A powerful antidote to "The current thing" and a step along the road to individuation is journaling and writing. Since you're already here on substack it is quite easy to get started. I encourage anyone reading this who hasn't started yet to commit to writing just one article on a favorite topic.
Right now I'm working on a piece titled "Muhammed Suiçmez - The best musician you've never heard of". Will more than a few people read it? Probably not. But in writing it, I dusted off my old copy of Cubase to re-arrange some of his works, listened to some Chopin Etudes I hadn't heard in years, and learned some fascinating new tidbits about my favorite musician from his interviews.
There is limited space in your head. Be deliberate about what fills it. Write more.
The act of producing trumps consumption in ways few understand. Your work being consumed, seen, heard, read and so on is great, but it is the effort to produce it that really produces the rewards.
In this media saturated world we live in few learn this lesson. Even gardening counts.
I am repeatedly planning along the same lines. Somehow the need to show off some of your work brings you on substack or any other platform and here you encounter 'the current thing'. First it's easy to ignore, you have your own stuff. But then it slowly creeps in. Whenever your stuff takes a break.
Even this article, while the best I read today, it's actually keeping us all from individuation. The fact that we are gathering here and there goes against it. And we instinctively want to gather. I wish this would be my last article read before going on my majestic journey, but I have a feeling we will all scroll past it and look for the next :))
Fantastic post. Another difference between The Current Thing and organised religion is how The Current Thing promotes constant frantic distraction and alienation, but never quiet contemplation and reflection. I've experienced myself how angry and accusatory NPCs get when you ask them to explain why they believe the things they say they believe: they are horrified by the prospect of looking inwards and finding nothing there
I am also shocked at how few people can look inward. Those of us who do this take it for granted. Indeed, it feels involuntary, particularly if it degenerates into rumination or anxiety. We can't stop contemplating.
But most people I know "cope" much better with life because they continually distract. Life is just one immersive mindless consumption experience after another, from Netflix to drinking.
That's exactly right. I think that now, those who surrender themselves to that constant distraction (and I was guilty of it myself for too long) are finding themselves going along with some pretty crazy stuff. The alternative is social isolation and the inability to keep enjoying the dogshit culture they've been part of for a long time, and it's tough
I agree. It demands a price. It is isolating too. But those who seek some semblance of the truth must detach.
The very real downside is it becomes ever more difficult to converse in normal circles. I don't mean to sound like I have some grand insight into how the world functions; I don't. But listening to mindless regurgitation of focus-grouped talking points from friends who are oblivious to almost everything happening around them is hard work.
Indeed, those people often consider themselves very well informed, and really hate being asked to explain why they believe and disbelieve certain things. It's remarkable how rude a person feels they can be if they think you're a 'conspiracy theorist' or similar
It is all a cop out because at some level they must know they are just accepting things they have been told. I tired of them long ago. I certainly discuss nothing with them as their views are difficult to listen to.
Last year I asked a guy to give me his bank number so I could send him money and he didn't want to do it cos he was convinced Russian hacking was a serious risk. I don't even think he knew what part of the process they would hack or what they would do with his bank details if they got them, but he was genuinely worried about it and I just had to bite my tongue so as not to create a giant scene. It was crazy
The American bad, orange man bad rhetoric is being amplified overseas to absolutely insane levels. People in my local area have infinite talking points about this and yet absolutely zero understanding or engagement in their local politic, something, in theory at least, they can change is completely ignored while the thing they have zero control over the other side of the world is endless debated... all while consuming US manufactured film and TV.. 🫠🫠 honestly it's fascinating. When this is pointed out adult tantrums follow.
There's a lot to digest here, thank you. Would you say that alt-right folks making memes, essays, or insults about Current Things are also participants in the Current Thing? Are we also playing our part as the demons of their quasi-religion?
It makes me wonder how we should engage. If to accept or deny the narrative is to strengthen it, should we say nothing?
Great question, Joseph. I think there are layers of analysis one could use with respect to the alt right: (1) that it was a populist movement that got out of hand after Trump's unexpected 2016 win, and that like the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement they were both shut down after they grew too much (in other words, they were movements that were controlled from the start); (2) our elites are not superhuman, and there are unintended consequences of their actions - for example, to shut down Trump 1.0 and the alt-right they had to reveal their existence to the public, which was itself antithetical to their interests - everyone knows about the existence of the so-called "deep state" now; (3) it is not commentary on politics per se that feeds the Current Thing, but by buying into it's action-reaction-synthesis dialectic. So posting memes, essay or insults about Current Things has multiple and perhaps contradictory effects depending on the level of analysis...
Let's take the Shiloh Hendrix Current Thing as an example (which, admittedly, I have not looked into the details much): the action and reaction would be that Hendrex's actions ere either good or bad, with a synthesis of worsening race relations (which is good for our upper elites, the masses focused on race/gender/sexual orientation fighting so they won't focus on elite theft). By arguing Hendrex is either good or bad, one feeds the narrative as a Current Thing, prolonging it's focus in the collective imagination. However, personally, I think pointing out how the process works, what the dialectical solution being sought is, is not a bad thing and probably even a good thing, but maybe there's a question of timing too where it's better to ignore it so long as it remains the Current Thing.
