Tag: Life lessons

Cartoon Reality

I grew up in the suburbs; I found it really boring; I watched a lot of TV, especially cartoons.

For better or worse, a good portion of my sense of justice came from Bugs Bunny.

Which is actually a lot more healthy than what passes for justice these days, I’d say!

During that time artificial reality did not blur so readily with actual reality. Now when I watch any media I see cartoons everywhere. I see cartoons when I look at people, too. So many have created caricatures of themselves it is clear there is too little authentic left to matter in them anymore. It’s like a return to the primitive, only plastic. Surface obsessed–the inner world collapsed in order to buttress the phony outer world of a manufactured jungle.

The following I copied and/or jotted down from still more media consumption, from a writer I imagine is real, who calls himself Stylman. Interesting name. I stopped following, despite his many wise expressions, when he wrote he thought the crazy weather is being controlled by the fears of the people who believe in geoengineering. A lunatic, obviously. And yet, some prescient views nonetheless.

“And it’s a road to nowhere—a few winners, millions of casualties, and an entire generation taught that their value lies in their ability to perform rather than create, to influence rather than contribute, to be seen rather than to matter.”

Now we live in an era where TikTok influencers who dance for thirty seconds make more than teachers, nurses, or the engineers who build our bridges. We’ve moved from celebrating skill to monetizing attention, from honoring achievement to rewarding performance and exhibitionism.

The fame machine isn’t just anti-human—it’s filling the void left by our disconnection from authentic community and natural guidance, while simultaneously being the logical response to living under constant surveillance.

But this isn’t cultural drift – it’s social engineering. The same institutional forces that have systematically replaced real information, real money, and real community are now replacing authentic human development with performance for strangers. This reflects a broader pattern: we live in an era where every essential human system has been replaced with artificial substitutes designed to harvest our energy rather than nourish our souls.

We’ve built a system that teaches them to treat their lives like content. That tells them: if you’re not being seen, you’re not really here. That your private self has no value unless it’s validated by strangers. We’ve stripped away something essential—the right to exist without an audience.”

While I agree, it’s actually much worse, in my experience.

The invasion of privacy of public systems and the individuals willing to force this state on everyone have deeply influenced inter-personal relationships as well–corrupting them, disfiguring them into parallel invasions–where expectation, extraction, exploitation has become the nauseating norm, and accountability has become entirely absent.

The public and private realities mirroring each other. Recently when I was visiting a dear friend who is Uber-Tech-Attached I had a Truman Show Moment, where she was gushing over her new air-fryer and I got the uncomfortable and uncanny sense I was unvoluntarily in an infomercial.

It’s a very creepy feeling I knew she would not understand.

Folks are faking their way through life, and this will have continued disastrous consequences.

The invasions will continue, until the trespasses are rejected and honor is restored to privacy and to nature.

The dangers of such a system, where access is assumed–access to your private spaces, your private thoughts, from your micro-expressions to your quotidian habits–is a culture of mutual parasitism, not even close to mutual understanding. This is not a culture more connected, it’s a culture more devolved. Incapable of boundaries, non-chalant around respect and autonomy, mocking of custom and structure, collapsing into a decaying emptiness. The nothingness of perpetually dissolving illusions, like the garish carricatures of a cartoonish, substanceless life.

A life perpetually romanticising illusion.

Even as its entire life support system slips away.

Even as the answer is so very simple.

True Fiction

I attract scorpions, I always have. It’s my sweet blood, I’m sure, I can be very irrestistible when I want.

There are a lot of us.  You can imagine us as the frogs.  Some of us let their hearts and wallets bleed out dry for stray cats, which then makes them act nasty toward fellow frogs.  Others turn their skin to poison for protection, which doesn’t really work all that well, because it gets some scorpions really high.

And still others migrate to Florida, where they freeze in manufactured ice storms.

Scorpions on frogs has been a pretty common theme for a while. It’s so common in fact that a new language is being crafted as I live and breath, right now, in this very cyberworld, also manufactured by man, like the Florida ice storms.

In scorpion-speak, everything was working just fine until the frogs started complaining.

But, the message in the bottle is that there are far more frogs than scorpions and the messengers are dropping many truths right into our very laps all about them. All kinds of clandestine information is flowing, on how to uncover them, how to trap them, how to recognize the master scorpions and even how ship them off to a land far, far away.

