If people in power were no longer able to hide secrets and spin lies about what’s going on in the world, all of our major problems would come to an end. Because secretive and manipulative power structures are the source of all of our major problems.
If the public could see what’s actually happening in their world, they would immediately begin using the power of their numbers to overhaul our current system. This is why our current system pours so much energy into preventing the public from seeing what’s actually happening in their world.
If it weren’t for the constant campaign of obfuscation and manipulation of public perception via veils of government secrecy and propaganda, humanity would naturally find its way out of the power-driven tribulations it now faces, as surely as you’ll avoid obstacles and hazards in your path when you are walking with your eyes open. The only problem in this case is that our eyes have not been permitted to open.
May All Be Revealed
"The fight for humanity’s future begins at your own eyelids."https://t.co/j1JQcolxIh
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) June 24, 2020
It isn’t actually necessary to hold a bunch of hard, rigid ideas about exactly what kind of society we should have, what kind of political system we should have, what kind of economic system we should have. There’s nothing wrong with promoting ideas and having preferences of course, but really if you just gave humanity the ability to navigate through its own troubles by removing the blindfolds of propaganda and power opacity, it would organically create a healthy society, and realistically such a society probably won’t look a whole lot like our mental models.
You do have the option, then, of simply promoting the end of government/political/corporate/financial opacity and the end of establishment perception management. Wanting humanity to see with clear eyes so that it can make its own informed decisions about where to take itself is a complete political position, in and of itself. You don’t have to hold any other political preferences of any kind if you don’t want to.
The desire for an end to the obfuscations and manipulations of the powerful so that humanity can find its own way is the most anti-authoritarian position you can possibly take, because it also protects the world from your own authoritarian impulses.
I personally am very leftwardly inclined and believe that if humanity had its perception management blindfolds removed it would naturally create a world where we’re all truly equal and everyone is taken care of by the collective each according to their need, but what the hell do I know? Maybe if the blindfold is removed I’d be proven wrong. I respect human sovereignty enough to want to find out, free from my own political preferences. I should not be the one making such societal decisions, society as a whole should. I just want human perception to be freed up enough to make that call.
How To Defeat The Empire
"What I do advocate, in as many different ways as I can come up with, is a decentralized guerrilla psywar against the institutions which enable the powerful to manipulate the way ordinary people think, act and vote."https://t.co/4F5dWaURdq
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 10, 2019
If you choose to make the end of perception management your foremost priority, that means you push for government transparency at every opportunity and support any movement to take away secret hiding places from the powerful.
It means opposing the way the powerful bolt shut all the doors on public scrutiny of their behavior, smear anyone who speculates about what they might be up to as a crazy conspiracy theorist, and imprisons anyone who leaks information about what they’re really doing to the people.
It means you support whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden who help shine light on the things power tries to keep hidden in the dark.
It means you support WikiLeaks and Julian Assange and any journalist who helps expose the secrets of the powerful.
It means you fight the empire’s propaganda machine at every opportunity to break public trust in its manipulations.
It means you support breaking up the monolithic mass media and giving everyone the equal ability to influence the dominant narratives.
It means opposing internet censorship, since Silicon Valley plutocrats propping up the establishment their kingdoms are built upon by censoring anti-establishment voices is another way of keeping people from being shown the truth about their world.
I personally would add that it means supporting the decriminalization of psychedelics, because seeing within ourselves is just as important as seeing what’s happening in our world and entheogens can facilitate this seeing, but maybe that’s just me.
Cancel Government Secrecy: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
"Government says it needs secrecy to make war on its enemies effectively, and, curiously, the more secrecy we allow it the more wars and enemies it seems to have."https://t.co/fLWa478cva
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) July 20, 2020
Again, there’s no harm in engaging in politics and pushing for the changes you’d like to see in your world, and there can be many benefits to doing so. But as long as people are successfully prevented from seeing and understanding what’s really happening in their world by the obfuscation of information and by the manipulation of people’s perception of that information, the status quo will always remain in place.
So in my opinion this is the most sensible point upon which to converge our energy. I personally have no interest in controlling what humanity does, and desire only that people come to see freely enough to make their own decisions.
