Listen to a reading of this article: ❖ If you've publicly challenged the official narratives of the western political/media class about any major issue, you've probably noticed that people can get pretty upset about it. Like, actually upset. Not mildly annoyed like you might get at someone who is saying something that is obviously false and stupid, but burning hot emotional like you'd get if you heard someone insulting your loved one. Or like someone insulting you personally.
Thanks, Caitlin, I've had several almost-not-quite fallings out with really close friends because I question what we're being told about - well - everything. My partner and I were just talking about how growing up during Vietnam sort of pulled the rug out from under us so that neither of us ever bought into the Official Party Line.
I've backed off from these kinds of conversations and so have those friends. My insistence that the U.S. is throwing Ukraine under a Russian bus can only alienate really good friends.
(but I'll keep writing about it and reading your work)
" Many of the people you'll run into online or in person who defend imperial narratives from your criticisms aren't doing so because they believe the US-centralized empire is awesome and great, they're doing so because it's much more comfortable than confronting the possibility that their entire worldview is made of lies. "
This is about my son, and I do not know what to do about it.
I get this. I was team Obama or die. Didn't just drink his Kool-aid, he inspired me greatly, and I invested a lot of emotion in his candidacy My tumble down the rabbit hole indeed shattered my perception of reality
Thank you for being a big part of that process for me. Your writing made me really uncomfortable when I first read it but somehow I kept coming back for more. 😂
Revising your worldview is like learning a language: if you’ve done it once, you have the meta-skill and it’s easier (though still not easy) the next time. I’ve entertained so many worldviews in my life that I’ve come to see them all as partial constructs none of which can encompass or even represent reality with all its mysteries and contradictions..intuition has emerged out of the ruins of all these shattered constructs as a pretty reliable guide.
Kia ora Caitlin (from a cuzzie from the other side of the ditch). Thank you for this wise, compassionate commentary, I think I needed very much to have this explained to me. My best friend since I was 15 (I'm 47) won't talk to me anymore, because of this exact issue/process. Loving your work by the way.
Another great post and very timely for me! I've just had to mend bridges with a friend for pushing too hard. It is uncomfortable but also exciting to see past the narrative. I want to share it because it seems so obvious now but I am learning that to do so takes some subtlety and patience.
Not to mention, once you start to question the cognitive consensus, you can face very real and very personal difficulties. Or a guilty conscience, at a minimum.
If you go along with the flow, nothing happens to you, at least not for the time being.
Tyrants everywhere have used this to their advantage.
Well said!!! You have laid it out brilliantly. People will go to great lengths to hang onto their "world view." Believe me, I know... I'm living my own version of being burned at the stake. This fanatical, terrified need to clutch the baby blanket is the main reason we are in the predicament we're in today.
A great exposition of the basic unreality of the reality most people live in and with: for most people it is much more comfortable to live in a lie than start all over with nothing but the reality of your self and your own careful observations/conclusions. It was the great struggle Nietzsche took upon himself and recommended for those who would be free: you may never know the ultimate truth, the entire truth about most things, but you can disinvest from obvious lies, and especially evil, ugly, debilitating, and perhaps fatal lies. You know they are lies when they offer no physical evidence, must be taken on faith, and involve some kind of extortion, moral or physical, at the hands of authority. The only faith that counts for anything is the belief that you can free yourself from this bondage.
Defending their comfort gained by force of discomfort and/or death of others; all that cheap gas, cheap plastic, cheap timber, cheap textiles, cheap, oh so cheap food. The squeamish don't want to look, but the rest clasp their hands daily in front of the boob tube or laptop and feel the warmth of a fresh horror.
I think Caitlin nails it with her comment about - it depends how attached you are to a feeling of security - that’s a big source of the problem.
Think about it, the modern progressive movement - successor ideology - is all about creating feelings of security. They create safe spaces and talk of trigger warnings and bemoan micro- aggressions. Successor Ideology, woke, intersectionality, social justice warrior, call it what you will, it is all about protecting people from feeling vulnerable. The vagaries of life are the enemy.
Caitlin is not writing about progressives in this piece she’s just talking about the challenge people face escaping the vertically integrated narrative.
But her words made me realize, the entire woke project is about protecting people and increasing their sense of security, precisely the need to feel secure that makes people so easy to manipulate and deceive.
It's useful to link Oatmeal's thing about core beliefs to tribes and how they form around and with core beliefs about themselves being different from, and better than, other tribes. Bateson's schizmogenesis and the narcissism of small differences are both features of tribal behavior, which is fundamental in human social behavior.
there's a large scar where my worldview disintegration cut deep... and it probably will never heal because it keeps getting more disintegrated everyday.
