Wow! This was a masterpiece, each separate theme insightfully articulated and woven together into a powerful whole. The tribute to your grandmother was beautiful, the comparison of her memorial to your godmother's funeral was amazingly apt, and the analogy of individual life-cycles and death to that of entire cultures was profoundly perfect. If you publish a book with your best essays, this one has to be in there. This piece warrants multiple readings and much contemplation and conversation between readings. You really captured so much, so concisely, and so memorably.
That's one thing that encourages me about substacks like yours: the same spirit that inspired the greatest art and science and philosophy through the ages is still very much alive and well. Our culture may be dying, and its parasitic elites may have no care or concern beyond feeding on its corpse until nothing is left, but given the creative genius that is so palpably flowing through substack and other such hangouts for the dissident right today, we can be sure that another renaissance of cultural beauty will come. As you said, it's Springtime!
Thanks, man. It took me a week to write this one. To be honest I still wasn't entirely happy with it, it still felt unfinished ... but perhaps that was for the best....
Beautifully written, John, and glorious illustrations. I think the world is the hallucination of our collective death wish, the suicide urge of an eternal being. But that's a story for another time.
Now there's an interesting perspective. Indeed, is existence not the continual incarnation and excruciation of the godhead? That which must die, that it may live.
I'll reply to myself so it goes to both of you. I think we're the only mad god around, demiurge. And we're only the god of this mad dream, not reality. If we really are One Mind, as the mystics of every tradition say, the world can be our collective delusion, subjective rather than objective reality. It's a theory that fits the data, and should be considered.
The only other two possibilities is that God is a monster, who created evil as some kind of psychopathic test, or we are god the psychopath, who are creating evil. The latter is more hopeful than the former, but not by much.
Is there such a thing as good/evil, some would argue that the concept is a religious belief and that we are just sentient animals.
Or maybe zeus created women to unleash evil and torment mankind. Or maybe we are our own demiurge... mage the awakening had an interesting take on it. Atlantean mages broke into the supernal realms, becoming gods, then sealed the entry. They use their powers to control humanity, keeping them down in the material fallen world.
You've clearly outlined the other two possibilities. If we're just sentient animals there is no good and evil because we're each the product of genetics and environment, nothing more. So evil doesn't exist, any more than good does.
And the other possibility is that some supernatural creator force unleashed evil because it is evil and likes torture because it's sadistic.
If the second is true, death is really our best option because life is just suffering and the forces are arrayed against us. But there's no more evidence for that than my theory, that God and reality may be all-good but we're having a nightmare that's a pocket where reality doesn't exist. When we make this into a good dream, we won't be afraid to wake up. That seems like a more useful idea of the supernatural to entertain--not believe, but allow ourselves to question what seems to be reality.
You say "God and reality may be all-good but we're having a nightmare that's a pocket where reality doesn't exist. When we make this into a good dream, we won't be afraid to wake up. ". And you also refer to the Demiurge.
Yes :)
I think that it was the invention of the technology of language which caused us to forget that each one of us is just a highly simplified, hugely compressed model/avatar or representation of our far greater real selves, ( and that the world we each apparently live in is also a model, created by our far greater real selves in order to better track and manage its increasingky complex attention processes ), because language created such distractingly awesome special effects, was so ultra immersive.
You could say that language is the Demiurge.
The model, this little avatar that i call "me", of my unimaginably vaster real self, and the unknowably vast reality that self is a part of, has an important purpose, and we might have always remembered that, and our role in it, what we *really* are, if it had not been for language, the beguiling/seductive fascination of labelling things, black and white, good and bad, etc, and the illusion it created that *we* were gods, creating the world.
Worth remembering that language is a left hemisphere function; the right hemisphere, which is the part of the brain that directly perceives/experiences reality, is inarticulate. The left hemisphere, by contrast, is that part which uses reality ... and inhabits a model of it, rather than experiencing it directly.
