If we’d been living in a healthy society and then suddenly had this society’s sick, insane status quo thrust upon us by powerful people, we’d have all been out in the streets making life very hard for those powerful people in an instant.
We are in the same situation now. We are having a wildly insane status quo thrust upon us by the powerful and for the benefit of the powerful. Only difference is we’re not all out in the streets, and instead of thrusting this horrible situation upon us suddenly, they’ve been doing it this entire time.
Which is precisely why we’re not out in the streets. We were born into this mess, so we assume it’s normal and that things are supposed to be this way. But it isn’t, and they aren’t.
What is normal is health. Health is the normal default condition. If you wake up with a fever and stabbing pain in your abdomen you don’t say “Ah well I guess that’s normal now, you can’t expect to just not have a fever and stabbing abdominal pain,” you recognize that there’s an urgent problem and you take action to fix it.
Even if you’d been sick your entire life, you would understand that your situation is not normal. You would understand that the basic default condition is health, but some dysfunction in your specific system has deprived you of that normal state of being.
In order for us to begin pushing back on the dysfunction of our current system, we need to begin looking at it in the same way. We need to clearly come to see how spectacularly divergent it is from the basic default condition of health. How sick it is. How abnormal it is.
We need to see clearly that health is normal and sickness is abnormal, whether you’re talking about an individual or a society.
It’s not normal for a civilization to be dominated by plutocrats and secretive government agencies and to only get offered the choice between two authoritarian corporate warmongers in a pretend election to a position of leadership that is almost entirely fake.
It’s not normal for there to be enough wealth to feed and care for everyone and yet instead have people with unfathomable amounts of money while others die of lack.
It’s not normal for a globe-spanning empire to dominate our species with endless military violence and starvation sanctions for the sole purpose of maintaining and expanding the unipolar hegemony of a few sociopathic manipulators.
It’s not normal for us to be destroying our ecosystem in order to grow an economy that is ultimately an imaginary construction in our minds instead of learning to collaborate harmoniously with that ecosystem.
It’s not normal for us all to be competing against each other at the expense of the entire world instead of collaborating with each other for the good of the entire world.
We need to get crystal clear that these things are not normal, because our entire society is completely saturated with skilful manipulations telling us that they are.
I write a lot about the more egregious, incendiary lies that the mass media have notoriously promulgated like WMDs in Iraq, Russiagate, the imaginary Labour antisemitism crisis etc. But the most destructive lies the mass media tell us are not the ones that stand out the most in our collective memory. The most damaging lies they tell us are the little ones they tell us many times every single day by way of spin, omission, half-truth and distortion in order to give us the impression that this status quo is normal and inescapable.
You see it in the way they talk about politicians who stand even a tiny bit outside the warmongering oligarchic beltway consensus like they are radical extremists. You see it in the way they’ll focus on protests in Belarus or Hong Kong while ignoring them in Bolivia or France. You see it in the way they ignore Yemen when it’s the single most horrific thing happening on our planet right now. You see it in all the sitcoms and movies where debt and low wages and other symptoms of status quo dysfunction are almost never a featured concern.
You see it in innumerable other ways, day in and day out, and they add up. They add up for someone who was born into a gravely dysfunctional system and has never known anything resembling health to compare it to. They’re like someone who has always been sick, who has also never known or heard about anyone who is healthy.
You can tell me we’ve never had a healthy society since the dawn of civilization all you want. All you are telling me is that we have always been sick. Being sick all your life doesn’t mean health isn’t normal or that health shouldn’t be urgently sought; if anything it means it should be sought more urgently.
It is not human nature to be this sick, and anyone who tells you it is is lying. Anyone who tells you it’s human nature to be greedy, violent, domineering and abusive isn’t telling you about humanity’s nature, they’re telling you about their own nature. And it’s probably a bad idea to turn your back on them.
We can have health. We can have normality. But just as you won’t return to health by pretending that your fever and abdominal pains are normal, we can’t create a healthy society as long as we allow ourselves to be manipulated into the belief that our backwards, insane status quo is what normality looks like.
So abnormalize the status quo. Abnormalize it every chance you get. Abnormalize it by holding a clear idea in your mind of what a healthy society would look like, then point out all the bizarre deviations from that vision at every opportunity. Remind people that this is crazy. Assure them that it doesn’t have to be this way. That the only thing keeping it this way is the fact that the powerful keep pouring vast troves of wealth into manipulating us into thinking that we should.
Help people see what health is so that they can see what sickness is. Interrupt conversations about which flavor of sickness would be preferable this election season to point to what real health would look like. Disrupt all attempts to normalize our status quo, and use whatever reach you have to help abnormalize it.
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107 responses to “Abnormalize The Status Quo”
More intelligent people than stupid people, just some need to have it all shown to them.
This is the END of the democRAT party!!
Another excellent analysis – whenever have you not articulated the reality of what is going on. Your archive will be/is regarded as the definitive description of where the human race has been placed by sociopaths.
I wrote this two years ago. It is sort of an ab-normalizing piece. By the way, if any of you are a registered Democrat in New Hampshire, I am running against the DNC hack, Nowhere Ann Kuster in the Dem primary September 8. Don’t want money, just votes. https://www.sentinelsource.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/in-the-end-we-get-what-we-deserve-by-joseph-mirzoeff/article_40432d2c-d7ac-5d32-ae98-1f7855748001.html
The rest of the world is moving on from the innocuous virus claimed to be a CRISIS !!
