Warning: this episode gets a bit schizo. For some of you, this is right up your alley. For others, well, just think of all the things you once thought you knew for sure and how many of those narratives have since been exposed as sophisticated confidence tricks. I’m not asking anyone to believe or disbelieve anything I say. I’m just putting it out there because I have found it helpful and think it might be helpful to others, so if it resonates with you, cool. If not, that’s okay too. I discuss the latest “current thing” crisis, the USA getting involved in the war between Israel and Iran, briefly. I don’t want to dwell on it. There is little that I can really do. I have written to my senators and congressman urging that we not involve ourselves in any more needless foreign conflicts, even though I know that doesn’t really do much (the form letter I got back from one of them showed that no one in his office even read what I wrote). With such high-level geopolitical issues, the outcome is pre-ordained. The politicians are just actors reading from their respective scripts. I can determine that a red line for me is that I will not allow my children to be conscripted to fight and die for Jared Kushner’s real estate portfolio or Netanyahu’s government or anything else like that. The powers that be would have to kill me, and they would no doubt happily do so if I stood in their way of drafting my children, but that’s my red line. Otherwise, there is not much I can do about this escalating Middle East conflict, so I plan to NOT pay much attention to it. Because I have learned (better late than never) that there are spiritual costs when we pay attention and get emotionally invested in the social engineers’ narratives (either for them or in opposition to them). I was watching Owen Benjamin’s breakdown of the movie A Cabin in the Woods, which shows some profound truths about how social engineering works, and I was really hit with something: the social engineering tricks work only because, on some level, we want them to. If we didn’t want anything the regime’s confidence men were selling, they would not be able to convince us to buy it (especially not more than once). We do live in a realm of bullshit piled on top of bullshit, and we start getting hit with the magic spells and propaganda before we can even talk, mostly by people who have, themselves, been mesmerized and propagandized into believing these lies as if they were gospel truth. The social engineers are combining ancient techniques of advanced spell-casting with technological marvels that are even greater than whatever the public has access to. Like the devil these social engineers serve, they (usually) know us better than we know ourselves. Whereas we tend to lie to ourselves about our flaws and weaknesses, they carefully study these vulnerabilities and work them into their sales pitches. By lying to ourselves, we give them the opportunities they need to exploit us. The PsyOps work only because we want them to work. On some level, we wanted whatever they were selling, and for the most part, what they were selling was (and continues to be) something for nothing. Maybe it’s a false certainty that everything is under control, that the adults are in charge, and that we can “trust the plan.” Maybe it’s that by wearing a piece of cloth or getting an injection we will be healthy. Maybe it’s that we can just stay home all day every day for weeks or months on end and that the world will keep working like it always has even as we withdraw from it. Maybe it’s a sense of moral superiority that our empire is being maintained because of our commitment to such ideals as freedom and human rights. Maybe it’s a belief that we shouldn’t have to bear any responsibility for the crimes of our empire because one particular tribe of people and their country in the Middle East tricked us into all of it, and maybe this belief is coupled with (usually) a contradictory belief that we have a *right* to enjoy the lifestyle of comfort and convenience that living in the heart of our bankster-run empire, with its world-reserve currency, once allowed Americans to have. In other words, maybe it’s a belief that we should be able to have our cake and eat it too, and then blame the cake merchant and the credit card company when the bill comes due. Maybe we believed the regime’s founding myths about World War II because they allowed us to feel like the good guys who deserved all that postwar economic success. Maybe we believe that we can accept the benefits of empire but save our souls by condemning the people and practices that make that empire possible. Maybe we believe that we are one of the very few smart one who see how hopeless everything is, and that we have a rare form of psychological courage that allows us to take the blackpill with no chaser. Maybe we believe that this, in turn, gives us standing to judge and condemn everyone who lacks the insight and courage to take the blackpill too, thereby absolving us of any moral responsibility towards those around us. We can eat as much, and drink as much, and be as merry as we like, because the whole thing is going to hell anyway, and we don’t owe anyone else a damned thing, because what have they ever done for us? There are lots of luxury beliefs that are based in, or that implicate, some falsehoods that we’d rather not have to confront (especially about ourselves). “The truth shall make you free,” said Jesus. But that freedom isn’t free. It requires giving up some of our most cherished beliefs about ourselves and our world. But the alternative is remaining in deception, and as long as we want to be deceived, there will be evil sorcerers willing to enchant us with their spells. They lend us some illusion of goodness or rightness, or some comfort or convenience, or they give us some nice-sounding justification for our hypocrisy or an excuse for our cowardice. This leads to a “reality debt,” and eventually, we have to make payments on that debt. How do we pay? One way is by “paying attention” — they really want our attention devoted to some things and diverted from other things, and if you notice where and how they direct people’s attention, you can see some interesting patterns. Another way is by rolling over our original reality debt into a new loan, some kind of new narrative or justification or excuse that allows us to maintain our illusions about ourselves and our involvement with the world. The only way out is to acknowledge that their confidence tricks worked on us because we, on some level, were willing partners: we wanted what they were selling and were willing to compromise to get it. None of this is to minimize the evil of the regime’s wicked witches and fraudulent wizards. They have consciously chosen evil and rejected good and are spiritually dead because of it. They have their reward, and their punishment. But just as you can condemn a burglar who broke into a car, so too you can derive lessons from car burglaries: don’t leave valuables in plain sight, don’t park in poorly lit or out of the way areas, etc. Even as we condemn the pathocratic elites for their crimes, so too can we derive valuable lessons from the devastating effectiveness of their confidence schemes. In this podcast episode, I discuss the PsyOps I have fallen for and the lessons (I think) I have learned from those experiences. And even those PsyOps I didn’t fall for, I see how the regime’s wizards had presented me (and millions of others) with a “magicians’ choice” that redirected my attention and energy back into their desired outcome, and I participated in their “trick” because on some level I wanted what they were selling. Remember how their dialectic works: they will send you a “bad cop” to sell you a bad idea, and if you see through it and reject it, they will have one of their “good cops” come up to you with the opposite idea. But as has often been said, the opposite of a bad idea is probably also a bad idea. Or as Aristotle noted about vicious extremes, their opposite is another vicious extreme (but it is one that will probably be packaged and sold to you as if it is a virtuous fix for your problems). So what is the virtuous mean that avoids vicious extremes? The life of Christ. The Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Impossible to define, but you can experience it and abide in it in a very real way, even in this fallen, f****d up world. “The thief comes only to steal, to kill, and to destroy, but I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.” (John 10: 10.) We are like sheep without a shepherd, and the world we inhabit is a factory farm governed by bloodthirsty wolves. It makes sense to blackpill about the future of this world; even from a Christian perspective, the New Testament repeatedly says that, in the end, this world is doomed. But in the here and now, we can experience the beginnings of Christ’s abundant life and be an instrument through which that light brightens the world around us. Whatever is eternal about our being can be improved by the struggle to be Good in a world that rewards evil, to discern Truth in a world that enshrines falsehood, and to create Beauty in a world that celebrates ugliness. The True God cannot give us the experience of overcoming the corrupting influence of a fallen world without allowing us to experience living in such a world, and I think the sobering truth is that this world reflects back to you much of what you bring to it; the world can corrupt you because something in you is corruptible, something in you wants to be corrupted and willingly accepts the bargains the devil offered you. God is real, and Christ is the way, not *out*, but *through*. In this episode, I cite or discuss the following: Owen Benjamin’s analysis of the movie Cabin in the Woods, which is behind a paywall on Ladle.
