“Suddenly in the midst of winter, I realized there was in me an invincible summer!” — Albert Camus, French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist
To understand the connections I will lay out in this blog, it is important to back up to a blog I posted on January 25, 2025. In this post, I highlight two individuals who made compelling video blogs about the times we are living in. One is Adam Mockler who made a must see video of what an oligarchy is. The other is economic professor Richard D. Wolff who is an American economist and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Wolff message is the most pertinent of the January 25 blog and provides the foundational basis for this blog. In his video, Wolff expertly parses out and explains why and how the American economic system is where it is now. Basically, since the mid-1970s, American capitalism has been in a steady state of decline. Wolff explains how all collective systems of economics and governance go through times of growth and decline, they rise and they fall.
Wolff describes how the American capitalist economy experienced an unprecedented period of growth from the mid-1870s to the mid-1970s. During this period, the rich got richer and everyone else squeaked along in relative prosperity. Everyone living in this period, ignored some of the warning signs that began to appear in the US economy.
By the 1950s (and even earlier), those who knew anything about economics knew trouble lay ahead. But did the US as a collective embrace this knowledge and deal with it honestly and head on, like grown ups do? Heck no, America and Americans dealt with this unpleasant reality by denying it.
Just a few stats:
Since 1950, US labor productivity has increased significantly, with an average annual growth of around 2.3%. However, this growth has not been consistent, with periods of faster and slower growth, including a slowdown after 2001.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:
1950-1970: Productivity grew at an average of 3.2% per year.
1970-1990: Productivity growth slowed to 1.9% per year.
1991-Present: Productivity growth climbed back to over 2.3% per year, with a modest slowdown after 2001.
1948-1979: Productivity grew 112.5%, while worker compensation grew 90.2%.
1979-2019: Productivity grew 85.1%, while worker compensation grew 13.2%.
1950-2018: US labor productivity increased by 299%.
1950-2024: US nonfarm labor productivity increased from 22.07 points in the third quarter of 1947 to 115.66 points in the fourth quarter of 2024.
2023-2024: Annual average productivity was revised up 0.4 percentage point to an increase of 2.7 percent.
2024: Productivity increased 1.5 percent in the nonfarm business sector in the fourth quarter of 2024.
2024: In manufacturing, productivity increased 0.3 percent.
-- Generative AI is experimental Sources:
In Brief: The Recent Rise in US Labor Productivity Apr 25, 2024 — Economist Robert Gordon has documented that the United States enjoyed a “special century” of productivity growth from ... Aspen Economic Strategy Group
Productivity has grown 3.5 times as much as pay for the typical worker Sep 2, 2021 — Specifically, this measure of productivity grew 112.5% from 1948 to 1979 with a corresponding 90.2% growth in a worker' Economic Policy Institute
Behind the productivity slowdown: A big drop in new firms Oct 18, 2017 — Since the 1950s, productivity growth averaged 2.3 percent a year. Is the culprit corporations buying back shares to ra...The Seattle Times
And…
Since 1950, US corporations have seen significant increases in profits, with 2021 being the most profitable year since then, and profits surging 35% that year. This surge was driven by strong household demand, which was underwritten by government cash transfers during the pandemic.
-- Generative AI is experimental Sources:
Profits Soar as U.S. Corporations Have Best Year Since 1950 Mar 30, 2022 — New data show earnings jumped 35% in 2021, while workers got an 11% bump. Photo: Getty Images. By Matthew Boesler. Mar...Bloomberg.com
The Evolution of U.S. Corporate Profits: Dissecting 70 Years ... Earnings that now amount to roughly $600 billion a year have been transferred from labor to capital. ... The first, from 1950-1970... cdn.pficdn.com
Fattest corporate profits since 1950 debunk inflation story ... Nov 30, 2021 — Bloomberg. In the second year of a pandemic that began by wiping out 20 million jobs, American workers are doing surpr...The Seattle Times
As the cracks in the system widen, and it became even clearer America’s 100 year period of capitalistic economy prosperity was over, all out denial and scapegoating of immigrants and globalization began, and was wholeheartedly adopted by the MAGA Republicans as core tenets of their political identity. Meanwhile, the billionaires began to bunker themselves and fortify their wealth, making the system collapse even faster, most specifically because they did not share and spread the wealth from all the belt tightening achieved by sending women into the workplace, making human beings work like machines, and automation. Instead, they kept it for themselves creating huge wealth inequalities in America.
Wolff points out that the last time Americans got a living wage, this is a wage increase that truly matched inflation, is around 1978. Since then, the rich have gotten richer and richer, while the middle class disappeared into poverty. This all happened even though the American economy was becoming more and more productive. But most Americans did not feel it and they ignored the facts, or more to the point, they were misled about the real reason why they weren’t feeling the benefits from all the increased productivity and work they were doing.
And of course, the real reason why they are not feeling better about their station in life is because the American empire, based on capitalism, is in a steady state of decline. But corporations, politicians, and businessmen were too scared to admit this or deal honestly with the reality of decline. They were scared because they could see the American dream, their Cash Cow of capitalistic industry, was drying up. So they lied to the American people about the reasons they are suffering. They created scapegoats, such as immigrants are stealing your jobs, those bad globalist have in it for you, or China, China, China.
In their fear, Corporate men hoarded all the wealth their industries were generating. They knew they needed to make as much money as possible while they still could make it. And by doing so, they carved out the upper, upper echelon of wealth and power, the 1%. Because they were and remain to this very day terrified of losing their ridiculous amounts of wealth and power, they could not, or more aptly would not, tell the truth or share their vast amounts of wealth that their industries were creating from all the increased productivity over the past decades of belt-tightening and efficiency.
Who suffered? Why of course ordinary workers did. Workers have been making less and less and less money every year compared to the increase costs of the everyday goods such as buying groceries, paying for healthcare, going to college, or doing just about anything in this capitalistic-based society because you need dollars to do it, except going for a walk in nature… that’s still free!
Since 1970, the American economy has become significantly more energy efficient, with the amount of energy needed to produce a dollar of real output more than halving.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:
Energy Efficiency Gains:
In 1970, the US economy required approximately 14,400 BTUs of energy for every dollar of output.
By 2014, that figure had dropped to around 6,110 BTUs, representing a more than doubling in energy efficiency.
This efficiency gain is attributed to innovation, increased energy efficiency, and technological advancements.
Economic Growth:
Since 1949, the US economy has grown by a factor of 8, from $2.0 trillion in real GDP to $16.1 trillion in 2014.
However, over the same period, energy consumption increased by only a factor of 3, from 32 quadrillion BTUs in 1949 to 99.32 quadrillion BTUs in 2014.
Productivity Slowdown:
While the US economy has become more energy efficient, productivity growth has slowed since the early 1970s.
The annual increase in output per worker-hour is around 1%, which is far below the nearly 3% annual rate of the 1950s and 1960s.
Wage Stagnation:
For much of the past generation, pay for the vast majority of workers has lagged behind overall productivity growth.
From 1973 to 2013, hourly compensation of a typical worker rose just 9% while productivity increased 74%.
-- Generative AI is experimental
Sources:
Wage Stagnation in Nine Charts | Economic Policy InstituteBut for most of the past generation (except for a brief period in the late 1990s), pay for the vast majority lagged further and fu...Economic Policy Institute
Chart of the Day: In 2014, the US Economy Was More Than ...Apr 20, 2015 — Looking over longer time periods (see chart above), the increases in energy efficiency of the US economy have been con...American Enterprise Institute
What's better, worse about US economy now than in '70s, '80sNov 7, 2022 — The 1970s certainly had the highest U.S. peacetime inflation of the 20th century. The Consumer Price Index had been new...Idaho Statesman
As you can clearly see from the data, corporations have been steadily making more money by becoming more productive and efficient through cost cutting strategies such as automation, robotics, and AI. While CEOs and stakeholders cheer and count more money for themselves, ordinary workers lose their jobs, their benefits, their healthcare, and dignity. To me, when corporations talk about efficiency, it is code for cruelty.
AI OverviewLearn more
Since 1950, corporations have saved a significant amount of labor through robotics, automation, and AI, with estimates suggesting that automation has led to a substantial increase in productivity and efficiency, while also potentially displacing some jobs.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:
1. Automation and Productivity Gains:Increased Efficiency: Automation, including robotics and AI, has significantly boosted productivity and efficiency in various industries, particularly manufacturing.
Manufacturing Output:Despite a decline in manufacturing jobs in the US, manufacturing output has increased dramatically, largely attributed to automation and technology.
Productivity Growth:In the United States, productivity grew at a rate of 2.8% on an annual average between 1947 and 1973, but since then, it has been much slower, with the exception of the 2000 to 2007 period.
2. Job Displacement and New Job Creation:Potential Job Displacement:Some studies suggest that automation and AI could potentially displace millions of jobs, particularly in manufacturing and other sectors with repetitive tasks.
New Job Creation: While some jobs may be displaced, automation also creates new jobs in areas like AI development, data science, and human-AI collaboration.
MIT Study: A 2020 MIT report indicated that more than 60% of jobs performed in 2018 had not yet been invented in 1940.
3. Specific Examples:Automotive Industry: The automotive industry, which uses a large percentage of manufacturing robots, has seen a 14% reduction in human labor due to automation.
Robots in the Workforce: There are 2.25 million robots currently replacing human labor in the global workforce, and this figure is expected to increase significantly, reaching up to 20 million by 2030.
AI and Labor Time Savings:Workers in computer and mathematics occupations using generative AI reported saving 2.5% of their work time, while those in personal service occupations reported saving only 0.4%.
Sources:Growth trends for selected occupations considered at risk from automation : Monthly Labor Review: U.S. Bureau of Labor StatisticsBureau of Labor StatisticsAssessing the Impact of New Technologies on the Labor MarketFor example, in the United States, productivity grew at a rate of 2.8% on an annual average basis between 1947 and 1973, but since...Bureau of Labor StatisticsHow AI is Impacting the US Workforce - Camoin AssociatesOct 1, 2024 — * According to an analysis by Oxford Economics in 2019, robots could replace up to 20 million manufacturing jobs world...Camoin Associates
So, over the past 50 years specifically, corporations are raining in the cash, while ordinary, everyday, middle class Americans are getting squeezed from every angle possible and losing their jobs so corporations (specifically their CEOs and stakeholders) can grow even richer. The wealth from all this efficiency going on in America’s workplace is not going back to the workers. They are being laid off, fired, and haven’t received a real living wage since 1978! Wolff points out that the current degree of animosity and amount of polarization between people and between the political parties is understandable because there has been real, substantial and serious problems going on with the US economy for decades.
Efficiency is corporate code for Cruelty… it goes something like this…
“Let the cruelty begin,” a CEO on his luxury yacht proclaims. “Throw those excess workers overboard! They’re hurting my bottomline! Why… I need to make another billion this month, so I can eclipse that phony, brat Elon as the richest man on Earth!”
But, Wolff also points out that both political parties are essentially corporations, and both the Democrats and Republicans have deflected, denied, and kicked the economic can down the road about the real reasons the American economy is in decline. The Democrats have done it a little less than the Republicans. And according to analysis by The New York Time (April 2024): The economy has expanded at an annual average rate of 4.6 percent under Democratic presidents, compared to just 2.4 percent under Republicans.
Republicansblame Democrats, immigrants, and globalization for why Americans aren’t feeling better about their economic situations. Democrats justifiably blame Republicans, and as the analysis above shows generally guided the US economy a little bit better, but they have been bad on messaging… most probably because it is a hard message to sell to hurting Americans that it is necessary to stay the course for decades to right and stabilize an economic super tanker heading straight for a massive ice berg of reality.
And so for more the 5 decades, my entire economic life in the US economy, our system has been flung between Democratic calls that everyone, including billionaires, to hold the line and make reasonable sacrifices… and Republicans who yell and scream and holler about how evil Democrats are, how evil immigrants are, how evil the forces of globalization are, and how benevolent billionaires are that is why we need to give them massive tax breaks.
But this was a lie. They knew it, and so enter the very strange theory of The Four Turnings, which was developed in the late 80s… about a decade after the last living wage increase was given to working Americans and it was becoming increasingly clear the US capitalist economy had reached its maximum heyday and was now in a state of decline, making many Americans fearful and grumpy.
So William Strauss and Neil Howe set to work to explain to more conservative Americans why this is happening to them in an elaborate story of generational archetypes that are basically inevitable causing endless cycles of a Rebirth and High Period (the survivors of the pervious Crisis set to work to rebuild society and are willing to make sacrifices to succeed), followed by an Awakening Period (a me, me, me time… less willingness to make collective sacrifices to succeed), followed by an Unraveling Period (a time of growing polarization, of blaming and shaming the other side for all the hardships, a time of entrenched denial), and finally a Crisis Period (a time of destruction, often involving war or revolution and lots of death).
Representation of the Intergenerational Wheel Envisioned by Strauss and Howe
Now, if you really believe this a gospel, enter in a new and very dangerous ideology: Accelerationism, pioneered by Nick Land, and English philospher acclaimed to be the Godfather of Accelerationism. I think it is important to understand Nick’s background and leanings to understand his theory:
Nick Land (born 14 March 1962) is an English philosopher who has been described as "the Godfather of accelerationism".[2] His work has been tied to the development of speculative realism,[3][4]and departs from the formal conventions of academic writing, incorporating unorthodox and esoteric influences.[5] Much of his writing was anthologized in the 2011 collection Fanged Noumena.
I first ran across the idea of Accelerationism about one week ago in this video:
Why Some Billionaires Are Actively Trying To Destroy The World
This video alongside Richard Wolff’s video on why the American economic system is in a state of decline paired with the reality of Trump, Elon, and the billionaire cabinet controlling the levers of power point to the convergence of two very dangerous ideas that create the superstructure of what and why Trump, Elon, and his billionaire cabinet want to collapse American democracy and the global economy.
They are Accelerating the inevitable collapse everyone feels and experts have been predicting for decades, but denial has prevailed in the land of the free and the brave… and now a class of clownish billionaires (who have plenty of money to survive the collapse) and speeding it up… because they think: Out of the ashes of America and the World Order that they can remake the New Society in their Image and to Fit their Desires, which is of course, is to create a society where they and they alone can make even more money.
This got me thinking. Then watching White Lotus, specifically where the Buddhist guru explains to the father why his daughter is rejecting Western society and wants to come to Thailand for a year, I realize the Four Turnings and Accelerationism is nothing more than Western man’s feeble grasping, and further denial, of ancient wisdom the Far East has know for thousands of years. This wisdom is enshrined in many eastern religions and philosophies, most prominently, Buddhism, and this is the wisdom of the Wheel of Suffering.
Representation of Buddhist Wisdom of the Wheel of Suffering Powered by Ignorance
What Trump just did starting a Global Trade War and what Elon and now Trump’s billionaire loser cabinet are doing by firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers is nothing short than blowing up the current global economic order and collapsing democracy so that they can rise as super heroes to guide the survivors back into an Authortarian Oligarchic Society.
Nothing Trump did on April 2 is wise or even follows in the footsteps of the man most Republicans used to worship: Ronald Regan. Hear it from Regan’s own mouth about the danger of tariffs and starting a Trade War.
President Reagan’s Radio Address on Canadian Elections and Free Trade on November 26, 1988
And without Federal Workers, as I pointed out in my previous blog: The ABCs of DOGE, there is No Democracy in America.
Feature Animation for the ABC’s of DOGE
I just discovered this video today! Boy, is it dead on target regarding the themes of this blog.
The Hidden Agenda of Trump & Musk EXPOSED: What They’re Not Telling You! || Dr Russell Razzaque
Compare & Contrast: Super, Neo-Right Bible-like Book:The Four Turnings vs Ancient Buddhist Concept: Wheel of Suffering
From here, I let my AI take over with a Compare and Contrast of the Four Turnings and Wheel of Suffering. But it missed what I was apprehending and so I asked it to consider this comparsion from this angle of thought:
But how does generational ignorance in Strauss-Howe theory for The Four Turnings contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy in a sense that each generation chooses (whether consciously or unconsciously) to ignore certain fundamental lessons, insights, or struggles from the previous generation, leading to a collective IGNORANCE that inevitably leads the 4th generation to repeat the mistakes of the 4 generations before it? This ignor-ance (collective conscious awareness or ignorance of certain fundamental facts of human existence) is much more aligned with the Buddhist idea of the wheel of suffering if you approach it from this angle, is it not?
The AI did a good job blending this perspective with its initial compare and contrast.
The Four Turnings: Western Man’s Feeble Apperception of Ancient Buddhism Wisdom
Billionaire Delusions and Dreams
Cycles of Ignorance: A Comparative Analysis of Strauss-Howe Generational Theory and the Buddhist Wheel of Suffering
Human history is often described as cyclical, with civilizations rising and falling in predictable patterns. Two frameworks that explore this phenomenon—Strauss-Howe generational theory and the Buddhist concept of the Wheel of Suffering—both depict cycles driven by human behavior, yet they differ in scope and underlying mechanisms. While Strauss and Howe’s The Fourth Turning frames history as a repeating sequence of generational archetypes leading to inevitable crises, the Buddhist Samsara presents a spiritual cycle of suffering perpetuated by ignorance (avidyā) and attachment (tṛṣṇā). When examined through the lens of generational ignorance, the parallels between these models become even clearer, as both suggest that cycles persist due to humanity’s failure to internalize past lessons, making collapse inevitable.
Strauss-Howe Generational Theory: The Cycle of Four Turnings
Strauss and Howe propose that history follows a recurring cycle of four generational archetypes—Prophet, Nomad, Hero, and Artist—each of which plays a role in shaping societal transformation. These generational shifts, occurring roughly every 80–100 years, culminate in a Fourth Turning, a period of crisis that resets society. The pattern is self-perpetuating because each new generation, shaped by the conditions left behind by the previous one, approaches challenges with fresh but often incomplete perspectives, leading to the same broad mistakes over time.
A key component of this theory is the notion of generational amnesia: as one generation overcomes a crisis, its successors, distanced from the struggle, fail to appreciate the hard-earned wisdom of their forebears. For example, the Hero generation (e.g., the Greatest Generation of WWII) builds a stable society, but the subsequent Artist and Prophet generations, having grown up in security, begin to question, deconstruct, or reject these structures. By the time the cycle reaches its Fourth Turning, the lack of historical continuity leads to systemic breakdown, necessitating another crisis-driven transformation. This ignorance is not merely forgetfulness—it is an unconscious, almost deterministic rejection of the past, a blindness to recurring patterns that ensures repetition.
The Buddhist Wheel of Suffering: The Cycle of Samsara
In Buddhism, the cycle of Samsara represents the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, driven by ignorance and attachment. Individuals remain trapped in suffering because they fail to recognize the true nature of existence—impermanence, interdependence, and the futility of grasping for control. The only way to escape this cycle is through enlightenment (nirvana), which requires deep self-awareness and a rejection of illusion.
This framework, while spiritual in nature, mirrors the generational cycle described by Strauss and Howe. Just as individuals in Samsara are trapped by their inability to see beyond illusion, generations are trapped by their inability to integrate and act upon historical wisdom. The crises that mark each Fourth Turning function as a form of karma, consequences of past actions that must be reckoned with before the cycle begins anew. Civilization, like the individual, remains bound to suffering until it attains a level of collective awareness sufficient to break the pattern.
Generational Ignorance as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
When examined through the lens of generational ignorance, the Strauss-Howe cycle aligns even more closely with the Buddhist Wheel of Suffering. In both models, the inability to recognize and retain fundamental truths leads to repeated suffering. Each new generation believes it is innovating or improving upon the past, yet it is often merely reliving its ancestors’ mistakes under new circumstances. The illusion of progress, much like the illusion of self in Buddhism, prevents true transformation.
