Narrative is crumbling.
It’s difficult to understand what’s going on in the world.
It’s difficult to understand what’s going on in the world because powerful people actively manipulate public understanding of what’s going on in the world.
Powerful people actively manipulate public understanding of what’s going on in the world because if the public understood what’s going on in the world, they would rise up and use their strength of numbers to overthrow the powerful.
The public would rise up and use their strength of numbers to overthrow the powerful if they understood what’s going on in their world because then they would understand that the powerful have been exploiting, oppressing, robbing, cheating and deceiving them while destroying the ecosystem, stockpiling weapons of armageddon and waging endless wars, for no other reason than so that they can maintain and expand their power.
The public do not rise up and use their strength of numbers to overthrow the powerful because they have been successfully manipulated into not wanting to.
Narrative is crumbling.
The public have been successfully manipulated into not wanting to rise up and use their strength of numbers to overthrow the powerful due to the way the powerful have been able to shore up mainstream narrative control in the form of purchasing mass media outlets, funding think tanks, buying politicians, implementing government opacity, pushing internet censorship, and other forms of perception management.
The powerful use their control over mainstream narratives to ensure that enough members of the public believe they live in a free democracy where things aren’t perfect but it’s the best you could ask for, instead of in a corporatist oligarchy wherein the powerful exploit, oppress, rob, cheat and deceive them while destroying the ecosystem, stockpiling weapons of armageddon and waging endless wars.
As long as the powerful are able to exert control over mainstream narratives, there will never be enough members of the public willing to use their strength of numbers to shake off the powerful and create a healthy society.
The powerful will remain capable of exerting control over mainstream narratives for as long as the public maintains its current unhealthy relationship with mental narrative.
Narrative is crumbling.
A collective shift into a healthy relationship with mental narrative would mean thought becomes the useful tool we evolved it to be rather than this noisy, compulsive head-chatter which dominates our lives where we are driven by fear and attachment to imbue an endless string of mental stories with the power of belief.
If we had a healthy relationship with mental narrative we would naturally view stories about what’s going on in the world far more objectively, because rather than glomming onto them out of fear and attachment we would have psychological space enough to look at them and critically examine whether or not they are useful tools for us to use in the present moment.
If humanity collectively made such a transition on a mass scale–a transition which sages across the millennia assure us humans are fully capable of–then humanity would become impossible to propagandize effectively.
If humanity becomes impossible to propagandize effectively, the lies will be impossible to conceal via mainstream narrative control, and humanity using the strength of its numbers to create a healthy society will become an inevitability.
And the funny thing is, in a weird way from way out of left field that nobody could possibly have anticipated, humanity’s current relationship with mental narrative appears to be drawing to a close.
Narrative is crumbling.
The narratives are breaking down.
People’s old ways of understanding what’s going on in the world just aren’t holding together anymore.
Trust in the mass media is at an all-time low, and it’s only getting lower.
People are more aware than ever that anything they see can be propaganda or disinformation.
Deepfake technology will soon be so advanced and so accessible that nobody will even trust video anymore.
The leader of the most powerful country on earth speaks in a way that has no real relationship with facts or reality in any way, and people have just learned to roll with it.
Ordinary people are hurting financially but Wall Street is booming, a glaring plot hole in the story of the economy that’s only getting more pronounced.
The entire media class will now spend years leading the public on a wild goose chase for Russian collusion and then act like it’s no big deal when the whole thing turned out to be completely baseless.
There’s a virus causing a massive disturbance in the entirety of human civilization with two wildly different narratives about it running simultaneously, and both sides are 100 percent convinced that all the facts have fully vindicated their position.
There are protests where people are becoming more and more aware that they are being fed empty narratives of approval and understanding while their core demands are going completely unaddressed.
There’s a presidential election between two obvious dementia patients and the mass media are all pretending that’s fine and normal despite what people can see with their own eyes.
New cold war escalations between the US-centralized empire and the unabsorbed governments of China and Russia are going to cause the media airwaves around the planet to become saturated in ever-intensifying propaganda narratives which favor one side or the other and have no interest in honestly telling people the truth about what’s going on.
Now they’re even babbling about UFOs.
Narrative is crumbling.
It’s all accelerating toward a white noise saturation point.
How long do you think we can go on like this?
How far do you think humanity’s relationship with narrative can be stretched before it snaps completely and forces a completely new way of being?
How long before it becomes more and more common for people to begin looking to themselves as individuals to determine which narratives are useful to them instead of looking to establishment narrative managers like they used to?
How long before people find themselves more and more often asking the question “Is this true?”
How long before people find themselves more and more often asking the question “What is truth?”
How long before people find themselves more and more often asking the question “What else have I been deceived about?”
How long before people find themselves more and more often asking the question “How else have I been deceiving myself?”
The current strain that is being placed on our collective relationship with narrative is completely unsustainable.
This would be a bad thing if we’d had a healthy relationship with mental narrative, but we don’t; we have a profoundly unhealthy relationship with mental narrative which has left us susceptible to terrible abuses on a mass scale.
We are now, as a species, collectively squeezing ourselves out of our old unhealthy relationship with narrative.
Narrative is crumbling.
It’s all crumbling to the ground.
This cannot be a bad thing.
It could end up being very, very good.
_________________________
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118 responses to “Narrative Is Crumbling”
Caitlin,
great article, it reads like poetry.
I am trying to contact you/your organization concerning an interview.
we’re just about to launch a new blogging platform — it’s a collaborative project– and an interview with you, especially on the matter of state-sponsored propaganda would be a tremendous turning point.
So unless I missed “contact info” somewhere, could you direct me appropriately.
I like that you are telling the truth on your Blog. Please check out my Blog: https://strangerinajewishworld.blogspot.com/
Think for yourself, but thank you to independent critical thinkers like Caitlin Johnstone, Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, among others, who help us to see the contradictions and learn outside the prevailing narrative.
If challenging the narrative.
Be prepared to have your mind changed.
https://ahtribune.com/world/asia-pacific/australia/4310-john-kerr-palace-papers.html
“The entire media class will now spend years leading the public on a wild goose chase for Russian collusion and then act like it’s no big deal when the whole thing turned out to be completely baseless.”
I guess you haven’t noticed that many millions of Americans believe the case has been proven beyond doubt. I don’t know how they do it, but they believe! If you doubt this is true, go look at some of the better known blogs: Hullabaloo, Eschaton, Emptywheel, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Rude Pundit, Mahablog, etc. They are not only certain that it’s been proven beyond a doubt that Russia controlled the election outcome in 2016, they believe it’s been proven beyond a doubt that Russia is already meddling in this year’s election. Oh, they also believe it’s been proven beyond a doubt that Hillary would be president right now if it wasn’t for those rotten, treasonous Bernie supporters. They not only sat out the election, they all voted for Trump, too. And Bernie actively sabotaged her. I’m strongly tempted to follow George Carlin’s advice and not vote. That way I have a legitimate right to complain about those idiots who voted the rotten government in.
I love Carlin, but this is one area where I can’t quite just let “George” do it.
Not when there are so many people who don’t vote that, if their non-votes were counted as votes for None Of The Above, NOTA would win in a landslide.
If the “NOTA Coalition” decides to, it could elect Bernie Sanders . . . or the Green Party’s ticket of Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker . . . or the Libertarians Jo Jorgensen and Jeremy Cohen, though they’re both from South Carolina so they might have to split that state’s electoral votes . . . or Diana Ross and Rachael Ray, for that matter.
OTOH, the system doesn’t exactly make such choices easy — or effective. And many if not all of those who don’t vote have decided on that as a form of protest . . . maybe hoping to delegitimize the result.
So I suggest a different rule: anybody gets to complain about any options they decided and acted to oppose. Or about those they supported changing their positions on key issues.
Don’t get to caught up in trying to outsmart them.
Focus on something stable and positive.
But watch them a little to know how it should not be done.
FedCoin cometh.
Cognitive dissonance results when reality does not align with assumptions.
We punish ourselves by being unwilling to accept reality.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/20/americas-forgotten-bullshit-bombing-of-serbia/
Thank you Caitlin. Wonderful and truthful article. The problem with overthrowing the powerful is first that you have to know who they are ( really, who are they? I mean their names, their professions, their home address, etc. – not some poor soul who happened to be around them at the wrong time. ) And then even if that happens, who gets to rule? In reality, I only trust myself as I am sure you only trust yourself. We could say that we all – seven billion of us – get to rule. But still we have to come up with the logistics. And they have to be fair, and in the end, we should all agree. Tough.
