"In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."
refutation, even just internally, takes energy and we all have only so much.
we all have only so much outrage.
exposed to enough, it desensitizes you. the message is not the product, the volume is.
it is not the convincingness of the lies that takes you down, but the sheer weight of them and then the humiliation that you are forced to live bent beneath such a world and are too exhausted to shovel back the tide that just keeps coming and coming is what subjugates you.
Yes, it seems we only have so much energy. The evil is so pervasive, so soul-withering at times, and since we are fighting on the many fronts that have been diabolically laid out, we find ourselves feeling scattered, ineffectively stomping out fires everywhere.
Many find peace and restoration in leaning on God for strength. He will lift up our trembling arms. It's his world. He loves us. He hovers over us. This is all happening for a purpose. We must hang on, lean on God, and put one step in front of another. His word is a lamp for my feet.
I believe in God, and that belief will not allow me to be subjugated. God wants us to resist and fight evil with all our might and soul.! And as for masks, we should try to get stores and restaurants to NOT ALLOW them in their businesses. You'd see all those masks come off in a heart beat! It would also cut down on robberies and other crimes !
Absolute statements negate any nuance. While your statement on politics and religion may have merit, that does not mean "All" We do not throw away all politics because some is necessary for people to organize societal cooperation. Some religion - the spiritual seeking of what is beyond our daily grind gives us value and meaning. That does not mean we have to include all dogmas or say you must accept my book, yours is no good therefore you are evil, because reasons.
Yes, societies require organizing mechanisms, a hierarchy to establish order, an origin story to create plausibility, and a scripture to establish the rules, and the appropriate punishments for heretics.
All formalized belief systems require, you know, belief. Dissidents break away, establish new versions, rinse and repeat.
And people who say they can live perfectly well without dogma and labels and formalized ritual actions and don't need codified belief systems are often accused of having no belief in something higher outside themselves, because they refuse to name or define the Unknowable Indefinable.
I am sad your experience with "religions" has been discouraging.
But, for many, their experience with religion has been uplifting and life-defining. I am a Christian. Christians who have come to understand that "religion" is the vehicle in which to grow in understanding of God and their relation with him are those who grow in faith and peace.
People sometimes denigrate religion because of the poor behaviour and example they perceive in Christians (or others who are in religions). Our faith is never to be in one another. We shall always let each other down. Our faith is in God. And we must remember the wise saying: "Be charitable, because for some people mere existence is an act of heroism."
Because of my religion, my faith grows when I come together with fellow Christians to worship God on the Lord's Day.
The definition of a "cult" is very specific. I have never felt my religion was cult-like - and would suggest most mainstream religions are not cult-like. I am free to stay and free to go. I can call on many offered resources in my Christian religion to build me up - or I may choose not to. I am a free happy camper embracing a specific religion, and I love God.
Believe what you like! I've no interest in persuading anyone otherwise. Just ensure that your own sectarian beliefs don't interfere with the governance of a secular civil society.
But "mainstream religion" is a nice way of trying to disguise that all religions are cults.
One doesn't need a dogma to believe in something outside oneself that cannot be conceptualized properly with the limits of human language.
If, in your last statement, you mean the "thing outside oneself" cannot be conceptualized IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER, you are contradicting yourself; saying that an object cannot be conceptualized is to conceptualize that object--i.e,. as falling under the concept of unconceptualizable things.
If, however, you mean that no human can conceptualize the divine FULLY, then you are not at all in opposition to orthodox Christianity..
You haven't learned a damn thing in past 2.5 years. You can diminish and discredit a particular religious doctrine, but you can't eradicate collectivism, which is the second component of religion. How's this "goverance of a secular civil society" working out for you? Seems we're seeing the rise of a new "religion". You might prefer the lack of doctrine, but membership and obedience is mandatory. You can view it as a partial victory.
Stick to your fever dream hypotheticals. It's not my "religion" with a long stellar history of legislative thuggery. It yours. If your inane nightmare came true, you surely wouldn't be giving me a pass for being an innocent Christian separatist. Keep in mind, in my religion, we don't need you. Our God is plenty strong. Power by "universal adherence" is a graven image. That should bring you comfort. I wish your religion believed the same.
Religions have a finite doctrine, so they can't keep "making stuff up". Of course if your "religion" is Truth (Jesus being the Truth), then you can be subject to an endless volume of truth, which can be equally distasteful and oppressive, depending on your stomach for it.
The goal is to destroy one's individual identity, and fuse the individual's identity with the groups identity. This forces violation of the individual conscience. Continual violation of the conscience results in destruction of the conscience. This in turn results in elimination of feelings of guilt-cognitive dissonance, for dishonest, self-destructive, sociopathic behaviors. Free moral agency-individuality is lost-murdered. The "self" no longer exists. It is replaced by the collective-group. We become the walking dead. For an explanation of this process see Edgar Allen Poe's bone chilling story, "William Wilson." It's the story of a man who succeeded in murdering his conscience and thus murdered himself.
Back in the olden days when I was a university tutor, I had one of Dalrymple's Spectator pieces taped to my door, with to piece of the text highlighted.
The article concerned "discrimination" and "prejudice" - the words themselves and what they entail behaviourally - and haven't been able to find it again (and I've got all of Dalrymple's books, and have search the Spectator archive).
Anyhow... the two highlights went something like
"if you see a shaven-headed black man with a scar on his scalp, a red sports car and a gold tooth, he may not be a drug dealer, but it's the way to bet"
and
"to face every day with absolutely zero prejudgements is like being a naked infant in a gale"
Quite a Bayesian notion: we don't start every analysis with a prior that is uniform on (-∞,∞) and starting with a non-uniform (and bounded) prior is almost always the right thing. And the guy's probably a drug dealer. (Drug dealers always discriminate against me: I've been told I give off a 'cop' vibe.[1]).
