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.
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.
“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.
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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.
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.
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
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
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.
Is Hope Naïve in a World Like Ours? | Esau McCaulley & Gary Saul Morson at Northwestern
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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
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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.
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.”
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.
I ain’t blind and I don’t like what I think I see. – Takin’ it to the Streets, The Doobie Brothers
“Moreover, he knew nothing yet well enough to see it: you cannot see things till you know roughly what they are.” –C.S. Lewis, The Space Trilogy
Having trouble seeing things today? Do you “know roughly what they are” – the dark forces at work in the world today? You and I should know them well enough to see to them for what they are – opportunists of evil. To wit, opportunist evil doers act according to the following scheme:
You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. – Former Chicago Mayor and Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel
You hear and read about these opportunists every day. Ruling class elites, tech giant CEOs, Fortune 500 CEOs, Democrat pols, mainstream icons and gatekeepers – globalists all. They are the gods. We are the peons. They look down on us. They want us to look up and pray “Thy elite will be done on earth as it is boardrooms, college classrooms and political backrooms.”
The crisis has presented an opportunity. Social engineering. The globalist elites are testing the resistance of people to a One World authority. They are doing this under the rubric of mitigating a “public health crisis.” Healthy political and social immune systems are being worn down.
You know what the evil opportunists are doing. Power is being transferred from the people to the state. State licensing is gutting small business with threats of revocation. Wealth is being transferred from the middle class to the wealthy (who do not bear the financial brunt of the lockdowns). Civil liberties are being trashed. People are being forced to kneel to the will of the state. The state had help from evil opportunists – sheep in wolves’ clothing -to make it all-powerful.
Globalist health organizations (the CDC, the WHO, and the NIH) are lockdown enablers. (see video below)
The Progressive state media (the NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News) are re-educating the masses. The public is now being subjected to a 24/7 exposure to case numbers, positivity rates, death tickers and PSAs. The useful idiots of these media orgs want you to believe that contracting COVID-19 is a death sentence.
You will not find reported the number of those who have recovered (the word on the street is 99.9%). You will not find the number of cases to mortality rate reported. You will not find year over year mortality rates and causation. The latter was analyzed, graphed and posted on the internet only to be quickly retracted and removed “The article may have contributed to the spread of misinformation about COVID-19.” You and I are not allowed the whole truth.
The CDC classified all deaths that are related to COVID-19 simply as COVID-19 deaths. Even patients dying from other underlying diseases but are infected with COVID-19 count as COVID-19 deaths. This is likely the main explanation as to why COVID-19 deaths drastically increased while deaths by all other diseases experienced a significant decrease.
In other words, COVID-19 death counts replaced ‘typical’ causes of death counts. You and I are being manipulated by the media and health organizations.
The article noted that “in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.” You and I are to be terrified and run into the arms of globalists. They are the gods who will save us.
(I am 68. I am not concerned about contracting the virus. If I do, my body will deal with it. My body will build immunity to the virus. I will not be taking the vaccine. In liberal parlance, “MY BODY, MY CHOICE!”
I am not a science denier. I am an engineer. I am also a Christian. I put my life in the hands of God and not in the hands of fortune-telling scientists who are subjects of Lucifer.)
You and I should know the evil opportunists well enough to see to them for what they are. Social media publishers are like the wardens of Europe:
As you are aware, there has been election fraud. Our Republic is now in crisis. Per Rahm’s tactic, media has taken control of free speech to manipulate your understanding of the crisis. Social media curators will edit you out. That is, if you post evidence of election fraud or about the communist china-compromised Biden family. Then, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube will ban you at their discretion. This is how censorship happens in a free-speech Republic. Media (and government) take control of free speech during a crisis. They publish their narrative – “consensus.”
Your evidence, opinions, values, and beliefs are stripped from their naked public square. Your voice is de-valued just as Democrats had no problem disenfranchising your vote with election fraud. Social media publishers have no problem dismissing election fraud evidence just as the mainstream media says “nothing to see here, move on”.
