We each inhabit two very different worlds simultaneously: the real world, and the narrative world.
The real world is the physical world of matter, of atoms and molecules and stars and planets and animals wandering around trying to bite and copulate with each other. Science does not yet understand much of this world, but it can reasonably be said to have some degree of existence to it.
The narrative world is made of stories, of mental chatter about what’s going on. It is only related to the real world in the loosest of terms, and commonly has no relation to the real world whatsoever.
In the narrative world you exist as a person with a certain name and a certain life story with a mountain of adjectives attached to you, some believed consciously and some believed subconsciously. You are this, you are that. You are inadequate. You are inferior. You are clever. You are fat. You are unlovable. Whatever. Words, words, words, words, words.
In the real world what you think of as “you” exists as an organism, breathing and digesting and pulsing and moving in the appearance of time. No thoughts or words need to occur for this organism to exist; it just is whatever it is.
In the narrative world, your surroundings are experienced as friends and foes, good and bad, right and wrong, threatening and non-threatening. Churning, babbling stories about what’s happening pervade the experience of the narrative world: those people over there are bad people and should be punished. Those people over there are the good people and they should be rewarded. That man is blah blah blah. That woman is this and that.
In the real world, your surroundings are experienced as raw sensory data: sensory impressions arising in each point in spacetime. Breath going in, breath going out. The feeling of feet on the ground. Sound of a bird call. Sight of a passing car. It’s all just happening as it is, as whatever it is. Simple. Present.
In the narrative world, the United States changed dramatically on the 20th of January. If you live in one narrative echo chamber it changed dramatically for the better, if you live in the other narrative echo chamber it changed dramatically for the worse. But throughout the narrative world most agree that the 20th of January 2021 marked a very real and significant turn of events.
In the real world, things are moving in pretty much the same ways they were on January 19th. The money is moving in more or less the same directions at more or less the same rates. The weapons and troops are moving to more or less the same places in basically the same ways as before. The resources are behaving in essentially the same way. The people are moving in pretty much the same way. The actual, physical dynamics have remained predominantly unchanged.
The real world and the narrative world could not be more different. Skilled manipulators exploit these differences for their benefit like foreign exchange traders exploit the differences in world currency values. A religious manipulator can get you to hand over your real currency in exchange for narrative currency about eternal salvation or spiritual purification. A sexual predator can manipulate you into trading the real currency of sex for the narrative currency of “I think I’m in love with you”. A politician can manipulate you into trading the real currency of votes for the narrative currency of whatever they say on the campaign trail.
It’s very hard to control people in the real world by just using the means that are available in the real world. If you’re bigger and stronger than someone you can get them to hand over their sandwich by hitting them, or if you have a big stick or something. If you want to exert a large amount of control over a large number of people, though, you generally have to seize that control through the narrative world.
It’s easier to control people through the narrative world than the real world because the narrative world and its relationship with the real world is too complicated for most people to understand, whereas the real world is quite simple and straightforward. For this reason, a tremendous amount of energy goes into controlling the dominant narratives, the dominant stories that people tell about what’s going on in the world.
Convince people to accept the narrative that a government’s leader is an evil dictator in need of regime change, and you can trade that narrative for real world control over a crucial geostrategic region. Convince people to accept that the status quo is working fine and any attempts to change it are dangerous insanity, and you ensure that people will never rise up and take away your real world control. Convince people that anyone questioning your narratives is a conspiracy theorist or a Russian propagandist, and you ensure your continued hegemonic control over the narrative world.
The most powerful manipulators are the ones who have succeeded in exerting control over both the real world and the narrative world, and they pursue both agendas with equal emphasis. Populations in the real world who insist upon their own national, resource, financial, economic or military sovereignty are subject to real world attacks by bombs, starvation sanctions and special ops. Entities in the narrative world which threaten imperial narrative domination are attacked, smeared, marginalized and censored.
That’s all we are seeing with the increasingly shrill mainstream panic about disinformation, conspiracy theories, foreign propaganda and domestic extremism. Our rulers and their media lackeys are not compassionately protecting us from deception, they are ensuring that they remain the only ones authorized to administer deception. By golly the only ones allowed to deceive us should be our government, our news media, our teachers and our priests.
