Listen to a reading of this article:

The struggle to obtain power is the struggle to gain control over the people around you. Trying to gain more control over a romantic partner, a family member, workers, the citizenry; all of these things are an attempt to obtain power.

Gaining control over others gives us the feeling that we are making ourselves more safe and secure, because, to whatever extent we’re able to exert it, it seems like we are able to control what they do and prevent them from creating undesirable outcomes for us.

The assumption that more control means more safety is mistaken, and it’s what generates most of the suffering in our world today. It’s also what drives the impulse to obtain power.

The largest expression of that impulse is the agenda to control the entire world. The largest manifestation of that agenda is in the US-centralized empire. The people who run that empire continually seek to obtain more and more control over what humans do on this planet, with the official reason being that it makes the United States more secure and the unofficial reason being that it makes the empire architects more secure.

But in reality it does neither. It turns out that maintaining a unipolar world order requires constant violence and the constant threat of violence, and it also requires steadily mounting nuclear brinkmanship against countries who don’t want to be controlled which could easily lead to the death of everyone on earth. The assumption is that more control will bring more security, but the reality is that it creates more insecurity.

This is not just true at the largest scale; it’s a principle which scales all the way down to the innermost workings of a single human.

The more control you exert over your environment, the more your environment is destroyed. The more control you exert over your citizenry, the more likely they are to put someone else in charge at the earliest opportunity. The more control you exert over your employees, the more likely they are to want to go work someplace else. The more control you exert over your friends and coworkers, the more likely they are to turn against you. The more control you exert over your family, the more likely they are to avoid you. The more control you exert over your lover, the more likely they are to stop loving you. The more control you exert over life, the more likely you are to suffer.

The ego, by which I mean the psychological construct of a “self” character which is believed in and identified with by the human organism, arises from the human organism’s sense of insecurity in early childhood. Because our large brains relative to the size of the pelvic bone make it necessary for us to be born far more helpless and underdeveloped than other animals, we’ve got long childhoods which we spend in a protracted state of what generally feels like insecurity. We aren’t able to get our own food, keep ourselves safe, or use advanced thinking processes to predict what’s going to happen in a frightening world surrounded by traumatized giants whose behavior often startles and scares us.

The organism’s entirely understandable response to this sense of existential insecurity is to use the human brain’s immense power to create a “me” character whose interests can be looked after using thought and language. From the perspective of the psychological self construct, the world shifts from an ineffable mystery to something that can be known, and thereby controlled.

The primitive reflex of fear which the human organism inherited from its evolutionary ancestors is thereby eased. The emergence of egoic consciousness creates a sense of security, in the same way the emergence of the empire gave rise to a sense of security at the other end of the human behavior scale.

But both are equally illusory. By exerting control over life in this way, by creating a separate “me” which can be identified with and a separate “world” which can be understood and known, the organism senses that it is gaining more control and therefore less fear and anxiety. But really all it’s done is chain itself to the wheel of suffering.

What presents as a path to security is really the path to insecurity. The psychological creation of the separate self creates in the same movement a world of separate others who can pose all sorts of social and existential threats to us. It creates a personal history of failures and deficiencies and defeats and wounds. It creates this churning, babbling mental monologue about me and mine and they and them and what should I do and am I doing it right and oh God I did it wrong, didn’t I?

The overwhelming majority of human suffering is of the psychologically generated sort which arises from the process of egoing, and the overwhelming majority of what’s left (starvation, violence, untreated sickness etc) is born of human agendas to exert control and hoard wealth because of egoing.

Without egoing, it would just be human organisms peacefully existing on the planet they were born on until they died of natural causes. There’d be no reason not to collaborate with each other and with our ecosystem toward the common good and make sure everyone gets what they need, because there’d be no “me” whose interests need to be secured before those of “others”, no “others” whose wellbeing could be seen as taking anything from “me”.

And that’s what we are working toward here on this planet, in my opinion. A world where we ultimately wind up relinquishing control over each other, and over life itself, as we move from a state of confusion to a state of clarity, from a state of egoic contraction to a state of egoless expansion, from a state of control to a state of freedom.

It will probably be a sloppy, awkward process, with more control coming in at times and then being relinquished as it is seen as unnecessary, two steps forward, one step back. But I do think we’ll make it.

And the cool thing is we can begin this process ourselves, from right where we are standing, just by relinquishing the illusion of self and separation. There are many teachings and pointers out there to help anyone who wants to get started on this. All you really need is a sincere curiosity and a willingness to let untruth fall away.

Ultimately the path to ending egoing is the same as the path to ending empiring: letting life be as it is instead of trying to manipulate and control.

We’re only as free as we allow our world to be. In setting the world free, we set ourselves free. In setting ourselves free, the world becomes that much freer.

_________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on FacebookTwitterSoundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fiPatreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to 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. 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. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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51 responses to “You’re Only As Free As You Allow Your World To Be”

  1. My favorite op-ed author, Ms Enlightenment, here, was heard calling for the forced sterilization of an entire gender at age thirteen on that Twit thing a few weeks back…
    …speaking of egoistic self-absorption and control issues, just saying.

