There is a brand of people amongst us. They have no name but they exist. They are everywhere, at work, at home, at school, and in the streets, stores, and shopping malls. It is highly unlikely to not know someone who belongs in this category. It’s the so called non-conspiracy theorists. You know, the guy who tries to terminate conversations by alleging that you are nothing more than a “conspiracy theorist” and the information you share is false or not believable. Yes, that guy. Let’s meet face to face with your typical non-conspiracy theorist. We all know them, they often are the ones who hold the “conspiracy” verbal accusation as a valid logically defined argument in and of itself. The logic works like this:
Conspiracy theorist says: “You are claiming that fire alone can cause a building to self-implode, descend at freefall speed into its own footprint? That’s physically impossible, what about Newton’s Laws and laws of thermal dynamics and such? “
Non-conspiracy theorist says: “No, you are wrong because you are a conspiracy theorist.”
And with that, often the non-conspiracy theorist will walk away. What’s happening? They had nothing to elaborate on so the non-conspiracy theorist, whose thinking is engineered and controlled by government, mainstream media and Hollywood entertainment, resorted to a socially engineered answer. For this reason it is fascinating to explore the mindset and psychology of the individuals who take this position in place of a logical stance.
Core defect and twisted meanings
By definition, conspiracy means a group of two or more people secretly plotting (or conspiring) a harmful (or evil) deed against another person(s). This behavior is part of human nature. Humans have been conspiring against each other since the beginning of time. There was a never a time in world history when such an elementary behavior (of conspiring against an enemy) did not exist. Can you find a period in history when a certain human emotional trait or action didn’t exist? Was there a time when the human genome didn’t express jealousy, game playing, free trading, rage, or happiness? As odd or ridiculous as this may sound, non-conspiracists unknowingly subscribe to this logic. If evidence points to a conspired crime, why not treat it as such? Why demonize the very concept of conspiring? This is a core defect in the thought process of non-conspiracy theorists. You can easily identify them by their speech.
What the non-conspiracy theorists doesn’t see is that the battle field is right before them and they have outsourced all critical thought and action to a government thinking service known as mass media. Like being on the playing field in a football field while the ball is in play, without realizing what is happening. You see people waving at you in the stands to get out of the way, but you don’t understand what they are saying so you continue walking on the field with your headsets on. Likewise non-conspiracy theorists perceive all logic and reason arguments and warnings made by the conspiracy theorist as noise. They don’t understand the warning and so they continue living and carrying on with what they are doing. Like the person on the field not understanding the warning being communicated by those in the stands, non-conspiracy theorists cannot receive the basic signals of logic and reason. The headsets adding to the confusion is like the TV and mainstream media news. Since they themselves refuse to look at the evidence, they put their faith in the government and in the mass corporate establishment to safely guide them in their reality. They gain a sense of psychological protection from this overall system. Since the information being believed is almost always artificial they need to hear their own opinions repeated to them by the voices on TV so they can confirm (and re-confirm) their own belief system to themselves to be legitimate. At no point will the non-conspiracy theorist plan a day of research or dedicate a few hours every once in a while to research the topic or put any thought into issues. Information and world problems are but one category in a shelf of categories that make up their lives. The non-conspiracy theorist ignores that government has always implemented social engineering and mass mind control on the general public. In order for the non-conspiracy theorist to confidently walk away from someone who challenges their belief system with scientific facts, they need to have a sustained comfort and assurance that what government and mainstream media is saying is true.
Maintaining the non-conspiracy delusion
The non-conspiracy theorist is thus profoundly psychologically interconnected with today’s mass mind control paradigm. They are a species representing a full byproduct of 21st century social engineering. The doctrine of this type of social engineering, programs its believers to believe that when government and media accuses someone of “conspiracies”, then this accusation is cause for someone being considered diseased. The symptoms being paranoia. But paranoia is based on systematized delusions and delusions are based on false beliefs. A proper exploring of meanings brings us back to proving what is true or false. We come full circle and the spin is over. Non-conspiracy theorists don’t realize they dwell in this circle of misapplied words, never exploring the meanings or doing the work to determine what is true and what is provable.
Non-conspiracy theorists therefore wake up every morning and reach for the mental orientation map known as mainstream media news. Without it they would be disoriented as they would not know what to believe. They actually believe that if anyone was guilty of wrongdoing at the highest level of government someone would speak out every time and everyone would know about it. They ignore that state secrets are the norm and government operations are conducted in secret. They ignore the consequences each individual at the government and military level faces for blowing the whistle. Despite these consequences many individuals at government level still risk it all and do blow the whistle on government. Despite all this the idea of maintaining State secrecy is myth to non-conspiracy theorists. The idea that government would do something immoral, nefarious or criminal is a fiction as well to the non-conspiracy theorist.
The history of war, corruption, tyranny and fascism is incidental, coincidental, insignificant and irrelevant to the non-conspiracy theorist. None of these should be used to gauge the events of our times since history is a thing of the past. Non-conspiracy theorists choose not to connect the historic dots. According to them there is nothing to learn from the history of tyranny and totalitarianism. Anyone attempting to connect the dots is likely a conspiracy theorist. This goes hand in hand with the logic defect we discussed earlier. As the earlier case of the conspiracy theorist having his scientific arguments debunked by virtue of simply being diseased with the accusation of conspiracy theorist. Note, the non-conspiracy theorists use the name as a loaded, proven concept with power to permanently label someone diseased. In this case, attempting to connect the dots automatically tags you as a conspiracy theorist.
As far as non-conspiracy theorists are concerned all critical thought are deferred to the authorities. The scientists do their work and then report the facts to the government and mainstream media who carefully announce to the masses what they should know. Any scientists that speak out and claim to have evidence contradicting government claims must first be endorsed and approved by the mainstream media and government. Without this approval the scientists are marginalized no matter how large their numbers are. Without these ridiculous rules the delusion of being a non-conspiracy theorists cannot be maintained. This is the psychology of tyranny. Tyranny and totalitarianism cannot be implemented without mass mind control. This dangerous group think mentality will ignore all warning signs to help continue advancing the agenda. And so the non-conspiracy theorist is the most important instrument for maintaining control of the masses. Without these non-conspiracy theorist vessels of the global empire, the plan would not be possible.
It is quite possible that years from now the concept of conspiracy will return back to where it belongs right next to other concepts like jealousy, laughter, love, stealing, fighting, friendship, hatred and other human expressions that define who we are. By then perhaps being a friendship theorist, a stealing theorist or a jealousy theorist will be the new propaganda boogie monster term. Or perhaps years from now we will be sick and tired of this vicious cycle of physical and mental slavery. Perhaps people will truly have enough of the control system and will have abolished it by then.
Standing by truth
I am thrilled to be considered a “conspiracy theorist” by those still controlled by the social engineering experiments of the last one hundred or so years. We are proof that humans are able to critically think on their own and prefer to be free. We are the embodiment of the resistance, we never run from challenges and debates, we recreated the media and are responsible for the progressive death of the mainstream media. We choose to give humanity a voice outside of the socially engineered control system. We rely on firsthand accounts, physical evidence consistent with natural laws, factual documents, common sense, high probability, and forensic scientific evidence before jumping to conclusions. We do not rely on name calling to give strength to our position and we stand as a reminder that the human mind will never be completely contained. Unraveling the reality we face became normal for us at some point and the information the non-conspiracy theorists consider scary is common news to those of us name called “conspiracy theorists”.
