Listen to a reading of this article:
❖
Stories about protagonists who’ve been misguided their whole lives about something very important have been emerging in our culture for generations, and they continue to delight audiences in the box office to this day.
The pauper was really a prince. Luke was Darth Vader’s son. Keanu Reeves had been living in a computer simulation. Bruce Willis was really a ghost. Jim Carrey’s whole world was the set of a TV show, and everyone in his life had been lying to him since his infancy.
This theme repeats so often because it strongly resonates with people. And it strongly resonates with people because it’s exactly what is happening.
From our earliest moments we are trained to fit in with a society that was designed from the ground up by the powerful in the service of the powerful. As soon as we are old enough to get curious about the world and how it works our heads are filled with lies about such matters, by our education systems, by the media we consume, by our parents who were indoctrinated in the same way, and by the very culture we find ourselves immersed in from day one.
These stories about a character who’s been deceived about life resonate so strongly with us because on some level we all suspect it might be true of our own lives as well. They whisper to something hidden and sacred within us that has always sensed that there’s something not quite right with the way we are perceiving things.
We’ve spent our whole lives marinating in lies which serve the powerful. We’re deceived into believing that we live in a democracy whose government acts in accordance with the will of the voting public. We’re deceived into believing our political systems are driven by two warring ideological factions whose divisions are naturally occurring phenomena in our society instead of the product of deliberate social engineering. We’re deceived into believing our government is basically good, and that it stands in opposition to foreign governments who are pure evil. We’re deceived into believing the way things are is the only way they could possibly be.
We’re deceived into believing false things about the ways we gather information and form our understanding of the world. We’re deceived into believing the news media tell us the truth about what’s going on. We’re deceived into believing that everything we hear from our side of the political partisan divide is true and trustworthy. We’re deceived into believing the partisan filters which have been placed over our perception of national and world events by indoctrination are entirely reliable instruments for interpreting information and drawing conclusions.
We’re deceived into believing false things about ourselves. We’re deceived into believing that we are successful if we can become dominant capitalists and wealthy ladder climbers, and that we are failures if we don’t turn the gears of industry and climb over others to get ahead. We’re deceived into believing that we are good if we uphold the made-up, power-serving rules of law, of culture and of religion, and that we are bad if we transgress them. We are deceived into believing that we need to keep accomplishing, achieving and obtaining, that we need to keep earning money and approval, so that we might one day feel adequate at some imaginary point in a future which never arrives.
If we really commit to uprooting the untruth that’s been planted in us, we can even discover that we’ve been deceiving ourselves about the way we experience reality. That the perception of oneself as a finite character who is separate from the world is based on false assumptions about the way experience is happening, unhelpful mental habits born of incorrect premises, and overlooked aspects of our own consciousness. That we’ve been making ourselves miserable with false beliefs about who and what we are.
This civilization is the set of the Truman Show, and we are all Truman.
But because we are all Truman, we can only walk off the set if we walk off together. There is no option to leave as an individual, because even if you know it’s all lies, you’re still stuck in a world full of humans whose behavior is driven by lies.
Awakening to reality as an individual can for this reason sometimes be more uncomfortable than remaining asleep in the dream, because you’re like Truman after he realizes it’s all a sham, but before he escapes. At times you’re just stuck there, freaking out at the actor who’s playing your mother while she tries in vain to cut to a commercial break. It can be distressing for you, and it can be distressing for the people around you who aren’t yet on the same page.
The only way we’re getting off the set of the Truman Show is if we can all succeed in waking each other up from the lies which built it. Until then we’ll be stuck in a world of poverty, war, exploitation, degradation, ecocide, and suffering. It’s not until enough of us have unplugged our minds from the matrix of lies that we’ll be able to use our strength of numbers to force real change.
Only then will we be able to escape.
Only then will we be able to walk off the set.
Only then will we be able to turn to the audience and say, “In case I don’t see ya: good afternoon, good evening, and good night!”
And then turn around, and walk out the door, and begin our adventure into reality.