  2. pants on fire Avatar
    pants on fire

    We need to preserve wild spaces. Outside in the environment, but also within ourselves. The opposite of control isn’t chaos, it is reality

    1. Thank you. You have inspired an article!

  3. Willing to be 200 that this “captured” Russian tank, now performing heroic duties for the Urkraine cause, hasn’t fired a shot in anger for either side since this war began.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5v_Mdjx53s
    Lmao … I don’t know if people follow this shit, but if you do, you start to realize you too could be a producer of fake war scenes. All you need is couple of cameras and a mortar or an artillery piece or a tank, and a crew of three or four dudes who know how to operate, more or less, the said weapon system. You will need a field somewhere, some woods, some dummy rounds, and if the budget allows, you might want to dig 14 feet of trenchline.
    For extra verisimilitude.
    And that’s about it. I don’t know how much a tank costs to rent for a day, but it seems to me you could stage these type of “actions” for less than 5 grand per. On average.
    Oh, and you will need a sound guy, to add one or two background explosions in post production. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe Windows 10 can do it for you.

  4. https://youtu.be/yJmupYwFUNU
    ~
    What politics has become:
    I’m gonna say some things.
    Oh great, are you going to do some things?
    Yes.
    Are they going to relate to the things you said?
    Only in that they’re the opposite of them.
    ~
    Lmao Russell Brand (working with CJ’s “Biden’s Visit to Saudi Arabia”)

    1. “You know Joe Biden …hmm, JoeBidenJoeBiden …. old guy, sweet as a nut.”
      Another big shout out to Ms. Johnstone in this one. I find myself feeling disappointed these days when at a Caitlin Johnstone quote of some kind doesn’t make into a Brand or a Dore episode.
      An incompleteness, is what it is I think. Thanks for the link.

  5. Never, again

    In 1999 I never thought middle-of-the-road
    would someday be measured as radical politics.

    In 1999 I never thought people
    would someday support an illegal invasion.

    In 1999 I never thought people
    would someday support invasions, again and again and again.

    In 1999 I never thought middle-of-the-road
    would someday be called traitorous, again and again and again.

    In 1999 I never thought people
    would someday support Nazis.

    In 1999 I never thought “never again”
    would someday mean – “look out”, here comes that “never” again.

  6. does this skip

    a line above here?

    or even above here?

    It should as I am using blockquote

  7. These U.S Oligarchs are ADDICTS for MORE Money, Power & Control…

    ADDICTS do not care how much damage they do to get their next fix and they have delusional versions of ‘reality’ that back up their justifications for such damage if they aren’t completely oblivous.

    Once you understand that these people will never STOP THEMSELVES… then you understand the reality we are facing… they can’t be ‘reasoned’ with… they have no ‘reasoning’ that does not involve pushing forward with their agenda.

    We need a rehab for these people and I think they need years of residential, contained treatment.

      1. As Mike Whitney says:
        “A wise leader would do everything in his power to pull us back from the brink.”
        So Biden says:
        “Dammit man, jes move forward and jump.” (he has a peculiar way of pronouncing “just”)

      2. Speaking of Ukraine, journalist Eva Bartlett informs:
        ~
        https://youtu.be/OzMLPSXb7RU
        ~
        https://youtu.be/Q-0D22KcXoc

        1. Remarkable girl, Eva Bartlett! A French girl called Christelle Néant does the same kind of reporting there. The Kiev forces shelled her car the other day. Fortunately, she was no in it but that’s how dangerous their job is. Kudos! And thanks 2U for posting this.

        2. Yes, words can’t describe what an admirable young woman she is. Followed her work for 6-7 years. She goes to the places she writes about.

    1. This shows the difference between you and them.

      If the roles were reversed they would just kill you.

    2. Or maybe we can just send them to a seminar.

  8. It’s what Caitlin and Tim leave out of their article that is most important in how all of us obtain the vital neceissities of life that we “consume” or “use” every day of our lives. These are not mere incidentals that can be ignored. Let’s use a bit of human imagination time-traveling to try to find out the true causes of individual human behavior.
     
    In central Europe, 10,000 years ago, two human animals give birth to two offspring. In 1946, in the same place, two human animals give birth to two offspring. Without anyone’s knowledge, one infant from 1946 is swapped with one infant from 10,000 years ago.
     
    All four children grow up and live their lives in their separate times. Despite the 10,000-year difference in their birth dates, throughout their lives, the day to day behavior of the two children living 10,000 years ago is remarkably similar. Likewise, despite the 10,000-year difference in their birth dates, throughout their lives, the day to day behavior of the two children living in 1946 is also remarkably similar. But the day to day “environment” (The Matrix) in which the two humans living 10,000 years ago lived their lives was very different than the environment in which the two humans living in 1946 lived their lives.
     
    The humans living 10,000 years ago and the humans living in 1946 had to eat, cover themselves, sleep, urinate and defecate. To accomplish the latter three “tasks” required little parental instruction. However, to obtain the food, water and material to cover themselves every day of their lives required a great deal of training and fine-tuning throughout all four’s lives. That is, the behavior required of the two humans living 10,000 years ago to obtain food, water and material to cover themselves day-to-day was astronomically different than the behavior required of the two humans born in 1946.
     
    What the two humans living 10,000 years ago heard, saw, spoke about and thought about, day-to-day, was also astronomically different than that of the two humans living in 1946 onward.
     
    Finally to the point of this exercise of human imagination. Just exactly WHAT accounted for the difference in the day-to-day minutiae of behavior, throughout their lives, of the two humans that were swapped on the day that they were born, and just exactly WHY is the correct, accurate, precise answer to that question of utmost importance for solving the existential crisis that the human species of animal faces today? More specifically, did the overriding, most important “cause” of the day-to-day human behavior prevalent 10,000 years ago, and the cause of human behavior prevalent in 1946 reside inside human heads or outside human heads and why is the correct answer to that question so important for today?
     
    The correct, accurate, precise answer is vitally important because if the cause resides inside human heads, the focus of attention to solve existentially threatening behavior must be to repair what is wrong inside human heads – not enough intelligence, not enough wisdom or not enough spirituality, too much “need to control”.
     