It’s absolutely insane that information which affects us all is kept hidden away from our clear vision by secrecy and propaganda. It’s even crazier that they shame us when we wonder what’s really going on and throw us in prison when we try to find out. We must liberate ourselves from this madness so we can create a healthy world together.
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61 responses to “The Only Obstacle To A Healthy World Is Government Secrecy And Propaganda”
“But as long as people are successfully prevented from seeing and understanding what’s really happening in their world by the obfuscation of information and by the manipulation of people’s perception of that information, the status quo will always remain in place.”
That’s basically the creed of the ruling sociopaths. That’s their time-tested control model. Their need to obfuscate information and manipulate people’s perception as they pursue ever greater power and control is a direct consequence of their diseased psychology, a psychology devoid of empathy. As long as the ruling sociopaths have the power and control, they will maintain the status quo. The solution is thus to identify the sociopaths, and disqualify them from positions of power and control. But how, when the ruling sociopaths have enormous power and control and are not about to allow us to do anything that will change the status quo? Knowing the solution is the easy part. Implementing the solution is the challenge.
Excellent , Excellent article and content Caitlin.
Thank you for your clarity of mind and ambition to share this.
If you want to remove the obstacle to happy life, the first obstacle is that you do not understand the problem and you are wrongly identifying that obstacle.
There are billions of people on the planet, there are N countries with N governments. So many people cannot exist without the government. Which one of these governments (with its secrets) is the “only obstacle”? Moreover, why the assumption that all people are rational and good? They are not.
How about simply ending the power?
Exiting Babylon: the only way to escape being prey for UK Government in perpetuity
frombehindenemylines.org.uk/2020/07/exiting-babylon-the-only-way-to-escape-being-prey-for-uk-government-in-perpetuity/
There’s so much wrong with this, it’s hard to know where to start. But begin we must.
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If the public knew all the secrets of government and state, all aspects of its machinations and repression, of its secret connections and dealings with the ruling class and all the rest, it is still a reactionary illusion to think that as a result on some fine sunny morning the public “would immediately begin using the power of their numbers to overhaul our current system”. If only the world were that simple. Such belief in a spontaneous exercise of collective will that ‘overhauls’ the most ruthless and violently exploitative system in history run by the most bloody ruling class in history is a dangerously naive kindergarten anarcho-fantasism. This system cannot be ‘overhauled’. It must be overthrown.
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And such a prospect of a mythical spontaneous uprising certainly is not at all “why our current system pours so much energy into preventing the public from seeing what’s actually happening in their world”. Rather, it’s a matter of efficiency: if the oppressed sincerely, preferably fervently, believe in their own oppression, that it’s ‘natural’, etc, then less naked repression is needed with a population already programmed to behave itself. And with less perceived repression, less pushback occurs, and so no conflict and cost escalation ensues.
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Capitalism doesn’t work efficiently with roadblocks, checkpoints, arbitrary arrests and disappearances, and all the other accoutrements of repression. And it doesn’t work all that well in unstable situations teetering on civil war, in an environment where increasing numbers of expensive armed thugs of the state and/or fascists are needed to keep the capitalists’ profits flowing. It’s still far cheaper to have a propaganda, religious and ‘education’ apparatus to direct millions to behave in a certain way than to have hundreds of thousands of cops ordering and forcing everyone to do so. Far less numbers of cops are needed, to mop up the outliers, ‘deviants’, ‘misfits’, refuseniks.
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Simply knowing about the present reality isn’t enough either. It’s a matter of knowing history, of knowing what’s been done to successfully actuate real social change — ie, ‘what is to be done’. First, there’s never, ever been a change from one social system to its successor without major class warfare, revolution and civil war. This is a hard fact of life and for all liberals and many reformist ‘leftists’ to swallow. They’d much rather rationalise all such nastiness away, with ‘if only everyone realises how dire things really are, there’d be an overwhelming consensus to…reorganise society for the benefit of everyone’ (or similar).
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It’s time to grow up and understand that even just protesting on the streets can unleash a shit storm of violence from the bourgeois state that can’t be wished or ‘reformed’ away, as recent events have attested. While it’s been very good that many whites in the US are beginning to wake up to the vicious reality of class society and the nature of the state machine that defends it, black Americans have known this for 400 years. It matters not a wit how ‘advanced’ one’s conscious or knowledge is if they’re still deluded enough to think the capitalist ruling class will simply surrender their power peacefully if they also advanced their ‘consciousness’. The ruling class will never surrender power peacefully. The ruling class will never surrender power peacefully. The ruling class will never surrender power peacefully. If only this were the mantra of our transcendental lentils.