I think the Alt-Right has overall had a much more positive effect than the Tea Party. I can't think of a single policy change that came from the Tea Party - It was co-opted almost immediately. The Alt-Right is being co-opted as we speak, but it's already done it's damage to the elites as you describe.
Regarding the Current Thing - Seems like pointing out what each position is (good/bad) and how they help elites, then pondering a third way, is how to pull people out of the Current Thing. Plus history so people can see how much and how often the Current Thing is changed.
Which is pretty much your Substack and your mission. Thanks for all you do. You're changing lives out here.
Individuation increases the less we have the one size fits all religions. This includes economic unity, political unity, and the other Orwellian big brother type of "we have the answer" speak.
Despite the chaos which you depicted perfectly, it's not just a curse but a blessing. It breaks apart the false stability of the plans offered by unified group think.
Ukraine was something that you covered and at the time I couldn't put my finger on why the coverage of the war was annoying to me.
My subconscious was pushing against my nature to be concerned and fearful about the war.
Same reason why COVID was a blessing as instead of being turned into cognitive zombies as intended, we got shaken up and confused as to why what they said didn't match reality.
Here's an old post of mine where I am confused as to why propaganda is done so sloppily compared to the "Wag the Dog" type stuff we had with Iraq and 9/11 which you mention in your Ukraine post.
I think they lost control when they stopped giving us a basic stability of economics, leading to fear of food and gas prices despite people not seeing the record inflation in real estate since the 00s. People were ok with being in underwater "stable debt" mortgages, but are now facing basic things being almost out of reach.
They kept on with the circuses but stopped giving bread. 😂
Amazingly comprehensive and necessary post on the most important challenge of the day
It is a religion. We're creating egregores and worshipping them in order to make them rule over us. Or in other words, as Dostoevsky revealed in "Demons", we're handing ourselves over to demons by our apathetic self-enslavement (mimetic frenzy) over each new "topic". The devil moves in crowds, and we willingly hand ourselves to him, and then worship him by doing whatever he (the current thing) demands.
But what's the way out of this mimetic frenzy? Christ, who talks to and saves each individual through an individual relationship, in the most anti-mimetic way.
Individual curiosity and local living! If everyone is involved in their local affairs, boring life wud become normal. Small groups don't have capacity to produce new thing everyday. Plus, if everyone is at least curious enough to not directly believe shallow narratives world wud be better place.
Although, I am not sure if it's even possible for everyone to be curious.
Live Strong, Kony 2012, Je Suis Charlie, Me Too... and a million other slogans that people got emotionally invested in and then completely forgot about
Remember the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge? That had to be peak performative virtue signalling, when thousands of people got cold water thrown in their faces on camera to cure ALS... somehow
The behavior of the Episcopal Church this week, and the behavior of 90% of Christian churches during the plandemic, are two strong indicators (among many others, such as the rainbow flags hanging on the church buildings) that Christianity itself now worships The Current Thing first and foremost, above their old theology.
Very insightful post! Could it be that this “Current Thing” mania is a sign of the speeding up of the Western cultural decadence?
How the sequence could look like:
traditional religions did survive for thousands of years,
then followed by all the secular religions 18-19th centuries (Liberalism, Nationalism, Darwinism/Racism, Socialism, etc etc) that managed to survive and coexist for a couple centuries,
Then followed by the liberal, global, capitalistic, democracy secular religion that was THE current thing of the late 20th century and early 21st.
Each step of the downward spiral being shorter than the last…
Yes, exactly. This is what Rene Guenon referred to in The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times as the increased “solidification” of the world, where events speed up parabolically over time and the world increasingly “materializes” (i.e. becomes more secular and anti-spiritual) until it reaches a point where it cannot continue these trends any further, after which a massive paradigm shift will occur, the end of the Kali Yuga era and the start of a new era…
Speaking of Guenon, he seems to have a very large body of work. Could you suggest some of his more important books? Or maybe some other author who has done the reference work about him?
Guénon belongs to the Traditionalist or Perennialist school of thought, a movement that also includes figures such as Frithjof Schuon and Julius Evola. Mircea Eliade, while not a strict Traditionalist, was influenced by some of its ideas. Guénon's best-known works include The Reign of Quantity, which I found dense and challenging despite the importance of its concepts, and the more accessible The Crisis of the Modern World, which might serve as a better entry point. I personally struggled with the style of this school - Schuon, for instance, I found nearly unreadable, and Evola's Ride the Tiger devotes much of its content to critiquing existentialism in a way I found pedantic. Still, Guénon’s work stands out as particularly worthwhile.
The necessary compliment to conscious individuation is conscious interdependence, which is not necessarily just based on quiet contemplation and 'self-development' as such, but a larger sense of communion properly understood.
On the surface, Jung's conception of the individuation process (which should not be confused with individualism) can seem selfish as it demands deep introspection, separation from collective norms, and prioritizing personal growth and authenticity over conformity.
However, individuation ultimately leads to a more selfless existence. As individuals become more whole and self-aware, they become less driven by unconscious projections or unacknowledged insecurities. This allows them to act with greater empathy, wisdom, and responsibility toward others. A fully individuated person contributes more meaningfully to the community not through conformity, but by bringing their unique, integrated self to serve the collective in conscious, balanced ways.