_______________________
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52 responses to “We’ve Been Lied To Our Whole Lives About Everything That Matters”
Spot on, and if you hadn’t noticed it before you definitely notice it now. Used to be that these ideas, designed to keep us dumb and distracted and in the dark were nuanced. Woven into movies and TV and political speeches as affirmations or tied to noble concepts. Do your part by paying your taxes or getting vaccinated or getting educated or helping the less fortunate. But eyes open and ideas spread. Rumors spread, videos surfaced and soon there was more and more to hide from more and more lookers. In the heat of all of it what was once nuanced messaging has become overt, incessant, forceful coercion. Because they are desperate. No, we weren’t all over it. We were in a deep sleep while they overthrew nations, eroded our freedoms and appropriated our collective wealth to themselves and their self preservation schemes. It is only in the 11th hour and 59th minute that we have snapped awake, wiped the scales from our eyes and peered behind the curtain. But it was enough. And now they are desperate and scrambling. Speak anything remotely resembling the truth and you are censored and unpersoned. Turn on any media and you are bombarded with slogans and agendas. They’ve traded nuance for irrepressible force. The jokes on late night TV are now about Ukraine and Vaccines. Science has been digressed to climate data and gender studies. Anything credible or visible is highjacked by overt narratives and sloganeering. No longer is anything sacred or pure or of any interest or purpose beyond being a vehicle for their unrelenting messaging. It’s how you know we’re near the end.
Very good article, and what you wrote about the lies are all too true. However, the idea that “It’s not until enough of us have unplugged… will we be able to escape.” is a bit misleading and more altruistic than a lot of your other articles. Truth is, those who are plugged in, cannot uplug.
Why? If you’re not familiar, check out Yuri Bezmenov. In this text excerpt from his 1984 video, Bezmenov was asked, ‘When the Soviets used the phrase ideological subversion, what do they mean?’ His response:
“Ideological subversion is the process which is legitimate, overt, and open. You can see it with your own eyes. All you have to do, all American mass media has to do, is to unplug their bananas from their ears, open up their eyes, and they can see it.
There is no mystery, there is nothing to do with espionage. I know that espionage intelligence gathering looks more romantic. It sells more deodorants through advertising, probably. That’s why your Hollywood producers are so crazy about James Bond-type of thrillers.
But in reality, the main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion, and the opinion of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15 percent of time, money and manpower is spent on espionage as such.
The other 85 percent is a slow process, which we call either ideological subversion or “active measures” — aktivnye meropriyatiya in the language of the KGB — or psychological warfare.
What it basically means is, to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.
It’s a great brainwashing process which goes very slow, and it’s divided into four basic stages, the first one being demoralization. It takes from fifteen to twenty years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years?
Because this is the minimum number of years required to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy. Exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxism–Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism, American patriotism.
The result, the result you can see. Most of the people who graduated in the ’60s, drop-outs or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, educational system.
You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated.
They are programed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their minds. Even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.
In other words, these people — the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To rid society of these people you need another twenty or fifteen years to educate a new generation of patriotically-minded, common-sense people who would be acting in favor and in the interests of the United States society.”
Excerpt from:
Yuri Bezmenov: Former Soviet KGB Agent Warns of Plans to Subvert Western Culture
https://gnosticwarrior.com/yuri-bezmenov.html
Videos:
Yuri Bezmenov – ALL Interviews Lectures HQ (1983-1984)
https://archive.org/details/yuri_bezmenov_all_interviews_lectures_hq_1983_1984
As for some of the comments, there is nothing wrong with the Constitution or Capitalism. Actually, both have fostered more individual freedom, wealth, health and a higher standard of living in this country than the world has seen in its entire history. The problem is not this form of government nor is a capitalistic economy. Rather, it’s the people – the elected leaders and those who voted for them – the people Bezmenov spoke of – who are the problem.
And I think his reasoning is correct; they ain’t gonna change. Any concerted focus should be educating the next generation and the next, to reverse what’s already been done. Given the many thousands of school districts and teacher associations, that’s a lot to accomplish in the next fifteen to twenty years!
from my perspective the cia succeeded (in europe and elsewhere) in what this kgb-guy was dreaming about.
education is indeed important, but i don’t agree with the assertions in the two last paragraph.
Americans and our “elected leaders” are brainwashed with Marxist ideology? And it was the KGB that done it, no less? That’s too funny man!
American entitlement to say what goes and then enforce that through whatever means “necessary” is the “ideology” of our “elected leaders.” CIA/ Wall Street ascendant since Dulles brothers.
You left off Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the Great Pumpkin. Society makes a vast narrative point of deceiving everyone from birth.