Western media has no choice now but to IGNORE the rest of the world !
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/498256-wuhan-water-party-covid-lockdown/
PURCHASE a stamp and mail to The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Congratulate him on his one-term presidency & draining the swamp! &/or wish hocus pocus bogus POTUS 45 GODSPEED and an early retirement (&/or good riddance) Maybe with the additional paperwork the swamp can be reclassified as a Superfund landfill! The United States Space Force has concluded along with the EPA that the cloud in cyberspace is contaminated with hazardous substances like greenhouse-swamp-gas tweets –>>[https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump]
SUPPORT the USPS United States Postal Service by utilizing their mail !
Eliminating the USPS is about a lot more than Mail-in Voting — though that’s important at the moment — the real reason(s) to shut it down is to further Privatize Public Services (i.e., Neoliberalism – http://bitly.ws/8ZPB ), and the big one, I believe, is to eliminate the Gov. owned (i.e., taxpayers) infrastructure (buildings, etc.) that would facilitate the implementation of a National Public Bank(ing) System.
https://www.publicbankinginstitute.org/
You’re on to something. God forbid that some public agency actually works, like the post office has been doing for generations. For less than 50 cents, I can send a letter all across the country and feel fairly certain that it will be received in timely fashion. Not always, of course, but almost always, and that should be just fine for us fallible human beings.
http://www.campaignforpostalbanking.org/know-the-facts/
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https://jacobinmag.com/2017/11/postal-banking-payday-lenders-usps/
You rock Caitlin !!
Precisely. We are asked to choose between two candidates, neither of whom believes in keeping the public sector protected from capitalist vultures. Privatization of our public services became “normalized” 40 years ago. This is the first step towards fascism.
It’s not rocket science. If you don’t support keeping the public sector public, you are a traitor to the democratic system and do not belong in the US.
Here’s a British WWII vet reminding us what they fought and died for:
“We have somehow broken our solemn bond with those warriors of yesterday and forgotten that when the survivors of the Second World War returned to their homes, they were like a tide that raised all boats. My generation’s shared experience of suffering, of witnessing genocide, ethnic cleansing, and enduring unspeakable privations as both soldiers and civilians made us vigilant when it came to demanding our peace dividend.
We knew what we deserved and that was a future that didn’t resemble our hard-scrabble past. The Green and Pleasant land was for everyone after the war because we had bled for it and died for it. We demanded a truly democratic society where merit was rewarded and no one would be left behind because of poverty, poor health or an inadequate education.
Today, however, in a world where our reservoirs of wealth are as deep and enormous as all the mighty rivers of the world combined, our politicians, financial institutions and megalithic industries tell us we can no longer afford these human rights that men sacrificed their lives for: the freedom to live with dignity in a compassionate society. We are told by those in charge that we can no longer live with luxuries like healthcare, proper state funded pensions, decent wages, trade unions and most aspects of our social safety network.”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/09/is-camerons-britain-what-we-fought-for
I have to add that the most disjointed abnormal we’ve been born into is this Pasteurian paradigm. The germ theory is 160 years old, but even Pasteur himself recanted it on his deathbed! But here we are, still basing an entire medical industry on a discredited theory (like neoliberalism). When 1 in 2 children is diagnosed with a chronic condition, something is horribly wrong. Shouldn’t they be the healthiest, since US kids get twice as many vaccines as the rest of the world?
“… it is abundantly clear that the Pasteurian paradigm has failed to deliver. With Americans in such a shocking state of ill health, we cannot afford to let the profit-driven pharmaceutical perspective continue to dominate.”
https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/notes-from-yesteryear/germ-theory-versus-terrain-the-wrong-side-won-the-day/#.XzAUrfceQsE.twitter
Step out of the zombie line and learn the truth about vaccines.
Dr. Suzanne Humphries – Smallpox Illusions.
Just how safe and effective was that vaccine?
And there’s this:
Dr. Judy Mikovitz on the history of vaccine development and protocols and fraud for the past 30 years:
http://bitly.ws/8Q2H
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See also:
Plandemic:
http://bitly.ws/8PUg
The 40 yr Washington Consensus between both major parties has been the agreement to roll out David Koch’s 1980 Libertarian platform agenda. In fact, the word “privatization” is a Koch creation.
Lisa Graves has written an article, Wait a Minute, Mr. Kochman, about the Koch’s 50-yr war on the postal service:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjwnIgM5pBM
The Powell Memorandum, 1971
Here’s why:
https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/this-is-neoliberalism/
No. Every step in the direction of adding to the powers of government was a step in the direction of statism (fascism, socialism, communism). Every step backward is a step in the direction of regaining our former liberties.
Stop worshiping the state.
Ms Johnstone, you and most of your readers should like this article as it is about crazy propaganda.
Ms Clinton loses an election, blames Russia, the intelligence agencies pile on, the media shrieks away. Americans are told patriotic Americans do not doubt. And now we arrive at the next stage of insanity. William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, informs us that “Russia is backing Donald Trump, China is supporting Joe Biden and Iran is seeking to sow chaos in the United States presidential election..”. I guess that means that Russia and China will cancel each other out and that he is telling us that Iran will choose the next POTUS.
