Thanks, Joshua, for an excellent series. It's not been an easy read (haha) but a necessary one. While I've had a number of red pills throughout my life, none of them matched what happened during the Covid plandemic. I felt the horror you talk about. Like many of us, I was in a real-life remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. While I appreciate the childlike wonder you talk about, I have not been able to return to that, at least not consistently. Just a few moments. Five years later and I still have waves of horror as I look around me or as I read yet another red pill exposé. But the freedom and awareness it gives is worth it. Without all those red pills, I'm not sure I'd even be around. I know there's more to come and I welcome them.
Joshua, thank you so much. This series is more important than many may think. You’ve got your finger on the button and you offer choices to step out of the controlled system and reconnect with what is truly us. Please continue to share your realizations and findings as you go along. I extend to you my deepest gratitude! (And I can’t wait for you to tear the veil off the extremely fake “Faul” McCartney. Such cognitive dissonance when it comes to actually seeing the psyop that was the Beatles!)
“In the film The Truman Show, a man slowly discovers his entire life is a fabricated reality...
In Life, we each create a false identity of ourselves and then we spend our entire lifetime building further upon that empty foundation of falseness and defending that to the outside World – and to our own selves. What a waste.
The first thing to do to learn who you really are is – to learn who you really are! That would not a bad start. And once you first do that... everything else in Life becomes easier. Much easier. Why? Because you’re not living from a fatally-flawed central operating software concept in the first place.
OK, so Who are You? Guess what. We may look and think differently on the outside. But on the inside, the answer is the same for every person alive today or who have already left this Earth. You are the Seer and the Experiencer of Life. Not your Earthly personal history. Not the ideas in your head– many of which were never yours in the first place that were downloaded or forced into you. You are the consciousness that experiences your existence. Beyond that, any further answer is just unnecessary fluff.
How does one achieve ‘cognitive freedom’? Simple. Just remember who you really are. And to the degree that you can do that... then that is the degree of freedom you will experience and live with. And to the degree that you forget who you are or misidentify yourself as something else? That’s the amount you will be confused, disoriented, always-seeking-never-finding, and suffering. The choice is yours.
“Thought Dictators” don’t stand a chance when you remember Who you are. And that’s why They do everything they can through acculturation, through anti-social media, and through State Legacy Media and various other forms of mind-warping to try to make sure that you never learn the truth about yourself. Or what those bastards are always doing to you with bad intent.
Thanks a lot, Dark State 'masters'. Thanks for making our lives a living hell. And the karma you have sown will make sure that all you now have some fun things in store for yourselves in the not-too-distant future. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of Life-perverters.
Yes, this Game on Earth is rigged. But the nice thing is that when you see that for yourself you can’t un-see it... and you are changed forever. Those bastards have lost any power they may have once had over you. Your Life and your mind and soul are precious and are yours. Don’t ever let anyone steal those away... or just give those away yourself.
If They like living a false reality so much then let Them live in that for themselves. And you can go right on with your own life never once again burdened by living a false identity imposed on you by Them, and by your own self.
Please read psychotherapist/neurologist Iain McGilchrist's giant study The Matter with Things, covering right and left brain inputs, consciousness and the nature of reality. People like Yuval Harari, Sapolsky and other materialists are stuck in a left-brain delusion of their own making. Yes, there is free will, and two-minutes' thought would explain why evolutionarily there has to be, even for single-celled creatures. To survive, any living thing has to know the difference between "me" and "not me"; ergo, we are not programmed, not even plants are. Current biology is operating in a 100 year old time warp, using a system of physics that no longer pertains. I can also recommend Bernardo Kastrup and the Essentia Foundation, and any number of participating physicists.
The Covid Show was a reminder to anyone who till then was spared, the governments do not work at behalf of the citizens interest. They are self serving, believing that they will be needed forever. Hopefully, the job slaughter brought about by automation and AI/Robotics will replace these bureaucrats sooner than they ever expected. After all, those who buy into lies and profit from them, should also get their own enlightenment moment. They are all expendable, just as the rest of humanity is, in the eyes and minds of a few.
Grok, reveal the best form of governance of a nation:
It must be economically sound.
It must make best use of financial resources.
There must be no opportunity for greed, graft or manipulation.
It must make the best use of human resources and creativity.
Its laws must call for basic goodness, kindness, nobility, gentleness, self-control.
Each person must enjoy the heritage of freedom: to be free to speak without fear, free to worship God in their own way, free to stand for what they think right, free to oppose what they believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern their country.
Well done, this was a real opus. All 4 parts list substantial information. Anyone wonder why one is not living his/hers life in the best self-interest, should read this opus.
It's odd that the propaganda quality is low, despite the easy to use deep fake technology. They regularly make mistakes like the one you mentioned and it makes me wonder why aren't they spending a bit of time on quality assurance 😂.
Amazing how the brain decided before it was consciously decided. That's why we're able to do miraculous things like driving without being swamped by having to consciously choose every movement.
Iain McGilchrist's book The Matter with Things explains how the left and right hemisphere work in the brain.
The left hemisphere calculates linear solutions and always is "yes, yes, yes". It's up to the right hemisphere to either let it happen or inhibit the impulse by saying no.
I've listened to a lot of McGilchrist on podcasts, but I never heard his point distilled so simply as you say it: "The left hemisphere calculates linear solutions and always is "yes, yes, yes". It's up to the right hemisphere to either let it happen or inhibit the impulse by saying no."
My daughter's first word was "No" and she used it A LOT. It worried me at the time, but makes perfect sense in the context above. 2 decades on she's a truly gifted artist - totally right brain dominant and it is IMPOSSIBLE to get her to do anything she really doesn't want to do! Love it. Thanks.
Wow! A very convincing series of essays - well researched, argued and articulated. Impressive work. I found myself resonating with everything you said, which gave me pause. In the last few years I've become aware of reality tunnels, where one gets pushed along with the flow of like minded people, sometimes toward conclusions I wouldn't arrive at on my own. So I listened with my best discernment (I listened with the AI reader in the app).
At the very end I heard something that concerned me - your call for legislation to protect cognitive sovereignty. On the surface that makes total sense. But in the past 5 years I've come to recognize that the legal system is a huge player in the matrix of reality. It works hand in hand with the insurance system and the education system and all the other systems that form the web that hold us in society's thrall. Technically we have a legal right to bodily autonomy and informed consent, but somehow this has become wrapped up in requiring it to be part of a religious conviction. It was not possible to opt out of getting the covid shot in our state other than to provide a religious exemption as the reason. In some states, they have already removed the right to a religious exemption to attend school without being vaccinated. According to the constitution we're supposed to have guaranteed freedom of movement and assembly but somehow our legal right to opt out of vaccination by religious exemption makes it possible for state governments to remove that constitutional guarantee.
We have some sort of inherent right to not have our every move tracked by corporations and the government, not to have our data repackaged and sold. But if you don't agree to the smart contract for every app you use on your phone - and maybe even to use the phone itself, you can't use the app or the phone. There are all sorts of hoops you can jump through to try to limit the damage, but the onus is on the consumer and it's not easy. What happens if the same sort of playbook is used for cognitive sovereignty? At some point in the future when 70% of the population has sleepwalked their way to giving over to "voluntary" mind enhancement systems in exchange for whatever conveniences and safety are promised, all the system has to do is mount a massive fear campaign and turn them against anyone who has legally opted out. Even the ACLU turned against the unvaccinated. I think we need nothing short of a society-wide paradigm shift. But how?
