Left to Our Own Devices?

May 25, 2026 Leave a comment

“You will own nothing and you will be happy.”

This published World Economic Forum slogan, derived from a reposted blog essay by a Danish politician titled “Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better,” embodies a vision of doing away with the ownership of private property and autonomy in favor of a shared and planned economy overseen by the “providence” of WEF elites.

The proposed systems or platforms would provide technological access to needed resources, thereby providing gratification – so says the Dane. What is not said: in order to produce a hyper-egalitarian world, such comprehensive oversight of humans would require the beating down, leveling, debasing, and tyrannizing of the humans into thinking and accepting what is doled out in terms of what is valued per the elites.

“Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?” – C.S. Lewis, from the third essay in The Abolition of Man.

The overlords of the modern bureaucratic state (presumptuously) use rational control to solve all problems with (smug) amoral certainty. Rational control?

R.J. Snell writing for Acton Institute regarding Harvey C. Mansfield’s recent book The Rise and Fall of Rational Control: The History of Modern Political Philosophy:

According to Mansfield, modernity is intrinsically linked to Machiavelli. . .

Rational control depended on ending irrational control, meaning custom, which includes social mores, institutions, and “God or the gods.” Rational control requires our liberation from the divine; humanity itself serves as a principle of order, asserting “human rights as against divine rights.” Moral custom can survive the taming of the gods, however, so morality must also be placed on a rational basis. For Machiavelli, princes must learn “how to be not good.” Ancient philosophers constructed utopian principles, but moderns take guidance from the “effectual truth” of action. The ruthless doing of “the necessary” establishes and preserves the city.

Who is Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 -1527)? See below.

The WEF’s Brave New World kind of slogan, with its enchantment of fulfillment via a Soma-like numbing- homogenizing process that divests the individual of all worldly (and otherworldly) concerns, I read as “rational control” ending “irrational control.” The ownership of inherited values and identity from the older cosmic order that included the transcendent Overworld is to be exchanged for the management of affairs by the realpolitik of “princes.” Their new modes and orders will displace what came before, replace the “ought” with the “is,” and effect the ruthless doing of “the necessary” via devices with avatars, apps and AI.

(Our world has many glory seeking manipulative “princes.” They rule their principalities in the WEF, the EU, and the UN. They rule in city, state, and federal government. They are the tech bros pushing AI and data centers down our throats.)

“You will own nothing and you will be happy”represents the presumed gratifying effects of rational control giving materialism and science unquestioned authority over our lives to produce “effectual truth” outcomes. Subjects of the slogan are to sell their souls to the “princes” of this world to make way for “man’s freedom … to answer his own needs with his own arms.”

Those enchanted by a managed existence absent of meaning and free will, such as the Danish politician, are apparently OK with a world that is increasingly disconnected from “the past, people, place, and prayer” and increasingly connected to “science, self, sex, and screens” (Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine).

Chuck Chalberg, writing for the Imaginative Conservative:

Kingsnorth might not have needed to define each of his S’s, but he does: Science gives us a “non-mythic” story of our origins; “the highest good is to serve the self”; sex is an “affirmation of individual identity”; and the screen is “both our main source of distraction from reality and the interface by which we are directed into the coming post-human reality of the machine.”

I view such world as cold and indifferent, in a calculating, utilitarian, mechanistic, ad-addled, app-addled, drug-addled, increasingly violent, and wretched way.

Those enchanted by a dystopian existence are apparently OK with living in a pathological environment, one that has “almost no qualities of a sane, wise, productive, creative environment that we would wish for ourselves” (Iain McGilchrist).

“You will own nothing and you will be happy” is scientific reductionism’s disenchantment of the world.

Henri Bortoft writes at The Nature Institute about the 18th to 19th century German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s way of perceiving:

Goethe [sought a method that, in his words] “did not treat of nature as divided and in pieces, but presented her as working and alive, striving out of the whole into the parts.” The first thing we notice here is the reversal of perception: not from the part to the whole, but from the whole into the parts. Goethe was someone who could see the wholeness in nature directly, and, furthermore, had specific practices that could lead to the ability to do so.

C. S. Lewis, in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1954), wrote that no longer is the universe thought of as an orchestra “tingling with anthropomorphic life, dancing, ceremonial, a festival.” Now it is thought of in terms of a machine. In terms of language, Lewis’ understood that

“Pre-modern metaphors were animated; the cosmos seemed saturated with presence, soul, and being. In contrast, modern man prefers inorganic metaphors borrowed from the steady, unwavering move­ment of machines.” (Jason Baxter, “Evil Enchantment” versus Platonic Vision: Dante, Lewis, and the Weight of Glory) (The After Dinner Scholar podcast).

Many have witnessed and written about the ongoing deconstruction of our inherited perception of the cosmos.

Below, two poets, a professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, a modern playwright and a psychiatrist/neuroscientist account the withdrawing from the ages-old animating symphonic signal (objective values of truth, beauty, and goodness) toward modern machine noise (amoral realpolitik’s ruthless doing of “the necessary”):

“Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”

In 1867, Matthew Arnold wrote a poem about the decline of religious belief in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. Dover Beach speaks of a sea change during the Victorian era: the rising tide of scientific discovery and the withdrawing “sea of faith.” He saw Christian faith increasingly challenged by the influences of materialism and scientific discoveries.

Dover Beach portrays the effect with words describing loss and alienation from what had been so encompassing:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

“A heap of broken images”

T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land, written in the wake of WWI, describes the barrenness and alienation of modern life. With a collage of cultural allusions, Eliot portrays modern society as shallow, the rich spiritual and cultural landscape of the past reduced to rubble. Society, he writes, is dealing with “A heap of broken images.”

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.

“a bad spell, an evil enchantment”

Jason M. Baxter, in his essay “Evil Enchantment” versus Platonic Vision: Dante, Lewis, and the Weight of Glory,” writes of professor C.S. Lewis’ take on the negation of goodness referencing a compilation of Lewis’ sermons tiled Transposition (1944) and his book The Abolition of Man (1943):

“The oxford don consistently used the metaphor of a bad spell, arguing that modernity had cast an “evil enchantment of worldliness” that makes the weight of goodness fell less substantial. In fact, Lewis argued that there was a kind of historical chasm or gaping cultural canyon that separated modernity from anything that came before: what he called the “Great Divide.”  . . . This is, in part, because our image of the cosmos and our understanding of its op­erations are radically different from that of the pre-modern world. Our metaphors have changed: “The fundamental concept of modern science is, or was until very recently, that of natural ‘laws.’. . . In medieval science the fundamental concept was that of certain sympathies, antipathies, and strivings inherent in matter itself.” Modern man speaks about how a fall­ing rock obeys a law of nature; medieval man spoke of the rock as desiring or longing to return to its natural place, like a pigeon returning to its nest by a homing instinct. Pre-modern metaphors were animated; the cosmos seemed saturated with presence, soul, and being. In contrast, modern man prefers inorganic metaphors borrowed from the steady, unwavering move­ment of machines. (My emphasis.)

. . .

“When the animate picture of the cosmos and the organic metaphors used to describe it passed away, two other changes followed. The first is that we began to imagine the sources of deep meaning were located within, not without. As Charles Taylor has put it, we “conceive of ourselves as having inner depths. We might even say that the depths which were previously located in the cosmos, the enchanted world, are now more readily placed within.” Lewis wrote about this displacement of meaning in his impas­sioned critique of modern education, The Abolition of Man.”

(You can read Baxter’s complete essay w/footnotes in my post “Self-Central Casting.” The article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ George Fox University)

The Abolition of Man was published in 1943. Three lectures by C.S. Lewis form the book: Men Without Chests, The Way, and The Abolition of Man.

In identifying the pathologies of the age, Lewis warned about the consequences of doing away with ideas of objective value and natural law. Moral relativism, he claimed, would-result in the Abolition of Man and Men Without Chests. He defended the existence of a moral consensus among mankind that transcends cultures, polities, and historical epochs. 

Lewis sought to reenchant the world with his fiction: The Space trilogy, Till We have Faces, The Chronicles of Narnia and other works.

In a 1946 essay “Talking about Bicycles” Lewis wrote about how understanding changes in terms of “four ages about nearly everything.” He gave them names: the unenchanted age, the enchanted age, the disenchanted age, and the reenchanted age.

We are in a disenchanted age.

Where do values come from?

British playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard (1937-2025) was known for plays that are both comedic and philosophical.

This is true of one of his most famous plays, the 1966 absurdist tragicomedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet become main figures in a play ‘outside’ the narrative of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (which has a play within a play).

From the play’s synopsis at Stage Agent:

Part Shakespearean tragedy, part Laurel and Hardy comedy routine, part Waiting for Godot absurdity, Tom Stoppard’s masterful debut play calls fate, free will, art, reality, communication, and the very constructs of theatre into question, all the while leading two most honorable, adventurous, brilliant, and inept characters on their path to their unfortunate, unavoidable, infamous fate.

His 1972 play Jumpers “intertwines high-minded discussion with broad comic absurdity.” Stoppard “explores and satirizes the field of academic philosophy by likening it to a less-than-skillful competitive gymnastics display.” It is set in a university “where philosophy has become a battleground rather than a search for truth.” It is a bewildering world of pragmatists and relativists where logic has confounded belief in moral absolutes. The play raises questions of “What do we know?” and “Where do values come from?”

Stoppard’s 2015 play The Hard Problem again deals the ultimate source of objective goodness and value.

Lauren Halvorsen, at Studio Theater:

In constructing Hilary, Stoppard explains, “I wanted to write a character who is good—not goody-goody—and believes that goodness has an objective reality which is not captured by, explained by, or defined by evolutionary science, by evolutionary psychology, by evolutionary biology, by neo-Darwinism.” Hilary’s faith is ridiculed by her colleagues—but they can’t fully refute her stances. Stoppard investigates the interplay of faith and fact, irrationality with would-be rational behavior. How would neuroscientists definitively prove that every instinct is chemical, explicable, and geared for survival? And what happens to our beliefs when science can’t hold all the answers? Can some ideas only be understood through an unquantifiable intuition?

…

In a world driven by empirical data, Hilary is a controversial figure—she argues passionately in favor of free will, defends altruism as more than self-interest, and believes in God, much to the consternation of her materialist fellow scientist and occasional lover Spike. And it gradually emerges that Hilary’s stances are informed, in part, by personal reasons: at age 15, she had a baby and made an adoption plan, and now prays for her daughter as she wonders what became of her.

We are living in a pathological environment

Iain McGilchrist – psychiatrist, philosopher and neuroscientist:

“There is no question. We are living in a pathological environment. It has almost no qualities of a sane, wise, productive, creative environment that we would wish for ourselves. It has very few of those qualities that characteristically lead to those qualities. It maximizes conflict. It incubates extreme points of view. It robs us of embodied and embedded wisdom that comes from the culture and proximity to the natural world.

All these things that used to be taken for granted are now robbed of us and it’s no surprise that responses are massive existential anxiety, depression, suicidal thinking, a sense of hopelessness, complete loss of meaning. . . it is a complete tragedy because it doesn’t have to be like that. We need to break out of the prison we have made for ourselves.”

The above excerpt from the May 2026 video & podcast – Civilization’s Imbalance and Restoring the Humanities: The Divided Brain

https://www.unsiloedpodcast.com/episodes/iain-mcgilchrist

Iain McGilchrist discusses how the brain works, how left and right hemispheres attend to things – thereby making a difference on how we respond to the world.

Ultimate Meaning with objective standards for goodness and value is being explained away by neuroscience reductionist claims that meaning comes down to brain chemistry and atoms. If there is meaning, it is described in terms of an inexorable evolutionary process at work to pass on our genes in the best way possible. (See Is God the answer to our Meaning Crisis? Video below.)

Are we to view life through scientific reductionism’s microscope?

Are we to be viewed life through scientific reductionism’s microscope?

Should we be logical positivists and base all knowledge on perceptual experience and consider metaphysical and subjective arguments not based on observable data as meaningless?

Should we live accepting that there is nothing but matter and disregard intuition or revelation for “the science?”

Is life to be understood using only the science text book of humans (which scientism perverts for “effectual truth” outcomes) and not the gestalt of human consciousness as found in poetry (that provides meaning)?

Admittedly, there is a lot to ponder here.

As I have written before, I am an autodidact. I have no degree. I read and study that which interests and concerns me. Then, I put it down in words. The above is not some term paper to be graded. The above is what I have come to understand: what I was looking for since my earliest days, since The Day the Music Died.

It wasn’t until I reached my 70s that I understood the loss of connection to true mythos and the orchestra “tingling with anthropomorphic life, dancing, ceremonial, a festival.”

~~~

Who is Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 -1527)?

Here’s a brief Yale lecture (video, podcast & transcript) about the Florentine, the founder of the modern state, and his book, “The Prince”: Lecture 10 – New Modes and Orders: Machiavelli, The Prince (chaps. 1-12)

“Machiavelli announces his break, indeed his repudiation of all those who have come before, all those who have come before. He both replaces and yet reconfigures according to his own lights, elements from both the Christian empire and the Roman republic, to create a new form of political organization distinctly his own.” (This description of Machiavelli could be describing today’s Progressive politicians and many church organizations!)

(This being Memorial Day weekend, I doubt that the “princes” of this world will honor the fallen. They’ll be busy barbecuing and planning their next doing of “the necessary.”

~~~

The modern state increasingly treats culture not as an independent civilizational inheritance deserving protection but as raw material to be supervised, corrected, and ideologically aligned. The old pastoral ideal of the fulfilled and self-reliant individual citizen gradually gives way to the therapeutic subject: managed, supervised, controlled, yet perpetually assured of her freedom in “our democracy.”

A civilization survives only when there remain spheres of life politics cannot wholly absorb. Once politics becomes everything, civilization itself begins to disappear.

The Politicization Of Everything | ZeroHedge

Authored by David Solway via The Epoch Times,

Don’t become a Green grocer.

~~~

Elizabeth Oldfield & James Marriott: Is God the answer to our Meaning Crisis? | Uncommon Ground

Elizabeth Oldfield, host of the Sacred Podcast, and James Marriott, literary critic and Times columnist, join Justin on Uncommon Ground to discuss whether we can find meaning in life without God.
Elizabeth tells of her own search for meaning in Christian faith, while James explains why, as an atheist nihilist, he still loves art and literature. They discuss the search for purpose, and signs of a new interest in faith among young people.

Elizabeth Oldfield & James Marriott: Is God the answer to our Meaning Crisis? | Uncommon Ground

For Elizabeth Oldfield: https://www.elizabetholdfield.com/
For James Marriott: https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/full-fat-faith-the-young-christian-converts-filling-our-churches-x69pd289k?

~~~

Filed under 2026 Current Events, Culture, Philosophy, Political Commentary, social commentary, social engineering, Technocracy, technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Self-Central Casting

April 20, 2026 Leave a comment

In trying to understand the phenomena of the double down defiant, the disruptive and destructive characters under the evil enchantment of our culture, I came across the vain imaginings of main character syndrome (MCS).

Seeing yourself as the main character in a narrative of one’s own struggles, a mediated aspect of MCS, is considered normal. You might hear a life coach say “Living your hero life starts in your head—and it’s won in your daily choices.” Our culture embraces the internalized hero narrative.

Scientific American says To Lead a Meaningful Life, Become Your Own Hero

Forbes offers How To Become The Hero Of Your Story: Eight Steps

But when someone believes that their experiences and problems are more important than the next guy’s experiences and problems, that self-serving perspective is nobody’s friend.

And when someone starts acting like they’re the main character of not only their story, but everyone else’s, that is delusional and narcissistic. Imagination and passions take on a dramatic self-narrative that entails self-absorbed behavior, a lack of empathy, and seeing everyone else as a side character.

Taking on this perverse aspect of MCS, a person views their life as a movie and themselves as the central character. Such a person romanticizes their importance on the world stage. They behave as if they always have an audience. Checking in with others to invoke reality-based self-reflection is not a consideration. Basking in the mind’s spotlight is more important.

When I first came across main character syndrome, I immediately thought of Anna Karenina in Tolstoy’s novel by the same name. Some have suggested that Anna is the heroine of the novel. Oprah called the novel “one of the greatest love stories of our time” referring in particular to the passionate and illicit love affair of Anna and Count Vronsky in a milieu of 19th-century Russian social norms.

But the heroines of “one of the greatest love stories of our time” are two women whose prosaic love pays attention to those around them. Dolly is not caught up in romantic notions of herself or life. She is down-to-earth practical with her love. And, it is Kitty’s self-giving love shown to her husband’s dying  brother that the analytical Levin comes to recognize as making the world go round.

Anna is all drama, all self-absorbed, all self-deception, all main character syndrome. Everyone else is a side character.