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Now to the central and most ludicrous assertion here: “It isn’t actually necessary to hold a bunch of hard, rigid ideas about exactly what kind of society we should have, what kind of political system we should have, what kind of economic system we should have.”
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Really? So it matters little for preventing looming ecocide and human extinction if the means of production and all this planet’s resources remain in the hands of private owners and plutocrats and aren’t taken possession of in the name of all society? That everyone remains subject to the ‘eternal’ and ‘sacred’ private diktats of capital? That the anarchy of the ‘free market’ prevails? The global economy needs to be subject to planning, quickly, if catastrophe within the next 50 years isn’t to be averted. There is not alternative to expropriating the capitalist class worldwide to achieve this, and a globally planned economy must be ‘rigidly’ imposed. That’s a rigid ‘idea’ that can’t be gotten around.
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History also shows us that the political systems that exist in such arrangements originate in the organs of struggle that grew up ‘spontaneously’ during the overthrow of the old order. The Paris Commune, the 1905 and 1917 Russian revolutions, and numerous other smaller examples point to similar ‘rigid’ phenomena emerging during such social cataclysms: communes; workers, soldiers and peasants councils (soviets); various other councils and soviet-like decision-making bodies, from Spain 1936-38 to Portugal 1975. Even the recent short-lived Seattle commune conforms to this familiar pattern. The crucial difference is that in only one example only did these organs come under a revolutionary leadership to successfully overthrow the old order — the Russian October revolution. And before that revolution degenerated in the face of economic backwardness and imperialist encirclement, the soviets were the decision-making organs of the state power in the new socialist order.
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“There’s nothing wrong with promoting ideas and having preferences of course, but really if you just gave humanity the ability to navigate through its own troubles by removing the blindfolds of propaganda and power opacity, it would organically create a healthy society,…”
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‘Really’? One can only ask who is the ‘you’ in ‘if you just gave humanity…’. Is it the ruling class, perchance? Or is it the mass of the oppressed and exploited? And this is the rub: it’s not a matter of ‘giving’ at all. It’s a matter of taking, and for the oppressed to get to the point of saying ‘we’re going to fucking take it all’ requires a revolutionary leadership that captures the support of the majority of the working population with a ‘rigid’ program for making a revolution which alone can solve the pressing problems facing humanity. Until that happens, everyone’s eyes can be open as wide as possible to reality, and still nothing will change — the capitalist rulers will retain their power. ‘Rigidly’, to quote the 1891 words of Karl Kautsky, later made famous by Rosa Luxemburg, and which never rang truer than today: “We must either move forward into socialism or fall back into barbarism”.
You make a strong case, Stephen, rooted in what has been; i.e., history. But the class-based socialist/communist revolution you say is our only hope strikes me as being even more of a long shot right now than the sudden, unprecedented, trans-historical evolution of the human species envisioned by Caitlin. If we’re locked into history, my friend, we’re fucked. Or as Bobby put it more elegantly: “Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.” The polar opposite of neoliberalism, it’s true mortal enemy, is not socialism/communism but idealism, and I say this as both a socialist and an idealist.
Intellectual gymnastics don’t work. Never have and never will. And that is what you are performing here.
As intelligent as your rebuttal sounds there’s an appropriate saying that fits your narrative.
Either you are part of the solution or you are part of the problem.
You,..are part of the problem.
Intuition overrides intellect.
Try it sometime.
Peace your dude.
Excellent analysis Stephen. Do you have a blog or website of your own?
Today happens to provide an excellent opportunity to spot exactly who is pumping a certain type of propaganda.
In China, they’ve had heavy rains. In an era when the climate is changing, this can happen. China quite famously built a large dam project a few years back, known as the Three Gorges Dam. Unsurprisingly, when China is suffering heavy rains and flooding, the water levels held behind this dam are rising.