“ Technically we have a legal right to bodily autonomy and informed consent, but somehow this has become wrapped up in requiring it to be part of a religious conviction... According to the constitution we're supposed to have guaranteed freedom of movement and assembly but somehow our legal right to opt out of vaccination by religious exemption makes it possible for state governments to remove that constitutional guarantee.“
I think I can help with this. Technically, there are two of you: a natural person and an artificial/legal person. The first was created by nature/god, the second by the state. Confusingly (by design) they both have the same name, though the legal name has a title appended to it (Mr/Mrs/Ms). Because they both have the same name (and it is not common knowledge that there are two separate entities) it is generally assumed that there is only one.
The state enjoys jurisdiction over the legal person as it created this entity with the unwitting complicity of your mother and father who filled out an application for your registration with said state. In the US the constitution guarantees the rights of the natural person. Whenever agents of the state ask your name they presume you are giving your *legal* name. Any form of identification such as a license is for a *legal* person. This conflation is technically called establishing joinder and places you, as a legal person, under the jurisdiction of the state and subject to its statutory laws. In contrast the natural person is subject only to natural law as established by the Bible.
This can quickly become a complex and confusing topic, but in essence it is quite simple.
Indeed. And yet it is not so easy to get on a plane as a natural woman (the word person seems to land us in a trap of some sort). Jumping into the fray of establishing our legal right to cognitive sovereignty seems like it could take us further into the maze. I think the only way to protect cognitive sovereignty might be to make all inventions and activities that can impact the cognitive sovereignty of human beings illegal or at least unprofitable. Take away the perverse incentive of exponential profits and/or exponential control and investment into that field would evaporate. Perhaps patent laws need to be altered. Currently it is not possible to patent a naturally occurring thing. But if you genetically alter it then it can be patented and profit can be made. I’ve long thought that this leaves a huge doorway open for perverse incentives. If patent laws were amended so that nothing that alters natural life can be patented that would reshape a lot of the nefarious activities that threaten humans and our world. But every sane person would agree on the impossibility of that happening.
Your name reminds me of a quote from a funny cartoon show (Sealab 2021, Stimutacs) "It is not the spoon that you wish to bend, but rather*the will* of the spoon."
It seems likely that our civil liberties associations are currently involved in countless legal battles heard in secret courts paid for by the taxpayers yet which refuse our access because the Covid-19 military operation FAKE PANDEMIC falls under the jurisdiction of national defense. Also, the vast majority of people complied with Covid-19 biofascism and therefore, if the civil liberties groups would have publicly refuted the "pandemic" then, they would have lost the monthly donations of the closeted authoritarians and blindly obedient fanatics. These legal challenges will last for years and maybe decades because the accused have retained the best corporate law firms funded by the enormous proceeds of crime stolen from the taxpayers and rightfully non-compliant workers like me.
When legal technicalities meet with carefully crafted cancel culture narratives and a population conditioned to want to “do the right thing” the system designed ostensibly to protect the people is open to exploitation. It is a formidable weapon against the people. My father used to rant against all forms of government regulation. I always thought he was wrong… until I realized he was right.
"These pattern interrupts—moments when something doesn't align with the manufactured narrative—aren't failures of the system but gifts of perception, holy cracks where light leaks through the dome."
Indeed, discernment and perception are our most important faculties going forward.
This was an excellent series, thank you! I appreciate the nuanced approach that dividing it into four parts offered. Also, the focus on pattern recognition. Well done!
You neglected something rather important: the social ramifications of awareness. It's rather lonely, save for internet communities like the one you're building here.
Namely, the ability to have conversations about any of it with anyone without substantial discovery of what they know, and where they're at, and what that might mean.
If you recall the Joseph Biden microphone video--some kind of unfortunate deepfake after a Marine One helicopter ride, where his hand passed through the fuzzy microphone--how am I (42) supposed to explain this to my boomer parents?
Or even if I could explain that a Joseph Biden video was indeed manipulated, how to begin to explain why? It's a lot of trouble to go to without any obvious payoff.
I'll repeat my comment from part 3; we (your audience) need to focus much more about *what to actually do*. A few lines about turning one's phone off once in a while aren't enough. And the notion that our minds can be protected through existing legal frameworks isn't very realistic.
We have more than enough information to take action. But what that action is, I wonder about daily.
Please keep up the good work. I think you'd be outstanding on a podcast, and whatever book you might write would be a home run.
Are you a Christian? (I’m Catholic.) Many of us Christians believe we’re just around the corner from the end times… that gives us LOTS to do, besides disengage from the cultural system and do lots of “prepping”… pray, receive the sacraments as often as possible, grow in virtue, do massive amounts of penance to bring down more grace for others, evangelize, do works of mercy, etc.
I think we’re close to a *fake* “aliens/extra terrestrials” so-called “disclosure” by the government (there are no aliens … they’re demons/ evil spirits) and also close to whatever the mark of the beast will be.
I experienced a lot of mind-blowing revelations in the past couple of years, like the ones described in this series, since I red-pilled over COVID and started investigating…
Joshua, I just want to thank you for your thoughtful analysis and for all of the information provided. I have been through this rabbit hole since 2013 and it is absolutely empowering to see how much of what was conspiratorial back then is being exposed by amazing research like yours. We as humans need to realize that we are in this together, and it takes courage to admit most of reality has been fabricated. You have a very thankful reader here.
Thankyou. I do find your essays fascinating. Some perceptual break throughs have seemed spiritual in nature. And metaphoric messaging for the transcendence of this perceptual prison appears ongoingly through written word and synchronicity. Your work here is a great service. I recall after years of dv counseling that pointed out coercive control patterning, the shamdemic including the abuse of those not getting vaccinated rang patterning bells and it all began to fall apart from there. I hope your essays reach much broader audience
This whole four part essay is soooo excellent that it should be in book form with many of your other works, Joshua!!! I cannot put into words how much my consciousness expanded and was delighted by all that I learned! Thank you! Thank you!!!
Off the top, presenting Yuval Harari as a credible 'warning' source is problematic, given his pivotal role in shaping the WEF Great Reset Psycho-social 'you will own nothing' Agenda. A snake-oil salesman of the first degree.
Teaching children critical thinking skills from an early age short-circuits the "hand that rocks the cradle" and unfettered social conditioning phenomena. More enabling kids HOW to think, rather than telling them WHAT to think. Sure, ya gotta learn your times tables if you want to be a scientist, but too much rote learning is a mind-killer. My ability to unsettle 'authority figures' from a young age by simply asking questions or holding my ground when things 'didn't make sense' taught me their gaslighting feet of clay. When they couldn't provide rational answers, the carefully titrated browbeating and coercion began. I was the 'nail' that stuck up above the rest, and routinely got hammered for my temerity to question the Received Wisdom. Turns out these were battles that needed to be fought for my own eventual mental freedom.