I'm permitted - by the rules of the Modern Inquisitors - to discriminate my arse off... for the sole reason that my grandfather was brown (a Māori).
I would also be permitted to discriminate my arse off if Little Grandad had come from the former Pale of Settlement and had pretended to believe in a gallimaufry of primitive prescientific tribal drivel about a psychopathic Storm God who for some reason is obsessed with foreskins.
The Old Nonsense is the brutal masturbatory fantasies of a bunch of Bronze Age primitives who retconned a history for themselves.
No Maori believes that New Zealand was a gigantic stingray that Maui caught and bludgeoned to death, but a bunch of mostly-atheists claim to believe that Yahweh promised them Palestine (which was at all salient times in their invented narrative, occupied by a major power of the time).
I am allowed to say that. One drop, bitchez!
.
As it happens, I disagree with Dalrymple's description of what we are told to believe about Soviet-era propaganda. Solzhenitzyn is the archetypical "manufactured opposition" - although if more people read a reliable (non-MEMRI-style) translation of "Two Hundred Years Together" he would be cancelled throughout the West and his name anathemised.
Soviet-era propaganda was not a single iota different from modern Western marketing - the difference being that after 20 years, a larger proportion of Soviet citizens knew it was bullshit, than modern Westerners.
[1] One of the great injustices of modern life.
Sure, I look like a 6'2", 200lb clean-shaven white male with a buzzcut, no tattoos and all his front teeth... but in fact I'm in absolute solidarity with small-scale free-market entrepreneurs (and am 'canonically' a "person of colour").
I travelled 16000 kilometers - bloody near a lap of Australia - and could not find a single person to sell me weed. The bloke who eventually let on that I looked like a cop (remember: this is from the perspective of a drug dealer), did so in exchange for a six-pack of beer... but still wouldn't sell me weed.
I'm getting a (fake) neck tattoo - that should swing the deal.
And no, I don't want access to "medicinal" weed. It's a matter of principle: I should not need Massah's 'chit' to get a quarter-ounce to make my own weed tincture. Medicinal weed can go fuck itself.
Thank you. Another to add to the stew. This by Kenneth Rexroth
INTRODUCTION
The Libertarian Tradition
Prior to 1918 the word “communism” did not mean Left Social Democracy of the sort represented by the Russian Bolsheviks, a radical, revolutionary form of State socialism. Quite the contrary, it was used of those who wished in one way or another to abolish the State, who believed that socialism was not a matter of seizing power, but of doing away with power and returning society to an organic community of non-coercive human relations. They believed that this was what society was naturally, and that the State was only a morbid growth on the normal body of oeconomia, the housekeeping of the human family, grouped in voluntary association. Even the word “socialism” itself was originally applied to the free communist communities which were so common in America in the nineteenth century.
I truly don't know anymore. I used to think that informing and educating people through rational discussion and debate was the solution, but this is no longer possible and accordingly I fear we have reached the point of no return.
We are now in a situation where a plurality of the electorate will, literally, believe anything the Dem propaganda organs (a.k.a. MSM) tell them, no matter how preposterous the proposition, and are utterly impervious to any contrary evidence, fact or argument, regardless of how compelling, or even dispositive, it may be.
Add to this astonishing credulity an arguably pathological arrogance stemming from profound ignorance (a year ago, 41% of Democrats believed that at least 50% of unvaccinated people had been hospitalized due to COVID-19[1]), and a complete blindness to their own hypocrisy (e.g. "my body, my choice").
Last, but certainly not least, they are tyrannical authoritarians, in diametric opposition to not only the founding principles of the U.S., but to common decency. Back in January, 45% of Dems supported sending the un-jabbed to internment camps, with 59% in favor of home confinement [2].
How does one reason with people who are incapable of rational thought and coherent argument? Who reject the validity of rational thought and argument altogether? How does one compromise with people who want to throw you into a concentration camp or lock you in your house for disagreeing with them?
I am open to suggestion, but don't have high hopes.
Truer words have never been spoken. I can thoroughly empathize with your frustrations and conclusion that it's only getting worse -- just wait until the Millennials and Gen Z take over. Hope I'm dead and buried long before then.
When only 60% of the populace admits to some degree of not liking Biden's Führer (furor?) speech last week, that means 40% had no problems with the outright condemnation of half the country by their Dear Leader (who fancies himself a "uniter"). Absurdity beyond comprehension.
At least we have some mutual support groups like Gatoland.
Yes, it's frustrating. Arguing is necessary, but the trope of rational discussion and debate may be too clinical a way of looking at it. Reason takes us from point A to point B, and truth is simply a reliable map of our world. But ultimately, we take our sides under social-political drivers that have nothing to do with either of those.
Who threatens me, or belittles me? Who is fighting against my foes effectively? Whose favor do I so want that I fear to offend them? That is the terrain in the other person's mind that we have to understand and handle intelligently, knowing when to push back sharply, and when to send warm fuzzies, if we want to persuade them to our side.
Casual friendship, and exchange of our thoughts and feelings uninhibited by electronic devices, is the glue that holds us together in a morally sound society. That's why the coup against us is so concerned to drive us apart, with isolation at home, social distancing, and mask wearing. It is to snuff out that free, private flow of communication that humans have always had, and force us to their controlled propaganda systems for news of what is going on, and information on who is friend and who is enemy. The damage done here in two and a half years has been enormous.