It should surprise no one that a person with MCS may also have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

Someone with NPD is characterized with a perverse self-interest, grandiosity, entitlement, and power fantasies. Such are manipulative, emotionally immature, attention-seeking, and lacking empathy.

In practice, such a person may focus on information patterns in the MSM and social media and ignore anything contradictory. This myopic view of things provides a confirmation bias for an imagined reckless hero narrative.

Did Renee Good and Alex Pretti hone in on the anti-ICE media narrative that included the tough guy talk of Democrat politicians – Minnesota’s governor Tim Walz, AG Keith Ellison, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey – and then hone in on ICE officers? Did the rash Good and Pretti act out their ‘confirmed’ narrative?

Does MCS have a cultural imprimatur?

James Bowman wrote about the Tough Talk of the above politicians and the street theater response “their intemperate language” could be expected to invoke. He went on to reference Kat Rosenfield’s The Free Press article Minneapolis Isn’t a Movie which carries the subheading “There is a pervasive sense that ICE agents are more like cartoon villains than legitimate law enforcement. The killing of Renee Nicole Good proved this a dangerous illusion” and then referenced a Substack article:

After Alex Pretti was killed, Michael Shellenberger wrote on his Substack,

Both Good and Pretti were thirty-seven years old when they died, and Millennials, more than Gen X before and Gen Z after, are very progressive and are “heroes in their narratives,” researchers find. The deaths of Good and Pretti are thus the result of a collision of forces that have been building for decades. After World War II, fighting Nazis and fascists became the number one heroic fantasy for Americans and others in the West. And Baby Boomers taught their own revolutionary heroic values to their Millennial children, who see fighting Trump and ice as an opportunity to achieve a form of transcendence.

Do the endless world-saving super hero movies and video games contribute to MCS? What about viewing everything in terms of power dynamics and a hero-villain victim-oppressor narrative? Wouldn’t an action-hero of such fantasies want to bash an oppressor with her car?

Validation of a self-serving bias is accomplished when media comes along to chronicle the deadly street theater in heroic terms and to direct blame away from the deadly aggressor and place it on ICE and Trump and anything else except the character who acted out their hero fantasy.

Such validation will have the “heroes in their narratives” double down their acting out. (The deep state loves those with MCS. The deep state doesn’t care how many are lost to protect itself.)

Our culture has produced and enabled many “heroes in their narratives”, including alleged assassins and alleged attempted assassins.

Luigi Nicholas Mangione is accused of murdering of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare.

Tyler James Robinson is accused of murdering Charlie Kirk.

20-year-old Michael Steven Sandford attempted to steal a police officer’s firearm and use it on Trump, during a rally in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Gregory Lee Leingang stole a forklift from a North Dakota oil refinery and later confessed to trying to kill the then-president by flipping the vehicle.

Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Ryan Wesley Routh broke into Trump International Golf Club and staked out for several hours before Trump.

Those with attention-seeking main character syndrome include left-leaning cosplayer Christians (James Talarico, David Brooks, and David French to name a few ), politicians (Gavin Newsome, J.B. Pritzker, Tim Walz, Barack Obama, and Jasmine Crockett to name a few) and federal and supreme court justices who want to be seen as heroes resisting the Trump administration. These and more are promoted on MS-13 (MS NOW), the NYT, and other propaganda outlets.

Those with attention-seeking main character syndrome include a host of activists who want the world to be looking at them as they do battle against media-designated oppressors. Hence the ubiquitous presence of cameras to record themselves on social media.

Islamism produces main character syndrome that generates “Allahu Akbar” terrorism characterized by a lack of empathy for anyone not embracing Islam and ‘heroically’ responding to Qur’an’s call to Muslims to “strike terror in the enemies of Allah” (8:60).

For those with main character syndrome, what occurs is not a lack of feeling, but a lack of understanding. Hindsight, foresight and insight are banished for the sake of a romanticized fantasy that places them at its center.

Read about Pseudo-heroes here:

All the Dream Houses of the Left: The Left’s political imagination builds heroes, villains, and entire histories untethered from reality, substituting narrative for fact until it collapses under scrutiny.

With hedgehog mindsets, those with main character syndrome have taught themselves not to see anything but themselves in the drama they concoct, a drama that is validated by the confirmation bias of the media and mullahs. Self-deception is key to MCS and the media and mullahs enable self-deception.

~~~

Identity Shaped by the Misshaped

I don’t find it surprising that main character syndrome is a thing when modern culture works to remake identity with its evil enchantment and the loss of a tangible community to help us break that spell.

A mechanized worldview banishes all transcendence in its path and would have us believe that the source of meaning comes from within the world of ourselves. Such a disenchanted perspective of the goodness of the Good can foster the utmost ruthlessness and egoist pursuit of one’s own narrow interests.

Without the Good, reality is abstracted, truth is inverted, language is subverted, history is weaponized, and we are alienated from each other. Progressivism, socialism, and Islamism, by these distortions and with violence, each act to strengthen a bond to itself. Identity envisioned with the myopia each requires can foster a main character syndrome hell-bent on protecting what it holds to be true.

Tangible community, with its relationships, sense of cultural purpose, membership, status, traditions, and continuity that once formed identity is being replaced with online identity promoting the symbolic devotion and fusion of identity with power for its own sake, power which demands control of everything. A perfect fit for the narcissist with the loss of community.

Sociologist Robert Nisbet, in The Quest for Community writes that  community “encompasses all forms of relationships that are characterized by a high degree of personal intimacy, emotional depth, moral commitment, social cohesion, and continuity in time.” 

Our digital age fosters social atomization and alienation along with depression and other mental illnesses. Spending time alone in front of a screen can produce MCS. The desire to overcome our isolation and to overcome the world can be found online.

  Release man from the contexts of community and you get not freedom and rights but intolerable aloneness and subjection to demoniac fears and passions. –  Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community

Call it main character syndrome. Call it identity shaped by the misshaped. Call it Bad Actors in Bad Fantasy. Call it self-central Casting. Whatever term you may use, you will find that the Self-center Cannot Hold.

~~~

Regarding our culture’s evil enchantment:

“Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modem philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Evil Enchantment_ versus Platonic Vision_Dante Lewis and theDownload

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From The War on Meaning:

The object of the system was to create a dual consciousness. At public meetings, and even in private conversations, citizens were obliged to repeat in ritual fashion grotesque falsehoods about themselves, the world, and the Soviet Union, and at the same time to keep silent about things they knew very well, not only because they were terrorized but because the incessant repetition of falsehoods which they knew to be such made them accomplices in the campaign of lies inculcated by the party and state. 

-Leszek Kołakowski

The War on Meaning _ The American SpectatorDownload

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It is no surprise that sloth is a characteristic of MCS driven by NPD. Empathy takes effort. Scapegoating and sacrificing victims to one’s narcissism is easy.

Recognizing and accepting the boundaries of others takes restraint. Crossing lines doesn’t.

Looking for meaning outside one’s self, the internet, and media takes effort. Accepting one’s self-narration of experiences, like a pre-written movie, is easy.

“The sixth Deadly Sin is named by the Church Acedia or Sloth. In the world it calls itself Tolerance; but in hell it is called Despair. It is the accomplice of the other sins and their worst punishment. It is the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for. We have known it far too well for many years. The only thing perhaps that we have not known about it is that it is mortal sin.” ― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Other Six Deadly Sins

For Sayers, this is the evil enchantment of the modern age.

~~~

The Feminine Wound: The Radicalization of Young Women Is about More than the Internet and Social Media › American Greatness

Heros of their narratives:

Men without chests:

Filed under 2026 Current Events, mental health, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary, social engineering, social science Tagged with , , , ,

A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Hand Over

December 8, 2025 Leave a comment

When we hear someone say crazy things, we might say “Yeah, right” and shrug it off. But when a group of people say crazy things and a group of people agree with said crazy things, we wonder “What in the world is going on?”

Objective reality – the existence of things as they are – is obvious to everyone. And so are the values, accumulated over several millennia, of what is true and of what works and what hasn’t. But not everyone accepts the obvious and the values based on time proven objective reality. Some see themselves as Progressive in rejecting both.

Today’s academic, artistic, media, and political elites, a vanguard of Progressive Groupthink, reject the existence of things as they are and do so within the safe space of their ranks thereby creating an illusion of invulnerability and inherent morality. Members of this vanguard suppress dissenting opinions and avoid critically evaluated alternatives so as to maintain the group’s shared illusion of unanimity.

The vanguard’s conformity is maintained with mind guards – the media reports “right thinking” about a matter – and with self-censorship of deviations from shared beliefs and with shared views of the enemy – those who present a reality contrary to the groups’ notion of reality.

When we hear the vanguard’s irrational take on what is going on in the world, its roiling Doublethink, its name calling and shunning of voices outside its collective choir, and its dysfunctional decision-making which objective reality tells us will result in disastrous, dehumanizing, and even deadly outcomes, we ask “Where is this coming from and where is this going?

Those of us who keep an ear to the ground in order to hear what is approaching will answer “History is repeating itself.”

The objective reality of the murderous totalitarian regimes of the last century, which Progressives willfully ignore to promote their glorious future of equality via the same means, will help us understand the denial-of-reality collaboration of today’s intelligentsia – those who hold to one way of thinking – and their quest for total domination of the body, mind, and soul with Progressive Groupthink.

Specifically, Russian Soviet history will help us understand the conformity dynamic behind today’s intelligentsia. For this understanding I turn to one of the most informed scholars of the Russian history of ideas as communicated in its literature: Northwestern Professor Gary Saul Morson.

***

In Morson’s magnum opus Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter Morson details how politics and literature, in the writings of realists, idealists, and revolutionaries, played against each other during the Soviet period.

He describes Soviet thinking that rejected the realism and the real people depicted in nineteenth-century Russian fiction and required that reality be written to include “not only of the observable present but also the inevitable future in the making” and with Socialist Realist heroes – utopianism made flesh.

Writers of Russian realism – Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Solzhenitsyn, and others – wrote about what they saw and experienced. They are the “wonder” in the title. They represented the world as it was in their writings about the Gulag, mass starvation, torture, unspeakable violence, about how people thought about and dealt with what was going on, and about how many succumbed to the imposed Soviet mindset.

Russian realist authors confronted those of the “certainty,” those who wrote redefined reality in terms of the “observable present and the inevitable future in the making” and in terms of “positive heroes.”

The “positive hero” was to set an example for the reader’s behavior. A Soviet cosmonaut, for one example, became a “positive hero.” A cosmonaut’s space trip was seen as science, materialism, and atheism triumphing over the transcendent values held in the U.S., the enemy of the Soviet Union.

The “certainty” writers followed the lead of the embodiment of “certainty” – Vladimir Lenin. Lenin mocked his opponents’ self-characterization as ‘seekers’ of truth. He held that dialectical materialists do not seek truth; they already possess it. And so, the party-minded “positive hero” refused dialogue, refused to see any alternatives to the Marxist-Leninist-materialist-atheistic “truth” espoused by the party, the representatives of Karl Marx’s class-struggling proletariat.

From Wonder Confronts Certainty:

“The Soviets would label fidelity to present facts “bourgeois objectivism.” It was the best that could be expected from the age of realism, but must give way to socialist realism, which shows the ideal world inevitably coming. The socialist realist author was expected to focus on the people of the future, “positive heroes” exhibiting complete “Party-mindedness.” True positive heroes do not have bring their thinking into accord with the party, a process requiring effort; they exhibit Party-mindedness so thorough that no effort is required”

“Party-mindedness”, we learn from the writings of Russian realist authors, was propagated through the means of propaganda, show trials, random arrests, and the constant terror that there might be any hint, any innuendo, any false statement that would convict one of not being party-minded.

The “party-mindedness” of the 20th century Russian intelligentsia, its conformity to only one way of thinking, is replicated today.

***

Here’s Morson in his Touchtone article Beyond Belief: Literary Reflections on Thoughtless Conformity:

“I happened to witness two professors waiting for an elevator. To make conversation, one voiced an opinion on some political question to see if the other agreed. When she did, they chattered away on a dozen other topics with perfect assurance that they agreed on those, too. Evidently, their beliefs came as a package. Subsequently I noticed this way of thinking many times, as I imagine many of my readers have.

The process works something like this: a person first chooses the group with whom he wishes to identify and then adopts its opinions. He believes as strongly in gun control, let us say, as he does in supporting Planned Parenthood, defunding the police, and banning fossil fuels. It is evident that no arguments or evidence can shake his opinions on any of these topics because arguments or evidence had nothing to do with why they were adopted.

To be sure, a person who thinks this way can cite facts and reasons to justify his opinion, but they have been acquired in the same way as the opinion itself. They are the same reasons others in the group have learned to give. I used to find it eerie to hear repeatedly the same arguments expressed in the same phrases, as if I were listening to a recording rather than to highly educated people who imagined that, unlike their intellectual inferiors, they had arrived at opinions rationally and would change them as evidence warranted. I thought of Jonathan Swift’s observation that no one was ever talked out of an opinion he was not first talked into.”

***

Reading Morson’s article, I was reminded of the easy-going liberal mindset of the Stiva Oblonsky character in Tolstoy’s Russian realism novel Anna Karenina.

Behind Stiva’s smile, his self-possessed mannerisms and hedonism is what Tolstoy described as “the liberalism of the blood.”

From the novel:

“Stepan Arkadyevitch took and read a liberal newspaper, not a radical one, but one advocating the viewpoint maintained by the majority. And even though neither science, nor art or politics held any particular interest for him, he firmly maintained the same views on all these subjects that were maintained by the majority and by his paper, and he changed them only when the majority changed them, or, better put, he did not change them at all; they imperceptibly changed within him . . .

“And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.”

Stiva, we learn in in the novel, does not recognize his conscious when it speaks to him. And that is aided by his living-in-the-moment forgetting. He did not want to remember any unpleasant thing.

Self-deception and romantic ideology play key roles in Anna’s life.

***

Czeslaw Milosz, Polish American poet, novelist, translator, critic, and diplomat, is best known for The Captive Mind (1953). His essay collection focuses on intellectuals, specifically poets and other writers.

As Charles Haywood writes in his 2019 article The Captive Mind (Czeslaw Milosz), [Milosz’s] “book shows how mental gymnastics, rather than coercion, caused writers under Communism to adhere to Communism. Thereby, indirectly, it congratulates writers who believe their minds free from such, or other, contortions.

“The West incorrectly sees “might and coercion” as the reasons those in Eastern Europe submit to Communism. But, rather, unwilling to face either physical or spiritual death, many choose instead to be “reborn” through taking these metaphorical pills, because “[t]here is an internal longing for harmony and happiness that lies deeper than ordinary fear or the desire to escape misery or physical destruction.” Intellectuals, and artists especially, do not want to be “internal exiles, irreconcilable, non-participating, eroded by hatred.” So they swallow the pills and adopt the “New Faith” (a term Milosz uses throughout the book) which offers the intellectual the certainty he is both correct and virtuous, and therefore gives him a sense of belonging, gives him a feeling of being “warm-hearted and good . . . a friend of mankind—not mankind as it is, but as it should be.”” (Emphasis mine.)

Returning to Morson’s article about package thinking, Morson relates

“What really matters, [Czeslaw} Milosz explains, is “the intellectual’s feeling of belonging.” His defining “characteristic is his fear of thinking for himself.” For this reason, as well as to prosper, he must root out all the old ways of thinking. Milosz describes a phenomenon with which university people are all too familiar, the always incomplete process of teaching oneself to say the right things (in the right words), and avoid saying the wrong ones, so that one never makes a slip entailing ostracism or worse. Of course, the best way to do this is to get oneself actually to share the prescribed views. Milosz describes how

after long acquaintance with his role, a man grows into it so closely that he can no longer differentiate his true self from the self he simulates, so that even the most intimate of individuals speak to each other in Party slogans. To identify self with the role one is obliged to play  . .  . permits a relaxation of one’s vigilance. Proper reflexes at the proper time become truly automatic.”

***

One obvious feature of our culture’s downward trend toward mindless conformity is critical thinking’s easy alternative: clicking on a machine to receive packaged thoughts.

Why think when packaged thoughts are there for the clicking? And why expand one’s personal bandwidth when you can reaffirm your tribal identity with a click?

Why research and consider a range of ideas and thoughts when clicking on machine AI is ready to do away with mystery and your curiosity, wonder, and impatience? And why think outside package thinking when life is short – shortened by every minute clicking on a machine.

Why read classic literature to gain wisdom, insight, and understanding from other people in other places and in other times, when you can click on a remote for package thinking entertainment.

Have you bought into the globalist, academic, secular and progressive (GASP) package (a feature of Wikipedia) that censors alternative views as “extremist” or “fringe theories” or “conspiracy theories” or “racist?”

Did you buy into the globalist open borders “welcoming the stranger” package where millions of unvetted illegal invaders entered the country as simple or criminal or terrorism opportunists? Did you accept the package thinking that allows third world invaders into our country to replace American workers and American values and do all manner of harm to its citizens as empathy, as what Jesus would do? Take a look at the strangers welcomed: Arrested: Worst of the Worst | Homeland Security And, there’s this: They Called It ‘Compassion’ — But it was Child Trafficking – American Thinker

Are you buying into the central planning democratic socialism package where everyone, except certain individuals who hold more power and privilege, must be made equal no matter the human cost? Are you buying into the central planning democratic socialism package and willfully forgetting the objective reality of the horrors of socialism/communism? Are you willfully handing over your life, your thoughts, to “Party-mindedness”?

Did you accept the “don’t question the science” COVID package thinking of mandates, masking, social distancing, vaccine passports, isolation camps, vaccine efficacy, and of COVID’s origin lies? America’s COVID Response Was Based on Lies

Likewise, did you not question the package thinking of “climate experts” who announced their verdict that the world would end if we didn’t act now. Not long ago, woven into almost every weather report on local and mainstream media when major weather events (floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires) occurred was the narrative that climate change was behind them – without ever mentioning large-scale natural phenomena such as solar cycles, ocean currents and volcanoes that have been affecting weather for many millennia.

How Dare You

The Green New scam was behind Biden’s $93 Billion Crony Climate Heist. Will declassifying carbon dioxide (necessary for all of life) as a pollutant and the end of carbon dioxide regulation mean the end of the Green New scam? Are we now seeing The End of the Green New Scam? | The Rude Awakening? Matt Ridely thinks so: The end of the climate cult – The Spectator World

(A climate expert I trust: https://judithcurry.com/about/)

Do you go along with the package thinking of the [John] Rawlsian theory of ad hoc justice that, for example, releases someone arrested 40 times, is not considered a “criminal” because of their minority status, and is released by a judge back onto the street where he sets a woman on fire?

Do you buy philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s notion that “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” – the package thinking that says that people are entirely products of their environment, of their society, of their age, and that’s why they do what they do. Therefore, they are not responsible for what they do because of external influence. That’s the package thinking behind the Rawlsian theory of justice and behind the executions and horrors of the French revolution working to change social environment.

Have you agreed with the insurrection thought package being espoused by The Seditious Six imploring military service members to “refuse illegal orders” thereby implying that orders coming out of the Trump administration are considered illegal by them and therefore military service members should disobey their commanding officer and join the club of the “Party-minded.” Remember, package thinking has only one train of thought – gaining and maintaining power over reality.

Have you agreed with the insurrection package thinking espoused previously by NYT’s op-ed columnist David Brooks? Do the values of your party-minded package thinking allow you to hamstring a DEMOCRACY! elected president with the rulings of party-minded federal court judges that will be overturned. Do the values of your party-minded package thinking justify the deep state, in the labyrinth of government, to sabotage the efforts of a Democratically elected President?

Do the values of your package thinking allow you to call for uprisings by any means necessary, to burn down buildings, to destroy property, to destroy businesses, to steal, do violence on others, to defund the police, to create pipe bombs, to assassinate? To ignore your conscience?

Did you accept the “Danger to our Democracy” thought package the media delivered during the last presidential election cycle? It should be obvious from the likes of David Brooks, that the “guardians of democracy” are the ones who want to tear it down.

Have bought into the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) playbook that conforms and coerces everyone to identify with Soviet style party-mindedness package thinking?

Have bought into viewing everything including humans through the lens of materialism?

Have you bought into package thinking so as to not be considered an outsider? Have you bought into conformity for conformity’s sake?

Is censorship the worst thing that can happen to a people? Or, is it “Party-mindedness?”

When we hear someone say crazy things, we might say “Yeah, right” and shrug it off. But when a group of people say crazy things with the smug air of certainty and people agree with said crazy things, we wonder “What in the world is going on?” and “Where is this coming from and where is it going?”

What happened in Russia didn’t stay in Russia. And a mind is still a terrible thing to hand over.

What happened in Russia didn’t stay in Russia . . . Britain Is Lost | ZeroHedge