You seem to blur the lines between the Scientific Method and Scientism. Yes, many branches of Science are currently 'captured' (i.e. medical, psychiatric) due to the corruption of the Peer Review system, not because the Peer Review Concept itself is flawed. More 'who', rather than 'what' or 'how'. Pattern Recognition is an integral part of the Scientific Method, are you actually critiquing pointless Deconstruction to the nth degree?
Was Huxley and others you name willing participants, or was their work simply hijacked? As a deliberate hijacking example we can be sure of, Kary Mullis invented the PCR test, which was used to 'diagnose' Covid infections (to scare the masses). This despite his explicit warning that the PCR should NEVER, EVER be used to diagnose illness. Could the knowledge that the PCR was the wrong tool have made more people think twice about the whole Plandemic? It sure made my mind up. Mullis also openly called Fauci a fraud (over his role in the AIDS 'response') long before Covid was foisted upon us all. I will leave his untimely death for the conspiracy theorists to hash out, but it is something that makes me go 'hhhmmm'.
The entire Free Will theoretical clusterfuck is chasing a black cat in a dark room with your eyes closed, that probably isn't there, dead or alive. No-free-will is usually employed to claim God is actually in charge of our minds, though here you demonstrably posit the MKUltra 'system' is equally inescapable for most people. At some point humans must learn to take responsibility for their thoughts and actions or we are truly doomed. Whether MKUltra or religion, it makes little difference, as humans were slaughtering each other over "God's Will" since before recorded history.
I think we're talking past each other on several points:
First, I certainly wasn't presenting Harari as separate from the system - quite the opposite. His statements are disturbing precisely because he's an insider describing their agenda, not a critic warning against it.
On critical thinking, we're in complete agreement. Our modern educational frameworks descend from the Prussian school system, which was deliberately designed to produce compliance rather than independent thought - reshaping education toward rote learning and authority deference rather than critical thinking.
Regarding scientific method versus scientism - my point isn't that peer review itself is flawed, but that institutional control over what constitutes "acceptable" inquiry renders the process compromised. The mechanisms of scientific knowledge production have been captured through funding, publication gatekeeping, and career incentives.
On Huxley - I barely touch on this here and go into a little more detail about their backgrounds in the Technocratic Blueprint. I can't claim to know the Huxleys' intent - nor do I - but I make my case for why it may not have been entirely pure:
And yes, Kary Mullis's convenient death shortly before his PCR test became the foundation of global policy is one of those timing 'coincidences' that keeps appearing in these systems. His voice on AIDS - and climate change - is very important.
I never suggested these control mechanisms are inescapable - my entire purpose in documenting them is to help people recognize and resist them. Understanding a system's architecture is the first step toward neutralizing its effects.
I appreciate your contribution to the conversation, though I think you may have misunderstood some of my core arguments.
“On critical thinking, we're in complete agreement. Our modern educational frameworks descend from the Prussian school system, which was deliberately designed to produce compliance rather than independent thought - reshaping education toward rote learning and authority deference rather than critical thinking.”
“critical thinking”: On the surface, this seems ideal. In reality, it is less workable. Why? We grow up in varying degrees of dysfunctional families. The family is the original basic root for each of us, and what happens in those formative years is crucial to our selfhood. Each human is also affected by geographical, cultural, societal, intellectual, physical, financial, educational, genetic and constitutional situations around them.
We need merely to look around us, not just locally, but nationally (or at least to examine the Western world).
The examination needs to go beyond the last decade, but at least in the last half century to capture a slightly better overview of who we are. In the main, do we not seek a sense of order and stability to better conduct our short lives? Further, most of us are not leaders. Most are followers. Many need rote and are not fully capable of critical thinking. They are about the business of sorting out the conditions of their lives: emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually.
One merely has to examine a family of, say, 8 children to realize that, despite very similar upbringings, each child is very different and unique. The parents recognize the differences in potential, talents, and intellectual and emotional capacity. In the main, loving wise parents embrace the varied capabilities of all their children and create an atmosphere for maximum growth. Applied to society, it would embrace systems to encompass the varied capabilities of its citizens. Wouldn’t this necessarily utilize the best of rote - and the call to critical thinking?
I appreciate your thoughtful response, Donna. You raise important questions about human diversity and the practical challenges of implementing critical thinking broadly.
We're in complete agreement that people have vastly different capabilities and circumstances. I'm not suggesting we turn everyone into independent researchers or eliminate all structure and guidance.
But that opens up more questions: if not critical thinking as a foundational skill, then what's the alternative? Being subordinate? To who?
When you suggest "systems to encompass the varied capabilities of citizens," who gets to design those systems? Who decides what's best for whom? History shows us repeatedly what happens when some people accept permanent follower roles while others claim the right to perpetually lead them.
The manipulation techniques I've documented don't respect individual differences - they target universal psychological vulnerabilities that exist across all intelligence and capability levels. They work precisely because they bypass conscious reasoning entirely, affecting the brilliant and the struggling equally.
Critical thinking, at its most basic level, isn't complex philosophical analysis. It's pattern recognition: Can someone sense when their emotions are being manipulated? Can they recognize obvious contradictions? Can they ask: "who benefits?"
These aren't advanced intellectual skills - they're survival instincts that have been systematically dulled in all of us, regardless of our other capabilities.
I'm not advocating for chaos. I'm suggesting that basic discernment - the ability to recognize when you're being lied to - should be considered a fundamental human capacity worth developing in everyone, alongside whatever other support systems they may need. Easier said that done, I realize - especially in our carefully manufactured existence.
Regarding education. John Taylor Gatto and Charlotte Iserbyt wrote of the dumbing down of America. Bush's No Child Left Behind and Obama's Race to the Top/Common Core were essentially the Federalization of education into indoctrination - the lowest wasn't raised up the highest was brought down. This created the Woke generation and trans stupidity.
We indeed are talking about a multi-vector control grid, and education is one of the vectors.
"You seem to blur the lines between the Scientific Method and Scientism. Yes, many branches of Science are currently 'captured' (i.e. medical, psychiatric) due to the corruption of the Peer Review system, not because the Peer Review Concept itself is flawed. More 'who', rather than 'what' or 'how'. "
---
As to the 'what' and 'how', the biggest factor that comes to my mind is WHEN. Like, when a government shuts down science due to its challenge affecting policy "too much" (various samples from UAP and invention science with Dr.Steven Greer, to the APA being bullied into censuring a 1998 study that challenged the status-quo "too much".
Big Science/little science, it just doesn't matter. The "weaker" groups get marginalized (i.e. see Dr.Judy Mikovits on the politcs of viral research at Fort Detrick), while the "strong" groups (like the APA) get threatened (with having their funding cut and legitimacy vacated).
Bottom line, science, big or small, has been shown to be just another form of religion. With legions of uncritical Believers all starry-eyed about so-called "objectivity" and a rather small group on the top (whomever's in power in government) who make the final call on whatever controversy (when it truly counts).
I promote you read a batch of authors i've stumbled across on this topic. You might start with Michael Polanyi, Thomas Kuhn, and, for the academics out there, Paul Feyerabend's book 'Against Method'. I thought that Theodore Roszak made some exceptional demystification in his book 'The Making of a Counterculture' in the chapter on objectivity in science. Finally, there's Vine DeLoria ("Red Earth, White Lies").