As China and its allies increasingly threaten the real world hegemony of the US and its allies, operations in the narrative world are getting increasingly heated and intense. Expect continued demonization of Russia, and expect anti-China propaganda to get more and more noisy. Expect people to be herded into partisan echo chambers with thicker and thicker walls in the narrative world, because dividing them up in this way makes it much easier to administer propaganda to them.
The narrative world is getting more and more frenzied while the real world is headed toward disaster due to the military and ecological pressures created by our status quo. There are only a few ways this can possibly break, with the most obvious being mass scale climate disaster or nuclear war.
There is also the possibility that the human species goes the other way and adapts. Organisms always wind up hitting a juncture where they either adapt to a new situation or go extinct, and we are approaching our juncture now.
Throughout recorded history, all around the globe, wise humans have been attesting that it is possible to transcend our delusion-rooted conditioning and come to a lucid perception of the narrative world and reality. There are many names for this lucid perception, but the one that caught on most widely is enlightenment.
We all have this potential within us. It has been gestating in us for many millennia. As we approach our adaptation-or-extinction juncture, we are very close indeed to learning if that potential will awaken in us or not.
If it does, a healthy and harmonious world will shift from being an unimaginable pipe dream to something very achievable. No longer confused about the relationship between the real world and the narrative world, we will be able to perceive our actual situation clearly, unfiltered by manipulation, and begin collaborating to build something beautiful and unprecedented. Once we move out of our narrative manipulation-driven model of competition and domination, and into a lucidity-driven model of collaboration with each other and with our ecosystem, a lasting peace will open up to us all.
______________________________
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54 responses to “The Real World And The Narrative World”
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I’m a regular reader of your essays and have made critical comments on a few.
You actually outdid yourself with this one. Your literary demarcation of the real vs the narrated world is original and powerful. I can’t think of a better way to present this dichotomy and the danger it poses for all of us.
Thank you for your excellent work.
Vaccination Is The Hope Of The Hopeless!
This forced global vaccination program is only a business at best.
It is only giving ignorant, fearful people hope.
Your hope is blind!
These so called vaccines do not prevent contraction or transmission of disease.
Therefore these products do not vaccinate.
These ‘vaccines’ are really untested mRNA gene therapies, which are not approved and are licensed for emergency use only.
Do you all wish to remain ignorant, stupid and possibly damaged test subjects!
Compliance needs obedience.
Obedience means slavery.
You have just to follow, you are not to doubt, you are not to question, you have just to be an unconscious robot.
Obedience teaches you blindness.
Obedience teaches you unintelligence.
Obedience keeps you retarded.
Obedience takes away the very base of growth, it simply orders you.
It is an exercise in destroying intelligence.
Obedience is basically used by politicians, religions, educationalists, parents.
They are all destroying your intelligence, and they are making a great value of obedience.
Obedience is a disease far more dangerous than any cancer, because cancer can be cured, can be operated on.
But once you get caught into the net of obedience, there is no cure for you.
To keep the status quo of the society as it is, with no change, to keep billions of people in spiritual slavery.
Total obedience is required.
Those who are obedient have to be rewarded and those who are not obedient have to be punished.
That is the way to create obedience.
Naturally, sooner or later, particularly younger people start feeling that all this obedience is nothing but a strategy to impose slavery.
They react, and move to the other extreme.
Then they start making disobedience the law of life.
Disobedience is only reaction.
If there is no obedience imposed on you, disobedience will disappear automatically because there is nothing to disobey.
Politicians are forcing obedience on their own citizens, which will really create mass disobedience.
But politicians need mass disobedience as an excuse to enforce their sinister global plan of mass prosecution, detention and genocide of all non-group-think citizens who dare to disobey them!
This world is run by the cunning, by the heartless and the cruel.
Watch any politician, they are power-mad.
They are all drunk.
And certainly the alcohol that is created out of power is more dangerous than any alcohol that comes out of grapes.
These power maniacs are the most dangerous people in the world.
And great power is dangerous in the hands of those who have no love.
Your so-called leaders are not leaders but murderers.
But people have become completely uncaring, unfeeling; they don’t care at all!
They have by-passed their heart.
They don’t go through the heart, they only live in their head, their intellect, their mind.
They have avoided their heart.
Intellect has no heart.
Therefore the life and the world created by intellect will also be heartless.
If you want to succeed in politics, you have to forget completely that there is something called a heart within you.
You cannot use your emotions, because you need the utmost heartlessness and hardness to be in politics.
