The Enigma of Coexistence | Part 6: The Marvelization of Man

This blog addresses the last section of chapter 5 in Joost Merloo’s The Rape of the Mind.

Now we are getting into the nitty gritty stuff of why we need strong archetypal characters and stories, especially now. We need them because we live in a time chock full of improbable characters playing as if they are super heroes, but really they are just playing insidious tricks on our minds so they can get our money or get power.

And if they do get enough power, they are going to take everything from you (Yes, even if you supported them, especially if you supported them!)

And also as if we need even more examples of why we need to strengthen our minds against frauds and fakesters, just the other day, David Gura spoke with Zeke Faux of Bloomberg News and New Yorker staff writer Sheelah Kolhatkar about the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried who is the disgraced founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

This part of the interview is exactly what Joost Merloo is writing about here and why I am highlighting in this blog: We are suckers for people with money. We are even worse suckers for people who pretend to have money!

Pay attention:

GURA: For people who haven't invested in crypto, haven't dabbled in this world, don't know Sam Bankman-Fried, don't know what FTX is, why is this story, why is this alleged fraud so important and such a big deal?
KOLHATKAR: This is an old story, to some extent. This is a story about, you know, an ostensible genius who happened to be very young, lauded by the press, you know, worshipped by Silicon Valley, who was allowed to go out and behave in, ultimately, a reckless way with other people's money while people turned and looked the other way. And, you know, lo and behold, things were not as they seemed. Something was seriously wrong, and it resulted in a, you know, terrible amount of pain and destruction and financial losses.
And this arc, this narrative arc, is something we see over and over again, particularly in sort of hot, new tech companies where you often have these young men who are just empowered to go out and behave recklessly while they try and grow their companies. And then, of course, we figure out afterwards that they were cutting corners or fraud occurred, and, you know, there's all sorts of pain and recrimination. And you don't have to care about crypto to care about the outcome and the question of whether justice is served in this case.

-- The fall of crypto | All Things Considered, NPR

The Enigma of Coexistence

Is it possible to coexist with a totalitarian system that never ceases to use its psychological artillery? Can a free democracy be strong enough to tolerate the parasitic intrusion of totalitarianism into its rights and freedoms? History tells us that many opposing and clashing ideologies have been able to coexist under a common law that assured tolerance and justice. The church no longer burns its apostates.
Coexist | Music: Coexist — The xx — Chained
Before the opposites of totalitarianism and free democracy can coexist under the umbrella of supervising law and mutual good will, a great deal more of mutual understanding and tolerance will have to be built up. The actual cold war and psychological warfare certainly do not yet help toward this end.
To the totalitarian, the word "coexistence" has a different meaning than it has to us. The totalitarian may use it merely as a catch-word or an appeaser. The danger is that the concept of peaceful coexistence may become a disguise, dulling the awareness of inevitable interactions and so profiting the psychologically stronger party. Lenin spoke about the strategic breathing spell (peredyshka) that has to weaken the enemy. Too enthusiastic a peace movement may mean a superficial appeasement of problems. Such an appeal has to be studied and restudied, lest it result in a dangerous letdown of defences, which have to remain mobilized to face a ruthless enemy.

A tragic example of this is what happened to Khasoggi five years ago today.

Image from Morning Edition – NPR: Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. Five years on, there has been little accountability — and human rights groups say that has implications for free expression around the world.
Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images

As I write this blog, today is five years since Jamal Khashoggi with murdered and mutilated. Rachel Treisman opens this segment saying:

Jamal Khashoggi — a Saudi dissident who lived in Virginia and wrote for the Washington Post — walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage. He never came out.
Khashoggi, 59, was dismembered, and his remains have never been found.
U.S. intelligence later determined that a team of 15 Saudi agents had flown to Istanbul to carry out a "capture or kill" operation approved by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).

What strikes me as particularly pertinent to what Joost Meerloo is saying above is what Khashoggi’s friend and collegue Washington Post columnist David Ignatius says:

It's undeniable that there have been major changes in Saudi Arabia in the last five years, Ignatius notes.
For example: The government lifted a ban on women driving months before Khashoggi's death in 2018; now women "mix freely in Saudi society with men," including at music festivals. It stripped the "religious police" of their privileges, which led to many women no longer wearing the hijab in public.
Saudi Arabia and Israel have hinted they are open to establishing formal relations, which Ignatius says is something he never thought he'd see in his lifetime.
"It would be wrong not to credit those changes," Ignatius said. "What bothers me is that those changes have been implemented essentially by force ... We should understand that this is a modernizing dictator. And there's always the danger that citizens of Saudi Arabia could be thrown into prison if they disagree with him."

If you are interested in this topic, you should listen to the whole interview. It is only 3 minutes; time well spent to understand the complexities of our time and how what looks like a good thing or even a GREAT things, might be a very poisonous thing for our psychological reality.


Back to Joost and The Enigma of Coexistence:

Coexistence may mean a suffocating subordination much like that of prisoners coexisting with their jailers. At its best, it may imitate the intensive symbiotic or ever-parasitic relationship we can see among animals which need each other, or as we see it in the infant in its years of dependency upon its mother.
In order to coexist and to cooperate, one must have notions and comparable images of interaction, of a sameness of ideas, of a belonging-together, of an interdependence of the whole human race, in spite of the existence of racial and cultural differences. Otherwise the ideology backed by the greater military strength will strangle the weaker one.
Peaceful coexistence presupposes on BOTH sides a high understanding of the problems and complications of simple coexistence, of mutual agreement and limitations, of the diversity of personalities, and especially of the coexistence of contrasting and irreconcilable thoughts and feelings in every individual of the innate ambivalence of man. It demands an understanding of the rights of both the individual and the collectivity. Using coexistence as a catch-word, we may obscure the problems involved, and we may find that we use the word as a flag that covers gradual surrender to the stronger strategist.

Page 72 — Chapter 5: The Rape of the Mind by Joost Meerloo


Do you think the United States’ Congress has a high understanding of the problems and complications of coexistence? Given the recent fight over funding the US government and now Matt Gate’s stunt, it seems we need divine intervention to help guide us weaker minded souls in just remembering how to compromise and get along together.

Go to Your Corners | Music: Donkeys & Elephants by Somr

“In the majestic Halls of Congress, God ushers elephants to one corner and donkeys to another, bestowing upon them a much-deserved respite.

Archetypal Animations

Images made on Genolve using AI with music for each animation as follows:

Feature Archetypal Animation

Music: The Greatest Showman (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) — Various Artists — The Greatest Show

First Archetypal Animation

Music: Coexist — The xx — Chained

Second Archetypal Animation: Donkeys & Elephants by Somr

Indoctrination Barrage | Part 5: The Marvelization of Man

Introduction: Reminder Why We Need Strong Super Hero Movies

I found a great article on Harrison Ford in Esquire where the writer Ryan asks Harrison what he thinks the point of stories are for people. Harrison answers:

“I guess the point is, these stories we see—movies, novels—we look for ourselves in these characters and these stories,” I say, rebooting.
He nods. “We look for ourselves, and we look for useful information to help us navigate our fucking lives and the world that we’re living in,” he says. “We don’t realize we’re looking for that. But we’re looking to pull out of a fantasy something that’s useful to us. And what’s useful to us is to emotionally participate in things outside of our own lives.” 

-- Esquire | Harrison Ford Has Stories to Tell |Yeah, Indiana Jones is back. But enough with the legend stuff. We spent two days in L.A. with Ford—in his airplane hangar, at his house—drinking bourbon and talking about what really matters in life. By Ryan D'Agostino | PUBLISHED: MAY 31, 2023
Hans Solo & His Poached Egg | Music: Poached Egg by The Namby Pamby

To understand the animation of Hans Solo and his poached eggs you need to read the article in Esquire. In short, Harrison Ford is a super hero archetype actor. He’s acted in Star Wars (no date needed!), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Blade Runner (1982), Witness (1985), The Mosquito Coast (1986), Working Girl (1988), Presumed Innocent (1990), Patriot Games (1992), The Fugitive (1993), Clear and Present Danger (1994), Air Force One (1997), and Marvel movies as the President of the United States, and more.

Harrison knows better than most why we like and need stories in our lives. He’s acted in a bunch of them after all where it is his job to depict Arches of Consciousness. That is what stories and movies are all about. And as Arches of Consciousness, every arch has a light side and a shadow side. Just as human beings do and this is because we get to decide what side of an archetype we act upon. Our super hero movies and modern stories, just like ancient myths, depict what happens to human beings when they choose to act on one side of an arch or the other in constantly changing situations, which is the position we all find ourselves in as conscious living beings throughout our lives.

Arches of Consciousness | Music: Stream Of Consciousness — Coherent Energy

Stories are short cuts to consequences, karma. And karma is nothing more than the consequences of conscious choices made by human beings. Stories show us what might happen when we choose to act using one side or another side of an Arch of Consciousness or if we only choose to act using a very narrow spectrum of our full conscious capabilities.


The Indoctrination Barrage

So let’s get back to the meat of consciousness and why we need to pay attention and use our minds critically every moment of every day. We need to do this work of critical thinking, which is how we work out our consciousness, to stay healthy and free. We need to work out our minds just like we need to work out our bodies to stay healthy and live a long life.

Here is the next section of Joost A. M. Meerloo’s landmark book The Rape of the Mind, Chapter 5: The Indoctrination Barrage, beginning on page 71.

The continual intrusion into our minds of the hammering noises of arguments an propaganda can lead to two kinds of reactions. It may lead to apathy and indifference, the I-don't-care reaction, or to a more intensified desire to study and to understand. Unfortunately, the first reaction is the more popular one. The flight from study and awareness is much too common in a world that throws too many confusing pictures to the individual. For the sake of our democracy, based on freedom and individualism, we have to bring ourselves back to study again and again. Otherwise, we can become easy victims of a well-planned verbal attack on our minds and consciences.
We Don’t Need No Education | Music: We Don’t Need No EducationRegent Street
We cannot be enough aware of the continual coercion of our senses and minds, the continual suggestive attacks which may pass through the intellectual barriers of insight. Repetition and Pavlovian conditioning exhaust the individual and may seduce him ultimately to accept a truth he himself initially defied and scorned. 
Pavlovian Conditioning | Music: The Chain (cover) — Marvel Years
The totalitarians are very ingenious in arousing latent guilt in us by repeating over and over again how criminally the Western World has acted toward innocent and peaceful people. The totalitarians may attack our identification with our leaders by ridiculing them, making use of every man's latent critical attitude toward all leaders. Sometimes they use the strategy of boredom to lull the people to sleep. They would like the entire Western world to fall into a hypnotic sleep under the illusion of peaceful coexistence. In a more refined strategy, they would like to have us cut all our ties of loyalty with the past, away from relatives and parents. The more you have forsaken them and their so-called outmoded concepts, the better you will cooperate with those who want to take mental possession of you. Every political strategy that aims toward arousing fear and suspicion tends to isolate the insecure individual until he surrenders to those forces that seem to him stronger than his former friends. 
And last but not least, let us not forget that in the battle of arguments those with the best and most forceful strategy tend to win. The totalitarians organize intensive dialectical training for their subjects lest their doubts get the better of them. They try to do the same thing to the rest of the world in a less obtrusive way.
We have to learn to encounter the totalitarians' exhausting barrage of words with better training and better understanding. If we try to escape from these problems of mental defense or deny their complications, the cold war will gradually be lost to the slow encroachment of words -- and more words.
I’m GOD | Music: I’m God (Best Part Looped) — Crystalline

Concluding Thoughts

Resist, resist, resist the I-don’t-care reaction! Push yourself to learn, study, and understand. Run, don’t walk, towards the more intensified desire to study and to understand reaction that Joost A. M. Meerloo talks about. This is the only way we stay free. This is the only way we survive as a species on planet Earth because do you really think demigods like Trump, Putin, and the others really care about your freedoms, about your economic security, about the planet. If you really think they do, well, you’ve been successfully indoctrinated and are riding the barge to the end of the world

Archetypal Animations

Images made on Genolve AI image generation options.

Feature Archetypal Animation

Music: The Baroque Ball (From “Cruella”) [Instrumental] — Roxane Genot

Second Archetypal Animation

Music: Poached Egg – The Namby Pamby

Third Archetypal Animation

Music: Stream Of Consciousness — Coherent Energy

Fourth Archetypal Animation

Music: We Don’t Need No Education — Regent Street

Fifth Archetypal Animation

Music: The Chain (cover) — Marvel Years

Sixth Archetypal Animation

Music: I’m God (Best Part Looped) — Crystalline

Marvelization of Man

This is the first blog in a series discussing the Marvelization of Man’s Mind.

Morbius

After watching Morbius, I felt flat and bloated like I had just downed a Family Sized Package of Cheetos too fast.

MORBIUS – Official Trailer (HD)

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Morbius’ origin story!

The movie is well acted, well executed, and has superb special effects… just as we have come to expect from a Marvelous Marvel Movie… or should I say, just as we have been conditioned to expect?

Perhaps that’s it, Marvel Movies are entirely predictable. In the past 20 some years, they have become perfectly formulated to meet popular tastes. Because of this, we know what to expect, when to expect it, and how to expect it.

Marvel Movies run on well worn tracks of success. Yes, a few have been busts, but on average, Marvel Movies make $715 million dollars per movie with at least half of this gross-income, which means it goes right into the pockets of Robert Iger, CEO, and the Disney-Marvel Cinematic Universe. This has been the case since 2009 when Disney brought Marvel Cinematic Universe from Ronald Perelman who formerly use to pocket the bucks.

The Marvelous Marvel formula has evolved to include hooks and lures about how each newly rendered Marvel character retrieved from the Marvel vault and brought to life on screen will met up and team up with other recently revived Marvel characters for the next Marvelous Marvel movie.

Heck, soon the different Disney universes and their characters might begin meeting up with Marvel, or ever perhaps as, Marvel characters to fight off the bad guys.

Perhaps like this super cool new chic: Tinker Bell Die Hard Predator Ape?

Don’t Mess With the Tinker Bell Die Hard Predator Ape! | These blended characters are all owned by Disney!

Hell YEAH… this might actually BE interesting!

Marvel Characters Are Archetypes

We adore Marvel characters because they are archetypes. They speak to things deep inside of all of us: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Stuff that is really, really hard to speak to each other about in our overly average, highly regimented, very repetitive work, work, and more work worlds.

Mostly we don’t talk to each other about this stuff. It is so much safer (and let’s face it, it is so much easier) to be superficial with each other.

That’s what the movies are made for! Right?!

Movies give us an emotional release and a little freedom from all that stuff pent up and building up inside of us. The stuff we don’t or can’t talk to each other about, at least not on the deepest levels where our wounds usually lay. These are deep interior layers that we can seldom reach without self-expression that can lead to self-realization, if we allow it.

This is what archetypes partly do for us. They help illuminate things inside of us that are vague, mysterious, troubling, or even exhilarating. But things that are hard to put our finger on because they are inside of us and we can’t see them with our eyes. We can only feel them or try not to feel them when they bother us too much.

Archetypes are mental models that give shape and perspective on the shadowy, nebulous, unsettling, fuzzy states and feelings that can overtake us. They do a lot more than this, but for the purposes of this blog I’ll stick to how archetypes provide man with mental models on how to handle and act to feelings rising inside of him and all around him in other people.

Ever since Marvel’s founding in 1939 by Martin Goodman, which was then known as Timely Comics, the characters have been giving shape to man’s collective shadowy feelings and showing us possibilities on how to channel and handle our dim, indistinct inner worlds in our shared outer world.

In 1951, Timely Comics became known as Atlas Comics. It is not until June 1961 that it transforms into the franchise we know it today as Marvel with the launch of The Fantastic Four.

Ever since its beginning, Marvel characters were created to meet a moment. They emerged from the fabric of that time and in the spaces of what was happening in the country or world at that moment. Their creators invented characters who could met the demands and uncertainty of the times in which they were created.

I am sure each creator imbued their characters with the super powers everyone needed at that moment to survive mental through the demands, threats, and catastrophes of the times. That is what archetypes do. They provide strong mental images combined with stories that imbue inspiration, hope, and courage into the hearts and minds of real people who need to meet real life challenges as they navigate the ups and downs of life.

Character     Date Created            Creator(s)

Sub-Mariner | 1939 (Build up to WII)| Bill Everett

Human Torch | 1939 (Build up toWWII) | Carl Burgos

Angel | 1939 (Build up to WWII) | Paul Gustavson

Masked Raider | 1939 (WWII & shifting economics) | Al Anders

Phantom Reporter | 1940 (WWII & shifting economics)| Robert O. Erisman, Sam Cooper

Black Widow | 1940 (WWII & shifting economics such as women working to build war machines and bombs) | George Kapitan, Harry Gahle

Vision | 1940 (Intensification of WWII)| Joe Simon, Jack Kirby

Captain America | 1940 (Intensification of WWII)| Joe Simon, Jack Kirby

Black Marvel | 1941 (Intensification of WWII) | Al Gabriele

Uranian Boy | 1950 (First atomic bomb drop 1945) | Stan Lee, Russ Heath

The Fantastic Four | 1961 (It's the 60s and its Stan and Jack!) | Stan Lee, Jack Kirby 

The Hulk | 1962 (It's the 60s and its Stan and Jack!)| Stan Lee, Jack Kirby

Red She Hulk | 1962 (It's the 60s and its Stan and Jack!) | Stan Lee, Jack Kirby

Thor | 1962 (It's the 60s and its Stan and Jack!)| Stan Lee, Jack Kirby

Spider-Man | 1962 (It's the 60s and its Stan and Steve this time)| Stan Lee, Steve Ditko

Iron Man | 1963 (Cuban missile crisis 1962)| Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Don Heck

Doctor Strange | 1963 (Cuban missile crisis 1962) | Stan Lee, Steve Ditko

Black Panther | 1966 (Civil Rights Act sign 1965) | Stan Lee, Jack Kirby

                                            -- See full timeline at Wiki

I think you get the idea.

So, What’s Wrong With A Little Marvel Time?!

There is nothing wrong with a little Marvel time.

The issue is much more subtle and pervasive than that. It is not so much that we go to the movies to watch great, big, spectacular dramas that take our minds off our worries or give us a joyful jolt of non-reality.

The issue is rather what we are not seeing when we go to the movies, especially the really BIG blockbuster ones that are highly formulated and super monetized to capture our time and attention.

These blockbuster cash cows act like somewhat steamrollers crushing the competition and funneling more and more money into the pockets of billionaires who own mega conglomerates that control the content and production of multiple franchises and merchandise.

And guess what the mega billionaires want you to do?

They want you to go to see more of their movies and buy more of their merchandise so they make more money.

And we do exactly that… and each time we do, they grow even bigger!

If you’re wondering why Marvel movies all look alike, it’s because of us. It is the way we are choosing to consume them.

I recently learned more about this from Terry Gross’ interview with Lucas Shaw, who is in charge of Media and Entertainment at Bloomberg and writes the Screentime newsletter. He’s the one who made me aware of how much content Disney owns!

But there are a lot of other big Media-Entertainment Titans operating out there too and all of them want to get inside our heads and tickle away some our money that we make working highly automated jobs that require at least 8 hours of our days, 5 days a week.

Sadly, despite popular opinions, most of us do not work in our Dream Jobs! Indeed, most of us must go through the motions 8 hours days doing very boring, tedious, monotonous work. So who wouldn’t want to break free and escape into a Marvelous Marvel movie when it comes out?

But that might be exactly what the super rich want us to feel and react. They can make money from lots of bored people who need to escape from their dreary, mind-numbing, mechanical lives with a Fantastic New Movie!

And, hey wait, you can also escape and feel just like the movie characters feel by buying this splashy new watch or this brand new fancy car or this mouthwatering, very pricey dress. And of course you need the latest technology to go along with all this! You want to look modern don’t you?

All these fancy, enjoyable costly things are there to help you escape from your boredom and ease your burden of living highly repetitive, unvarying, humdrum modern lives.

Lucas Shaw tells Terry Gross how the movie-TV-streaming business is becoming one super long ad promoting consumerism, capitalism, and merchandising by the new Titans of Industry.

SHAW: You know, Barry Diller, I feel like, has been declaring the death of Hollywood for a long time now, so I do take what he says with a little grain of salt. But he's right that the growth of Amazon and Apple, which I would say are now two of the six major studios in town - you know, they've replaced some of the other ones that have been consolidated in the deals that we've talked about - entertainment is not their primary business. And it speaks to maybe the lesser value of traditional film and television in broader culture, where it - so does the fact that YouTube is now bigger than any TV network, that if you - that TikTok is as popular as any streaming service.
You know, film and TV doesn't have the same stranglehold on culture and on youth that it used to. And it's - if I were running one of these traditional media and entertainment companies - running Warner Bros. Discovery, running Disney - it would certainly scare me that two of our biggest competitors don't care about making money from film and TV in the same way because it means that the stakes are lower. The approach is going to be different. And entertainment is just a means of selling something else - in Amazon's case, you know, diapers or books or whatever it is; in Apple's case, phones and other devices. -- FreshAir, July 20, 2023

So my take away from this conversation is that the purpose of movies, TV shows, and streaming platforms are increasingly veering towards a focus on how to keep viewing audiences glued to a particular station-conglomerate, so it can make more money–be that ads, subscriptions, or the super cool merchandise they make, create, and sell.

The Hollowing Out Effect of Money

This hyper-focus on making more money is a major force in hollowing out many Marvel characters. You can read about the reasons why 16 actors are talking about quitting or leaving the Marvel Cinematic Universe here.

The Marvel universe seems to be becoming more one-dimensional and cartoonish as the focus on making another blockbuster and capturing the vast majority of the market take precedence over story. This focus on money has a watering down effect on the characters, making them feel less real, less vibrant, and less inspiring.

They are losing their numinosity, which is what archetypes hold for us. Numinous content gives our lives meaning, content, and purpose. Without numinosity in our lives, we feel drab, automatic, and mechanical.

But maybe the mechanization of man is one of the very objectives these new Titans of Industry seek to create inside of us.

If we are continually feeling unimportant, unremarkable, and unnecessary in keeping the clogs of industry running in the world, then we need to compensate for our super small roles in society.

How else can we wake up each morning and go out to do our boring, repetitive jobs?

So a good Marvel Movie is a great antidote to not feeling like a machine!

But, don’t get too caught up in the marvelousness of a Marvel movie! That would be going too far in our highly mechanized modern world.

If you do happen to believe Marvel characters are real and you look up to them and draw hope and courage from then (like any good archetype should do), then you will get laughed at because we are not really suppose to identify with them anymore. They are simply entertainment.

We watch them, then we get up the next day and go back to work to make some money so we can go watch the next amazing Marvel movie coming out soon because there was that little teaser at the end!


Another troubling result of the Marvelization of Man is that Marvel movies are impacting how other movies are made or even more importantly, NOT BEING MADE.

With great big, super blockbusters with BIG special effects (like Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar), more and more people only go to theaters to see these on the silver screen. They don’t show up for the “other movies” being made and trying to survive in an increasingly one-dimensional entertainment universe.

Basically, every studio wants a piece of the action in this “shared universe” business.
But it’s hard to argue that any of them have been as successful as Marvel has.
Kevin Feige’s ambitious plan (which resulted in him being named President of Marvel Studios and reporting directly to Disney CEO Bob Iger) has fundamentally changed the way film studios approach properties. Certainly, a creative idea which allows for iteration upon iteration, sequel after sequel after spinoff after prequel, to be produced is appealing to every studio executive. -- The Marvelization of Movies |  / FILM TALKIES

This effect is drying up the field of creativity for the creation, production, and life of other types of movies that deal with difficult but really important stuff such as Women Talking:

The women of an isolated religious community grapple with reconciling their reality with their faith. Though the backstory, we see a community of women come together to figure out how they might move forward together to build a better world for themselves and their children. Stay and fight or leave. They will not do nothing.— Official synopsis
WOMEN TALKING | Official Trailer

Or like the Fabelmans:

Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.

It is lpLoosely based on Spielberg's childhood growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, from age seven to eighteen, a young man named Sammy Fabelman discovers a shattering family secret, and explores how the power of movies help us see the truth about each other and ourselves. —Toronto International Film Festival

He also encounters antisemitism and bullying, which is a very important issue that deserves far more airtime in our current culture and polictical climate.
The Fabelmans | Official Trailer [HD]

Or going back even further to the time of radio like Suspense: Report From A Dead Planet

Report From a Dead Planet – Suspense | A spaceship lands on a beautiful world and finds that all the inhabitants have vanished.

Another thing that struck me while watching Morbius is that really talented actors are playing pretty superficial, very simplified characters.