Luke Skywalker was Darth Vader’s son?
This is for Pascal who wrote a long comment on my comment. So Pascal, I gather that you have read all of the book “Operation Gladio”, I’m only about half way through so I didn’t know some of the things you wrote about some of the people in there. I hope your comment may encourage others to check this book out. Much of what the author says is absolutely jaw dropping, but I will also say that it is depressing as well to find out how constantly we have been lied to. The constant struggle between what we call “fascism” and “communism” or “socialism” appears epic, and it’s sad to realize that virtually all our major institutions in the West, including the Catholic church, seem to lean toward fascism, rather than socialism despite the fact that Jesus’ words were definitely the essence of socialism. If we are going to work together as Caitlin suggests, we need to recognize the fundamental struggle between the desire for power and dominance, as opposed to community and love for living things.
From Santa, the tooth fairy, catechism indoctrination in school, I was yanked by my ear to the office for asking the nun how she knew that God made man. Unfortunately, Caitlyn’s idea of mass awakening is also a belief, a hippie belief from the ’60s, back when Tim Leary believed in LSD, Kushi believed in brown rice, there was Aikido, David Crosby wanted to sail away with his hippie friends and share berries, the list goes on, but the idea is shared, a communal behavior or believing that will snap us out of the collective nightmare. Believing must have been a survival mechanism in the past, but now it leads to wide scale manipulation and also self deception.
I studied at the Kushi Institute in Brookline, Mass. during the winter 79/80. I remember Aveline Kushi giving us lessons on how and what to cook to avoid cancer. She wrote two books about it too. Then she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1992 at age 69 and died nine years later at 78, which is rather young for a Japanese woman, especially eating traditional food. Her daughter was also diagnosed with cervical cancer and died aged 48 and her husband Michio, who also wrote books and gave a lot of lectures (some of which I transcribed from tapes to turn them into books) about how to live a long disease-free life, got cancer at age 82 and died of it at 88. Macrobiotics was another illusion… We should have known since its founder George Ohsawa, who dubbed his founding book “the art of longevity”, died of a heart attack at 73 just like Jerome Rodale, a health guru who passed away on the Dick Cavett show after promoting organic food and saying he felt like he was gonna live to be 100. As Mark Twain said, “it’s very difficult to make predictions, especially about the future”.
I recently read that in the US the overall risk of cancer after age of 55 y is 78%. That’s almost everyone. Maybe this is how we escape being lied to. Or maybe we can start facing what is not working for us, and live longer and desease-free.
I googled that. I found:
Around 78 percent of all cancers are diagnosed in people age 55 and older.
not syaing you are wrong, I wouldn’t know… but I suspect you mis-read what you read.
I googled that. I found:
Around 78 percent of all cancers are diagnosed in people age 55 and older.
not saying you are wrong, I wouldn’t know… but I suspect you mis-read what you read.
You are right, I misunderstood that statistic.
Mark Twain died at 74.
My late ex-wife worked for a time in the Erewhon warehouse in East Cambridge that the Kushis operated. She said they would receive fifty pound sacks of ordinary Quaker Oats which they would rebag into expensive little packages labeled “organic” to sell in their store of the same name on trendy Newbury Street in Boston.
*
The employees did get to bring home the glumpy chunks of oats and syrups that sometimes clogged up the granola machine. We called them “road apples” and enjoyed them at the price these foods were worth – nothing. Macrobiotics was also briefly touted as the cure for AIDS.
What, THE FUCK, does timothy leary have to do with the fact we’re being lied to constantly in a program of constant lying -a program which CNN FOX and the State dept. have, ironically finally admitted to , calling it “information warfare” – by the people who we pay to o tell us the truth ?
Question everything, Believe only that which you an prove to yourself by researching deeply using you eyes, your ears and your brain – and believe only a fraction of that, because most of your research will lead you where the powerful want you to go.
You must practice again and again and again, until you learn, without effort, to recognize the deceit, or at least think that you can. But, no matter what, never become complacent like the vast majority is. Keep sharing, because people that don’t believe you today, will experience things to make you believable a week, a month or a year from today.
As I would say to my daughter, “With good information, I trust you to make good choices.”
With warped, distorted, and manipulated information we become partially disabled. And those oppressed further under the circumstances, are nearly completely disabled. We are an abused & exploited people.