In order to be considered a conspiracy theorist by the non-conspiracy theorists you must believe that government is corrupt. Believing that others are corrupt does not get you the title automatically. The list of what qualifies someone as a conspiracy theorist has been changing rapidly and today is determined by mainstream media and government in real time. Today, only government and mainstream media gets to decide who qualifies as a conspiracy theorist. The thought process of the non-conspiracy theorist is thus predictable and automated because the agenda being followed by government and mass media is predictable. The mindset is; no research required, if Associated Press, NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, CNN or NPR doesn’t agree to report it, then all other sources must be false. This shines a light into the thought process of non-conspiracy theorists.
Impact on humanity
How creepy does all this sound? We often take for granted the thought process required to make someone believe how they believe and the (mainstream media believing) non-conspiracy theorist mentality is quietly as culpable for the condition of the world today as the individuals who actually carry out the crimes that have put us where we are. Little to no effort is put by non-conspiracy theorists to learn about their own social mindsets, social engineering, group think, and government propaganda and mind-control history.
The non-conspiracy theorists are thus arguably indirectly ushering many of the religious and cultural prophesies of the end times and the predictions of the dooms-day prophets. They are proving to be key vessels in the events that are to come. They have already carved their mark in history as supporters of the global empire. Everyone who has played a role in supporting the global empire of the U.S. has already left their mark. Let’s all wait and see how this mental defect will play itself out and what role these non-conspiracy theorists will play in ushering in the final pieces of the global government. Will they be rewarded? Will they support the extermination of all critical thinkers? Will it turn out the non-conspiracy theorists were expressing an alternate DNA or is this idea too far out? Will it turn out they were all part of a larger experiment? Will the final waking up process or critical mass be stomped out by this core of non-conspiracy theorist who blindly believe government programmed lies? Or will they be responsible for delaying critical mass by a certain amount of time.
These and many other questions will be answered in the next few years/decades. Let us not forget the layers of defective logic and blind faith in government required to be considered a non-conspiracy theorist. It sounds bizarre but it’s true. It’s been said that in times of mass deceit telling the truth is revolutionary and never has this been more apparent. Want to make an impact on others? Want to be a giant among men? Then tell the truth and watch the sheep run. There is so much deceit in today’s world that if you blindly reverse everything government and mainstream media says, just by default you would be closer to truth than if you believed some of what they say.
Remember the non-conspiracy theorist who says “someone would have spoken out”? We’ve all heard this excuse. Of course, someone always does speak out, only they call those that speak out, no matter how high in government they are, conspiracy theorists, instead of someone who is speaking out or blowing the whistle. It’s time to memorialize the web of non-logic that qualifies a non-conspiracy theorist and not take for granted what these individuals mean to our battle for freedom and what key role they will play in the final lock-down of what was once a beacon for freedom throughout the world. Even as each of us carries on every day it’s difficult to fathom how the average person you come across who is a non-conspiracy theorist is having such a massive impact on millions of people globally and the direction of humanity as a whole including the overall survival of the human race.
What follows is a bit of my own internal dialogue that’s been built into why it would even be worth the effort to launch an international tour to speak about how gnosis is a term that we should all have a good grasp of.
In the discussions of what our real ends are, some ideas have come up that have sent me into a back and forth about the actual value of any of it.
Have you ever felt yourself slip into an existential funk in which ask, “Why the fuck should I even care? Why the fuck should I try?” I mean what’s the point? Many of us have been long disenchanted with Religion, Politics, Love and pretty much every other institution of this mad consensus reality that we call life.
Take for instance the viewpoint of Nisargadatta Maharaj, a Spiritual teacher in the Advaita Vedanta tradition in his exchange with an interviewer:
Q: There is suffering and bloodshed in East Pakistan at the present moment. How do you look at it? How does it appear to you, how do you react to it?
M: In pure consciousness nothing ever happens.
Q: Please come down from these metaphysical heights! Of what use is it to a suffering man to be told that nobody is aware of his suffering but himself? To relegate everything to illusion is insult added to injury. The Bengali of East Pakistan is a fact and his suffering is a fact. Please, do not analyse them out of existence! You are reading newspapers, you hear people talking about it. You cannot plead ignorance. Now, what is your attitude to what is happening?
M: No attitude. Nothing is happening.
Q: Any day there may be a riot right in front of you, perhaps people killing each other. Surely you cannot say: nothing is happening and remain aloof.
M: I never talked of remaining aloof. You could as well see me jumping into the fray to save somebody and getting killed. Yet to me nothing happened. Imagine a big building collapsing. Some rooms are in ruins, some are intact. But can you speak of the space as ruined or intact? It is only the structure that suffered and the people who happened to live in it. Nothing happened to space itself. Similarly, nothing happens to life when forms break down and names are wiped out. The goldsmith melts down old ornaments to make new. Sometimes a good piece goes with the bad. He takes it in his stride, for he knows that no gold is lost.
Q: It is not death that I rebel against. It is the manner of dying.
M: Death is natural, the manner of dying is man-made. Separateness causes fear and aggression, which again cause violence. Do away with man-made separations and all this horror of people killing each other will surely end. But in reality there is no killing and no dying. The real does not die, the unreal never lived. Set your mind right and all will be right. When you know that the world is one, that humanity is one, you will act accordingly. But first of all you must attend to the way you feel, think and live. Unless there is order in yourself, there can be no order in the world.
I bring this up because Maharaj is saying there is nothing to be done because there is nothing. ”Set your mind right and all will be right” he says as the interviewer poses the images of death and catastrophe.
So what are we to make of this idea? IF this were true, then our daily activities and cares about what present to buy x, or the immediate bill due to y mean absolutely nothing. We would be better off using our time, ‘setting our mind right’. Who wants to join a monastery with me?
Let’s switch gears to Christian theologian, William Stringfellow who has this to say about our institutions, both great and small:
According to the Bible, the principalities are legion in species, number, variety and name. They are designated by such multifarious titles as powers, virtues, thrones, authorities, dominions, demons, princes, strongholds, lords, angels, gods, elements, spirits…
Terms that characterize are frequently used biblically in naming the principalities: “tempter,” “mocker,” “foul spirit,” “destroyer,” “adversary,” “the enemy.” And the privity of the principalities to the power of death incarnate is shown in mention of their agency to Beelzebub or Satan or the Devil or the Antichrist…
And if some of these seem quaint, transposed into contemporary language they lose quaintness and the principalities become recognizable and all too familiar: they include all institutions, all ideologies, all images, all movements, all causes, all corporations, all bureaucracies, all traditions, all methods and routines, all conglomerates, all races, all nations, all idols. Thus, the Pentagon or the Ford Motor Company or Harvard University or the Hudson Institute or Consolidated Edison or the Diners Club or the Olympics or the Methodist Church or the Teamsters Union are principalities. So are capitalism, Maoism, humanism, Mormonism, astrology, the Puritan work ethic, science and scientism, white supremacy, patriotism, plus many, many more—sports, sex, any profession or discipline, technology, money, the family—beyond any prospect of full enumeration. The principalities and powers are legion.
