Start Making Sense

Who knew that a rock band could call the tune for how the world would be run, four decades later? Then again, the year of Talking Heads’ concert film Stop Making Sense was 1984, an auspicious date.

From our woozy berth on the observation deck here in 2021, that title pretty much describes the erratic course charted by our rulers. Their leaky rustbucket of faked studies, bogus tests, irrelevant case numbers, censorship guidelines, banned treatments, social restrictions, and self-exempt directives from on high, tacking in the artificial breeze of the approved science of the week, have sent us pining to return to safe harbor, where it’s about time we dock the boat, sit down over a refreshing beverage, and start talking sense.

Someone said to me recently, still on wobbly sea-legs, “It’s not black and white.” Another friend last year said of the vast gulf between differing perspectives, “There has to be a middle ground.”

Once upon a time, I learned from a rhetoric textbook that “liberal” discourse aimed for balance, neutrality, objectivity. In the real universe of politics, whether conventional or radical, that nonconfrontational stance sounds good, but it comes at a price. If you occupy a mainstream position in society, as a professional or public figure, it means compromising or selling out. The result is what Chris Hedges called The Death of the Liberal Class.

The radical view has little patience for the centrist whitewash of conventional politics. What matters is taking a stand for righteous causes. Naturally, people will disagree on what is right—and increasingly, these days, on what is true. Then if neither separation nor violence is an option, mediation ensues.

Yet for anyone who claims to stand in the middle, more than likely their supposed neutrality masks a hidden bias, given their race, culture, gender, conditioning, belief. Government claims that role of all-inclusive representation, but then ends up enforcing their own preferred bias in alignment with corporate elites. They mandate their exclusive version of “health care” to benefit Big Pharma, the predetermined winners of the Covid Sweepstakes. They call out the SWAT teams to stand on guard, not for thee or me, but for the rape of the last remaining old growth forests and northern indigenous territories. If we care to look closely, we see at every level government abuses our trust and care while pursuing prior agendas, higher order allegiances. When the whole rigged scheme screams “class warfare,” you have to wonder, do the super-rich now get their own class?

If you are a journalist, perhaps it’s your local editor, or your desire to play it safe, that limits the bounds of your coverage of issues and positions. Further up the chain of command, mighty financial empires are tolerant only to a point. Even judges can be pressured and paid off, bribed and blackmailed. So-called scientists produce results for the highest bidder. Academics, teachers, doctors speak as members of their tribe, their class, their institutions.

While philosophers might proclaim a desire for objective truth, they are more than likely trying to justify their worldview and way of life. This is why fake news exists. —Max Derrat, paraphrasing Nietzsche

What can we tell each other, face to face, heart to heart? Let’s start by pulling off the mask, or several layers of masks. What’s under there? A human face, an expression of pain or joy, of fellow feeling, of affection or care, of understanding, of needing to hear or say more?

When the news is done being repeated, what then?

What’s really going on out there? And inside, where it also matters… what kind of sense does it make?

In the wake of clashing realities, contrary narratives, naming and blaming, what is left?

Does it make any sense at all?

Abundant documentation advertises clear intent, in black and white, to ensure and solidify power. Details we can argue. Speculate, investigate, juggle the evidence, discern the disinfo. But what’s the bottom line?

Deep down we know. They killed JFK, they brought down the Twin Towers. They slam-dunked Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and now they’ve gone and scam-dam-demicked us to death. They, by the way, is not just the evil US, or royal Britain, let alone bugbear Russia or Cheshire cat China. Canada has played along with every false note.

We know who they are since they’re the ones giving orders. They pontificate from their high tower offices at the World Economic Forum, the WHO, the World Bank, GAVI, the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations. It sounds complex, until you remember they’re all the 0.01 percent. Pumping money down the line, to keep the troops in pay: bureaucrats, health officials, hospital boards, media, government mouthpieces, certified factcheckers.

At the bottom of that food chain is the well-meaning stranger who chews you out in the store for not adjusting your face diaper properly.

You might say this is rabbit hole stuff. Internet clickbait. Conspiracy whatever.  I say, you want to talk about it? Good, you can tell me more about your experience, too. How about we start by agreeing on a simple ground rule for this conversation we’re about to have: Start Making Sense.

