A lot of folks still aren’t grasping this manipulative strategy, so I want to make a glaring point of it this post.
It’s easier for others to recognize classic rudeness, and shrug it off. It’s considered good manners to be tolerant of others’ petty foibles or potential misunderstandings or cultural differences and so on.
But folks aren’t putting a stop to plain old gaslighting, even when it’s obvious. They aren’t calling it out, and naming for it what it is—abusive, highly toxic, anti-social, not only for those who perpetrate, and their victims—but also from those merely viewing or reading.
Abuse radiates much further than those immediately involved in the moment.
This little rant, or welcome observation, depending on your position, was inspired by a small YT channel, another East Texas gardener, which I was curious to view from his title today—Garden Failures: Looks like another bad year.
The kind of title of a seemingly honest person just sharing his experience, not a hustler looking to sell me shit or snare me into another Cult-ur, is one of the nice rare finds still sometimes popping in my social feeds.
I watched only a few minutes before taking a gander at the first comment, and was relieved to find a someone seemingly aware of the enormous amount of weather manipulation going on, and clicked because I saw there was a reply.
But, much to my annoyance and disappointment, it was the typical reply of a Master Gaslighter.
Screenshot
To be shamed as you seek validation, or understanding, is gaslighting. This ‘rude behavior’ is far more than rude and it is tolerated in our culture far more than bullying. Why?
This behavior is graver than victim-blaming and bullying, it is an aggressive attempt to diminish, deflect, avoid, minimize, and control the perceptions, research, feelings and lived reality of the host.
The host, as in the one who has had the audacity and courage to seek understanding in the first place, in a hostile environment and against the norms of the Cult-ure.
I’d just been listening to Jon Levi discussing it, so it was very fresh in my mind. I’ve experienced it all my life, as ALL have in our Cult-ure.
It’s just that some go along with it, instead of recoil from it.
I have gaslit others before, sometimes knowingly, sometimes quite unconsciously, only realizing it years later. My mindset was at those times to ‘fight fire with fire’ and maybe that’s a good strategy, at times, with those who have breached the boundaries into your personal life and betrayed you.
But the large majority of the time those gaslighting others on social media is ALL about narrative control and social engineering. Sometimes I wonder if these are actual individuals, but I don’t bother to check, because I’ve experienced it enough in real life to know if these are just AI bots replying to one another, well, they have a pretty good idea of the human condition.
Is it because the political world has so infiltrated every aspect of our existence that folks have come to accept a steady supply of gaslighting in their lives?
I’ve stopped fighting fire with fire myself, too much gas out there, I’m too old for that now.
But, I wonder, besides avoidin the gaslighters, which seems quite impossible these days, what other action might one take?
I don’t know when the breaking point will be, how it will come about, who will throw the first punch or the last. But, I’ve got some good quotes to share this post, of the variety that make me wonder if the public has finally had enough of the lies.
Or, was Bezmenov right? It’s hopeless at this point?
More false claims about raw milk, inspiring a good article from a wise woman, Sally Fallon of Weston A. Price. A few quotes:
“In a press release dated March 25, 2024,3 the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as state veterinary and public health officials, announced investigation of “an illness among primarily older dairy cows in Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico that is causing decreased lactation, low appetite, and other symptoms.”
“The agencies claim that samples of unpasteurized milk from sick cattle in Kansas and Texas have tested positive for “highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).” Officials blame the outbreak on contact with “wild migratory birds” and possibly from transmission between cattle. The press release specifically warns against consumption of raw milk, a warning repeated in numerous publications and Internet postings.”
“The truth is that “viruses” serve as the whipping boy for environmental toxins, and in the confinement animal system, there are lots of them — hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia from excrement, for example. Then there are toxins in the feed, such as arsenic added to chicken feed, and mycotoxins, tropane and β-carboline alkaloids in soybean meal. By blaming nonexistent viruses, agriculture officials can avoid stepping on any big industry toes nor add to the increasing public disgust with the confinement animal system.”
“Nearly a decade ago we won the mandatory national Radio Frequency Animal Identification (RFID) regulation. It was pushed on the heels of the mad cow paranoia as a way to track and find diseases quickly.”