To make our case, we need to join our friends and family, and make them feel good around us by treating them as whole people, without obsessing about the current ill-begotten state of affairs. At the same time, we need to balance the vicious propaganda they hear by making our own red lines clear, showing our fangs if they are crossed, and gently trouncing them on any propaganda they repeat. Be strong enough ourselves to be honestly kind to others. I think that's the best we can do.
I wonder if that is so true anymore. I think the push to jab little kids has made a lot people who are otherwise pro the jabs for themselves reconsider what the risks may be for their children. The mounting evidence of athletes dropping from suddenly and unexpected as well as the BS being told about the economy and inflation is hard to ignore. But the word ignorant is there for a reason.
" To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself." -- this (and Russians :) reminds me on what Jordan Peterson said the other day, on the subject of truth, in this video 'Russia Vs. Ukraine Or Civil War In The West?' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxdHm2dmvKE
I am watching. But there is a problem for me. Before I go there, my respect over all for, Dr. Jordan Peterson is deep. Jordan Peterson said he had spent a good deal of time preparing this presentation. @ about 11m10s into the video Dr. Person states that Ukraine found large Petroleum reserves they owned along the Caspian Sea.
Perhaps he corrects the mistake. I submit he meant the Black Sea. But for a carefully prepared video I am surprised by this mistake. He rarely makes mistakes like this.
Talk about a learning curve too, if one wants to get into it. Talmud is what, more than 3000 A4 sized pages of text by now? Not even annotated versions of Das Kapital comes close.
To quote a former colleague, a swedish jew: "Where's MY membership card? I never get invited to any secret meetings!"
Well, they're too secret for him to know about. Inner sanctum thingy and all that. Priesthood for a reason. (Fun fact: I've got the priestly lineage on my mother's side and the Temple assistants' lineage on my father's side, and it pissed me off royally as a kid that we hadn't been assigned any specific tribal allotment in the Land of Israel. Not fair!)
Jewish genealogical records were destroyed by the Romans in the razing of the temple in 70 C.E. Therefore any Jewish genealogical claims are based soley on oral tradition not documentation.
This may be overplayed but I always think of this quote in relation to the last 30 years of LIES:
"The most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: let their rule hold not through me!.....never knowingly support lies!"
This. One example is lying by getting a fake vax card. I might like to go somewhere where vax/booster is required but I don’t want to play the game (getting the fake). That might be convenient, but it is supporting the bigger lie. Not OK.
We are stuck in the washing machine of propaganda. The legacy and social media platforms take blatant untruths and cycle them through the media machine enough times until the masses start repeating them as long-known truths.
(Almost)Everyone in western societies is so busy just getting by, or trying to get ahead.
And that is what the system - comprising interlocking fields of fire - is designed for. Like a cow in a milking stand we have just enough GMO grains within reach to keep us occupied while we are milked, while our meager wealth is inflated up to and concentrated at lofty heights to fatten hogs at the trough. Schooling, working, retirement. Shaping, conditioning, priming for exploitation. Before we are discarded with a nightcap of Remdesivir or Midazolam. Or a booster of something 100 times worse than the disease...all told that will be a tragic under-estimation by The Science - can see a day it will be 10000. There is a cartoon, with a cow, Big (P)harma, and Rat-Fauchi, a creature less despicable than the real termite. Can't recall the artist, and the focus is narrow, but it captures that head of the Hydra well.
An income tax is the most striking example of a gratuitous handicap. Without one I could build wealth at twice the rate. Compounded, that could mean decades less working and being milked. Greater quality of life. Balance. Opportunity to flourish. The money can be conjured by JPow's magical MMT printer instead. A wealth tax would actually compensate for the loss, and it would be equitable, forgetting my tongue-in-cheek MMT reference. Only a fool would believe you can print forever without consequences, Janet & JPow, Lagarde & Lowe.
So the lies are easily accepted, because we are stressed beyond all reason as our default condition. And the lies are everywhere, soaking into our pores from every vector 'Brought To Us By...", like the most pathogenic exosomes in the world always belching forth. It is like we have been through the wringer at Lubyanka, and just want the pain to stop. So we accept the lie, to carry on with the daily grind. And we become complicit in the lie, informing on others or just remaining passive while aligning with evil. And we share blood on our hands for those we pushed to their deaths or disablement.
It is a reinforcing loop. It gets worse the longer the system is active. Within each of us, and in the wider society.
This is why it is so hard to wake people up. Their own subconscious defences fight to prevent the deluge of pain that would wash through them once the dam is breached.
To break the loop we need truth on every front. Truth doesn't need to be hidden behind Parody-Ministries, Big Tech, your White House, Psychopathic Cabals, Big (P)harma, or the MSM - or a hellish collusion of all of the above. Truth can stand alone and be impervious to any of the above. Through dialogue.
Which is why they are going after it so desperately.
The latest example is the quasi-criminalisation of climate-denialism. Wonder what that might be telegraphing...
Required reading for anyone thinking about freedoms:
Dostoyevsky's 'The Grand Inquisitor'.
As a follow up: study the history of the Inquisiton, to see what reason and methods inspired all secret police forces, as well as communists and fascists alike.
It is not a bad novel no. There's also a movie of the same name, from 1995.
If you'd like to read a similar-yet-different norwegian novel in the same style, I'd recommend Sandemose's 'The Werewolf' from 1958 and perhaps even more (though it is a different genre) his "En flykting korsar sitt spår" (A refugee crosses his own trail) though I'm unsure if the latter is available in translation.