Zombie Apocalypse

I used to love watching zombie movies when I was growing up… say, ages 9 to 13. They were the cheap black and white kind, featuring voodoo scenes from the jungle. Much later in life I became fascinated with the power of hand drumming and gained access to the trance where the frequency harmonics conjure angelic voices in the old church rafters, and dancers commune with the Orishas.

As a Vodounist once explained, “The white man goes into church and speaks about God; the Indians eat magic plants and speak to God; we dance in the temple and become God.” —Wade Davis, The Art of Shamanic Healing

Then came the zombie revival, but on a mass scale: from zombie possession to zombie apocalypse. You might say it went viral, to the point where by now, it’s like, whatever dude. You are what you watch. Psychic shadow, exaggerated fear of death, why the F not. At least It’s free entrain—er, entertain-ment.

Science Fact and Fiction

In which science fact (see: Fauci, CDC, WHO, Nature, Oxford) becomes fiction (lies, pretexts, smokescreens and sheer propaganda for thinly veiled master plans); while science fiction (transhumanism, robotics, dystopian prison-states, mind-hacking, nanobot doctors and supersoldiers, Borg empire, weaponized climate) becomes our reality. Bad science fiction becomes fact, that is, when we allow ourselves to be written into the script, the algorithmic code for total takeover.

I always wondered why science fiction only shows future humans with the same foibles and failings we always had. So people can relate?

What about human evolution—does it have to go the route of hard science and cheap fiction? Aren’t there more esoteric improvements that could change everything?

Maybe, but meanwhile, peek past the curtain and tell me what you see.

Masked automatons everywhere, and it’s just the first wave. The nanobot invasion is also underway, with its 5G control grid hardening via towers and blanket satellite coverage. As these weird fictions become fact, conspiracy worms its way into reality.

The human animal is by now so long domesticated that it has become fatally attached to its condition of dependence. This is the default identity of the chronically abused, the collectively traumatized, the drugged and desensitized—the willing subject and compliant slave, if not eager enforcer.

Zombies on the march, again, hungry for flesh. Will they break into the holding pens, or will the humans break out, only to face the hordes? Stay tuned to the next exciting episode of Zombie Apocalypse!

History in a nutshell

For a lengthy prequel, might as well start with the Old Testament. It’s a rerun zombie apocalypse every chapter. Kill the men, rape the women, and make the children slaves. Hell, it’s obviously hardwired in our nature, right? Check out the Hollywood highlights.

Remember the Vikings, Mongols, Huns? The Evil Empire? There are inexhaustible reasons to live in fear, all great for ratings, and the next election. The local mafia. The crazy slasher. The other kind of government. Headhunters. The neighboring Apaches. The Red Tide. The boot forever. Literal Hitler. Killing sanctions. Mind-control technologies. False flags… and, failing all that, real war, raw or cooked, blood-glazed or blue sugar frosted.

Bottom line, who’s in charge here?

Please don’t tell me zombies.

Who’s in Charge?

Lockdown Fanatics

“As with almost every revolution in history, a small minority of crazy people with a cause prevailed over the humane rationality of multitudes. When people catch on, the fires of vengeance will burn very hot.

“The task now is to rebuild a civilized life that is no longer so fragile as to allow insane people to lay waste to all that humanity has worked so hard to build.

Jeffrey Tucker, How Fanatics Took Over the World

While Biden’s cabinet has proposed a $2 trillion infrastructure proposal, critics have pointed out that only 5% of that investment would go towards roads and bridges, while the vast majority would be spent on “social engineering” programs. —Biden jokes about running over reporter after being questioned about Israel

Vaccine Euphoria

“So what is all the excitement about? Well, if you ask anyone who has just gotten a jab they will most likely tell you that they feel like celebrating doing their part to save the human race. They may think that is the case, but I believe the real reason is a strange, and possibly largely unconscious, belief that technology will save them from actually being human. We seem to believe that we have risen from animal status to some sort of higher, trans-human, status, or at least are on our way to that lofty position.

“And if we trust our scientists and others who are leading the way, we may even one day be able to transcend death itself, because death, of course, is the messiest animal thing an animal does. And we don’t want that.”

