A new series for me, quite inspired actually, and not at all unrelated to our themes here on the wee homestead, even though that may not appear as immediately obvious.
We’re going to approach it in a completely non-confrontational, voluntary, super simple journey. KISS—keep it simple, stupid!
How does nature form the divine feminine?
Jolene by Dolly Parton
Are her fears valid? Does she spend her precious life energy protecting herself and her family from the perceived “Jolene”?
How does she do this—a boob job at 60? Bleached hair? Botox to make her eyes look brighter? How much time does she offer to her gods?
Maybe surrounding herself with only admirers, to boost her perceived public value?Maybe shaming attractive women who dare to compete? Maybe rebuffing conversations that make her uncomfortable?Maybe by using her charm to get out of yet another traffic ticket?
How does Hollywood exploit your/her vulnerabilities?
How do you give this level of low-brow passion-play manipulation a free pass to your psyche every damn day?Through your music, your soap operas, your cruise vacations, your TV programming, your social media?
And don’t pretend it started with flocking Instagram, bitches!Your mothers were raised on Harlequin and Shirley Temple. Get a bloody grip.
Before you get upset by the Epstein drama, remember, the televised drama of the Iran-Contra scandal in the 80s, and how it is now a blockbuster hit with Tom Cruise. Now that’s progress!
Take a deep breath, count to 3, and just try to imagine: Who would you like to play the character of Epstein in this blockbuster drama 20 years from now?
Fun stuff, right?!
Aahhh . . . now doesn’t that feel better?
You’re welcome! 🙂
Before you go bonkers over the climate changing, remember Al Gore has a mansion and a yacht, like in this Looney Tunes clip, and just look what happened to him.
You see . . . Cartoon karma . . . It’s ALL for you!
Before you cry over the pension you will lose in order to pay for more criminal acts in the Imperialist forever wars and everyday fleecing, just listen, and, relax.
Listen to the lyrics . . .and just . . .relax.
Or, if you’re an adult, and have had enough of the history repeating, perhaps this article is just the thing for you. No pressure! A bit of light reading before bed, perhaps?
We have all been misguided, of that I have not a shred of doubt anymore. Our culture, our history, our news, our entertainment, our religions, our future, have been fabricated and falsified and manipulated in such horrific ways as most folks can hardly fathom.
And it’s going to get worse. This is not some apocalyptic vision of mine, there are plenty of those going around, and for a very long time. Forever, even. I’m a tiny fraction of a grain of sand in that vast hourglass.
“. . . A clown-like, grinning mockery of the victim(s) as a show of power and macabre arrogance.When this is performed in a veiled manner, accompanied by certain occult signs and symbolic words and elicits no meaningful response of opposition or resistance from the target(s), it is one of the most efficacious techniques of psychological warfare and mind-rape.”—Michael Hoffman, Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare
We can lay blame, and I often do, on our own selves, as well as others. I didn’t invent society, I can’t change the shit-show I was born into, that was fate, or something. You can complain your shit-show was worse, or better, and I won’t argue. I imagine most folks around the world had it much worse, or better, for whatever that means.
When faced with this truth, the truth that we’ve all bought a pack of lies, we don’t have a lot of choice on how we react—anger, resentment, bitterness, confusion, frustration, apathy, hope, forgiveness, fear—the list goes on. I know all these reactions have value, I take them seriously, I dismiss none of them as of more or less value than another.
But when they are not a transitory state, but where one then chooses to reside, we’ve allowed the reaction to dissolve action. We must make great effort to move from the reaction to the response.
Our response, not our reaction, is what defines our humanity. Every animal will react in fight, flight, fawn, freeze, in order to save their own skin, unless they are impaired.
Human nature has a higher calling. You stand for, you stand against, it doesn’t matter, you’ve got to take a stand. Once you’ve taken a stand, you know you fall, you know what falling feels like. That is the wisdom of the gods.
A boxer once told me, while I was cringing, trying to be polite in delicately couching the fact that I hate his so-called sport — “Boxers don’t train to fight. We train to get back up.”
