Didn't "blackpilled" start as a perjoritive? I like it, it's catchy.
Am I blackpilled in real life? Hell no. I'm the cool dad that knows everyone's name and hands out compliments like candy. I use the blackpill knowledge to place my family in the least blackpilled environment possible.
We're like Jonas in The Giver. We have the dark and esoteric knowledge, and it's not meant to be shared with everyone. It's meant for making the hard calls correctly.
Your best yet. Epictetus, Goethe, Stockdale, heroes always operate from internal strength and refuse to relinquish control over their will, no matter the setting. The only art I currently have in my office (though I've never been a slave to alcohol) is a needlepoint of "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference". Great post!
Thanks Rick, I appreciate your feedback and you’re right about heroes refusing to relinquish control over their will. I’m a big fan of the serenity prayer too, which would have been a great inclusion in the post.
The serenity prayer was also on my mind when I read this excellent post. Funnily enough, I too have a needlepoint of it, made by my mother, which sits in my office. Along with a plaque quoting Eleanor Roosevelt: “ Learn from the mistakes of others.” You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.”
I ever go back to Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, which brings to life the power of one’s determination to live with integrity, whatever the circumstances. Your Goethe quote does the same, and is incredibly inspiring. Thank you!
While physical evolution is quite slow, psychological evolution happens much faster. Remember, only a couple of decades ago it was ok to look down on women and have apartheid of fellow humans just because they looked different.
Funny you bring up the 1990s. In an interview, a neuroscientist said when he started in that time, consciousness was not an interest in the field. So wow, only 3 decades ago they didn't really care about studying consciousness!
The black pill was hell even for me having known the corruption and the way humanity just sleep walks into atrocities primed by sociopathic elites that they blindly trust.
We could have come out of con-vid as cognitive zombies... Had they done it earlier, perhaps they would have succeeded.
But thankfully, it was done at the wrong time and finally many are seeing that the holy experts, not unlike the priests of old, lied and cheated us. I call this a psychological software update, not unlike animals learning of a new predator to watch out for. No physical evolution needed to update... Just different conditions and the survival instinct. That's why even though many still think the shots are safe, they're not getting the boosters.
THE ONLY WAY IS UP.
"The only alternative left for mankind, ” he continued, “is discipline. Discipline is the only deterrent. But by discipline I don’t mean harsh routines. I don’t mean waking up every morning at five-thirty and throwing cold water on yourself until you’re blue. Sorcerers understand discipline as the capacity to face with serenity odds that are not included in our expectations. For them, discipline is an art: the art of facing infinity without flinching, not because they are strong and tough but because they are filled with awe.” - from The Active Side of Infinity by Carlos Casteneda
I know now that he was a phony and made up things but sometimes fiction has truth in it and that's the best explanation to face the unknown of death and appreciate life while I am still alive.
"Remember, only a couple of decades ago it was ok to look down on women"
Today it's OK for media of all colours to abuse men (they cunningly target White men specifically) in the most unhinged, cowardly, anti-truth, possible way. Many millions "read", "watch", both men and women, and feel no objection to it within them.
There are many things that may be misidentified as "psychological evolution", and are something else, or the very opposite.
Krishnamurti said there is no psychological evolution, that psychologically we are the same as people thousands of years ago. Culture and customs may change, different groups become powerful or marginalised, but the human mind remains the same deep down.
This is what as struck me as strange. They have spent years denigrating the straight, white male as toxic, incel degenerates. Yet there seems to now be a push across Europe and America for war and to try to bring these self same males back in to the fold to fight their dirty little war be it with Russia, China, Iran or whoever.
I feel that these same males look at their countries and see them for the deracinated, economic gay parades that the elites have transformed them into and rightfully come to the conclusion that there’s fuck all to fight for anymore.
I’m not sure you’ll get any of them to fight even with a draft which leads me to believe the elites are in a bit of a pickle. I mean you could round up the diversity and promise them citizenship but a mercenary army usually ends up devouring the host. So what then?
I’m a little over the hill for the draft but in one way I’d welcome some combat and arms training. I’d turn them on the CO’s and then hunt down the politicians with not a hint of guilt and perhaps a smile on my face. I once considered myself a pacifist to boot but even I have limits.
I think that what you are describing/prescribing -- on the level of the tenacious, unfazed individual -- is the basic operational mechanism that builds up and maintains what N. Taleb has defined as "antifragility".
You really have a gift to distill things into plain language and, most importantly, give actionable solutions.
Do you think most people over most of history are animals that talk?
If so, can we always assume they will never break out of the paradigm they’re born into?
Also, when I read this it made think of Frank Zappa’s quote:
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion.
At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Thanks Crumpet. That’s a great Zappa quote and very true, I think. Re: whether most people are animals that talk, I wouldn’t put it in those terms — it’s a little too arrogant and egotistical to separate oneself from humanity in this manner, I think — but rather that people are evolutionarily evolved for millions of years to survive in very small groups - think of the Dunbar number - and surviving in such groups meant listening to the leader, who was in turn responsible to the group. Expulsion from the group for not listening to the leader was basically a death sentence, so people who did that were weeded out of the gene pool. What we see, then, is that human psychology is simply not properly evolved for an environment where there the leaders (here, the privately owned central bank owners) hide in the shadows and disclaim total responsibility for their nefarious and deeply evil rule, and it’s very hard psychologically for most people to shift to understand this.
