Category: education

Disenchanting Enchanted Rock

I was so excited when I found ‘an expert’ on Enchanted Rock, who had written an entire book on the monument and its surroundings and has a website too, with lots of details. I was sure to have found a great source, I thought.

Click pic for my previous post about Enchanted Rock called “My favorite Enchanting photo”

And with a name like Kennedy, it’s gotta be good, right?

In the spirit of disobedience, in a word, no. Two words: Hell, no! Three words: Big, Fat, Disappointment!!

Wow, I didn’t realize anyone can just throw any piece of nonsense together and call it history. Or anthropology. Or pretty much any ‘science’.

Way to spoil a miraculous destination, Kennedy, thanks bunches.

But I can’t really blame him alone, it’s more than a trend. The dumbing down of the public has been documented for decades, and this sort of material that is supposed to pass as educational is a perfect case in point. So, let’s take a few pokes at it from a few of those many angles.

The History of Enchanted Rock in the Texas Hill Country by Ira Kennedy self-published in 2010 naming it https://www.amazon.com/HISTORY-ENCHANTED-ROCK-TEXAS-COUNTRY/dp/1456818783
“The Sacred Landmark of Central Texas”.

It is not sold as a children’s book and costs $21.99. According to the the Amazon page Ira Kennedy is:

“Considered as the state’s leading authority on Enchanted Rock, the sacred mountain of Central Texas, Ira has assisted the author’s of several published books, articles and the Thomas Evans mural of Enchanted Rock in the Austin-Bergstorm International Airport. IN 1992, Ira was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from the Texas Parks and & Wildlife Department for providing numerous educational talks at Enchanted Rock Natural Area.” And it goes on.

The first Amazon review looked promising.
“Ira Kennedy is the world expert, in the opinion of many, of this beautiful Texas natural treasure. His knowledge comes from spending a great deal of his life on or near the rock. Ira is a creative genius and humble man who has written this amazing book, sure to answer all your questions about this geological wonder. Beautifully illustrated by Ira, you will keep this book among your special collections.”

The ‘book’ itself looks more like a coloring book. There are no references or citations, no bibliography or notes. While the author states he did multi-disciplinary research and himself has an advanced degree and was employed in Naval intelligence as a cryptographer, he must seriously understand what an ‘expert’ text would look like, and this one is the polar opposite of scholarly.

I can only assume ‘expert’ has taken on a new meaning sometime around the year 1999.

Let’s set the tone with his “Brief Historical Timeline” which begins his story in 12,000 B.C. and ends in 1978. With only a smattering of centuries missing, bless his heart!

We learn of a dubious-looking character named Jack Hays who was ‘an enigma’. We learn about a William Kennedy and his ‘flower-spangled’ landscape and ‘lost mines’ the ‘fueled the imaginagtion’. We learn about some immigrants from Germany in the 1840s.

We have the ‘First People’ myths and ‘The Imaginary Frontier’ of the Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who passed right through Mason County in the sixteenth century. And some childish stick figure drawings, some arrowheads and feather headdresses.

Later in the book are some drawings of angry indians who we learn may or may not have practiced human sacrifice.

And that about sums up my waste of money and time! Alas, the journey of discovery continues.

Poor, misunderstood ‘Enchanted Rock’ — I don’t even like your name anymore, so I think I’ll find a new one. And a new history to go with it. It would surely be better footnoted than this toilet paper, and good bit more entertaining I expect too!

I dare say, you there, intrepid traveler, can you smell anything beyond the boulders of bullshit?

Gavin’s Reciprocity

I’ve had a bit of challenge trying to simply label Gavin Mounsey’s book, “Recipes For Reciprocity: The Regnerative Way From Seed to Table” because it’s so much more than a cookbook. I have a great many cookbooks and my favorite type are what we might call ‘narrative cookbooks’ (though there may be an official sub-category name that I don’t know)–these are the kind where there’s a very present narrator telling you stories about the foods, and the places, and the people associated with the recipes and the author’s life. I might be inspired enough to write one of these myself someday.

Gavin’s book is not that, yet it is even more still. Rather than try to say it better myself, and fail, here’s an excellent description from the back cover:
“This book is a magnificent achievement. It can help you learn pracical ways to grow and cook mouthwatering food-as-medicine, and build deeper and stronger community, but it is so much more than that. Gavin has written a love letter to humanity and the living world and a manifesto for workable hope, all with an unflinching honesty about the crises we face. Gavin uses the nuts and bolts skills in the garden and kitchen as a launchpad to reimagine our place in the world, and the result is a solid foundation in the chaos. His hope and love are infectious, and the applied knowledge shared in his book is encyclopedic. I highly recommend it to you.” ~ Jason Padyorac

Along with the two books, one I gave to a friend, Gavin sent lots of seeds, some I’m already growing, others I can’t wait to try.

