To oppose power is to set yourself on a collision course with despair.
You set out, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, charging full speed at the man all set to overthrow the status quo, and then what happens?
You splat headfirst into a solid steel wall.
Your plans fail.
Your heroes capitulate.
Your comrades begin succumbing to propaganda.
You realize that the roots of establishment power stretch far deeper than you’d initially guessed, and that it has strategies in place to ensure its survival that are far more ingenious and effective than you’d ever previously imagined.
And then there she is. Lady Despair, in all her ego-crushing glory.
And then what do you do?
Perhaps you avoid the despair by pretending things aren’t as bad as they seem; pretending that the corrupt establishment lackeys that are being presented to you as power-threatening rebels really are power-threatening rebels, pretending the fake decoy revolution they’re stagnating your movement with is a real one.
Perhaps you do as so many lifelong revolutionaries have done and refuse to give in to despair, keeping your feet planted and refusing to fall as its weight saps the fire from your eyes and makes you hard, jaded and bitter.
Perhaps you avoid the weight of despair by giving yourself a new narrative about how the fight is useless and resistance is futile, so you drop your revolutionary spirit altogether and become whatever we call hippies who become yuppies these days.
Or perhaps you really give in to hopelessness. Really, truly surrender to it. Honestly, directly, and unreservedly.
And perhaps you discover something you hadn’t noticed before. A part of the equation it had never occurred to you to account for.
And perhaps you learn that just as your naive hopefulness was the result of a misperception of reality, so too was your hopelessness.
And perhaps it turns out that just as the impulse to fight the power was an invitation to hopelessness, hopelessness is in turn an invitation to real power.
Because it might perhaps turn out that when you let go of all hope–really, truly let go of it–you expect to fall. You’ve been holding onto hope like someone clinging to a cliff’s edge, so when you let go you expect there to be a disastrous plummet into the abyss.
And perhaps you will find that the fall never comes. You let go, fully prepared to plummet, and it turns out the whole situation was an illusion. There was never anywhere to fall to.
And perhaps you notice that your lungs are still taking in air. That the life of the world–including your own–keeps marching on completely unimpeded. That your body is still standing, all on its own.
And perhaps you discover on an experiential level that the force which powers you has never had anything to do with your hopes and your desires and your personal willpower. Perhaps you discover that it has never had anything to do with what you think of as “you” at all.
Perhaps, by relinquishing all hope and struggle and control, you find that what you’re really made of has never had any use for those things anyway. That, in fact, they’ve only ever been getting in the way.
And perhaps you find out that what you really are is far more powerful than what you thought you were. That it is far more powerful than the power you were trying to fight.
By letting go completely, perhaps you find that the life force which grows your hair and replicates your cells has far greater organizing power and spontaneous creativity than the repetitive thought patterns you’d previously been employing to fight the power.
Perhaps openings in the armor of the machine are noticed in what had previously looked like a solid steel carapace. Perhaps solutions emerge to what had looked like unsolvable dilemmas. Perhaps you begin moving in ways which surprise even you, because they arise from an unpatterned place of unprecedented aliveness.
And perhaps others do the same.
And perhaps that’s how we win.
Hope and hopelessness might just be an opening to a discovery of something that is far beyond them both.
Something boundless.
Something crackling with potentiality.
And something the bastards never saw coming.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. What the hell do I know? Try it out for yourself.
And let go.
_____________________
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
74 responses to “To Oppose Power Is To Meet With Hopelessness, But Hopelessness Is An Invitation To Real Power”
Caitlin
I’m unsubscribing from your blog, which I’ve only been getting for a couple weeks. Since I haven’t been a contributor, you aren’t losing anything monetary. The three reasons that spring to mind are the facts that your missives do not permit an email reply, that you are entirely wrong that fighting propaganda alone will end oligarchic rule, and that only under fiat currency is money
“… a made-up conceptual construct whose only value is given to it by the will of the collective; the only reason a dollar is worth what it’s worth is because we as a collective have agreed to pretend that that’s true.” (CJ)
As you are a self-described fan of Ron Paul, I’m somewhat astonished to see a statement like that from you.