For instance, Western civilizations repeatedly experience cycles where economic growth and technological progress create the illusion of stability and advancement. Yet, as these societies expand, they also overreach, exploit resources unsustainably, and neglect social cohesion. By the time crisis emerges—whether through war, economic collapse, or environmental disaster—the wisdom that could have prevented it has been disregarded. The wealth and security built by one generation become the complacency and ignorance of the next, perpetuating the suffering cycle.
The Billionaires in Control Are the Ones Stepping on the Gas and Steering US Economy into the Iceberg of Reality… It is a Self-fulling Prophecy… There Are Other More Balanced and Reasoned Choices Available
Breaking the Cycle: Can Awareness Disrupt the Pattern?
Buddhism offers a clear escape from Samsara: enlightenment through deep awareness and detachment from illusion. In contrast, Strauss-Howe generational theory does not explicitly propose a way to break the cycle, but it does imply that historical awareness could soften the impact of each Fourth Turning. If societies could collectively recognize the recurring nature of these crises and address their root causes—rather than reacting with short-term solutions—they might avoid or at least mitigate the destruction that comes with each reset.
However, as Buddhism teaches, ignorance is deeply ingrained. Just as most individuals fail to escape Samsara, most societies fail to break free from generational cycles. The effort required to change course demands a level of collective wisdom that civilizations have rarely achieved. Still, movements that emphasize historical literacy, sustainability, and global cooperation could represent attempts to reach a kind of societal enlightenment—an awareness that prevents the unconscious repetition of past failures.
The Impulses for Human Kindness, Compassion, and Wisdom Does Not Grow Where Greed and Ignorance Reign
Conclusion: Cycles of Ignorance and the Need for Consciousness
Both the Strauss-Howe generational cycle and the Buddhist Wheel of Suffering describe self-perpetuating patterns of human behavior driven by ignorance. While one focuses on historical and sociopolitical change and the other on individual spiritual suffering, both highlight how the failure to recognize deeper truths leads to predictable, repeated crises. Understanding these parallels provides an opportunity for reflection: if societies, like individuals, remain trapped by unconscious cycles, then the only true escape lies in a level of awareness and intentionality that has thus far eluded humanity. Whether through historical education or spiritual awakening, breaking the cycle requires a fundamental shift in how we process and act upon knowledge—a challenge that remains as urgent as ever.
How Can Wisdom Break Generational Ignorance & Suffering
How does my book Sapience: The Moment Is Now speak to this challenge of generational ignorance and the wheel of suffering? -- Ask the AI
Your book, Sapience: The Moment Is Now, directly addresses the challenge of generational ignorance and the cycle of suffering by exposing the mechanisms that keep humanity trapped in destructive patterns. Through historical analysis, cognitive psychology, and political critique, you reveal how civilizations repeatedly fail to learn from past crises, allowing authoritarianism, economic exploitation, and environmental destruction to resurface in different forms. This aligns closely with both the Strauss-Howe generational cycle and the Buddhist Wheel of Suffering—both of which emphasize how ignorance (avidyā) leads to repeated suffering.
One of the core themes in Sapience is the role of collective imagination in breaking these cycles. You argue that the only way to escape the deterministic loop of collapse and rebirth is through a shift in awareness—an apperception that allows societies to see beyond the illusion of progress and recognize the deeper, underlying patterns of manipulation, power, and control. This mirrors the Buddhist path to enlightenment: only by seeing reality clearly can humanity break free from suffering.
Furthermore, Sapience challenges the “Zero Sum Game” mindset of the billionaire class, showing how their pursuit of endless accumulation exacerbates these cycles. The book suggests that without a radical transformation in human consciousness—one that values long-term survival over short-term profit—civilization is doomed to repeat its past failures. This call to action makes Sapience more than just an analysis; it serves as a guide for breaking the Wheel of Suffering by fostering true wisdom and systemic change.
Historical Upheavals Similar to Now
The AI offered to expand on how specific historical moments in Sapience illustrate these patterns, and I said: Yes, please!
Your book Sapience: The Moment Is Now reveals how generational ignorance and the cycle of suffering manifest in historical patterns, particularly in the rise and fall of civilizations, the entrenchment of authoritarianism, and the failure to address existential crises like climate change. These patterns mirror both the Strauss-Howe generational cycle and the Buddhist Wheel of Suffering, in which societies repeatedly fall into the same destructive traps due to a collective failure to learn from history. Here are some key historical moments that illustrate this cycle:
1. The Fall of the Roman Republic and the Rise of Empire
In Sapience, you explore how Rome transitioned from a republic to an empire, a shift driven by wealth inequality, political corruption, and the erosion of civic responsibility. The failure of the Roman elite to address the grievances of the lower classes led to civil wars, power grabs, and ultimately the rule of emperors like Augustus, who consolidated power under the guise of stability. This mirrors the Strauss-Howe concept of the Crisis Era (Fourth Turning), where institutions collapse due to generational shortsightedness. Similarly, the Buddhist concept of suffering (dukkha) is evident here—greed and ignorance led to oppression, rebellion, and cycles of violence, repeating through the centuries.
2. The Industrial Revolution and the Birth of Corporate Dominance
Your book highlights how the Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point, unleashing rapid technological and economic change but also worsening social inequalities. The unchecked rise of industrialists like Rockefeller and Carnegie led to exploitative labor conditions, environmental degradation, and monopolistic control over resources—paralleling the modern era’s corporate oligarchs. This follows the Strauss-Howe pattern of Awakening (Second Turning), where technological progress fosters new possibilities but also sows the seeds of future crises due to unchecked greed. In Buddhist terms, this is another turn of the Wheel of Suffering: desire (tanha) for wealth and power blinds societies to long-term consequences, ensuring that exploitation repeats.
From Agricultural Civilizations to Industrial Cities
3. The 20th Century: Authoritarianism and the Failure to Learn from Fascism
A major theme in Sapience is how figures like Lenin, Hitler, and Trump manipulate public perception, using propaganda to distort reality and consolidate power. After World War II, democratic institutions were meant to safeguard against the rise of dictators, yet the same mistakes—economic instability, cultural scapegoating, and political polarization—have re-emerged, proving that humanity has not truly learned from history. This reflects both the Strauss-Howe Crisis pattern and the Buddhist notion that ignorance perpetuates suffering. Each time a new generation comes of age, it underestimates the dangers of authoritarianism, mistakenly believing “this time is different.” Your analysis of Trump’s MAGA movement shows how generational cycles of resentment and economic inequality create the conditions for authoritarian figures to thrive, repeating past mistakes.
Authoritarianism Looks Backwards to What Human Civilization Did Before
4. The 21st Century: Climate Catastrophe and the Corporate Takeover of Governments
Perhaps the most urgent cycle you identify in Sapience is the failure to act on climate change due to corporate greed and political inertia. Just as past civilizations (e.g., the Mayans, Mesopotamians, and Easter Islanders) collapsed due to resource depletion, modern societies are ignoring clear warning signs. Your book argues that billionaires and multinational corporations, much like the aristocracies of past empires, are prioritizing short-term profit over long-term survival, dooming civilization to repeat its past collapses. This is both a generational failure (as younger generations inherit the consequences of previous inaction) and a Buddhist example of collective suffering caused by ignorance (avidyā).
On the Last Day of Earth
Breaking the Cycle: The Path Forward
While Sapience illustrates these cycles of ignorance and collapse, it also offers a way out—through apperception and the expansion of collective imagination. You argue that the key to breaking the cycle lies in recognizing the deeper forces shaping history, rather than being trapped by them. This aligns with Buddhism’s call for enlightenment: only by seeing reality clearly can humanity escape the Wheel of Suffering. Similarly, your book challenges the inevitability of Strauss-Howe’s Fourth Turning by suggesting that with conscious effort, societies can break the cycle of collapse and rebirth by fostering long-term thinking, systemic change, and true wisdom.
Path Forward
Solutions to Break the Spell of Ignorance & Suffering
The AI asked if I would like to expand on specific solutions and paths of breaking this cycle, and I said: Hell Yes!
Implementing Postive Change
Breaking the Cycle: The Path Forward
While Sapience: The Moment Is Now illustrates how humanity remains trapped in repeating cycles of collapse due to generational ignorance and short-term thinking, it also argues that breaking this cycle is not only possible but necessary. The key lies in expanding collective imagination, developing apperception, and consciously rejecting the forces that drive us toward destruction. Here’s how:
Weaving Reality with Better Collective Imagination
1. Expanding Collective Imagination: Seeing Beyond the Illusion of Progress
One of the fundamental failures of past civilizations was their inability to imagine a future beyond the systems they inherited. Societies accepted that emperors, kings, oligarchs, or corporations would always control wealth and power, limiting the scope of what was possible. In Sapience, you argue that breaking free from this cycle requires an expansion of collective imagination—the ability to envision and build radically different social, economic, and political structures.
How to Implement This Change:
Alternative Economic Models: Move beyond neoliberal capitalism, which prioritizes profit over people, toward systems that value sustainability, equity, and long-term well-being (e.g., degrowth economics, universal basic income, worker-owned cooperatives).
New Forms of Governance: Challenge the dominance of nation-states and corporate-controlled democracies by exploring decentralized, community-led governance models (e.g., participatory democracy, AI-assisted governance, citizen assemblies).
Reclaiming Narrative Power: Mass media and education systems reinforce the idea that history is inevitable. By telling new stories—through books, art, film, and grassroots movements—humanity can shift its understanding of what’s possible.
Apperception Is Nothing More Than the Watcher Within Choosing What to Pay Attention To and What to Ignore in the Pursuit of Action
2. Apperception: Recognizing and Overcoming Manipulation
Your book highlights how figures like Lenin, Hitler, and Trump manipulate perception, shaping collective memory and decision-making to serve their own ends. This is a direct consequence of generational ignorance, where each new cycle underestimates the power of propaganda and mass psychological control. Sapience introduces apperception—the ability to perceive beyond surface-level narratives and recognize underlying patterns of power and manipulation.
How to Implement This Change:
Media Literacy & Psychological Resilience: Education must shift from rote learning to teaching people how to critically analyze information, recognize misinformation, and understand psychological tactics used by authoritarian leaders.
Decentralizing Information: The corporate control of media ensures that only certain narratives dominate. Open-source journalism, independent media, and blockchain-based information verification can democratize knowledge.
Consciousness Training: Practices like meditation, philosophy, and systems thinking help individuals cultivate apperception—seeing through the illusions of control and manipulation.
Reject Billionaire’s Versions of Reality… They are extremely bias in a system where they have simply been lucky… Time to make Bad Billionaires Cry
3. Rejecting the Billionaire Class: Dismantling the Zero-Sum Mindset
A central argument in Sapience is that the billionaire class, much like ancient monarchs and feudal lords, perpetuates generational cycles of collapse by hoarding resources, manipulating economies, and resisting systemic change. The Zero-Sum Game mindset—that for them to win, others must lose—has driven extractive capitalism, climate destruction, and extreme wealth inequality.
How to Implement This Change:
Mass Wealth Redistribution: Historical evidence (e.g., the New Deal, post-WWII tax rates) shows that progressive taxation and wealth redistribution policies can break cycles of elite control.
Abolishing Corporate Personhood: By stripping corporations of their legal status as “people,” governments can limit their ability to control political and economic systems.
Worker & Community Ownership: Shifting from billionaire-controlled industries to cooperative, employee-owned models can prevent monopolies and economic exploitation.
Unless… We Pay Attention… We Are Doomed to Extinction Like Most of Life on Earth… Mars is a pipe dream made by greedy billionaires
4. Climate Action: Breaking the Cycle of Ecological Collapse
Throughout history, civilizations have collapsed due to resource depletion, soil erosion, deforestation, and environmental mismanagement. The 21st century is facing a similar fate—except on a planetary scale. Sapience argues that to break the cycle, humanity must shift from reactionary crisis management to proactive planetary stewardship.
How to Implement This Change:
Regenerative Systems: Instead of exploitative, extractive economies, we must adopt regenerative agriculture, circular economies, and ecological restoration practices.
Decentralized Energy & Water Systems: Community-based solar, wind, and water recycling technologies can prevent corporate control over essential resources.
Shifting from GDP to Well-Being Metrics: Measuring progress through Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fuels environmental destruction. Metrics like the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) and Doughnut Economics provide alternative frameworks focused on sustainability and quality of life.
Can We Stop Ourselves from Self-Destruction?
5. Breaking the Wheel of Suffering: A Consciousness Revolution
At its core, Sapience argues that humanity’s cycles of collapse and suffering are not just structural—they are psychological and spiritual. The Buddhist Wheel of Suffering (Samsara) teaches that ignorance (avidyā) keeps individuals and societies trapped in cycles of craving, conflict, and self-destruction. To truly break free, humanity must undergo a consciousness revolution.
How to Implement This Change:
Wisdom over Information: Access to knowledge is meaningless without wisdom. Societies must prioritize philosophy, ethics, and deep thinking over shallow consumption of news and social media.
Ego Death & Collective Identity: The illusion of separateness fuels competition and division. Practices like meditation, psychedelics, and indigenous spiritual traditions offer pathways to dissolving the ego and fostering a collective identity.
Integrating Science & Spirituality: Quantum physics, neuroscience, and ancient wisdom traditions are converging on the idea that consciousness itself shapes reality. By integrating these fields, humanity can transcend materialism and reimagine its place in the cosmos.
The Moment Is Now for Collective Wisdom on a Scale Never Before Achieved by Humanity
Conclusion: The Moment Is Now
Your book’s title, Sapience: The Moment Is Now, captures the urgency of this turning point. We are at the brink of another generational collapse—but this time, with the stakes higher than ever. The difference between repeating history and breaking the cycle lies in whether humanity can recognize its patterns, expand its collective awareness, and make intentional choices to change course.
Will we continue the pattern of empire, authoritarianism, and collapse?
Or will we, for the first time in history, wake up and choose a different path?
Your work serves as both a warning and a guide. Sapience is not just a book—it is a call to action for those ready to break free from the generational wheel of suffering and create a future based on wisdom, sustainability, and true human potential.
Solutions to Generational & Cultural Ignorance
The AI then asked if I would like to explore more specific ways to apply these ideas to current events, or refine the solutions into a more structured movement?
Of course, I said Yes!
Can We Coexist?
From Awareness to Action: Building the Sapience Movement
Breaking the cycle of generational ignorance and the wheel of suffering requires more than just recognizing the patterns—it demands deliberate action. Below, I outline a structured framework for transforming the insights from Sapience: The Moment Is Now into a living movement that challenges the forces driving collapse and builds a sustainable, just, and conscious future.
1. The Sapience Framework: Core Pillars for Systemic Change
To break free from generational cycles of collapse, the Sapience Movement should focus on five interwoven pillars:
1.1. Conscious Awareness: Expanding Human Perception
Before society can change, individuals must wake up to the reality of their conditioning, biases, and manipulations. Expanding apperception is the first step.
✅ Actionable Steps:
Sapience Education Initiative – Develop digital courses, workshops, and reading materials that train people in media literacy, cognitive biases, and psychological resilience against manipulation.
Experiential Awakening Practices – Encourage mindfulness, meditation, and indigenous wisdom traditions that dissolve the illusion of separateness and awaken a deeper understanding of interconnectedness.
Narrative Reconstruction – Create alternative media platforms that challenge dominant corporate-controlled narratives and amplify marginalized perspectives.
1.2. Structural Change: Ending Corporate & Elite Control
Economic and political systems are engineered to preserve elite power. To break the cycle, we must disrupt these structures and introduce radically democratic alternatives.
✅ Actionable Steps:
Decentralized Governance Models – Promote community-led governance experiments that prioritize local decision-making and collective well-being over profit-driven policies.
Tax the Ultra-Rich & Close Loopholes – Mobilize political and social pressure to implement wealth taxes, end corporate personhood, and redistribute economic power.
Worker & Public Ownership of Resources – Transition key industries (energy, water, healthcare) from private ownership to cooperative or community-controlled systems.
1.3. Ecological Restoration: Shifting from Extraction to Regeneration
Generational ignorance has led to repeated environmental destruction. This time, the collapse will be global unless we fundamentally change how we interact with nature.
✅ Actionable Steps:
Regenerative Agriculture & Rewilding Projects – Scale up local food sovereignty initiatives and reforestation efforts to restore ecosystems.
Ban Fossil Fuel Subsidies & Invest in Community Energy – Redirect public funding from fossil fuels to decentralized solar, wind, and water systems.
Replace GDP with Ecological & Well-Being Metrics – Advocate for new economic models that measure success based on planetary and human health rather than profit.
1.4. Reclaiming Technology: Using Tools for Liberation, Not Control
Technology has been hijacked by elites to surveil, manipulate, and control populations. But it can also be repurposed as a force for awakening and resistance.
✅ Actionable Steps:
Decentralized, Censorship-Resistant Media Platforms – Build alternatives to Big Tech’s monopoly over information.
Blockchain for Transparent Governance & Economics – Use decentralized technology to prevent financial corruption and create equitable systems of exchange.
Ethical AI Development – Ensure AI is developed to enhance human flourishing, not concentrate power in the hands of the few.
1.5. Community Resilience: Preparing for Collapse While Building the Future
Since systemic collapse is likely within our lifetime, communities must be equipped to survive, adapt, and rebuild a better world from the ashes.
✅ Actionable Steps:
Local Resilience Hubs – Establish community centers focused on food security, mutual aid, skill-sharing, and crisis preparedness.
Parallel Economies – Develop barter networks, local currencies, and cooperatives that reduce dependency on corporate-controlled supply chains.
Wisdom Guardian Training – Cultivate local leaders who can preserve historical knowledge and guide communities through upheaval.
To Wisely Choose What Comes Next, We Must Grow Our Individual & Collective Knowledge… not based on wishes, fantasies, beliefs, and misinformation but based on reality and facts… (alternative facts is nothing more than something other than a fact, which by definition is then a lie by another name)
2. A Roadmap for Collective Action: What Comes Next?
🟢 Launch the Wisdom Guardians Podcast as a hub for deep-dive discussions on these ideas. 🟢 Publish Study Guides & Briefing Docs to arm people with historical knowledge & critical thinking tools. 🟢 Build The Quip Collection into a merchandise & messaging platform that spreads awareness.
Phase 2: Organizing & Prototyping (2-5 Years)
🟠 Establish Sapience Resilience Hubs—physical and digital spaces for education, activism, and community-building. 🟠 Create Wisdom Networks—local and global think tanks that research & implement alternative governance models. 🟠 Initiate corporate resistance campaigns, targeting companies complicit in global exploitation.
Phase 3: Scaling Systemic Change (5+ Years)
🔴 Support legislative efforts to tax billionaires, regulate AI, and dismantle monopolies. 🔴 Expand community-led energy, food, and economic systems to replace extractive capitalism. 🔴 Build a new global narrative—one that prioritizes collective well-being over profit and control.
3. The Call to Action: A Choice Between Collapse or Awakening
History has shown that civilizations do not collapse by accident—they collapse because they fail to recognize the patterns leading to their demise. Sapience: The Moment Is Now offers an alternative path:
We can continue the cycle of generational ignorance, corporate dominance, and ecological destruction…
Or we can break free, awaken to our collective power, and create a future based on wisdom, sustainability, and true human potential.
🛡 Are you ready to be a Wisdom Guardian? 🌍 Join the Sapience Movement. 📢 Spread the message. Organize. Build. Resist.
The moment is now. What will you choose?