You need excessive, aggressive thoughts, love will be of no value.
These politicians who profess to know what’s best for humanity, are hardhearted, ruthless and cruel.
Genocide is resorted to without the slightest compunction!
Truman gave the order to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima.
Next morning, the journalists surrounded Truman and asked, “Could you sleep peacefully last night?”
Truman said, “Very peacefully, as I heard that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been turned into ashes, and that Japan would surrender, immediately I went to sleep peacefully for the first time.”
None of those journalists even asked, “One hundred and twenty thousand people have been killed and you could sleep peacefully?Are you a human being or something else?”
Every day people go on becoming more and more heartless.
If there is no love within you, then whatever you do will be evil.
But if there is love within you, then whatever you do, it cannot be evil.
If power is in the hands of loving persons, then life grows, and if power is in the hands of a loveless person, then life will become only a graveyard and nothing else.
As I look around the world, and at all your politicians.
I have to ask.
Where is the love!
You need to adjust your reality to get with the program. Wear your mask, get your vaccination and basically talk about other stuff lije yemen or biden.
Yuval Noah Harari sold a lot of books on the subject; we, Homo sapiens are the story believing species. You could never convince a monkey to give you her banana for a promise of unlimited bananas in monkey heaven; monkeys aren’t that dumb, people are. Money is the biggest scam, totally faith based, just like the second biggest scam, the invisible man in the sky mythology. Rule of law, the nation state and almost everything else are stories, nothing more. This does allow us to build very large societies but it also allows a small ruling class to extract real wealth from the workers and has since elites started skimming off the farmers extra production at the dawn of agriculture. The mechanics/biology of how this works was discovered, just a few years ago in fMRI scans. Your pre frontal cortex literally shuts down when you are exposed to the narrative by a charasmatic individual.. your parents, your priest, teacher, politican etc. It’s harder with some but social pressure mostly works with them and of course, the mailed fist is there in the background. As a man once said to me; “think, I know it’s hard but try it”! If you make the assumption that almost everyone telling some narrative is lying to you, honestly or deliberately to control you, you won’t often be wrong. The fantastical woke narrative being jammed into your brain is just a pre condition to you accepted without question the latest mind control of the upper classes. You see, the more fantastical the narrative they have you believe, the more power they have over you. There’s a method behind the madness and it’s control.
“A religious manipulator can get you to hand over your real currency in exchange for narrative currency about eternal salvation or spiritual purification.”
So support me on Patreon. And here’s my bitcoin wallet…
I try to quit you Team Rogue, but the dopamine hit from bourgeois keyboards feels so damn good.
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/195301
The currency isn’t real, it’s only real because of the masses believing in it and of course, the mailed fist. That’s why it says on every bill “this is legal tender”. That means, you have to accept it, you can’t demand gold, Euro’s or salt and it will be enforced by force of arms if necessary.
All money is real only because the masses believe in it. Dollars, Euros, Francs, Pesos, Bolivars, ounces of gold or silver, bitcoin, etc. has value only insofar as other people want a pile of it and will exchange real things for the money. This is with the slight exception that there are limited uses for gold and silver, such as but perhaps not limited to filling cavities in teeth, manufacturing photographic emulsions and for electronics.
The narrative surrounding the value of money and organizing human social interactions around it is overarching among humans on the planet today when, in fact, money is, itself, nearly worthless in a real sense.
Whatever currency we use for “money” it is useful as a tool of trade in that it fosters specialization and focus. Like all “symbolic representations” it is inherently “fake”. Trump uses the right word describing the pundits of discourse … we only ever hear a “symbolic representation”, never the truth (present company excluded)
Currency is only valuable as a tool of trade inasmuch as those who are trading accept the narrative that it is a tool of trade and represents some sort of promised value. That is, in that it is expected that someone else will trade real things and real services in exchange for the money. In other words, money is something people want only because other people want it.
And, even though humans had not yet invented much of the technologically we use today, there was specialization before money was invented.
It’s a sad irony that there are still printed signatures on the currency, of the Treasurer and Secretary, because our paper money began (during the Civil War) as promissory notes, receipts for something of value held in trust by a faithful government. In addition to the legal tender clause, most notes stated “this certifies that there have been deposited in the Treasury of the United States $x redeemable in gold, silver, or lawful money by the bearer on demand”. The Treasury finally banned redemption of notes in precious metal in 1968 – three years after all the silver had been taken from the coins too, and 35 years after possession of circulating gold coin was outlawed.
