Category Archives: Psychology

As Babies are Prescribed Pharmaceuticals, Have We Reached Dystopia?

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Tablets Pills Baby

By Joe Jarvis

Source: The Daily Bell

Would you let a five-year-old smoke a joint? I certainly hope not. Yet that would probably be less harmful than loading kids up on pharmaceuticals.

Currently, over a million American children UNDER SIX YEARS OLD are taking psychiatric drugs. Babies are literally being doped up by the pharmaceutical industry. Over 274,000 babies UNDER ONE-YEAR-OLD are given drugs, mostly for anxiety.

Anxiety drugs for babies. Have they tried motherly love? Or is that just an old fashioned, outdated concept?

You know, I like to mention society’s similarity to Orwell’s 1984. And surely the growing police state, war on drugs, and endless military campaigns–where the enemy seems to change daily–are reminiscent of the fictional dictatorship of Big Brother.

But it seems the powers that be are working tirelessly to blend together the dystopia of 1984, with that of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

In that dystopia, there is no police state or war. Society has been perfectly designed by scientists, inspired by Ford’s assembly line. Babies are grown in the lab, cloned to all look alike, depending on their class. Parents are an embarrassing relic of the past. How silly to think a child needs family when they have the state!

The lower castes are deprived of oxygen as embryos to stunt their mental development. In America, they use fluoride in the drinking water instead.

In Brave New World, children listen to 24-hour propaganda in their cribs. Betas hear:

Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse.

White pride, black pride, gay pride, national pride. Pride is not meant for accidents of birth. You should be proud of accomplishments and achievements, not genetics and geography. Perhaps someone has been whispering in these radicalized children’s ears.

And how jealous the Department of Education must be of the incubators of Brave New World! They have to sometimes wait years to indoctrinate children. But at least the government gets to drug them up at a young age! And if the TV is left on, most of the programming is done for them.

Of course, the adults are drugged up in Brave New World as well, just like in America. If anyone feels the least bit anxious, nervous, sad–or any other troublesome emotion–they get “soma.” It’s the perfect mix of drugs with only pleasant feelings and no ill side effects.

The 1 in 6 Americans on antidepressants, antipsychotics, and anti-anxiety medication still have to put up with side effects.

The 50 million plus Americans on psychiatric medication sometimes kill themselves, or go mad and kill others. I guess the government is still working out the kinks. Or it’s just another creative blending of 1984 and Brave New World. In the former, the proles must be properly terrified.

And there is one more thing I can remember from Brave New World that strikes eerily similar to modern America.

At what age does the public education system start teaching sex ed? Kindergarteners in some states receive “age appropriate”–according to the government–sexual education. Some studies suggest teen pregnancies rise in areas where sex ed is taught at younger ages.

How young is too young for a sex change? Kids can now choose between 43 genders, or make up a new one! It’s like Mr. Potato head, but with their own bodies. And they will be given corresponding drugs to enhance the “natural” changes.

In the classrooms of Brave New World:

“We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes,” she answered. “But now it’s switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness.”

The Director walked slowly down the long line of cots. Rosy and relaxed with sleep, eighty little boys and girls lay softly breathing…

He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.

Drugging the population, programming citizens with propaganda, sexualizing children, creating class divisions.

These dystopian novels were meant to be warnings, not instruction manuals.

 

Gandhi’s Truth: Ending Human Violence One Commitment at a Time

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By Robert J. Burrowes

Gandhi Jayanti – 2 October, the date of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s birth in 1869 and the International Day of Nonviolence – offers an opportunity to reflect on human violence and to ponder ways to end it. There may be a fast way to end human violence but, if there is, Gandhi did not know it. Nor do I. Nor does anyone else that I have read or asked either. But this does not mean there is no way to end human violence.

Human violence has a cause. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’. It has many manifestations. And it can be ended. But if this is to happen, then many of us must make the commitment to work towards that end. This is because, as Gandhi noted: ‘The future depends on what we do in the present.’

In other words, if human violence is to end, it will happen because individuals and organizations commit themselves to joining the effort to do so. Here is a sample of individuals around the world who have made that commitment, each in their own unique way. You are invited to join them.

HRH Prince Simbwa Joseph was born to a Ugandan Royal Family in Kampala. He abhors violence and is involved in many charities for helping those in need, as well as human rights organisations. He is currently manager of Nsambu and Company Advocates – a law firm and one of the oldest legal chambers in Uganda and East Africa, having been established in 1970. Among other engagements, he is also president of the African Federation Association in Uganda, which is a member of the World Federalist Movement Institute for Global policy. Following negotiations with Prince Simbwa as project manager in 2014, and involving the Ugandan Vice-President in launching the project, the World Sustainability Fund and its partners agreed to provide €1.5m to launch the AFA-WFM permanent office in Kampala in support of efforts to assist Uganda to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals. In Prince Simbwa’s words: ‘Today the world is on tension due to so many things in social, economic, political disparities and pending nuclear wars. We are concerned as global citizens because if violence or war escalates those whom we call “Nalumanya ne Salumanya” in our local Luganda language (literally meaning “those concerned and less concerned”) shall be trapped equally…. Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela and elder statesman appealed to the world during his lifetime to reinvent Indian freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent approach to solving conflicts.’

Lily Thapa is the inspirational founder president, in 1994, of Women for Human Rights, single women group (WHR) in Nepal. WHR is an NGO ‘dedicated to creating an active network of single women on a regional, national and international level. By working exclusively with and for them, WHR is dedicated to addressing the rights of single women and creating a just and equitable society where the lives of single women are strengthened and empowered.’ Rejecting the label ‘widow’, WHR ‘issued a national declaration to use the term “single women” instead of “widow”. The word “widow” (“Bidhwa” in Nepali) carries negativity and disdainful societal views which leaves many single women feeling humiliated and distressed.’ Working to empower women economically, politically, socially and culturally in order to live dignified lives and enjoy the value of human rights, WHR works at the grassroots, district, regional, national, South Asian and international levels. Lily has pointed out that there are ‘285 million single women in the world, among them 115 million fall below the poverty line and 38 million conflict-affected single women have no access to justice; these women are last.’ You can read more about Lily and WHR’s monumental efforts on their website. Recently, Lily was awarded the South Asian ‘Dayawati Modi Stree Shakti Samman’, which is ‘presented annually to a woman who has dared to dream and has the capability to translate that dream into reality’.