For you youngsters, it was a draconian measure that was incredibly prejudiced against small outfits. For example, a Tyson factory could register one RFID tag for a whole house of 20,000 chickens—one per flock. But an outfit like ours would have to RFID every single chicken. Costs ranged from $2 to $5 per tag.
Every time you moved animals from one addressed premise to another, you had to notify authorities. Thousands of farmers around the country attended the hearings and voiced their opposition. The backlash was severe and eventually the USDA pulled the plan. It’s been dormant for a long time and we thought it was dead.”
********
Moving on to an essay that hits close to the mark, I think.
“In an election year that follows more than a decade of rising populist dissatisfaction, high-skill but low-status rejects are coming to look like a formidable social class.
Increasingly, it’s not just obscure farmers or overtaxed truckers who feel cheated out of the respect they’ve earned: it’s also debt-ridden college kids, heterodox tech magnates and blacklisted intellectuals. It’s manual laborers whose wages get depressed by inflation and illegal immigration, but it’s also artists whose projects get passed over to make room for yet another adaptation of The Color Purple. This helps explain why Trump has mobilized young people, blue-collar workers, white evangelicals, law-abiding Hispanics and black business owners, all in unexpected numbers: those are people who feel, in one way or another, despised without cause.
But the bitter irony is that in trying to outdo the founders’ virtue, we have created an unnatural aristocracy far more hide-bound and unworthy than the old-world royalty they fled. Our self-styled betters have neither raised us up toward a more perfect meritocracy nor led us triumphantly into a classless paradise. They have simply replaced an imperfect class system with a grotesque and nonsensical one. They promised to cater to throngs of frustrated pariahs; instead, they created more of them, adding to their number daily from the exiles of the natural aristocracy. Whether or not it is desirable that the resulting coalition should once again find itself represented by Donald Trump — a profoundly suboptimal champion — it was inevitable. This presidential contest is shaping up into a face-off between the incompetent elect and the excellent outcasts. It may not be the most exhilarating choice to have to face. But it’s not a particularly difficult one, either.”
And closing with an appropriate poem that was posted in the comment’s section of the post by Salatin quoted above. An author I’m very familiar with, but the poem is new to me.
THE WRATH OF THE AWAKENED SAXON by Rudyard Kipling
It was not part of their blood, It came to them very late, With long arrears to make good, When the Saxon began to hate.
They were not easily moved, They were icy — willing to wait Till every count should be proved, Ere the Saxon began to hate.
Their voices were even and low. Their eyes were level and straight. There was neither sign nor show When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not preached to the crowd. It was not taught by the state. No man spoke it aloud When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not suddently bred. It will not swiftly abate. Through the chilled years ahead, When Time shall count from the date That the Saxon began to hate.
I have to applaud our reader Highlander for sharing this musician who has me laughing so hard I have tears streaming down my cheeks! Nothing like a good laugh for health. So, first the fun stuff.
I believe this kind of ‘meaningful entertainment’ is an excellent way to spread the word about unpleasant news.
Another good one I’ve shared in the past, not a parody tune, a ballad, and very sad.
And, winding down, if you can muster the courage, Dane’s weekly Bad News Broadcast, which I never miss (much to Hubby’s chagrin!)
Keep laughin’, keep preppin’, and thanks for stopping by! 🤗
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 . . . 😁
Following is my personal opinion on: ‘Daily writing prompts’* and the personal lives of ‘Activists’.
It should be considered Rated R, Adult Content, Not Suitable for Work. And generally just bitchy.
(Furthermore, it may be considered as a Self-Righteous Rant and a Cowardly Non-Accusation aimed specifically at I know who but will not name, because these are the kinds of fuckers who will publicly come after me to berate a tiny fish in front of their very large audiences. As I’ve seen them do on numerous occasions to others who dare to ‘cross’ them, even privately.)
Today, among the political classes and the masses, we have victim groups, instead of individual victims. It’s a kind of class action diffusion. It’s like the old adage: 1 death is a tragedy, a million a statistic.