If it's true that culture is downstream from the local landscape or technology, then I guess we're in for a bumpy ride! People aren't hungry or cold enough to compel them to change. I guess we wait!
Another wide-ranging and provocative post ! I take on board your arguments about there being no saviours in our political (or other) elites, that Donald Trump is just as much serving his masters as was the last incumbent - or those who were wheeling him out as and when necessary to make pronouncements. Some of those masters might wax and wane in influence depending on circumstances, I would venture to say.
And the same applies across Europe and the UK, and probably Russia and so on. Globalism is gonna globalise, to paraphrase someone.
But I was wondering, do you believe that (for example) DJT has absolutely no agency in any of his policies or executive actions, or that he is on a short leash, and that - to use a current topic as an illustration - the elites will wait for the fallout from the trade tariffs announcements, make an assessment thereof and then shape a new policy direction to be followed, preceded by propaganda to soften up the population for acceptance?
I was also interested in your writing here on the holocene extinction stuff, and the ROEI links, which I will look more at. My own current view is one of extreme scepticism and that it smells of more elite propaganda to max out the green scam, hand-in-fist with the anthropegenic warming nonsense which has been the lie which begat other lies like the zoonotic virus transfer via "wet markets", and the WHO "One Health" fiction.
I don't deny that we as a species have been and still are guilty of horrific over-exploitation of resources like the oceans and possibly forests as well, but when species die out for one reason or another - even if it's entirely by human intervention - an ecological gap appears, which will be filled by other species, as long as the environment is not toxified. We might not like the fact that this is happening here and now as we witness it, but happen it will, and we cannot second-guess what occurs next. We don't have the intellectual tools. The planet will adapt as it has for its whole existence, and we will adapt or perish. I think as a species we are smart and resilient enough to do that and find a balance with our environment, albeit with periodic crises of one sort or another. We have survived several glaciation periods and many other threats to our species, and with the cards more heavily stacked against us, I would guess. It's just that the controllers don't want us to believe in our own abilities for obvious reasons.
Having said all that, I concur with some other contributors here that the globalism thing is going to be very hard to roll back very far, as we in the West are probably all (or mostly) too ensnared in its web of "convenience" to let it go voluntarily.
Just my tuppence worth on one or two things ! Excellent post, as always.
Thanks Renewable. Personally, I believe that Trump's agency in pushing policies - at least policies that matter - is almost entirely curtailed. The man was facing multiple criminal charges that would put him in prison for life, civil trials that if they had continued could have bankrupted him (remember the rape and defamation verdicts for $83.3 million?), and he was promised that it would all go away and that he would get rich if he would do as he was told (hence, Trumpcoin and Melaniacoin, Bezos dramatically overpaying for Trump media material, etc.). He caved behind closed doors and now is merely acting in whatever role is assigned him; this is why the incessant media demonization of him was turned down.
Whether our central bank owning elites want to crash the economy to enact CBDC, and/or push for war with Israel or China, or inflate the bubble even higher, or transition to a fake "multi-polar" order ultimately is not clear, because they develop their strategies behind closed doors (although whatever they do will benefit themselves and Israel); what matters is the understanding that the system as designed offers no voice to the masses whatsoever, and that the upper elite's rapaciousness and greed means they plan to institute a permanent technocratic worldwide slavery grid which will dramatically transform and destroy society (even more than they currently are).
I agree with you that our elites are using and abusing neo-Malthusian arguments (Club of Rome stuff) for their own purposes, and that perhaps they don't even believe their own arguments - hence, we see them giving unlimited aid to Africa which needlessly increased it's population by well over a billion, for example. If our elites were worried about the environment why would they allow that (unless they have a deathwish)? With that said, it doesn't seem logical to me that you can have exponentially increasing and consuming populations on a planet with finite resources and expect a happy ending. The rates of species die-offs are an easy thing to point to that there is such an unsustainable problem.
N.F, some feedback on your quote by Geopolitics and Empire where he says:
"The Cold War is over. Communism is dead."
I emphatically disagree with him on both points:
1. The world is in a New Cold War for the scramble of mineral resources for all the "green" energy transition devices i.e wind turbines, solar panels, electric cars, batteries, etc. This scramble is happening all over the global south as well as in Ukraine. How did Hrvoje Moric miss that? Here's a recent article as an example of what I'm referring to.
2. . "Communism is dead". I don't think so at all, to the contrary we have since 2020 transitioned into Stakeholder-Communism (next-level communism based on the Chinese model a blend of capitalism and communism, but at it's core its communism), as this documentary illustrates very clearly:
Although I do agree with him about this left-right political theatre and the switching from one side to the other (controlling the narratives driving both sides).
However, I also share your belief N.F. that we can use every situation to learn from it and to clarify our views, our beliefs and our political positions, but ultimately this is really about moral development (as the ancients believed). And what all the left-right fluctuations show up is very high levels of hypocrisy all around. Am I/you a hypocrite on this or that or any matter is the question I/we need to ask and then take a clear stance on it. Do I consider apartheid, genocide, racism, nationalism, globalism, etc, etc fine in some cases but evil in other cases? Am I quiet on some issues sometimes and very vocal on the same issues other times, depending on what serves me in that moment .. - and we can see this is the basic state of moral development of most people. Clarifying these issues for ourselves as an inner practice is the best antidote to nihilism i.m.o. as it off-sets moral relativism which would otherwise contribute to nihilism.