Stringfellow continues on to death:
Death, after all, is no abstract idea, nor merely a destination in time, nor just an occasional happening, nor only a reality for human beings, but, both biblically and empirically, death names a moral power claiming sovereignty over all people and all things in history. Apart from God, death is a living power greater–because death survives them all–than any other moral power in this world of whatever sort: human beings, nations, corporations, cultures, wealth, knowledge, fame or memory, language, the arts, race, religion.
To me, Stringfellow is indeed a fellow with strings that tug on our existential feelings of futility. His observations have merit when we see that we do create a monster of sorts when we create the Ford Motor Company, or any of the other things in the laundry list. We can see the monsters all around and in our efforts to make something of ourselves just make more demons.
So to one learned man, Jesus is the answer and to the other a change of the perception of reality and our place within it is the answer. But both seem to show a very strong dislocation from the world in which we live and its edifices. So if by one hand we are exercising futility and by another creating new demons, why might we even make another effort toward anything? What’s it really worth? We’re just shitting ourselves right?
The chaos magician might say that life is our plaything and therefore we should ascribe meaning where we see fit and leave the rest to chaos, not necessarily without care, but understanding we can’t do everything and the sardonic smile of knowing we will all end up as worm food anyway.
But if one moves past the fear of death to where it no longer hold sway over us, then what? How does our fear of death control us and furthermore how do those most brooding about life as we speak of it head plunge headlong into it through the barrel of a gun, the top of a bridge, or the slice of the razor?
G. I. Gurdjieff has his own thoughts on the matter.
“There do exist enquiring minds, which long for the truth of the heart, seek it, strive to solve the problems set by life, try to penetrate to the essence of things and phenomena and to penetrate into themselves. If a man reasons and thinks soundly, no matter which path he follows in solving these problems, he must inevitably arrive back at himself, and begin with the solution of the problem of what he is himself and what his place is in the world around him.”
So for the sake of argument, we’ve purified ourselves and set our minds right, understood both the illusory and or demonic nature of our constructs and chosen a life of what? Asceticism? Quiet contemplation? The hero of the grimoir, The Black Pullet ends his story of achieving all power and wisdom with this statement:
My days passed between work, study, meditation, and walking exercise. I received a few visitors in my home, but nobody had an inkling of that which passed in my private life. To live happily, live concealed, as a Sage said.
After much dancing around with these ideas, I’ve come to respect each perspective and identify with a number of aspects of each, regardless of wisdom tradition which each is affiliated with, but it hasn’t made me feel any better or brought us any closer to what we should do with our lives in order to get the most out of it, so here’s my personal approach:
1. In relationships to all other humans and other living beings as well: Increasingly improve your output of love and compassion. Make generosity the benchmark of your life in whatever way you can possibly think.
2. In relationship to work: Find something that you love to do and commit to it and lay out everything else around it. You can’t have a body without a frame.
3. In relationship to whether or not to participate: I believe it is each individual’s choice how they choose to do this, but for me I choose to pick up the paintbrush and paint and make the canvass of my life its own work of art. After all, art is not often seen as a necessity, but it can take you to new places and show you things you’ve never seen before. Whether real or illusory, the world is a better place with a couple ‘paintings’ on the walls.
Perhaps there is no world to be saved, no actual causes to fight for and no actual tragedies. Perhaps our mind is the only thing and our internal work is the prime thing for us to work on. If so,I choose for my actions to reflect my internal process coming to life and translate that to an experience of creation, evolution and art.
I choose to participate in this walking meditation of sorts because I have decided I wish to keep growing, learning, struggling and increasing in love and compassion. I can’t think of many better ways to do so than by getting into a vehicle and operating in exchange with all of you out there; people I will soon be unable to imagine myself without.
Yes, it is permissible to NOT go, to NOT participate, but I choose to and perhaps in my own way I can make the perfect demon of sorts.
“I, Pet Goat II” is an award winning animated short released in the spring of 2012 by Louis Lefebvre and canadian art collective Heliofant. It quickly gained a following among alternative news/independent media communities for its cryptic symbolism and allusions to recent history weaved with parapolitical concepts. The meaning of some of the more archetypal symbols are easy enough to intuit, but in case you’re curious about the artist’s intent, the following information is from the Heliofant site:
fire of truth
That’s YOU!!! when you stand in the awareness of your sonship with the Divine and the brotherhood of mankind!!!
BO/B
The left-right puppet and additional layer of disenfranchisement, keeping you distracted while Drako weaves his web.
Lily
And suddenly a startling realization arose in Lily: “This apple is not mine”, she thought. “It belongs to someone else.”
Sun-Sue
Opposing courageously those who would enslave her.
Aali
The whirling heart of Islam awakened to the one true God! He is free and needs no control.
Juan “Pepito”
After years of economic exploitation and the environmental degradation, Juan “Pepito” has a decidedly sinking feeling.
L’enfant bleu
The keeper of the flame.
Madame Q
Madame Q’s point of suffering is sex. Is it repression or indulgence?
We don’t know. Yet there is definitely shame there.
Ludovic
In Latin, ludo means to play and ovis (ovum/ovis) can mean egg. The egg is a symbol of the potential, genetics, and of the soul.
Ovis can also mean sheep in Latin.
But in reality, Ludovic comes from a Germanic name meaning illustrious in combat.
Drako
The Sorcerer, the unseen hand and spirit of madness seeking ever more control through trickery, lies, poisons, false-flag events, wars, and mountains of beauracratic and legal framework to siphon off the energy of the inhabitants of the earth. He fears the light of day as he fears life itself, and operates in the shadows. His greatest power is his hold on the issuance of the currency.
Preface
I would like to start off by saying that the film came to me in its visual form, much like a painter who sees colors and forms in his mind’s eye. And I tried to be faithful to what I saw visually without necessarily understanding what the symbols were alluding to. Some of the symbols were pretty obvious to decipher, whereas some scenes had me scratching my head and took me some time to understand.
I do not pretend to be an expert in symbology and am learning this as I go along. I do not claim any truth. As I understand it, language is an outpouring of archetypes which are much more profound and more encompassing. To try and explain the symbols with common language is slightly reductive. It’s like trying to explain a poem.
Having said that, many people have asked me to explain my work and I am sensitive to their request. So I will try to provide some possible suggestions for the interpretation to the most commonly asked questions, but hope you will keep in mind that your answer is probably better. The hope is that it will provide some stimulation for inquiry and discussion.
The Meaning
There are many themes interwoven into the film, but the main story is about the crumbling away of the hierarchical world based on control and oppression, and the rising up of spiritual man, awake to his divine nature, free of intermediaries, fire in his eyes.
About the Egyptian Symbology
The Christ character in his boat is reminiscent of Ra, the Egyptian sun god who travels the sky in his celestial boat. In the evening he descends into the underworld, a sort of death. And in the morning he is resurrected and lights up the sky. The theme of resurrection was an important motif in the life of Egyptians.
Anubis, the jackal-headed god, is the Greek name for the earlier Egyptian Deity Anapa. He is associated with the afterlife and protects the souls of men in their journey through the underworld. He also weighs the truth and the heart of those souls before deciding their fate.
Anubis is often associated with Wepwawet who has a wolf’s head and is a war deity of Egypt. He is called the opener of ways. He opens up the way for the army to move in.