The memory holing of Sigrid Undset by the modern literary world is a crime. She was a gifted writer with rare insight into human psychology and motivation. The Master of Hestviken is absolutely haunting.
man, isn't that the truth! i have seen so many people who i thought i knew well, who i believed to be intelligent, reasonable and compassionate, totally lose their ability to think rationally. i've seen them wish others a horrible death, cheer when nurses who had taken care of their relatives just a few months ago were suddenly deemed "too stupid" to work in hospitals, applaud the suggestion that certain veterans be stripped of their earned benefits, that their neighbors be stripped of their jobs, that a seat belt is comparable to a vaccine and that what's been going on in this country and other western democracies is not at all reminiscent of germany in the 30's and 40's, that freedom of speech is dangerous, that bodily autonomy only counts when you want an abortion but doesn't apply at all when i want to make my own medical decisions.
i've had to re-evaluate every friendship i thought i had and many came up sorely lacking.
If the queen identifies as a man and claims to be king, do the kingside and queenside split into warring factions? Or maybe the king decides he's gay and is OK with being married to a "man," and civil war is avoided.
As can be seen, although great strides have been made, quite a bit more work is needed to fully simulate an adult, sentient human.
* The "BBB" is a special designation for this release only, honoring perhaps one of Brandon's most "original" intelligent ideas: Build Back Bolshevik™.
See my parallel comment to yours. Adding to that comment, I have noticed as well that the bots are very good at back and forth political jabs. However, if you try to change the subject abruptly they produce numerous non-sequiturs.
My guess is 90+% of the "conversation" on Twitter is just algorithmic tug of war on shaping consensus.
This is increasingly obvious, but Twitter is mostly bots and/or state-directed wumao. The goal is likely to shape public consensus on issues for a desired outcome.
The most recent movement that smelled like state-directed mass influence was the overly-artificial "NAFO" group that popped up out of nowhere. The movement is so inauthentic that it has a perfectly manufactured Wikipedia page (dead giveaway it is state sponsored).
Say anything negative about Ukraine on Twitter, won't be more than a minute or two before the NAFO Langley-based bot army comes after you.
To be surrounded by people I thought I knew who have accepted the lies is quite difficult. It dawned on me what side of history they would have been on at critical junctures in history. I know a very very few who see through it.
Garry seems sincere and well-intentioned. It's too bad that he buys into the Trump-Russia collusion bullsh!t, when in fact Trump was much tougher on Russia than his predecessor or his successor.
My best guess for when the Political Established Order first acknowledged the power of social media relative to legacy media was probably the 2008 election cycle.
I sense they fully embraced it as a consensus-shaping tool during or slightly after the 2016 election. Up until that point legacy media was the primary propaganda tool. I'd mark 2016 as the year social tools became the primary mechanism. Their use and effectiveness has compounded since and are now so powerful they wear away at our efforts to see the truth among the lies.
"In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."
~ Theodore Dalrymple
We Are All In This Together™.
indeed.
the sheer volume of it is no accident either.
refutation, even just internally, takes energy and we all have only so much.
we all have only so much outrage.
exposed to enough, it desensitizes you. the message is not the product, the volume is.
it is not the convincingness of the lies that takes you down, but the sheer weight of them and then the humiliation that you are forced to live bent beneath such a world and are too exhausted to shovel back the tide that just keeps coming and coming is what subjugates you.
Yes, it seems we only have so much energy. The evil is so pervasive, so soul-withering at times, and since we are fighting on the many fronts that have been diabolically laid out, we find ourselves feeling scattered, ineffectively stomping out fires everywhere.
Many find peace and restoration in leaning on God for strength. He will lift up our trembling arms. It's his world. He loves us. He hovers over us. This is all happening for a purpose. We must hang on, lean on God, and put one step in front of another. His word is a lamp for my feet.
Beautiful, this will be our prayer tonight.
I believe in God, and that belief will not allow me to be subjugated. God wants us to resist and fight evil with all our might and soul.! And as for masks, we should try to get stores and restaurants to NOT ALLOW them in their businesses. You'd see all those masks come off in a heart beat! It would also cut down on robberies and other crimes !
🙏🏻🙌🏼♥️
Very well stated, and this is why we all need to take staggered breaks (and commit to that break without being sucked back in) to re-energize.
Have you seen Kari Lake demolish the 'narrative' ? Take a look at her in action in recent video posted at Conservative Treehouse. She is amazing.
To be fair this is the story of all religions too, because politics is a religion and all religions are cults.
Wow, lack nuance much?
How much nuance is required here?
Absolute statements negate any nuance. While your statement on politics and religion may have merit, that does not mean "All" We do not throw away all politics because some is necessary for people to organize societal cooperation. Some religion - the spiritual seeking of what is beyond our daily grind gives us value and meaning. That does not mean we have to include all dogmas or say you must accept my book, yours is no good therefore you are evil, because reasons.
"Absolute statements negate any nuance."
Isn't that an absolute statement in itself?
reductio ad absurdum
Yes, societies require organizing mechanisms, a hierarchy to establish order, an origin story to create plausibility, and a scripture to establish the rules, and the appropriate punishments for heretics.
All formalized belief systems require, you know, belief. Dissidents break away, establish new versions, rinse and repeat.
And people who say they can live perfectly well without dogma and labels and formalized ritual actions and don't need codified belief systems are often accused of having no belief in something higher outside themselves, because they refuse to name or define the Unknowable Indefinable.
Sounds like you doubt yourself. Why worry about what others say or believe? Your convictions are yours, they need not the approbation of others.
I am sad your experience with "religions" has been discouraging.
But, for many, their experience with religion has been uplifting and life-defining. I am a Christian. Christians who have come to understand that "religion" is the vehicle in which to grow in understanding of God and their relation with him are those who grow in faith and peace.
People sometimes denigrate religion because of the poor behaviour and example they perceive in Christians (or others who are in religions). Our faith is never to be in one another. We shall always let each other down. Our faith is in God. And we must remember the wise saying: "Be charitable, because for some people mere existence is an act of heroism."