Fighting propaganda comes under the heading of Resistance, which does not, in and of itself, supplant oppression. Nowhere do you propose a positivist alternative, which is the only means that has ever, from what I’ve read, freed one group of people from domination by a more powerful group. In Western societies, that is. Castro vs the US, Mao vs Chiang, Ho Chi Minh vs Nixon, Gandhi vs the British Empire, in every case the struggle required much more than fighting propaganda.
It is fine to be an essayist and not an organizer. The two realms may assist each other.
i agree with you i part. CAitlin opens eyes to concepts we might navemissed. she has no Solutions: if you do where is it? or them.
i have some goals at least: end CIA, the FED, IRS, and tax assets only, DOD cuyt in half. non-military police. Crash all the off shores and slam them shut. and many more…
theses are hopes and dreams.
i am being specific here, but rushed.
HOW? is the Big Q you are looking for organizer. i have had it up to here with organizers ego trippers. the people just go out and do it. behind the scenes are those who work within and without the systems we have to dis-entangle. to save the POOR! future generations, democracy–is it even worth it? well, a loud YES, compared to corpo-state fascism. what say you? tell us how to untie the Gordian knot…
waiting….
This stuck a cord with me. I am a recovering alcoholic. And what I found is that hopelessness(for me) was indeed the first step to greater power. As they say, I had to stop fighting everyone and everything. Surrender.
On the surface that sounds contradictory, but I had to let go of the ego and stop trying to control. Only then could I start to rebuild my life in a manor that gave me serenity and power, not in the sense of controlling things but in the sense of controlling myself and my attitudes. They say alcoholics are insane, and they are right. But that does not mean the rest of the world is sane. I sensed from an early age that things are seriously wrong with the way the world is and it slowly drove me crazy. It seems strange but I am thankful for my (past) drinking because it broke me down and forced me to re-evaluate the way I was living and thinking.
As many articles on this site point out, the world is at an inflection point. To borrow from the Lord of the Rings, we either destroy the ring of power and enter a golden age or it destroys us and all is lost. I can only look at the man in the mirror and live my life in a manner that seems good to me, that is the only power that I have. Thank you for your time.
hey pinhead! you ever watch Archie Bunker? i know AA, it is good stuff. it can pull you up outa da hole but it cannot make you fly.
you can do more way more than look in da mirror.
shit! you just did. nice words of complete honesty. just not quite good enough for you.
you too smart to with draw into a cocoon of being NICE!
you got a voice:
i say SPEAK!
GET OUTSIDE YOURSELF AND PICK ANY TOPIC THEN LET ‘EN HAVE IT. TELL ANYONE WHO’LL LISTEN. go to the meetings and tell them. we got WORK, bro.
you might know how what who something….that would help the world get better healed or recovered. so SPEAK! you just did. right!
i say forget the egoistic self always warning ALL of US about what peephole might think.
i’d like to think that you are LOUD.
AA is good and you got miles to tell.
Reconnaissance is never wasted.
A problem understood is a problem half solved.
From Lockdown to Police State: The “Great Reset” Rolls Out
an article by Ellen Brown, on UNZ.
check it out. the cast of writer who contribute there is interesting.
basically she states that Melbourne is currently being invaded by home-grown fascist storm troopers. is that true? where is the news?
oh well, they aren’t commies dirty pinko…so i guess it’s all right to have yer home trashed and violated for fake inoculations and having yur mouths sewn shut.
i always wanted to eat thru a straw. (not plastic of course–we wouldn’t want to hurt a whale).
UGH…Covid WAS a hoax! not as you might expect but man-made for sure now….we know. not that dangerous but declared so by comparing us to horror show nations that have to hop step and jump over their dead compatriots every day. i must say, Sweden is working out fine after being in the 3rd or 4th worst place in EU for while now is rivaling China in zeros.
see? we are messed up in US because of few idiot colonies scattered around. ean ol Frisco has under 100 deaths. and. we’re bigger than Iceland!
our cops are sinister but not so very bad they just dont like masks. eh! Kenosha is a frigging SUBURB! watch the movie. cops aare TRYING to start something. i bet that guy gets a 100K in Cayman. but i got anew name for a Broadway Show: OH, Melbourne!