Basic challenges to all science include: reductionism ideology, myth of objectivity, the structure of scientific revolutions, assumption of emotions as categorically without value, and more!
Nice post. I agree critical thinking is the bomb. But your advice "humans must learn to take responsibility for their thought and actions" will never happen for most humans. Sure we should foster critical thinking and open-mindedness. The more of it the better. But if you look around with the open mind you seem to have, you might notice, as I have, most are either not capable or not willing to follow that path. Which is why I disagree with your hostility towards religions. I agree most have been pretty bad. Christianity however, is the best platform for human thriving to ever come along. The ultimate Truth or a bunch of myths I don't know. But no denying its net positive impact. Of course all hierarchies are corrupt, or quickly become corrupt, including the Church. But the dogma is a force for good. People will believe in something like that, or something else - invariably something worse. I used to knock Christianity too, until I woke up and saw what happens in its absence. Sure, like any ideology it's often used by demagogues for evil purposes, that happens with anything. Look how they turned science into "The Science".
Hey, a friend turned me onto this excellent looking series. Having been a student of such topics over many years, i'll admit to not having read this in its entirety (only snippets, and the conclusion); but i still feel that i can add to the dialogue (and will be reading over the rest of the article).
SteelJ said:
" most are either not capable or not willing to follow that path."
--
I know that there's a *crucial context* to their reasoning but it is a reasoning that many within the elite, "well" educated, community never seem to want to demystify...for curiously intrigueing reasons. Precisely, the CONTEXT of people's lives and WHY they do what they do, and the elite/managerial beliefs that serve to buttress their (severely alienated) belief in people's stupidity.
(We are stupid-ized, not inherently stupid)
So, when we look at people's CONTEXT, we see that they are largely psychologically genocided very early on. As kids. Where, all around them/us is a social arrangement hell-bent on war and maintaining the empire. At almost all costs (short of nuking, most of the time). Where programs like MKULTRA only scratch surfaces!
You look at it from an non-settler/non-europeon-centric, decolonization perspective and you begin to see a systematic pattern, deeper than that found in the MKULTRA critique; from nuclearized families (and their lack of connection, anymore, to extended family), to compulsory schooling embracing whatever ideology gives them the most funding (i.e. MBD, ADD, ADHD ideology coming to the fore just as "Rollback" (via the Trilateralists, with Walter Mondale) kicks in in the late 1970s/early 80s. (See Noam Chomsky's speech/small book "Media Control" for an indepth exploration).
You read someone like "Wewa Wewo" ("Just Leave Us Alone") or John Trudell (best in video; author of the idea "psychologically genocided" i think), or the diverse voices at unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com and you can start to see strictures thru-out the entire cult-ure.
But we are not encouraged to understand. We ARE encouraged to do everything else (all in the Machiavellian-esque virtual playbook). We are encouraged to conform, to Follow, to Shut Up, and keep our heads down. We are encouraged to fear and hate each other, etc. ad nauseum.
I agree we are stupidized. And that "We are encouraged to fear and hate each other, etc. ad nauseum". Where I think I disagree with you is you think that's an excuse (if I'm reading you right). I think being susceptible to such stupidization and encouragement shows inherent stupidity. If you don't want to call it stupidity, then it's some similar failure to kick in one's ability to think and see what's really what. Humans are naturally herd animals, authoritarian followers. But there is a subset who are not that way, and it's that subset who don't fall for the BS. IOW, being brainwashed or not is determined by who you were to start with, not the brainwashing process. As a steelhead and salmon fisherman, I liken it to those species. Most return to their natal streams to reproduce, or will die trying. But there is a small subset who roam, searching for other suitable streams to ascend. The existence of both groups are important for survival of the species - and obviously for the ability to expand range. People seem to have a similar grouping.
Yes, i guess i do see being stupid-ized as being an excuse.
But i don't agree with where you take this. It feels like exactly the kind of belief one gets after reading the Legacy (well-funded) Media too much.
Like Malcolm X said: "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you [judging] the people being oppressed, and loving the people doing the oppressing." Elites try to have the masses internalizing such values and then we are that much easier/maleable for wars at home and abroad, etc.
So to me, being 'susceptible' to coercion depends on what one's 'Frame of References' were growing up. If one is born and bred into the so-called "upper" classes, they are often stupid-ized in one way (i.e. cannot figure out how to fix their car) while being allowed to be 'smart' in other ways (i.e. manipulating people); while those born and bred into the so-called "lower" classes are stupid and smart in other ways, generally speaking.
But your illustration of the salmon, that's interesting and i can see what you mean. i just think that kind of reductionist assumption dovetails with what and how the feudal system (i.e. the shadow government still believing in 'Dark Age Ruling Control Forms') WANTS and ideologically BELIEVES IT NEEDS.
Why? Because authoritarians (i.e. combat survivors) coerce it, and few have been able to organize successfully beyond such. (I.e. when the public tries, they usually succumb to covert action, such as what the f.b.i. got caught doing with 'cointelpro' (lower case to show my dishonor towards them). Upon such a wide variety of nonviolent (and self-defensive) groups.
So, without this knowledge of various things that are put into place to "trip people up", it's easy, too easy, to have the same viewpoint as elites. Those elites whose position has been gotten in intensely cynical ways, i think.
The general failure of certain human "fish" depends, most crucially, on what kind of covert and overt violence (coming from many points, as bell hooks pointed out in her essay about patriarchy) contributes to their/our collective "psychological genocide". Those who do escape such with their hearts and wits intact (or at least partially) may well not have had it as heavy as others.
Why not think about this possibility?
For my own trajectory, i was deeply duped and didn't start waking up in any deep way until, in my 20s, i found myself faced with rigid hypocrisy (by chance, i suppose). Then, wanting to explore alternatives that i had previously ignored due to my absolutely naive trust in the Legacy Media and Given Authority in general.
"Par for the course" in today's n.america, i think.
"Free to fill one's belly, but fettered in mind and spirit."
As for the "herd" mentality? i think that's a wrong-headed reductionism that should be challenged! People, like other animals, group together because they have been intuitively oriented to groupings. Tending to trust more in each other than the 'individualist' design. (Btw, i don't buy into the seemingly prevailing and alienated idea that animals are somehow "lesser" than us humans. Just because they cannot devise cynical ways to treat each other, etc., doesn't mean they are Dumb!)
That that tendency of extended family or village is despised (and curiously deeply distrusted) by elites, is a crucial insight. Something critical thinkers would do well to scrutinize carefully before swallowing!
Thanks, Joshua, for an excellent series. It's not been an easy read (haha) but a necessary one. While I've had a number of red pills throughout my life, none of them matched what happened during the Covid plandemic. I felt the horror you talk about. Like many of us, I was in a real-life remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. While I appreciate the childlike wonder you talk about, I have not been able to return to that, at least not consistently. Just a few moments. Five years later and I still have waves of horror as I look around me or as I read yet another red pill exposé. But the freedom and awareness it gives is worth it. Without all those red pills, I'm not sure I'd even be around. I know there's more to come and I welcome them.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers is exactly how it feels, still, unfortunately. What a time to be alive.