~~~~~

You can put your ear to the road and hear what is quickly approaching. Download and listen to the following podcasts:

London is falling – or has it fallen already?

 Liz Truss, the 56th prime minister of the United Kingdom, in her very first episode of The Liz Truss Show discusses how bad things are in Britain with a mass migration and economic doom loop – and how to defeat the deep state who have let this happen

London is falling – Liz Truss

https://justthenews.com/podcasts/liz-truss-show/london-falling-or-has-it-fallen-already

~~~

Interview with Professor Gary Saul Morson on Tolstoy, Faith, Package Thinking, and The Importance of Critical Thinking

Professor Gary Saul Morson shares his thought-provoking definition of an intellectual—someone who seeks truth independently, values ideas for their own sake, and stands apart from identity-driven thinking. Whether discussing classic Russian Literature or analyzing modern society, Professor Morson is one of the most insightful and consequential scholars of our time. Discover how this interview, and its exploration of timeless topics, can inspire bold, principled leadership and innovation within today’s business environment.

Gary Saul Morson on Tolstoy, Faith, Package Thinking, and The Importance of Critical Thinking

Interview with Professor Gary Saul Morson on Tolstoy, Faith, and The Importance of Critical Thinking – The Profitable Table Fed by Woolco Foods | Acast

~~~

The Moral Imagination – Michael Matheson Miller

Gary Saul Morson Ph.D.: Thinking Like Lenin

Vladimir Lenin’s ideas are alive and well today: Party-ness, politics as win-lose, zero-sum game, Who-Whom, rejection of truth, ideology, violence, philosophical materialism, adherence to lying.

Thinking Like Lenin, with Gary Saul Morson

Ep. 15: Thinking Like Lenin, with Gary Saul Morson


Is Hope Naïve in a World Like Ours? | Esau McCaulley & Gary Saul Morson at Northwestern

~~~~~

Quotes:

In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea … gain their instant acceptance and applause. On the other hand whatever is brought forward against it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or with hot rage – if indeed it does not make them ill. Beside themselves with passion, some of them would not be backward even about scheming to suppress and silence their adversaries. I have had some experience of this myself. … No good can come of dealing with such people, especially to the extent that their company may be not only unpleasant but dangerous. Galileo Galilei

If the Brave New World cannot insert a square peg into a round hole, it will redefine “roundness” until a perfect fit results.

-Jerome Meckier, from Aldous Huxley: Satire and Structure

…a sense of unity is opposite of a sense of uniformity. Uniformity, where everyone “belongs”, uses the same cliches, thinks alike and behaves alike, produces a society which seems comfortable at first but is totally lacking in human dignity. Real unity tolerates dissent and rejoices in variety of outlook and tradition, realizes that it is man’s destiny to unite and not divide… Unity, so understood, is the extra dimension that raises the sense of belonging into genuine human life.

-Northrop Frye, from The Bush Garden

Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something. -Plato

“The past is our always-available counterculture, and it’s a rich one. Every minute you spend attending to something not-immediately-present, you are helping to build a counterculture.” ― Alan Jacobs

~~~~~

Links:

Why are intellectuals — those whose thinking is supposed to be most refined — so susceptible to totalitarianism? Gary Saul Morson offers three explanations from the treasury of Russian literature.

https://tomklingenstein.com/mind-forgd-manacles-why-intellectuals-conform/

The greatest depiction of woke totalitarianism was written 150 years ago in Russia

Re-Possessed
The Return of the ‘Useful Idiot’
The Captive Mind: A Summary of Czesław Miłosz’s Classic Work on Totalitarianism

Anti-Communism Week has been marked for November 2025. Writer-producer Julie Behling’s documentary “Beneath Sheep’s Clothing” warns of communism’s devastation: “Globally, communism claimed the lives of approximately 150 million people in the 20th century.”

‘Beneath Sheep’s Clothing’: Communism’s Capture Of America | ZeroHedge

Totalitarian governments cannot afford that its citizens remain autonomous persons. This poses a threat to their quest to consolidate power. Individual liberty threatens the theoretical, utopian foundations of promising the re-distribution of goods, and equality; communism ultimately fails to re-distribute the essence of human nature.

10 Habits of Mind to Avoid Ideological Thinking

Everyday Habits That Reveal a Low IQ (Backed by Psychology)

Everyday Habits That Reveal a Low IQ (Backed by Psychology) – YouTube

~~~~~

Added 12-15-2025:

Sam Faddis (formerly with the CIA) sits down to talk about the reality of the ongoing Marxist revolution in America.

The Revolution Right Here At Home – by Sam Faddis

Filed under 2025 Current Events, Communism, cultural Marxism, Culture, Democracy, History, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary, totalitarianism Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Hound of Hell

November 9, 2025 Leave a comment

“The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse.”

-Guy Montag, Fahrenheit 451 

Anyone who has read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 will remember the menacing Mechanical Hound.

In fireman Guy Montag’s world, firemen burn outlawed books and where people hid them. The firehouse ‘dog’, a robotic beast, is an enforcer for the state. If you do not follow society’s rules, the Hound is unleashed. It tracks down and kills book readers using stored information about individuals. The Hound catches its prey and then injects it with lethal drugs.

Though configured as man’s best friend, Montag finds out the true nature of the beast. Being “fascinated as always with the dead beast, the living beast,” he touches the muzzle of the Hound. The Hound growls and Montag recoils.

“The Hound half rose in its kennel and looked at him with green-blue neon light flickering in its suddenly activated eye bulbs. It growled again, a strange rasping combination of electric sizzle, a frying sound, a scraping of metal, a turning of cogs that seemed rusty and ancient with suspicion.”

 Not long afterward, Montag tells Captain Beatty “It doesn’t like me.” Captain Beatty tells Montag:

“Come off it. It doesn’t like or dislike. It just `functions.’ It’s like a lesson in ballistics. It has a trajectory we decide for it. It follows through. It targets itself, homes itself, and cuts off. It’s only copper wire, storage batteries, and electricity.”

The Mechanical Hound attacks what it is programmed to attack. And when Montag becomes more and more inquisitive about books and one is found in his possession, the Hound is released to track him down.

~~~

The techno-capitalist-industrialist-open borders system that goes by “Progress” or “Development” or “the Science” or “Fair-Trade” or “Commercialization” or “Globalization” or “Open Society,” is summed into a single descriptor – “the Machine” – by Paul Kingsnorth in his book Against the Machine (See side bar, previous post, and podcasts below for more information.)

In the chapter Come the Black Ships, Kingsnorth describes the process of Machine as being

“a war against all ‘closed’ things; against limits and boundaries of any kind, cultural and ecological; against historical traditions, local economies, trade unions, national economic plans, nations themselves, tribal cultures, religions . . . anything that interferes with the path of commercial expansion and its associated culture of individualist liberalism. Open is good, closed is bad. Why? Because closed things can’t be harvested, exploited or transformed in the image of the new world which the Machine is building. ‘Open’ things, on the other hand; well, they’re easy prey.”

That is our reality today. The West has colonialized itself with what it has colonized other nations – the Machine’s promise of the “open is good” gravy train. The WEF’s mission statement cloaks the Machine in good: “We bring together government, businesses and civil society to improve the state of the world” by “seiz[ing] opportunities for positive change.”

And so it is that the Machine’s process is advertised as that which benefits humanity in various ways. These include “Enhanced Customer Experience”, “Innovation”, “Diversity”, and “Advancements in Medicine, Education, Efficiency, Productivity, and “Sustainability” all while waging “a war against all ‘closed’ things” for the sake of its commercialization, monetization, and control of the process.

For the Machine to wage “war against all ‘closed’ things”, technology is employed to sniff out and snuff out the ‘closed’ – those people and their places unwilling to “be harvested, exploited or transformed in the image of the new world.” This machine I see depicted as Bradbury’s Mechanical Hound.

The Mechanical Hound represents the perversion of technology. Man’s best friend, a creature meant for companionship, aid, and protection, is turned into a technological tool of oppression. Its purpose is to impose order with terror.

With the Mechanical Hound in mind, consider digital technology which can be seen as friendly and helpful but can been programmed to avenge and punish citizens who break society’s rules. See China’s social credit system.

With the Mechanical Hound in mind, see the UK introducing digital ID cards. The UK government claims the system will simplify access to public services such as healthcare, welfare, and childcare, reduce identity fraud, ensure that only those with the right to work can be hired and is expected to minimize identity fraud by linking personal information to a secure digital format. With all these great “benefits” (for the state), what could go wrong? Say, if someone online says something that is considered “hate speech” by the UK government will the Hound be released to track that person down? That is happening today in the UK.

See a cashless society and Central Bank digital currency (CBDC) where purchases are monitored and financial accounts controlled by the government.

See the smartphone that “slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of” your pocket.

Consider the digital contraptions in your home and car that, like the Hound, can track you with information gathered from 5G towers that is downloaded to data centers that consume massive amounts of energy and water and taxpayer money – to monitor your physical and societal whereabouts so it can sell you more of the Machine’s process.

In Montag’s repressed society, books, book holders, and critical thinkers are dealt with. For books hold the experience and wisdom of ‘closed’ things – history, tradition, culture and religion – and must be done away with. And, so must thinking critically. For researching and comprehending what the Machine is doing to humans and their world is a threat. (https://www.thefire.org/news/10-worst-censors-2024)

With this in mind, consider the calls for censorship on our college campuses. In Britain you can go to jail for saying the ‘wrong’ thing.

In Montag’s repressed society, wall screens and pills replace books. The wall screens produce for Montag’s wife, Mildred, her ‘family’. Their home has three wall screens. She wants a fourth wall screen. We learn how depressing life is for Mildred when she attempts to commit suicide with an overdose.

Consider that it is depressing to live in places run by Democrats: (Illinois state legislature passes assisted-suicide bill)

~~~

How did we get amenable to the Machine’s control over us and thus take on a mechanized way of seeing and relating to the world? Bradbury provides insight.

Fahrenheit 451 is about more than censorship. It is about conformity to state-imposed uniformity. Books in 451 were seen as creating discord. They had to go. For, with the advent of visual media, TV in particular, people no longer read and didn’t want to hear anything but what they heard on the screens. People wanted censorship and conformity to the screens.

As Captain Beatty tells Montag,

“’The fact is we didn’t get along well until photography came into its own. Then–motion pictures in the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things began to have mass.’

“Montag sat in bed, not moving.

“’And because they had mass, they became simpler,” said Beatty. “Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?’”

“’I think so.’”

“Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. ‘Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations, Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.”

“’Snap ending.’ Mildred nodded.”

Captain Beatty, again:

“You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.”

“Yes.”

Beatty’s Full Speech to Montag is provided below.

~~~~~

This our reality: the Machine and the Mechanical Hound.

Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine – On the Unmaking of Humanity has provided us a prophetic understanding of where we are and where we are headed. The Machine is moving us downstream, displacing us from what we value – in Kingsnorth’s words “the past, people, place, and prayer.”

Various entities participate and promote the Machine.

Mainstream media is run by the Machine. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, WSJ, NYT, WaPo and other outlets are the Machine’s mouthpieces. They talk down the “closed” and proclaim the “open.”

Both political parties promote the Machine. It is “progress” (and control) after all. The biggest threat to democracy is the Machine that consumes culture and churns out cogs.

Now that Mamdani has won the NYC mayor’s race, you can be sure that the Mechanical Hound will be released in NYC to enforce socialist jihad. Neither socialism nor Jihad exists without a Mechanical Hound.

Central planners – The World Economic Forum (WEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Trade Organization – represent the Machine’s values.

It takes no stretch of the imagination to see ourselves in Montag’s society or to see technology as that which mimics the good but is easily programmed to avenge and punish citizens who break society’s rules. The Mechanical Hound can tract us down to dispose of the ‘closed’ and conform us to the “Open is good” of the Machine.

Bradbury said that with Fahrenheit 451 he wasn’t trying to predict the future but to prevent it. He wanted to protect the present.

The terror of the Hound of Hell is becoming a permanent feature of the “open” (closing up) brave new (upside down) world.

~~~~~

Read Fahrenheit 451: Beatty’s Speech to Montag

beatty-speech-to-montag-excerptDownload

~~~~~

Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity | Paul Kingsnorth

Demetri Kofinas speaks with Paul Kingsnorth, a novelist, essayist, and former environmental activist who first came on many people’s radars during the Covid-19 pandemic with the publication of his viral three-part series “The Vaccine Moment.” His current work explores the intersection of technology, culture, and the divine. In his latest book, Against the Machine, Kingsnorth examines how our increasingly mechanized way of seeing and relating to the world—and to ourselves—has contributed to the death of Western culture, and what it would take to reclaim our humanity and save our souls.

Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity | Paul Kingsnorth

Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity | Paul Kingsnorth | Listen Notes

~~~

How We Lost Ourselves to Technology—and How We Can Come Back

Do you feel uneasy? Do you feel a level of ambient anxiety? Do you feel despair, despite the fact that we live in the most luxurious time and place in human history? 

The point is, you are not crazy. If you feel these things, you are simply attuned to reality—and it’s not a problem that’s solvable with less screen time or with meditation, red light, or sea moss.

Bari Weiss’ brilliant guest, Paul Kingsnorth, argues that the reason you feel this way is not this or that social media app or algorithm or culture war issue. That these are all superficial expressions of a thousand-year battle with what he calls “the Machine.” What exactly that means, he’ll explain tonight.

How We Lost Ourselves to Technology—and How We Can Come Back

~~~~~

From Doug Ross’ substack:

Top 20 Chilling Insights from Yuri Bezmenov

How the KGB’s Playbook Is Destroying the West Today

Yuri Aleksandrovich Bezmenov (1939–1993), also known as Tomas David Schuman, was a Soviet journalist and KGB operative specializing in propaganda and ideological subversion.

Ideological subversion is the process of bending a society’s perception of reality so completely that it destroys itself.

The goal is to demoralize a society by undermining its moral, educational, and cultural foundations, making people unable to recognize or defend against threats.

Demoralization takes 15-20 years, the time needed to educate one generation with subversive ideas.

Read Bezmenov’s 20 key insights

~~~~~

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From the Free Press:

Peter Thiel Says Capitalism Is Failing the Young. Is He Right?

Five years ago, Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist behind PayPal and Palantir, sent a prescient email to Facebook executives.

“When 70% of millennials say they are pro-socialist,” he wrote, “we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why.”

The email went viral after democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s victory last week in the New York City mayoral race. Thiel then sat down with The Free Press’s Sean Fischer to explain what he saw in 2020 that no one else did.

Capitalism isn’t working for young people, Thiel said, citing burdensome student debt and regulations putting homeownership out of reach for many. “People assume everything still works, but objectively, it doesn’t. . . . If you proletarianize the young people, you shouldn’t be surprised if they eventually become communist.” (Emphasis mine.)

Thiel, who I see as also promoting the Machine, at least sees what the Machine is doing to the young.

And, of course, socialism/communism is a horrifying Machine that revels in terror to replace humanity with ideology.

~~~~~

The Machine’s AI Alchemy

Mary Shelly’s Victor Frankenstein, obsessed with creating a human being, used alchemy and electricity and body parts to create a creature (without woman). . .

A group of Stanford University scientists . . .  used artificial intelligence to design new viruses capable of killing bacteria.

In a world where AI keeps creeping in on uniquely human territory by composing sonnets, writing songs or forging friendships, this seemed to be crossing a new Rubicon. Depending on your belief system, AI was doing what evolution, or God, or scientists working with genome-engineering tools aim to do.

“Machines are rethinking what it is to be human, what it is to be alive,” said Michael Hecht, a chemistry professor at Princeton University focused on designing novel proteins and artificial genomes. “I find this very unsettling and staggering. They are devising, coming up with novel life forms. Darwin 2.0.”

AI-designed viruses raise fears over creating life – The Washington Post

Filed under 2025 Current Events, AI, central planning, Economic World Forum, Globalism, Political Commentary, Progressivism, social commentary, Technocracy, technology, totalitarianism, WEF, World Economic Forum Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Displaced in Place

October 19, 2025 Leave a comment

Monica Sanders, a survivor of Hurricane Katrina, wrote in her August 18, 2025, Oxford American article The Storm that Blew Us Apart recalling Twenty years after Katrina, we’re still living in the space between before and after:

 The flood took homes and heirlooms, yes. But it also took the things that don’t have price tags: your grandmother’s pew at St. Peter Claver, the second-line route your cousin danced for the first time, the rhythm of being able to walk next door to ask for a lemon and stay for a two-hour porch talk.

We became refugees in our own country . . .

Some of us never came back.

Those who did found a different city. Not just rebuilt, but rearranged. The neighborhoods we knew—Broadmoor, Gentilly, the Lower Nine—returned with new names, new residents, and new rules. People who knew about noise ordinances but not about king cakes. People who brought nonprofits but not traditions. People who wanted charm but not character. The kind who say “N’Awlins” with a wink, and don’t hear the ghost in that mispronunciation.

Displacement gave way to gentrification. What was affordable became vacation rentals. What was vibrant became boutique. Streets that once held parades now hold pop-ups. We became the entertainment, not the community.

And yet, we remain. . .

All of us carry the “before” with us. . .

We talk about resilience now, but we forget that true resilience is cultural as much as physical. It’s knowing who to call when the lights go out. It’s gathering your neighbors even when there’s no power. Its memory passed like gumbo recipes and Sunday prayers.

Mutual Aid, New Orleans, 2005. Inkjet Print on Canvas, Clarence Williams

~~~

As helicopters rush off with the most desperately ill, throngs trapped for nearly a week in New Orleans climb aboard busses at the intersection of I-10 and Causeway Blvd., Saturday, September, 3, 2005. (Staff photo by Eliot Kamentiz, The Times-Picayune)

I began with Monica’s reflection on the effects of Hurricane Katrina, for order being swallowed up by non-order, an overwhelming flood, parallels the flood of disorder working to decouple us from people, place and the past and to colonize us for its reorganizing purposes which include efficacy, profitability and efficiency.  (Order, non-order and disorder are terms coined by Dr. John Walton to describe cosmology in his Job commentary.)

That storm is blowing us apart. And as was experienced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we feel a pervasive sense of displacement, of being refugees in our own country, of living in the space before and after the imposed transformation of our culture.

The source of dysphoria about our time and place being out of joint may not be readily recognizable. As with the “frog in boiling water”, we steep in its flood waters not recognizing the stew we are in. Screens constantly distract our attention away from what is happening to our existence.  

The source: a flood of ideologically progressive technology and globalization that is wiping out our connections to people, place and the past. Its overwhelming force is our unmooring, our unmaking. Its irresistible force is displacing us in place.

I’ve been aware of the source for many years, starting when I bought a 286 computer in the 70s. The machine had an allure that had me come back to it constantly.

In an October 23, 2022 post Altered States, I quoted Jacques Ellul from his book The Technological Society and wrote the following:

I’m becoming a neo-Luddite of sorts. I have a particular dislike for digital technology as it modifies the means of relating to ourselves, to those around us and to our world. Its dissociative medium detaches us from reality, thereby affecting identity, memory, perception, and truth.

The flood waters are rising around us. Look at what is going on with the tech-bro push for AI and transhumanism, with concerns about rare earth minerals, with chips, chips, and more chips, with 5G towers, energy and water consuming data centers, constant surveillance, mandated digital IDs – why do we need any of it?

‘A Sharp Escalation’: Americans Starting To Revolt Against Data Centers | ZeroHedge

I recently came across an author that uses “the Machine” as the analogy for the inhuman forces at work to enclose all in its path for Progress. What Kingsnorth writes resonates with everything that I’ve read in dystopian novels: 1984, That Hideous Strength, Brave New World, and Darkness at Noon. Here’s Paul Kingsnorth with “Huxley and the Machine”:

Paul Kingsnorth’s, Against the Machine is “an account of the technological-cultural matrix enveloping all of us. The culmination of two decades of my writing and thinking about technology, culture, spirituality and politics, it seeks to offer an insight into how the techno-industrial culture that I call ‘the Machine’ has choked Western civilisation, is destroying the Earth itself, and is reshaping us all in its image.

From the First Industrial Revolution to the rise of artificial intelligence, this book shows how the hollowing out of humanity has been a long game—and how our very soul is now at stake.

Against the Machine is the spiritual manual for dissidents in the technological age.”

~~~~~

Per Lewis Fried, Lewis Mumford, author of The Myth of the Machine, “insisted upon the reality of the Megamachine: the convergence of science, economy, technics and political power as a unified community of interpretation rendering useless and eccentric life-enhancing values. Subversion of this authoritarian kingdom begins with that area of human contact with the world that cannot be successfully repressed – one’s feelings about one’s self. “

Mumford:

The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture.

Technology, instead of introducing us to freedom, has imposed on us the slavery of the machine.

Modern Man is the victim of the very instruments he values most. Every gain in power, every mastery of natural forces, every scientific addition to knowledge, has proved potentially dangerous, because it has not been accompanied by equal gains in self-understanding and self-discipline.

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.

Western culture no longer represents man: it is mainly outside him, and in no small measure hostile to his whole self: he cannot take it in. He is like a patient condemned in the interests of X-ray photography to live upon a diet of barium sulphate…In the end, as Samuel Butler satirically prophesied, man may become just a machine’s contrivance for reproducing another machine.

The great gains that were made in technics during the last few centuries were largely offset by a philosophy that either denied the validity of man’s higher needs or that sought to foster only that limited set of interests which enlarged the power of science and gave scope to a power personality. At a moment when a vast surplus was available for the goods of leisure and culture, the very ideals of leisure and culture were cast into disrepute — except when they could be turned to profit. Here lies the core of the inner crisis that has afflicted our civilization for at least two centuries. In the heyday of expansionism, the middle of the nineteenth century, scarcely a single humane voice could be found to defend either the means or the ideals of a power civilization…Blake, Ruskin, Morris, Arnold, Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Melville, Dickens, Howells, Hugo, Zola, Mazzini, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Ibsen…denounced the human results of the whole process of mechanization and physical conquest. As with one voice, they protested against the inhuman sacrifices and brutalizations, the tawdry materialisms, the crass neglect of the human personality.

~~~~~

~~~~~

The truth is, men have lost their belief in the Invisible, and believe, and hope, and work only in the Visible; or, to speak it in other words: This is not a Religious age. Only the material, the immediately practical, not the divine and spiritual, is important to us. The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable. Worship, indeed, in any sense, is not recognised among us, or is mechanically explained into Fear of pain, or Hope of pleasure. Our true Deity is Mechanism. It has subdued external Nature for us, and we think it will do all other things. We are Giants in physical power: in a deeper than metaphorical sense, we are Titans, that strive, by heaping mountain on mountain, to conquer Heaven also.

Thomas Carlyle, from “Signs of the Times“

~~~~~

Against the machine: Digital ID Black Pill Moment? – The Burning Platform

Michael Appleton/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

Smiley N. Pool/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

Filed under 2025 Current Events, Culture, Digitalization, social commentary, technology, the Singularity Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Juxtaposed! News ™ NYC and Nigeria

June 29, 2025 Leave a comment

24 years post 9/11, New York City welcomes Jihad

New York City, home to about one million Jews, voted in the Democratic mayoral primary for a Shia Muslim deeply critical of Israel.

Zohran Mamdani wants to “globalize the intifada” – a slogan used by pro-Palestinian activists that calls for worldwide support for Palestinian resistance against Israel and Jews involving violence. Mamdani does this with the handwashing tact of standing up for Palestinian human rights.

Mamdani supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

The hook for NYC’s wealthy champagne socialists who need to virtue signal eyes away from their wealth and for the young and restless urbanites who can’t afford rent in NYC: Mamdani is a 33-year-old member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Andrew Cuomo dominated the voting among those making under $50K, but Mamdani beat Cuomo by 20 points among voters earning more than $100,000 a year.

Why did New Yorkers vote this way? Sean Ring at https://www.rudeawakening.info/ had this to say:

Mamdani’s campaign was a symbolic war against the status quo. Today’s left doesn’t organize labor. It organizes narratives.

And that’s why wealthy, well-fed urbanites feel perfectly comfortable voting for a candidate whose policies might, in theory, hurt their pocketbooks.

Because in 2025, feeling good beats doing good. . .

Welcome to the revolution, brought to you by people who can afford it

See also Karl Marx Moving Into Gracie Mansion and

Zohran Mamdani Admits He Hates Capitalism… Allied With Socialist Operative Linked To Marxist Terror Group:

Americans were stunned last week when foreign-born, self-proclaimed socialist Zohran Mamdani used CNN as a platform to denounce capitalism—the very system that transformed this country from frontier towns into a global superpower. Capitalism has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, built a middle class, and fueled rapid technological innovation—outcomes impossible under socialist regimes, as evidenced by an imploding Europe adopting welfare-state models or failed communist states like Cuba. 

Like all communist organizers (cf. Obama), the 33-year-old progressive democratic socialist promises an anticapitalism world (with no rising seas or costs) if you just give up all common sense and any understanding of free-market economics (I, Pencil provides understanding) and vote (and pay dearly later) for the revolution. (It’s no secret that capitalism’s profits pay for socialism’s follies.)

Mandani, in order to control costs (read seize the means of production and central planning), says that he wants to freeze rents and provide free transportation and universal childcare, create city-owned grocery stores and construct 200,00 affordable housing units.

He also wants to raise New York City’s minimum wage to $30 by 2030, thereby pricing people out of jobs.

How will Mandani fill the coffers of socialism? With racism:  NYC’s Mamdani Wants Higher Taxes for ‘Whiter Neighborhoods.’

“Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods.” – Zohran for New York City policy memo.

Mamdani, using the narrative of the left, wants to defund the NYPD and abolish prisons.

NYC’s new Marxist messiah wants to empty the jails and crown criminals as victims…

He promises to work against U.S. laws to continue Welcoming the Stranger/Fellow Traveler from other failed socialist countries. He will double down on sanctuary city protections for illegals and end cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Welcome to the revolution.

Like fellow travelers Tim Waltz and Kamala Harris, Mamdani defended the Black Lives Matter riots in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2020. He described the violence (read intifada struggle) as necessary and grounded in racial justice solidarity.

Not only will Mamdani work against U.S. laws, he will also work against nature itself. He’s Pledging $65 Million for Trans Health Care.

Did NYC Democrats not see the destruction of the palisades and LA by the incompetent leadership of California’s Governor Gavin Newsom and inclusion’s DEI hire Mayor Karen Bass? With this recent vote, do NYC Democrats also approve of the wholesale destruction of their blue city?

Do Democrats in NYC not remember Gavin Newsom eating without mask or social distancing at the French Laundry during the COVID lockdowns? With this recent vote, do NYC Democrats also approve of the hypocrisy of a society that claims to promote equality while allowing a ruling class to dominate?

Mamdani was born in Uganda and briefly lived in South Africa. He became a U.S. citizen in 2018. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Africana studies from Bowdoin College. 

No doubt the 33-year-old has been steeped in the anti-American anti-Capitalism rhetoric and Islamic Jihad teaching. It appears that he knows nothing of American history or of Communism’s deadly and destructive track record.

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” -George Santayana

Welcome to the revolution. Welcome To Crazy Town – New York Commits Political Suicide

Welcome to Jihad.

From Welcoming Jihad in NYC to Globalized Intifada – The Holy War Against Christians in Nigeria

I’m sure you’ve heard the following reported in the main stream media.

But then again, the reactionary MSM is busy defending the globalist Jihad of the “Welcoming the Stranger” open borders narrative and dissing the law-and-order activity of the Trump administration done to secure the integrity of the United States and the wellbeing of its citizens.

(No doubt some, including some Christians, believe that the morally relativistic “social justice” is a permissive that allows them moral authority to break laws created by representatives of our Republic’s Democracy to maintain order and the common good.)

What’s happening and been happening in Nigeria is Jihad. But it’s not the ghetto-uprising kind of a NYC socialist Jihadist. Here are five articles describing the horrors of Islamist Jihad:

Beneath the silence of the Western press, a genocide is unfolding — one that has claimed the lives of over 3,100 Christians in Nigeria this year alone. And yet, for all the blood spilled, for all the churches burned and children slain, one would be hard-pressed to find even a whisper of coverage from CNN, the BBC, or The New York Times. The slaughter of Christians, it seems, is not newsworthy in today’s media economy. (Emphasis mine.)

Western Media Silent As Slaughter of Christians Intensifies in Nigeria

In a horrifying escalation of violence, between 100 and 200 Christians were murdered by Fulani jihadist herdsmen in Nigeria’s Benue State, according to multiple sources. (Emphasis mine.)

Jihadis butcher 200 Nigerian Christians in fresh massacre

Jihadist violence continues to escalate in Nigeria, and Christians are particularly at risk from targeted attacks by Islamist militants, including Fulani fighters, Boko Haram and ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province). These increased under the rule of former president Muhammadu Buhari, putting Nigeria at the epicentre of targeted violence against the church. The government’s failure to protect Christians and punish perpetrators has only strengthened the militants’ influence. (Emphasis mine.)

Nigeria  · Serving Persecuted Christians Worldwide

Nigeria, the most populated country in Africa, faces a harsh reality for its Christian population. Since the early 2000s, over 62,000 Christians have lost their lives to violence driven by extremist groups like Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and Fulani militias. (Emphasis mine.)

The Silent Slaughter: Christian Persecution in Nigeria and Central Africa

[Bishop Wilfred Anagbe] added that for his people, their experience today “can be summed up as that of a Church under Islamist extermination.” (Emphasis mine.)

‘This is genocide,’ charity says as ‘barbaric massacres’ target Christians in Nigeria

Nigerian martyrs cry out in a loud voice, “Holy and true Master! How much longer are you going to put off giving judgement, and avenging our blood on the earth-dwellers?” -Revelation 6:10

~~~

No more word games. How are we to understand intifada and jihad? As merely a personal struggle against, say, cigarette smoking? As a struggle against an oppressor? As a non-violent ghetto uprising involving work stoppages, boycotts and demonstrations that might involve small weapons such as rocks or Molotov cocktails, and on some occasions firearms or grenades?