Thanks for your thoughts. I'm a follower and practitioner of the Mesoamerican calendar systems which provide for an alternative understanding of reality. Rather than it being mechanical and machine-like, it's fully organic and metaphysical - an energetic structure within an organic cyclic organism. Every day/week/month/year has its own personality, challenges, offerings, positives, wisdom, things to learn from, guidance and so on.
Each one of us is an energy imprint and an intrinsic component of creation. Once we start to fully understand this version of reality there's very little room for real nihilism, which I think is partially caused by a/the mechanical view of reality and it's possible malevolent design.
Although Gnosticism has a lot to offer there's some beliefs within it that seem foreign to me, so I take only from it some of the mystical aspects that fit into my own spiritual journey. Same with Jung's work, I'm not into absolutely all of his work, but much of it is absolutely indispensable in my view.
However, one can also really broaden one's spiritual and mystical journey through ancient spiritual systems like the Mesoamerican and Vedic (Yuga) calendar systems and philosophical systems, which is where my path takes me more often than not.
The Chinese farmer in your piece has been repeated over and over in myriad cultures and times. It really does ask the question of whether our snap judgements and evaluations belong to a larger or smaller sphere...our perceived world. It also, to my mind at least asks to what level of immersion one finds themselves in, in regards to the Tao, usually translated as the Way, the Flow.
It seems to me that early 21st century American society IS that place of snap judgements.
How is it possible to examine any issue, if the knee jerk reaction is to force everything into a classification immediately?
In the case of the Dire Wolf, for example, the usual suspects have it all packaged...okay guys, we brought it back! Now lets get the next big research check and move on before anyone notices!
Missing from the equation is any valid effort at examination, much less the asking of questions, like...should this kind of monkeywrenching be done at all?
Labels are a kind of classification. Its a method by which a person is summed up in a simple term. It almost doesn't matter if its valid, because if there's enough piling on around it, the person just shrugs and starts to accept it. The label becomes the classification and the identity.
The latest hit for humanity has many stinging, and meanwhile the media is buisy using it to advance their usual tactics of polarization and substanceless screaming.
Yet below all the fun and games, there is a Wolf that was forced to participate in the latest iteration of Frankenstein. The governments of the world are continuing their wars on the forests. The majority are still juggling with what can be put off to meet the next price hike, and unseen, unknown, unrecognized...the Tao is still flowing, ever present, eternal, real.
Do you feel it's worth having children in a doomed world? Several of my friends have sworn off having children after getting too blackpilled about the future.
Philosophically I am pro-natalist, but only for those who can have children without relying on government aid or other handouts. The Amish, for example, have lots of kids built around community, and I think what they do is wholesome and wonderful. Having children while relying on handouts for survival is an incredibly dysgenic situation.
On a personal level, and this is just my take, I think children are a blessing and get us to see life from an entirely different angle. It involves a kind of selfless giving that is not experienced in any other context. I think there is a balance to be had recognizing this world as fundamentally fallen while still trying to retain a measure of optimism for developing agency, family, community, etc. in one’s own life. If one doesn’t find the right partner, doesn’t have the right nurturing perspective, isn’t making enough money to afford a family, then I don’t think it’s right to bring a child into a situation with a broken home/poverty/atomization/loneliness in an already broken world…
I believe in the long run this whole thing will end in a nuclear war. There are a couple of possible flahspoints though I think Israel is the most likely candidate. What could be more blackpilling?
On the other hand, if the strikes amount to 200 or less detonations, the world will continue even if many (and I suspect will knock on effects 1-4 billion die) are lost. What is more, I think the current elite’s yoke will be torn apart in such an event.
I definitely think our elites have mass nuclear war as a contingency - nuke it all and head to bunker, wait a couple years and come out to a pristine and empty planet, or do more limited nuclear strikes as an excuse for martial law. It just seems like they’re getting a lot of what they want under the current system — mass inflation to starve out the masses, furthering the Greater Israel project, decreasing the birthrates of advanced nations (and especially whites). The chaos from lots of nukes going off might create uncertain elements that they wouldn’t have planned for or controlled. Still, they might. The justification for martial law would be very powerful.
Hello N.F. Very many interesting points (some I agree with, some I don't, but that's what thought-provoking articles are all about). We typically comment on what we don't agree with so here goes - only one point for now:
" ...where media reporting has become fully divorced from actual political developments. This is a new and unique situation."
Is it really? Did this not happen under communism? Or Nazism for that matter? Or other instances of dictatorships and the like? Since this is happening right now should we not face up to the fact that we are IN totalitarianism? But what is it? What is totalitarianism? It's a system supported by the people as well as the elites, moreover it's maintained MORE by the people than the elites, as Matthias Desmet explains here:
This reality is very Jungian in a sense, of course, because we are failing exactly what Jung proposed, which is to stop projecting and to start introspecting. How did WE bring about this situation? Surely it's because WE have been supporting globalisation all along. The truth is there is no real "anti-globalism" anywhere - can you point it out? Rurik Skywalker made a similar observation in his most recent post: "Look, there is no war against Globalism ..."