Scarlet Runner Bean in early summer, now dead.
Full Texas sun, not a happy plant.
Bit of afternoon cover and is looking good.

So far I’ve planted the Scarlet Runner Beans and the Black Hopi Sunflowers.

Gavin:

“These beans are among my all time favorites for their versatility in the kitchen and beauty as well as productivity in the garden. They are an amazing companion plant due to the plant’s roots having the ability to associate with rhizobia (nitrogen fixing bacteria) which not only allows this plant to fertilize itself by pulling plant food from the air, it also means this plant can help fertilize its meighboring plants with excess nitrogen. On top of that amazing benefit the scarlet runner bean has beautiful red flowers that attract pollinators such as ruby-throated hummingbirds and bumblebees.”

It is amazing to see how many fantastic plants can flourish in such varied climates. Because Gavin is in Canada and I’m in Texas I didn’t expect to find so many parallels in what we plant in our gardens, though certainly the timing and special needs vary quite a bit. The scarlet runner beans I’ve planted in full sun are perishing. But the others I planted which is shaded during the intense mid-day heat are hanging on. They’ve not produced yet, but I’m still hopeful and I like them anyway. I’m sure if there is any production and I can save the seed, it will acclimate to our area. Unfortunately, after a promising spring, the bumblebees and butterflies have been depressingly scarce in the garden lately.

Gorgeous! Ugly pity for the chem-sky.

The Black Hopi sunflower has been the piece de resistance. It’s gorgeous and taller and fuller than any I’ve ever seen. I had several planted in several spots, and most of them got damaged in the high-wind storms we’ve had. But not this magnificent giant!

Gavin’s reciprocity in action is so inspiring, which is why I wanted to spend a couple of posts sharing about his book. Regular readers will probably remember I’ve shared some other of his work here in the past, especially in our Herbal Explorations pages, which come from his Substack newsletter.

In another post I’ll dive into a few of the recipes, but for now I’d like to expand on a few quotes which so align with my own learning and experience growing a garden and cooking seasonally from scratch. It has absolutely been the most rewarding journey of my life, with plenty of hope remaining for more of the same in the future.

From the section: Reciprocity in Action
“Choosing to give our attention to nature is also a form of giving back. Observing and paying attention to the cycles and living systems in nature involves giving our time and our thoughts. When we closely observe nature we inevitably come to perceive countless expressions of beauty through our perceptions of the form, color, sound, scent, textures, tastes and relationships that are all around us. This leads us to caring, feeling gratitude for and feeling compelled to protect the amazing gifts nature shares with us. From the place of gratitude we engage in one of the most meaningful and powerful acts of reciprocity. We open our hearts, we feel content . . . we practice self-restraint, we choose to live more consciously and aware of how our life choices impact the living planet that sustains us and showers us with endless gifts.”

Gavin most certainly has an eye for beauty, his photography is stunning.

(3) The Jubilation Of June – by Gavin Mounsey

https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/the-jubilation-of-june-d41

I know how daunting it can seem to dive into a new hobby like gardening, or even cooking nowadays, but there’s so many smaller and easier things that take so little effort or knowledge that might be just the momentum for many to kickstart a healthier life and society.

Just observing. I couldn’t agree more. It really does start that small and simple and while I have read loads of books on gardening and cooking and many adjacent subjects, I’ve learned far more from observing. Taking notes helps too, but considering how bad I am at that, it must not be totally necessary.

The other few very simple things that require no gardening and very little cooking is compost and ferments, both which Gavin discusses in the book.

Why those two, you might be wondering? Because in my experience, composting makes you far more conscious of waste, and fermenting shifts your attention to the weather and seasons. Both of these processes have enriched my life and health and outlook far more than I could’ve ever imagined.

A window sill of herbs would be enough to use up the compost produced by the average small household. Or donate it to a friend who gardens if you have such a black thumb or really no space. And who knows, maybe she’ll reciprocate with a zuccinni or two.

I had no idea what eating seasonally meant. Really. Until I went to the farmer’s markets in France on a high school exchange program, I had zero clue produce even had seasons, and considering how much is grown indoors today, that’s probably become more normalized than ever.

Considering I grew up eating like the vast majority of Americans–fast, frozen, canned, bagged–I know what easy looks like, and this is pretty darn easy. The shift really is more in attitude and attention.