Todd Hayden, “Vaccine Euphoria”

Eugenics Made Simple

“To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family tradition, national patriotism and religious dogmas. —G. Brock Chisolm, founder of the WHO

“It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment. —Bertrand Russell

See: Matthew Ehret, How the Unthinkable Became Thinkable

The Fourth World: Our Common Ground

With so many examples of unethical and immoral behavior, why do we continually look to “the system” for answers and solutions? Why do we even participate? Based on everything that’s happened, and is currently happening within politics, it seems human beings themselves, independent from any sort of government, would be better off seeking to create wide scale changes to our current systems. This is a long, difficult conversation, but one that must be had. We can create a system that truly resonates with human thrivability, but we won’t if we don’t talk about it —Arjun Walia, Indigenous Residential School Children Were Used As Test Subjects For Medical Experimentation

Returning to the opening theme, it’s way past overdue to start talking sense with each other. We don’t have to agree on details. We do have to find common ground. Otherwise, it’s go with one herd into zombie apocalypse, or maintain pockets of pushback, until threshold is reached for a quantum shift.

Local Pushback Initiatives

One term used for the global nations of indigenous peoples is the “Fourth World.” The same principles can be shared by those of us identified with our various tribal and ethnic roots, either biological or adopted: People of the Earth. Not to be confused, however, with the Globalist Greenwash. A key antidote to the transhuman reset is strong local pushback, along with living alternatives to mainstream matrix institutions. Popular and local efforts include:

  • supporting local business and farms
  • collective refusal of lockdown measures
  • barter networks and alternative markets
  • local resource control
  • cultural inclusion, not cancelation

Connectivity

Resisting zombie madness means fostering human connectivity—the precious attribute of our life on earth to date, which is diametrically opposed by every lockdown measure to isolate, silence, and dehumanize.

It’s no accident or coincidence (go ahead, call it a conspiracy if you prefer) that the very word and concept of connectivity has been technologized. Our “friends,” “contacts,” and “meetings” have been ushered into databanks where our former human identity now resides, shackled to a handheld device by which our expressions and impressions are tabulated, evaluated, rewarded or punished.

Careful with that search and share on “eugenics,” cyberlad or lassie or indeterminate gender. As for “vaccine injuries to the reproductive system”? Your phone is smart enough to report you to the authorities (in lieu of the proper reporting of any such alleged injuries).

Not that you care, if you’re going to keep using, anyway. You’re called a user, and they’re called authorities, for a reason, right? And anyway It’s all or nothing now, right?

And, it’s almost time for the next Zombie Apocalypse! Got your popcorn, kids?

Click.

Aww mo-om, it’s the new episode. Pleeeze?

image credits:

(feature): false fire: artunlimited.com
law n order: InCollage
seatbelts: Kim Usbourne
zombies: society6.com
Paul: Rand Paul, twitter
Germany: jimbob
lockdowns: Kulvinder Kaur
lie to rule: Kim Usbourne
joe n jim: Nowick Gray
manacle: twicsy.com

This article first appeared in The New Agora.

 

Dispatches From Earth

“Not even I know all the rules,” says the old officer under his breath. “There are things that cannot and should not be explained. But there is no cause for concern. The Town is fair in its own way. The things you need, the things you need to know, one by one the Town will set these before you. Hear me now: this Town is perfect. It has everything. If you cannot see that, then it has nothing. A perfect nothing. Remember this well. That is as much as anyone can tell you; the rest you must learn for yourself. Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.” —Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Behavioral Psychology and the War on Humanity

“You will perform your duty voluntarily, or else you must be compelled.” —Paula Volsky, Illusion

The story of planet Earth in our time has come to its pivotal chapter: the war on humanity. In truth it has been foreshadowed from the book’s beginning. But now the cards are on the table, and the winnings, global in scope and irreversible in the annals of time, are being raked away.

It’s a time when the herd mentality of blind obedience has overridden nature’s protocol, herd immunity. We witness the futility of mere facts, so easily disputed with cooked statistics and preloaded interpretations. Logic is locked down, bound to the rails of absolute power.

So those who dare to question the rules of the game must look deeper, to its design.

The field of behavioral psychology has been weaponized to enslave the human species from the inside out. Bizarre as that may sound, think tanks tasked with that very goal have been busy sanitizing the language to make total control seem downright philanthropic: saving ourselves from… whatever turns your fear crank.