Which doesn't mean I necessarily agree with everything he says, but he's spot-on with this, and as well as some of his comments after that:
Anti-globalism in a real sense would require Genuine Decentralisation but zero dissidents are truly advocating for that, which is why I subjectively view the entire so-called dissident-sphere as SEMI-fraudulent ... (wittingly or unwittingly). Everyone is an "anti-globalist" (apparently) in words, but directionless in what that actually means ... (what it WOULD actually mean). Many examples among the well-known dissidents.
The issue is most dissidents are leftists at heart, truth be told (I've mentioned this before), so decentralisation in a real sense wouldn't come natural to them. Genuine decentralisation would require being anti-imperialist, a bridge too far for "dissidents" based in imperial zones (North America, Western Europe, Russia & China). Subjects of former or current imperial nations don't advocate for their own demise through decentralisation (i.e. the loss of their satellites and colonies), so what they are dissidents of is not clear.
Which is why the concept of BRICS as an antidote to globalism is a false construct too - see my comment here:
Hi Energy, thanks for the comment. While the narratives built in prior eras were lies, I believe the underlying facts being reported on were at least semi-accurate (to the limited extent actual actions were reported on, of course). This is because, in part, (1) the system used news reporting as a way to further inter-agency coordination so it had to be on some level accurate, (2) there has been no actual challenges or competition for our upper elites for many decades now, so accurate reporting is no longer necessary, and (3) the technology for instantaneous communication and coordination did not exist as it does today (via whatever behind the scenes mechanisms they are using), a process that really began in the gulf war (as I discussed in my gulf war post: "the Gulf War was the first war which allowed the instantaneous media-government-spook state feedback mechanisms that allowed for hyperreality to manifest itself"). This situation is unique now because the underlying "facts" being reported on are simply being made up.
Re: Matthias Desmet, there's something about his style that just doesn't work with me -- his concept of "mass formation", which got thrown around as a buzzword across the right for awhile, kind of just went right over my head, even if I may agree or not with the underlying concepts. It just didn't connect with me.
"Anti-globalism in a real sense would require Genuine Decentralisation but zero dissidents are truly advocating for that" There are different aspects of anti-globalism: there's the monetary component (Guido Preparata recommends negative interest currency, basically a continuation of the Worgl experiment), there's the local community focus/self-sufficiency component (which doesn't work well if the monetary component isn't addressed), and there's the worldview/religious outlook component (requiring a "re-enchantment of the world"), which, imo, Jungian individuation and perhaps Christian gnosticism have the best chances of at the moment - but you're right that the aspects currently are awaiting some sort of synthesis.
Thanks for your response N.F. Yes, good points. We all deal with globalism contextually within the zones we find ourselves. I'm based in the southern hemisphere, hence my views are more a case of "looking from the outside in" and would/should differ somewhat from someone in the Northern Zones. Regardless, we all live inside Globalism, whether North or South, that's the global reality.
With regards to your points about the situation being unique right now, I guess we would have to agree to disagree (respectfully) as I think that many facts were made up in the past (under communism, etc) but it's also regularly the case under democracy ...
As for Matthias Desmet, his totalitarianism work is based on Gustave Le Bon's "The Crowd" (1895). I've read the source material several times over. Desmett also integrates observations from other people who studied totalitarianism in later periods of time, e.g. during WW2. I think we see mass-formation all around us regularly: "Trump/Musk is a [literal] Nazi ..." (which you mention too) is just one such recent example (on a small scale). Observe how people coalesce around such memes instantaneously, and how they mindlessly repeat, mimic and project them. It's not even ideology, there's no thought involved at all (true or not doesn't factor in), it's mindless idea-repetition: mass-formation. Any kind of mob-behaviour would be examples of mass-formation (online or offline). Some people don't like Desmett's style of delivery, I get that, but I think he's right on the money, he's just elaborating on a phenomenon identified by others before him, including Jung:
“Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic.” - CG Jung – The Undiscovered Self
Didn't "blackpilled" start as a perjoritive? I like it, it's catchy.
Am I blackpilled in real life? Hell no. I'm the cool dad that knows everyone's name and hands out compliments like candy. I use the blackpill knowledge to place my family in the least blackpilled environment possible.
We're like Jonas in The Giver. We have the dark and esoteric knowledge, and it's not meant to be shared with everyone. It's meant for making the hard calls correctly.
Your best yet. Epictetus, Goethe, Stockdale, heroes always operate from internal strength and refuse to relinquish control over their will, no matter the setting. The only art I currently have in my office (though I've never been a slave to alcohol) is a needlepoint of "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference". Great post!
Thanks Rick, I appreciate your feedback and you’re right about heroes refusing to relinquish control over their will. I’m a big fan of the serenity prayer too, which would have been a great inclusion in the post.
The serenity prayer was also on my mind when I read this excellent post. Funnily enough, I too have a needlepoint of it, made by my mother, which sits in my office. Along with a plaque quoting Eleanor Roosevelt: “ Learn from the mistakes of others.” You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.”
I ever go back to Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, which brings to life the power of one’s determination to live with integrity, whatever the circumstances. Your Goethe quote does the same, and is incredibly inspiring. Thank you!