Matt Smith for example is the villain in Morbius. He is great as the villain, but his performance leaves me feeling empty. He is a really talented actor! Why don’t I feel more from his performance in Morbius?

Because I’m not supposed to?!

His super villain in Morbius is pretty vanilla compared to his roles in Season 1 and 2 of The Crown, The Last Night in Soho, and my all time favorite The Doctor of Doctor Who.

Also, Jared Leto who plays Morbius struck me as a super talented actor as well. I haven’t seen him before. He does a great job playing Morbius. In fact, he imbue more life into Morbius than the role allows.

I think Quentin Tarantino sums it up pretty well when he said: “Marvel Actors Are ‘Not Movie Stars’

Tarantino previously said that he would not want to direct a movie for Marvel Studios for the simple reason he is “not a hired hand.’ As someone planning to direct just ten movies in his career, and with only one of those to make up the number, it is probably not surprising that the Pulp Fiction helmer would want to concentrate on his own ideas. When it comes to the MCU, the director says that the franchise does not contain any “movie stars” as the characters are all people want to see. He said:
“Part of the Marvel-ization of Hollywood is… you have all these actors who have become famous playing these characters, but they’re not movie stars. Right? Captain America is the star. Or Thor is the star. I mean, I’m not the first person to say that. I think that’s been said a zillion times, you know, but it’s like, you know, it’s these franchise characters that become a star.” -- Quentin Tarantino Says Marvel Actors Are 'Not Movie Stars'
BY
ANTHONY LUND
PUBLISHED NOV 22, 2022
Quentin Tarantino has been vocal about his feelings regarding the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it looks like he isn't quite done yet.

So What?

I will still watch Marvel movies.

But I will seek out and watch more different movies that leave an impression in my psyche and make me think about the world in ways I might not have before.

I will continue to gravitate to movies where BIG ideas are explored rather than BIG action but increasingly hallow characters dance across the screen.

I want something that satisfies my imagination and feeds my psyche, because feeling alive and not like small cog in a BIG machine is important to me, and only I can change my perspective and the way I feel about things.

Stories and movies feed my imagination so I can feed and grow my soul.

Stay tuned for this series because I am going to go deeper into the effects and impacts of living in our super consumerism society on man’s mind.

For now, maybe the Oppenheimer-Barbie movies will provide a reprieve from the Marvelization of Man’s Mind.

Introducing Atomic Barbie | The New Super Hero We Didn’t Know We Need!

Archetypal Animations

I made all images with Genolve using AI generated images, specifically Midjourney, this time. So I am just listing the songs used in the above animations.

Feature Archetypal Animation: Nowhere but Up | [3] Break the Chain    4:53

WYR GEMI – Predator | Music for Tinker Bell Die Hard Predator Ape!

Mary Poppins Jedi Master Archetypal Animation:

SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS (Clean Version)209TONYTONY

[1] SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS    3:02

Barbie Archetypal Animation:

Summer Nova All Atomic

[1] Summer Nova    5:18

Mansplaining “Functional” Hierarchies

Recently, I found out that I really hate the word hierarchy. I came to this conclusion after arguing with an old, ex-Facebook friend about “functional hierarchy“.

I fundamentally don’t believe any human hierarchy can withstand the corruption of thought. It is thinking too much that has gotten the world into the predicaments it is in, thinking is not the God it once was, and it is not going to get us out of our messes.

We are like 10 billion baby birds clustered in nests of endless thought and thinking, and we are terrified to fly. This will make sense if you keep reading! But before dropping into the underworld, you better watch this Mother video!!!


Meghan Trainor — Mother (Official Music Video) — How to Stop Mansplaining | Thank You EJ!!! This is so Awesome!!!

This whole convoluted conversation happened because of a very simple question I asked about a diagram this particular man made about Transformational Change.

In the graphic he posted, I noticed there is no pathway for what to do if people don’t agree on the type of Transformational Change needed or on how to implement it.

So, I made the following comment:

On the outer circle of Discuss & Agree... what happens when you Discuss & Disagree or even further have Conflict?
Without this other very real possibility included in a realistic way, this is a closed-circle of "Liked-minded" thinkers who will grow smaller and smaller in their shared beliefs and ideas of Transformation, which they may conclude: "Needs to Be Imposed on Everyone Else for the Good of the World."
So much trauma and cycles of destruction, reprisals, vendettas have emerged out of Closed-Systems of Thinking ending in "Do Gooder" agendas.
What do you think?

Well, maybe I was a little too provocative and Alan Wattsy in my comment when I ask about Do-Gooder agendas. He probably has no idea what I mean. But, as you will see, he assumes he knows what I mean… but he has no clue.

What I am referring to is explained simply in this video:

Alan Watts – The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

His response to my comment is as follows:

true. Which is why this model aims to 'transcend to THEN include'... the ethical commitment to act on behalf of the whole.
Can you show me a model where informed democracy is addressing Overshoot? No... there is, unfortunately, a functional hierarchy which needs to honour those who CAN see more, sense more, grok more, on behalf of the whole system/social field. This is only part of the process 😎
If interested you might find more here (it's a link to his website...)

GULP! Now, I have a whole bunch more questions!

Really, he has made a mental model that CAN identify people who have transcended and these people get admitted into some governing body who will make decisions and act on behalf of the whole?

Does this mean, the whole world?

Does it mean all the misfortunate survivors of the coming catastrophe that is going to destroy most of mankind …pick your catastrophe: climate change, nuclear war, AIs take over the world; they do this because they were given instructions by a Do-Gooder programmer desperately trying to make the world safe for all life, so the AIs decide that humans have to go to make the world safe for more lifeforms.

You think I am exaggerating?! Then, you better listen to the Godfather of A.I.s as we know them today. He cracked the code for how the human mind works and implemented his understandings to machine learning. And did you know machines hallucinate? Well, the intelligent ones do! I think this is utterly fascinating!

The Daily | The Godfather of A.I. Has Some Regrets | Thank you Carrie & EJ for drawing my attention to this must listen to episode!!!

I also know that this guy (and many others in his circle of friends on Facebook) fervently believe the world is going to collapse, and it is going to be God awful, so we better have a plan.

Knowing this, and assuming I survive the collapse, what if I don’t like this transcended group of people who are going to jump into action with their plan to save us and ensure only actions that benefit the good of us all are implemented?

And Grok?!! Really, is this like Mork (where is Mindy?). Or is Grok more like super Geeky?

Whatever it is, I don’t think I want anyone grokking for me.


I should have given up the ghost at this point, but I was stupid and engaged further saying:

Ah yes, functional hierarchy like what we see in the Good’Old USA 🇺🇸 or Russia 🇷🇺 sure is showing the world how much more they see than the rest of us can see on how to make the world Great again!
I say this tongue and cheek but without allowing for conflict even on the highest levels of hierarchy, I just don’t see how the human race is going to be doing much transforming any time soon, except maybe some fizzy bubbles 🫧 on the sides of spaceship Earth 

By the way, I could have also brought up China’s ambitions, North Korea’s ambitions, India’s ambitions, Saudi Arabia’s ambitions, and the newly incorporated states of mind and ambitions of Trump & Company, Elon Musk & Companies, Zhong Shanshan & Companies, Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault & Companies, and the list of corporations who make more money than most countries GDP is endless. But, I didn’t want to overwhelm him.


He responded with gusto! Writing the following response:

At this moment I've just watched a program on Al Jazeera on Black Lives Matter, and seeing (one of) the deep dysfunctional divisions in the US - the US is in collapse (see Umair Haque or Chris Hedges) [OH?!! Thank God this guy knows something I didn't know! Thank God We're going to die!], and will continue to split apart along these and other fault lines as biophysical reality gets harder to cope with (with climate change and ecological collapse and resultant economic collapse - which is already happening).
These divisions are caused by competing for identity (and survival) at a level less than that needed for the higher-level collective identity - in the words of one commentator the 'more viable future' would be 'a multiracial society that can live in harmony'.

I need to interrupt here. This guy has just made a huge pivot and is lecturing me about my own country! I live in the United States of America. In fact, I live less than 5 miles from the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC.

Now, I’m not putting Al Jazeera down, but since I live here and I must navigate these competing “identity issues” every day, I think I know a little bit more about them than he does or a single documentary can cover.

In fact, I’ve made a few documentaries myself about these very divisions and dysfunctions.

Here are just a few of them:

Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter (2)
Black Lives Matter
Trump Rally about a Month and a Half Before Jan. 6 | Cacophony — The Beautiful Humans of Earth
Sustain the Flame – Full (Best Version) Women’s March on Washington 2017
Women’s March 2018 — Can’t Delete Reality
March for Truth — Watergate Redux
March for Truth — State of World
Sioux Z Dezbah at Women’s March on Washington — 1/21/17
Science March | 6 years ago
Sapience Talks — March for Science — Climate Change is Critical | 6 years ago
March for Science — Climate Change is Single Most Critical Issue | 6 years ago
Sapience Talks (#3) — Science Builds Communities
Sapience Talks – Day after Comey is Fired — interview 1
Sapience Talks – Day after Comey is Fired — interview 2
Sapience Talks – Comey Fired – #3
Sapience Talks #2 — The Intersection of Science & Spirit
Web of Lies — March for Truth
Women’s March 2018 — Diversity
Women’s March 2018 — Handmaid’s Tale
Women’s March 2018 — Stranger Things
March for Our Lives | 5 years ago
Never Again | March Against Gun Violence | 5 years ago
Deep Forgiveness (Darryl Green) & March for Our Lives | March For Our Lives | 5 years ago (This is the only one this ex-friend watched and made fun of it.)
Orange is the New Black — Science March 2017 | 6 years ago
“I Want to Be a Scientist” — Science March 2017 | 6 years ago
College Students Climate March | 6 years ago
Curiosity & Human Civilization – Science March 2017 | 6 years ago
Science March 2017 — Bio-medical Robots | 6 years ago
Science March 2017 — Bio-medical Research and Cuts to NIH | 6 years ago
Teens – People’s Climate March | 6 years ago
We ARE the Monsters | 6 months ago
We Are the Story Earth Needs | 4 years ago

Whew! I bet you thought I’d never stop listing them!


Back to ex-FakeBook friend’s comments.

When I refer to 'functional hierarchy' I mean the sort of hierarchy that every natural ecosystem has - nested, holonic, and operating on behalf of the whole AND with diverse individual yet interdependent autonomous beings. In nature this animate intelligence expresses itself through co-evolution and within the higher 'goal' of 'life'.

AH!!! The baby birds! I bet you read this far to see what the 10 billion baby birds in nests is all about! It’s about this comment.

First of all, I bet this ex-friend doesn’t know that being a baby bird in a nest is the most dangerous time of a bird’s life. It is a time of flightlessness that make baby birds vulnerable to all kinds of threats--crows, squirrels, snakes, cats, even wind.

The best thing for a baby bird to do is grow up fast and get the heck out of the nest!!! And have you ever looked at a nest after all the baby birds have left? I have! It’s full of poop!!!

I am not very impressed with his responses so far and started to do my own research on how to run a country or run a bunch of survivors after a great BIG disaster.

I quickly find based on his reference to nests, which I think he wants it to sound NATURAL, that he really doesn’t mean ‘functional hierarchy‘ at all — if he is really talking about a natural system where there is lots and lots of diversity and autonomous living beings walking about and doing their thing, then he is talking heterarchy; full stop: NOT hierarchy.

I found an article rather quickly in Forbe’s about all of this and this article led me to Philip Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles. I will talk more about this later. But clearly my ex-friend has never heard of Philip or his book.

Also, before moving on to the rest of his comments, let’s dig into this word holonic:

A holon is something that is simultaneously a whole in and of itself, as well as a part of a larger whole. In other words, holons can be understood as the constituent part–wholes of a hierarchyWikipedia

It is also a fundamental theory of machine learning. So, we are back to the end of the world by A.I.s!

Who knows, he might even be the Do-Gooder programmer who writes a well intention code to save as much diversity of life as possible that ends the human race because the AIs determine we are killing life faster than we are preserving it.

And the last thing I want to know: has he talked to this animate intelligence himself?!

How the HELL does he know that this thing or being has a higher goal and that the goal is life?

First of all, I know he doesn’t believe in God, but this is sounding a lot like a God with goals who is going to Make Something Happen!

This an important clue to his thinking, and it provides a glimpse into the Mega Myth he fervently believes runs the universe.

This myth is The Fully Automative Model. This short Alan Watts tells it best!

Alan Watts – The Ceramic and the Fully Automatic

Alright, I’ve digressed enough, so back to his comments:

In Human systems we most often have structural hierarchies, with power-over dynamics. We DO need ways of inviting (creative) conflict across difference to discuss the options in front of us; and a functional Democracy is meant to assist that process. And, it can... but often at a level that is removed from the emerging future realities of biophysical collapse.

Wow I’m so glad he pointed this out to me. I would still be thinking humans who live in great BIG civilized systems still gather around one GREAT BIG camp fire singing Kumbaya to solve conflicts!

Is he possibly admitting that there should be an arrow in his diagram for conflict?!!

We could have ended this entire conversation right here!


But wait! He goes on!

If democratic representatives were aware of the biophysical realities within which all their ideas and creative options are nested (functional hierarchy) then perhaps they might make collective decisions in mutual interest at levels required for what's coming. Unfortunately most people are ecologically illiterate and removed from nature so they don't realize that their current comfort levels and assumptions of entitlement, and fear of others taking them from them, are threatened by bigger, more encompassing forces (that will affect everyone) that will cause massive suffering as whole systems collapse.

Fine, these are overly broad generalizations that basically paint a picture that pretty much every human being living in a civilization on Earth is an illiterate, fearful, comfort-seeking coward with entitlement issues. If he wants to define nearly 10 billion people on Earth in this way, he’s not all wrong, but neither is he all right.

In making all my documentaries, I met and talked with so many motivated, well-informed, highly intelligent people who had profound ecological awareness and were not sitting home eating Cheetos! Rather, they were getting on a buses at 3 a.m. to get to marches happening in Washington, DC on Climate Change, Science, Gun Violence, Trump, Lies, and Black Lives Matter.


Perhaps he’s simply mansplaining again. But he still has more to say:

My point about 'transcend' is that only people that understand this can see which futures are no longer viable. That does not mean they 'know everything' - but it does mean they have a different worldview. They cannot guarantee 'the way' to go - there is no single direction. They can however point to many of the non-ways to go, because of Universal Harms that would and do threaten Universal Interests - not just the vested interests of any particular group that sees 'others' as the biggest threat to their identity and wellbeing.

Oh goodie! Transcendence! Yes, I really want to know more about what he means by transcend!

But, Hmmmmm… there are ONLY a select group of people who can understand this? My father was a pastor. My grandfathers were pastors. My great grandfathers were pastors as were many of my uncles and cousins… and you get the picture… I have been steeped in the language and imagery of transcendence.

What he describes is not transcendence. It’s intellectual arrogance, which is super creepy. At least he recognizes he and other transcended individuals might not get it right and cannot guarantee “the way to go“.

I remain highly concern about how power and authority is being ranked and sorted in his System of Transformation.

How is this really complicated human issue of governing itself in ever bigger and bigger systems of humans going to decide and select people to serve on this “functional hierarchy“? How in the HELL are they even going to recognize Transcended individuals?!


First of all, I don’t think you can recognize transcended people. In fact, for thousands of years, human beings typically tend to kill people who have transcended, in other words people who have become Holy.

Why do humans kill Holy people? Because Holy people scare the crap out of us regular, run of the mill human beings.

And why is this? Because Holy people are Whole people–they have fully integrated their Light and Dark sides, their Good Side and their Evil Side, the Savior and the Devil. This is not my idea. This is a very ancient idea as expressed by Alan Watts.

Alan Watts – The Holy Man and Insecure Societies

So, if you think you are a bunch of highly intelligent Transcended people, you probably aren’t. But if you take the reins of ruling a great big bunch of humans, and you believe you are a transcended bunch of bloʊks, then you are eventually going to have to decide who lives and who dies.

Running huge human systems is not for sissies or for people who are squeamish because Nature makes LIFE and DEATH decisions every day, and if you think you are a bunch of Transcended humans running things like NATURE does, then guess what!?? You are going to have to make these kind of decisions too.

If you don’t, Kaboom! Another disaster! Overpopulation, perhaps like The Mote in God’s Eye, which is a science fiction novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, first published in 1974.


This story is about human beings first contact with an intelligent alien race. How exciting, except these aliens are more intelligent than humans and they keep something concealed from the humans who are trying to decide if they are friends or foes. The thing they are hiding is population issues…really, really serious population issues that have caused this ancient race of intelligent beings to rise to spectacular heights only to crash back down into primitive savagery again and again and again… something they call Cycles.

Image from: BAEN eBooks

Such big and complex decisions required to run an advanced, intelligent civilization (regardless of whether they are human or aliens) depends entirely on what is being valued by the group and by who wants to do the running of things.

How is this any different than what is happening in the USA, in Russia, or in any hierarchical system on Earth? In fact, how is it different than how corporations, cities, towns, non-profits, and pretty much every modern, technology-using human system (and perhaps even intelligent alien system) are deciding how to run things?

If an intelligent group of beings decides to run things by a hierarchy, then they have to decide first on what they value. Based on these values, a ranking is created that determines how the hierarchy will be structured.

In other words, the values selected determine who will be placed on top of the pyramid to give to the orders and who will be placed in the middle and bottom of the pyramid to listen to and follow the orders. Another way of seeing this, is that the people in the middle and on the bottom (everyone who are below the ruling class) are the ones doing the work to hold up the agreed upon values.

Everyone–this includes rulers, managers, middle managers, bosses, workers, and through much of human history, slaves–assumes the mold of the Functional Hierarchy. Another way of saying this is that every person assume a role that holds the mold, which operates constantly in the background of everybody’s mind who lives in the system. This operating system provides unconscious instructions sort of like an algorithm, which are a set of rules to be followed or calculations to be made to solve problems encountered as the system operates through time.

The mental model of a pyramid is a powerful system of thinking. Indeed it is machine-like. It can be cold, calculating, and extremely brutal, perhaps this is why humans are so found on hierarchies, regardless of if they are functional or dysfunctional.

However, whenever (wherever) humans create hierarchies to run things, lots of people and things don’t make it to the top of the pyramid because they simply don’t fit into the desired values of the “functional hierarchy” (something humans created based on arbitrary ideas and values). The people and things (living beings) that get left outside of the ideal are automatically de-valued. Clearly, something important is being left out, being ig-nored, by the very ideas necessary to create a Functional Hierarchy.


Let’s see if he answers or addresses any of these concerns because so far he has not. But he’s also not done explaining (or should I say mansplaing):

In our approach we don't create 'safe-spaces' where everybody stays in their comfort zone. We create 'safe-enough spaces' where people are challenged. From our website Glossary: (his website again and another diagram)
“Safety is not the absence of threat—it is the presence of connection.” 
– Gabor Maté
We use the term to describe spaces where we can have challenging Courageous Conversations about difficult topics, involving rigorous inquiry from multiple perspectives, and still hold space for “respectful belonging” where we can appreciate one another as we live the questions together.
Part of our approach is to hold people 'safe-enough' while challenging them not to collude at levels less than the biophysical system dictates is needed - ie. face reality and live the questions, together, in Universal Interests... and, yes, you are right to be cynical, for it is virtually impossible from this starting point... especially in the US at present.

Hmmm… I don’t really have a problem with all this mulling about safety and safe enough and challenging people. But he is not providing a tangible way of doing anything differently than what we are already doing in the world with all our hierarchies, functional or not!

And, WOW, he is really putting the USA down! I never knew he hated Americans so much!!!


So, once again I press on when I should have stopped writing this:

So how do you select people: "that understand this can see which futures are no longer viable."
How do you ensure all peoples, the ones still asleep in the safety of civilization and the people awaken to the the coming collapse, are represented in the decision-making of the 'functional hierarchy' (I don't think you used functional previously, but that is beside the point)... who gets to decide what is functional and belongs in a human hierarchy?
Might it not be our very own overthinking of every problem and solution digging us all deeper into the pit of collapse?
And who is "our" in approach? Is this the synthesize of your years of deep thinking and consideration, which is considerable and done with empathic intent, or are there others involved in the "our"?
And, you did not mention Russia or Putin? How does this transcendent approach handle this situation? Or is this Western propaganda at work blowing up the situation in Ukraine?

One quick side note on overthinking and/or clinging to an idea or a thought when clearly one should have let go of it long ago. When a person does this, the idea or thought tends to grow smaller and smaller.

This is because the process of thinking presses the LIFE FORCE right out of an idea or a thought. The more the LIFE FORCE is removed, the less and less alive the IDEA is inside ones mind, or should I say the MORE DEAD the IDEA BECOMES.

Every single person who is born into Western Civilization is trained to do this from the day they are born. It is essential they learn how to do this and to do this all the time so that they stay in the social order, the social hierarchy, regardless of it is a functional one or not.

Alan Watts and many of great sages of Buddhism speak a lot about the need to let go of our ideas and patterns of thought and beliefs. They encourage us to fly, not to cling to dead and dying thoughts that make us do ignorant and increasingly crazy things. Once we outgrow our ideas or learn something new, we need to let go of them and move on with the flow of all things living in time and are alive.

Drawing from Notebook on 4/24/23 | Pressed into the Mold or Clinging to a Thought Until All the Life Is Drained Out of the Idea

Now, back to his thoughts and thinking:

...thanks for engaging. First, re 'functional hierarchy' I did mention it 😉

I don’t think until this point he knew who I was, and I hit a nerve for sure: a functional nerve! In his original invitation for Transformational Change anyone, he does not mention functional. That is what I was commenting about. The first time he mentions functional and hierarchy is in his first comment to my original question. And his answer to that question is what made more questions in my mind.


But, he goes on:

"Can you show me a model where informed democracy is addressing Overshoot? No... there is, unfortunately, a functional hierarchy which needs to honour those who CAN see more, sense more, grok more, on behalf of the whole system/social field. This is only part of the process 😎"

There’s the Geeky Grokking again. And the inference that some human beings are better than and more advanced than others, in what precisely?!

If you read it as hierarchy then you probably didn't see my point... it is a natural functional hierarchy - which many debate, but which does exist, based on maturity, capability, consciousness levels and activation (or not) of human development potentials - NOT a constructed human hierarchy (like an imposed boss/ servant relationship - with power over).

OH WOW! He says it again, it is a natural functioning hierarchy! Which apparently should make all the difference something like what Simba discovered, right?

Alan Watts & David Lindberg & The Lion King – Who Are You

But, no, my ex-friend is not talking about a Natural System because he is dividing and cutting it up into all sorts of categorizes by using labels such as maturity, capability, consciousness levels and activation. This is what the thinking mind does; it cuts up reality into little tiny bits then messes them up, so we can never put it back together again…just like Humpty Dumpty or at least not as long as our selfish, self-center, fearful, greedy human minds are in control of the narrative.

And, he’s still not done mansplaining. So maybe there is still something in his explanation that won’t make the hairs stand on my arm.


Here he goes! Hold onto your steering wheel:

That said, people are, despite their best wishes and hopes NOT equal [I don't disagree with this, but please...] every parent knows this... you don't force a kid who can only crawl to walk before they are ready (or at all);[Well... duh!] yet you can assume they have the potential, and, if they see others doing it, will one day also do so - where does the leadership example come from...? Another younger kid? An older kid? An adult? [Ah, perhaps here's the natural functional hierarchy...you age into it? Is this what he's implying? Well, I take issue.] Hence we need to be careful NOT to assume people don't have 'potential' while also recognising that not everyone has actualised it yet - that's why we generally don't let kids drive trucks. [Haha -- he hasn't been to the USA! Here, we can do anything at any age!]

OK!!! Full Stop!!! We’ve got to explore this explanation a little bit more!

Hmmm… maybe babies can drive trucks!

And what if the evolution of mind runs in reverse to the evolution to the physical body?

Above, the trajectory of growth of the human body is indeed as he describes… until… the decline begins. However, many of the most ancient sages say we come into this world perfect and through the trials and journey of life, our consciousness narrows and shrinks and becomes less and less than what it started out as… until… the physical decline begins!

I’m a MOM! I’ve raised a baby! Yes, my baby crawled, then she walked, and now she drives a truck!!! It all happened exactly as he says…LOL!

But, I don’t think WISDOM grows that way. I think on the Mental-Spiritual realm (this gooey, sticky place inside the human mind where we feel this utterly strange sensation of sentience, something we all simply refer to as consciousness) that growth rather runs in reverse to the body.

As we grow up, we get narrower and narrower in our thinking and focus. We are forced to shut out more and more of the world from our MIND so we can carry out the tasks of daily living (or survival in a manmade world). Eventually, we all get to an incredibly small world views with an incredibly small selection of thoughts, ideas, values that we think explain everything. What we fail to see is we have become a SINGULARITY and we are COLLAPSING in on ourselves!