Physics says more water pushing against the dam holding it back will exert a heavy force on the dam. All you need to do to get that point is to understand gravity and fill up a 5 gallon (20 liter) bucket with water and try to carry it. You arm will feel how heavy water is. Now picture water stacked up hundreds of feet deep behind a tall dam and how much that weighs.
Things in this earth move. When you put a large force against an object, it moves. Even a solid object like a dam. Engineers understand this, and design accordingly. So, surprise, surprise, when the lake is full in a flood, the weight moves the damn. But not in any way the engineers didn’t anticipate.
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Knowing that provides an opportunity to spot exactly who is throwing propaganda at you. Do an internet search on the Three Gorges Dam. You’ll find some recent news articles on the search results that scream headlines about how the 3 Gorges Dam is about to collapse. FoxNews (owned by Austrailian Rupert Murdoch) was prominent on the list. Breitbart was on the list. There were some other official news outlets and a collection of blogs, some of which were already on my personal ‘kook’ list.
Write down the names of who’s lying to you about this one topic, and never trust them again.
You can use this. When you happen to know something about a particular topic, use that to see who’s lying about it. But don’t be surprised to find out these days that probably everyone is.
Caitlin, Talking of propaganda, you control your own blog page; therefore you can use your journalist skills to influence your reader’s perceptions. Why not permit comments about Zionists, even comments you believe are slanderous, and then provide pertinent facts, figures and arguments to disprove false accusations and shame the people who made them.
Problem: quoting facts, figures and arguments to disprove false accusations is usually a waste of time because prejudice is extremely hard to dislodge once established.
“The Only Obstacle To A Healthy World Is Government Secrecy And Propaganda”
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That’s certainly a big part of it. But beyond this, is one’s bedrock belief that people are basically “good” or “not”? Because if most people choose to give in to their personal flaws and are not committed to rising above their current spiritual condition, then a Healthy World still has this major road block beyond anything any government does.
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“If it weren’t for the constant campaign of obfuscation and manipulation of public perception via veils of government secrecy and propaganda, humanity would naturally find its way out of the power-driven tribulations it now faces…”
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That’s why the constant diet of bullcrap is fundamental to the powers that be. Their very survival depends on it.
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“I just want human perception to be freed up…”
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Are we free human beings created in the image of The Divine, or are we just things go be used and abused by anyone and everyone that comes along our way? Yes, and yes. We are a particular caricature of The Divine, but that doesn’t stop governments, marketers, schools, think-tanks, friends, family, potential lovers, and others from seeing us just as a thing to be exploited for their own enjoyment. Human perception allows one to see others and ourselves in any image we choose to see. Even when human perception is freed up.
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“It’s absolutely insane that information which affects us all is kept hidden away from our clear vision by secrecy and propaganda.”
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This has worked for the Catholic Church for centuries. Keeping things hidden. At one time they did not want average people to read the Bible. Keep the information to themselves. Great way to control people. The Earth revolves around the Sun? Burn anyone at the stake who utters such nonsense! Wait, you don’t have to follow a bunch of man-made rules and go to Church twice a week and God still loves you? How dare you say that! We’ll let you know who God loves or not! Not just picking on the Catholics here as others do the same thing. But they’ve been doing it longer than most.
“I personally would add that it (opposing secrecy and censorship) means supporting the decriminalization of psychedelics, because seeing within ourselves is just as important as seeing what’s happening in our world and entheogens can facilitate this seeing, but maybe that’s just me.” I’m all for such decriminalization, Caitlin, but let me assure you, as someone who came of age in the late 60s when so many young people, at least on campus, were tripping out, that there was little carryover AT BEST into the lifelong pursuit of social justice. In most cases, getting high on hallucinogens when young, far from bringing enlightenment, merely paved the way to getting high on money and career when older.
Agree with this comment. Getting high with psychedelics had little connection to social justice with the 1960 Hippies of the age. I’m from an older generation and was unimpressed with the results. Perhaps these drugs may be useful in certain medical cures under a physician’s watch.
Things are so corrupt within these United States of America that this story is probably true instead of being false.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8531293/Ghislaine-Maxwell-paid-25K-Jacob-Wohl-smear-victims-AG-fired.html
You left out the corollary. The most legitimate system is the one in which governments have no privacy–they work in glass-walled offices (perhaps literally) and the people whop pay their salaries–the public–are entitled to know what they’re doing. But people who are NOT public figures, nor working for the government, are entitled to privacy and the government should not be surveilling its citizens. We are seeing the opposite, here in the US and probably everywhere–the government asserts the right to keep more and more of its doings under wraps, while spying on everything everyone is doing or saying, where they’re going, who they’re meeting with.