And now, their window of opportunity has been blasted wide open with the enemy of dreams: an invisible virus, with magical powers to survive every effort to eradicate it. It’s a perfect storm… for calculated madness, learned helplessness, humiliation and impotence: a recipe for infinite control.

calculated madness

“The Mindspace document [2010] was boasting that this was the first time the [UK] Government would be able to use applied techniques where people would have their behaviour changed—that means their thoughts changed!—and they wouldn’t even be aware that it had occurred. if you want to execute power, then you’re going to try and use normal, democratic politics, or you’re going to try and use force, or you’re going to try and use other means.… They were going to use this covert applied psychology to pressurise citizens to act against one another.

“The uncertainty and the change in the rules: that is part of the psychological attack.

“Because the uncertainty immediately is putting people in a position of stress and anxiety and confusion. And if we go back into the professional world of applied psychology, people who are in a distressed, confused state are very susceptible to further messages and instructions. If there’s a fire in a building and people are starting to panic, the first person that starts to give clear commands to the people, those commands will be followed. And that is due to the psychological state.

“… There’s a very important paper which is called Biderman’s Chart of Coercion. It’s a World Health Organisation-recognised paper about non-physical techniques of torture. Virtually every Covid pandemic measure can be ticked off against one of the entries in Biderman’s chart.… We can say that people are under a spell, and the best description, we believe, is that they’ve been mesmerised.”

Brian Gerrish’s testimony to Reiner Füllmich: Our oppressors are very frightened people

learned helplessness

“Learned helplessness is well documented. It takes place when an individual believes he continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to improve his circumstances, even when he has the ability to do so. Discovering the loss of control elicits a passive reaction to a harmful situation. Psychologists call this a maladaptive response, characterized by avoidance of challenges and the collapse of problem-solving when obstacles arise. You give up trying to fight back.

“…The way out is to allow people to make decisions and choices on their own. This therapy is used with victims of learned helplessness such as hostages. During their confinement all the important decisions of their life, and most of the minor ones, were made by their captors. Upon release, many hostages fear things as simple as a meal choice and need to be coaxed out of helplessness one micro-choice at a time.”

COVID, Learned Helplessness, and Control

humiliation and impotence

Within an established totalitarian regime the purpose of propaganda is not to persuade, much less to inform, but rather to humiliate. From this point of view, propaganda should not approximate to the truth as closely as possible. On the contrary, it should do as much violence to it as possible. For by endlessly asserting what is blatantly untrue, by making such untruth ubiquitous and unavoidable, and finally by insisting that everyone publicly acquiesce in it, the regime displays its power and reduces individuals to nullities.

Apart from the massacres, deaths and famines for which communism was responsible, the worst thing about the system was the official lying: that is to say the lying in which everyone was forced to take part by repetition, assent or failure to contradict… The less true it was, the less it corresponded in any way to reality, the better; the more it contradicted the experience of the persons to whom it was directed, the more docile, self-despising for their failure to protest, and impotent they became.

—Theodore Dalrymple, in Breaking the Covid Trance: How the Irish People were Psychologically Manipulated

countering cognitive dissonance

The above rollout of psychological warfare on the entire planet demands extraordinary resilience of positive human qualities: insight, patience, analysis, courage, compassion, forgiveness, whistleblowing, self-sacrifice, truth-telling. The hypnotherapist Theodore Dalrymple (above) points to the awakening of intuition to break the spell of the Covid trance.

We all know, deep down, we’re being lied to, manipulated, and abused. The signs of our programming are everywhere. But even when our senses, our media feeds, our trusted sources, our friends and family and peer groups are all succumbing to the relentless tide of doctored reality, our bodies know better. Beneath even the falsely triggered fear, our truer gut instincts, our heartstrings, our soul callings, will guide us back to alignment with our humanity.

our mythic evolution

Our evolutionary calling in this time has a mythic dimension, with roots in the ancient past, and branches in the birthing of an era of transformation. Seers such as Tielhard de Chardin, Jung, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have pointed the way, along with Rudolph Steiner, who foresaw also the darker agenda urging our leap in consciousness as a necessity of survival.

Steiner said that the super-sensible being known as Ahriman would incarnate in the 21st Century, as humanity makes a transition into a new planetary incarnation. Ahriman represents the power of materialism, material technologies, and sterile rationality. Ahriman’s incarnation might be fulfilled through the birth of a generalized Artificial Intelligence able to embody itself through technology—as latticed network or robot, or via transhumanist biotechnologies that meld human beings with machines, such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink.

