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RESISTING TYRANNY DEPENDS ON THE COURAGE TO NOT CONFORM

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By Barry Brownstein

Source: Waking Times

Social psychologist Roy Baumeister begins his book Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, with a proposition that will be counterintuitive to many: “Evil usually enters the world unrecognized by the people who open the door and let it in. Most people who perpetrate evil do not see what they are doing as evil.”

Dismissing evildoers as “insane” is an attempt to absolve both them and you of responsibility. Baumeister observes, “People do become extremely upset and abandon self-control, with violent results, but this is not insanity.” If only “insane” people commit “evil” acts, you might reason there is no need to strengthen spiritual and moral muscles. You might skip the reflection, study, and practice that builds spiritual and moral strength.

Would you, Baumeister asks, “obey orders to kill innocent civilians? Would you help torture someone? Would you stand by passively while the secret police hauled your neighbors off to concentration camps?” Baumeister writes, “Most people say no. But when such events actually happen, the reality is quite different.” Today, to the point, will you obey orders to fire upon people who refuse to comply with mandates?

In one of the most instructive books about Nazi Germany, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, historian Christopher Browning explores why most people say yes and commit heinous acts even when given latitude to say no.

The men of Police Battalion 101 were not specially selected psychopathic killers. Initially, the Battalion was set up to enforce Nazi rule in occupied Poland. Eventually, their mission changed, bringing them to be the genocidal murderers of Jews they were charged with rounding up. Browning explains, “The bulk of the killers were not specially selected but drawn at random from a cross-section of German society, and they did not kill because they were coerced by the threat of dire punishment for refusing.” Mostly they were “middle-aged reserve policemen.” Battle had not driven these men to depravity, “they had not been fired on nor had they lost comrades.”

Browning explores one of their initial murderous actions, “shooting some 1,500 Jews in the Polish village of Józefów in the summer of 1942.” Major Wilhelm Trapp addressed his men before the shooting began: “Pale and nervous, with choking voice and tears in his eyes, Trapp visibly fought to control himself as he spoke. The Battalion, he said plaintively, had to perform a frightfully unpleasant task. This assignment was not to his liking; indeed, it was highly regrettable, but the orders came from the highest authorities.”

Trapp provided a “justification” for the coming slaughter—Jews were damaging Germany and threatening German troops—but then Trapp “made an extraordinary offer: if any of the older men among them did not feel up to the task that lay before him, he could step out.” The task, Trapp outlined, was the immediate killing of all women, children, and the elderly.

Only twelve of the approximately 500 in the Battalion initially took Trapp’s offer to “step out.” Browning estimated “10 to 20 percent of those actually assigned to the firing squads” extricated themselves “by less conspicuous methods or asked to be released from the firing squads once the shooting had begun.” Yet for most of the police, killing became second nature: “Many reserve policemen who were horrified in the woods outside Józefów… subsequently became casual volunteers for numerous firing squads and ‘Jew hunts.’”

Browning’s research provides insights into the mindsets that fueled obedience: “Who would have ‘dared,’ one policeman declared emphatically, to ‘lose face’ before the assembled troops.” Another said, “No one wants to be thought a coward.”

Not all who followed orders lacked moral consciousness: “Another policeman—more aware of what truly required courage—said quite simply, ‘I was cowardly.’”

Some rationalized their atrocities: “It was possible for me to shoot only children. My neighbor then shot the mother and I shot the child that belonged to her, because I reasoned with myself that after all without its mother the child could not live any longer.”

To escape moral culpability, others offered the excuse of what difference could they make: “Without me [shooting] the Jews were not going to escape their fate anyway.” How many managers are saying today, what difference can I make? If I don’t fire the unvaccinated, someone else will.

Browning explains, “The men’s concern for their standing in the eyes of their comrades was not matched by any sense of human ties with their victims. The Jews stood outside their circle of human obligation and responsibility.” Today, hospital administrators are firing workers with robust natural immunity who faithfully served during the pandemic and refuse the vaccine. Like the men in the Battalion, these administrators are just following orders.

What would have happened that terrible day in 1942 if more policemen recognized the humanity of the “other” and had the courage to not conform? Today, what would happen if more businesses, like In-N-Out Burger, refuse to obey government edicts? In October, Stephen Davis, a Florida fire battalion chief, “was fired for refusing to discipline department employees listed as unvaccinated.” What would happen if more managers had the courage of Chief Davis? Without obedience, tyranny fails.

During this time of Covid, we can learn lessons from Browning’s book about how we treat people who make choices different from our own. We can notice when we fail to see the humanity in others. We can become aware when we justify an us vs. them mindset. We can question our perceptions. To wait for Biden or Fauci to change first is to ignore our power of choice.

Lessons Learned

Browning reflects on the actions of the Battalion and asks, “If obedience to orders out of fear of dire punishment is not a valid explanation, what about ‘obedience to authority’ in the more general sense used by Stanley Milgram?”

Browning wonders if there is “a ’deeply ingrained behavior tendency’ to comply with the directives of those positioned hierarchically above, even to the point of performing repugnant actions in violation of ‘universally accepted’ moral norms.” Browning explains,

The notions of ‘loyalty, duty, discipline,’ requiring competent performance in the eyes of authority, become moral imperatives overriding any identification with the victim. Normal individuals enter an ‘agentic state’ in which they are the instrument of another’s will. In such a state, they no longer feel personally responsible for the content of their actions but only for how well they perform.

Browning recounts, “Milgram made direct reference to the similarities between human behavior in his experiments and under the Nazi regime. He concluded, ‘Men are led to kill with little difficulty.’”

Importantly, “Milgram himself notes that people far more frequently invoke authority than conformity to explain their behavior, for only the former seems to absolve them of personal responsibility.” Yet, in the Battalion case, “Many policemen admitted responding to the pressures of conformity—how would they be seen in the eyes of their comrades?—not authority.” Based on his research, Browning concludes, “Conformity assumes a more central role than authority at Józefów.”

The Covidocracy demands we all conform and shames those who make different choices. Browning explains the dangers of a culture of shame: “The shame culture, making conformity a prime virtue, impelled ordinary Germans in uniform to commit terrible crimes rather than suffer the stigma of cowardice and weakness and the ‘social death’ of isolation and alienation vis-à-vis their comrades.”

The segregation of Jews was an enabler of evil actions. Browning points to pervasive banishment of Jews from German society “and the resulting exclusion of the Jewish victims from any common ground with the perpetrators made it all the easier for the majority of the policemen to conform to the norms of their immediate community (the battalion) and their society at large (Nazi Germany).”

For some policemen who did not shoot, their commercial ties shaped their view of human beings. One said, “Through my business experience, especially because it extended abroad, I had gained a better overview of things. Moreover, through my earlier business activities I already knew many Jews.”

Harvard social psychologist Gordon Allport developed his famed contact hypothesis in the 1940s: “Increasing exposure to out-group members will improve attitudes toward that group and decrease prejudice and stereotyping.” Commercial ties bring people together.

Today, politicians work overtime demonizing, mocking, and punishing “out-group members” who won’t obey their dictates.

A Story of Nonconformity

Recently Tim, a reader and business owner from New Zealand, sent me his powerful testimony in an email:

Fifty odd years ago, as a young child I went to Ranui Primary School in suburban Auckland. There were two Māori boys in my class of 9-year-olds. Sometimes through the day they would make short comments to each other in Māori.

If the teacher heard them do it, he would keep our entire class in detention after school for 15 to 30 minutes. I always hated it because one of the boys was my friend, and a regular playmate of mine after school. The other one, used to walk home from school with me too, they were my friends.