I came here because Medium is presently experiencing technical problems. What I see from these comments are some idealists–myself included–that have been disillusioned, and screwed royally by a corrupt power system meant to siphon resources from all of us to feed the capitalist monster. They do want the worst aspects of this vampiric monster to remain hidden, to force false promises in narratives to control flows of information in an effort to control the masses. And it’s mostly working. People, though, do know something’s amiss but the narrative flows hide the ‘real’ and keep buried the disastrous processes that are murdering us along with our home, Earth. I do wish I had some of Caitlin’s optimism but I see a catastrophe brewing from this horrible c-virus pandemic that will, perhaps, bring the whole kit and caboodle of civilization to its knees. All the vectors are poised to collapse all at once. I hope not for all the youth of the world. Shine a light on the vampire squids of deceit that rules us all. Peace, The Ol’ Hippy
From one Ol’ Hippy to another–a long, demanding, but guardedly hopeful assessment of where we are, how we got here, and where we might be going. Please ignore the implicit acceptance of the absurd official 9/11 narrative.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q_3hKjy3ncH26nOOvUkCevmWSVbi0pmz/view
Work = Death
Live Free!
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Remember, “Liberty” was always a Liberal concept. If you see people who claim to support Liberty, but who also hate Liberals, know that they are lying to you. The two do not go together.
The title “liberal” has reached such a point as to be a pejorative, derogatory, term. I call myself a leftist these days. I dropped the liberal from my writing lexicon–even though I’m very liberal in a civil libertarian way…!–wow, my power failed as I was writing this but the partial draft was saved!!–Liberty was mostly disappeared this century as tighter controls of authoritarianism have been tightening the screws since the attacks of September 11,’01.
As I recall in the modern era circa 1960 Ayn Rand among others tried to rationalize altruism with self interest , with an idea called Objectivism , a reworking of Nietzsche , and was laughed out of town at the time . That so called progressives take these ideas seriously today speaks volumes to the devolution of the human intellect.
We are dealing with a large group of crime families running things around the world, and until we start to prosecute and jail them, we aren’t going to stop the criminal activity. Most international tension comes from warring crime families battling for turf and control. But Obama set a big precedent when he failed to prosecute anyone in the Bush administration. Crime families stick together.
Very good John. You state a basic truth of our human world. Naive faith in people as a whole making the right decisions about their mutual governance would be inadequate to create the better society we seek.
Yea. Someone needs to take charge and do it right. There will always be someone around who thinks it is their job to tell other people how to live.
Do you prefer hereditary Kings who are often incompetent due to inbreeding, or do you prefer the strongman dictator who kills, imprisons and tortures everyone who opposes her until she’s the only one left.
Those aren’t the only choices. Benevolent kings, dictators, and governments have succeeded in the past. The intent of the governing body, whether to raise all boats or just certain ones, is the critical factor.
Your assumption is that most people are truth seekers and that clarity will allow them to seek the greater collective and individual good, but people are inherently prideful, selfish and inclined to embrace and grow money and power at the expense of others when given the opportunity. The root problem of our failed institutions is ourselves, and we can’t deliver ourselves without help. Institutions come from us and are warped because of it. True truth seekers stand a chance, but most are comfortable in their own delusion and their manufactured reality and don’t want truth. Truth is hard when easier, more digestible realities are offered and many will take offense at pursuing truth because it’s uncomfortable.
All that said, I enjoy many of your posts, when those I’m prolly opposite on. We are in very different political places but I love that you are a truth seeker and your insight into mass manipulation and propaganda is refreshing.
Since the so-called ‘Enlightenment’ People have been trained to be “prideful, selfish and inclined to embrace and grow money and power at the expense of others when given the opportunity.”
well said “J”: “we can’t deliver ourselves without help. Institutions come from us and are warped because of it.”
We are indeed a lazy bunch, and need a much better educational system to prepare us for making the difficult decisions involved in resolving our different ideas and interests. Bringing an unconditionally loving heart to the game is ultimately essential for lasting results.