John McKenna’s commitment is to end discrimination in all of its forms against those with disabilities. In one recent article, the Australian surveyed the value of recent disability-mitigating technologies becoming available. In his thoughtful article ‘What’s App?’ he assessed the value of technologies that, for example, assist people who are blind, people who have problems with speech, and people with disabilities who are getting older.

In a nonviolent action to draw attention to the horror of drone murders, US grandmother Joy First was one of four nonviolent activists arrested at the Wisconsin Air National Guard Base (Volk Field) during one of the monthly vigils (held for over five years now) by Wisconsin Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars. Volk Field is a critical component of the drone warfare program being conducted by the US government in a number of countries in the Middle East and Africa. At Volk Field personnel are trained to operate the RQ-7 Shadow Drone, which has been used for reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition. You can read more about drone warfare and resistance to it in Joy’s highly informative article ‘Four Citizen Activists Arrested at Volk Field as they Attempt to Identify the Base as a Crime Scene’.

Father Nithiya is the National Programme Coordinator of the Association of Franciscan Families of India (AFFI). Their inspirational work is focused on two campaigns: the Violence of Extreme poverty and hunger and the Right to Food Campaign, as well as the National Campaign to Stop Violence Against Women. In relation to the latter campaign, AFFI has released a DVD and a booklet as a result of a four day intensive national consultation and training organised by them in 2016. Through their vast network of educational, social and medical ministries, AFFI has committed itself to stopping violence against women using various strategies all over the country, especially through their schools and colleges. Identifying ten types of violence against women – gender selection, female foeticide, child marriage, child abuse, harassment at work, prostitution and trafficking, domestic violence and Eve teasing, child labour, effects of alcoholism of men, and unemployment and underemployment of women – the DVD and booklet include analytical data, information about the legal framework and redress mechanisms. The aim is to empower women for their safety and security. Fr. Nithiya has given seminars to teachers and students to raise awareness of how they can stop any form of violence against women in their personal life, in their families, communities and society at large. The aim is to make these AFFI resources available in various Indian languages.

In one of her many engagements, Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire from Northern Ireland continues her ongoing solidarity work in support of the Rohingya, the ethnic group in Burma currently suffering the genocidal assault of the Burmese government and its military forces, the Tatmadaw. In a recent evocative appeal to their fellow laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, signed by Mairead and four other laureates, they asked ‘How many Rohingya have to die; how many Rohingya women will be raped; how many communities will be razed before you raise your voice in defence of those who have no voice? Your silence is not in line with the vision of “democracy” for your country that you outlined to us, and for which we all supported you over the years.’ See ‘Five Nobel Laureates urge Aung San Suu Kyi to defend Rohingya Muslims’.

So if you would like to join the individuals above, as well as those individuals and organizations in 101 countries who have made the commitment to work to end human violence, you can do so by signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ which, thanks to Antonio Gutiérrez Rodero in Venezuela, is also available in Spanish.

If you also subscribe to Gandhi’s belief that ‘Earth provides enough to satisfy every [person’s] needs, but not every [person’s] greed’, then you might consider participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ which he inspired as well.

And if you wish to use nonviolence, as Gandhi developed and employed it, for your campaign or liberation struggle, you will be given clear guidance on how to do so on these websites that draw heavily on his work: Nonviolent Campaign Strategy and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

Will enough people make the commitment to end human violence? Will you? As Gandhi warns us, fear of inadequate outcomes is no excuse for inaction: ‘You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing there will be no results.’

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

—

Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68 Daylesford
Victoria 3460 Australia

Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:

http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com (Nonviolence Charter) http://tinyurl.com/flametree (Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth) http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence (‘Why Violence?’) https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/ (Nonviolent Campaign Strategy) https://nonviolentliberationstrategy.wordpress.com/ (Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy) http://anitamckone.wordpress.com (Anita: Songs of Nonviolence) http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com (Robert) https://globalnonviolencenetwork.wordpress.com/ (Global Nonviolence Network)

Decoding a Fake Reality

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By Rosanne Lindsay

Source: Waking Times

Reality is a program of beliefs we decode:

Disease equals Health
Fake news equals Truth
Wars equal Peace
Uniformity equals Unity
State-granted rights equal human rights
Slavery equals Freedom.

All is illusion.

As our world unfolds in multiple dimensions, we are focused in a time-space continuum (linear construct) with limited perception. Our “perception deception” in this reality timeline means that no matter what happened in the past, or what might happen in the future, we are always pondering it and creating it in the Now.

The power to restructure reality is only possible with the clarity of the cosmic mind. Unfortunately, as humans, we are easily programmed to believe that what we see, feel, taste, hear, and smell is all there is.

“The outer world is a reflection of the inner world. Other people’s perception of you is a reflection of them; your response to them is an awareness of you.” ~Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

Our beliefs guide our perception about who we are and what we can create. Believe we are sick and tired and we are. The body responds to core beliefs. The cells hear what we say, they hear limitations and feel fear. If we love our cells, the body will support our beliefs. What we do in our bodies is pivotal to our multidimensional selves, as well as to other timelines.

The Structure of Reality

Reality is constructed in time and space in this Third Dimension. Time and space are frequencies which cycle in a looped timeline, which our brains decode so that we can experience life as humans. Everything cycles, from the seasons to the economy, just as history tends to repeat itself.

We live in a Matrix system that can be described as a grid, a hologram, or a game composed of electromagnetic (EM) frequencies. The hologram is information as light that is distributed non-locally. Our brains decode this information based on perception; how things appear to us. And as we know, appearances can be deceiving.