But most of the class blamed these two Māori boys for us all being locked in after school. The majority of the kids disliked and bullied them in my class.

I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t dislike them because they were my friends. Perhaps even then as a boy I could see what our teacher was doing.

Our teacher was using the rest of the class as a weapon against those two young boys by encouraging the spiteful and discriminating attitudes towards them.

Tim’s choice to not conform to social pressure made all the difference to his Māori friends. Did Tim’s ability to see the humanity in others help him become a successful entrepreneur? After all, entrepreneurs succeed when they help serve the needs of others.

Tim continued his testimony:

Today, 50 years later, I am again feeling the same way as I did back in my Ranui Primary School class. The teacher is telling us all that we will continue to be locked in until 90% (or whatever) of the country is vaccinated. And further, we are told that it is the fault of the 20% (or so) that have so far chosen not to accept the two shots in the arm.

As a country, we are all encouraged to heap blame and hate towards anyone who has decided to not vaccinate.

Regardless of my own vaccination status, I have friends and family who I refuse to hate or blame.

I lay the blame exactly where it belongs. At the feet of my Primary School teacher for our detentions, not my two boyhood friends.

And at the feet of our Prime Minister for her lockdown rules, not my friends and family who have chosen to decline an injection that they don’t trust, rightly or wrongly.

Be like Tim. Be like the 10-20% of Battalion 101 who didn’t conform. Our scorn should be towards those who demand our obedience and split America into an in-group and an out-group. Become more aware when you allow your thinking to be hijacked by propaganda.

Many in the Battalion didn’t understand their crimes until decades after the war ended. Don’t wait to reflect until a future historian writes a book about how you supported tyranny by placing conformity above human rights.

Today Charles Eisenstein points out, “Many people trust the authorities and willingly comply with their rules. They face no dilemma, no initiatory moment, no self-defining world-creating choice point, not yet.”

Conforming, lacking courage, will not spare you from choices that life will demand of you. Eisenstein challenges us: “As the authorities’ narratives devolve into absurdity and their rules devolve into oppression, more and more of us face this choice: … To do what you know is right, or to cave in to the pressure, consoling yourself with words you don’t believe. ‘I had no choice.’”

We all have a personal responsibility for preserving freedom. The price of abdicating our responsibility is high. As Browning puts it, Germans paid a high price for “placing uncritical trust in the ‘firm leadership’ of seemingly well-intentioned political authority between 1933 and 1945.”

MASS PSYCHOSIS IS A REAL GLOBAL PANDEMIC

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By Dr. Mercola

Source: Waking Times

Mass psychosis is defined as “an epidemic of madness” that occurs when a “large portion of society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions.” The witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries are a classic example. We’re now in the middle of another mass psychosis, induced by relentless fearmongering coupled with data suppression and intimidation tactics of all kinds.

Fearmongering Breeds Insanity

A number of mental health experts have expressed concern over the blatant panic mongering during the COVID-19 pandemic, warning it can have serious psychiatric effects. For example, in a December 22, 2020, article2 in Evie Magazine, S.G. Cheah discussed the emergence of mass insanity caused by “delusional fear of COVID-19.”

“Even when the statistics point to the extremely low fatality rate among children and young adults (measuring 0.002% at age 10 and 0.01% at 25), the young and the healthy are still terrorized by the chokehold of irrational fear when faced with the coronavirus,” Cheah wrote, adding:3

“Instead of facing reality, the delusional person would rather live in their world of make-believe. But in order to keep faking reality, they’ll have to make sure that everyone else around them also pretends to live in their imaginary world.

In simpler words, the delusional person rejects reality. And in this rejection of reality, others have to play along with how they view the world, otherwise, their world will not make sense to them. It’s why the delusional person will get angry when they face someone who doesn’t conform to their world view …

It’s one of the reasons why you’re seeing so many people who’d happily approve the silencing of any medical experts whose views contradict the WHO or CDC guidelines. ‘Obey the rules!’ becomes more important than questioning if the rules were legitimate to begin with.”

In a December 2020 interview (below), psychiatrist and medical legal expert Dr. Mark McDonald4 also went on record stating “the true public health crisis lies in the widespread fear which morphed and evolved into a form of mass delusional psychosis.”We are now well beyond the first profound shocks of this crisis, and it’s deeply concerning that the number of [mental health] referrals remains so high. ~ Brian Dow, Deputy chief executive of Rethink Mental Illness

He went so far as to refer to the outside of his home or office as the “outdoor insane asylum,” where he must assume “that any person that I run into is insane” unless they prove otherwise.5

Reports of Psychotic Episodes Soar in Great Britain

Now, after some 19 months of abnormal “pandemic life,” the data are starting to reflect McDonald’s fears. For example, in the U.K., psychiatric referrals for first-time psychotic episodes have skyrocketed. As reported by The Guardian, October 17, 2021:6

“Cases of psychosis have soared over the past two years in England as an increasing number of people experience hallucinations and delusional thinking amid the stresses of the Covid-19 pandemic.

There was a 29% increase in the number of people referred to mental health services for their first suspected episode of psychosis between April 2019 and April 2021, NHS data7 shows. The rise continued throughout the spring, with 9,460 referred in May 2021, up 26% from 7,520 in May 2019.

The charity Rethink Mental Illness is urging the government to invest more in early intervention for psychosis to prevent further deterioration in people’s mental health from which it could take them years to recover.

It says the statistics provide some of the first concrete evidence to indicate the significant levels of distress experienced across the population during the pandemic.”

Psychosis Takes a Heavy Toll on a Person’s Life

Deputy chief executive of Rethink Mental Illness, Brian Dow, commented on the findings:8

“Psychosis can have a devastating impact on people’s lives. Swift access to treatment is vital to prevent further deterioration in people’s mental health which could take them years to recover from. These soaring numbers of suspected first episodes of psychosis are cause for alarm.

We are now well beyond the first profound shocks of this crisis, and it’s deeply concerning that the number of referrals remains so high. As first presentations of psychosis typically occur in young adults, this steep rise raises additional concerns about the pressures the younger generation have faced during the pandemic.

The pandemic has had a game changing effect on our mental health and it requires a revolutionary response. Dedicated additional funding for mental health and social care must go to frontline services to help meet the new demand, otherwise thousands of people could bear a catastrophic cost.”

According to a spokesperson for the British Department of Health and Social Care, the agency will expand the NHS mental health services budget by £2.3 billion ($3.1 billion) per year by 2023/2024. They’ve also added £500 million ($691 million) to the 2021 budget to provide services to those hit hardest by pandemic measures.9

Anxiety and Depression Have Increased Dramatically Worldwide

Another study,10,11 looking at the rates of anxiety and depression worldwide, found both conditions increased dramatically in 2020. The researchers estimate the COVID pandemic resulted in an additional 76 million cases of anxiety and 53 million cases of major depressive disorder, over and above annual norms, with women and younger individuals being disproportionally affected. According to The Guardian:12

“… the team estimate there were 246m cases of major depressive disorder and 374m cases of anxiety disorders worldwide in 2020, with the figure for the former 28% higher, and for the latter 26% higher, than would have been expected had the crisis not happened.

About two-thirds of these extra cases of major depressive disorder and 68% of the extra cases of anxiety disorders were among women, while younger people were affected more than older adults, with extra cases greatest among people aged 20-24.”