Blackrock owns 45,000 EMPTY homes in CAL. 4,500 in Copenhagen. dig it.
How many in your hometown?
We do NOT need to destroy our econ101’s. not if we’re all gonna die anyway. some things you just gotta get up for.
Dr Erik Erikson: “You will no longer be afraid, if you stop hoping.”
Richard Ford: “Fear and hope are alike underneath.”
Baruch Spinoza: “Fear cannot be without hope, nor hope without fear.”
AND MY ALL-TIME FAVOURITE: Nikos Kazanzakis (author of “Zorba the Greek”):
“I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
“You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free food. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again. You then slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.”
People living in the cities, taking their monthly vaccinations and relying on the government and police to tell them how to think will not survive the evil empire’s coming implosion and self-destruction. Read more of this here: http://www.wisdompage.com/2013%20Articles/Molyneaux%20essay.pdf
We are in a unique situation where technology, industry, population density and energy production has increased exponentially to the point where our finite planet will no longer be able to support continued infinite growth and elite globalists know this. They are psychopaths but that does not mean they are stupid. They employ top class scientists and economists to predict the future and plan covert strategies for sustaining life on earth. Their hidden agendas, technologies and wealth for controlling the world will eventually turn to disaster when droughts and floods destroy crops and herds, fuel and electricity costs are no longer affordable, and when pollution becomes unbearable. Then propaganda will no longer fool the masses. Then a secret, underground, subversive, non-violent but ultimately successful liberation movement will start. I hope I live to see that day.
I believe that people often fail to see what’s closest to their eyes, fail to see what’s happening just at the moment it’s happening, and thus history is, by definition, always seen in retrospect. Based upon those beliefs, and my sense or intuition of the significance and repercussions of this “Covid thing,” I would urge you to consider that the “secret, underground, subversive, non-violent but ultimately successful liberation movement” is already underway and inviting you to join it via this blog.
I think that this essay is not only your best, but the best received as well, which I think is a very promising development. However, due the filthy nature of these thugs I can’t add anything more to the discussion other than to say follow veteranstoday.com
Wikipedia smears the heck out of that site, lol. my kind of site! Wikipedia even smears Eva Bartlett. so it’s an honor to be smeared by Wikipedia.
Caitlin aptly describes how most dissidents and revolutionaries respond to the almost unassailable propaganda and control tools of the evil empire. Yeshua, whose name means Liberator in Hebrew, explained how we can actively contribute to the self-destruction and elimination of the evil empire and He instructed His followers to withdrawn financial support and cooperation in official crimes against humanity, but we don’t do this because it is too challenging. Even critical journalists, dissidents, protesters and looters continue to enjoy the benefits of remaining part of the establishment and complicit in their crimes. Yeshua explained His brilliant revolutionary strategies in detail but for 1700 years the Roman Catholic Church twisted and corrupted His lectures and protest actions through translation errors and/or massive censoring of relevant ancient records. The Roman Catholic Church is the mother of abominations, collaborating with governments in fraud, mind control and oppression.
Saying 105 of the Gospel of Thomas reads:
Jesus said, “Whoever knows the father and the mother will be called the child of a whore.”
Using three insights acquired from study of the other sayings of the gospel (that the gospel was actually written by the historical Jesus, that the sayings therein are directed to us rather than to people who lived 2000 years ago, and that many of the sayings therein are “grammatical skeletons” which need to be “fleshed out” to become meaningful within the larger context of the gospel) we can interpret this saying as follows:
Jesus said, “Whoever has been indoctrinated with the dogmas of “the Holy Father” (that is, the pope, a Pontifex Maximus with red shoes) and “the Mother of God” (that is, the mother of Jesus, whom the early Catholic spinmeisters promoted to the status of “Mother of God” to facilitate the conversion to their version of Christianity of Roman worshippers of the female god Isis) will be called the intellectual product of a whore. In short, Jesus is telling us in Saying 105 that the Roman church is a whore. But I think a lot of visitors to this website already know this.