Indeed, all is not as it seems. We create a collective reality with electromagnetic frequencies where everyone and everything is connected, in similar fashion to how the internet works. However, in the space we occupy we see only a small visible light spectrum, a narrow band of information that represents only 0.0001% of the whole electromagnetic spectrum.

Spirit First

We perceive that the brain is the central processing unit of the body, the body is a computer, and our DNA is nature’s hard drive. Yet we must also accept that we are receivers and transmitters of information – we are also the energy that runs the body. We are Spirit first. We are consciousness having a physical experience in a holographic constructed reality for our soul’s growth and evolution. Consciousness creates reality.

“You are a creator. You of humanity… Science has a fixation on knowledge, particularly that which is compatible with sense perception. Despite instruments which far exceed man’s sensory capacity, all knowledge gained in translated back to a sense perception before it can be coded as information. If it cannot be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted, it is not received by physical man. The five senses of man. The four walls and the lid of your prison. Discard them. Touch will not determine subtle shapes. Eye will not perceive reality. Ears do not hear the song of the universe. You cannot taste the food of angels or smell the fragrance of a higher truth. We rejoice as you begin to unshackle the self-imposed chains of limitation. Use your physical senses, enjoy them, but never for one moment believe in them as complete reality. Your heart knows – experience. Believe. Believe. Whatever you believe is so.” ―  Jade Plant, Talking with Nature by Michael J. Roads

If we understand the construction of an atom, then we appreciate that we are not solid at all. We are pure awareness in a cosmos we cannot measure. We are not our bodies or our names. We are not our emotions. We are limitless. Through our limited perception and core beliefs this may sound impossible.

However, we are not impossible but everything that is possible. All possibility means we are everything and no-thing. We are matter and energy, sound and silence. Life is a continuum, between physical and non-physical. Without beginning and without end.

In this game of illusion, we are a projection of our True Selves. In this reality, we are a hologram in a holographic universe. A hologram: a three-dimensional projection written on a two dimensional surface (i.e., piece of paper).

We are here to remember that we are more than words on paper just as we are more than base pairs of our DNA. Our DNA is a projection of a greater force. We are wave and particle at the same time. We are not complex. We are multiplex.

In this game of illusion, humans are caught in a time loop distortion where we have lost our power to those who control the program in the hologram. Not only are minds controlled (via social engineering and frequencies), but human genetics have been manipulated to perceive through five physical senses, resulting in the suppression of our true selves and our true potential.

The Freedom To Choose

In navigating All That We Are, we have a choice. We can choose to become bees in a Hive Mind on a colony of control and draconian laws, or we can choose freedom.

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law and no court, can save it.” ― Judge Learned Hand

When we talk about freedom, we perceive only a fraction of what is possible based on what we have been programmed and conditioned to believe through the limits of the five senses. The moment we perceive differently to use all of our senses, and to embody freedom, we reclaim our freedom. We no longer have to conform to colony control.

Decoding a Fake Reality

The mind controls beliefs in a reality that conforms to core beliefs. When we do not see beyond the page and open to all that is possible, we decode a fake reality and perpetuate it. We become distracted by the limitations set up to suppress our inherent power instead of creating the reality that best serves all of humanity and the planet.

“Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

 

Neo: What truth?

 

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.” ~The Matrix

The Matrix is a system into which humans incarnate and reincarnate for the purpose of soul evolution, and to wake up. While this construct may not be able to be “fixed” it can be conditioned by the way we respond to it.

A Reality of Now in Three Steps

Step 1: Free the mind from the program of beliefs.

Unlearn Core Beliefs:
Schools are there to enlighten us to the truth of the world.
Governments grant rights to protect us.
Big Pharma cures us.
The mainstream media tells the truth about what is happening in the world.
Politicians stand for hope and change.
Terrorists (false flag events) necessitate less freedom though more controls and surveillance.
GMO foods feed the world.
RFID microchips make life more convenient and efficient.
Chemtrails and geoengineering control “global warming” to protect the planet.

Step 2: Expand what we think is possible. Choose to become conscious of the Matrix system or to choose to remain unconscious. If we are in denial we cannot change anything. Accept what is so that we can change what is.

Step 3: Move from thinking and talking about it to doing something about it. Start with the body. Change emotions to lighten the body burden. Love the Self. See the body respond and heal and watch it ripple out to change reality.

The Complexity of Cultural Evolution

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By Joe Brewer

Source: Resilience

What does the ecological crisis have in common with global poverty? How does politics relate to economics? The study of history? The changing landscape of technology, arts, and culture? Why is there not a coherent School of Social Sciences that brings themes like these together in one place? Answers can only be found by synthesizing two of the most important areas of scientific work in the last 150 years — in the fields of evolutionary studies and complexity science.

All of the most interesting and important topics of concern in the world today (How does consciousness work? What is the human mind? Is it possible to restore health to deteriorated ecosystems? Can we create political systems that promote widespread health and well-being?) involve vast networks of relationships interacting with each other — what are called complex adaptive systems in the lingo of complexity science.

Familiar examples include things like the weather with its inherent unpredictability or a market economy that has no central locus of control. The thing that makes a system “complex” is that patterns arise through the interactions that are not reducible to its constituent parts. You cannot explain the weather simply by describing what water molecules or solar radiation on their own are capable of doing. Neither can you explain an economy by describing how individuals engage in barter or exchange if they happen to be in a market-based society.

Importantly, complex adaptive systems are always far from equilibrium. They are not static. And the only way to make sense of their behavior is to computationally model how the various parts interact with each other dynamically — which leads to the importance of evolution. Emphasis on the word adaptive in complex adaptive systems gives an inkling of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, where the biological traits of an organism that happen to be adaptive in its environment tend to occur more frequently than traits that are not adaptive.

Over time (since living systems are also dynamic), the evolutionary pathway for biology is traced by the intersections of adaptive fitness in environments that might be changing quickly or slowly. All biological systems are complex (they have many interacting parts with emergent phenomena that are not reducible) and they are adaptive (as natural selection plays out in changing environments).