Indeed
Joshua, thank you so much. This series is more important than many may think. You’ve got your finger on the button and you offer choices to step out of the controlled system and reconnect with what is truly us. Please continue to share your realizations and findings as you go along. I extend to you my deepest gratitude! (And I can’t wait for you to tear the veil off the extremely fake “Faul” McCartney. Such cognitive dissonance when it comes to actually seeing the psyop that was the Beatles!)
How about Make Cognitive Sovereignty a Human Right Again t-shirts and hats?
Thank you for your work, Josh.
“In the film The Truman Show, a man slowly discovers his entire life is a fabricated reality...
In Life, we each create a false identity of ourselves and then we spend our entire lifetime building further upon that empty foundation of falseness and defending that to the outside World – and to our own selves. What a waste.
The first thing to do to learn who you really are is – to learn who you really are! That would not a bad start. And once you first do that... everything else in Life becomes easier. Much easier. Why? Because you’re not living from a fatally-flawed central operating software concept in the first place.
OK, so Who are You? Guess what. We may look and think differently on the outside. But on the inside, the answer is the same for every person alive today or who have already left this Earth. You are the Seer and the Experiencer of Life. Not your Earthly personal history. Not the ideas in your head– many of which were never yours in the first place that were downloaded or forced into you. You are the consciousness that experiences your existence. Beyond that, any further answer is just unnecessary fluff.
How does one achieve ‘cognitive freedom’? Simple. Just remember who you really are. And to the degree that you can do that... then that is the degree of freedom you will experience and live with. And to the degree that you forget who you are or misidentify yourself as something else? That’s the amount you will be confused, disoriented, always-seeking-never-finding, and suffering. The choice is yours.
“Thought Dictators” don’t stand a chance when you remember Who you are. And that’s why They do everything they can through acculturation, through anti-social media, and through State Legacy Media and various other forms of mind-warping to try to make sure that you never learn the truth about yourself. Or what those bastards are always doing to you with bad intent.
Thanks a lot, Dark State 'masters'. Thanks for making our lives a living hell. And the karma you have sown will make sure that all you now have some fun things in store for yourselves in the not-too-distant future. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of Life-perverters.
Yes, this Game on Earth is rigged. But the nice thing is that when you see that for yourself you can’t un-see it... and you are changed forever. Those bastards have lost any power they may have once had over you. Your Life and your mind and soul are precious and are yours. Don’t ever let anyone steal those away... or just give those away yourself.
If They like living a false reality so much then let Them live in that for themselves. And you can go right on with your own life never once again burdened by living a false identity imposed on you by Them, and by your own self.
And that’s when your life really begins...
Please read psychotherapist/neurologist Iain McGilchrist's giant study The Matter with Things, covering right and left brain inputs, consciousness and the nature of reality. People like Yuval Harari, Sapolsky and other materialists are stuck in a left-brain delusion of their own making. Yes, there is free will, and two-minutes' thought would explain why evolutionarily there has to be, even for single-celled creatures. To survive, any living thing has to know the difference between "me" and "not me"; ergo, we are not programmed, not even plants are. Current biology is operating in a 100 year old time warp, using a system of physics that no longer pertains. I can also recommend Bernardo Kastrup and the Essentia Foundation, and any number of participating physicists.
The Covid Show was a reminder to anyone who till then was spared, the governments do not work at behalf of the citizens interest. They are self serving, believing that they will be needed forever. Hopefully, the job slaughter brought about by automation and AI/Robotics will replace these bureaucrats sooner than they ever expected. After all, those who buy into lies and profit from them, should also get their own enlightenment moment. They are all expendable, just as the rest of humanity is, in the eyes and minds of a few.
As in?:
Grok, reveal the best form of governance of a nation:
It must be economically sound.
It must make best use of financial resources.
There must be no opportunity for greed, graft or manipulation.
It must make the best use of human resources and creativity.
Its laws must call for basic goodness, kindness, nobility, gentleness, self-control.
Each person must enjoy the heritage of freedom: to be free to speak without fear, free to worship God in their own way, free to stand for what they think right, free to oppose what they believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern their country.
Well done, this was a real opus. All 4 parts list substantial information. Anyone wonder why one is not living his/hers life in the best self-interest, should read this opus.
It's odd that the propaganda quality is low, despite the easy to use deep fake technology. They regularly make mistakes like the one you mentioned and it makes me wonder why aren't they spending a bit of time on quality assurance 😂.
https://robc137.substack.com/p/looking-behind-the-curtain-of-oz
As for free will, I've learned that it's actually free won't.
https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2019/03/our-brains-reveal-our-choices-before-were-even-aware-of-them--st
Amazing how the brain decided before it was consciously decided. That's why we're able to do miraculous things like driving without being swamped by having to consciously choose every movement.
Iain McGilchrist's book The Matter with Things explains how the left and right hemisphere work in the brain.
The left hemisphere calculates linear solutions and always is "yes, yes, yes". It's up to the right hemisphere to either let it happen or inhibit the impulse by saying no.
https://iainmcgilchrist.substack.com/p/metaphors-can-make-you-blind
And here's where I saw a good example of the contrast between left hemisphere bias vs a whole brain which has proper balance.
https://robc137.substack.com/p/left-brain-vs-whole-brain-in-battlestar
The low quality of eg the AI photos and videos of Kate Middleton is possibly a deliberate revelation of the method?
I've listened to a lot of McGilchrist on podcasts, but I never heard his point distilled so simply as you say it: "The left hemisphere calculates linear solutions and always is "yes, yes, yes". It's up to the right hemisphere to either let it happen or inhibit the impulse by saying no."
My daughter's first word was "No" and she used it A LOT. It worried me at the time, but makes perfect sense in the context above. 2 decades on she's a truly gifted artist - totally right brain dominant and it is IMPOSSIBLE to get her to do anything she really doesn't want to do! Love it. Thanks.
Wow! A very convincing series of essays - well researched, argued and articulated. Impressive work. I found myself resonating with everything you said, which gave me pause. In the last few years I've become aware of reality tunnels, where one gets pushed along with the flow of like minded people, sometimes toward conclusions I wouldn't arrive at on my own. So I listened with my best discernment (I listened with the AI reader in the app).
At the very end I heard something that concerned me - your call for legislation to protect cognitive sovereignty. On the surface that makes total sense. But in the past 5 years I've come to recognize that the legal system is a huge player in the matrix of reality. It works hand in hand with the insurance system and the education system and all the other systems that form the web that hold us in society's thrall. Technically we have a legal right to bodily autonomy and informed consent, but somehow this has become wrapped up in requiring it to be part of a religious conviction. It was not possible to opt out of getting the covid shot in our state other than to provide a religious exemption as the reason. In some states, they have already removed the right to a religious exemption to attend school without being vaccinated. According to the constitution we're supposed to have guaranteed freedom of movement and assembly but somehow our legal right to opt out of vaccination by religious exemption makes it possible for state governments to remove that constitutional guarantee.