I have heard many people say that the symbology is satanic in nature. I do not believe it is. It is more about the intent invested in them. In all religions there are truth seeking souls and people who corrupted the intent of the original symbols. The fear is that the film subverts the Christ symbol to the message of Satanism. I would say it is the opposite. It is about taking back the symbology that has been corrupted to degrade the human spirit and control man, and redressing those symbols, by placing the Christ at the center of the narration.
The all-seeing eye, in the elite world view, is about control and surveillance of every person and aspect of society. When placed on the Christ character, it means the opening up of the third eye or pineal gland that permits a unhindered communication with God, as well as other dimensions. In other words, clear spiritual vision. The triangle on his forehead represents Divinity and is actually a symbol found in many churches to represent the Divine Source. This is opposed to the pyramids in the final shot which represent a top down control system where each layer is manipulated through deception by the layer above it, giving the very few at the apex incredible power.
The Apple
Little Lily, our girl dressed in white, symbolizes purity. She is like the bride and holds the apple which very much looks like a stain on her immaculate dress. The apple is a symbol of sin, and shame, and all her inward divisions about herself, that have been cultivated by the rulers of society in order that she remain in her place, subservient, like the children driven to apathy behind the barbed wires. Lily sees the ridiculous spectacle in front of her and is completely exhausted. It seems she has been holding this apple forever. So she just let’s it slip away.
You’ll notice that she sits in a circle, a symbol of her wholeness and alignment in spirit. She is centered. Behind her are the symbols of nature all around, intimating that her true nature is this wholeness.
…
This is a starting point to the commentary. We will be expanding on this in the days and weeks to come. We hope to add a feature which will enable you to add your interpretation as well. We’ll see…
Ultimately stunning in its revelations, Lutz Dammbeck’s The Net explores the incredibly complex backstory of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. This exquisitely crafted inquiry into the rationale of this mythic figure situates him within a late 20th Century web of technology—a system that he grew to oppose. A marvelously subversive approach to the history of the Internet, this insightful documentary combines speculative travelogue and investigative journalism to trace contrasting countercultural responses to the cybernetic revolution.
For those who resist these intrusive systems of technological control, the Unabomber has come to symbolize an ultimate figure of Refusal. For those that embrace it, as did and do the early champions of media art like Marshall McLuhan, Nam June Paik, and Stewart Brand, the promises of worldwide networking and instantaneous communication outweighed the perils. Dammbeck’s conceptual quest links these multiple nodes of cultural and political thought like the Internet itself. Circling through themes of utopianism, anarchism, terrorism, CIA, LSD, Tim Leary, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, The Net exposes a hidden matrix of revolutionary advances, coincidences, and conspiracies.
New studies demonstrate the deep power of human empathy, debunk right-brain and left-brain personalities, explore neural structures during sleep and way more…
It’s been an awe-inspiring few years for neuroscience.
By peering inside the living brain, neuroscientists have made all kinds of incredible discoveries.
Here are ten of my favourite–click the title to get the full story.
A new study on the brains of 949 young people found striking gender differences in the brain’s connectivity between males and females. These may help explain some of the classic psychological differences between men and women.
A new study published in the prestigious journal, Science, found that the brain may wash away toxins built up over the day during sleep.
The research discovered “hidden caves” inside the brain, which open up during sleep, allowing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to flush out potential neurotoxins, like β-amyloid, which has been associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Those who were confirmed night owls (preferring late to bed and late to rise) were found to have lower integrity of the white matter in various areas of the brain.
Lower integrity in these areas has been linked to depression and cognitive instability.
In “Bad Boy Bubby” (1993), an Australian film by writer/director Rolf de Heer, Nicholas Hope gives a brilliant performance as Bubby, a man who’s been kept confined and abused physically and emotionally by his mother for 35 years. He eventually escapes and has a number of chance encounters which reveal different aspects of himself and society. The first portion of the film is the most brutal, but as Bubby ventures out into the world the film’s tone lightens a bit and becomes more of a traditional (yet still twisted) dark comedy. Bad Boy Bubby is definitely not for all tastes and is initially difficult to watch, but is ultimately rewarding for its uniformly great performances, writing and direction.
Gary Null of The Progressive Commentary Hour podcast recently posted this insightful and comprehensive essay on the culture of violence at his PRN.fm blog. The majority of it was featured on the Progressive Commentary Hour podcast released on 12/30:
The Causes of Violence
The recent mass shootings at schools and colleges, shopping malls, theaters, and a Sikh temple have unleashed a psychological terror on Americans, reminding us that murder can happen anywhere. One of the most urgent questions we are faced with in the wake of these events is which discussion we should be having. Should discussions be limited to the issue of access to assault weapons, the apparent American preference for mass shootings? Or do we focus on the ease of obtaining a weapon without a mental health screening? Or is it possible that the actual violence is far more pernicious and systemic and we are unwilling to acknowledge and confront it?
Could it be that only the most overt forms of violence that occur in our backyards draw our attention and demand immediate dialogue? If this is so, then is it even worth considering the inability of the US to shed a tear or demand a public outcry over the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of native peoples, or confess to the abysmal treatment of minority groups, especially African Americans? And where is the national remorse for the indiscriminate bombing campaigns that took the lives of an estimated 3.8 million Vietnamese and an additional 300,000-500,000 Cambodians and Laotians, according new figures published by the British Medical Journal?
Would Americans have been equally as outraged and equally as loud in their cries for gun control if the carnage had not occurred in the prosperous community of Newtown, but instead had happened in Camden, New Jersey, or a Detroit ghetto? And finally, as a nation, are we capable of separating out the means of violence (e.g., guns) from the underlying cause of violence?
Violence is a highly lucrative and intoxicating progenitor of the American lifestyle. It permeates our culture in many forms including mixed martial arts, video games and comic books glorifying war and murder. Verbal violence and emotional taunting have become trademarks of reality television, as normal, everyday events are transformed into a cruel spectacle in order to entertain viewers. Each of these examples involve provocation through threatening actions, ridiculing and mocking words, and finally, emotional and physical violence.
Why are we not shocked by the large number of children who are physically abused and die every day without guns or those who miss school because of bullying and intimidation without a firearm? And why is there little reaction by the American public to the epidemic of spousal abuse not involving guns?
When was the last time a national debate in Congress, or in the churches and temples, took place to question the legitimacy of hundreds of thousands of dead men, women and children, due to America’s incursions into Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya and Yemen? If we are not willing to examine each of these military intrusions, then can we understand the true cause of individual acts of violence, such as a mass killing of innocents on a school campus?
What does it tell us about ourselves that the Hunger Games-a film about kids killing kids for the pleasure of young and old alike-is one of the top grossing films?
Today, anything enacted in the name of nationalism or patriotism and in defense of our biases and prejudices, is considered normal and worthy of praise. This illogical psychology leads us to believe that we are an exceptional people; a culture second to none. Such unearned exceptionalism, accompanied by a false sense of entitlement, has become a disease rapidly spreading through our population, and especially surging among the younger generations.
We cannot talk about violence unless we also acknowledge factors such as poverty, fractured families, income disparity, the ghettoization of America and the abandonment of our senior citizens, the poor working class and the middle class. Though they are given short shrift by the media and government, these issues play a major role our culture of violence.
If we stand back and take in all of these pieces and then ask if they fit into a realistic portrait of the illusions that America has mastered and sustained, then we can see the real nature of what the country has become and what it is morphing into.