This sounds terrible, but this is the mental world… not the physical world. This moment of COLLAPSE is the most exciting opportunity ever! It the MOMENT of Transformation.

The thing you got to do when you get to this MOMENT is KEEP MOVING… go man go!!!

Whatever crisis you hit, it’s there for a reason. It is your DOING, your HAPPENING because you want to GROW and TRANSFORM is what consciousness does... it is flowing, it is dancing, it is constantly making new patterns and experiences.

I can’t tell you what your moment of crisis will be or when you will hit it. But if you are human, you’re going to have a chance to thread the eye of your MOMENT IN TIME.

Each of us is born into this world with utterly unique capabilities and potential. Each of us is trying to master innate abilities we have always had, but we forget we have them because of all the training we get into HOW TO BE A GOOD CITIZEN.

Don’t get me wrong! There is tremendous value in this. Going around and hitting other kids over the head is not a NICE way to move through the WORLD (Trump and Putin obviously never moved passed this stage in mental development).

We all want civility in this world. That is how we all live in peace and plenty, but we cannot master our innate abilities without really digesting and integrating ALL the knowledge trained into us on how to be a GOOD CITIZEN and RECKON that with WHO WE REALLY are (and have always been since the day we were born).

Without this reckoning that is really going to feel like a constriction, a tightening and reduction of consciousness, you won’t get to other side of your Self.

If you are paying attention, there is going to a point of crisis in your life that is going to make you question everything. And this is ALL RIGHT! In fact, it is essential.

But, if you are not paying attention (Ron DeSantis, I’m talking AT you), and you don’t want to WAKE UP, then you are not going to WAKE UP. And this is ALL RIGHT too!

The only thing I can tell you if you do hit this point of constriction is:


But wait, my ex-friend is not done mansplaining:

Unfortunately many in politics (such as your infamous ex-Pres) reach arrested development at a level less than what is required to provide systems-ethical leadership for our times. Bully boy narcissism (pick any number of exemplars, globally) is not what's called for when the potential extinction of humanity is the writing on the wall. 

[What did I tell you? He is totally into total collapse of our global system...and human extinction. But maybe we deserve to go extinct and resistance is futile, so why suffer the inevitable? It's a collective gamble that we all clearly lost...right?!!]
See — I love to make funny pictures of Putin and Trump!

But this also pissed me off. Not the Bully Boy Narcissism comment, that just made it very obvious he is not paying attention to me or my work (as he pretended to do for years).

If he had been paying attention, he might have learned something NEW because I’ve been writing and posting about all this stuff (some stuff very humorously, some very critical of our ex-President) for a long time.

Basically, my take away from his comment is that he is implying this functional hierarchy is most probably going to consist of a lot of grumpy old men and a few token women who refuse to grow up.

I know this guy from lots of previous engagements, and I can read between the lines, and this is exactly what he is saying.

He is also implying HE is the one who can see further, run faster, and out think all the rest of us to lead this NEW functional hierarchy that will save the world from collapse (or after collapse)!

It leads me to wonder just which direction is he and his new functional leaders going towards? Is it truly the “right” direction to be looking or is it just more of the same tangled web of endless bureaucracies we are already stuck in up over our eyeballs already?

So these are some of the reasons this comment really pisses me off.

And also, some of the wisest, kindness, most inclusive people I know are young people. I would totally choose a younger people over jagged jerks like my ex-friend is being here as he defends his fictional “functional hierarchy.


But, maybe I should still be patient and read keep reading:

As for "who are we when I say 'our'" - I provided a link to 'our' website - And Now What - and this is the About Us page - https://andnowwhat.be/about/ - and, yes, it is the result of "years of deep thinking and consideration, which is considerable and done with empathic intent" by each of us alone, and for several years collectively.

______

YEAH! Finally! He is addressing the Putin bastard and dysfunctional Russia!

As for Russia or Putin - what can I say... he would not be included in the 'transcendent' because he is, by definition, not aiming to transcend and include (partly my point) but to take-over by force... which, incidentally, also happens to be the way the US generally behaves - and it will continue to do so, for it fears losing the dominance its inhabitants take for granted, and fears what would happen if others behaved toward it as it has toward them.

But, hey wait! That is a huge BIG pivot! WOW, he really hates us. He didn’t even finish his thought about Russia.

I was REALLY hoping to learn something about his thinking on Putin.

Several years ago, back when we conversed all the time, I told him that the most evil character in my book is based on Putin. This was before Putin invaded Ukraine and Trump was cozying up to him like a pussy cat to a snake or is it a snake to a pussy cat or are they really both SNAKE CATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe Putin and Trump mated and mutated!!!!!!!!!!!

Viral ‘Amazon Snake Cat‘ Has the Internet Totally Baffled | WOW! I want one of those!!!

He immediately put me down by lecturing me on how Putin is a pussy cat, really he isn’t a bad guy at all, he’s just watching out for his country like any good ruler would do. And, it’s a BIG country he has to take care of and the world isn’t very nice place, especially the WEST. He told me that I was simply indoctrinated by Western media and didn’t understand things accurately.

He kind of sounded like Trump (?!!) in that moment! I have never forgotten his put down. And, it’s probably the real reason I needled him.


But, I have digressed again! Let’s get back to his mighty man-splaination!

So, to be clear - I think you have just pointed to why there needs to be distinction between those who CAN think transformationally, on behalf of the whole system, and those who can only think of their own vested interests or for a smaller subset of the whole (individual, in-group, corporation, nation)... 
So, if you had to try to create transformative change that might get the US out of the mess it has created for itself, who would you select? Who would you not select? And why?

I’m fine with leaving Putin out of the hierarchy too… DUH!

But HERE again he pivots and attacks my country lumping the USA in the same dusty coal bin as Putin and his goons.

We are having this conversation, by the way, over the United States Memorial Weekend, which is a time we reflect on the men and women who have served in the Armed Forces, especially the ones who died or were injured.

I have 2 Great Uncles who served in WWI, an Uncle who served in Korea, and a brother who served in the Army Reserves. He’s really pissed me off NOW!

And Now What would have happened to the world if the US had not gotten involved in these great wars?

Would he really want a Kim Jong Un ruling over the whole Korean Peninsula? Does he know Winston Churchill begged the US to get involved in WWII? What if the US had just sat on its hands mumbling: “We don’t want to get involved in that war,” as it sang Kumbaya to itself as it pretended nothing’s going on over there?

Yes, the USA has made some really bad foreign affairs decisions. The US has sent troops into places they should not have sent them. The US has pulled troops out of places we have been when they should not done this: Afghanistan!!

What happened in Afghanistan is complicated. How do you define exactly when all the trouble began and how do you define when it has all ended? Was it 1219 to 1332 when the Mongol Empire ruled Afghanistan? Was it 1370 to 1405 when Timur (sometimes referred to as Tamerlane) ruled the land that would become Afghanistan plus a whole lot more of middle Asia? Both Empires are remembered for the barbarity of their conquests.

But that is ancient history, right? What does that have to do with the barbarity of our modern age? Well, have you seen Flee? If not, you should!

FLEE – Official Trailer | Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner FLEE tells the story of Amin Nawabi as he grapples with a painful secret he has kept hidden for 20 years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon to be husband. Recounted mostly through animation to director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, he tells for the first time the story of his extraordinary journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan. Directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen Executive Produced by Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau Produced by Monica Hellström, Signe Byrge Sørensen
If you watch Flee, you may ask Why did the US fund the mujahideen?

Well that’s a long, sordid, complicated story that “began decades earlier, after the Soviet Union invaded that country in 1979. The U.S. wanted to do everything it could to counter the Russians during the Cold War. And so, at that time, the U.S. worked with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to arm Afghan Islamist fighters known as the mujahideen.” — Read or listen to PBS NewsHour and the Former head of Saudi intelligence recounts America’s longstanding ties to Afghanistan

This colossal battle between the two Titans of the Modern Western World, because if you’re going to be a Good Titan you’re going to need a Bad Titan. It has been this way in the human made world for 5,000 years. If you’re wondering why I pick this number, you are just going to have to wait and read my book.

Since WWII, the USA and USSR (now Russia) made so many Nukes if they went to war with each other, the world would descend into a nuclear winter so profound, life as we know it would cease. Something like Midnight Sky depicted:

Earth after some unnamed disaster, but most likely nuclear war | Midnight Sky
Midnight Sky

So instead, the US and Russia poke each other through proxy wars that create a different sort of consequence: Blowback. I am not as stupid as my mansplaining friend wants to pretend that I am, nor are countless Americans like me.

US support of mujahideen created Osama bin Laden who would train Saudi men to fly planes into buildings pulling off one of the worst terrorist event on US soil 9/11. Leading to the US invasion of Afghanistan and hunt for bin Laden.

How the USA pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021 was reprehensible. It made me really mad. We drove the Taliban out and killed bin Laden in Pakistan; who, by the way, played a huge role in funding the Taliban so that they would take control of Afghanistan after Mujahideen factions failed to establish a broad-based government after creating an interim administration in 1992.

The Pakistan government has repeatedly denied that it provides any military support to the Taliban in its diplomacy regarding its extensive operations in Afghanistan.82 Of all the foreign powers involved in efforts to sustain and manipulate the ongoing fighting, Pakistan is distinguished both by the sweep of its objectives and the scale of its efforts, which include soliciting funding for the Taliban, bankrolling Taliban operations, providing diplomatic support as the Taliban's virtual emissaries abroad, arranging training for Taliban fighters, recruiting skilled and unskilled manpower to serve in Taliban armies, planning and directing offensives, providing and facilitating shipments of ammunition and fuel, and on several occasions apparently directly providing combat support. -- Human Rights Watch

Pakistan did this because it served their interests. US stayed for 20 years to encourage democracy because that served our interests. Then, the US pulled out due to a deal negotiated by the Orange turkey himself, Trump, and implemented by Biden, letting everything all come crashing down again, just like what happened to Amin and his family on April 28, 1992, and the USA played a role in this collapse too!


If we are really honest with what is happening in the world right now, it has so much more to do with ordinary, everyday men and women and their individual and collective beliefs, values, and biases than it has to do with a big bad Russia or a big bad USA.

Oh yes, humans know how to cluster together into great, big, bad armies and nations. We know how to build pyramidsFunctional Hierarchies–structures that live inside our minds and operate endlessly like algorithmic codes transported seamlessly into our very souls on endless streams of thoughts (conscious thoughts or unconscious thoughts) and also the things we are told we must do or else!

We’ve been doing this for over 5,000 years. Creating human pyramids to get our way in this world; it is a very human thing to do. And it’s worked way too well!

Wherever Amin and his family fled, they had to fear the RULES and CUSTOMS of every country and nation where they had FLED desperately seeking safety… seeking a HOME.

How we treat the least of us is a global issue! Is there any place on Earth where humans have settled that can claim to be completely angelic and benevolent? Is there any nation, state, or city in the world from any time that has always made the right decisions at the right time, always and always and always… like a GOD or an angel?

I think my friend is a bit jealous of the USA’s status in the world because he knows his Functional Hierarchy is just a wish-dream. It is his performance; his great show in the world of men and their endless games of one-upmanships. Yes, indeed these are ships made out of thoughts built like pyramids. These Functional Vessels sail every day to the twin continents of Doom and Disaster.

This mansplayer knows very well where he’s going, and he also knows that he will never captain a ship as BIG as the Good’Old USA. But who cares?! He knows if he crows loud enough, long enough that we all just cry out: Hip, Hip Hooray–for that’s just what we say when another ship sets sail to the Land of Doom or Disaster!


Now, being pretty beyond pissed, I pressed him again:

I don't think you are really talking about hierarchies as how you explain it in the above comment.
Rather you are describing a Heterarchy, but this is your thinking and work, so you are absolutely free to name it whatever you like.
And, the And Now What? team looks exceptional 😉
As for who would I select? There is absolutely no one I would select to form a team to transform the Good'Old USA. There is no way I am in a position to see, understand, or hear all the voices and ideas that would be necessary to do such a thing... this country will either survive or it will die, as things in this world have always done.
And to be clear... I am of the USA... but I am not of the fraction in the USA who are dead set... "to take-over by force" (as you put it) ...the rest of the world. Nor do I "fear losing the dominance" in the world, nor do I "take for granted" that the USA has dominance or that my Whiteness gives me privilege in the world as we know it. And, I am not alone in knowing this... and in the face of the pressure to conform to the Mold, I resist it, as do many others here in USA and as reports come on in Russia, despite the threat of death there, while here, it harassment, lost opportunities, and hate.
I must surmise your opinion of the United States is as low as your opinion is of Russia. I suspect you are implying that the US flows in the very same vein and mindset of World Domination and Control as Russia, China, North Korea, the unincorporated state of Trump, the unincorporated state of Elon Musk, and anyone else with power, authority, or money who can make others submit to them.
But be careful of over generalizing systems. They are always so much more complicated than you can fully see and comprehend. This is why I remain highly suspicious of hierarchies, even highly evolved, functional hierarchies, because when it comes down to it... it is only made up of men (and a few token women).
I might suggest that I am like a very small cell like an antibody reacting and responding to an overwhelming spiritual-psychological-psychic Viral Infection that seeks devastation and to do harm to pretty much anyone who is not on the "inside" of the infection. 
And this infection is everywhere, not just Russia-USA, it is inside every human being on the planet, including myself... one can only acknowledge the infection is real, it is deadly, and it will not stop until human life is brought to its ultimate demise (self-inflicted and totally avoidable)... 
I find by the way, the youngest humans among us are the wisest and healthiest. If I had to depend on someone to carry me to a safe spot because I ran out of energy (due to fighting against the overwhelming infection that I know is inside of me and everyone else and an infection that I know I cannot by myself overcome) I would choose the youngest among us in the infected country formerly known as the USA.

He responds with the infamous:

When people do this on FakeBook when there clearly is not a sickness, death, despair, or trauma, it means: “Fuck off” … with a smile.

By the way, Alan Watts says the best leaders are the most Selfish! What he means by this are individuals who have thought about what being Selfish means. Alan Watts says it so much better!

Alan Watts – Selfish

Anticipating Mansplayer would not be able to explain to me why I should trust a functional hierarchy to save the world, I did my own research. This is what I found.

Heterarchy vs Hierarchy vs Anarchy

In a hierarchy, if A is over B, and B is over C, then A is over C — your basic pecking order. In a heterarchy, though, you can have A over B, B over C, and C over A. Think of the game “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” Paper covers rock; rock crushes scissors; scissors cut paper. -- Heterarchy: An Idea Finally Ripe for Its Time by Jay Ogilvy | Forbes -- 2/4/16

Heterarchy

“A heterarchy of values determined by the topology of nervous nets.” — Warren McCulloch’s 1945 essay

A HETERARCHICAL SYSTEM
In a heterarchy, as opposed to a
hierarchy, there is no “top” or “bottom” ranking. However, unlike in an anarchy, there is superiority and inferiority as each element is activated in some circumstances and inhibited in others. McCulloch calls these circular configurations of neurons: “dromes of diallels.”

Copyright Strat for 2016 www.stratfor.com

This is a fascinating article in Forbes: Heterarchy: An Idea Finally Ripe for Its Time. You need to read the whole thing yourself, if you are interested in this idea, but here are a few parts that really capture my excitement in discovering this word I did not know existed.

Interestingly enough -- and here's where both problems and possibilities start popping up -- this circular logic is identical to what Nobel economist Kenneth Arrow described as the "Voter's Paradox." The problem goes all the way back to the late 18th century when it was identified by Marquis de Condorcet. Consider the case in which one faction prefers candidate A over B and candidate B over C; a second, equal faction prefers B over C and C over A; and a third faction prefers, you guessed it, C over A and A over B. The choice that eventually gets made will not be a reflection of the real preference of the whole society, but will instead result from "irrational" and arbitrary issues like who voted first and who voted last. And over time and subsequent elections, the decision may cycle from one choice to another with no apparent reason. -- Heterarchy: An Idea Finally Ripe for Its Time by Jay Ogilvy | Forbes -- 2/4/16
Why the quotation marks around "irrational"? Because in the analysis of the relationship between hierarchy and heterarchy, it is precisely the definition of what counts as rational that is at stake. As McCulloch explained:

Circularities in preference instead of indicating inconsistencies, actually demonstrate consistency of a higher order than had been dreamed of in our philosophy. An organism possessed of this nervous system — six neurons — is sufficiently endowed to be unpredictable from any theory founded on a scale of values. It has a heterarchy of values, and is thus internectively too rich to submit to a summum bonum [highest good].”

— Warren McCulloch’s — “A heterarchy of values determined by the topology of nervous nets.”
Now there is a phrase to conjure with: "internectively too rich to submit to a summum bonum." This sounds like the Middle East. Or the geopolitical, global problematique. Or the Republican primaries in the United States. Or the problems of the European Union.
The problem with heterarchy, and the challenge to making it work, is not the lack of hierarchy, but too many competing hierarchies. And that's the reality we live in. -- Heterarchy: An Idea Finally Ripe for Its Time by Jay Ogilvy | Forbes -- 2/4/16

(…)

"Heterarchy" is an unwieldy word. Our ongoing discussion group on making heterarchy work eventually abandoned the word when one of our members looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary and found the definition to be "rule by aliens." That's not what we meant at all. Despite its unwieldiness, and shadows of aliens, though, the term recommends itself for the way it mediates the dialectic between hierarchy and anarchy. -- Heterarchy: An Idea Finally Ripe for Its Time by Jay Ogilvy | Forbes -- 2/4/16

Hierarchies

As Francis Fukuyama showed in The Origins of Political Order, the first hierarchies were imposed by "strongmen" and then later justified by ancestor worship and a priestly caste. From all we can determine, primitive hunter-gatherer bands were heterarchical. Teamwork joining different skills was necessary to bag a woolly bison. But no one leader called for deference to a summum bonum.
With the transition from nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers to larger settlements with agricultural surpluses, patriarchy and hierarchy were required to maintain some degree of order. As my colleague in this space, Ian Morris, argues in his several books, the bargain we humans made with hierarchies might strike a visiting Martian as odd once it compares the life of the unencumbered hunter-gatherer with the lives of later citizens suborned under often onerous hierarchies. But once you start down that road toward hierarchy, from the point of view of defense and security, bigger is almost always better. So there is a natural logic of larger, more powerful hierarchies conquering and subsuming smaller, less powerful hierarchies.
Next thing you know, people are talking about "the American Century," or "the Chinese Century," as if it is perfectly natural that some nation must be number one. I recall an invitation to give a talk at Rand a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. The concern at Rand was how to manage a "unipolar world" now that the bipolar order of the Cold War had come to an end. I tried to tell the researchers at Rand about heterarchy ... but they were not interested. There was a mindset there, a hierarchical mindset, that insisted that somebody must be "number one," and it better be us.
You see this mindset at play in the well-worn epithet of the lion as "king of the jungle." Who says that the jungle has to have a king? The jungle is not a political order, however many alpha male gorillas may roam its paths. The jungle is an ecology -- an incredibly complex web of metabolisms, relationships and interactions, some of which may be hierarchical. But there is no summum bonum in the jungle. -- Heterarchy: An Idea Finally Ripe for Its Time by Jay Ogilvy | Forbes -- 2/4/16
The Lion King I Just Can’t Wait To Be King (1080p)

Three Types of Hierarchies

Chapter 25 of Philip Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles. In those 60 pages, Bobbitt develops three scenarios:

“The world of The Meadow is that of a society of states in which the entrepreneurial market-state has become predominant. In this world, success comes to those who nimbly exploit the fast-moving, evanescent opportunities…

Philip Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles
green grass covered mountain under white and blue skies
Photo by PhotoMIX Company on Pexels.com

The world view portrayed in The Park… reflects a society in which the values and attitudes of the managerial market-state have prevailed. Governments play a far larger role…

Philip Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles
game map aerial view
Photo by Tom Fisk on Pexels.com

Finally, The Garden describes an approach associated with the mercantile market-state…

Philip Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles
arched bridge over calm lake in japanese park
Photo by Ryutaro Tsukata on Pexels.com

Unlike the regional groupings fostered by The Park, the states of The Garden have become more and more ethnocentric, and more and more protective of their respective cultures.”

Philip Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles
As you will not be surprised to hear, these scenarios and their names can be associated with certain geopolitical avatars, namely, North America for the wide open Meadow, Europe for the publicly managed Park, and East Asia for the ethnocentric Garden. "In a meadow all is profusion, randomness, variety. A park is for the most part publicly maintained, highly regulated with different sectors for different uses. A garden is smaller, more inwardly turned -- it aims for the sublime, not the efficient or the just."
Bobbitt then explores a range of drivers and trends, possible events and challenging decisions prior to the articulation of the three scenarios in which all of these elements play out in different ways. In my humble opinion, the truly remarkable climax of Bobbitt's very long book is the elegant construction of the heterarchy of choices playing out in the global geopolitical dynamic involving the United States, Europe and East Asia. -- Heterarchy: An Idea Finally Ripe for Its Time by Jay Ogilvy | Forbes -- 2/4/16

If you read this far, you should go to the full article: Heterarchy: An Idea Finally Ripe for Its Time by Jay Ogilvy | Forbes — 2/4/16 and read carefully all the possible scenarios of the three different ways the 3 different ways of organizing hierarchies interact and lead to global outcomes. . No wonder my ex-friend is terrified, but then again, he is trying to solve an impending cataclysm with yet another type of hierarchy.

Hmmm… yeah… like that is going to work after more than 5,000 years of increasingly dysfunctional myopic hierarchies!


Overview of Philip Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles:

For five centuries, the State has evolved according to epoch-making cycles of war and peace. But now our world has changed irrevocably. What faces us in this era of fear and uncertainty? How do we protect ourselves against war machines that can penetrate the defenses of any state? Visionary and prophetic, The Shield of Achilles looks back at history, at the “Long War” of 1914-1990, and at the future: the death of the nation-state and the birth of a new kind of conflict without precedent.

— Amazon


Mythos and Melodrama in the Philippines
Image from: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

Another thing about hierarchies is that they can go sideways fast. Big ones can. Little ones can. Corporate ones can. Non-profit ones can. Peace-loving ones can. Bottom line, if humans build a hierarchy to run something, it seems too tempting for humans not to take advantage of it.

Also, governments of any kind are dealing with a lot of information, pushes and pulls, demands, crises, polls, budgets, public opinion (that is by definition pretty variable depending on the day) and so many more things. So to take a country like Russia or the USA and make the comments my ex-fakebook friend said is a pretty naive and ignorant thing to say.

This episode on Throughline is very compelling. If you want to see how easy it is for a hierarchy to go sideways, listen to this one.

Corruption. Wealth. Authoritarianism. Torture. These are the words many people associate with Ferdinand Marcos, the former dictator of the Philippines, and his wife, Imelda. But in 1965, on the day of his presidential inauguration, clad in bright white traditional Filipino clothing, Ferdinand and Imelda were the picture of hope and progress: the Camelot of the Philippines. They styled themselves as mythical figures with a divine right to rule, even as their democratic ascent reached a dictatorial peak.
Ferdinand Marcos ruled for two decades. And then, in 2022, more than thirty years after his death, the Philippines elected a new president: Ferdinand's son, Bongbong. Both in his campaign and since taking office, Bongbong has evoked the Marcos era as a golden age — effectively, rewriting history.
Welcome to the "Epic of Marcos." In this tale of a family that's larger than life, Ferdinand Marcos is at the center. But the figures that surround him are just as important: Imelda, his muse; Bongbong, his heir; and the United States, his faithful sidekick. The story of the Marcos family is a blueprint for authoritarianism, laying out clearly how melodrama, paranoia, love, betrayal and a hunger for power collide to create a myth capable of propelling a nation.
Today on the show, the rise, fall, and resurrection of a dynasty — and what that means for democracy worldwide.

The Freedom of Speech
Image from Throughline: Volunteers help roll up a giant banner printed with the Preamble to the United States Constitution during a demonstration against the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall October 20, 2010 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Another thing about hierarchies is that they need to select and enforce the values that matter. But just as I was needling my ex-friend, how are these values selected? Are we conscious of them or not?

This episode of THROUGHLINE goes through the history and conscious and unconscious biases of the USA selecting and enforcing just one value: Freedom of Speech. If you are interested in this process, take a listen. It is worth your while!!

Book bans, disinformation, the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates are all around us.What were the Founding Fathers thinking when they created the First Amendment, and how have the words they wrote in the 18th century been stretched and shaped to fit a world they never could have imagined? It's a story that travels through world wars and culture wars. Through the highest courts and the Ku Klux Klan. What exactly is free speech, and how has the answer to that question changed in the history of the U.S.?