Full Participatory Democracy could be the answer. Peoples Congresses. No more giving power to sociopaths and psychopaths to laughingly act on our behalf as in Representative Demockery. The Libyan people en masse with Gaddafi showed a much better way forward than the monstrous system(s) we find ourselves in. The recipe is here:
http://openanthropology.org/libya/gaddafi-green-book.pdf
Full. Participatory. Democracy.
Great article, Ms Johnstone, and for the comments that follow..brilliant and interesting criticisms, too. I have to say Mr. Fredrich’s was the best:” I render unto Caesar, that which is Caesars”. If that which is Caesars, is nothing, or thin air. then my tribute to Caesar is nothing.
Good riddance dirt bags.
“Money” is just being generated out of thin air in the States which should make people wonder why Greece is the one in trouble. Trump WAS asked to do a Dementia test, he proudly discussed the results; so, there is no question about an election race between the obvious addled brained and a suspected case, but considering Reagan had Alzheimers while president is this really a big deal? Everyone wonders about Jeffery Epstein’s death, so bets are on about Ghislaine’s, but the real question is why a pedophile like Prince Andrew is not in jail? The American dream is a myth, always was, just a narrative, is it so surprising most of us are discovering it was just hot air?
In the specific contexts of (1) knowledge overcoming cognitive biases and (2) the power of narrative vs the power of empirical evidence-based knowledge, why assume that narrative is more powerful than knowledge.
C. Johnstone writes:
CJ is correct about this “massive disturbance in human civilization”. Could anyone have conceived last Halloween that this July would be our “new (permanent?) normal”?
What CJ gets wrong imo is making this about “sides” and “narratives” and “facts” instead of making this about evidence. Facts are already established knowledge. Who but a raging lunatic would deny the facts that the earth has one moon and that the earth and the earth’s moon are spherically shaped? Evidence, i.e. natural phenomena which is independent of narrative and polarized human thinking which results in creating “sides”, can be studied objectively. It takes a fairly long process of practicing “Follow the Evidence” before evidence yields facts, which facts overcome side-taking and narrative.
C. Johnstone is engaging in pseudoscience and pseudo-skepticism when she writes “both sides are 100 percent convinced that all the facts have fully vindicated their position.” The facts haven’t been established. We’re still in that process of turning evidence into knowledge and knowledge into facts (i.e. common taken-for-granted knowledge). It’s weird — but CJ has written about the normal patterns breaking down so that things get weirder and weirder — that Caitlin and her partner (who CJ acknowledges is her writing partner) could get this so wrong. I guess they both believed that they were immune to their own false narratives which they propagate.
I wish this was true but I don’t see narratives crumbling. Only a few crowds being paid by agents of the Deep State to riot and protest without offering any solutions. They object but have nothing positive to offer.
I agree. There are Koolaid dispensers aplenty, and they are being used. The vast majority are compliant with nearly all the theater we are fed. They proudly put on their face diaper to protect them from a virus for which we have gotten zero accurate information. BLM has devolved into a black supremacist movement, creating racism where there previously was none. While I favor neither, one political party has put forth a POTUS candidate who can rarely form a coherent sentence, and he’s leading in the polls.The sheeple gladly accepted the $1200 dollar bribe to distract them from the TRILLIONS handed to the bank cartel and corporations. I fear that if there is any return to sanity it will involve a lot of dead people. A LOT!
Agree. Just anarchy.
They lied about WW1, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Thalidomide, chemical fertilisers, Glyphosate, Vioxx, etc etc etc.
And the MSM cheered them on.
Why the hell should we believe anything they say?
“I render unto Caesar, that which is Caesars”. If that which is Caesars, is nothing, or thin air. then my tribute to Caesar is nothing.
Good riddance dirt bags.
Another plausible explanation for what is happening and why and then, the best part, what to do about it – GetWisdom.com
Here is what I wrote in response to a video about some Pleaidian ET faction coming to the rescue of the Human Family –
I think many people, especially those open to the idea of extraterrestrials and ascension, are getting a little more concerned as things deteriorate on earth without any signs that a true spiritual transformation is coming.
Many of them have been doing the very best they can to hold up their end by meditating, keeping their loving feelings strong and following their favorite information sources about signs that what they hope for is really on the way.
I was one of those people who thought that if something like what is described here in this video actually happened, it would definitely be a good thing. I was a local meditation leader for an organization that was supposedly in contact with Pleiadians and then this is what happened.
I met a psychic medium named Vidya in late 2015 after struggling with an addiction to alcohol that was on its way to becoming much worse. I had already been thru AA, other self-help approaches and several other highly touted and expensive healing modalities and I knew that something was still missing. She did a reading that was far more inclusive than expected, but the big surprise for me was her announcement that I had an entity attachment and that was what was fueling my self-medication/addiction problem. I never heard of such a thing. She told me that she did not do entity attachment removals, but she knew someone who did. She gave me his name and number and I called this fellow immediately.
I instinctively knew that Vidya had finally revealed something that could be very helpful to me. So I contacted this fellow and his name is Karl Mollison and he did a remote healing session for me and that was it. The problem was solved. No drama, no fireworks, no gnashing of teeth or great turmoil going from being someone depending on alcohol for relief to someone who really had no use for it. This got my attention. At the time I was very much enamored with and interested in the idea of ascension and the Event; the transformation from normal 3D living to what is popularly known as a 5D existence all happening as a normal course of human spiritual evolution.
I later did a video interview with Vidya for my YouTube channel Why Is This True and off camera I told her about what I had learned about the Event as described by the folks from Prepare for Change and from an east European fellow who goes by the name of Cobra who claimed that he was a Peiadian. She was not impressed and politely told me she conceived of a more sedate and protracted process in store for human kind. I did not pursue the matter any further since her reaction did not ring as anything close to being an endorsement of the idea.
A couple of years later I found her as a champion of the idea along with some other notable local researchers and writers while I had moved away from the notion of ascension and the Event in favor of a much darker scenario although along with this darker scenario came with it a much more meaningful and solution driven orientation for us humans. It was at once a very daunting narrative, but far more realistic given the current conditions on earth. The most important part of all of what I had learned through my association with Karl Mollison was the healing aspect and pivotal role for each and every one of us, IF we decide to become part of the solution.
The idea of ascension is not false. What is false is how it is possible for humans to get there. What I learned was that the only way we, as the human family, will enjoy such a thing as an ascension is if, and only if, we are first healed and this healing will only be possible if those who enslave us are also healed to the point where they decide to leave us alone.
The unbelievable fact in all of this is that the entire earth is being managed by a dark ET cohort that are, for all intents and purposes, races of sociopathic beings almost completely devoid of any spiritual connections to Source Creator. They are infected by the fallen angelic beings and are using earth as a resource and playground for their dark doings and depraved desires. The evidence for this is literally everywhere and growing every day. That this is not common knowledge is due to their superior technologies and intelligence, and most of all, to their ability to mind control humans and fool that portion of humanity who have advanced psychic skills; that is – the psychic readers, the channelers, the UFO and ET researchers and mediums and clairvoyants who comprise a relatively small percentage of humanity, but are in fact a potential threat to those who actually rule and run the earth and the powerful cabal and deep state and all their various minions and off-shoot organizations.
Now Karl Mollison is my business partner in an endeavor called Get Wisdom. He and another fellow named Brian Kelly along with me, own and run a website called GetWisdom.com and we are getting the word out about this as best we can. More importantly, we offer healing services, the same kind that helped me over 5 years ago, only now, it has been vastly improved. It is called the Lightworker Healing Protocol.
You could say that Vidya saved my life by alerting me about something that was completely invisible to me and by putting me in contact with Karl Mollison.
It pains me to see what is going on here. But it has to be done. I have to let you know and those who follow this channeling by Livia Skugor know that what is being promoted here is part of devious plan. It is not her fault other than she has not been careful to check to see that those who communicate with her have accurately identified themselves. As above so below. You have to use even more care in the world of channeling than you do out on the dark city streets.
Waiting for benevolent ET’s to come from the sky to save us is NOT the answer. These ET’s just need our consent to move in and then, only when it is far too late, will we discover that they are the very ones who have enslaved mankind for thousands of years.
Think about it. If they were here, as benevolent beings, keeping their secret from us while we went about killing each other by the MILLIONS, why would they wait until now to talk about an alleged virus that hasn’t even approached the severity of the Spanish Flu of 1918-20 where 50 million people died?
Did you know that there is a thing called democide? See Death by Government by R. J. Rummel https://amzn.to/3g2zF0d
That is where governments kill their own people. In the last 120 years 167 million people were killed by their own governments. Let that sink in and ask yourself, “Where were these Pleiadians then?” I am sorry to say that this is a shake down and a game where they will manipulate the remaining humans into a suicidal program of annihilation to finish the job.