Incidentally the U.S. Mints today strike millions of legal tender coins monthly in gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, but they are offered for sale at their current value in bullion (plus a coining fee) rather than at nominal face value.
It is my understanding that you can demand any sort of money you desire in a sale of goods or services. The Federal Reserve Notes are, however, legal tender to extinguish debts in the United States. If no credit is extended, no debt is incurred and the court will not force you to accept them.
I am not sure if Caitlin uses correct modalities when she writes about “narrative world”. Fully understandably given small amount of time she spent there etc.
Narrative is about emotions, ownership and deciding what SHOULD BE TRUE. Or more precisely, what you should say, approve etc. I guess more than once Caitlin was caught in flagrant as supporting an incorrect narrative. But as a real worlders, Caitlin lacks understanding how narratives think and feel. It does not help that narrativists are not offering many introspections and revelations of their inner thinking process. Thus I recommend to analyze a frank confession written by a “Delta Gamma sorority sister”. Being to frank for most of the public, it can be found by searching for “letter deranged sorority [sister]”. In the cite below, I made a shortcut by replacing the most frequent word with X:
I’ve gotten texts about people actually cheering for the opposing team. The opposing. X. Team. ARE YOU X STUPID?!! I don’t give a SHIT about sportsmanship, YOU CHEER FOR OUR GODDAMN TEAM AND NOT THE OTHER ONE, HAVE YOU NEVER BEEN TO A SPORTS GAME? ARE YOU X BLIND? Or are you just so X dense about what it means to make people like you that you think being a good little supporter of the greek community is going to make our matchup happy? Well it’s time someone told you, NO ONE X LIKES THAT…
======
In narrativist universe, no one likes facts or sportsmanship, and if you insist on them, no one X likes you, eliminating chances for activities that potentially lead to reproduction, or to a good job etc. You stick to our goddam narrative and not the other one. It is simply a matter of survival, and more importantly, getting good X.
As a psychotherapist trained in the phenomenon of “narrative,” its psychological uses and effects, I can assure you that you only understand a fraction of what “narrative” means and implies, to the exclusion of other elements that are actually relevant to the subject at hand. Caitlin has advanced a perceptive and useful definition of “narrative” for explicating life in the matrix: a definition which she has taken the pain to carefully and correctly explain, over a series of articles, given its central role in her expositions of dominance and control by psychopaths running “the show.” Kudos to her!
What a perfect way to celebrate today being the Lunar New Year. Thank you so much for this beautiful and lucid piece, Caitlin. In the Tibetan tradition, we say “Happy Losar!”
The greatest discovery of the 20th century was in understanding quantum physics, which forever ended our previous belief in an “objective” world. Our very observation of physical reality has a direct effect on it, based on our perceptions. So whether you are a doomsday theorist or an optimist at heart, know that every single one of us has equal power in the Flower of Life.
Quantum mechanics, like the rest of ‘reality’, is another narrative, or rather, set of narratives, that is, stuff we make up out of our limited perceptions of phenomena and our limited ability to reason about those perceptions. QM is an especially poor basis of drawing conclusions about the general shape of reality _because we do not understand it_. No interpretation of quantum phenomena corresponds to our direct experience, not probability waves, not Many Worlds, not 11-dimensional strings — it’s basically a bunch of measurements and a lot of difficult mathematics about which dubious hypotheses are made. In other words, as Robin Williams once wisecracked, ‘Reality — what a concept!’
Not sure what you mean in the last sentence, MAE, but the rest is on the money. I find it fascinating that cutting-edge science is converging these days on something entirely mental–“information”–as being the fundamental building block of the universe. “It from bit.” Back in 2005, the eminent astronomer/physicist Richard Conn Henry laid this out simply and clearly in a highly-regarded, peer-reviewed scientific journal:
https://www.academia.edu/39597797/Richard_Conn_Henry_The_Mental_Universe
OK, my lone post for the day (assuming it goes through) in celebration of the Chinese New Year – Year of the Ox
~
My post will be on topic…..here goes:
~
The real world =
Here is your homework assignment pupils.
~
The narrative world could =
nothing but imagination – must be = 0.
~
If the narrative world is full of imagination –
It will be easy to change it.