Anarchy

Most anarchists are disappointed hierarchists. From Mikhail Bakunin to Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, anarchists have taken potshots at the failings of hierarchy: They shoot holes in the purported legitimacy of exercises of authority, whether by the divine right of kings or the use of violence to impose subordination.
As Francis Fukuyama showed in The Origins of Political Order, the first hierarchies were imposed by "strongmen" and then later justified by ancestor worship and a priestly caste. From all we can determine, primitive hunter-gatherer bands were heterarchical. Teamwork joining different skills was necessary to bag a woolly bison. But no one leader called for deference to a summum bonum [the highest good, especially as the ultimate goal according to which values and priorities are established in an ethical system].
 -- Heterarchy: An Idea Finally Ripe for Its Time

So in summary of the Forbe’s article and Throughline episode, hierarchies can be concluded understood as:

“Not all good things go together

— Some Ancient Sage from a Forgotten Time

Organic vs Mechanical World View — More From Alan Watts

Throughout this series I have been trying to explain two fundamentally different ways of looking at our world, one characteristic predominantly of the West and the other of the East. And these might be called, respectively, the way of description as opposed to the way of seeing. The way, in other words, of understanding things in words or in terms contrasted with the way of understanding through looking and seeing a field or a subject totally all at once. Or you might call these the linear view (strung out in a line) or the total view (seeing all at once), or the serial view on the one hand as contrasted with the simultaneous view on the other. -- Alan Watts | Organism Earth
Now, in classical Western science we have depended largely on this serial or analytic view, which understands the world by translating it into ideas, into words, or into, say, even series of numbers. The basic feature of it being that things are understood in a step-by-step way in sequence. And insofar as we constantly look at nature in that way, we tend to think of nature as something constructed—something, in other words, made or put together as we ourselves make and put things together through a series of steps. And perhaps this gives us the feeling that if we understood nature  sufficiently, if we understood in full detail all the steps which go to the making of our universe, we could ourselves make it. -- Alan Watts | Organism Earth
Now, it’s here, you see, that we get a very fundamental contrast between East and West, and especially through Chinese and Japanese ideas of the formation of nature. Because for them it seems extremely odd to think of nature as being constructed or made by a sort of step-by-step procedure. Their feeling is rather that the world and its forms are not so much constructed as grown. And one of the most important keys to an understanding of Far Eastern thought is to see the difference between a view of a constructed world and a grown world. -- Alan Watts | Organism Earth
Now, to give a sort of crazy illustration of this: supposing I construct something—for example, an artificial flower—and you know, when you get instructions, how to do this, and you buy a book of do-it-yourself artificial flowers, you get a step-by-step procedure which tells you what to do. Step one: take a piece of wire with a black button and fix it to the end. Step two: take the stamens previously cut out and affix it to the button. Next step: insert a disk of sticky material, push the wire through the middle, and then affix the petals. Here they go. And notice that, as I put them on, I take them from outside and around me—things that are bits—and I bring these bits together to make the flower a construction, or whatever form it is that I’m intending to create. And so from going around to the center, from getting something that was previously pieces and bringing it all together, I get my flower. -- Alan Watts | Organism Earth
How to make artificial flowers at home with paper / diy home decoration paper flower
But now watch how an actual flower grows; how it starts, as it were, from the center. And it unfolds itself not bit by bit, but all the parts of the flower exfoliating together from the center outwards, in contrast to the making process, which goes from the outside inwards. From a situation where the parts are originally all apart (all in bits) and then assembled, contrasting with a situation where you have some simple beginning (like a seed or a bud), and as it expands it constellates or forms its own parts from within itself. And this is the fundamental process of natural growth. It’s in the same way that the human baby is formed within the womb. It’s in the same way that, if you watch crystals under a microscope forming a solution, you will notice the whole area of the crystal, the whole structure of the crystal, coming into being all together at once, and you will not see a kind of bit-by-bit assemblage which we use when we make machines or make houses or make tools. Even when we carve a block of wood—although the block of wood is not originally a lot of distinct parts, nevertheless we work upon it from the outside towards the inside, whereas all processes of growth go from the inside to the outside. -- Alan Watts | Organism Earth
Time-Lapse: Watch Flowers Bloom Before Your Eyes | Short Film Showcase
Now, in our current scientific way of thinking in the West, this kind of growth, this kind of formation, is always talked about in terms of what we call field theory; fields of force. And I suppose one of the most striking exhibitions of what a field is can be seen in looking at the formation of magnetic lines of force in iron filings—as when we take filings that are not magnetized, just thrown chaotically over  an area, and then, with the magnets underneath, notice that all the filings form together into a pattern, the whole area moving together, every single part of it simultaneously into its shape. And that shows us the whole nature of a field of force. -- Alan Watts | Organism Earth
Magnetic Field Around Stack of Magnets With Iron Filings

(Blab, blab, blab…I skipped a lot of important stuff from his talk to get to the part that links up to my inquiry about hierarchies vs heterarchies, but what Watts says here is exactly what Jay Ogilvy is sharing in the article in Forbes)

And then, in turn, in the field there is a structure, and the structure of the field is thought of as governing the formation of the universe. And you may remember that, in the last program, I gave you a particular Chinese world which meant the basic pattern or order of the world. Do you remember this word, which is pronounced , and which had as its original meaning “the markings in jade,” “the fiber in muscle,” or “the grain in wood.” This word, then, designates the basic structure within the tao, within the fundamental field of the world, and thus its order—which can be, as it were, understood by looking at it, but is too complex, too much happening so fast all together at once, for us ever to be able to analyze it in the relatively clumsy language of words. Now thus, you see, it seems to us that that order is enormously complex. The order of nature, the order of beauty, the order of ethics—all these kinds of orders baffle us when we try to think about them bit by bit. -- Alan Watts | Organism Earth
Lǐ 里 Inside – Chinese Word of the Day 每日一词
The “Tao” Explained: Deep Insights With Deng Ming Dao 道
But actually this order is only a complicated order when we try to think about it. I mean, it’s very simple, isn’t it, to drink water if you put it in a cup or a glass and toss it down. But it would be extraordinarily complex if one tried to drink water with a fork. And in the same way, the world and the order of the world, the activity within the field, seems incredibly complicated to us when we try to translate it into thinking and into words. But this, then, is the fundamental Chinese Taoist and Indian Buddhist view of how the formations of the world arise. Not by a step-by-step process which can be put down in a line like the instructions for making the flower, but by something which happens spontaneously all together at once. -- Alan Watts | Organism Earth

The centipede was happy, quite,
Until a toad, in fun, said, “Pray,
Which leg goes after which?”
This worked its mind to such a pitch,
It lay distracted in a ditch
Considering how to run.

Alan Watts | Organism Earth

Feature Archetypal Animation

Pyramids credit:TheDigitalArtist

Image from: Female Pyramid Head

Music:

Distances | H.U.V.A. Network

[9] Moon Town    6:21

For more pryamid people, see:

Satan’s Sister
Satan’s Sister Blog from December 21, 2021

For more on Mansplaining and Other cruel things people to on FAKEBOOK and other social media outlets, see:

If you have read this far, you might also enjoy this blog post
And this one!
Is Collective Transformation Possible?

All this writing about Transformation has made me remember that I wrote a blog about this very idea 6 years ago, way back when I started this blogging business (which is a pretty useless one at that).

One of my very early posts was titled Is Collective Transformation Possible? It was sandwich between my Girl With Dragon and Divine Dodo series. Also, I had just finished my Women’s March Documentary documenting why thousands (millions) of women and men around the world gathered to march against Trump and after doing all that work, well, yes, I was hoping some people would watch itat least some of it…and commune with me about some of the really important issues people were bringing up. We all felt what TRUMP stood for and it was revolting. But no one really watched my documentary and NO ONE communed (communicated) with me about any of the issues explored in my Women’s March Documentary, except my REAL friends in Germany.

I joined hundreds of Facebook groups to meet liked-minded people who might care. It was so exciting and so hopefully for a minute, then my time of constriction came.

I knew it was coming. I could feel it. It had been building up for quite some time. But no one I was talking to then understood what I was talking about. I told this one group that felt itself to be an extremely rare group of enlightened beings, that I needed to go through a very small hole or to make a very difficult journey. They just smiled politely and said: “Oh, maybe you’re already on the other side? Maybe you’re already HERE!!”

They were clueless like Jon Snow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lde4qgB3zYY
Ygritte “You know nothing, Jon Snow.”

And when my time of constriction gripped me with such despair that death sounded more pleasant that life and thoughts of violent murder and suicide floated continuously through my mind… all these NEW, hopeful, FAKE friends vanished like THE NOTHING. Many of my physical friends did too.

I was left to navigate my inner DARKNESS where a good part of my inner collective wanted me dead. I was drawing my journey. I was documenting my descent. But you know what Mansplanyer said to me at a point of crisis, a time when I simply needed a compassionate listener and occasional cheerleader? He told me he didn’t think the Dodo was a good look for me and I shouldn’t continue… people might get the wrong impressions!

The Divine Dodo – – Circles

Well…DUH, Duh, duh! Do you see what is happening to Dodo? He’s being crucified for GOD’s sakes! Don’t you think I know DEAD is not a GOOD look?

As my inner collective divided into fighting factions–some aspects of myself wanted to help me, other aspects not so much, my exterior collective crumbled as well. These were the real life people who said they were my friends but they dried up like the Great Salt Lake, leaving nothing to help me during a very difficult time–a kind word, likes of my blog posts, regular comments on my Facebook page–would have meant so much to me at this time.

The System of Facebook is not set up to operate with kindness and compassion. Rather it is set up for Performers to Perform.

I would soon learn all these NEWfriends were FAKE FRIENDS. They were happy to court my attention IF (and only IF) I FOLLOWED THEM. The more blindly I followed, the more FAKE ATTENTION they might throw my way, and even that was ify. Most just had to be constantly admired!

This behavior is called Bread Crumbing or Baiting. It is an aspect of a significant psychological disorder called Narcissism. And FAKEBOOK is especially calculated up to cater to Narcissists and for people suffering from the opposite imbalance of this disorder: the ECHO Personality.

Narcissistic baiting & how deal with it | 92,295 views May 14, 2023 (There is a reason this video is getting so many views! Every person in civilized society is dealing with more and more Narcissitic People more often)

I was an echo that nobody missed when my voice began to fail and fade.

I chose to surround myself and to trust people who were nesting, in hollow holonic circular thoughts that spun round and round shrinking, sinking, shrieking point of consciousness that was cut off from true human understanding.

I pulled the Cloak of Darkness and Doubt over my own head and descended into HELL.

Cloak of Darkness and Doubt

To be a genuine human being requires self-sacrifice. It requires suspension of thinking and judgement. It requires listening, sometimes for hours and hours and hours, as someone else wails in grief and despair due to the circumstance of their life. To be alive, to be a real authentic human being requires give and take… not just take, take, take… and abandoning others when they become a burden to you.

To be a trustworthy person, you have to be a person that another person can TRUST to be there when TIMES are TOUGH. This might require sitting for hours and hours in complete silence just being with another human being who is being crushed by their circumstances. It is only people who are capable of doing this who can be TRUSTED with AUTHORITY. Only people who other people can depend on to BE THERE when YOU NEED THEM can be trusted with the Authority to make decisions for the Greater Good, which might very well require the Sacrifice of Self.

March 2, 2022 Blog Post

Just like what is going on in Ukraine right now… hundreds of thousands of men and women are STANDING UP, STANDING AGAIST BRUTALITY… TO HELL with my MANSPLAYER ex friend who equates the USA with Russia! I STAND WITH UKRAINE! I stand with every person doing creative acts of resistance as well as every person fighting, killing other people to defeat Russia NOW!

This is the stuff my father did. He was never called to serve in a war. He was a listener. He provided compassionate assistance to anyone for as long as they needed it! He was a healer. He gave his time, his money, his life for others. This is how the world is savednot by abandoning each other when we need each other the most because it takes too much TIME! Time is all we have… and how we value our time decides the type of world we live inside.

Saving the World is not the stuff being hocked on FakeBook or pretty much anywhere you look or turn for security and comfort (not comfortable but for solace and support) in our modern, overly complicated, pyramid-based world.

We made this world out of thoughts! It is a world that forces every civilized person to Hold the Mold of their cultture, of their caste, of their race (because the Modern World is extremely racists), of their economic situation, and of their place in the social order (all the hierarchies in which they live and must navigate to work, to play, to live).

The Modern World was built by narcissists to lift up narcissists that is why narcissist are rising to the Top of Likes like frothy bubbles on FakeBook, this is why they rise and hold the highest levels of power in almost every modern human civilization on Earth–each one built out of pyramid schemes. That is why everybody wants to be a narcissist in our world or at least they need to learn to play with narcissistic people and like it. Because that is how you wield POWER in the physical world NOW.

If you aspire to be a narcissist, FakeBook is the place for you! There are so many narcissists playing and sparring with each other on FakeBook. And there are so many echoes (like ME) attracted to all the glittery, sparkly thoughts, ideas, wishes, and dreams the narcissists spin. But, they are simply spinning hollow holonic nests of dead and dying thoughts. And the spinning of these expiring, nesting thoughts creates a vortex that has a suck. And if you get sucked into one of these vortex (most often it is one of your own making), you are heading straight down to HELL.

I knew what was happening to me, inside and outside of me, 6 years ago. And, The Dodo knew that I had pulled the Cloak of Darkness and Dark over my head. The Dodo knew I did this to myself, but the Dodo did not judge… he was just there providing glimmering specks of creative imagination, LIGHTsparks of light (but not thinking light), that were guiding me through HELL.

And the Dodo was the one thing that Mansplayer didn’t want me to have. He told me to give up the Dodo, to stop drawing him!!! And, I did stop drawing him, but I also stopped following the Mansplayer. But I was still in HELL; however now, without my guide, the dumb, stupid Dodo! HELL is a place of our own making... HELL is where you doubt yourself! Doubt is the Dark Force!

From a blog published in May of 2021

In this old post where I wonder if Collective Transformation is possible, I provide a list and links to all the wonderful people I was meeting on Facebook 6 years ago. I cannot recommend any of these people today. Not the artists, musicians, or writers who are listed, but the people who made me DOUBT myself. These people I cannot recommend.

These people know who they are. They are the ones playing at DOING something to SAVE the WORLD. But they can’t even SAVE THEMSELVES much less take a MOMENT in their very busy days to HELP anyone else who is drowning.

OH NO!” You’ll hear them yell. “I can’t stop. You’ll slow me down! You’re too much of a burden in this state of despair. I’m the only one who can SEE more, RUN faster, TRAVEL farther than ALL the REST!! I’m the only one who can SAVE the WORLD!!!!

All of them yell this. Mansplayers and Womansplayers, there are hundreds of thousands of them all yelling different version of this chant night and day…telling you (begging you) to follow them! But the only place you are going to go if you follow them is down because without the super powers of kindness, compassion, love… these people, all of them, are just hypoallergenic hollow holonic nesters spinning around and around a vortex of their own making, drilling deeper and deeper into the darkest parts of themselves on streams of endless thoughts.

You are MONSTERS…you people who pretended to care about me and then abandoned me when I really needed a helping hand. You, the ones who treated me as if I were the contagion, while in reality it is you suffering from the most prolific pandemic of our MODERN time: Narcissism and Supreme Ignorance created by OVERTHINKING. This is the Greatest EVIL of our TIME. We are all vulnerable to it but some fight it off better than others.

 Signs You’re Dealing With an Evil Person | 3,150,085 views Sep 5, 2020 (and more and more people are dabbling in the DARK TRIAD of psychological disorders)

I don’t know how I survived this time. It lasted for more than 6 years! But the story that my very dear friend from college told me about her suicide attempt somehow stopped me from mine. Today, I don’t think Collective Transformation is possible, even though this is what my story is about. The one I have been writing since 2012.

Have a GREAT DAY! And, remember, GO FOR IT! Follow your passion and whatever you do, keep moving, don’t stop!

Satan’s Sister | Moonrunner by Dance With the Dead

Unless….

What did the Lorax mean by Unless?

Image from: Are You a Lorax? | By  Jim Fitzpatrick – March 12, 2012 – Newport Beach Independent

This story had a deep and lasting impact on me. I was a child when it came out. I loved it the most of all the Dr. Seuss books. But it also troubled me. It felt very different from The Cat In the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, or Oh the Places You’ll Go.

It felt like a puzzle that needed to be solved and time was running out!

I felt that the one word the Lorax leaves behind for the greedy, old Once-ler was the key to solving the puzzle! But, what does it mean? Unless…what?!!

Dr. Seuss tells us what the Once-ler thinks Unless means at the end of the story. The Once-ler thinks that unless someone like the boy cares a whole lot, the world will never change.

It seems so simple. Surely, I felt as a child, there are bunches of children just like me reading this book and understand the message and will care enough. Surely, we the kids of the 70s get it, and when we grow up, we will change the world and avoid catastrophe.

But, we didn’t. Here we all are, 52 years later, and the world has not changed course. It remains fixed on the same course that it was on back in the 70s when Seuss first published The Lorax. In fact, it feels that we are all speeding ever faster… and to what? The End?

Clearly, the Lorax means something entirely different in his silent message he leave to the selfish, self-absorbed Once-ler. Clearly, Unless means something different than what the Once-ler thinks. But what? What do we need to do as humans to avert total disaster… perhaps even the end of the world as we know it now?

Quick Recap of The Lorax

Image from: ‘The Lorax’: A Campy And Whimsical Seussical | By David Edelstein – March 2, 2012 – Fresh Air

The young Once-ler arrives in the forest where the lovely Truffula Trees look like lollipops and the cute fuzzy Bar-ba-loots bears play alongside the beautiful Swomee-Swans birds and lovely humming fish!

Image from: Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax: Movie Adaption Information | By Carey Bryson — 3/17/17 — LiveAbout

But instead of seeing the incredible beauty all around him, the young Once-ler cuts down one of the incredible Truffula Trees and makes a Thneed!

What really?! A Thneed… this is the thing that everyone needs!

Dr. Seuss uses the Thneed as a symbol for the modern world’s obsession with fossil fuels. And Seuss is certainly right about this, gas-fuel-oil is truly something everyone needs in the world we have made.

There are lots of Once-lers in the modern world making millions and billions of dollars harvesting fossil fuels for all the things we need in our slick, fast-paced modern world!

Image from: ‘The Lorax’ review: Surgery was done on this Dr. Seuss | Published: Mar. 01, 2012 — OregonLive

The Lorax confronts the young Once-ler saying:

"I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.
And I'm asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs" —
he was very upset as he shouted and puffed —
"What's that THING you've made out of my Truffula tuft?"
Image from: The Badness of The Lorax Is a Shock | by David Edelstein – MAR. 2, 2012 – Vulture

But the Once-ler does not hear the Lorax. Or rather he hears him but ignores him proclaiming he has a right to make money from the trees!

Image from: The Lorax | IMDb

The Lorax rallies all the animals and tries again to make the young Once-ler listen and understand.

Image from: It’s Seusstastic! How The Lorax Saved Hollywood | By Richard Corliss – 3/4/12 – Time

But there’s no stopping the happy young Once-ler. He cuts and chops and build a factory to make even more Thneeds! And then the Lorax is forced to come back and to tell him this:

'I'm the Lorax who speaks for the trees which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please. But I'm also in charge of the Brown Bar-ba-loots who played in the shade in their Bar-ba-loots suits and happily lived, eating Truffula Fruits.'
Image from: the lorax | By Alison on June 18, 2011 – a tree grows in brookline and a teacher blogs about it

Nope, the Once-ler won’t listen. He builds an even bigger factory, and one even bigger than that one.

Images from: the lorax | By Alison on June 18, 2011 – a tree grows in brookline and a teacher blogs about it & Teaching Climate Change With The Lorax and The Jungle | By Mark Gozonsky on Getting High-School Kids to Read and Care About the Climate in Unconventional Ways — 10/21/19 — Literary Hub

Soon, the Lorax comes back with another dire message telling the Once-ler:

"Once-ler! You're making such smogulous smoke! My poor Swomee-Swans...why, they can't sing a note! No one can sing who has smog in his throat."
Image from: Final #PostABird fact for #BlackBirdersWeek Day 2. Do you know why the Lorax sends the Swomee-Swans away? Because there is too much smogulous smoke. | Twitter

The Once-ler shrugs and continues chopping down the beautiful Truffula Trees and making a Thneeds.

The Lorax returns again. Now it is the Humming-Fish who can no longer hum.

This time the Once-ler gets mad and shouts:

'Now listen here, Dad! All you do is yap-yap and say, 'Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad!' Well, I have my rights sir, and I'm telling you I intend to go on doing just what I do! And, for your information, you Lorax, I'm figgering on biggering and biggering and biggering and biggering, turning MORE Truffual Trees into Thneeds which everyone, EVERYONE, EVERYONE needs!'
Image from: THE LORAX BY DR SEUSS | Stella & Rose’s Books

Not long after this the Lorax does the thing that sticks in my mind and haunts me to this day. He builds a small platform underneath the Once-ler’s factory, waits for the Once-ler to look out, then without a word, the Lorax picks up the seat of his pants and flies away disappearing through the last blue hole in the polluted, ugly sky… and that is thatUnless...

Image from: THE LORAX BY DR SEUSS | Stella & Rose’s Books

So What Did the Lorax Mean?

Dr. Suess says many years after the last Truffula Tree is chopped down, the now very old Once-ler thinks the word Unless means:

Image from: THE LORAX BY DR SEUSS | Stella & Rose’s Books

But, it hasn’t worked. Hope is not enough. To fix this mess, it take action.

Are We Even Capable of Changing Our Fate?

Do we really need to destroy our planet before we care enough about it to fix it?

I know, I know, the seed the Once-ler throws down to the boy is a symbol of hope and we all need hope to Do The Right Thing. But quite honestly, do we really know what the right thing is that we should be doing?

And nature will do just fine after humans are gone. Kind of like 2067, an Australian SciFi film, where that is exactly what happens.

2067 – Official Trailer
Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Ryan Kwanten Writer/Director: Seth Larney By the year 2067, Earth has been ravaged by climate change and humanity is forced to live on artificial oxygen. An illness caused by the synthetic O2 is killing the worlds’ population and the only hope for a cure comes in the form of a message from the future: “Send Ethan Whyte”. Ethan, an underground tunnel worker, is suddenly thrust into a terrifying new world full of unknown danger as he must fight to save the human race.

I think the Lorax is telling us something else. I think the Lorax is warning us about ourselves and that Unless we learn how to let go of bad ideas, we are doomed to create the world we are speeding ever faster towards making. The one that will kill us.

What Is the Lorax Warning Us About Ourselves?

I think it is Shame; toxic shame to be specific.

Shame is an emotion of civilizations. We feel shame, and it is necessary to feel it. Feeling ashamed motivates us to improve ourselves. It motivates us to take care of the people around us, so that we to treat them with kindness, dignity, and respect.

No one wants to feel shame. Of all human emotions, shame is perhaps the hardest one to endure. Because of this, it is one of the scariest, most loathed, most feared emotion in our human tool box.

If shame had a color it would be the color of pee. Listen to Snap Judgement, and you’ll understand.

My Big Pee Break

Actress Diona Reasonover was on the brink of her big break. But she never expected it to happen while she was on her vacation.
Diona Reasonover is an actress who lives in LA, you can check out her writing on “I Love You America” with Sarah Silverman on Hulu.
Produced by Adizah Eghan

Note: Diona had a knee injury and could not make it to the bathroom on the plane before others beat her to it. Then, the plane begins to descend and the flight attendant not very understanding. So you’ll need to listen to how Diona solves her dilemma.

Bearing Witness

The episode before this one is worth a listen too: Date With The Devil. This one touches on the topic of how ee always hear about the people who survive a disaster and who often give credit Jesus or God for their good fortune, but we never hear about the people who made the exact same calculations, believe just as much in a higher power, but ended up dead.

I think we have become a bit lopsided in thinking about our survival as individuals and as a species when we hear only miraculous stories of good fortune, good luck, or good timing that allows a person to avert a tragedy.

But what about the people who don’t avert disaster? What about the people who get killed?

D. Parvaz touches on this in a very different story. It is a scary, tormented, horrifying, heart-wrenching story about people (through no fault of their own) do not make it. Indeed, they are murdered by monsters. That’s what humans become when they don’t digest and assimilate all of who they are as a human being. This means seeing the good in one’s self as well as the bad in one’s self. And yes, shame is one of those things.

People who refuse to feel their shame, fear, guilty, or whatever makes them uncomfortable will project them onto other people. People who don’t feel shame will do shameful things, horrendous things. They are no longer human because they have thrown half of who they are away.