So what does this say about cultural evolution? How can we apply this basic finding from biology to the study of history and economics, politics, and environmental management? Well it turns out that researchers who study cultural evolution — and there are now nearly 2,000 of them in the newly formed Cultural Evolution Society that I was tasked to help create — have brought the mathematical toolkit used in complexity science to the study of cultural change in human and non-human species.

The earliest inklings of this synthesis go back to a debate a century ago when foundations were being laid for the study of population genetics. At that time, statisticians were actively grappling with questions about how to account for genetic variation in biological organisms without the use of digital computers. They developed accounting systems for biological traits that matured continuously through the early-to-mid 20th Century.

In the late 1970’s and early 80’s, there was a group of cultural evolution researchers who translated these statistical tools for the distinct mechanisms of “selection” that play out for behavioral repertoires and other cultural phenomena in human and non-human cultures. Among them were Luigi Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus Feldman at Stanford, Peter J. Richerson at UC-Davis, and Robert Boyd of Arizona State University. These efforts culminated in the publishing of Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach in 1981 and Culture and the Evolutionary Process in 1988.

It was during this same time period that the field of complexity research was getting underway — with the multidisciplinary Santa Fe Institute being established in 1984 to explore the mathematical patterns of complex adaptive systems across many domains of study. They organized workshops and symposia on economics, ecology, urban studies, epidemiology, and more to discover how complex systems evolve and change using the mathematical tools of fractal geometry, network science, differential equations, and computational methods.

As I have written elsewhere, the time is urgently upon us to synthesize and apply what is known about complexity and evolution. The fate of humanity literally depends on our ability to do this. In a time of unprecedented exponential change, we must learn to manage complex systems as they evolve in real time.

We need to firstly understand that cultural systems evolve according to Darwinian principles. The interested reader can find many books explaining why this is the case. Here are a few to get you started:

This is a mere sampling — there are now hundreds of books on cultural evolutionary studies that one can dive into. Important for this article is to note that (i) the field of cultural evolution is quite mature at this point in time; (ii) it has advanced rapidly since incorporating mathematical tools used in the study of complexity; and (iii)the world is in flux with tremendous need for this body of knowledge to be brought to bear on our global challenges in the 21st Century.

This is the work of culture design.

The most pressing challenges in the world have foundational cultural components. Global warming arose from the false illusions of human separation from nature and the perception of endless bounty for natural resources at the beginning of the industrial era. Terrorism is cultivated in landscapes where people feel deep-seated anxiety and economic desperation — which arise from particular models of colonial (or post-colonial) exploitation that have unique cultural histories.

Similarly, the spread of rugged individualism as a cultural construct treats human beings as if they are separate from their communities, inherently selfish, and venerable for engaging in psychopathic behaviors like wealth hoarding. In each case, the real state of power is culture and the only viable solutions involve the intentional management of cultural evolutionary change.

But we cannot even start to think this way if we don’t recognize how human cultures operate as complex systems. Only by learning to see that emergent patterns arise through the interactions of constituent parts will we begin to discern how evolutionary change is taking us closer to planetary-scale collapse — and that design practices will be needed that make use of what is now known from cultural evolutionary studies.

Onward, fellow humans.

Played by the Ruling Elite’s Control System, It’s Time for a New Paradigm

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By Paul A. Philips

Source: Waking Times

People are waking up in droves, but the majority continue to be played by the ruling elite’s control system, unaware that almost every subject under the sun is rigged: In effect we are confined to living in a false or limiting paradigm. Against the ‘insurmountable odds,’ will there ever be a new paradigm experience? Having seen through the grand deception, will the awakened ever change the control system? Can we somehow go on to cultivate new theories and practices for a humane new paradigm experience, one that will create a world that truly makes a difference for everyone?

Before answering, here are just some of the ways in which the majority people in their ignorance are played by the ruling elite’s control system in the current false or limiting paradigm.

1. Fake science

Corporate/Banker sponsored pseudo-science has had a grip on humanity for quite some time, headed by highly dogmatic fake guru scientists. Try telling some followers in the church of scientism that these so-called Gurus are fake and wrong; they may look at you as if you have 3 heads, no matter how knowledgeable you are or good at communicating the real science.

(Hint:  Why were we taught very little or nothing about Nikola Tesla in school..?)

2. Fake Political Parties

Indeed, the awakened know that regardless of who’s in power all the major political party leaders are only puppets to the ruling elite puppet masters. Thus, the ruling elite make all the major political decisions regardless of who’s in power, making the parties and their leaders irrelevant. The masses are distracted from waking up to the realization of this: For instance, one of the latest tricks used to con the masses into giving their support has been to make the leader of a political party look like an ‘outsider’ who will not walk the dictated political white line.

As in the case of Trump during his presidential election campaign, he came across as an ‘outsider,’ telling the masses what they wanted to hear. He came across as anti-establishment. But in the end, his long lists of anti-establishment promises did not get fulfilled: The false promises were nothing more than gimmicks to win votes, while the same old same old still continues…

3. Fake Wars

Sadly, the majority are still falling for the fake wars narratives with their related psyops; false flags or divide and rule tactics, pushed on us for the ulterior motives of power, profit and political gains. The warmongers, aided and abetted by the mainstream media (real fake news) threaten the existence of not only every man, woman and child, but all life forms on this planet if nuclear war breaks out.

To find out what those war-hungry leaders don’t want you to know about go HERE.

4. Played by the ‘Beneficial’ Deception

As part of the deception, to get approval, the ruling elite present their agendas as ‘beneficial’ when, in fact, they are actually harmful or enslaving to the masses. The greater the difference between something that is perceived by the masses as ‘beneficial’ compared to the opposite of what it really is, the easier the elite can advance their agendas.

Agenda 2030 (Agenda 21 on speed), is a classic example. To take a look at how the perceived ‘benefits’ are presented, but, are in truth, extremely damaging, go HERE.

