/asha-logos-a-call-for-parallel-institutions/
Hello, fellow coworkers. I want to introduce into this discussion a Great American Hero, Col. John Boyd. Some of you have probably heard of him and his influence on 20th Century military thinking and well beyond, but many more have never and likely won't ever, Col. Boyd was a great systematic and practical philosopher without having the "credentials" of the academic who worked in designing the F-16, had a hand in the A-10, and was an unbeatable master of aerial combat. He had a penetrating and amazing mind and was able to condense some of the most far-reaching innovative concepts of the early 20th Century —the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems— into an eight page thesis document, titled "Destruction and Creation" that helps to understand in simpler terms why there will never be a Total System of All-Knowledge and why all learning and growth comes from a dialectic of openness and outwardness rather than a turn inward and away-from. I cannot do it all justice, but please start from this (https://www.goalsys.com/books/documents/DESTRUCTION_AND_CREATION.pdf).
One of the most significant things Boyd developed was his idea of the oodaloop, a conceptual tool for understanding, grasping, and controlling how concepts become actions. Essentially, the oodaloop describes an embodied mental process going from Observing to Orienting to Deciding to Acting —the OODA loop, but Boyd pronounces it as one quick word. While the simplified versions of his idea present this as four stations you pass through, the more complex version Boyd actively worked with in teaching (and living out) this model shows that the process is non-linear, interactive, constantly engaged/engaging —it is how we live if we are curious, inventive, dedicated, and wilful. Boyd presents this in the context of an entire metanarrative of "winning and losing", as a particular way of approaching all "patterns of conflict" whereby one competes with another for limited resources/time/space, at both individual and societal, even as species, levels.
What Mathew describes as a mind virus with its debilitating features works alongside Boyd's oodaloop account.
Our observations are what we make of our environment, but they come to us through our bodies as well as through our conceptual frames, and these conceptual frames are both given to us and developed by us. They are given to us through our culture, our educators, our social values, our role models, and in a reflected way from those who motivate and challenge us as our own "recipients" —the people whom we teach, whom we are models for, who learn from us, whether the little ones in our lives or the coworkers coming onto our shifts, in how they respond and react to what we are doing, saying, choosing. We also inherit these frames, literally: we are our families' previous choices and the choices parents, grandparents, greater-grandparents, ancestors made in the context of challenges pushed upon them, choices made over the entire history of our family, our race, our ethnos, our species.
We are never simply passive in making observations, but we are also engaged in orienting ourselves within the world and within these frames. We make a judgment about what to engage with, how long to keep that engagement, when to receive and when to interact, and how to perform those interactions. Orienting ourselves is more than just knowing where you are locally, but also extends backwards and forwards, inward and outward, through spacetime for as much as you deem relevant to the context of those observations. This is why I can look at a data plot of COVID-19 statistics and it looks like fancy dots and lines but Mathew can look at it and quickly conclude things about not only what is being presented about the data but also *the intentions and framing* of those who compiled and presented the data: his conceptual space for orienting himself among the observations is vast compared to mine. But there will also be cases where, perhaps, my conceptual space is vast compated to his: orientation is not *simply* "subjective" but it is one of the essential and defining aspects of who and what we are *as* subjects —we are each of us the protagonist of the narrative of our lives.
So once we have reckoned ourselves with our observations, we must make decisions about what we are observing and how meaningful it all is: we must decide what to do, even if our decision is to ignore, go passive, think about dinner, or proofread someone else's comment. Our decisions, again, are not simply something that arises inside us but occur within a conceptual space that informs what a decision even *looks like* or *feels like* for us. If you are not even aware there is a decision you could make, you won't ever recognize that it is an option for consideration, for something you could decide to do. A culture constrains the choices and options for its people, but this is not always a Bad Thing —if you agree with Mathew's consistent use of 'kunlangeta' as a model for thinking about psychopaths amongst us, you already agree that there are choices and options that need to be constrained if our culture is to remain *a culture that's ours*.
And so once you have made your decision, it is nothing until you act —but not all actions flowing from a shared decision will look the same. A husband deciding to marry his wife has a made a similar decision to his wife deciding to marry him, but both of them will act out that decision in different ways, and, again, in ways that are as much rooted in those physical bodies they have defining them as 'husband' and 'wife' as they are grafted into social bodies constructed by these labels 'husband' and 'wife'. We are (at least) both physical beings and virtual ones existing within societies, and our societies exist in physical ways having thermodynamic limitations and efficiency tricks. How one performs action involves all those ethical, social, practical, physical, fiscal, spiritual, &cal dimensions, some of which are consciously involved in the action itself but perhaps most of which are felt as the "intuitive" background for why we did what we do —"Your honor, it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time."
