Very thought provoking, Johan, thank you. The modern archetype of the non-conforming child who must be excluded, converted, drugged, or regendered, is eerily similar to that of the heretic don't you think?
Thanks for the kind words. I fully agree, and this is an important observation.
A lot of people have mentioned how there's really no redemption within the current worldview and its downstream politics. Offenders and wrongthinkers are heretics without any obvious means for forgiveness or reintegration.
Apart from the biopolitics' health. Curing the political dissident becomes the only conceivable means of reintegrating him/her into the community, which possibly will further the pathologization of nonconformism.
On that note, there's an argument that ADHD traits are simply adaptations to pre-civilizational patterns of society:
So well written and thought out! Thank you! I have come to think the profound ability of conscious to render any object into a symbol, a conceptual model that can be moved forward and backwards in time, attributes parsed out of, and of course, personal bias applied to, has untethered from the reality it was created to represent. I believe this is the actual story of Narcissus. Not that he fell to vain glory but he came to misunderstand the symbol of himself for the reality. Our phones have hijacked this evolutionary flaw, but also, how much of our moment to moment existence permeated with symbolic thought? Our words are carriers of multiple layers of symbols, our jobs, actions, relationships... ect. And now the falcon cannot hear the falconer.
Thought about that issue too quite a bit during the last year. There is indeed an untethering of rational thought from reality; the former having been stunted and twisted towards meaningless games. And the impact of mediation and digital technology here I think is profound far beyond our ability to really comprehend.
We need to go back to the land. Return to reading, reflection and meditation.
And Apollo flayed the satyr Marysyas, which always seemed to me an act of domination (and sadism) purely for domination's sake. And of course we are expected to take for granted that Apollo's music was better. Who knows? We might have preferred the satyr's music...
Just like of course modern medicine is better than, let's say, medieval women healers. Silvia Federici writes about the witch burnings in that context, and how the newly minted male surgeons needed to discredit centuries of trust in the old healers,. And AI is better than humans. etc. etc. . . .
It's interesting because I thought that this idea that any kind of "suffering"--physical, emotional, spiritual--is an expression of failure or something to be immediately excised was particularly American. Or maybe European. But even places where I thought people would resist this rush towards biomedical totalitarianism, like Mexico, have, in a sense gone along.
Jul 31, 2022·edited Aug 2, 2022Liked by laughlyn (johan eddebo)
They aren't curing me of anything!
Excellent essay.
My advice is to start a garden and learn how to grow food without killing everything with elite poisons. Only then will all this come home, a garden is just the start. Not going to happen anytime soon so prepare for maximum carnage!
I made this comment on another stack that posted your essay: All people are seeking now is to be entertained. Even suffering and death entertains them!
Even the people who are highlighting the suffering and deaths from this current and deadly injection mania in an effort to warn others are simply being entertained! Hahahahaha!
I planted a bunch of apple trees out at the old family farm. The place is almost deserted now. Hopefully a little orchard will help. But there needs to be an entire village founded.
And yes, we approach almost everything as entertainment. I see that in myself as well. It's a disease of the mind into which we've been trained since childhood, I guess. Neil Postman was quite right about all of that.
I'm not familiar with Neil Postman. We shouldn't want to eat too many apples it seems our bodies can't process fructose very well. Feed them to farm animals would be good. Berries are good, on the tree list are mulberries, then all the other bushes and canes, nut trees are good, some large fruit has less fructose I have one here the Siberian peach. We have been so habituated to sugary flavor we don't know how food tastes. Of course, prepare garden beds and cover them in cardboard & straw every year. If you have to retreat back to the farm they will be ready for the veggie seeds. And if protein is needed, all this food will attract the meat!
I like how at least one of your commenters below invoked Yeats.
This essay gets to the heart of how decoupled our current myths have become from where our ancestors began. Understanding that health is the held to be only metric of success in the upside down version of the human community is absolutely key to unraveling these knots.
I think you quoted meditation 38 of the Tao te Ching at the end of one of the more recent Aesthetic Resistance podcasts, so I will just write out a few lines that encapsulate the wisdom you are relaying.
There when Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is kindness.
When kindness is lost, there is justice.
When justice is lost, there is ritual.
Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.
Knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of Tao.
Very thought provoking, Johan, thank you. The modern archetype of the non-conforming child who must be excluded, converted, drugged, or regendered, is eerily similar to that of the heretic don't you think?