After every school or community shooting, we attempt to identify and rationalize the threat. We demonize it and then struggle to have the menace surgically removed by legislative decree. We are willing to sacrifice some of our freedoms and give permission to the powerful to rule over more of our lives in order to feel better protected through measures such as increasing the number of school guards, arming teachers and enacting stricter rules for students.
Opponents of America’s gun culture believe that if we simply remove firearms the country will magically transform into a culture of civility. But since when have we been a civil culture? For much of our history the American promise has excluded the poor, the working class and minority groups from enjoying the same respect given to those who rule. Never is an average citizen included in the debate over which country to invade next. The entire debate ignores the critical and ominous fact that American culture continues to devolve into a penal colony that institutionalizes cruelty, bullying and violence. Our patriotism thrives on the adrenaline of the country’s wealthy and powerful, our physical might, and our penchant for exploitation and abuse. The US is the top bully in the global playground and we love being number one. It makes us feel omnipotent. Yet we remain clueless about what or who is really threatening us. It is a delusional concept of security. What if we look in the mirror and see our true nature staring back? Then we may finally grasp that the real enemy is ourselves.
The truth of the matter is that our values and moral bearings are not honored. Most Americans believe that possession of the world’s most powerful military force gives us the mandate and absolute right to use it for any purpose that strengthens our national power and corporate interests. Cost of human life is not calculated into the equation. This merciless power has even been codified into the Patriot Act under Bush and then further expanded by Obama in the National Defense Authorization Act. We train young impressionable minds and transform them into bullies. A grotesque alpha-dominant standard for both genders, believing in a personal manifest destiny, has become the new ideal to strive for. There is no outcry that America’s forces are now present in over 130 countries around the world to champion a democracy and freedom that is absent in the homeland. And this grand illusion, in Chris Hedges’ words, is America’s “celebration of power.”
The recent analysis of the American Freshman Survey, a 47 year old survey of college freshmen’s perceptions of themselves compared to their peers, notes an alarming increase of narcissistic attributes among young adults: exaggerated perceptions about themselves and their skills that don’t match their real abilities, “ambition inflation,” unrealistic expectations, self-centeredness and a lack of humility. What the study failed to explore is the high degree of competition between young people, which motivates them to battle and defeat others in order to achieve naive aspirations. This is why the younger generations have been consistently criticized for their attitude that they are entitled to everything as well as their tendency to resent anyone, any institution, and any belief or value that threatens their vacuous existence.
Consider the American power structure and the great efforts people undertake to attain power, acquire wealth and rise to celebrity status. The drive for power and wealth blinds us to what brings true happiness and the superior gifts we receive when we care and show compassion towards others. Since we live in a corporate culture, wherein we are desensitized from life’s vitality by the media, everything and everyone outside our inner circle are no more than inanimate objects. Therefore there should be little wonder why people have the urge to escape normal feelings and find relief in virtual relationships such as Facebook and in mood-altering medications and other substances.
Our society has mutated into a mind-numbing toxin; it has itself become a drug that desensitizes our youth because violence is among the best-selling commodities for a consumer-based entertainment economy. And among our most successful exporters driving GDP growth are the private military industrial complex, the poisons unleashed by the pharmaceutical and agro-chemical industries, and the financial industry that keeps the machine greased and running.
How many citizens can honestly admit they feel outrage towards their nation’s crimes against humanity, which has cost millions of children’s lives across the Middle East and other nations that don’t buy into the Washington Consensus. What does it tell us when President Clinton’s Secretary of State can tell the American people on 60 Minutes that the death of half a million children due to US sanctions against Iraq was “worth it.” This form of violence against the innocent would be genocide by any other humanitarian standard. However, today this is permitted because it is the new norm of US foreign policy, and it is again being repeated with sanctions against Iran. We have desensitized ourselves from a decade of indiscriminate bombing ventures across Afghanistan and Iraq, drone warfare, and decades of playing possum in order to avoid our personal role and responsibility for the world’s largest concentration camp, better known as Gaza.
When 250,000 Indian farmers commit suicide- frequently by drinking the pesticide Roundup- is this not an act of escape from the violence perpetrated upon them by a heartless agro-chemical corporation solely concerned with seed and pesticide sales? Monsanto would never shed a tear for numerous dead farmers who were swindled to purchase seeds that destroyed themselves and their families. On the other hand, what would happen if 250,000 American corporate executives committed suicide by drinking Roundup in their Wall Street suites? Would that capture our attention? Would the country be calling for an emergency national dialogue?
Buried beneath the gun control debate is our collective national denial about America’s moral decay. We need to wake up to the fact that much of our culture is cruel and violent and we are exporting this violent temperament globally. It is one of the few manufactured commodities America has left. America is a nation built upon the right to gun ownership. In and of themselves we should not believe guns are a primary cause for violence. This is too simplistic and untrue.
If it were true that guns are a fundamental cause behind mass shootings, then Switzerland, the world’s fourth largest gun-toting nation, would have comparable homicide and gun crime rates. But for many social and regulatory factors that the Swiss understand and Americans intentionally ignore, there is no evidence this is the case. The Swiss do not engage in a fruitless war against drugs that is a huge expense to taxpayers but highly profitable for corporate vultures running the privatized prison system. For years the Swiss have forgiven drug use and prostitution in order to reduce unwanted elements associated with violent crime. Unlike the US, Switzerland doesn’t have one in four children under the age of six living in poverty. Nor are 12% of Swiss children and teens taking psychiatric drugs for conditions that are non-existent. Instead, Switzerland boasts one of the highest standards of living in the world, with greater economic equality in the GINI ratings than the US. And equally important, Switzerland prevents citizens with past or present mental conditions from purchasing firearms.
It is time for the US to be honest with itself. People with violent dispositions pull triggers. So do people who have been victims of abuse and compulsively act out with aggression against a culture that is fundamentally cruel, callous and lacking in compassion. Before arguing about the role of guns in crime, homicides and suicides, we must first accept we are becoming a violent nation and then examine why is our culture so cruel. Similar to most medications, it is easier to treat symptoms than cure disease. For that reason, drawing a red line between those who would fight for the right to keep their guns and those who yearn to enforce laws to take them away misses the more serious issues and is non-constructive.
So what are the many forms of violence that characterize America as a deranged culture?
The Rise of Gangs
According to the National Gang Intelligence Center, between 48 to 90 percent of violent crime is gang-related in state and local jurisdictions where gang activity is prominent. And as of 2011, there were over 33,000 gangs in the US, representing approximately 1.4 million members. This number will increase substantially if the country pursues its current economic and social restructuring and domestic policing trajectory. In large part, the War on Drugs and regressive court rulings have contributed to the upsurge in gang membership. Gun prohibition will only reproduce the failures of past historical prohibitions that strengthened crime syndicates and gangs. It is therefore wise to ask ourselves a serious question posed by philosopher John Kozy, “do you really believe that gun control will miraculously make America into a tranquil nation?”
There are many reasons behind the escalating growth in gang membership, including abject poverty, fractured and dysfunctional families, bullying and the fear of injury, domestic abuse and violence, city and police harassment in lower income neighborhoods, the dismal failures of the War on Drugs, and miserable, underfunded school systems. Gangs serve as an extension of the protected family in ways where American society has failed. A boy who joins a gang will be capable of supporting family members with food, clothing and a roof over their heads. Gang membership empowers youth; they are respected because they are feared, and no longer will they be bullied as they can be the bully. But in return, the boy must undergo a thorough initiation, usually by committing a violent act, to become a worthy member of the new family.