Now I long for cucumber season as I long for tomato season as I long for melon season as I long for radish and lettuce season. It’s become that nuanced and I love it. Sure, there’s some cross-over and we can and ferment to save the bounty. But that limited time window of bounty becomes a season within a season, with all that entails–a change in primary food and focus–all with their unique gifts and challenges.

Surplus requires work, work requires rest and creates reward. 😊

The ebb and flow of surplus and scarcity becomes natural again, each bringing its own unique gifts and challenges.

My influences growing up–that of media, education, environment–worked synergistically as detachment mechanism. Nature was that which we were being systematically detached from, and that trend has only exaccerbated, to the growing dis-ease of ourselves and our environment.

“Within the last century, healthy, natural, organic food has been made more difficult to produce because of the chemical pollution, at first, and genetic pollution, more recently. A handful of companies have spread these toxins across our planet diverting US$ 400 billion of public money to subsidize their high cost chemical commodities to make them artificially ‘cheap’. The costs of this ‘cheap’ food are astronomical in terms of the health of people, the ecological damge it causes and its exploitation of farmers. If the true costs of chemical food were taken into account it would be unaffordable. Insead of subsidizing chemical food and creating epidemics of food-related diseases, public money, used for nourishment and the protection of public health through organic food, would save us billions in health care. Denying people their right to healthy, poison-free food by manipulating laws, policy, science and the use of public money to impose a non-sustainable, unhealthy food is food-dictatorship.”

to be continued . . .

Thanks for reading!

Art As Transformative?

What do you think? Have you had a personal experience of transformation through art?

I wrote my Master’s thesis on social engineering in 90s, before I had any idea what social engineering was. I didn’t know at the time that’s what I was writing about. The thesis was about women writers of francophone West Africa using their novels as a means to catalyze social change. Liberation through literature, I called it, where practices like polygamy, female genital mutilation, and lack of educational opportunities were voiced in fictional form by the otherwise voiceless.

Certainly it is not at all uncommon for writers to use their works toward such ends. And yet, something about the timing of my thesis, or perhaps the content, resonated less with others than I expected.

I found that instead ‘Art for art’s sake’ had become the more popular mode of the times and works that were considered to be ‘too pedantic’ (which seemed to mean any fictional work with a purpose other than sheer entertainment) were heavily criticized.

I tried for years to pitch similar ideas for publishing to various entities and could find no interest and quite a lot of criticism. Folks wanted to be entertained, not taught. If they had to learn something, they wanted it tightly obscured in a bubble of excitement, like a Dan Brown novel.

But times seem to have changed again and authors and artists with a serious message, with deep societal concerns, seem to be able to find, or are perhaps themselves creating, a growing audience hungry for their transformational content.

It reminds me of some of the criticisms I heard in the 90s—art is not meant to transform or educate, but rather has the sole purpose to simply express the subjective worldview of the creator. Any feelings of universality in a work of art is essentially meaningless coincidence. Art should not be held in the clutches of meaning-making. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Art cannot be personally or socially transformative, except to the artist himself, that is an establishment myth of conformity.

I even had an artist friend, with an art degree, who assisted at a gallery, try to insist to me that the glass flask full of the artist’s excrement (I’m not joking) was to be considered art just as much as any old famous painting.

So I’m very pleased to see this more recent ‘re-formation’ to art with purpose. But, I wonder, can it actually be transformative? Or were all those critical voices in the 90s correct?

What do y’all think?

Here’s a couple of amazing pieces which might have such power. Do you know of others to share? If so, please do link below!

In Shadow: A Modern Odyssey

Kingdom

These works are both by: Lubomir Arsov and you can find an excellent interview with him here:

https://open.substack.com/pub/unbekoming/p/interview-with-lubomir-arsov?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios

The Myth of ‘Market-Driven’

We were taught in Economics 101 that we live in a market-based economy in the USA. They sometimes threw around the word ‘free market’ as well.

We were also taught it was our prosperity that allowed for so many choices in our free country, which itself was thanks to our progress.

Wonderful words that sound magical together: Progress and Prosperity

And this could almost make sense, it’s not exactly a lie, so it could almost be true.*. Except, we were taught another thing at the same time: We were taught that it is the customers who drive the market.

Now the lie becomes recognizable, because we can easily point to thousands of examples as to how it is not the case that the consumer drives the market.

Here are some of my preferred examples. Feel free to add more in the comments.

The Illusion of Choice

It’s not just thousands of breakfast cereals made up of the same toxic ingredients, but most of the food products available to the average consumer these days.