Good response I heartily agree.
Agree completely.
I think everyone knows the bigger something gets with increased moving components the more complex it becomes. Now add technology to that complex mechanism and it gets way worse. The world has become too complex. Thus it must fail and reconstitute into smaller individual patterns. Thus the global economy is doomed. Socialism is doomed. We must revert back to a more individualistic pattern where everyone carries their own weight. The gravy train and free lunch must end. No more welfare. No more social security. No more over consumption. All will have to lower their standard of living and get off their butts, pull together and work.
Much of the human world’s complexity is a good thing, and merely needs to be managed better and more fairly for all. Some simplification of individual and collective living arrangements would profit from simplification however, but not too much.
We are like a herd of deer that has grown too large. Mother nature will step in and thin our herd. If not the hidden and powerful eugenics cabal will do it for her.
Yes, Ms Johnstone, it would be great if all of the owners and the masters and their ” puppets ” were no longer allowed to control the human population and dictate what the herd thinks and does at every turn; but how can that ” status-quo ” ever be changed?? If it were not for the Internet even more people would be blind to our evil manipulations. A world wide ” truth-telling network ” is sorely needed but how can that ever be established?
A world wide “truth telling network” still must be open to questioning and refutation in the free competition of ideas, otherwise it just becomes just another irresponsible authoritarian dogmatism.
Hey it’s just a mask–a little levity for the down-trodden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXUtsft0Z74
I refer to Items 12 and 13 on this Matthew Raphael Johnson playlist – but the rest of the podcasts are also full of profound gems of insight and wisdom.
*Agrarianism [Part 1] – Matthew Raphael Johnson*
*Agrarianism [Part 2] – Matthew Raphael Johnson*
humanity…
manifesting…
mostly unconscious…
mostly dysfunctional manifesting…
secrecy, propaganda, deception, control, unpleasantness
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The Powers That Be are the result of humanity’s unconscious manifestation. Consider never cleaning the house or taking a bath. Sure, we could blame all the attracted rodents, insects, and bacteria. We could spend our time figuring out ways to remove them. The effort would be useless because the real problem is WE STINK. Clean up, and we won’t attract them anymore.
Nice Lynn. Work on ourselves is the essential basis for healthy change.
There is a process of abstract simplification in our primate brains. A thing we do that helps us multiply and prevail as a species is predictive-modeling of our world. Our models are never as complex as reality, but the better ones give us practical advice and direction as to acting today, to benefit ourselves in the future.
Our cognitive models long for clarity-through-brevity, even if it’s wrong. (Our target is slightly- wrong-but-useful.)
It’s a setting we ALL come with, and to varying degrees, but it only works when it works, and when a lot of changes are happening at once, lots of interwoven complex processes, we can be more wrong than usual, just when it matters most for our survival.
I posit that we are now in an epoch where more is changing at once than any of us can cognitively model, The global resources are running lower, and are more expensive to get. Economies are loaded with more parasitic debt, which is growing , while economies shrink, global heating, dying coral, plastic particles in oceans and our food, algal blooms, CIA/narco-terrorists have no boundaries as “American” dirty wars just keep growing as their own economy…
WE, in our relative remove and insulation, are having to face viral pandemic more personally than we are used to.
Viral pandemic is War-by-Fire, and whether the fire got out of Ft Detrick or Wuhan-IV lab, it is loose among us, up-close-and-personal. We are white-water-rafting through the rapids of history, and we do not know when the rapids smooth out.
We need to maintain immediate focus and paddle whatever direction at the bow that we need to avoid a big rock RIGHT NOW.
Our family did this in Thailand. It’s a practice of immediate awareness in the moment.
In chaotic systems, the conditions at onset of chaos are one of the most important factors, and about all we can really consider in our simplified predictive models.
A city where the service sector is already strained in business-as-usual, and that can’t fund police, EMS, fire, trash, sewer, roads and pensions, is predicted to collapse in chaotic conditions.
That’s the easy part. Picking your own best bet is much harder, because your human network is wherever you have been the last 20 years, and that is really important in chaos. We are wired to maintain our human network relationships. It’s deep wiring. It informs the most fundamental form of human economy, “Gift economy”….
