If we’re honest with ourselves, electoral politics has failed and we need a revolution.
If we’re really honest with ourselves, revolution will fail until propaganda is eliminated.
If we’re really really honest with ourselves, everything will fail without a mass-scale awakening.
~
The most revolutionary thing you can do is use your creativity to find ways of helping people see the insanity of the status quo with fresh eyes. Punching holes in the manufactured normality so that people can see beyond the bullshit they’ve all gotten used to and really grok just how ugly and disgusting things have gotten will do infinitely more damage to the empire than just listing facts and figures and talking about how things ought to be.
~
Heinlein said “Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.” This is true of media psyops; people think they hate an empire-targeted nation/person because of reasons X, Y and Z, but really it’s because the empire targeted them, and then propagandists rationalized it.
If people were really honest with themselves, they’d say “You know I think I hate that Official Bad Guy of the Day because of reasons X, Y and Z, but maybe it’s actually because he began inconveniencing the empire, and for that reason the media started telling me to hate him?” But generally they don’t, because it’s uncomfortable admitting to yourself that you have not been thinking rationally; that you have actually been rationalizing the entirely irrational behavior of a depraved empire without realizing it, just because the TV told you to.
~
“Who benefits from my beliefs?”
“Is anyone who could have benefitted from my beliefs responsible for putting them in my mind?”
If we want to live lucidly, we must maintain a standing examination of these two questions. They’ll turn up some very interesting and surprising answers. It will turn up answers relating to politics, imperialism and religion of course, and, unless you’ve been very lucky, it will also turn up answers relating to people in your life who put beliefs in your head in order to dominate and control you in various ways.
~
The problem is that people without functioning empathy centers are willing to do anything to get power and are able to use narrative manipulation to obtain it. You can add as many individual details as you like, but around the world this is the primary obstacle to human thriving.
~
In Tolkien’s Middle Earth, the affairs of men are dominated by a cabal of wizards who understand the esoteric art of using language to manipulate reality in a way that advantages powerful rulers… Oh wait sorry that’s regular earth I was thinking of. That’s what happens here.
~
To awaken from the establishment propaganda matrix is extremely uncomfortable, because the status quo becomes intolerable. This is a good thing. It means if you can help someone else awaken they’ll experience the same discomfort, which will drive them to awaken others, and so on.
~
Mehdi Hasan is not a leftist, he just understands how to advance mainstream centrist agendas using leftist framing.
~
If the deep state really had a problem with Trump they wouldn’t keep letting the Dems run spectacularly unelectable candidates against him.
~
The Biden vs Trump debates are going to horrify the world. The shiny happy mask of American democracy is going to slide right off on the international stage and the true face of empire will be revealed. The gasp will be audible from space. So there’s that.
~
Is it accident or sadism to force Biden the demented right-wing rapist as nominee and then bully everyone into pretending he’s not as obviously abhorrent as he is? A dominatrix would have a harder time coming up with something more demeaning.
~
Without being raised in a media environment saturated with establishment propaganda it would never occur to anyone to call a violent authoritarian extremist like Joe Biden a “moderate”, or “electable”.
~
Biden could very easily be replaced by an empty chair with the words “NOT TRUMP” scribbled on it in sharpie. People would barely notice.
~
No, refusing to support Biden is not a sign of privilege. A sign of privilege is supporting the status quo which continually murders and exploits the most vulnerable populations at home and abroad regardless of which sock puppet is in office.
~
Once you stop believing the fairy tale that there are two separate political parties in America – an evil and abusive one and a less evil and abusive one – you just see one big nasty dickhead telling you “Vote for my left-handed sock puppet or I’ll beat you up with my right one.”
What is the sane response to such a situation? Is it to placate this asshole and say “Oh no please sir don’t beat me up, I’ll play whatever game you want”? Or is it to stand up and say “How about no? How about you don’t get to beat up anyone at all?”
The dickhead might say “You play my games or I’ll beat up under-privileged groups! I mean, I’ll still beat them up either way, but I’ll beat them up worse if you don’t play!” Do you placate the monster? Or do you turn around and say “No. No you don’t get to beat up anyone”?