How about the good ole landline? Soon to be gone the way of the pay phone.
We are told that folks just don’t want landlines anymore and so they will begin to discontinue them. California recently had a public backlash, but it won’t matter in the long run. Landlines will be discontinued for the plebs. That is those who haven’t already happily switched to a Smart surveillance system they carry everywhere.

In some cases, probably many, this will happen by forcing (coercing) customers into canceling their service. This is just ‘anecdotal evidence’ as they always say, whereas they have ‘the data’ which says the opposite.

It’s not that landline service has become increasingly poor over the last decade while the costs keep rising, as has happened to us and our neighbors. No, it’s market-driven scientific data that claims folks don’t want them anymore.

Lightbulbs. Low-flush toilets and low-flow shower heads. Wood-burning appliance restrictions and prohibitions. Gas can safety features. Smart washing machines. Electric cars. Sustainable Everything driving up energy costs. “Sin” taxes.

Your market-driven choice: Smart City or poverty

I have met very few folks who wanted any of these market-driven signs of our ever-improved Progress and Prosperity. But again, anecdotal.

Because they are ALL for the Environment, or our own good, of course. And the data says we want it.

Everything I want to do is illegal, like:

Sell raw milk Camembert at the Farmer’s Market (or anywhere else), distill our own whiskey, grow hemp, sell pork chops to our neighbors, refuse to pay taxes that fund wars and bail-out bankers or funds the research that floods our fields.

Behold the market-driven forces of weather modification!

But we are driven into Progress on the Big Bus of Bullshit called Prosperity (undefined term) by unseen forces (mostly unelected and completely unaccountable). Like magic!

Which brings me to my most obvious market-driven fantasy.

More like: Encyclopedia of Useless Myths


Out-of-print books

This one really aggravates me!  There are plenty of glaring examples of the deliberate dumbing down of our media and our educational content. Here’s just one perfect example because it’s fresh on my mind from just today.

This book of utter herbal nonsense which I should probably burn on principle, is on its 22nd printing—Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs.

While Juliette de Bairacli Levy’s books of serious research and immense practical value are mostly out of print, or hard to find, in poor condition and/or expensive, or only available to read online (which I truly dislike, but there are no good public libraries around anymore and books are ridiculously over-priced and of course, I want to do my part for the trees. 😂)

A collector’s copy worth thousands proves there’s no interest whatsoever from the free market.

Why learn the practical magic of the actual benefits and remedies of the common Comfrey when it is demonized by Big Pharma and cajoled and belittled into its ‘fairy magic’ properties thanks to ‘trendy’ books dominating the marketplace, repeating drivel like:

“Worn or carried, Comfrey protects and ensures safety during travel. Also, tuck some into your suitcases so that they aren’t lost or stolen.”

Ah brilliant, so helpful! Our ancestors must’ve been loading up those trunks and buggies with their comfrey leaves. Is Cunningham’s book really worthy of 22 continuous reprints?

Or do folks buy this book for the same reason I did, because they were so desperate to learn practical wisdom about how our ancestors used herbs that they foolishly believed such a popular book must have something of value besides the pretty cover. Fool me once . . .

And in the meantime, arrest that old Amish man who fraudulently claimed his comfrey salve cures skin cancer (surely killing or maiming millions).

Samuel Girod Sentenced To 6 Years In Prison – Amish America

*Market-driven I’ve come to realize is a kind of Newspeak, because it has a double-meaning, similar to “stakeholder capitalism”—the market is not meant as in the agora, the market-place, you and I, but as in the stock market.

ALL For Sale

When I lived in Europe in the 90s it was not too uncommon to see an amazing castle for sale for a pittance. I do mean a real castle, or a vast country estate that included a structure that once was a castle.

And I do mean a pittance, as in, they were not able to give these places away.

Vauburg, France (not my image), bit of a multi-generational hodge-podge.

Sometimes that was because they came with strings attached, so I can understand. Or it was designated for a specific purpose or with strict regulations. You had to restore it, for example, which was something that cost so much that the just wealthy could not afford it.

I had a French boyfriend for a while, who boasted some aristocratic lineage and took me to the castle where his aunt still lived. I marveled at the exquisite property and at the lingering formality of his kin who addressed each other, that is as husband and wife, in the formal, using ‘vous’.

Maybe the uber-wealthy could afford it, if they cared to, but they just didn’t have the interest?

Or, which I’m actually more inclined to think these days, even with their fortunes, they would not be able to restore it. Because the skills to accomplish such an extraordinary endeavor have been lost to time.

