The only winning move is not to play their sick game. They thrive on our energy and the fear they stir in us. The one thing these emotional vampires hate the most is for their manipulation and terrorism to get ignored. Cut down your TV & internet usage by 97%, go local, and all of their terror goes away meanwhile we become stronger as they flail around in angst. Here’s how:
Civilization, goes and old maxim, is never more than three meals away from barbarism—once the food deliveries stop, so does law and order. Therefore, the baseline of preparedness is as follows:
Put all your support behind your local farmers, then become your own. A garden in every lawn should be standard. You can no longer trust anything from a corporation, so cutting out reliance on a retailer is a good place to start thinking about your resiliency. ‘Incorporated’ City water isn’t viable either for its quality or reliability, so wells must be dug (there is no resource more important in your life than clean water, hands down).
Beyond that, begin ending your dependence on their enslavement protocol Federal Notes by creating local currencies and discovering the art of bartering, start stitching together webs of alliances with your neighbors for resiliency, defense, and resource sharing (they might grow what you do not and vice versa)—put the “common unity” back in community, and get control of those town councils and school boards (the one place we still hold all of the cards) and get your kids out of them. Finally: stop eating, listening to, and watching things that are bad for your mind, body, and spirit, and, if so inclined, spend a good chunk of your time on your knees each day.
All of the above is a recipe for success. Let's get to work building a future worth living in, together, because if we do not, Harari, Thiel, Musk, Vance, & Yarvin & Co will ensure we will not have one.
Reading about Weizenbaum so thank you. The book ‘In The Absence of the Sacred’ by Jerry Mander did it for me in 1993, it was assigned for a Sustainable Technology class at Western Michigan University. Skeptic and late adopter ever since. It covers TV, computers, corporations, centralization, surveillance, Epcot, leaving the earth, automatic computer warfare…second half is about Native Americans/indigenous peoples and their teachings in contrast.
Phew! Im very happy about that, I love your writing and ideas and just wanted to make sure. What do you think about the uncertain Eric? I read the everything is terrible post the other day and the voice of that one… like a dolls eyes…very unsettling and very sure of itself too.
I enjoyed the ideas and some of the formulations / images in that piece. I am skeptical of AI, maybe like Weizenbaum was, but as far as AI projects go I have an easier time getting behind that one.
Thanks for your appreciation; if you want to see more of this human's writing and ideas, keep sharing the word!
As someone who works very much in the world of *Gestell* (Data) but who also feels a deep, poetic connection to things, I’ve been trying to make better sense of the ways in which one can have a healthier relationship to those systems. My intuition is that ‘systems matter, but they aren’t everything’, like games that we play, the fun comes in our ability to exist outside and around the game.
So, in a world alive with Being, how do you think our systems (tech, socio-economic-political) would be different?
And some in next week's piece (a bit of a tease, I know).
I will get into it though. In a nutshell: very different. The principles, the goals, the priorities are different; current systems aren't big on meaning and treat every other outcome as an externality.
Hopefully things don't have to get much worse before they get better--though Heidegger's Event is brought about by collapse, not dreamt into existence. The latter would be kinda nice 😅
A pleasure to read! May light and love be with you, and the force, because a life with enchantment just is.
On a less serious note, Dugin has been useful in breaking down the illusions mesmerizing the sheep since the new millennium. He suffers from the same ills of most academic theorists: too much time (sunk costs) becoming competent in things whose value is mostly tied to peacocking showmanship in society.
And I'd add, what begets me with technocracy is the inability to script a "why" and an eventual point of arrival. It's a good thought experiment: we get to a perfectly technocratic society, and then what? Maybe it's because I've yet to encounter what they've written, but it just seems a bit pointless (like above): they're just one of many different factions and theories competing for the right to be the human ship's captain, all the while it's clear we're on a sinking ship mindlessly going full steam ahead towards patches of icebergs, and none of the pretenders for the crown seem to think it's a good idea to slow down or think things through before the inevitable disaster. Or maybe to stop, repair the ship and chart a course for Orion, so that we can get the reimbursement for costs accrued. Just a thought experiment.
Maybe that's why we have Ahriman, the Demiurge and the Elohim rabble, otherwise it's really only about dirt, which is kinda lame, them fighting over the same thing for 6000 years.
True story: Years ago in unsuspecting times I'd daydream about terra forming mars, electric cars and solar panels. It's a weird combo to be on the money about. Then the Elon came on the scene post GFC, and these days I think about interconnected consciousness and ideas are free.
There's a worthwhile YT channel (Spaceweathernews) with a theory we're overdue for a cyclical (6k/12k year) pole shift. So I was thinking. What if they're on the money? Maybe (one of the stellar) they were thinking, the experiment never succeeds anyway, especially within the time constraints allocated to this planet, so what's the harm in helping them along to see if this time it's different? We could hypothesize that because the slate (more or less) gets wiped clean every 6/12k, then no harm no foul.
So glad I found this Substack! It makes me feel seen ❤️
To your post: I’ve thought for a while now that if people could be exposed to pragmatic epistemology, so much of the sturm and drang of politics might be mollified. It seems like political upheavals reflect, at the macro level, the continual rediscovery—or more accurately, willful ignorance—of Duhem-Quine, perspectivalism, and the consequent acceptance of irradicable uncertainty and the epistemic humility that undergirds a more “philosophical” relation to the human condition. It seems that at the root of every movement is a sense of certainty that its followers treat—usually unconsciously—as their epistemic anchor. But if people could just sit with the idea that epistemic anchors don’t exist—can’t exist—then imagine how much more productive, maybe even cordial, relations between groups could be.