Because of my religion, my faith grows when I come together with fellow Christians to worship God on the Lord's Day.
The definition of a "cult" is very specific. I have never felt my religion was cult-like - and would suggest most mainstream religions are not cult-like. I am free to stay and free to go. I can call on many offered resources in my Christian religion to build me up - or I may choose not to. I am a free happy camper embracing a specific religion, and I love God.
Believe what you like! I've no interest in persuading anyone otherwise. Just ensure that your own sectarian beliefs don't interfere with the governance of a secular civil society.
But "mainstream religion" is a nice way of trying to disguise that all religions are cults.
One doesn't need a dogma to believe in something outside oneself that cannot be conceptualized properly with the limits of human language.
If, in your last statement, you mean the "thing outside oneself" cannot be conceptualized IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER, you are contradicting yourself; saying that an object cannot be conceptualized is to conceptualize that object--i.e,. as falling under the concept of unconceptualizable things.
If, however, you mean that no human can conceptualize the divine FULLY, then you are not at all in opposition to orthodox Christianity..
Your last statement, except for its concluding clause, I'm with you.
One of my favorite thinkers is Meister Eckhart. Outside of him believing that Jesus is God, I'm with him all the way...
You haven't learned a damn thing in past 2.5 years. You can diminish and discredit a particular religious doctrine, but you can't eradicate collectivism, which is the second component of religion. How's this "goverance of a secular civil society" working out for you? Seems we're seeing the rise of a new "religion". You might prefer the lack of doctrine, but membership and obedience is mandatory. You can view it as a partial victory.
Oh, I learned plenty. I'm against all collective thinking fer shure.
Believe what you like! Just stay out of my public square with your doctrinal-derived attempts at legislative thuggery.
Stick to your fever dream hypotheticals. It's not my "religion" with a long stellar history of legislative thuggery. It yours. If your inane nightmare came true, you surely wouldn't be giving me a pass for being an innocent Christian separatist. Keep in mind, in my religion, we don't need you. Our God is plenty strong. Power by "universal adherence" is a graven image. That should bring you comfort. I wish your religion believed the same.
"Believe what you like! I've no interest in persuading anyone otherwise. [...]
But ""
... but you do :P.
No. I don't.
Here, SCA, take this helmet and umbrella quickly. I'll wait nearby with the engine running.
I'm real bad at running away.
Offered without a shred of evidence
Oh, the shreds are what make the world go round, from the beginning of history.
Say this in church, record what happens.
Viola.
Proof.
Or in a political organizing meeting...
I guess you had to duck when you saw what was coming <g>
Human nature is a pretty constant thing.
Religions have a finite doctrine, so they can't keep "making stuff up". Of course if your "religion" is Truth (Jesus being the Truth), then you can be subject to an endless volume of truth, which can be equally distasteful and oppressive, depending on your stomach for it.
*You* think Jesus is the truth. Doesn't make it true. Just one cult among many.
Nor do your gratuitous assertions make religion—as I. Belief in Jesus—false.
The goal is to destroy one's individual identity, and fuse the individual's identity with the groups identity. This forces violation of the individual conscience. Continual violation of the conscience results in destruction of the conscience. This in turn results in elimination of feelings of guilt-cognitive dissonance, for dishonest, self-destructive, sociopathic behaviors. Free moral agency-individuality is lost-murdered. The "self" no longer exists. It is replaced by the collective-group. We become the walking dead. For an explanation of this process see Edgar Allen Poe's bone chilling story, "William Wilson." It's the story of a man who succeeded in murdering his conscience and thus murdered himself.
Back in the olden days when I was a university tutor, I had one of Dalrymple's Spectator pieces taped to my door, with to piece of the text highlighted.
The article concerned "discrimination" and "prejudice" - the words themselves and what they entail behaviourally - and haven't been able to find it again (and I've got all of Dalrymple's books, and have search the Spectator archive).
Anyhow... the two highlights went something like
"if you see a shaven-headed black man with a scar on his scalp, a red sports car and a gold tooth, he may not be a drug dealer, but it's the way to bet"
and
"to face every day with absolutely zero prejudgements is like being a naked infant in a gale"
Quite a Bayesian notion: we don't start every analysis with a prior that is uniform on (-∞,∞) and starting with a non-uniform (and bounded) prior is almost always the right thing. And the guy's probably a drug dealer. (Drug dealers always discriminate against me: I've been told I give off a 'cop' vibe.[1]).
I'm permitted - by the rules of the Modern Inquisitors - to discriminate my arse off... for the sole reason that my grandfather was brown (a Māori).
I would also be permitted to discriminate my arse off if Little Grandad had come from the former Pale of Settlement and had pretended to believe in a gallimaufry of primitive prescientific tribal drivel about a psychopathic Storm God who for some reason is obsessed with foreskins.
The Old Nonsense is the brutal masturbatory fantasies of a bunch of Bronze Age primitives who retconned a history for themselves.
No Maori believes that New Zealand was a gigantic stingray that Maui caught and bludgeoned to death, but a bunch of mostly-atheists claim to believe that Yahweh promised them Palestine (which was at all salient times in their invented narrative, occupied by a major power of the time).
I am allowed to say that. One drop, bitchez!
.
As it happens, I disagree with Dalrymple's description of what we are told to believe about Soviet-era propaganda. Solzhenitzyn is the archetypical "manufactured opposition" - although if more people read a reliable (non-MEMRI-style) translation of "Two Hundred Years Together" he would be cancelled throughout the West and his name anathemised.
Soviet-era propaganda was not a single iota different from modern Western marketing - the difference being that after 20 years, a larger proportion of Soviet citizens knew it was bullshit, than modern Westerners.