I was flabbergasted at the wisdom in that simple statement, which I’d never considered before, and with which he was able to so tactically and efficaciously respond to my reaction.
I think of this now, because, as much as I never liked sports, or games, still I’m somehow wired to think strategy. I was born into a game I don’t understand, which no one gave me the tools or teachings to navigate, but to which I was expected to adapt nonetheless. At some point I chose, and still choose, to not simply adapt.
I’m weakening, physically, but my mind and tongue are still sharp enough to benefit where age and injury weigh me down. I think that’s a sign of one’s wisdom years, now beckoning me to return to the studies that will find new meaning in re-engagement, with now decades of life experience to inform on their deeper meanings and interpretations.
I feel blessed for this time and space and luxury to reconsider.
In high school one of our teachers played a trick on us, an ‘experiment’ for which we were uninformed and had given no consent.
Half-way through the year he changed the grading scale.It became the new rule that we would have to earn a higher score in order to get the same grade.So, to get an ‘A’ now meant achieving a 95% instead of a 90%, a B required 85% instead of 80%, and so on.
Once the year and the experiment were finished we learned this ‘research’ was part of his dissertation, and that it had ‘worked.’His purpose was to prove that students would earn the grade they think they are capable of, and not try harder or achieve less.He was working on a PhD in sociology.
I was one of the ones who ‘succeeded’ in proving his point.I would’ve gotten a ‘B’ in his class, instead I got an ‘A,’ thanks to his arbitrary new rules.I was expected to be grateful for this.When I complained, this teacher, in classic narcissistic fashion, couldn’t imagine how his successful experiment would bother anyone, especially someone who ‘benefitted’ from it.
Narcissists don’t look any further than their own noses to justify their actions.Was he concerned what it took for me to earn those extra 5% points?Did he care that my motivation was simply not to get a ‘C’ in his class, because at home we were not allowed to get C’s in school.My mom would’ve been extremely disappointed and my allowance docked.I put myself through months of stress to avoid this fate, including quitting an extra-curricular activity in order to spend more time on his class.My other grades that year suffered, thanks to him, and I was sick more often.
Oh, but it ‘worked!’He achieved the results he desired by manipulating everyone else.The ends justify the means, according to these types, even though they never bother to ask what those means actually meant to anyone.
When it became clear to me, once a teacher myself, that I was being used as a flying monkey for narcissists and psychopaths, I quit, remembering this moment in particular.I was expected to compromise my students’ autonomy, their privacy, their trust—not to mention my own ethics—in order to comply with the orders streaming down from above, and constantly changing.
This has become the new normal.“Get on board, or get out,” was what I was commanded.I know I chose wisely to get out.Most of my colleagues did not.
This is obviously a societal issue not isolated to the realm of education.Not only are we expected to accept the experimentation done on us in the name of whatever the psychopaths upstairs command—whether that’s with the weather, the vaccines, the 5G, the Frankenfoods, the forever wars, the pathetic political theatre, and the relentless social engineering that is off-the-charts insane, like the rebranding of pedophilia as a ‘preference’—we’re supposed to be grateful for the opportunity to be their guinea pigs in whatever brand of f**ckery they care to shoot down the pipeline next.
At one time I blamed solely the narcissists and psychopaths for this clear social dysfunction they are perpetrating.
But after further research and contemplation I realized this is a dysfunctional relationship, where those flying monkeys and order-followers and social climbers are clearly benefitting from the tyranny inflicted on all of us through their lack of moral fiber and courage, greed, apathy, laziness, fear, and/or whatever other personal character issues they refuse to grow beyond.
Someday the social climbers will lament, probably when they suddenly find themselves under the boot—but, where have all the heroes gone?!
I cherish that day, when I will respond with a condescending shrug and smug grimace and say, “Looks like they don’t work for the tyrants and their minions anymore!”
In response to Caitlin Johnstone’s article, I’d like to offer this rebuttal. I have loads of respect for this journalist, I agree with her on most of her points of view, except this and the fact she’s clearly not researched weather modification/geoengineering, but that’s another post.