5. Played by ‘Confusion’

One of the tricks used to cover-up information and allow hidden crooked agendas to continue is to put the masses into a state of confusion or neutrality.

For example, through Big Pharma shills with their disinformation and/or the cover-up of scientific evidence in the elite’s owned and controlled mainstream media, the masses have been duped into confusion, not knowing what to do regarding choices on life-saving alternative health practices…

6. Played into Being Comfortably Numb

Are you comfortably numb or a truth-seeking activist?

Ruled and divided, wilfully ignorant and apathetic to the woes of the world, some people love their comfort zone so much they will do all they can to remain there. To avoid confrontation, they go into agreement with the general consensus of the masses while blindly accepting the rule of authority without ever questioning.

Labelled as Stockholm syndrome, some people even love their servitude under the rule of authority. Such individuals affected grovel away their lives in victimhood without ever realizing they’ve been ensnared in a web of deceit, while their cognitive dissonance and denial plays a major part in maintaining the status quo…

Many folks have been played into mindless habituation. For example, many spend endless hours languishing away, watching the T.V (moron box) brainwashed by mainstream media broadcasts…

 In effect, consistent with the Pink Floyd song these people have become “Comfortably numb…”

-Indeed the list goes on where so many are played by the ruling elite’s control system

Creating the New Paradigm

A major response to the imprisoning control system is to disconnect. Here are just a few examples:

Disconnect from giving your support to those power-drunk, dishonest, egomaniacal puppet politicians. All Western World government is a myth because it has been designed to give the illusion of choice or change. It’s the puppet masters we really need to get at not so much the puppeteered politicians. We need to expose their inhumane criminal activities to the world…

Disconnect from the increasingly health-threatening wireless technology and the internet of things. Stop using ‘smart’ technology (dumb technology). Stop using the electronic appliances: No longer giving these appliances to kids would be a good start. Stop using credit cards… Find alternative ways of bypassing the system…

Disconnect from consuming disease-causing food and water poisoned with GMO technology, toxic ingredients and additives, irradiated by nutrient-nuking manufacturing processes… Refuse toxic medicines such as vaccines. Foods and medicines are killing us. The select few belonging to the related establishments manufacturing the medicines are making trillions on us as a consequence of our increasing disease…

Disconnect from the greed-driven mega-corporations swallowing up small businesses while depriving the freedom of their owners in the monopolies. Support the small business man.

Reconnecting with our True Self

Humans have now reached unprecedented levels of selfishness. We are running amok with narcissism, materialistic greed and consumerism while the rich get even richer: It’s now been reported that 5 people nearly have as much wealth as half the world’s population. Around 90% of the world’s population lives in poverty. Mega-corporations are getting even fatter. Consider the case of Jeff Bezos and Amazon as an example…

-In effect we have been pushed to the limits. All this only adds up to the realization that change has to happen. The control system’s imprisoning status quo has to end as it continues to be an ever widening mismatch compared to our ongoing awakening.

Besides making the effort to disconnect from the ruling Elite’s control system, to stop us from being dictated, we also need to change our ways by reconnecting with our true self.

Reconnecting with the true self means changing our inner world to make intended changes manifest in our outer world. We need to be a stand for truth, honesty, integrity, kindness, caring and compassion for governing ourselves in a new paradigm experience.

So many people eek away their daily existences in dissatisfaction, frustration and servitude: It’s time that we felt good about ourselves again; make the shift from victim to victor… A monumental task, of course, but for our survival we need an open mindedness and open heartedness to build the multiple layers needed for complete change so that the new system is solid enough to bring lasting peace. Peace for ourselves, our children and their children to be.

Profit Maximization is Easy: Invest in Violence

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By Robert J. Burrowes

For those of us committed to systematically reducing and, one day, ending human violence, it is vital to understand what is causing and driving it so that effective strategies can be developed for dealing with violence in its myriad contexts. For an understanding of the fundamental cause of violence, see ‘Why Violence?’

However, while we can tackle violence at its source by each of us making and implementing ‘My Promise to Children’, the widespread violence in our world is driven by just one factor: fear or, more accurately, terror. And I am not talking about jihadist terror or even the terror caused by US warmaking. Let me explain, starting from the beginning.

The person who is fearless has no use for violence and has no trouble achieving their goals, including their own defence, without it. But fearlessness is a state that few humans would claim. Hence violence is rampant.

Moreover, once someone is afraid, they will be less likely to perceive the truth behind the delusions with which they are presented. They will also be less able to access and rely on other mental functions, such as conscience and intelligence, to decide their course of action in any context. Worse still, the range of their possible responses to perceived threats will be extremely limited. And they will be more easily mobilised to support or even participate in violence, in the delusional belief that this will make them safe.

For reasons such as these, it is useful for political and corporate elites to keep us in a state of fear: social control is much easier in this context. But so is profit maximization. And the most profitable enterprise on the planet is violence. In essence then: more violence leads to more fear making it easier to gain greater social control to inflict more violence…. And starting early, by terrorizing children, is the most efficient way to initiate and maintain this cycle. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

So, for example, if you think the massive number of police killings of innocent civilians in the United States – see ‘Killed by Police’ and ‘The Counted: People killed by police in the US’ – is a problem, you are not considering it from the perspective of maintaining elite social control and maximizing corporate profit. Police killings of innocent civilians is just one (necessary) part of the formula for maintaining control and maximising profit.

This is because if you want to make a lot of money in this world, then killing or exploiting fellow human beings and destroying the natural world are the three most lucrative business enterprises on the planet. And we are now very good at it, as the record shows, with the planetary death toll from violence and exploitation now well over 100,000 human beings each day, 200 species driven to extinction each day and ecological destruction so advanced that the end of all life (not just human life) on Earth is postulated to occur within decades, if not sooner, depending on the scenario. See, for example, ‘The End of Being: Abrupt Climate Change One of Many Ecological Crises Threatening to Collapse the Biosphere’.

So what forms does this violence take? Here is a daily accounting.