A single example of the dozens of architectural marvels which have been destroyed in our little city, with more on the chopping block all the time.

In those days I dreamed of becoming a travel writer, or a writer of historical fiction. So, it’s not a huge stretch for me now to covet an interest in such parallel stories here, today, locally.

This is the closest real city to us, Palestine. What I’d call a small city today, though growing steadily. It was never more than a small city, as far as population goes. Just how it amassed such an amazing amount of great architecture is a real mystery to me. Though there are official stories.

I knew there was some interesting history there, and all around here, but it’s not like I’ve had a lot of time for exploring such idle pastimes, with all the work trying to build up a homestead.

But lately I’ve been squeezing in some time and loving it!

And of course, you’ve got to blossom where you’re planted. I used to tour every castle or abbey or old walls or ruins I could find, whether in the Old Town of any European city or hamlet, or a day hike away from the nearest bus stop.

This Old World has entered center stage for me again thanks to the Cyber World, which is really kinda crazy. But, true.

I’ve seen this old church for sale the last few times while driving through the downtown streets marveling at the old buildings.

I stop for lunch, and at a favorite antique shop, where I see tourists, which I find delightful. Though they only have much interest in the antique shops and the cafes and the provided entertainment. Still, it’s fun hearing German in the tourist office and hearing ladies from places all around the region, even in a rainstorm, there to peruse what our little city has to offer.

I was a novice travel writer, until I met the love of my life, who I managed to lure from the beaches of Thailand to a trailer park in Mena, Arkansas.

Hubby and I at ‘Roman ruins’ in Spain 2003—note our cute matching outfits—that was not planned.

And look who returned the favor by luring me into the deep woods of East Texas to spend an exceptional amount of time doing menial labor. 😏

I was also a beginner tour guide, Mayflower Tours. I lasted about two weeks, until I realized how unsuited I was to a job hosting a bus full of retirees for four-day trips to and around Branson, Missouri three times a month.

I think they weeded out a lot of us that way. There must be a trick to how many bossy seniors and cowboy theaters can be stomached for minimum wage, but I couldn’t figure that out quite fast enough. Another potential career option in the toilet.

And yet . . .

When I see precious gems like this my imagination sparks just like those days in Spain, France, Germany, UK, Czech Republic, Poland . . . Ok, everywhere, just about everywhere. I was very much a Europhile. Still am.

And yet . . .

I’m so struck by the lack of general interest. And knowledge. And, frankly, care.

I see the collapsing remnants of a structure worth saving. I see a history worth understanding and passing forward.

That’s the shot to inspire a buyer’s creative juices? Yikes. What about its real history, does anyone care? And, where’s the roof?

But the Realtors, who are there to sell this precious gem, see little of that world, neither the past nor the true potential. It’s such a shame. Such a very common, and so very confusing, big fat shame.

Will it become an ‘event venue’ as they suggest? It’s hard to imagine the kind of events that would make such a renovation effort worthwhile, or particularly palatable. Is there even such skilled workmanship available today?

Dare I question, true philanthropy, if it ever existed at all, is it dead?

There are many such gems in our little city, which suggest but mere clues to the true treasures in our midst, in plain sight—all teetering in a world of nearly forgotten but, dare I hope, at least a cyber-revival?

A taste of the hidden history in plain site, he’s getting to all the states eventually, and beyond, one of a great many channels sparking my renewed interests . . . 😁

Creating the Global Citizen

“Alvin Toffler predicted ‘demassification’: a process ‘in which a relatively homogeneous social collectivity (or one conceptualized as such) is broken down into (or reconceptualized in terms of) smaller, more diverse elements’. This is the prize for big social networks: compartmentalize people into echo chambers and bombard them with confusing distractions and dead ends.”

Confuse the words, creating a smokescreen of misunderstanding: Like: community=network=market
Obviously these words used to mean very different things in the actual world, before the virtual environment muddied the waters. The market wants all kinds of personal details about you and so they pretend they are in a community with you. Your network of friends and acquaintances and business relations may indeed form a community at some basic level, but to expand this concept out in an attempt to create from this a sense of ‘global community’ is preposterous. It is a Benetton ad, not a community.

Yet it has infiltrated and infected the actual world as we’ve all experienced. The great Convid is example enough. But, there’s more. 

Even small local shops in rural Texas feel entitled to ask shoppers for their phone number, to use video surveillance indiscriminately, to appeal to shoppers for ‘community’ donations and to shove their mailing list and ‘loyalty card’ at you. I seriously doubt they will draw the line at the next big thing the big box markets teach them.