Characteristics and symbols of the Whore of Babylon in Revelation chapters 17 and 18 describe the Roman Catholic Church exactly. No other global organization fits those characteristics and symbols. As a top-notch statistician, linguist and historian I find this amazing.
This is what is now controlling the United States through its iron grip on Trump – they have the orange one by the balls, he is their Suka, their bitch. The Russian Jewish Mafia has made the entire United States population it’s bitches, they are slowly turning the US into one giant Gulag and I can’t think of anything worse to be than a bitch in a gulag…and really if you live here and you’re doing fine then really you must be a bitch
damn Lynn, to hear such strong words… it’s refreshing & sexy. are you familiar with Harry Vox? YouTube is coming down hard on him, trying to label him an anti-semite, etc. you know the usual ploy, the Political Parasites use when anyone speaks truth to power. you & him have similar views. i agree but don’t have enough cojones yet but they’re growing everyday. FYI: a few years ago, i would not have the clarity, experience, wisdom to think outside the box but a personal crisis opened up my eyes and now, i see the world as it is: the majority of people have no integrity, are inconsistent, and money is their god. because of this, i live in the moment, to the fullest, treat everyone with respect & dignity. i spent 3 years traveling, soul-searching in Mexico, alone, with just a backpack. in that process, i discovered who i am: a Cancerian, free-spirited male. im no bitch. 🙂
An intriguing and positive notion, Caitlin. A little too existential I fear for our body politik writ large.
yes. and the audacity of hope turns into the austerity of nope…and Pelosi says not yet.
Perez, Podesta, Pelosi…Benign Biden…and vertigo
PPPB-V
google it.
Rumi said, “Do what you love.”
and the youth love to run and throw and hit and run and yell their epithets. and as long as they do it alone the police strike back…until the QAnon arrives and the police take a nap.
we lost every war we ever fought against any nation without an air force.
the last war we won was WWII and we ended up paying for them to rebuild.
the despoiled are either left to wither and die off, or told to put on a white shirt and continue the holocaust under a new name and with a new species of victim.
we resist. we complain. we rage. but do we agree with each other? about what?
that Capital is ours not theirs? that it belongs to the people? the currency is not of Nathan Rothschild who said, as Lord (catch the hubris in that word) of the Exchequer (i love the hated french twist in that word….to give us some one to blame if it did not work?)<
"I care not who runs the .GOV'T, he who controls the currency controls the .GOV'T, AND I CONTROL THE CURRENCY."
We are the "useless eaters." The elites hold us in contempt of their own courts. We are outlawed from their croquets. WE are meat to them, needing more meat. seeking meat. from our ever-expanding squalor.
and there is a list being drawn up, Du Farge is knitting. the Blade is being sharpened. so we must be clear and together decide deciduously which leaves must fall and which may stay. we have to join and examine our cause so it is one. not one squabble. The People.
…not the peephole.
i suggest death to the FED, CIA, DOD, privatization, DEA, DIA, secrets and secret societies, laissez faire purchases of "persons" by other "persons" called holding companies…and a new .GOV loan for single family homes made by creating money not borrowing it from those who got it from us to begin with. Death to the MORT Gauge. Hooray for the home equity loan of, by, and for the people.
and maybe we could force BlackRock and others to sell off those 45,000 homes in CA that they have acquired by eviction and design. holding them empty while people die off from cold, hunger, and disdain.
IS this "socialism" or communalism….or simply the Family of Mankind?
And the family is femme…at its core. and by that i mean, at its heart. we got to have heart.
Could this be a beacon of hope?
https://21stcenturywire.com/2020/08/24/dr-dolores-cahill-speech-in-dublin-destroys-govt-argument
“To oppose power is to set yourself on a collision course with despair… Hope and hopelessness might just be an opening to a discovery of something that is far beyond them both.”
.