Thanks for the kind words. I fully agree, and this is an important observation.
A lot of people have mentioned how there's really no redemption within the current worldview and its downstream politics. Offenders and wrongthinkers are heretics without any obvious means for forgiveness or reintegration.
Apart from the biopolitics' health. Curing the political dissident becomes the only conceivable means of reintegrating him/her into the community, which possibly will further the pathologization of nonconformism.
On that note, there's an argument that ADHD traits are simply adaptations to pre-civilizational patterns of society:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7248073/
So well written and thought out! Thank you! I have come to think the profound ability of conscious to render any object into a symbol, a conceptual model that can be moved forward and backwards in time, attributes parsed out of, and of course, personal bias applied to, has untethered from the reality it was created to represent. I believe this is the actual story of Narcissus. Not that he fell to vain glory but he came to misunderstand the symbol of himself for the reality. Our phones have hijacked this evolutionary flaw, but also, how much of our moment to moment existence permeated with symbolic thought? Our words are carriers of multiple layers of symbols, our jobs, actions, relationships... ect. And now the falcon cannot hear the falconer.
Thought about that issue too quite a bit during the last year. There is indeed an untethering of rational thought from reality; the former having been stunted and twisted towards meaningless games. And the impact of mediation and digital technology here I think is profound far beyond our ability to really comprehend.
We need to go back to the land. Return to reading, reflection and meditation.
And Apollo flayed the satyr Marysyas, which always seemed to me an act of domination (and sadism) purely for domination's sake. And of course we are expected to take for granted that Apollo's music was better. Who knows? We might have preferred the satyr's music...
Just like of course modern medicine is better than, let's say, medieval women healers. Silvia Federici writes about the witch burnings in that context, and how the newly minted male surgeons needed to discredit centuries of trust in the old healers,. And AI is better than humans. etc. etc. . . .
It's interesting because I thought that this idea that any kind of "suffering"--physical, emotional, spiritual--is an expression of failure or something to be immediately excised was particularly American. Or maybe European. But even places where I thought people would resist this rush towards biomedical totalitarianism, like Mexico, have, in a sense gone along.
They aren't curing me of anything!
Excellent essay.
My advice is to start a garden and learn how to grow food without killing everything with elite poisons. Only then will all this come home, a garden is just the start. Not going to happen anytime soon so prepare for maximum carnage!
I made this comment on another stack that posted your essay: All people are seeking now is to be entertained. Even suffering and death entertains them!
Even the people who are highlighting the suffering and deaths from this current and deadly injection mania in an effort to warn others are simply being entertained! Hahahahaha!
I planted a bunch of apple trees out at the old family farm. The place is almost deserted now. Hopefully a little orchard will help. But there needs to be an entire village founded.
And yes, we approach almost everything as entertainment. I see that in myself as well. It's a disease of the mind into which we've been trained since childhood, I guess. Neil Postman was quite right about all of that.
I'm not familiar with Neil Postman. We shouldn't want to eat too many apples it seems our bodies can't process fructose very well. Feed them to farm animals would be good. Berries are good, on the tree list are mulberries, then all the other bushes and canes, nut trees are good, some large fruit has less fructose I have one here the Siberian peach. We have been so habituated to sugary flavor we don't know how food tastes. Of course, prepare garden beds and cover them in cardboard & straw every year. If you have to retreat back to the farm they will be ready for the veggie seeds. And if protein is needed, all this food will attract the meat!
If we have the sense we are born with, learning to use it and communicate it are important.
True words. To actively practice communication with others is of utmost importance, not least since everyone is so... Dissuaded from this, isolated.
It is like walking a tightrope over the Grand Canyon but yes it is even more essential now than it was for Thomas Paine.
I like how at least one of your commenters below invoked Yeats.
This essay gets to the heart of how decoupled our current myths have become from where our ancestors began. Understanding that health is the held to be only metric of success in the upside down version of the human community is absolutely key to unraveling these knots.
I think you quoted meditation 38 of the Tao te Ching at the end of one of the more recent Aesthetic Resistance podcasts, so I will just write out a few lines that encapsulate the wisdom you are relaying.
There when Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is kindness.
When kindness is lost, there is justice.
When justice is lost, there is ritual.
Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.
Knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of Tao.
It is the beginning of follow.