Lead author Damian Santomauro, Ph.D., of the University of Queensland told The Guardian:13

“We believe [that] is because women are more likely to be affected by the social and economic consequences of the pandemic. Women are more likely to take on additional carer and household responsibilities due to school closures or family members becoming unwell.

Women also tend to have lower salaries, less savings, and less secure employment than men, and so are more likely to be financially disadvantaged during the pandemic. Youth have been impacted by the closures of schools and higher education facilities, and wider restrictions inhibiting young people from peer interactions.”

Increased prevalence of domestic violence may also be a contributing factor that places women at increased risk of mental problems, while young adults are more likely to become unemployed.

Massive Rise in Mental Health Problems in Children

Children are bearing a particularly heavy burden as adults succumb to irrational fears. It’s not surprising then that mental health referrals for children have nearly doubled in the U.K. since the start of the pandemic.14 According to British authorities, 16% of children between the ages of 5 and 16 were diagnosed with a mental disorder in 2020, compared to 10.8% in 2017.15 As noted in a September 23, 2021, press release by the Royal College of Psychiatrists:16

“Eighteen months after the first lockdown and after warnings from the mental health sector about the long-lasting mental health impact of the pandemic, the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ analysis of NHS Digital data found that:

  • 190,271 0–18-year-olds were referred to children and young people’s mental health services between April and June this year, up 134% on the same period last year (81,170) and 96% on 2019 (97,342).
  • 8,552 children and young people were referred for urgent or emergency crisis care between April and June this year, up 80% on the same period last year (4,741) and up 64% on 2019 (5,219).
  • 340,694 children in contact with children and young people’s mental health services at the end of June, up 25% on the same month last year (272,529) and up 51% on June 2019 (225,480).”

Eating disorders are also more prevalent than ever, and the rapid increase has left many children waiting months for treatment — delays that could have life-threatening consequences — as facilities are at capacity. The press release quotes a mother whose teenage daughter relapsed into anorexia during the pandemic:17

“The pandemic has been devastating for my daughter and for our family. She has anorexia and was discharged from an inpatient unit last year, but the disruption to her normal routines and socializing really affected her recovery. She was spending a lot less time doing the things she enjoys and a lot more time alone with her thoughts.

Unfortunately, she relapsed, becoming so unwell she was admitted to hospital and sectioned. After 72 days in hospital with no specialist eating disorder bed becoming available, we brought her home where I had to tube feed her for 10 weeks.

My daughter urgently needed specialist help for this life-threatening illness, but services are completely overwhelmed because so many young people need help. It’s a terrifying situation for patients and families to be in.”

Mass Delusional Psychosis Traumatizes Children

Indeed, the widespread insanity on display among adults can have severe and lasting effects on children as they grow up. According to McDonald (see interview above), the mental states of the children he’s treated during this pandemic are far worse than he’s used to seeing in these age groups. This tells us the trauma inflicted by pandemic measures is very serious.

One of the worst traumas inflicted on children has been the ridiculous idea that they might kill their parents or grandparents simply by being around them. They’re also being taught to feel guilty about behaviors that would normally be completely normal — as just one example: hysterical adults calling a toddler who refuses to wear a mask a “brat,” when resisting having a restrictive mask put across your face is perfectly normal at that age.

It’s extremely abnormal for children to grow up thinking that they’re a danger to people around them, and that everyone around them is a danger to them. It’s completely abnormal to grow up thinking that facemasks, gloves and physical separation are required to stay alive.

Adults have also twisted irrational fear into a virtue, which is doubly tragic and wrong. Wearing a mask has become a way to demonstrate that you’re a “good person,” someone who cares about others, whereas not wearing a mask brands you as an inconsiderate lout, if not a prospective mass murderer, simply by breathing.

What’s more, by encouraging us to remain in fear and allow it to control and constrain our lives, the fear has become so entrenched that anyone who says we need to be fearless and fight for our freedoms is attacked for being both stupid and dangerous.

Adults Must Be Healed to Save the Children

It’s adults who are mindlessly inflicting this emotional trauma on an entire generation. As noted by McDonald in his interview, a primary cause of depression among children is feeling disconnected from family and friends.

Everyone, but children in particular, needs face-to-face contact, physical contact, and emotional intimacy. We need these things to feel safe around others and within our own selves. Digital interactions cannot replace these most basic human needs, and are inherently separating.

McDonald cites U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics showing there was a 400% increase in adolescent depression during 2020 compared to the year before, and in 25% of cases, they contemplated suicide. These are unheard of statistics, he says. Never before have so many teenagers considered committing suicide.

According to McDonald, parents and adults in general are to blame, because they are the ones scaring children to the point they don’t feel life is worth living anymore. This is why we can’t just treat the children. We must also address the psychosis of the adult population that is causing all this trauma.

Mass Delusion Is Leading Us Into Slavery

The mass delusion must also be addressed because it’s driving us all, sane and insane alike, toward a society devoid of all previous freedoms and civil liberties, and the corrupt individuals in charge will not voluntarily relinquish power once we’ve given it to them.

Clearly, many of our political leaders know COVID-19 isn’t the deadly plague it’s been made out to be. They issue stay-at-home orders from their vacation homes in the Caribbean and repeatedly break their own mask and lockdown mandates.

They ride their bikes, stroll through the park, have family gatherings and dine out without a care. They’re simply playing along, following the narrative coming from technocratic strongholds like the World Health Organization, because it benefits them.

You could say the ruling class suffers from a different kind of psychosis. As explained in “Mass Psychosis — How an Entire Population Becomes Mentally Ill,” totalitarianism actually begins as psychosis within the ruling class, as the individuals within this class are easily enamored with delusions that augment their power. And no delusion is greater than the delusion that they can, and should control and dominate others.

Whether the totalitarian mindset takes the form of communism, fascism or technocracy, a ruling elite that has succumbed to their own delusions of grandeur then sets about to indoctrinate the masses into their own twisted worldview. All that’s needed to accomplish that reorganization of society is the manipulation of collective feelings.

Sadly, many citizens are unwittingly aiding and abetting the global power grab that will result in our enslavement. Fear fueled hysteria, which led to mass delusional psychosis and group control where citizens themselves support and press for the elimination of basic freedoms.

There’s no doubt at this point that a totalitarian society is the ultimate end of this societal psychosis unless we do something about it. The truth is, we’re as safe now as we ever were. We must not allow our freedoms to be taken from us due to delusional fears. As noted by Cheah in her article:18

“It’s not unthinkable that the final outcome would be total societal control on every aspect of your life. Consider this — the endpoint of a mentally ill person is for them to be put under a controlled environment (institutionalized like an asylum) where all freedoms are restricted. And it’s looking more and more like that’s the endpoint of where this mass psychosis is heading.”

We Must Restore Sanity

Once a society is firmly in the grip of mass psychosis, totalitarians are free to take the last, decisive step: They can offer a way out, a return to order. The price is your freedom. You must cede control of all aspects of your life to the rulers, because unless they are granted total control, they won’t be able to create the order everyone craves.

This order, however, is a pathological one, devoid of all humanity. It eliminates the spontaneity that brings joy and creativity to one’s life by demanding strict conformity and blind obedience. And despite the promise of safety, a totalitarian society is inherently fearful. It is built on fear, and is maintained by it too. So, giving up your freedom for safety and a sense of order will only lead to more of the same fear and anxiety that allowed the totalitarians to gain control in the first place.

Knowing this, we must remember to embrace courage, truth, honesty and freedom as we move forward — not just in our thoughts and words but also in our actions. People cannot think logically when in a state of delusional psychosis, which is why sharing information, facts, data and evidence tends to be ineffective except in cases where the person was acting out of peer pressure rather than a delusional belief.