It’s a very exciting time! It’s becoming fashionable even! Soon the frogs will be free from scorpion influence! Maybe even forever!!

I do tend to get too enthusiastic and hopeful, but the thing is, I really think it’s working this time. I think it might even be coordinated. But, you know, they call me a conspiracy theorist.

This time they’ve given us the words. The words are the map to the behavior. The behavior is the path to extermination. From what I’ve been able to work out so far, it’s a lot like used-car sales with them.

First, they get their foot in the door. Then, they try to sell you a lemon.

“Foot-in-the-door technique is a compliance tactic that aims at getting a person to agree to a large request by having them agree to a modest request first. This technique works by creating a connection between the person asking for a request and the person that is being asked. If a smaller request is granted, then the person who is agreeing feels like they are obligated to keep agreeing to larger requests to stay consistent with the original decision of agreeing.”

If you buy it, their quick onto your back, for as long as they feel like free-riding. They’ll expect you to cart them around everywhere without ever learning to paddle for themselves. They’ll expect to suck your life’s energy while you’re paddling them around, cooking for them, cleaning for them, while simultaneously entertaining them. When you complain you’re too drained and exhausted, they’ll snap at you that you are weak and that you should really try harder. Their drive matters far more than your fatigue.

Once they’ve got their claws in you, you’ll wish you were the frog freezing to death in Florida. They have all kinds of tricks, let me tell you!

If you try to pry them off your back once attached, here’s what you should expect to hear. They are, in fact, the true victims! They will actually try to persuade you this is true, even if they have to shapeshift before your very eyes, distort words just spoken, and throw you under the bus, all at the same time.

Indeed, Frog, why have you been so dissappointing a carrier? Why are you so cruel and malintentioned that your energy and vitality are not infinitely enduring? Why are you holding back?

You said you wanted me to be comfortable, Frog, and I am no longer, so fix it! I want more!

And you see I’m not capable of crossing the river by myself, it’s so obvious, what are you, some kind of a dumbass? I suppose you’d be fine if I just drowned. You’re just mean, that’s it. You pretend to be kind and caring, but you don’t care, you’ll just leave me by the side of the river while you go off with your other frog friends.

I know plenty of other frogs who will help me, you know. Not that I need help, of course. Just with this one little thing about getting across the river. And you won’t even do that. But, another will. They always do. You’ll see.

I don’t know, Scorpion, the frogs, well, they’re catching on to your tricks. They’re starting to collectively block you. That can’t be fun! The young scorpions, they’re getting more and more lazy and entitled, while the young frogs are getting wiser and craftier. I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem to be looking too good for your kind anymore.

One fellow frog has even started selling deep-fried scorpion chips, and I tasted one, and wow, are they tasty!

Predators and Passivity

(A re-post of one from 2016, happy 10 year anniversary to Kensho! Funny-not funny, my viewpoint has not changed a bit!)

I wish I could say I was not guilty of it. I watched on two different days last week as a coyote trotted off contentedly first with a duck, then a chicken. The latter time I was outside, with our very large Dane-Mastiff guarding, reading on the deck as the coyote pranced by 200 feet from us, without any chicken ever making a sound to alert our attention.

I did shoot at it, far too late, but I was so slow and stunned I hardly had a chance. I asked on social media whether, had they been faster than me, if they would have choosen to shoot the thieving coyote with their cameras or their guns. Most chose cameras, which demonstrates a double-bind, I believe.

We have lost sight of the predator/prey relationship. In fact, when we look closely into New Age groups and the major push in education currently, the prey has been deluded into believing they can transform the predator into something ‘better’ or “safer” or at least less scary.

The prey goes into school and later even therapy so as to come out better adapted at the game and to his role as prey. The predators understand perfectly this relationship can be best described by the old parable of ‘the frog and the scorpion.’  Since at least Biblical times, it has always been the same game.  The predator/prey relationship is easily paralleled to our more civilized equivalent of Master/slave, which can be extended further to our current neo-serf system of Parent/child and State/citizen.