[1] One of the great injustices of modern life.
Sure, I look like a 6'2", 200lb clean-shaven white male with a buzzcut, no tattoos and all his front teeth... but in fact I'm in absolute solidarity with small-scale free-market entrepreneurs (and am 'canonically' a "person of colour").
I travelled 16000 kilometers - bloody near a lap of Australia - and could not find a single person to sell me weed. The bloke who eventually let on that I looked like a cop (remember: this is from the perspective of a drug dealer), did so in exchange for a six-pack of beer... but still wouldn't sell me weed.
I'm getting a (fake) neck tattoo - that should swing the deal.
And no, I don't want access to "medicinal" weed. It's a matter of principle: I should not need Massah's 'chit' to get a quarter-ounce to make my own weed tincture. Medicinal weed can go fuck itself.
Thank you. Another to add to the stew. This by Kenneth Rexroth
INTRODUCTION
The Libertarian Tradition
Prior to 1918 the word “communism” did not mean Left Social Democracy of the sort represented by the Russian Bolsheviks, a radical, revolutionary form of State socialism. Quite the contrary, it was used of those who wished in one way or another to abolish the State, who believed that socialism was not a matter of seizing power, but of doing away with power and returning society to an organic community of non-coercive human relations. They believed that this was what society was naturally, and that the State was only a morbid growth on the normal body of oeconomia, the housekeeping of the human family, grouped in voluntary association. Even the word “socialism” itself was originally applied to the free communist communities which were so common in America in the nineteenth century.
The question then remains: How do we all get OUT of this together? We certainly can't go it alone.
I truly don't know anymore. I used to think that informing and educating people through rational discussion and debate was the solution, but this is no longer possible and accordingly I fear we have reached the point of no return.
We are now in a situation where a plurality of the electorate will, literally, believe anything the Dem propaganda organs (a.k.a. MSM) tell them, no matter how preposterous the proposition, and are utterly impervious to any contrary evidence, fact or argument, regardless of how compelling, or even dispositive, it may be.
Add to this astonishing credulity an arguably pathological arrogance stemming from profound ignorance (a year ago, 41% of Democrats believed that at least 50% of unvaccinated people had been hospitalized due to COVID-19[1]), and a complete blindness to their own hypocrisy (e.g. "my body, my choice").
Last, but certainly not least, they are tyrannical authoritarians, in diametric opposition to not only the founding principles of the U.S., but to common decency. Back in January, 45% of Dems supported sending the un-jabbed to internment camps, with 59% in favor of home confinement [2].
How does one reason with people who are incapable of rational thought and coherent argument? Who reject the validity of rational thought and argument altogether? How does one compromise with people who want to throw you into a concentration camp or lock you in your house for disagreeing with them?
I am open to suggestion, but don't have high hopes.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimates-covid-hospitalization-risk.aspx
[2] https://www.uspresidentialelectionnews.com/2022/01/poll-45-of-dems-support-internment-camps-for-unvaccinated-59-support-home-lockdowns/
Truer words have never been spoken. I can thoroughly empathize with your frustrations and conclusion that it's only getting worse -- just wait until the Millennials and Gen Z take over. Hope I'm dead and buried long before then.
When only 60% of the populace admits to some degree of not liking Biden's Führer (furor?) speech last week, that means 40% had no problems with the outright condemnation of half the country by their Dear Leader (who fancies himself a "uniter"). Absurdity beyond comprehension.
At least we have some mutual support groups like Gatoland.
Yes, it's frustrating. Arguing is necessary, but the trope of rational discussion and debate may be too clinical a way of looking at it. Reason takes us from point A to point B, and truth is simply a reliable map of our world. But ultimately, we take our sides under social-political drivers that have nothing to do with either of those.
Who threatens me, or belittles me? Who is fighting against my foes effectively? Whose favor do I so want that I fear to offend them? That is the terrain in the other person's mind that we have to understand and handle intelligently, knowing when to push back sharply, and when to send warm fuzzies, if we want to persuade them to our side.
Casual friendship, and exchange of our thoughts and feelings uninhibited by electronic devices, is the glue that holds us together in a morally sound society. That's why the coup against us is so concerned to drive us apart, with isolation at home, social distancing, and mask wearing. It is to snuff out that free, private flow of communication that humans have always had, and force us to their controlled propaganda systems for news of what is going on, and information on who is friend and who is enemy. The damage done here in two and a half years has been enormous.
To make our case, we need to join our friends and family, and make them feel good around us by treating them as whole people, without obsessing about the current ill-begotten state of affairs. At the same time, we need to balance the vicious propaganda they hear by making our own red lines clear, showing our fangs if they are crossed, and gently trouncing them on any propaganda they repeat. Be strong enough ourselves to be honestly kind to others. I think that's the best we can do.
I wonder if that is so true anymore. I think the push to jab little kids has made a lot people who are otherwise pro the jabs for themselves reconsider what the risks may be for their children. The mounting evidence of athletes dropping from suddenly and unexpected as well as the BS being told about the economy and inflation is hard to ignore. But the word ignorant is there for a reason.
" To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself." -- this (and Russians :) reminds me on what Jordan Peterson said the other day, on the subject of truth, in this video 'Russia Vs. Ukraine Or Civil War In The West?' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxdHm2dmvKE
Enjoy.
Peterson is a treasure. Have not seen this but will give it a gander. Cheers.
I am watching. But there is a problem for me. Before I go there, my respect over all for, Dr. Jordan Peterson is deep. Jordan Peterson said he had spent a good deal of time preparing this presentation. @ about 11m10s into the video Dr. Person states that Ukraine found large Petroleum reserves they owned along the Caspian Sea.