    If the cause resides outside human heads – in the environment (The Matrix of 10,000 years ago versus The Matrix of 1946) into which human animals just happened to be born – the focus of attention to solve the existentially threatening human behavior must be placed on the flaws in the environments into which human animals are born and live their lives – the flaws in the “systems” in which human animals just happen to be born and live their lives TODAY, for example – in particular, the so-called “economic” systems of today that require perpetual war and perpetual growth in order to maintain those systems unchanged (the microscipic percentage of the human population that benefits the most from these ancient, fatally-flawed systems will do absolutely anything to make sure that these systems never change); because either one of those poisons by itself is going to soon cause the extinction-by-suicide of the earth+sun-created species of animal called “human”.
     
    Fortunately, the reasons why people behave the way they do were described not that long ago, along with the details of a better Matrix into which all humans should be born — a Matrix that does NOT require either perpetual war or perpetual growth. What some great number of human imaginations have to do now is convice others of the certain fatality of the present Matrix and describe exactly how to politically bring the better one into being on a large scale. The former, Caitlin and Tim do very well. The latter, …………you tell me.

  9. I’d be willing to bet 100 that this a staged news report.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKKQ63byxS0
    If you give me 3 to 1 odds, I’d even go so far as to bet this “action” is taking place in Poland.
    We live in a world of make believe.

    1. This report here, from Radio Free Europe, I’ll give YOU 5 to 1 odds that these hired actors are not within 350 kilometers of the front lines.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsnfqvf6R98
      A “mortar team” firing duds into a pasteur, perhaps on the outskirts of Lviv. That’s what’s going on in this one.

  10. Egoing versus Utopia

    On Caitlin Johnstone’s essay “You’re Only As Free As You Allow Your World To Be”.

    Caitlin Johnstone suggests that egoing and trying to control others is the primary source of our insecurity, and we should stop doing this — both on the personal and political levels.

    However, I am afraid that while Caitlin Johnstone is an excellent critic, she is unable to cure the world because she wrongly identifies the problems to be solved. Therefore, her suggestions remain a utopia.

    I would like to see her at least attempt to be more precise and tackle some well-known nuances and problems.

    Concerning the policy of gaining more control and the threat of nuclear disaster, Johnstone writes:

    “…could easily lead to the death of everyone on earth. The assumption is that more control will bring more security, but the reality is that it creates more insecurity.”

    Concerning such phrases as “more insecurity”, please specify whether you keep in mind the absolute value of the possible losses L or the weighed (or expected) value p x L, where p is the probability of that loss L.

    Concerning such problems tackled in the essay, it is essential to invoke the game theory, particularly the game called “Prisoner’s Dilemma”. For example, it is the essence of the arms race — and the problems discussed by Johnstone are of a similar kind.

    I shall explain it in the case of Johnstone’s sentences:

    “Without egoing, it would just be human organisms peacefully existing on the planet they were born on until they died of natural causes.”

    — The question is not about what would happen on the planet where all organisms and human beings were without egoing. The real question is how we could achieve a better world and what kinds of better worlds are feasible. In the present world we are in; the following question is fundamental:

    Who should be the first one to stop egoing and stop controlling others?

    If I am the first one to stop egoing, does it really make my security better as the others have not stopped egoing, and they can take advantage of my mitigated policy?

    I do not believe that Caitlin Johnstone can make the world a better and safer place if she simply continues to ignore these fundamental and well-known problems.

    1. Life is an individual adventure based on (and meant for) individual evolution. Collective one-size-fits-all happiness – whatever that means since, according to Heraclitus, every phenomenon is in movement toward its opposite and there’s no such thing as a lasting reality – can only be achieved through a magic wand. Nobody can make the world a better and safer place for everybody. We can only learn from the collective’s experience to make life around ourselves – or, with modern means of communication, within the reach of our thoughts and actions – a little better by improving who we are and what we do and say. As the proverb goes, the fool learns from his own mistakes, the wise learns from the mistakes of others. Of course, there are exceptions like in “by 2030, you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” which automatically induces that if you suffer from acute depression or a broken spine for instance, just owning nothing will bring upon you eternal bliss. The time it takes to realize this is total bullshit inspired by distorted religious teachings and aimed at fooling people into general enslavement by a handful of ruthless plutocrats can probably be reckoned in seconds though. It’s “rules-based democracy” whose rules are made in the vicinity of Palermo by the likes of Don Corleone.

  11. Re Caitlin’s ‘You’re Only As Free As You Allow Your World To Be”

    A friend said: “When things on the outside get complicated, go back inside where everything is simple.”

    One thing I have experienced when I sit down quietly and go inside (and I am not alone in this) is that the body is automatic. From a space inside of yourself you can observe this body being Breathed. The Breath coming in – seemingly from out of nowhere – only to leave again so that another may return. You can observe clearly, you are not this body. You are the consciousness that can observe this body; just as you are the consciousness that can observe the mind. Breath is a power that ebbs and flows, a swing on which we rock – a thread on which is gifted Life; but beyond our control. Breath is the pillar on which this body is supported. Without it, you cannot be. It is the greatest gift of this universe, to you. When a baby is born it is the first thing the doctors look for; when we pass from this world its absence marks death and dissolution of form, then restitution and recycling of matter. For Kings and villagers – trees, mountains, galaxies and the universes – it is the same.

    The truly remarkable thing about humans is that everyone is so busy, no one is thinking about what it means to be without the Breath. Or, why it even exists?