I find it absolutely remarkable when we accomplish anything and when we taken a stand on anything, given the extreme abuse & neglect we have endured.
I grew up in extreme abuse & neglect as a child. I always had an interest in trying to understand what lawmakers were doing. I recall watching segments of congress at age 14 and feeling that these people were ALSO abusing & neglecting us, as a people. That was 44 years ago….
Connir: on reality. Start at 5:55 end at about 6:45
The rich and powerful exploit and deceive us. But they too trapped in a dead end perspective where each of us is only a lonely struggling ego in a cruel lifeless world. We must find our way back to our own souls which are deeply connected to the Spirits Within All Things.
It’s hard to blame the people that have seen the truth and want no part of it.
@Ranney’s post below: The Godfather III kinda relates both to Caitlin’s article and to your post as Michael Corleone tries to buy himself respectability and legitimacy by donating spectacularly to the Catholic Church (the Vatican really) only to discover that the hierarchy there is as rotten as what he’s seen in the US political world, culminating with the alleged poisoning of Pope John Paul I in 1978, who wouldn’t go along with the ambient financial skulduggery.
This was quite a colorful period, with people flying out of windows at Clearstream in Luxemburg that laundered the money deposited in the Ambrosiano Bank whose chairman, Roberto Calvi, dubbed God’s banker, was eventually found hanging from London’s Blackfriars (can’t make that up) Bridge in 1982 in what was ruled a murder.
The Lodge P2 (Propaganda Due), labelled a “state in the state” for having members from all walks of deep state life (government, the Church, secret services, bankers… dancing to the tune of Nato’s terrorist branch Operation Gladio – officially a stay-behind army hell-bent on fighting communism in Europe while being actually run by far-right thugs, including CIA rogue nazi sympathizers Azov Battalion style, who killed dozens of Italian citizens in false flags attacks attributed to the Red Brigades) was of course suspected. Not alien to that suspicion was the fact that Michele Sindona (dubbed “the Vatican banker” because he had been appointed as economic consigliere by Paul VI), a member of Lodge P2 known in banking circles as “the Shark”, was also linked to the Sicilian mafia and chosen by the Gambino family to “manage” their profits from heroin sales. Sindona finally had Giorgio Ambrosoli, a lawyer who investigated him as liquidator of one of the banks he controlled, assassinated and was serving a life sentence in a Lombardian cell for that crime in 1986 when he serendipitously drank a cup of coffee laced with cyanide.
Meanwhile, back in the old ranch, in 1981, an assassination attempt was perpetrated on John Paul II. They are those, like the CIA, who heavily insist that it was “the Russians” in retaliation for John Paul II’s support of Polish anti-Russian communist rule organization Solidarnosc while others claim it was the CIA/Gladio for the same reason they had wacked John Paul II’s predecessor. Of course the fact that the would be assassin was a member of the far-right Turkish organization Grey Wolves, a CIA ally, doesn’t help the official CIA version much.
It’s interesting that Propaganda Due was also active in Argentina during the far-right Videla dictatorship brought about by the CIA’s Operation Condor while Provincial Superior of the Society of Jesus Jorge Mario Bergoglio (better known these days as Pope Francis), a vocal opponent to the left-wing theology of liberation hardly had anything to say about the atrocities committed by the junta.
We learnt from him later through complacent corporate media (who’ve loved him with a passion from day one) that he actually saved a few lives. It is an absolute marvel in any case to see how he is an ostentatiously woke pillar of the New World Order and Great Reset, even in domains not really pertaining to the church like heavily promoting the experimental, basically useless and marginally lethal Covid vaccines. Can’t make that stuff up!
The greatest lie of all – or at least the self-deception – is power: people want it, not realizing it is an illusion. “Power” has ultimately brought every empire in history the conflict it was attempting to avoid: its own collapse.
https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/
There is of course only one truth in this world, and that is there is no truth in it….period
An “adventure into reality.” Nice one.
We never should have left reality behind in the first place, though, it will prove a costly mistake I’m afraid.
As Max Tsu once said; never waste time when time is running out.
And that’s what we’re doing, with all this living in the Truman Matrix world.
Wasting what limited time is left to us at previously unthinkable, warp speeds.
“You heard the order Mr. Sulu. Warp factor 7.”