So, don’t thrown your shame away! You need it. You really, really do… and the Lorax understood how desperately humans need to feel shame and other parts of themselves that make them truly capable of being human.

The Hidden Shame That Threatens Our World

This article is about toxic shame.

John Amodeo (a psychotherapist for over 40 years) describes that how not dealing with our feelings of shame there are far-reaching, destructive consequences.

He says, “When shame lurks outside of our awareness, it can become the driving force behind the destructive rage, blame, and violence that is damaging our world.”

Have you ever encountered someone who is boiling with a seething rage bubbling just under their human-looking skin but really what is lurking underneath is a monster ready to explode at the drop of a pin?

Consider the shootings this past week.

  • A teenage honor student who knocked on the wrong door was shot.
  • Cheerleaders who accidentally opened the wrong door of a car late at night are shot.
  • Teenagers who pulled into the wrong driveway and were turning around were shot, one died.
  • Children playing basketball and their ball rolls into a neighbors lawn are shot at, one father lost a lung after getting shot in the back.

Amodeo describes shame as the felt sense of being defective and inadequate: “it as an “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”

Shame has also been defined by Gerhsen Kaufman as a breaking of the interpersonal bridge. As human beings wired for connection, we dread isolation. Children fail to thrive when they don’t feel a safe and secure connection with caregivers. When healthy attachment is ruptured, a child feels unworthy of love and acceptance. This unbearable shame can lead to a mad scramble to prove our worth in distorted ways that often dehumanize others.
In a 2016 article, shame expert Bret Lyon, who leads Healing Shame trainings, describes how intolerable shame can be transferred to others:

“Driven by the need to keep the feelings of shame at bay and away from themselves, people can exult in their contempt and cynicism—finding a curious kind of gratification in it… In extreme cases, runaway contempt can cause people to lose sight of another’s humanity. Even their right to exist. This has led to extreme behavior, in Germany and many other places.”

The Hidden Shame That Threatens Our World

Amodeo drives home the point of toxic shame, the very same one that I think the Lorax is trying to drive home to us with his message Unless. Amodeo writes:

When the drive toward personal “success” or being superior becomes dissociated from our humanity, we seek gratification in ways that will never really satisfy us. We become disconnected from our souls, as our innate longing for love and connection curdles into a desire for status, money, or power. These substitute ways to seek gratification often spiral out of control—taking us on a perilous journey away from our fellow humans—and away from our true selves. This desire for a narrow self-gratification overlooks the reality that we are inescapably interconnected.
We can observe this shame-driven dynamic in our fraught politics, where looking good replaces being good (truly caring about others). We can see it in political and business leaders competing to amass the greatest wealth and power, which often translates into a race to see who can be the most contemptuous and divisive.
Some political leadersand followers who relish the thrill of belonging to a group that has special knowledge and that is superior to others—have so thoroughly dissociated from their vulnerability, their humanity, their hearts, and their souls, that they have no compunction to deny the rights of others, or, as we've seen in Ukraine and elsewhere, committing atrocities without any healthy shame to check their behavior.

The Big Choice

So… what are we going to do? Are we going to save our beautiful world full of life or are we all going to drown in a Yellow Sea of Seething Shame?

This is a job that requires every person on the planet to do. Every living individual needs to claim their shame and proclaim proudly: “I am human! I do stupid things! I learn from them! I become a better human because I use my shame to grow!”

Or, you can lock yourself inside a dilapidated husk of what used to be your humanity… deny your shame, cast it onto everyone else around you as you fake being a perfect human being.

But, your performance is nothing more than a rickety, glittery, shiny shell of who you used to be. Inside there is nothing to balance you out and make you human. You have become hollow; a garden hose flowing with seething shame disguised as rage.

On A Related Note

My college roommate from College of the Atlantic shared this story. It is closely related to the responsibility of each and every person to do the invisible work of sustaining and maintaining psychological as well as social health, which takes daily work.

Kicked out of the university lecture
Subject: Legal studies.
First lecture.
The professor enters the lecture hall.He looks around.
"You there in the 8th row. Can you tell me your name?" he asks a student.
"My name is Sandra" says a voice.
The professor asks her, "Please leave my lecture hall. I don't want to see you in my lecture."
Everyone is quiet. The student is irritated, slowly packs her things and stands up.
"Faster please" she is asked.
She doesn't dare to say anything and leaves the lecture hall.
The professor keeps looking around.
The participants are scared.
"Why are there laws?" he asks the group.
All quiet. Everyone looks at the others.
"What are laws for?" he asks again.
"Social order" is heard from a row
A student says "To protect a person's personal rights."
Another says "So that you can rely on the state."
The professor is not satisfied.
"Justice" calls out a student.
The professor smiling. She has his attention.
"Thank you very much. Did I behave unfairly towards your classmate earlier?"
Everyone nods.
"Indeed I did. Why didn't anyone protest?
Why didn't any of you try to stop me?
Why didn't you want to prevent this injustice?" he asks.
Nobody answers.
"What you just learned you wouldn't have understood in 1,000 hours of lectures if you hadn't lived it. You didn't say anything just because you weren't affected yourself. This attitude speaks against you and against life. You think as long as it doesn't concern you, it's none of your business. I'm telling you, if you don't say anything today and don't bring about justice, then one day you too will experience injustice and no one will stand before you. Justice lives through us all. We have to fight for it."
“In life and at work, we often live next to each other instead of with each other. We console ourselves that the problems of others are none of our business. We go home and are glad that we were spared. But it's also about standing up for others. Every day an injustice happens in business, in sports or on the tram. Relying on someone to sort it out is not enough. It is our duty to be there for others. Speaking for others when they cannot.”
                                      -- Shared by Liza Hall -- 12/4/22

Feature Archetypal Animation

Music: How Bad Can I Be (From “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax”) — Geek Music

Free to Choose

The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn’t do or say.” 
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

In the second episode of Shantaram, available on AppleTV, Lin steps out of his friend Prabaker’s tent in one of Bombay’s sprawling slums. He looks around at all the people in the bustling slum who are looking at him and wonders if they are afraid of him and hate him. He knows he doesn’t belong there, but fate has put him there.

Thinking to himself, he says something like this: “It is what people know about themselves that make them afraid of you.

In A World…

I rewound and watch this moment again. I was not expecting a nugget of wisdom in this drama. But, there it was…something real, something true, something very pertinent to the world we live in now. Today, no matter where you live, we live in a world….

…where MAGA Republicans think all Democrats are evil beings who drink the blood of children. This belief makes liberals and Democrats not really human. If they aren’t really human, then that makes it all right to kill them, all of them.

“Oh? You don’t believe me?”

Listen to this man right here. He’s the man with the littlest Wiennie of them all. The man in the middle touting hate, lies, deception, stories of separation, fear, and division. He’s Steve Bannon.

Steve Bannon Swears Revenge On His Democratic Enemies After Being Sentenced To Prison — Politicus Media; 10.2K subscribers

This little man, Trump’s Rasputin, knows that a democracy divided is easy to control. And he wants to control everything. Look at his beady eyes and scrubby stubble. He’s a tormented man doing everything to create confusion, chaos, and destruction so he can rise as a Christ for a world of sinners. If you have not seen CNN’s special report Divided We Fall, it is time to watch it.

CNN SPECIAL REPORT: STEVE BANNON, DIVIDED WE FALL Reported by Drew Griffin

Oh — you don’t trust CNN?

You say it’s the radical left touting Joe Biden’s radical agenda…and before that it was Hillary….and before that it was Obama…and before and before…

How far back should we go with the blame game and ‘I don’t trust you‘ contest? To Adam and Eve? Is it really that nasty little snake who started it all?

If you’re playing this game, you have already swallowed the Red Pill, and it’s working its toxic poison deep inside of you. It’s a poison that makes you deeply afraid of others and deeply afraid of your own shadow. And, you probably should be deeply afraid of your own shadow.

That is what Lin is aware of while standing alone in the slum of Bombay. That sneaky shadow that lives inside all of us casting its evil intensions and desires onto everyone else, except for you.

If you are playing this game, you have joined the ranks of people who violently participate in the denial of diversity. You do this to legitimize your own violent fear of anyone who doesn’t walk like you, talk like you, look like you, act like you, or think like you. You secretly believe and harbor a wish to bring into being a world that obeys and worships you.

The dirty little secret is hidden deep inside of you is a greedy, little, bloodthirsty thing who rages and whines about inflicting pain and suffering onto others. You want to do this so that you can enjoy your comforts and privileges. You need to do this because how would you know you are enjoying comforts and privileges unless others are suffering?

When you get called out on your racism, homophobia, antisemitism, and racism, you rage. You rage against the radical liberals who are merely pointing out your evil shadow. But, you don’t want to see the evil inside of you. So you build a wall. It’s a really tall wall that is made from the seething anger and rage boiling inside of you. If anyone gets too near, it burns like a living fire.

‘God damn it!’ if anyone is going to penetrate you inner wall and see that howling, wounded, frighten, greedy thing that lives inside of you.

That thing…. that scoundrel, that fiend, rascal, rogue, fraudster, trickster, beast, son of a bitch, deviant thing, loser, weirdo, cry baby, stupid brutal bastard, and bully. But guess what? So am I, and so is everyone else you know. We all have this evil thing living inside of us.

It never goes away. It bubbles and boils and burns inside us all. It pursues and terrorizes us in our dreams. Lin says, “A dream is when a wish and fear come together. A nightmare is when they are the same thing.”

Remaining ignorant of your evil being merely locks it inside of you where it is hidden behind the carefully constructed idea of yourself (your persona: the role you play in your community and for your family). It is your personal internal prison cell behind the giant wall that you built to conceal your evil being. You built the wall so well, most of the time you can’t even see your evil being locked inside your mental prison cell with you.

This thing inside of you is relentless and torments you night and day. In an act of utter desperation, you spew it out onto others and shout in a voice dripping with rage and fury:

“There! There is the boogeyman!

There is the Devil!

There is the Evil Thing that must be annihilated!”

Or, if the other person (the boogeyman) was once part of your exclusive club of people who know the Truth and what is really going on, you might shout:

“Hang Mike Pence!!”


In a world where Putin calls the people of Ukraine Nazis. Never mind he is the one acting like the Nazi. He is the one full of hate. He is the one who has driven out close to a million Russian men because they don’t want to fight in his barbaric, poorly equipped, and pretty bad army. He is losing. So he resorts to lies and double downs on stupid while waging his limp, impotent Nuclear Weiner.

Do not be fooled by Putin’s weak, victim-based, impotent hysterics! He is exactly the type of man who would push the button.


In a world where Iran’s Moral Police beat up and kill young women simply for wearing their hijab too loosely. But it is themselves they are really policing. They are afraid that if they see a single strand of hair sticking out from a hijab, their Limp Weak Weiner will grow. And if this happens, they are afraid they’ll lose control and turn into the Devils they know themselves to really be deep, deep down inside. This corrupt and bankrupt regime has already killed 272 young people and beaten and/or tortured 1,110 others.

In each world outlined above, each man’s rigid, inflexible thinking and bullshit is camouflage for the shitty little men they really are. They lust after power and cluster together helping each other hold onto power and control in their stinking palaces riddled with long, long corridors of terror.

Maps of Hate

This is what the corruption is and this is what it does to human beings. It is a kind of moral bankruptcy. It takes root inside individuals who find each other and clump together in groups that try to take control in order to enforce their style and way of thinking. If they do get control, they quickly create systems that exclude diversity and impose their way of doing things in brutal ways meant to terrorize everyone else into compliance. When a government becomes populated by such individuals, it turns into a structural system of terror bent on brutalizing anyone who is not exactly like them.

There are three main mappable categories of this deadly psychic virus: Dictators, Terror Groups, and Hate Groups. But the corruption lives inside everyone and is readily expressed in every day transactions. You see it in families, in workplaces, in schools, between friends and lovers. It thrives in ignorance and lack of self-awareness. It particularly loves to reside inside narcissists!

Dictators of the World

Current World Dictators
This is a comprehensive, up-to-date list of the world's current dictators and authoritarian regimes. In 2022, there are 57 dictatorships in the world. We define a dictator as the ruler of a land rated “Not Free” by the Freedom House in their annual survey of freedom. See the interactive map and photos below or click to visit the current dictators category.

Of course, the dictators of the world will point to all the yellow areas of this map and claim, “There! There is the evil capitalists who are draining the world of resources and polluting our planet!

They are not entirely wrong, expect they think in black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. They split the world into opposite halves. Then, they step inside the Good Bubble, created entirely inside their mind and spew out their pent-up boiling hate, vengeance, and destructive tendencies on everyone else. They never take responsibility for themselves. They are the consummate victim, and always the hero in their narcissistic story. And so, it is in this way that we (the human race) will split the planet into two unreconcilable halves and all die together in a seething puddle of hate.


Terror Groups

One step behind dictators and authoritarian rulers of the world are terror groups such as Boko Haram, ISIS, and Taliban (which actually managed to retake control of Afghanistan bumping them back up to the dictator map above). The map below shows terror groups around the world and provides a list of largest terrorist groups worldwide.

These are groups of people who twist words and religions to bolster their brutal causes. They are mostly stateless centers of terror who are trying to grab some land and people who they can crush and ruin.

2021 Global Terrorism Index
Overall Terrorism Index Score: GTI is a composite measure made up of four indicators: incidents, fatalities, injuries and property damage. To measure the impact of terrorism, a five year weighted average is applied.

Hate Groups

One step behind terror groups are hate groups. Rather than centering their brutal activities in one spot or country, hate groups operate like a distributed network that hock, sell, and propagate hate. It is easier than ever to breed hate with the advent of the Internet and people who live their lives online.

Hate groups traffick outrage and outlandish accusations designed to divide the world into Us and Them, into people you can trust and people you can’t trust. Hate groups are insidious and invade peoples minds like a drug. Once you become addicted to hate, it is an addiction that is harder to kick than heroin. It is a poison to your mind that is more destructive than Meth. Hate literally changes the neural pathways of your brain.

The following images are from Jigsaw, an incredible website that helps you visualize hate.

Red Pilling: Signalling allegiance to a group or ideology often becomes an all-consuming project for extremists. Even once an extremist has been formally admitted into a group or online forum of extremists, formers described the need to prove themselves as “down for the cause” or “white enough” by committing more and more time and energy. This performance of dedication often escalates in a competitive fashion, resulting in hate speech and violence.
Red Pilling: The rise of informal white supremacist communities online over the last 20 years has made it easier to find, join, and become radicalized into white supremacist groups. Whereas groups in the past might have recruited at white power rock shows or amenable bars, online radicalization no longer requires this investment of in-person time and physical vetting. Today a person can spend hours online moving through increasingly radical content and discussion forums. The immersive nature of these online forums and communities can create a “new normal” that contradicts offline social norms28. This also means younger children and teens, who could not be recruited at bars or white power concerts in the past, can more easily join white supremacist groups at impressionable ages. One former interviewed had entered a white supremacist forum at age 13 and, drawn to the provocative memes and secretive chat forums, had adopted national socialist beliefs by 15. By 18, he was part of a neo-Nazi terrorist organization proscribed in the UK.
Formal and informal extremist groups often coexist online, playing complementary roles
White supremacy is a globally networked movement

Another excellent mapping project is the Hate-Map using real time data of hate events to create a map that shows hotspots and how hate is growing worldwide.

Interactive Hate Map | You need to go to the site embedded in the Hate Map, but as you zoom into an area, the number of incidences increases in the the places that appear white in the map above this one.
The Hate Map is populated with data submitted both by our internal researchers, the public and our network of volunteers. This data largely stems from publicly available news-sources and consolidations of information from other public data-sets and records. Existing records are however often limited in scope and fail to give a comprehensive picture of the global activities of the far right ranging from spread of propaganda and low-level activities through major terrorist incidents.
All data in the Hate Map is verified and quality controlled by internal researchers who are experts on far right extremism and experienced in the field of open source intelligence (OSINT) building on public sources and providing verifiable documentation before it is made available in our public-facing database and dashboard. Our researchers take great care to verify sources where there might exist any doubt. Links to external sources are provided for all our database entries in order to ensure that the public further can verify any incident independently.
Our dataset is cross referenced against the work of other institutions and organizations mapping the far right in order to ensure as comprehensive a picture of the global situation of the far right as possible, in keeping with the highest academic standards.
The Hate Map is a living document and both recent and historic events are added and verified on a daily basis. -- The Hate-Map

The Playbook

Regardless of if you are a dictator; an authoritarian ruler; a leader or member of a terror group; a leader or member of a hate group; a narcissistic boss, sibling, friend, or parent, you play from the same dirty handbook. That book repeats one mantra over and over, which is to inflict as much pain, terror, and suffering on your enemy (which is anyone who does not agree with you) while constantly claiming to be the victim. And if you can’t win that way, then you have the right to destroy everything.

This attitude, belief system, behavior is all a big cover up of who you really are. It is a smoke screen and distraction because deep, deep down inside yourself you feel inferior, impotent, dithering, confused, frighten, and like a limp Weiner. That’s why you run around the world hurting everyone else. If you can’t have it your way, then you want to be the first to destroy it!

Looking at these map, it is pretty clear we are not doing very well as species. No wonder we are not paying attention to Climate Change. Perhaps we won’t need to after all. The way things are going we will blow ourselves up before nature cleans us off the surface of the planet with climate disasters that are only getting bigger and more deadlier by the year… and this trend is only going bigger and badder not the other way.

Perhaps we all better stop, take a deep breathe, and listen to the Whale Songs again. The ones Vermont biologist Roger Payne captured and brought to us in the 1970s!

Songs Of The Humpback Whale – by Dr. Roger Payne
Gordon Snyder; 494 subscribers

Yetzer Harah

I realized this thing Lin said in the second episode of Shantaram is part of the puzzle of the Yetzer Harah.

I first heard about the Yetzer Harah while listening to Alan Watts lectures who describes it like this:

So, in Hebrew theology incidentally. That there is a thing called the yetzer harah. And in the beginning of time when God created Adam he implanted in him the yetzer hara and the yetzer hara means that wayward spirit. He put something funny in man so that man would be a little odd and it was a result of the yetzer hara that Adam was tempted by Eve who was tempted by the serpent to eat that famous fruit. And, but the Hebrew believes that everything that God created is good. Including the Yetzer Hara. Because if it hadn’t been for the yetzer hara, there would have nothing ever happened. Everybody would have obeyed God and God would have said well this is kind of a bore. 

Now that you see, you can’t you can’t just get up to someone and say disobey me, because if they do there are varying you. See that’s a double bind. Say to somebody disobey me but God is much more subtle than that. He didn’t tell Adam to disobey he told him to obey. 

But suddenly he put this yetzer hara thing in like that so that, God would say well I’m not responsible. For this thing’s going to happen on its own because what everybody wants is something to happen on its own. And everybody wants that. 

Because you see, this sensation of being you. This curious lonely center of awkward sensitivity, subject to the most peculiar feelings and pains and anxieties and all that sort of thing all that. Is an essential prerequisite for feeling something else. These two experiences go together. -- 2.4.9 Way Beyond Seeking Part 2; Alan Watts Organization

In short, the Yetzer Harah is why we do evil things, why we fear people we don’t know, why we wage wars, why we cheat each other… pretty much why we are living in the mess we made of the world today.

Shantaram tells the story of how Lin made a mess of his life (surely guided by his inner Yetzer Harah that tempted him into making a lot of bad choices that landed him in prison). Then, Lin makes a courageous choice, escapes from prison, and gets a second chance to live his life, which he is messing up again–gosh darn it!

I’m only on episode 2…so Lin is probably going to embark on different mistakes. And I bet he is going to grow from these mistakes because Lin demonstrates the capacity to reflect on his new situation and past mistakes, which pushing open the door of the prison cell inside your head, just a little bit, but if you look…there is vast and beautiful field of wisdom beyond your prison cell behind your wall of ignorance.

Is wisdom perhaps the reason God implanted the Yetzer Harah into man at the very beginning?

I suppose we will never know because clearly we are going to kill each other long before we can collectively learn how to embrace diversity and celebrate life in all its many facets and ways of being in the world.

Images For Archetypal Animations

Feature Archetypal Animation

Cucuy: The Boogeyman
Free Evil Fiend Art Prints and Artworks
Alice In Wonderland Clip Alice Falls Into a Rabbit Hole 2010 HD
Shop Alice Falling Down The Rabbit Hole Designs in Fabric
White rabbit runs and falls into a hole

Music: Down the Rabbit Hole: Emma Wallace [1] Rabbit Hole    2:02


Second Archetypal Animation

I was searching for exactly what Lin said to himself when he woke up the first morning in his friends tent in the Bombay slum. I could not find it, but I found a lot of other great quotes from Gregory David Roberts who is the author of Shantarm. So, I have sprinkled these in between the credits of where I found the images for this animation.

Shantaram TV Review

“Civilisation, after all, is defined by what we forbid, more than what we permit.” 
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“Fear dries a man’s mouth, and hate strangles him. That’s why hate has no great literature: real fear and real hate have no words.” ― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love; the passionate search for truth other than our own. With longing; the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on.” 
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn’t do or say.” 
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

Charlie Hunnam And Shubham Saraf Tell Us About How The Spirit Of Chaos (And One Drunken Night) Fueled ‘Shantaram

“While I was chained to a wall and being tortured, I realized, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.” ~ Gregory David Roberts

“The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men,’ he said. ‘It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men – it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone – the noblest man alive or the most wicked – has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God.” ~ Gregory David Roberts

“It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.” ~ Gregory David Roberts

Charlie Hunnam Fell In Love With India While Working On ‘Shantaram’ But Also Fell Severely Ill!

“There’s a truth deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We’re helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn’t always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart, just as Prabhakar told it to me, just as I’m telling it to you now.” ~ Gregory David Roberts

“Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever.” ~ Gregory David Roberts

“Some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. Some things are so sad that only your soul can do the crying for them.” ~ Gregory David Roberts

Shantaram
Inde. Bombay ou Mumbai, il faut choisir son 

Music: Shantaram (Chapter Four)Various Artists [1] Aeternum    9:16 [2] Inner Fire – Yuriy from Russia Remix    9:15

Collective Storytelling: Who Is Q & What The Heck Is the Plandemic and Anti Vaxxers All About?!!

Myths of Fear, Marks of the Beast, and the End of the World

Storytelling Species: Makers & Players of Reality Bubbles

Part 5 in The Storytelling Species Series

Conspiracy Myths

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (11/12) Movie CLIP – Three-Way Standoff (1966) HD — MovieClips

Oh How We Love Scary Tales & Stories Skirting the Edge of Being Bad

We play with reality. We do this with our minds. The world is not a perfect place and a lot of bad things happen in it. When we don’t understand something, it is in our nature to make sense of it, and we do this most often by telling each other stories. Collective stories provide a critical glue that hold people together in a common understanding of reality. But that is not all collective stories do. Collective stories activate our inner worlds. They energize them and inspire action in the world. They are powerful and people who seek power know this and they know how to manipulate stories to benefit themselves or a small few.

Recently, the idea of alternative facts and reality has entered the mainstream Western lexicon with a vengeance. It’s been confounding to watch common, ordinary facts get twisted and ripped apart, then thrown in the air like confetti. Today, pretty much anyone can be a Magician of Reality; pretty much anyone can concoct elaborate myths and illusions of reality, and then peddle their piddle as truth. People do this for lots of reasons: to entertain, to distract from something bad they’ve done, and to manipulate and misguide others to make a lot of money.

Profit & the News (or Should I Say Altered News Meant to Tantalize, Titillate, and Terrorize)

People profit from misinformation. People like Alex Jones. It is so very tempting, in fact, it is irresistible to become a Master of Illusions. If you have not heard This American’s Life episode titled: Beware the Jabberwock, now it a good time to stop reading and listen to this episode.

Image from This American Life: Beware the Jabberwock | Stories from the upside-down world where conspiracy theorists dwell.

There are two acts in this episode. The first is one is called: Down the Rabbit Hole where producer Miki Meeks picks up the story of Lenny Pozner, whose son, Noah, was killed at Sandy Hook. In the years after Noah’s death, Lenny and his family were harassed by people who believed the shooting at Sandy Hook never happened – that it was all a conspiracy. Until one day, Lenny decided to fight back. (24 minutes)

The second one is called: Alex in Wonderland. It is narrative by Jon Ronson who travels to Alex Jones’ hometown to validate the Alex Jones myth. He finds many, many holes in Alex’s recollection of his own past.