Who would have thought that the fate of the “greatest nation in earth” (as Presidents Trump, Obama, Bush Jr, Clinton, Bush Sr and Reagan like to call it) would be hidden under a turban somewhere in Iran?
So, American, know this: your “trusted sources” are telling you not to bother to vote in November – it is not your decision. This magnificent article can be read here:
The Abyss of Disinformation Gazes Into Its Creators by Patrick Armstrong!
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/17/the-abyss-of-disinformation-gazes-into-its-creators/
Thanks Ron, I love that. good reading for everyone!
Yes, the next Pwezident of the Unusually Stupid Assholes has already been chosen.
You have the part of the world that chooses right, Mr. Campbell, but it’s a different country.
Know what I mean?
“We are having a wildly insane status quo thrust upon us by the powerful and for the benefit of the powerful… We were born into this mess, so we assume it’s normal and that things are supposed to be this way. But it isn’t, and they aren’t.”
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Another name for status quo is Stuck In A Rut.
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Being stuck in a rut is normally not a good or productive thing. If we have a pattern that works for us that we stay with, we don’t say with glee… “Hey! I’m stuck in a rut and I love it” Ruts are what you fall in to when your car slips off an icy street and into a ditch along the road. Not where you want or intend to be nor will it get you to a good destination.
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Status quo just means something that has built up such momentum or critical mass that it lumbers along like a loaded freight train that can’t stop its mindless aimless momentum lurch. Status quo does not think or look for alternatives. Status quo lives to maintain itself and foreclose on all other ways and options.
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The soulless powers-that-be have all kinds of status quo(s) that they do everything in their power to keep moving along and crushing us beneath. Why? Because it serves them, and we are supposed to be serving them as well in their demonic cosmology. But we were not put upon this Earth by a benevolent Great Spirit to be servants of Status Quo Crap. Status Quo is a denial of our Divine Birthright.
It surely is, and although the PTB don’t yet know it, a denial of theirs as well. I always loved the old joke about the rich man who died. “How much did he leave?” someone asked; and then someone answered: “He left it all.”
A fine short story by Tolstoy, “How Much Land Does a Man Require?” is apropos here.
https://archive.org/details/LevNikolayevichTolstoy-SelectedShortStories
I was born in 1948, at the very beginning of the Cold War and the beginning of the CIA’s development of front organizations like Radio Free Europe and other propaganda outfits. This was their thanks to the USSR for pulling their capitalist chestnuts out of the fire of WWII. No good deed goes unpunished.
As Billy Joel famously sang, “We didn’t start the fire, although we didn’t light it we’ve been trying to fight it.” I’ve been fighting it since I was a teenager, beginning after the assassination of John Kennedy when I was 15. We must not accept the current degeneration of all democratic institutions to play out to its ultimate end, which is destruction of the planet and everything on it.
There is nothing “normal” about fascism and all of its concomitant evils. Remember that the charges against the Third Reich at the Nuremburg trials was that of “waging aggressive war” under which all of the accompanying evils, like the Holocaust, are subsumed.
Keep on fighting.
Came in the same year, Carolyn, and like you, will go out fighting. Things didn’t turn out like we thought they would, but God what wonderfully strange and chaotic times we lived through when we were young and briefly had the bastards on the run. Wouldn’t trade those crazy coming-of-age years for anything.
Or as another inspirational figure put it, “Hasta la Vittoria! Siempre!”
This deeply insightful piece by Catlin has triggered a swarm of some of the best comments I have seen on this blog Thanks guys and gals!
The only thing I can see, in this article, that is not accurate is the apparent assumptions that there are not some of us still alive who were not born into this mess. I remember an America that didn’t have and wouldn’t tolerate the great majority of this mess. But it was this way in the 1970s when people didn’t realize that it was and when the late singer/songwriter/philanthropist, Harry Chapin, wrote about it. But, it has gotten increasingly wore. The use of the word ‘mess’ is a gigantic understatement. we are actually living in a designed slow slide to totalitarianism. And, if the people, en mass, don’t soon stand up and do something about it, we will be living in a real-world Tolkein’s Mordor.
Disagree. It’s always been a mess; no such thing as “normal”.
In the 1960s we had a potentially great president and a potentially great successor; both were murdered by the Deep State. The Vietnam war continued. None of this was “normal”.
In the 1950s we had the Korean war, where nukes were very nearly used. President Ike made a stirring speech warning about the MIC but sat on his hands and did nothing to hinder it.
In the 1940s we had WWII and the US hatched its first plans to dominate Europe and Russia.
In the 1930s we had a great president who was prevented by the nascent Deep State from taking the action which would have ended the Great Depression without war. The great hero Gen. Smedley Butler prevented a fascist coup.
No “normal” anywhere. Need I go on?
What president are you talking about? And what successor? John F. Kennedy was an imperialist. So was Bobby Kennedy. Franklin Roosevelt instituted the New Deal, not because he felt a duty to the working class, but in order to save capitalism. There was a real possibility of revolution here in the 1930s. Socialism was a big movement in the USA back then, contrary to all those idiots who claim there was never support for it here.
Need Pasha go on ? Certainly. All you describe is but the symptoms. The cause is what matters, if we are ever to stop the sabotage of our potential.