~
FYI if your leftism/anarchism sees you siding with the CIA and State Department against targeted governments, then you are not a leftist or an anarchist. You’re just one more gullible tool helping to shore up more power for the most dangerous authoritarian regime on the planet.
It’s so funny how people who consider themselves anti-authoritarian so often find themselves effectively siding with the most powerful government in the world which openly proclaims that all other civilizations must bow to its will or be obliterated.
~
“Aren’t you Australian?” asked the nineteen thousandth inhabitant of a strange reality tunnel where US politics only affect Americans.
~
I’ll never get used to the fact that I focus my attention on the most powerful and deadly government on the face of the earth, and people are so propagandized that they see this as a strange thing to do.
~
Hoping that a critical mass of people rise up and force change, despite being aggressively propagandized not to, is hoping for a miracle. The unspoken part of our plan is always “And then hopefully we’ll just spontaneously start waking up.” They talk about organizing and grassroots activism, but these plans always include an unacknowledged x-factor in which people suddenly begin working against the interests of establishment power structures for some miraculous reason and begin turning this ship around.
Revolutionary thought is an act of faith. If we’re honest with ourselves, as a group we’re a fair bit less atheistic than we pretend to be.
And yet, I maintain that this faith is entirely reasonable. I believe we do have the seeds of a miracle planted deep within us. I’ve seen too much not to.
________________________________
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40 responses to “Seeds Of Awakening: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”
Wait — you’re Australian? You’ve never had to ration insulin because it sells for ten times the world price? You’ve never been dinged a thousand bucks for a five-minute ambulance ride? You’ve never been billed a couple grand for a visit to the emergency room? You’ve never been on the hook for $30,000 for a few days in an ordinary, non-intensive-care hospital bed? You’ve never experienced the indisputable GREATNESS and NUMBER-ONENESS that is America firsthand? This changes EVERYthing! 😉
Caitlin writes: “Revolutionary thought is an act of faith.” I agree but faith without action is not good enough. Caitlin often stated that politics is irrelevant and will not change anything. Therefore, we need a genuine revolution with wise, effective, insightful, visionary leaders, generals, captains and lieutenants to inspire, guide and organize dissidents. We need local groups of wise, alert, resourceful, generous, peace-loving, eco-friendly dissidents who network with neighbouring local groups and start breaking free from mainstream media, from government support, from electronic surveillance and control and effectively from the medical-industrial-military complex. We also need local groups to choose leaders who will network with other leaders. This is what Yeshua trained His Ambassadors to teach and practice and the hidden powers ruling the world today will have no strategy to prevent the growing revolution from sucking the power out of their medical-industrial-military complex. I recommend that dissidents should study, understand and collectively put into practice the revolutionary strategy and tactics which Yeshua trained His Ambassadors to teach and practice. Unfortunately, His revolutionary strategy and tactics are so brilliant, exceptional and powerful that this is way above the mental abilities even for highly intelligent and well-educated people who fail to grasp what Yeshua said and meant. Read more of this here: http://www.wisdompage.com/2013%20Articles/Molyneaux%20essay.pdf
To all who want me to die for higher corporate profits, here is my reply …
……
…… You First!
“If we’re honest with ourselves, electoral politics has failed and we need a revolution. If we’re really honest with ourselves, revolution will fail until propaganda is eliminated. If we’re really really honest with ourselves, everything will fail without a mass-scale awakening.”
If we’re really honest with ourselves, we’ll realize that the only revolution and awakening that can really happen is within each of us. The Outer World has long been infected by a disease worse than Covid, and keeps re-infecting itself so much that no antidote will ever be strong enough to provide outer relief. Electoral politics is the receptacle that claims the Diseased.
“Vote for my left-handed sock puppet or I’ll beat you up with my right one.”
The political yardstick is never Left-Right. It’s Uppers (self-proclaimed elites) and Underneaths (all the sane people of the world). It’s The Human vs. The Not. It’s The Psychopaths vs. The Compassionate.
“Revolutionary thought is an act of faith. If we’re honest with ourselves, as a group we’re a fair bit less atheistic than we pretend to be.”
No one is truly atheist. The “atheist” person just hasn’t yet found the cartoon drawing approximation of The Almighty that fits into their personal bias. And to that, The Almighty just smiles.