As you know, social media platforms have no problem inviting you into their world. They have commercial and political purposes. But you enter their world. You may be considered a virus if you don’t say the things that agree with their body politic. They may quarantine you. To remain in their world, you must be inoculated. The GroupThink vaccine works to inure one against the negative effects of censorship. The GroupThink vaccine causes one to react against actual journalism.
(A conservative blog was recently ‘de-platformed’ by WordPress for unknown ‘content’ violation. Questioning things and offering a countervailing opinion is apparently a ‘content’ violation. Is my WordPress blog next?)
Do you see the thinking behind censorship? It’s the logical relation of Orwell and Protagoras: some men are more the measure of all things.
You don’t need to be a Christian to be concerned about what is happening though. Big Tech tyranny must be stopped at all costs. The only way for that to happen is for us to exit their data silos and digital panopticons. – Then They Came for Christians: A Warning
You and I should be aware. Globalist-driven social media sites push to “obtain the future we want.” In other words, they want utopia. They curate to fashion the collective story of pluralism and peace. They promote the Great Reset.
While most of the ordinary citizenry are languishing in government-created poverty due to the mandatory shutdowns, the pompous Davos elites are busy exploiting the pandemic as an opportunity to push their Marxist agenda on everyone else. –What Is “The Great Reset”?
I have heard opportunist evil doers blame President Trump for pandemic deaths. Why? Globalists connected with China don’t want you to point a finger at China. A media narrative was created to deflect blame.
You should listen to this whistleblower! Chinese ophthalmologist and virologist Dr. Lei Meng Yan put the lie to the Communist Chinese Party’s propaganda: the virus exists in nature; the nature origin theory. Her white paper (below) shows that the virus was generated by the CCP. The virus is a weapon.
Note: Dr. Yan has fled China. Her mother, still in China, has been arrested. The CCP is very angry with Dr. Yan.
“The scientific evidence and records indicate that the current pandemic is not a result of accidental release of gain-of-function product but a planned attack using an Unrestricted Bioweapon. The current pandemic therefore should be considered as a result of Unrestricted Biowarfare.” From the paper SARS-CoV-2 Is an Unrestricted Bioweapon: A Truth Revealed through Uncovering a Large Scale, Organized Scientific Fraud & @ 15:28 in the video below.
Near the end of the above video (@21:00), a question is asked: “Why is there hesitancy in the science community …ten months into this, why does it take you Dr. Yan, to report on a bioweapon?”
There is a reason why there is a hesitancy in the “silence” community. In the next video, Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, MIT PhD in biological engineering, talks about crisis opportunists. Big pharma and those in cahoots with them are pushing a vaccine mandate. You will find out why. Note: there are effective drugs already available, i.e., Ivermectin.
Did you know that Archbishop Viganò sent an open letter to President Trump about the globalist takeover? Here is an excerpt:
The purpose of the Great Reset is the imposition of a health dictatorship aiming at the imposition of liberticidal measures, hidden behind tempting promises of ensuring a universal income and cancelling individual debt. The price of these concessions from the International Monetary Fund will be the renunciation of private property and adherence to a program of vaccination against Covid-19 and Covid-21 promoted by Bill Gates with the collaboration of the main pharmaceutical groups.
Under cover of crisis evil opportunists are becoming ascendant. The billionaire aristocracy, the technocrats, oligarchs and the “dark green” religionists are moving into place. The rich globalists and their foundations are setting up state capitalism and totalitarian control. You are to be serfs and worker bees in their programs.
Did you know? The growing resistance to globalism is not about Trump. It is not about populism. It is not about Republicans and Democrats. We are fighting against evil opportunists and the dark spiritual forces that employ them. Everyone who loves freedom, including the Chinese diaspora, is resisting. Join the fight. The world is watching.