Typically, the best you can do is stand firm and act in alignment with truth and objective reality, much like you would if you were a first responder faced with an accident victim who is responding hysterically to what you know is only a minor injury.

In short, to help return sanity to an insane world, you first need to center yourself and live in such a way as to provide inspiration for others to follow — speak and act in such a way as to demonstrate that you are not afraid to live life and return to normalcy.

Planet of the Living Dead (Halloween 2021)

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By Mickey Z.

Source: Dissident Voice

The only thing we have to fear…

(the dude who signed Executive Order 9066)

Halloween is an odd holiday. The ostensible concept — as it has evolved to become — is to shock, startle, frighten, petrify, horrify, and/or terrify… all while consuming enough high fructose corn syrup to keep the American Dental Association content for another century or two. Every year, as October 31 nears, loyal consumers squander a small fortune to adorn their soon-to-be-foreclosed-upon abodes with Made-in-China images of tombstones, skulls, ghouls, goblins, monsters, zombies, and even the occasional bloody severed limb or two. But let’s face it, none of these cardboard depictions remotely compare to the real-life horrors we passively accept as normal.

Who needs Dracula when we’ve got ruling class vampires sucking us dry — stealing not only our blood but also our jobs, homes, health, autonomy, sovereignty, and future? Why bother with Michael Myers when legions of Y chromosome ghouls unleash far worse cruelty — every minute of every day — via male pattern violence? Never forget:

  • No zombie is more frightening than those stumbling around in masks and chanting “trust the science.” 
  • Never mind Jason and his hockey mask when you’ve got “Brandon” playing left wing. 
  • Bats, pumpkins, and skeletons vs. pornographers, pimps, and pedophiles? No contest. 
  • Elm Street’s Freddie ain’t got nothing on corporations transformed into “persons” — set free to pillage the ecosystem and co-opt our minds. 
  • And I’ll take Godzilla’s side over pesticide, genocide, and ecocide. 

Here’s one more 24/7 real-life nightmare far more dreadful than anything the Halloween-Industrial Complex can conjure up: When all those kids come knocking on your door, expecting brightly colored toxins called “candy,” you might wish to remind yourself that across the globe, an estimated 10,000 extra children are dying each month thanks to unnecessary lockdowns and restrictions. 

Cue the ominous music: 10,000 dead. Every single month. From preventable causes. Because most of the world bought into the Covid lies. The next time you’re at a sporting event or a concert (for the vaccinated-only, of course), take a good, slow look around you and get a feel for what 10,000 looks like. It’s a whole lot more terrifying than the whir of a chainsaw echoing down a desolate Texas highway. Remember: “We’re all in this together.”

ALL OUT WAR ON THE LIFE FORCE

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By Julian Rose

Source: Waking Times

‘Guile’ and ‘cunning’ are two words that seldom feature in the modern vernacular, yet we need them now – because our species is under an unprecedented level of sustained attack – and it is guile and cunning that is being used to disguise this attack as some form of benevolent protection. The hypnotic effect this deception is having on mankind threatens to render our species extinct.

Who would guess? After all, those who believe what they read in the press and see on TV are sure they are being ‘saved’ not sacrificed.

Saved from Covid, global warming, the Russians and of course ‘terrorists’. While individuals in possession of a reasonable degree of awareness recognise that those calling the shots are trying to pull-off some grand plan which will leave them in charge of all the material avenues of daily life. What Klaus Schwab, director of the World Economic Forum likes to refer to as “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.”

Which properly translates as “We’ll own everything and you’ll be fortunate if your still alive”.

Yet this is actually just one level of a multi pronged attack being prepared against humanity. It goes a lot deeper.

At the deeper level we are brought up against a struggle with our own minds to grasp the magnitude of the dark agenda proposed for life on earth. Many amongst us cannot even begin to fathom the fact that this is not just a new attempt to introduce a totalitarian dictatorship, but is in fact all out war on the life force itself. An attempt to render our very DNA for ever changed – engineered – into something wholly alien to that which drives the evolutionary dynamic of life on earth.

The origins of this anti-life persuasion stretch back a long way. They start with a refusal to recognise the essential spiritual composition of all matter. That at its essence, life – in all its animate and inanimate forms – is a manifestation of that which was brought to birth by a cosmic entity of pure spirit – over a great span of time – during which it evolved itself into what we call ‘matter’.

Matter is pure spirit congealed into material substance. That is why Jesus is cited as saying “Split wood, and I am there.” Our ancient rocks, soils, ferns, protozoa, aerobic microorganisms, insects, reptiles – and eventually man – form a grand diversity and continuum of expressions of one omnipotent cosmic source point we call God.

Initially, the life expression here on earth was of a very simple nature and lacked any form of self awareness. Yet all seemingly inanimate matter contains the seed of animation. It is, after all ‘all energy’ – but the fact that we cannot see the whirling atoms that form the composition of a rock does not mean they are not actual. That it is not alive.

The creative source point of all life is present even in the most ancient mountains and minerals of our planet.

All these are aspiring to become more than they are. They all have the capacity for constant movement towards a higher expression of themselves. Thus they ‘transform’ and move on, as it were, into subtler forms of expression of their original form. This is the true meaning of the word ‘evolution’.

We – mankind – are at the upper edge of this process of evolution, but we are still informed by all stages that got us here. We recognise them as being gradually evolving expressions within the development of our unique psycho-spiritual and physical propensities.

Thus we can today, if we so wish, feel ‘at one’ with the natural environment around us, simply because we are it – and it is us. There has never been a separation point, just a continuum of evolving expression of the pure source point from whence ‘life’ was birthed.

However, somewhere along the line, at a well developed stage of the continuum – with the human brain already active, a deviation of the natural evolutionary movement became manifest.

We will not speculate on what exactly that was, but will acknowledge its existence. This deviation could happen due to the ‘free will’ originally accorded to independent ‘thinking’ man.

Free will is the condition we call ‘freedom’ today; however, only when its intention is the continuing manifestation of the great diversity of the species and a further manifestation of its divine origins. A state I call ‘the responsibility of freedom’.

This ‘true freedom’ is precisely what came under attack many millennia ago. The motivation for the attack was based upon the desire that the riches the material world brings to birth should be seen and worshipped solely as inert matter, completely devoid of spirit. In other words, a denial of the existence of a (cosmic) creator which is reflected in all life forms – and a taking ownership of the material world (matter) as a ‘possession’ whose primary objective is personal enrichment.

Thus the divine source was stripped clean from the manifestation of its own creation.

From here, gorged on the wealth of three dimensional power, the false aspirants went on – driven by an insatiable infatuation with possession, to try to capture not just the material – but the innate spiritual expression of human and planetary evolution as well.

They saw that in spite of their taking a controlling influence over mankind, the life force remained irrepressible. This aroused a deep jealously in ‘the one who would be god-king’; and the only way of satiating this jealousy was to reek vengeance on this freedom loving life force. A force that would not allow itself to come under the control of a godless authority.

Great wars were set in motion by the jealous ones. The core of each was ‘divide man against himself’. Let him destroy himself.

But even the carnage reeked by this evil ploy did not completely vanquish the true human, driven as he/she is by the upwardly rising spirit of aspiration, resonant echo of the One Pure Spirit. That great mystery which stimulates the desire to consciously realise one’s oneness with Source.

So we arrive at today.