Thanks, Caitlin, I've had several almost-not-quite fallings out with really close friends because I question what we're being told about - well - everything. My partner and I were just talking about how growing up during Vietnam sort of pulled the rug out from under us so that neither of us ever bought into the Official Party Line.
I've backed off from these kinds of conversations and so have those friends. My insistence that the U.S. is throwing Ukraine under a Russian bus can only alienate really good friends.
(but I'll keep writing about it and reading your work)
Keep it up babe 🥰
" Many of the people you'll run into online or in person who defend imperial narratives from your criticisms aren't doing so because they believe the US-centralized empire is awesome and great, they're doing so because it's much more comfortable than confronting the possibility that their entire worldview is made of lies. "
This is about my son, and I do not know what to do about it.
I get this. I was team Obama or die. Didn't just drink his Kool-aid, he inspired me greatly, and I invested a lot of emotion in his candidacy My tumble down the rabbit hole indeed shattered my perception of reality
Mass formation is a weapon.
Thank you for being a big part of that process for me. Your writing made me really uncomfortable when I first read it but somehow I kept coming back for more. 😂
Revising your worldview is like learning a language: if you’ve done it once, you have the meta-skill and it’s easier (though still not easy) the next time. I’ve entertained so many worldviews in my life that I’ve come to see them all as partial constructs none of which can encompass or even represent reality with all its mysteries and contradictions..intuition has emerged out of the ruins of all these shattered constructs as a pretty reliable guide.
Kia ora Caitlin (from a cuzzie from the other side of the ditch). Thank you for this wise, compassionate commentary, I think I needed very much to have this explained to me. My best friend since I was 15 (I'm 47) won't talk to me anymore, because of this exact issue/process. Loving your work by the way.
Another great post and very timely for me! I've just had to mend bridges with a friend for pushing too hard. It is uncomfortable but also exciting to see past the narrative. I want to share it because it seems so obvious now but I am learning that to do so takes some subtlety and patience.
Not to mention, once you start to question the cognitive consensus, you can face very real and very personal difficulties. Or a guilty conscience, at a minimum.
If you go along with the flow, nothing happens to you, at least not for the time being.
Tyrants everywhere have used this to their advantage.
Well said!!! You have laid it out brilliantly. People will go to great lengths to hang onto their "world view." Believe me, I know... I'm living my own version of being burned at the stake. This fanatical, terrified need to clutch the baby blanket is the main reason we are in the predicament we're in today.
A great exposition of the basic unreality of the reality most people live in and with: for most people it is much more comfortable to live in a lie than start all over with nothing but the reality of your self and your own careful observations/conclusions. It was the great struggle Nietzsche took upon himself and recommended for those who would be free: you may never know the ultimate truth, the entire truth about most things, but you can disinvest from obvious lies, and especially evil, ugly, debilitating, and perhaps fatal lies. You know they are lies when they offer no physical evidence, must be taken on faith, and involve some kind of extortion, moral or physical, at the hands of authority. The only faith that counts for anything is the belief that you can free yourself from this bondage.
Defending their comfort gained by force of discomfort and/or death of others; all that cheap gas, cheap plastic, cheap timber, cheap textiles, cheap, oh so cheap food. The squeamish don't want to look, but the rest clasp their hands daily in front of the boob tube or laptop and feel the warmth of a fresh horror.
I think Caitlin nails it with her comment about - it depends how attached you are to a feeling of security - that’s a big source of the problem.
Think about it, the modern progressive movement - successor ideology - is all about creating feelings of security. They create safe spaces and talk of trigger warnings and bemoan micro- aggressions. Successor Ideology, woke, intersectionality, social justice warrior, call it what you will, it is all about protecting people from feeling vulnerable. The vagaries of life are the enemy.
Caitlin is not writing about progressives in this piece she’s just talking about the challenge people face escaping the vertically integrated narrative.
But her words made me realize, the entire woke project is about protecting people and increasing their sense of security, precisely the need to feel secure that makes people so easy to manipulate and deceive.
It's useful to link Oatmeal's thing about core beliefs to tribes and how they form around and with core beliefs about themselves being different from, and better than, other tribes. Bateson's schizmogenesis and the narcissism of small differences are both features of tribal behavior, which is fundamental in human social behavior.
Beautifully optimistic and encouraging!
there's a large scar where my worldview disintegration cut deep... and it probably will never heal because it keeps getting more disintegrated everyday.