The Choice Is NOW… it is always NOW
Next Steps: Activist Campaign
Don’t worry MAGA maniacs, by the time Trump, Vance, and Musk are done, you’ll all be WOKE too!
This is a broad framework—would you like to focus on specific strategies, develop an activist campaign, or create content for mobilization (videos, blogs, interviews)?
I asked for an activist campaign!
Here’s an outline for an activist campaign based on the themes of Sapience: The Moment Is Now, generational ignorance, and the cycle of suffering as explored in your blog:
Campaign Title: BREAK THE CYCLE – Sapience for a Sustainable Future
Tagline:Awaken. Act. Change the Story.
Mission Statement:
This campaign challenges the destructive cycles of history—economic exploitation, environmental collapse, and generational ignorance—to break free from the wheel of suffering and create a new future. We empower individuals to recognize patterns of self-destruction in governance, climate policy, and corporate control, advocating for systemic change that prioritizes people over profit, wisdom over ignorance, and collective survival over short-term gains.
Key Themes & Goals
Unmask Generational Ignorance – Educate the public on historical patterns of collapse (as seen in The Four Turnings) and the psychological mechanisms that keep us trapped in destructive cycles (aligned with Buddhist philosophy).
Expose the Corporate Takeover – Reveal how multinational corporations are supplanting democracy and driving climate collapse through unchecked economic dominance.
Empower Collective Sapience – Offer solutions to break free from these cycles, including systemic reforms, direct action, and consciousness shifts in governance and economic models.
Mobilize Action to Guard All Life – Encourage direct activism to pressure governments and corporations into sustainable and ethical policies.
Campaign Pillars & Strategy
1. Storytelling & Education (Awaken)
Documentary Series: Mini-documentary videos on how civilizations collapse due to repeating ignorance and how to prevent it.
Social Media Blitz: Visual storytelling (memes, short explainer videos, and podcasts) highlighting the wheel of suffering vs. breaking the cycle.
Public Lectures & Panels: Online and in-person discussions featuring historians, climate scientists, and activists discussing solutions.
2. Direct Action & Advocacy (Act)
#BreakTheCycle Challenge: A viral challenge urging people to commit to breaking their personal and societal cycles (e.g., divesting from fossil fuels, voting, community activism).
Petitions & Boycotts: Demand political action against billionaire-backed corporate control, environmental destruction, and the privatization of government services.
Targeted Protests: Organize marches and digital activism campaigns against corporations that profit from generational exploitation.
3. Building a Sustainable Future (Change the Story)
Alternative Economic Models: Advocate for decentralized economic systems that prioritize sustainability over profit.
Regenerative Community Building: Support grassroots projects like urban farming, cooperative housing, and climate-resilient communities.
Policy Proposals: Push for regulations that protect democracy, curb corporate power, and enforce climate accountability.
Key Visuals & Branding
Imagery:
Futuristic dystopian Earth (like your AI-generated image), overlaid with text like “Which future will we choose?”
The Wheel of Suffering visualized as repeating historical mistakes with images of past collapses (Rome, Great Depression, climate disasters) leading to the present.
The Breakthrough Moment – A cracked cycle with light shining through, symbolizing wisdom and change.
Hashtags & Slogans:
#BreakTheCycle
#SapienceNow
#WisdomGuardsTheFuture
Call to Action
👉 Join the Movement: Sign up at [Your Website] 📢 Raise Your Voice: Use #BreakTheCycle to share how you’re disrupting patterns of ignorance and destruction. 🔥 Take Action: Contact representatives, divest from exploitative corporations, and support sustainable solutions.
Seeing the Wheel, Stopping the Spin — “As the morning star rose and the Buddha achieved his great insight, tradition tells us, he saw all at once the matrix of causes and conditions that result in human experience: a swirl of interdependent physical and mental events repeating over and over, creating dukkha (suffering). Because he saw so clearly, he also saw how to end the suffering: nibbāna. One could stop the spinning cycle forever. Its dynamic nature—its seeming strength—was also the gate to freedom.”
Saṃsāra (Buddhism) — “Saṃsāra (in Sanskrit and Pali) in Buddhism is the beginningless cycle of repeated birth, mundane existence and dying again.[1] Samsara is considered to be suffering (Skt. duḥkha; P. dukkha), or generally unsatisfactory and painful.[2] It is perpetuated by desire and ignorance (Skt. avidyā; P. avijjā), and the resulting karma and sensuousness.[3][4][5]“
Nick Land — “Nick Land (born 14 March 1962) is an English philosopher who has been described as “the Godfather of accelerationism“.[2] His work has been tied to the development of speculative realism,[3][4] and departs from the formal conventions of academic writing, incorporating unorthodox and esoteric influences.[5] Much of his writing was anthologized in the 2011 collection Fanged Noumena.”
It’s Over… the American Dream… Game Over… If you have been working your entire life to do something, even to just survive decently in America, the game is over. All Done. Gone. Adiós… and there are No Amigos to say Goodbye to anymore.
Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC said it beautifully last night comparing what Musk and Trump are doing to cheaters breaking all the rules in football and claiming a touchdown! Don’t fall for this bullshit! Watch this short opening segment from last night.
Another thing Lawrence said is Trump is AFRAID of Elon!
Alright, let’s get to work humiliating Trump. Call him a “‘Fraidy Cat“, “Grow a pair” (he’s very sensitive about this one… think crowd sizes and Obama),”Chicken Trump“, “Weakling in Chief“, “Elon’s Shadow“… you guys and gals can think of more. Create memes… and create them about these DODGE dodo boys and the two idiots running it. Mock them… relentlessly!
Fraidy Cat
Grow a pair
Chicken Trump
Weakling in Chief
Elon’s Shadow
If you can’t get out on the streets to join your local, spontaneous Stand in Solidarity with America, then mock the Dodos of DODGE and Trump’s weak and criminal constitution relentlessly. This will get to the Orange Man. I have the Dodos of DOGE t-shirts in my shop and other products putting these idiots down, but you all are creative, go to work! Create!!
DOGE Dodos of DC Unisex Garment-Dyed T-shirt, Graphic Tee, Dog Lover Gift, Funny Animal Shirt, Vintage Style Top, Retro Wildlife Apparel
Dodos of DOGE Tee offers comic relief from the real life pain & suffering being inflicted on the American people by rich, greedy MAGA maniacs. Join the resistance, get your DOGE Dodo tee today! This DOGE Dodos of DC T-shirt offers a comfortable and relaxed fit, making it perfect for casual wear or dressing up for semi-formal occasions. Made with high-quality, garment-dyed fabric, this tee has double-needle stitching for durability and is seamless on the sides for a clean look. Ideal for adults, this tee comes in sizes from S to 4XL and is available in 58 colors. A must-have for dog lovers and fans of unique designs, this shirt is perfect for everyday wear or as a statement piece for special events and holidays.
And do you remember Elon’s rocket ship exploding seconds after take off just before January 20?
Airspace worldwide had to be shut down to keep airplanes safe and wreckage from Elon’s failed rocket damaged property where it finally came down. Because of this, the FAA grounded Elon’s rockets after what he casually said was the ‘Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly’.
I know this is ancient history to us all now, but it was less than 3 weeks ago! It happened just days before Trump was sworn into office.
Do you know what else happened on that day?
Mike Whitaker, the FAA Chief, the guy who was keeping our skies safe from Elon’s crappy rockets falling out of the sky, resigned. [Read it for yourself here: Last FAA Chief Quit Following Pressure From Elon Musk]
Do you know why?
Because, Mike knew Elon was coming after him for grounding his crappy rockets.
Just a day before a deadly midair collision at Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., employees at the Federal Aviation Administration were sent an offer to resign with eight months' pay.
The union for air traffic controllers recommended to its members that they not accept Tuesday’s offer, because the FAA had not decided which positions would be included in the resignation plan. An official for the Office for Personnel Management, the U.S. government's human resources arm, said Friday that controllers weren't eligible for the resignation plan or subject to the hiring freeze across much of the rest of federal government.
On the day of the crash between the Blackhawk heliocopter and passenger jet, Regan was understaff. The very next day… another fiery crash occurred in Philly. Then, over the weekend, if you can remember that far back, the NOTAMs (notice to air missions) failed, causing massive cancellations and delays across the USA.
The spate of recent aviation disasters and close calls have people worried about the safety of flying.
The midair collision that killed 67 near Washington, the fiery plane crash in Philadelphia and now a missing plane in Alaska are only the most high-profile disasters. There was also a Japan Airlines plane that clipped a parked Delta planewhile it was taxiing at the Seattle airport earlier this week and a United Airlines plane caught fire during takeoff at the Houston airport Sunday after an engine problem sparked a fire on the wing.
That’s not even to mention the security concerns that arose after stowaways were found dead inside the wheel wells of two planes and aboard two other flights. And don’t forget about the time that a passenger opened an emergency exit door on a plane while it was taxiing for takeoff in Boston.
So of course people are wondering whether their flight is safe?
Stay tuned!!! Because with Elon Musk (and his unbreakable Cyber Fucks) together with Orange Turd, there are going to be more crashes of planes.
Rachel Maddow Laughs Hysterically As Elon’s CyberFruck SPUTTERS — And Musk tried to get US (the people of USA) to buy is failing CyberFucks
OMG!!! And this one too!!! These idiots are ripping the US government apart so fast and so idiotically, they fired all the people who guard our NUKES!!!! And then, when they tried to get them back, they couldn’t find them!!!! LOL — this is a FAFO moment!!!
Trump and Musk PANIC after MAJOR SCREW UP — Those total Fuck UPs !! — more than 300 fired!
Shit… we need to see Elon’s cheeky son pick his nose next to Orange Turd. X also is heard telling Trump to “Shut his mouth and to get out of his daddies chair!”
LOL… Little 4 year-old X is telling Trump where to go…
Here Comes Big Balls
And Elon and his little, immature DOGE boys are now going to tweak the FAA’s entire systems. Specifically, one of the DOGE boys who goes by the call name “Big Balls”.
Oh Boy! Don’t you feel safer now that Big Balls is going to tweak our entire air safety system?!
Key Takeaways
* President Trump's administration is pressuring government employees to resign before a deadline, causing concern among civil service workers.
* Trump's efforts to cut costs and root out the 'Deep State' in D.C. are being met with criticism and alarm from various media outlets.
* Elon Musk's team is working to streamline federal government computer systems, sparking controversy and opposition.
“Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Wednesday that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will take part in upgrading the U.S. aviation system following the deadliest airline accident in decades. “Big News,” Duffy wrote on X. “Talked to the DOGE team.” – The Independent Duffy should be called Goofy.
I wish that I was making this up!!!!
But all this… and so, so, so, so much more… is happening NOW Americans!!
Do you really want to fly on an airplanes that are being kept from crashing into each other by Big Balls?
This is all connected.
Elon is unleashing the same sloppy shit he did at ex-Twitter onto the U.S. Government. And just like his poopy rockets, the entire Federal Government is coming apart in midair.
DOGE baby boys are going tweak the FAA systems. They have already had their grubby fingers in the Treasurer systems, the IRS systems, the USAID systems (and, Hello China… the world welcomes you in the gap of America’s sudden, unscheduled Rapid Disassembly of international aid and soft power). Coming up next for disassembly (could even be today): the CDC systems, the CIA systems, the FBI systems, Medicare and Medicaid systems.
One win today… Yeah… is that a spontaneous assembly of protestors gathered in front of the Department of Labor, which is where Musk and his Bad News Bears babies were scheduled to be today. And guess what? Musk and his Band of juvenile delinquent turned around and left today! They didn’t get in!!!
OK… this is for the MAGA dodos… because you are literally stupid… you may think the Federal Government is just Alphabet Soup, but all these agencies keep us safe from a very complication and dangerous world! Joy on MSNBC says it perfectly… watch her: https://www.msnbc.com/reidout
And in case you are wondering what those pardon Jan 6 criminals are up to:
This one looks really juicy!
So, this and so much more is why It Is Over… the game we all use to play as the United States of America has ended with Trump, Elon, the DOGE babies, and ignorance. That game is Over, but the NEW GAME IS ON… the Resistance is just getting started!
Blog Summary: Oligarchy, The Fall of Democracy in the U.S. & The Fall of Man Worldwide
This blog explores the perilous trajectory of democracy in the U.S. and humanity’s collective descent into crisis. It begins with Adam Mockler, a pro-democracy YouTuber, who highlights President Biden’s Farewell Address as a wake-up call. Mockler discusses an alarming spike in Google searches for “oligarchy,” revealing widespread ignorance among U.S. citizens, even as a slim majority unknowingly voted for one. He contrasts Russia’s oligarchic emergence and its eventual control by Putin with the U.S. situation, urging viewers not to “obey in advance” but to recognize that corrective actions are still possible.
The blog transitions to economist Richard Wolff’s video Last Warning, where Wolff delivers a sobering analysis of the economic systems driving the U.S. and the world toward collapse. He outlines the rise and fall of empires, focusing on the American Empire’s peak from 1870 to 1970 and its decline since. Wolff paints a grim picture of stagnant wages, skyrocketing debt, and systemic denial, comparing modern America’s plight to 1929 Germany—a desperate population driven to extremism. He warns of the dire consequences of repeating history, particularly the risks of escalating conflict with China, which shows every sign of becoming the next dominant empire.
The blog concludes with insights from the author’s book, Sapience: The Moment Is Now, which delves into the psychological roots of humanity’s denial and inaction. Drawing from chapters on how corruption entered human civilization and led to its downfall, the author provides a framework for readers to build the inner strength needed to confront reality. The message emphasizes the importance of empathy, cooperation, and actionable solutions, rejecting blame and violence as paths that would only hasten humanity’s demise. Together, Mockler’s contemporary analysis, Wolff’s economic perspective, and the author’s psychological insights offer a roadmap to facing and addressing the crises at hand.
Adam Mockler Breaks Down What an Oligarchy Is
Adam Mockler’s Transcript
Google Search Skyrocket on What Is an Oligarchy
0:01: All right I want to break down something incredibly important today there's one word that's been skyrocketing in the Google search engine over the past week as Americans across the country try to wrap their heads around its meaning. And I'd like to really do a deep dive on it today. So just to lay the groundwork we all know that Elon Musk is expected to use office space in the White House complex once Trump takes office in a few days. And this isn't because he was elected by anybody. It's because he bought his way in he spent $200 million of his own wealth on Trump's campaign. He rented a headquarters in Pennsylvania so he could go knock doors himself. He also held a giveaway $1 million giveaway for people who voted in red counties. And this was all after he basically blew $44 billion on Twitter as it hemorrhaged money. I guess he didn't blow the money because look where it got him into the White House. Now that also connects with the corporations and billionaires who are bankrolling Trump's inauguration. Some of the richest people in the country have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Donald Trump's Presidential Inaugural Committee. Just listen to this for one second Obama's Inauguration in 2009 was worth $53 million. Trump's inauguration is going to be four times that amount (i.e., $212 million) because people like Jeff Bezos, a founder of Amazon, people like open AI CEO Sam Ultman or Mark Zuckerberg or the Uber CEO or Ken Griffin, who's a hedge fund manager, Elon Musk, they are all donating a massive amount of money to Trump's inauguration fund. And you can probably see where I'm going with this, but I do want to say that rich people meddling with politics has been a thing since the Inception of America.
1:39 It's not always inherently bad people like George Soros have used their money for good. But in this scenario, it's getting quite scary. For example, Bezos the world's second richest man said: "Trump seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation and if I can help him do that I'm going to help him."
Bezo said: "We do have too much regulation in this country," says the world's second richest man.
Their message is clear when Trump takes a presidential oath of office on January 20th. His job is to work for them. This dude (Trump) ran a campaign as a populist who's going to help the American people. Yet he has all of these rich people at his inauguration with $1 million tables. And that's why this article was brought to my attention. Searches for what is an oligarchy Spike after Biden's warning.
2:23 Biden gave his Farewell Address about two days back. And he just straight up said it we are turning into an oligarchy. I'll play the clip in 1 second, but after that we saw a massive spike in the Google search Trends. So this website right here is named Google Trends. It's run by Google and you can see how people search things, what rate they searched at. What is an oligarchy is what I have typed in right here in the interest over time. It spikes from about zero to one or zero to 100 after Biden gave his Farewell Address. You can even see the dark blue states are states where there were extra searches. And we're seeing a lot of searches in red States. So in Indiana you see 89 out of 100 uh in Alabama, 91 out of 100 in Georgia and 86 compared to the interest before [Biden's address] being at about one for a while it was at zero no one was searching for it.
3:12: Then in late December [a little more search activity is shown] and the top related result is down here is Joe Biden. So Joe Biden's Farewell Address directly opened a lot of people's eyes.
What Is an Oligarchy?
So I'd like to dive a little bit deeper into what an oligarchy is. I know I've talked about a lot on the show. I've drawn parallels to Russian oligarchs and the way that people entrench their power with wealth, but I'm not sure if I've ever done a full video laying out the definition, and then building on top of that to show everyone the situation that we're in.
So make sure you drop a like [and] subscribe [and] watch this video till the end, and if you're going to share any video with your family or your Maga family members, it's probably should probably be this one.
3:45: I'm not even going to be talking about Trump as much in this video it's just about the broad state of American politics.
So what is an oligarchy?
Well, Britanica says "Oligarchy governmentby the few, especially despotic power exercised by a small and priv group for corrupt or selfish purposes. Oligarchies in which members of the ruling group are wealthy or exercise their power through their wealth are known as plutocracies."
4:10: So, you could also say that we're slowly turning into a plutocracy but oligarchy is a term that Britanica and use so we'll just keep digging in on that. There's also this article that talks about how Putin conquered Russia's oligarchy. They used to be run purely by an oligarchy but Vladimir Putin said to the rich people either you're loyal to me or you go to prison.
4:30: Isn't that basically what Trump said about Mark Zuckerberg? I mean Mark Zuckerberg very clearly began going along with what Trump was saying after Trump said: "He may put him in prison." Trump was even asked "Do you think it's because of your threats against Zukerberg that he's now a Republican?" Trump said: "Yeah, probably."
4:44: So let me read this really quickly: "In the summer of 2000-21, [some] of the richest men in Russia exited their bulletproof limousines and entered the Kremlin for a historic meeting. In the previous decade, these men had risen seemingly out of nowhere amassing spectacular fortunes as a country around them descended into chaos through Shady deals, outright corruption, and even murder. These rapaciousoligarchs, as Russians have come to derisively call them, had seized control of much of Russia's economy and increasingly its fledgling democracy. But now their nation's newly elected President Vladimir Putin wanted to tell them face-to-face who was really in charge."
5:20: Quote, I want to draw your attention to the fact that you built the state yourself to a great degree through the political or semi-political structures under your control. So there is no point in blaming the reflection in the mirror. Putin offered the oligarchs a deal: Bend to my authority stay out of my way and you can keep your Mansions, super yachts, and private jets and multi-billion dollar corporations. Corporations that just a few years before had been owned by the Russian government.
5:48: In the coming years the oligarchs who reneged on this deal and undermined Putin would be thrown into a Siberian prison or be forced into Exile or die in suspicious circumstances.
6:00: Now, this is obviously an extreme example. The US is not Russia and people who are saying that we are already Russiaare sort of just obeying in advance. A lot of my commenters are like: "Oh Adam... it's so cute of you to think that we're ever going to have another election again. That is a form of obeying in advance just admitting that that we're never going to have an election before Trump even takes office means in a way you are obeying in advance, and you're just giving up. You're being that cynical!
6:19: We need to keep fighting. We are not Russia, and I know people in the comments are going to be like: Adam, we basically are Russia. We're not we're not Russia yet. Trust me.