These psychopathic beings are in need of healing desperately. If we want fewer victims and save the Divine Human Free Will Experiment here on earth – then we need to ask the Divine Realm and our Creator to heal the perpetrators.
All of us need healing, and that includes the perpetrators, and the high level healing needed is not going to come from the human realm, it is a Divine level problem that needs Divine level healing that will only be initiated by human request to the Divine Realm and Source Creator, God or Allah or whatever name you use when referring the Creator of All That Is.
Could I now be alerting you to something that has been completely invisible to you?
Geez … an incredibly long post offering “another plausible explanation” which I foolishly read only to see you pull out the God card in the next to the last paragraph.
Have mercy, either bring God into it immediately or write shorter posts.
BTW, why no mention of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Here is the important summary, from the last paragraph:
All of us need healing, and that includes the perpetrators, and the high level healing needed is not going to come from the human realm, it is a Divine level problem that needs Divine level healing that will only be initiated by human request to the Divine Realm … .
To put it into the context of Caitlin’s vision of sudden manifestation of new and improved human consciousness:
– the perpetrators must be part of that healing
– the healing cannot come from our ego-focused consciousness
– the process must be initiated by means of a request from the ego-focused consciousness
This is an important mystery, which is presented in different forms, by different traditions.
Our job as an ego-focused consciousness, is to call for healing from a higher state of consciousness. If you don’t acknowledge that you are currently ego-focused, then you are still part of the problem. If you think you can solve it from the ego-focused consciousness, you are still part of the problem.
The way I think of it, the lower vehicles are like scouts in strange territory, reporting back to the command post. We are the eyes and ears. The command post has no understanding or knowledge of what is happening “on the ground”.
The material reality is literally beyond the comprehension of the higher aspects of consciousness, so the lower vehicles (which includes the conceptualising mind) need to report to the higher consciousness by giving an assessment, providing feedback in terms of wishes and desires, and ask for help as appropriate. The higher consciousness is then able to assimilate that feedback and act on it.
The perfection of this relationship is when the lower vehicles decide consciously to surrender completely to the higher so they become a perfect expression of higher will. Even so, the higher consciousness still relies on the lower vehicles to observe and act in the material reality – which is their function.
What feelings come up when you think about total surrender? If negative, it is because you are still ego-focused.
Psychopaths are not capable of being healed. The Ancient Prophets said they will eventually all fight one another for control of the earth’s resources and end up killing one another. Then those who escape and survive wars and violent rebellion will build a new and much better civilization. Read more of this here: http://www.wisdompage.com/2013%20Articles/Molyneaux%20essay.pdf
Yet the manipulation surrounding Covid-19 is being ignored by Caitlin Johnstone — after all her preaching about “narrative” and psychological warfare operations. The silence is deafening.
Here’s the link which caused me to question the prevailing narrative about Covid-19: https://thewallwillfall.org/2020/05/02/gaslighting-the-coronavirus-dimitry-orlov/
And here is one of my most recent posts on social media about this prevailing narrative. The counter-narrative, the dissenting opinion is that this pandemic is fake and is being hyped. [Interestingly, the World Socialist Web Site, with an operating budget of about $10 million USD, is censoring dissenting arguments about Covid-19.] Anyway, here’s the link — https://disqus.com/home/discussion/the-digger/the_digger_facts_about_covid_19_published_by_swiss_policy_research_july_update/#comment-5007099506 — and the post:
I know what you mean, but the hype is also very real.
Let’s presume that this new SARS strain of corona virus is real, i.e. recently discovered. (That eliminates one level of conspiracy theorizing.)
Let’s also presume that it really doesn’t matter — once the virus has entered the general population — that it doesn’t matter if the virus’ origin was zoonotic or genetically engineered in a bioweapons lab. (That eliminates another layer of conspiracy theorizing.)
Let’s presume that the lethality of this new virus can be studied by following the evidence. (This eliminates conspiracy theorizing altogether.)
Admittedly, this is a corona virus which causes sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). SARS is a type/kind of response to a viral infection. Pre-Covid-19 (i.e. the name attached to the disease caused by this virus which causes SARS), there were x-number of deaths annually from assorted acute respiratory infections. (Again, all of this is evidence based.)
If there is a real pandemic — as opposed to a hyped one, and there is no need whatsoever to get into why “the politicians, the bureaucrats and the propagandists… proven liars” would have a collective agenda to hype a pandemic, because that’s getting into conspiracy theorizing — then there ought to be excess mortality due to this new corona virus causing SARS demonstrably above and beyond (1) the background mortality due to seasonal influenza (2) the background mortality due to influenza-like infections (3) all combined acute respiratory infections. Supposedly, from my scanty research, back in 2010 the total number of deaths from all combined acute respiratory infections was about 4 million annually.
Show. Me. The.
MoneyBodies! That’s empirical evidence. It cannot be hidden by words and conspiracies. It ought to be evident that, if this is a global pandemic, this pandemic is demonstrable by all of the excess deaths.I have seen nothing which compares (A) total numbers of worldwide deaths caused by acute respiratory viral and bacterial infections pre-Covid-19 with (B) total numbers of worldwide deaths caused by acute respiratory and bacterial infections during Covid-19. This comparison would provide proof (i.e. the necessary and sufficient evidence) of a pandemic. Where is the evidence?
I’ve always been taught that, from a scientific worldview, one must be skeptical of a hypothesis until the necessary and sufficient evidence demonstrates that the hypothesis is probably not wrong. In short, Follow. The. Evidence. Where is the evidence that this pandemic is real? If there is no evidence, then we must return to the null hypothesis.
The fear campaign is real just like covid. Covid is just like the flu but no one will tell you. They could have launched this campaign any flu season. My daughter in the ER said about 100 patients through the ER are admitted now for Covid. All have preexisting conditions and all are mostly elderly. This happens each year during a bad flu season. THIS IS A POLITICAL WORLDWIDE FEAR CAMPAIGN.
Truth!
Covid is absolutely not “just like the flu” and this fact has been made abundantly clear. There is no vaccine for Covid (at present); flu shots are commonly available at pharmacies. Covid is more infectious than the flu and hospitalizations and deaths are greater. If, as you yell in all caps, this is a political worldwide fear campaign, what is its ultimate goal?
Hasn’t CJ given you any hints as to “the ultimate goal”?
And please allow me to take this opportunity to ask,
where is Petra in all this brouhaha?
I agree Gary. And frankly I’m surprised that Caitlin seems to accept the official narrative on this one.
I’ll be checking out your article and your post.
By the way, I’m in the process of asking around for the studies that fulfill Koch’s postulates. So far, not a single one so far, even now six months later, let alone at the time that the quarantines, the lockdown, the testing, and masks were foisted on the public. My next stop is this guy: https://www.virology.ws/about/
HAHA I just looked at Dmitri’s article. This line hit me, and OH so true:
//
The economy doesn’t matter as much as being among people who are willing to help each other.
//
Absolutely.
You’ll notice when you look at the hysteria pumped out by MSM that they are all about **concerns of the rich**. We’re only interested because we’re hanging, teeth clenched on their withered teats. “Security” and “economy” and all the rest are the paranoia of people who are afraid to lose what little they have (and riches are very, very little) and think that everyone wants to take it from them. Let the narcissism of that sink in. This guy epitomizes the “but EVERYBODY wants to be like me!” idiocy of the rich and those want to be rich: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x384xk3
Get a load of him when they get to “The Rich Get Richer”.
What Caitlin has written does not describe what these transformed, healthy-thinking people would/should DO to change the whatever-you-want-to-call-it system or Matrix in which we live. Presumably, these healthy-thinking people would indeed want the present arrangement to change, right?
So let’s assume for the moment that every single voter in the US becomes a healthy-thinker. Once again with feeling, just exactly how do/should these people BEHAVE after such a transformation? What do they DO that will be different than what they USED to do, BEFORE their transformation?
What tool does every American have to literally transform the world? US citizens live in a “system” in which they are allowed to vote every four years. In the past, BEFORE their recent transformation into healthy-thinkers, the vast majority voted for Rs or Ds for public office. These now-transformed voters see the historical results of electing R or D presidents and congress-people in the near and distant past. These transformed voters know that BOTH of those parties are to blame for the present day situation of perpetual war, perpetual bail-outs of the Elite corporations and banks, people having to hold more than one job to barely eek out an existence, people getting beaten or murdered by the Elite’s pit-bull police for maybe no reason, etc. etc.
Therefore, with all of the above real-life experience of being ruled by Rs and Ds fully in their transformed minds, just exactly WHAT DO THEY DO? Do they once again vote for ANOTHER R or D?!