    The second observation is equally instantaneous, made from this space inside. Just as you are not your body (which is a vehicle, an automaton) you are not your mind. Mind is your shadow. Just as the sun creates a shadow from your body, the Self in you creates mind that is the ‘shadow’ of the consciousness that you are. This ‘light or consciousness’ conditions this shadow. If you fill this shadow full of garbage, it will suffer. And because we identify with the shadow we suffer along with it. The easiest way around this condition is to fill the shadow with good. The long-term solution is to realise the Self. People absorb incredible amounts of negativity, FUD and wonder why they feel bilious. They are also willing slaves and servants of their shadows or other people’s shadows. (In the perennial wisdom mind is also a vehicle – a more subtle body).

    Ergo, most people think they are their (mind)-shadow. That is because they have never been taught how to focus inside of themselves, on the Self. To understand what their being, their existence, actually is. In the mind also, is an ‘I’ – (a wave in the mindstuff, a thought-form is the modern term): like Narcissus people are hypnotised by this reflection, their personality, wavering in the pond of the mind. Whatever happens to the ‘I’ happens to them. They are caught up in the roller coaster ride of the ‘I’. We are all subject to this illusion of Nature. We do not notice that it is the Sun of Self providing the light to the moon of the ‘I’. The self or consciousness is an observer and user of the mind – the ‘I’ grows from childhood but has no further use once the self is awake. The personality evolves intellect and the power of feeling but the Self and the self are the true ruler of this domain.

    The ‘I’ has its ambitions, its wants and desires. We are conditioned to follow it, blindly. Whatever is happening in the mind is expressed in the outside world. War begins in the minds of men, where the ‘I’ resides – not in their hearts where the Self gestates. Breath possesses you and you possess nothing. Only awareness or consciousness – it is what you are conscious of that is important. That is why materiality does not suit you or satisfy you. The only thing that a human can possess, and only whilst you are alive, is what is in the heart – because that is our essential Reality. The sages all agreed on this one but in this Kali Yuga of iron, where everything is bound to mind, very few people understand.

    Other than in the vapour of mind, philosophers, traders, art degree + STEM degree morons | geniuses, citizenship, race, breed, gender etc. – do not exist. They are all shadows. Dancing on the wall. You can spend your life hypnotised by this wall. In the heart, there are real, existential, human beings. If you want to know yourself, that is where you will find you and your ‘family’. Not in your mind. Not in the world. In your heart – then you will never be alone.

    Either you are conscious or unconscious. What is Mâyâ, what is dreaming: what is being awake? What is intelligence and what is love – why is the world staggering around in an atmosphere, tumultuous, obnoxious, in their absence.

    Whatever your mind makes you gather in this world, you cannot take with you. Mind makes humans quarry stone, build cities and kneel down to worship them- play out stupid deadly meaningless games: war has left the fields and occupied the streets; this is not who you are as a consciousness – a child of this universe. The heart makes you seek the reality inside of you. Which brings me back to the Breath…

    Kabir said this was a rope, so that you could find your way back to your source.

    1. Maya and Satya are involved in an eternal gladiator fight where Maya is the retiarius. Whenever she catches Satya in her net, the latter always manages to make a hole in it and reappear in the most unexpected circumstances like Dubya acknowledging in a lapsus that the Iraq insanity was due to “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion”. Which proves that the Parcae have a sense of humour.