6:27: These individuals have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people. The White House said in a recent statement announcing sanctions against over a dozen oligarchs connected to Putin, quote: "They sit a top Russia's largest companies and are responsible [for] providing the resources necessary to support Putin's invasion of Ukraine. So, [in] the so in Russia's case, we can safely say that oligarchs are a small group of unelected individuals who have concentrated their power by wielding their disproportionate amount of wealth, and they use their wealth to entrench their power within politics outside of the formal election systems.
Elon Musk & Office Space in Trump’s White House
7:02: Can I just go back to this article Elon Musk is expected to use office space in the White House complex. The richest man in the world has bought his way into the White House, and now he gets an office space not because he was elected, he wasn't even born in America. He was not elected by anybody. The location suggests that Mr Musk, who owns companies with billions of dollars in contracts with the federal government, will continue to have remarkable access to president-elect Donald J Trump.
7:28: Can I just go back to what what Bezos said. Quote: "He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation and if I can help him do that, I'm going to help him. We do have too much regulation in this country."7:37: This is the second richest man in the world saying: "Hey, this regulation is making it... uh, really hard for me to get rich and exploit my workers."
7:46: Bro -- you're already rich what type of regulations do you want to remove other than things that will just hurt American citizens?
7:54: So let's watch this video of President Biden during his Farewell Address, now that I've laid out the groundwork. Now I can play this video of president Biden, and we can all be on the same page. I know that you guys know what an oligarchy is but there is something to be said that most Americans had to search this after Biden's farewell address and that this spiked.
8:09: So let's listen to this that's why my Farewell Address tonight I want to warn the country of some things that give me
great
Back to President’s Biden’s Warning to All Americans — Red, White, Blue, Brown, Green
8:13: "I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern this is a dangerous con and that's a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra wealthy people. The dangerous consequences [is] if their Abuse of Power is left unchecked today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights, and freedoms. [It also threatens] a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. We see the consequences all across America, and we've seen it before more than a century ago. But the American people stood up to the Robert Barons back then and busted the trusts. They didn't punish the wealthy. [They] just made the wealthy pay the by play by the rules everybody else had to just play by the rules that everybody else has to play by. "
9:11: And let me remind you guys, President Biden is very careful with his words. If I have one criticism of his presidency, [it] is that he was probably too risk averse at certain points. There were certain times when he didn't want to rock the boat regarding Russia or he didn't have the strength needed on the international stage to keep Russia in check, and I think Biden had a great domestic presidency.
9:30: I mean I think he passed some historic legislation. He is a great human being, but the least I can say is I think there are certain moments where he he he was a little bit too risk averse. And that showed on the world stage but right here, he is being very careful with his words. He would not say the US is turning into an oligarchy if he didn't mean it. He's not just Trump. Trump will bloviate and he'll throw out any word whenever it suits his interest.
9:54:Trump will literally say anything to anybody. Biden is not like that. Biden is very careful with what he says [and] does because he understands that what he does sends a message.
10:06: So let's finish off with this article President Joe Biden in his farewell address to the nation on Wednesday warned that American democracy is being threatened by a burgeoning oligarchy. Oligarchs are a subset of the very very wealthy and this is an important distinction right here. Being rich doesn't necessarily make you an oligarch.
The 1% Is What Oligarchs Are… and Even a Subset of That Super Elite Group
10:19: "An oligarch is someone who influences politics outside of the formal system," explained by Brooke Harrington who studies this exact thing at Dartmouth University. She spoke with the five-minute fix in 2022 when US sanctions were targeting Russian oligarchs at the outset of the war in Ukraine. Quote: "It's someone who isn't an elected representative or Cabinet member but who has the ear of the president." And she said this before Elon Musk was really Maga. I mean in 2022 Elon Musk had bought Twitter, but he wasn't like full onon full-throated Maga yet.
10:50 She then pointed to the late Sheldon Adon a billionaire Casino Tycoon and Republican Mega donor who did work on US Israeli relations and now Sheldon's wife Miriam is one of Trump's biggest donors and even got the presidential medal of freedom after Trump's first term... that is an example of an American oligarch. Elon Musk almost certainly fits the definition today. No matter where the definition is coming from, whether you're getting it from Marian Webster or even Wikipedia, it doesn't matter Elon Musk almost certainly fits the definition.
11:23: The tech billionaire has taken calls with foreign leaders. He stopped a government spending Bill in its tracks by sending out a few tweets or X's or whatever the hell [that thing is now], and [he] seemingly hasn't left president-elect Donald Trump's side since the end of the campaign. He's an unofficial leader in the Republican party. Some Democrats have derisively called him Pro co-president but he is he is literally the co-president, and this is an oligarchy in every sense of the term.
11:45: Why Trump tends to attract oligarchs this part is important. Harrington argues there have always been American oligarchs like I said at the beginning of the video, rich people have always been putting their thumb on the scale most of the time. We don't want that we can have a separate conversation about money and politics in general, but what we're seeing is new. This is a different scale from George Soros donating to Obama's campaign in 2008. This is different and I also will say I think Trump will change what the presidency in America means or what it looks like. I genuinely think that in 20 years, being president will mean something completely different.
12:19: After Trump's term in 2028 the presidency will not mean the same as what it means in 2024. I can make another video about that but Trump has a lot to do with it and a lot to do with why the oligarchy is growing. Many in the business community view him as a purely transactional president. He's a very transactional person and that you get what you give, and so oligarchs and potential oligarchs are growing in influence [abd] in number.
12:44: And as he prepares again to take [and has taken] office, several Tech Titans are making an almost dizzying amount of business moves that could be easily perceived as being for Trump. [For example] META, Mark Zuckerberg, [is] ending factchecking on a social media platforms and removing tampons from certain bathrooms... undoing things about pronouns. I mean it's all just posturing, right?
13:01: Jeff Bezos who founded Amazon and owns the Washington Post, spiked a comma Harris endorsement from the post editorial board. The Tik Tok CEO will be [and was] at Trump's inauguration on Monday, a day after the platform is expected to be banned. Actually, they'll all be at Trump's inauguration including the heads of Google, the head of Apple they've all donated millions of dollars to Trump's inauguration because, quote: "We're witnessing Tech CEOs scrambling [to] curry favor, and the Trump Administration has not not even begun," said Maximillian Potter a journalist with the group protect democracy.
13:34: Trump also appears to be integrating his wealthy allies into the government not unlike his first term where many of his cabinet members were millionaires or billionaires. Musk, the richest man in the world, and millionaire biotech entrepreneur V Ramaswami will lead an initiative tasked with cutting government spending and waste with republicans in Congress following their lead [Ramaswami actually quit from DOGE and is running for mayor or governor of someplace now].
13:55: And here's what I was saying earlier and I want to make an entire other video about this, but an oligarchy can be hard to stop once it's in motion. I genuinely think that after this Trump term, the office of the presidency will mean something different. It has long been the case that big money controls politicians, as I said, but Musk and other billionaires growing influence on the system could be a product, a direct result of Americans dissatisfaction with how responsive or the lack of responsiveness from the government over the past few years.
14:23: Trump and the billionaires with whom he's aligned himself are seen among his supporters as Outsiders who will disrupt the status quo in Washington. Whether we like it or not quote: "Democrats have become associated with the elite with political correctness. There are times when Democrats are a little bit too finger Waggy--no don't do that don't do that..." uh explaining that the party came across during the campaign [and] is more interested in the causes of higher educated, uh urban communities than the rest of America. I don't know if I agree exactly with that perception, but yes, people did think Trump was for them due to a multitude of reasons.
14:55: Russia is the poster country for oligarchs. There oligarchs are fully embedded in politics. They are directing culture, serving in high-profile governmental jobs... [and] can I just go back to this article one more time, this dude [Musk] is going to have an office in the White House, in the White House.
15:11: Quote: "There are no laws against a president in a super wealthy cabinet using their power to benefit their own class. There is nothing that compels them to look beyond their privilege to address the needs of the citizenry. In other words it's going to be up to voters to hold leaders accountable for putting the rich first. And in order to show voters that their interests are being put second, we're going to have to push back relentlessly. We're going to have to dominate The Narrative and that's where you and I come in every single day we're going to be pushing back on this channel.
15:36: So I'll end off with that drop a like subscribe. I love you guys. I'll see you in the next one and peace out!
Richard Wolff’s Last WARNING
“Most People Have No Idea What’s About To Happen” | Richard Wolff Last WARNING ⚠️ | DENIAL
Richard D. Wolff is an American economist and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is known for his critiques of economic inequality and his advocacy for worker cooperatives as a way to empower individuals and address systemic issues within the economy. Through his books, lectures, and public appearances, Wolff explores topics such as economic democracy and alternative economic models.
Richard Wolff’s Transcript
A System in Very Deep Doodoo
0:00 Before I start I have to ask you to understand that old adage that if you don't like the message, please don't take your anger out on the messenger. I am going to be describing to you as best I can what the situation is with the United States's economic system, which has a name... it's called capitalism, and it is to give you a hint of where we're going. It is a system in very deep doodoo.0:30 It is in the greatest difficulty that I have ever seen in my life. And you can tell from my white hair that I've been around a while. I never expected to see what I am experiencing and I imagine for many of you, it is the same unless you are committed to something my psychotherapist wife explains to me as the problem of denial. Not a river in Egypt but an inability to confront what it is that's going on because it's frightening. It's a very human thing to do. It's like a little child who puts his or her hands in front of her face when there's a scary dog in the neighborhood because she still imagines at age three... that if you don't see it it isn't there. And if you don't see what's going on around us then perhaps it isn't there.
1:20And that is something which our political leaders and our cultural leaders and our economic leaders that's one thing they all have in in common with very few exceptions namely a commitment to denial.
Why Is the American System in Very Deep Doodoo? Because of Denial
1:41 So my presentation today is going to try to break through all the mechanisms of denial that surround us in order to tell you what I think is going on. I'm not infallible. I make mistakes like everybody else but this is the fruit of a lifetime of observing US capitalism, which I was born in the United States in Young, Ohio. I've lived and worked here all my life. I have never seen anything like the situation we are in now.
2:12 To give you the framework and then jump in [to my observations], I think that the history of the world is a sequence with interruptions, but a sequence of Empires: the Greek, the Roman, the Persian, the Egyptian, the Chinese. I mean I could go on, and they all have something in common they are born usually out of the demise of another Empire. They evolve and change over a period of time running from a few decades to a few centuries, and then they die. They pass away.
Empires Fall — They Live & They Die
Empires fall — they live & die
2:36 The most recent one perhaps the most and best studied was the British Empire, which depending on how you want to count goes from around the 16th century to the end of the 19th... more or less so three or four centuries.
2:56 Depending on how you come and out of the disintegration of the British Empire, literally punctuated by the war the independence war that swirled around Boston right where you are, a part of that Empire broke away. And in an important lesson, the Empire denied that this was building, even though it was building across the entirety of the 18th century. [The British Empire] denied it, and then in 1776 the denial blew up in its face as the colonists here in this part of the British Empire, by the way a relatively small relatively unimportant part of the Empire, wanted its independence.
3:37 And a war was fought, which to the surprise and nd a war was fought, which to the surprise and chagrin of the British Empire and George III sitting on his throne in England, the British lost. Not to be forgetful, let me remind you that in 1812 they tried again,and they lost again.
3:56 And with that set in motion the disintegration of the British Empire, which ended in World War I [as well as the Ottoman Empire].
4:02 Out of it emerged the American Empire.
4:09 American capitalism across the 19th century resolved certain key internal contradictions holding them back most notably the bizarre coexistence in this country of a capitalist Northeast and Midwest and a slave South that was resolved by the willful destruction of slavery by the capitalists.
4:29 Remember the Civil War is the expropriation without compensation of the single most important wealth of the south in this country the slave.
4:41 The slave was emancipated, and thereby the White Master impoverished. The very Stark disregard for the sanctity of private property and capitalism having destroyed its competitor with enormous violence took off.
5:04 Starting in 1870, the United State's capitalism had a century of economic growth the most amazing thing is if you look at the statistics, crude as they are especially in the early years, the United States grew uninterruptedly for that Century.
5:19 Roughly 1870s to the 1970s, every decade real wages of workers were high higher than the decade before. Even across the Great Depression, profits grew even faster.
5:37 So you had this bizarre situation, quite rare in the world of a capitalism that was able to give Rising profits to its capitalists and Rising wages to the mass of its workers with of course the exception of those workers with the bad luck to not have been born white.
6:00 Very important [to let] that they sink in [a] while. Why? Because if you do something like this, if you have a century of economic growth under an economic system like capitalism, it isn't So surprising that you think of the United States as exceptional... because in that regard it was. If you're religious, perhaps you think God likes Americans better than he or she likes other people. If you're not religious, you will attribute it to who knows what... entrepreneurship. My professors used to like to say, "Whatever in the world that's supposed to be?"
6:33 But it was exceptional, and Americans, whatever there other orientations, took on the notion that we live in an exceptional place.
6:46 And they then really ran with that ball, and [they] began to imagine that this exceptionality was somehow inherent. And so, it would last forever. It was upward and onward... the American economy! And it would carry our culture around the world to become the world's culture.
The American Economy, Onward & Upward Forever & Ever… OH NO!! Help!!!
7:05 Our political system would be the model. Our military would push away those backward people who wanted to resist. It became, and I use this word carefully, crazy.
7:26 And of course when the signs began to emerge that this Empire, the United States Empire, after a 100 Year rise up, was beginning to show the signs of decline, of peaking, of breaking... it's not surprising that the leaders of such a system with such a history would be deep into denying what had happened.
7:52 Not seeing what was exploding around them over the last few days, Americans have been confronted yet again with the level of violence committed every day somewhere in this country by the police against the Citizens.
8:13 And again there are people who want to blame it on this or that particular policeman or woman who will not see that this is a social phenomena.
8:26 It has been going on for a long time and it is getting worse. This the same issue. It's the same denial.
8:34 Okay... what exactly is being denied? Let's begin, and I apologize I'm going to begin with economics, but that is what I know best.
8:41 That is what I have studied all my life. And so if I'm going to be useful to you, I want to share at first what I know best.
8:58 Over the last 40 years, roughly 1980 to now, we have seen (and all economists of all political persuasions understand this and see it).
9:03 We all use basically the same numbers, and with a few exceptions of course, always we come to the same conclusion over the last 40 years: There has been a radical redistribution of wealth from the bottom and the middle to the top.
9:23 And the more top you get [the better]... the top 10% have done really well, the top 5% even better, the top 1% even better than that, and the top one tenth of 1% the best of all!
9:37 And you know them because in our society we adulate them. I'm talking about Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Warren Buffett or fill-in the blank. You know them! Our culture [cult-ure] makes sure you know them!!
As the Rich Get Richer… and the Rise of Wage Slaves
AS THE RICH GET RICHER… UNDER RIGGED TAX CODES THAT BENEFIT CORPORATIONS & THE RICH… THE POOR GET POORER & THE MIDDLE CLASS DISAPPEARS
9:49 They became much richer. The top 10% became [even] richer. All across those 40 years. This was partly because... and this is very important that you understand this.... it was partly because we changed the tax laws in this country.
10:08We relieved taxes from corporations and the rich, and we switched them [taxes] onto the middle and bottom.
10:14It was done by Republicans. It was done by Democrats. It didn't matter who was in The White House or who was controlling the houses of the Congress.
10:25The Democrats did it a little less quickly. The Republicans were a bit more intense.
10:33Speed varied... content did not. Even more important than the changes in taxes was the phenomenon of the relationship between capital and labor--that is corporations and business on the one hand and the mass of people, employees, on the other.
10:52 As I've told you, real wages went up for a century--1870s to 1970.
10:58Why 1970, do I pick that? Now I can tell you because that's when real wages in America stopped rising!
11:06Absolutely epic making change!!What is a real wage? It's the amount of money you get adjusted for the prices you pay. So for example, if your wages go up 10%, you might feel good, but if all the prices you have to pay went up by 10%... you're no better off with a 10% bigger money wage than you were without it because the prices have adjusted.
11:32 We all know that in economics, so we don't use money wages, we use what's called real wages. Wages understood in terms of what it can afford you to buy: Goods, services, food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, education, medical care... whatever.
Americans have not made a real wage… a living wage… since 1978
11:43 Real wages rose. In other words, the money wages workers had from 1870 to 1970 rose more than the prices did. So they really got more stuff that they could afford to buy.
Trapped in the Illusion of Never-Ending Capitalistic Growth
Americans are trapped in an illusion of never-ending growth, which capitalism did from the 1870s to 1970s… but then it stopped
12:04 In the 1970s, that stopped and it has never resumed. The American working class today earns, in terms of what it can afford to buy, the average American worker earns now what he or she did in 1978.
Americans today receive the same real wage, a living wage, that they did in 1978
12:25Try to wrap your head around no more real wage increase. For a country that had enjoyed steady real wage rises for a century, this is a traumatic event.
Back to Denial
12:33 How is it handled in the United States?
12:36 Denial.
How has this been handled in the US?
Denial
12:39 I won't embarrass you by asking how many of you know what I just said, to be the case. How many of you have dwelt in your mind on what it might do to a population used to a rising wage when it is no longer available.
12:52 There was no discussion at the time or since. No debate in this country... what do we do about all of this?!
13:05 The closest you got were vague gestures in which somebody says: "Gee the middle class seems to be fading away..." as if this were I don't know some sort of cosmic effect or maybe the result of sunspots or allergies or who knows what.
13:24 But an analysis either of why it happened or of what its consequences were No, no, no... nothing serious.
No analysts of why this happened or the consequences of it has ever been done.
US Women Sent into the Workforce, Enmasse, Due to Denial
13:29 Well let me tell you what some of the results were.
13:35Number one, [and] by far the most important socially, the women of the United States left the home, where they had been sequestered for the earlier parts of American history and had to go out and do wage labor on mass.
13:48 The only ones who had been doing that beforehand were black and brown women. They long been doing it cuz they had to and the poorest among the whites.
13:55 But now suddenly, all women, all the wives and mothers had to go out. There was no other way to sustain the fantasy of growth of the American dream of what had been experienced in the previous Century.
14:13The second most important effect Americans began to realize that the only way they could participate in further growth of consumption, the way they had been led to believewas somehow inherent in the American Experience besides sending their wives out to work, besides following a career as a worker in a factory you could now go back to work and be a greeter at Walmart's but beside that--you could borrow money.
14:50 In the 1970s, the banks of the United States decided that the consumer... to whom they had never lent money before... they would now lend money to.
15:03 In other words, the credit card, which until then had been
American Express in the hands of rich people and businessmen, would now become socialized.
15:08 Everybody's wallet would be crammed full of plastic cards... live off them.
15:15 And so, the American working class from around the 1970 to the present accumulated debt. We are a debt ridden society in the way we never were before.
America is a Debt Ridden Society
Pioneers of Debt, Depression, and Denial
15:28 We became Pioneers not in covered wagons going west, but in what we could cram plastic in our wallets. All the growth of consumption in the last 40 years has been based on women's labor women's earnings and debt.
15:46 Families have become much more complicated institutions. To survive we have the highest divorce rate in the world. We put our families under levels of pressure that would be impossible for anyone to sustain.
15:56American women consume more psychotropic drugs than any other population on the planet!
American women consume more psychotropic drugs than any other population on the planet… Why?
16:02Why? Because they are druggies?
16:08 No! Because we put them under impossible pressures, which blew up the family, since the mother was what held the emotional life of so many families together, and she was now as exhausted as the husband.
16:20 Coming back from her hours of work, the Empire's Foundation is beginning to crack.16:27 Well, you keep assuming more debt, which the American working class did.