~
Just don’t forget to do your homework assignment!
As stated on this day:
~
21221
BK
IANAL (I am not a linguist) but found myself in want of a single word appendage that might mean ‘bad faith’ as in ‘bad faith argument’ but that might roll more lubriciously than say ‘bad faith arguer’ or ‘bad faith political rhetoricist’ (for instance). I came across this modern mint on Wikipedia:
Agnotology is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. It was coined in 1995 by Robert N. Proctor, a Stanford University professor, and linguist Iain Boal. The word is based on the Neoclassical Greek word ἄγνωσις, agnōsis, “not knowing” (cf. Attic Greek ἄγνωτος “unknown”), and -λογία, -logia.
(This is similar to ‘agnostic’ (from Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-) ‘without’, and γνῶσις (gnōsis) ‘knowledge’, but with a secular rather than religious bent).
As the greatest fact of human life is ignorance, ἀγνῶσις should be studied carefully. To confine perception of it as peculiar to that which is ‘culturally induced’ is, I think, a considerable mistake. No doubt professors at Stanford think they know more and better than almost everyone else, but that certainly remains to be proved. Skepticism is the mother of the sciences.
Oh very well said !!!! Should be required reading for all Americans.
Which is exactly why I’ve never been much of a joiner. Every single time I’ve examined any organization that wanted me to join it, I found a great deal of erroneous narrative included. Much of the time in exact opposition to its stated goal. The two mutually self preserving US political parties are perfect examples. Their primary narrative is “you have no choice, you must pick one or the other”. Consequently, I don’t participate in their “election” narrative. The only choice I’ve noticed since I reached voting age in 1972 is either bad, or worse. And not a lot worse. Just enough to facilitate the narrative that there’s a difference. Even if the difference is just a part and parcel of the narrative. All insist that you must submit to their narrative, at gunpoint. Which is the very foundation of every form, and every example of government. How many would actually pay a tax without the threat of violence? I suspect only those who stand to gain profit from paying it. AKA members of the oligarchy.
Pretty much.
Good article.
“If we get caught, they will just replace us with persons of the same cloth. So, it does not matter what you do. America is a golden calf; and we will suck it dry, chop it up, and sell it off piece by piece until there is nothing left but the world’s biggest welfare state that we will create and control. Why? Because it is the will of God, and America is big enough to take the hit; so, we can do it again and again and again. This is what we do to countries that we hate. We destroy them very slowly and make them suffer for refusing to be our slaves”
“the only ones allowed to deceive us should be our government, our news media, our teachers and our priests.” What about medical people? Enforced masking of healthy people (can’t buy or sell without…), experimental injections, getting quite real out here.
Cant talk about that sorry. Forbidden subject.
Could Spike Protein in Moderna, Pfizer Vaccines Cause Blood Clots, Brain Inflammation and Heart Attacks?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/could-spike-protein-moderna-pfizer-vaccines-cause-blood-clots-brain-inflammation-heart-attacks/5737069
Anything is possible because it was never properly tested. Human trials going on now as they inject populace.
So we’ll find out pretty soon. I am greatly heartened by the evidence that millions have not dropped dead already.
If they died too quickly they would not have time to get enough people vaccinated.
Dear Caitlin
Since I cannot write you in person I will leave you a personal note right here…
You are in a league of a very few like Charles Eisenstein and Nic Askew. Your voice is so clear, crisp and refreshing, coming from an (extra)ordinary secular human being. Besides my teacher I have met very few in this life with that ability – thanks _()_
I would love to listen in on a conversation between you and my friend Michael Carroll: http://www.awakeatwork.net
If you don’t know Charles Eisenstein and Nic Askew, you can find them here:
https://charleseisenstein.org
https://nicaskew.com
In gratitude – Martin
Hi Martin, thanks for the links. Am already a fan of Charles Eisenstein but had never heard of Nik askew. Am exploring his site right now.
Happy Chinese New Year Everyone!! Today February 12, 2021 begins the Year of the Ox and it will last until January 31, 2022. It is said that the kind of day you have today will set a trend for your entire year. I hope that everyone enjoys their day today. Peace and Harmony would be nice.
Dear Caitlin,
This is G.D. BRILLIANT _()_ Thanks !!!