No one has the power to make us despairing or hopeless. Only we can do this to ourselves. Is it tempting to be hopeless? Sure it is. There are countless reasons to get us upset or angry or confused or to give us feelings of powerlessness. But to make us hopeless? That’s 100 percent all on us. Being hopeless is not our default setting. We choose that. We could have made a different choice. People throughout history have recorded making that different choice.
.
And THAT is the source of our power. We always, always have the Power. Only we can surrender it to another or to circumstances. We don’t ever have to choose hopelessness, regardless of how much garbage is coming at us. Our zeal and engagement with life is one thing that we should never, ever surrender. Once we do that, They have won. We gave Them exactly what They wanted from us.
.
The mystics have told us for eons. Only we can make ourselves unhappy and miserable. Only the weak among us would deny that, for they do not want to take responsibility for their perceived misery. They would keep looking outside for answers to their plight that will not and cannot be found there. Only we- each of us – possess the answers inside and in any denial of that we foreclose on our own healing.
.
There is a greater virus out there than this Covid crap. The greater virus is hopelessness. There is no vaccine for that. And that’s OK. You don’t need one. You already have the answer inside any time you want to use it. And nobody can take it away from you unless you let them.
It is rare that a journalist delivers an article that I not only agree with; but also scares the hell out of me. Ms Kamala Harris reminds me of my landlord. This great article can be read here:
The Seven Dangerous Paradoxes of Kamala Harris by Martin Sieff!
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/24/the-seven-dangerous-paradoxes-of-kamala-harris/
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/08/24/how-trump-became-the-russian-mafias-bitch/
This website is already under attack, anyone who undertakes the task of reading it will know why.
Posted 2 am Chicago time August 24, 2020. This has been my life for the last few years, no doubt they will kill everyone in my family.
I see nothing, i hear nothing, i know nothing. – Hogan Heroes
I am an old man always having to deal with the things I usually purchase always going up in price as the volume within my purchase always decreases. Therefore I do not have to be a rocket scientist to realize that the United States dollar is heading to bsing worthless. This article round-a-boutly reaches the same conclusion:
The Quiet American Reset by Alastair Crooke!
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/24/the-quiet-american-reset/
Hi Caitlin. You asked on Twitter recently why the color revolution of a certain nation is not more supported from the west. You asked: can you explain? I can. Assuming we are speaking of Belarus. It’s quite well supported by the various deep states. Czechia, for example, has been allotting rather vast amounts of money to create mischief in Belarus since about 2006.
But the reason why many ordinary people are not supporting their color revolution is that we are sick of the same template: go in with slogans and paid organizers. Get useful idiots (naive locals) on board along with criminal elements willing to create brawls. Announce a new Satan who must leave power. Offer a puppet. If successful, proceed to loot. There are plenty of examples not far from Belarus, Ukraine the most horrifying. I hope the majority of people in Belarus pay attention.
80% of Belarus is state-owned. Plus they still have their gold reserves, which, after a color revolution seems to mysteriously vanish, over and over. That would be quite a piratizing, tunneling party. I think I’d rather keep the dictator, distasteful as it is, because the other option is a lot worse.
right! 8 years of that fraud under Oblama: leaving us with Egypt, Libya, Georgia, ukraine (under Victoria Nuland–to whom is she married?) Iraq, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Syria (contested), Mali, Sudan, Honduras, Haiti, Guatemala, Nicaragua (Attempted), Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela (attempted), Argentina (repulsedby elecions), Ecuador, Colombia…and more i cannot remember…never letting once the people to decide.
Jimmy, I am relieved to report Caitlin was quoting someone she describes as “Obama administration Cold Warrior Michael McFaul”. Apparently, it was his query.
Thank goodness. Nobody that has a head should by now believe a color revolution. 🙂
To have found hopelessness one must have first discovered and embraced hope . Both are emotional reactions and as such false notions encouraged by ruling elites to avoid the rage that despair aka hopelessness naturally engenders in humans . Rage leads to property damage something all materialists frown on.
“They gave us their minds”. Never be fooled by how human we look. We are all Reptilians hybrids and as such have back-doors in our software that can be activated at any time to sabotage reform.