Qutie obviously, if these transformed voters want change, they are NOT going to once again repeat the time-proven mistake of voting for an R or a D candidate for POTUS OR CONGRESS in the upcoming election! These transformed people know that Real change will be obtained ONLY by voting for candidates from OTHER parties.
These healthy-thinkers also now realize that beneficial change will NOT be obtained by shooting a bunch of Elite dead in their Manhattan or DC or Arlington mansions.
These healthy-thinkers know that there are only 435 members of the house of representatives.
That there are only 100 senators in the senate.
That there is only ONE president in the white house.
Therefore, that the entire elected federal government consists of only 536 human beings. They know that THESE 536 people are the people who maintain the whatever-you-want-to-call-it system in which a microscopic percentage of the population owns or controls the vast majority of LARGE SCALE capital equipment, wealth and land (upon which the vast majority of the population vitally depends), for their own astronomical profit. These healthy-thinkers know that the Elite own those 536 R or D human beings.
These healthy-thinkers know that the aforementioned microscopic percentage is spending literally billions of printed-out-of-thin-air “dollars” to accomplish only one thing — to make absolutely sure that they will walk into a voting booth in November and vote for an R or a D candidate for POTUS and R or D candidates for both legislative branches.
These healthy-thinkers know that the Elite do not care one iota WHICH R or D candidates they vote for because ALL R or D candidates for public office will MAINTAIN their power, which means that they will maintain the present system exactly as it is.
These healthy-thinkers know that by supporting illegal war against the world and unconstitutional acts against American citizens at home, these 536 human beings have proven themselves unfit for office. But just exactly HOW can these 536 be removed from office?
These healthy-thinkers know that ALL of these 536 can be removed from office only, ONLY!, if they DO NOT vote for an R or a D in the upcoming election and the mid-term two years down the road. These healthy-thinkers sudden realize that doing that simple thing is really all it will take for them to literally change the world for the better — that all each of them has to do is step into the voting booth in November and NOT vote for an R or D. These healthy-thinkers can already imagine how the world would be day AFTER they vote all the Rs and Ds out of office.
Thanks …
Want a facsimile of democracy? Minimum 7 viable parties dukking it out in a squabbling parliament with frequent consultations of the electorate.
The main thing on my mind as a topic is the threat to the power elites, posed by citizen-cooperation, outside of their direct command and control.
This is a long term Catch-22 for the elites, since they need society to cooperatively create an economy to feed them.
In the short term, elites need to maintain their power and privilege, at the cost of everything else. That short term means the economy cannot adjust when it needs to. Our economy badly needed to adjust in 2008, but it just kept the same course, promised the moon. Power elites made sure stock valuations kept rising, and dividends got paid, while the production-economy got bled.
We are cognitively trapped in the world we have known, the world in our heads, where we can predict things day to day, but our cognitive models are not the real world. All of us have great reluctance to broach the subject of complete societal change (to less wealth) with others. There is a whole lot of criticism and shunning of people who are accused of saying the wrong thing these days. It’s harsh. It shuts down discussion immediately. I see this at my own work, among physicians in public health. It’s pervasive.
We cannot question the belief systems which bind our social groups together.
Everything is already contained in a belief system.
Know your belief system or be taught your error through public denunciation!
The tide will begin to turn when we give up on competing social orthodoxies, to work together for practical necessity.
Working together for common good, cooperation, is our most successful human trait over the eons.
In times of plenty, societies may be driven down other trails, but at the end of any such historical experiment, when the support system for the society fails, people either cooperate to find solutions, or slaughter each other,,, eventually followed by survivors cooperating to find solutions.
http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/07/cooperative-survival.html
Great article, Caitlin! I wanted to click on a heart, but couldn’t find it. I write political and environmental articles for the N Ca Peace Press, Bohemian newspaper, occasionally for CounterPunch, and sent your excellent article to my main out of state (Oregon) correspondent – I’m on the left coast of the US Empire. I am so glad you see the importance of writing about “my” country from Australia much of the time. My website currently has 60+ radical political and environment articles, poetry, much satire, and political fantasy stories. You inspire me, Caitlin. I welcome feedback. Pay site, but everything is free of charge to read. Patreon.com/BarryBarnett, email barrymuse123@gmail.com. Peace. Be well.
P.S. I subscribe to your writing.
Trump is not an obvious dementia patient. Biden is and you, the author might quite possibly be. Yours is a argument of false equivelency interperted by a pseudo intellect. Your commentary hangs on an obvious truth, repetition and a general loss of any contribution either insightful, or reasoned. This site claims ther eis a duplicate comment, but it fails to properly process
I think narratives really do crumble. Remember those guys who tried to invade Venezuela? They truly believed that it would be easy and that Trump was behind them. They don’t believe that any more.
whatever he is he is failing. his tanking campaign can be laid at his feet. i think he is marginally more intellectually competent than biden at this stage, but biden will meekly listen to his advisors and trump blunders around changing positions constantly, which makes him functionally more stupid because he doesn’t really listen to anybody but the promptings of his intuition. he was given a great gift in 2016 because he was running against the odious clinton, but then he squandered it, and now he is losing to someone that may be more demented than reagan in his second term.
Trump is not an obvious dementia patient. Biden is and you, the author might quite possibly be. Yours is a argument of false equivelency interperted by a pseudo intellect. Your commentary hangs on an obvious truth, repetition and a general loss of any contribution either insightful, or reasoned.
My friend, please be aware you have “Cognitive Dissidence”, I would seek medical advise!
I dont think there will be a general awakening from the mainstream media matrix which most people are immersed in; no more than I believe in the Christian rapture or the new age myth we are about to ascend to the 5th dimension. Nor will we be saved (or invaded) by aliens. I think we are going to have to muddle through the globalizing crisis as we have muddled through every other crisis for the the past millennia from the stone age to today. It is likely to be very difficult and messy; and if we succeed it will be at great cost. What matters is that humanity succeeds. Each one of us is right now playing our part in that process. If enough of us play our parts well enough maybe humanity will have a chance.
I would like to add I think Caitlin is playing her part exceptionally well.
Thank you Caitlin
When the ” shit hits the fan ” the owners and the masters will demand that everyone not following their orders or suggestions be immediately sent to the re-education camps to get our minds right. If that fails we will be quickly ” eliminated “.
Hey David, I hope all is well.I genuinely believe we are at the beginning of a new epoch, one in which the many, will no longer be controlled by the few. Corruption has reached a tipping point and all is set to collapse next year. Between now and then, the collective consciousness will be added to. At the point of ignition, there will be an uprising in excess of what we see now, and undoubtedly more violent. The choice that Humanity then has is, a life devoid of consciousness or one where we contribute towards moving Humanity forward, not just for ourselves, but for generations to come. We have the opportunity of making earth the most inspiring, challenging, wondrous, and just plain fun, conscious experience. Let the history books show that the Age of Reason started in 2020 “Consciousness is a precondition of being” – Jung.
Paul, you sense this thing that Caitlin senses, some sea-change in human civilization just around the corner, more evolutionary than revolutionary, more Jungian than Marxian, though there will be elements of both in the transition. So do I sense this thing, and it’s one of those things that can’t really be argued about, even reasoned about. You either pick up on it or you don’t. There are very few blogs out there, at least that I’ve been able to find, which are sensitive to this new vibe, groping for ways to express it, point to it, help us anticipate and begin to experience it. That’s what makes coming here so exciting and refreshing.
New epoch, yes. The many will be starved and killed. The remainder will be too busy just trying to survive to care who is in charge.
I like the ‘comparison of probabilities’ formula for analyzing narratives (stories).
For instance,
Is it more probable that most of the shiney thingys in the night sky are suns (like our own), which birth planets, which birth life forms (that we might be able to recognize as such, given our development), or is it more likely that our government is telling us the truth about it?
Another example would be (as relates to the super creepy Maxwell/Epstein/’Royals’/’Politicians’/Weinstein/’Hollywood Stars’/’Celebrities’/The Vatican and its agents (a.k.a. creepy gay dude in that stupid fuckin’ hat who claims that God and Jesus are exclusively his invisible homeboys, and nobody else’s of course)),
… Is it more likely that children are sexually abused and exploited in order to continue and reinforce the institution of prostitution and human compromise, or is it more likely that the ‘MSM’ and the government are telling us the truth about it?
Another case in point would be,
Is it more likely that a cartel of drug dealing mass murderers have compromised the judicial and law enforcement structures of several powerful nations in order to further not only their chosen profession but also destitution and human slavery through addiction and abject poverty, or is it more likely that half of the world is full of the dumbest fucking cops and judges that this universe has thus far been capable of producing (and the ‘dudes on tv are being honest about the whole thing)?