Perhaps he corrects the mistake. I submit he meant the Black Sea. But for a carefully prepared video I am surprised by this mistake. He rarely makes mistakes like this.
One of the finest and most poignant observations in history.
in the internet age it also has the related effect of making channels you cant entirely control seem so ridiculous that the reasonable people leave
Incredible quote, have never seen it but screen capped it for the save file
Communism was/is Talmudism, a lie culture, writ large. Today, Talmudists control the Dem Party and the MSM.
Well at least you're varying the terminology here a little.
Talk about a learning curve too, if one wants to get into it. Talmud is what, more than 3000 A4 sized pages of text by now? Not even annotated versions of Das Kapital comes close.
To quote a former colleague, a swedish jew: "Where's MY membership card? I never get invited to any secret meetings!"
Well, they're too secret for him to know about. Inner sanctum thingy and all that. Priesthood for a reason. (Fun fact: I've got the priestly lineage on my mother's side and the Temple assistants' lineage on my father's side, and it pissed me off royally as a kid that we hadn't been assigned any specific tribal allotment in the Land of Israel. Not fair!)
Still waiting for my secret Neanderthal-club membership card to arrive.
NLM - Neanderthal Lives Matter! Cro Magnon Imperialists go home!
You so funny!!!! Ha, ha, ha! Say, could you guys put on tnat hilarious routine, "Gimme reparations"?
Been thinking about them Denisovans...
Jewish genealogical records were destroyed by the Romans in the razing of the temple in 70 C.E. Therefore any Jewish genealogical claims are based soley on oral tradition not documentation.
You mean genealogical tracing from now to then - almost 2 000 years of it - lacks merit?
Most of us have significant middle eastern DNA, even if our recent ancestors are from Galicia.
We don't need no stinking documentation...
...but Jewish birth and burial rituals maintain a certain fidelity to lineage histories.
Do note, though, that you may have missed the necessary tone required to read my previous comment with full understanding of my point.
He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
~1984
But he who does not control his bowels thinks he controls the white house.
not a pretty picture
This may be overplayed but I always think of this quote in relation to the last 30 years of LIES:
"The most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: let their rule hold not through me!.....never knowingly support lies!"
- Solzhenitsyn
This. One example is lying by getting a fake vax card. I might like to go somewhere where vax/booster is required but I don’t want to play the game (getting the fake). That might be convenient, but it is supporting the bigger lie. Not OK.
Same with fake masks, don't play.
This was one of the main reasons I refused to wear a mask.
That and my children.
We are stuck in the washing machine of propaganda. The legacy and social media platforms take blatant untruths and cycle them through the media machine enough times until the masses start repeating them as long-known truths.
"Safe and effective"
"Climate emergency"
"Most secure elections"
"Trump Russian asset"
"Ukraine is not corrupt"
"Hunter's laptop is disinformation"
"Weapons of mass destruction"
"Russian bounties on US soldiers"
"Jussie Smollett a victim"
"Very fine people"
"Insurrection"
It seems like a good point, but I don't really have time to think about it.
Very droll, Mr. Bray. I love it.
That is the key. And it isn't accidental.
(Almost)Everyone in western societies is so busy just getting by, or trying to get ahead.
And that is what the system - comprising interlocking fields of fire - is designed for. Like a cow in a milking stand we have just enough GMO grains within reach to keep us occupied while we are milked, while our meager wealth is inflated up to and concentrated at lofty heights to fatten hogs at the trough. Schooling, working, retirement. Shaping, conditioning, priming for exploitation. Before we are discarded with a nightcap of Remdesivir or Midazolam. Or a booster of something 100 times worse than the disease...all told that will be a tragic under-estimation by The Science - can see a day it will be 10000. There is a cartoon, with a cow, Big (P)harma, and Rat-Fauchi, a creature less despicable than the real termite. Can't recall the artist, and the focus is narrow, but it captures that head of the Hydra well.
An income tax is the most striking example of a gratuitous handicap. Without one I could build wealth at twice the rate. Compounded, that could mean decades less working and being milked. Greater quality of life. Balance. Opportunity to flourish. The money can be conjured by JPow's magical MMT printer instead. A wealth tax would actually compensate for the loss, and it would be equitable, forgetting my tongue-in-cheek MMT reference. Only a fool would believe you can print forever without consequences, Janet & JPow, Lagarde & Lowe.
So the lies are easily accepted, because we are stressed beyond all reason as our default condition. And the lies are everywhere, soaking into our pores from every vector 'Brought To Us By...", like the most pathogenic exosomes in the world always belching forth. It is like we have been through the wringer at Lubyanka, and just want the pain to stop. So we accept the lie, to carry on with the daily grind. And we become complicit in the lie, informing on others or just remaining passive while aligning with evil. And we share blood on our hands for those we pushed to their deaths or disablement.
It is a reinforcing loop. It gets worse the longer the system is active. Within each of us, and in the wider society.
This is why it is so hard to wake people up. Their own subconscious defences fight to prevent the deluge of pain that would wash through them once the dam is breached.
To break the loop we need truth on every front. Truth doesn't need to be hidden behind Parody-Ministries, Big Tech, your White House, Psychopathic Cabals, Big (P)harma, or the MSM - or a hellish collusion of all of the above. Truth can stand alone and be impervious to any of the above. Through dialogue.
Which is why they are going after it so desperately.
The latest example is the quasi-criminalisation of climate-denialism. Wonder what that might be telegraphing...
Required reading for anyone thinking about freedoms:
Dostoyevsky's 'The Grand Inquisitor'.
As a follow up: study the history of the Inquisiton, to see what reason and methods inspired all secret police forces, as well as communists and fascists alike.