In essence, individuation is paradoxical: it requires turning inward to become whole, but in doing so, the individual becomes more capable of outward service.
I think Rajeev’s point is worth contemplating, imo bc Western use of meditation & spiritual practices have completely veered into this selfish direction. Basically mindfulness and similar have become stress management techniques for white collar and PMC types looking for tools to self-exploit themselves more effectively in the rat race. And fuck everyone else, as usual.
I would add that there needs to be some balance in one’s life wrt to such self-work, otherwise one risks becoming obsessed with the self, which can block the view on other things and the bigger picture. I.e. work on self, but also live a humble and decent life, whatever that means on a personal level. This brings some perspective and can throw one out of a sense of self-importance (gotta laugh at oneself and one’s follies from time to time).
Also, there seems to be some sort of duality here: you can use the newfound power, derived from integration, for nefarious aims, i.e. joining the “higher dark side”.
Yes, I very much agree with you that it is not full naval gazing obsession with self that is the right approach, but a balance of it with still living one's life and engaging with others, and to try to do it in a way consistent with the Golden Rule (to the extent one can, which is never total). Jung himself commented that he needed his wife, his children, and his clinical practice in order to stay grounded - without it, he would easily have spun off to a path that was inimical toward his authentic growth.
Regarding your latter comment, this is so true. I was reading about Nikolai Berdyaev, a Eastern Orthodox mystic whose philosophy of creative freedom or personalism is closely related to Jung’s process of individuation in many ways, and I stumbled across this academic book: https://www.amazon.com/C-G-Jung-Nikolai-Berdyaev-Individuation/dp/0415493161 . I then uncovered that the author's advisor was a guy named Renos Papadopoulos, a high-level Jungian scholar associated with the horrific Tavistock Institute, with a Greek Orthodox background, who is an open borders fanatic, dismissing distinctions between refugees and economic migrants and calling for totally open borders. This then lead directly to the question of whether individuation necessarily makes one "better" spiritually, and the answer is no: Papadopoulos joined the "higher dark side", as you call it. Even though spiritual growth involves the unity of opposites along our own life path, it's easy, as limited, finite beings incapable of grasping the full extent of the whole, to end up in clashes on this plane of existence regardless of individuation...
Since long ago I've also been thinking that the Current Thing is a replacement for religion, and I find your excellent analysis spot on, specially its second segment. I would say, though, that the elites are about to get over (if they haven't yet) the stage of gaining control via shaping mass public opinion, seen as democracies have degenerated to meaninglessness. Nowadays, elections are very easily rigged or, if necessary, nulified like Romania's recent case. So, what the public opines is becoming less and less relevant. Of course it is always useful to fabricate narratives for keeping the plebs entertained and/or concerned, but I tend to think that, at present, the main tools for control are fear on the one side (terrorism, nuclear war, 'pandemics', climate change, blackouts like in Spain last week -perhaps the new invention?- etc.) and the digital Gulag on the other (video surveillance, CBDCs, mobile phones, AI, etc.) Covid unprecedented experiment neatly showed the degree of control the elites exert on all people on the planet regardless of opinion, reality perception or Current Thing concerns.
I am, however, utterly pessimistic. I am not sure, for instance, about the relevance of not supporting the Current Thing by ignoring it, for methinks the elites care very little about that. If necessary, they'll force us to participate (again: Covid example). Nor am I sure the well-fed, well-entertained plebs have any strong motivation, let alone real agency, to change the system, despite James Corbett constantly preaching we can. First, the dissidents are too scattered and not organized - nor will ever be allowed to. At most, we can -as you suggest- disengage from the fabricated narratives, but since every single person lives under the authority of some government and there are no unclaimed lands left on Earth, we ultimately have to abide by the rules and, worst of all, to finance the system with the taxes it forcibly exactss from us, regardless of whether we participate in the Current Thing or totally ignore it. Second, dissent is -or so it seems to me- something of the oldies, of those of us who have grown up in a very different world; but as we grow even older, we either die or lack the energy for changing anything, even for keep resisting. Newer generations, on the other hand, have been raised in present-day's paradigm, milkfed Netflix and Instagram and digital money and what have you, so that they quite likely have come to accept the actual order of things as normal and valid. At least that's what I see in younger people around me. I will not say revolution, but even civil desobedience (which is the least it would take to -let's say- refuse lockdowns and masks in plandemics) is risky and of course morally bad, whereas being a good and virtue-signaling citizen brings rewards and reinforcements.
But I digress. Sorry about that. Coming back to the point of your post, the advent of secularism and nihilism was, I am afraid, inevitable. The all-encompassing worldview religions provided was doomed to fall apart sooner or later, as scientific knowledge brought us the answers to most (not all) of the questions that, so far, had made people embrace supernatural beliefs. And those very few questions still unanswered by science (basically, the how of the Big Bang, for since that moment on everything else is causality) do not find any rationally acceptable answer in religions either. The time for transcendence, metaphysics, divine beings or the sacred is irremissibly gone, to the misfortune of humankind, given that, faced to the Absurd, today we do not know what for we suffer nor why should we endure it. And as you well say, the Current Thing is a very deficient replacement. But I think there is no way back, knowledge being, in my opinion, irreversible. The vacuum left by faith has come to stay, and it was only natural (according to human nature, that is) that someone would profit from it in order to gain -or maintain- power. And who knows? Perhaps society is better off with the Current Thing than with nothing at all, as is the case of hopeless nihilists like me. For me at least -and probably for many other people too- what left me spiritually unmoored was science and rationalism, not the media-driven narratives, which, while deserving my utter contempt, have come only after my nihilism and were therefore not its cause.