Today the jealous ones, bruised, but more vindictive than ever – thanks to their past failures – aim to attack and distort the very DNA of life itself. In order to splice into it the codes of their spirit-less digital mechanistic void, so as to create the ‘ex-human’ robotic designer-slave – that which has all its faculties genetically engineered, to the synthetic point of no return. No return to nature. No way home.

Thus the murderers seek to enthrone themselves as god-kings of their satanic empire.

Now they have declared open war on Earth as well as humanity – and are going for the jugular.

While this very small and very sick cabal leads the way, their army of foot soldiers trudge along behind, gazing into their mobile phones and wide screen TV’s, awaiting the next instructions. Their designer-slave minds already given over to the slow march into spiritual oblivion. Their bodies bent with denial. Their souls’ vital transmissions suffocated under a heavy blanket of uncontrolled and poisoned thinking, whose chief ingredient is – fear.

We know the plan – and we know of human-kind’s retrograde passivity which has been responsible for allowing this plan to get as far as it has.

We have learned that the Covid jab, chemtrails-aluminium, WiFi and fluoride combine to calcify the pineal gland and block its function as chief receptor of the higher vibrational cosmic energies.

We have learned that GMO and pesticides do a very similar thing to the plant kingdom which is here to nourish us. And we know that a great part of the food chain carries the burden of this toxicity.

We know that all such brutal attacks on this living planet and its occupants stem from a grossly distorted perception of what Life is all about. A reversal, in fact.

But we also know one more thing. That a rising tide of awakening humanity has recognised the deception and is now establishing a formidable resistance. And in doing so has discovered its inner powers and found the will to directly challenge the architects of destruction.

We start to understand how times of profound darkness can be precursors of times of searing illumination. How a great metamorphosis of life on earth is in the air.

A manifestation that will bring with it that which we nurture in our hearts and envision in our minds. We, guardians of the flag of truth and vanguard of a new society built on honour, wisdom, justice and truth.

It’s a battle royal, make no mistake. The road to peace is not secured via passivity and wishful thinking. Not at all. Not even prayer.

The great Indian Sadhu, Prabat Rajan Sarkar stated it this way “There is no other way of establishing peace than by fighting against the reasons that disturb the peace.”

So fight we will, until we win.

About the Author

Julian Rose is an early pioneer and practitioner of UK organic farming; an entrepreneur and leader of projects to create self sufficient communities based on local supply and demand; a teacher of holistic life approaches and the author of four books – one of which ‘Creative Solutions to a World in Crisis’ lays-out detailed guide-lines for the transformation of society into caring communities built upon ecological and spiritual awareness, justice and cooperation. See Julian’s website for more information www.julianrose.info

WE ARE ALL BEING COOKED IN THE SOUP TOGETHER

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By Paul Levy

Source: Waking Times

One of the recurring thought-forms that I hear repeated everywhere during these apocalyptic times is, “We are all in this together.” It is ironic that “we are all in this together,” and yet, our world feels anything but together, as it is in an incredibly polarized and dissociated state. Our species is suffering from what Jung calls a “sickness of dissociation,” which is a state of fragmentation deep within the unconscious itself that has seemingly spilled outside of our skulls and, through psychic forces beyond our conscious awareness, has taken the form of polarizing collective events playing themselves out en masse on the world stage. Our dissociation is not solely pathological, however, but is an expression of a deeper holistic process that is in the act of revealing itself. To quote Jung, “the sickness of dissociation in our world is at the same time a process of recovery, or rather, the climax of a period of pregnancy which heralds the throes of birth. A time of dissociation … is simultaneously an age of rebirth.”[1]

Whenever I hear “We are all in this together,” it reminds me of an amazing paragraph that Jung wrote in the late 1950’s that is as relevant today as it was then. Here is an excerpt: “We are in the soup that is going to be cooked for us, whether we claim to have invented it or not…. We are threatened with universal genocide if we cannot work out the way of salvation by a symbolic death.”[2] In other words, we are fated to suffer an unconscious “literal” death if we don’t consciously go through a “symbolic” death. What does Jung mean by this?

We are all in the soup together, yet we are suffering from a sickness of dissociation, and we are needing to go through a symbolic death experience, while another part of us is being reborn! What is going on here? Is what’s happening in our world meaningless chaos, or is there “something deeper” going on? The short answer: Our species has gotten drafted into an archetypal death/rebirth experience – in symbolically dying to a part of ourselves that is no longer serving us, another part of us is being reborn. As Jung points out, “there are times [and ours seems to be one of them] when the spirit is completely darkened because it needs to be reborn.”[3]

We can deepen our understanding of the archetypal process of death and rebirth that we are living out by shedding light on a prototypical example of death and rebirth – i.e., The Incarnation. Contemplating the West’s prevailing myth of the birth of God as a human being—the Christ event—psychologically, which is to say symbolically (i.e., as if it is a dream of our species) can help us gain some crucial insights into the deeper archetypal process that we are collectively enacting unconsciously on the world stage during these truly apocalyptic times.

The word “apocalypse,” etymologically speaking, refers to something previously hidden being unveiled and brought to light – in other words, something is being revealed to us during these apocalyptic times. Whereas in religious language, the apocalypse has to do with the Incarnation of God and the coming of the Messiah, psychologically speaking, the “apocalypse” means the momentous, world-shattering event of the coming of what Jung calls “the Self” (the wholeness of our personality, i.e., the God within) into conscious realization. Instead of incarnating through one man, however, like God did over two thousand years ago through the individual person of Jesus, the divine is now incarnating through the unconscious psyche of all of humanity. “God,” Jung writes, “wants to become man,” and instead of choosing a pure, guiltless vessel, God has chosen, in Jung’s words, “the creaturely man filled with darkness—the natural man who is tainted with original sin.”[4]

In that same amazing paragraph Jung writes, “Through his further incarnation God becomes a fearful task for man, who must now find ways and means to unite the divine opposites in himself. He is summoned…. Christ has shown how everybody will be crucified upon his destiny, i.e., upon his self, as he was. He did not carry his cross and suffer crucifixion so that we could escape.”[5] In other words, regardless of our outer religious orientation, everyone of us is fated (whether we like it or not) to carry our cross—to consciously bear our shadow and suffer the tension of the opposites within us—just as Christ did. And yet, something that we could not have created via the efforts of our own ego can potentially emerge as a result of consciously bearing this creative tension.

In being “summoned,” like a healer, shaman or artist who is being called by their inner voice and sacred vocation, we are being subpoenaed by a higher power. Whenever the archetype of the Self is constellated, due to the opposites intrinsic to the nature of this experience, we invariably feel a state of extreme conflict within us that is epitomized by the Christian symbol of the cross. Viewed symbolically, Christ on the cross reveals to us that the development and differentiation of consciousness leads to an ever-increasing awareness of a primordial conflict within our soul which necessarily involves a crucifixion of the ego. To understand this conflict psychologically, we could say that the unconscious longs to reach the light of consciousness, while at the same time continually recoils against it, because it would rather remain unconscious. In theological terms, to quote Jung, “God wants to become man, but not quite.”[6]

The Self is made manifest—i.e., real in space and time—through consciously suffering the conflict between the opposites to the point where we begin to experience their synthesis and complementarity. Jung comments, “This condition of the crucifixion, then, is a symbolic expression for the state of extreme conflict, where one simply has to give up, where one no longer knows, where one almost loses one’s mind. Out of that condition grows the thing which is really fought for … the birth of the self.”[7] It is by going through an internal experience of what the historical crucifixion symbolizes that the divine holy and whole-making spirit gets born through us.