For Steiner, the incarnation of Ahriman was inevitable. But an evolutionary leap of human consciousness was also inevitable, leading to a new “incarnation” of the Earth…. What mattered for Steiner was to accelerate the evolution of those who could awaken, which meant, for him, learning to develop “organs” of “supersensible” perception and cognition… a new “body,” which he called the “spirit self.” … Those who are able to stay conscious within the increasingly turbulent dream-world of reality will attain the fruits of this evolutionary journey. It may take us into a dimension that is no longer purely physical. —Daniel Pinchbeck, Dystopian Follies

Pinchbeck suggests a uniquely human tool to wield against the robotic power of materialism and its heartless deity, AI. Spiritual imagination—call it prayer—gives us the living language of myth.

… Our world is made up of the stories we tell about it, to a great extent. As Nietzsche noted, humans always live mythologically. What we are undergoing now, collectively, involves a transformation not just in our physical and psychic lives but also in our mythological paradigm. As Patrick Harpur put it: “The world we see is the myth we are in.” When we change our myths, the world changes around us.

Prayers from Dystopia

With heavy heart I watch my loved ones surrender their sovereignty to the vax gods. And I almost feel all is lost. With science and logic co-opted, commandeered, inverted and perverted for material and malevolent purposes, it may be that all we have left is prayer: our access to the mythic realm.

What is prayer?

Here’s one: “Hope for the best, expect the worst, and take what comes with grace.”

That covers a lot, but strikes a rather fatalistic tone; perhaps a fallback option at best, to maintain peace of mind in the midst of a dystopia on earth. Is this the last summer of joy, and peace, and love, as the vortex of evil sucks us all into its posthuman maw?

Daily the screws tighten on the great reset; everything the Schwabians have pronounced is unfolding according to their in-our-face plan for total control. The information war is already lost, for all those who have bowed to the pressure instead of trusting the common sense they were born with, or the integrity of the minority view. When groupthink is complete, in-your-face becomes the new deity: it’s Big Brother time, without apology from above or below.

Even for so many we have known as intelligent, rational, skeptical, we must now concede that peer pressure is more powerful than independent thought. The rationalist view—to examine evidence, objectively—is not sacrosanct, after all, but simply bought and sold in the commerce of public opinion, readily shaped by the controlling agenda, advanced nonstop by the formidable alliance of government, media, and institutional bias.

  • FDA – Fully Denatured & Artificial
  • CDC – Controlled Disinformation Company
  • CBC – Canadian Brainwashing Corporation
  • NDP – No Damn Promises
  • Liberal – see: Faucism
  • Conservative – conserving one’s own socio-economic status
  • Green – with power envy (see: Controlled Opposition)

There are those in charge of this war on humanity, those who volunteer to be its officers, those conscripted as footsoldiers, and those herded into the arena to watch the blood flow. Bread and circuses have lost none of their appeal over the past two or three millennia.

Here’s another prayer: “Everything is happening in perfect time.”

This one gives a more positive spin. We might surmise that the karmic wheel, ever turning, will bring justice in the end, when “God wins.” In this time of testing, will the victims of deception fall away, purged from the healthy system, allowing survivors to thrive better than before?

Lacking human-clothed gods and goddesses, a more inclusive definition of prayer might be something like “frequency alignment.” That could take the potent magical form of music, a time-honored means of connecting with more subtle dimensions of our vibratory existence in the cosmos.

One way or another, human culture to survive must maintain the bridges between Nature and Spirit. As we do so, we honor and continue to mourn the old bridgekeepers who were branded and hung, burned alive, bulldozed nearly out of memory.

In today’s unprecedented crisis for humanity, I therefore strive to attune with the presence of source energy, opening to spirit:

  • for connection with nature and all-that-is
  • for health protection
  • for peaceful outcome
  • for the heartbeat of creation
  • for inspiration and solace
  • for clarity and truth
  • for the light of wisdom

Outside the gates of the empire, we barbarians tend our council fires. Simple tribes, nomads, refugees, renegades.

Are we hoping for the walls to fall from their own unsteady weight, built on shifting sand? Are we waiting our chance to enter the gates when the death wagons roll out?

We pass the time with wholesome food, self-made music, care of the children, prayers to the fire.