From public opinion surveys I have seen, the biggest adherents of the current thing are women. The current thing provides women with drama and the opportunity to virtue signal without the need for personal sacrifice. It also provides women with the ability and justification to be boss girls.
Just as it - reacting to it, religion - reinforces the myths of religious dogma and control, which are, actually faaaar worse, and a significant contributor to many of the issues faced today. If that conditioning and programming to religious and other types of belief systems, didn’t exist, this new “modernity’s religion,” wouldn’t either. As you write, it’s patterned after the religion and dogma. And, if one is able to look beyond, things would be very different with trust in the inherent self-regulating systems of the body and psyche. Belief systems and religion were never needed for that. They are simply systems of control. By whomever is doing the controlling, or has assigned themselves that role.
It ultimately comes down to what Dostoevsky wrote so eloquently in his Grand Inquisitor sub-story within Brothers Karamazov: the vast majority of people are terrified of both self-accountability and the void, and whatever authority figures can give them artificial meaning or distract them they will eagerly follow. Same as it ever was…
They don’t realize “tis the void that passeth to the void.” Through fear, religion (even the religion of politics) with its dogma instigates compliance and control.
IF I had a firm belief that all this mess is “reality,” - yes, it IS a part of same, so to speak, but the magical mirage part, I would jump off the edge of the flat earth. 🤣
The main - and substantial - difference I find between religions and the Current Thing is that, throughout all of human history and until quite recently, when science gave us knowledge and something approximate to truth, religion (i.e., superstition) was 'naturally' justified. Man, not knowing what to make of the strange fenomena around him, attributed causes to the supernatural. That is how religions came to appear, and there was no intrinsic 'evil' in them, despite the fact that high priests might -and increasingly did- take personal advantage of such beliefs and myths. Those millennia-old religious systems were, in my opinion, inevitable, they couldn't but exist because there was nothing else to explain the world. The Current Thing, however, is intrinsically evil because those who create and foster it know perfectly well that it is all a blatant lie, that there is no meaning whatsoever in the Universe (let alone in life), and they profit immensely (much more, I would say, than any previous religious lords) from the fact that man is now faced with the Absurd, and utterly lost at the individual level. Methinks that the Current Thing is a malevolent fabrication from the ground up, whereas religion happened as a spontaneous naïve belief.
I don’t disagree mostly. I think the primary benefit from the takeover by the early “priests” was power. Money, wealth is a great side benefit. Power, control, though - that’s the thing. Yes, I see the “organic” nature of the development of belief in stories.
Isn’t it absolutely amazing that no one - well a few did - seems to have gotten wise to the stories for as long as humanity has supposedly been around? That doesn’t say much for “us.”
In reference to your “no meaning” phrase: It’s all pretend - or to use my new favorite phrase, magical mirage * there’s no meaning * and it doesn’t matter * AND it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t matter. Agreeing, in other words.
Thanks for the talking. I do really enjoy honest and calm exchange of ideas. There’s room for everything, the way I see it.
Power indeed! I would say that wealth isn't so much a 'side' benefit as 'the way' to power. But power is no doubt the main goal, and has always been. So, yes, I can very well imagine the first gurus in tribal societies taking advantage of superstitions in order to gain power, then gurus becoming priests when superstitions became religions (which are simply more sophisticated superstitions). Notwithstanding this, those gurus and priests probably did not know any better than the rest about life, the world, the universe, lightning, eclipses, evolution, diseases and so on, thus quite likely they were also believers to a good degree. Present-day gurus, though, do not believe a word of what they 'preach' to us (Neo's 'Current Thing'), and that's why I find their imposture more immoral. One thing is to profit from a famine to sell your wheat at 10x price, and quite another thing is to create a famine to that same goal.
Personally I don't find too shocking that humanity hasn't 'gotten wise' for as long as it's been around, since scientific revelations (mostly Darwinism, astronomy, biology and advanced physics) are a very recent thing. How could humans in ancient times know, for instance, that creationism was totally wrong, or that eclipses weren't supernatural? What I do find interesting -albeit quite understandable- is that nowadays, with all that knowledge at the tip of our fingers, there are still so many believers or 'spirituals' of some sort or other.
A powerful antidote to "The current thing" and a step along the road to individuation is journaling and writing. Since you're already here on substack it is quite easy to get started. I encourage anyone reading this who hasn't started yet to commit to writing just one article on a favorite topic.
Right now I'm working on a piece titled "Muhammed Suiçmez - The best musician you've never heard of". Will more than a few people read it? Probably not. But in writing it, I dusted off my old copy of Cubase to re-arrange some of his works, listened to some Chopin Etudes I hadn't heard in years, and learned some fascinating new tidbits about my favorite musician from his interviews.