Maybe that’s why it’s become de rigeur for our ‘influencers’ to pile so much of their personal baggage into the public sphere. I’m not talking a time or two, or a personage or two, I’m talking a years-long pattern of ‘popular’ people spraying every issue with their personal odiferous and onerous and particularly cacophonous stench.
‘It’s not your work, Hannon – it’s your attitude.’
(And, I want to be very clear here, I’m not talking about all those folks with personal blogs. Blogging is by its nature a borderline media—somewhat public, certainly not private. Somewhat professional, sometimes, but mostly more like gathering at the cyberhood pub. Personal blogs sharing folks’ personal issues in their lives is a fine genre for generating support and camaraderie and insights and I enjoy and appreciate many of them.)
I’m talking about those who consider themselves, who are labeling themselves, as activists or influencers or journalists, specifically. Very public folks feeding their audiences on a regularly supply of their constantly distracting and dramatic personal conflicts and dramas.
Landing somewhere between a Mexican soap opera and politicians’ tawdry nightly news scandals, I find I’m being increasingly bombarded with the personal lives and conflicts of an increasing number of ‘advocates’ and ‘influencers’ and ‘activists’ and ‘philosophers’.
Who are these people and why are their personal lives weaved in so tightly with their public work?
From their personal lawsuits, to their family problems, to their health issues, to their constant bickering with the opposition—which really makes me wonder—are these activists in fact trying to replace the current Hollywood celebrities?
It’s like a version of reality TV for the ‘alternative’ or ‘conspiracy’ or ‘news’ buff. Who’s being censored this week? Who’s blocked whom? Who’s going bankrupt? Who’s getting divorced? Who’s going to rehab?
And then those very same activists claim their work is all about criticizing the SYSTEM, and it’s not about individuals.
Wait, what?
If this is about the system, why is your audience being constantly drawn to the dramas about YOU, an individual? And your relationships. And your endless conflicts. And your constant frustrations. And your family life. And your love life, or lack there of.
If it’s really not about you, then stop making it about you!
And, on, and on. Every fucking where they go they create conflict. And then ‘unpack’ it, for hours, for their audiences. How/why is this? Every damn month it’s some new drama with some poor new (or repeat) sap. All over the screens, unavoidable, poking their pathetic noses into my feeds on a regular basis.
How many collaborators must I block while still being subjected to your ‘news’? Your shifty, and forever shifting, views. Criticizing everyone while no one’s allowed to criticize you. Whining constantly how you are all about the ‘greater good’ while sucking the hearts out of your collaborators and supporters alike, for years.
Why bring your personal life to your work, and then demand your audience and collaborators focus solely on your work? Either bring your personal shit into the space, or leave it out. Don’t be that dumbass bitch who wears her teeny-tiny tank top on the city street and then whines when men gawk at her.
There’s a place for airing your dirty laundry in public—it’s located somewhere between the Red Light District and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
Please y’all, spare me, and park yourselves there, so I know how to better avoid you in future.
________
*Why include those innocent-seeming ‘daily writing prompts’ in my diatribe, like those shuffled out right here on WP, you might ask?
Because they are invasive and I believe a stepping stone onto the TMI stage. Diffusing your victimhood or childhood fears or daily dramas through writing is cathartic and can be healthy, within safe environments and safe people.
These platforms are not safe. A nameless/faceless/largely invisible audience is not safe. Being a public figure in general requires a certain level of risk. And, being courageous enough to publicly share your difficulties in order to help or educate or vent or encourage, or even criticize others is not the problem.
It’s the deliberate and repeated interference of the private sphere into the public forums that is collapsing healthy discourse and glueing the undiscerning public eye on the train wrecks of the characters speaking over the actual social issues in question.
If that’s not a deliberate diversionary tactic, it sure the hell looks like one from where I’m standing. These are ‘professional activists’ doing a grave disservice to public activity. And the platforms are encouraging it because it generates copious data and more eager audiences around otherwise rather dry topics.
It’s the ‘Clinton-Lewinsky Effect’ of the Activists’ Cult and when I see it happen 3 times with one activist I know they are a card-carrying member of this cult and that’s the sign it’s high time to step away from their addictions, distractions and shenanigans.