What We Forget: The Fire of Life and Death

Sitting by a fire brings back ancient memories, timeless truth. We see the slow burn of things that were once alive: trees to logs, branches and roots, piled on the pyre. Once sprouting green, sucking water, now spitting flames.

Isn’t it sad? In a way, yes. But that’s okay. Like it or not, it’s okay. Death, and fire, are part of life.

Fire in our modern lives, like death itself, has been outlawed, criminalized, weaponized. Out of fear of death by covid, our life has been pruned to bare branches, wrapped in plastic, caged and sprayed. To save our elders, they were herded into killing pens. To save our children from a threat that was never theirs, they are masked and separated, bullied and brainwashed, offered ice cream with a needle that could sterilize, maim and kill.

Will the framed-up danger ever pass? That depends on your perspective. Some in charge pledge “we will never get back to normal until covid is eradicated.” Which  is a recipe both for perpetual vaccination, and permanent control and surveillance.

Not that the supposed goal is ever achievable. For every seasonal sniffle, will we always now be tracked and traced, muzzled and jabbed for probable cause? Call it a scam, and will we always be silenced, deplatformed, banished, erased?

Those who thrive on control know that fear is its fuel. So death… from a never-ending supply of dread diseases and their mutating variants, bat drool or lab leaks; from a scary world of infinite terrorists, foreign or domestic, bent on “destroying our way of life”…  there’s no end of trouble in store.

With the evil twins, fear and control, dancing in our face like TikTok nurses, we shrink and die a slow, constricted death. Just where they want us—so they, the chosen few, can live the life of the promised land, of freedom and abundance? I pray not.

They, too, shall die. And we will live again.

In the meantime, grow your garden, tend your fire, sing your prayer.

image credits:
(feature) cedars: Nowick Gray
reset: Jim Quinn
mask safety: BC Ministry of Health
masks: Facebook
orwell: George Orwell
humans: lysianne93.centerblog.net
bought science: David Rich
firedragon, fire: Nowick Gray

This post first appeared in The New Agora.

See Nowick’s YouTube interview with Lorenzo of the New Now Agora.

 

Remembering Who We Are (part two)

Greenwash: None Dare Call it Democracy

Pre-2020, the Gulf Islands between Victoria and Vancouver, BC took pride in holding one of the only Green Party ridings in Canada. Residents here shared a majority voice in advocating for wildlife and the environment.

What a difference a year makes.

Already suspect for the ties between “Green” policy and globalist control agendas under cover of a “climate emergency,” the Green Party has shown a shocking lack of leadership in health policy by backing the Big Pharma agenda under cover of a bogus pandemic.

Recently I sent a letter to my Green MP Elizabeth May with the subject “Please do everything you can to make sure the COVID-19 vaccine is purely voluntary” (never mind that it’s not even a vaccine but a genetic experiment). I had signed my name to a letter template citing the various risks and infringements posed by this historic, potentially genocidal scam.

I received a worse-than-form-letter reply from Elizabeth May’s office with the opening lines: “Thank you for writing to call for access to vaccines in developing nations. I agree that the pandemic will keep hurting us at home until we end it everywhere.” The letter ends with the equally inappropriate closing: “Thank you again for your advocacy. I would be happy to raise the issue of vaccine allocation with my caucus. It is an honour to serve as your Member of Parliament.”

Gaia only knows what leverage the globalists have over the hearts of our erstwhile green and democratic representatives in government. In the meantime we can nurse with nostalgia the promise the Greens once held for a sane, healthy, and natural world.

The Mind Virus that Ate the World

Columbus: “With fifty men we could enslave them all and cause them to do anything we desire.”

Remember what it was like to live by hunting and gathering and subsistence farming? Probably not.

The fingerprints of wetiko [AKA the mind virus]-like  beliefs can be traced at least as far back as the Neolithic revolution, when humans in the Fertile Crescent first learned to dominate their environment by what author Daniel Quinn calls “totalitarian agriculture” — i.e., settled agricultural practices that produce more food than is strictly needed for the population, and that see the destruction of any living entity that gets in the way of that (over-)production — be it other humans, ‘pests’ or the natural environment — as not only legitimate but moral. —Seeing Wetiko: On Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition, by Alnoor Ladha, Martin Kirk (2016)

Unless we have gone to the far North or the Amazon, we have likely never encountered any society but our own global parasite known as neoliberal capitalism—the mind virus’s own self-perpetuating creation. Its single mission, it seems, is to conquer the natural world, demonstrating such with

its insatiable hunger for finite resources; its disregard for the pain of groups and cultures it consumes; its belief in consumption as savior; its overriding obsession with its own material growth; and its viral spread across the surface of the planet. It is wholly accurate to describe neoliberal capitalism as the primary cannibalizing force of life on this planet. It is not the only truth — capitalism has also facilitated an explosion of human life and ingenuity — but when taken as a whole, capitalism is certainly eating through the life-force of this planet in service of its own growth.