As you say, ‘we may have the seeds of a miracle planted deep within us’ but seeds need to sprout in order for the plant to grow. My problem is that i agree with the entire thread of this article, but see that the vast majority, who believe in the two-party system, are either cultists to the left or cultists to the right – and all are puppets dancing to the string manipulations of the puppeteer oligarch.
I continually try to talk with people regarding the truth, to waken their consciousness. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find one who will lift the solid, thick door that prevents sound from entering his or her ears.
I don’t care where you are from, Caitlin.’ Defined nation states, with border that need passports and/or visas in order to pass are a fairly new invention. Sure there were nations but, for most, people were free to come and go without restriction well into the 1800s. I’m a John Lennon follower who actually does se the necessity for all to “‘imagine all the people sharing all the world.”
As for revolution – I’ve been saying for years that it is inevitable, unless the majority fail to act before we can complete our current slide toward totalitarianism.
I don’t have a death wish. I love living. But maybe my status as a senior citizen will save me from viewing and participating in the final collapse, no matter which side wins, if the ‘good’winning is even possible without a radical change to the system that prevents another rise to power by the psychopaths.
Presently, billions of people around the world are “living” under mandatory stay-at-home orders, purportedly to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. Aside from the question as to whether quarantine is the most effective method for fighting this particular pandemic, what exactly will be required from us before any semblance of normalcy returns?
One possible requirement – aside from being discouraged from ever shaking hands again – is the mandatory participation in a global vaccine program, underwritten by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Big Pharma and an assortment of other people who supposedly have the best interest of the global citizenry in mind. Should we be concerned? This article can be read here:
Sooner or Later, United States of Americans Will Have to Choose Between Freedom and a Micro-Chipped Vaccine by Robert Bridge!
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/04/18/sooner-later-americans-will-have-choose-between-freedom
Another down-the-pipe piece about the bigger picture, perhaps about to become even bigger and badder, perhaps in the process of being torn apart. Thank you, Caitlin, for your concluding words: “Revolutionary thought is an act of faith. If we’re honest with ourselves, as a group we’re a fair bit less atheistic than we pretend to be. And yet, I maintain that this faith is entirely reasonable. I believe we do have the seeds of a miracle planted deep within us. I’ve seen too much not to.” Many of us have also seen such things and share your belief, your faith, though it often seems to be against all odds. You and your readers don’t want to miss this extraordinary interview:
You go, girl! … This is The Bomb!
Love you Caitlin.
Have you hear this song? It’s my anthem and I think you’d enjoy it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlfgpdsBJ1o
I wrote a poem, I think you might like it…https://jpjude.wordpress.com …bit weak on the editing, so forgive me, I posted without thinking….from a Canadian
There are situations which have been fucked up for so long that they are now impossible to correct, and are now doomed to destroy themselves. Welcome to our reality fellow humans. Sorry about that folks, but some laws are implacable and final. Love unconditionally or perish is such a cosmic law for evolving intelligences. Reality will accept no substitutes. Our time is almost up now.
Excellent, Caitlin !
Great fuel for thought….
I hear “Wake Up!”all through it…
But the fact which the Deep State won’t share with us is that they have already taken Joe’s car keys away from him.
“Is it accident or sadism to force Biden the demented right-wing rapist as nominee and then bully everyone into pretending he’s not as obviously abhorrent as he is? A dominatrix would have a harder time coming up with something more demeaning.“
You go girl!! My quote of the day. Or week. Or of all time!!
The rest is very good, obviously, but that is priceless.
Nobody needs to be awakened by anything. The people are not going to overthrow anything. The government will destroy itself.
The destroying of the currency is enough. Once this is done the super power status will end. The U.S. dollar will not be worth the paper it is printed on. We will be forced to start over after years of pain.
Most countries who are smart are buying gold. Most people who are smart are buying gold. China and Russa have already taken big steps to work together using there own currencies. Russia has bought a huge amount of gold in the past five years as has China.
They don’t need war all they have to do now is wait for the currency destruction to complete itself and it’s over.
All these so called awakenings as you call it, are not nessessary. Everybody will be forced into this reality soon enough.
It started the day Nixon ended the gold standard.
Most downfalls of any super power or country throughout history has been because of the debasment of their currency.