I know the arguments and I’ve lived them in post-Soviet countries. Being the simpleton I’ve been called I do find it valuable to make the complicated simple, whittle it down to the essential. Socialism is unethical. That’s all that matters to me.
I don’t like to be bullied, most folks don’t.Whether that bully is another individual or a group, it’s wrong.What happens in practicality with collectivism, after the niceties of fairness and group-think wear off, is manipulation, a constant shifting of the goal post, gaslighting, dehumanizing, celebrating mediocrity.
Imagine this as it often happens within a typical master/slave dynamic, like with parents toward their children. When Mom wants her teenager to think for herself she’ll say: “So, if all your friends jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, would you do it too?”
Yet the very same mom will insist her daughter does not elope and wears white to her wedding, and invites the right people, and all sorts of other group-think behavior if it suits her fancy. You might chalk this up to that’s just how the world works, but clearly upon deeper reflection it’s obvious this is not ethical: It’s not based on consistent and universal principles, it’s based on the whims of what the mother finds ‘right’ in the moment.
We are naturally collective, that’s why we need the balancing power of strong individuation.‘Rugged individuals’ don’t go off to conquer new territory, whether in land, mind or sea, in order to be alone, alienated with their creation beyond kin or company.They do it in service to something, and that something is often called ego, but in fact ego alone doesn’t get one very far, unless there’s a crowd there serving that ego.
To see what collectivism, or socialism as it’s currently named, will look like as a worldwide system, one needs only consider it in a practical confined context.In healthy families it works brilliantly.But what happens in unhealthy ones, or when the tribe gets larger?
What about in a business setting, for example?Someone in that business is taking a bigger risk, someone is more competent, more popular, more trusted, more diligent, more something.That’s just how we are wired, we follow the weak at our peril.
Organizing around the weakest links is what’s required of socialism, for ‘equity’s’ sake, but in nature this creates the same predator/prey situation as in any work environment.We must collaborate, we must cooperate, but not at the expense of the will of the strong, the natural leaders.
“It is precisely these generalities of character, governed by forces of which we are unconscious, and possessed the normal of individuals of a race in much the same degree—it is precisely these qualities I say that in crowds become common property. In the collective mind the intellectual aptitudes of the individual, and in consequence their individuality, are weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped by the homogeneous, and the unconscious qualities obtain the upper-hand.” Gustav LeBon’s The Crowd
I don’t believe in free will.I think will is very expensive indeed.What will the strong do if they are constantly undermined, manipulated, bullied by the crowd?
The incompetent will pull too much on the competent to the point they quit, or to the point their mojo is reduced to such a level as to become ineffectual.This is why Ayn Rand’s work is so relevant and poignant on the political level.How does power work?Well, above all, it’s an aphrodisiac for those who seek it.
But, is that what the ‘rugged individualist’ is seeking, necessarily?This is an assumption that’s often brandied about as fact by collectivist types.
”In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated. It is not all the world, as is so often repeated, that has more wit than Voltaire, but assuredly Voltaire that has more wit than all the world, if by ‘all the world’ crowds are to be understood.” LeBon
We need more rugged individuals, not fewer.We squash them, even in this supposedly most free country and beacon of individualism, we force them from the earliest age to conform and comply.
This feeds tyranny, no doubt, but not for the reasons collectivists think. It’s not because a few rogue elements get past the socialization and rise up to rule the roost out of sheer force of individual will. The tough skin the individual acquires by fighting group-think his entire childhood and adolescence becomes armor for some, but more often the individual succumbs to the pressure.Only the toughest survive not because they are beaten down by the competition, but because their potential rivals are beaten down by the crowd.That works really well for the ruthless.
”Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live? When I meet a government which says to me, “Your money or your life,” why should I be in haste to give it my money? . . . I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.” Henry David Thoreau ‘Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
The rugged individualists I know are more interested in adventure than in conquering; more interested in creating than in destroying, more interested in ethics than power.
