Thanks again for your analysis and courage. My big question is: how come that some of us are immune to all that disinformation? If we can find out why some people are more resilient to this propaganda and fake news, it could help to find ways to fight it.
Habits of critical thinking, evaluating different claims, and also - very important - being able to admit error, accept the humbling that comes with being wrong, and trying again.
I had to unfriend a perfectly nice acquaintance of mine a couple days ago because he posted a defense of that comedian’s offensive jokes at the T rally. Actually, not because of what he posted, but because his reaction to my retort was to accuse me of being in a cult. Talk about mirroring!
His friends, all members of a conservative rural community, started shit talking me. So I blocked them and unfriended him, after a series of strange DMs.
I take very seriously the notion that if you have 10 friends to dinner and you invite one Nazi/MAGA-surrectionist you now have 11 Nazis.
Their ideas are a social contagion that must be quarantined. They justify spreading their absurd and dangerous ideas behind cynical “free speech “ arguments. Methinks the same mindset applies to maskholes.
As I tap this out my liberal instincts kick in and make me pause and wonder “am I the baddie now?” Shouldn’t free speech and the marketplace of ideas be sacrosanct? Who am I to tell people they have no right to spread ideas, even the most deplorable ones?
To that Old Liberal in say: That’s all well and good for healthy, functioning society. We are not. We are hell-bent on destroying everything we hold dear for the sake of “progress and prosperity.” We show little respect for indigenous peoples and their collective wisdom, who most certainly have a different view on what constitutes “free speech.” Look what happens to them when exposed to Western culture, our drugs, germs and steel.
Likewise, we have been infected by a novel, engineered mind virus. Memes, in the Dawkins sense. (Many parallels to Covid, which may have been engineered too.) Our body politic has a high fever and the prognosis is worrying.
Well said. The "free speech in the marketplace of ideas" assumes a rational population . . . or that humans in general are rational. I think the vast majority of people have close to no actual mindful control over their behaviors and choices--most are just instinctively and emotionally reacting. This is not an insult, just the way it is. I am not calling for limits of speech either, but it would be nice if we had a greater recognition of our collective irrationality--which is why the old saw of "can't yell fire in a crowded theatre" still makes sense.
“Personally, I believe the collapse we see in the collective American psyche is the result of masterful PsyOp techniques, orchestrated by the worlds’ autocrats aligned with a number of Right Wing billionaires in finance, technology, and fossil fuels. Billions of dollars have gone into this disruptive attack….. It doesn’t occur to them that if so much effort is being made to subvert it by the worst actors and our foreign enemies — pouring billions into this election — it is probably worth preserving.”
You somewhat answer your question here but why is this? Why is this form of government so threatening?
The alternative is monarchy / tyranny at large scales. People won their right to participate in their own governance through the revolutions of the 18th century. I know our system is flawed but I do not think we want to go back to dictatorship. I would rather we go forward into more participatory governance, but that isn’t on the menu on Tuesday
So grateful for your ongoing efforts, DP, tackling this situation from so many important angles. One that I haven’t yet heard you address with regard to Musk, is his openly stated endgame of achieving multiplanetary civilization. He has indicated several times that this is his primary motivation for getting into politics. It’s clear he’s an absolute megalomaniac seeking to commandeer aspects of government to forcefully accomplish this mission, which would require trillions in resources, is guaranteed to fail, and will irreversibly damage the upper atmosphere in the process. Trump is already on board bragging that Musk will help us win the space race to reach Mars by 2028. Still feel we need to carefully examine the transhumanist and technocratic worldviews driving these agendas. Musk perversely believes environmentalists are misanthropic and “extinctionist” when it’s precisely his own catastrophically short-sighted backwards-priority aims that will accelerate biosphere collapse and human extinction.
I spent far too much time looking for approval and recognition for things I thought I accomplished in life, when the reality is that I had very little to do with said accomplishments.
BF Skinner and Dennis Lehane finally set me straight. Skinner illustrated the crucial role environment plays in shaping behaviors. Lehane summed it all up in a few paragraphs on “Luck.”
I’ve been lucky all my life, or, at least I’ve been luckier than most, perhaps not as lucky as some. Although the circumstances of my upbringing have been the source of enormous self-pity, those same circumstances prepared me to respond to encounters with people and events in such a way that I was fortunate enough to find work I loved for three quarters of my 52 year working history
Luck
“Every breath, son, is luck. Achievement? Depends on luck – to be born in the right place at the right time and be of the right color. To live long enough to be in the right place at the right time to make one’s fortune. Yes, hard work and talent make up the difference. They are crucial, and you know I’d never argue different. But the foundation of all lives is luck. Good or bad. Luck is life and life is luck. And it’s leaking from the moment it lands in your hand.
“… … Sometimes you make your luck. But other times it makes you.”
Dennis Lehane, “Live by Night.”
“… … Sometimes you make your luck. But other times it makes you.”