Reading further through the comments, I must appreciate Haim Ginott, rather than Goethe.
Thanks Karen, I investigated it further and Christopher in the comments was right that it's from Ginott. I updated the post accordingly.
While physical evolution is quite slow, psychological evolution happens much faster. Remember, only a couple of decades ago it was ok to look down on women and have apartheid of fellow humans just because they looked different.
Funny you bring up the 1990s. In an interview, a neuroscientist said when he started in that time, consciousness was not an interest in the field. So wow, only 3 decades ago they didn't really care about studying consciousness!
(They also wrongly assumed things about humanity with stupid broken methods of their experiments. https://robc137.substack.com/p/the-milgram-experiment-and-how-we )
The black pill was hell even for me having known the corruption and the way humanity just sleep walks into atrocities primed by sociopathic elites that they blindly trust.
We could have come out of con-vid as cognitive zombies... Had they done it earlier, perhaps they would have succeeded.
(See transcript below the video)
https://robc137.substack.com/p/covid
But thankfully, it was done at the wrong time and finally many are seeing that the holy experts, not unlike the priests of old, lied and cheated us. I call this a psychological software update, not unlike animals learning of a new predator to watch out for. No physical evolution needed to update... Just different conditions and the survival instinct. That's why even though many still think the shots are safe, they're not getting the boosters.
THE ONLY WAY IS UP.
"The only alternative left for mankind, ” he continued, “is discipline. Discipline is the only deterrent. But by discipline I don’t mean harsh routines. I don’t mean waking up every morning at five-thirty and throwing cold water on yourself until you’re blue. Sorcerers understand discipline as the capacity to face with serenity odds that are not included in our expectations. For them, discipline is an art: the art of facing infinity without flinching, not because they are strong and tough but because they are filled with awe.” - from The Active Side of Infinity by Carlos Casteneda
I know now that he was a phony and made up things but sometimes fiction has truth in it and that's the best explanation to face the unknown of death and appreciate life while I am still alive.
"Remember, only a couple of decades ago it was ok to look down on women"
Today it's OK for media of all colours to abuse men (they cunningly target White men specifically) in the most unhinged, cowardly, anti-truth, possible way. Many millions "read", "watch", both men and women, and feel no objection to it within them.
There are many things that may be misidentified as "psychological evolution", and are something else, or the very opposite.
Krishnamurti said there is no psychological evolution, that psychologically we are the same as people thousands of years ago. Culture and customs may change, different groups become powerful or marginalised, but the human mind remains the same deep down.
This is what as struck me as strange. They have spent years denigrating the straight, white male as toxic, incel degenerates. Yet there seems to now be a push across Europe and America for war and to try to bring these self same males back in to the fold to fight their dirty little war be it with Russia, China, Iran or whoever.
I feel that these same males look at their countries and see them for the deracinated, economic gay parades that the elites have transformed them into and rightfully come to the conclusion that there’s fuck all to fight for anymore.
I’m not sure you’ll get any of them to fight even with a draft which leads me to believe the elites are in a bit of a pickle. I mean you could round up the diversity and promise them citizenship but a mercenary army usually ends up devouring the host. So what then?
I’m a little over the hill for the draft but in one way I’d welcome some combat and arms training. I’d turn them on the CO’s and then hunt down the politicians with not a hint of guilt and perhaps a smile on my face. I once considered myself a pacifist to boot but even I have limits.
Great Castenada quote. Who cares if he made it up? We all make it up. P.s. there is always indiscipline as well... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH3phKBbVLs
King Crimson is awesome! Starless is one of my favorite songs, despite the depressive nature. It reminds me of the sad days we all go through.
I think one of the guys in the band is big into Gurdjieff, another interesting fellow like Casteneda.
Yeah, I don't care if he made it up either.
I just do that for the people who like to cancel truth depending on who says it.
The other day, I shared an off guardian link about Nord Stream and the dude dismissed it because it's off guardian 😂
I recall a question in a dating app. It went something like this.
"Could you separate the art from the artist? Would you still like a good piece of their art even if the artist was a jerk?"
I answered yes.
I think that what you are describing/prescribing -- on the level of the tenacious, unfazed individual -- is the basic operational mechanism that builds up and maintains what N. Taleb has defined as "antifragility".
Pretty optimistic piece, this one.
🤣
I appreciate these thoughts and the nuance of the blackpill framing.
Glad to see you here! Congrats on the kid. 👍
despair is a sin
That's for who believes, or knows of the existence, of a good God, not universal.
Excellent!
You really have a gift to distill things into plain language and, most importantly, give actionable solutions.
Do you think most people over most of history are animals that talk?
If so, can we always assume they will never break out of the paradigm they’re born into?
Also, when I read this it made think of Frank Zappa’s quote:
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion.
At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Thanks Crumpet. That’s a great Zappa quote and very true, I think. Re: whether most people are animals that talk, I wouldn’t put it in those terms — it’s a little too arrogant and egotistical to separate oneself from humanity in this manner, I think — but rather that people are evolutionarily evolved for millions of years to survive in very small groups - think of the Dunbar number - and surviving in such groups meant listening to the leader, who was in turn responsible to the group. Expulsion from the group for not listening to the leader was basically a death sentence, so people who did that were weeded out of the gene pool. What we see, then, is that human psychology is simply not properly evolved for an environment where there the leaders (here, the privately owned central bank owners) hide in the shadows and disclaim total responsibility for their nefarious and deeply evil rule, and it’s very hard psychologically for most people to shift to understand this.