Gangs will remain a significant feature in American culture as long as no effort is made to deghettoize our bleakest neighborhoods. After the 2008 financial meltdown, over 50 million Americans either lost their homes or are underwater in their mortgage payments. A neighborhood with an inordinate number of empty homes decreases the value of those that are occupied. The consequence is that the ghetto has now reached the suburbs.
Imagine being a 15 year old, awakened by a marshal and law enforcement officers to evict your family from your home and having no where to go? For a teenager, there is the humiliation of going to school and knowing you are among the poorest of the poor. There is social isolation and denigration. A gang offers more than government social service projects. This scenario is well known by sociologists but the elite refuse to pay heed. Why didn’t the President execute a moratorium on foreclosures, or force too-big-to-fail banks to reduce homeowners’ payments and suspend interest? But we don’t want to look at this kind of institutionalized violence against families, nor discuss the growing income disparity, low wages and rising costs of the essentials to live, as contributors to violence.
Violence as Entertainment
Violence is one of our most popular pastimes. The multimedia entertainment and video gaming industries capitalize on a vicious assault upon the senses of youth and adults alike. The Department of Defense surely doesn’t mind. It applauds the popularity of video games such as Gear of War, Soldier of Fortune and Call of Duty because they desensitize our children, reshaping them into easy prey for future military recruiters. And if that is not enough, especially after 9/11, we have witnessed the Pentagon strengthening its collaborations with Hollywood to fund nationalist propaganda on the big screen. Boys can be further bullied through images that distort the virtues of honor and integrity to serve an imperialist agenda. It is an illusion, a grand betrayal, that is now well known to numerous traumatized veterans who have returned from the killing fields in Iraq and Afghanistan.
America’s Prisons as Gulags of Violence
Another way violence is being reinforced in our society is through a privatized prison system that is completely dependent upon rising crime rates for its sustenance. Through the detention industry’s lobbying efforts, violence is a lucrative asset. American prisons are nothing but gulags that further incubate and unleash violence. Rape and assault are endemic. Judges, lawyers and state legislators know this all too well but permit this violence to continue unrestricted in order to not upset private entrepreneurs controlling the system.
License for violence spreads like a virus; more incarceration means more financial incentives for state and local authorities to bully citizens. Police departments have been militarized and now collaborate closely with our military services. They have turned into hives of legalized thuggery, the rights of citizens are abused, and the preservation of civility and community well being is undermined. For example, the Stop and Search program by the New York Police Department has victimized hundreds of thousands of citizens, mostly men and women of color. As a result, many have been illegally harassed and arrested for crimes never committed.
The Violence of Dogmatic Faith
Even religion has been infiltrated by our culture of cruelty. At one time, most religious faiths advocated love and compassion over hatred and violence. That was when religion was more relevant and contributed constructively to educating children with the higher ideals of respect and tolerance towards multiethnic and multicultural diversity. Today, along the pavements of Main Street, many American churches have morphed into Christian madrassas, communities of dogmatic cruelty and abuse. The Gospel has been reinterpreted to mandate rule by the rod. Jesus is then transfigured into a cosmic warrior leading America’s crusades under a banner of hatred towards all who do not bow down to its ideology.
Historically religion has offered a forum to understand the nature of violence and rage and then seek solutions to resolve the issues leading to cruel behavior. This was traditionally done within the congregations and they could serve this function again. At a national level, those truly vital religions and spiritual traditions, not plagued with intolerance and hatred, might have an enormous impact in curing many social ills, including the disease of irrational religious dogmatism that has been another cause of violence.
Violence Towards Veterans
I have produced four separate documentaries about the plight of veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Gulf War Syndrome. Never before have we seen so many homeless veterans. I found thousands of vets living throughout the woods in northeast Florida without food, electricity, medicine or beds. I have spoken with hundreds of homeless men and women and almost all of them told me they were victims of violence. Many of them suffered from PTSD due to violence they inflicted on others during combat. Similar to gang initiates, these vets underwent indoctrination. Worse still, many were heavily medicated with cocktails of drugs while in combat. This deadly combination of pharmaceutical drugs and mind-altering indoctrination methods transforms soldiers into fools of conquest and destruction.
One woman told me that she never imagined it possible that her mind could be so conditioned by the military to violate another person without any feelings of emotion and empathy. This is what enables soldiers to destroy homes and terrorize families during night raids. She was anesthetized to the suffering of others. After completing her military commitment and returning home, she became volatile towards her spouse and children. Three months later, she found herself homeless without friends, family, food or money. During the following months she had been harassed, beaten and raped until she heard about groups of veterans living in the woods. Now she and others like her struggle to survive by relying on their military skills.
The moment these veterans enter a town to get their daily bread and perhaps find clean water to wash, the local residents make their disdain towards them clear. In the past when I have asked veterans how they feel when Glen Beck and Sean Hannity bark about supporting our troops, and their feelings about Bush and Obama, the generals, the VA and corporate media refusing to confront this national disgrace, they have said, “I can speak for every vet I have met. Only now do we realize what absolute degenerate hypocrites we are as a society.” This is another example showing how violence is pervasive even at the highest levels of American culture.
Child Abuse
Why are we not addressing the nation’s epidemic of child abuse that ranks highest among developed nations? According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 6 million children were abused in 2011 and abuse has been increasing equally across ethnic, religious, socioeconomic and educational level groups. Five children, 80 percent under 4 years of age, die from abuse every day in the US. This is a conservative estimate because an additional 50-60 percent of child abuse fatalities go unreported on death certificates. Where is the mourning for the almost 2000 children who die from abuse, not associated with weapons, in this country?
Bullying and Violence
There is yet another scourge ravaging the country: children abusing children. Bullying in the US has been termed by the Crisis Prevention Institute a “silent epidemic.” Special needs children, such as Adam Lanza, are especially singled out as victims. For example, in October of 2009, another young adult with Asperger’s Syndrome, 17 year old Tyler Long from Murray County GA, was the victim of school bullying. Tyler, however, turned his rage upon himself by committing suicide. Dan Olweus at the National School Safety Center estimates there are 2.1 million bullies in the American school system. This violent behavior has contributed to almost 300,000 students being physically attacked in secondary schools every month. Approximately 160,000 children miss school every day out of fear and intimidation from bullying threats by other students. Many of our most deluded corporate and political leaders want to blame teachers for the failures of students learning. The truth is probably closer to the fact that, for many children, schools are only dysfunctional care centers for intimidation and maltreatment.
Other statistics are more shocking and should make us pause when we consider the Sandy Hook shooting and many other mass killings before it. An estimated 90 percent of 4th through 8th graders report being victims of bullying; 86 percent of students believe that victimized students will turn to lethal violence for revenge, and 61 percent of students believe that physical abuse at home is the cause for kids shooting others.
The New Violence of Cyber-Bullying
Along with new technologies and the advent of social media, bullying is no longer limited to school grounds. Entire organizations are now founded to fight against the rise of cyber bullying that has affected 43% of school children, most of them girls. The psychological and emotional traumas from cyber bullying are comparable to real life bullying. Because it is easier for a bully to get away with taunting and demeaning another student in the virtual world, cyber bullying is growing into a serious problem without any certain solutions.