Corporate capitalist control of national economies, held in place by military violence, kills vast numbers of people (nearly one million each week) by starving them to death in Africa, Asia and Central/South America. This is because this ‘economic’ system is designed and managed to allocate resources for military weapons and corporate profits for the wealthy, instead of resources for living.

Wars kill, wound and incapacitate a substantial number of civilians, mostly women and children, as do genocidal assaults, on a daily basis, in countries all over the planet. Wars also kill some soldiers and mercenaries.

Apart from those people we kill every day, we sell many women and children into sexual slavery, we kidnap children to terrorise them into becoming child soldiers and force men, women and children to work as slave labourers, in horrific conditions, in fields and factories (and buy the cheap products of their exploited labour as our latest ‘bargain’).

We condemn millions of people to live in poverty, homelessness and misery, even in industrialized countries where the refugees of western-instigated wars and climate-destroying policies are often treated with contempt. We cause many children to be born with grotesque genetic deformities because we use horrific weapons, like those with depleted uranium, on their parents. We also inflict violence on women and children in many other forms, ranging from ‘ordinary’ domestic violence to genital mutilation.

We ensnare and imprison vast numbers of people in the police-legal-prison complex. See ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’. We pay the pharmaceutical industry and its handmaiden, psychiatry, to destroy our minds with drugs and electro-shocking. See ‘Defeating the Violence of Psychiatry’. We imprison vast numbers of children in school in the delusional belief that this is good for them. See ‘Do We Want School or Education?’ And we kill or otherwise exploit animals, mostly for human consumption, in numbers so vast the death toll is probably beyond calculation.

We also engage in an endless assault on the Earth’s biosphere. Apart from the phenomenal damage done to the environment and climate by military violence: we emit gases and pollutants to heat and destroy the atmosphere and destroy its oxygen content. We cut down and burn rainforests. We cut down mangroves and woodlands and pave grasslands. We poison the soil with herbicides and pesticides. We pollute the waterways and oceans with everything from carbon and nitrogenous fertilizers to plastic, as well as the radioactive contamination from Fukushima. And delude ourselves that our token gestures to remedy this destruction constitutes ‘conservation’.

So if you are seeking work, whether as a recent graduate or long-term unemployed person, then the most readily available form of work, where you will undoubtedly be exploited as well, is a government bureaucracy or large corporation that inflicts violence on life itself. Whether it is the military, the police, legal or prison system, a weapons, fossil fuel, banking, pharmaceutical, media, mining, agricultural, logging, food or water corporation, a farm that exploits animals or even a retail outlet that sells poisonous, processed and often genetically-mutilated substances under the label ‘food’ – see ‘Defeating the Violence in Our Food and Medicine’ – you will have many options to help add to the profits of those corporations and government ‘services’ that exist to inflict violence on you, your family and every other living being that shares this biosphere.

Tragically, genuinely ethical employment is a rarity because most industries, even those that seem benign like the education, finance, information technology and electronics industries, usually end up providing skilled personnel, finance, services or components that are used to inflict violence. And other industries such as those in insurance and superannuation, like the corporate banks, usually invest in violence (such as the military and fossil fuel industries): it is the most profitable.

So while many government bureaucracies and corporate industries exist to inflict violence, in one form or another, they can only do so because we are too scared to insist on seeking out ethical employment. In the end, we will take a job as a teacher, corporate journalist or pharmaceutical drug pusher, serve junk food, work in a bank, join the police or military, work in the legal system, assemble a weapons component… rather than ask ourselves the frightening questions ‘Is this nonviolent? Is this ethical? Does it enhance life?’

And yes, I know about structural violence and the way it limits options and opportunities for those of particular classes, races, genders…. But if ordinary people like us don’t consider moral issues and make moral choices, why should governments and corporations?

Moral choices? you might ask in confusion. In this day and age? Well, it might seem old-fashioned but, in fact, while most of us have been drawn along by the events in our life to make choices based on such considerations as self-interest, personal gain and ‘financial security’, there is a deeper path. Remember Gandhi? ‘True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding the true path for ourselves, and fearlessly following it.’

Strange words they no doubt sound in this world where our attention is endlessly taken by all of those high-tech devices. But Gandhi’s words remind us that there is something deeper in life that the violence we have suffered throughout our lives has taken from us. The courage to be ourselves and to seek our own unique destiny.

Do you have this courage? To be yourself, rather than a cog in someone else’s machine? To refuse to submit to the violence that surrounds and overwhelms us on a daily basis?

If you are inclined to ponder these questions, you might also consider making moral choices that work systematically to end the violence in our world: consider participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’, signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ and/or helping to develop and implement an effective strategy to resist one or the other of the many threats to our survival using the strategic framework explained in Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

Of course, these choices aren’t for everyone. As Gandhi observed: ‘Cowards can never be moral.’

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

Robert J. Burrowes P.O. Box 68 Daylesford Victoria 3460 Australia

Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:
http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com (Nonviolence Charter)
http://tinyurl.com/flametree (Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth)
http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence (‘Why Violence?’)
https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/ (Nonviolent Campaign Strategy)
https://nonviolentliberationstrategy.wordpress.com/ (Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy)
http://anitamckone.wordpress.com (Anita: Songs of Nonviolence)
http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com (Robert)
https://globalnonviolencenetwork.wordpress.com/ (Global Nonviolence Network)

Why are all those Racists so Terrified?

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Zach Roberts/NurPhoto/Getty Images

By Robert J. Burrowes

Racism is not a new phenomenon and while it is an ongoing daily reality for vast numbers of people, it also often bursts from the shadows to remind us that just because we can keep ignoring the endless sequence of ‘minor’ racist incidents, racism has not gone away despite supposedly significant efforts to eliminate it.

I say ‘supposedly’ because these past efforts, whatever personnel, resources and strategies have been devoted to them, have done nothing to address the underlying cause of racism and so their impact must be superficial and temporary. As the record demonstrates. I say this not to denounce the effort made and, in limited contexts, the progress achieved, but if we want to eliminate racism, rather than confine it to the shadows for it to burst out periodically, then we must have the courage to understand what drives racism and design responses that address this cause.