A commenter (Ray Songtree) on the above article warns of the future prospects of this dark force, which seems prophetic now five years later:

People infected with Wetiko call progress “Singularity.” They want one mind, one economy, one government, one purpose. The goal is one global slave state controlled, not by humans with hearts, but by artificial intelligence… default software connected to electric fences and armed drones. AI can never be self conscious, but it can be programmed to self replicate and defend itself.… What matters is whether you support local farmers or the bio-tech plague. Organic or Wetiko? What matters will be how you vote with your wallet and how soon you leave the city. Waking up will mean unplugging.

“I’d Love to Change the World”

We’ve got to get ourselves / Back to the garden. —Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock”

The lead single from the 1971 album by Ten Years After, A Space in Time, sums up the spirit of the age, among my generation. What became of this revolutionary impulse, which charged every aspect of cultural life? Did we change the world for the better? Did we diverge into individual paths of success as we each came to define it? Or did we simply give up?

What became of the nonviolent protest movement, active in every city and campus? Where do we stand today, fifty years after, with prospects for positive social change and a sustainable future?

Where once broad-based coalitions could move millions to take to the streets, now we are sedated and seduced by digital distraction; divided and subdued by fear and fake news; canceled by mandates, cowed by peer pressure, conned into submission.

Protest has been commandeered as a tool of power from the top, orchestrated to occupy the public space and weaponize demographics such as race or religion to divide and conquer. Whether in the USA or abroad, “nonviolent regime change” may be the favored contemporary brand, for PR effect; but the bottom line remains, “regime change.”

The US goal in the Arab Spring revolutions was to replace unpopular despotic dictators while taking care to maintain the autocratic US-friendly infrastructure that had brought them to power. All initially followed the nonviolent precepts [Gene] Sharp outlines in his 1994 book From Dictatorship to Democracy. (Gayle Kimball, “U.S. Government Influence on Global Uprisings”)

Following Sharp’s role in the ‘color’ revolutions in Eastern Europe and the attempted coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002… in Libya, Syria and Yemen, the US and their allies were clearly prepared to introduce paid mercenaries when their Sharpian ‘revolutions’ failed to produce regime change” (Kimball).

Sharp the scholar, both prophetic and pragmatic, turned lackey of empire. With his “neoliberal nonviolence… he rationalized the weapons of the weak to advance the interests of the strong” (Marcie Smith). Bolivia serves as a more recent example of the color revolution model still in play. Not to mention establishment sponsorship of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, pushing the envelope of nonviolence so as to invite a violent response from their targets… and either way, to get the troublesome, unpredictable, and mostly uncooperative “president” out of the picture.

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Flashback to 1980, Gene Sharp was one of my guiding lights, in the theory and practice of nonviolent action for social change. His earlier masterwork, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1973) combed the annals of real history and compiled hundreds of successful tactics of nonviolent resistance and advocacy, and put forward strategic principles by which such movements succeed. He was a natural mentor to the disarmament and later environmental movement. Fast forward back to the future where we are now, and nonviolent struggle has been rebranded and repackaged as manufactured rebellion; staged and weaponized as a narrative device; and delivered as a species of fake news.

This manipulation of popular struggle, and of mass perception, takes place today in a context where “the news” has become just another program (and form of mental programming) competing for viewership. Control and consolidation of media networks and narratives mean power to define not only what is “newsworthy,” but what is truth itself.

Telling the mass media to “just do their jobs” and report the news is like bursting into a shoe factory yelling “Just do your jobs and start manufacturing dentures!” Their job is not to report the news, their job is to manipulate public perception for the benefit of the media-owning class.
—Caitlin Johnstone, “The Mass Media Will Never Regain the Public’s Trust”

While color revolutions are staged under global spotlights, genuine protests for anti-imperial causes are excluded from view: banned or disbanded, censored or spun, and if all else fails, ignored. True grassroots movements for freedom and accountability are kept in the wings of the stage, outside the circus tent of trick animals and human chimeras.