:) Yes, absolutely! :) I almost posted a PS to that effect last evening! :) ..... And now ( with ref WEF/lizard brain too ) I'm really understanding that the brain isn't always, or ever, exactly unanimous ..... and until the model of the attention processes imposed a filter and drowned the majority of them ( in unconsciousness/outside of our "working" awareness ) the cacophony of "voices" fighting for dominance must have been horrendous. As Julian Jaynes ( "The Bicameral Mind" .... or should that be multicameral? ) says, once upon a time we actually heard those voices, as if they were gods and/or other people talking to us or with us .... .... Which one did we used to identify with? ... The attention processes model is in the parietal lobe I think, but the whole of the brain, and the rest of the body including the gastroenteric ( ent ) nervous system, etc etc etc, is represented/modelled in it .... Our avatar might have felt like a pair/group, not one. Weird. Identifying *with* it would not have been so easy, even post-language-invention, the illusion of *being* our avatar much less powerful.. But it was the "language-tech-based-god" that pushed to censor/make inaudible the other "voices" ( a "jealous god" ) .... .... NB. Little children refer to themselves in the third person for the first couple of years.
Yes, I think what you and John are saying are both consistent with my model. Language is differentiation, mostly into you as separate from me. The God of Genesis names things into being, and then there's the tree of judgment into good and evil. Once that enters in, the 'I' needs to differentiate from the 'you' in order to see myself as better. The only place I'd differ from your definition is the word 'selves'. If this is our shared delusion, internal and subjective, we can only be dreaming the same dream because we're really One Self.
*Reality* is one, indivisible, but we each have/"live in"/"experience" our own individual/separate model /"illusion"... for as long as we identify with our avatars in those models.
The past three years certainly have brought a lot into focus. Before covid, I thought that people were basically good, the government was basically doing its job, and that I would never be faced with any real crisis in my life. But growth is not possible without a crisis. Covid has been the great mirror of our time -- it shows us who we really are and what we really value. There will be some bad years ahead, but that's preferable to the slow creep of mediocrity.
Yes, was thinking this today. Almost grateful for the last 3 years which forced me to wake up. Still not popular as an unclean RN. Finally got an exemption. Occasionally I wonder if ignorance is bliss. Went back to healthcare 2 months ago. That's very difficult. Should have been a plumber.
I'm in the same boat with regards to working in healthcare without a covid vaccination. I can still work as there are currently no mandates, but everything that happened the last 3 years has made me unmotivated to work in this field. Seeing all colleagues falling for the propaganda, and denouncing everyone that does not fall for it as some sort of schizophrenic conspiracy theorist, wakes you up real fast to how this society functions.
I always knew most people are too dumb, or simply too scared, to form independent opinions but seeing how easily this all happened during covid was like a slap in the face. Even most of the people that did knew what was going on acquiesced just out of fear of being not the same as the herd or losing a job. And of course it is not easy to lose a job, but it is better to lose a job than to take an expiremental vaccine and sacrifice your beliefs and the autonomy over your own body. Millions of people in history died for their beliefs, and the current population does whatever the masters say without their even being any threat to their lives.
On a happier note, you are a great writer and I hope you can make enough money of this thing to replace your lost job in academia.
Much of the current population is as up describe, but a significant minority refused to acquiesce and have gained a degree of moral confidence they never knew before.
1) In Spengler's model of civilizational winter he predicts the rise of populist strongmen. He predicted that “the 20th century has and will continue to be …a period of imperialism and annihilation wars. Science will stop reaching certainties (although technology continues to accelerate…). The people reject common goals. Art is reduced to fashion, and innovation as a concept is cheapened and trivialized. Between the 21st and 23rd centuries, Caesarism [will rise] again in the continuation of ‘civilizational winter'. The politics of brute force returns to break the stranglehold of money…it seems that tribal strength surges and ‘impersonal’ institutions decay. Weak ties and complex bureaucracies (fueled by “money”) are severed in favor of strong ties and absolutism (fueled by “blood”). Nuance and the essence of the high culture decays gently into the dirt.”