The unrestrained self-importance of collaborators (with their cunningly cruel theft of self-responsibility and freedom of intent) is likewise a symptom of evil without a known cause.
Since Pasha has not gone far enough, i again propose my disgusting heresy : look at the Mud Shadows.
Here is an explanation that fits the symptoms, yet is studiously ignored . . . as though Forbidden Knowledge is actively enforced by a hidden dynamic in our internalDialogue.
The concept of a mindParasite controlling its human host is always dismissed without due diligence, without correlating the evidence of current affairs since Rome was subverted by jesusBeggars, who burned all the classical libraries from Rome to Alexandria through to the Mayan literature of metaphysics, astronomy and star travellers. (see Catherine Nixey’s “The Darkening Age”)
Only predatory external influence explains the antiEvolutionary self-harm which Pasha brings to our attention.
It’s “Technocracy” taking another (long/well-planned, strategic) leap.
Web search:
1. Technocracy + Trilateral Commission
2. Zbigniew Brzezinski + Technotronic
A very powerful statement about Mask Wearing by Sharon Stone.
https://chasingthesquirrel.com/assets/videos/sharonStone.mp4
The system has no leg to stand on logically with its irrelevant PCR tests supposedly identifying a fake contagion, so they resort to these heart-tugging, guilt-inducing tactics. Emotions are one of the strategies used to manipulate us. However, we can acquire information to think for ourselves.
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There’s a lot of good information out there, including many links provided by people commenting on this website. Read Jon Rappoport & Makia Freeman. Their sites are easy to find.
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Watch London Real’s Brian Rose interview with Dr. Andrew Kaufman.
https://www.brasscheck.com/video/the-encyclopedia-of-covid-crisis-scams-exposed/
Our world has become over the top ridiculous. The “flu” and “coronavirus” have been around forever, but only now with this latest “strain” they say masks help. And people are not only duped, they get angry at those who aren’t!
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So they train us to go along with the most ludicrous edicts, and with a little push here and there (e.g. Sharon Stone), the sheep enforce the nonsense on each other.
And the there’s reality.
https://youtu.be/knyEabpXH4Y
Then, there’s reality.
https://youtu.be/knyEabpXH4Y
The “system” has been in existence since 1792 when the US Constitution was ratified. It has ALWAYS been the case that two major parties have dominated politics. That’s because the authors of the Constitution did not setup a parliamentary system where forming political alliances between minority and majority or minority and minority parties yield at least some power to minority points of view. The view that the two major parties are simply two sides of the same coin is naive and not supported by data. Our political system has been steadily broken over the course of about the last 50 years of history. In the last 20 years the right-wing has edged toward declaring outright war on America. Events over the course of the last 3+ years are indicative that we are now at total war. This is great for the right-wing because they are very unified and their opposition is divided.
no normal person wants to risk comfort and engage conflict. That’s why the elites have already won.
I disagree.
I also get the feeling that things are hopeless at times. I blame the robber barons. They have been brainwashing us, through the media, all of our lives, to believe we can’t make a difference, that we can’t have healthy lives and healthy societies, that anyone who doesn’t look like me, talk like me and think like me is the enemy. When I take a step back and start thinking it’s this conditioning, we’ve all been exposed to, that keeps us from finding solutions, I start thinking we’re all in this together and we can all break out of this conditioning together. Love. Peace.
Define “comfort”.
Some people are NOT comfortable with oppression, poverty, injustice, inequity, war…
Personally I’m more comfortable rejecting, resisting and avoiding the powers-that-be and the Status Quo — the forces that create such things — however, I’m not comfortable with violence or hate either so I “engage” with tolerance & forgiveness (i.e., “don’t hate the player; hate the game”), and an aim toward peace & harmony … if only my own.
Great article!
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I’m a big believer in Buckminster Fuller’s “Trim tab effect”:
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https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/21/buckminster-fuller-trim-tab/
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“Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Elizabeth — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, “Call me Trim Tab.”
`
I’m also a big believer in six degrees of separation:
https://www.thecut.com/2018/03/the-history-of-the-six-degrees-of-separation-study.html
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“Six degrees of separation is the theory that any person on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. The concept of six degrees of separation is often represented by a graph database, a type of NoSQL database that uses graph theory to store, map and query relationships.Real-world applications of the theory include power grid mapping and analysis, disease transmission mapping and analysis, computer circuitry design and search engine ranking.” [much less than 6 degrees now, I’m sure.]
`
This feels like solutions to me.
Love. Peace.
Great comment…I know of Buckminster Fuller but not that article. What a great line..I want to be a ‘trim tab.’ too!
Thanks JP.
It really is powerful in low key sort of way, I think. Suits me.
The “Trim Tab Theory”, Jeff Bridges was explaining that on Bill Maher, or trying to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_FKc4R6HHM
Wonderful.
Love “Bucky”, didn’t know his “Trim Tab Effect”, per se.
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Brings to mind:
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”
-Laozi (Dao De Jing)
and:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
Love the butterfly effect theory. That the, seemingly, insignificant flapping of a butterflies wings could, theoretically, be the “straw” that causes a tornado is mind blowing really.