“And perhaps that’s how we win. Hope and hopelessness might just be an opening to a discovery of something that is far beyond them both. Something boundless. Something crackling with potentiality. And something the bastards never saw coming.” I have had a strange, unshakable feeling since it broke that this “Covid thing”–the stopping in its tracks of the neoliberal shark that must swim to breathe, the unexpected and extended pause interrupting so many of our gerbil wheel lives, the compulsion felt by our plutocratic governments to least make gestures to protect public health, the necessity of these governments providing at least a pittance to forestall mass homelessness and food insecurity, the questioning that has arisen about whether we even WANT to return to the pre-pandemic status quo, the forcing of us to move past our culture’s denial of death and come to grips with our own mortality, etc.–is the beginning of the revolution/evolution that will take us beyond TINA dystopia into something yet unimaginable, much less predictable or fully understandable. If, as many believe, the plutocratic bastards planned this pandemic to tighten their stranglehold on us, I suspect they made a HUGE mistake, didn’t see that they were unleashing something “crackling with potentiality,” something “boundless” which “they never saw coming.” So let us not bicker and divide ourselves over whether the plutocrats planned this thing or it just happened for one reason or another. Instead, let us seize this revolutionary/evolutionary opening, regardless of its source, and go for it with all that’s in us. How we “go for it” TOGETHER, how we “let go” of the old so that the new might be born, must not be only Caitlin’s concern (and bless her for the illumination she brings) but the concern, the focus, the task, the challenge, the calling of every single one of us who longs for a better, more beautiful world. “What the hell do (any of us) know,” except that such a world might, just MIGHT, be at hand if enough of us allow ourselves to dare to believe it?
Bravo
What was the FBI doing while a dangerous and fanatical right-wing movement took hold in the US, and especially gained dangerous footholds in the police and military? What was the FBI doing to defend America while this grave threat to freedom and democracy grew?
A: Plotting against imagined “eco-terrorists” who for some strange, pro-global-warming reason, want to destroy windmills.
“Tilting at Windmills”
https://theintercept.com/2020/08/24/fbi-fusion-center-environmental-wind/
My godfather was once the head of the midwest branch of the FBI, he was put out to pasture after the FBI was turned over to the mafia and Mossad to run.
To oppose power is always a long fight.
Its a marathon, not a sprint.
Or, more accurately, its the first leg of a Triathalon.
Because after you win the long and at times hopeless seeming fight to oppose power, you will then have to wage another long fight, but this time less hopeless-seeming, to fight off the inevitable counter-revolution where conservatives will attempt to make things great again by undoing everything you’ve gained.
Its a long fight. Its the struggle of a lifetime.
Be prepared. There will be many ups and downs, and at times things will seem quite hopeless. That’s all a part of any struggle against real power and the monsters who wield it to destroy lives for their benefit.
In fighting for something good we may not want to hear what I have written below, but I very much believe it is of great importance if people are to keep honestly hoping that good wins, to at least really reflect on it:
I have been very fortunate to learn from a very wise man that there has always been a fight between good and evil in the world and it is continuous with the same fight going on in every person, and that all you can do is to try to have what is good win in yourself and the world. That way you will respect and like yourself and have a good hope for the world. (I admit it doesn’t guarantee your personal survival, but I think it can improve your chances.) It is so easy to to feel you are just a good person fighting an evil world – but it will only make the fight harder. You cannot be really be against evil unless you are simultaneously against it in yourself. Otherwise your fight against evil is just another ego-exercise in proving your superiority to some people.
I hate how profit economics has caused the deaths of millions and millions of people, but I want to hate just as much my own wanting to get as much as I can while giving as little as possible, while I treasure more the desire in all of us for fairness in economics. When I look at Trump I want to be against his murderous egotism while using him to see the same thing better in myself and be a better critic of both of us. I have also learned that I should not use seeing relation to Trump to be a means of being soft on both of us. I am also sure that the best thing in Trump has him despise himself for what he has done and intends to do in the future, and that in his ignorance he thinks doing more of the same will have him stop despising himself. So he needs to be stopped the same way the best thing in us would want to be stopped if we were being run by something evil and causing so much damage.
