Great group. Great craic. I was inspired by a documentary about Britain under the Blitz recently. It's all about human solidarity, an entire society pulling together, each citizen with an oar in the water. It's the kind of imagery that works especially well for those of us who are White and of a certain age, but it's still very moving and inspiring. For me, it puts the lie to the claim from the reactionary right that collectivist action and the pooling of resources are illegitimate, communist, or corrosive of individual liberties. Human solidarity is how we as a race survived all of our ordeals. Seeing how the Brits rise to the moment while under siege by the Nazis fills the heart with hope for humankind.
Love this conversation. Each one of you contributed in such a deep and meaningful way.
Fwiw. I think it was Aldous Huxley who made the point that LSD shouldn't be taken by large percentage of humanity - that a prerequisite should be a refined, cultivated mind....or something like that. I can't remember exactly how he put it.
The 1st adapters of cultural phenomena, you described brought it to mind. These types aren't anywhere near 1st adapters.
Tech bros are blessed with great intellect, but coarse minds, so not suited to the experience. And, if anything that stoned sense of detachment removes them from the objective world in which we struggle and into amoral solipsism.
It's important to point out we are living in very complex times to figure things out properly we need additional senses of ourselves developed. These dormant senses are what saves us ...
I love Douglas's lingering remnant of faith and hope, hung over from a GD concert in the 80s, that because rich assholes embibed psychedelics they somewhere deep inside have some mystic recognition of Life and the healing required for us to continue to survive on the earth. This feels a bit like holding out hope that fanatical Christian Nationalists will wake up to compassion and empathy for poor immigrants because in their dewy-eyed youth they once felt an inner call and made their way down to the altar at a tent revival meeting to embrace John 3:16 and be born again in Jesus.
Psychedelics generate huge energies. And Trump generates the strongest energies of all! Of course if your spending decades blitzing your sense of perception with these drugs, you will be as vulnerable to such exciting power based energies as moths to a flame.
What about all the reporting on how these riots are being funded and orchestrated? Even from one of the Walmart heirs? Oh the irony! And reporting about antifa? It’s not something “made up”. I really feel like you guys don’t get or understand the masses.
Hi Stacey, Yes the Walmart heir is funding one of the No Kings protests. Do you know what? The billionaires behind the Heritage Foundation funded the Tea Party and other social movements. I would imagine some of the White Nationalist groups are funded by billionaires too. Obviously when we are talking about mass actions, there will be some bad actors even in largely peaceful demonstrations. But also, it is a tried-and-true tactic of authoritarians to use agents to foment violence and destruction in order to create further opportunities for repression. People are sad and angry because they are seeing people they care about who actually contribute even in humble ways to our society ripped from their homes and lives, in some cases put into foreign concentration camps without any due process or Habeus Corpus. This is just totally against the U.S. Constitution. Also, the attack on illegal immigrants is basically a misdirection against where people should be focusing their rage, which is against oligarchy and its control over our society for its own benefit.
Hi Daniel, I understand. I lived in LA for 15 years. I too am appalled. Thank you for the education on the Tea Party. I suppose nothing anymore is truly organic. It takes a lot of energy to try and understand this chaos. I’m hearing last presidents did the same, for example Clinton, exported with no due process, even American citizens. I do not support the duopoly at the end of the day. Political parties are inherently corrupt, and it feels like there will never be any solutions. Unfortunately humanity goes in circles, not accention.
We have to come back to the spirit by way of the intellect. And that, you see, is the task of anthroposophy. It has no wish to do what would please many people, that is, to bring primitive conditions back to humanity-ancient Indian wisdom, for example. It is nonsense when people harp on that.
Anthroposophy, on the other hand, sets value on a return to the spirit, but a return to the spirit precisely in full possession of the intellect, with the intellect fully alive. It is important, gentlemen, and must be borne strictly in mind, that we have nothing at all against the intellect; rather, the point is that we have to go forward with it. Originally human beings had spirit without intellect; then the spirit gradually fell away and the intellect increased. Now, by means of the intellect, we have to regain the spirit. Culture is obliged to take this course.
If it does not do so — well, gentlemen, people are always saying that the World War was unlike anything ever experienced before, and it is indeed a fact that men have never before so viciously torn one another to pieces. But if men refuse to take the course of returning to the spirit and bringing their intellect with them, then still greater wars will come upon us, wars that will become more and more savage. Men will really destroy one another as the two rats did that, shut up together in a cage, gnawed at each other till there was nothing left of them but two tails. That is putting it rather brutally, but in fact mankind is on the way to total extermination. It is very important to know this.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 354 – The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars: Lecture VIII – Dornach, 6th August 1924
J Hansen, loved your quote. I mite say of tech bros-great engineering minds but otherwise not completely baked! Their proclivities have them arrested in a mix of quantum computing and greed. I don’t think they can see it. (I mean, I can’t see things about myself sometimes that are right in front of my nose). It’s in our species.
This leads into the topic of right wing psychedelic use and totalitarianism.
Any unchecked human activity is eventually going to destroy itself.
Unchecked capitalism is running out of things to capitalize.
Psy use has become capitalized.
It doesn’t mean the insight gained isn’t real. It’s just that the value of psy use has been monetized.
Seems the only thing left to monetize (more) is humanity. That requires democratic demise and an unimaginable wealth gap.