I’m just saying that this is the path we are on as we enter this process of complex change. The complex societal and environmental reorganization is in the direction of less stuff, less energy, less hierarchy (unaffordable) and abrogation of the guarantees of the exhausted post WW-2 social contract.
We are already all into the beginning of the white water rapids, but we also all have some agency, some ability to adjust direction, both immediately and knowing that we are in the rapids until further notice.
http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/07/signaling-virtuous-victimhood.html
What you say is unfortunately correct John. We are ill prepared to deal with our exploding collective and individual karma now. You can fasten whatever seat belts you have available, but it won’t help much in the turbulent rapids we are now entering!
I don’t know about the only obstacle is government; we wouldn’t be in this slow-motion technicolor train-wreck if what passes for humanity wasn’t primarily a group of emotional children, conditioned or inherent, always looking for the next cookie, be it that warm&fuzzy that’s chilled my man-sack for decades or a State permission to steal someone’s stuff, including the only thing any of us ever own-our lives.
The fight for empathy and respect, independent of status & utility, has been ongoing for centuries and some of the puddle-diving passion-splats have a very appealing rap, which is how find ourselves here. Life has potential, but there are still too many knuckle-pumpers playing the ‘don’t need her/him and no one else should either’ game for whatever reason, often using institutions to promote dehumanization.
Eventually that paradigm fails because no one wants the bum’s rush to the ever open door of the always moving bus, which seems to be almost where we are-we are all pawns and no one is safe. Once that becomes more true than not, we serfs have nothing to lose by going rogue and getting heavy-which leads into the bigger problem I see-we as a species become that which we claim to abhor and the only thing that changes is who’s driving the bus.
Moan and bitch about it all if it helps Jim.
HAHAHAHA!
I really enjoy your writing – great style and passion and I hope you’re managing to make a quid from it – you deserve to.
The content is quintessentially idealistic, but why not? The world would be tedious if everybody was as cynical as me.
At some point you may want to explore the ideas behind resource limits and especially energy constraints, although they’re a bummer really, because they stomp on progress, the green revolution and free shit for everyone.
But in the meantime, carry on.
Disclaimer: I’m an old white guy, the most despised demographic of all. Patriarch alert!! Worse, I don’t think Trump is the Devil incarnate. However, given the choice between him and senile ol’ Joe, Putin must be scratching his head about who to elect this time.
Fred — A part of you has found a way to pretend to be above it all. Just watch out for falling off that perch!
I think this page now blocks my comments.
No but it seems to block negative perspectives about Z*0 nists.
Ms Johnstone seems to have embarked on her own adventure with censorship in what she believes is protecting her perspective and focusing her political narrative . This type of reaction seems to be a stage all organizations eventually reach Big government being the supreme example . Secrecy and censorship go hand in hand.
I suggested that Caitlin permit comments about Zionists, even comments she feels are slanderous, and then provide pertinent facts, figures and arguments to disprove false accusations and shame the people who made them.
Prejudice is extremely hard to dislodge once established.
Many tend to equate Zionism with Judaism. They are NOT the same thing, any more than Jihadist and Muslim are. A particular religion may be a prerequisite. Just like all tigers are cats does not mean all cats are tigers.
Yes. What a judge once said about pornography is also true of antisemitism: it’s hard to define it, but you know it when you see it. I, for one, trust Caitlin’s eyes when it comes to this sensitive issue. The most effective way to undercut legitimate and necessary criticism of Israel/Zionism is to intermix it with bigotry and hatred.
It didn’t block this one.
Let’s begin with “I don’t know”. What is happening and unfolding in the world is not clear for most all of us. Everything has been thrown into question. Nothing is certain. One thing we might all agree on is that we swim in a milieu of corruption and sometimes, being that it is more or less the medium we live in, we forget this. But, we might agree, that it is killing us, and many other forms of life. It is taking us to the extinction event we call the climate crisis. Even though there are many of us, humans should be on the endangered species list.
Corruption can take many forms, and can include behaviours like: public servants demanding or taking money or favours in exchange for services, politicians misusing public money or granting public jobs or contracts to their sponsors, friends and families, corporations bribing officials to get lucrative deals.