One more would be,
Is it more likely that the dudes that make and sell all of the guns/tanks/bombs/planes/ships/missiles used to murder millions of humans (as often as possible) are doing it just for money and power, or is it more likely that some brown dude that you never have met (and never will) literally spends his spare time bombing innocent mommies and daddies and babies and grandmas and grandpas and puppies and kittens and birthday cake bakeries and what not because it amuses him and he’s just that bored?
Comparison of probabilities are pretty handy sometimes, if applied honestly and in a manner which is grounded in, and connected to, reality.
This patronisingly underestimates people. Most people do see the system in terminal crisis, that they’re being spun and conned — because now it’s all round and forced on everyone. Even the dimmest, most ‘educated’ can now see it. About 100,000,000 US voters don’t vote. That’s not apathy or brainwashing. That’s knowing the electoral farce makes no difference. People aren’t as stupid or as brainwashed as portrayed here.
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Jump up and down as much as you like about the bourgeoisie’s ‘crumbling narrative’, but if there’s no program and leadership to put the capitalist beast down, then it all matters for nought. In short, a Bolshevik party with a revolutionary program is sorely needed. It’s not ‘narrative’, but What Is To Be Done.
Caitlins article’s can fill you with hope but reading the comments takes you straight back to realising that for every insightful person there are a million Gumps out there that can read that and reply how they do. Caitlin’s articles are basically soul Heroin and the comments are Naloxone.
Commenters, don’t confuse Caitlin’s positivity about your potential with the idea that you understand anything. The fact that we’re all pissing our souls into commodifying virtual text boxes is bad enough but the sense of authority and unhinged fundamentalism in all manner of wacky ‘beliefs’ (always stated as flat facts) that I see here are tantamount to fascism.
The ‘if you dont believe that there is NO virus then you are part of the problem’ guys perfectly illustrate this.
If you think the weight of taking an extreme viewpoint and calling everyone who doesn’t agree the enemy is enough to break that minds relationship with narrative, then you missed the fact that it already broke and this is the result.
It takes many years and tons of support from insightful people to recover from a break like that. I’ve seen it done, but it definitely ain’t no spontaneous occurence.
In a word. Dreams vs Reality
No. It’s more like one dream transitioning into another–a dream of life replacing, overcoming, transcending a dream of death.
Not quite sure what you are saying there. The normal historical arc of a civilisation includes an age when there is wealth and security, and the citizens can afford to live in a fantasy without serious repercussions (to the citizen). During the early genesis and development of a civilisation, and after its collapse, people need to be more in touch with reality just to survive. It’s still dream-like, but of necessity the dream has more points of agreement with the actual.
The collapse of belief in present narratives is only a step in the right direction, not a solution to all our problems. We will need new narratives based on realities to guide and empower the efforts to forge a new world. Simple anarchy is not a solution.
Quite correct, Mike. But optimistic articles like this are more welcome than sober reality. As the saying goes: Don’t let the truth spoil a good story. Their pain must get much worse before people wake up to reality.
It takes both the stick and the carrot to get the horse to move the cart. So yes, the pain must get worse. But at the same time, there must be an infusion of joy, joy in the birth of the new and the beautiful. The aborted “revolution” of the late 60s/early 70s was filled with such joy. Just listen to the music. When something like this reappears, especially among the young, when some irresistible positive force again joins hands with the necessary negative, THEN we’ll know that the times are truly a’changin.
Also a good article, caitlinesque even:
https://ahtribune.com/us/4305-reason-washington-is-hostile-to-china.html
Is achingly close to realizing the truth, but the truth is not that china is threat to the us but that china is a threat to the owners.
You keep outdoing yourself, Caitlin. 🙂 This acutely observant, wonderfully reiterative proclamation surfaces just as ‘the crack in everything’ has suddenly widened. The false narrative they constructed to subdue our hearts, minds, and souls is indeed crumbling, but where we desperately need assistance – now — is in selecting from among the forces that are flooding in to replace it. It could go in any direction. Yeats’ “The Second Coming” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming describes a similar moment. it also brings to mind the warning said to be written at the edge of some old mariners’ maps: “Beyond here be monsters.” Let’s try to head them off as we feel our way toward a better future for this beautiful planet and its inhabitants.
“Narrative is crumbling… People’s old ways of understanding what’s going on in the world just aren’t holding together anymore.”
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Narrative is Story. Some stories are good, others are bull-leavings. Someone has to create the Story. Who do they work for? What is their true intention? What is their aim?
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Each individual cannot exist without a Story. Who am I? What characters do I play in life? What is my motivation? Where is my Bliss? Who is helping me and who are my enemies? Where am I headed? What are my personal demons? Who will I save today in my Superman outfit today? Who do I want to be tomorrow?
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Nations needs stories, too. Who are we as a people? Why do we exist as a group? What is our relationship to others and the World? What are our goals? What are our sins to atone for?
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You don’t like your current Story? Get a better Story. Create it yourself.
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Are you living your Story or someone else’s?
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We are all Authors whether we choose to be or not. Each of us IS writing his/her own story whether you consciously do it or not.
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Don’t wait for someone else to write a good story for you. Do it yourself. Then, go out and live it and make it real.
You want stories? Don’t we all? Let Noah explain! He’s right on the money…! https://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_what_explains_the_rise_of_humans?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
you are part of the problem if you do not believe that there is NO virus. It’s not been proven. there is no peer-reviewed study that has isolated a virus and proven to cause this disease. not a one that uses Koch’s Postulates to prove cause.
Brain food for brain dead to bring in contradiction the the joke of other posts. Your own dream is a nightmate for everyone else.
Big bang
Black holes
Dark matter
Dark energy
Inflation
Inflaton
Age of universe
Co2 holds heat
All of modernistic relative physics
Einstein proven wrong on all three of his relativistic assumptions
Agw.
Here comes observation real stuff
Cycles
Interconnection of universe
Interconnection of galaxies
Interconnection of sun and planets
Same as interconnection of fungus, atoms and the rest of tiny stuff.
Same as you brain!!
Its an electromagnetic universe amazing in its connection and reveal.
Everything is connected. And one source of all energy and matter.
Aporoaching the galactic center Pluto allready taking a hit.
Cosmic energy sheet on the way
In front of us being hit. Three stars in succession have done the nova thing !! We will be next to some unknown degree.
Electromagnetic field of earth collapsing. Disease and infection driving the insanity of your screens
Ready for what’s comming
Trying to get more people to understand this reality is a hard sell; I’ve tried. People now live in fear, perpetuated by ridiculous masking/muzzling, and will beg for the “injection” in the hope their lives will return to “normal.” But that is never going to happen.
This is how I see it unfolding. Those who get vaccinated will get some type ID not requiring masks. The rest must wear them. Then over time the mask wearers will be seen as dangerous and unhealthy by MSM. Over tine peer pressure will cause many to succumb to the vaccine as the mask wearers will be further ostracized and possibly even attacked.
Part of the realization the narrative is crumbling is the realization of a basic assumption from postmodernism that the endeavor of a grand narrative isnt possible. People have been plating with this idea wildly and social media has wildly reinforced this assumption by demonstrating completely contrasting , mutually exclusive narrative descriptions of anything that can be assumed to have a political bend to it. So called msm has been prone to obfuscating facts since it began. Yellow journalism didnt start with the cold war, but Bernays marketing techniques and the overton window really upped the game when applied to marketing principles disguised as journalism and punditry. Its just so blatant now, the assumption being that saturating key talking points creates public support among people that want to believe and discredits skeptics, as the “evidence” piles up from repetition regardless of factual basis.
Ive had friends convinced the covid crisis is really just a push at mass population control through inducing a suicide wave. My response was it doesnt matter what the powers that be want us to do or believe, we create a political bond through friendship, camaraderie and fellowship. When people are willing to show up for each other in relationships not mediated by money. That leaves the state its only other tool of force to discover this “threat” to its hegemony and risk losing narrative control by squishing ants, for exercising the rights each of us is born with. The state must project power in order to exist, to appear to be everywhere, when in fact they are perpetually outnumbered, and the control mechanism is perpetually in factional conflict with itself. It is fear based rule to protect the fear and greed driven sociopathic entities that define the very concept of unsustainable based on the imbalances they embody and protect. Love has always been the only solution to any of this, and it starts in the informal micropolitical sense. We have all the tools to create a non harmful society before us already, it just needs to start and take hold at the interpersonal level, before the state level fallacy can be made obsolete.
Brilliantly stated and the best comment I’ve seen on here. I wish everyone could see what is so plain and clear to you & I.