  12. https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/unintended-consequences?s=w
    Michael Hudson’s latest essay focuses on the urgent choices that face the food-importing nations this summer, especially those with $US debts to pay.
    I​ am greatly appreciative of Professor Hudson’s persistence in bringing this attack upon humanity by global multinational financial-capitalist interests​ to global attention.
    ​Professor Hudson’s analysis of the $US global hegemony, even without the backing of gold, was the book “Super Imperialism”. He did not intend this, but his book became the intellectual foundation for the Nixon/Kissinger/Saudi “Petrodollar” arrangement. No current economist elucidates global capital flows and trade considerations better, or more nobly than Michael Hudson.​
    ​ My personal read is that the WEF & Friends Great-Reset plans have gotten out of synch with events on the ground, but that there is no way to change those plans, now in motion. The world was supposed to become more compliant and fearful with COVID. Some did. Others became warned and vigilant. Russia was forced to fight Ukraine, either by attacking or being attacked. Financial/economic sanctions were to crush the Russian economy, removing Russian options for economic action, paralyzing Russia. They did not. Russia is not paralyzed, currently has cash and oil and gas and grain and a level of trust and respect which is growing in the world.
    The food and fuel crisis was to increase costs to “global south” countries, so that they would be unable to buy food, fuel and to also pay their $US debts. They would be forced to comply with some new regime, which would further reduce their national rights and their national abilities to feed their people and economies. They already have the minimal economic levels for these needs, as they are commodity-exporters to global financial capitalism, and should keep all costs down, so that profits accrue to global financiers.​
    ​ This card is now being played, but instead of having no-choice-but-compliance, these nations now have a global champion who has weathered the attack of western-finance and NATO, has oil, gas, wheat, and fertilizer, and has enough budget-surplus, despite supporting a war against NATO, to make good deals on oil, fertilizer, wheat, and even good-for-cheap anti-aircraft missile systems, if something like that would also be useful…​
    ​ The result is … to be determined in these next few critical months…​ If the tipping-point has been passed, neoliberal globalism will lose power quickly.
    Is US/NATO (with WEF help) pushing for a Global South famine?​ Michael Hudson
    Is the proxy war in Ukraine turning out to be only a lead-up to something larger, involving world famine and a foreign-exchange crisis for food- and oil-deficit countries? …
    ..We are seeing a financially weaponized power grab by the U.S. Dollar Area over the Global South as well as over Western Europe. Without dollar credit from the United States and its IMF subsidiary, how can countries stay afloat? How hard will the U.S. act to block them from de-dollarizing, opting out of the U.S. economic orbit? …
    ​..​Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum worries that the world is overpopulated – at least with the “wrong kind” of people. As Microsoft philanthropist (the customary euphemism for rentier monopolist) Bill Gates has explained: “Population growth in Africa is a challenge.”​ …
    ​ ​Is world famine and balance-of-payments crisis a deliberate US/NATO policy?​ …
    ​..Senegal’s President Sall worried that: “Anti-Russia sanctions have made this situation worse and now we do not have access to grain from Russia, primarily to wheat. And, most importantly, we do not have access to fertilizer.”
    ​ ​U.S. diplomats are forcing countries to choose whether, in George W. Bush’s words, “you are either for us or against us.” The litmus test is whether they are willing to force their populations to starve and shut down their economies for lack of food and oil by stopping trade with the world’s Eurasian core of China, Russia, India, Iran and their neighbors.​..
    ..The hope was that blocking it from selling its oil and gas, food or other exports would drive down the ruble’s exchange rate and “make Russia scream” (as the U.S. tried to do to Allende’s Chile to set the stage for is backing of the Pinochet military coup). Exclusion from the SWIFT bank-clearing system was supposed to disrupt Russia’s payment system and sales, while seizing Russia’s $300 billion om foreign-currency reserves held in the West was expected to collapse the ruble, preventing Russian consumers from buying the Western goods to which they had become accustomed. The idea (and it seems so silly in retrospect) was that Russia’s population would rise in rebellion to protest…​.​​ But the ruble soared rather than sunk, and Russia quickly replaced SWIFT with its own system linked to that of China…
    ​..​It is now looking like the major aim of the U.S. war in Ukraine all along was merely to serve as a catalyst, an excuse to impose sanctions that would disrupt the world’s food and energy trade, and to manage this crisis in a way that would afford U.S. diplomats an opportunity to confront Global South countries with the choice “Your loyalty and neoliberal dependency or your life​”​…
    ​..​Russia accounts for 40% of the world’s grain trade and 25 percent of the world fertilizer market (45 percent if Belarus is included). Any scenario would have included a calculation that if so large a volume of grain and fertilizer was withdrawn from the market, prices would soar, just as they have done for oil and gas.
    ​ ​Adding to the disruption in the balance-of-payments of countries having to import these commodities, the price is rising for buying dollars to pay their foreign bondholders and banks for debts falling due. The Federal Reserve’s tightening of interest rates has caused a rising premium for U.S. dollars…
    ​..​Most disruptions are in the 2 to 5 percent range, but today’s US/NATO sanctions are so far off the historical track that price increases will soar substantially above the historic range. Nothing like this has happened in recent times.
    ​ ​This suggests that what appeared in February to be a war between Ukrainians and Russia is really a trigger intended to restructure the world economy – and to do so in a way to lock U.S. control over the Global South…​
    ​..​The choice confronting Global South countries: to starve by paying their foreign bondholders and bankers, or to announce, as a basic principle of international law: “As sovereign countries, we put our survival above the aim of enriching foreign creditors who have made loans that have gone bad as a result of their choice to wage a new Cold War. As for the destructive neoliberal advice that the IMF and World Bank have given us, their austerity plans were destructive instead of helpful. Therefore, their loans have gone bad. As such, they have become odious.”​ …
    ​ ​(Since Kissinger/Nixon/Earl Butz) The major grain exporter was the heavily subsidized U.S. farm sector, followed by Europe’s highly subsidized Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). These were the main grain exporters before Russia entered the picture. The US/NATO demand is to roll back the clock to restore dependency on the Dollar Area and its eurozone satellites.​..
    ​The implicit Russian and Chinese counterplan
    ​ ​What is needed for the world’s non-US/NATO population to survive is a new world trade and financial system. The alternative is world famine for much of the world. More people will die of the sanctions than have died on the Ukrainian battlefield. Financial and trade sanctions are as destructive as military attack…
    ​..​First, reject the sanctions and reorient trade to Russia, China, India, Iran and their fellow members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
    The problem is how to pay…
    ..Therefore, the second need is to declare a debt moratorium – in effect, a repudiation – of the debts that represent loans gone bad…
    ..A third corollary that follows from these economic imperatives is to replace the World Bank and its pro-U.S. policies of trade dependency and underdevelopment with a genuine Bank for Economic Acceleration. Along with this institution is a fourth corollary in the form of the new bank’s sibling: a replacement for the IMF free of austerity junk economics…
    ​(What protective umbrella might be extended this summer?) ​..The fifth requirement is for countries to protect themselves by joining a military alliance as an alternative to NATO, to avoid being turned into another Afghanistan, another Libya, another Iraq or Syria or Ukraine.
    https://thesaker.is/is-us-nato-with-wef-help-pushing-for-a-global-south-famine/

    ​(NATO “member”) ​Turkey, Russia Agree To De-Mining Operation In Ukrainian Ports To Erect ‘Grain Corridor’
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/turkey-russia-agree-de-mining-operation-ukrainian-ports-erect-grain-corridor

    1. I agree with Professor Hudson. I think the shackled nations of the global South should rise one by one and announce, “I am Spartacus.”
      “NO!”
      “I … am Spartacus.”
      And so on down the line, each member more emphatic than the next that they are they one true rebel leader deserved of crucifixion.
      Ok, maybe a bad analogy, and certainly in the Kubrick movie version the stradegy only served to get all the captives crucified, but still, a nation caught between a rock and a hard place has to choose one or the other, and perhaps choosing to say fuck you to the neo-liberal world order and their hired assassins at the IMF and World Bank will give them the best long range chances for survival.
      Especially if there are dozens and dozens of other nations in a similar situation that have their back.
      Note: As for the “Grain Corridor,” another example why I consider Beau of the 5th to be one of the most dangerous human beings in America.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGOq1ze-OgM
      Willing to risk WWIII in order lift a blockade that doesn’t exist. That’s my main man Beau.