The technocracy is ruled by the ‘law of large numbers’ that is — “BIG DATA” — that is, the crowd.
I wonder if the average person were to be presented with a simple and straight-forward question whether the answer would come out in favor of the ‘rugged individual’:
“If you were forced to have someone rule over you, would you rather it were a great individual or a machine of collective consensus?”
I don’t think I need a ruler at all, but if there were no other choice, I know my answer.
But then, I consider myself to be a rugged individualist.
“What do you do when things go from bad to worse?”
I was asked that question a couple months ago after the “tornado” hit our property by a man whose work I follow, Jason Lindgren.I consider the work he does with Crrow777 to be very inspiring.
So, pray tell, wise man, what do I do with a dozen fallen trees?
It’s not at all inspiring in the vein of Ram Dass quotes and vision boards and self-help mantras.You might even argue it’s the opposite, more often than not.Not that it’s nihilistic ‘slash and burn’ either, but more like, ‘tastefully deconstruct and reconsider.’
These guys have heard it all, I’m sure. Nut jobs, shills, conspiracy theorists would be on the mild side.
I see something quite different, typical. They’ve recently filmed a documentary called “Shoot the Moon” — about the lunar wave — quite à propos, no?
I see determination, resilience, fortitude, creativity—all qualities I consider to be deliciously rare. Others see ‘crazy’ where I see ‘courageous.’
Most of all, I see care. Authentic care.
“What a good question,” I replied at the time.
I really had not a clue at that moment and was still in a state of mental and emotional chaos, which had my conscious thoughts and unconscious feelings ALL over the place.
Of course, when I’m all over the place I drag Hubby all over the place with me, which surely isn’t the reason why he’s been working so much overtime, right?? 🙂
“Let’s sell it all and move to Mexico!” was at the top of my list at the time of that astute question.Folks don’t ask a lot of good questions, even the well-meaning ones.Mostly I hear useless platitudes, like these Ram Dass quotes, and even actual arguments about how they think I should be feeling.
To be absolutely frank in a ‘too much information’ sort of way I’m sure to regret at some point, I think what happened to my psyche right after the latest weather disaster was what the shrinks would call ‘complex PTSD’.
Yes, I’m self-diagnosing from the Internet.But, the symptoms fit, and the worst of it came out in flooding of somatic memories that were totally overpowering and illogical and unwelcome, along with intense anxiety, nightmares and terrors, paranoia, depression, loss of sense of stability and control, and so on.
These weren’t overpowering memories just from the previous two disasters, Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, they went much further back.They wen’t so far back sometimes that I couldn’t really tell if they were ‘all mine’ alone, but that doesn’t matter one bit, because they were terrifying and I was feeling them as if they were currently happening to me, alone.
I mostly isolate in such times, because I feel if nothing else, I don’t want to take others down with me. But also because I know from experience how badly the average person handles disaster, or grief, or anything remotely unpleasant or unsavory, so I feel I have little other choice.
I want to say now what I think really helped, now that I feel on the upswing once again.It’s not because I think what helps me will help others necessarily, but you never know how adding to the reservoir of our individual coping and healing techniques could work for someone, somewhere, and I’ve got a great big hunch more folks are going to need more such resources for the coming decades.
What’s working for me, what have been my buoys in the darkness?
Not those typically espoused by those who think they know, like ‘get out and socialize’ or ‘join a club’ or ‘try these meds’ or even meditate or try a new hobby.
Jason’s simple question—spontaneous, honest, rhetorical—gave me a point of focus I expect he never intended, but was able to offer to a virtual stranger, out of . . . I don’t really know . . . empathy, curiosity, tact?
I decided (again) my first responsibility is to my own well-being, which should be obvious, but I often forget it.
This blog helped, the folks who support me in this blog helped. I got to send my chaotic feelings into the ether, to be read or ignored as the reader saw fit, no obligation, but no expectations from me either. That’s truly cathartic for me.