There is limited space in your head. Be deliberate about what fills it. Write more.
The act of producing trumps consumption in ways few understand. Your work being consumed, seen, heard, read and so on is great, but it is the effort to produce it that really produces the rewards.
In this media saturated world we live in few learn this lesson. Even gardening counts.
I am repeatedly planning along the same lines. Somehow the need to show off some of your work brings you on substack or any other platform and here you encounter 'the current thing'. First it's easy to ignore, you have your own stuff. But then it slowly creeps in. Whenever your stuff takes a break.
Even this article, while the best I read today, it's actually keeping us all from individuation. The fact that we are gathering here and there goes against it. And we instinctively want to gather. I wish this would be my last article read before going on my majestic journey, but I have a feeling we will all scroll past it and look for the next :))
Fantastic post. Another difference between The Current Thing and organised religion is how The Current Thing promotes constant frantic distraction and alienation, but never quiet contemplation and reflection. I've experienced myself how angry and accusatory NPCs get when you ask them to explain why they believe the things they say they believe: they are horrified by the prospect of looking inwards and finding nothing there
I am also shocked at how few people can look inward. Those of us who do this take it for granted. Indeed, it feels involuntary, particularly if it degenerates into rumination or anxiety. We can't stop contemplating.
But most people I know "cope" much better with life because they continually distract. Life is just one immersive mindless consumption experience after another, from Netflix to drinking.
That's exactly right. I think that now, those who surrender themselves to that constant distraction (and I was guilty of it myself for too long) are finding themselves going along with some pretty crazy stuff. The alternative is social isolation and the inability to keep enjoying the dogshit culture they've been part of for a long time, and it's tough
I agree. It demands a price. It is isolating too. But those who seek some semblance of the truth must detach.
The very real downside is it becomes ever more difficult to converse in normal circles. I don't mean to sound like I have some grand insight into how the world functions; I don't. But listening to mindless regurgitation of focus-grouped talking points from friends who are oblivious to almost everything happening around them is hard work.
Indeed, those people often consider themselves very well informed, and really hate being asked to explain why they believe and disbelieve certain things. It's remarkable how rude a person feels they can be if they think you're a 'conspiracy theorist' or similar
It is all a cop out because at some level they must know they are just accepting things they have been told. I tired of them long ago. I certainly discuss nothing with them as their views are difficult to listen to.
Last year I asked a guy to give me his bank number so I could send him money and he didn't want to do it cos he was convinced Russian hacking was a serious risk. I don't even think he knew what part of the process they would hack or what they would do with his bank details if they got them, but he was genuinely worried about it and I just had to bite my tongue so as not to create a giant scene. It was crazy
Very focused analysis. My thanks.
The American bad, orange man bad rhetoric is being amplified overseas to absolutely insane levels. People in my local area have infinite talking points about this and yet absolutely zero understanding or engagement in their local politic, something, in theory at least, they can change is completely ignored while the thing they have zero control over the other side of the world is endless debated... all while consuming US manufactured film and TV.. 🫠🫠 honestly it's fascinating. When this is pointed out adult tantrums follow.
There's a lot to digest here, thank you. Would you say that alt-right folks making memes, essays, or insults about Current Things are also participants in the Current Thing? Are we also playing our part as the demons of their quasi-religion?
It makes me wonder how we should engage. If to accept or deny the narrative is to strengthen it, should we say nothing?
Great question, Joseph. I think there are layers of analysis one could use with respect to the alt right: (1) that it was a populist movement that got out of hand after Trump's unexpected 2016 win, and that like the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement they were both shut down after they grew too much (in other words, they were movements that were controlled from the start); (2) our elites are not superhuman, and there are unintended consequences of their actions - for example, to shut down Trump 1.0 and the alt-right they had to reveal their existence to the public, which was itself antithetical to their interests - everyone knows about the existence of the so-called "deep state" now; (3) it is not commentary on politics per se that feeds the Current Thing, but by buying into it's action-reaction-synthesis dialectic. So posting memes, essay or insults about Current Things has multiple and perhaps contradictory effects depending on the level of analysis...
Let's take the Shiloh Hendrix Current Thing as an example (which, admittedly, I have not looked into the details much): the action and reaction would be that Hendrex's actions ere either good or bad, with a synthesis of worsening race relations (which is good for our upper elites, the masses focused on race/gender/sexual orientation fighting so they won't focus on elite theft). By arguing Hendrex is either good or bad, one feeds the narrative as a Current Thing, prolonging it's focus in the collective imagination. However, personally, I think pointing out how the process works, what the dialectical solution being sought is, is not a bad thing and probably even a good thing, but maybe there's a question of timing too where it's better to ignore it so long as it remains the Current Thing.
I think the Alt-Right has overall had a much more positive effect than the Tea Party. I can't think of a single policy change that came from the Tea Party - It was co-opted almost immediately. The Alt-Right is being co-opted as we speak, but it's already done it's damage to the elites as you describe.
Regarding the Current Thing - Seems like pointing out what each position is (good/bad) and how they help elites, then pondering a third way, is how to pull people out of the Current Thing. Plus history so people can see how much and how often the Current Thing is changed.