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Funny (or sad) , I guess. I don’t read a lot, other than alternative media sites like this one, but the Trim Tab was really the only thing I knew about Buckminster Fuller. I’ll start reading more about him.
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Thanks for the link X. One step at a time, my friend.
“Help people see what health is so that they can see what sickness is.”
One of the most important and strengthening calls to arms I have seen in a long time! This column is of great importance and should be known by everyone. For 40 years I have been learning that you cannot really see what ugliness and injustice are if you do not see them together with their opposites. Just as you cannot really regret doing the wrong thing if you do not see what you might have done right instead.
Thank you Caitlin Johnstone for this quietly mighty article.
I’m over 70 years old, have been (and still am) an ordained American Baptist minister (the liberal wing of the Baptist church) and, until retirement, made my living as a community organizer and public interest attorney. I’ve read voraciously all my life, in a wide variety of subjects and disciplines, but until just a few years ago, well into the final chapter of my journey, I had only the vaguest intimation of what a truly healthy society would look like, would actually feel like to live in. I had instead reluctantly reached the somber conclusion, due to the relentless conditioning that Caitlin describes and the teachings of my own tradition, that human nature was somehow “fallen” and thus prevented the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer that the Kingdom of God come on earth. Then I stumbled upon (via Oliver Stone’s/Peter Kuznick’s “The Untold History of the United States”) the work of a forgotten American author from the first Gilded Age. In an almost biblical fashion, my eyes were opened when I pored over his two major companion novels and was able, for the first time in a lifetime, to understand clearly and distinctly what at least one version of a genuinely healthy and humane society would look and feel like. For those readers of Caitlin’s blog who have come in their own ways to understand what for so long I did not understand, for those who know in their minds and hearts not only what is wrong with the world but also have a vivid vision of a better, more beautiful one, all I can say is you got there ahead of me and bless you for it. For those others still groping to find such clarity, or for those who have given up this quest as futile, as I had done, I can only offer this link, along with the information that both books are free to read on the net or available for peanuts from used book sellers.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/19/on-earth-as-in-heaven-the-utopianism-of-edward-bellamy/
Many of Caitlin’s readers might know a few things but I have never met anyone who knows how to prepare the way for the coming “genuinely healthy and humane society.” Yeshua, signifying “Liberator” in Hebrew, described what preparation is required, but ancient Roman Catholic scholars twisted and corrupted His lectures and brilliant revolutionary strategies through translation errors and/or massive censoring of relevant ancient records. It seems to me that Pastor Newton and leaders of other Christian denominations still live under the deception of misleading Roman Catholic doctrines.
I’m likely wrong in many ways about ultimate things, TANLAR, as are we all, but I adhere to no official doctrine, Roman Catholic or otherwise. By the way, the early Jesus tradition was being messed with long before there was a Roman Catholic church.
“Tired and no longer active revolutionary” finally reveals why he cannot think straight : he’s a cargoCult jesusBeggar, a believer that obedience and belief will cure everything wrong with mankind. No wonder he failed as a wannabe revolutionary, while he prays to a spokesman for the mudShadows for salvation.
Peter You jump to conclusions and are wrong about me.
Tired and no longer active revolutionary contradicts conclusions expertly inferred from a great deal of information, yet offers nothing to identify what error i have made in the falsely-alleged jump.
The inference being that he has nothing of substance with which to refute my observations published above.
Any criminal can plead themselves not guilty, which means anything when coming from a person so out of touch with our human heritage that they regard Jesus as an exemplar of human potential.
“Looking Backward”
By Edward Bellamy
Audiobook:
https://archive.org/details/lookingbackward_0909_librivox
Short Link:
http://bitly.ws/9sGs
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“Equality”
Text:
https://archive.org/details/equality00bell
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PS
Listen to “Ishmael”!
https://bookaudiobook.com/ishmael-audiobook/
Thanks, X. “Ishmael” and its two sequels, “The Story of B” and “My Ishmael,” are well worth reading (or listening to) again and again. Bellamy’s radically egalitarian society strikes me as an attempt to translate some of the truths of the Leaver culture(s) into the oppressive–and now ecocidal–Taker way of life.
Thanks. I’ll look for those sequels, and for the Bellamy/Ismael correlation(s).
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PS
Maybe a “third party” should be called “The Leaver Party”!
Great picture of 2 peas in a pod called America . Worth 10000 words and the reason the “western” hegemony continues to collapse at a quickening pace, taking most of the rest of humanity with it.
“Everything is about sex – except sex – sex is about power” Oscar Wilde
“Everything is about COVID – except COVID – Covid is about power”
Good thought ! Except claiming covid is about power is like believing baldness is a hair style , or celibacy is a sexual position to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens? Power junkies and sex starved monkeys are different types of mental illness often found in 1 individual ?
Agree.
In normal times, the ruling elites in the West and their mainstream medias would be talking about what is happening right now in Belarus, but now they are too busy with their battle against ordinary citizens of the West using the pandemic they have probably themselves created to control ordinary citizens.
The level of decadence among the ruling elites in the West is amazing. We are truly living the return of the days of Noah just before the return of Jesus.
Keeping my Rosary on hand!
no michel, they would not be talking about what’s happening in belarus, they would be talking about what’s happening in yemen. do you pay any attention at all? jebus is not gonna be very happy with your performance here in the waiting room.