Big Pharma as Big Bully
Each of the institutions associated with the violence noted above, private and pubic, benefit from cruelty. However, two other institutions have contributed directly to most of the indiscriminate mass shootings over the past 20 years: the pharmaceutical industrial complex, including the entire psychiatric establishment, and our federal health agencies, particularly the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration.
Is there a direct causal relationship between the epidemic in drug prescriptions for mental health and the rise in mass shootings, such as the latest at Sandy Hook Elementary School? It is now well established that the majority of teenagers and young adults responsible for mass shootings were taking medications for psychological conditions. Physician Dr. Gary Kohls has documented numerous student homicides that have been traced to psychotropic drugs. The most frequent medications found in student homicides have been Luvox, Prozac, Paxil, Ritalin and Zoloft. How can there be almost 100 mass shooting cases in 20 years in which all the killers have been on psychiatric drugs or in withdrawal yet no one at the national level can see an association?
On January 15 of this year, the Summit on Reducing Gun Violence in America at Johns Hopkins University completed its deliberations to create a long litany of recommendations for curtailing gun violence. Among the many proposed law changes, there is finally recognition that rules should be tightened for people with mental health problems and mental health histories utilizing the National Instant Check System used for gun buyers. However, nowhere do they mention specific medications, especially the SSRI drugs that have been most associated with violence to self or others, as disqualifying criteria for a purchasing a gun.
It is certain that the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, was prescribed one or more medications for treating at least, a diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. There is no single ideal drug for Asperger’s, therefore a cocktail of psychotropic drugs is frequently prescribed for a variety of symptoms observed in a patient. These drug combinations can be deadly and no concise clinical studies have ever been performed to warn us about how these drugs might interact when taken together. The FDA has been grossly neglectful in permitting these dangerous psychotropic drugs to proliferate and be used as a first course of treatment for countless children and teens.
Although the Newtown school shooting occurred a month ago, investigating authorities have yet to release details of Adam Lanza’s medical treatment history. In order to protect the drug industry, which is being cornered by a growing body of scientific evidence confirming these drugs are a serious threat to the country’s health and safety, I doubt Adam Lanza’s drug history will ever be “officially” released.
The over-medicating of children is a national disgrace and embarrassment. Nowhere else in the world can you invent illness, such as “authority defiance disorder,” and then create pills to treat it. The psychological health of the American population is severely compromised by psychiatrists sitting on national boards, almost every one of them funded by the pharmaceutical industrial complex, for the sole purpose of approving and distributing patented drugs for obscene profits.
Schools may try to ban aggression but these are futile efforts if we continue to support and reward the sources that are institutionalized in our national identity. This culture of violence is guided by leaders, many of whom are unsympathetic bullies themselves and are psychologically numb to the mass atrocities inflicted by our foreign policies and blinded by their allegiance to corporate lobbyists who reward them with wealth and a means to hold power. These individuals prefer to remain deaf to the cries of the millions of children in poverty, who go hungry, or are being physically or psychologically tortured in abusive families and by a social system that doesn’t really give damn about much other than its own self-perseverance.
Conclusion
When we investigate all the different forms of violence and their multiple causes, we realize the depth of America’s disconnection from the higher values that sustain and preserve the well being of all of life. Instead, the nation has chosen a path that has digressed into a winner-take-all attitude. The only thing this path nurtures is a coldhearted disregard towards the pain inflicted upon others. What remains of a national pride has mutated into the perversion of manifest destiny. The consequence has been the emergence of a new caste society that is more representative of Medieval India than the vision of the nation’s founders.
Everything that lives and breathes is a potential commodity for commercial interests. Billions are spent on reelections, thereby making the vote of citizens irrelevant. Shadow corporate organizations, such as ALEC, are permitted to operate and meet in secret to create laws benefiting the profits of its members while harming 98 percent of Americans. Mainstream corporate media edits the truth because it lacks a conscience to value the truth. Public school teachers are no longer permitted to teach critical thinking skills because this might empower students to become independent, free-thinking adults who might turn out far wiser than elected officials and corporate executives.
When the average American family today is too dysfunctional to parent wisely;
When children are being programmed to relate better to a virtual reality than to real life encounters;
When inflicting pain is as pleasurable as watching it;
When selfishness so permeates society that the thought of helping our neighbor is anathema;
Then, should we be surprised by a shooting occurring at Sandy Hook Elementary School?
If we wish to ban assault rifles, then what will be next? Handguns? Clubs and knives? A fist or foot? Or how about words fired like bullets into another’s psyche? What needs to be banned are the causes of the pathologies leading to violence and those begin at the highest levels of America’s economic caste system.
In the meantime, we will be unable to engage in an honest dialogue leading to positive change if we are unwilling to embrace a higher truth about ourselves and the consequences of our ignorance.
School Shooters Under the Influence of Psychiatric Drugs
At least 14 school shooters were under the influence of psychiatric drugs documented to cause mania, psychosis, hostility, aggression and homicidal ideation.
Fact: Despite 22 international drug regulatory warnings on psychiatric drugs citing effects of mania, hostility, violence and even homicidal ideation, and dozens of high profile school shootings/killings tied to psychiatric drug use, there has yet to be a federal investigation on the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of senseless violence.
Fact: Between 2004 and 2011, there have been over 11,000 reports to the U.S. FDA’s MedWatch system of psychiatric drug side effects related to violence. These include 300 cases of homicide, nearly 3,000 cases of mania and over 7,000 cases of aggression. Note: By the FDA’s own admission, only 1-10% of side effects are ever reported to the FDA, so the actual number of side effects occurring are most certainly higher.
Fact: At least fourteen recent school shootings were committed by those taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs resulting in 109 wounded and 58 killed (in other school shootings, information about their drug use was never made public—neither confirming or refuting if they were under the influence of prescribed drugs.) The most important fact about this list, is that these are only the shooters where the information about their psychiatric drug use was made public. To give an example, although it is known that James Holmes, suspected perpetrator of a mass shooting that occurred July 20, 2012, at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, was seeing psychiatrist Lynne Fenton, no mention has been made of what psychiatric drugs he may have been taking. Also note that all these mass shootings didn’t just occur in the United States.
Huntsville, Alabama – February 5, 2010: 15-year-old Hammad Memon shot and killed another Discover Middle School student Todd Brown. Memon had a history for being treated for ADHD and depression. He was taking the antidepressant Zoloft and “other drugs for the conditions.” He had been seeing a psychiatrist and psychologist.
Kauhajoki, Finland – September 23, 2008: 22-year-old culinary student Matti Saari shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine. He was also seeing a psychologist.
Dekalb, Illinois – February 14, 2008: 27-year-old Steven Kazmierczak shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amount of Xanax in his system. He had been seeing a psychiatrist.
Jokela, Finland – November 7, 2007: 18-year-old Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School in southern Finland, then committed suicide.
Cleveland, Ohio – October 10, 2007: 14-year-old Asa Coon stormed through his school with a gun in each hand, shooting and wounding four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon had been placed on the antidepressant Trazodone.
Red Lake, Minnesota – March 2005: 16-year-old Jeff Weise, on Prozac, shot and killed his grandparents, then went to his school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation where he shot dead 7 students and a teacher, and wounded 7 before killing himself.