16:33 It borrowed. It had borrowed with government support for its house. That's how mortgages developed.
16:39 For those of you who don't know, mortgages were never given to working class people to buy a home until the Great Depression.
The Great Depression & Greedy Corporations
Mortgages were never given to working class people to buy a home until the Great Depression.
16:46 To get us out of the Great Depression, the government took the step of guaranteeing the mortgages so the banks could lend without a risk.
16:53 Otherwise they wouldn't have. Cuz they never did. The American homeowner Society is a product of the government not of private Enterprise, which was too greedy and too frightened to ever do it.
Private Enterprise was too greedy & too frightened to make loans to ordinary American citizens, so the government did it.
17:05 Home loaning, then the car had to be paid for with loans because the working class couldn't afford it.
17:12 Then the credit card, so you could buy everything!
Why the US Government Had to Step In
Government helped banks prop up the people with home mortgages, car loans, and then the credit card.
17:17 And then in the last 20 years, a new indebtedness, the college student.
17:23 So by now, the family is dying, floating in levels of debt it cannot support because the underlying wage didn't go up... just the debts.
17:31 And it doesn't take a PhD in economics, although I have that, for you to understand that if the underlying wage doesn't go up... you can't keep accumulating debt because the time will come... and it's called 2008... and that's why that song is so appropriate: Cracks in the Empire!
It doesn’t take a PhD to understand that if a person keeps accumulating debt that the time will come when the debt bubble bursts.
That Bubble Bursting is call 2008
Side Trip
I’m not sure which song Wolff is referring to… I am interested which one… but I found these two.
Colin Dodds – Debit Credit Theory (Accounting Rap Song
Cracks in the Empire — Diamond Dan
Back to Richard Wolff
Cracks in the Empire
17:42Cracks... In... The... Empire... this system is so committed to inequality that not only did it grow over the last 40 years as wages stopped rising... of course, where would would workers income go they couldn't grow their wages were flat but they were becoming more productive all the time.
18:00 The last 40 years are the computer, the robot, artificial intelligence... all of that workers productivity goes up [but] workers wages are flat.
18:13Wages are what the employer gives you.Productivity is what you give the employer.18:19 If what the employer gives you is flat and what you give the employer keeps rising... guess what you have:inequality.
Flat Wages = Inequality
If what the employer gives you is flat & what you give the employer keeps rising… guess what you have?Inequality.
18:25 You're taking all your growing out put and giving it to one small class of people employers are 1 2 3% of our population, if that.
Employers are 1, 2, 3% of our population, if that… but they get all the wealth.
18:38 They get it even across Covid-19 pandemic.
Employers benefit from rising productivity even across COVID-19.
18:38 Inequality got worse. And what did we do to the working class after we gave them 40 years of losing everything... their families falling apart, their position in American society, their growing wealth (a kind of affirmation that somehow you're doing better) [but] all of that's taken away.
19:04 Then we hit them with COVID, then we hit them with an inflation and now we're hitting them with rising interest rates.
After 40 Years of Losing Everything…. the Middle Class Is…
40 years of losing everything… their families falling apart, their position in American society, their wealth… then we hit them with COVID, inflation & rising interest rates.
19:10 Let me frighten you, if I may... if what I've said hasn't done that job already.
19:16 There is an example in history of another working class over a small number of years being hit with economic blows on a scale of what's Happening Here.
19:21The example is Germany, and here's how it works in the second half of the 19th century as the British British Empire is declining the United States is not the only competitor looking to replace the British... there is another one, Germany.
Here’s How Another Highly Productive Middle Class/Working Class Society Handled Losing Everything
There is an example in history of another working class over a small number of years being hit with economic blows on a scale of what’s Happening Here… Now… in America.
That example is Germany
19:40World War Idefeats Germany. Britain with its allies defeat Germany... throw them out of the competition, wipe them out, impose at the end a reparations they couldn't possibly pay.
19:51 The German working class, which had been built up across the 19th century to believe it was creating a whole new globe. In German it's called Das Deutsche Reich.
Throughout the 19th Century, Germans were made to believe they were buildingDas Deutsche Reich.
20:03 That's like the German Empire, and it had... you know, territories in Asia, territories in Africa, and so on. All that was smashed when the unthinkable happened in 1914 to 1918.
20:19Germany was defeated. The empire was taken away. Literally, the British took the colonies in Africa away from the Germans and made them British colonies.
20:27 Everything for them [Germans] destroyed. It was a trauma for the German working class.
20:33 It ended in 1918 with defeat. Within four years late 22 to early 1923, literally a century ago, Germany then experienced the worst inflation in modern times anywherein the West.
20:48 In a period of 9 months, the German currency went from six Deutsche Marks to the dollar to 4 trillion Deutsche Marks to the dollar.
In a period of 9 months, the Deutsche Mark went from 6 Marks to the Dollar…
…to 4 Trillion Deutsche Marks to the Dollar
21:01 Prices doubled over weeks at a time, every hour of the day, any savings accumulated by a German family, and they were very frugal, were wiped out.
21:13 [During this time, after] six generations of saving money, [they] had enough money put away to buy a quarter pound of butter. They were done.
21:19 And five years after that, in 1929, the Great Depression hit Germany. It was too much. You cannot hit a working class, even the German working class, which was the best educated, most productive and, most progressive working class anywhere in Europe.
21:38 No contest. Even that... it was too much. And in 1932, those German people overwhelmed by what they had been put through, turned around and supported a little Austrian with a black mustache Adolf Hitler...and you know the rest of the story...
It was too much. And in 1932, those German people overwhelmed by what they had been put through, turned around and supported a little Austrian with a black mustache.
Here We Go Again… This Time in America
21:56 We're just living out... here we go... the same sad scenario: denial, not explaining to people the foundation of what they're assuming, not talking honestly about its disappearance, the cracks what it means when your Empire has that fun ride up... [then] begins to be replaced by the much less fun ride down. We're in very deep trouble,
Here we go… the much less fun ride down… in denial all the way!
22:27 The last half century, we have benefited enormously by the fact that there's one international currency money: It's the US dollar.
22:35 It's as good as gold because it literally functions like gold.
22:41 That's over. Ukraine simply speeds up the process. China, Russia, now Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, and many more countries are signing up for another International currency.
22:56 It shouldn't come as a big surprise whose currency that is... it's the currency of the People's Republic of China.
23:10 China shows all the signs of a rising Empire, matching all the signs of a declining Empire here.
The Day of the US Dollar Ruling Are Over
The days that the US dollar rules the international currency is over.
23:18 You may not like that information. You may be upset by it... that's your business. But to pretend it isn't there... let me give you just some numbers...
23:30 I'm an economist we do that. One of the things we do as economists is we look at the size of an economy to gauge relative economic power. And the number we use it's crude, like all numbers, but it gives you an idea it's called GDP. It stands for gross domestic product.
23:49 It's a measure of the output of goods and services in one calendar year.
23:54 So it helps us if we look at it and we measure it. And it's measured for every country on this Planet. It gives us an idea of the relative size.
GDP
GDP is how economic power is measured worldwide.
24:00 Okay... let's now do a comparison of three countries Russia, China, and the US to get a sense of their economic wealth their economic power.
24:13 Their economic footprint, if you like, in the world to give you an idea of... and if you didn't know this, think about what that might mean. So I'll start with Russia.
24:26 The GDP of the most recent year for Russia it's about 1.5 trillion dollars. The GDP of the United States last year was $21 trillion dollars.
24:49 Do you understand Russia has never been and is not now anything like a serious economic competitor of the United States. It never was. It never came close.
24:54 It may have had some nuclear weapons to worry about. It may have had political influence but like an economic unit?
24:59 Only people [who] systematically denied the simple statistic I just gave you could believe that
25:09 Russia has $1.5 trillion GDP. The United States alone [has] 21 [trillion GDP]
25:13 You know who has a bigger economic footprint than Russia? Italy
25:18 United States is allied with Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and, many other countries against Russia.
25:25 If you put them all together, it's like 30 maybe 35 trillion dollar against Russia with one and a half... what are you talking about a war? 25:37 This is a war between David and Goliath, and you're not going to be happy with who is playing which role. Think about it.
Russia GDP $1.5 trillion dollars
US GDP $21 trillion dollars
25:47 Now China... what's the GDP of China? Ready -- $17.5 trillion.
China GDP is $17.5 trillion dollars
25:47 $175 trillion... that's a competitor, not Russia.
25:53 China that's the Empire emerging, not Russia. China.
25:59 And why? Easy to explain. Over the last 25 or 30 years annual growth of GDP, how fast is the economy growing. Here in the United States is 2% maybe, slightly more 2.5 to 3%, somewhere in there. Let's be generous 2 to 3% US average annual growth.
26:19 China's average annual growth is 6 to 9%. End of conversation.
26:27 That's why China went from being one of the poorest countries in the world to being the competitor of the United States, one of
the richest.
26:32 You know what it's like? It's a story a little like the colony in North America being a place for Furs, and then becoming the new Empire
26:44 So that the roles between Great Britain and its Colony were reversed.
26:49 Now Britain is our Colony, as any honest appraisal of the relationship between these two countries would immediately acknowledge.
26:57 In Britain, one of the most common jokes you can hear is that when the United States tells Britain to jump, the response of Britain is: How high?
In Britain, one of the most common jokes you can hear is that when the United States tells Britain to jump, the response of Britain is: How high?
27:05 China has overtaken the United States in dozens of fields, particularly the highest Tech ones.
27:17 Young people around you are using TikTok... that's Chinese, as a social media. What's going on?
27:23 The United States doesn't know what to do. Having not learned the lessons, having not understood what denial means... for a long time they denied because to see the rise of China is to take a step in the direction that might make you confront what's happening to you and that's a taboo.27:42Finally, the United States figures it out and what does it do as if it learned nothing from its history. It tries Warfare.
How the US Deals with the Fact that Its Capitalistic Systems Are Declining & China is Rising
The signs of denial are all around…
27:55 It tries to slow down, to stop, maybe even to reverse history... just like Britain did. Mr Trump declared a
28:03 Mr Trump declared a trade war against China. You remember... it's not that many years ago he applied sanctions, he applied tariffs, he did everything he could to stop to reverse it.
28:14 None of it worked. It was one big fat failure.
Big Fat Orange Failure… and that Was 4 Years Ago!
None of what Trump did worked 4 years ago… It was one big fat failure.
28:23 Now, we are in a war, we the US and its allies, with the most important ally China had, Russia.
28:29That's what's going on in Ukraine. It has got nothing whatever to do with that sad country suffering this war. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
28:42 The truth of Ukraine, all the rest is propagandistic Foolery on both sides.
28:49This is about weakening the Ally of China,which Russia is.
The Truth About Ukraine from an Economic Perspective
28:55 When the war started, Mr. Biden predicted the Russians couldn't last a few weeks
29:01 With this Armada of countries and weapons and wealth, and new name it, he referred to what they were doing as the Mother of All Sanctions, which it was greatest sanction program ever apply, [that] Russia wouldn't last.
29:15 The ruble would be valueless within weeks.
29:24All of that 100% wrong. The Russian economy bubbling along pretty well took a dip right after came back most of the way.
29:30 You know why? Because the sanctions mainly stop buying.
Russia is an exporter of oil & gas… when the West stopped buying China, India, and Suadi Arabia bought more…
29:35 Oil and gas, which is Russia's Lifeline, that's what Russia is an exporter of oil and gas. I'm exaggerating but it's the basic story.
29:42 [While] Europe said we wouldn't buy it anymore, and that would have crippled Russia, except Russia found other buyers.
29:48 It's not a complicated story. China bought more. India bought tons more. Saudi Arabia is reorganizing its economy. Pakistan is making important agreements with the Chines
30:00 And the Russians on... The World Isn't, guess what?
30:06Controlled by the United States.It's over. It's all around you. The United Nations took a vote on Ukraine, the majority of countries did not agree with the United States.
30:19 They either voted on the side of Russia or they abstained they refused to participate. It's over.
Will they help or not?
30:25 But you live in an environment which needs to deny it. The divisions in our society become worse with each passing day.
30:33 Because they're grounded in a reality that isn't changing inequality
Systemic Denial Persists in the USA
30:39 As I'm speaking to you... [it] is continuing to get worse.
30:45Corporations are working as hard as they ever did to pay no taxes. The mass of people are suffering on a scale that is unspeakable.
30:51The inflation we're still [in]... at prices are going up roughly twice as fast as Wages30:56 That's a destruction of the working class.
31:03 Prices are going up twice the rate of wages. This is impossible. You can't do this without explosions. Now the explosions are happening in our country.
31:16So they explode, how? By taking it out on one another... crime,
bitterness, resentment, a politics of scapegoating.
31:28 I mean how else explain Preposterous Notions that become serious?
31:35 This is a country, United States, of 325 to 330 million people.
Prices are going up twice the rate of wages. This is impossible.You can’t do this without explosions.
Immigrants Are Not the Problem People… MAGA Is Lying to You to Keep You Deaf, Dumb, Blind and Very Obedient to the Oligarchs
31:41 The biggest estimate I've ever seen of undocumented immigrants in our country says 10 million. Okay... there's no way 10 million of the poorest people there are, immigrants from Central America, are the cause of the difficulties of a capitalist economy of 330 million people.
31:58 That's silly. That's on a level, you know, that an elementary school kindergarten kid wouldn't come up with something as off the chart as that.
There’s no way 10 million of the poorest people there are, immigrants from Central America, are the cause of the difficulties of a capitalist economy of 330 million people.
You Are Desperate… I Understand… but Denial Won’t Help You
32:04 You're desperate.
32:10 I understand that. You've been suffering, you have, you have a right to be angry and upset, no question you do.
32:17 You have been screwed in this system, having been led to believe by those 100 years that the opposite was waiting in store for you.
32:23 Instead, you're being being slapped and whacked and deprived with no end in sight.
32:32 I teach at the University. I'm surrounded all the time with people in 18 19 into their 20s. They are not happy this generation.
32:40 They don't see good jobs. They don't see good Futures. They don't see any of it. They were led by their
32:48 They were led by their parents and this culture to expect what they now know they're not going to get.
32:53 And they want some answers too. The most recent Gallup poll indicates that a majority of Americans polled, randomly, [who were] 35 years of age and younger, when asked would you rather live in a capitalist or a socialist economy? the majority say
33:14 The majority say socialist.
33:19 You know after half a century of ideological pressure against everything social that I grew up in, I'm a product of that, this is amazing.
33:25 That the point of view could be twisted like this and when you talk to students as I do about this all the time, I quickly learn the polling is correct.
33:32 But it's not that they like socialism, they haven't a clue what it is.
33:39 Those votes that polling is [revealing is] because they are angry at Capitalism. They know that that system is not for them. socialism I mean let's try that but
33:48 It's not that they like socialism, it's that they don't like capitalism, but that has to be faced. I'm not making these
33:54 I'm not making these numbers up. You can't come away from what I've just said with an imagination that all is well in this Empire.
33:59 But I'm not done. Now, we're blaming Russia. What?
34:06 Russia invaded. I've been a victim of war in my own family. My own life. I'm against war. War is no way to solve problems.
34:13 The Russians shouldn't, could have done something else, should have done something else. I get that, but like with every war you have to ask why did it come to this?
34:20 Russians have suffered from war as much as any other country in the last century.
34:25 They're not going to go into a War easily and quickly. They're not like the United States upon which no war has been fought in the last century.
34:33 Both world wars killed more Russians than anybody else.
34:38 They know. So why? You have to ask why? We don't.
Why So Much War
WHY?
34:45 So let me end with military. Since the end of World War II, the United States has invaded small countries repeatedly, violating norms-rules based international order.
34:59 It invaded Korea. It invaded Vietnam. It invaded Iraq. It invaded Afghanistan. It lost all of them.
35:07 The wars were lost: Korea, Vietnam, they all were lost.
35:13 The Communist Party of Vietnam took over that country. The Taliban took over Afghanistan. I could go on.
35:18 They lost. They didn't win. They lost and if you look at the line between the Russians and the Ukrainians it has moved Westward.
35:28 There is there is no question of who's winning and who's losing.
35:35 Only in the minds of people committed to denial are these things going on.
35:41 I'm not asking you to endorse either side in this war. I'm not asking you to endorse China or the Chinese system.
35:47 I'm just asking you, and I do this with all my public speaking, I'm asking you look at the reality you have in front of you.
35:53 Don't be afraid.
35:59 The danger lies in denial, not in facing it, and if we face it there is a lesson to be learned from the British Empire.
36:05 After two attempts to militarily force the United States back into the British Empire, after those two efforts had failed the British Empire stopped trying and decided instead to try to work out a relationship with the United States, which it did, not the greatest job but did a pretty good job.
36:30 The biggest waffle came in the US Civil War. When the British seriously considered siding with the South.
36:38 They didn't, but they came close. After that though... once they could see who won there, they went with the winner.
36:43 A very courageous move [said with humor] Once the war was over.
36:50 But maybe we have to learn that we have to live with the People's Republic of China. It has virtues.
36:55 We could learn from them, just as they could learn from the United States. And that [could] be a better plan than what they're doing now.
37:03 American 7th Fleet is in the China Sea. There is no Chinese Fleet on our border.
37:08 We are there. We are threatening them. We always have.
37:14 This is a country that is now our economic competitor. Its Global political reach is extraordinary.
37:21 And it has four times the number of people we do, and now that they're close, mostly allied with India, you're talking about the two largest countries by population on this planet.
37:32 You better come to terms with them.
37:39 Because the prospect of defeating that in a war... that's a war everybody loses.
We Must Stop the Denial or We Are Toast
We have to stop the denial & face what is going on… or we are all toast…
37:46 You don't have that option unless you're crazy. We have to stop the denial and face what is going on otherwise we are going to get ourselves into one mess after another.
37:58And who's going to do it? The corporations that are profiting from this system?38:04Unlikely.38:10The rich who have become richer for 40 years, are they likely to question the system that has rewarded them that way?Unlikely.38:16 You know who's going to do it, if anybody does, it's the mass of the people, the employees of this culture, or if you allow me the old language: the working class... because it's their ass that's on the line.
38:28They're the soldiers and they're the taxpayers who keep the system going and that's probably whydenial has won over honest confrontation with our reality. Marx once said that the
38:44 Marx once said that the capitalist class will in the end destroy itself the question for all of us and all of you is: Will we let that system take us down with it?
Will we let “the system” take us down with it?
Dr. Richard Wolff from a Different Angle
Trump’s billionaires will accelerate American decline. Dr. Richard Wolff explains how.
DOGE Debunked: Billionaires Are Robbing You and Calling It ‘Efficiency’ w/ Prof. Richard Wolff ||| “What we are seeing here is pure IDEAOLOGY”.. not REALITY. Republicans have always hated taxes, so they pandered to extremists groups–Nazis, White Supremacists, anti-abortionists to form a base just powerful enough to get them elected into positions of power
Min 9:41: “We are watching a billionaire government doing what’s good for them… for the business class they represent… for the super wealthiest among them and their Savaging working class families.“
D. Mann — Sapience: The Moment Is Now
Chapters on How the Corruption Entered Human Civilization Leading to Humanity’s Fall Over the Climate Cliff… a fictional future that doesn’t seem so fictional now… pages 138- 147
The Corruption
Mother called the artery clogging disease that kills civilizations the Corruption. It cuts up cohesive cooperation with selfish self-interests. Money often lies at the root of the Corruption. Money is the shiny, bright object, often presented as a bribe or a false promise of prosperity (but only if…), that lures people to do bad things. The Corruption entices good, peaceful people to do bad things, things that benefit only a few people, not the good of all people living in a system who rely on cooperation to survive.