So many stories not told. They don’t fit the mold.
While the same stories are repeated over and over. The approved stories, with the approved arcs and twists, capturing audiences beyond time and space.
Hero or Villain? Victim or Culprit?
The ordinary stories of ordinary folks are bypassed. Not sexy enough. Not dramatic enough. Too slow-paced. Not Catchy. Or spicy. Or click-baity.
Not nearly sticky enough.
Stories must be sending the right message. Clicking the right boxes in the right moments in the accepted paradigm according to the right models.
Triumph over adversity are ultimately the only stories allowed. Even the stories of failed heroes are spun in such a light, otherwise they are considered ‘dystopian’. And even then we see tragic heroes ‘set free’ by their surrender to the ‘greater force’ or ‘liberated’ by a merciful death.
How the stories are told indicate what the audience will perceive. Here I provide some examples.
These are all still ‘my stories’, just spun to be acceptable, or not. My goal here is to get folks to question WHY certain stories sell. Is it a matter of authentic taste? Of expectation? Of social programming?
Is it the audience who choose, or someone else, perhaps more subtly who chooses for you?
Here are some stories never told, true (ish) stories from my own life. You be the judge/critic/pretend publisher and let me know.
***
While in NOLA, a hurricane. The story that would sell: Young teacher moves to New Orleans for her new position at a prestigious Southern university one week before the most devastating hurricane in its history. She evacuates to a remote part of the Louisiana bayou and learns about Creole and Cajun history and music and cuisine and finally settles in the region of the native Caddo tribe to study Pre-Colombian cultures of the Deep South.
The story that won’t sell: Young teacher moves to New Orleans for her new position at a prestigious Southern university one week before the most devastating hurricane in its history. She evacuates to a remote part of the Louisiana bayou and learns about weather modification and clandestine military operations pertaining to centralized, unelected power structures controlling the U.S. government.
***
While in Galveston, a hurricane. The story that would sell: Couple not long ago evacuated from New Orleans experiences second 100-year hurricane evacuation after just three years. After being forced to split up in order to continue working, they blow through a decade of savings, suffer marital issues and nearly divorce, but are called by God to settle in the remote hills of East Texas to build a homestead.
The story that won’t sell: Couple not long ago evacuated from New Orleans experiences second 100-year hurricane evacuation after just three years. Wife begins seriously researching ‘chemtrails’ and learns about the 70+ years of weather modification that leads her to the ongoing Geoengineering projects—that is the global ‘climate remediation’ experimentation, much of it covert operations of global public-private partnerships with zero accountability or known oversight.
***
While in Elkhart, a tornado. The story that would sell: Couple experiences third weather disaster and nearly loses home and wife talks of ‘meeting death’. She finds God, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Enlightenment and starts a fundamentalist cult which then gets attacked Waco-style by the government and all cultists die in flames.
The story that won’t sell: Couple experiences third weather disaster and nearly loses home and wife talks of ‘meeting death’. She turns to herbalism and organic gardening and a life of quiet reflection about the nature of evil and tyranny and the statist system broken beyond repair and the inadequacies of every group-think solution to this issue, including the anarchy renamed voluntarism and the so-called ‘mystery schools’ and the exhausting rehashing of ‘Prophecy’ and is just generally permanently dissatisfied with all the solutions and proposals she’s ever heard, and she’s heard a fucking ton of them by now.
She discovers a mass effort at brainwashing against the ‘victim’ —some kind of crazy signaling effort of victims to rally other victims, and wonders who does this attitude really serve? So, we ‘victims’ are now considered by the establishment as of a ‘dark triad’ type (witches?) if we don’t spin our circumstances to always be whistling while we work, in whatever chaotic wind they care to bare down on us. Or so it would seem.
“Victim signaling, defined as ‘public and intentional expressions of one’s disadvantages, suffering, oppression, or personal limitations’ is strongly correlated (r = .52) with Dark Triad personality traits”.