“Please take a sensor bracelet at the entrance, this will ensure you a positive shopping experience.”

That is no community for me!

Deb Filman does a fine job of ranting about this, and an even better job breaking it down for folks, especially parents, because it really is the kids they are after. They always start with the easiest targets.

Are We Educating Children or Training Bots? That is the question!

More concept confabulation: Training=programming=learning
Deb has some choice words to share about this, so I’ll be brief. These words and concepts are being deliberately confused in order to create cognitive dissonance in order to get us to comply. Social engineering has become an acceptable system for indoctrination of populations and is being normalized and implemented by the United Nations and cooperating global partners through our institutions, and directly into our LOCAL communities, all of them.

The U.N.: Creating child social activists all over the country on our dollar.

More muddying of words and concepts happens all the time. This is to be expected. This is not a new tactic at all. If they still teach Animal Farm in school, let’s hope the correct message is still being taken from it. The rules written on the barnyard wall keep shifting. (Therefore, it must be my job to keep shifting with the rules, right?)

More word meshing:
Individuals=collectives
Regulate=Control=Master=Suppress

“It is the responsibility of civil society to experiment with models of effective global citizenship.”

To experiment with models! It is our responsibility, as global citizens, to experiment with our populations through education, to create good global citizens.

That is, for one, to train children in ‘Emotional Regulation’ in order to make good ‘Global Citizens’. Soldiers are trained in emotional regulation. As much as you might get annoyed at the Hobby Lobby with the number of emotionally unregulated children, this is not something that we want as institutional directives aimed at children. Why? Because as the establishment experts know very well, it leads to neuroticism. One kind of behavior required at school, another one at home, another one in public, another one at church, another one here and there and everywhere, and what the kids end up with is not an education, but the essential life skill required of a psychotic society: Mask Juggling.

In other words, become better adjusted at nebulous, shifting, always uncertain unreality. Who does that serve?

From Wiki, the ‘experts’, right?!

“Psychodynamic therapy uses the idea of a Faustian bargain to explain defence mechanisms, usually rooted in childhood, that sacrifice elements of the self in favor of some form of psychological survival. For the neurotic, abandoning one’s genuine feeling self in favour of a false self more amenable to caretakers may offer a viable form of life, but at the expense of one’s true emotions and affects. For the psychotic, a Faustian bargain with an omnipotent self can offer the imaginary refuge of a psychic retreat at the price of living in unreality.”

I can’t help but wonder, as illogical as all this obviously is, could it actually be the setup for the next great fall?

“We had created a global civilization, and for what? So the whole thing could come crashing down into the ocean, bringing unimaginable misery upon the earth? What purpose could such suffering possibly serve? The answer—in truth, the loss, death, despair, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignity and, as Nietzsche wrote, ‘profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust and the wretchedness of the vanquished’ rarely change ordinary men and women. Extraordinary people change through the good thing, and through the self-mastery that yokes them to it; the joyous source of the world. But such types are few and far between. For the masses, there is no hope because all they have is hope, and habit, and expectation, and desire, and possession, and progress, and business, and money, and all the other illusions of the egoic system.
That man had to be disillusioned was not, quite obviously, a message which could find very much popular support in a world of illusions, but then no message worth hearing ever does. The individual knows that the evil and pain and suffering she has gone through has not been for naught. Being sensitive and kind—those rarest of qualities in the civilized system—the individual finds no pleasure in the idea that everyone has to go through hell to reach heaven.” 33 Myths of the System by Darren Allen

Virology’s Death March

It couldn’t make me happier to see that the pseudoscience of virology is on its way out! I don’t need a Utopia to be happy, I just need to know the bullshit sciences are going down, kicking and screaming of course, as useless as that will soon prove.

The top 3 on my Shit-Sciences list: virology, nutrition and climate — all pseudosciences full of con artists passing themselves off as scientists while getting public approval, respect and major funding as real science—with detrimental effects on life.

So, I just have to share the latest, copied entirely from DPL’s Newsletter on Substack. For the full-article with all links, comments, formatting and memes, read it directly here, this copied version is incomplete, meant for your quick perusal.

Hacking At the Root of the Virus Issue

Introduction
Starting out on the No Virus topic, I was introduced to the isolation issue. Cowan mentioned that the 1954 Enders paper showed a failed control and I searched for this paper to confirm it for myself. At the back of the paper under “Other agents isolated during the study” Enders discussed the failed control and this was enough to know that virology was dead (refer to an earlier article here). The below meme was born from this knowledge.