Hey There Caitlin, wow – just wow. I genuinely believe we are at the beginning of a new epoch, one in which the many, will no longer be controlled by the few. Corruption has reached a tipping point and all is set to collapse next year. Between now and then, the collective consciousness will be added to. At the point of ignition, there will be an uprising in excess of what we see now, and undoubtedly more violent. The choice that Humanity then has is, a life devoid of consciousness or one where we contribute towards moving Humanity forward, not just for ourselves, but for generations to come. We have the opportunity of making earth the most inspiring, challenging, wondrous, and just plain fun, conscious experience. Let the history books show that the Age of Reason started in 2020 “Consciousness is a precondition of being” – Jung.
Ms Johnstone the title of this article caught my attention right away. The article is well worth reading even though you are not the ” Johnstone ” the writer was speaking of. This article can be read here:
Adams Meets Johnstone – The Monsters Are at Home Now by John Quincy Adams!
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/07/26/adams-meets-johnstone-the-monsters-are-at-home-now/
Thanks, Ron.
Good article. Pro-War-Left is called to task.
John, it amazes me that so many people within these United States have such twisted minds that they can never ever see their own hypocrisy and complicity in the mass murder carried out by our governmental criminals. Every side of the political aisles are just as guilty as the murderers on top ordering the killings worldwide.
Great article.
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Caitlin said:
“If we had a healthy relationship with mental narrative we would naturally view stories about what’s going on in the world far more objectively, because rather than glomming onto them out of fear and attachment we would have psychological space enough to look at them and critically examine whether or not they are useful tools for us to use in the present moment.”
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In order to find solutions, it is imperative that we identify the problem(s) as clearly and succinctly as possible. Then think about solutions to the problem. Look at the problem from every angle and compare and contrast solutions in as many different ways as we can. From absolutely unattainable, pie in the sky, impossible solutions to the the simpleton propaganda (non) solutions we get from media narrative.
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While I don’t view it as the only big problem we face, I do think Caitlin’s quote, above, is an extremely important one and, arguably, should be addressed first. It seems logical to me that in order to solve the huge problems we face, as a society, as a planet, we must all break free of the narratives brainwashing us.
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I think most of us here realize, there’s no magic wand, no easy fixes. Having said that, it seems to me we each contribute to the world we live in tomorrow, by the actions we take in the world we live in today.
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I often hear people say that boycotts and strikes don’t work. Absolute load of dung. They’re the only thing that’s ever worked.
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How do we stop the media narrative from controlling our planet? Boycott the media. I’m not at the point, yet, where I boycott all media, but I stopped watching cable news a while back and when I do watch commercial television I mute the commercials. I remember, when I watched cable news, I had this feeling that I had some kind of personal relationship, with the hosts. Seems strange now. Muting commercials is wonderful. It gives you little breaks between content to think about and reflect on what you just saw, or discuss it with someone you’re watching with.
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It used to be that the first thing I did when I’d come home is to turn on the tv. It was almost like I was afraid to be alone with my own thoughts or something. Strange, I know. I think I find myself calmer, more relaxed and generally happier than I used to be. I’ve found that I am fine, even happy, being alone with my own thoughts.
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I hear people say that boycotts and strikes don’t work. Absolute dung. They’re the only thing that’s ever worked.
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How do we stop the monopolies from controlling everything? Boycott! Start with Amazon, Google (I do need to dump gmail) and Facebook. There are alternatives. Look for small businesses, or even large brick and mortar stores, or order online from someone else. Use other search engines and browsers, use other social media platforms.
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It may be a bit inconvenient and take a little more time, but it’s not that bad. Besides, the time we save watching the media should more than make up for it.
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How do we stop hate? Treat people with compassion, dignity and respect, understanding and forgiveness. Patience. Everyday.
Love. Peace.
Indeed a great and greatly-written article. It almost read like poetry.
Caitlin’s work on narrative and media is consistently outstanding. Those who are finding their way through the propaganda maze may also find this article by professor John McMurtry helpful. Although he tends toward rather academic language, it clearly maps out “how” and “why” we can be fed nothing but lies from MSM on a daily basis and why the system can never and will never correct those lies. A very worthwhile read:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8588/7451ac76cf289aa4a6796eba7e54b60b3598.pdf
The first thing to do to turn off the propaganda is to get rid of your television. Television, instead of being used to educate and enlighten, as well as entertain, the people, has been taken over by corporate interests and the MIC to use as a giant brainwashing machine. That device sitting in your home is destroying your reason and programming you to believe the narrative of the oligarchy every day, not just by way of “news” reporting, but by advertising and even the story lines of comedies and dramas.
The great Frank Zappa advised us to kill our television decades ago. He was right. Get that lie machine out of your house and out of your head.
For many years my grandfather would not allow my grandmother to have a TV in their home. My grandfather said the ” infernal machines ” would destroy this country. He was right! For the last twenty years I only turn on my TV to watch a DVD. On the occasional times I listen to the radio it is only to listen to jazz music, nothing else. You would be amazed at how much crap gets put into our heads by the MSM and government propaganda 24/7.
“Blow up your TV…”
And be goddamn selective about what you let inside your mind and soul from the internet. Look not so much for agreement with your current views, because intellectual challenge helps us grow. Rather, let the spirit in which information and opinion is expressed be the basis of discernment. At least, that’s MHO.
What good is it to get rid of your Tee-Vee when you live on one website on social media which is such an echo chamber that it feels compelled to suppress dissent by practicing heavy-handed moderation and censorship?
You are a pious hypocrite for only posting on the WSWS.
I’ll be writing about all the commentary of mine on the WSWS which was censored, i.e. not posted as “spam” because it contained links, over the weekend and send you a link.
Censoring dissenting counterargument only shows what dogmatic & rigid & illiberal ideologues so many (so-called) “Maoists” or “Marxists” or “socialists” or “leftists” have become.
I put the advocates of these ideologies in quotation marks because I’m skeptical that these ideologues are friends of the working class whatsoever.
If you decide to reply to this — I doubt that you will — contact me on Disqus away from your illiberal echo chamber.
Here seems like a good time to mention my basic problem with the world according to Caitlin.
I’ve heard this all before. I was around in the 1970s. You can destroy the establishment’s narratives, but if you have no ideas of your own, it doesn’t matter. The powers that will still be will just redo their narratives and gradually put everyone back to sleep again.
Children think in narratives, in story telling. Adults develop schemata; functional models of reality.
When I get some time I will fully develop my brilliant refutation of Caitlinism, and write it up. tr
Let us decide whether it’s brilliant.
Plenty of us have ideas of our own. You would do better to develop the idea of socialism and work to overthrow the system of oligarchs, thieves, and murderers that is destroying the planet. And, as I have already commented, get rid of your television to restore your sanity.
Lol, looking forward to it.
I don’t fault Caitlin for lacking “ideas”. She shows no lack as far as I can see. I’ve watched her thinking develop and I think her trajectory is far more important than the distance she’s gone so far. Any of us that, at this point, pretend they have a grasp on what the world fixed will look like is kidding themselves. _All_ the work that any of us has done so far still reeks of the cesspool in which we devised it. It’s gonna take some time, some brutal honesty, and loads of mutual support, compassion, and ingenuity to clean the filth off, cuz it’s gotten into every pore and cranny.
But I sincerely look forward to seeing your contribution Tim. The more we share, the more we help each other clean up, the clearer our schemata and functional models will become.
And adults think in narratives, too. It’s how we impart our schemata and functional models to our children.
Excellent point.
As usual I agree with your analysis, and your values. I am on your side. I would love to see the present power structure crumble, and we should run with the momentum building for it.
I do believe, however, that your seeming assumption that people, even without the mental baggage of propaganda and false narrative, are all sweetness and light, reason and love, is mistaken. Humans are not, never have been and never will be entirely good. None of us are, completely, and some of us are just born bad.
That doesn’t argue that we should try to treat cancer with bandaids (piecemeal reform). But it does beg the question of what do we replace the diseased systems with. With almost 8 billion people some organization is necessary. It won’t just sort itself out.
The trick, as I see it, is to develop systems that allow good people (those who care about the group’s welfare), who are the majority I think, to maintain power, instead of the way it’s always been, the assholes gravitating to greed and their selfish stranglehold on governing structures. And preventing this requires some measure of force.
How do good people do bad, but necessary things to put down those individuals whose actions cause pain, suffering and death for many others? A slippery slope. But one which must be scaled, and is long overdue in our fight against said assholes ruling things now.
Hooray! Someone else gets it, too!