Are we to understand intifada as the October 7th attack on Israel when Gaza militants fired thousands of rockets towards Israeli towns killing more than 1,400 people, including civilians and soldiers, and took up to 150 hostages.

Some, like Daniel Lefkowitz, consider “intifada and genocide” in the same sentence to be “an unreasonable stretch.” But looking at what happened on October 7th and at what has been happening in Nigeria, is it a stretch?

“Globalize the intifada” is a call for a Muslim holy war or spiritual struggle for the propagation or defense of Islam that involves genocide and now wants to employ the unholy terror of Communism.

The New York mayoral Democratic primary candidate defends “Globalize the intifada.”

(I don’t hear pro-Israel war hawk “Tel Aviv Levin” decrying the violence done to Christians in Nigeria by Jihadists.)

~~~~~

AI – Act Now Before the Bill Passes!

Email your senators and ask them to remove a 10-year moratorium on enforcing state and local artificial intelligence laws from the GOP’s megabill. The moratorium infringes on states’ rights.

Removing the 10-year moratorium on enforcing state and local artificial intelligence laws

-will protect citizens from the harm the technology could cause, and the lack of “thoughtful” public debate over the measure.

-will protect our citizens from the misuse of artificial intelligence.

17 republican governors tell Thune to cancel AI rule

~~~~~

Now Playing:

Takemitsu_ Paths (In Memoriam Witold Lutoslawski)

Toru Takemitsu (1931-1996) was a self-taught Japanese composer who combined elements of Eastern and Western music and philosophy to create a unique sound world. 

(I played the trumpet for many years. My ears perked up when I heard Paths.)

Witold Roman Lutosławski was a Polish composer and conductor. He was one of the major composers of 20th-century classical music.

~~~~~

Iran Abandoned, and Blue Cities, Too

Filed under 2025 Current Events, anti-Semitism, central planning, Christianity, Communism, cultural Marxism, Democracy, democrats, Mideast, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary, social justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Existential This!

May 18, 2025 Leave a comment

For a long while now the main stream media has been staging professional wrestling matches with day-of-reckoning plots. The scrappers include Hurricane Climate Change, Mysterio Misinformation, Equalizer Inequality, Undertaker Pandemic, and The Hammer “Democracy!” Opponents will take the fall.

A lot of sponsor money is backing the theater. So, a team of writers pen the storylines. And though the plots are predetermined and the moves choreographed, the staged spectacle must appear real to wrest control of the public’s interest. The rigged and scripted matches must provide the illusion of legitimacy of an actual unprecedented threat.

The wrestlers’ character and in-ring actions must look authentic and connect with the audience. Even so, Joe Blow is not watching as a critical thinker. He’s partaking in the bloodlust.

The nature of the high-stakes fiction captures his full attention. He is soon whipped into a state of frenzy. Animal spirits, “the spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction” (M. Keynes), are released. He can barely contain himself.

What’s this! In tonight’s audience is another professional wrestler. The Snake! wants in on the action:

Former FBI Director James Comey posted a photo of sea shells arranged into the numbers “86 47” on his Instagram account today, before shortly deleting the post.

“86 47” – Former FBI Director Comey Posts-Then-Deletes Creepy Threat Aimed At Trump

~~~~~

OK. The pro wrestling imagery is not perfect, but here’s the thing . . .

High-stakes fiction – existential threats posed by climate change, misinformation, inequality, democracy, and who knows what’s next – is meant not only to capture the full attention of Joe Blow but also to overwhelm and exhaust his resolve. Such is the nature of psychological oppression. To wit:

“A gleeful, self-satisfied Mr Punch was often heard to remark: “That’s the way to do it.” Today we examine how Mark Poynting, one of the BBC’s top doom-mongering Net Zero activists, uses the trusted ‘scientists say’ message to turn a centennial sea level rise of around 30 cm into prose stating: “The world could see hugely damaging sea-level rises of several metres or more over the coming centuries””

Per Chris Morrison at the Daily Sceptic; The BBC’s Mark Poynting Shows How to Spread Climate Alarm

The constant messaging of threats – “It creates a state of utter helplessness, a state in which you are far more pliant.” So writes Thomas Buckley, of the Brownstone Institute in the web article The Existential Threat of the Existential Threat. Why do this? Buckley continues:

And those invoking that dread are waiting nearby to do just that – take society by the shoulder, offer it comfort on the form of entertainment, medication, and basic sustenance, and lead it away.

The real existential threat, as Buckley notes, is that which denies our individual human agency and seeks to combine us into communitarian compliancy with “the ethereal economy of government agencies, civil society actors, non-governmental organizations, foundations, and academia, all aided by the information cabal. Together they do, in fact, currently have the power to foist something upon civilization that truly is transgenerational, global, and terminal.

The benefit of a pliant public is all theirs, as Buckley writes:

The democracy being threatened is “their” democracy, not “our” democracy.

The climate being threatened is their silver sheened scrubbed personal environment – the actual environmental destruction that is occurring is out of sight, the denigrating of the sub-Deltas who inhabit other places, is immaterial.

The information being threatened are the lies being told to prop up the societal transformation. 

The equality being threatened is their right to be more equal than others forever.

And the pandemic being threatened is the right to declare a pandemic on a whim, terrifying the public into ceding basic rights in the name of safety.

Be aware of the conditioners of society! They want to put you into a permanent headlock!

The Existential Threat of the Existential ThreatDownload

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~~~~~

Climate Realism

A new paper by Dr. Judith Curry, one of the world’s most prominent scientists skeptical of a looming human-caused climate catastrophe, and economist Harry DeAngelo cautions investors and the public that “the apocalyptic climate narrative is a seriously flawed guide for public policy.” Why? “Because it radically overstates the risks to humanity from continued global warming.” Wide-scale suppression of fossil fuel use will not measurably change future temperatures, but “a sharp decline in quality of life would surely ensue.”

You can download the podcast here:

A Critique of the Climate Apocalypse with Dr. Judith Curry — The Climate Realism Show #156 – The Heartland Institute

About Climate Etc.

A Critique of the Apocalyptic Climate Narrative

~~~~~

Josh Blackman:

SCOTUS to CASA to A.A.R.P.: In Case Of (Perceived) Emergency, Ignore The Rules, And Make Stuff Up

“The past 24 hours have been something of a Rorschach Test for the Supreme Court. In the birthright citizenship case, the Court made clear that in emergencies, the judiciary must retain the power to enter universal injunctions, even if Article III does not otherwise permit such injunctions. And in A.A.R.P. v. Trump, the Court made clear that in emergencies, the court should certify a class without going through Rule 23, and grant an ex parte tro without considering any of the usual TRO factors.

“What lesson should lower court judges take away? In cases of perceived emergencies, forget all the rules and make stuff up. When the executive branch takes such actions we call it an autocracy. When the courts do it, they call it the “rule of law.””

Filed under 2025 Current Events, central planning, Climate change, Democracy, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary, social engineering Tagged with , , , , ,

The Fowler’s Snare Chronicles

November 3, 2024 Leave a comment

There is no way back but there is a way through.

The day that brothers Bryce and Blake returned to campus after a fencing tournament they were immediately escorted to the IU auditorium where the first session of the Ex Novo Institute in Basic Life Process had already started. It seemed to them that the whole student body was in attendance. They stood at the back of the balcony with the others who came in late.

Up front, a large screen projected a woman’s face. Her owlish eyes darted back and forth behind the circular frames of her glasses. The small, and yet imposing woman, had cropped black hair and was dressed in something like a military uniform. She was speaking from a podium off to the left of the screen.

“There will no longer be any recognition of the past. Clear your mind of all that came before. You are students of today. Your mindset is today. Your thoughts are today’s thoughts. When you complete the Basic Life Process course, you will become stewards of the New Way Forward and not of the dug-up past.”

Bryce and Blake gave each other a puzzled look.

“You will no longer be weighed down with the obligations of tradition and faith. Tradition and faith brought you guilt and prejudice and racism and greed and violence. You are to rid yourself of such baggage. Your motivations and direction will come from Central Screen. Central Screen will be your personal Event Horizon.”

A logo appeared on the large screen. Beneath the words “Central Screen” was what looked like graph paper curved into a cone pointing down. At the edge of the taper was “Event Horizon”. The cone’s tip was labeled “Singularity.”

“You will be given a new set of values from Central Screen. All that is good will come from Central Screen. There is no such thing as a morality that stands outside human society. Morality is subordinated to the General Will as shown on Central Screen.

“You will no longer have to worry about what is good and the right thing to. You won’t need religion. The Central Screen software will make particular ethical perceptions clearer by demonstrating how they exemplify more general rules based in scientific certainty. The software will provide a systematic accounting of reality that our intuitive moral perceptions and judgements can only hint at.”

When the first session had concluded, a student approached the speaker, Director Argans. She scanned the student’s face with her CenSoid App. “Yes, Alistair?”

“Director Argans, I am currently in the humanities doctoral program here at IU. My doctoral thesis is on Dante, Botticelli, and the Florentine Renaissance. I rushed back from Italy for this required course. Am I to understand, what you’re saying is, that the independent study of the humanities, the study of all languages and literatures, the arts, history, and philosophy is no more? Everything is to be found on Central Screen?

“Alistair, as you will learn on Day Three, anything that holds a bellicose inspiration from the past is a danger to the organization of peace. You will learn what unites us as world citizens. You want to live free from oppressive and pugnacious attachments to the past, don’t you Alistair? To see what can be, unburdened by what has been.

“It was pope Francis, Alistair, who said “a conservative is one who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that.” He also said that it was a “suicidal attitude because one thing is to take tradition into account, to consider situations from the past, but quite another is to be closed up inside a dogmatic box.

“And, wasn’t it Rousseau who said that people in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence, however, is corrupted by the evils of society? We are in the process of creating a new society using simple rational principles provided through Central Screen.”

“Well, Miss Argans, I never thought of art as bellicose or of being in a dogmatic box.”

“Alistair, you will after session three. Humanities stirs the emotions and emotions cloud reason. You will be given a new set of “realistic” or “rational” values to work with. In our workshops you will learn a new way forward with Central Screen AI. What will it profit you, Alistair, if you gained that doctorate and lose yourself with a suicidal attitude in the process?”

Another student broke in and Alistair wasn’t able to ask another question. He walked away stunned by what he had heard.

~~~~

“That was ten years ago this month.”

Comet got up from his chair and looked out the attic window of the Victorian house on Jefferson St. in Martinsville, Indiana. Seeing no threat, he sat back down and faced Scribe who was typing.

“That Ex Novo session was ten years ago this month. Make sure to note the dates in this chronicle. And listen, sis,” Comet emphasized, “no real names go into this eyewitness account. If these chronicles get into the wrong hands we’d be done for and so would mother and father and Grace downstairs. We are recording the diabolical acts of the Save Democracy party as Comet and Scribe. Let’s call this next chronicle Surface.”

“Surface?” asked Scribe.

“The Save Democracy party wants nothing to do with the past. Many in our world read and study history to know how to proceed. Practical wisdom is case based. But the Party studies the future, rewrites the past and proceeds with abstract theoretical reasoning or surface knowledge.

The party leadership operates like a ship’s captain heading out to sea and who ignores the traditional knowledge passed down through generations used by navigators to read the stars, winds, and currents.

“The Save Democracy party leadership ignores the guidance of the vast ocean underneath and the vast night sky above, the enduring connection to the space and time we all travel in. It ignores charts and says “I know my way around. I know where I want to go. I know the way forward just by looking at the surface” and “I know how to use a rudder.”

“The ship will move and be tossed about because the ocean surface is never still. Wind-driven waves and currents will steer the boat this way and that. It may take on water and go all Titanic. If not, it will end up lost at sea without a way back to port. Scribe, we have escaped. But most have been forced into steerage aboard the Surface ship of fools!”

“Got it, said Scribe. “I think.” She inserted another sheet of paper into the typewriter. “Did you finish what happened during that first Ex Novo Institute?”

“Ah, no. After the first session I came up and questioned Miss Argans about my law classes and finishing them up. She told me the same thing she said to the guy in front of me. When I left her, I noticed that I was being followed. I went to the second session – we all had to. It was the same lecture as the day before: tear it all down and start over. That time many of the students were clapping. Maybe out of fear or maybe because the words resonated with what they had been taught over the years.

“During the third session I saw the same people who had been following me. They were removing people from the auditorium. I snuck out. I went into hiding. We’ve been hiding ever since.”

Comet got up and took another look out the attic window. He remembered the day he saw the Rooms for Rent sign in the front yard. The widow Grace was happy to have them around to help keep things up and to keep her company. She also needed the money. The socialist economy had created hyperinflation. She let them rent two rooms.

Comet and Scribe arrived together. Their parents, who didn’t want either of them to grow up in the Save Democracy system, thought it best if they stayed out of sight together.

The house was a good location for Comet, a former astronomy student at IU. He spent many nights at IU’s Goethe Link Observatory just eleven miles north of Martinsville. He felt safe there in the middle of the night.

~~~~~

The street was quiet. What Comet thought unsettling was the Save Democracy party headquarters in the Morgan County Courthouse a few blocks away and the massive 5G tower standing next to it monitoring all digital communications and transactions.

“So, you were going to tell me what happened before all this Ex Novo business.” Scribe put another sheet of paper in the portable Smith-Corona typewriter.

Seeing no threat on the street Comet began pacing to give his account.  “Let’s call this next chronicle The Surface Comes to Power.”  Scribe began typing.

“Four years before the first Ex Novo days, a November election was held. But the man elected was not allowed into the White House. The Save Democracy party and a few others in the House of Representatives passed a resolution saying that the man was an “insurrectionist” and therefore disqualified under Section 3 of 14th Amendment “insurrection” clause. With Secret Service agents counting the electoral votes, together they refused to certify the election on January 6, 2025.  

“The Counting and Certification of Electoral Votes in Washington, DC, had been designated a National Special Security Event by the Secretary of Homeland Security. The military received an amended directive allowing for their direct involvement in civilian law enforcement operations under emergency conditions, including situations where there is an imminent threat. The military was used by the Save Democracy to facilitate a coup, a coup set in motion four years before on January sixth. An “insurrection” setup scenario had been initiated by the Save Democracy party in concert with the FBI, “deep state” actors, and later with a show trial.

“Right after the election, the twenty-fifth amendment was used to depose the current feeble-minded president. He was replaced by a puppet, the feeble-minded Vice president. The elected Vice President was given an office but no access to the White House or policy.  

“The Save Democracy party, over time, having taken control of both the house and senate with the votes of non-citizens, absentee votes counted after the election, and massive voter fraud, then removed the conservative members of the Supreme court with expulsions based on made-up ethics violations.

“The court was then reconstituted to hold fifteen members of the Save Democracy party. All challenges to the constitutionality of such sweeping changes failed because the plaintiffs were told they had no standing. No subsequent challenges were brought before the court after the Save Democracy party Speaker of the House tore up the U.S. Constitution during a State of the Union speech.

“It was then declared that the electoral college would be abolished and all future elections would have the oversight of the new Elections Council.

“Using the military “under emergency conditions” to keep the peace, Save Democracy members were quickly installed throughout state and local governments and the courts where there hadn’t been support for the Save Democracy party. The newly installed were given a mandate to defend One People, One Equality, One Equity, the motto of the Save Democracy party. The ensuing reign of terror went well beyond the atrocities of the French Revolution.”

Scribe stopped typing. “French Revolution? I don’t know what that is. Will the readers know?”

Comet sat down and faced her. “You were only six years old when the Save Democracy party took over the country. The party didn’t want anyone to learn history as it would expose them and their ways. You weren’t given a chance to learn history. I’ll explain the French Revolution later. You are an autodidact. You’ve learned a lot on your own already. I better go on. Have you got everything so far?”

“Yeah, go a little slower. I’m not used to typing on this thing” Scribe added another sheet of paper to the typewriter.

“OK. The Save Democracy party members immediately enacted permanent martial law. The Party media said that martial law had been imposed because of the civil unrest due to “perverse and macabre” political foes – those who didn’t accept what had happened to their country. Martial law allowed the Save Democracy party members to keep in check “extremist elements”, to control the drug trade for profit, and to exploit terrorism for its own ends.

“The operation of new penal codes was entrusted, not to legal authorities, but to local oversight committees. They hunted down those thought to be a threat to the community. Anyone could be accused of being disloyal to the Save Democracy party even based on hearsay. Anyone – father, mother, grandmother, grandfather, and child – could be imprisoned, tortured or executed for allegedly being critical of the Save Democracy party. Many were arrested on fabricated charges just to keep people living in fear of the local Save Democracy party.

“A favorite form of torture in many towns was the “Underneath pit.” An arrestee was thrown into a ten-foot-deep hole in the ground. The hole was exposed to the elements. The width of the pit was barely bigger than the person thrown in. He or she would not be able to bend or change their position. The hole was the prisoner’s latrine. After many days the person would become a sliver of flesh with only the feeling of anger keeping them alive. These tortures are still going on today.

“With the new power they had been given, local Save Democracy party members kept up the perpetual and brutal oppression of citizens. They loved to dehumanize. For them it was a game. They found new ways of doing so and posted them on Central Screen. Limitless coercion and terror were essential to the Save Democracy party’s New Way Forward.

“Random terror was meant to convey the constant and unyielding force of the Party’s control over humanity. It emphasized a future devoid of freedom and individuality. The end product was to create mindless and unfeeling oxen for the party.

“Out of fear of being sent home and losing benefits – a threat made on Party media – fifteen million illegal migrants voted for Party candidates every election.

“Once the Save Democracy party had full control, it was decided that vast numbers of the population had to be culled, as the welfare system, hospitals, schools, and prisons were overwhelmed. Some in the party just wanted to lower the population numbers out of climate concerns. So, a gain-of-function virus was released from a bioweapons lab in California. Millions of people suffered and died from the higher levels of spike protein in the One Health self-amplifying mRNA vaccine.

“The Committee of Public Singularity was established out of fear of a viral outbreak of past knowledge. The Committee created the Ex Novo-Institute in Basic Life Process to deal with the Underneath, a mindset that had been banned as extremist.

“The idea behind the institute was to make a clean sweep of human nature. At the compulsory meetings people were told that the Save Democracy party was building from scratch a new ideal society on the concepts of humanitarianism, social science, and collectivism using Central Screen programming. The analog past was to be replaced with a digital future controlled by Central Screen AI.

“What I learned during the Ex Novo sessions was that voiding the past and human attachments were required by the New Way Forward. Old thoughts, old habits, old culture, and old customs had to be destroyed. No one was to experience any connection with family, friends, children or about anything, past or present. They were to die to all that. All of life was to come from the Party’s Central Screen. All of life was to come from the Surface.”