Note:
“The engines can’t take much more Captain!”
“Noted Mr. Scott.”
Caitlin, you are absolutely right, but your examples aren’t scary enough. Lately I’ve been reading some books about our history. One of them is called “The Devil’s Chessboard” It’s about the Dulles brothers, especially about Alan who created the OSS and then the CIA. Both brothers were of the mind that Russia was an evil country because of Communism and that Communism must be eliminated at all costs. John Dulles was in charge of the State Department and the two of them went to work organizing the western world against Russia and communism. They were not above lying, if need be and they were definitely much more in sync with fascism and Nazis than they were of Russia. Granted Russia was our ally in the war but as soon as the war was over, as far as the Dulles bros were concerned , they were our enemies so they put out that Stalin was planning on attacking European countries and started us on an 80 year trajectory of hating Russia. I happened to be in 2nd grade when the war started and at the time Russia was our friend, so I have always thought of Russia as an ally, but that was a very short time period and most of us who are in their 80’s are dead and everyone who is even 2 or 3 years younger than 88, were actually raised to believe Russia was an enemy – it was easy back then – Stalin was not a nice guy and easy to hate, but he also was not planning to attack Europe; he was busy trying to get his country off its knees after losing 27 million people along with the total bombing of major cities and the destruction of their infrastructure. The lies have continued ever since 1945. Vietnam was fought to keep communism from taking over the world according to our leaders. (What CRAP!!!) and so it goes, as they say.
The other book I am currently reading is called ‘Operation Gladio: the Unholy Alliance between the Vatican, the CIA and the Mafia”, published in 2018. If author Paul Williams is even half accurate
(and he foot notes copiously) then the CIA (yes Dulles’ CIA) has been a major international drug dealer for the past 80 years, and has had the help of the Italian Mafia and the Vatican church’s own bank to help cover up that fact. We sort of know about Air America in Viet Nam because of the movie, but it was and is MUCH bigger than that. The truth is that absolutely nothing that the CIA says can be relied on; they may occasionally tell the truth by accident, but mostly they are simply working their money making agenda without concern for anything else – and by now they are raking in the money by the billions.
So yes, dear Caitlin, who I so enjoy reading, you are right – we are being lied to about everything especially when it comes to our relationship with the rest of the world. We lie continually about Russia and China and of course our behavior in meddling in the governments of other countries is disgusting. I am so ashamed at our constantly taking out semi liberal governments and putting in fascists as we have done over and over. It’s really time for us to learn the awful truth. Lots of reporters have tried to tell us what is going on but they get “disappeared” and are no longer seen or heard or read in major news outlets on TV or press. I hope you will keep trying.
Spot on observations of critically important facts and so lucidly expressed. Thanks for this post.
@Ranney: See reply above for space.
Are you waiting for everyone to get out of the set? That can be quite the wait.
Seriously Caitlin, I CHALLENGE you to speak to dispossesed people from foreign lands, like IRAQ, LIBYA,YEMEN, AFGHANISTAN, UKRAINE even. There’s incredibly large number to choose from these days, you need to interview these people if you wish to maintain creditability on this issue. I was Born in Europe, immediately after WW 2, my parents decided there was no future in Europe, and despite the war, nothing had changed to benefit the people. I grew up in Australia, and was confounded, when I started school at 6 years of age, being singled out as a NAZI, something I had no idea of what it was supposed to be. Before my first year was completed, I was fully informed on the issue. Thus I grew up watching and listening to these people claiming to be the Hollier than Thou, and anyone who did not suscribe to that, was the enemy. Until I joined the Australian Military and was sent to Vietnam.
Boy Oh Boy, what a rude awakening that was, I very quickly discovered that the Australians with their heavy British influence were just as bad with the alleged enemy, as the Nazis were accused of. This was a BIG shock to me, contrary to everything I had been told all my life up that point. So what your writing is not accurate. People can and do, break out from the accepted Bullshit that’s fed to them from craddle to grave. They simply need and event that snaps them out and into reality. B.T.W. we did have quiet a few soldiers, when that happened to them, were unable to deal with their lives after that awakening, some committed suicide, some went insane, and some simply drowned themselves in alcohol and drugs. Today, if you’ve been paying attention in the MSM, they now propose to treat such people with legalised methylamphetamines, a crimilised drug, being legalised to bring these people back under control, and the nation stands silently in approval.