If it's true that culture is downstream from the local landscape or technology, then I guess we're in for a bumpy ride! People aren't hungry or cold enough to compel them to change. I guess we wait!
Another wide-ranging and provocative post ! I take on board your arguments about there being no saviours in our political (or other) elites, that Donald Trump is just as much serving his masters as was the last incumbent - or those who were wheeling him out as and when necessary to make pronouncements. Some of those masters might wax and wane in influence depending on circumstances, I would venture to say.
And the same applies across Europe and the UK, and probably Russia and so on. Globalism is gonna globalise, to paraphrase someone.
But I was wondering, do you believe that (for example) DJT has absolutely no agency in any of his policies or executive actions, or that he is on a short leash, and that - to use a current topic as an illustration - the elites will wait for the fallout from the trade tariffs announcements, make an assessment thereof and then shape a new policy direction to be followed, preceded by propaganda to soften up the population for acceptance?
I was also interested in your writing here on the holocene extinction stuff, and the ROEI links, which I will look more at. My own current view is one of extreme scepticism and that it smells of more elite propaganda to max out the green scam, hand-in-fist with the anthropegenic warming nonsense which has been the lie which begat other lies like the zoonotic virus transfer via "wet markets", and the WHO "One Health" fiction.
I don't deny that we as a species have been and still are guilty of horrific over-exploitation of resources like the oceans and possibly forests as well, but when species die out for one reason or another - even if it's entirely by human intervention - an ecological gap appears, which will be filled by other species, as long as the environment is not toxified. We might not like the fact that this is happening here and now as we witness it, but happen it will, and we cannot second-guess what occurs next. We don't have the intellectual tools. The planet will adapt as it has for its whole existence, and we will adapt or perish. I think as a species we are smart and resilient enough to do that and find a balance with our environment, albeit with periodic crises of one sort or another. We have survived several glaciation periods and many other threats to our species, and with the cards more heavily stacked against us, I would guess. It's just that the controllers don't want us to believe in our own abilities for obvious reasons.
Having said all that, I concur with some other contributors here that the globalism thing is going to be very hard to roll back very far, as we in the West are probably all (or mostly) too ensnared in its web of "convenience" to let it go voluntarily.
Just my tuppence worth on one or two things ! Excellent post, as always.
Thanks Renewable. Personally, I believe that Trump's agency in pushing policies - at least policies that matter - is almost entirely curtailed. The man was facing multiple criminal charges that would put him in prison for life, civil trials that if they had continued could have bankrupted him (remember the rape and defamation verdicts for $83.3 million?), and he was promised that it would all go away and that he would get rich if he would do as he was told (hence, Trumpcoin and Melaniacoin, Bezos dramatically overpaying for Trump media material, etc.). He caved behind closed doors and now is merely acting in whatever role is assigned him; this is why the incessant media demonization of him was turned down.
Whether our central bank owning elites want to crash the economy to enact CBDC, and/or push for war with Israel or China, or inflate the bubble even higher, or transition to a fake "multi-polar" order ultimately is not clear, because they develop their strategies behind closed doors (although whatever they do will benefit themselves and Israel); what matters is the understanding that the system as designed offers no voice to the masses whatsoever, and that the upper elite's rapaciousness and greed means they plan to institute a permanent technocratic worldwide slavery grid which will dramatically transform and destroy society (even more than they currently are).
Regarding declining EROEI and Peak Oil theories I'll cover it separately in a future post, although Grundvilk's work is strong (he comes from an oil and gas background). I covered aspects of the neo-Malthusian argument here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-sad-skinsuiting-of-the-environmental
I agree with you that our elites are using and abusing neo-Malthusian arguments (Club of Rome stuff) for their own purposes, and that perhaps they don't even believe their own arguments - hence, we see them giving unlimited aid to Africa which needlessly increased it's population by well over a billion, for example. If our elites were worried about the environment why would they allow that (unless they have a deathwish)? With that said, it doesn't seem logical to me that you can have exponentially increasing and consuming populations on a planet with finite resources and expect a happy ending. The rates of species die-offs are an easy thing to point to that there is such an unsustainable problem.
N.F, some feedback on your quote by Geopolitics and Empire where he says:
"The Cold War is over. Communism is dead."
I emphatically disagree with him on both points:
1. The world is in a New Cold War for the scramble of mineral resources for all the "green" energy transition devices i.e wind turbines, solar panels, electric cars, batteries, etc. This scramble is happening all over the global south as well as in Ukraine. How did Hrvoje Moric miss that? Here's a recent article as an example of what I'm referring to.
https://brawlstreetjournal.substack.com/p/south-africa-energy-crisis-eu-hydrogen-push
2. . "Communism is dead". I don't think so at all, to the contrary we have since 2020 transitioned into Stakeholder-Communism (next-level communism based on the Chinese model a blend of capitalism and communism, but at it's core its communism), as this documentary illustrates very clearly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1m4zZvyCxg
(Also not sure how G&E missed that).
