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?
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.
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 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?
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.
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!
If we have the sense we are born with, learning to use it and communicate it are important.
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.