This act’s description is: Alex Jones spread the idea that Sandy Hook was a hoax, on his radio show and website for years after the shooting. He’s probably the country’s most famous conspiracy theorist. He’s even had Donald Trump on his show. Reporter Jon Ronson travels to Jones’ hometown in Texas, to investigate the story Jones tells about himself, and how he became who he is.  Jon Ronson and his producer Lina Misitzis originally created a version of this story for Audible. They also produced Jon’s latest series, a longform Original “The Last Days of August,” the never-before-told story of what caused the untimely death of 23-year-old porn star August Ames. It’s available exclusively on Audible.com.  (27 minutes)  

Fake News, Fake News — Everywhere You Look — Get Your Fake News Hit Today, Just Click Here

Much has been written about misinformation, but it was not until after the election results of 2016 that more people started paying attention to the real life effects that misinformation can have on ordinary, every day, real people. the AmericanPress Institute published a very good article: Factually: How misinformation makes money in 2019. Just a little teaser from this article:

There has been much written about how fake news websites and other sources make money from spreading misinformation. During the 2016 election in the United States, it even became a cottage industry.

Now a new study quantifies just how much misinformers are profiting from online advertising. Spoiler: It’s a lot.

Because There Is Billions and Billions of Dollars Out There

An article in GWToday reports on a virtual forum hosted by GW’s Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics that explored the harm being caused by online disinformation related to COVID-19 and social media regulation (or lack there of it). This article reports that Facebook netted $17.4 billion in advertising in its most recent quarter (back in 2020).

Image from GW Today | Social Media Companies Profiting from Misinformation | June 19, 2020

“Fear mongering, fraudulent groups are using social media to scam users with false rumors and fake claims about COVID-19,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said. Foreign actors including Russia, but not exclusively there, are flooding platforms with conspiracy theories and lies to sow national dissent as America protests racial injustice. Even our own president is using social media to fan the flames of intolerance and hatred during this precarious time in the nation’s history.”


So, Let’s Hurry Up and Make a Page That Misleads, Misguides, and Makes Lot’s of Money TOO!

Insider reported in October of 2020 about 40 Facebook pages identified as ‘super-spreaders’ of election misinformation that were reaching million of users.

Image from Insider | In this photo illustration a Facebook logo seen displayed on a smartphone.
Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

The Bigger the Lie — The More We Will Make!!

Sadly, we know how this misinformation cumulated into the Big Lie touted by Trump and his diehard cronies in the January 6, 2021 insurrection. In a letter to the editor of Lehigh Valley Live, one person summarizes the danger this type of information presents to us all.

Image from Lehighvalleylive | One of the supporters of President Trump who stormed the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6 carried a confederate battle flag into the rotunda.Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

The Big Lie headlines once again. Joe Biden and political commentators reference “the big election lie” to describe President Trump’s narrative regarding the election results. With repetition, the big lie takes on a life of its own. It becomes the truth to many and empowers its believers to think and act according to itself. Trump, his big lie and the believers of the big lie are cited by non-believing white people as the destroyers of democracy and the bearers of death.

Trump’s lie may be the modern Big Lie, but what is the biggest lie, the lie that has endured years, decades and centuries … the lie that shelters itself in our hearts … the lie that is passed from generation to generation?

If we white people of good will refuse to see ourselves reflected in the white supremacy that rose up on Jan. 6, then we choose to reject the truth that will free all of us. The truth will enable us to destroy our protective wall of white privilege and co-create with all our fellow human beings a society that respects the worth and dignity of each of us.

The biggest lie is the lie we choose to live. Choose truth.

Christine M. Condon | Whitehall Township


Dark Money | Dark Secrets | That’s Reality Today

In May 2020, Open Secrets explored how dark money networks hide political agendas behind fake news sites. One of the most super successful Master of Illusions to rise in recent history is Donald Trump (who Alex Jones counts as a close friend).

Image from Opensecrts.org | ‘Dark money’ networks hide political agendas behind fake news sites | A screenshot of a Facebook ad run by ACRONYM.

“Tax records analyzed by OpenSecrets reveal ACRONYM’s most recent financial information and shine light on its cozy relationship with affiliated entities.”

“ACRONYM raised $9.4 million from secret donors during its second year of operation through April 2019, more than seven times the prior year according to its tax returns. Three anonymous donors giving more than $1 million each made up more than half of that, with the top donor giving more than $2 million.”

Terrorizing people and misleading them is BIG Business!

Misinformation Superspreaders

And still, here we are reporting on the costs and consequences of misinformation in the world. For instance, this article about the very real dangers of COVID-19 misinformation was published on Jan 6, 2021. Ironically, the day the U.S. Capitol was ransacked by people who had ingested, believed, and acted on another myth filled with misinformation fed to them by the Big Lie.

Ex-QAnon follower: It’s like a doomsday cult | 709,676 views • Jan 22, 2021

The article Misinformation ‘superspreaders’: Covid vaccine falsehoods are thriving on Facebook and Instagram explores how falsehood continue to thrive on social media. It reports how big Facebook accounts still condemn vaccines while anti-vaxxers banned from Facebook have fled to Instagram.

“In late November, researchers NewGuard, the company that rates the quality of news sites, identified 14 large public English-language Facebook pages as “super-spreaders” of coronavirus vaccine misinformation. Twelve of those Facebook pages were still active in late December, said John Gregory, NewGuard’s deputy editor for health news. He added that the majority of individual vaccine misinformation posts flagged in that November report are also still live on the site, without any factchecking label.”

Misinformation ‘superspreaders’: Covid vaccine falsehoods still thriving on Facebook and Instagram — The Guardian

Anatomy of Conspiracy Myths

Anti-Semitism, Evil Powers, the End of the World Oh, and Don’t Forget How Eve Messed Everything Up

Michael Blume, a political scientist who serves as anti-Semitism commissioner for the government of Baden-Württemberg against anti-Semitism since 2018, has explored theories of religion and the effects in the brain (“neurotheologies”). In a recent interview, he says:

Supporters of conspiracy myths believe that evil powers rule the world, says Michael Blume, who has just written a book on the subject. It is not a question of education: “You can have an engineering degree, a PhD or a professor’s degree and use all your intelligence to sink all the deeper into conspiracy myths. With regard to the QAnon conspiracy myth, Blume predicts that the movement will disintegrate after the US presidential election. The remaining followers will, however, become more radical, he fears. ‘It cannot be ruled out that further violence will result from this conspiracy movement.‘”

Interview with Michael Blume and ‘The anti-Jewish myth links the far right, radical Islamists and far left

In another interview, he was asked about Querdenken 711 and explains:

So you’re not surprised about some of the statements being spread in these demonstrations? [i.e., Germany’s anti-lockdown movement “Querdenken 711”]

Image from Wikipedia: Blood libel — an antisemitic canard that alsely accuses Jews of murdering Christian children (or other gentiles) in order to use their blood in the performance of religious rituals.

Yes, it’s always been like that. Whenever a pandemic has occurred in history, we have had two possibilities. Either we face the fear and uncertainty and inform ourselves, while living with the fact that we don’t have any ready answers. For example, we do not know when the vaccine will be available. And the other option is simply to block it out: I don’t accept the fear, I look for a group to blame. All I have to do is shout at them and go out into the street. And then everything is supposed to be fine.

Many of these conspiracy myths already existed in the 15th to 19th centuries. Sometimes it even gets a bit boring, because they are always the same building pieces. People demonstrate together, whether they are left, center, or right, but what connects them is their image of the common enemy. And that is the important thing: People are so fixated in their fears that it is not even creative. They never come up with a Brazilian world conspiracy or a world conspiracy of Quakers or the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s always, always, always Jews and women behind it.


Anderson Cooper did a special on QAnon. This myth follows the age old conspiracy myth anatomy that has long been used to demonize Jews and undesirable people right down to eating babies. It is worth watching this clip when a former QAnon follower apologizes to Anderson Cooper for believing he ate babies.

In another clip from another interview, Jitarth Jadeja explains how he found QAnon in 2017, and then spent two years entrenched in this virtual cult. His biggest regret he tells is sharing the conspiracy theory with his father.

Escaping QAnon: How he left the virtual cult after two years | 17,119 views • Oct 16, 2020

And Good Morning America explored how QAnon is tearing families apart.

Families speak out after losing loved ones to conspiracy theories l GMA | 320,010 views • Jan 27, 2021

But Let’s Return to the Plandemic Myth & Dig A Little Deeper

The myth that COVID-19 was planned follows the classic pathways of myth creations humans have been using since we began telling stories about ourselves and what has happened to us as we journeyed through time and space. It uses pseudo sources of trusted sources of information about the coronavirus. One such pseudo experts is the radiologist that Trump appointed to the U.S. Corona Task Force. Trump appointed this idiot because he preaches about the benefits of herd immunity–something Trump was preaching in his vain effort to get re-elected. To Trump, the Coronavirus was an unwelcome reality check that pulled the covers off his levees of lies and levers of deception he was using to hoodwink his supporters into believing he was looking out for them. But, he wasn’t. He doesn’t look out for anyone but himself. Every moment of his life is a transaction he must win. So, Anthony Fauci’s science-based knowledge about what was happening to us was inconvenient to Trump’s failed narrative of how he would Make America Great again. Thus, enter the pseudo expert, a radiologist with no knowledge or understanding of infectious diseases spouting off the lies Trump wanted you to believe.

Trump Adds Dr. Scott Atlas to COVID-19 Task Force After Fox News Appearance | NowThis | Aug 20, 2020

Or the doctor Trump retweeted promoting hydroxychloroquine as a legitimate treatment for Coronavirus despite overwhelming evidence this immunosuppressive drug normally used as an anti-parasitical treatment for malaria had significant risks of triggering a heart attack in Coronavirus patients. In this same video the Trump greatly amplified through his mindless retweet, this pseudo doctor blames America’s current health problems on demon sperm. I’m not exaggerating…I really, really wish I was, but Trump really retweeted this doctor.

White House press secretary discusses the president’s controversial comments on COVID-19 — CBS: Jul 29, 2020 — DailyBeast: Kayleigh McEnany Struggles to Defend Trump’s Demon Sperm Doctor Retweets

Trevor Noah explains it much more plainly.

Keeping Up with Corona: Twerking Contests & Dr. Demon Sperm | The Daily Social Distancing Show — Jul 28, 2020

Global Goop

As you know, this sort of crazy thinking is not contained only to the United States. It is spreading globally like a goopy goo crisscrossing the glove through social media channels–being spread through anonymous document like the one I got hoodwinked into editing. It is absolutely a mind virus spreading and has many names; the most popular being “Plandemic“.

(Image: © Shutterstock) — Debunking the most dangerous claims of ‘Plandemic’ by Stephanie Pappas – Live Science Contributor May 13, 2020

Let’s Make A Myth & Make It Stick (Like Really Sticky Goopy Goop)

One story line of the Plandemic (there are many out there depending on who you want the enemy to be) goes something like this: There is a group of global elites who created the virus and unleashed it on the world to make more money (as if global elites don’t have anything better to do with their lives than commit mass murder, well…maybe some, but this narrative is hiding something lacking in the person drawn to it).

There is something incredibly glittery about pinning all the ills of the world on some super elites (and I agree they do share a bigger burden for perpetuating many of our current problems), but it’s too glittery, too black-and-white, too clean and neat… and reality is not clean and neat, it is messy and confusing, and confounding most of the time. But that is the appeal of myths, they make sense out of ignorance, mindlessness, folly, foolishness, idiocy, imbecility, incapacity, senselessness, and stupidity.

Photo by Bebe

Now, Back to QAnon & the Shaman!!

Now, let’s dig deeper into another glittery conspiracy myth: Q (or better known as QAnon).

Remember this guy?

Jake Angeli, who stormed the US Capitol yesterday, claims he can visit ‘higher dimensions’ where ‘pedos and rapists hide in the shadows’

Well, he says Q sent him to the Capitol on January 6, 2021. His name is Jake Angeli. He is 32 and was pictured wearing a horned fur hat as he stormed the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021. He also claims others things that are very tantalizing tib bits to the myth as reported by The Sun in this article: Horned QAnon ‘shaman’ Jake Angeli who stormed Capitol says he can ‘travel to other dimensions to fight pedos’ in rant.

This article labels Angeli as Inter-dimensionally Stupid, but is he, really? Is he not rather tapping into something deep living inside all of us that is trying desperately to navigate its way through intensely troubling tremendously stressful, fully anxiety riddled, and sometimes quite terrifying times?

Everyone is looking for answers to really scary, complicated stuff that leaves even the best and brightest of us feeling incompetent and with no personal control of what is happening to us, to the ones we love, to the world. It is during times like this when myths are more powerful and important.

So Who Is Q?

Picard Meets Q for the first time | Star Trek: The Next Generation – Encounter at Farpoint

No, Q is not the beloved, mischievous character from Star Trek. Although one might just consider this for a minute. I bet the Star Trek Q is exactly who the Russian Special Disinformation Agent known as Sergei was thinking of when he scribbled out a scrappy story for his Internet disinformation campaign he had been assigned to back in 2016.

Sergei just happened to hit gold dust when he scribbled down and spewed out his fictional character Q onto the social media channels he had been assigned to pollute. Oh how the angry Americans he was interacting with gobbled Q up in the lead up to the 2016 election. Sergei crafted his mysterious Q to have mysterious access to all the dirt on Hillary Clinton. Since then, Q has evolved into the great peculiar leader of QAnon, a conspiracy theory/myth alleging there is a battle between good and evil in which the Republican Mr. Trump is allied with the former.

Sound familiar?

Good Bubble | Bad Bubble

It should be. It is the classical story arch all great stories and myths follow. Returning to our good friend Mr. Trump, it is as if he found and is guarding the good bubble of reality for all of us to step into and be safe just like Glinda the Good Witch of the South who arrived just in the nick of time to help Dorothy survive the land of Oz.

Glinda the Good Witch of the South in the Wizard of Oz

But if you have a good bubble and a good witch, there must be a bad bubble and a bad witch, right?

I’m Melting! – The Wizard of Oz (7/8) Movie CLIP (1939) HD

And This Guy Named Q

The Wall Street Journal reported on this newest (and pretty strange story) about this guy named Q saying: “QAnon followers are awaiting two major events: the Storm and the Great Awakening. The Storm is the mass arrest of people in high-power positions who will face a long-awaited reckoning. The Great Awakening involves a single event in which everyone will attain the epiphany that QAnon theory was accurate the whole time. This realization will allow society to enter an age of utopia.”

So, Sergei still sits in his sod hut somewhere on the Siberian Tundra typing out tangy new details about Q while chomping on Spicy Cheetos and shooting down shots of vodka. Sergei is particularly proud about how QAnon has inspired enthusiastic new believers to carry out a despicable vandalizing attack on 3 galleries in Berlin. These vandals used some oily substance, which they threw on ancient artifacts such as Egyptian sarcophagi, stone sculptures and 19th-century paintings held at the Pergamon Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie and the Neues Museum sustained visible damage during the attack on 3 October, as reported by The Guardian. Reportedly, they did this because these museums were thought to be one of the centre of ‘global satanism’.

This is crazy stuff, right? But it is happening now in 2020 landing it right up there with the man who drove up from North Carolina, entered a beloved family pizza place called Comet Ping Pong, and shot off rounds from his rifle. Terrified families threw themselves and their children under tables while he babbled about freeing the fictional children enslaved in the basement of the pizza joint by Hillary Clinton and other Democrats elites. It is a very sad moment now known as Pizzagate.

Splitting — The Magic Ingredient of Conspiracy Myths — A Kind of Mind Bubble That Tend to Pop Pretty Fast When It Hits the Rock of Reality (Mother Earth… the ground upon which all life must stand upon)

To spin his illusions Sergei counts on our human fallibilities that get heighten during times of highly charged social unrest such as current American politics or the pressures of globalism or the looming calamities Climate Change promises to rain down on us. Sergei knows when humans feel stressed and not in control of their stress, he can prey upon the looming hopeless and despair threatening to crush them. When people feel like this, it is easy to lure them back into an immature and destructive psychological defense mechanisms called splitting.

Splitting allows humans to make just about anyone or anything into an instant enemy. Sergei knows this and makes his mysterious Q just vague enough so people project whatever they want into his fantasy character. Once frighten desperate people have their leader, it is very simple to create an enemy out of just about anyone or anything in 4 easy steps:
Step 1) Take ordinary reality and cut it into good and bad parts,
Step 2) Walk inside the good bubble created by splitting reality into polar opposites,
Step 3) Inhabit your good bubble and invite your friends, then zip up your bubble,
Step 4) Everything remaining outside of your good bubble is the enemy, this is the bad bubble that must be popped.

Anyone can do this. In fact, we have all done this because it is a normal psychological defense mechanism all children pass through on their way to becoming adults. It becomes a maladaptive psychological defense mechanism when adults continue to do it long into their adult years. When it becomes the only thing they do to deal with the unpleasant aspects of reality it can be pathological. One of the best write ups I have read describing psychological defense mechanisms (i.e., they range from the most highly evolved and mature mechanisms to the most neurotic, immature, and pathological mechanisms) is this excellent blog simply titled: Defence Mechanisms.

Previous Post in Storytelling Species: Part 4: Collective Storytelling: The Stories We Tell Become the Myths We

Collective Storytelling: The Stories We Tell Become the Myths We Live

Next Post in Storytelling Species: Part 6: Individual Storytelling — The Magic Ingredient

Part 6 of Storytelling Species Series | Individual Storytelling — The Magic Ingredient

Related Resilience Resources to Series

Facebook Folly … The Mistake & The Fake
Weaving Reality — So Many People, So Many Versions
The Magical Calculus of Consciousness
In Response To Π & Jan 6, 2021
Rational vs Intuitive
Mother of Grief | 2020
Now — The Taoist Way
Blood
Conflict — Nourishing Fruit or Poison Apple
What Do I Do With the Mad Inside Me
The Boy Who Ate the Wrong Part of the Crocodile
We’re Losing Time
Presencing
Wake UP, Wake UP
The Sea Within Us

The Story of How We Created the Sea of Misery & Misfortune

It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.” ― Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Storytelling Species: Makers & Players of Reality Bubbles

Part 2 in The Storytelling Species Series

The Sea of Misery: What Have We Done As Country…As A People?


In Part 1 of this blog series, I wrote: “As the global pandemic made its watery march around the world, I began to see stories shared by people I thought I knew that shocked me. Most barely clung to reality. Rather they floated in the air like blithe, colorful bubbles reflecting what was happening, but with a strange, surreal spin to it. Given the freakish, unearthly nature of these stories, most would pop upon encountering the first Blades of Reality growing out into the Sea of Being that we all live within and must comply to basic cause and effect realities. When this happens, then fate will run its course drawing momentum and energy from the psychic contents spilling out.”

While I wrote these words, a pro-Trump mob was descending on the Capitol of the United States. Thousands of people participated in the insurrection. It was a savage siege. One fatten up on lies and misinformation designed to trigger and incite the submerged psychic energies of the deep currents of White Supremacy that runs through our country. The President and his power-hungry cronies breathed new life into this diabolical narrative. They proved adept in using symbols and images to inspire and consolidate lots of fringe groups who are nursing their hate in chat rooms and shooting ranges. What Trump did is no small feat. He provided a center of gravity for all these fragmented groups to orbit around and synchronize their hate.

Image from The New York Times | Decoding the Far-Right Symbols at the Capitol Riot | By Matthew Rosenberg and Ainara Tiefenthäler | Jan. 13, 2021 — There were militia flags and banners of extremist groups, as well as absurd images of dinosaurs and comic book logos that belied the violence that was to unfold.

Once uniting all these discombobulated groups, Trump pulled them tighter into his circles of lies crafted to create even more mistrust, fear, and hate. His revolting bitterness fermented and grew even more toxic in groups such as QAnon (a disproven and discredited far-right conspiracy theory alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against U.S. president Donald Trump, who is fighting the cabal), Proud Boys (a group who refers to themselves as God’s warriors), the boogaloo movement (a loosely organized far-right, anti-government, and extremist political movement in the United States), the Three Percenters (re an American and Canadian militia movement & paramilitary group described as having right-libertarian and far-right ideology), and many more descended on the Capitol.

Warner Leger of the Anti-defamation League warns throughout 2021 there will continue to be flash points like we saw on the 6th

How Were Pro-Trump Extremists Able To Storm The U.S. Capitol? — January 07, 2021–Peter O’Dowd 

Image from Here & Now: Damage is seen inside the Capitol building early on Jan. 7, 2021, in Washington, D.C., after supporters of President Trump breeched security and entered the building during a session of Congress. (Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images)

Watchdog Group Warns Far-Right Extremists Feel Emboldened, View Capitol Mob As A ‘Watershed Moment’ — January 11, 2021 — Peter O’Dowd, Serena McMahon

Image from Here & Now: Security forces clash with President Trump’s extremist supporters after they breached the U.S. Capitol security in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

FBI Warns Of Extremist Violence Ahead Of Inauguration — January 14, 2021 — Former FBI special agent and domestic terrorism expert Michael German joins Here & Now’s Peter O’Dowd to discuss security concerns following last week’s deadly breach of the U.S Capitol. “Law enforcement has so long turned its gaze away from these far-right groups, they don’t really know what’s going on.” “What shocks me that this has been a patterned for a number of years—Portland, OR and Michigan.”  “In this group, people were trained by the US military.”

Image from CNN: Terrifying scope of Capitol attack becoming clearer as Washington locks down for Biden’s inaugurationBarbed wire is installed on the top of a security fence surrounding the Capitol.

So irresistible was Trump’s Monkeyshine for the Mind, violent chatter continues although they are scrambling for platforms that will tolerate their hate. In short, Trump and his minions have turned Washington, DC into a war zone just before the inauguration of Biden and Harris.

Image from CNN: Terrifying scope of Capitol attack becoming clearer as Washington locks down for Biden’s inauguration Members of the National Guard stand outside the Capitol on January 14, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Alternative Realities

How do so many people get hoodwink into believing and then acting on an alternative reality

Image from CNN: Terrifying scope of Capitol attack becoming clearer as Washington locks down for Biden’s inauguration Jacob Chansley wore a horned headdress inside the Capitol.

With participants such as Jacob Chansley (who is known as the QAnon’s Shaman), I was very tempted to write the whole thing off as a dreadful and misguided fantasy.

But then, someone called my lived experience a fantasy. 

Mind Matters

Narratives, fantasy, and imagination have always served as powerful tools for humans to mold and shape reality in accordance to their deepest desires and benefit. When thousands of people storm the US Capitol with some willing to commit murder or die, there is something deadly real going on, even inside a fantasy story chock full of lies.


Narratives, Fantasy, Lies & The Rise of Western Civilization

Narratives, fantasy, and imagination are used by storytellers to create mind nets that are cast into the depths of the individual and collective human consciousness. They are especially effective in the unconscious realms of the human mind. Without myth, fantasy, or sacred symbols, human beings would probably sink back into the Sea of Unconsciousness from which we emerged long ago, becoming ignorant beings again who are guided by nothing more than animal instincts. The magical Alchemy of Mind that man can do is because he is conscious. It allows human beings to make their inner reality an outer reality. It is a power that has defined the Rise and Fall of great civilizations for time immemorial.

Lloyd’s Rise & Fall Playlist

Western Civilization evolved much like any other civilization, though it developed a distinct appetite for gobbling up other groups of people by conquering them. Throughout time, the winners of such conflicts are able to consolidate even more power and gain more resources (often more than they need) along with obtaining the right to write the history of how they came to be the superior human beings. Such historical narratives are not really about the past, but rather they are meant to set the Stage of Mind for the living members inside the group (aka Western Civilization) to inspire them to move forward together in a specific pattern. In the case of being a conquering people, the narrative is intended to inspire the belief that they are the glorious, chosen people bestowed with the manifest power to conquer and control other people. The sole purpose of this collective belief is to grow even stronger and to become even more powerful

Myth, fantasy, and fibs have always served as cornerstones for just about every group of people who have ever aspired to be something greater than they were. Indeed, myth, fantasy, and fibs have proved to be essential tools of the mind needed to consolidate the psychic energy of individuals who are needed to conduct the desired action. Civilizations are nothing more than a bunch of human actors performing in such a way necessary to build the desired empire (in other words, they are following the script and playing their roles). Such narratives are imbued with the numinous power of myth and legend. The greatest empires that have ever existed in Western Civilization have attained their greatness by drawing from this dark, mysterious, deep well that lives inside every human being. It is a well that extends all the way down to an inner sea, a collective sea, that is constantly flowing and constantly influencing human reality.