  13. So much yes to this.

    And if Caitlin doesn’t go far enough down the path of not controlling others for you, look up Relationship Anarchy. Monogamy is at the core of normalized control structures. It is rooted in capitalism and the church, and must eventually fall away for our material lives to match that of our souls. Our connections are a web. Communities of 2 are not nearly sufficient for healthy societies.

    To share this world properly and care for each other completely, the concept of “ours” must extend beyond a nuclear family.

  14. There is a well trodden blue print to what you are describing in this article. Partially developed by Carl Jung. It’s the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. You can insert any word you want instead of alcohol. Don’t even have to have an alcohol problem to utilize these steps.

    At heart it’s a tried and true blueprint to kill one’s ego.

  15. Human organisms peacefully coexisting. Wow, man, what are you smoking? Seriously, I love these psych articles as much as the empire bad, mkay diatribes. The salvation religions, which offered eternal good stuff if y’all will just behave, came about long ago when the peacefully coexisting was not going well. It still isn’t there yet. The wisdom traditions using meditation techniques have elevated a few over the centuries, but are impractical for the masses, that’s why there was a Buddha rather than billions. It’s almost as if new societal drivers must reward selflessness and chastise hoarding, then the psychopathics will be motivated to rise to the bottom.

  16. BB Benderhaus Avatar
    BB Benderhaus

    Power is a funny thing that can only be counteracted by love. Take a couple for instance. If love does not intervene one partner will eventually gain power in a relationship. This is often inadvertant and gradual. It evolves from a persons inate selfishness and sometimes laziness. It is also based on each type personality. This is not a bad thing in itself but can only be balanced by a love for each other. So the world operates much the same way. We must love all mankind to wish them well and counteract power forces. Love is the true path to freedom.

  17. Dr. Hans Schwantz Avatar
    Dr. Hans Schwantz

    This is why The Venus Project would be the system that would greatly eliminate much of the want, depravity and other problems the world faces now. Once you see its value, you realize it should have been in place long ago.

    https://www.thevenusproject.com/

  18. Did you know that Bernie Sanders was “controlled opposition”?

    The Hillary presidential campaign targeted Trump in a big way,
    as you should know by now. There was 24/7 coverage by the MSM
    of leaks orchestrated by the intelligence agencies, including the FBI,
    as well as by Hillary’s people.

    While all this was going on did you imagine that they ignored Bernie Sanders?

    But the MSM coverage wasn’t 24/7, it was 0/0 for Bernie. That is what you do with
    controlled opposition. They lose their value if people *know* they are
    controlled opposition.

    The Hillary campaign hit pay dirt against Bernie. Bernie’s wife had
    made an error while applying for a mortgage on behest of a college she was
    associated with. The FBI could press for penalties to the max.

    They had Bernie’s soccer balls in a vice. The Sword of Damocles was
    held over his head. Did you not ever wonder as to why Sanders was such a
    wimp when it became public knowledge how Hillary had owned and manipulated
    the DNC? Why did he just take it? How Sanders just rolled over on his back when screwed at the convention.
    How Sanders supporters **had to go it alone** without Bernie’s help
    in bringing a lawsuit against the DNC.

    The investigation by the FBI took over three years! For what? How long does
    it take to investigate a line item in a mortgage application? All the while
    that Sword was dangling over Sander’s head. Only days (wink) after the 2018 midterm
    elections did the FBI finally let Bernie breathe and conclude that Bernie’s wife
    had done nothing wrong.

    How many of us could withstand the onslaught of what the government can bring to bear?
    Their resources are virtually unlimited. If they wanted to put the Sword over *your*
    head they would investigate you and everyone that you cared about. *Who here* can say that
    all their relatives have dotted every “I” when doing their taxes, filling out loan
    applications, etc, etc. Who here can say that none of their friends and relatives are free
    of embarrasing things in their past?

    If they really wanted to get you their resources are immense. Could you stand up to that?
    Could Caitlin?

    1. This appears to be the leaked Hillary Clinton Opposition Research on Sanders document leaked by Wikileaks.

      https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3157291-151101-Sanders-Top-Hits-Thematics

    2. As you may recall, Wikileaks leaked a number of emails from John Podesta Hillary’s campaign manager. Bernie’s wife was discussed at length in the emails including a “potentially fraudulent purchase that nearly bankrupted the college”.

    3. Question everything, everybody. Including Caitlin.
      Keep your mind open, alert, aware.

      1. @Levi Tate: Sorry but the logic leading from the pretty obvious fact that Bernie Sanders is a controlled opposition snowflake to your gratuitous suspicion of Caitlin’s integrity is at best preposterous trolling bordering on defamation and at worst indicative of some mental issues – especially since it’s your third attempt in three consecutive newsletters to get at her without any semblance of reason.

        1. You ignored my reason. I gave it an earlier post.
          What is *your* problem?

          1. I don’t have any problem. I’m just following your advice: question everything and everybody. The reason you gave in an earlier post
            is not convincing and certainly doesn’t justify your insistence in questioning Caitlin’s integrity.