As the Corruption goes to work eroding cooperation, cohesion, and unity, the shared lines of a civilizations conscious awareness begin to clog with the hard plaque of fear, anger, and pain. People get hurt. People don’t know who to trust. People grow cynical. This toxic brew fosters an internal inferno where even more sticky and toxic plaque gets forged and deposited over the first layer of hardening, rigid consciousness. This second layer of plaque is uniquely human for it can transcend or descend the guard rails of instincts. The toxic plaque deposited over fear, anger, and suffering is hate, greed, envy, and revenge.
When enough civilizing lines of cohesion get clogged or a main artery becomes blocked, the inner crisis quickly manifests into physical reality. Such a blockage initiates destructive metabolism or catabolism. This is a systematic death within the Mental Model that destroys all systems the people living within the civilization depend upon to survive. Left without any means of keeping themselves alive, the people must flee or die. It is a catastrophe. It is the ouroboros who has eaten its own body up completely.
This is why mother travelled into the Western arteries of consciousness. This is why she met her father. This is why her parents were working on a book combining their knowledge and wisdom. Being a person herself of two radically different cultures and tribes of men, Rain understands from Grandmother’s stories the Ojibwe know how-to live-in harmony with their inside world and outside world. They have always known and still know. But they were subjugated and sidelined by the overwhelming virulent collective force emanating from Europe.
This is where one of the most virulent strains of the Corruption migrated at a time white Europeans figured out how to cross the ocean and were intoxicated by their own technical know-how and abilities. A competitive edge that would have devasting consequences for the rest of the world; consequences that would put the world squarely in the jaws of fate, the Ouroboros.
Whiny, Violent, Petulant Thing
Rain understands from Father’s and Mother’s stories that the Corruption started long ago in civilizations developing in and around the Fertile Crescent. Due to the abundance of civilizations evolving there, once the Corruption killed one civilization, it had already infected another civilization—violence, fear, and pain are its vectors. Each time it jumps; it mutates and grows more virulent, more noxious, more pernicious, and deadlier.
The Corruption did not just infect civilizations in the Fertile Crescent. Wherever human cultures grew lopsided, cultivating violence, fear, and pain, it had emerged. But it was the Cradle of Civilization where the Corruption grew most virulently, where it mutated for more than 5,000 years. Where it grew into a disease of consciousness capable of creating catastrophes that only grew bigger and more terrible with time. Where man applied his mind to make weapons of mass destruction, instead of making sure everyone in his civilizations were fed, secure, and sheltered.
The Corruption is the disease that will stop the collective heartbeat of humanity on Earth. White European culture is the tip of the spear that made the Modern world, of course, but this Thing now holding all life for ransom… it is something far deeper… something far more pervasive… something existing inside all humans, of all times, of all places, and of all cultures.
This is why Mother travelled into the darkest and most dangerous realms of human consciousness. And it is why Father studied history and religion. And it is why Yong Xing-li knew the final stages of the Transformation were essential to prevent the world from turning right back around and heading over the Climate Cliff.
This Thing is a whiny, violent, petulant, and very thin, polluted stream of human consciousness. It was, as Mother discovered, not just Western Civilization responsible for the ruin of the planet… Western Civilization simply controlled and imposed by brute force the economic systems that would come to define the Modern World. And the Modern World would readily agree to play by these rules because economic supremacy provides a legitimate, nonviolent means to rule the world!
The Long Game
In this game, everyone willingly agrees to cede power and authority to the person or entity who amasses the most money. By winning the money game, a person or an entity can claim the number 1 spot on the playing board… which is round, not flat, is 71% water, and has an oxygen rich atmosphere. A person or entity in the number 1 spot gets to define the parameters by which everyone else must play the money game, that is… until they get knocked off by someone or something that amasses more money.
The money game is the survival game but with a twist of malevolent satire. It is played on the Field of Mind, which exists anywhere a human can walk or go. People call the money game: Economics. It is a long game. And to play it well requires intelligence, acumen, wit, comprehension, reason, acuity, alertness, cleverness, insight, intuition, talent, and ability. It is a game defined in the early days of civilization, and it was complicated then. In the 5,000 years since, it has only become more complicated and harder to play.
Those who lack mastery or ability to play the game resort to brute force, deception, and violence. These are quite frankly weak, incompetent people who are willing to do anything to win. Incompetent people can only win by cheating, but cheaters are a dime a dozen if the rules of the money game are thrown to the wind. So, the most arrogant, greedy, and crafty incompetent people devised ways to subjugate the Model of Mind used by every modern economic and political power system to cheat at the money game, so they always win.
Pyramid Model of Mind
Masters of Time Fail to Master the Mind
The most powerful Model of Mind is the Pyramid Model, of course. It was conceived long ago by peaceful people who loved life, loved their land, loved their homes and children and culture. People who were mastering their minds and coming together to live in bigger and bigger groups growing into civil societies.
Civil societies grow to become civilizations. It is something that happens naturally like flowers growing in a field or rainbows appearing in the sky whenever rain and sunlight mix. They are the inevitable next step once Homo sapiens grew beyond the embryonic sac of instincts when they learned how to sing to themselves. Civil societies just happen because being civil to each other is how humans survived this long. And when a civil group of people start cooperating more broadly with other civil groups of people, they grow into civilizations.
Many civilizations all over the world conceived of the Pyramid Model of Mind. And many used it to mold their civil societies into a unified collective that can act as a single being. Such unanimity creates the living entity called civilization, which is what Mother came to believe civilizations really are, creatures. The more undivided in belief and behavior, the greater coherence of collective action can be conducted as a large group of people acting as one, like a God or a super being or a monster.
It was the ancient Egyptians who perceived first of the opposite side of growing into a great and glorious civilization. They perceived of a looming and growing danger capable of destroying a civilization no matter how great or glorious it had become. Because of this awareness, they took great care in mastering and perfecting the Pyramid Model of Mind, not just as a mold for their society, but as a way of protecting themselves from the Ouroboros, and then as a way of transforming their collective consciousness when they realized there was not a way to avert their fate once they passed a certain level of civilization.
They were the first to master the Pyramid Model of Mind, and they were the first to decapitate it. What they did not realize then was the Ouroboros is thought, specifically the circular thinking required by civil societies so individuals can specialize. Repetitive thought opens the door to a sort of sleepwalking through life; no longer did a person need to worry about getting food, water, shelter, or how to avoid being eaten—their civilization insulates them from all of that. All they needed to worry about was doing their specialized task really well and following along in the mainstream of their civil society’s norms and behaviors.
Playing Thinkers for Fools
And here is where the Ouroboros plays the thinker for a fool. People who can play the money game reasonably well enough to live and willingly obey the rules become sitting ducks for people who lack access to or mastery of the money game. These are also the people most susceptible to the venom of the split aspects of the Ouroboros—the White snake and Black snake, the Narcissist, and the Psychopath. These are people who flip the rules of civil society into their opposite form and turn the transformative power of the Pyramid Model of Mind into a penitentiary.
It is people corrupted by the Ouroboros who play the systems of their civil societies in reverse. Rather than looking out for the good of all, they look out only for the good of one, themselves. They are attracted to power like a magnet is attracted to nails. And wherever they land within the structure of their society, they punch holes in it like an earth auger. Get enough of such people in a civil society, and they eat away at the fabric of cooperation and civility like a colony of very hungry termites. They do this by infecting others with fear and doubt. They go around blaming and shaming others for their own fears and failures. They play the blame game to create a smoke screen: Blame the other guy for the very things they are guilty of doing or want to do! All the while, they are stealing from, impoverishing, and generally putting the lives of people who wish to live in peaceful, cooperative societies in danger, sometimes grave danger.
Decapitating the Pyramid
Get such a person lodged in the upper rungs of the flow of power in the Pyramid Model of Mind, and you get a person who not only knows how to use the rules of civil society to trap and imprison another person, but you get a person who has access to the very systems responsible for maintaining a civil society. This is very dangerous. Because corrupted men in powerful positions quickly find ways to divert the flow of power to themselves. Then, they consolidate power, wealth, and prestige at the very top, where there is only room for one, themselves. And that is when they strike like a snake, decapitating the flow of power.
This is how the Pyramid Model is decapitated and turned into a prison rather than a system of transformation. Dictators, tyrants, and terrorists tend to decapitate the pyramid it at the soldier level, using violence, fear, and terror to control everyone living below them or to imprison forever or kill those who do not agree with them. They call their new, improved economic game communism, totalitarianism, and despotism. Monarchies, oligarchies, and democracies tend to decapitate the pyramid social order at the scribe level, who in modern societies are intellectuals who use their thinking skills to confuse, baffle, distract, or outright deceive ordinary people from what is really going on. They call their new, improved economic game capitalism. And there are hybrid decapitations too such as commie-capitalism.
Decapitated Pyramid Model of Mind
Just before the Fall, not only was there an abundance of ruthless corrupted rulers eager to rule decapitated hierarchies, but there was an abundance of people who wanted to be ruled by them. What they share is a rigid, aggressive mindset that disliked subjectivity and imagination, and one that is extremely superstitious and views others through simplified stereotypical biases. It is a mindset obsessed with projecting idealized images of their own grandeur, power, and toughness. It is a mindset that takes credit for all the good things that happens and blames others for the bad. It is a cynical and destructive mindset to the point of feeling hostility towards anyone who does not believe exactly like them. Anyone thinking outside of their bubble of belief is assumed to be insincere, self-centered, and dangerous, which is really all the things that they themselves are but refuse to admit, and so they blame the other guy.
In short, these are humans standing in toe-deep water of their consciousness; everything beyond that on their islands of one is believed to be wild and menacing, not to be trusted. Lacking access to and understanding of their own most basic instinctual drives and emotional impulses, they cast their worst nightmares onto everyone else, becoming especially concern with sexual on-goings of others, never taking responsibility for their own short-comings and inability for self-reflection. These are fearful humans, sad humans, pitiful humans who fall victim to the Dark Triad over and over and over again, which is really a Dark Tetrad because there is a fourth hidden, malicious personality that was propagating like hot cakes just before the Fall.
The Dark Triad is the embodiment of narcissism or psychopathy in a human being, and when narcissism and psychopathy are contained inside one human skull, you get the third embodiment, which is a Machiavellian demon being. If sadism is added inside this same skull, you get one of the most disturb personality disorders to have evolved among humans: the Dark Tetrad. These are people who openly tell others that trolling the Internet is their favorite activity; a full-time Internet troll finds pleasure inflicting pain on others and the Internet is their favorite playground.
But given real power over other people, the Dark Tetrad becomes the most venomous vector of the Corruption. It can awaken and activate these same qualities in other people, twisting and contorting their public performances into violent, selfish, gruesome displays of ignorance. This is essentially what personalities are, the performance of a person’s consciousness in public. Through a person’s personality, it is possible to tell how mature or immature consciousness has developed within an individual human being. A mature consciousness can navigate between the extreme opposites arising from inside and choose civil, life promoting action; an immature consciousness cannot. Such a person is susceptible to the pull of extreme points of view, and no matter what side a person takes, uncivil, non-life promoting action results.
With the modern world increasingly revolving around a tiny screen people carried around with them 24/7 connected to a global audience with the ability to be anonymous, uncivil performance became a contest too tempting for most people to resist. Anyone having a bad day could blow off short-term frustration, disappointment, or anger with hostile, pithy comments. And if they get a lot of likes from other frustrated, disappointed, angry people in the world who like them are having a bad day, a culture that cultivates hate arises that soon turns into an addiction, an excuse to not take responsibility for one’s own anger, limitations, bad decisions, and consequences for the bad choices and actions they, and only they, made and acted on.
Rather than work to understand unconscious, underlying motivations and beliefs that feed their inner demon and allow it to take control of their thoughts and actions, people increasingly ignored the root causes of their irritations and anger. More and more people preferred to attack other people who they have never met and will never know or who they have dehumanized, so they feel no responsibility for their wellbeing. And because children like to run in packs, such individuals attract the following of other disaffected people around the world… no longer did losers run in packs of 2 or 3, now millions belonged to a growing cohort of people increasingly uncomfortable in the real world requiring real interactions and real relationships that take real time to grow and that also require taking responsibility for oneself.
Just before the Fall, there was a tidal wave of fake news, trolling, and hate culture exploding on city streets and propagating on the world wide web. This paved the way for the spread of the Totalitarian mindset. It took root in the minds of ordinary people everywhere in the world. People who had conditioned themselves not to take responsibility for anything, and so when “Big Daddy” comes along saying: “I will take care of everything for you!” … losers, haters, trolls of the world bow down and follow because they have trained themselves to be followers.
Mindsets are different than Models of Mind in that they form inside the overarching shape of a civilization like dust or pollen do in the natural world. Mindsets float about and coat ideas emerging within a civilization covering them with a fine layer of goo. Mindsets can obscure good ideas with thick layers of mucky thinking. And they can make ordinary ideas rigid and inflexible. They can also make bad ideas very sticky so that they clump together to create very, very bad ideas, lopsided ideas, extreme ideas, dangerous ideas that fail to see where the real danger is emanating from… and usually, in the world man made, it is coming from inside.
Mindsets require people capable of communicating the key features, traits, qualities, and ingredients of the mindset for they are basically scripts to stories that people are supposed to follow. This is why you can always recognize the difference between a mindset and a mental model because mindsets prescribe, advise, direct, urge, command. Mental models only provide a shape that an individual can choose to stay within or not, and if they choose to stay, it is up to them and their quality of mind how it is filled.
Because of this difference, mindsets must always have creators and purveyors of the mindset. And then, to work, mindsets need followers. The more charged with emotions a mindset is made; the more people are attracted to them. Once fused together, like a shepherd to his sheep, a preacher to his parishioners, or a cult leader to his cultists, it is very hard to separate people from their mindsets.
The Totalitarian mindset is one of the most aggressive, cruel, mean-spirited, spiteful, malicious, nasty, callous, pitiless, savage, cold-hearted, hostile, and beastly mindset ever hammered out inside the human mind. And it was spreading faster and infecting more people than ever just before the Fall.
Game of Isms
Another way to spot a mindset is if it ends with an ism. The Modern world operating underneath decapitated pyramids, aka corrupted hierarchies, ruled by corrupted men was speckled like a face full of pustules of isms just before the Fall.
Isms are thinly veiled attempts to legitimize the corruption that the people on top use to ride roughshod over the rights, opinions, and feelings of the people they have imprisoned in their decapitated pyramid. For people exhausted from just trying to survive, adhering to an ism is easier than going against it if it has gained enough momentum to become the prevailing wind in a system or civilization.
However, what a corrupted person really desires is that people believe in the ism and commit to it before they really understand what they are committing to. Corrupted people work hard to make an ism especially appealing to the hard-working people in a decapitated pyramid. Such isms promise good things to people who follow its teachings or script. These isms have a way of spreading far and wide before an antidote is found for them. By then, it is too late to inoculate the people who have succumb to such isms. Reality itself cannot dissuade a person from the false promises, covenants, and guarantees people believe they will receive if they follow the ism obediently and precisely.
The sad truth is anything that gets infected by an ism, even if it begins as a very good idea, tends to grow to be more stringent, drastic, exhaustive, and insane. This is because isms tend to grow ever more reactionary, fanatical, and revisionary over time. Isms decay like this because their core ideologies must continually warp to keep people trapped in the shallowest regions of their mind, and this is exactly where the Totalitarian mindset want people to be.
Just before the Fall, the Totalitarian mindset was disguised by every make and model of an ism a person could dream up. It came in every shape and color, every creed and system of belief or narrative. Some isms cast longer and darker shadows than others. But all must spin spell-binding stories out of one ism or another—liberal socialism, radical conservatism, crazed conspiracism, or the more standard models of communism and capitalism.
Saving A Dying World
It is decapitated pyramids, cynically called functional hierarchies, that came to rule the survivors of Earth under totalitarian minded CEOs and Multis. Yong Xing-li was unique because he had mastered the economic game using his intellect. But he also possessed compassion, caring, and patience, which is the essence of heart and heart is the home of wisdom.
Yong Xing-li understood it is the combination of intellect and heart that wins the long game of economics. His understanding combined with his intelligence and innate empathy secured Yong Xing-li the number 1 economic spot in the world. But it was a dying world. Rather than capitalize on death, Yong Xing-li used his economic position to do something about it, to change the fate of the world ruled by civilized humans.
In a way, Yong Xing-li is the closest thing the world had to Buddha or Jesus Christ at a time the world needed a savior more than ever. But like Jesus, he was killed for his passion to save people. Yong Xing-li’s mastery of the long game did not make his task easier. In fact, it probably made it a lot harder.
Rain remembers Father often saying with a downcast smile, “If Jesus was alive today and trying to do what he did 2,000 years ago, nobody would care, nobody would listen to him, nobody would follow him, and he would probably end up in prison or institutionalized because everybody thinks that only they, and they alone, know how to fix and rule the world.”
Rain knows now why father always said this with a sad, downcast smile. She not only knows what father knew, but she feels it too. Just like father, mother, grandmother, and Yong Xing-li she feels the suffering of people in a world brought into being based on greed, hate, and violence; a world most people had no hand in making but have been forced to submit to serving.
Conclusion: A Call to Action
As we confront the convergence of political, economic, and psychological crises, this blog underscores the urgency of understanding where we stand and how we got here. Adam Mockler reminds us of the immediacy of our democratic struggle, urging us not to accept the current trajectory as inevitable. Richard Wolff provides a sweeping historical and economic perspective, showing the fragility of empires and the devastating consequences of denial and inaction. Finally, Sapience: The Moment Is Now offers a way forward, emphasizing the power of empathy, cooperation, and self-awareness to confront these challenges head-on.
We stand at a crossroads. Blame and division will only accelerate our decline, but there is hope in recognizing our collective responsibility and capacity for change. The choice before us is stark: to repeat the mistakes of the past or to rise above them, working together to shape a sustainable and just future. The time for action is now.
On October 7, 2023, a significant and tragic escalation occurred in the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel. Early in the morning, Hamas launched a large-scale surprise attack on Israeli territory. The attack involved rocket fire and incursions by armed militants into various communities. This assault marked a particularly deadly day in the conflict’s history. It caused many casualties among both Israelis and Palestinians.
In response, Israel declared a state of war and commenced extensive military operations in Gaza. The violence quickly escalated, leading to airstrikes on Gaza and widespread destruction. The international community reacted with alarm, calling for de-escalation and urging both sides to pursue dialogue. The events of that day worsened the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. They also reignited discussions about the long-standing issues at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As the anniversary approaches, reflections on the events and their aftermath emerge. They highlight the ongoing tensions. These tensions have a profound impact on civilians in the region.
In my book, Sapience: The Moment Is Now, I trace the roots of antisemitism back centuries. These hateful sentiments stretch back to the First Crusades and even further back in time. The night (or rather early morning) of the attack, I had a dream about the Human Cake. It was the second time I had dreamed this dream. It is not a pleasant dream. Rather, it is a shocking, revolting, scary dream, and I could not image why I was dreaming about it again.
In this dream, I see a team of doctors all wearing white coats. They enter a sterile white space where I and others wait. They enter this room through shiny white double doors. Behind these doors is the operating theater where they have been creating their new thing. It is this Thing that they are giving a press conference about. It is clear they are very pleased with their work. I can see their pride on their sly smiles. I can feel their arrogance in the way they push the Thing in a wheelchair for everyone to see.
They spare no gory details on how they created the atrocity sitting in the wheelchair. This Thing used to be a man. Now, it sits as a helpless creature in its wheelchair for it has no legs. Nor can it express any emotions because it no longer has a face. The doctors are proud of these aspects of the creature. They say it is a break through and discuss each step they took to get to this featureless creature.