Which is pretty much your Substack and your mission. Thanks for all you do. You're changing lives out here.
Individuation increases the less we have the one size fits all religions. This includes economic unity, political unity, and the other Orwellian big brother type of "we have the answer" speak.
Despite the chaos which you depicted perfectly, it's not just a curse but a blessing. It breaks apart the false stability of the plans offered by unified group think.
Ukraine was something that you covered and at the time I couldn't put my finger on why the coverage of the war was annoying to me.
https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-ukraine-war-did-not-take-place
My subconscious was pushing against my nature to be concerned and fearful about the war.
Same reason why COVID was a blessing as instead of being turned into cognitive zombies as intended, we got shaken up and confused as to why what they said didn't match reality.
https://robc137.substack.com/p/covid
Here's an old post of mine where I am confused as to why propaganda is done so sloppily compared to the "Wag the Dog" type stuff we had with Iraq and 9/11 which you mention in your Ukraine post.
https://robc137.substack.com/p/looking-behind-the-curtain-of-oz
I think they lost control when they stopped giving us a basic stability of economics, leading to fear of food and gas prices despite people not seeing the record inflation in real estate since the 00s. People were ok with being in underwater "stable debt" mortgages, but are now facing basic things being almost out of reach.
They kept on with the circuses but stopped giving bread. 😂
Amazingly comprehensive and necessary post on the most important challenge of the day
It is a religion. We're creating egregores and worshipping them in order to make them rule over us. Or in other words, as Dostoevsky revealed in "Demons", we're handing ourselves over to demons by our apathetic self-enslavement (mimetic frenzy) over each new "topic". The devil moves in crowds, and we willingly hand ourselves to him, and then worship him by doing whatever he (the current thing) demands.
But what's the way out of this mimetic frenzy? Christ, who talks to and saves each individual through an individual relationship, in the most anti-mimetic way.
Individual curiosity and local living! If everyone is involved in their local affairs, boring life wud become normal. Small groups don't have capacity to produce new thing everyday. Plus, if everyone is at least curious enough to not directly believe shallow narratives world wud be better place.
Although, I am not sure if it's even possible for everyone to be curious.
Definitely agree with this analysis..The New Thing conditioning model brings to mind blasts from the past "Save Darfur"..and so many more since..
Live Strong, Kony 2012, Je Suis Charlie, Me Too... and a million other slogans that people got emotionally invested in and then completely forgot about
Exactly!
Remember the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge? That had to be peak performative virtue signalling, when thousands of people got cold water thrown in their faces on camera to cure ALS... somehow
The behavior of the Episcopal Church this week, and the behavior of 90% of Christian churches during the plandemic, are two strong indicators (among many others, such as the rainbow flags hanging on the church buildings) that Christianity itself now worships The Current Thing first and foremost, above their old theology.
Brilliant work NF. And timely
Very insightful post! Could it be that this “Current Thing” mania is a sign of the speeding up of the Western cultural decadence?
How the sequence could look like:
traditional religions did survive for thousands of years,
then followed by all the secular religions 18-19th centuries (Liberalism, Nationalism, Darwinism/Racism, Socialism, etc etc) that managed to survive and coexist for a couple centuries,
Then followed by the liberal, global, capitalistic, democracy secular religion that was THE current thing of the late 20th century and early 21st.
Each step of the downward spiral being shorter than the last…
Yes, exactly. This is what Rene Guenon referred to in The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times as the increased “solidification” of the world, where events speed up parabolically over time and the world increasingly “materializes” (i.e. becomes more secular and anti-spiritual) until it reaches a point where it cannot continue these trends any further, after which a massive paradigm shift will occur, the end of the Kali Yuga era and the start of a new era…
Speaking of Guenon, he seems to have a very large body of work. Could you suggest some of his more important books? Or maybe some other author who has done the reference work about him?
It would be very appreciated!
Guénon belongs to the Traditionalist or Perennialist school of thought, a movement that also includes figures such as Frithjof Schuon and Julius Evola. Mircea Eliade, while not a strict Traditionalist, was influenced by some of its ideas. Guénon's best-known works include The Reign of Quantity, which I found dense and challenging despite the importance of its concepts, and the more accessible The Crisis of the Modern World, which might serve as a better entry point. I personally struggled with the style of this school - Schuon, for instance, I found nearly unreadable, and Evola's Ride the Tiger devotes much of its content to critiquing existentialism in a way I found pedantic. Still, Guénon’s work stands out as particularly worthwhile.
Thanks for the comment! I will have a look at The Crisis of the Modern World after I finish Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy…
The necessary compliment to conscious individuation is conscious interdependence, which is not necessarily just based on quiet contemplation and 'self-development' as such, but a larger sense of communion properly understood.
On the surface, Jung's conception of the individuation process (which should not be confused with individualism) can seem selfish as it demands deep introspection, separation from collective norms, and prioritizing personal growth and authenticity over conformity.
However, individuation ultimately leads to a more selfless existence. As individuals become more whole and self-aware, they become less driven by unconscious projections or unacknowledged insecurities. This allows them to act with greater empathy, wisdom, and responsibility toward others. A fully individuated person contributes more meaningfully to the community not through conformity, but by bringing their unique, integrated self to serve the collective in conscious, balanced ways.