We have some sort of inherent right to not have our every move tracked by corporations and the government, not to have our data repackaged and sold. But if you don't agree to the smart contract for every app you use on your phone - and maybe even to use the phone itself, you can't use the app or the phone. There are all sorts of hoops you can jump through to try to limit the damage, but the onus is on the consumer and it's not easy. What happens if the same sort of playbook is used for cognitive sovereignty? At some point in the future when 70% of the population has sleepwalked their way to giving over to "voluntary" mind enhancement systems in exchange for whatever conveniences and safety are promised, all the system has to do is mount a massive fear campaign and turn them against anyone who has legally opted out. Even the ACLU turned against the unvaccinated. I think we need nothing short of a society-wide paradigm shift. But how?
“ Technically we have a legal right to bodily autonomy and informed consent, but somehow this has become wrapped up in requiring it to be part of a religious conviction... According to the constitution we're supposed to have guaranteed freedom of movement and assembly but somehow our legal right to opt out of vaccination by religious exemption makes it possible for state governments to remove that constitutional guarantee.“
I think I can help with this. Technically, there are two of you: a natural person and an artificial/legal person. The first was created by nature/god, the second by the state. Confusingly (by design) they both have the same name, though the legal name has a title appended to it (Mr/Mrs/Ms). Because they both have the same name (and it is not common knowledge that there are two separate entities) it is generally assumed that there is only one.
The state enjoys jurisdiction over the legal person as it created this entity with the unwitting complicity of your mother and father who filled out an application for your registration with said state. In the US the constitution guarantees the rights of the natural person. Whenever agents of the state ask your name they presume you are giving your *legal* name. Any form of identification such as a license is for a *legal* person. This conflation is technically called establishing joinder and places you, as a legal person, under the jurisdiction of the state and subject to its statutory laws. In contrast the natural person is subject only to natural law as established by the Bible.
This can quickly become a complex and confusing topic, but in essence it is quite simple.
Indeed. And yet it is not so easy to get on a plane as a natural woman (the word person seems to land us in a trap of some sort). Jumping into the fray of establishing our legal right to cognitive sovereignty seems like it could take us further into the maze. I think the only way to protect cognitive sovereignty might be to make all inventions and activities that can impact the cognitive sovereignty of human beings illegal or at least unprofitable. Take away the perverse incentive of exponential profits and/or exponential control and investment into that field would evaporate. Perhaps patent laws need to be altered. Currently it is not possible to patent a naturally occurring thing. But if you genetically alter it then it can be patented and profit can be made. I’ve long thought that this leaves a huge doorway open for perverse incentives. If patent laws were amended so that nothing that alters natural life can be patented that would reshape a lot of the nefarious activities that threaten humans and our world. But every sane person would agree on the impossibility of that happening.
Your name reminds me of a quote from a funny cartoon show (Sealab 2021, Stimutacs) "It is not the spoon that you wish to bend, but rather*the will* of the spoon."
Good times.
It seems likely that our civil liberties associations are currently involved in countless legal battles heard in secret courts paid for by the taxpayers yet which refuse our access because the Covid-19 military operation FAKE PANDEMIC falls under the jurisdiction of national defense. Also, the vast majority of people complied with Covid-19 biofascism and therefore, if the civil liberties groups would have publicly refuted the "pandemic" then, they would have lost the monthly donations of the closeted authoritarians and blindly obedient fanatics. These legal challenges will last for years and maybe decades because the accused have retained the best corporate law firms funded by the enormous proceeds of crime stolen from the taxpayers and rightfully non-compliant workers like me.
https://thenationaltelegraph.com/national/canadian-crown-corporations-coerced-employees-with-fake-vaccine-mandate/
When legal technicalities meet with carefully crafted cancel culture narratives and a population conditioned to want to “do the right thing” the system designed ostensibly to protect the people is open to exploitation. It is a formidable weapon against the people. My father used to rant against all forms of government regulation. I always thought he was wrong… until I realized he was right.
"These pattern interrupts—moments when something doesn't align with the manufactured narrative—aren't failures of the system but gifts of perception, holy cracks where light leaks through the dome."
Indeed, discernment and perception are our most important faculties going forward.
This was an excellent series, thank you! I appreciate the nuanced approach that dividing it into four parts offered. Also, the focus on pattern recognition. Well done!
You neglected something rather important: the social ramifications of awareness. It's rather lonely, save for internet communities like the one you're building here.
Namely, the ability to have conversations about any of it with anyone without substantial discovery of what they know, and where they're at, and what that might mean.
If you recall the Joseph Biden microphone video--some kind of unfortunate deepfake after a Marine One helicopter ride, where his hand passed through the fuzzy microphone--how am I (42) supposed to explain this to my boomer parents?
Or even if I could explain that a Joseph Biden video was indeed manipulated, how to begin to explain why? It's a lot of trouble to go to without any obvious payoff.
I'll repeat my comment from part 3; we (your audience) need to focus much more about *what to actually do*. A few lines about turning one's phone off once in a while aren't enough. And the notion that our minds can be protected through existing legal frameworks isn't very realistic.
We have more than enough information to take action. But what that action is, I wonder about daily.
Please keep up the good work. I think you'd be outstanding on a podcast, and whatever book you might write would be a home run.
Thanks for the brilliant articles as always.
Are you a Christian? (I’m Catholic.) Many of us Christians believe we’re just around the corner from the end times… that gives us LOTS to do, besides disengage from the cultural system and do lots of “prepping”… pray, receive the sacraments as often as possible, grow in virtue, do massive amounts of penance to bring down more grace for others, evangelize, do works of mercy, etc.
I think we’re close to a *fake* “aliens/extra terrestrials” so-called “disclosure” by the government (there are no aliens … they’re demons/ evil spirits) and also close to whatever the mark of the beast will be.
I experienced a lot of mind-blowing revelations in the past couple of years, like the ones described in this series, since I red-pilled over COVID and started investigating…
Short answer yes, and I know what you mean.
Joshua, I just want to thank you for your thoughtful analysis and for all of the information provided. I have been through this rabbit hole since 2013 and it is absolutely empowering to see how much of what was conspiratorial back then is being exposed by amazing research like yours. We as humans need to realize that we are in this together, and it takes courage to admit most of reality has been fabricated. You have a very thankful reader here.
Thankyou. I do find your essays fascinating. Some perceptual break throughs have seemed spiritual in nature. And metaphoric messaging for the transcendence of this perceptual prison appears ongoingly through written word and synchronicity. Your work here is a great service. I recall after years of dv counseling that pointed out coercive control patterning, the shamdemic including the abuse of those not getting vaccinated rang patterning bells and it all began to fall apart from there. I hope your essays reach much broader audience
This is the exact content that I came to substack for: finding the truth about why things are the way they are
This whole four part essay is soooo excellent that it should be in book form with many of your other works, Joshua!!! I cannot put into words how much my consciousness expanded and was delighted by all that I learned! Thank you! Thank you!!!
Off the top, presenting Yuval Harari as a credible 'warning' source is problematic, given his pivotal role in shaping the WEF Great Reset Psycho-social 'you will own nothing' Agenda. A snake-oil salesman of the first degree.