That being said, is that what we are seeing? One can see the possibility with Brexit, Trump, Bolsonaro, Viktor Orban, and Putin. A counter to this argument, though, is that these strongmen are losing re-elections (Trump, Bolsonaro), they are weak on the world stage (Orban), and/or continuing massive cooperation with globohomo (Putin, for multiple reasons). It looks like this system, highly reliant on technology for ever increasing control, is *rapidly advancing* instead of buckling before populist politicians; if so, it would disprove Spengler’s thesis, although it remains to be seen if these trends continue.
2) Is western civilization dying as a result of suicide, or is it being (or has it been) murdered -- perhaps as a result of the forces of capitalism, which seeks to *convert* every non-tangible element of life (community trust, concepts of honor, integrity, religion, etc) into something commoditized and tradable in a market -- or a combination? That is a very complicated question, requiring a great deal of analysis...
Regarding 1), it is early days yet, and the system still has great force within it. That it is fighting so desperately against the rise of the old gods suggests the trajectory of history is not in favor of the money power. Remember that Spengler's prediction went out for another two centuries....
Regarding 2) if it is being murdered - and there is a good argument to be made that this is so - it is via stealth, by poisoning, rather than by force.
None of Brexit, Trump, Bolsanaro, Orban or Putin can possibly halt the great decay, or even slow it down. Nor will the next round of 'populistas'. We are not voting out way out of this and put not your trust in a Kwizatz Hadarach.
I feel like we're still in the parasitic takeover, and haven't quite reached the Who Is John Galt stage yet. But people are starting to drop out and build gulches....
Good news and bad news. First the good news: this was so good that when I finished I actually went back to the beginning and read it all over again. The bad news? You've forced me to become a paid subscriber, you b*astard!
I've noticed something. The worldwide madness has bypassed certain places. Small, insignificant, humble communities. Many don't know what's going on, but they want to live. They love what is good, true and beautiful. Young people still fall in love, marry and have babies. Maybe this is an instance of the meek inheriting the earth.
John, you could be my twin with what you express but your writing suggests a somewhat younger man.
One thing that got me through the red pill experience is personal physical pursuits and sometimes, accomplishments. Be they they frozen desolate mountain tops, huge granite walls, vast and deep oceans, or soaring with the birds.... Physical trials you set for yourself not against (cause you'll lose) but in conjunction with nature.
Don't get too wrapped up in the bullshit cycle because it is all bullshit and there's nothing external to yourself that you control.
You're absolutely correct. When I got redpilled, I took the ironpill shortly after. The reader I quoted at the end is a case in point, as well. When you learn to see the evil, you are then able to see the good, and make a real choice as to the influence with which to align your life.
This is the most beautiful, harsh and poignant article I have read probably ever. Thankyou
"the soil must be receptive to the seed" genius.
I would only add that " the unyeilding snaps" and the addaptable might yet survive to begin this whole hullabaloo over again. Kind of makes me want to Riverdance.
It seems that even Bertrand Russell couldn't escape the shortcomings of his own assumptions. Tellingly, he wrote:
"The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain—a curious wild pain—a searching for something beyond what the world contains, something transfigured and infinite—the beatific vision—God…"
Someone described it as "a need to believe in God", particularly present apparently in those with high levels of fluid intelligence, ie the tendency to see/create patterns, to attribute agency and ascribe cause and effect; a need/yearning for a "final cause".
I felt it myself for years, and eventually "gave in", did like Peter Pan and repeated "I believe in God" over and over again to myself until I stopped laughing/sniggering ... and had the most astonishing experience of feeling safe, as if I had been wandering/scuttling/creeping in a wasteland/field of battle, surrounded on all sides by enemies, and had suddenly arrived "home".
Pastel-light yet distinct serene melancholy suits you 😔 And soothes grateful souls. The multitudes must have gone rogue and refuse to remain contained 😉
I've just inadvertently developed a knack for collecting labels from ye exquisite Rolo's crowd 😇 Stupid faggot, robot, vauge schizo oracle, and larper so far. Not sure zizactly what 'take ur meds' translates to: care to break it down for me, so I can file properly? 🤭
--
ETA On 2nd thought, I could have slapped a qualifier Whitman's onto the multitudes above, and found a way to point at antanaclasis implied—might have helped some strangers in the dark 😏 My bad.