That is the tell tale sign. It has taken longer than I thought but it is starting to happen more rapidly now.
So all these wars and propaganda and everything else will go away, once the currency is destroyed. It’s only a matter of time now.
Unless the US Sociopaths In Charge determine they would rather die than surrender. Of course being sociopaths, they have no reluctance taking the rest of us with them. “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”
Hey there, Caitlin….thank you again, for sharing your thoughts. You inspire, You clarify, You awaken. I’m grateful for your existence …..Cheers.
Lots of excellent phrases, especially on Biden as a place holder candidate. Best part, Caitlin, is saying you believe we the people can make positive changes. Thank you for your abiding optimism which I share.
The lull before the storm perhaps.
If the wandvirus wavers want a short growth phase after the election, Biden is their man. If they want another wave of conditioning soon after we get Trump.
“If we’re really honest with ourselves, revolution will fail until propaganda is eliminated.” Such naivety.
Propaganda is all about changing consciousness and persuading its targets to act, or not act. The most effective propaganda is based on acknowledging uncomfortable facts and harsh realities, and proposing measures and solutions to deal with them. Unless there is propaganda that effectively counters the dominant ideology of the ruling class, propaganda plus agitation with solutions to a crisis at basic, concrete and visceral levels, then no-one’s consciousness is ever going to be changed for the good. Without effective propaganda, despair will never transform into hope, and not only will ‘revolution fail’ — it won’t even get off the ground. Instead ‘the same old crap’ will persist, and worse.
The root of this naivety is this current trendy liberal notion that all ‘propaganda’ is simply lies and therefore inherently bad. It’s used unintelligently by people who should know better as a term of denunciation, abuse and derision. However, the most effective users of propaganda, from Lenin to Bernays, knew better. Lenin was a master at weaponising the truth in his propaganda, of never shirking from it to achieve a revolutionary outcome. Propaganda must be seen as weapon to be used. Why the hell should the bourgeoisie have — worse, be handed — the monopoly on this weapon? In short, no propaganda for change equals no change.
And of course the logic of this false notion, this false consciousness, follows without fail:
“The unspoken part of our plan is always “And then hopefully we’ll just spontaneously start waking up.” They talk about organizing and grassroots activism, but these plans always include an unacknowledged x-factor in which people suddenly begin working against the interests of establishment power structures for some miraculous reason and begin turning this ship around.”
People are waking up and many more will awaken over the coming weeks to their real situation. But waking up and realising the true horror of what is imminent isn’t enough. ‘Miracles’, ‘x-factors’ or ‘suddenly’ some other kind of ‘spontaneity’ won’t help either. As a ‘program’ this simply reproduces, and is the product of, despair, the ‘Hail Mary’ pass based on an evidence-free, unfounded, quasi-religious faith. If people’s political consciousness doesn’t mature beyond despair, none of this kind of thinking helps. It’s worse than useless.
Real revolutions on the other hand require preparation and leadership, by a revolutionary party which isn’t afraid to propagandise and agitate for a program that addresses the current needs and aspirations of the working class and all the oppressed, a party which stops at nothing short of overthrowing and expropriating the bourgeoisie. Such a party also understands that the working class alone is key to this because it creates all the wealth for the ruling class and thus has the raw social power to bring capitalism to a screeching halt, more completely than even a deadly virus can.
That worked out so well for the Kulaks. How dare they work hard and feed themselves.
Nor for other exploiters. How dare those who worked so hard for kulaks not be able to feed themselves.
As soon as I saw the word “grok,” I knew the old fascist Heinlein couldn’t be far behind…
I see a possible chain of events that may well make a big difference in terms of waking people up. Starting with the USA as the epicentre of the virus descending into widespread civil unrest as infections & deaths escalate, unemployment increases, food shortages increase, and the federal & state governments use force to impose lockdowns and order. Trump’s government would almost certainly handle it really badly and compound the problems. Meanwhile the rest of the world looks on comparing the chaos there to what’s going on in their countries. It would severely damage the remaining credibility and trust in governments, and corporations that have put so many people out of work. The message that everyone would hear and more importantly feel is that they have let us down and they are not to be trusted anymore. People will no longer be able to pretend that it doesn’t affect them – and that is when they wake up.