Lucy Worsley’s Royal Myths & Secrets | Queen Elizabeth I’s Speech at Tilbury | PBS — A myth that gave birth to a Western Super Power

Great storytellers know how to use narratives like nets cast into this inner sea, the Sea of Unconsciousness. They fish for forgotten fantasies, desires, and lost energies that are lying below the Threshold of Consciousness. This threshold is the demarcation line between animal instinct and human knowledge. The knowledge is that using the light of consciousness, man can see his primal instincts rising and can manipulate them before acting in the world. If unconscious content gets caught in the narrative net, then an individual is vulnerable to the numinosity of the narrative. The most dangerous narrative nets use myth, fantasies, and lies to manipulate and control the minds of the individuals who get caught inside the mind net. Individuals with unconscious content caught inside these nets can become part of the narrative–parroting out the lies, myths, and stories of the ones who are casting the net to control others. In effect, they grow the net, adding their individual psychic energy to the numinosity of the narrative. The bigger the narrative net grows and the more numinous it becomes, the more people are drawn and caught inside the net. Highly numinous narrative net grow a psychic gravitational field that attracts even more people to it.

When this happens an alternative reality bubble is born. 


Alternative Reality Bubbles

As long as an alternative reality bubble keeps growing, it tends to remain stable. But sometimes they veer too far from the stable, solid ground of reality. When this happens, such a bubble can pop suddenly and dramatically dropping all the mental constructs and numinous content back into the Sea of Unconsciousness. This can be a terrifying experience because suddenly all the ideas and beliefs that have been constructed around the ego to make oneself feel safe, important, and powerful are shattered. The first pieces of the ego’s outer protective shell to fall are from the false narrative that have been incorporated into the individual’s psyche–this is how an individual merges into a collective. It is a powerful feeling because they feel bigger and greater than they did as an individaul. Stripped from their shell, it can be an experience akin to being casted upon a great and endless sea without a boat to float upon. The boat in this case are the ideas and beliefs that make the individual feel they have a sense of purpose, feel secure, feel part of something bigger than himself, feel powerful.

Alone and without a Boat of Self to float upon, the Sea of Unconsciousness can invoke a primal fear (the kind our ancient ancestors probably felt just before being devoured by a more powerful beast). Such fear is dangerous, especially when felt by a living being that has attained consciousness for now they can manipulate this fear, warping it into an energy that is capable of dreadful, desperate, menacing action in the world. The most dangerous aspect of this state of being is that an individual often does not recognize the threat is rising from inside themself. Not recognizing this, they turn their murderous rage at anyone standing near. The ‘other‘ becomes the scapegoat—the cause of all the misfortune being suffered by the individual or the group. In the end, everyone suffers from this type of circular thinking and circular action architected by the creators of manipulative myths, fantasy, and lies. These stories are carefully crafted to siphon off some of an individual’s Field of Consciousness and submerge the rest. This is how an individual’s personal psychic energy is contributed to a collective fantasy or belief, thereby growing it. Narrative nets such as these often lead to conflict, bloodshed, and war. The only antidote to this mind disease is to grow one’s individual Field of Consciousness.


Apocalyptic Cults

You think I am exaggerating again, don’t you?

I understand your mistrust. I have come to understand through my own personal adversity how we have been taught to mistrust the deepest parts of who we are as human beings–the hidden parts, the invisible parts, the inner parts of ourselves. This is where our mythical, fantastical, divine and demonic parts of being human reside and live. This is why we need stories…why we are driven to tell and share stories. They help us understand who we are, where we are, what we are as a conscious living being existing in space and time. It is an awesome ability that comes with an implicit responsibility to self and other. We are responsible for each other’s realities and wellbeing.

Before you past judgement or read further, take a break and listen to this episode that aired on Snap Judgement on January 21, 2021. It is a deep dive into an apocalyptic cult that claimed the lives of 39 individuals in the late 90s.

Apocalyptic cults are not new. In fact, Snap Judgement’s host  Glynn Washington grew up in an apocalyptic cult. He recounts in this episode the day the 39 individuals were found dead with purple shrouds put over everyone expect the last 2 people to die…meaning they took their lives in waves over a long period of time. Washington remembers everyone in the bar where he was when the news broke stopping and watching in disbelief for a minute until shaking their heads and writing the whole thing off as fanatical individuals duped into death by a fantasy. Once writing out off the tragedy as a bunch of crazies, everyone went back to what they were doing. But not Washington. He knew how close he himself came to the same fate in apocalyptic cult he grew up in and he understood how close to this edge every human being exists.

This is a podcast well worth listening to. Washington says so poignantly, “Story is the closest way of touching someone else’s divine.” Without story, we are locked out of our own divinity…our own soul. We need stories. We need to tell our story. And, we need to hear other people’s stories. This is how we know what we know. This is how we create reality.

Heaven’s Gate – Spotlight — Snap Judgement

Description of episode:

In 1997, thirty-nine people took their own lives in an apparent mass suicide. The events captivated the media and had people across the planet asking the same question… ‘Why?’ 20 years later, those who lost loved ones and those who still believe – tell their story.

Snap Judgment presents a special spotlight on Heaven’s Gate. Find out the story behind the cult that changed the world.

Heaven’s Gate is produced by Stitcher in collaboration with Pineapple StreetMedia and is hosted by Snap’s very own Glynn Washington. You can listen to Heaven’s Gate wherever you get your pods. Go on… subscribe right now and listen to all the episodes!


The Sea of Unconsciousness

I cannot talk for someone else’s experience on the Sea of Unconsciousness. I can only talk about my own experience of finding myself on this endless, hopeless inner sea. I did not intend to write about the collective experience of being cast upon the Sea of Unconsciousness when I began this series, but the events of Jan 6, 2021 compelled me to mention how our collective narratives can infiltrate our minds, seep into our thoughts, and dictate our actions. Once inside the mind, they go to work creating alternative reality bubbles.

At first these narrative feel and seem like a Godsend, the answer to the hardships and difficulties being experienced. These manipulative narratives offer explanations and answers. These stories make an individual feel that they know something everyone else remains ignorant about and this makes a person feel powerful.

When you find yourself floating on the Sea of Unconsciousness because of bad luck and misfortune such a story is very appealing. But the story is made of the sugary content of lies and misinformation, it can be a very dangerous story to cling to. The question for the United States of America now is will we rise together as a united people determined to mend the rips, lacerations, and gashes that have been made in our collective fabric of life in a democracy? Or will we let our differences, fears, and mistrust (aka mislead instincts) let us tear us apart?

I do not know.

I can only tell you how I learned to pull my inner energy back inside myself so I could float and survive another day on this hopeless, miserable sea of misfortune. All of us end up here at one time or another because no one is spared from fate.

To me, fate is a coming together of one’s own unconsciousness with the unconsciousness of others in such a way that things previously believed to be safe and normal are no longer effective at keeping you and others safe. Normality gets flipped upside down. The arrival of COVID-19 is an example of such a time, but just about any reversal or set of misfortunes can pop one’s Reality Bubble. When this happens, you get dropped on the Sea of Unconsciousness, which can often feels like the Sea of Misery because nothing feels or works normally anymore. Depending on how much of one’s self is submerged below the Threshold of Consciousness determines how well you can navigate in the new reality and how fast you can build a new boat or better Reality Bubble.

Sea of Unconsciousness — Art by Bebe

I’ve been floating on this sea for some time. For me and my family, the growing currents of misfortune began in 2015 when my husband was targeted by cruel co-workers who were eyeing his small department’s budget for their own purposes. The fateful currents of misfortune continued in 2016 when I was targeted in a massive layoff made necessary due to an ill-conceived decision by the CEO to compete with a collaborating company. I was told I would lose my job 12 days before Christmas.

One Day — Yellowstone“This video is about our time in Yellowstone on this vacation, and the day fighting bison hit dad’s car.” This is when our fortunes changed, sweeping us away in a tide of misfortune that has not stopped yet, 5 years later.

The Fates of Misfortune double down on us in 2017.

As We Laughed At Our Misfortune | Dec 17, 2020 | Against the Tide – Topic

Perhaps the cruelest moment of misfortune was when the CEO of the low-paying job I had to take after being thrown overboard the corporate ship fired me for being with my dad as he struggled for his life in the ICU at the Mayo Clinic. He had experienced a massive heart attack. Against all odds, heroic first responders revived him. And then valiant efforts of doctors, nurses, and aids at the Mayo Clinic almost brought him all the way back. I’ve written about this and what happened before, so will not elaborate now.

Who We Are & He Walks With Me — Goodbye Dad | Posted: Aug 4, 2020

This is when I let go and fell into the Sea of Misfortune & Despair. I did not let go because my father died. I let go due to the cruelty of others…due to calculated callousness I had been experiencing before dad died, and then even more, after dad died.

Looking back, I can see how my father’s death acted like a lightning rod or the gunpowder of transformation that woke me (violently) to my role and responsibility to Bear Accurate Witness to my reality. It is something I have been doing my entire life, but did not realize it.

The Gun Powder of Transformation — July 4, 2018

In the System of Consciousness we are born into as citizens of modern Western culture, those born into privileged classes or strata of people are taught not to notice or see the inequalities, imbalances, polarities, and unfairness that are baked into the system. Things that determine what a person can do, where they can live, how far they can advance in their career–things that determine how well a person can survive inside the collective system of being in the world. This is not true of individuals who are forced to survive at the bottom of the system. They see the inequalities because not seeing them can mean the difference between life or death.

Our modern System of Consciousness has been constructed to steal the blessings and resources meant for everyone living inside the system and redirect it unto a few. Most of the civilizations that modern man exists inside is like the lottery–everyone buys into the belief that anyone can make to the very top if they just work hard enough and long enough. The truth is, which is the reality of the system, is that making it to the very top of the system is very rare. Most modern Western systems purposefully deprive people of what they need to live so that a few at the top who have made it can have a lot. It is really fun living at the very top because it means an individual can enjoy more than they need or deserve. This very system that has diverted the blessings meant for everyone, also blames the people from whom these blessings and resources have been stolen for their own misfortune. It is a cruel, inhuman system that refuses to see another person’s reality, especially if that person is perceived to exist below others existing in social strata above them.

Being white, I was born into a privileged class and taught not to notice the inequities existing all around me. However, being my father’s daughter, I was taught better than this. He showed me how to see them and how to hold all people as equal, beloved, and valuable. From an early age, my father taught me how to Bear Accurate Witness to my reality. It is something I would be punished for over and over again. And, I would learn there are many nuances existing inside the ‘superior’ class of people and that those who do not obey the silent rules and expectations of conformity would be throw into the Sea of Misery without a boat or any hope of rescue.


Scapegoats, Whipping Boys & Aunt Sally

Let me be perfectly clear: No one deserves misfortune. And, no one deserves fake sentimentality in place of true empathy, compassion, and help in the wake of the Maelstrom of Misfortune. No one asks for it, at least not consciously. And most people who are just trying to survive in our modern world have done nothing to deserve it. Rather, they are victims (scapegoats) of a system of consciousness we have evolved as humans to live inside. The one we live inside today is sick, lopsided, failing. It is a system that has engineered misfortune, injustice, tragedy, trauma, and grief to effect and impact some people more than others. Our modern system of consciousness channels blessings meant for everyone living inside the system onto a few.

Our systems are engineered to protect the few who are receiving blessing they don’t deserve. They are protected by automatic reactions that get triggered and expressed by the masses who reject any person who gets labeled as an oddball, an outsider, a freak or bad boy/girl…the wackadoodle weirdo who no one cares about.

These are deep subterranean psychological channels engineered by our system of consciousness that activate and trigger certain behaviors by the common man and woman living in the system. Most don’t even know they have been triggered by the system of consciousness they are living inside. It happens below the threshold of most people consciousness. Unaware of their unconscious reaction, they act in accordance with the expectations of the system that have been designed to maintain the imbalance of power.

When a person gets labeled as an outsider or eccentric oddity, the system gives the masses the permission to dismiss them, disengage from them (ignore them), and disenfranchise them from the benefits everyone else receives for following all the rules of the system without questioning them.

No one deserves to be a scapegoat, a whipping boy, an Aunt Sally (a game played in some parts of Britain in which players throw sticks or balls at a wooden dummy called Aunt Sally), the fall guy or girl for a wicked system. It is something that is done to them, so resources and blessings that should have naturally flow to everyone in the system is redirected only to a few who are living at the top of the system and holding the power and authority over everyone else under them. To heal this injustice, which is a disease of the collective soul, requires the entire system to stop blaming innocent people for the immoral, corrupt, black-hearted actions of those who hold power over others.

Aunt Sally — Wikipedia

When the blessings meant for everyone living inside a system are redirected unto a few, terrible consequences are inflicted on those from whom resources, benefits, and blessings have been diverted. The result is that perfectly innocent individuals suffer, more than they should, all for the good of a few greedy people. This is nothing less than the Theft of the Blessings meant for all living beings on planet Earth. It is an embezzlement conduct by a corrupted system of human being existing in a system of consciousness that has been engineered to steal the blessings meant from the masses and redirect them unto a few.

It is an imbalance engineered long, long ago.

It is dead wrong.

During the final days of the Trump Administration, we are seeing it play out in magnificent awfulness. While huge tax breaks were approved for the very rich and corporations by Republican Representatives and Senators two years earlier, the same individuals now reject raising the insufficient COVID relieve payment to individuals earning less than $70,000 from $600 to $2,000. The result of thefts like this is that the most vulnerable people suffer, especially the children as reported by PBS Newshour in this segment.

PBS NewsHour: The overwhelming impact of childhood trauma on Chicago’s West Side — Dec. 16, 2020

The Scapegoat & the Mainstream

So why does our system of consciousness, which defines all the manmade systems that we live and work within disenfranchise and scapegoat people? What exactly is a scapegoat anyhow?

A scapegoat is a goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it (Lev. 16) [Definition from Oxford Languages]

Judeo Christian beliefs contribute much material to the ancient channels of consciousness that grew to keep earlier groups of men and women safe from harm. However, what causes harm has been interpreted in vastly different ways according to the needs and environments in which the small groups of tribes of men grew. These ancient channels that hold the beliefs that sustained these ancient cultures–beliefs such as a goat can symbolically hold the sins of the people and be sent into the dessert to die for their sins–continue to flow through the channels of consciousness that live in the minds of modern men and women existing within Western Civilization.

We even have a word for this: Mainstream.

The banks of the mainstream hold and maintain the most commonly held beliefs and conventional ways of being in the world. It is broad and shallow. The banks of the mainstream are mostly made out of foregone and often very primitive social and cultural taboos.

Tribute to Cider | Jan 1, 2020 | This is definitely about taboos…thank you Cider for showing me!

The Banks of the Mainstream & the Role of Taboos

Many Western Civilization’s taboos originate from ancient Greek and Roman cultures, which themselves absorbed and assimilated the cultural substrate of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Western Civilization that we recognize today was chiseled out in medieval Europe. Some of the most powerful sculpting tools was Medieval Christian religion and feudal society with its dispersed power-structures that concentrated power in kings and courts and evolved economic dynamism — see Western Civilization TimeMaps.

However, since Western Civilization is old and very big, it has absorbed many beliefs, ideas, and cultural/religious taboos from many other smaller civilizations and cultures it gobbled up in its domination of the world of men. All of it and everyone gets incorporated into the ever-growing Banks of Being, which is the template for how to fit into Western Civilization. When you flow between these banks, you are flowing in the Mainstream.

Resistance is Futile! | Jun 5, 2012

Every child born into Western Civilization or every individual assimilated into it by choice or by force is indoctrinated into its particular ways of being. Some conditioning is plain to see. It happens in schools, places of worship, the workplace. It is maintained by rules of a community, a state, a country. It is also transmitted seamlessly and invisibly from parent to child and through peer networks, flowing like water constantly moving from person to person. It contains all the hidden cultural biases, prejudices, partisanship, favoritism, and bigotry built in the system of civilization in which the person lives.

These invisible codes transmitted are the taboos that have been defined long, long ago. They include all the illicit, illegal, unutterable parts of a being human deemed prohibited by the group, the tribe, the civilization. Most people mistakenly believe if they do not utter or see these dreadful, awful, unmentionable things banned by the group, they do not exist, or at least can be caged and contained. This is dangerous myth.

Dana Williams – Fragile Ego (Official Music Video) – Dec 1, 2017 | See Lloyd’s Egos….Masks Playlist for more music videos on egos and masks | This is a playlist created by the Last DJ of Earth who is trying to save survivors of Earth after multiple global climate catastrophes that brings the world order of the 21st Century to its knees. He hacks Multinational satellites (the new overlords of Earth who rose from the ashes of the last century). Once inside, he broadcasts musical sermons from his massive playlists–the only surviving library of Earth’s musical memory. He works day and night to bring down Earth’s corporate overlords–the ones who only worship money and their own greed. Consciousness is the key. The Sapience Series tells this tale. Follow this blog for when Sapience: The Moment is Now, the first Book in this series, is available.

Taboos & Autonomous Unconscious Content

Cultural taboos are very fragile and easily broken because they are very old and worn out. People feel this, which makes individuals conceal and hide the darkest parts of self in the deepest recesses of the human mind. It makes people weak because it keeps them in the dark. They don’t grow their consciousness. The illuminated part of their mind. The part modern men call the ego. The result is that the vast majority of consciousness, remains hidden in the darkness of unconsciousness where it is ready to pounce on our puny illuminated minds directed only by the ego. Once captured, these dark parts of self can hijack the little ego.

When autonomous unconscious content hijacks the mind, a person may engage in actions extremely counter-productive to their personal wellbeing or the wellbeing of others. This is what the taboos were originally were trying to do: hold back dangerous autonomous unconscious content. But they are not working so good any more. They are breaking, fragmenting, collapsing. When they completely fall away, a huge wall of unconsciousness is going to fill the collective sphere of human existence found inside the human mind.

Dodo Falling into Vortex of Darkness | The Divine Dodo

As mentioned, long ago taboos were constructed to protect us from our inner darkness and potential to do harm to self or others. Every culture constructed taboos. And indeed, they worked and protected their members from possession of autonomous unconscious content existing inside every human being. Not all this unconscious content is bad. Indeed, a great deal of it is superior, magnificent elements of being human.

Most ancient tribes and civilizations understood this. But they also understood it took training to master the darker realms of mind. Each culture created taboos aligned with the collective needs of the group to help them survive most optimally within the environment they existed. Taboos took into account availability of resources needed to survive as a collective as well as forces of competition limiting these resources.

When a person steps outside his or her cultural boundaries, they often were punished, sometimes harshly. And some become a scapegoat for their tribe who pile on to this individual all the unconscious content the other members of the tribe does not want to accept or see about themselves. It is a shortcut that is extremely short-sighted in the long run for the wellbeing of the tribe or civilization.


The Boy Who Ate the Wrong Part of the Crocodile | 2019 | Art by Donna Alena Hrabcakova

All systems of human consciousness have evolved taboos to maintain order in the group. Taboos are simply shared customs prohibiting or forbidding discussion of or behavior deemed dangerous to the wellbeing of the group. Sometimes what is deemed dangerous drifts because it becomes taboos to maintain power by those holding power in a group. See The Boy Who Ate the Wrong Part of the Crocodile as an example of forbidden action. A taboo can also be associated with a particular person, a place, or thing.


Why Taboos Aren’t Working So Well for Modern Man

The problem for modern man is these banned behaviors and thoughts are really, really old. They have been maintained inside man’s mind for so long, their origins are mostly forgotten. During this time, they have become very rigid. Repairs have been attempted through religions and rules civilizations erected on the graves of the old ones and the old ways. But under the demands of modern Western civilization and rapid globalization, these repairs are cracking and fragmenting. Modern life is very complicated and human cooperation, understanding, and empathy are crumbling as they system grows even harsher and crueler in a futile effort to maintain control. All around the world, mankind stands at the brink of disaster–one coming from inside.

The Divine Dodo — In Maidjan | Image/gif by Bebe drawn for The Divine Dodo story

Collectively, mankind stands at the edge of a Primal Split existing inside the mind of every human being. It is a split that gives man consciousness, but the human race has been using its ability of consciousness to rejigger the flow of blessings and misfortune that are supposed to be distributed equally unto all living creatures of Earth, unto a few. This causes more misfortune to flow onto the masses. This lopsidedness has grown so powerful we are shattering all guardrails of the mind… it’s everyone for themselves… when this happens, we are very near the end.

The rearranging of blessings unto a few and misfortune unto the many has been going on for a long time. It has created an uncrossable abyss cutting the ordinary man and woman off from some the most powerful aspects of who they are as human beings. Cut off from their most powerful inner resources, the ordinary man and woman are deemed much easier to control. The people holding power use fear or rage or threat of further misfortune if they don’t behave. Basically, stay on your boat and follow the rules of your captain.

Most human beings living today have no choice but to shut themselves off from their power emanating from the darkest regions in their mind. Yes, there are fearful, even deadly, beasts there… but there are many, many aspects of being a sentient being that include spiritual, atman, ka, anima/animus–the inner being possessing transcendent knowledge. Every human being has both aspects hidden in the unlit parts of their mind. It is the birth right of every human being to claim more of their inner worlds–to grow their individual Field of Consciousness.

But rather, today, we are forced to shut down our natural impulse to grow our inner light. A soul that is not growing is shutting itself down, thereby shutting off life. To be an inner voyager is to walk a very narrow high wire between intensely uptight external systems one must fit into to live and the inner self longing to grow and know. I keep falling off the high wire. I always seem to break taboos. Here are some I’ve broken.


Family Taboos

At my father’s funeral, one of his cousins told me other members of his extended family clan had always looked down their noses at him, his brother, sister, and father. They had failed to be strong and sturdy enough probably. The tragedy began shortly after my father was born–probably exacerbated by unrecognized and untreated postpartum depression–but it led to a mental health breakdown that would result in the institutionalization of my grandmother. She had been born into a dominated cultural belief that no matter what: you got to tough it out mentality. Trauma was viewed as discipline and mental health issues were considered a sign of weakness. My grandmother retreated to her parents’ home where she did receive loving care and where my father and his siblings were being cared by his mother’s family. However, my grandfather felt humiliated that she had left him, leaving him an angry and broken man. And so it was that he and his twin brother (who probably suffered from an undiagnosed mental health disorder) schemed to get the children back into my grandfather’s custody. They began by stealing my father right out of his highchair while his grandmother hung the laundry…at least that is what my father remembers happening. He would sue for custody of my father’s older siblings, but this would take a year or so. He was deeply traumatized from this and his father was known to be overly harsh with his children. However, no one in his family confronted him or did much to help the children besides smalls acts of kindness here and there. His older brother would go on to suffer from schizophrenia. These formative years would leave an indelible mark on my father for his entire life. It haunted him in nightmares that made his scream and kick and fall out of bed two to three times a week. It was one of the reasons I moved him to comfort care in his final days because he got trapped in an endless delirium with these phantoms of long ago visiting him. I knew them well. I’ve grown up with them. I was marked with the taboo of bearing accurate witness to mental illness running in our family rather than pretending it was not there.

Image from Is Mental Health a Taboo? Why?

Friendship Taboos

As my series of misfortunes piled up in the past 5 years, the last group of people I saw on a regular basis began to distance themselves from me. I had become a radioactive Contagion of Misfortune, and I was being blamed for my own misfortune. I doubt they even knew that they were doing this, but getting invited in group activities, conversations, and outings grew more and more infrequent.

One of the most glaring exclusions occurred at the opening of the Star Wars: The Last Jedi movie. I had been invited to join my little gym group for the last several Star Wars movies–though reluctantly for I knew there was invisible resistance inside this circle of friends to even include me as one of the groups. But due to circumstances, we saw each other every single day and so probably the taboo of pretending to be a nice person all the time was more powerful than the one to exclude me because I did not quite fit in with their dominate interests and form. However, as my misfortunes piled up, the balance tipped and when this movie came out, no invitation was forthcoming.

I had just lost my job with a government contractor 12 days before Christmas and my husband had been pushed out of his just one year before. It was a very stressful time. So, my friends were steering clear of me. But I loved Star Wars and needed a distraction to my misfortune, so I selected one of the opening showings, got a seat by myself, and went by myself. I enjoyed it immensely. I didn’t feel alone because the characters feel so vital and alive in my psyche. I sat watching the credits until the lights came up. I was sitting in a row close to the screen. When I got up and made my way to the closest isle, coming down the steps almost colliding with me, were ‘my friends‘ who this time did not include me. It was awkward, very awkward. I find it hilarious now. But then it was quite painful because I understood I had been marked with the taboo of bearing accurate witness to my circumstances, which made my friends uncomfortable. I made them uncomfortable because I was experiencing misfortune and talked about it.

Image/Quote from How to Know If You Identify with the Taboo Teacher Archetype (And Why it’s an Amazing Archetype!)