Yeah, shouting into hurricanes . . . very appropriate. We are far beyond reasoning or convincing, the body of the West is indeed just a husk now. I saw this exact thing happen with my grandmother and mother, they were dead long before their bodies stopped living. An extended period of grief and loss as you describe.
A really great, though painful, analogy for how I feel about our society, culture and many people around me. I think many of us are now at the acceptance stage of grief. Only from here can we move on. And we will move on. Empires may crumble, but strong individuals remain.
damn. I don't know who U are or how I even found U but this is one of the top 5 best things I've read on Substack. right up there with Paul Kingsnorth.
Wow! This was a masterpiece, each separate theme insightfully articulated and woven together into a powerful whole. The tribute to your grandmother was beautiful, the comparison of her memorial to your godmother's funeral was amazingly apt, and the analogy of individual life-cycles and death to that of entire cultures was profoundly perfect. If you publish a book with your best essays, this one has to be in there. This piece warrants multiple readings and much contemplation and conversation between readings. You really captured so much, so concisely, and so memorably.
That's one thing that encourages me about substacks like yours: the same spirit that inspired the greatest art and science and philosophy through the ages is still very much alive and well. Our culture may be dying, and its parasitic elites may have no care or concern beyond feeding on its corpse until nothing is left, but given the creative genius that is so palpably flowing through substack and other such hangouts for the dissident right today, we can be sure that another renaissance of cultural beauty will come. As you said, it's Springtime!
Thanks, man. It took me a week to write this one. To be honest I still wasn't entirely happy with it, it still felt unfinished ... but perhaps that was for the best....
As with any work of art... the greater art of it lies in knowing when to call it complete and then to leave it alone... in that a work of perfection.
A neo-hellenic spring... the abrahamics can be cast down to hecate as the olympians retake their throne.
You said it, Daniel.
Beautifully written, John, and glorious illustrations. I think the world is the hallucination of our collective death wish, the suicide urge of an eternal being. But that's a story for another time.
Thank you, Tereza.
Now there's an interesting perspective. Indeed, is existence not the continual incarnation and excruciation of the godhead? That which must die, that it may live.
I'll reply to myself so it goes to both of you. I think we're the only mad god around, demiurge. And we're only the god of this mad dream, not reality. If we really are One Mind, as the mystics of every tradition say, the world can be our collective delusion, subjective rather than objective reality. It's a theory that fits the data, and should be considered.
The only other two possibilities is that God is a monster, who created evil as some kind of psychopathic test, or we are god the psychopath, who are creating evil. The latter is more hopeful than the former, but not by much.
Is there such a thing as good/evil, some would argue that the concept is a religious belief and that we are just sentient animals.
Or maybe zeus created women to unleash evil and torment mankind. Or maybe we are our own demiurge... mage the awakening had an interesting take on it. Atlantean mages broke into the supernal realms, becoming gods, then sealed the entry. They use their powers to control humanity, keeping them down in the material fallen world.
You've clearly outlined the other two possibilities. If we're just sentient animals there is no good and evil because we're each the product of genetics and environment, nothing more. So evil doesn't exist, any more than good does.
And the other possibility is that some supernatural creator force unleashed evil because it is evil and likes torture because it's sadistic.
If the second is true, death is really our best option because life is just suffering and the forces are arrayed against us. But there's no more evidence for that than my theory, that God and reality may be all-good but we're having a nightmare that's a pocket where reality doesn't exist. When we make this into a good dream, we won't be afraid to wake up. That seems like a more useful idea of the supernatural to entertain--not believe, but allow ourselves to question what seems to be reality.
You say "God and reality may be all-good but we're having a nightmare that's a pocket where reality doesn't exist. When we make this into a good dream, we won't be afraid to wake up. ". And you also refer to the Demiurge.
Yes :)
I think that it was the invention of the technology of language which caused us to forget that each one of us is just a highly simplified, hugely compressed model/avatar or representation of our far greater real selves, ( and that the world we each apparently live in is also a model, created by our far greater real selves in order to better track and manage its increasingky complex attention processes ), because language created such distractingly awesome special effects, was so ultra immersive.