The other side of the Revolution—for the country dog instead of the town dog—was a more doable proposition: to tend one’s own garden. Woodstock symbolized a great paradigm shift: from the “American Dream” of endless consumption, to “the simple life,” returning “back to the land.” What became of that greener dream, for a generation and for the boomers who made it their guiding vision?

Simplify, simplify, simplify. —Thoreau, Walden

Well, we Boomers got older, one way or another, to the point where “Bed Bath & Beyond” kind of covers what’s left of our simple pleasures in life. Back then the main discovery was that simple living is no simple matter; it’s hard work living off the land and just as hard creating sustainable social community.

For the seeker of simplicity of any generation, it’s worth remembering that simplicity requires its own cultivation, its pruning of activity of body and mind to what is most vital. (Think “essential services,” but in a personal, fully informed consent kind of way).

A more natural life doesn’t necessarily mean we should all grub for insects and drink bark tea, after shooting all the deer and rabbits. It doesn’t mean working dawn to dusk behind a combine or tractor, shoveling shit and husking beans. Or it could, up to a point; but you have to respect your own limits—individual and collective, environmental, emotional, and spiritual.

What can be more simple than simplicity itself? Starting from scratch, and working back to balance.

To that end, I can recommend…

5 Simple Daily Practices for the Path Ahead

When I went to India the first time in 2008, I wasn’t looking for a guru. But one day I was playing flute by a river when I noticed a man washing clothes. I told him I hoped I wasn’t disturbing his peaceful day. He shook his head. “Not a problem.” It turned out he was a traveling cloth merchant, and we talked a bit about Indian spiritual practice. He shared with me these first two simple exercises, which I’ve done more or less consistently ever since. They are good minimal tuneups for body and mind.

  1. Stretch. Before getting out of bed in the morning, lean over to touch your toes three times.
  2. Sixty/forty breathing. One of the simplest forms of meditation is to focus on the breath. Easy enough, momentarily. Harder to sustain, with a restless wandering mind. Which is why this extended counting focus helps. Three rounds, and each round goes like this:
  • Inhale, hold, and count to sixty (6 x 10).
  • Exhale, hold, and count to forty (4 x 10).
  • Take two normal breaths.
  1. The Five Tibetans

For about the same dozen years I’ve been doing a daily series of exercises that are a cross between yoga poses and calisthenics. They are outlined in a slim book by Christopher Kilham, The Five Tibetans. The five poses/movements, each repeated twenty-one times, only take five minutes to complete. They provide not only a healthy stretch to all parts of the body, but also a cardo wakeup boost. I finish off with an extra 21 pushups (or 25, or whatever feels right for you). And instead of the full dizzying dervish spin of the Tibetans, I simply swing arms around while standing in place, twenty-one times, to loosen up after the pushups.

  1. Twenty-minute sit

Last thing in the morning practice is the twenty-minute sit. The essence of meditation is simply “sitting quietly, doing nothing.” Of course, the mind wants to keep busy, so you can keep it quiet by the sixty/forty breathing exercise if needed. Or variations thereof. You can sip tea or even coffee if you like. You can sit in full lotus, half-lotus, a chair, a hammock, a morning bath. The key is to keep it simple, quieting body and mind, clearing and refreshing for a more open-ended future.

  1. Walking in nature

Walking in nature is a good daily practice, at any time of day. Even in a city neighborhood, you can walk with awareness of the nature still around: sky (when free of chemtrails!), trees, birds, flowers, bees, grass. Better yet, find a trail through woods or by a lake or seashore. Again, focus on the breath… the simple joy of fully breathing, with live energy flowing through your whole body and being. Your space is open for untangling creative or personal dilemmas, or giving simple physical refreshment. It can be a “walking meditation” as you are able to still the mind and just be open, present… and free.

image credits:

(feature) Shaman: Ricardo Chargingbear
Immunity: Jimbob
Hiraeth: facebook
Protest: David Molko, CTV
Sick/Healthy: Florida Civil Rights Coalition
Yoga: Nowick Gray
Tibetans: Christopher Kilham, Amazon

See: Remembering Who We Are (part one)