We are always desiring both good and evil, and only through admitting that can we make the right choices. Through admitting this we can also come to have the pleasure of really seeing how the good in ourselves can have victories over the evil.
Thank you Caitlin.
Brilliant essay!!! I discovered upon hitting rock bottom that nothing mattered; I could say what I want…but that real power came from finding those who agreed with my ideas, or me with theirs. I quite admire what you say, Ms Johnstone, more importantly, I find a collegial spirit with fellow commentators.
Once one comes to terms with their mortality, fear becomes an inconvenience instead of a way of life. It becomes the instinct it is, rather than a motivation for absurd behavior. Ain’t nobody getting out of this alive. Now if I could deny such fear for my progeny, I would be unstoppable. Working on it.
Bless you, Caitlin, for being so open minded. That’s not an easy thing to do on the forefront of the unknown, where most are understandably insecure, and thus splitting hairs, staking out positions, and ardently defending them. Your strength is inspiring.
hell yea. i love finding/meeting cool, down-to-earth, like-minded people. it’s a rarity, in this treacherous world. Caitlin is definitely a wonderful human being.
Truly inspired and inspiring. Thanks Caithin I feel a little better because of that
“A gram is worth a damn.” –Huxley
Sorry, that was meant in reply to Khatika’s comment on Colorado below
The first line of the 2d stanza has in it some of the great wisdom of the age.
Say not the Struggle nought Availeth
BY ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
the line is
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
As we say in AA “let go and let God”. Just make sure the God you are surrendering to is Unconditional Love.
Please keep writing Caitlin. That is all.
We are all Assange, all trapped by the deadly cowardice of our species no one free until we All resist, break free and rise up. Assange is the harbinger and has tried to help us all. We must treat him honorably. He must be freed. So must we.
Gerald Celeste has long said “ when people lose everything, have nothing left to lose, they LOSE it” but what do they do? Protest? Riot? That’s just putty in the hands of agent provocateurs. The agenda here is to inflict chaos in otherwise orderly society. Out of chaos comes order, the Hegelian dialectic, problem, reaction, solution.
Two things power fears most, ridicule & loss of power. Speaking ‘truth to power’ titillates them, they get a perverse pleasure hearing the common people prattling off slogans & homilies they have planted in the mainstream discourse to be consumed by the righteous, indignant, outraged mob through controlled opposition.
To make fun of them infuriates them, that’s why they try to suppress free speech, not because they fear chants of “what do we want, when do we want it?”FFS.
They want you to be miserable, therefor controllable in your plight to find that elusive happiness. So they really hate it when you are laughing at anything or anyone they have not told you is “ funny”. Maybe that’s why comedy now is purile filth.
Oh, since Kim Jung Un is now in a coma, I see an opening for Chairman Dan to fill, should fit right in, some are already calling him Kim Jung Dan. Haha
You are awesomely brilliant and once again hit the spot exactly right for what I need to hear today. thank you!
hello Caitlin, i hope you’re doing OK. i hear Australia’s govt has been acting up. im in Philadelphia, USA and i speak truth to power. yes, im punished severely by the State & his goons but it’s my purpose in life. “i’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees” – a quote by Emiliano Zapata brought to my attention by Serena Shim. RIP Serena. Love from Philadelphia, USA. 🙂
Brought to Life here by Midnight Oil Dissident:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e-_s2UzdSek
For you Dissident >>>>
Brought to life by Midnight Oil:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e-_s2UzdSek
ty Fair Dinkum 🙂
INVOCATION
Let wave upon wave
strike shore after shore —
let a thousand empty cups be filled,
on this red valley floor,
and let the rocking storm the harder try,
to shatter any door.
All my fine store
of good hope’s gone,
and I can be fearful no more.
Thanks Caitlin. There are always new warriors springing up to refresh the ranks. The only certainty is change.
I don’t know much history, but it seems to me the powerful always fall eventually because corruption, greed and selfishness is inherently less effective than co-operation and mutual support. It can be a long wait, but there are many important successes along the way.