I'm surprised to see you hype Biden's economic record so wholeheartedly. I never understood why you and almost everyone resisted recognizing the positive aspects of Biden's stewardship of the country post-COVID. instead of expressing relief that vaccines were administered, lives saved, and the economy revived, most of America whined about inflation [and life-saving vaccines!!], arguably the one easily spotted domestic downside of Biden's term. Instead of acknowledging that the cure for Trump's eonomic and public health catastrophe might have some (minor, in my view, consididering the severity of the crisis) side effects and require a bit of sacrifice and social solidarity, America, including the "alt" left, turned unto a nation of whining, cynical soreheads. It didn't help that Biden was old and beginning to slip, of course, but this seemed like an extremely minor deficit since the nation was rebounding so very well. As you've articulated so well, much of this malaise can be attributed to the fracturing of consensus reality by Fox News, social media, snd foreign psyops.
May God Help Us All. For what it's worth, I re-read an interview I did with Jose Argüelles in 2003 about calendar change - and it really got me thinking again about this. He really felt at the time, that if we did not implement calendar change before/by 2012, then we will be in big trouble. Seems that we are so stuck in artificial time frequency 12:60, and now the "machine" is out of control and headed toward self-destruction. Some Jose excerpts from my interview:
"... life on Earth is going to be evolving and mutating. So, we have to be ready for that. This whole artificial junkie civilization, this technosphere, is like a big tinker toy set. It's going to come down. It's starting to come down right now. The first big signal was the 9/11. The question is: is it going to come down because of war and natural disasters, which have been engendered by human species operating on wrong time and artificial technology? Or is it going to come down because the human species got the intelligence to figure out that it had to change its frequency?
This gets back to the point of the calendar. It looks like a very simple little device, but the point of it is to change the frequency of human consciousness so that the human consciousness is in tune with the natural cosmic order of reality and in that way it can become in tune with the natural cosmic order in time to be ready for 2012.
That's why this 2004 date is so critical. Really it's the last moment, the last opportunity to get the calendar change and to give the human species enough time, it's like eight years, to shift its consciousness. A lot can happen in eight years if you are in the right frequency. A lot can happen in the wrong frequency too. If we continue eight years after 2004 in the wrong frequency, then your 2012 worst case scenarios are a sure bet."
Daniel I am grateful for your thoughts and perspective. I too am hoping and praying that sanity prevails. I try to have compassion for the unseeing but right now I'm very anxious. Never ever considered that I would live in a dictatorship. Still hoping...
Daniel, I appreciate your posts so much. They're always fresh and courageous. Thank you.
Thanks again for your analysis and courage. My big question is: how come that some of us are immune to all that disinformation? If we can find out why some people are more resilient to this propaganda and fake news, it could help to find ways to fight it.
Habits of critical thinking, evaluating different claims, and also - very important - being able to admit error, accept the humbling that comes with being wrong, and trying again.
the trouble is, everyone thinks they are immune and only posting the good stuff
I had to unfriend a perfectly nice acquaintance of mine a couple days ago because he posted a defense of that comedian’s offensive jokes at the T rally. Actually, not because of what he posted, but because his reaction to my retort was to accuse me of being in a cult. Talk about mirroring!
His friends, all members of a conservative rural community, started shit talking me. So I blocked them and unfriended him, after a series of strange DMs.
I take very seriously the notion that if you have 10 friends to dinner and you invite one Nazi/MAGA-surrectionist you now have 11 Nazis.
Their ideas are a social contagion that must be quarantined. They justify spreading their absurd and dangerous ideas behind cynical “free speech “ arguments. Methinks the same mindset applies to maskholes.
As I tap this out my liberal instincts kick in and make me pause and wonder “am I the baddie now?” Shouldn’t free speech and the marketplace of ideas be sacrosanct? Who am I to tell people they have no right to spread ideas, even the most deplorable ones?
To that Old Liberal in say: That’s all well and good for healthy, functioning society. We are not. We are hell-bent on destroying everything we hold dear for the sake of “progress and prosperity.” We show little respect for indigenous peoples and their collective wisdom, who most certainly have a different view on what constitutes “free speech.” Look what happens to them when exposed to Western culture, our drugs, germs and steel.
Likewise, we have been infected by a novel, engineered mind virus. Memes, in the Dawkins sense. (Many parallels to Covid, which may have been engineered too.) Our body politic has a high fever and the prognosis is worrying.
Well said. The "free speech in the marketplace of ideas" assumes a rational population . . . or that humans in general are rational. I think the vast majority of people have close to no actual mindful control over their behaviors and choices--most are just instinctively and emotionally reacting. This is not an insult, just the way it is. I am not calling for limits of speech either, but it would be nice if we had a greater recognition of our collective irrationality--which is why the old saw of "can't yell fire in a crowded theatre" still makes sense.
“Personally, I believe the collapse we see in the collective American psyche is the result of masterful PsyOp techniques, orchestrated by the worlds’ autocrats aligned with a number of Right Wing billionaires in finance, technology, and fossil fuels. Billions of dollars have gone into this disruptive attack….. It doesn’t occur to them that if so much effort is being made to subvert it by the worst actors and our foreign enemies — pouring billions into this election — it is probably worth preserving.”