From one dharma freak to another _()_ _()_ _()_
What? Me worry? No doubt the oligarchs have our best interests at heart.
https://sciencex.com/news/2021-02-ai-human-behavior.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-02-artificial-emotional-intelligence-safer-smarter.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
Very well put Caitlin.
However as the lies and the deceptions mount up ever higher I fear that the time for enlightenment may well have past.
Agreed, Sandra, I’ve long believed we will make it to that enlightened future, but now, day by day, I’m losing my hope and optimism.
That is the real world intruding on your narrative world. Reality has a habit of crushing dreams.
What’s that thing about always being darkest before the dawn? Take heart, Geoffrey. Believe against all odds, all appearances, in the human spirit, because its triumph depends upon that belief. That much this old man, with ever-diminishing mental powers, still knows with absolute clarity.
Real world intruding on narrative, again: It isn’t darkest before the dawn if the moon rises before twilight sets in, because it was darker before the moon rose.
Ms Johnstone, I would like you to read my take on this, which you can find at . If you think it is worth commenting on, even to condemn, please feel free. I am seventy years old, and do not expect to gain money or fame out of this. What I find hard to understand is that nobody seems to be interested enough even to tell me that I am some kind of idiot. You seem to be thinking about the same subject, even if your take on it is different.
the narrative world is incorrect, but I worry that we have limited awareness of the ‘real’ world, also.
Agreed. We each live within our own personal narrative. Some of us are more aware of what is hapoening than others.
Bingo. And the two are related in a way that Caitlin glosses over–or at least is vague about–in this otherwise insightful post. Our “real world” narrative intimately affects all the other narratives told to us or that we tell ourselves. As the 20th Century dawned, Frederic Myers, in “Human Personality,” put this as clearly and succinctly as possible. “The pessimist holds the view that sentient existence has been a deplorable blunder in the scheme of things. The egotist at least ACTS upon the view that the universe has no moral coherence, and that ‘each for himself’ is the only indisputable law.” It’s no coincidence that “materialism” has a two-fold meaning: (1) belief that observable “physical” reality is all there is; and (2) preoccupation with acquiring material things.
Very nicely done…and inspired.
I do not have the money to erect ” an atomic bomb shelter ” so I am hoping, Ms Johnstone, that humanity decides not to end all life on this planet. However there are way to many idiots believing that their nuclear war is ” winnable ” and they already have their bomb shelters stocked and ready for ” habitation “. It may be that the ” universe ” has already decided that humanity was a bad idea that needs to go extinct soon.
When I was a child in the 1950s during the cold war between US and Russia, people dug & stocked bomb shelters.
There must be some interesting photos and stories about what became of them. I’d bet that mold, rot and rodents have taken quite a toll on the pessimists’ expensive efforts.
I used to get into trouble with my teachers during those years; we all had to get under our desks during the Friday ” air raid test “. I always asked ” what good is it to hide under a desk when the whole building is going to be destroyed??
Bad student using common sense. Do what you are told right or wrong.
We’re lucky–aren’t we, Ron?–to have those old and asinine memories? Certainly the world was far from perfect when we were young, but the very air we breathed was filled, for a while, with the thrill of human possibility, the brash and bold confidence that a better, more beautiful world lay just ahead. Then, of course, we blew it or allowed it to be blown.
Some people may survive conventional bombing by doing the things they were telling us in those school drills. Go to the the gym – it was mostly below grade – and sit against the wall with your head down and covered. I still have no doubt that would have increased our chances of survival of bombing by conventional weapons, but not if they dropped The Bomb.
Now, the likelihood of the USSR sending bombers to our school with conventional bombs was laughably remote. We had no strategic importance. And the likelihood that they would waste an A-bomb on our little school was always vanishingly remote. In the event of nuclear war e would have, instead, died from radiation poisoning due to our location downwind of an Air Force base that might well have been targeted with an atomic bomb. So the drills were, in the end, futile as well in that account.
I get such joy reading your column. It can’t be said better than you just wrote. I like to trace this disconnect all the way back to when Words were invented. Until we came up with words of “judgement” (good, evil, better worse, etc.) our Narrative was confined to description and wisdom, but since humans decided that they could judge between good and evil, we have been estranged from Reality, believing our own opinions to be divine. I wholeheartedly expect a “Judgement Day” when our species will be forced to admit our error, and a new world to come with truth, mutual respect and true guidance from within. A little like Jesus’ “Kingdom” on earth!