Jung comments, “One shouldn’t evade this conflict by escaping into a premature and anticipated state of redemption, otherwise one provokes it in the outside world. And that is of the devil.”[8] If we don’t deal with the source of the divine conflict within us, it will get projected outside of ourselves and dreamed up in the external world. In other words, in our avoidance of dealing with the conflict within us, we are unwittingly colluding with the darker forces of death and destruction that are playing out in the outer world.

Nature herself does not come to a permanent standstill when confronted with opposites – rather, she uses them to create, out of their very opposition, a synthesis, a new birth. When Christ is nailed to the cross during the crucifixion, it symbolically represents that it is through the experience of being bound and severely limited in the space/time continuum that itself becomes the doorway through which we become introduced to the transcendent part of us that is beyond the physical, i.e., our spiritual nature. In other words, it is in experiencing our finite limitations to the max that becomes a doorway to the infinite part of ourselves.

Nothing so promotes the growth of consciousness as confronting the opposites within ourselves. Holding the tension of the opposites that is inherent in the crucifixion experience invariably liberates us from holding and identifying with our fixed and cherished perspectives. Helping us transcend the notion of a privileged and correct point of view, we become aperspectival in our viewpoint, as we see the relativity of all viewpoints – a way of seeing which coincides with the meta-perspective of the Self.

The essence of the Christian gnosis—the Incarnation of God through humanity—can be best understood as humanity’s creative confrontation with the opposites and their synthesis in the Self. The Self—which Jung equates with Christ—is present in everyone, but typically in an unconscious and unrealized condition. Once we withdraw our projections and fixations upon an external historical or metaphysical figure, however, we can realize that the Self/Christ (or whatever name we call it) lives within us – in Jung’s words, we then “wake up the Christ within.”[9]

Nature herself does not come to a permanent standstill when confronted with opposites – rather, she uses them to create, out of their very opposition, a synthesis, a new birth. When Christ is nailed to the cross during the crucifixion, it symbolically represents that it is through the experience of being bound and severely limited in the space/time continuum that itself becomes the doorway through which we become introduced to the transcendent part of us that is beyond the physical, i.e., our spiritual nature. In other words, it is in experiencing our finite limitations to the max that becomes a doorway to the infinite part of ourselves.

Nothing so promotes the growth of consciousness as confronting the opposites within ourselves. Holding the tension of the opposites that is inherent in the crucifixion experience invariably liberates us from holding and identifying with our fixed and cherished perspectives. Helping us transcend the notion of a privileged and correct point of view, we become aperspectival in our viewpoint, as we see the relativity of all viewpoints – a way of seeing which coincides with the meta-perspective of the Self.

The essence of the Christian gnosis—the Incarnation of God through humanity—can be best understood as humanity’s creative confrontation with the opposites and their synthesis in the Self. The Self—which Jung equates with Christ—is present in everyone, but typically in an unconscious and unrealized condition. Once we withdraw our projections and fixations upon an external historical or metaphysical figure, however, we can realize that the Self/Christ (or whatever name we call it) lives within us – in Jung’s words, we then “wake up the Christ within.”[9]

The cross is the symbol of the suffering Godhead that redeems humanity. This suffering would not have occurred without darker forces seemingly opposed to God. This is to say that the powers of evil play a crucial, mysterious and essential role in the redemption of humanity. Jung continues, “Christ is the model for the human answers and his symbol is the cross, the union of the opposites. This will be the fate of man, and this he must understand if he is to survive at all.”[11]

To quote Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton, “every man is Christ on the Cross, whether he realizes it or not. But we, if we are Christians [and in the deeper symbolic sense we are all “Christians”], must learn to realize it.”[12] Realizing we are Christ on the Cross re-contextualizes our suffering, transforming it from a deeply problematic personal situation to a more universal process in which we have all gotten enlisted. It is important to distinguish our neurotic suffering—which is a result of our unconscious clinging and is totally unproductive—from the suffering which is “sent by God” (as Christian mystics would say) in order to purify us of our obscurations. Our neurotic suffering blocks us from experiencing the divine, while the suffering that is a result of our participation in the archetypal process of crucifixion, through connecting us to the deeper passion that Christ went through, is the doorway introducing us to something beyond ourselves.

Russian philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev writes, “But there was a tendency to forget that the cross had a universal significance and application. The Crucifixion awaits not only the individual man but also society as a whole, a State or a civilization.”[13] In other words, it is not just individuals who are symbolically going through a crucifixion experience, but our global civilization as a whole. The microcosm (the individual) and the macrocosm (the collective), like iterations of the same fractal, are mirrored reflections of each other. The Self (or whatever name we call it) is incarnating through us—both individually and as a species—and it makes all the difference in the world whether we consciously realize this or not.[14]

If we remain unconscious when a living archetypal process is activated within us, this inner process will physically manifest itself externally in the outside world, where, as if by fate, it will get unconsciously dreamed up and acted out in a “literal,” concrete and oftentimes destructive way. Instead of going through an inner symbolic death, for example, we then literally kill each other, as well as, ultimately, ourselves. If we recognize, however, that we are being cast to play a role in a deeper cosmic process, instead of being destined to enact it unconsciously, and hence, destructively, we are able to consciously and creatively “incarnate” this archetypal process as individuation.

We, as a species, to quote Jung, have been “drawn into the cycle of the death and rebirth of the gods.”[15] In other words, having become part of a deeper mythic, archetypal and alchemical process of transformation, we are going through a cosmic death-rebirth experience of a higher order. Jung describes “how the divine process of change manifests itself to our human understanding and how man experiences it – as punishment, torment, death, and transfiguration.”[16] This divinely-sponsored process is subjectively experienced by the human ego as torture.[17] However, if we don’t personalize the experience, identify with it or get stuck in its nightmarish aspect—a great danger—but allow this deeper process to refine us as it needs to, it can lead to a transfiguration of our very being.

Whether consciously or not, we are all in a state of grieving – the world we have known is dying. In addition, our sense of who we think we are—imagining we exist as a separate self, alien to and apart from other separate selves as well as the rest of the universe—is an illusion whose expiration date has now been reached. This illusion is like a non-existent mirage that, if not recognized as illusory, can become reified and thereby become a lethal mirage. Either our illusion expires, or we do. As the poet Rumi would say, we need to “die before we die.”

To step out of the illusion of thinking we exist as a separate self is to recognize—and be born into—our greater identity (whether we call it the Self, Christ, Buddha, etc.), that includes and embraces everything under the sun. The Self—who we actually are—is simultaneously the source and fruit of life itself, enhancing life beyond measure. Connecting with the Self is not only our only hope in these dark times, it’s what everything that is happening in our world is potentially helping us to realize. And yet, the way to ascend to the light of the Higher Self (in Christian terminology, to attain The Resurrected Body)—as Christ himself indicates via his descent to the underworld after his death on the cross—is by journeying through the darkness.

To quote Jung, “God really wants to become man, even if he rends him asunder[18] … because he wants to become man, the uniting of his antinomy must take place in man.”[19] Where else, after all, could the opposites intrinsic to God’s nature (e.g., light and dark, good and evil) attain unity except in the very vessel—humanity—that God has prepared just for this very purpose? Being cooked in the soup together, we are being immersed and baptized into a deeper cosmic process. We are playing a crucial role in the divine drama of incarnation, an insight that renders meaning to our suffering and assists us in discovering our place in the world as well as helping us to find our very selves.