Otherwise, all of the best ideas in the world can do no more than repeat past efforts at dialogue, education, nonviolent action and the implementation of legislation designed to protect civil rights or even outlaw violence, which doesn’t work, of course, as the pervasive violence in our society demonstrates and was again graphically illustrated by the recent outbreak of ‘white nationalist’ violence in Charlottesville in the United States.

Racism directed against indigenous peoples and people of color has been a significant factor driving key aspects of domestic politics and foreign policy in many countries for centuries. This outcome is inevitable given the psychological imperatives that drive racist violence.

Racism – fear of, and hatred for, those of another race coupled with the beliefs that the other race is inferior and should be dominated (by your race) – is now highly visible among European populations impacted by refugee flows from the Middle East and North Africa. In addition, racism is ongoingly and highly evident among sectors of the US population but also in countries like South Africa as well as Australia and throughout Central and South America where indigenous populations are particularly impacted. But racism is a problem in many other countries too.

So why is fear and hatred of those of a different race so prominent? Let me start at the beginning.

Human socialization is essentially a process of terrorizing children into ‘thinking’ and doing what the adults around them want (irrespective of the functionality of this thought and behavior in evolutionary terms). Hence, the attitudes, beliefs, values and behaviors that most humans exhibit are driven by fear and the self-hatred that accompanies this fear. For a comprehensive explanation of this point, see ‘Why Violence?‘ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice‘.

However, because this fear and self-hatred are so unpleasant to feel consciously, most people suppress these feelings below conscious awareness and then (unconsciously) project them onto ‘legitimized’ victims (that is, those people ‘approved’ for victimization by their parents and/or society generally). In short: the fear and self-hatred are projected as fear of, and hatred for, particular social groups (whether people of another gender, nation, race, religion or class).

This all happens because virtually all adults are (unconsciously) terrified and self-hating, so they unconsciously terrorize children into accepting the attitudes, beliefs, values and behaviors that make the adults feel safe. A child who thinks and acts differently is frightening and is not allowed to flourish.

Once the child has been so terrorized however, they will respond to their fear and self-hatred with diminishing adult stimulus. What is important, emotionally speaking, is that the fear and self-hatred have an outlet so that they can be released and acted upon. And because parents do not allow their child to feel and express their fear and hatred in relation to the parents themselves (who, fundamentally, just want obedience without comprehending that obedience is rooted in fear and generates enormous self-hatred because it denies the individual’s Self-will), the child is left with no alternative but to project their fear and hatred in socially approved directions.

Hence, as an adult, their own fear and self-hatred are unconscious to the individual precisely because they were never allowed to feel and express them safely as a child. What they do feel, consciously, is their hatred for ‘legitimized’ victims.

Historically, different social groups in different cultural contexts have been the victim of this projected but ‘socially approved’ fear and hatred. Women, indigenous peoples, Catholics, Afro-Americans, Jews, communists, Palestinians…. The list goes on. The predominant group in this category, of course, is children (whose ‘uncontrollability’ frightens virtually all parents until they have been successfully terrorized and tamed).

The groups that are socially approved to be feared and hated are determined by elites. This is because individual members of the elite are themselves terrified and full of self-hatred and they use the various powerful instruments at their disposal – ranging from control of politicians to the corporate media – to trigger the fear and self-hatred of the population at large in order to focus this fear and hatred on what frightens the elite. This makes it easier for the elite to then attack the group that they are projecting frightens them, which is why Donald Trump and various European leaders encourage racist attacks. See, for example, ‘This expert on political violence thinks Trump is making neo-Nazi attacks more likely‘. It is also useful for providing a basis for enhancing elite social control through such measures as legislative restrictions on human rights and expanded police powers.

Historically speaking, indigenous peoples and people of color have been primary targets for this projected fear and self-hatred, which explains the psychological origins (which underpin and complement the political and economic origins) of practices such as the Atlantic slave trade and European colonialism in earlier centuries. Racism allows elites and others to project their fear and self-hatred onto indigenous people and people of color so that elites can then seek to destroy this fear and self-hatred.

Obviously, this cannot work. You cannot destroy fear, whether your own or that of anyone else. However, you can cause phenomenal damage to those onto whom your fear and self-hatred are projected. Of course, there is nothing intelligent about this process. If every indigenous person and person of colour in the world was killed, elites would simply then project their fear and self-hatred onto other groups and set out to destroy those groups too.

In fact, of course, western elites are now (unconsciously) projecting their fear and self-hatred onto Muslims as well and this manifests behaviourally in many ways, including as war on countries in the Middle East. And when the blowback from these wars manifests as ‘terrorist’ attacks on western countries (assuming they aren’t ‘false flag’ events, which is often the case), such as the recent attack in Barcelona, it is simply used by elites, employing their corporate media particularly, to justify more intrusive social control under the guise of ‘enhanced security’, as mentioned above.

If you are starting to wonder about the sanity of all this, you can rest assured there is none. Elites are insane. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane‘. Unfortunately, the individuals who are mobilized in response to this projection are also insane, as a cursory perusal of their written words and even modest attention to their spoken words will readily illustrate. See, for example, ‘Charlottesville: Race and Terror‘.

So is there anything we can do? Fundamentally, we need to stop terrorizing our children. As a back up, we can provide safe spaces for children and adults alike to feel their fear, self-hatred and other suppressed feelings consciously (which will allow them to be safely released). By doing this, we can avoid creating more insane individuals who will project their fear and self-hatred in elite-approved directions. See ‘My Promise to Children‘.

If you are fearless enough to recognize that elites are manipulating you into fearing those of other races (or religions) whom we do not need to fear, any time is a good time to speak up and to demonstrate your solidarity. You might also like to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World‘.

You are also welcome to consider using the strategic framework explained in Nonviolent Campaign Strategy for your anti-racism campaign. And if you want to organise a nonviolent action to combat racism in a context where violence might erupt, you can minimize the risk of this violence by following the comprehehensive list of guidelines here: ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression‘.

