Listen to a reading of this article: ❖ Things are fucked. That's our current situation in a nutshell. In a slightly bigger nutshell, things are fucked because powerful people are making them fucked, and they won't stop making things fucked unless ordinary people use their superior numbers to make them stop, but ordinary people are being psychologically manipulated away from making them stop by propaganda.
YouTube has been re-circulating a 2015 speech Glenn Greenwald gave at the Univ. of Utah at the height of the Snowden reporting. Here's what he said about secrecy and the security state:
"What you have is a government inside a government, an undemocratic apparatus making all of the decisions beneath a shell of democracy—something that looks like a democracy and is called a democracy, but has almost none of the properties a democracy is defined by."
Glenn Greenwald: "Edward Snowden and the Secrets of the National Security State" - YouTube
One of the most damaging aspects of Russia-gate and the ongoing liberal union with CIA/neocons was it took a fundamental fact about US political life -- the dominance and supreme danger of the Deep State -- and turned it into a conspiracy theory no decent person should believe.
We have this unusual tendency to contract all of our attention around a particular upsetting issue to the point we block out a greater and more vital perspective that points out root causes.
To be upset sends a survival brain signal that we might be in danger so, “ all hands on deck”, we focus completely on the upsetting issue until we can feel safe again.
The ego and its emotional component, the shadow/pain body, have extraordinary—extraordinarily destructive—single-minded focus.
Ironically, single-pointed focus on any sense perception in the present moment— concentration leading to meditation—is what we need to begin dissolving the compulsive thinking and reacting of the ego.
Had a distant family member visit over Thanksgiving. Has a nice job, nice car, nice house. Brought along his rather spoiled 10 year old.
Driving around, he tunes his radio to whatever's popular. He told me he once listened to a station for six months before he realized it was Christian Rock. I asked if he liked jazz, and he said, no; he didn't get it. Consumes mainstream entertainment without questioning it. Votes, but doesn't appear well-versed in politics, or even interested in what those votes wrought. Decent guy, wouldn't hurt a fly.
My point here is that if he read this article -- which he will never see -- I imagine he'd smile uncomfortably just like millions of other hardworking but strangely uncurious Americans, and, just like jazz, he would have absolutely no idea what the notes were trying to tell him.
I’m thinking she’s saying to kill the Morlocks first, then collectively become Eloi. The trouble is we’re already spineless, epicurean Eloi, hoping that the Morlocks dispose of us painlessly.
A healthy world? First of all, what are "we"? If we are unchanging consciousness, then "we" won't become extinct or die out. We will live forever.
The fundamental error here is the belief that we are born into the world. Wrong! We are consciousness and the world is born into us!
If consciousness is fundamental and forever and world comes and goes, then "we" can't be harmed.
If we can't be harmed what problem could possibly happen?
We were taught to believe (since Galileo) that the world exists independent of consciousness. False assumption! No one has ever been outside of consciousness/awareness to verify a world independent of awareness. And that is never going to happen.
Without God everything is permissible. Evolution, if you believe in it, is only doing what it does best; weeding out the weak and if as a result of this 'wondrous symmetry' we will go the way of the dinosaurs then that surely is its beauty? Our extinction should no more be mourned than that of the Brontosaurus...we should view it 'scientifically' that is, dispassionately.
However, the fact that many of us mourn humanity's imminent demise and its present sad condition may be indicative that we may not necessarily be the result of random and impossibly unlikely providential or miraculous mutations but something altogether more. Maybe designed...with a purpose, by a creator that has a purpose (and feels like us...as we were designed; to have compassion and hate injustice and love truth and to love) and all that is going on is just another factor of our deep denial of these 'facts'. And our investment in this anxiety is like 'kicking against the goads' (to use a biblical expression) and just another aspect of our being part of the problem.
It is our relentless pursuit of power, self-power, the self-destructive 'we know best' attitude that has got us to this pitiful place as a race, not the humility and the need to submit to truth... not some subjective political truth but universal truth; Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?
To listen to our 'designer', if one exists, might prove helpful to us...but then we need to be prepared to admit that we may be wrong and that takes not just a questioning mind but a courageous humility to be prepared to reject the years of destructive conditioning.