That’s right, no Palestinians are convinced of America’s benevolence. And the US military doesn’t have great morale, I’ve heard lots of ships are just a few maggots away from a potemkin moment.
Ah, but what form would the walking off take? We are so conditioned that all we know is violence. But I don’t think either violent revolution or passive resistance would do it. I suppose the first thing is to wake everyone else up – and you are certainly doing the best you can in that direction – but then what? And do we have the time? I’m not saying we should give up. Freedom’s worth the attempt even if it turns out to be a lost cause., But I can’t see what the attempt might consist of.
i think it starts with people like us talking to each other. organizing. brainstorming. strategizing. we need to connect and we need a plan. but it’s up to us. 🙂
Maybe we can start connecting with each other physically. Forming groups. We could walk off the set more effectively together rather than alone.
We are a minority under threat by a majority, and the majority is ruled by ruthless psychopaths.
I know, this is a scary situation, but to make it a little less scary, (and to give ourselves a chance), we can find safety with each other. We need real world connections. We need to try to build a strong network of people.
I suggest we be radically inclusive. Ignoring our personal backgrounds and beliefs, ignoring our religious differences, recognizing we are all people who are dedicated to peace and love and truth, we can accept each other as brothers and sisters in a great fight against a truly evil cabal who is destroying the whole world.
This is how we can begin to walk off the set. (And maybe we will need to walk off the set for a while, literally, because sometimes when persecution comes hard, your best bet is to get out.)
Your post just listed exactly what Catholics describe are the deceipts of Satan and his minions. The more people desert God individually, and as a society, the stronger Satan becomes. St Michael the Archangel is called on to be “the safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil” Amazing how this whole “4th Turning” -as some describe it…or possible Apocalypse-start of the End Times seems approaching. Old Testament lists sword, famine, wild beasts, pestilence or plague while New Testament-conquest, war, famine and death. Coincidence? Just repeats or has the decline of religious faith gone so far that the biblical process has begun?
Natalie, I’m a Vietnam Veteran, I spent 13 months in the mud and slush in Vietnam’s jungles, ALLEGEDLY fighting an enemy, that prior to our involvement, did not even know Australia existed. Consider that for a moment. At the same time, the Australian Government and the MSM was telling Australians we had to go fight them over there or we’d all be speaking Vietnamese in short order. The people believed them. I didn’t. I was keen to see what the truth really was, so I volunteered my services, knowing I might not be coming home, but I had to find the truth. Before our Battalion departed Australia, we toured all Christian faiths in Townsville, being blessed at each center, and were told we were doing “GOD’s work”. NONE of these religious folks had ever set foot in Vietnam. Imagine my shock on arrival in Vietnam, to discover the folks considered the enemy, were in actual FACT Christians themselves, and to make it worse, many of them were Catholics as well.
Here we were, appointed to do God’s work by butchering his own people ! I have not set foot into a church in Australia ever since, and have no intentions of ever doing so again. Your words, and I quote, “The more people desert God individually, and as a society, the stronger Satan becomes.” Unquote, area further mockery on top of a huge pile of the same crap.
People confuse the social manifestations of faith (churches) with the individual reality. It is a shame man perverts belief in God into such entities. God found Abraham faithful and just without a single church.
I’m very sorry about your personal experience and how it has soured you. There have been many aberrations, distortions and horrible acts of violence done by Catholics and other Christian groups-but those are part of the struggle. They serve to showcase the victories of evil-but are minuscule within the march of human history. Don’t conflate the personal with the general.
In my personal experience, any people I am told are our enemies, upon closer consideration, turn out to be like me in a major way.
Only our ignorance of others, or even ourselves, or of history, allows us to be manipulated into hating people in other distant lands.
IMO public education is intentionally underfunded not only because it is easy to take funding from kids, but so to create an underprivileged class that can be sent to war, or work to supply the wars that mainly rob other countries of their resources.
Long Run (2500 yrs) vs Modern Age-Last 100- Just like economics-perspective is critical
‘We’ve spent our whole lives marinating in lies which serve the powerful.’
god, bible, … that’s one of them imo.