Although I do agree with him about this left-right political theatre and the switching from one side to the other (controlling the narratives driving both sides).
However, I also share your belief N.F. that we can use every situation to learn from it and to clarify our views, our beliefs and our political positions, but ultimately this is really about moral development (as the ancients believed). And what all the left-right fluctuations show up is very high levels of hypocrisy all around. Am I/you a hypocrite on this or that or any matter is the question I/we need to ask and then take a clear stance on it. Do I consider apartheid, genocide, racism, nationalism, globalism, etc, etc fine in some cases but evil in other cases? Am I quiet on some issues sometimes and very vocal on the same issues other times, depending on what serves me in that moment .. - and we can see this is the basic state of moral development of most people. Clarifying these issues for ourselves as an inner practice is the best antidote to nihilism i.m.o. as it off-sets moral relativism which would otherwise contribute to nihilism.
Thanks for your thoughts. I'm a follower and practitioner of the Mesoamerican calendar systems which provide for an alternative understanding of reality. Rather than it being mechanical and machine-like, it's fully organic and metaphysical - an energetic structure within an organic cyclic organism. Every day/week/month/year has its own personality, challenges, offerings, positives, wisdom, things to learn from, guidance and so on.
Each one of us is an energy imprint and an intrinsic component of creation. Once we start to fully understand this version of reality there's very little room for real nihilism, which I think is partially caused by a/the mechanical view of reality and it's possible malevolent design.
Although Gnosticism has a lot to offer there's some beliefs within it that seem foreign to me, so I take only from it some of the mystical aspects that fit into my own spiritual journey. Same with Jung's work, I'm not into absolutely all of his work, but much of it is absolutely indispensable in my view.
However, one can also really broaden one's spiritual and mystical journey through ancient spiritual systems like the Mesoamerican and Vedic (Yuga) calendar systems and philosophical systems, which is where my path takes me more often than not.
another thing about being black pilled or pursuing a negative outlook is it becomes incredibly boring and it will make you ill.
That quote isn't Goethe- it's Haim Ginott's Teacher and Child
Thanks for the clarification, Christopher - I dug into this a bit and it looks like you're right. I'll update the reference in the post.
The Chinese farmer in your piece has been repeated over and over in myriad cultures and times. It really does ask the question of whether our snap judgements and evaluations belong to a larger or smaller sphere...our perceived world. It also, to my mind at least asks to what level of immersion one finds themselves in, in regards to the Tao, usually translated as the Way, the Flow.
It seems to me that early 21st century American society IS that place of snap judgements.
How is it possible to examine any issue, if the knee jerk reaction is to force everything into a classification immediately?
In the case of the Dire Wolf, for example, the usual suspects have it all packaged...okay guys, we brought it back! Now lets get the next big research check and move on before anyone notices!
Missing from the equation is any valid effort at examination, much less the asking of questions, like...should this kind of monkeywrenching be done at all?
Labels are a kind of classification. Its a method by which a person is summed up in a simple term. It almost doesn't matter if its valid, because if there's enough piling on around it, the person just shrugs and starts to accept it. The label becomes the classification and the identity.
The latest hit for humanity has many stinging, and meanwhile the media is buisy using it to advance their usual tactics of polarization and substanceless screaming.
Yet below all the fun and games, there is a Wolf that was forced to participate in the latest iteration of Frankenstein. The governments of the world are continuing their wars on the forests. The majority are still juggling with what can be put off to meet the next price hike, and unseen, unknown, unrecognized...the Tao is still flowing, ever present, eternal, real.
Do you feel it's worth having children in a doomed world? Several of my friends have sworn off having children after getting too blackpilled about the future.
Philosophically I am pro-natalist, but only for those who can have children without relying on government aid or other handouts. The Amish, for example, have lots of kids built around community, and I think what they do is wholesome and wonderful. Having children while relying on handouts for survival is an incredibly dysgenic situation.
On a personal level, and this is just my take, I think children are a blessing and get us to see life from an entirely different angle. It involves a kind of selfless giving that is not experienced in any other context. I think there is a balance to be had recognizing this world as fundamentally fallen while still trying to retain a measure of optimism for developing agency, family, community, etc. in one’s own life. If one doesn’t find the right partner, doesn’t have the right nurturing perspective, isn’t making enough money to afford a family, then I don’t think it’s right to bring a child into a situation with a broken home/poverty/atomization/loneliness in an already broken world…
I believe in the long run this whole thing will end in a nuclear war. There are a couple of possible flahspoints though I think Israel is the most likely candidate. What could be more blackpilling?
On the other hand, if the strikes amount to 200 or less detonations, the world will continue even if many (and I suspect will knock on effects 1-4 billion die) are lost. What is more, I think the current elite’s yoke will be torn apart in such an event.
So most of the time there is an upside
I definitely think our elites have mass nuclear war as a contingency - nuke it all and head to bunker, wait a couple years and come out to a pristine and empty planet, or do more limited nuclear strikes as an excuse for martial law. It just seems like they’re getting a lot of what they want under the current system — mass inflation to starve out the masses, furthering the Greater Israel project, decreasing the birthrates of advanced nations (and especially whites). The chaos from lots of nukes going off might create uncertain elements that they wouldn’t have planned for or controlled. Still, they might. The justification for martial law would be very powerful.