A further two years of study and I was confident enough to start chasing down the Mutton co trolls and the 77th brigade on Twitter. I joined some sharp peeps and a team of people are now confronting these twitter sewer dwellers on a daily basis. One thread has been ongoing since 10 March this year, believe it or not! You can have a look at that thread here.

For the longest time my focus was on the isolation process because this seemed to be the best angle to take down virology seeing as this same method is still being used today with some small changes in the process. Being new to the subject I did not really question this angle because the entire movement was talking about the isolation issue.

However, the most fundamental assumption of virology is that a viral agent can be transmitted by means of natural pathways for a sick person to make a healthy person sick. If there is no proof to support this assumption, then virology is well and truly dead. The meme obviously had to be updated as seen below.

Latest Update

The idea of hacking away at transmission was recently given a very good update with two presentations by Cowan.
Firstly
The true issue of where the idea or theory of virology comes from was well divined in a presentation discussing Inductive vs Inventive theories (the full length presentation can be seen here).

Conclusion

Every single transmission study that we have reviewed has shown that transmission has never been successfully demonstrated. Most of these studies include the injection of ground-up spinal fluid into the brains and lungs of animals and the remaining studies are observational, where there is little to no control over a large number of variables that can influence the results.
The virus pushers hate addressing this point because it cannot be addressed with the current body of peer reviewed publications.

https://dpl003.substack.com/p/hacking-at-the-root-of-the-virus?utm_medium=email&utm_content=post

I hope you’ll pay him a visit on his Substack, he’s got a small team there and they’re doing some great work!

Chop Wood, Carry Water

Trip to town, so sad. Two machines tried to rip me off and no working humans looked capable of anything.

Don’t load, don’t count, don’t smile. What do ya do?

Hostessing was once a thing, like customer service. I was a really good hostess once, let me assure y’all!

It’s more than charm and service, it’s an art and a craft.

So, it’s no mystery to me why the cats eat with the dogs on our back porch: Good food + Good vibes= Good company.

Being a good hostess is similar to being a good teacher—observation, agility, ingenuity—are higher qualifications than even empathy, discernment and a sense of propriety—all already a challenge for most.

A teacher cannot play the same role as a bouncer, though that is mostly what is required these days.

My greatest failures in the classroom mirror my greatest failures in life. I’d sum them up to a kind of mis-navigation of the cherished Comfort Zone. As an example I offer a brief recap of my worst classroom lesson ever.

It was taken from a book of suggested lessons for EFL/ESL (English as a Foreign/Second) students and it was called: ‘Dog or Wolf?’

These are lessons designed to generate conversation in the target language, so students learn new vocabulary, practice old expressions, participate with one another, and ultimately create a student-centered learning environment. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, occassionally it’s a classroom catastrophe.

This is where the observational and flexibility skills of the teacher can really shine. Or, really, not.

I thought I knew these students well enough to pull it off. NOT!

Was it my mood? My confidence? My lack of fluidity that particular day? I really can’t say, even now, but oh how that failure, just that one day out of how many other lesser failures, who knows, but that particular one has stuck in my craw still 2+decades later.

They were mostly Japanese students, from various cities, all college-aged. The caliber of student willing and able to travel to the desert US to immerse themselves in American life, indoctrination, and university culture. We had a good rapport, they were good students. Their English was at a level I knew they could perform well with the material.

I presented it, gave the requisite handouts, grouped them in fours as per the instructions and posed the preliminary question:

If you could choose, would you choose to be a dog or a wolf?

There were follow-up questions about culture and civilization, surplus vs scarcity, independence and hierarchy. In my mind it generated a brilliant potential conversation and I was looking forward to it.

The question was meant to lead to an exchange between group members who would discuss the merits of their choice, as opposed to the deficiencies of the other option. It was based on the assumption there would be some who would choose dog and others who would choose wolf, for various reasons, creating an atmosphere for debate.

Except all the students agreed on dog at the preliminary question, leaving me standing there with my mouth agape and no further game plan.

I nudged, painfully, at my more philosophical follow-up questions and got crickets. Obviously, everyone would be a dog—comfort, ease, predictability, discipline, training—DUH!

The ‘best’ student, a relatively large young man from Okinawa, who was more bold and out-going than the rest, immediately intuited my dilemma. He raised his hand and said he wanted to change his answer.

But, I was stuck in my own personal baffledom. I tried to go with it, push through, take the ball he’d so generously tossed me and run with it, but I remained, I don’t know, just sort of, stranded there, for way too long a moment.

And then I couldn’t get it back.