~~~~

“You staying with me, Scribe?”

“Yeah. This stuff you’re telling me is nasty. I don’t like thinking about it.” Scribe shivered.

“Yeah, it is. That’s why we are making a record of it. People need to know what happened. Right now, the Save Democracy party is erasing anything connected to the past. Let’s keep going.”

Once again, Comet got up and looked out the window. The neighborhood was quiet.

During the first days at the house, Grace talked about Martinsville. The first settlers, she said, arrived in Morgan County in 1822. Large numbers of Quakers migrated here from the south because of their opposition to slavery. 

She also said Martinsville was nicknamed the City of Mineral Water. Oil workers discovered the foul-smelling mineral water while drilling. Mineral water was thought to have healing properties. It was used in the Martinsville Sanitarium which operated as a health resort until about 1957. But now, she said, the Sanitarium was being used by the Party for optogenetic experiments on citizens.

That’s what her last renters, neuroscience students, told her. The Party is controlling subjects with the presence of light to alter cell behavior with regard to reward, motivation, fear, and sensory processing.

Seeing nothing on the street that concerned him, Comet continued dictating while pacing.

“In tandem with the Ex Novo-Institute, there was an even more invasive program: ReCognify Conditioning. The Save Democracy party, along with the social programmers of the World Economic Forum, claimed that human nature is no different to that of a programmable machine.

“Transhumanist scientists began implanting vast numbers of the population with synthetic memories using brain chips to create a new ideal human. The ReCognify program had been initially tested on criminals. According to one unauthorized release of Party documents, customized AI-generated content converted visual information into codes delivered directly to the brain and stored in DNA and RNA, forever altering the subject.

“Prisoners were implanted with synthetic memories of their crimes – but from the perspective of their victim or victims. The embedded artificial memories prompted reactions like remorse, empathy, and understanding.

“The ReCognify program then began to be used on the general population to wipe away past memories and to make people docile and pliable to the Party’s party authority. The Ex Novo Institute was the means to bring in those subjects the Party thought would be troublemakers. But not everyone would submit to ReCognify and the “forced forgetting” process.”

“Hold it,” said Scribe. “The ink is beginning to wear thin. I need another ribbon. I wonder if . . .”

“We’ll ask Grace if she has more,” Comet said. “C’mon. We need a break.”

~~~~

“We know that the son of God has come and given us understanding so that we know the truth. And we are in the truth, in his son Jesus the Messiah. This is the true God; this is the life of the age to come.”

Father Denny stopped reciting 1 John from memory when the barn door creaked opened. Everyone drew quiet. Bryce and Blake and their wives appeared at the door. Father Denny waved them in. The couples greeted him and six others of the Underneath community.

The group met to support each other in a barn on a southern Indiana farm. They had been living on the farm, hiding from the Save Democracy for the past ten years. The refuge was Father Denny’s idea.

Anglican priest Father Mason Denny, a gaunt bewhiskered marathoner, left his Indy parish and moved to the sweeping 80-acre working farm to help his friend Tom and his wife Sally. The Binghams were in their seventies and working the farm had become too much for them. They had no idea what happened to their children. They hoped the Save Democracy party hadn’t taken them.

Seeing the possibilities and after much prayer, Father Denny knew that he had to create a refuge to help those of the Underneath escape the “fowler’s snare,” as he called the Save Democracy party’s operations. A portion of the farm land was already being used as a short-term RV campsite. Using all of his retirement funds, he converted the campsite into a mobile home park and began rescuing students.

When the Ex Novo Institute staff began pulling students out of the audience for the ReCognify program, Father Denny brought several students to the farm. The students knew Father Denny and trusted him. He had been a chaplain on campus, providing spiritual services in the Beck chapel on the IU campus. This was before the Save Democracy party banned all such meetings as subversive.

The rescued students lived in the mobile homes and worked the farm. From their organic garden they harvested green onions, Italian greens, tomatoes, asparagus, spinach, strawberries, green beans, heirloom tomatoes, summer squash, blackberries, melons, and herbs. From the field, they gathered sweet corn.

They grew an array of flowers – zinnias, gladiolus, dahlias, and sunflowers – and tended goats, rabbits, and chickens.

Every Saturday they held a farmer’s market to sell produce, goat cheese, pastured eggs, and pies and to barter with locals for butter, flour, meat, and diesel fuel.

Father Denny found a way to sustain the Underneath, a mindset that had been banned. But it had come at a personal cost.

~~~~

Comet and Scribe sat at the farmhouse kitchen table with Tom, Sally, Father Denny, and Skippy, Tom and Sally’s three-legged Airedale.

Comet and Scribe had recently found their way to the refuge. Grace, the woman they were staying with, gave them directions to the farm after local Party authorities came around one day looking for them. One of her neighbors, who had received a ReCognify implant, had given them away.

Comet asked Scribe to read the transcript of what Grace related about her husband.

“Bill was a mechanic in a manufacturing company. He told me that every day in the lunch room there were news reports on the TV saying that inflation was transitory and that the economy was doing great and that wages rose again for the fourteenth quarter in the row. Bill began posting his pay stubs on his tool box to show that it wasn’t true. His foreman came along and told him to take it down or face dismissal. Bill didn’t take it down and he was dismissed. The Party wouldn’t allow him to work again.”

Comet described how he and Scribe were recording what took place the last fifteen years. He explained his use of “Surface” to describe the operation of the Save Democracy party.” Father Denny agreed with his analogy.

Comet and Scribe were eager to hear Father Denny’s story. They said they would record the story and use false names and places.

“Scribe, you don’t have to keep lugging that portable typewriter around.” Tom offered. “We can hide it under a floorboard in the other room. No one will find it there.”

Scribe nodded and smiled in relief.

“Are we ready Scribe?” Father Denny asked. 

“Ready, sir,” Scribe replied. Father Denny began.

“During my twentieth year as rector of an Indy church, I lost my wife Ellen to the effects of the mandated vaccine. Despite my protestations and my own refusal to take the mRNA vaccine, she thought it a Christian thing to do to obey the authorities, especially as the Party had mandated “No vaccine. No church gathering.”

“After Ellen’s passing, I came to realize that the authorities had more in mind than a vaccine mandate. I was faced with a choice.

“You see. Churches not obeying Save Democracy party directives were closed. The churches with what I call “cultural Christians” – those that obeyed mandates and focused on . . .” he paused and looked over at Comet, “. . . Surface issues pushed by Central Screen Apps, issues such as social justice, equity, race, gender, sexuality, and creation care – remained open.

The Party knew that the fate of its project of atheistic secularization was tied to the religious feelings people had. The Party saw that it couldn’t convert the religious with ideology. But it could use religion to further its ideology and fill the void of absence of spirituality.

“I saw that the spiritual way of life was to be replaced with the Surface way of life. Religious symbols were to be replaced with secular symbols. The church and the gospel were being replaced with Assemblies of the General Will and the “well done” of social credit scores. The Party worked to fill the ideological and spiritual absence of religion.

“As a way to reorient churches, ministers were forced to sign a social contract acknowledging that Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains and that all people should unite with the General Will of the people to bring about the common good of the New Way Forward.

“The General Will, as dictated by the Central Screen app, meant the total subordination of citizens. All rights, all property and all religion would be subject to the General Will. Freedom would be associated with obedience. As such, the General Will directive provided Party members a defense for oppressing and destroying those who did not obey including those of the Underneath.

“The deeper-than-surface Christianity that I call the “Underneath” was an ideological, political and spiritual problem for the Save Democracy party. The “error correction” of “the science” didn’t work on the Underneath. Its underlying history, tradition, and transcendent gospel had to be rooted out and destroyed.

“The Save Democracy party understood that those like myself and those here on the farm and elsewhere – disciples of Jesus – are not directed by Central Screen. We are directed by the Lord of heaven and earth. We don’t compromise and hold back a reserve of ourselves to maintain the status quo and avoid trouble. We speak to the fiction and lies around us and that has brought suffering.

“The cultural Christians of Central Screen desire the good feelings of social justice activism but none of the adversity attached to proclaiming the gospel message. They portray themselves as being and doing right with social justice standards. Jesus quoted Isaiah to the Pharisees and legal experts when a dispute arose about a manmade imperative:

‘These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
    but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they are worshiping me,
    but they don’t mean it.
They just use me as a cover
    for teaching whatever suits their fancy,
Ditching God’s command
    and taking up the latest fads.’

“Compromised, they live within the lie. They perpetuate and legitimize the ideological fiction of the Party. They become oppressed and the oppressor, persecuting critics of Central Screen activism.

“The party also knew that it couldn’t convert those of the Underneath with what they called the “Reformation” – the ideological work of scientific atheism through the Ex Novo Institute. They saw those of the Underneath as tenacious holdouts.

“Ex Novo programming was meant to show that The General Will is the purpose of life. Faith in The General Will was to become an inner conviction. Then, they assumed, all illusions about heaven and the afterlife and the kingdom of God fade away and disappear. The Surface was to be one’s spiritual refuge.

“When the vestry came to me one day and said “we need to show pronoun hospitality” I told them that I would retire. I could see that many in the congregation did not believe the lies of Central Screen, but they felt, as Vaclav Havel wrote in his essay The Power of the Powerless, that they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who did.

“Havel went on to say that “They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.”

“Seeing this mindset in the congregation, I told the vestry I would leave and go on the road and see the country. I ended up here on Tom and Sally’s farm in southern Indiana. I expected my son to join me here at the farm when he returned from his doctoral research trip to Italy. But that didn’t happen.

“I lost contact with him son after he returned to the states. I was frantic and looked for him all over campus. Those I asked said that the last time they saw Alistair was at the end of the first session of the Ex Novo Institute. They said he was asking questions.”

“I was there. I was behind him in line,” Comet jumped in.

Father Denny felt a sinking sensation in his stomach.  “I know Alistair. I knew that he would question things and exercise his point of view. But I also knew that the Save Democracy party accepted no challengers. So, I imagine the worst and pray for his safe return.”

Father Denny sighed heavily. “That was ten years ago and I haven’t heard a word about my son since.”

~~~~

The rescue from the third Ex Novo Institute session that December day happened quickly. The students were not able to inform their families. Telling them their whereabouts would put their families at serious risk. When the students didn’t sign in for the next Ex Novo Institute session, their families would be contacted and would be forced to take Truth Test Serum to tell the Party’s enforcement squad where they were. Having no knowledge of where the students were, they would be released. Father Denny later found a way to tell them that “they were safe and not to worry.”

Refugees Erin and Joseph were fourth-year neuroscience students. Jeremy studied computer science. Quinn had been a biotechnology major and worked part time at the Ray Bradbury Center at the IU Indy campus. Steven and Melanie were pre-med students.

Bryce was working on a Masters in epidemiology when he met Bryn, who was studying Environmental Health. Blake was working on his master’s degree in Business Analytics when he met Alice who was studying Business Admin Medicine. Father Mason Denny married the two couples in a ceremony held on the farm.

Mobile homes housed the former students. Each couple had a mobile home. Erin, Quinn, and Melanie shared a mobile home, as did Joseph, Jeremy and Steven. Father Mason Denny had a room in the farmhouse. Comet and Scribe had rooms in the farmhouse.

The members of the Underneath brought with them as many books as they could when they escaped Ex Novo and ReCognify. Father Denny brought his library to the farm. No other books would be available.

The Save Democracy party had dictated that books and education created inequality and unhappiness and were therefore banned. Libraries no longer contained books. Libraries were converted into ReCognify centers. The outside world had been cut off from knowledge that wasn’t Central Screen provided.

There were no electronics – phones, computers, TVs, radios, GPS devices – and no Central Screen app on the farm grounds. This was done to secure the location. Father Denny told the group that “The farm isn’t off the grid. We are hiding in the open and keep a low profile.”

Isolated from their families, members of the Underneath farm refuge supported each other. Weekdays were filled with farm work. At night the group ate together and then gathered in the barn or at the fire pit behind a thicket. They read texts out loud and recited memorized scripture. Each had committed entire Scripture texts to memory.

Father Denny had told them that “memorization is a means to internalize information of sacred nature, a transmutation of the metaphysical into flesh and blood and marrow.” It was also, he said, a means to create a memory palace – a mental sanctuary of information tied to farm scenes so that they can recall what was memorized. This, he said, would sustain them if captured by the Party.

On Sundays, the farm’s Underneath community came together for a liturgical service. They sang, prayed, and recited scripture. Father Denny administered to the group and administered the Eucharist.

Comet and Scribe set all this down under the heading “Rescue, Refuge, and New Reality.”

~~~~

The nights of the Underneath community were filled with readings and recitations, music and drama.

One night, Alice read Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor. Over several nights, Father Denny read Vaclav Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless. Other nights he read Father Brown stories. Over several nights, Jeremy read Robinson Caruso and Comet read Treasure Island. Quinn recited the poem ‘Dover Beach’ by Matthew Arnold.

Alister talked about his trip to Italy, and about the Italian Renaissance, Dante, and Botticelli.

Sally played the piano, Melanie played the flute, Jeremy the guitar, and Father Denny played some of his Big Band LPs for dancing.

One night they acted out Hamlet. Bryce and Blake played Hamlet and Laertes and fenced during the last Act. The brothers had, at one time, been in the U.S. Olympic fencing team.

One fire-pit night Alice quipped that women make the best archeologists because they are good at digging up the past. And Bryn said the smarted person in the Bible was Abraham: “He knew a Lot.”

One night they came together to listen to Quinn read Fahrenheit 451.

When Quinn finished reading the first chapter, Jeremy said “Read the part again, the part where fire chief Captain Beatty explains to Montag about how books had lost their value.”

Quinn turned back a few pages and read.

“Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ’bright’, did most of the reciting and answering while others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and torture after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?’

“Wow!” Said Jeremy. “That’s what the Party was pushing during Ex Novo. Exactly that!”

Father Denny added, “Polish poet Czesław Miłosz once said that “In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.””