I fancy myself aware, self-reliant, pro-active, resourceful. Yet, in my ‘truth quest,’ which a great many of us have been on for many years now, I’ve demonstrated my talent at pointing fingers, shifting responsibility, projecting, and most grievous and destructive of all, further nurturing an identification complex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_%28psychology%29

An identification complex is plaguing seemingly all of society right now so I have plenty of company. We are all pointing our fingers at the 1%, or in the case of “truthers” or “conspiracy theorists” the .001%, as the core problem with the world. We criticize from one side of our mouths and go along with the other. We go along in hundreds of different ways every day. We fall for their fashion and entertainment, we sit in their schools and on their boards and in their governments. On the surface there seems to be little other choice. When someone opens their eyes wide enough to see this is the same master/slave relationship indoctrinated and institutionalized at ever level of the system that has existed since the beginning of history, we are then met with the next inconvenient truth:  We are only looking at the gameboard, we are not understanding the game.

We the slaves both despise and envy the master, and the master knows this and uses it against us.  Obedience is the price and the master sets the terms.  Our role is to remain passive and uncomplaining against the unspoken contract.   When the noose tightens, some slaves become restless and resentful, while others adapt by learning to breathe more shallowly.  Livestock breeders use identical methods.  This is how the system perpetuates and exacerbates to such an imbalance that an excess of predators disrupt the natural order until collapse is inevitable.

Of course the game is rigged!  And if you had your way, it would be rigged in your favor.  Your preference might be: I want it to be fair and safe for everyone, for there to be no predators or prey, no masters or slaves, and many might support you, to the point they’d be willing to become the predators in order to preserve your collective safe-space.

What we see politically we are also allowing in our personal and professional lives. We feel the boot, there are fewer in denial everyday. We know we are being surveilled and minimized and made obsolete. We know we are victims and we react in one of the many ways they know we will, as prey always will: Fight, Flight, Fawn, or Freeze. If one can find another courageous enough to rebel, he is also lost eventually, because to rebel is to remain still inside the game. They have plenty of room for rebellion, they count on it, they thrive on it.

“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” Jay Gould

Obedience is the prey’s cost in the master/slave, State/citizen relationship, making the passive society become increasingly easy prey; little more than a flock of smiling depressives. These easiest of prey develop a quintessential need for their one-season world, for un-natural order, until passivity replaces fear and we all become the woman watching the coyote trot by with one of her ducks, too slow and maladapted and untrained to stop him.

When one is lucky enough to find another who has the courage to change the game, or at least give it a go, one has met the Fool soon to replace the Father. The game changes when we ourselves change, it’s an inside-out process, not an outside-in. We choose en masse, to not be prey or predator.  We choose to have no rulers. We choose Autonomy, Sovereignty and Self-government.

The ones who understand you must stop the predator or soon all your poultry will perish are the ones rebelling, which the masters then flaunt in front of the more passive prey to get them focused toward each other. The fawns point fingers at the fights, the freezes blame the flights, and around and around we go.

Where will we stop? Does somebody know?

When the most passive meets the predator en face they realize their only hope is one they’ve been trying to avoid all along.  Because the most unpleasant truth of the human condition from the mindset of the frog is that not every frog has to become aware of the nature of the scorpion, they just have to become aware faster than the last frog.

Here’s some research links I know could really benefit some of my fellow frogs.

For your personal life and relationships: Ollie Mathews, an ingenious entrepreneur helping victims of narcissistic abuse by reading their often painful letters on Youtube.  Understanding this co-dependent dysfunctional relationship is crucial to understanding how it’s playing out in the Big Game:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVFJBbBcV6akw8M1YuDo-Yg

To dig into the Big Game, prepare yourself for the most complex, multi-faceted work of your life.

https://www.unslaved.com/

https://tragedyandhope.com/

https://www.corbettreport.com/

 

 

 

 

Predators and Passivity

I wish I could say I was not guilty of it. I watched on two different days last week as a coyote trotted off contentedly first with a duck, then a chicken. The latter time I was outside, with our very large Dane-Mastiff guarding, reading on the deck as the coyote pranced by 200 feet from us, without any chicken ever making a sound to alert our attention.

I did shoot at it, far too late, but I was so slow and stunned I hardly had a chance. I asked on social media whether, had they been faster than me, if they would have choosen to shoot the thieving coyote with their cameras or their guns. Most chose cameras, which demonstrates a double-bind, I believe.

We have lost sight of the predator/prey relationship. In fact, when we look closely into New Age groups and the major push in education currently, the prey has been deluded into believing they can transform the predator into something ‘better’ or “safer” or at least less scary.