Greenbush, New York – February 2004: 16-year-old Jon Romano strolled into his high school in east Greenbush and opened fire with a shotgun. Special education teacher Michael Bennett was hit in the leg. Romano had been taking “medication for depression”. He had previously seen a psychiatrist.
Wahluke, Washington – April 10, 2001: Sixteen-year-old Cory Baadsgaard took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates and a teacher hostage. He had been taking the antidepressant Effexor.
El Cajon, California – March 22, 2001: 18-year-old Jason Hoffman, on the antidepressants Celexa and Effexor, opened fire on his classmates, wounding three students and two teachers at Granite Hills High School. He had been seeing a psychiatrist before the shooting.
Williamsport, Pennsylvania – March 7, 2001: 14-year-old Elizabeth Bush was taking the antidepressant Prozac when she shot at fellow students, wounding one.
Conyers, Georgia – May 20, 1999: 15-year-old T.J. Solomon was being treated with the stimulant Ritalin when he opened fire on and wounded six of his classmates.
Columbine, Colorado – April 20, 1999: 18-year-old Eric Harris and his accomplice, Dylan Klebold, killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 26 others before killing themselves. Harris was on the antidepressant Luvox. Klebold’s medical records remain sealed. Both shooters had been in anger-management classes and had undergone counseling. Harris had been seeing a psychiatrist before the shooting.
Notus, Idaho – April 16, 1999: 15-year-old Shawn Cooper fired two shotgun rounds in his school, narrowly missing students. He was taking a prescribed SSRI antidepressant and Ritalin.
Springfield, Oregon – May 21, 1998: 15-year-old Kip Kinkel murdered his parents and then proceeded to school where he opened fire on students in the cafeteria, killing two and wounding 25. Kinkel had been taking the antidepressant Prozac. Kinkel had been attending “anger control classes” and was under the care of a psychologist.
At Waking Times, Chris Bourne offers insights on the role of inner alchemy in the integration of an emerging “new world” and new paradigms to the reality of day-to-day life. He describes how the tactile, empathic, diplomatic aspect of the soul, by “intuiting and feeling the flow of ‘rightness’ in any given situation, yet molding and blending it into this material world”, can enable one to acknowledge and honor the subjective truth of others without compromising one’s integrity.
Inner alchemy, as Bourne defines it, is driven by spiritual awakening and resultant realization that our current world is out of balance with nature and out of synch with the natural flow of the universe. This leads to a compulsion to ‘be the change’ and involves “expressing your truth in every moment, not just with words, but in every physical, emotional and mental action that you take.” In other words, “Right Action”: action which is aligned with the universal flow. Among the indicators of “rightness” of one’s actions, he lists the following:
They confront, challenge and break down the ego within you and within others with whom you’re engaged.
Actions in rightness ultimately lead to an inner sense of expandedness, connection and openness, once you’ve broken through any tightness or resistance to expressing your truth.
When aligned with the flow, you tend to observe supportive synchronicity as the universe clicks into place around you.
When you’re in “Rightness”, it just feels right. It’s like being in love. No one can tell you if you’re in love. There’s no logic to it. You just know.
A choice made in rightness will feel like destiny.
Bourne describes the process of realignment towards right action as not so much about making specific choices (though it can lead to right choices) but finding and expressing lost aspects of one’s true nature or soul. This is easier said than done because it often puts one at odds with “the matrix”, a powerful social construct which influences and manipulates everything within it through the establishment and enforcement of rules, norms and beliefs, control of resources and isolation from the natural flow of life.
The struggle to manifest truth (working in opposition to social and economic pressure from the matrix to prevent the success of such efforts) can be aided by what Bourne calls “soul ray harmonics”, or frequencies of consciousness. On one side of the spectrum are “catalysts”, which are harmonics to “shake things up”: to change, unravel, unwind and metamorphosize. On the other side are “empaths” which he defines as “souls who can absolutely and unconditionally accept life as it is without judging. They can witness and feel the truth at the core of all behaviour – no matter how distorted – and not need to change it. They are that energy that helps play out a distortion so that others ultimately want to change, all of their own accord.” Knowing where one is on the spectrum can help to clarify and become aware of the nature of one’s interactions and the impact they have on others (which is necessary for one’s personal evolution).
The specific type of harmonic that Bourne feels is most useful for our current situation is what he calls “Ray 4”: the inner diplomat which empathises and influences, accepts unconditionally but also catalyses, also known as the ‘Bridge between Worlds’. To help become better attuned to this harmonic or frequency, he offers the following guidelines:
Firstly acknowledge that you’re here to influence and change the nature of reality. You’re not supposed to be cooped up in a box. Even if people around you react with projection towards you, fear and anger, recognise it is their own distortion they’re activating – otherwise they’d be able to calmly accept you as you are. As you realise this in your mind, feel a waterfall of flowing calmness descend around your expression of truth.
Secondly, in order to facilitate the greatest amount of positive change, there needs to be open doorways through the density of the field, that may touch something deep within another. In other words, whilst we stand our ground, we must recognise and honour the truth in another. Even if you notice their’s is a lower vibrational truth, it is still their truth and real to them. If you’re given to influence, you won’t get anywhere by riding roughshod over them.
Catalysing and therefore unwinding means first working to recognise the ‘ancient light’ at the core of a distortion. So all actions have begun with an authentic exploration of reality by the soul. It’s just that the ego then distorted the purity. So first work to find the truth at the core of their distortion and honour this with them. Then help them see the higher truth. If you’ve done it accurately, they’ll be on your side and much more open to change.
Recognize that the stream will always find different pathways back to the ocean. If you try one approach and it doesn’t work or if you then feel disconnected because you couldn’t fully honour the flow, work not to judge yourself for it. Benevolence doesn’t blame you! Instead keep softening into the place you are now at, pausing to reconnect again.
Compromise but don’t ever compromise the soul. Yes it may seem like an impossible paradox. But it is not. How can you make your truth the most understandable, the most reasonable, the most tactile, the most accessible and without any extra energy? If you can do this, you’ll find you don’t have to compromise your truth. Increasingly you’ll be accepted.
Don’t tell others what you know to be their truth (this can be a big button pusher!). Instead work to facilitate an increase in realisation by asking an empowering question. One that is open ended, one that causes them to explore and feel for themselves.
Accept that sometimes you will be in a minority of one. It does not make your truth untruth. Know and accept when it is time to stand your ground, come what May. This will always test your level of trust in the divine. So be it. Take it as an opportunity to evolve and grow.
Bourne follows this with a reminder to question whether one’s actions are driven by the soul or ego and concludes with an inspiring message:
Whether we fully know it or not, we’re living in two worlds at the moment. The higher paradigm is to be found infusing this lower world, working to transform it. Those who are already carrying the light, will frequently find it challenging. The old world values are so used to living in the shadows and fear the light. There’s a clinging to the easy-to-understand, in-the-box expediency and soft comfort. There’s a strong dependence on the crutch of old behaviours.
Despite this, there comes a point where you simply cannot compromise your soul a moment longer. You realise the illusion and that the only real purpose of life is the expression of you. In mastering the Ray 4 Diplomat – an interwoven aspect of your soul – it means you can still be living and breathing the higher realm, whilst acting in this one. It means you can stay in the truth.
In so doing, not only does your awakened life become more manageable, you become a powerful facilitator.
You become a bridge between the worlds.
After the Crash 