Evil is crouching at the door. Arm yourself with the sword of the spirit – the word of God. (and check out these sites to avoid the globalist narrative and censorship.)
No more suppressing the truth, no more controlling the narrative…. China has caused coronavirus the deaths.
Josh Phillips of The Epoch Times w/a documentary about the CCP Wuhan virus, a synthetic (not naturally mutated) virus designed for cross species transmission.
At night, when all the world’s asleep, the questions run so deep for such a simple man. Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned I know it sounds absurd but please tell me who I am.
The Logical Song by Supertramp
This post hopes to give insight into another malignant outgrowth of evil ~ a sub-culture collective of hive minded individuals wreaking havoc today, even now as you read your computer screen.
The collective connects daily, almost constantly. When doing so each member hides behind a pseudonym ‘mask.’ And, from their text exchanges it appears that the collective meets to recharge each their own narcissistic-self-image and sense of power. Beyond this the colony gathers in groupthink to plot attacks on unsuspecting victims and for the “lulz.”
VPNs or Virtual Private Networks hide an IP address. The VPN provides a false internet identity and a remote physical location. This ‘obscuring’ allows “tunneling” to another computer secretly. VPNs are used by “black hat” hackers and “white hat” hackers (good guys who root out the “black hat” hackers). Businesses will also use VPNs for employees to use their work computers at home.
It is within the ‘protection’ of purposely opaque cyber secrecy that each member of the collective learns from each other as to how to deceive, how to DDoS (.a Distributed Denial of Service website attack), how to “social engineer” their way into people’s privacy and other online vigilantism.
The members will go on to use their ‘hands-on’ knowledge to infiltrate private property and to disperse it under a pretense of a self-satisfactory justice. Reputations of their victims are destroyed (called “life ruins”) along the way.
This collective doesn’t gather in a material space. Instead each cyber participant from their usually darkened domicile meets in the backwaters of chat rooms, bulletin boards and cyber channels, otherwise known as the noosphere. The collective can be called several names, depending on who is writing about the group: “hacktivists”, the “Antisec movement”, “AnonOps”, “LulzSec”, “Anonymous”.
The background for this post comes primarily from a recently published book. I have quoted extensive passages so as to provide a third party description of this malignancy.
“We Are Anonymous: Inside the World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency authored by Parmy Olson, a Forbes magazine writer, reveals the dark side of the cyber world of pranksters, identity thieves and the mostly 15-30 year-old guys who do nothing but spend their days and nights in front of an computer screen causing others harm. They will act individually or as a quickly assembled hive of hacktivists.”
One individual prankster named in the book is a guy named William.
As related, William would hack into a person’s Facebook account after ‘socially manipulating’ his victim to handover passwords. He would then go on to embarrass, terrorize and deface his victim with the information found on the victim’s social media site. And, if William didn’t find enough of what he needed to terrorize his victim he would then “social engineer” (manipulate them using lies and flattery) the person and use their personal info found on the Facebook page. William spoke to Parmy about the process:
From page 377:
William: “We split up boyfriends and girlfriends and appalled many people’s mothers,“ (my note: After having gained his victim’s confidence William would extort pornographic photos from his victim. He would then show them to the victim’s parents) William remembered. “That’s one of the bits I enjoy more. Sending a picture of someone’s c__k to their mum. The idea of it happening to me is so unimaginably embarrassing it makes me laugh.”
Parmy talking about William, pages 377, 378: What he loved doing even more, from the time he’d begun pedo-baiting, at fifteen, was getting another man online highly aroused and then suddenly dousing the moment with the threat of exposure to family and friends or police… Hacking into people’s Facebook accounts wasn’t exactly life-altering, but he got a buzz from knowing that at least for a moment, his victims felt the lives crumbling around them.
William: “…That’s all I want from 4chan. I want something that’s going to leave me not depressed and give me something to focus on. And it’s fun to make someone feel that awful from a distance. I could never do that face to face.”