Two quick shares today—a very short peek at a few radar clips from GeoengineeringWatch.org. These ‘anomalies’ occur daily, obviously it’s not natural. Are the meteorologists all in on it? They can’t be so dumb as to think this is natural, right?
I came across a great artifact—a Monday, July 21, 1969 edition of The Odessa American, a Texas newspaper, with this particular edition all about the ‘awesome’ moon landings.
I must say, I’m rather shocked at the disgraceful condition the astronauts of Apollo 11 left their host space. I mean really, we go to the park and are ordered to ‘leave no trace’ — while they, the great men of the world, are allowed to pollute everywhere they go.
Costly Junk Left Behind On The Moon
Space Center, Houston (AP) — Two Apollo 11 astronauts leave behind one of the most expensive junk yards in the universe when they lift off from the moon today.
They discarded almost $1 million worth of cameras, tools, and breathing equipment up there. The cameras included the black and white television camera that captured their moon walk for the world. This camera cost the Aeronautics and Space Administration $250,000.
Also in the litter—a Kodak worth $50,000 and a Hasselblad camera that cost $11, 176.
After returning to the moon lander’s cabin, the astronauts opened the hatch and dumped the back packs which kept them alive during their walk. Each of these units, called the Portable Life Support System, cost NASA $300,000. Moon tools designed especially for the astronauts added to the junk pile. Tongs, a scoop, a long-handled hammer, an extension handle and other items were dropped when the space men were through with them. These tools cost $45,000.
Largest item to be left was the descent stage of the lunar module. NASA is reluctant to put a cost on this two-ton piece of metal since it’s only part of a lunar module that cost $41 million. Even if the spacecraft stage hadn’t been left on the moon, it could never have been returned to earth; it has no heat shield. An American flag was left on the moon. The space agency doesn’t know how much it cost and doesn’t want to.
NASA bought a large number of flags from different manufacturers, a spokesman said, and then removed all labels. One was selected at random. “We’ve no idea which one is up there,” said the spokesman. “This was so no company could make a big thing of their flag being on the moon.”
A silicone-water bearing electronically-reduced messages of goodwill from 78 countries cost NASA nothing. A private firm produced it at no cost to the government.
A plaque bearing the autographs of the astronauts and of President Nixon couldn’t be priced. It was made in the metal shop at NASA of materials already at hand.”
I sure do hope the next men that land there will be thoughtful enough to take out the trash! 😂
Some are shocked and appalled by this, as they should be, according to me. Others think it will be a fantastic improvement to human life, or a great way to make more fiat, or a solution to the burden on the caring professionals, or they love tech for tech’s sake, or whatever.
Those of us who love history and dwell constantly on the question ‘how has it come to this’ were well aware of this potential because we study the trajectory of modern life. I could begin with the first critics centuries ago, but for brevity sake, I’ll start instead with my own life, the only history available to me to know thoroughly enough.
Working mother, divorced parents, step parents, then step siblings, professional daycares, neighborhood babysitters, after school programs, junk food, convenience food, lots of TV. Family history of: diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, vision problems, depression, eczema, alcoholism, Parkinson’s, and, you get the picture.
And I would not say my family life was bad. It was the typical American suburban life of a great many growing up in the 70s and 80s. Neither particularly good, nor bad, just normal. Normal, as in well-normalized.
Like most families my parents would joke about voting for the ‘lesser of two evils’. They probably learned that from their parents. My mom went to community college and got her degree once we were gone, in sociology. She worked full-time all her adult life and didn’t regret it. My dad remained ‘upwardly mobile’ as his Protestant father taught him to be.
In fact, we have retired before him, and he has just had his first heart attack.
They are both still with us, but they do not read this blog, so I could say whatever I wanted. 😏. But, that’s not the point of this particular post.
Let’s leave it at this—in hindsight, my unique perception of growing up this way is, in a nutshell—there was not a lot of parenting happening. The results of this having widespread and devastating effects.
It is from these original seeds of pseudocare that have been not only consistently irrigated in our own territories, but have been dispersed throughout the world these last five-plus decades which has ensured the trajectory to the ridiculous place where we now find ourselves: Drowning in pseudocare so deeply we can scarcely recognize what real care looks like anymore.