This is way off topic and not generally a book up my alley, but I just finished reading Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset.
Don't think less of me, but I thought it was brilliantly written.
It was interesting because it had several references to historical events/factoids you've learned me up on.
I actually thought it was masterpiece.
It is not a bad novel no. There's also a movie of the same name, from 1995.
If you'd like to read a similar-yet-different norwegian novel in the same style, I'd recommend Sandemose's 'The Werewolf' from 1958 and perhaps even more (though it is a different genre) his "En flykting korsar sitt spår" (A refugee crosses his own trail) though I'm unsure if the latter is available in translation.
Do you have anything like Sci-fi/high fantasy, etc. of Scandinavian origins?
I need a change of pace...an escape from all the biz shit I have to read.
Lars Walker maybe?
The memory holing of Sigrid Undset by the modern literary world is a crime. She was a gifted writer with rare insight into human psychology and motivation. The Master of Hestviken is absolutely haunting.
I will have to check that out. I'm always intrigued when someone describes a book as haunting.
To your point though; I wonder why her work has been memory holed? As a child I always saw her books at the library growing up in the 70's.
I actually thought Kristin Lavransdatter was pretty darn "racey" for a piece written in the early 20th century.
man, isn't that the truth! i have seen so many people who i thought i knew well, who i believed to be intelligent, reasonable and compassionate, totally lose their ability to think rationally. i've seen them wish others a horrible death, cheer when nurses who had taken care of their relatives just a few months ago were suddenly deemed "too stupid" to work in hospitals, applaud the suggestion that certain veterans be stripped of their earned benefits, that their neighbors be stripped of their jobs, that a seat belt is comparable to a vaccine and that what's been going on in this country and other western democracies is not at all reminiscent of germany in the 30's and 40's, that freedom of speech is dangerous, that bodily autonomy only counts when you want an abortion but doesn't apply at all when i want to make my own medical decisions.
i've had to re-evaluate every friendship i thought i had and many came up sorely lacking.
Yea, but does he know what a woman is?
As a chessicist, he will assume that all women are queens.
ahh, but even in the dark of knight, he might stumble a pawn the truth.
(it's hard to rook a grandmaster)
Ooooooooo!
kitty dropping the mic again...
Oooh, Chess humor. I like it! 😂
If the queen identifies as a man and claims to be king, do the kingside and queenside split into warring factions? Or maybe the king decides he's gay and is OK with being married to a "man," and civil war is avoided.
Of course he does.
A woman is whatever he thinks a woman is, just like everything else today.
Dollars to donuts you either don't work on Fridays or your good at pretending to work!...;]
My multi-tasking abilities are unparalleled. Especially on Friday.
At this point it is starting to feel like someone is using AI to direct this stuff as well. We are always a few steps behind.
Oh, it started some time ago, and there has been substantial progress in this area in the last 30 years.
This is an early alpha version (v. 0.10054327xh, I think) of an AI politibot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt56RMbpq_0
Three decades later, this has evolved into the first full-version release, v. 1.0.0.2 BBB*, colloquially known as "Brandon 1.0".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6uingtAWbk
As can be seen, although great strides have been made, quite a bit more work is needed to fully simulate an adult, sentient human.
* The "BBB" is a special designation for this release only, honoring perhaps one of Brandon's most "original" intelligent ideas: Build Back Bolshevik™.
See my parallel comment to yours. Adding to that comment, I have noticed as well that the bots are very good at back and forth political jabs. However, if you try to change the subject abruptly they produce numerous non-sequiturs.
My guess is 90+% of the "conversation" on Twitter is just algorithmic tug of war on shaping consensus.
I love that turn of phrase. I've been using it for BBB since I first heard the term and understood exactly what it meant.
Funny, i also used that same term for BBB.. Cross between the BS and Communism that it represents.
Bolshevik Lies Murder strikes close to center mass, as well.
This is increasingly obvious, but Twitter is mostly bots and/or state-directed wumao. The goal is likely to shape public consensus on issues for a desired outcome.
The most recent movement that smelled like state-directed mass influence was the overly-artificial "NAFO" group that popped up out of nowhere. The movement is so inauthentic that it has a perfectly manufactured Wikipedia page (dead giveaway it is state sponsored).
Say anything negative about Ukraine on Twitter, won't be more than a minute or two before the NAFO Langley-based bot army comes after you.
To be surrounded by people I thought I knew who have accepted the lies is quite difficult. It dawned on me what side of history they would have been on at critical junctures in history. I know a very very few who see through it.
Garry seems sincere and well-intentioned. It's too bad that he buys into the Trump-Russia collusion bullsh!t, when in fact Trump was much tougher on Russia than his predecessor or his successor.
This Garry Kasparov?
https://rdi.org/
That's quite a "Never Trump" board line up he has.
He can be right about some things and wrong about others. I was also disappointed by JR Saul aligning with the establishment.
And that's the entirety of it, captured in one clear paragraph. Describes every issue of our time.
6 years but ok :)
are you saying this only started this year, mr ray?
My best guess for when the Political Established Order first acknowledged the power of social media relative to legacy media was probably the 2008 election cycle.
I sense they fully embraced it as a consensus-shaping tool during or slightly after the 2016 election. Up until that point legacy media was the primary propaganda tool. I'd mark 2016 as the year social tools became the primary mechanism. Their use and effectiveness has compounded since and are now so powerful they wear away at our efforts to see the truth among the lies.
doh!
It's a total immersion, from colleges and universities, to tv/streaming, to even crossword puzzles in newspapers. Another word for it is brainwashing.
🎯
And many it seems have precious little critical thinking - or any kind of thinking - to exhaust.
"Thinking" is no longer taught, practiced, or for that matter, allowed!