Steve, you voice some very common opinions. The problem with them is:
1. They’ve never been demonstrated by any research.
2. They are ignore-ant because they ignore the elephant in the room: childhood abuse.
3. Sapolsky, for one, has debunked the “human nature” and “born bad” myths in his work with baboons.
When prevailing opinion gravitates toward the mythical and superstitious, there’s a reason for it and, as far as I’ve been able to tell from my research, it always originates in precisely the kind of manipulation by the rich that Caitlin has been documenting. All of the behavior that supposedly shows that “human nature” is some degree of depraved can be traced back to the effects of trauma — physical, psychological, social — rooted in the narratives (public education), institutions, and systems erected by the rich for their own purposes. Bottom line, the “human nature” arguments are avoidant and circular.
Very good Tim and Steve, while most are unaware of it, what we use for money has profoundly negative psychological consequences, it is money created under usury; the abuse of monetary authority for personal gain. (Search psychological consequences of money) We don’t see how it operates subconsciously because money is an abstraction, debt-money is the real “hidden hand” of capitalism. The system has to change or it will take us all down. Tim is right, we need to replace the narrative just as we need to replace the system. We need to create a powerful meta-narrative, there is nothing more inter-sectional than money.
Marx and Engels have already come up with one. You should check it out. They wrote a couple of good books, especially about money. One of them is called Capital.
Exactly. That is the root upon which everything hinges, and it must be replaced. Without changing it, we might as well get drunk or stoned, sit back, and enjoy the view before it’s gone, because all the hue and cry over all the myriad sub-issues will be for nought. It’s about systems, which are a choice, and can be changed, not people,which, collectively anyway, never really do.
It is capitalism that brings out the worst in people, the greed that leads to violence and control. It must be eradicated and replaced with socialism, which can bring out the best.
“From each according to his ability;
To each according to his need.”
There is a better way.
Thank you.
Steve, you voice some very common opinions. The problem with them is:
1. They’ve never been demonstrated by any research.
2. They are ignore-ant because they ignore the elephant in the room: childhood abuse.
3. Sapolsky, for one, has debunked the “human nature” and “born bad” myths in his work with baboons.
When prevailing opinion gravitates toward the mythical and superstitious, there’s a reason for it and, as far as I’ve been able to tell from my research, it always originates in precisely the kind of manipulation by the rich that Caitlin has been documenting for a long time now, and others (Chomsky comes to mind) have done so before her.
All of the behavior that supposedly shows that “human nature” is some degree of depraved can be traced back to the effects of trauma — physical, psychological, social — rooted in the narratives (public education), institutions, and systems erected by the rich for their own purposes.
Bottom line, the “human nature” arguments are avoidant and circular.
Oops, there were some tech difficulties blocking my comment, they fixed them, I looked for it, didn’t see it, reposted. Sorry for the duplicate, no idea how to remove it.
Two dementia patients? Is there evidence Trump has dementia now? News to me…
Dementia isn’t a problem for puppets… er presidents. Reagan continued to play out his role fine with it. However, they do need to be capable of reading a teleprompter. Uh, wait. Bush Jr couldn’t even do that. So what do I know?
Yes, the narrative about capitalism, the “free market,” and the “invisible hand,” will be among the last to crumble, and when it does, which will likely happen as a consequence of the coming Covid Depression, we can expect, initially, various forms of fascism to step into the vacuum. And then when THEY also crumble, which they will, the door will finally open to the only viable socioeconomic system crying out to be born: some version(s), yet to be fully fleshed out, of eco-socialism. I lived through the crazy, scary, yet exhilarating tumult of the late 1960s/early 1970s. Then things got really bad and really BORING for a series of decades (you know, the end of history bit). Now, suddenly, out of nowhere, history and this old man are again ALIVE, and the proper responses would seem to be gratitude to the higher power(s) for allowing me to glimpse the promised land AND a search for ways to still be of assistance, however meager, to the young and to the future. That’s why I come here to Caitlin’s cutting-edge blog, as I believe do many others of my generation, as unhelpful or offtrack or dated as some of our comments may be.
Jeremy Corbyn is being sued.
Here’s the fundraiser.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/47gyy-jeremy039s-legal-fund
Sorry about the off topic.
An excellent discussion of this and other associated ills, including narrative management, can be found in this video with Aaron Mate and Max Bllumenthal. He discusses how narrative management was used against Corbyn and also how it was used–and continues to be used–against Julian Assange.
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/07/13/max-blumenthal-cancel-culture-hypocrites-cancel-open-debate-and-foreign-countries/
Caitlin: The most insightful commentary that you have written. Informative, accurate, and so painful to read. Reading only reinforced the reality of our daily life. The life of all humanity – a fire in the rain forest of Brazil, a tear gas canister in Portland, a starving child in Yemen, a Bangladesh village under water, a run of barb wire in Gaza, etc. All the same symptoms of ‘crumbling’. tom golden
“WuFlu@WarpSpeed” the latest in a series of articles on the current, staged NWO pandemic, posted at > principia-scientific(.)org
The 1895 Pasteur germ “theory” is in fact a false hypothesis, basis of the allopathic medical mafia monopoly, the power base for this social, economic Apocalypse. PlandemicMovie(.)com explains some of the planning, which goes back decades, this session from July 2001 >
“NASA Future War 2025 is Here Already” > TruthStreamMedia(.)com
NASA says they must use “trauma based mind control” for Continuity of Government b
Honestly, this is a complete and total trainwreck. Everyone who was paying attention knew it was coming (http://stormcloudsgathering.com/civil-unrest/), but nobody thought it would be like this.
Narrative: it may do well to look into the psychology of power, or revisit it. http://stormcloudsgathering.com/rule-from-the-shadows/
For those of us looking for solutions, I would direct you to Paradigm for the Next Generation (http://paradigmforthenextgeneration.com/). Also check out the decentralization subsaidit (https://saidit.net/s/DecentralizeAllThings), although it focuses too much on the internet if you ask me. Also check this out: http://stormcloudsgathering.com/hurricane-maria-recovery-a-positive-course-of-action/. (In case you haven’t noticed, my respect for StormCloudsGathering is very high.)
For those looking for solutions, I recommend the World Socialist Web Site. Join the oldest struggle against capitalism and its destructive power in the world. http://www.wsws.org
You are willfully ignorant or honestly mistaken or lying about the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), Carolyn.
It has an operating budget of $10 million USD and has been co-opted by TPTB.
The WSWS is an echo chamber which practices heavy-handed censorship suppressing dissenting logical counterargument. The site is full of rigid, dogmatic, illiberal, Machiavellian ideologues.
You are one.
Yes. I am avoided in public because I ask for the sheeple to stop and think about what they are believing in. I suggest to shop attendants, who are assisting mass self censorship (which is the AUST Govt’s demand) that this is the most powerful from of indoctrination. They have been instructed not to talk. I am met with avoidance and group fear, suggesting that I don’t know what the propaganda is telling us. No one is given any verifiable information they can ask for that proves the need for fear. In AUS you cannot say anything ever. The mass media is the single voice, and all the people walk around afraid of each other, without speaking. If you ask them what they are afraid of, they cannot answer. I write on my compulsory mask, ‘FEAR’ and other confrontations, asking for reasons to choose this, and most avert their eyes for fear of the “loonie”. No News paper prints my challenges in the so called public forums, which only prints fear verification stories. My own friends label me “Conspiracy Theorist” as they have been given this cop out, ‘sounds like you know what you are saying’ phrase, which really means they have developed no argument of their own, because there are no verifiable arguments. My kids are at home alone as other parents are too afraid to let their kids play together at all. REBELLION is necessary.
Three cheers! A very clear and accurate analysis, imho. It will take a while- we need to lose my generation of boomers who saw some progress for the masses, are semi comfortable and have been indoctrinated all our lives.
Caitlin have you come across Harry Vox? He is on Fire and it would be great to see you two do an interview.
info@voxnews.com.
lots of love…………….
Hey Sarah isn’t Vox the new hip arm of Comcast, Viacom, Disney or NBC: slightly irreverent but controlled “opposition”?
All opposition is controlled opposition, IMHO.
Within the present system, the propaganda narratives are the “authoritative truths”. To work within the system, people have to go along with the narratives, or be ostracized and fired for being a nutjob conspiracy theorist who claims all the truths are lying propaganda. Money is the key. Everybody needs money to pay their daily and monthly costs of living spending. In a world in which everything is bought-sold for money, money is the most basic necessity of our economic lives and livelihoods. Money is not issued by governments as a public utility, to serve the economy’s money needs. Money is issued by commercial banks as repayable loans at interest, to serve the banks’ profit needs. As long as money issuance remains a private monopoly rather than a public utility, the narratives will retain their power to force compliance among people who need to keep their jobs working within the system, in order to get paid the money that they need to sustain their physical existence. Without monetary reform, no other beneficial reforms will be possible.