William spent the next few nights keeping hold of Selena’s credential’s, meeting his new Facebook group of /b/ pranksters, and terrorizing people on Serena’s social network, including posting comments on the photos of her female friends and calling them fat…
This was how William liked to cause a stir. Not by entertaining an audience of thousands on Twitter, like Topiary did, but by embarrassing others to entertain himself. Still, there were things that William and Topiary had in common, not least that both had found Anonymous through 4chan. (my note: Topiary is the online name for Jake Davis).
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One day William and Jake meet for lunch. Parmy records their conversation. Jake is wearing an ankle bracelet. He had been arrested and brought to London for his hacking crimes. He is out on bail.
The telling conversation of the two previously Anonymous hackers now meeting face to face began slowly, but eventually “the two started talking about Anonymous and how it had changed them.”
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From the book (page 381):
“It’s made me a more extreme version of myself,” William said. “I used to sleep badly. Now I sleep terribly. I used to be sarcastic; now I can be an a__hole.”He didn’t just “like “tormenting people; he loved it. He didn’t just “like” porn; he looked at it every day.“None of this bothers me, he added. “I don’t care about anything.”William had said in the past that he had no moral code; everything was case by case, his decisions based on gut reaction. Earnest Hemingway had said it best: “What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”
Jake was nodding. “I have to agree with all of that, “he said. It desensitized me.”…Acting out with crowds of people on the Internet had created a detachment from reality and a sense of obliviousness to certain consequences. Anonymous did bad things, but its members were not bad people, per se.” (emphasis mine)
~~~
Parmy records the conversation of the two amoral hacktivists, from pages 381, 382:
There was a common misconception about the lack of morals on /b/ and in Anonymous. “It doesn’t mean you do bad things,” said William. “It just means there’s no rules. We don’t revert to being bastards at every opportunity.”
“It’s also nice to just be nice,” Jake added.
Many of the /b/’s most hard core users, like William, didn’t care about jobs, family, or life’s typical milestone events. Both Jake and William relished the idea of living a life that had no impact on real people.”…
“To have as little impact on anywhere as possible is a really appealing thought, which is like never being born, “said Jake. No legitimate home, no name on a piece of government paper, no fingerprints. To be nameless, with no identity, not bogged down by any system but to “lightly live everywhere” was something they both craved in life.”
Did that craving come from what they’d experienced with Anonymous: vandalizing things often with little consequence?”…
(page 384) Did either of them ever feel like he had been manipulated by Anonymous?
“Not at all,” said William.
Jake looked down for a moment, then answered. “Not manipulated, but influenced, he said. “When you’re in a mob mentality with lots of others. You have a ‘mob extreme’ version of yourself too, this one, unified mind-set where you don’t care that anything exists and you want to wreck something.” William was nodding now.”
“I’ve said no but the mob things rings true, “he said. The issue of mental health meant a lot to him personally, but sometimes he’d see a thread on /b/ where the original poster has said, “I’m really depressed and want to kill myself.” If the thread’s participants leaned toward telling him to commit suicide, William would join in, posting a picture of a can of cyanide and reminding the OP to do it properly. “Which is something I don’t even believe. I don’t want people to die, but”~ he shrugged ~ “it’s something to write and something to do.” (Emphasis mine)
Of course, both William and Jake had done their fair share of (social) manipulating too….”
~~~
Talking about the younger “goombie” users and newfags on 4chan, William goes on to tell Jake his thoughts (page 384):
“They want to think the world is against them so there’s something to justify their angst,” he said That’s why it was almost easy to get people to join the revolution I Anonymous. “you can just make stuff up [about government or corporate corruption] and they buy it.” To write a rousing post on /b/, for instance, you just needed to write in a way that appeal to the Anon crowd, using linguistic devices like alliteration, repetition, sound bytes, and dramatic words like injustice, oppression, and downtrodden to describe corporations and governments, and justice, freedom and uprising when referring to Anonymous.”… (emphasis mine)
~~~
From page 385: …Jake was nodding again. If you knew how to communicate with the Anons, sometimes you could direct them. “It’s just so easy, “he said.