Everyone in the room sits in stunned silence. There is nothing left of the man except a mound of gory goo. The doctors take turns describing with excitement how they systematically cut off every recognizable feature of the man. They describe with joy how they took these pieces and reattached them to utterly unsuitable places of the body. Places never intended for a severed limb or an eye.
The result is disgusting, stomach-churning, repulsive, beastly, vulgar, and heinous. The doctors did it, but the man volunteered. I couldn’t understand why?! Then, I woke up to the horrible news of what was happening in Israel. I was overwhelmed by the news coming out of Israel. And overhanging this was the shock and horror of my dream that lingered in my mind like an evil specter.
Carl Jung calls such moments as these Moments of Synchronicity. When any human encounters a moment of synchronicity, attention must be paid. This is because often, there is something very important for the individual to know or understand. I knew this was important.
I was working on the final stretch of my book feeling an intense need to get it published by 4/24/24. After October 7, 2023, I stopped writing and editing my book. I could not do a thing in it for the rest of the month. I felt compelled to witness the harrowing stories of survival. And I listened to the tragic stories of death of innocence people at the hands of men filled with hate.
I made a playlist on YouTube called Remember. I saved every story I heard to this list. I was shocked again and again at the savagery described by survivors. The brutality inflicted on babies, children, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and grandfathers shook me to my core.
After this month of bearing witness, I knew what I had to do with my book. I needed to write about the Human Cake. And I also needed to include the history of the Middle East. This new research and writing sidelined me for at least another month, but I did it.
If you get my book, you will encounter the Human Cake first. He makes his appearance in the book at about page 101. Brothers of the Levant… Before the Fall begins on page 173. Histories of genocides begins around page 320 with the chapter titled: Rise of the Machine.
You need to read all of these sections to gain a full history of current crisis in the Middle East. You also need to read other sections to understand how hate has risen inside of man. He has learned to harness it with machine-like precision. I cover many, many hate groups who have emerged and are growing like a cancer all over the world. In addition, I carefully show how no human being is immune to the infection of hate. These sections are cited for I have researched them intensely. I cite historians, psychologists, and philosophers. Additionally, I reference people who have specialized and written about all this stuff for a very long time.
In this section, I talk about the Human Cake. My character Rain recalls her grandmother’s words about fear and other strong emotions. Her grandmother was a wise woman, and Rain knows she needs wisdom now to survive.
A man who clings to his instinct to kill becomes a person aroused by murder and death. It fascinates him like a candle flame, but to keep the kill candle burning… such a man must kill… constantly. But doing so in a civilized society risks punishment and possibly his own death. And so, such a man fantasizes about murder, mayhem, and massacres inside the confines of his mind. Such a man feeds his fantasies with pictures and images of dead or dying people; kill porn. Such a man glorifies death and idolizes martyrdom. Such a man celebrates the wholesale slaughter of other human beings who he considers to be less than he considers himself to be. It is a false and insincere division made by his foul and increasingly warp light of consciousness that must be constantly fed. He becomes like a drug addict who needs a hit of heroin to feel normal again.
Grandmother said that anything done constantly in the mind soon grows boring to man’s fickle, flickering light of conscious attention, so a man clinging to his kill instinct must up the ante to feed his fading fervor and desire to butcher and decimate other living beings. Such a man may pacify his erotic passion by killing what he considers lesser forms of life. He can also fuel the instinct to kill with anger, regret, and rage. He can work himself up into a berserker frenzy by consuming a steady diet of fury and indignation.
Grandmother said that a man who fantasizes about death and celebrates killing is the devil he fears in others. Such a man cultivates his inner instinct to kill to a fever-pitch, he becomes a tube of intensity, a cannula of desperate excitement, a pipeline of frantic, frenzied, futile fear and rage. His magma tube of hate drops him below the animal realm of living beings, it plunges him below the daemon realm of human beings. He falls into a monster pit, a place where he embodies the wretched vermin that he accuses others of being. His invisible world where all his thinking is done is transformed into Hell’s Kitchen populated by unrecognizable things baked in the heat of hate and scorn.
Such a man uses his laser beam of hate to mutilate his inner man. He disfigures and desecrates his inner self by cutting off his inner man’s fingers and toes, hands and feet, legs, and arms. He pulls out his inner man’s hair and gouges out his eyes. He removes his nose and mouth and face and slops them onto the growing heap of hate he is becoming. Then he turns up the heat of his fear and loathing, baking himself into a human cake made of hostility, disgust, resentment, bitterness, antipathy, and apathy.
Such a dismembered and disfigured inner man can no longer recognize the humanity in himself, and certainly not in others. He becomes a thing of contempt and repugnance, a thing no longer recognizable as human or animal, except for one thing: his thinking and his words. Such a man uses these lingering abilities with deft callousness to beguile and enthrall, to rivet and fascinate, to transfix, super charge, and magnetize the ordinary man and woman… pulling them farther and farther out of the mainstream, tempting them to leave their reservoirs of wisdom with promises of everything but love. Then he destroys their inner equanimity and binds them to him with chains of fear that are firmly fastened to his crumpled wheelchair of cruelty. He must do this for such a man is crippled by his own fear and hate. And so, he needs others to do the terrible things he dreams up, but which he is too cowardly to do himself.
Commanding his army of human zombies from his wheelchair of hate, he must constantly recruit new people to his wretched world of scorn and loathing because he throws his foot soldiers to their deaths again and again. And they must die because they have been commanded to kill the women, kill the children, kill the babies, kill the goats and chickens and dogs and wheat and barley and water… to kill anything resembling life. So, anything resembling life must fight back or be killed and die by the killer human zombies who have been robbed of their souls by the human cakes baked by their own hate.
Just before the Fall, some of the biggest, most hideous, gut-churning, ghastly acts of hate are immortalized as mere numbers: 9/11, 2/24, 10/7. Days of infamy that plunged the highly interconnected world of the dawning 21st Century not only into bloody, gruesome, localized conflicts and war, but mind grenades carefully calibrated to inspire fear and fill the ordinary man and woman with hate for the other around the entire world. It doesn’t matter what side a person is blown to in the blast of gruesome cruelty. These mind grenades are simply meant to shock and to shake the fragile foundations upon which modern people must trust will protect them and keep them safe.
With the ordinary man’s and woman’s trust in humanity shook, it doesn’t take much more for the most hateful human cakes to shatter any common bonds still holding a civilized society together into a million, billion bits. Once shattered, the hate filled human cakes rearrange the shiny, reflective shards of human consciousness like tiny mirrors on a disco ball. The human cakes shine their light of hate on the remnants of the ordinary man’s and woman’s sense of safety and security. -- Excerpt from Sapience: The Moment Is Now
What else can I say about hate of Human Cakes?
I can only show you the drawing I made of this creature… the one I dreamt about on the morning of October 7, 2023 for the second time. The dream I knew I needed to pay attention to… and so I did.
On this day six years ago, my father had a heart attack. First responders revived him after 15 minutes of CPR, and then he was flown by helicopter to the Mayo Clinic. There he was put into an induced coma and body cooled to help preserve as much brain function as possible. Nobody knew if he would wake up and if he did, how much of him would wake up. But after days of touch and go, dad came back all of him except swallowing and he had developed pneumonia due to CPR, and this was expected and Mayo began aggressive treatment of it because it turns out if you aren’t breaking ribs while doing CPR, you aren’t pumping enough blood to revive the individual.
Remembering Dad
I wrote all about this in the first anniversary of dad’s death, as well as the reasons why he did not make it.
How Narcissistic Abuse Severely Thwarted my Healing Journey
In addition to dad’s death, the CEO of a small nonprofit I was working for fired me for being by dad’s side. Most probably this CEO suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder and she would be fired soon enough for this and a number of other things she did or failed to do during her tenure.
Adding insult to injury, my mother-in-law who is most definitely contorted and warped by Narcissistic Personality Disorder was about to launch one of her most hideous and disgusting campaigns to make herself appear as the victim so she could harvest attention and pity from her flying monkeys. This is what narcissists enablers are called by professionals who try to help family members and people abused by Narcissists heal. The fuel for her campaign of Narcissistic madness was her own children and grandchildren.
It would take me 6 years to understand what my mother-in-law was doing and why. But back in 2018 and 2019 I simply found myself in HELL.
I should not be here today. The only thing that helped me hold on during this time of pain and abandonment was the story I had started writing in 2012. I was reading dad the latest parts of the story when he died with me by his side on August 4, 2018.
Even though dad had slipped into a delirium due to the stress of life-saving procedures such as suctioning the mucous from his airways and reinserting a feeding tube he had worked out with the back of his tongue four times the previous day, he told the nurses caring for him that he was so proud of me for writing this book and that my whole life has been preparing me for it.
So in the dark days of the summer of 2019, with the help of a friend, I returned to my story and began editing the beginning to bring it up to the level of writing I had evolved into after six years of writing. My friend was then editing my edited version of book 1.
Then, Something New Began Coming Through
Not too long into this process, something new started coming through. I argued with myself… it was right around this time in 2019… for I knew writing something new would take more time.
The something new won took 6 more years to write! I finally published the book my father believed in so much on April 24, 2024.
Here is an excerpt of some of the something new that was coming through me after father died. This is from Sapience: The Moment Is Now — What Rain knows.
From the Book
"You cannot sell wisdom, nor can you buy it. You must earn it by living fully, living unself-consciously but not unconsciously. Wisdom is a group activity. Wisdom is kind. Wisdom shares its last morsel of food simply because that is what wisdom does. Wisdom knows that everything is connected, and what you do to someone else, you have done to yourself first. Wisdom is a baby crawling and giggling with its newfound mastery of getting around. Wisdom is an old man falling and laughing at his misfortunate mishap, knowing perfectly well everyone falls sometimes and it doesn’t mean a darn thing.
Wisdom knows sometimes you are going to win. Wisdom knows sometimes you are going to lose. Wisdom knows winning and losing doesn’t mean a darn thing because that is part of being alive. Wisdom knows navigating the ups and downs, the wins and losses, are much easier and mean so much more when you share it with the people who care about you and who you care about… this is love... caring and sharing, celebrating and mourning, feasting and fasting together as ever as one.
Wisdom is the joy of sharing life with the ones you love. Wisdom is the bliss of partaking equitably in the ups and downs of life. Wisdom is tolerating in another the things that annoy you most. Tolerance is a blessing, and wisdom knows this. Tolerance and wisdom are essential because life is complicated, too complicated for one insignificant human being to know everything it must to make a good decision.
A wise person knows this. A wise person knows a single individual can never consciously gather enough information to make a wise decision: so, stop trying to fool yourself and others that you can. A wise person understands action must be taken without foreknowledge of the results, but if the action is grounded in mutuality, respect, compassion, dignity, love, and a huge heaping of tolerance… mostly the results will reap good outcomes. And when they don’t, a wise person knows it is important to try again. Failure is simply the process of success.
Tolerance is an anti-gravity force to fear. Tolerance requires a person to broaden their bandwidth of consciousness rather than narrow and restrict it as fear does. Tolerance allows an individual to sit in discomfort, to sit in not knowing, to sit in the darkness of what is not clear yet and to wait for understanding of what is right action.
Timing is everything when it comes to action. Right action done too soon quickly turns into wrong action. Right action done too late will also not produce desired results. Action done outside of its proper time or beyond what is necessary to complete a task is easily twisted and corrupted by thinking that tries to justify it. Such action grows fat with inaccurate, incorrect, false, untrue, and mistaken attributions ladled onto it to get people to act. This sort of propped up action becomes more and more improper and unsuitable for the circumstances.
Such artificial action awakens the most wicked and sinful parts of a person, because acting outside and beyond the bounds of right action requires an angry mind, a brash, conservative, intolerant, mean, merciless, unfriendly, unsympathetic, biased, disapproving, narrow-minded, and prejudiced mind. People acting in this manner are cruel, brutal, savage, bloodthirsty, vicious people driven by narrower and narrower justifications loaded with fantastical and fraudulent fancies.
Wisdom knows this and knows tolerance is the only way to slow down enough to sense and see what is really going on inside and outside of one’s own mind and body. Only by sensing and seeing more of what is actually going on in the present moment can a person produce right action at the right time.
Right action does not inflict harm unto oneself or another without a really good reason why violence is required. Isaac Asimov got it right when his character, Salvor Hardin, says: “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” This is true because it is so easy to lose wisdom when one is racing inside their mind, thought after thought conceived by lies, half-truths, or half-baked ideas and silly beliefs.
A person acting in such a way utilizes the narrowest bandwidth of consciousness possible yet still able to remain conscious. Any narrower, and the person would fall into a dumb, zombie-like stupor. Wisdom knows this. Wisdom knows thinking is a result of the constriction of consciousness due to fear. Wisdom knows thinking trumped up with false facts and fantastical beliefs is going to make a lot of mistakes due to its failure to grasp reality. So, like any good toddler, a person who thinks all the time and falls out of phase with right action will make more and more mistakes and will act in more and more rageful ways trying to cover up and hide all their blunders, miscalculations, gaffes, and ignorance." -- Pages 128-128
Note: the link to Sapience is supposed to be a universal link that will open to the book in whatever browser and language from which you operate; however, it has not seemed to be working, so you can also search by the ASIN: B0D2LM5B6K.
The oracle is an ancient role that a wise woman or wise man played in society. Ancient man understood balance is essential, but finding the right balance can be tricky, especially when confronted with lots of divergent opinions, ideas, gossip, agitprop, spin, hype, propaganda, indoctrination, misinformation and disinformation on top of more spin.
In today’s modern world, life is even more chaotic and nerve wracking. This is why finding peace and quiet to dream is more important than ever before, and thus the inspiration for this plush, comfy comforter and its simple words of inspiration to invite delight into the night.
“I am an Oracle. Didn’t you hear? My wisdom’s like magic… … mystic and clear. I’ll lead you to places… … free from pain, fear, and hate. So, ask me your questions… And dream into being your destiny tonight!”
— by Deborah
Oracle Collection
The oracle collection is a reminder wisdom lies inside of all of us. And it is closer than we think. Wisdom’s light is soft, gentle like the moonlight that makes night a magical time. To hear our inner oracle, we must find outer calm and tranquility, even during the worst of times or the hardest trails life throws to us. This is not easy to do when one is feeling pain, fear, or hate. The oracle helps to soothes away the blocking feelings and traumas, so we can all find our way to our inner pool of peace and tranquility where our wisdom waits to rise like a full prescient moon.
The oracle is part of my book: Sapience: The Moment Is Now. It is an archetype, which is an idea developed by Carl Jung around the turn of the 20th Century to talk about how people use consciousness. Being self-aware and thinking are things we do every day, but rarely do we think about how we do it. Jung proposed there are body parts for the mind just as there are body parts for our bodies. Archetypes are the body parts of the mind. To visualized this, the colorful women-harps. If you look closely, the woman and harp are one entity.
Rainbow Women
I created these lovely rainbow women and harps for a blog I wrote about consciousness and arches of consciousness. I used Genolve via Midjourney to create rainbow arches of consciousness that the AI displayed to me as women and musical instruments playing the chords of consciousness inside of us. This is what the AI imagined, and I really liked it. One of the cues I gave to the AI was arches of consciousness, which is short for archetypes or an idea.
If you are interested in consciousness and archetypes, they are thoroughly explored in my book as well—Sapience: The Moment Is Now (on Amazon).
Merch& Book
These are just a few of the Oracle Collection items available now on Etsy at The Quip Collection
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.
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.
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.
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
This is part 2 of the blog series: The Marvelization of Man
Morbius
I began this series talking about Marvel’s reboot of Morbius who is a character created in 1971 by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane. Morbius is a “Living Vampire.”
As a child, Morbius suffers from a disease that cripples him and makes him frail and weak. There are others like him; all will die young. But young Morbius is a smart kid and becomes a doctor. He finds a cure for his illness. And you guessed it, the cure comes from the genes of vampire bats.
Marvel hoped for another BIG blockbuster after the smashing hit of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). This movie earned $1.1915 billion US dollars. Morbius debuts in 2022 with a production budget of $75 million dollars but it only earns $163 million worldwide, with only $74 million dollars earned domestically, as reported by Forbes.
In short, Morbius was a great disappointment both financially and critically. Many critics said the plot was not well-structured.
While this may be true, I think Marvel also missed the mark of what Morbius’ character embodies. All movie character are symbols. This is why we like them. They remind of us of ourselves in some deep fundamental, eternal, and mysterious way.
Magic of Symbols in Storytelling
Marvel, and every other marvelous entertainment universe, draws on these symbols each time they tell us a story. The stories we watch today are not that much different than the stories the ancient Greeks and Romans enjoyed.
Indeed, the stories arcs are virtually identical in nature, scope, and meaning. Stories such as Prometheus and the Stolen Fire, Orpheus and Sisyphus, or Echo and Narcissus have just as much relevance to 21st Century humans as they did for ancient Greeks and Romans. These types of stories crystalize unique aspects of what it means to be human. They harness and embody specific patterns of human behavior that we all recognize and can relate to. They center such patterns in specific characters who become the hero, ruler, everybody’s man, trickster, femme fatale, tragic hero, warrior, sage, knight-errant, and many more patterns of behavior we all relate to or have experienced.
These patterns of human behavior have been well observed and commented on since ancient times. Plato called these recognizable patterns of human behavior Forms. His philosophies on Forms create the foundation of Modern Western philosophy. What he meant by Forms is that there are pre-existing ideals or templates all humans access and use to navigate life as a conscious being.
Carl Jung dedicated his life to understanding the secret life of the human mind and called these often unconscious patterns of behavior primordial images or archetypes.
Archetypes are everywhere and influence more than 99% of human behavior. Most of us remain unaware of the energizing patterns that influence our lives in a myriad of ways every day. Archetypes inspire us, guide us, possess us, rule us, and live through us every day.
This is why our favorite movies and stories depend on characters who are possessed by and living out a powerful archetype. Pamela Buckle Henning writes for writers and actors of the stage:
Archetypal patterns are an unintended, unconscious presence in human life. Archetypes are primordial patterns that operate within the psyche of every individual. They also operate within groups of people. When people gather together for any purpose, they can become unwittingly entrained in archetypal dramas. -- STAGES, SKILLS, AND STEPS OF ARCHETYPAL
PATTERN ANALYSIS by Pamela Buckle Henning
Bottom line, archetypes are fundamental to telling a powerful story, one that lots of people will want to see and pay to go see. The most powerful stories have characters, both good and bad, who speak to and meet our collective unconscious. Characters and stories that get at and illuminate something that everyone feels but can’t seem to put their finger on or name.
Vampires Are Archetype of Narcs
As a vampire, Morbius embodies the narcissistic archetype.
The myth of Echo and Narcissus warns about the danger of narcissism as the beautiful wood nymph Echo falls in love with the young and very handsome human man Narcissus who sadly loves himself more than anybody or anything else. This causes Echo to disappear becoming a tree in her forest while Narcissus stares at himself in pond. He stares so long, he becomes a tree rooted to the bank.
There are other many other aspects of the narcissist archetype, but the most recognizable one is that these are people obsessed with their own self-importance and status. In Jungian terms, these are people possessed by and fascinated with all the negative aspects of the ruler archetype.
Narcissists personify the negative aspects of the ruler archetype in that they desire power and control, see themselves as fit and entitled to rule and see others as inferior subjects. They fear losing their power and use multiple strategies to maintain it. -- Narcissism and Archetypes - Children of Narcissists
These are fearful rulers who are afraid of being overthrown. Their paranoia grows so intense and overbearing that it corrupts and cripples all good qualities and instincts they would otherwise possess. This corruption essential rips the wholeness of their psyche, leaving a gap for the shadow to jump in.