Teaching children critical thinking skills from an early age short-circuits the "hand that rocks the cradle" and unfettered social conditioning phenomena. More enabling kids HOW to think, rather than telling them WHAT to think. Sure, ya gotta learn your times tables if you want to be a scientist, but too much rote learning is a mind-killer. My ability to unsettle 'authority figures' from a young age by simply asking questions or holding my ground when things 'didn't make sense' taught me their gaslighting feet of clay. When they couldn't provide rational answers, the carefully titrated browbeating and coercion began. I was the 'nail' that stuck up above the rest, and routinely got hammered for my temerity to question the Received Wisdom. Turns out these were battles that needed to be fought for my own eventual mental freedom.
You seem to blur the lines between the Scientific Method and Scientism. Yes, many branches of Science are currently 'captured' (i.e. medical, psychiatric) due to the corruption of the Peer Review system, not because the Peer Review Concept itself is flawed. More 'who', rather than 'what' or 'how'. Pattern Recognition is an integral part of the Scientific Method, are you actually critiquing pointless Deconstruction to the nth degree?
Was Huxley and others you name willing participants, or was their work simply hijacked? As a deliberate hijacking example we can be sure of, Kary Mullis invented the PCR test, which was used to 'diagnose' Covid infections (to scare the masses). This despite his explicit warning that the PCR should NEVER, EVER be used to diagnose illness. Could the knowledge that the PCR was the wrong tool have made more people think twice about the whole Plandemic? It sure made my mind up. Mullis also openly called Fauci a fraud (over his role in the AIDS 'response') long before Covid was foisted upon us all. I will leave his untimely death for the conspiracy theorists to hash out, but it is something that makes me go 'hhhmmm'.
The entire Free Will theoretical clusterfuck is chasing a black cat in a dark room with your eyes closed, that probably isn't there, dead or alive. No-free-will is usually employed to claim God is actually in charge of our minds, though here you demonstrably posit the MKUltra 'system' is equally inescapable for most people. At some point humans must learn to take responsibility for their thoughts and actions or we are truly doomed. Whether MKUltra or religion, it makes little difference, as humans were slaughtering each other over "God's Will" since before recorded history.
Again, critical thinking is the key.
I think we're talking past each other on several points:
First, I certainly wasn't presenting Harari as separate from the system - quite the opposite. His statements are disturbing precisely because he's an insider describing their agenda, not a critic warning against it.
On critical thinking, we're in complete agreement. Our modern educational frameworks descend from the Prussian school system, which was deliberately designed to produce compliance rather than independent thought - reshaping education toward rote learning and authority deference rather than critical thinking.
Regarding scientific method versus scientism - my point isn't that peer review itself is flawed, but that institutional control over what constitutes "acceptable" inquiry renders the process compromised. The mechanisms of scientific knowledge production have been captured through funding, publication gatekeeping, and career incentives.
On Huxley - I barely touch on this here and go into a little more detail about their backgrounds in the Technocratic Blueprint. I can't claim to know the Huxleys' intent - nor do I - but I make my case for why it may not have been entirely pure:
https://stylman.substack.com/p/the-technocratic-blueprint
And yes, Kary Mullis's convenient death shortly before his PCR test became the foundation of global policy is one of those timing 'coincidences' that keeps appearing in these systems. His voice on AIDS - and climate change - is very important.
I never suggested these control mechanisms are inescapable - my entire purpose in documenting them is to help people recognize and resist them. Understanding a system's architecture is the first step toward neutralizing its effects.
I appreciate your contribution to the conversation, though I think you may have misunderstood some of my core arguments.
“On critical thinking, we're in complete agreement. Our modern educational frameworks descend from the Prussian school system, which was deliberately designed to produce compliance rather than independent thought - reshaping education toward rote learning and authority deference rather than critical thinking.”
“critical thinking”: On the surface, this seems ideal. In reality, it is less workable. Why? We grow up in varying degrees of dysfunctional families. The family is the original basic root for each of us, and what happens in those formative years is crucial to our selfhood. Each human is also affected by geographical, cultural, societal, intellectual, physical, financial, educational, genetic and constitutional situations around them.
We need merely to look around us, not just locally, but nationally (or at least to examine the Western world).
The examination needs to go beyond the last decade, but at least in the last half century to capture a slightly better overview of who we are. In the main, do we not seek a sense of order and stability to better conduct our short lives? Further, most of us are not leaders. Most are followers. Many need rote and are not fully capable of critical thinking. They are about the business of sorting out the conditions of their lives: emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually.
One merely has to examine a family of, say, 8 children to realize that, despite very similar upbringings, each child is very different and unique. The parents recognize the differences in potential, talents, and intellectual and emotional capacity. In the main, loving wise parents embrace the varied capabilities of all their children and create an atmosphere for maximum growth. Applied to society, it would embrace systems to encompass the varied capabilities of its citizens. Wouldn’t this necessarily utilize the best of rote - and the call to critical thinking?
I appreciate your thoughtful response, Donna. You raise important questions about human diversity and the practical challenges of implementing critical thinking broadly.
We're in complete agreement that people have vastly different capabilities and circumstances. I'm not suggesting we turn everyone into independent researchers or eliminate all structure and guidance.
But that opens up more questions: if not critical thinking as a foundational skill, then what's the alternative? Being subordinate? To who?
When you suggest "systems to encompass the varied capabilities of citizens," who gets to design those systems? Who decides what's best for whom? History shows us repeatedly what happens when some people accept permanent follower roles while others claim the right to perpetually lead them.
The manipulation techniques I've documented don't respect individual differences - they target universal psychological vulnerabilities that exist across all intelligence and capability levels. They work precisely because they bypass conscious reasoning entirely, affecting the brilliant and the struggling equally.
Critical thinking, at its most basic level, isn't complex philosophical analysis. It's pattern recognition: Can someone sense when their emotions are being manipulated? Can they recognize obvious contradictions? Can they ask: "who benefits?"
These aren't advanced intellectual skills - they're survival instincts that have been systematically dulled in all of us, regardless of our other capabilities.
I'm not advocating for chaos. I'm suggesting that basic discernment - the ability to recognize when you're being lied to - should be considered a fundamental human capacity worth developing in everyone, alongside whatever other support systems they may need. Easier said that done, I realize - especially in our carefully manufactured existence.
Regarding education. John Taylor Gatto and Charlotte Iserbyt wrote of the dumbing down of America. Bush's No Child Left Behind and Obama's Race to the Top/Common Core were essentially the Federalization of education into indoctrination - the lowest wasn't raised up the highest was brought down. This created the Woke generation and trans stupidity.
We indeed are talking about a multi-vector control grid, and education is one of the vectors.
Any person said:
"You seem to blur the lines between the Scientific Method and Scientism. Yes, many branches of Science are currently 'captured' (i.e. medical, psychiatric) due to the corruption of the Peer Review system, not because the Peer Review Concept itself is flawed. More 'who', rather than 'what' or 'how'. "
---
As to the 'what' and 'how', the biggest factor that comes to my mind is WHEN. Like, when a government shuts down science due to its challenge affecting policy "too much" (various samples from UAP and invention science with Dr.Steven Greer, to the APA being bullied into censuring a 1998 study that challenged the status-quo "too much".
Big Science/little science, it just doesn't matter. The "weaker" groups get marginalized (i.e. see Dr.Judy Mikovits on the politcs of viral research at Fort Detrick), while the "strong" groups (like the APA) get threatened (with having their funding cut and legitimacy vacated).