I’m taking herbal hormones and eating an even healthier diet than I typically do, just loading up more on the veggies and herbs and lightening up on the chips and fries.That part has been pretty painless.
Isolating for me dramatically reduces stress, yet this is what all the experts say to never do.I think that’s because they want the vulnerable to join cults and be in an even greater position of weakness to group-think and consensus trance and taking bad popular advice, like anti-depressants, for starters.
I’m not saying I’ve figured it all out or it’s all downhill from here, but I’ve added a few more tools to the box.
So, to answer your question, Jason, “What do you do when things go from bad to worse?”
I re-balance and re-tune, and if that goes well, I re-commit.
I might still be down, but I’m not yet out. And there’s no power, be it technocratic, dogmatic, omnipotent or otherwise, who’s going to force me from our land in this lifetime. If it comes to push and shove, I go down with the ship. Period.
My grandfather, wise man that he was, used to turn down the television at commercials. I used to love watching the commercials and would plead with him to turn it back up on my favorite ones, like Fruit Loops and Frosted Flakes. He never did, and would laugh at me and shake his head, surely foreseeing the inevitable decline in culture with the rise of marketing to children. Or, maybe he just understood how this business really worked, being he was a salesman.
We watch very little TV these days, occasionally the evening propaganda, so we know what the controllers want us to think. Of course, we always turn it down at the commercials.
Now though, I’m thrilled to see there are ads I’m loving again! This series cracks me up completely, who doesn’t love satire?!
The governments, it seems, don’t like it one bit. Which means I love it even more!
This comes from my personal experience pledging the sororities at SMSU, Springfield, MO circa 1986.
Part of our plebe requirements after pledging was to memorize the names and birthplaces of all those sisters above us and to recite them, along with details of their preferences, and whatever else they felt should be important to us, for the privilege of belonging to their group consensus. Shortly after winning my entrance, I lost interest completely.
I didn’t last long once ‘Activated’ in Alpha Sigma Alpha, not surprising. I was sucked in nonetheless for another year in these ritual phases until I refused to perpetuate these abuses onto the new coming plebs, and ultimately perhaps just to record them in my own small way now in the later years of my life.
My ‘big sister’ aka ‘sponsor’ had died in a drunk driving accident during my apprenticeship . It was this tragedy that gave me mercy among the rest of the disapproving sisterhood. You see, I’d given the horrid affront of not assuming appropriate position in appropriate hour with appropriate humility, and therefore, I must suffer. I was grilled like a pale shrimp on the Barbie (bad pun intended).
It was the candle vigil, dressed in white, yes, it’s really like that, just like you see in the movies. And I was grilled. It was ‘fair’ for some, not for others, who stood up for me, and won. I was relieved. That’s how Stockholm Syndrome works. I lived in ‘the house’ as a pleb, and that’s how it works. Good cops/bad cops.
There is no time-space. These memories come to me as current, right now, right here. This is not a blessing. Since the last weather disaster this spring, these memories just come, beyond my reasoning or control.
Just maybe, it’s some sort of karma. And I’m not afraid anymore. And I pity those who are still afraid, sometimes very sincerely, sometimes with a sense of sorry superiority that haunts me in the middle of the night.
I do know better now. I am not that naive girl anymore. I’ve made choices and braved chasms beyond these putrid machinations. I’m not proud for that, I did it mostly of necessity. But I know, because of it, we will reside in different worlds, and will remain so, for the rest of our short lives.
You needed me to conform. I get that. I don’t shame you for it.
But, still, I do resent you for it. Though I’m very sure you couldn’t give a rat’s arse either way.
When confronted with your obvious limitations have you ever said, “F*ck off!”?
When you hear again and again, apparently sold with all the best of intentions the same menu: You can’t control the weather; You can’t fight the government; You can’t be David against Goliath; You can’t conquer the dragons; You can’t rise above your lot . . . Have you ever said, “Excuse me, why the bloody hell not?!”
Some are most certainly doing it, so why not me?
You can call that a sense of entitlement if you want. I call it something else entirely.
Kensho Homestead 