Excellent piece. Insightful and punchy. Thanks for the mention.
A brilliant essay. Just sayin.
Hello N.F. Very many interesting points (some I agree with, some I don't, but that's what thought-provoking articles are all about). We typically comment on what we don't agree with so here goes - only one point for now:
" ...where media reporting has become fully divorced from actual political developments. This is a new and unique situation."
Is it really? Did this not happen under communism? Or Nazism for that matter? Or other instances of dictatorships and the like? Since this is happening right now should we not face up to the fact that we are IN totalitarianism? But what is it? What is totalitarianism? It's a system supported by the people as well as the elites, moreover it's maintained MORE by the people than the elites, as Matthias Desmet explains here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g5ub5vqtd0
This reality is very Jungian in a sense, of course, because we are failing exactly what Jung proposed, which is to stop projecting and to start introspecting. How did WE bring about this situation? Surely it's because WE have been supporting globalisation all along. The truth is there is no real "anti-globalism" anywhere - can you point it out? Rurik Skywalker made a similar observation in his most recent post: "Look, there is no war against Globalism ..."
Which doesn't mean I necessarily agree with everything he says, but he's spot-on with this, and as well as some of his comments after that:
https://slavlandchronicles.substack.com/p/the-slavland-chronicles-explained
Anti-globalism in a real sense would require Genuine Decentralisation but zero dissidents are truly advocating for that, which is why I subjectively view the entire so-called dissident-sphere as SEMI-fraudulent ... (wittingly or unwittingly). Everyone is an "anti-globalist" (apparently) in words, but directionless in what that actually means ... (what it WOULD actually mean). Many examples among the well-known dissidents.
The issue is most dissidents are leftists at heart, truth be told (I've mentioned this before), so decentralisation in a real sense wouldn't come natural to them. Genuine decentralisation would require being anti-imperialist, a bridge too far for "dissidents" based in imperial zones (North America, Western Europe, Russia & China). Subjects of former or current imperial nations don't advocate for their own demise through decentralisation (i.e. the loss of their satellites and colonies), so what they are dissidents of is not clear.
Which is why the concept of BRICS as an antidote to globalism is a false construct too - see my comment here:
https://alexanderdugin.substack.com/p/alexander-dugin-on-multipolarity/comment/96192079
Hi Energy, thanks for the comment. While the narratives built in prior eras were lies, I believe the underlying facts being reported on were at least semi-accurate (to the limited extent actual actions were reported on, of course). This is because, in part, (1) the system used news reporting as a way to further inter-agency coordination so it had to be on some level accurate, (2) there has been no actual challenges or competition for our upper elites for many decades now, so accurate reporting is no longer necessary, and (3) the technology for instantaneous communication and coordination did not exist as it does today (via whatever behind the scenes mechanisms they are using), a process that really began in the gulf war (as I discussed in my gulf war post: "the Gulf War was the first war which allowed the instantaneous media-government-spook state feedback mechanisms that allowed for hyperreality to manifest itself"). This situation is unique now because the underlying "facts" being reported on are simply being made up.
Re: Matthias Desmet, there's something about his style that just doesn't work with me -- his concept of "mass formation", which got thrown around as a buzzword across the right for awhile, kind of just went right over my head, even if I may agree or not with the underlying concepts. It just didn't connect with me.
"Anti-globalism in a real sense would require Genuine Decentralisation but zero dissidents are truly advocating for that" There are different aspects of anti-globalism: there's the monetary component (Guido Preparata recommends negative interest currency, basically a continuation of the Worgl experiment), there's the local community focus/self-sufficiency component (which doesn't work well if the monetary component isn't addressed), and there's the worldview/religious outlook component (requiring a "re-enchantment of the world"), which, imo, Jungian individuation and perhaps Christian gnosticism have the best chances of at the moment - but you're right that the aspects currently are awaiting some sort of synthesis.
Thanks for your response N.F. Yes, good points. We all deal with globalism contextually within the zones we find ourselves. I'm based in the southern hemisphere, hence my views are more a case of "looking from the outside in" and would/should differ somewhat from someone in the Northern Zones. Regardless, we all live inside Globalism, whether North or South, that's the global reality.
With regards to your points about the situation being unique right now, I guess we would have to agree to disagree (respectfully) as I think that many facts were made up in the past (under communism, etc) but it's also regularly the case under democracy ...
As for Matthias Desmet, his totalitarianism work is based on Gustave Le Bon's "The Crowd" (1895). I've read the source material several times over. Desmett also integrates observations from other people who studied totalitarianism in later periods of time, e.g. during WW2. I think we see mass-formation all around us regularly: "Trump/Musk is a [literal] Nazi ..." (which you mention too) is just one such recent example (on a small scale). Observe how people coalesce around such memes instantaneously, and how they mindlessly repeat, mimic and project them. It's not even ideology, there's no thought involved at all (true or not doesn't factor in), it's mindless idea-repetition: mass-formation. Any kind of mob-behaviour would be examples of mass-formation (online or offline). Some people don't like Desmett's style of delivery, I get that, but I think he's right on the money, he's just elaborating on a phenomenon identified by others before him, including Jung:
“Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic.” - CG Jung – The Undiscovered Self