Bottom line, science, big or small, has been shown to be just another form of religion. With legions of uncritical Believers all starry-eyed about so-called "objectivity" and a rather small group on the top (whomever's in power in government) who make the final call on whatever controversy (when it truly counts).
I promote you read a batch of authors i've stumbled across on this topic. You might start with Michael Polanyi, Thomas Kuhn, and, for the academics out there, Paul Feyerabend's book 'Against Method'. I thought that Theodore Roszak made some exceptional demystification in his book 'The Making of a Counterculture' in the chapter on objectivity in science. Finally, there's Vine DeLoria ("Red Earth, White Lies").
Basic challenges to all science include: reductionism ideology, myth of objectivity, the structure of scientific revolutions, assumption of emotions as categorically without value, and more!
Nice post. I agree critical thinking is the bomb. But your advice "humans must learn to take responsibility for their thought and actions" will never happen for most humans. Sure we should foster critical thinking and open-mindedness. The more of it the better. But if you look around with the open mind you seem to have, you might notice, as I have, most are either not capable or not willing to follow that path. Which is why I disagree with your hostility towards religions. I agree most have been pretty bad. Christianity however, is the best platform for human thriving to ever come along. The ultimate Truth or a bunch of myths I don't know. But no denying its net positive impact. Of course all hierarchies are corrupt, or quickly become corrupt, including the Church. But the dogma is a force for good. People will believe in something like that, or something else - invariably something worse. I used to knock Christianity too, until I woke up and saw what happens in its absence. Sure, like any ideology it's often used by demagogues for evil purposes, that happens with anything. Look how they turned science into "The Science".
Hey, a friend turned me onto this excellent looking series. Having been a student of such topics over many years, i'll admit to not having read this in its entirety (only snippets, and the conclusion); but i still feel that i can add to the dialogue (and will be reading over the rest of the article).
SteelJ said:
" most are either not capable or not willing to follow that path."
--
I know that there's a *crucial context* to their reasoning but it is a reasoning that many within the elite, "well" educated, community never seem to want to demystify...for curiously intrigueing reasons. Precisely, the CONTEXT of people's lives and WHY they do what they do, and the elite/managerial beliefs that serve to buttress their (severely alienated) belief in people's stupidity.
(We are stupid-ized, not inherently stupid)
So, when we look at people's CONTEXT, we see that they are largely psychologically genocided very early on. As kids. Where, all around them/us is a social arrangement hell-bent on war and maintaining the empire. At almost all costs (short of nuking, most of the time). Where programs like MKULTRA only scratch surfaces!
You look at it from an non-settler/non-europeon-centric, decolonization perspective and you begin to see a systematic pattern, deeper than that found in the MKULTRA critique; from nuclearized families (and their lack of connection, anymore, to extended family), to compulsory schooling embracing whatever ideology gives them the most funding (i.e. MBD, ADD, ADHD ideology coming to the fore just as "Rollback" (via the Trilateralists, with Walter Mondale) kicks in in the late 1970s/early 80s. (See Noam Chomsky's speech/small book "Media Control" for an indepth exploration).
You read someone like "Wewa Wewo" ("Just Leave Us Alone") or John Trudell (best in video; author of the idea "psychologically genocided" i think), or the diverse voices at unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com and you can start to see strictures thru-out the entire cult-ure.
But we are not encouraged to understand. We ARE encouraged to do everything else (all in the Machiavellian-esque virtual playbook). We are encouraged to conform, to Follow, to Shut Up, and keep our heads down. We are encouraged to fear and hate each other, etc. ad nauseum.
I agree we are stupidized. And that "We are encouraged to fear and hate each other, etc. ad nauseum". Where I think I disagree with you is you think that's an excuse (if I'm reading you right). I think being susceptible to such stupidization and encouragement shows inherent stupidity. If you don't want to call it stupidity, then it's some similar failure to kick in one's ability to think and see what's really what. Humans are naturally herd animals, authoritarian followers. But there is a subset who are not that way, and it's that subset who don't fall for the BS. IOW, being brainwashed or not is determined by who you were to start with, not the brainwashing process. As a steelhead and salmon fisherman, I liken it to those species. Most return to their natal streams to reproduce, or will die trying. But there is a small subset who roam, searching for other suitable streams to ascend. The existence of both groups are important for survival of the species - and obviously for the ability to expand range. People seem to have a similar grouping.
SteelJ,
Yes, i guess i do see being stupid-ized as being an excuse.
But i don't agree with where you take this. It feels like exactly the kind of belief one gets after reading the Legacy (well-funded) Media too much.
Like Malcolm X said: "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you [judging] the people being oppressed, and loving the people doing the oppressing." Elites try to have the masses internalizing such values and then we are that much easier/maleable for wars at home and abroad, etc.
So to me, being 'susceptible' to coercion depends on what one's 'Frame of References' were growing up. If one is born and bred into the so-called "upper" classes, they are often stupid-ized in one way (i.e. cannot figure out how to fix their car) while being allowed to be 'smart' in other ways (i.e. manipulating people); while those born and bred into the so-called "lower" classes are stupid and smart in other ways, generally speaking.
But your illustration of the salmon, that's interesting and i can see what you mean. i just think that kind of reductionist assumption dovetails with what and how the feudal system (i.e. the shadow government still believing in 'Dark Age Ruling Control Forms') WANTS and ideologically BELIEVES IT NEEDS.
Why? Because authoritarians (i.e. combat survivors) coerce it, and few have been able to organize successfully beyond such. (I.e. when the public tries, they usually succumb to covert action, such as what the f.b.i. got caught doing with 'cointelpro' (lower case to show my dishonor towards them). Upon such a wide variety of nonviolent (and self-defensive) groups.
So, without this knowledge of various things that are put into place to "trip people up", it's easy, too easy, to have the same viewpoint as elites. Those elites whose position has been gotten in intensely cynical ways, i think.
The general failure of certain human "fish" depends, most crucially, on what kind of covert and overt violence (coming from many points, as bell hooks pointed out in her essay about patriarchy) contributes to their/our collective "psychological genocide". Those who do escape such with their hearts and wits intact (or at least partially) may well not have had it as heavy as others.
Why not think about this possibility?
For my own trajectory, i was deeply duped and didn't start waking up in any deep way until, in my 20s, i found myself faced with rigid hypocrisy (by chance, i suppose). Then, wanting to explore alternatives that i had previously ignored due to my absolutely naive trust in the Legacy Media and Given Authority in general.
"Par for the course" in today's n.america, i think.
"Free to fill one's belly, but fettered in mind and spirit."
As for the "herd" mentality? i think that's a wrong-headed reductionism that should be challenged! People, like other animals, group together because they have been intuitively oriented to groupings. Tending to trust more in each other than the 'individualist' design. (Btw, i don't buy into the seemingly prevailing and alienated idea that animals are somehow "lesser" than us humans. Just because they cannot devise cynical ways to treat each other, etc., doesn't mean they are Dumb!)
That that tendency of extended family or village is despised (and curiously deeply distrusted) by elites, is a crucial insight. Something critical thinkers would do well to scrutinize carefully before swallowing!