            1. I will note that you backed off from your prvevious over the top phrase:”without any semblance of reason.”

    4. What controls BS is exactly described in the following.
      https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51464.htm
      BS either does what he’s told or it’s………… bye, bye, Miss F35.

  19. Laurie de marco Avatar
    Laurie de marco

    You are a beckon in a planetary war between darkness and light the dark beast has a name megalomania and light is named wisdom our poor planetary home and the innocent creatures are collateral damage may wisdom accentuate and darkness be eliminated

  20. You missed the bit about wealth and its creation… When you have an empire that produces the reserve/trading currency, all you have to do is print pieces of paper with dollar signs that other countries buy with their real money, which you use for buying their goods.

    A free ride on the rest of the world like this is to be protected with war at any cost. Its really all part of enslaving everyone else so you don’t have to work for a living.

  21. The Buddhist teachings of Emptiness encapsulate this situation perfectly, however much we look for a separate individual self there is only the illusion of such, the phrase is dependant origination , our so called separate self selves depends on other factors,we in other words as individuals have no reality, the Buddhists teach that there are two realities provincial and ultimate the provincial is the self and the ultimate is what they the Buddhists refer to as the subtle mind , it is only in the end that we find this out, and for those in power along with all evil people will find out to their cost , so , KEEP GOING .

  22. I am very tired now being directly effected as you describe by family/neighbours/state persecutions. It has been going on for very many years. I am aware of all their manipulations against me and the endless propoganda because THEY screwed up.
    Still despite all their many resources and power i am capable of not only exposing them but the endless lies of western narratives which as you point out are scaled from the single person up to countries.
    Life has little meaning to me, i can not do much more than eat and sleep. And after stepping out of the cave i do not have any appetite to start playing their games again around false egos, no intelligence or logic.
    In your heart as i have been aware of you Caitlin for a long time now you know i can see greatly how the future will play out.
    Let me go to my peace. They will never learn.

  23. question- couldn’t real capitalism (not crony oligarchic economics in place today, but real competitive markets) be a path to this awakening. Meaning if we juice the wealth engine all the way shan’t we get to a place where we solve most insecurity and can focus on more important things?

    My personal issue with leftist notions is they seem (and I hope I’m wrong) to boil down to force. But here a person who I think supports left-it’s ideology rails against the only tool for bringing such a system about- force and ultimately violence.

    Is there some sort of force-free collectivism that can coexist with (real) capitalism? Is this religion’s role in such a society?

    I like all your points though. Thoughtful.

    1. No. It’s the No True Scotsman argument. It’s a utopian ideal of libertarianism. If markets were less regulated, then everyone would be wealthy, throw in some organized salvation religion, and they’d be good, too. We have fairly unregulated markets, which has lead to poverty and billionaires, and some serious organized religion which hasn’t tempered the domination impulse. So, the answer is likely no.

      1. I do appreciate that libertarians embrace their own forms of utopia. Nonetheless what cinches it for me with libertarianism is the anti-force principle. Socialism, Marxism, Fascism (also more socialist than capitalist under Mussolini’s vision) etc are envisioned. They all require forced compliance and forced relinquishment of one’s labor to the state. I just don’t see how that’s even worse for ‘controlling others’ than capitalism/libertarianism when compared. In the US, for example, it is the left (arguably only shit libs) endeavoring to force uptake of arguably insufficiently tested vaccines. This not only exerts control and force through coercion, it circularly undermines the quality of the vacccines themselves buy eliminating choice/market forces.

        Don’t misread me, I’m not necessarily anti-collectivist. It’s beyond serious dispute that the collective can achieve more for freedom and enlightenment than individualism. The question this essay prompts for me is how do we retain free will and choice (not control others) while nonetheless harnessing the power of collectivism?