Freedom from Fear: Stop Playing the Government’s Mind Games

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By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”—Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalist

America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions.

The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other.

Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent zealots, while others inclined to pacifism have taken to stockpiling weapons and practicing defensive drills.

This plague on our nation—one that has been spreading like wildfire—is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live and the constantly shifting crises that keep the populace in a state of high alert.

Everywhere you turn, those on both the left- and right-wing are fomenting distrust and division. You can’t escape it.

We’re being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of a virus, fear of the unmasked, fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of extremists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government. The list goes on and on.

The strategy is simple yet effective: the best way to control a populace is through fear and discord.

Fear makes people stupid.

Confound them, distract them with mindless news chatter and entertainment, pit them against one another by turning minor disagreements into major skirmishes, and tie them up in knots over matters lacking in national significance.

Most importantly, divide the people into factions, persuade them to see each other as the enemy and keep them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.

This is how free people enslave themselves and allow tyrants to prevail.

This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology, endless wars, COVID-19 mandates, etc., hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes.

All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance.

Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police, marauding SWAT teams, and egregious assaults on the rights of the citizenry.

America has already entered a new phase, one in which communities are locked down, employees are forced to choose between keeping their jobs or exercising their freedoms, children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents, and law-abiding Americans are finding their movements tracked, their financial transactions documented and their communications monitored.

These threats are not to be underestimated.

Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language in which they are couched: the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure.

Fear, as history shows, is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government.

So far, these tactics are working.

An atmosphere of fear permeates modern America.

Each successive crisis in recent years (a COVID-19 pandemic, terrorism, etc.)—manufactured or legitimate—has succeeded in reducing the American people to what commentator Dan Sanchez refers to as “herd-minded hundreds of millions [who] will stampede to the State for security, bleating to please, please be shorn of their remaining liberties.”

Sanchez continues:

“I am not terrified of the terrorists; i.e., I am not, myself, terrorized. Rather, I am terrified of the terrorized; terrified of the bovine masses who are so easily manipulated by terrorists, governments, and the terror-amplifying media into allowing our country to slip toward totalitarianism and total war…

“I do not irrationally and disproportionately fear Muslim bomb-wielding jihadists or white, gun-toting nutcases. But I rationally and proportionately fear those who do, and the regimes such terror empowers. History demonstrates that governments are capable of mass murder and enslavement far beyond what rogue militants can muster. Industrial-scale terrorists are the ones who wear ties, chevrons, and badges. But such terrorists are a powerless few without the supine acquiescence of the terrorized many. There is nothing to fear but the fearful themselves…

“Stop swallowing the overblown scaremongering of the government and its corporate media cronies. Stop letting them use hysteria over small menaces to drive you into the arms of tyranny, which is the greatest menace of all.”

As history makes clear, fear leads to fascistic, totalitarian regimes.

It’s a simple enough formula. National crises, global pandemics, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. Fear prevents us from thinking. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.

A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled.

The following are a few of the necessary ingredients for a fascist state:

·       The government is managed by a powerful leader (even if he or she assumes office by way of the electoral process). This is the fascistic leadership principle (or father figure).

·       The government assumes it is not restrained in its power. This is authoritarianism, which eventually evolves into totalitarianism.

·       The government ostensibly operates under a capitalist system while being undergirded by an immense bureaucracy.

·       The government through its politicians emits powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.

·       The government has an obsession with national security while constantly invoking terrifying internal and external enemies.

·       The government establishes a domestic and invasive surveillance system and develops a paramilitary force that is not answerable to the citizenry.

·       The government and its various agencies (federal, state, and local) develop an obsession with crime and punishment. This is overcriminalization.

·       The government becomes increasingly centralized while aligning closely with corporate powers to control all aspects of the country’s social, economic, military, and governmental structures.

·       The government uses militarism as a center point of its economic and taxing structure.

·       The government is increasingly imperialistic in order to maintain the military-industrial corporate forces.

The parallels to modern America are impossible to ignore.

“Every industry is regulated. Every profession is classified and organized,” writes Jeffrey Tucker. “Every good or service is taxed. Endless debt accumulation is preserved. Immense doesn’t begin to describe the bureaucracy. Military preparedness never stops, and war with some evil foreign foe, remains a daily prospect.”

For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary. In times of “crisis,” expediency is upheld as the central principle—that is, in order to keep us safe and secure, the government must militarize the police, strip us of basic constitutional rights and criminalize virtually every form of behavior.

Not only does fear grease the wheels of the transition to fascism by cultivating fearful, controlled, pacified, cowed citizens, but it also embeds itself in our very DNA so that we pass on our fear and compliance to our offspring.

It’s called epigenetic inheritance, the transmission through DNA of traumatic experiences.

For example, neuroscientists have observed how quickly fear can travel through generations of mice DNA. As The Washington Post reports:

In the experiment, researchers taught male mice to fear the smell of cherry blossoms by associating the scent with mild foot shocks. Two weeks later, they bred with females. The resulting pups were raised to adulthood having never been exposed to the smell. Yet when the critters caught a whiff of it for the first time, they suddenly became anxious and fearful. They were even born with more cherry-blossom-detecting neurons in their noses and more brain space devoted to cherry-blossom-smelling.

The conclusion? “A newborn mouse pup, seemingly innocent to the workings of the world, may actually harbor generations’ worth of information passed down by its ancestors.”

Now consider the ramifications of inherited generations of fears and experiences on human beings. As the Post reports, “Studies on humans suggest that children and grandchildren may have felt the epigenetic impact of such traumatic events such as famine, the Holocaust and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, fear, trauma and compliance can be passed down through the generations.

Fear has been a critical tool in past fascistic regimes, and it now operates in our contemporary world—all of which raises fundamental questions about us as human beings and what we will give up in order to perpetuate the illusions of safety and security.

In the words of psychologist Erich Fromm:

[C]an human nature be changed in such a way that man will forget his longing for freedom, for dignity, for integrity, for love—that is to say, can man forget he is human? Or does human nature have a dynamism which will react to the violation of these basic human needs by attempting to change an inhuman society into a human one?

THE ART OF THE UNDECEIVED

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Strong confident woman.

By Gary Z McGee

Source: Waking Times

“Here the ways of men divide. If you wish to strive for peace of soul and happiness, then believe; if you wish to be a disciple of truth, then search.” ~Nietzsche

What does it mean to be undeceived?

To a certain extent, we are always deceived. For we are only human, all too human. But to the extent that we can become aware of deception—both self-deception and the deception of others—being undeceived means being ahead of the curve of the human condition.

First, it means embracing deception as an integral part of life. Then it means being strategically circumspect while creating your own meaning. It means taking everything that you’ve learned into consideration with humility and a good sense of humor. It means becoming so healthy that your very existence is a catalyst for healthy change. It means connecting courage to curiosity. It means taking a leap of courage. It means putting things into proper perspective by using health as a benchmark.

It is, paraphrasing Bruce Lee, “absorbing what is useful, discarding what is not, and adding what is uniquely your own.” Let’s break it down…

Absorb what is useful:

“If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.” ~Benjamin Franklin

What is useful? Well, if your goal is not only basic survival but also progressive evolution, then what is useful is what is healthy. Contrastingly, what is not useful is what is unhealthy.

So, how do you figure out what is healthy or not? Through logic, reason, and critical thinking. You cannot wish something into being healthy. You cannot simply believe something is healthy and, by your strong faith alone, expect it to be valid. You can only reason through if something is healthy or not. Once you have reasoned a thing to be healthy, you free yourself to absorb what is useful.