You somewhat answer your question here but why is this? Why is this form of government so threatening?
The alternative is monarchy / tyranny at large scales. People won their right to participate in their own governance through the revolutions of the 18th century. I know our system is flawed but I do not think we want to go back to dictatorship. I would rather we go forward into more participatory governance, but that isn’t on the menu on Tuesday
So grateful for your ongoing efforts, DP, tackling this situation from so many important angles. One that I haven’t yet heard you address with regard to Musk, is his openly stated endgame of achieving multiplanetary civilization. He has indicated several times that this is his primary motivation for getting into politics. It’s clear he’s an absolute megalomaniac seeking to commandeer aspects of government to forcefully accomplish this mission, which would require trillions in resources, is guaranteed to fail, and will irreversibly damage the upper atmosphere in the process. Trump is already on board bragging that Musk will help us win the space race to reach Mars by 2028. Still feel we need to carefully examine the transhumanist and technocratic worldviews driving these agendas. Musk perversely believes environmentalists are misanthropic and “extinctionist” when it’s precisely his own catastrophically short-sighted backwards-priority aims that will accelerate biosphere collapse and human extinction.
I spent far too much time looking for approval and recognition for things I thought I accomplished in life, when the reality is that I had very little to do with said accomplishments.
BF Skinner and Dennis Lehane finally set me straight. Skinner illustrated the crucial role environment plays in shaping behaviors. Lehane summed it all up in a few paragraphs on “Luck.”
I’ve been lucky all my life, or, at least I’ve been luckier than most, perhaps not as lucky as some. Although the circumstances of my upbringing have been the source of enormous self-pity, those same circumstances prepared me to respond to encounters with people and events in such a way that I was fortunate enough to find work I loved for three quarters of my 52 year working history
Luck
“Every breath, son, is luck. Achievement? Depends on luck – to be born in the right place at the right time and be of the right color. To live long enough to be in the right place at the right time to make one’s fortune. Yes, hard work and talent make up the difference. They are crucial, and you know I’d never argue different. But the foundation of all lives is luck. Good or bad. Luck is life and life is luck. And it’s leaking from the moment it lands in your hand.
“… … Sometimes you make your luck. But other times it makes you.”
Dennis Lehane, “Live by Night.”
“… … Sometimes you make your luck. But other times it makes you.”
Dennis Lehane, “Live by Night.”
I'm surprised to see you hype Biden's economic record so wholeheartedly. I never understood why you and almost everyone resisted recognizing the positive aspects of Biden's stewardship of the country post-COVID. instead of expressing relief that vaccines were administered, lives saved, and the economy revived, most of America whined about inflation [and life-saving vaccines!!], arguably the one easily spotted domestic downside of Biden's term. Instead of acknowledging that the cure for Trump's eonomic and public health catastrophe might have some (minor, in my view, consididering the severity of the crisis) side effects and require a bit of sacrifice and social solidarity, America, including the "alt" left, turned unto a nation of whining, cynical soreheads. It didn't help that Biden was old and beginning to slip, of course, but this seemed like an extremely minor deficit since the nation was rebounding so very well. As you've articulated so well, much of this malaise can be attributed to the fracturing of consensus reality by Fox News, social media, snd foreign psyops.
"America, including the "alt" left, turned unto a nation of whining, cynical soreheads." -- Yep, a society of entitled children.
May God Help Us All. For what it's worth, I re-read an interview I did with Jose Argüelles in 2003 about calendar change - and it really got me thinking again about this. He really felt at the time, that if we did not implement calendar change before/by 2012, then we will be in big trouble. Seems that we are so stuck in artificial time frequency 12:60, and now the "machine" is out of control and headed toward self-destruction. Some Jose excerpts from my interview:
"... life on Earth is going to be evolving and mutating. So, we have to be ready for that. This whole artificial junkie civilization, this technosphere, is like a big tinker toy set. It's going to come down. It's starting to come down right now. The first big signal was the 9/11. The question is: is it going to come down because of war and natural disasters, which have been engendered by human species operating on wrong time and artificial technology? Or is it going to come down because the human species got the intelligence to figure out that it had to change its frequency?
This gets back to the point of the calendar. It looks like a very simple little device, but the point of it is to change the frequency of human consciousness so that the human consciousness is in tune with the natural cosmic order of reality and in that way it can become in tune with the natural cosmic order in time to be ready for 2012.
That's why this 2004 date is so critical. Really it's the last moment, the last opportunity to get the calendar change and to give the human species enough time, it's like eight years, to shift its consciousness. A lot can happen in eight years if you are in the right frequency. A lot can happen in the wrong frequency too. If we continue eight years after 2004 in the wrong frequency, then your 2012 worst case scenarios are a sure bet."
Full read:
https://philzone.com/interviews/jose/jose.html
Daniel I am grateful for your thoughts and perspective. I too am hoping and praying that sanity prevails. I try to have compassion for the unseeing but right now I'm very anxious. Never ever considered that I would live in a dictatorship. Still hoping...
A cogent analysis of the dire political projections that we the people will overcome. Someday. Next week?