  24. Om mani padme Hum !

  25. REDEMPTION
    WHEN Zarathustra went one day over the great bridge, then did the
    cripples and beggars surround him, and a hunchback spoke thus to him: “Behold, Zarathustra! Even the people learn from you, and acquire faith in your teaching: but for them to believe fully in you, one thing is still needful – you must first of all convince us cripples! Here have you now a fine selection, and truly, an opportunity with more than one fore- lock! The blind can you heal, and make the lame run; and from him who has too much behind, could you well, also, take away a little; – that, I think, would be the right method to make the cripples believe in Zarathustra!”
    Zarathustra, however, answered thus to him who so spoke: When one
    takes his hump from the hunchback, then does one take from him his spirit – so do the people teach. And when one gives the blind man eyes, then does he see too many bad things on the earth: so that he curses him who healed him. He, however, who makes the lame man run, inflicts upon him the greatest injury; for hardly can he run, when his vices run away with him – so do the people teach concerning cripples. And why should not Zarathustra also learn from the people, when the people learn from Zarathustra?
    It is, however, the smallest thing to me since I have been among men, to see one person lacking an eye, another an ear, and a third a leg, and that others have lost the tongue, or the nose, or the head.
    I see and have seen worse things, and divers things so hideous, that I should neither like to speak of all matters, nor even keep silent about some of them: namely, men who lack everything, except that they have too much of one thing – men who are nothing more than a big eye, or a big mouth, or a big belly, or something else big, – reversed cripples, I call such men.
    And when I came out of my solitude, and for the first time passed over this bridge, then I could not trust my eyes, but looked again and again, and said at last: “That is an ear! An ear as big as a man!” I looked still more attentively – and actually there did move under the ear something that was pitiably small and poor and slim. And in truth this immense ear was perched on a small thin stalk – the stalk, however, was a man! If one used a magnifying glass one could even recognize an envious tiny face; also, that a bloated little soul was dangling from the stalk. The people told me, however, that the big ear was not only a man, but a great man, a genius. But I never believed in the people when they spoke of great men – and I hold to my belief that it was a reversed cripple, who had too little of everything, and too much of one thing.
    When Zarathustra had spoken thus to the hunchback, and to those of whom the hunchback was the mouthpiece and advocate, then did he turn to his disciples in profound dejection, and said:
    Truly, my friends, I walk among men as among the fragments and limbs of human beings!
    This is the terrible thing to my eye, that I find man broken up, and scattered about, as on a battle – and butcher-ground.
    And when my eye flies from the present to the bygone, it finds ever the same: fragments and limbs and fearful chances – but no men!
    The present and the bygone upon earth – ah! my friends – that is my most unbearable trouble; and I should not know how to live, if I were not a seer of what is to come.
    A seer, a purposer, a creator, a future itself, and a bridge to the future – and Alas. also as it were a cripple on this bridge: all that is Zarathustra.
    And you also asked yourselves often: “Who is Zarathustra to us? What shall he be called by us?” And like me, did you give yourselves questions for answers.
    Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? A har- vest? Or a ploughshare? A physician? Or a healed one?
    Is he a poet? Or a genuine one? An emancipator? Or a subjugator? A good one? Or an evil one?
    I walk among men as the fragments of the future: that future which I contemplate.
    And it is all my poetisation and aspiration to compose and collect into
    unity what is fragment and riddle and fearful chance.
    And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also the com-
    poser, and riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance!
    To redeem what is past, and to transform every “It was” into “Thus
    would I have it!” – that only do I call redemption!
    Will – so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught
    you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: the Will itself is still a pris- oner.
    Willing emancipates: but what is that called which still putts the eman- cipator in chains?
    “It was”: thus is the Will’s teeth-gnashing and lonesomest tribulation called. Impotent towards what has been done – it is a malicious spectator of all that is past.
    Not backward can the Will will; that it cannot break time and time’s de- sire – that is the Will’s lonesomest tribulation.
    Willing emancipates: what does Willing itself devise in order to get free from its tribulation and mock at its prison?
    Ah, a fool becomes every prisoner! Foolishly delivers itself also the im- prisoned Will.
    That time does not run backward – that is its animosity: “That which was”: so is the stone which it cannot roll called.
    And thus does it roll stones out of animosity and ill-humour, and takes revenge on whatever does not, like it, feel rage and ill-humour.
    Thus did the Will, the emancipator, become a torturer; and on all that is capable of suffering it takes revenge, because it cannot go backward.
    This, yes, this alone is revenge itself: the Will’s antipathy to time, and its “It was.”
    Truly, a great folly dwells in our Will; and it became a curse to all hu- manity, that this folly acquired spirit!
    The spirit of revenge: my friends, that has thus far been man’s best con- templation; and where there was suffering, it was claimed there was al- ways penalty.
    “Penalty,” so calls itself revenge. With a lying word it feigns a good conscience.
    And because in the willer himself there is suffering, because he cannot will backwards – thus was Willing itself, and all life, claimed – to be penalty!
    And then did cloud after cloud roll over the spirit, until at last madness
    preached: “Everything perishes, therefore everything deserves to perish!” “And this itself is justice, the law of time – that he must devour his children:” thus did madness preach.
    “Morally are things ordered according to justice and penalty. Oh,
    where is there deliverance from the flux of things and from the ‘existence’ of penalty?” Thus did madness preach.
    “Can there be deliverance when there is eternal justice? Alas, unrollable is the stone, ‘It was’: eternal must also be all penalties!” Thus did mad- ness preach.
    “No deed can be annihilated: how could it be undone by the penalty! This, this is what is eternal in the ‘existence’ of penalty, that existence also must be eternally recurring deed and guilt!
    Unless the Will should at last deliver itself, and Willing become non- Willing-:” but you know, my brothers, this fabulous song of madness!
    Away from those fabulous songs did I lead you when I taught you: “The Will is a creator.”
    All “It was” is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance – until the creating Will says to it: “But thus would I have it.”-
    Until the creating Will says to it: “But thus do I will it! Thus shall I will it!”
    But did it ever speak thus? And when does this take place? has the Will been unharnessed from its own folly?
    has the Will become its own deliverer and joy-bringer? has it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all teeth-gnashing?
    And who has taught it reconciliation with time, and something higher than all reconciliation?
    Something higher than all reconciliation must the Will will which is the Will to Power-: but how does that take place? Who has taught it also to will backwards?
    -But at this point in his discourse it chanced that Zarathustra suddenly paused, and looked like a person in the greatest alarm. With terror in his eyes did he gaze on his disciples; his glances pierced as with arrows their thoughts and arrear-thoughts. But after a brief space he again laughed, and said soothingly:
    “It is difficult to live among men, because silence is so difficult – espe- cially for a babbler.” –
    Thus spoke Zarathustra. The hunchback, however, had listened to the conversation and had covered his face during the time; but when he heard Zarathustra laugh, he looked up with curiosity, and said slowly: “But why does Zarathustra speak otherwise to us than to his disciples?” Zarathustra answered: “What is there to be wondered at! With hunch-
    backs one May well speak in a hunchbacked way!”
    “Very good,” said the hunchback; “and with pupils one may well tell
    tales out of school.
    But why does Zarathustra speak otherwise to his pupils – than to him-
    self?”

    1. “Those spoke Zarathustra.”

      1. Sorry, THUS spoke Zarathustra, not THOSE. My eyes are not as good as they used to be.

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