Comet and Scribe took notes.

~~~~

Comet brought his refractor telescope with him to the farm. One late night the group headed outside to explore the night sky. The area around the farm had little light pollution, so the evening sky sparkled with illumination.

The moon was full that night and the entire earth-facing surface was clear to see. Comet pointed the telescope at the lunar surface. Everyone took a turn viewing.

Scribe, waiting her turn, caught sight of something coming from the road. The moonlight-etched figure walked and weaved toward them like one of the disoriented ReCognits. The figure stumbled down, got up and tried to wave but fell down again and stayed down.

The group moved closer. Bryce turned the man over and lifted the soiled hair from his face.

“It’s Alister! he shouted. “Help me get him up.”

~~~~

Alister opened one eye and saw his father sitting in a chair. He was asleep.

“Dad,” Alister whispered.

Father Denny jolted up from the chair. “I just had a dream that you came home.”

“I had the same dream,” Alister replied. “I guess we’re on the same wavelength.”

Father Denny felt Alister’s head. “You have a fever. Here, drink this water.” He propped up Alister and helped him drink. “How do you feel?”

“I feel weak. I have a headache and a stiff neck. I ache all over.”

“Can you talk about what happened?’

“Maybe later today.” With that Alister closed his eyes and fell asleep.

That evening Sally came downstairs and told father Denny that Alister was awake and his fever was down. Father Denny, Tom, Comet and Scribe went up to see Alister. He was sitting up in bed with Skippy on his lap. He smiled when they entered the room

Father Denny, seeing that Alister’s face was no longer pale, put the back of his hand on his forehead. “You’ve cooled down, thank God.”

“I’m ready to tell you what happened.” Alister took a long drink of water. The four took their place around the bed.

“After that first Ex Novo Institute session, I went up to Director Argans to ask about continuing my doctoral program. I won’t go into all she said right now, but I left with the understanding that the Party had put the kibosh on everything pertaining to cultural memory and intellectual diversity. Everything was to be the General Will of the people.

“When I left the auditorium, I went to my room and packed. I was going to come here. But then two Save Democracy party goons came in and took me to their headquarters on campus. There, over many days I was subjected to constant Central Screen videos. I was deprived of food and sleep. People I knew came in and tried to coax me into signing my allegiance to the Party. I wouldn’t.

“They must have seen that they needed to break me even more so I was placed in solitary confinement.  They put a sign above the cell. It read “The Divine Comedy.”

“I don’t know how long I was in there. What sustained me was my faith in God and what I had learned.

“Sometime, after a lifetime in that cell, I was brought outside. The fresh air in my lungs revived me. But then they dropped me into a deep hole in the ground. They said that if I wanted to be part of the Underneath that I would be put underneath.

“The hole was so tight that I could not move side to side or up and down. And it was so deep that I could not climb out. I was left there, day and night, in all kinds of weather and with bugs. I was in there maybe twenty days. Then one night I felt a rope on my face. I looked up and saw no one.

“I pulled on the rope and it was secure. I tried to climb it but I was too weak. But then a voice said “Hold on.” So, I did.

“I was pulled out to the surface and onto the ground. When I looked, there was no one around. No one.”

The group looked at each other.

“I found my way here.”

~~~~

When Alister had fully regained his strength, the Underneath community held a Eucharistic service in thanksgiving for his rescue and homecoming.

The first reading, Jeremiah 51:45-48, was read by Bryce:

“Get out of this place while you can,
    this place torched by God’s raging anger.
Don’t lose hope. Don’t ever give up
    when the rumors pour in hot and heavy.
One year it’s this, the next year it’s that—
    rumors of violence, rumors of war.
Trust me, the time is coming
    when I’ll put the no-gods of Babylon in their place.
I’ll show up the whole country as a sickening fraud,
    with dead bodies strewn all over the place.
Heaven and earth, angels and people,
    will throw a victory party over Babylon
When the avenging armies from the north
    descend on her.” God’s Decree!”

Alister read from Psalm 124: 6-8:

“Oh, blessed be God!
    He didn’t go off and leave us.
He didn’t abandon us defenseless,
    helpless as a rabbit in a pack of snarling dogs.

We’ve flown free from their fangs,
    free of their traps, free as a bird.
Their grip is broken;
    we’re free as a bird in flight.

God’s strong name is our help,
    the same God who made heaven and earth.”

Blake read the epistle, 2 Corinthians 6:16-18:

“Don’t become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That’s not partnership; that’s war. Is light best friends with dark? Does Christ go strolling with the Devil? Do trust and mistrust hold hands? Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God’s holy Temple? But that is exactly what we are, each of us a temple in whom God lives. God himself put it this way:

“I’ll live in them, move into them;
    I’ll be their God and they’ll be my people.
So leave the corruption and compromise;
    leave it for good,” says God.
“Don’t link up with those who will pollute you.
    I want you all for myself.
I’ll be a Father to you;
    you’ll be sons and daughters to me.”
The Word of the Master, God.

Father Denny read the gospel, Luke 21:11-19:

“Jesus went on, “Nation will fight nation and ruler fight ruler, over and over. Huge earthquakes will occur in various places. There will be famines. You’ll think at times that the very sky is falling.

“But before any of this happens, they’ll arrest you, hunt you down, and drag you to court and jail. It will go from bad to worse, dog-eat-dog, everyone at your throat because you carry my name. You’ll end up on the witness stand, called to testify. Make up your mind right now not to worry about it. I’ll give you the words and wisdom that will reduce all your accusers to stammers and stutters.

 “You’ll even be turned in by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends. Some of you will be killed. There’s no telling who will hate you because of me. Even so, every detail of your body and soul—even the hairs of your head!—is in my care; nothing of you will be lost. Staying with it—that’s what is required. Stay with it to the end. You won’t be sorry; you’ll be saved.””

Using the Jeremiah text, Father Denny spoke on “Come out of her, my people! The world, Babylon, would have you come out as its own creation but we have come out as sons and daughters of the Father.”

He then read Revelation 18:4-5:

“Get out, my people, as fast as you can,
    so you don’t get mixed up in her sins,
    so you don’t get caught in her doom.
Her sins stink to high Heaven;
    God has remembered every evil she’s done.
Give her back what she’s given,
    double what she’s doubled in her works,
    double the recipe in the cup she mixed;
Bring her flaunting and wild ways
    to torment and tears.
Because she gloated, “I’m queen over all,
    and no widow, never a tear on my face,”
In one day, disasters will crush her—
    death, heartbreak, and famine—
Then she’ll be burned by fire, because God,
    the Strong God who judges her,
    has had enough.

The Eucharistic Feast followed.

~~~~

On the following Saturday, at 9 AM, two tables were set up along the roadside. They were covered with fresh produce, flowers, eggs, goat cheese, and a cooler with rabbit and chicken meat. Local people began to come along and exchange goods.

Bryce thought that everything was going well that beautiful August morning. But then he noticed something and whispered to Blake, “Don’t look. I think that’s Director Argans getting out of that car on the right. She has white pointy hair now.”

Blake, conversing with customers, saw her approach the table. When the farm stand customers saw a uniform, they got in their cars and drove off.

“Where is your sign?” It was Director Argans.

“I’m sorry ma’am. What sign?” Blake looked puzzled.

“The “People of The General Will Unite” sign!” She crossed her arms and waited for an answer.

“Ma’am, here is our sign.” Blake grabbed the grease board from the table, erased “THANK YOU FOR COMING OUT,” and wrote something on it. He read it out loud: “We are compliant and obedient and there is no need to worry about us.”

Director Argans looked it over, huffed, and then her black eye brows shot up above the frames of her round glasses and her jaw dropped. She was looking between Bryce and Blake. Alister had come up to the table. Director Argens grabbed an apple from the basket on the table and headed back to her car.

Bryce breathed a sigh of relief. He looked over at Blake and said “Good one! She doesn’t know who we are compliant and obedient to.” And together, they said “There is no need to worry about us!”

~~~~

Comet and Scribe created a circular letter to send to other Underneath communities in hiding.

It began . . . “These chronicles have been written with eyewitness accounts so that you may know the history and extent of evil in the land. There are many other evil acts of the “Save Democracy” party which are not recorded here.

“These Fowler’s Snare chronicles have been written so that you may share in our faithful witness:

We have escaped like a bird

from the snare of the fowlers;

the snare is broken,

and we have escaped.

Our help is in the name of the Lord,

who made heaven and earth.”

©Lena Johnson, Kingdom Venturers, 2024, All Rights Reserved

Filed under 2024 Current Events, 2024 Election, Christianity, Short Story, short story, social commentary Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Honey, They Shrunk the Choice Architecture

May 26, 2024 Leave a comment

You and I being are being directed to change our behaviors.

Felt a Nudge lately? A reminder to do something to better your health, your finances, the environment? Felt a Nudge during COVID to mask and social distance and sanitize and to be vaccinated?

Felt a Nudge Down With RYBELSUS? A Nanny State Nudge to buy into a government service? A pop-up nudge? A click-bait nudge? A text nudge? A nudge to buy something before its gone? A nudge to pay for something using only digital payment and not cash? A Nurge (Urgent Nudge) to decarbonize to prevent “climate catastrophe”?

Behavioral science is being used to direct our decisions.

Influencing behavior in a libertarian paternalistic way with active engineering of choice architecture is behind the concept of nudge theory developed by Richard Thaler, a professor of economics and behavioral science at the University of Chicago.

Why influence behavior in a libertarian paternalistic way? It has been said that . . .

“In recent decades, behavioral economists have shown that, out of impulse, impatience, or ignorance, people often make choices that are not the best or even good for them: we are not the rational self-interest maximizers that conventional economists have long assumed [see “The Marketplace of Perceptions,” March-April 2006].” Cass Sunstein on the constitution in the 21st century | Harvard Magazine

The “nudge”, a gentle prompt that influences people’s behavior in a predictable way, was popularized in the 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by behavioral economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein. The book discusses how it is both possible and legitimate for private and public institutions to affect behavior, while maintaining freedom of choice, to help steer people to people make better choices in their daily lives, because in Thaler’s and Sunstein’s assessment . . .

“People often make poor choices—and look back at them with bafflement!” And . . .

“We do this because, as human beings, we all are susceptible to a wide array of routine biases that can lead to an equally wide array of embarrassing blunders in education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, happiness, and even the planet itself.”

Nudge theory is based upon the idea that by shaping the environment, also known as the “choice architecture” – a term coined by Thaler and Sunstein in their Nudge book – one can influence the likelihood that one option is chosen over another by individuals who feel in control of the decisions they make.

Terms

Choice architecture is the framing of different ways choices are presented. These would include the number of choices presented, the manner in which attributes are described, and the presence of a “default.” One example: how food is displayed in cafeterias. Offering healthy food at the beginning of the line or at eye level can contribute to healthier choices.

Libertarian paternalism is an oxymoronic term coined by Richard Thaler. Being “Libertarian” “means being free to make your own choices about your own life, that what you do with your body and your property ought to be up to you. Other people must not forcibly interfere with your liberty, and you must not forcibly interfere with theirs.”

Paternalism is “A policy or practice of treating or governing people in a fatherly manner, especially by providing for their needs without giving them rights or responsibilities. Paternalism can be “excessive governmental regulation of the private affairs and business methods and interests of the people; undue solicitude on the part of the central government for the protection of the people and their interests, and interference therewith.”

A Libertarian approach preserves freedom of choice and being able to opt out. A paternalistic approach assumes a restriction of choice. Libertarian paternalism is “an approach that preserves freedom of choice but that authorizes both private and public institutions to steer people in directions that will promote their welfare.”

Nudge is a gentle prompt that influences people’s behavior in a predictable way to make better decisions. It doesn’t mandate, order, enforce, or control. It uses motivational techniques most people respond to – such as the need to fit in with social norms. A nudge is meant to move people toward the best decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society, without restricting our freedom of choice.

“Nudging, like persuasion, can be used with more or less ethical intentions. When it is less ethical it is known as Sludge. A lot of nudging involves changing a choice architecture that people are faced with.”

 10 Important Nudges: Simple Things That Can Change Behaviors – The World of Work Project

Examples of using “choice architecture”:

In Retail:

1. Placement of items in a store

2. Use of scarcity and social proof in marketing

3. Use of loyalty programs and rewards

In Technology:

1. Default settings on devices and apps

2. Push notifications and reminders

3. Gamification of tasks and activities

In Health and Wellness

Use of reminders and goal-setting tools

Design of workout spaces and equipment

Use of social support and accountability

In Finance

1. Automatic savings and investment plans

2. Design of banking apps and websites

3. Use of behavioral economics in financial education

Nudge Theory: Definition and 10 Examples (2024) (helpfulprofessor.com)

Small nudges to giant leaps: Examples of nudging in the workplace (applaudhr.com)

Examples of Nudge Theory in Public Policy:

Nudging supposedly makes it easier for improved access to public services and help people achieve their goals in life.

In the UK the Nudge Unit was established in the Cabinet Office in 2010 by David Cameron’s government to apply behavioral science to public policy. The Behavioral Insights team, or “Nudge Unit”, plays a big role in helping the government formulate its response to coronavirus. “The Nudge Unit is working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care in crafting the government response. The most visible manifestation of its influence to date is in the communication around hand-washing and face touching – in particular the use of “disgust” as an incentive to wash hands and the suggestion of singing Happy Birthday to ensure hands are washed for the requisite 20 seconds.” -Jill Rutter, “Nudge Unit” | Institute for Government

Boris Johnson’s government tried to fight the coronavirus pandemic by using the nudge theory to encourage “herd immunity”.

The Canadian Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), established in 2014, emerged from the original “Nudge Unit” in the British government, which was founded in the Cabinet Office in 2010. It uses a consultancy model to support government and the not-for-profit sector to support BI [behavioral insights] policy interventions. Nudging the way to better public policy (irpp.org)

One example in Canada is to make Elections and voting day need an injection of fun and celebration. Nudge theory illustrates ways to inspire anyone too busy, too “irritated” to vote.

Personal freedoms are a fundamental value of our liberal democracy. Citizens have the choice to opt out of participating. Thus, we should focus on making voting easier to opt into but not mandatory. We should act in ways that will nudge, not force, people to the voting booth.

We need to nudge joy into voting (irpp.org)

Both David Cameron and Barack Obama employed the nudge theory to advance domestic policy goals in their countries.

In the U.S. . . .based on research from University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler and Harvard law school professor Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory czar. . . who argued in their 2008 book “Nudge” that government policies can be designed in a way that “nudges” citizens towards certain behaviors and choices. . .

On September 15, 2015, Obama issued Executive Order 13707 “Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better serve American People” directing Federal Government Agencies to apply Behavioral Science Insights to design their policies and programs.

Per Donald Marron at Forbes:

“President Obama established the unit—officially known as the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST)—to use insights from psychology, behavioral economics, and other decision sciences to improve federal programs and operations. Those social sciences increasingly appreciate what regular folks have long known: people are imperfect. We procrastinate. We avoid making choices. We get confused and discouraged by complex forms. We forget to do things. We sometimes lack the energy to weigh decisions thoroughly, so we act based on what we think our peers do or how choices are framed. And we sometimes cut corners when we think no one is looking.”

The Executive Order also charges the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST), a cross-agency group, to make it happen.

Per Megan Fella at Obama’s effort to ‘nudge’ America (politico.com)

“Ultimately, knowing what drives us puts us in the driver’s seat.” – Susan M. Schneider

The Social and Behavioral Science Team (SBST) is a small, but mighty group of leading behavioral scientists and innovators from across the country. Housed within the Office of Evaluation Sciences at GSA, the SBST realizes that “seemingly small barriers to engagement…can prevent programs from effectively reaching the people they are intended to serve” and that “an effective and efficient government must, therefore, reflect our best understanding of human behavior.”

According to Meet the Social and Behavioral Science Team (usa.gov):

In order to create a better government, the SBST looks for opportunities in four aspects of program design:

Streamlining access to programs and benefits

Improving how government presents information to consumers, borrowers, and program beneficiaries

Enhancing how government presents and structures choices within programs

Examining the frequency, presentation, and labeling of benefits, tax credits, and other incentives

Chuck Ross, on September 15, 2015, voiced his concerns: Obama’s Nudge Brigade: White House Embraces Behavioral Sciences To Improve Government (forbes.com)

“President Obama’s federal health care law, Obamacare, is replete with “nudge” language and experimentation. . .

“Another nudge contained in Obamacare was brought to light in the debate over whether the individual mandate contained in the law was a tax hike.

“Republicans insisted that it was a tax increase, but the White House portrayed it as a penalty on the logic that the word “tax” has a negative connotation.

While the Obama administration touted nudge policies, others were hesitant to get on board.

““I am very skeptical of a team promoting nudge policies,” Michael Thomas, an economist at Utah State University, told Fox News in 2013.

““Ultimately, nudging…assumes a small group of people in government know better about choices than the individuals making them.”” (Emphasis mine.)

The purpose of this post is to provide a simplified overview of behavioral science manipulation tactics being used and to make readers aware of “nudging”. The little pokes and prods to improve behavior sound benign:

“Sunstein defines nudges as “simple, low-cost, freedom-preserving approaches, drawing directly from behavioral economics, that promise to save money, to improve people’s health, and to lengthen their lives”—small pushes in the right direction, like a restaurant disclosing the calorie count of each dish so patrons are more likely to order healthy food, or a company setting up its 401(k) plan so employees are automatically enrolled in the savings program and must choose to opt out.”

– Lincoln Caplan, Cass R. Sunstein – Harvard Law School | Harvard Law School

Richard Thaler – Nudge: An Overview (youtube.com)

My concerns:

Who’s nudging me? Who’s arranging my choices? Who’s engineering my “choice architecture” and by what values?

Using motivational techniques most people respond to – such as the need to fit in with social norms to positively change people’s behavior, I’m OK with. Automatically enrolling employees in an optional 401(k), for instance, or easily allowing organ donors to opt out, I’m OK with. But what about the motivational techniques behind consequential choices like healthcare or the COVID vaccine or whether I need more government decision making in my life? Can I opt of the choices given me?

As employed by government policies and programs, behavioral science “nudging” seems to be making big government more attractive and more conducive for an individual to rely on government for more and more decision making. Nudge’s low intensity manipulation seems to always advance the goals of the federal government while couched in ways as helping people make good decisions. As such, “nudging” seems to be growing the Nanny State.

Certainly, there are concerns about the ethics of nudging. Nudges can engineer people’s choices to reach certain ends desired by a policy maker. A policy “choice architecture” can, by design, make certain options have a greater chance of being chosen. Ergo, the government should be transparent in its behavioral approaches to ensure that policymakers, media, and the public have the evidence they need to judge their merits. Yet, I don’t every government agency will be transparent with its manipulation or propaganda.

When nudging seeks to frame behavior with limited choices to achieve a political outcome, then formerly well-intentioned nudges give way to outright manipulation. We will then be influenced to do whatever those in power want done. Example: When “We’re all in this together” becomes the stigmatizing “The pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

What happens when the owners of a technocratic control group known as social media shrink your choice architecture” on the inter-web and you do not see all there is to know? Such frames are difficult to combat because we are not often presented with the alternative frame, and thus we often don’t realize how the frame we see affects our decisions.

When information leading to truth is censored by technocrats with government approval, tyranny is slowly being put in place to rob common people of their health, savings, freedoms, and their futures. In other words, “Freedom of choice be damned!”

You will want to read this>> Exposing The CIA’s Secret Effort To Seize Control Of Social Media | ZeroHedge

What happens when sensible “choice architecture” that nudges people toward the best decisions for themselves, their families, and society without restricting freedom of choice, shrinks to “choose this or else” as with a mandate? “Honey, they shrunk the Choice Architecture and have grown the size of their influence!”

A [San Francisco Democrat’s] bill before California lawmakers would require new cars sold in the state in coming years to beep a warning whenever drivers exceed the speed limit by at least 10 mph

New cars in California could alert drivers for breaking the speed limit – ABC News (go.com)

According to the write up, the signal can be turned off – the driver’s choice architecture.