Do you think alot of what you describe can be partially attributed to the world population reaching a tipping point. The larger a system, the more complex becomes the management and control. Also the more abberations which appear. Not excusing this insanity we are in but just acknowledging that small systems usually run smoother than large ones.
I think what you are actually describing is change. The oldest generation sees and understands the most change. They look upon the society of their youth as better times than the present. Memories are always rosier than present day reality. There are exceptions but generally this is the case. Change must be gradual to be accepted. Yes, we are going to hell in a handbasket.
By what magical authority does one claim perfect knowledge of what is NORMAL, or HEALTHY? How is it that what one considers normal/healthy is exactly the same as what another does? The only way for there to be any resolution to the incongruity among us is to stop handing the reins of our lives to people with guns who hold a claim of higher authority than you over your life and liberty. In more primitive, and perhaps superior times, if one were displeased with the machinations of whomever was in power, one could simply walk away to a tribe with different machinations, or to a solitary life with none. Such is no longer possible. There are Psychopaths In Charge everywhere. Which area has the least malevolent psychopaths changes periodically.
Others who are supposed to be wiser and who in any case have more power decide the question for them and also decide the methods and means by which subjects may arrive at the enjoyment of what is good for them. This form of coercion and suppression is more subtle and more effective than is overt intimidation and restraint. When it is habitual and embodied in social institutions, it seems the normal and natural state of affairs. The masses usually become unaware that they have a claim to a development of their own powers. Their experience is so restricted that they are not conscious of restriction. It is part of the democratic conception that they as individuals are not the only sufferers, but that the whole social body is deprived of the potential resources that should be at its service. The individuals of the submerged mass may not be very wise. But there is one thing they are wiser about than anybody else can be, and that is where the shoe pinches, the troubles they suffer from. John Dewey, Democracy and Educational Administration. 1937.
It is not normal OR healthy to lock people in their homes.
It is not normal to isolate children at home.
It is not normal to not let children go to school.
It is not normal to not let people go beyond one mile.
It is not normal to arrest and/or fine people for leaving their home.
I agree. All these things are abnormal and unhealthy. And yet the media incessantly tells us the opposite. Even electronic signs on the highway where I live. Very scary.
Pedagogy of the oppressed by Freire is a book length manual of different ways in which to “Abnormalise the Status Quo”
https://bookaudiobook.com/pedagogy-of-the-oppressed-audiobook/
Short URL:
http://bitly.ws/9s3e
Most of us are born normal.
Our crystal clear perception of the world is incrementally distorted by our parents, teachers and the MSM.
It is not their fault, they are victims just like us.
Most of us are born healthy.
Nurtured by Mothers ‘milk’ we are incrementally poisoned by junk food, repetitive jobs and/or hard labour.
If one becomes still enough or shocked into wakefulness, we can change.
“Nurtured by Mothers ‘milk’[1] we are incrementally poisoned by junk food[2], repetitive jobs and/or hard labour[3].”
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1. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/more-gates-funded-brave-new-world-science-fake-breast-milk/
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2a. https://thoughtmaybe.com/consuming-kids/
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2b. https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-world-according-to-monsanto/
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3. https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/obey-2013/
As a big fan, I’m a little disappointed that you didn’t speak to issues more relevant. People are walking around in unhealthy masks because they have been told to do so by the powerful and the MSM. Even after we have “flattened the curve” months ago! Even after the actual death rate of Covid19 is about the same as the annual flu. Did you know that deaths by suicide have now exceeded deaths by covid19 (even with the corrupt death count protocols!) This virus has been so politicized that we can no longer believe anything coming from the MSM. Mask mandates based on no science at all = masks of submission. Leaders who extend the lockdowns and medical mandates based on no science at all and only for political agenda = traitors and enemies of the state.
Please take this advice from an old man, do not risk your life or a stay in a hospital bed by going against ” the status-quo ” too strongly. Sick people are not rational people; they are capable of being very violent so be careful in dealing with them. The society may be very sick around you and your neighborhood; but if you are leading a healthy harmonious life with a healthy attitude those around you will notice that without you ever to have said a single word to them. Lead by example, walk away from stupidity and/or hatred. Develop a ” crust ” about yourself to protect your insides from getting sick from the swill you traverse through every day. Do the right thing; be the right thing 24/7.
“…if you are leading a healthy harmonious life with a healthy attitude those around you will notice…” -Ron Campbell
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A personal anecdote to support Ron’s assertion:
I buy my food at two different family owned markets — one has produce, the other has household goods, they both have misc. other — and all the clerks at both regularly comment to or ask me about health & nutrition at checkout.
I’m not wearing a sign that says: “Health & Nutrition Expert”; rather, I know it’s because they have noticed my purchases and they conclude I care and know about health & nutrition and are inspired to ask what I know and/or tell me what they’ve learned.
When there is a line at checkout I have the opportunity to both see what others are purchasing and observe the interactions between the clerks and the customers: There is no conversation and there is usually lots of junk and a little healthy food transacted.
On the other hand, we’re still talking while they checkout the next customer after me.