You’re right, but also wrong. Money is the PRIMARY tool of coercion/repression/control on this plane of ‘reality/unreality’ experience, followed by
PHYSICAL force if money doesn’t work. Money is and always has been, under controlling repressive systems, the best way to manipulate through greed, scare-city or whatever is the appropriate contemporary tactic to maintain control.
Money is capitalism. The capitalist system is the greatest oppresser of all. Without bringing down capitalism and replacing it with socialism, the power of money will remain intact. Go to the root to kill the evil weed of capitalist exploitation. Picking the flowers will do no good.
100% in agreement with you. They’ve monetised everything and charge us interest that can never be repaid each time they create [imaginary] money out of nothing. Look at the preposterous ‘debt’ they claim the people of the earth owe them. https://commodity.com/debt-clock/ and that’s before mortgages, business loans, et c., are factored in.
We could make a start changing all this for the better by using [local] complementary currencies that could also provoke a national conversation about the nature of money. Win!/Win! https://www.complementarycurrency.org/
John, I’ve been closely following the development of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) for several years, and I think that this new perspective about how to understand fiat money offers amazing opportunities to enhance the public sector and eventually eliminate private sector dominance. For example, the Job Guarantee sounds like merely a mechanism to shore up capitalism, draw upon unused or under-used labor, but I believe it would in fact operate like the public option would have operated in Obamacare, had it not been dropped at the outset. The public option would likely have outperformed the private insurance options and then begun to absorb the entire field of American healthcare, leading to Medicare For All or something like it. The trillions upon trillions suddenly created out of nowhere to bail out the rich and powerful in the Covid Crisis demonstrate the unassailable truth of MMT. The task before us is to use that same fiat money to rescue not the bastards but the people and planet they are destroying. How do we obtain the political power to apply the insights of MMT in the right way? In that detail is the devil.
May I ask the position of MMT on the charging of interest i.e., usury? The charging of interest is the nub of the problem as far as I’m concerned but I’ve never had a satisfactory answer from any of the MMT proponents. Do shine some light on this. Thanks.
MMT sharply distinguishes between bank money, ALWAYS linked to interest (and bank profit), and the federal monopoly power to create its own fiat currency. Currently, the feds ALLOW private banks to operate in the predatory manner they do, while the feds also obfuscate the fiat nature of the money they create by “requiring” it to be “covered” by taxes or bond sales. Hope this audio helps:
http://macroncheese.com/paying-ourselves-to-save-the-planet-an-mmt-story-with-jd-alt?link_id=0&can_id=178b737266e52f9dd959e82826a58c9f&source=email-macro-https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/07/26/narrative-is-crumbling/#n-cheese-podcast-raul-carrillo-ep-77&email_referrer=email_872254&email_subject=macro-n-cheese-podcast-jd-alt-ep-78
I haven’t kept up with MMT, but I’ve read Michael Hudson from time to time. He is in part a historian, and as far as I recall, and to the best of my understanding, the bronze age civilisations were well aware of the usury problem, and solved it by declaring jubilee years during which debts were forgiven. I don’t believe it forgave ordinary person-to-person agreements, but more systemic debts, including debts owed by individuals to institutions which had been given the power to issue interest-bearing loans by the sovereign. The reason for Jubilee Years was to keep the economy and the society stable and to prevent the emergence of too-big-to-fail institutions which, naturally enough, would undermine the power of the sovereign. Failure to declare Jubilee Years in effect led to slavery through debt bondage, which also had a knock-on effect in public works and food production.
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There is a line of thinking that Jesus was demanding a return of this practice (maybe the Romans didn’t follow this tradition?). Thus his anger at the Temple money-lenders. Forgive us our trespasses was originally Forgive us our debts. And in Lk 4,16-30 Jesus was proclaiming a Jubilee Year.
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I am not an expert.
Read Capital. Marx wrote about this subject 170 years ago.
Derryl, very glad to see this mentioned without me having to do it. 🙂 The ignorance and fear of money is rampant and those who want to eschew money instead of understanding what is wrong with the system and how to fix it do not understand how a revolution is won. Also, those who imagine they can win a fair society at the local level without interference from the macro-economic social management system might be deluded.
However, I do think local action is how to challenge the system, first by rejecting the current debt-for-money system and then creating debt-free asset-money locally based on Gesell’s ideas that were demonstrated in the depths of the great depression in Wörgl, Austria. Irving Fisher, who wrote the 1939 plan for Monetary Reform that would have ended the depression, even produced a pamphlet on this powerful local (stamp scrip) currency that accomplished $2.5 million in public projects but only issuing $6000, due the the extreme velocity of the currency that had a demurrage fee attached. Many communities issued scrip just as Tenino, Washington is doing today, but none were nearly has successful as stamp scrip. This, along with pressure at the national level on changing the money system from debt-based to asset-based system. Yes, there will be conflict but it can show the people the power of publicly issued money and give them a vital tool for self-governance.
There is, of course much conditioned resistance to learning anything about the money system, MMT is insisting the system does not need to change, revealing them to be controlled opposition. As Marshall McLuhan said,“Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity.” If the revolution does not understand the money it will never win.
Many revolutions have been fought, some even won militarily like the American and French Revolutions, and while they made a valiant effort both revolutions lost monetarily. As Allende would say of his own revolution 200 years later, “We won the revolution but we did not win the power.” A revolution that does not win the power is a failed revolution. Perhaps readers here should consider the words of John Adams; “There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country, one is by the sword the other by debt.”
Pleased to meet you, Howard. I am in full agreement with everything you wrote, and I also refer to Gesell’s stamp money, and Irving Fisher’s proposal to convert from a private bank-issued debt-based money system to a government issued debt-free money system, in my writing. When I first read Warren Mosler’s Soft Currency Economics in 2009, I thought, Wow! Finally somebody understands what a reformed monetary system can do! But after getting involved in MMT, I was dismayed to discover that MMTers claim the government already issues the money by spending it into existence, and only issues bonds after the fact as a “liquidity drain”. No evidence or logic can change the minds of MMTers, who make themselves an anti-reform school of monetary economics by insisting the government already issues the money.
I’ve also experienced this. I’ve tried explaining we *could* do this but they respond by saying we already do for which I find no evidence for. The nub of the matter to me is [private] banks charging interest (usury) upon any borrowed money. If government created our own sovereign money like the Bradbury Treasury notes of old then it would not be borrowed but be created and spent into circulation interest-free meaning there could be no [false] debts compounding away to the peoples unending detriment in indentured slavery to private banksters. We could then afford the money to get the high priority urgent tasks done without cooking up ridiculous business plans to save ourselves from extinction.
Exactly. Evidence and logic have no power to change the minds of committed ideologues.
The US Treasury does not “spend money into existence by marking up accounts”, as MMT claims “operationally”. Banks mark up (credit) and mark down (debit) their customers’ deposit account balances, when money is paid into or paid out of the accounts. The US government is a bank customer. The government is not a bank.
The Treasury has bank accounts at commercial banks (Treasury Tax and Loan Accounts, into which the Treasury receives tax payments and bond sale proceeds); and at the Federal Reserve Banks (Treasury General Accounts, which are the government’s main money spending accounts). It is illegal, under the Federal Reserve Act, for the Federal Reserve banks to provide the government with spending money by directly buying new issues of Treasury debt from the government; or by allowing the government to spend money out of its central bank accounts if the government does not already have a sufficient balance in the accounts to debit, to clear the payments.
This is no different than you and I: if our deposit account balance is NSF, we cannot spend money out of our account, because we have no money in the account. When we make a payment, our bank debits our deposit account balance in the amount of the payment, and the payee’s bank credits the payee’s deposit account balance in the same amount. Banks debit and credit their customers’ deposit account balances.
“Operationally”, the government cannot spend money out of its bank accounts, unless the government has already been paid enough taxes and bond sale proceeds money into the accounts. But MMT insists on imagining that the government spends money into existence by crediting payees’ bank account balances, as if the government has direct access to banking system computers to credit people’s bank account balances. Monetary system reformers (like me, and it sounds like you too) argue that governments “should” spend money into existence like this. But at present they don’t. To change the present system into the system we should have, requires monetary system “reform”. But MMT denies the need for reform by insisting the government already spends money into existence, and taxes money out of existence.
Precisely. In my opinion, MMT wittingly or unwittingly muddies the waters leaving the private banksters in peace to carry on their nefarious work of stealing everything we have with usury.
Thank you Caitlin for your important role in crumbling that narrative. One part of the narrative most visibly crumbling is that people are more permanently aware than ever that private industry cannot do the job right because it is run, not on the basis of usefulness, but for profits for the few at the expense of everyone else.