~~~~~

More information:

Richard Thaler won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his “contributions to behavioral economics.”

Cass Sunstein is an American legal scholar known for his work in constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and behavioral economics. Cass R. Sunstein – Harvard Law School | Harvard Law School

“From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs [under Obama], and after that, he served on the President’s Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and on the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board. Mr. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has advised officials at the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, and many nations on issues of law and public policy. He serves as an adviser to the Behavioral Insights Team in the United Kingdom.”

How Nudging Can Change Customer’s Behaviour – Radiant Copywriting

Frontiers | Nudge politics: efficacy and ethics (frontiersin.org)

Nudge and Nudging in Public Policy | SpringerLink

Nudging in Public Policy | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics

Behavioural Insights Team: ethical, professional and historical considerations | Behavioural Public Policy | Cambridge Core

Nudge theory: what 15 years of research tells us about its promises and politics (theconversation.com)

Nudge theory doesn’t work after all, says new evidence review – but it could still have a future (theconversation.com)

Barriers to Converting Applied Social Psychology to Bettering the Human Condition (tandfonline.com)

There’s a backlash against nudging – but it was never meant to solve every problem | Cass Sunstein | The Guardian

Freedom and Flourishing: Is economics becoming a branch of psychology?

Nudge: How Small Changes Can Significantly Influence People’s Choices – Effectiviology

~~~~~

Winston Marshall Matters

Laura Dodsworth is a photographer, artist and author. In her most recent book Free Your Mind: The New World of Manipulation and How to Resist it, Laura draws on the Nudge Unit, behavioral psychology and fact checking services to analyze the range of ways in which our minds are manipulated. On the podcast, Laura talks about the government propaganda machine and how this all relates back to issues such as climate catastrophe, the pandemic and free speech. 

Laura Dodsworth: How to protect yourself from government propaganda

Laura Dodsworth: How to protect yourself from government propaganda | The Spectator

Learn how to recognize and resist the daily attempts to control and manipulate your mind.

There is a war on for your mind. You may not notice, but you are surrounded by manipulators: advertisers, politicians, big tech, even the humble waiter who asks, ‘Still or sparkling?’

Free Your Mind is your field manual to surviving the information battlefield. In this indispensable book, Laura Dodsworth and Patrick Fagan draw on interviews with mind-control experts ranging from monks to magicians, infiltrate cults and forums to uncover their most deceptive techniques and expose the hidden tactics used to influence you, from social media to subliminal messages.

Free Your Mind: The must-read expert guide on how to identify techniques to influence you and how to resist them: Amazon.co.uk: Dodsworth, Laura, Fagan, Patrick: 9780008600945: Books

This is a book about fear. Fear of a virus. Fear of death. Fear of losing our jobs, our democracy, our human connections, our health and our minds. It’s also about how the government weaponised our fear against us – supposedly in our best interests – until we were one of the most frightened countries in the world.

A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic: Amazon.co.uk: Dodsworth, Laura: 9781780667201: Books

~~~~~

I have often posted about those who seek to engineer our lives – my previous post Central Planning or I Know What I Know?

I am cynical about those who seek to control us for “our own good.” There are always people in the world who want to manipulate and control others to have them make ‘better’ decisions, i.e., think like them. And this is true in the church:

There’s a growing list of the controlled opposition’s shaming screeds promoted on MSNBC to influence voters by making them feel morally superior if they make the ‘right’ choice: to not support and vote for Trump.

These Nudge-mental authors want to move you in the direction of being an ‘acceptable’ Christian and to be politically ‘acceptable’ in their eyes.

Tim Alberta and The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, published December 5, 2023

Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman with White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy published on February 27, 2024

Jim Wallis: The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy, published April 2, 2024

The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics, Nancy French and Curtis Chang, based on project by David French, Russell Moore & Curtis Chang, published April 23, 2024

Ironically, these holier-than-MAGA disparagers no doubt benefitted from Trump’s presidency. There was peace and prosperity. There were no wars. Look at Trump’s Middle East peace deal. There was no invasion of our southern border. Inflation was around 2%. People had money to support themselves and to give to charitable causes like The Roy’s Report and The Trinity Forum, (where these guys hawk their wares.)

During those four years and since, these guys sit around and nitpick about people who are not like them at great benefit to themselves.

And please don’t tell me they are writing these things to protect Jesus from the rabble. “Put down your sword, Peter.” Jesus – very God – is not beholden to anyone for protection.

~~~~~

Well before Nudge, the book of Proverbs talked about those who act out of impulse, impatience, or ignorance. Proverbs talked about people who often make choices that are not the best or even good for them. What Does the Book of Proverbs Say About Fools? – Bible Gateway Blog

Wisdom was in place long before Nudge came along:

The Lord Created me [Wisdom] at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old, Proverbs 8:22-31

Wisdom, personified as a female in the book of Proverbs, aspires to produce much more than a nudge toward a rational self-interest maximizing approach to decision making. Wisdom’s desire is to expand one’s personal bandwidth with the experience of the knowledge and fear of God.

Wisdom wants you to tap into God’s creation.

Wisdom is coupled with humility – you don’t have all the answers. (I get the image of a wife telling her husband to ask for directions when they are lost.)

You can ask God for wisdom in your decision making and God will supply you with wisdom.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart,

and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways acknowledge Him,

and He will make your paths straight.

Be not wise in your own eyes;

fear the LORD and turn away from evil.

This will bring healing to your body

and refreshment to your bones. Proverbs 3:5-8

“The wise shall inherit glory (all honor and good) but shame is the highest rank conferred on [self-confident] fools.” Proverbs 3:35

“A foolish person will believe anything. But a wise person thinks about what he does.” Proverbs 14:15

You don’t need to be a tenuous reed in the wind, nudged in every direction. Seek wisdom from God.

~~~~~

Nudge them not before a TV screen:

“. . . while screen time may be harmless or even enriching in moderation, it’s still rife with pitfalls. Screens can tempt kids away from physical activity and imaginative play, for example, and could stunt development of critical skills like emotional self-regulation if overused.

“According to a new study, screen time for babies and toddlers is also linked to an additional risk many parents may not have considered: developing atypical sensory-processing behaviors. . .

“The behaviors include “sensation seeking” and “sensation avoiding” – when a child seeks out more intense sensory stimulation or is more averse to intense sensations, respectively – as well as “low registration,” a lower sensitivity or slower response to stimuli.”

Screen Time Could Have a Surprising Effect on Our Children’s Ability to Process Sensations : ScienceAlert

There be NO Health choice architecture if Dr. Tedros of the WHO becomes the health dictator:

Exposing WHO Chief Dr. Tedros: Militant Marxist and China Stooge (rumble.com)

The World Health Organization is working with the European Union to roll out international, interoperable digital IDs. If you go to the World Economic Forum website these digital IDs are touted as means to enrich our lives by making the following tasks easier: Accessing healthcare, opening a bank account, traveling, engaging in online transactions, accessing Medicare/Medicaid, voting, and paying taxes. Without these IDs, you won’t be able to do any of those things. Or, if you step out of line in some way (say, if a certain vaccine is mandated that you refuse), the WHO could interfere with your digital ID to limit your access to any of these very basic activities. (Emphasis mine.)

Reggie Littlejohn: “We Should All Be Worried About The WHO’s Pandemic Treaty”

Celebrity “Nudge-mentalism”:

Nudge-truth:

Filed under 2024 Current Events, Culture, social commentary, social engineering Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

The Disconnected Ones

May 5, 2024 Leave a comment

From parents pampering their progeny (Indulging “I-Me-Mine”) to priests and pastors preaching Progressivism (‘Inspired’ “I-Me-Mine”) to professors promulgating political propaganda (Ideological “I-Me-Mine” & Illiteracy) to the phenomenon of ‘political correctness’ (Ideological Conformity & Indulgent Illiberalism) to policies promoting pseudo pronouns (Indulgent Illusions of “I-Me-Mine”) to protestors pronouncing “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” (Indulgent Intifada), the Left’s Long Maoist/Marxist/ Marcusean March through institutions has left a trail strewn with social pathologies and pogroms. Ptooey!

The humorless Left, a product of its own Polarizing and Infantilizing Process, is self-absorbed but not self-examining. The Left refuses to learn from anything outside itself including history to account for its own dysfunctional and belligerent ways. If it did, it would turn from its deceptions – the filtering mindsets of victim-oppressor and of passion as morality – and it wouldn’t continue the Long March, inchoate, with those who have been patently processed like themselves to destroy whatever is in its path including “Democracy!”

Today’s products of the Polarizing and Infantilizing Process, disconnected from history and reality and preoccupied with self, are working diligently to take down Western civilization and its Judeo-Christian foundation. In its place they want to build sand castles, imagined communist and Islamic utopias, from the river to the sea.

Yet, as history has recorded as happening under all preceding totalitarian impulses, the season of indulging one’s passions and the rush to violence will soon pass. The revolutionary impulse inevitably turns inward, as the “I-Me-Mine” of the leaders begins to indulgently purge all dissent including thought crimes in order to impose mindless uniformity. Thus, the season of torture, torment, and tedium begins for the disconnected ones.

~~~~~

Retired prison psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple (pen name for Anthony Daniels) speaks and writes with keen insight gathered from his experience of the human condition and of its surrounding culture.

Having read several of his books, I recommend two books to start with:

Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass (Start with this book. It will change how you look at the world.)

Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality

Here’s Theodore Dalrymple’s address at the London National Conservatism Conference on May 15, 2023.

Theodore Dalrymple | Historiography and the State of the Western Mind | NatCon UK (youtube.com)

~~~

The New Criterion’s Roger Kimball takes the audience through a history of America’s cultural revolution of the 1960’s and its effects on American politics and culture today.

The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s Changed America by Roger Kimball (youtube.com)

~~~

Per Italian communist Antonio [ Gramsci] “If the Left truly wanted to win, it needed to first seize the “cultural means of production”: the culture-forming institutions such as the media and universities and even churches. He saw societal transformation coming about by a “march through the institutions.” …

“Gramsci insisted that leftist intellectuals needed to question everything, including moral absolutes and the Judeo-Christian basis of Western civilization. They needed to frame seemingly benign conventions as systematic injustices that must be exposed. This is where we got professors fulminating against everything from “the patriarchy” to “white imperialism” to “transphobia.””

Marx at 200: Cultural Marxism’s Long Happy March Through the Institutions

Expand your temporal bandwidth . . .

“The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency — the belief that the here and now is all there is.”
― Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

. . . because . . .

“We live in an age of full spectrum deception.” — Edward Dowd

Why I read novels . . .

“The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. There, the novel has no place.”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

~~~~~

The Way I Heard It, Mike Rowe podcast:

382: Individualism Rightly Understood with Scott Mann 1:19:03

The former U.S. Army Green Beret, NYT bestselling author, leadership consultant, and perennial storyteller talks about the division and tribal behavior that permeates our country now, the death of honor, shame, and consequence, and why Alexis de Tocqueville was right when he observed that America succeeds because she puts the individual ahead of the collective. You can preorder Scott’s newest book here.

Individualism Rightly Understood Mike Rowe with Scott Mann

Podcast – Mike Rowe

LAST OUT (lastoutplay.com)

~~~~~

Controlled Opposition

The growing list of the controlled opposition’s shaming screeds promoted on MSNBC to influence voters by making them feel morally superior if they don’t vote for Trump:

Tim Alberta and The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, published December 5, 2023

Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman with White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy published on February 27, 2024

Jim Wallis: The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy, published April 2, 2024

Apparently, the only way to be a Christian is to be a Democrat like the author/s and to vote for all of the things that your faith disagrees with and for the continued destruction of our country. Got it.

“Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”

“Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.

Mark 9:38-41

Apparently, there are people who are very ‘concerned’ about Trump being associated with Jesus because Trump “was not one of us.”

~~~~~

You realize, don’t you, that what’s going on in our country is the collapse not just of an empire, or an economy, but a comprehensive paradigm of human progress. The hallmark of post-war life in Western Civ was supposed to be a return to sanity after the mid-twentieth century fugue of mass psychotic violence. The wish for just and rational order was not entirely pretense. But that was then. Now that we are going medieval on ourselves, the not-so-ironic result will be our literally going medieval, sinking back into a pre-modern existence of darkness, superstition, and penury, grubbing for a mere subsistence in the shadow of scuffling hobgoblins, our achievements lost and forgotten. . .

The source of anguish in all that is the struggle to understand why they [the “governing apparatus”] would want that to happen. What debauched sense of history would drive anyone to such lunatic desperation? It’s a cliché now to say that the Democratic Party has turned its traditional moral scaffold upside down and inside out. It acts against the kitchen table interests of the working and middle classes. It’s against civil liberties. It demands mental obedience to patently insane policy. It’s avid for war, no matter how cruelly pointless. It’s deliberately stirring up racial hatred. It despises personal privacy. It feeds a rogue bureaucracy that has become a veritable Moloch, an all-devouring malevolent deity. And now, rather suddenly, it aligns itself with a faction that seeks to exterminate the Jews.

James Howard Kunstler at https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/pep-talk-on-a-dark-day/

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As of 5-5-2024, we are 22 days away (May 27th) from the WHO approving One Health One World control of countries and of our health and freedom.

Find out more and how to act>>>

Exit the WHO, Take 2! – STAND FOR HEALTH FREEDOM

WHO and global health update – STAND FOR HEALTH FREEDOM

49 Republican Senators REJECT Pandemic Treaty From WHO | WLT Report

who-presentation-pdfDownload

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Citizen Free Press on X: “Babylon Bee presents Woke Jesus. This is really well done. https://t.co/RWA5KYMp5o” / X (twitter.com)

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