You could say that language is the Demiurge.
The model, this little avatar that i call "me", of my unimaginably vaster real self, and the unknowably vast reality that self is a part of, has an important purpose, and we might have always remembered that, and our role in it, what we *really* are, if it had not been for language, the beguiling/seductive fascination of labelling things, black and white, good and bad, etc, and the illusion it created that *we* were gods, creating the world.
Worth remembering that language is a left hemisphere function; the right hemisphere, which is the part of the brain that directly perceives/experiences reality, is inarticulate. The left hemisphere, by contrast, is that part which uses reality ... and inhabits a model of it, rather than experiencing it directly.
I think this is consistent with your model.
:) Yes, absolutely! :) I almost posted a PS to that effect last evening! :) ..... And now ( with ref WEF/lizard brain too ) I'm really understanding that the brain isn't always, or ever, exactly unanimous ..... and until the model of the attention processes imposed a filter and drowned the majority of them ( in unconsciousness/outside of our "working" awareness ) the cacophony of "voices" fighting for dominance must have been horrendous. As Julian Jaynes ( "The Bicameral Mind" .... or should that be multicameral? ) says, once upon a time we actually heard those voices, as if they were gods and/or other people talking to us or with us .... .... Which one did we used to identify with? ... The attention processes model is in the parietal lobe I think, but the whole of the brain, and the rest of the body including the gastroenteric ( ent ) nervous system, etc etc etc, is represented/modelled in it .... Our avatar might have felt like a pair/group, not one. Weird. Identifying *with* it would not have been so easy, even post-language-invention, the illusion of *being* our avatar much less powerful.. But it was the "language-tech-based-god" that pushed to censor/make inaudible the other "voices" ( a "jealous god" ) .... .... NB. Little children refer to themselves in the third person for the first couple of years.
Yes, I think what you and John are saying are both consistent with my model. Language is differentiation, mostly into you as separate from me. The God of Genesis names things into being, and then there's the tree of judgment into good and evil. Once that enters in, the 'I' needs to differentiate from the 'you' in order to see myself as better. The only place I'd differ from your definition is the word 'selves'. If this is our shared delusion, internal and subjective, we can only be dreaming the same dream because we're really One Self.
*Reality* is one, indivisible, but we each have/"live in"/"experience" our own individual/separate model /"illusion"... for as long as we identify with our avatars in those models.
Perhaps the work of a mad god... a void dragon? An unending cycle of death and rebirth
The past three years certainly have brought a lot into focus. Before covid, I thought that people were basically good, the government was basically doing its job, and that I would never be faced with any real crisis in my life. But growth is not possible without a crisis. Covid has been the great mirror of our time -- it shows us who we really are and what we really value. There will be some bad years ahead, but that's preferable to the slow creep of mediocrity.
Yes, was thinking this today. Almost grateful for the last 3 years which forced me to wake up. Still not popular as an unclean RN. Finally got an exemption. Occasionally I wonder if ignorance is bliss. Went back to healthcare 2 months ago. That's very difficult. Should have been a plumber.
I'm in the same boat with regards to working in healthcare without a covid vaccination. I can still work as there are currently no mandates, but everything that happened the last 3 years has made me unmotivated to work in this field. Seeing all colleagues falling for the propaganda, and denouncing everyone that does not fall for it as some sort of schizophrenic conspiracy theorist, wakes you up real fast to how this society functions.
Guess I should have been a plumber.
I had a similar reaction. Realizing how easily programmed one's colleagues are, and how little they value truth and autonomy, was highly demotivating.
I always knew most people are too dumb, or simply too scared, to form independent opinions but seeing how easily this all happened during covid was like a slap in the face. Even most of the people that did knew what was going on acquiesced just out of fear of being not the same as the herd or losing a job. And of course it is not easy to lose a job, but it is better to lose a job than to take an expiremental vaccine and sacrifice your beliefs and the autonomy over your own body. Millions of people in history died for their beliefs, and the current population does whatever the masters say without their even being any threat to their lives.