In essence, individuation is paradoxical: it requires turning inward to become whole, but in doing so, the individual becomes more capable of outward service.
I think Rajeev’s point is worth contemplating, imo bc Western use of meditation & spiritual practices have completely veered into this selfish direction. Basically mindfulness and similar have become stress management techniques for white collar and PMC types looking for tools to self-exploit themselves more effectively in the rat race. And fuck everyone else, as usual.
Very true and well said.
I would add that there needs to be some balance in one’s life wrt to such self-work, otherwise one risks becoming obsessed with the self, which can block the view on other things and the bigger picture. I.e. work on self, but also live a humble and decent life, whatever that means on a personal level. This brings some perspective and can throw one out of a sense of self-importance (gotta laugh at oneself and one’s follies from time to time).
Also, there seems to be some sort of duality here: you can use the newfound power, derived from integration, for nefarious aims, i.e. joining the “higher dark side”.
Yes, I very much agree with you that it is not full naval gazing obsession with self that is the right approach, but a balance of it with still living one's life and engaging with others, and to try to do it in a way consistent with the Golden Rule (to the extent one can, which is never total). Jung himself commented that he needed his wife, his children, and his clinical practice in order to stay grounded - without it, he would easily have spun off to a path that was inimical toward his authentic growth.
Regarding your latter comment, this is so true. I was reading about Nikolai Berdyaev, a Eastern Orthodox mystic whose philosophy of creative freedom or personalism is closely related to Jung’s process of individuation in many ways, and I stumbled across this academic book: https://www.amazon.com/C-G-Jung-Nikolai-Berdyaev-Individuation/dp/0415493161 . I then uncovered that the author's advisor was a guy named Renos Papadopoulos, a high-level Jungian scholar associated with the horrific Tavistock Institute, with a Greek Orthodox background, who is an open borders fanatic, dismissing distinctions between refugees and economic migrants and calling for totally open borders. This then lead directly to the question of whether individuation necessarily makes one "better" spiritually, and the answer is no: Papadopoulos joined the "higher dark side", as you call it. Even though spiritual growth involves the unity of opposites along our own life path, it's easy, as limited, finite beings incapable of grasping the full extent of the whole, to end up in clashes on this plane of existence regardless of individuation...
Since long ago I've also been thinking that the Current Thing is a replacement for religion, and I find your excellent analysis spot on, specially its second segment. I would say, though, that the elites are about to get over (if they haven't yet) the stage of gaining control via shaping mass public opinion, seen as democracies have degenerated to meaninglessness. Nowadays, elections are very easily rigged or, if necessary, nulified like Romania's recent case. So, what the public opines is becoming less and less relevant. Of course it is always useful to fabricate narratives for keeping the plebs entertained and/or concerned, but I tend to think that, at present, the main tools for control are fear on the one side (terrorism, nuclear war, 'pandemics', climate change, blackouts like in Spain last week -perhaps the new invention?- etc.) and the digital Gulag on the other (video surveillance, CBDCs, mobile phones, AI, etc.) Covid unprecedented experiment neatly showed the degree of control the elites exert on all people on the planet regardless of opinion, reality perception or Current Thing concerns.
I am, however, utterly pessimistic. I am not sure, for instance, about the relevance of not supporting the Current Thing by ignoring it, for methinks the elites care very little about that. If necessary, they'll force us to participate (again: Covid example). Nor am I sure the well-fed, well-entertained plebs have any strong motivation, let alone real agency, to change the system, despite James Corbett constantly preaching we can. First, the dissidents are too scattered and not organized - nor will ever be allowed to. At most, we can -as you suggest- disengage from the fabricated narratives, but since every single person lives under the authority of some government and there are no unclaimed lands left on Earth, we ultimately have to abide by the rules and, worst of all, to finance the system with the taxes it forcibly exactss from us, regardless of whether we participate in the Current Thing or totally ignore it. Second, dissent is -or so it seems to me- something of the oldies, of those of us who have grown up in a very different world; but as we grow even older, we either die or lack the energy for changing anything, even for keep resisting. Newer generations, on the other hand, have been raised in present-day's paradigm, milkfed Netflix and Instagram and digital money and what have you, so that they quite likely have come to accept the actual order of things as normal and valid. At least that's what I see in younger people around me. I will not say revolution, but even civil desobedience (which is the least it would take to -let's say- refuse lockdowns and masks in plandemics) is risky and of course morally bad, whereas being a good and virtue-signaling citizen brings rewards and reinforcements.
But I digress. Sorry about that. Coming back to the point of your post, the advent of secularism and nihilism was, I am afraid, inevitable. The all-encompassing worldview religions provided was doomed to fall apart sooner or later, as scientific knowledge brought us the answers to most (not all) of the questions that, so far, had made people embrace supernatural beliefs. And those very few questions still unanswered by science (basically, the how of the Big Bang, for since that moment on everything else is causality) do not find any rationally acceptable answer in religions either. The time for transcendence, metaphysics, divine beings or the sacred is irremissibly gone, to the misfortune of humankind, given that, faced to the Absurd, today we do not know what for we suffer nor why should we endure it. And as you well say, the Current Thing is a very deficient replacement. But I think there is no way back, knowledge being, in my opinion, irreversible. The vacuum left by faith has come to stay, and it was only natural (according to human nature, that is) that someone would profit from it in order to gain -or maintain- power. And who knows? Perhaps society is better off with the Current Thing than with nothing at all, as is the case of hopeless nihilists like me. For me at least -and probably for many other people too- what left me spiritually unmoored was science and rationalism, not the media-driven narratives, which, while deserving my utter contempt, have come only after my nihilism and were therefore not its cause.