Corruption can happen anywhere: in business, government, the courts, the media, and in civil society, as well as across all sectors from health and education to infrastructure and sports.
Corruption can involve anyone: politicians, government officials, public servants, institutions, scientists, business people or members of the public.
Costs of Corruption:
Political costs: Your freedom and rule of law.
Social costs: Your participation and even your trust in government (https://www.whiteoutpress.com/secret-government-experiments-on-the-american-people/).
Environmental costs: Your chance for a healthy environment and a sustainable future.
Economic costs: Your opportunity to build and grow wealth.
Some of us may agree that it is our economy that breeds corruption and that it is this that must be changed, economy in the widest sense of the word. We may agree that the neo-liberal agenda cannot continue, it puts all of us at risk, it has brought us to this tipping point.
In addition to this, so much now is unclear and many of our agreed upon assumptions regarding almost everything must be rescrutinized: Are viruses actually contagious? Are they the cause of disease? Was Louis Pasteur wrong and actually a very bad and dishonest person? Is the entire medical profession based on a false assumption? (https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/notes-from-yesteryear/germ-theory-versus-terrain-the-wrong-side-won-the-day/)
We needn’t argue so much about who is right or wrong, we are all together in our unknowing. Everything needs to be questioned, even the links that I have provided. Beliefs need to be suspended and released, not to attach too strongly to one’s idea of “fake news” and “real news”. Can anyone really be sure that they are correct? 100%?
That being said, we can all agree that we want a more beautiful world that leaves no one out, a world based on love and caring, caring for life in all of it’s forms, where everyone can enjoy abundance and freedom. We all want this, but how do we get it?
While most prefer to sit back and watch things unfold, many of us would rather do whatever we can to make sure things go in the right way. We can work locally and try to organize wherever we live, to create assemblies/committees of volunteers to reimagine each and every sector from transportation to sewage to energy, economy, regenerative agriculture, etc. Transition towns initiative is a great example of this as well as tni.org, and there are more. Keeping in mind, horizontally organizing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wywMhg604W8&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3FswJdxXh8a37R8KV_8e7-PDhHPcXuWS-JEl38lOBzGghi4rca4PnSNJ4). Please help make this viral.
While this can’t hurt, it may not be enough. Because the powers that be may have other plans. The pandemic has shown us how we are at their mercy, whether we want to acknowledge this or not. Individually, we have no power to contradict their demands. We may be united in spirit, but that seems not enough if we have no way to organize and create effective strategies and solidarity.
We are in the process of creating a giant network which will make solidarity possible. But this is a monumental undertaking which will take months. We need funding, we need more IT specialists. We want to succeed with this as soon as possible, but nothing is certain, we can only do our best. If anyone wishes to participate, contact us through utopiacornucopia.org.
“That being said, we can all agree that we want a more beautiful world that leaves no one out, a world based on love and caring, caring for life in all of it’s forms, where everyone can enjoy abundance and freedom. We all want this, but how do we get it?”
No that’s part of the problem, we don’t all agree on that. There are masses of people that don’t care about anyone else, they only care about what they can harvest for themselves.
The single most problem behind all the others is the LACK of unity consciousness. The lack of knowing that we’re all in this together, the lack of believing there’s enough for everyone to be provided for. Masses of people object to socialism or communism because they believe if wealth and resources were distributed evenly then we would all be poor and wanting. (they also believe eevrything would be authoritarian while not realizing how authoritarian capitalism is and where it’s headed) They believe that only the strongest survive and it’s natural that some live off the lives and suffering of others and that it’s their objective to make sure they get what they can even while someone next to them suffers.
The problem with communism is that you remove the incentive to work hard. Thus why paint my house since it is free. Why do anything extra. The lazy shit next door lays out sick at least one day a week and I get the exact same as him. Hard work is not rewarded. Thus why work. Just go through the motions. Communism crushes thd human spirit. I think the people that promote communism deep down think they will be one of those in charge instead of the guy waiting in line for a loaf of bread.
If people were all good, honest, responsible, hard-working, generous, wise and far-sighted it would not matter whether we had a communist or capitalist economy. People make the difference not the system of government.
But hopefully a society tries to encourage good behavior. Having lived under capitalism, I can state that capitalism not only encourages but absolutely demands the most horrible and evil behavior.