The prey goes into school and later even therapy so as to come out better adapted at the game and to his role as prey. The predators understand perfectly this relationship can be best described by the old parable of ‘the frog and the scorpion.’  Since at least Biblical times, it has always been the same game.  The predator/prey relationship is easily paralleled to our more civilized equivalent of Master/slave, which can be extended further to our current neo-serf system of Parent/child and State/citizen.

I fancy myself aware, self-reliant, pro-active, resourceful. Yet, in my ‘truth quest,’ which a great many of us have been on for many years now, I’ve demonstrated my talent at pointing fingers, shifting responsibility, projecting, and most grievous and destructive of all, further nurturing an identification complex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_%28psychology%29

An identification complex is plaguing seemingly all of society right now so I have plenty of company. We are all pointing our fingers at the 1%, or in the case of “truthers” or “conspiracy theorists” the .001%, as the core problem with the world. We criticize from one side of our mouths and go along with the other. We go along in hundreds of different ways every day. We fall for their fashion and entertainment, we sit in their schools and on their boards and in their governments. On the surface there seems to be little other choice. When someone opens their eyes wide enough to see this is the same master/slave relationship indoctrinated and institutionalized at ever level of the system that has existed since the beginning of history, we are then met with the next inconvenient truth:  We are only looking at the gameboard, we are not understanding the game.

We the slaves both despise and envy the master, and the master knows this and uses it against us.  Obedience is the price and the master sets the terms.  Our role is to remain passive and uncomplaining against the unspoken contract.   When the noose tightens, some slaves become restless and resentful, while others adapt by learning to breathe more shallowly.  Livestock breeders use identical methods.  This is how the system perpetuates and exacerbates to such an imbalance that an excess of predators disrupt the natural order until collapse is inevitable.

Of course the game is rigged!  And if you had your way, it would be rigged in your favor.  Your preference might be: I want it to be fair and safe for everyone, for there to be no predators or prey, no masters or slaves, and many might support you, to the point they’d be willing to become the predators in order to preserve your collective safe-space.

What we see politically we are also allowing in our personal and professional lives. We feel the boot, there are fewer in denial everyday. We know we are being surveilled and minimized and made obsolete. We know we are victims and we react in one of the many ways they know we will, as prey always will: Fight, Flight, Fawn, or Freeze. If one can find another courageous enough to rebel, he is also lost eventually, because to rebel is to remain still inside the game. They have plenty of room for rebellion, they count on it, they thrive on it.

“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” Jay Gould

Obedience is the prey’s cost in the master/slave, State/citizen relationship, making the passive society become increasingly easy prey; little more than a flock of smiling depressives. These easiest of prey develop a quintessential need for their one-season world, for un-natural order, until passivity replaces fear and we all become the woman watching the coyote trot by with one of her ducks, too slow and maladapted and untrained to stop him.

When one is lucky enough to find another who has the courage to change the game, or at least give it a go, one has met the Fool soon to replace the Father. The game changes when we ourselves change, it’s an inside-out process, not an outside-in. We choose en masse, to not be prey or predator.  We choose to have no rulers. We choose Autonomy, Sovereignty and Self-government.

The ones who understand you must stop the predator or soon all your poultry will perish are the ones rebelling, which the masters then flaunt in front of the more passive prey to get them focused toward each other. The fawns point fingers at the fights, the freezes blame the flights, and around and around we go.

Where will we stop? Does somebody know?

When the most passive meets the predator en face they realize their only hope is one they’ve been trying to avoid all along.  Because the most unpleasant truth of the human condition from the mindset of the frog is that not every frog has to become aware of the nature of the scorpion, they just have to become aware faster than the last frog.

Here’s some research links I know could really benefit some of my fellow frogs.

For your personal life and relationships: Ollie Mathews, an ingenious entrepreneur helping victims of narcissistic abuse by reading their often painful letters on Youtube.  Understanding this co-dependent dysfunctional relationship is crucial to understanding how it’s playing out in the Big Game:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVFJBbBcV6akw8M1YuDo-Yg

To dig into the Big Game, prepare yourself for the most complex, multi-faceted work of your life.

https://www.unslaved.com/

https://tragedyandhope.com/

https://www.corbettreport.com/