…because healthy food is something that matters (and junk food doesn’t matter). -X
Ah food, a macrobiotic female many years ago, got me into food and yoga and the IChing etc. Through her my eyes and my mind transformed and I became aware of the charade United States society actually is. I became aware of meridians, the wonders of raw vegetable juices, brown rice, seaweed, etc. I am a man now that knows about food. Woman are supposed to know about food and internal medicine but here in these United States most women are only concerned about their looks or their clothes or their electronic devices or how much money you have in the bank. I mostly shop at Trader Joe’s and in Manhattan’s Chinatown. If you get things done and carry yourself correctly every day other humans take notice. Ms Johnstone walks the walk and talks the talk on the Internet. I re-post her great articles on my blog and under her picture it says: Ah, the Buddha Ms Caitlin speaks the truth! The Heavens have bless us with her presence.
Good on you for awakening Ron. Food is one of the master keys to living as we are supposed to — in tune with cosmic realities.
Your comment JWK is in line with Plato’s observation that the wise should rule, but they have little desire to do so.
“Socrates’ answer is known as “the paradox of the philosopher king” and is stated dramatically at 473d: the way to bring about a just state is to have it ruled by philosophers, or what is commonly called “the Philosopher-King.” ”
See:
http://people.loyno.edu/~folse/Philking.html
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Web Search: “Philosopher King” to learn more
Thanks X for sharing your instructive anecdote about influencing others in a good way in everyday encounters
Today I awaited in line at a Best Buy to see one of the workers. I was on line a long time and this guy comes into the store and gets ahead of me. I said ” Sir there is a line here. ” He says to me ” I’m picking up “. This is the attitude that ” the masters and the owners ” have that the entire world is supposed to kiss their ass. He tried to go to the counter in front of me but both clerks knew I had been waiting a long time and they told this asshole that I was next. In the next three to four minutes this guy went ballistic, yelling insults at the top of his voice. I got my scheduled appointment set and as I left the store every employee and most of the other customers were watching the show this screaming guy was putting on. I told the employee at the door to keep his cell phone handy because he would probably have to call the police.
Salud!
I was contemplating it further after sharing the anecdote: The people we buy our food from should be our trusted friends; why is this rarely the case?
I think the buyers and sellers are ashamed of what is being bought and sold most of the time; alas, it’s usually a transaction of vice (like a drug deal), not a common good (can’t think of one of those — what’s going on! — except the healthy food one)…
we would tax the victors to whom went the spoils, if we were normal.
we would tax assets not work, if we were normal.0 for a chi
we would care little what Russia China and all of Islam do if we were normal.
they would be like loud neighbors who party too often to us if we were normal.
if we were normal. we would not kill one soul.
if we were normal we would not offer 2500 for killing a man’s wife or 500 for a grannie. and maybe 250 for a child.
we would not even be using oil or coal by now instead of fighting to get more of it, if we were normal.
if we were normal we’d also have a female president by now like Ex-Nazi Germany and Finland and Norway, Iceland Ireland and even the UK. Like Indira Gandhi. IN THE LARGEST NATION BY POPULATION. like New Zealand and Argentina and Brazil once upon a time not so long ago and dreary.
we would heave universal single payer health care (AND) expensive private care allowed for anyone who really wanted to spend the money–after all they couyld still fly to Switzerland, if we were normal.
we would have totally free education at all levels if we were normal. and it would be secular only, if we were normal. because you could still pay for religious schools and all that jazz if we were normal.
we would control our own currency if we were normal. we would have public banks and money would not trickle down but bubble up is we were normal.
we would have lotsa jobs and our .GOV would make sure their were plenty of projects on going to make more if we had any recessions if we were normal.
if we were normal we would have a heck of lot more stable economy because we would control our banker/investment firms with sensible non-speculative rules and regs…
if we were normal we would be happy having a good home job and health and no devious psychotic drive to possess the Future generations anymore than owning air or water or food or all shelter…if we were normal.
if we were normal there would be almost no fear of any other human being on Earth…as they would only want to be like us and not prisoners of their own greedy venal systems of mass population control….if they were normal also.
we could visit each other and speak freely wherever we went. ideas would flow like water among the peoples of the world and many innovative measures would be tried and tested as open as a baby’s smile upon all of us….if we were normal.
Of course these things are what YOU consider to be normal. Others would describe them as extreme aberration. The instant that you willfully accommodate the notion that it’s OK to establish a government that retains the authority to hold a gun to someone’s head and force them to do, or not do this or that, you have also given that government the authority to determine what is “normal”. That authority is the mother’s milk of psychopaths. It grants them the fulfillment of their insane desires. No “normal” person desires such, and so government position is actively sought only by the insane. Government would be desirable if it were occupied by genius saints, who would never seek such position.
For 20 years I tried waking people up to reality but made no impact. MSM pulls them in hook line and sinker. Money talks too loud. I asked Caitlin to set up an online survey and ask readers: (1) how long have you been trying to wake people up to reality? (2) Approximately how many people have you tried to wake up? (3) Approximately how many people did you succeed in waking up and really converting them? I guess she does not have time to do that. Can any other reader start an online survey for Caitlin’s readers and send us a link to take part in the survey?
Good luck with that.
My answers to your survey:
1. My whole life (60+ years).
2. Every interaction is an opportunity. You do the math.
3. This is a misguided question:
a. Waking someone up and converting someone are mutually exclusive.
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b. It’s a process, not an event. So a person may wake up a little bit, and it may be years after you spoke to them.