Localisation could be part of the answer. Globalisation created the current thing buzz!
If everyone live locally, staying involved in their local affairs, boring things would become new normal.
Localisation movement is pushing for exactly same thing.
Wearing a mask is common courtesy, everyone should be forced to wear a mask, like in the Mongoloid race.
From public opinion surveys I have seen, the biggest adherents of the current thing are women. The current thing provides women with drama and the opportunity to virtue signal without the need for personal sacrifice. It also provides women with the ability and justification to be boss girls.
This was excellent. Good medicine for my soul.
Excellent. Thanks.
Beautifully written. Thank you.
True.
Just as it - reacting to it, religion - reinforces the myths of religious dogma and control, which are, actually faaaar worse, and a significant contributor to many of the issues faced today. If that conditioning and programming to religious and other types of belief systems, didn’t exist, this new “modernity’s religion,” wouldn’t either. As you write, it’s patterned after the religion and dogma. And, if one is able to look beyond, things would be very different with trust in the inherent self-regulating systems of the body and psyche. Belief systems and religion were never needed for that. They are simply systems of control. By whomever is doing the controlling, or has assigned themselves that role.
It ultimately comes down to what Dostoevsky wrote so eloquently in his Grand Inquisitor sub-story within Brothers Karamazov: the vast majority of people are terrified of both self-accountability and the void, and whatever authority figures can give them artificial meaning or distract them they will eagerly follow. Same as it ever was…
Yes, and it’s pathetic.
They don’t realize “tis the void that passeth to the void.” Through fear, religion (even the religion of politics) with its dogma instigates compliance and control.
IF I had a firm belief that all this mess is “reality,” - yes, it IS a part of same, so to speak, but the magical mirage part, I would jump off the edge of the flat earth. 🤣
The main - and substantial - difference I find between religions and the Current Thing is that, throughout all of human history and until quite recently, when science gave us knowledge and something approximate to truth, religion (i.e., superstition) was 'naturally' justified. Man, not knowing what to make of the strange fenomena around him, attributed causes to the supernatural. That is how religions came to appear, and there was no intrinsic 'evil' in them, despite the fact that high priests might -and increasingly did- take personal advantage of such beliefs and myths. Those millennia-old religious systems were, in my opinion, inevitable, they couldn't but exist because there was nothing else to explain the world. The Current Thing, however, is intrinsically evil because those who create and foster it know perfectly well that it is all a blatant lie, that there is no meaning whatsoever in the Universe (let alone in life), and they profit immensely (much more, I would say, than any previous religious lords) from the fact that man is now faced with the Absurd, and utterly lost at the individual level. Methinks that the Current Thing is a malevolent fabrication from the ground up, whereas religion happened as a spontaneous naïve belief.
I don’t disagree mostly. I think the primary benefit from the takeover by the early “priests” was power. Money, wealth is a great side benefit. Power, control, though - that’s the thing. Yes, I see the “organic” nature of the development of belief in stories.
Isn’t it absolutely amazing that no one - well a few did - seems to have gotten wise to the stories for as long as humanity has supposedly been around? That doesn’t say much for “us.”
In reference to your “no meaning” phrase: It’s all pretend - or to use my new favorite phrase, magical mirage * there’s no meaning * and it doesn’t matter * AND it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t matter. Agreeing, in other words.
Thanks for the talking. I do really enjoy honest and calm exchange of ideas. There’s room for everything, the way I see it.
Power indeed! I would say that wealth isn't so much a 'side' benefit as 'the way' to power. But power is no doubt the main goal, and has always been. So, yes, I can very well imagine the first gurus in tribal societies taking advantage of superstitions in order to gain power, then gurus becoming priests when superstitions became religions (which are simply more sophisticated superstitions). Notwithstanding this, those gurus and priests probably did not know any better than the rest about life, the world, the universe, lightning, eclipses, evolution, diseases and so on, thus quite likely they were also believers to a good degree. Present-day gurus, though, do not believe a word of what they 'preach' to us (Neo's 'Current Thing'), and that's why I find their imposture more immoral. One thing is to profit from a famine to sell your wheat at 10x price, and quite another thing is to create a famine to that same goal.
Personally I don't find too shocking that humanity hasn't 'gotten wise' for as long as it's been around, since scientific revelations (mostly Darwinism, astronomy, biology and advanced physics) are a very recent thing. How could humans in ancient times know, for instance, that creationism was totally wrong, or that eclipses weren't supernatural? What I do find interesting -albeit quite understandable- is that nowadays, with all that knowledge at the tip of our fingers, there are still so many believers or 'spirituals' of some sort or other.