According to Jung’s interpretation of the Shadow Archetype, the shadow contains all the sex and life instincts. It is created as the conscious mind grows in relation to its culture where conscious survival compels an individual to repress ideas, weaknesses, desires, instincts, and shortcomings in an effort to adapt and conform to cultural norms and expectations.
It is this side of a fearful ruler’s mind that takes over filling him with every negative, shadowy, repressed idea, instinct, or impulse he has ever had. Suddenly, this feeble, frighten man is transformed into a monster and becomes a Ruthless Ruler.
Narcissistic Descent
Narcissists descend to dark interior places inside themselves. In the darkness of their own Shadow, they lose the ability to regulate and balance their own emotions, even to power their own psyche (ability to think and focus). They have essentially split themselves in half and can no longer self-regulate. They feel constantly empty and void inside, which feeds their fear and widens the gap between their Good Self and their Bad Self.
Soon they must pick a side. It does not matter which side they choose. They have split themselves into two opposing parts, which leaves them psychically starving. The food they crave is attention. This is energy for the psyche, and a starving psyche will do anything to get it, which sets them off on their ruthless pursuit to control everyone and everything.
The best supply of psychic energy for a Narc is watching or causing another person’s pain. To a Narcissist, watching someone suffer is like a vampire feeding on another person’s blood to survive. For Narcs, human pain and suffering is psychic blood.
Back in the 70s when Morbius was created, he was an appropriate evolution of the original Dracula imagined by Irish author Bram Stoker back in 1897 who then captured the evolution of corrupted, evil ruler archetype for his time.
The 1970s was a time of unabashed proliferation of narcissism. No longer did a person need to be rich and famous to be a Narc, but now you could be poor and weak, a common man or ordinary woman. Narcissism invaded American society with a vengeance, partly due to unregulated capitalism. In fact, being a Narc was good for business.
So, Roy Thomas and Gil Kane captured the changing psychological landscape that everyone was encountering in the 70s with Morbius, who was a conflicted vampire. He wanted to do the right thing, but his vampire mind proves more powerful than his human mind, which is very much like a narcissistic mind craving attention, power, glory.
The superhero-villain was a very compelling archetype then and remains one now. It plays off the idea that it takes a monster to destroy a monster.
Narcissism: Humans Who Feed on Other Human’s Pain
Narcissists must feed on another human being’s pain and trauma to live. Narcissists are hollowed out human beings with extremely weak psychological coping abilities. In fact, they really don’t have them at all, at least not the healthy kind. Because of this, they are very emotionally damaged human beings.
They manage their inner pain and inner hell by making other people feel the pain and suffering they are too afraid to feel inside themselves. So they project their pain, their suffering, and their inner hell on everyone else.
Narcs strange psychological math is: “I get rid of my pain by making you feel pain. In their mind, relationships are based on dominance and submission.” — Dr. Les Carter, Surviving Narcissism
What Do Narcissists Gain By Your Trauma Bond?
Narcs feed off of your pain and enjoy abusing and crushing others to get their narcissistic high, also known as supply. Sounds a lot like drinking blood, doesn’t it?
And that’s exactly what it is, only psychic, emotional, spiritual blood. The 70s were a great time for Narcs to thrive, so enter a Marvel superhero specifically created to deal with them… because the old adage is correct: You need a monster to kill a monster!
And that is what Mordius becomes by trying to cure his disability with vampire genes; he becomes a monster, but he doesn’t want to kill his fellow humans unless he has to kill them. Then, he doesn’t mind and is pretty darn good at doing it. He even kills his childhood friend who goes off the rails with all these new powers of this cure of the childhood disease that they share.
Bram’s vampire, Dracula, is immediately recognizable around the world as this evil, fantom fiend who is already dead but keeps waking up to feed on the living.
He is of course a fictional character; however, Bram drew inspiration for this particular type of evil from a historical figure who was widely known back in his day for his thirst for blood.
This man was Vlad the Impaler. His real name was Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia. His father was Vlad II Dracul (or Vlad the Dragon) who was a prominent member of the Order of Dracul (also known as the Order of the Dragon).
The Vlads lived during the 1400s, which is a really tough time to be alive and running a minor kingdom sandwiched between two big empires fighting all the time as well as minor kingdom squabbles. The two great empires Wallachia sits between are the Holy Roman Empire (not to be confused with the Roman Empire) and the Ottoman Empire. In addition to these great machines of human will, are a bunch of minor states and kingdoms trying to grow bigger and pledging allegiance to one or the other empire so they might be rescued if they are invaded by a hostile force.
Young Vlad III is taken hostage by the Ottoman Empire as a child with his brother to make sure his father keeps his pledge of allegiance to Mehmed the Conqueror the man who conqueres Constantinople thereby ending the Byzantine Empire.
It is during this time as a prisoner that Vlad III learns the torture tactics that will earn him his name. Vlad III employs these horrific tactics in service to Pope Pius II who finances his efforts to take back his kingdom along with uphold the territories of christendom.
Vlad III employs his skills with such brutality, cruelty, and at a scale of magnitude never before imagined that he rightly earns his name Vlad the Impaler. He goes down in history as one of Europe’s most bloodthirsty evil fiends. And of course, his trail of blood sows fertile ground for Bram Stoker to create one of the most reviled, evil, bloodthirsty villains ever to be imagined and to enter popular culture’s collective imagination through Bram’s book.
Narcissism in the 1970s is proliferating rapidly. It is becoming a much more socially accepted, equal opportunity disease. In fact, if you do not have a bit of narcissism going on, it is hard to get ahead in business, in romance, and virtually everything we are told we should love and adore in our modern world.
This is where you get vamps like Morbius who really don’t want to drink human blood, but there’s this beast inside that must be fed. There is a flowering of vampire dramas in the 70s that mirrors the flowering of narcissism in world.
There are frustrated vampires who cannot find enough virgins to feed on (like Blood for Dracula) and there are racy. There are hungry female vampires (like Daughters of Darkness).
Andy Warhol’s Dracula – restored trailer
DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS TRAILER
There is the rise of black vampires like top-grossing Blacula (1972) and Ganja and Hess (1973) that will inspire Black horror movies like Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Spike Lee’s Da Blood of Jesus.
Blacula Official Trailer #1 – Thalmus Rasulala Movie (1972) HD
ANJA & HESS – Trailer
There is Vampire Circus (1972) starring David Prowse before he become Darth Vader. And there are the psychological vampires like Martin (1977), and the lonely vampire Nosferatu, The Vampyre (1979).
Vampire Circus (1972) Original Trailer [FHD|
Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979) – Trailer
There are vampires who drink the beauty of other humans so they stay eternally young, there are energy vampires, and Omega Man (1979) where vampirism is symbol of humanity’s continual hunger for progress leaving all but one man little more than nocturnal prowlers of blood. To get a real detailed breakdown of 70s Vamps, see 10 Vampire Movies From the ’70s You Probably Haven’t Seen (But Should)
The Omega Man (1971) Official Trailer – Charlton Heston Movie
By the 70s, narcissism had long since descended from the pedestals of popes, sultans, and kings. Narcissism now flourishes in wanton abundance among all of humanity and has continued to evolve ever since.
Marvel Got It Wrong
This is where Marvel got it wrong.
The Narcs who send chills down out backs now are much closer to Harry Potter’s Voldemort.
Lord Voldemort uses a wand to project his dark magic on his victims. A Narcs like Donald Trump simply uses his tongue (a bit like a wand but more like a snake). Modern Narc project their poison then take possession of a person’s mind sucking them dry, then filling them up with their Dark Thoughts. This is the magic of our time. People who come under the spell of an evil, vampire-like, magician like Voldemort (or Trump) are doomed to become empty vessels who do his bidding.
Today’s Narcs want to occupy your mind and fill your head with their thoughts. Narcs want you to believe they are omnipotent, but really they are parasites, viruses, feeble infections who need your mind to survive in this world.
Narcs are disgusting, degenerative, dying babies. And even Lord Voldemort is even 10 years behind the evolution of narcissism in our world.
Stranger Things nails it even closer to our collective truth:
Lord Venca, Number 1, the Mind Flayer!
Stranger Things | Vecna (001)
“When One kills, he doesn’t simply kill, he consumes. He takes everything from his victims. Everything they are and everything they ever will be.”
— Stranger Things and the Upside Down
So poor Morbius really needs to catch up to the crystalizing, consuming power of Narcissists in our Modern World.
Lord Vecna | Mind Flayer I AM Your Lord & King! I HAVE Come to Occupy Your Mind! — So you don’t have to!
Lackluster Nature of Transactional Archetypes
Every modern human being must navigate a slew of complicated social dynamics each and every day. We must navigate the social dynamics at work, home, hectic, even the gym. We are social creatures and maintaining strong community relationships influences our social health, mental health, physical health, and psychological health.
So, how do we psyche ourselves up to complete a hundred complicated tasks every day spanning work, home, and the day care center? How do we prepare ourselves psychologically for the hours of focused conscious attention needed to complete one task after another after another? How do we maintain our focus throughout the duration of the project? How do switch between the type of attention needed at work and that needed at home or in community?
Each and every human being does this sort of switching of focused conscious attention continuously throughout our day. We do it so much, we don’t even think about how we even do it, nor do we consider there is a psychological ecosystem sustaining the energy requirements needed to have a single thought, much less 10s of thousands of thoughts each day matched by 10s of billion of conscious and unconscious actions and reactions to our environment and changing circumstances.
So how do we do it: Maintain a Steady Stream of Conscious Thought?
Mind vs Matter | Music: Distractions Stract — Distraction
How do we pull out attention back to a difficult task when it wanders away?
Watered Down Archetypes
My beef with Marvel and Morbius is that more attention seems to be going into creating another blockbuster movie rather than architecting complex, relatable, and believable characters. Individuals with real flaws and real issues that resonate with our complicated, complex, hyped up, machine-like world.
Super heroes and archetypes should give us recognizable human patterns that we can empathize with and pretend to be if we find ourselves in a similar quandary or situation that requires us to dig a little deeper for those inner Super Powers (that we all have) to do something hard.
Marvel, by focusing on making blockbusters, follows a formula for success that waters down the characters into transactional beings. Instead of feasting on information-rich archetypal characters, we end up watching sad, sorry, distracted, transactional creatures trudge through unoriginal storylines and adventures.
The magic is gone.
Instead we are served up highly systematized, transactional characters, highly processed and mainstreamed into sugar coated, tiny packages labeled: This Is A Monster, This Is A Hero, This Is A Super Hero,This Is A Conflicted Hero.
Super Sweet Super Heroes | Music: It’s Gonna Be a Great Day — Fergal Flaherty
"Social dynamics boil down to the two main categories of relationships—transactional and transformational. The former often alienates leaders to their peers, while the latter builds strong, trusting relationships with peers, helping them to feel like their work matters and giving them a reason to care."
-- The Risks of Having Transactional Relationships with Your Peers; Leigh Bailey | April 11, 2023 | Blog | Executive Coaching | Leadership Development | Leadership Team Development | The Bailey Group
We are allowed to indulge as much as we want on all this filtered, strained, sifted, rarefied, clarified, in short highly refined stuff just as long as we don’t take it seriously! After all, come on man, these are comic book characters!
As we live in smaller and smaller cubby hole roles that are striped of responsibility and original thoughts, we feel the pressure pushing in on us to Hold the Mold no matter what. We assume lives of repetitive, homogeneity, but inside we are starved for meaning and purpose. We are starved for healthy, robust, vigorous ideas of what we might be… if only…
We are not suppose to formulate an answer to that. We are just suppose to go to work so e can go watch another Marvel movie when it comes out.
Too Much Watering CausesChronic Hypoxia of the Human Mind
The next blogs in this series will take a deeper dive into the transactional nature of our modern living and how this is creating a chronic hypoxia occurring in our minds. Simply said, we are being starved of information-rich, highly symbolic, nourishing ideas.
Man’s mind must breathe and its oxygen are ideas. Creating a chronic condition of dehydrated, highly processed, synthetic ideas deprives man’s mind of the air it needs to maintain a homeostasis capable of providing normal focus human conscious attention. is no longer possible.
In the body when hypoxia occurs, it is due to a lack of oxygen. In the mind when hypoxia occurs, it is due to a lack of nourishing, rich ideas that help root us to our tasks, to each other, and the Earth.
Failure to correct the current hypoxia of the modern mind will result in greater susceptibility to what A.M. Merloo, M.D., called the Rape of the Mind.
Born as Abraham MauritsMeerloo in The Hague, Netherlands, Meerloo came to United States in 1946, was naturalized in 1950, and resumed Dutch citizenship in 1972. Dr. Meerloo practiced psychiatry for over forty years. He did staff work in the Netherlands until 1942 under Nazioccupation, when he assumed the name Joost (instead of the more Jewish-sounding Abraham) to fool the occupying forces. In 1942 he fled to Belgium,[1] and from there he escaped to England (after barely eluding death at the hands of the Germans). He became a colonel and was chief of the Psychological Department of the Dutch Army-in-Exile in England.
After the war, he served as High Commissioner for Welfare in the Netherlands, and was an adviser to UNRRA and SHAEF. An American citizen since 1950, Dr. Meerloo was a member of the faculty at Columbia University and associate professor of psychiatry at the New York School of Psychiatry. He was the author of many books, including Rape of the Mind (a classic work on brainwashing), Conversation and Communication, and Hidden Communion.
He was the son of Bernard and Anna Frederika (Benjamins) Meerloo. He was the youngest of six children and the only one to escape his occupied country and survive the Holocaust.[2]
He married Elisabeth Johanna Kalf Den Haag, on May 16, 1928. The couple divorced on February 19, 1946. He subsequently married Louisa Betty "Loekie" Duits, a physical therapist, in New York City on May 7, 1948.
When one thinks of totalitarian states, Russia, China, Syria, Iran, and North Korea leap to mind. However, Joost explains in great detail the differences between overt thought control as practiced by torturers and subtle thought control.
Sneak Peak of the Marvelization of Man Series
Psychological Warfare as a Weapon of Terror
Every human communication can be either a report of straight facts or an attempt to suggest things and situations as they do not exist. Such distortion and perversion of facts strike at the core of human communication. The verbal battle against man's concept of truth and against his mind seems to be ceaseless. For example, if I can instil in eventual future enemies fear and terror and the suggestion of impending defeat, even before they are willing to fight, my battle is already half won. -- Merloo, M.D., called the Rape of the Mind.
Conversation From Previous Post
The Great Archetype – Das Grosse Urbild
This is the end of a conversation I had with a friend about this first blog in this series. He shared with me this fascinating video about the Great Archetype that produced in me a great feeling and passion, which I suppose the the purpose of the Great Archetype. Below is my attempt to communicate this feeling to my friend
Thank you for sharing this. If you shared it to me previously, I did not recognize its importance then. But now, I can comprehend its significance! This is important. I'm going to have to digest it slowly as the visuals are stunning but knock me off course from reading the translations, which I know I need to read to fully understand.
From the Vimeo description, I am getting the jest that this is Christ Consciousness, Divine Consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness.
It is that thing man glimpses but cannot seem to grasp.
But of course not... there is nothing there to grasp... it is a state of mind beyond 2-dimensional thinking.
There are those among us, and who have come before, us who have gotten there (to Divine Consciousness), and even more importantly, they have come back to share this knowledge with us, but human consciousness as it is now is in a terrible mire.
This is where we are now. It is a divisive stage of consciousness... that is thinking... for it only knows how to cut and divide, sort and calculate, and put into order everything it cuts into bits and pieces, but thinking does not know how to put it back together again in the unified whole it was before the scissors of thought got to it.
We may not make it out of the mess we have made by ourselves using thought that only divides creating amazing and terrible things like the atom bomb, which this past week, some humans somberly remembered was 75 years since "at 5:29 a.m. (MST) on July 16, 1945, the world's first atomic bomb detonated in the New Mexican desert, releasing a level of destructive power ..."
And it will soon be 75 years, since man took that awesome power and dropped it on Hiroshima, then Nagasaki, August 6 and 9.
The events that Christopher Nolan has profoundly produced to remind us about in Oppenheimer, but I fear sadly due the Marvelization of Man, we (most of humanity) will not truly comprehend where we are at as a species on this planet.
I think Nolan duly points out that it does not matter that it is in the US where this terrible magic is cracked... people all over the world were cracking the code and figuring it out.... it was just a matter of time until humans figured it out.
Oppenheimer understood this and created an incubator to do it faster so that the Allied forces could win the wars against powers that had condensed into pure evil; powers rolling across the world stage like bulldozers achieving some of the most gruesome levels of destruction humans had yet achieved at that point in time remembered now as WWII.
Now, we can do even more hideous things to each other and we are doing so...
Now we hold the keys to our collective demise for destruction comes in all sorts of flavors--nuclear war, climate change, autocracies, and Marvelous Worlds full of capitalistic wonders that will dull us all down into one long droning wail of mediocrity very soon... and that is because ... we all agreed a long, long time ago... that only some people will be allowed to sit on top of functional hierarchies, which are the systems of power that rule the world as we know it now.
But we have all conveniently forgotten that all people are susceptible to the corrupting power of their own thinking!
And functional hierarchies are the most easily corrupted things we have created as conscious creatures. They are all around us like Trump Enterprises, Elon Musk, and the list is long of failed or failing corporations. The list is even longer of failed of failing states. The ones impacting us now are known as Russia, North Korea, and who knows, maybe even China maybe be in the running to rattle the nuclear rattle we hold in our tiny human hands in tantrums of ultimate self-hatred and self-destruction.
Some people I know put the USA, Great Britain, and all of Europe in this list too. I wrote a big blog about this...... I was pretty pissed because it is only in states that allow for free thought that we might still find the cure to our disease.
The kind of mega disaster that individuals like Christ and others tried to save us from... but still... most of us run directly into the flame of ignorance rather than grow up as we were meant to do from the very beginning...
And I do think God is woman
Now, I have diverged...lol...
Archetypal Animations
All images, except for Feature Animation, use Midjourney AI to create the animations…that is until I ran out of credits. Following are the songs that enliven them.
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.
CharacterDate 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 Marvelizationof 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.
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!
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 alittle 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 acton 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 thatCAN 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 tomake 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!
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 beingswalking 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 hierarchy. Wikipedia
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.
So, if you think you are a bunch of highly intelligent Transcendedpeople, 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.
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 uponvalues.
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 naturalfunctional 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 hopesNOT 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 humanityis 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 thinkall 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 CANthink 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
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.
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 pyramids—Functional 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.
Heterarchyvs 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].”
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
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…“
“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…“
“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.”
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!
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:
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 lǐ, 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.
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 it…at 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!!”
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!
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 “NEW” friends were FAKEFRIENDS. 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 Darknessand 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 saved… not 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 cult–ture, 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 dreamsthe 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, LIGHT—sparks 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 hypoallergenichollow 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
American Enterprise Institute
Idaho Statesman
Bureau of Labor Statistics Assessing the Impact of New Technologies on the Labor MarketFor example, in the United States, productivity grew at a rate of 2.8% on an annual average basis between 1947 and 1973, but since...
Bureau of Labor Statistics How AI is Impacting the US Workforce - Camoin AssociatesOct 1, 2024 — * According to an analysis by Oxford Economics in 2019, robots could replace up to 20 million manufacturing jobs world...
Camoin Associates
... I was pretty pissed because it is only in states that allow for free thought that we might still find the cure to our disease.