Enlightened. There is so much to learn from this. Genuinely impressed.
It’s simple, but not easy.
You just have to go headless:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jcDMJvO6aHU
Or, as Barry Long called it, ‘thoughtlessness’
So there you are up against the monster getting knocked down over and over again and you get up and you continue to do battle; because that is all that your inner soul knows how to do. You will fight this entire life and probably into the next life, and the next; because that is your destiny, that is who you are!
Often the difference between hope and despair is nothing more than attitude.
Every time I think I hit bottom, someone throws me a shovel. – Garfield
I agree with this analysis. Hopelessness and despair are deceptive in the same way that hope and enthusiasm are deceptive. In truth, Lady Despair is just as ego-reinforcing as Little Miss Sunshine, it just reinforces a different aspect of ego. To embrace hopelessness and despair as part of life rather than something you are is to attain a modicum of wisdom. The strength that comes from this realisation is partly a recognition of your own natural robustness, and partly a realisation of the fluid nature of hopelessness and despair.
.
However, this does not give you magical powers to change what can’t be changed, or to achieve specific outcomes when you don’t understand what you’re doing. You still need to pay attention to reality and how it works if you expect to influence the outcome. Also, this skill needs to be revisited again and again, it’s not a one-off realisation.
.
I guess you could look at despair as an opportunity to re-evaluate your understanding of reality rather than wallow in emotion. And by you I mean me.
There are a number of different approaches you can take.
.
You can deny the feeling. This can creep up on you, for example you had an insight in the past, and now you pretend you’re past all that.
.
You can choose not to dwell on it, and just get on with other things. Not bad, but takes some effort until the feeling passes.
.
You can try to suppress or overwhelm the feeling by an act of will. Not quite the same as above, because your attention is still on the feeling.
.
You can work on changing your emotional patterns. There are self-help books, visualisations, etc. This is not denial, it’s doing karmic work which fruits as a mind habitually more hopeful.
.
You can undo the part of your self that clings to despair as an ego-identification. This is deep work. Typically, you would open yourself up to experience the feeling completely, without getting sucked into its story, and pay careful attention. Therapy, counselling, vipassana practices, etc are examples. Sometimes you will uncover some event or trauma that acts as a hook. If done successfully, this can result in a massive reduction in the occurrence of despair, or a massive reduction its impact on you.
Of course, you can also just wallow in it for a while. This would be like choosing to stay inside because the weather outside is so horrible. Sometimes it’s nice to just take a break and stay cosy. Don’t beat yourself up about it.
Dont forget about drugs. Lots to choose from. Zoloft, paxil, wellbutrin……then of course my go to favorite cannibis now available from vending machines in colorado.
Also notice no riots in colorado. Pass around enough weed and everything is just fine.
I know, I thought of that hours after I had completed what I thought was an exhaustive list. These days, I allow the various emotions to wash over/through me and I don’t even consider a technological quick-fix. I keep forgetting that others prefer the idea of science as saviour. I was fully into mary jane for a long time. I poured many years into that bottomless hole and I understand its attraction. Keep up the good work, Khatika.
Exactly. I discovered this, when I turned thirty. Cried and cried, finally letting go of all that brought me to thirty. And low and behold, in that surrender, I discovered life. The unstoppable force, that is life. And the wisdom held deep within life. If you’re not fully engaged, in all that is you;(mental, emotional, spiritual etc.)you aren’t fully living. This is the big question people must ask themselves, Do you want to go through life going along to get along or do you want to discover yourself? No two people are a like, on this planet and we should be celebrating that fact. When, as a society, we decide to honor, in reverence, our differences and have open communication we will expand exponentially, across all space and time. Thank you Caitlin, I love your process and writings.
So how do you think it is going to go when you hit 40, 50, 60….
I hit 72, …AND? ………………
Check out my YouTube channel ArielAZAlexander
OK so you slow down………a bit.
Such beauty and power in this, Caitlin. Thank you!
Exactly !
Thank you again, Caitlin Johnstone !