On a happier note, you are a great writer and I hope you can make enough money of this thing to replace your lost job in academia.
Much of the current population is as up describe, but a significant minority refused to acquiesce and have gained a degree of moral confidence they never knew before.
And cheers! I hope so too.
Co-workers are pushing back against the mask mandates being relaxed in non patient care areas😣
Very nice post. A couple of comments:
1) In Spengler's model of civilizational winter he predicts the rise of populist strongmen. He predicted that “the 20th century has and will continue to be …a period of imperialism and annihilation wars. Science will stop reaching certainties (although technology continues to accelerate…). The people reject common goals. Art is reduced to fashion, and innovation as a concept is cheapened and trivialized. Between the 21st and 23rd centuries, Caesarism [will rise] again in the continuation of ‘civilizational winter'. The politics of brute force returns to break the stranglehold of money…it seems that tribal strength surges and ‘impersonal’ institutions decay. Weak ties and complex bureaucracies (fueled by “money”) are severed in favor of strong ties and absolutism (fueled by “blood”). Nuance and the essence of the high culture decays gently into the dirt.”
That being said, is that what we are seeing? One can see the possibility with Brexit, Trump, Bolsonaro, Viktor Orban, and Putin. A counter to this argument, though, is that these strongmen are losing re-elections (Trump, Bolsonaro), they are weak on the world stage (Orban), and/or continuing massive cooperation with globohomo (Putin, for multiple reasons). It looks like this system, highly reliant on technology for ever increasing control, is *rapidly advancing* instead of buckling before populist politicians; if so, it would disprove Spengler’s thesis, although it remains to be seen if these trends continue.
2) Is western civilization dying as a result of suicide, or is it being (or has it been) murdered -- perhaps as a result of the forces of capitalism, which seeks to *convert* every non-tangible element of life (community trust, concepts of honor, integrity, religion, etc) into something commoditized and tradable in a market -- or a combination? That is a very complicated question, requiring a great deal of analysis...
Regarding 1), it is early days yet, and the system still has great force within it. That it is fighting so desperately against the rise of the old gods suggests the trajectory of history is not in favor of the money power. Remember that Spengler's prediction went out for another two centuries....
Regarding 2) if it is being murdered - and there is a good argument to be made that this is so - it is via stealth, by poisoning, rather than by force.
I blame the abrahamics... most of our ills are associated with them. The global homo noahide is very popular with xtians and juice
None of Brexit, Trump, Bolsanaro, Orban or Putin can possibly halt the great decay, or even slow it down. Nor will the next round of 'populistas'. We are not voting out way out of this and put not your trust in a Kwizatz Hadarach.
Remember when Atlas Shrugged was considered fiction? Pepperidge Farms remembers, too.
I feel like we're still in the parasitic takeover, and haven't quite reached the Who Is John Galt stage yet. But people are starting to drop out and build gulches....
You’re probably right but we can see it from here.
Good news and bad news. First the good news: this was so good that when I finished I actually went back to the beginning and read it all over again. The bad news? You've forced me to become a paid subscriber, you b*astard!
That's the kind of bad news I love to get.
I've noticed something. The worldwide madness has bypassed certain places. Small, insignificant, humble communities. Many don't know what's going on, but they want to live. They love what is good, true and beautiful. Young people still fall in love, marry and have babies. Maybe this is an instance of the meek inheriting the earth.
Meek is often misinterpreted, it actually means disciplined warrior.
I remember coming across this somewhere, and finding that to be a very interesting interpretation.
Perhaps this?
https://identitydixie.com/2020/02/11/the-meek-shall-inherit-nothing-%ef%bb%bf/
That's good, but no, I don't think it was there. I think it might have been a book I was reading about the literary origins of the Bible.
Meek is not weak.
It means doing instead of boasting.
John, you could be my twin with what you express but your writing suggests a somewhat younger man.
One thing that got me through the red pill experience is personal physical pursuits and sometimes, accomplishments. Be they they frozen desolate mountain tops, huge granite walls, vast and deep oceans, or soaring with the birds.... Physical trials you set for yourself not against (cause you'll lose) but in conjunction with nature.