Absorbing what is useful is absorbing what is healthy. The path is then clear to question with a good conscience. You become undeceived. In a state of undeception, you are free to wield the question mark sword, the Sword of Truth, and to use it in a way that distinguishes what’s healthy from what’s not.

What is healthy is absorbed as something useful for progressive evolution. What is unhealthy can then be discarded as something useless, so as to avoid an unhealthy society.

Discard what is not useful:

“A fool thinks himself wise, a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” ~William Shakespeare

Discarding what is not useful (what is unhealthy) requires self-discipline. It requires vigilance. Most people don’t even know that they don’t know the difference between healthy and unhealthy. Especially people who have grown up, culturally conditioned and indoctrinated, in a profoundly sick society.

How do you know if you were born into a profoundly sick society?

1.) Any society that pollutes the air it needs to breathe is a profoundly sick society.

2.) Any society that pollutes the water it needs to drink is a profoundly sick society.

3.) Any society that pollutes the food it needs to eat is a profoundly sick society.

4.) Any society that pollutes the minds it needs to evolve with is a profoundly sick society.

You must have the self-discipline to daily question what is healthy and what is not. For health is not a matter of opinion. Health is a benchmark. Without this benchmark, you cannot discern what is useful from what is not useful.

As such, belief and certainty are the greatest obstacles blocking us from being able to discard what is not useful. This is especially dangerous when those beliefs and certainties are derived from the cultural conditioning of a profoundly sick society. Hence the importance of vigilance and strategic prudence.

In order to remain undeceived, we must remain circumspect. The Sword of Truth must be unleashed daily so that it may cut through the red tape of wishful thinking, irrational beliefs, and whimsical certitude.

It is only when our naïve beliefs have been shattered upon the hard concrete of reality that we are free to distinguish between what is healthy and what is not. As we begin to piece things together, we become undeceived. We are liberated to absorb what is useful and discard what is not.

Add what is uniquely your own:

“Small minds discuss people. Average minds discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas.” ~Henry Thomas Buckle

Once you have successfully threshed the chaff (unhealthy/useless) from the grain (healthy/useful), you are free to unleash your creativity. From swords to plowshares, your Sword of Truth becomes a Pen of Truth. With it, you are free to create high art; art that shatters molds, stretches comfort zones, and initiates wake up calls. You become free to prove why the pen will always be mightier than the sword.

Here, still, we must remain vigilant. For even art can become dogmatic. In order not to be deceived, we must always be in a state of questioning what we think we know and weighing it against the nonnegotiable scales of healthy/unhealthy. Should our art become dogmatic, we would be wise to absorb what is useful from it and discard what is not. This way we will always be openminded and openhearted enough to add what is uniquely our own.

Outdated truth must die so that it doesn’t taint the updated truth of the times. God must die so that God can be reborn. Creativity thrives off the ashes of old art. Evolution progresses or stagnates in proportion to how creative we can be after having absorbed what is useful (healthy) and discarding what is not (unhealthy).

The art of being undeceived is more like the juggler’s art than the interrogator’s. It should be flexible and adaptable to meet results which are sudden and unexpected. The undeceived understand that the self is masks all the way down perceiving delusions all the way up, and they have the acumen and the wherewithal to juggle both masks and delusions into a state of high humor and even higher art.

We Won’t Be Free Until Our Minds Are Free

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

There’s a quote from an ancient Buddhist text called the Dhammapada that’s often translated as, “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.”

In other words our mental habits shape our personality and determine how that personality will behave, and that behavior contributes to the shaping of the world.

We see a similar line in the Upanishads of Hinduism: “As is your desire, so is your intention. As is your intention, so is your will. As is your will, so is your deed. As is your deed, so is your destiny.”

These are two different ways of expressing the same timeless observation we see pop up in various forms throughout philosophical traditions around the world: that our actions arise from our thoughts and our thoughts arise from our conditioned mental habits, so we need to be very careful about what those mental habits are since it will ultimately determine our destiny.

But the people who pour the most energy and attention into this timeless observation as a group are not the Buddhists, nor the Hindus, nor any religious or philosophical tradition at all. Those who are the most interested in studying and acting upon this insight are the powerful people who rule this world.

The powerful understand that because people’s actions follow from their thoughts and the destiny of the world follows from people’s actions, if you can control the thoughts people think at mass scale you can control the destiny of the world.

Control the way people collectively think about things and you can control the way they act, you can control the way they organize, and you can control the way they vote. This is important because people have become more literate and better at sharing information over the years, and therefore more aware of the value of freedom and equality, so it’s gotten harder and harder to deny them freedom and equality without sparking violent revolutions and winding up with your head in a basket.

Power structures of more “enlightened” societies have addressed this dilemma by giving people the illusion of freedom snd equality while still keeping them enslaved to the agendas of their rulers via mass-scale psychological manipulation. Media institutions, online platforms and think tanks are dominated by plutocrats in coordination with secretive government agencies to ensure that the information the majority of people consume serves the social, political, military and geostrategic interests of the ruling power structure.

This is why when you watch the news on TV it always kind of feels like they are deceiving you; that’s exactly what’s happening. Information that is inconvenient for the powerful is omitted, while information that serves the powerful is amplified and twisted in the most convenient light possible.

This happens not because the media-controlling class is personally leaning over the shoulder of every news reporter and instructing them to lie, but because if you control who runs a media outlet then you control who they will hire and who they will elevate, naturally giving rise to a system wherein reporters understand that the only way for them to advance their careers is to promote narratives which serve the ruling power establishment and marginalize narratives which don’t.

The best way to manipulate people without their knowing it is to appeal to their strongest and most unconscious impulses. In practice this means tugging at the psychological hooks of the ego, which at their base level are fear and identity. If you’ve made a strong identity out of something like belonging to a certain political party or a certain ideological or ethnic group, then it will carry a lot of egoic weight for you. If you’re in a fear state then there will be a lot of egoic contraction and you’ll consequentially take your thoughts very seriously.

If you can appeal to people’s base impulses of fear and identification it becomes very easy to insert ideas into their minds and give them new mental habits, and that’s exactly what propagandists do. You need to fear the terrorists, the Russians and the Chinese, because they’re going to harm you. You need to support the Democratic Party and everything its pundits tell you, because that’s your tribe. Those anti-vaxxers over there are your real enemy, not the nuclear-armed globe-spanning power structure that is driving our world to its doom in myriad ways. And on and on and on.

They give us the illusion of freedom, but as long as they chain our minds with propaganda we are not free. It wouldn’t matter if they gave us every personal liberty imaginable if a critical mass of us were still thinking in ways which benefit the powerful, because those thoughts would cause us to act, organize and vote in a way that benefits our rulers and not us.

If we want to free our minds from the chains of power, it’s not enough to do research and memorize a bunch of facts about what’s really going on in our nation and our world. The most important step to freeing our minds from their shackles is to remove from ourselves the psychological hooks of fear and identity to which those shackles are attached. This means freeing ourselves from the delusions of egoic consciousness, which, funny enough, brings us right back around to the central tenets of Buddhism and Hinduism again.

As long as humanity is enslaved to the ego it will remain enslaved to abusive power structures, because manipulators will always be able to use our egoic hooks to propagandize us into supporting their interests at mass scale. Until then it won’t ultimately matter how many civil liberties we gain or lose, because we’ll still be unable to move beyond the bonds of our psychological chains.

Not until humanity collectively breaks free from the gravitational pull of egoic consciousness will we truly blast off into the real potentiality of our species.