See, I can't do all this justice and condense this down to something less than all these paragraphs. But the point of all this: a mind virus is a way to disturb the entire reasoning, deciding, acting process by breaking off an agent's oodaloop and disturbing the flow of it or otherwise constraining it. Having to respond to or address the viral in another uses up resources of your own, for your own conceptual flow through your own oodaloops. Competition and battle is about *tempo*, and someone with a very fast or tight oodaloop (which is not to say someone who thinks in *small loops*) will outperform and emerge victorious when in competition with someone with a very loose or degraded oodaloop. This is easy to understand with kinetic warfare, where if I can draw my gun faster than you I'll getcha, but you can also think about how someone with a "quick mind" can beat you at chess or checkers before you ever realize you've lost the game five moves ago. Psychological warfare —the infamous "psy op"— requires disrupting oodaloops by feeding into them false or conflicting information, constraining opponents' choices into pre-selected dead-ends or indefinite/indeterminate cycles (ever notice how trying to decide where to eat by running through all the options and tradeoffs and values takes so long that you end up either making a bad choice or none at all?), while also surveilling opponent reactions and responses through preemptively gathering together patterns of their choices. You can work quickly or slowly through the many historical examples Boyd uses to draw out this concept in fascinating ways in his "Patterns of Conflict" —where the sections on guerrilla warfare might be of great importance in understanding how a sovereign nation loses itself to an occupying force or how a decadent Empire collapses through concerted, parallel action. You can find this essay here (https://danford.net/boyd/) or there (https://www.coljohnboyd.com/static/documents/2018-03__Boyd_John_R__edited_Hammond_Grant_T__A_Discourse_on_Winning_and_Losing.pdf).
"Destruction and creation" gives a short synopsis for seeing that uncertainty causes a loss or a failure when it *turns the doubtful inward*, making them question their observations or their place in society or a world, thus closing off the flow, inward as well as outward, of information. Anxiety and alienation closes a person —or a people— off, from their friends, their history, their culture, their environment. At the same time people were removed from their workplaces and enclosed in homes they could no longer afford, they were also removed from the history of themselves as a people —all the good and bad, lessons and moral wisdom accumulated, from the ugly and the beauty of who they were and will be. Entropy increases in a closed system, forcing systemic derangements and breakdowns as the poop from the loop becomes the feed coming into it. Obsessions, delusions, greater divergence from reality: these are the products of a refusal or relucatance or retreat or regression from engagement with externalities that cannot be controlled, accepted, understood, *even conceptualized*. (Don't forget that your own history is part of this *external* environment: it is an aspect of reality which you cannot control, cannot deny, cannot erase without severe disruption to your ability to orient and decide!) As the products of disordered, destructive thinking and acting, delusions, obsessions, anxieties inevitably destroy the system producing them.
A psychopath is inherently incapable of sustaining their own lives because they are disconnected and removed from the larger orientation within which they have their life and their being —not just the social world of others but the physical planet beneath them and the starry heavens above them. All psychopaths inevitably self-destruct and implode when they pursue their choices, as brute force cannot overturn the dialectical engine or keep it running. But they can survive for long enough, just as sick and diseased forms of life, being a part of nature, participate in it long enough to become the food and homes for evolving forms of life. Only openness, thoughtfulness, humble but wilful engagement with the social and the physical (as well as the spiritual, the formal) will encourage growth and evolution and life —or find a way to reconcile peacefully with the inevitability of death and destruction. The systems created and sustained by the psychopaths *are breaking down*. That is why we see the poop accumulating everywhere. The outlandish push for control will fail —but for some of us not in our lifetimes, as others have already suffered and many are currently suffering and an even greater number have finished in their suffering altogether.
A push, well-placed, well-timed, well-orchestrated and delivered with the confidence of one's convictions, can definitely help. This is obvious to the psychopaths who are quite intelligent enough to know who their enemies are. This is why the boots have begun marching and stamping upon the faces of the world. But we who are guided by Love for them, for others, for what is to come and what was, we must make great use of what we have observed, know our places and this moment in history, decide to do what is effective in concert with others of similar Guidance, and act.
By all means, Act.
Could the book have been “The Inner Game of Tennis”?
Not sure.