I purposefully quoted whole passages so that you could get insight into the depths of the nihilism, decadence, despair and boredom of this horrific self-destructive-neighbor-destructive behavior. You should read the book to get the full effect. The book has a useful Glossary of terms coined by the collective.
For me the book was a difficult read because I know how good and wholesome life can be outside of yourself, outside of groupthink.
This type of collective evil has gripped so many young lives. And, suicide is one of the Evil One’s ‘escapes.’ from the dreariness of life in the dark.
If your son (let’s talk specifics) spends all his time in his room with the curtains shut, door locked and his computer on then it is time for an intervention. Moral relativism from the “noosphere” is what is feeding his soul. The Evil One or one of his emissaries is close at hand, looking over his shoulder, suggesting things that are inordinate, evil.
Regarding “social justice” as just cause to take the law into your own hands…
Anthony Daniels an English writer and retired prison doctor and psychiatrist once said: “Moral relativism can easily be a trick of an egotistical mind to silence the voice of conscience.”
~~~~~~
The Age of Enlightenment pushed reason onto the scene. But reason and its subset, – controlled data from human sensory experience – without revelation – an outside source of Enlightenment with its subset of moral absolutes – turns life in on itself where it finds the deep dark well of nihilism. When that occurs one finds that there is no rational meaning to life beyond one’s fleeting existential thoughts and feelings or the “lulz,” we give it. And, in a way, “lulz” is a variant of Münchausen syndrome: Anons develop grandiose facetious exploits for the sake of a vast amounts of immediate attention satisfaction, an emo-sensory spike.
“Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”
The Gospel according to John: 8:12
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note: I did not write about the Anons use of DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service~basically, slamming a website with spam so that it cannot be accessed) and LOIC (low orbit ion cannon~basically, another DDOS ‘weapon’). These exploits, corporate and government hacking and their destruction of public safety and personal privacy are not something I would ever promote. These and other nefarious cyber attacks are documented in Parmy’s enlightening book.
As mentioned in the book, this collective of people did these things mostly for the Lulz for ‘kicks’. Here’s Parmy’s definition: “An alteration of LOL (laugh out loud), this term is thought to have first appeared on an Internet Relay Chat network in 2003 in reaction to something funny. It now refers to the enjoyment felt after pursuing a prank or online disruption that leads to someone else’s embarrassment.”
I hope to keep you informed and updated about hacking activity, ‘safe’ computing. Keep checking this post for updates as I become aware of them.
8/9/2014: I’ll offer. You read and decide. I have used TrendMicro’s web security free scanning download – this scan has be used by many>> Cryptolocker GOZeuS
8/9/2014: Danger, Will Robinson and the rest of you earthlings!! Be vary, vary wary of anyone who comments on your Facebook page and/or blog and is flattering. They may appear as someone you know. If so, verify the comment in a separate email to the person that you do know. (Blame me if the person gets upset.) Danger, too, when someone comments on things that do no relate at all to what is on your Facebook page or to what’s on your blog. These ‘guys’ want to connect with you in order to download malware “bots” onto your computer and worse….Hit “DELETE” immediately!!!
8/9/2014: I recently received an email from ~ Subject: “Attorney “so & so” has a legal matter to discuss with you. Respond Immediately or the judge may issue a default judgment in our favor.” Don’t buy it!! A real attorney will send you a certified letter notifying you of any legal matter concerning you. Do not open the email!!! Hit “DELETE” immediately!!!
I am a Christian parent of four children. I post this because…
The new/old Jeremiah Wright preachers of hate and exclusion want you to join them in bashing Whites, Jews, Christians, Tea Party members, Capitalism, language and… the First Amendment:
The Annual White Privilege Conference in Madison, Wisconsin 2014.