Anyone who has never stood in front of a classroom most likely underestimates the skill it takes to be good at it. And when I say good, I don’t just mean popular. And I don’t just mean effective. I mean the kind of good where one can walk the line between popular and effective, because it is impossibly narrow. Those who pull off that level of impossible should be studied and duly rewarded and I’m sure there are more than a few. So, it’s not actually impossibly narrow. Just too narrow for me that day, that lesson.

They should also study bombs like mine that day.

After missing the generous handoff, I was so tongue-tied and disgusted, with it all—them, myself, the lesson—that I dismissed the class early.

The Okinawan student stayed there, obviously to discuss it with me. He wanted to make me feel better about the clear and dismal failure, I think. It was a really sweet gesture and very appreciated, even in the moment, but it didn’t really help me make sense of it all.

Like, why was I so confident that lesson would work? So confident, in fact, that I didn’t even have a Plan B. Bad teacher! So confident, in fact, that I became rigid. And frankly, still feel judgmental of those students (so passive, so acquiescent, so like, totally lame!).

Not really like me. So stuck in my own thinking that it’s not conceivable to me every student would choose dog over wolf that I could not, in fact still feel challenged to, mentally adjust from my misperceptions. Yes, even now.

A room of 30 students and only one wolf, and that one only under pressure, and with a savior complex no less.

What happens in world become so ‘civilized’ we’ve all become obedient dogs? And, obedient to what, and to whom?

Don’t think, don’t fight, don’t roam, what do we do? What happens when man becomes too civilized? Too domesticated? Too content?

I still don’t know what to do with such a muddle. Would you?

Eye-Opening Quotes: R. Hutchins

“The countries of the West are committed to universal, free, compulsory education. The United States first made this commitment and has extended it further than any other. In this country 92.5% of the children who are fourteen years old and 71.3% of those between fourteen and seventeen are in school. It will not be suggested that they are receiving the education that the democratic ideal requires. The West has not accepted the proposition that the democratic ideal demands liberal education for all. In the United States, at least, the prevailing opinion seems to be that the demands of that ideal are met by universal schooling, rather than by universal liberal education. What goes on in school is regarded as of relatively minor importance. The object appears to be to keep the child off the labor market and to detain him in comparatively sanitary surroundings until we are ready to have him go to work.

“The results of universal, free, compulsory education in America can be acceptable only on the theory that the object of the schools is something other than education, that it is, for example, to keep the young from cluttering up homes and factories during a difficult period of their lives, or that it is to bring them together for social or recreational purposes.”

“Education is supposed to have something to do with intelligence. It was because of this connection that it was always assumed that if the people were to have political power they would have to have education. They would have to have it if they were to use their power intelligently. This was the basis of the Western commitment to universal, free, compulsory education. I have suggested that the kind of education that will develop the requisite intelligence for democratic citizenship is liberal education, education through great books and the liberal arts, a kind of education that has all but disappeared from the schools, colleges, and universities of the United States.”

~The Great Conversation: The Substance of a Liberal Education
by Robert M. Hutchins, 1952

More by Hutchins . . .

“Because of experimental science we know a very large number of things about the natural world of which our predecessors were ignorant. In the great books we can observe the birth of science, applaud the development of the experimental technique, and celebrate the triumphs it has won. But we can also note the limitations of the method and mourn the errors that its misapplication has caused. We can distinguish the outlines of those great persistent problems that the method … may never solve and find the clues to their solutions offered by other methods and other disciplines.”

“Liberal education was aristocratic in the sense that it was the education of those who enjoyed leisure and political power. If it was the right education for those who had leisure and political power, then it is the right education for everybody today.”

Zuckerkandl! a comic book Hutchins published in 1968, later made into a cartoon short, narrated himself. It’s about disentanglement and living guilt-free and is said to be a parody of Freud.

Neuroeducation via Learning Standards to force Neuroliberalism: Such a Fruitful Site for Intervention — Invisible Serfs Collar

Brainwashing is not education! Fortunately, good educators are seeing through the top-down conspiracy to mold social behavior rather than teach critical thinking in our school systems. Here’s one of them . . .

The original title for this post on the admissions about Psychological Governance (PG) and its declared ties to ‘standards-based’ education reforms and ‘competency frameworks’ was going to be “Shaping Citizen Identity and Social Practice so that Governance is Inside-Out, not a Building”. That gets at the function nicely and what must be, and is being,…

Neuroeducation via Learning Standards to force Neuroliberalism: Such a Fruitful Site for Intervention — Invisible Serfs Collar