Workplace Taboos

One of my first corporate jobs was working for a hospital that was conducting cutting edge research in treating AIDS and cancer. It was located on the West Coast but treated people all across the country and world. I was hired by a high-spirited, dynamic woman who was opening a new regional office in Washington, DC. I rose quickly through the ranks to Director of Development with my boss based on the West Coast. I loved the job and my co-workers (who except for the woman who hired me), I helped hire. We got a lot done, raised a lot of money, and had lots of fun being together. Not long after rising to Director, word was racing through the workplace grapevine that there was a tremendous power struggle going on at headquarters.

When I was first hired, there was a CEO and 4 or 5 Vice Presidents who oversaw various activities such as workplace giving programs, unions, special events, and so on. I worked under events planning and my boss was friendly and helpful. One by one, the VPs fell but we thought in DC my boss would remain because he was best friends with the VP making the power plays. We were wrong. He did him in too. At the next all staff meeting that doubled as the biggest gathering of volunteers from across the country, which always took place at the Beverly Hills Hilton, our new VP let us know the new rules. This was probably my 3rd all staff meeting and previously we were treated like adults who could conduct themselves appropriately and we did.

But this time was different. The new VP of everything was letting everyone know that he was the new boss in town. He lectured everyone the very first night that there would be no use of the pool, the exercise room, all employees were assigned set up and clean up shifts for the big thank you fundraiser of long-time volunteers. He made it known these were mandatory regardless of if there was anything to do or not. Having come from the East Coast to the West Coast, I was not hungry at the proper time and went for a run instead. I arrived at my assignment on time just to sit for 5 hours because everything was done. During this time, I grew famished and light-headed because I had not eaten breakfast or lunch.

My co-worker from Philadelphia told me to go get a sandwich and bring it back, she’d cover for me if anyone asked but she was sure no one would notice. So, I slipped out, went downstairs to the little cafe, and ordered a sandwich to go. While I waited, I chatted with a man eating a late lunch. I thought nothing of it until I felt a forceful tap on my shoulder. I turned around and was shocked. It was the VP of Everything. He had noticed I was gone. He forced my co-worker to tell him where I went. He had come to fetch me back. I had to go immediately. I could not even wait for my sandwich even though I said I was light-headed and needed protein. His response was tough luck. You had your lunch time. You didn’t eat. There are candy almonds on the tables. Eat those. It is pretty funny now. I was kind of scared then.

Fortunately, the man I had been talking to downstairs knew where the VP took me. He brought me my sandwich telling me that the whole thing was pretty unbelievable. I broke the taboo of being human and putting my own physical needs above the edicts of VP. Super controllers often try to imprint this taboo on everyone through loyalty pledges. They do this because they are making a power grab, so anyone willing to break their edicts becomes dangerous.

THE RAMBLINGS OF A FORMER DWP CIVIL SERVANT …

Facebook Taboos

Social media platforms are weird and very sugary environments. The idea that individuals all over the world who do not have any previous real life, face-to-face relationship of meaningful exchange can establish and maintain any kind of genuine human system is farcical. Facebook is a space that allows people to migrate to the most superficial extremities of who they have defined themselves as human being. Here, they marinate in the outermost cosmetic personas of themselves. But they do this at the expense of true knowledge of who they are as a complex being with good and bad qualities that must always be calculated and balanced in every moment, especially the liminal space where thought is manifested into words or deeds.

Because of the vast superficiality of this virtual space (i.e., a space lacking in thoroughness, depth of character, or serious thought) the worse parts of being human tend to rise inside of individuals where it quickly gains dominance and power over thought and actions, which attracts others of liked mind and superficial attitudes. It is a space that cultivates addictive personalities. People who crave the time and attention of others to such an extreme other people stop being human beings with whom they can have a real and genuine relationship but become food for their vainglorious superficial self.

Such environments tend to create vacuums of consciousness where one-sided, narcissistic thinking grows and thrives, lacking the normal brakes of reality that exists in the real, normal, drab, everyday life of being a human being who must cooperate and offer basic respect and decency to the people around them. I broke the taboo of being individual, being real, and sharing this with others pretending to be something else and ultimately, the taboo of being more complicated than the stick figure I had been made out to be by Fake Friends on Facebook.

You can read all about it in this post:

Facebook Folly: The Mistake & The Fake
In Response to Π & Jan 6, 2021

Taboo Breakers, Consciousness Warriors & the Inner War

While the folly recounted above was unfolding, my friend Reinhold from Germany (who recently deleted his account from Facebook) sent me the following e-mail. Since I am not very good at responding to messages and e-mail, he had no idea what was going on with me. And his messages are always a bit code-like, but this one really resonated with my moment. And it synched what was happening to me externally to my ancient wisdom inside me that helped me shape the structure of this blog. He said:

We are in a Historic Phase Transition… 
…like 1914
1932
1945
2001
2008
2020
and there is MORE to come!

…even…
…if there were any working solutions
WHO???
is able
even WILLING to attack it–
WHO…?????

EXODUS

No place in Taboo Land for any sacred person...

We are all sacred people, if only we could remember we were so.


Another case occurring in the nebulous realms of our collective virtual world is recounted here (Moulton/Comedy of Terrors) by Barry Kort. There are times when names and details need to be remembered and recounted so that how we get to a moment is understood. Below in Supplement Resources, I include Take No Prisoners about the AfterMath of WWII.


There is a poem Margaret Thatcher recites to the Queen in the fourth season of The Crown in the episode called ‘The Balmoral Test’? The poem is “No Enemies” by Scottish poet Charles Mackay, who lived from 1814 to 1889.

YOU have no enemies, you say?

Alas! my friend, the boast is poor;

He who has mingled in the fray

Of duty, that the brave endure,

Must have made foes! If you have none,

Small is the work that you have done.

You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,

You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,

You’ve never turned the wrong to right,

You’ve been a coward in the fight.”

Thatcher THE CROWN Enemies quote, Charles Mackay | The Crown Season 4, Gillian Anderson’s Thatcher

I call taboo breakers Consciousness Warriors.

Consciousness Warriors tend to break lots of taboos, but the war is an inner war. We need more Consciousness Warriors now than ever because modern life has grown more complicated than ever, and more unconscious than ever. Western Civilization has been herding humanity into the shallowest waters of consciousness for a long time, but now social media with its algorithms are doing this work at an unprecedented rate and level herding our collective psyche into long-standing rigid patterns designed to benefit a few.

See After Math: The Magical Calculus of Consciousness and Parrots of the Algorithms for more on how the modern our human psyche is held in ridge, well-defined patterns of behavior and conformity by algorithms.

AfterMath — The Magical Calculus of Consciousness

Coming Up Next

In subsequent blogs, I will cover:

Part 1: Individual StorytellingHow Being Outside Helped Me Observe Better Mind Stories that Helped Me Repair My Lost and Little Boat Cast Adrift on an Endless Sea of Unconsciousness

Part 2: Collective StorytellingThe Good, The Bad & The Ugly, especially Conspiracy Myths that Always Rise during Times of Great Change and Crisis

Part 3: Collective Reality — How to Mix Our Individual Stories with Collective Stories to Make a Better Shared Reality

We are a beautiful species with an extraordinary power: the power to tell stories. And the stories we tell create reality. What does your story tell?

Thank you for your time and attention.

Supplemental Resources

The culmination of Trumpism: MAGA riots at the Capitol

Eerie Theories: The Psychology Behind Conspiracy

Image from 1A aired 1/18/21: A man wearing a QAnon sweatshirt protests against US Capitol police officers as they try to stop supporters of US President Donald Trump from entering the Capitol in Washington, DC. SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

Description: Conspiracy theorists have enjoyed the Trump presidency. Wild false notions about the deaths of high-profile American figures and what was really going on behind closed doors in Washington and Hollywood took over certain sections of the internet.

But the link between online conspiracy theories and real-life behavior has clarified as conspiracy theorists like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) began running for elected office. And as President Trump, along with his associates and supporters, began questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election despite no evidence of fraud.

Find our conversation about how Qanon supporters hijacked #SaveTheChildren. 

It all came to a head when insurrectionists, who believed the president’s lie that the election had been stolen, stormed the Capitol building while Congress was certifying the electoral votes for the 2020 election.

Why are conspiracy theories so enticing? And how can we combat conspiratorial thinking?


How The Capitol Mob Compares To Black Lives Matter; Actor Wendell Pierce

Here & Now | January 18, 2021: Some on the right have compared the violence of the insurrection to last year’s Black Lives Matter protests. Historian Ashley Howard explains why the comparison doesn’t hold up to reality. And, “The Wire” star Wendell Pierce talks about the role of art in advancing social progress. That and more, in hour one of Here & Now’s Jan. 18, 2021, full broadcast. You can find more at hereandnow.org — and follow us on TwitterInstagram or join the conversation on Facebook.


Agency And Perseverance: Pastor Reflects On New Year’s Eve Watch Night Services

This interview is so inspiring. This is one way to hold onto more of our consciousness as human beings.

Description: “Host Michel Martin talks with Rev. William H. Lamar IV, pastor of Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, D.C., about the message of his New Year’s Eve Watch Night service this year.” Three things he said that really resonated in me are:

  • “2020 didn’t do anything to us. Systemic racism and America’s refusal to treat human beings as human beings did it to us.”
  • “We too much rest and must remember if we become human doings without rest, we will not accomplish much. Rest is revolutionary.”
  • “The importance of the message of perseverance must be remembered because they have always come… they won’t stop coming… in the words of Sterling Brown, we too must keep coming with love… bending the world towards justice includes efforts, work, muscle… we can build better multicultural, multi religious communities where every one has a seat at the table…”

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough Discusses His New Book On President Harry Truman

NPR’s Scott Simon talks with MSNBC host Joe Scarborough about his book, Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization. When Scott asks Joe if he will miss the ratings after Trump leaves the White House, Joe said absolutely not. It’s been exhausting and politics has been turned into a tribal sport. Thirty years ago, a liberal could sit down with a conservative and strike a deal and get things done. Today, it’s all about winning and it is killing our democracy.


Image from 1A: Stickers for voters after they have voted, sit on a table at a Cobb County voting location in Atlanta, Georgia.Megan Varner/Getty Images

What The Georgia Senate Runoff Results Mean For The Future Of The Senate

Description: “The stakes are sky-high in this week’s Georgia dual Senate runoff election. Rev. Raphael Warnock defeated Sen. Kelly Loeffler to become Georgia’s first-ever Black senator. The race between Jon Ossoff and Sen. David Perdue is still too close to call. Democrats are halfway to reaching their goal.

If Ossoff can pull off a win, control of the Senate and Congress will shift to the Democrats. If Perdue emerges victorious, control remains with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and the GOP.

Those outcomes, whichever comes to pass, will decide what goals the Biden administration can expect to accomplish. Reports indicate the president-elect’s team is optimistic for a victory given record voter turnout and Republican missteps on the campaign trail, but bracing for the consequences of defeat.

However, it might not be apparent who won for some time. Just like in November, there’s a chance that Americans won’t know which party is in control of the Senate for several days.

Plus, Congress still has important business ahead. Senators are due to meet on Wednesday as a part of a joint session of Congress to certify President-elect Biden’s victory. But some Republicans, including Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, say they will object. Although any allegation of voter fraud is completely unsubstantiated, these senators have called for a commission to investigate the 2020 election.

What will the results of the election mean for the Senate? And for the federal government as a whole?”

Guests:

Amanda BeckerWashington correspondent, The 19th

Andra Gillespie — Director, James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University; associate professor, political science

David Becker — Executive Director and Founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research; election law expert and contributor, CBS News


How Dolly Parton Lead Me to an Epiphany

Jad Abumrad is the creator of RadioLab. In this TedTalk he tells how Dolly Parton helped him understand the deeper currents operating inside people that activate during conflicts and how she found a way to unite people in a safe space even though her fans run the gamut of ideologies, beliefs, and ways of being in the world that recently have ended up in deadlock rigid conflict.


Image from Reveal’s Take No Prisoners episode I heard on Jan 2, 2021

Take No Prisoners | Jan 2, 2021

In December 1944, Frank Hartzell was a young soldier pressed into fierce fighting during the Battle of the Bulge. He was there battling Nazi soldiers for control of the Belgian town of Chenogne, and he was there afterward when dozens of unarmed German prisoners of war were gunned down in a field. 

Reporter Chris Harland-Dunaway travels to Belgium to tour Chenogne with Belgian historian Roger Marquet. Then he sits down with Bill Johnsen, a military historian and former dean of the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to ask why the Patton Papers don’t accurately reflect Gen. George S. Patton’s diary entries about Chenogne. 

The massacre at Chenogne happened soon after the Malmedy massacre, during which Nazi troops killed unarmed American POWs. The German soldiers responsible were tried at Dachau, but the American soldiers who committed the massacre at Chenogne were never held accountable. Harland-Dunaway interviews Ben Ferencz, the last surviving lawyer from the Nuremberg Trials, about why the Americans escaped justice.

And finally, Harland-Dunaway returns to Hartzell to explain what he’s learned and to press Hartzell for a full accounting of his role that day in Chenogne.  

This episode was originally broadcast July 28, 2018.

Listening to this episode, after hearing Jad Abumrad‘s and his realization about the scared space between us is complicated and perhaps only a person with a high degree of empathy can truly begin to hold and honor all these complications was striking in comparison to this story and the heat of war. Here the scared space of possibility is collapsed into instinct, repetitive training, and orders. What a man or woman might have done differently in a moment if they had more time to consider their options is not an option during war or high stress conflict. During these times, people act and the winners control the narrative, which always only tells half the truth. This is a compelling listen.


UK Judge Blocks Extradition For Julian Assange. What’s Next For The Wikileaks Founder?

I found this 3 minutes very interesting. Assange’s mental state remind me of how bad mine became due to unrelenting circumstances beyond my control. Yes, Assange brought the fury of the US upon himself when he stole and dumped classified content onto the Internet. But then, I thought back to what I heard yesterday in Chris Harland-Dunaway‘s story about Chenogne, Belgian and the notes he found in General Patton’s personal diary expressing the hope this could be covered up and never revealed. The truth is, as one of the last living army man from this day tells Chris, both sides of a war are capable of committing terrible atrocities and crime. And, it is the winner to determines and controls the narrative (or those in power).


A Creature of Habit — Hidden Brain

I also listened to this yesterday, which influenced the connections I made between all the content I was listening to as I wrote this blog. This is an excellent piece about how we develop healthy habits and unhealthy habits. A lot of what determines a healthy habit vs an unhealthy habit is how much consciousness you bring to forming it (another way to view this is how much time and attention do you apply to developing a health habit). I would further argue that putting more time and attention into developing and maintaining healthy habits has an added benefit of growing one’s individual Field of Consciousness.


Image from FreshAir: Sean Gladwell/Getty Images

To ‘Keep Sharp’ This Year, Keep Learning, Advises Neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta — FreshAir

And this is another awesome listen for developing the inner flexibility and health you need to survive the Sea of Misery when you find yourself afloat upon it… as most people have found themselves upon as 2020 unfolded… and most of us continue to float upon as 2021 begins.

A few excerpts from this wonderful interview:

On why he recommends seven to nine hours of sleep at night for optimal brain health

The brain is not at rest the way people might imagine it to be when we’re sleeping. … There are several important things that are happening. … One is, that is the time when we really do consolidate memories. So, you’ve had all these interesting experiences throughout your day — people that you’ve met, conversations you’ve had, experiences you’ve had, whatever it may be. You have these things in part because you want to remember them and add them to your life narrative.

That process of actually putting them in the memory book, if you will … really happens at the time that you sleep. That’s the “consolidation of memory” sort of phase. Some of it is actually placing the memory. Some of it is moving memories from short-term to longer-term memory and those sorts of things. So you have to be able to sleep well in order to remember well. And you also have to be able to sleep well to in order to forget well, because you want to, in order to make that life narrative as cohesive as possible, you’re doing a lot of editing along the way. … A lot of that is happening while you sleep.

Another more recent finding about sleep is that there is a sort of rinse cycle that’s happening when you sleep — a rinse cycle that allows certain neurotrophic factors to bathe the brain, but also to remove certain waste as well from the basic metabolic processes that are happening. … So during sleep, it’s really this consolidation of memories, this removal of waste and this nourishing of the brain that takes place more efficiently than at any other time during the day.


On why multitasking doesn’t really work

The idea that you move from one task to another sounds great and very efficient. The issue was that they found you actually divert a fair amount of attention each time you do that. You may not notice it yourself, but when you start to objectively measure this with different types of brain scans, scans that are measuring the function of the brain or particular parts of the brain, at any given millisecond, you find that you actually expend quite a bit of energy just to switch from one task to another. So you think you’re doing both simultaneously, but you’re probably doing neither as well as you could be, and you’re probably going to take more time than if you just did them linearly in some way.

“Science cannot rescue us from ourselves if we don’t have the leadership.”

Dr. Sanjay Gupta

On how the unrelenting stress of the pandemic impacts the brain

It’s been really challenging. I think that there is a thing about stress and the brain that has long been documented. And the headline is that stress is not necessarily the enemy. In fact, we need a certain amount of stress. It’s what gets us out of bed in the morning, makes us perform well on tests, hopefully, all that sort of stuff. But it is that second adjective you used — unrelenting — that is really problematic here. We need these breaks from stress. You need that constant sort of ebb and flow, and that’s what’s missing. Again, you don’t want it to all be good all the time, but you need to have that sort of up and down to some extent. … The idea of eliminating stress … it is not attainable nor is it necessarily a good idea for the brain.


What The Pandemic Means For Communities, Togetherness

In this short segment, Here & Now‘s Peter O’Dowd speaks with Derek Thompson, about what these shifts mean for our lives and communities. Thompson is a staff writer at the Atlantic and he talks exactly about what I am writing about here — the fragmentation of reality. He says, “Community is where you show up again and again… however during this past year, we have not been able to show up in the places we normally did.” This is worth a listen.


David Attenborough Explains How Humans Jeopardize ‘A Perfect Planet’ For Life

Here & Now‘s Tonya Mosley speaks with Sir David Attenborough and executive producer Alastair Fothergill about their new five-part documentary series, “A Perfect Planet.”

Kilauea Volcano Eruption | A Perfect Planet | BBC Earth | Jan 2, 2021

The part I most love about this clip of A Perfect Planet occurs at about minute 1:24 when Attenborough says:

Volcanoes are certainly destructive but without these powerful underground forces there would be no breathable atmosphere, no oceans, no lands, no life. We can’t control volcanoes but they’re vital for all living things on planet earth…for you.

I will advance this as metaphor to the power of story, to possessing the power of consciousness, to know that we know as human beings. Just like volcanoes result from powerful subterranean forces that break through Earth’s crust and transform our planet, so too is consciousness which erupted through the shell of instinct and routine and birthed us–a species who can think, can know things, can tell stories about who we are and where we are going. So as it is with Earth and underground forces constantly at work shaping our planet making it the perfect place for life, so too it is with our minds with unconscious forces constantly at work shaping our shared reality.


I end all my Have You Been Outside Today videos with the following questions:

What will you do with your plot of consciousness today?

More importantly, what will your unconsciousness do with you today?

It’s Going To Rain Tomorrow | Oct 28, 2020

Previous Post: Part 1 of The Storytelling Species Series

The Storytelling Species: Makers & Players of Reality

Next Post: Part 3 of The Storytelling Species Series

Story of the Death of a Father

Supplemental and Resource Posts for the Storytelling Species Series

Rational vs Intuitive
In Response to Π & Jan. 6, 2021
Facebook Folly — The Mistake & The Fake
After Math — The Magical Calculus of Consciousness
Weaving Reality — So Many Humans, So Many Versions
Deniers, Liars & Alt Reality

Facebook Folly…The Mistake & the Fake

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”  Carl Jung, The Philosophical Tree

This is a simple and very common story. It is a story about a mistake that lead to a misunderstanding that descended into fatuity. Stuff like this happens all the time between people. Most of the time, it leaves both parties feeling moronic, doltish, and foolish.

The exception is when one person holds more power or authority than another person. Then such common occurrences get channeled down a most menacing passage way. One socially designed to keep the power holder’s dignity and respectability in place while decimating the other’s social standing or means of making a living.

You think I am exaggerating?

Injustices use the energy created inside the mind to effect action in the world. Systems of consciousness evolved to divert the psychological energies generated by simple mistakes and common misunderstanding unto a few. The few are the handful of people who have amassed resources and become rich and powerful in the world of human beings. These rich and powerful folks then engineer the social systems to reroute the blessings meant for all people living within a system (e.g., a family, a tribe, a city, a state, a nation, a civilization) unto themselves. This has been happening for centuries, entrenching power unto a few people existing on the top of the social hierarchy.

Still doubt me? Watch Poldark to see how the system worked in the late 18th century and early 19th century in England–a country that emerged as a supersized powerhouse in molding how modern day Western Civilization works today. Sure Poldark is a work of fiction, but all good fiction draws upon archetypal characters acting in the real world.

Poldark: The Best of Ross Poldark | Nov 20, 2019 | Throughout the series Ross Poldark must navigate the disruption and disasters created by his childhood nemesis George Warleggan–a man born into wealth and good fortune but who wants constantly wants more than he deserves.

George sets himself against Ross because deep down George feels inferior to Ross. There are many scenes where George uses his wealth, social connections, and the law to bring Ross to his knees. He almost does. But, Ross is made of something different than George…very different.

In this clip, George and Ross point guns at each other and George asks Ross: “On what side will you fight Ross for the civilized world or the revolution?” Ross answers: “On the side that stands with humanity.”

But even a foolish, stupid thing can be turned into a source of knowledge, even wisdom, if one seeks deeper understanding and is not committed to upholding the existing system of being, most often referred to as civilization. It is for this reason I choose to tell and share this story.

To me it is a navigation map. Something an individual in a conflict can refer to as a reference point for guidance in navigating the depths of misunderstanding, especially when all the Cards of Knowledge are not being lain down on the Table of Resolution. Knowing how to navigate the strong currents created by deception, power plays, and one upmanship maneuvers can help both parties avoid dropping down into the even darker realms of being human. Down there in these darkest realms of the human psyche, mistakes can quickly transform into ugly beasts of folly that are quite capable of inflicting terrible suffering on other people, and even of swallowing a fragile ego whole, just like a snake swallows an egg.

Snake Swallowing Egg | Set to Creepy Music

You think I am exaggerating again, don’t you?

Girl With Dragon — A Mini Series Chronicling the Premonition of the Confluence of Unconscious Content that Was Going to Come Together in a Terrible Way… Some of It Was Mine… Much of It Was Mixed With the Content of Others Surrounding Me in My Life at the Point in Time

If you are like me and taught the edges of your thought are the edges of yourself and believing this, you have probably constructed a pretty nice ego (or perhaps it should be called an egg-o!..lol..) to comport yourself through life, just like I did. Most of the time, your ego construct probably serves you just fine, just like mine did. But if you are like me and believed this to be all that you are–like that pretty egg just sitting there doing nothing to invite the devastation and destruction fate so often serves–then you encountered autonomous unconscious content inside yourself but outside of your egg-o, it was probably pretty traumatic, just like it was for me.

But wait, there is more: you realize such autonomous unconscious content exists inside everyone who you love, respect, answer to at work, depend on as friends, etc., ect. When you realize this, such an encounter with autonomous unconscious content can turn into something very devastating, just like it did for me.

I chronicle it in my girl with dragon story that tells about what happened to me as my autonomous unconscious content mixed with everyone’s else around me to create the perfect dragon storm of autonomous unconscious content acting in the world.

Girl With Dragon – Part 1 | Apr 2, 2019

If you’re not into reading blogs (even super short ones), I turned this story into a video series. But, there are only 3 because during this time of my inner journey, I needed encouragement and attention. This first video got a lot of likes and comments when I shared it, but the next two seemed to reach no one. So, I stopped making them. I didn’t have any more energy inside to do it even though they made me happy. I was relying on the time and attention others were giving me then. It is not a good way to live; however, the Facebook universe is built this way. It incites us to live on the outer most edges of ourselves, which are the most public, the social roles we play in our groups and society. Facebook promises fame and fortune for those who learn how to play this game well. But, there is a dark side to this game we are all playing on this platform.


The brutality is built right into the platform (as well as other social media platforms) and it can spill over into reality in terrible, evil ways. Consider the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. This genocide used Facebook to incite terrible, brutal violence in the real world. The New York Times conducted an in-depth investigation of this genocide and reported what they found in this article: A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military

“Members of the Myanmar military were the prime operatives behind a systematic campaign on Facebook that stretched back half a decade and that targeted the country’s mostly Muslim Rohingya minority group, the people said. The military exploited Facebook’s wide reach in Myanmar, where it is so broadly used that many of the country’s 18 million internet users confuse the Silicon Valley social media platform with the internet. Human rights groups blame the anti-Rohingya propaganda for inciting murdersrapes</