You are right, Caitlin. The seeds of a miracle are planted within us. But it’s not so deep. It is life itself. We are life. We are not real world entities. We have created the real world within our own minds. (It is therefore not even logically possible to be a component of that thing which we have created.) A key step, I think, is to break free from the conceptual prison of a worldly identity. We can then understand that the bastards can kill our bodies but they cannot kill our soul.
I haven’t told you this before, but I love you Caitlin. You are one of the only people presently speaking coherently. Be strong and stay alive. Big hugs from the other side of the planet.
Love is a verb.
Do it.
Hard, isn’t it?
🙂
The only good thing about this current event is it is exposing many of the usual suspects, both countries and people, for what they actually are.
Its exposing Sociopaths In Charge, to which all countries have by definition subjected themselves to. Otherwise they would not be “nations”, but regions containing free people.
We have to stop buying what they are selling. We have to stop lending our lives to the charade of their shadow world masquerade. Our lives are our own. Our lives do not belong to them. If they have no life within them, we need to let them cease to be. We should have done so long long ago.
Here, here! If we ignore them they will go away. Not likely in a peaceful manner, but they will. For example, if no one voted, from where would they gain their authority? If no one paid taxes, how could they possibly exert any force at all? We need to realize that no sane person would seek such power. Without the Gestapo, Hitler would have been a not very good comedian.
Great article
Maybe one day folks will figure out that the problem with government is government. Those that love government promise great things but deliver something more like a dystopia. I believe that life would be better with no government – certainly not a perfect world, but better than than with government. Individuals would have to learn to work together and organize some groups to undertake different functions that are handled by government. Remember, for those of you that fear and loathe corporations, the very corporations you hate and think can be regulated by state are in fact creatures of statutes and are enable by the the government. Without government, corporations have no more power than you give them.
Anarchy would be an improvement. The derision placed upon anarchy is that we would be “ruled by the strong”. We already are. The opposing argument is that being “ruled by the strong” is not anarchy. If we could ever obtain such, we would need to be on constant guard to maintain it.
The Biden vs Trump debates are going to horrify the world. Yes, Ms Johnstone there will be no getting around that. Every ” endorsement ” of Mr. Joe Biden will bring shame and contempt to the endorser. The DNC will be revealed to be the corrupt cesspool that it is. The United States economy will never recover from this virus and its aftermath. The ” owners and the masters ” will not be able to placate the mobs in the streets because anarchy and chaos are coming to these United States of America. The “hologram of a free country ” will not be possible to maintain; tyranny and ” martial law ” will crush all who dare to defy ” the government “! 2020 will turn out to be ” the year ” in recorded history. I think the ” doomsday machine ” has been activated and there is no turning it off!
The Biden/Trump debates are going to be hilarious, one belly laugh after another, and anyone who takes them seriously is seriously braindead. That goes for the entire electoral process.
“The most revolutionary thing you can do is use your creativity to find ways of helping people see the insanity of the status quo with fresh eyes. Punching holes in the manufactured normality…”
Hey Caitlin, this clip of “Ticked Off Vic” that came to mind, hope it wakes a few up. Beware, Vic is very pissed off! The Titile is “A Message To The Government”.
https://thedailycoin.org/2020/04/17/ticked-off-vic-a-message-to-the-government-video/
https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-washington-dc-faces-coronavirus-spike-secret-military-task-force-prepares-secure-1498276U.S.
EXCLUSIVE: AS WASHINGTON DC FACES CORONAVIRUS SPIKE, SECRET MILITARY TASK FORCE PREPARES TO SECURE THE CAPITAL
BY WILLIAM M. ARKIN ON 4/16/20
No Caitlin, you’re not Australian at all, you’re a citizen of the 51st state of the USA. And I don’t want to sound authoritarian, but we Fifty-first Staters are the “Deputy Sherrif” of the world. Remember Little Johnny OM AC? (Bless his soul) Aint you proud Caitlin?
HL Mencken insightfully observed, “If you make people think they are thinking, they’ll love you for it. If you make them really think, they’ll hate you with a passion.” It’s an awfully real and deeply challenging construct to successfully work around. But there is no alternative to such challenge other than acquiescing to an ultimately total submersion beneath a flooding tide of brutalised idiocy.