Suppressed fear and self-hatred must be projected and they are usually projected in socially approved ways (although mental illnesses and some forms of criminal activity are ways in which this suppressed fear manifests that are not socially approved).

In essence, racism is a manifestation of the mental illness of elites manipulating us into doing their insane bidding. Unfortunately, many people are easy victims of this manipulation because they are full of suppressed terror and self-hatred too.

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding
and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in
an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a
nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘
His email address is flametree@riseup.net
and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

—
Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68
Daylesford
Victoria 3460
Australia
Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:
Nonviolence Charter
Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth
‘Why Violence?’
Nonviolent Campaign Strategy
Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy
Anita: Songs of Nonviolence
Robert Burrowes
Global Nonviolence Network

Open-Mindedness Is Intrinsic and Often Terrifying

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By Equanimous Rex

Source: Modern Mythology

“If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” — The Thomas Theorem, formulated in 1928 by William Isaac Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas

The world of society appears a machine run off of the fuel of self-fulfilling prophecy. The word “prediction” gives us insight into the nature of prophecy: prediction. Speaking of a thing before it has happened. Prognostication, the half-rational half-intuitive art of looking at the mess around us and hazarding a guess at where it is going to go.

It would be easy to assume that this is a passive act, a matter of mere observation — as though it necessarily follows that when one perceives the present, they can perceive the future. But what about when the prediction alters the present, contributing to a future that without the prediction would not exist? Of course, since we do not have the capacities to create a universe exactly alike our own to test and experiment with, to play back and forth making slight alterations, we cannot know for certain. We can do our best to connect the branching causal links, however.

So when I first learned about the Thomas Theorem, something clicked immediately.

“If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” — The child in America: Behavior problems and programs.

I had struggled for ages to explain to people how mental states and psychological abstractions are not merely ephemeral reactions to external stimuli, but aspects of feedback loops that in turn affect our behaviors. Our thoughts on events affect how we feel in reaction to our own interpretations of those events, our emotions subsequently affect our drives and aversions and alter our behaviors. Because we cannot directly observe thought, belief, or feelings, it is easy to believe that they have no real-world effect.

For many of us born in countries that have inherited the legacy of Christendom, we are told that by the merit of our very birth we are gifted with a metaphysical superpower known as free-will, which allows us continuous authorship and subsequently total responsibility for every action that we take, every decision we enact. It is then easy — with this presupposition firmly entrenched — to dismiss the effects of external stimuli on internal mentality, and visa-versa. To deny that we are open systems, and that there is an influx and egress between our environment and the core of our existence as perceiving-beings. (I have no desire to get into a debate on the metaphysics of free-will, but merely point to it as an example of a way of thinking that produces real-world change.)

If I think that everything I do is sourced originally from within myself, then there is no incentive to investigate the catalysts that prompt me to ponder in the first place, nor those which compel me to take action. No reason to reflect upon the framing and anchoring of news stories, blogs, or books. The unconscious is relegated to the status of urban myth, a spook to worry lesser beings who believe in such superstition. The assumption of free-will is necessarily the denial of non-conscious cognitive processes, of denial of bias, and the proposition that we are the masters of the entirety of our being.

This is a belief system which renders a person totally responsible for everything they do; the perfect grift. If you can convince people that psychic abstractions have no real-world effect, that thoughts and feelings are merely strange footnotes in human existence, wisps of our experience that follow only after our free-will based decisions, then you can convince people that the life they are currently perceiving is not merely a best-guess neurological prediction machine. You can convince them that new ideas and managed expectations, emotions, and visceral drives have no more than superficial impact on their lives. The doctrine of free-willism, the metaphysical presupposition tacitly assumed as true and inherited by our cultural ties to Abrahamism, is essentially an anti self-help system. If you assume all that you have to do is throw free-will at a problem to solve it, and the problem remains unsolved, it must be that you desire to be burdened and have chosen such a victimization. You are always at fault, or in denial. It declaws the idea of introspection, of conscious behavior modification and extensive practice and training, of therapies intended to guide a person into their more desired state, of art that sways and moves people or inspires them into action. It denies the effect of lies, of propaganda, of marketing. It is a myth that deceptively limits our sense of the power of myth.

If we assume that we are the ultimate source from which all of our opinions, actions and emotions arise, we will not search out how they were absorbed by osmosis from our environment, our parents, our peers, nor how old narratives prime us to select more of the same, and discard the rest. If we accept that we are neither source nor first cause, we are forced to face the unconscious head-on, to stare at it in its darkened visage despite the pain or unease it causes us.

We have to come to accept that not all of our interpretations of events are just or fair, and that the relationship between psyche and environment is an open one. That the things we see as passive — such as making an off-hand prediction about the future — can affect the external world and alter that which we strive to objectively assess. Consider such phenomena as the Pygmalion effect, in which higher expectations placed on a person leads to increases upon performance; and likewise the inverted Golem effect, in which lower expectations placed results in lowered performance. We deal with Mean-World syndrome, in which those who consume large amounts of violent media tend to believe that the world is a more violent and unforgiving place than people who do not consume such media, despite the statistics that seem to indicate that violence crime has been steadily decreasing in many parts of the world for an extended time. The placebo effect, far from meaning “nothing happens”, refers to substances administered as medicines that have no active therapeutic effect, which still cause changes in the experiential — even the physiological — state of the patient. Nocebo effect does the opposite, in which inert substances produce harmful effects on the individual.

I’m not trying to convince you free-will isn’t real or that there’s nothing you can do to affect your own behavior, or to accept that you are a bio-robotic automaton, a p-zombie devoid of agency or identity. My musing here is merely a sort of memorial to self-fulfilling prophecy, a reminder to myself and others that the unconscious is not accepted into our cultural narrative despite the near ubiquity of the term. If you want to see an alien world, merely think of humans as open systems subject to outside influence and go and talk to anyone about current events.