.
You are not the only one doing this. It’s cumulative.
It’s journey not a destination.
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However, if you must:
https://zapier.com/learn/forms-surveys/best-survey-apps/
(I’ve used Typeform, not as intended, and liked it)
Thanks for the link to survey. I tried registering for the App but it is tedious and confusing to do. I work long hours, not much free time for this.
To consumers/users, Tech is a day at the beach; while to the producers of Tech (coding, the “back-end”, etc.) it’s the deep blue sea.
You just dipped your toe in the surf … too cold perhaps.
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PS
If you tried it on your phone I suggest trying again on a PC. The “back-end” is not yet very phone-friendly.
If you have been trying to change minds for twenty years you likely have changed a few. I have been into peak oil for just as long. Have I influenced anybody? It got back to me that someone I had ‘enlightened‘ lost his shit. I started a process where this person became a research machine and arrived at the conclusion that the end is nigh. He quit a high paying job to move into the mountains and become a hermit prepper. Not what I had in mind but I did influence this person.
I don’t think Catlin should do your survey. There is no way for you to know what your true influence has been except to know it falls short of your desire. I just se this as another draught from the nihilism punch bowl.
I just see this as another draught from the nihilism punch bowl.But, I looked at your online survey list. Why would Catlin use an external site that FUNNELS ALL IP ADDYS AND RESULTS TO HOMELAND SECURITY?
When she can write her own software like I did. Go to my website and you can vote against both Trump and Biden. (In the sidebar)
Great idea to vote against Biden and Trump. But who else do you say deserves to be elected?
How did you so quickly forget the only real alternative : USA’s most-liked politician Bernie ?
Visit the website.
`
Breaking news: New Internet Poll shows both Trump and Biden trailing behind unknown third contender!
Jesse Ventura
https://peopleforjesse.com/
If you are into peak oil, you might have heard of John Michael Greer, the Archdruid. He is a person who changed my thinking. Learned so much from that guy (and not just about peak oil). Now I think of it, some of the things I learned from him feed into the ways I explain things to other people, including on this website, so in an indirect way, both he and I are changing the way other people think. But how much and in what way? You’re right, you can’t reduce that to a count in a survey.
A well-reasoned and important perspective from Caitlin, which deserves widespread attention.
The alternative healthy society has previously existed : it prevailed throughout much of the Americas prior to the invasion by Europeans, who went to extraordinary criminal lengths to erase all traces of the preceding civilisations.
This effort to erase sane alternatives continues today ; evidence of this is available on Wikipedia, which for years has hosted the astonishingly-dishonest characterAssassination of Cherokee author and historian Forrest Carter.
The man who endowed civilisation with masterpieces such as “The Education of Little Tree” and “Watch for me on the Mountain” is deliberately misrepresented as a white KKK phantasist . . . to discredit his didactic portraits of how nativAmerican values can be lived by people of diverse cultural backgrounds.
This form of characterAssassination is not new ; it was used against Bertrand Russell, the great social philosopher who gave us “The Conquest of Happiness” and “Marriage & Morals” and “Why i am not a Christian” to deprive him of a teaching position at New York’s University.
Even more important, characterAssassination was used against field anthropologist Carlos Castaneda, whose reportage on the Toltec realityMap was reclassified as fiction after a whole book was dedicated to ridiculing the methods he describes for mastering awareness. Methods which work as described, and which verify the descriptions passed to posterity by his extraordinary informants, chief of whom was the nagual Juan Matus.
I cannot convey the importance of the Toltec knowledge to our finding how to make the changes Caitlin so eloquently argues for. We have blindspots built into our perceptiveness by false beliefs, and these blindspots must be explored and countered before we clain reclaim our sanity from the thieves of individual sovereignty (like Jesus and Allah, for example, who demand belief and obedience, instead of discernment and purpose.)
Early on in Orwell’s 1984 – Winston Smith is walking down the street when he sees a ‘severed’ hand on the pavement (from a fear induced overnight bombing – from his own government) Winston casually kicks it aside – he has become desensitised to it !!
This is what is happening NOW !
I have read 1984 many times (my father owned bookshops) and now that I am stuck in Bali
( actually I have no desire to return to Australia at the moment ) I was perusing the internet and found this !
http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/22.html
Complete works – FREE !
Thought I would pass it on.
Thanks. I particularly like “Down and Out in Paris and London”, which explains the perspective from which he subsequently viewed the world of men. And his “Burmese Days” is one of the frankest analyses of female psychology i have encountered.
Those who like Orwell will also enjoy investigative journalist Wilf Burchette, whose autobiography explains the basis of his egalitarian values with incomparable eloquence.
I dearly love those who really understand what they are talking about.
Kind of like Kurt Vonnegut’s story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
Thanks.
Also, the very well done audiobook of “1984” is available at:
https://archive.org/details/1984Part01
Bonus:
“Brave New World”:
https://archive.org/details/BRAVENEWWORLDcompleteAudiobook
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I’ve noticed some debate about which way the world is going — “1984” vs “Brave New World” — and I think it’s both (with “Brave New World” momentarily in the lead due to CoV19, Gates, etc.), but “1984” seems more generally, consistently accurate… Hmmm
This may be one of your best articles. Thank you.
Thanks!
Pow, baby!