Great group. Great craic. I was inspired by a documentary about Britain under the Blitz recently. It's all about human solidarity, an entire society pulling together, each citizen with an oar in the water. It's the kind of imagery that works especially well for those of us who are White and of a certain age, but it's still very moving and inspiring. For me, it puts the lie to the claim from the reactionary right that collectivist action and the pooling of resources are illegitimate, communist, or corrosive of individual liberties. Human solidarity is how we as a race survived all of our ordeals. Seeing how the Brits rise to the moment while under siege by the Nazis fills the heart with hope for humankind.
Gosh. Well said! Way too much emphasis placed on the individual for many decades now.
Love this conversation. Each one of you contributed in such a deep and meaningful way.
Fwiw. I think it was Aldous Huxley who made the point that LSD shouldn't be taken by large percentage of humanity - that a prerequisite should be a refined, cultivated mind....or something like that. I can't remember exactly how he put it.
The 1st adapters of cultural phenomena, you described brought it to mind. These types aren't anywhere near 1st adapters.
Tech bros are blessed with great intellect, but coarse minds, so not suited to the experience. And, if anything that stoned sense of detachment removes them from the objective world in which we struggle and into amoral solipsism.
It's important to point out we are living in very complex times to figure things out properly we need additional senses of ourselves developed. These dormant senses are what saves us ...
I love Douglas's lingering remnant of faith and hope, hung over from a GD concert in the 80s, that because rich assholes embibed psychedelics they somewhere deep inside have some mystic recognition of Life and the healing required for us to continue to survive on the earth. This feels a bit like holding out hope that fanatical Christian Nationalists will wake up to compassion and empathy for poor immigrants because in their dewy-eyed youth they once felt an inner call and made their way down to the altar at a tent revival meeting to embrace John 3:16 and be born again in Jesus.
Psychedelics generate huge energies. And Trump generates the strongest energies of all! Of course if your spending decades blitzing your sense of perception with these drugs, you will be as vulnerable to such exciting power based energies as moths to a flame.
What about all the reporting on how these riots are being funded and orchestrated? Even from one of the Walmart heirs? Oh the irony! And reporting about antifa? It’s not something “made up”. I really feel like you guys don’t get or understand the masses.
Hi Stacey, Yes the Walmart heir is funding one of the No Kings protests. Do you know what? The billionaires behind the Heritage Foundation funded the Tea Party and other social movements. I would imagine some of the White Nationalist groups are funded by billionaires too. Obviously when we are talking about mass actions, there will be some bad actors even in largely peaceful demonstrations. But also, it is a tried-and-true tactic of authoritarians to use agents to foment violence and destruction in order to create further opportunities for repression. People are sad and angry because they are seeing people they care about who actually contribute even in humble ways to our society ripped from their homes and lives, in some cases put into foreign concentration camps without any due process or Habeus Corpus. This is just totally against the U.S. Constitution. Also, the attack on illegal immigrants is basically a misdirection against where people should be focusing their rage, which is against oligarchy and its control over our society for its own benefit.
Hi Daniel, I understand. I lived in LA for 15 years. I too am appalled. Thank you for the education on the Tea Party. I suppose nothing anymore is truly organic. It takes a lot of energy to try and understand this chaos. I’m hearing last presidents did the same, for example Clinton, exported with no due process, even American citizens. I do not support the duopoly at the end of the day. Political parties are inherently corrupt, and it feels like there will never be any solutions. Unfortunately humanity goes in circles, not accention.
I also know the US alien immigration agency is primarily a human trafficking cover reported by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It’s a complex mess.
Rudolf Steiner Archive "Greater wars will come
We have to come back to the spirit by way of the intellect. And that, you see, is the task of anthroposophy. It has no wish to do what would please many people, that is, to bring primitive conditions back to humanity-ancient Indian wisdom, for example. It is nonsense when people harp on that.
Anthroposophy, on the other hand, sets value on a return to the spirit, but a return to the spirit precisely in full possession of the intellect, with the intellect fully alive. It is important, gentlemen, and must be borne strictly in mind, that we have nothing at all against the intellect; rather, the point is that we have to go forward with it. Originally human beings had spirit without intellect; then the spirit gradually fell away and the intellect increased. Now, by means of the intellect, we have to regain the spirit. Culture is obliged to take this course.
If it does not do so — well, gentlemen, people are always saying that the World War was unlike anything ever experienced before, and it is indeed a fact that men have never before so viciously torn one another to pieces. But if men refuse to take the course of returning to the spirit and bringing their intellect with them, then still greater wars will come upon us, wars that will become more and more savage. Men will really destroy one another as the two rats did that, shut up together in a cage, gnawed at each other till there was nothing left of them but two tails. That is putting it rather brutally, but in fact mankind is on the way to total extermination. It is very important to know this.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 354 – The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars: Lecture VIII – Dornach, 6th August 1924
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA354/English/RSP1987/19240806p01.html
Translated by Gladys Hahn
J Hansen, loved your quote. I mite say of tech bros-great engineering minds but otherwise not completely baked! Their proclivities have them arrested in a mix of quantum computing and greed. I don’t think they can see it. (I mean, I can’t see things about myself sometimes that are right in front of my nose). It’s in our species.
This leads into the topic of right wing psychedelic use and totalitarianism.
Any unchecked human activity is eventually going to destroy itself.
Unchecked capitalism is running out of things to capitalize.
Psy use has become capitalized.
It doesn’t mean the insight gained isn’t real. It’s just that the value of psy use has been monetized.
Seems the only thing left to monetize (more) is humanity. That requires democratic demise and an unimaginable wealth gap.
Hey…where did you 3 go?!