Another quick peak at the fruits those seeds have produced.
Yet even facing all of this, I’m still optimistic, as I have been all my life. Even at the worst of times, even during a few prolonged worst of times, I must’ve still learned something vital from my half-assed upbringing and collapsing culture.
So, here it is, in another nutshell:
Believe in yourself, believe it can change, but don’t practice in sidestepping the hard stuff. And the hardest of the hard stuff is care, real care—for yourself, for others, for the future—that is why we are here. How you go about that is your personal journey and your only real duty to discover and live. That is all there is to do in a life well-lived.
Which is why I want to once again quote an obvious example of someone doing exactly that, Gavin Mounsey, who is rocking the real care like a hurricane these days! Wait . . . What?? Ok, terrible simile aside . . .
I believe he knows what needs to happen next and is becoming the living manifestation of that in his own life first, and passing it around. Leading by example, it’s the only way. It’s the same cardinal rule as storytelling—Show, don’t tell.
“I want to give my energy to improving and increasing the resilience of my local community, not your hyper centralized one size fits all infrastructure.
“Freedom is not a consolatory prize that can be given to us to reward our obedience and capitulation to a system of violent coercion. It is not something that can be granted or provided to you by some government that wrote some thing on a piece of paper. Freedom is your birthright, and you either live it and embody it, or you allow yourself to be put in a mental cage by statists and other abusive institutions or individuals. My ancestors bloodlines are traced back to a people described in today’s terms as The Gaels. “Saoirse” is Irish Gaelic word for “Freedom”. Saoirse is an ancient concept that comes from the original Brehon laws of the Druidic (and eventually Celtic) world before the time of Christ. In the times when that word was created, my ancient ancestors lived without a centralized state, without prisons and without police.
“Saoirse means many things to different people. For some it means freedom to think, express and freedom to learn, for others it’s the freedom of imagination and the freedom of the spirit. And for some it also means freedom to set up parallel societies.
“This is one of the reasons that I included glimpses into two historical cultural cross sections of ancient cultures that existed without a centralized state and police/prison system in my essay as I feel that we can glean wisdom from stateless societies that existed for centuries to millennia in how to design more ethical, equitable, honest, Regenerative and practical ways to organize community, encourage amicable/respectful behaviour in humans and collaborate to leave this world a little bit more free and beautiful than it was when we got here after we are gone.
“With all that being said, I want to emphasize that I think that placing any culture, group of people or individual on some pedestal as pure is unhealthy. I feel we should be vigilant to make sure we are not romanticizing their past nor romanticizing the potential of their worldviews to provide solutions to the present challenges we face.
“The path to become connected to place with a reciprocal relationship, reverence and humility is the path to embrace indigeneity ourselves.
“It is a great starting point to create pockets of decentralized resistance to oligarchic / statist tyranny as growing your own medicine and veggies may appear harmless, but in a parasitic global plutocracy it represents a decisive action that severs the tentacles of tyranny in a critically important aspect of our lives (how we access food and medicine). Thus, it is a radical and revolutionary act that appears benign to the hubristic philanthropaths and demociders, serving as a sort of covert sedition in a world governed by parasites that want us dependent, gardening to grow or own food and medicine is like a hammer wrapped in velvet that knee caps big pharma’s plans to poison us slowly through dependence on their system for health care and also strikes the spine of the digital gulag system, breaking its back so it can no longer have any strength to influence our lives through controlling our access to food/medicine.
A better essay about the importance of self-reliance and health as the ideal antidote to modern societal tyranny I could not have written! And he has a YT channel. 😁
He was also kind enough to try to address our biggest garden nuisance within the scope of his permaculture lens. He offered many potential solutions, and bless his heart for the effort.
But I’ll just repeat my personal favorite: hot and spicy gopher wings. 🤪
What an example of authentic care—growing in the real and cyber worlds simultaneously—where even sassy meat-eaters and smart-asses and AI are welcome to stuff up their comments sections. Now that’s grace under fire!
Thanks to guys like these, in the coming decades I predict courageousfellowship will become the new sexy.
“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