“Things are fucked. That's our current situation in a nutshell.”
Yes, and perhaps that is exactly how we like it. Isn’t “Fucked…in a nutshell” how every great story begins, whether it’s a novel, play, movie, epic poem, video game. The fiction teachers used to call it “conflict”—if such a term is even allowed in our modern woke creative writing programs. It’s what fascinates us and keeps us reading, viewing, or playing. We just love finding out all the clever, brilliant, heroic, devious, bumbling, angelic, devilish, hilarious ways the characters (heroes, anti-heroes, minor characters, NPCs) respond to this fuckedness. Some get the Hollywood ending, some die dreadfully. Some become filthy rich but unimaginably miserable. Some marry the man/woman/they/entity of their dreams only to find out he/she/ze/it turns into a were-weasel every Tuesday. Others get the shaft but find the meaning of life. Others lose everything and everyone that ever mattered, yet walk off into the sunset laughing their asses off. Ain’t it grand, as some say.
Of course, having a boss fight with Bill Gates using anti-blue-screen-of-death magic to leave him in an eternal keyboard-smashing, rebooting rage in which he is absolutely powerless to fix it and has to wait endlessly on the phone in tech-support hell would be enormously satisfying.
Y'know how fads pop up, spontaneously, as if spontaneously... out of nowhere. And it's only denial-ridden, speciously oblivious rich folks can afford to ignore them (until media ass-hats totally misconstrue their kids' odd obsessions with silly-ass poor folks being murdered or firestorms & city sized methane fireballs, where permafrost used to be; or folks flying jetliners full of folks into huge skyscrapers? Howsabout, yunz young kids up and EATING rich white churls in NYC, DC or y'know, like the Hamptons, Palm Springs? Just a few at a time, at first. Giving Rachel or Anderson time to blame Russia or China? Then, livestream viral video, to prove it's affluent 'Murikan honkey kids, doing it. It's not like we've a whole bunch of time. They're getting pretty BLATANT killing the rest of us to flip our homes, indenture us into shitty gig-serfdom or incarcerating us like slaves?
Wonderful piece, beautifully put
YouTube has been re-circulating a 2015 speech Glenn Greenwald gave at the Univ. of Utah at the height of the Snowden reporting. Here's what he said about secrecy and the security state:
"What you have is a government inside a government, an undemocratic apparatus making all of the decisions beneath a shell of democracy—something that looks like a democracy and is called a democracy, but has almost none of the properties a democracy is defined by."
Glenn Greenwald: "Edward Snowden and the Secrets of the National Security State" - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1jAOJHvll0&t=1s
One of the most damaging aspects of Russia-gate and the ongoing liberal union with CIA/neocons was it took a fundamental fact about US political life -- the dominance and supreme danger of the Deep State -- and turned it into a conspiracy theory no decent person should believe.
Perfect, just perfect, thank you.
We have this unusual tendency to contract all of our attention around a particular upsetting issue to the point we block out a greater and more vital perspective that points out root causes.
To be upset sends a survival brain signal that we might be in danger so, “ all hands on deck”, we focus completely on the upsetting issue until we can feel safe again.
The ego and its emotional component, the shadow/pain body, have extraordinary—extraordinarily destructive—single-minded focus.
Ironically, single-pointed focus on any sense perception in the present moment— concentration leading to meditation—is what we need to begin dissolving the compulsive thinking and reacting of the ego.
Had a distant family member visit over Thanksgiving. Has a nice job, nice car, nice house. Brought along his rather spoiled 10 year old.
Driving around, he tunes his radio to whatever's popular. He told me he once listened to a station for six months before he realized it was Christian Rock. I asked if he liked jazz, and he said, no; he didn't get it. Consumes mainstream entertainment without questioning it. Votes, but doesn't appear well-versed in politics, or even interested in what those votes wrought. Decent guy, wouldn't hurt a fly.
My point here is that if he read this article -- which he will never see -- I imagine he'd smile uncomfortably just like millions of other hardworking but strangely uncurious Americans, and, just like jazz, he would have absolutely no idea what the notes were trying to tell him.