As you listen to the video below you will hear the devotees of this ‘white guilt’ cult parsing language to reprogram your mind.
“Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true. But many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly,” Thomas Sowell
…These are the people who will teach your children in public schools.
No Christian should take part in this evil. Christians, rather, must be alerted to the evil crouching at their child’s school door.
As you will see and hear the White Privilege Conference gives meaning to Hannah Arendt’s once used phrase “the banality of evil.” ‘Normal’ everyday people within these conference walls are invoked to participate in acts of evil against humanity, even against their own humanity and against God-given human rights, human rights not based on the melanin content of your skin.
All parents with school children must be informed as to the evil going on right under their noses in the class room.
Here is part 2 of a 4 part series, “White Privilege Conference 2014 Part 2 of 4: Rape Is Not Intrinsically Bad” provided by the website Progressives Today (see below).
Much of what you are hearing today began years ago on college campuses: “Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End American Debate” by Greg Lukianoff. Buy this book and read the specifics of how this type of reprogramming of student’ minds with white guilt/white privilege propaganda could grow into a White Privilege Conference
Para-Steele: white liberals and their black enablers unleash moral relativism that is corrupting America.
Save your children: Home School, Home School, Home School!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What do you want? The Truth or a Lie?
added 5-18-2014:
Group think, collectivist hive mindedness:
“When present, these antecedent conditions are hypothesized to foster the extreme consensus-seeking characteristic of groupthink. This in turn is predicted to lead to two categories of undesirable decision-making processes. The first, traditionally labeled symptoms of groupthink, include illusion of invulnerability, collective rationalization, stereotypes of outgroups, self-censorship, mindguards, and belief in the inherent morality of the group. The second, typically identified as symptoms of defective decision-making, involve the incomplete survey of alternatives and objectives, poor information search, failure to appraise the risks of the preferred solution, and selective information processing. Not surprisingly, these combined forces are predicted to result in extremely defective decision making performance by the group.”
(Marlene E. Turner & Anthony R. Pratkanis, Twenty-Five Years of Groupthink Theory and Research: Lessons from the Evaluation of a Theory, 1998, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 73, 105–115.)
The American Studies Association has passed a resolution promoted by the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement to single out Israel alone for an academic boycott.
You can read the whole sordid back story here at Legal Insurrection’s post:
And some words of Roger Berkowitz, regarding Hanna Arendt’s understanding of controlled groupthink: “They take pride not only in their dutifulness, but also in their initiative and support for carrying out the goals of the regime.”
“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton
*****
“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
*****
“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
*****
“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
*****
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
*****
“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
*****
Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
*****
If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
*****
“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
*****
“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
*****
Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
*****
“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
*****
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
*****
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
*****
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
*****
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
*****
God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
*****
From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
*****
“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
*****
One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
*****
“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
*****
God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
*****
“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
**
“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
*****
“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
*****
“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
*****
“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
*****
This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
*****
“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
*****
Cindy Wity 
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.
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
https://justthenews.com/podcasts/liz-truss-show/london-falling-or-has-it-fallen-already
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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.
Interview with Professor Gary Saul Morson on Tolstoy, Faith, and The Importance of Critical Thinking – The Profitable Table Fed by Woolco Foods | Acast
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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.
Ep. 15: Thinking Like Lenin, with Gary Saul Morson
Is Hope Naïve in a World Like Ours? | Esau McCaulley & Gary Saul Morson at Northwestern
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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
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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
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
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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
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Filed under 2025 Current Events, Communism, cultural Marxism, Culture, Democracy, History, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary, totalitarianism Tagged with Communism, Democracy, groupthink, history, Marxism, mind control, package thinking, party-mindedness, politics, progressivism, russia, Soviet Union, totalitarianism, Valdimir Lenin