98% DNA Chimps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmRsJxuILd0
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/07/20/our-challenge-is-to-transcend-our-evolutionary-ape-heritage/
Chimp minds can outperform human minds at some tasks. They just took off early the day brains were being handed out. Humans are clever and in love with their cleverness to the point of being blind to having exceeded their limitations.
this may be your pièce de résistance. would actually love to hear it read by you. with feeling. if someone could put video to that it would be awesome. 🙂
yes, i’m replying to my own comment! 🙂
the one thing i don’t agree with is that i don’t think we have to wake everyone up to achieve some level of freedom. some people just will never want to wake up. i guess that’s their right, right? i’m not really into forcing anyone to do anything.
i think that we only need a certain number of people to wake up before we have the numbers to at least make waves if not real change. and i’m feeling like we might already be there. even though i know it often feels like we’re the only ones we know who are awake in the real world.
but fuck the real world! we can organize virtually! why isn’t everyone who reads caitlin working together? i mean, i’m guessing we aren’t. are we? if so, i want in! if not, let’s do it! 🙂
it would be easier if her site let us chat with other readers. might that be something we could do, caitlin? i’m guessing at least one of your readers knows how to do shit like that. 🙂
and then we could get down to business! actually collaborating and strategizing ways we can best utilize our collective resources globally for the cause. like @max girard said, no one is coming to save us. it’s up to us. however many of us there are. 🙂
I believe there’s a bit of a paradox in the process of everyone waking up. Most people aren’t thinking, they’re just following the dominant narrative. So the process of waking everyone up would involve, at least at first, waking up a critical mass which would then be followed by the rest. Those who are just following along would not actually be any more enlightened than they were before (because they’re still just following the dominant narrative, and it’s just luck if it happens to be the truth), but at least they’d be going through the motions, and hopefully that would lead to an actual awakening.
That’s how I see it playing out (after a lot more conflict and misery in the meantime).
Some things, like survival of our species, dealing constructively with climate change, etc. are just too important to leave to politicians and corporations IMO.
We need desperately to come together around policy, and leave ideology behind if just until we can get on the path toward a sustainable future.
99% of humanity is being guided by the 1% who have no interest in us or our problems. But just as those living in the top 20 floors of a hi-rise feel privileged, have more of the good life, and enjoy their status, while the rest live in the lesser floors of this 100 story building, when it collapses, all floors will be first floors! Gone will be the prestige, status, & good life.
It falls to us, the ordinary people, to pull together, to design better systems, to agree to get some things done even if we dont agree on everything. No one is coming to our rescue!
so let’s do it! have any suggestions? 🙂
Sure, take cold showers, get rid of you car and use a bike instead, wear more clothes in winter and less in summer, abandon air conditioning, grow your own food, stay home and dont travel except for necessity, dont take vacations, basically revert back to the 19th century.
This is the problem, isn’t it? How do we make it happen? The only only reason we can even read Caitlin’s work and comment about it is that we are on the fringe and for the most part affecting nothing. If anyone comes up with “any suggestions” they’ll shut it down. I’m looking for the same thing. People in the “real world” around me think I’m crazy. People in the comment section of fringe blogs give me a small amount of hope and sanity, but when we can’t come together and act in any more meaningful, effective ways, I feel like we just barking at the moon, preaching to the choir. How do we move beyond? We can act in individual ways, as suggested by BB Benderhaus, and while I believe that meaningful change must start at the individual level, we need to figure out how to gather and act collectively beyond a handful of individual anonymous kooks scattered across the globe.
So I guess I’m really just reiterating your question: Any suggestions?
There are several groups pursuing alternatives to the prevailing financial / economic system. One of them is the International Environment Forum with its “Global Solidarity Accounting” concept: https://iefworld.org/accounting_community. The blurb ends with “This is new and we are all just learning. We need case studies of communities willing to try this out. What are the best ways to explain the concept to your community for them to take it up? How do they value each of the nine dimensions? Will this motivate them to social action? What are the results?” Would these be folks we could collaborate with and learn together?
Of course we have been lied to – the hierarchy existing in our “civilized” society needed to mold us to build and strengthen itself. Therefore, the most powerful country on earth, the USA, also has the highest inequality, which is the main force on which this society and economy operates.
Always worth the time, thanks.
FWIW, there appears one deception I missed-egotism, with all it’s expressions and iterations, is not my friend. At best, it’s a necessary liability, too easily weaponized against the person who can’t let it go.