Really good well observed article and light at the end of the tunnel.
I’m thinking she’s saying to kill the Morlocks first, then collectively become Eloi. The trouble is we’re already spineless, epicurean Eloi, hoping that the Morlocks dispose of us painlessly.
A healthy world? First of all, what are "we"? If we are unchanging consciousness, then "we" won't become extinct or die out. We will live forever.
The fundamental error here is the belief that we are born into the world. Wrong! We are consciousness and the world is born into us!
If consciousness is fundamental and forever and world comes and goes, then "we" can't be harmed.
If we can't be harmed what problem could possibly happen?
We were taught to believe (since Galileo) that the world exists independent of consciousness. False assumption! No one has ever been outside of consciousness/awareness to verify a world independent of awareness. And that is never going to happen.
One wrong assumption and we're all miserable.
Without God everything is permissible. Evolution, if you believe in it, is only doing what it does best; weeding out the weak and if as a result of this 'wondrous symmetry' we will go the way of the dinosaurs then that surely is its beauty? Our extinction should no more be mourned than that of the Brontosaurus...we should view it 'scientifically' that is, dispassionately.
However, the fact that many of us mourn humanity's imminent demise and its present sad condition may be indicative that we may not necessarily be the result of random and impossibly unlikely providential or miraculous mutations but something altogether more. Maybe designed...with a purpose, by a creator that has a purpose (and feels like us...as we were designed; to have compassion and hate injustice and love truth and to love) and all that is going on is just another factor of our deep denial of these 'facts'. And our investment in this anxiety is like 'kicking against the goads' (to use a biblical expression) and just another aspect of our being part of the problem.
It is our relentless pursuit of power, self-power, the self-destructive 'we know best' attitude that has got us to this pitiful place as a race, not the humility and the need to submit to truth... not some subjective political truth but universal truth; Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?
To listen to our 'designer', if one exists, might prove helpful to us...but then we need to be prepared to admit that we may be wrong and that takes not just a questioning mind but a courageous humility to be prepared to reject the years of destructive conditioning.
“Things are fucked. That's our current situation in a nutshell.”
Yes, and perhaps that is exactly how we like it. Isn’t “Fucked…in a nutshell” how every great story begins, whether it’s a novel, play, movie, epic poem, video game. The fiction teachers used to call it “conflict”—if such a term is even allowed in our modern woke creative writing programs. It’s what fascinates us and keeps us reading, viewing, or playing. We just love finding out all the clever, brilliant, heroic, devious, bumbling, angelic, devilish, hilarious ways the characters (heroes, anti-heroes, minor characters, NPCs) respond to this fuckedness. Some get the Hollywood ending, some die dreadfully. Some become filthy rich but unimaginably miserable. Some marry the man/woman/they/entity of their dreams only to find out he/she/ze/it turns into a were-weasel every Tuesday. Others get the shaft but find the meaning of life. Others lose everything and everyone that ever mattered, yet walk off into the sunset laughing their asses off. Ain’t it grand, as some say.
Of course, having a boss fight with Bill Gates using anti-blue-screen-of-death magic to leave him in an eternal keyboard-smashing, rebooting rage in which he is absolutely powerless to fix it and has to wait endlessly on the phone in tech-support hell would be enormously satisfying.
Y'know how fads pop up, spontaneously, as if spontaneously... out of nowhere. And it's only denial-ridden, speciously oblivious rich folks can afford to ignore them (until media ass-hats totally misconstrue their kids' odd obsessions with silly-ass poor folks being murdered or firestorms & city sized methane fireballs, where permafrost used to be; or folks flying jetliners full of folks into huge skyscrapers? Howsabout, yunz young kids up and EATING rich white churls in NYC, DC or y'know, like the Hamptons, Palm Springs? Just a few at a time, at first. Giving Rachel or Anderson time to blame Russia or China? Then, livestream viral video, to prove it's affluent 'Murikan honkey kids, doing it. It's not like we've a whole bunch of time. They're getting pretty BLATANT killing the rest of us to flip our homes, indenture us into shitty gig-serfdom or incarcerating us like slaves?