Don't get too wrapped up in the bullshit cycle because it is all bullshit and there's nothing external to yourself that you control.
Great article btw.
You're absolutely correct. When I got redpilled, I took the ironpill shortly after. The reader I quoted at the end is a case in point, as well. When you learn to see the evil, you are then able to see the good, and make a real choice as to the influence with which to align your life.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7Ub3oL4q9jo/WRaKaMUuVlI/AAAAAAAAdJo/XYLmFkqaGS8Kj2LhzspExf442Lre0YBKwCLcB/s1600/greenpill3%2B-%2BCopy.jpg
Yes.
Light does reveal the dark, stinky lies we've been fed.
This is the most beautiful, harsh and poignant article I have read probably ever. Thankyou
"the soil must be receptive to the seed" genius.
I would only add that " the unyeilding snaps" and the addaptable might yet survive to begin this whole hullabaloo over again. Kind of makes me want to Riverdance.
Terrific.
It seems that even Bertrand Russell couldn't escape the shortcomings of his own assumptions. Tellingly, he wrote:
"The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain—a curious wild pain—a searching for something beyond what the world contains, something transfigured and infinite—the beatific vision—God…"
Interesting. So many of them are at war with their own instincts.
Someone described it as "a need to believe in God", particularly present apparently in those with high levels of fluid intelligence, ie the tendency to see/create patterns, to attribute agency and ascribe cause and effect; a need/yearning for a "final cause".
I felt it myself for years, and eventually "gave in", did like Peter Pan and repeated "I believe in God" over and over again to myself until I stopped laughing/sniggering ... and had the most astonishing experience of feeling safe, as if I had been wandering/scuttling/creeping in a wasteland/field of battle, surrounded on all sides by enemies, and had suddenly arrived "home".
PS. Said it out loud, to myself. I don't know if it would have worked if I'd said it silently/under my breath.
There is genuine power in verbalized prayer of that sort.
Pastel-light yet distinct serene melancholy suits you 😔 And soothes grateful souls. The multitudes must have gone rogue and refuse to remain contained 😉
I've always suffered from an excess of black bile ;)
One lad's suffering is another lass's d-lite 🤸
Careful with such compliments, you'll bring too much delight, and dry up the suffering :)
Are you larping as a skitshow? Rolo referred to them as being shamans...
I've just inadvertently developed a knack for collecting labels from ye exquisite Rolo's crowd 😇 Stupid faggot, robot, vauge schizo oracle, and larper so far. Not sure zizactly what 'take ur meds' translates to: care to break it down for me, so I can file properly? 🤭
--
ETA On 2nd thought, I could have slapped a qualifier Whitman's onto the multitudes above, and found a way to point at antanaclasis implied—might have helped some strangers in the dark 😏 My bad.
Daiva, have you been trolling Rolo's comments? 😏
😂 Not an eensy tad more than yours 😏
😂
Thank you for writing. There’s a lot of beauty still around, it’s true. I feel like everything is going to be ok in the end.
We're all gonna make it.
Albedo, citrinas, rubedo, negredo..
The putrefaction, the separation of the salts.
The rapid heating, volatisation brings out the essence, and the fermentation followed by the distillation brings forth the spirit.
Recombination into tonic
Salve et coagulum.
Yeah, shouting into hurricanes . . . very appropriate. We are far beyond reasoning or convincing, the body of the West is indeed just a husk now. I saw this exact thing happen with my grandmother and mother, they were dead long before their bodies stopped living. An extended period of grief and loss as you describe.
A really great, though painful, analogy for how I feel about our society, culture and many people around me. I think many of us are now at the acceptance stage of grief. Only from here can we move on. And we will move on. Empires may crumble, but strong individuals remain.
There's always a next generation - the death of the old need not prevent the life of the young. For cultures as well as individuals.
Something not alive but also not dead... a ghoul. The perfected slave?
damn. I don't know who U are or how I even found U but this is one of the top 5 best things I've read on Substack. right up there with Paul Kingsnorth.
keep it up sir...
Wow, thank you!
this is the essay I needed to read today. thank you.