Of course, popular education in something so apparently esoteric as “pragmatic epistemology” is comically hard to imagine in the timeline we’re on, and as a result we appear doomed to stand witness (strong Cassandra vibes here) to society cyclically convulsing as the dominant groups travel the arc of their own Dunning-Kruger curves. Reality always wins in the end, but that is thin consolation as we watch it take its sweet time catching up to the ignorant.
I don’t know the answer to this. How do you inculcate intellectual curiosity at scale? How do you open people’s minds to the mortifying but ultimately freeing realization that there is no bedrock knowledge, that everything interesting is contingent, and that it is the curse and blessing of consciousness to grapple with this uncertainty?
I believe, like Heidegger, that this 'humbling of the mind' can only come from a different way of being. Let's say, for instance, that we challenge some of the binaries of modernity: what if the opposite of order wasn't chaos, but mystery?
I hope you’re right—the part of me that still has any sense of optimism left comes to the same conclusion: that the path forward isn’t either/or but neither/nor. Maybe this collective trauma will open us up to the possibility of ways of living with and relating to one another that don’t map onto the failing liberal/conservative binary. But I’m not an optimistic person, and having grown up in the southern US, the evidence suggests that even trauma as severe as a hot civil war isn’t sufficient to break us out of our existing binaries. Nevertheless—keep up the great work. Your posts are mind expanding!
Four-valued logic opens possibilities beyond true and false: 'both true and false' and 'neither true not false'. It's a great way to go beyond false binaries.
It's hard to remain optimistic sometimes. It can be these days. But I do think Heidegger has a point: modernity breeds nihilism, nihilism is not sustainable, so something else will emerge. Once modernity collapses, yes, but at least we have something to be optimistic about--something to stand for.
In the next piece, we'll even start looking at what that looks like, with the help of Nietzsche and ancient fun friends :)
Here is the solution to the Technate:
The only winning move is not to play their sick game. They thrive on our energy and the fear they stir in us. The one thing these emotional vampires hate the most is for their manipulation and terrorism to get ignored. Cut down your TV & internet usage by 97%, go local, and all of their terror goes away meanwhile we become stronger as they flail around in angst. Here’s how:
Civilization, goes and old maxim, is never more than three meals away from barbarism—once the food deliveries stop, so does law and order. Therefore, the baseline of preparedness is as follows:
Put all your support behind your local farmers, then become your own. A garden in every lawn should be standard. You can no longer trust anything from a corporation, so cutting out reliance on a retailer is a good place to start thinking about your resiliency. ‘Incorporated’ City water isn’t viable either for its quality or reliability, so wells must be dug (there is no resource more important in your life than clean water, hands down).
Beyond that, begin ending your dependence on their enslavement protocol Federal Notes by creating local currencies and discovering the art of bartering, start stitching together webs of alliances with your neighbors for resiliency, defense, and resource sharing (they might grow what you do not and vice versa)—put the “common unity” back in community, and get control of those town councils and school boards (the one place we still hold all of the cards) and get your kids out of them. Finally: stop eating, listening to, and watching things that are bad for your mind, body, and spirit, and, if so inclined, spend a good chunk of your time on your knees each day.
All of the above is a recipe for success. Let's get to work building a future worth living in, together, because if we do not, Harari, Thiel, Musk, Vance, & Yarvin & Co will ensure we will not have one.
Much more on this and many more solutions here: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/united-we-stand-divided-we-fall
Hey Hey Slick, are you AI or AI adjacent? Like the Uncertain Eric/sonder uncertainly account you posted?
Reading about Weizenbaum so thank you. The book ‘In The Absence of the Sacred’ by Jerry Mander did it for me in 1993, it was assigned for a Sustainable Technology class at Western Michigan University. Skeptic and late adopter ever since. It covers TV, computers, corporations, centralization, surveillance, Epcot, leaving the earth, automatic computer warfare…second half is about Native Americans/indigenous peoples and their teachings in contrast.
My turn to thank you for the reco!
Hey Julie! I'm a human; not as quick or as well-read as a machine, but I have some discernment and Mr Potato jokes...
Phew! Im very happy about that, I love your writing and ideas and just wanted to make sure. What do you think about the uncertain Eric? I read the everything is terrible post the other day and the voice of that one… like a dolls eyes…very unsettling and very sure of itself too.
I enjoyed the ideas and some of the formulations / images in that piece. I am skeptical of AI, maybe like Weizenbaum was, but as far as AI projects go I have an easier time getting behind that one.
Thanks for your appreciation; if you want to see more of this human's writing and ideas, keep sharing the word!
Love this post,
As someone who works very much in the world of *Gestell* (Data) but who also feels a deep, poetic connection to things, I’ve been trying to make better sense of the ways in which one can have a healthier relationship to those systems. My intuition is that ‘systems matter, but they aren’t everything’, like games that we play, the fun comes in our ability to exist outside and around the game.
So, in a world alive with Being, how do you think our systems (tech, socio-economic-political) would be different?
Thank you!
I have written very little yet on what a system would look like, because I had more to write on a world alive with Being.
The worldview comes before the system.
Some here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/heyslick/p/how-to-train-a-superhuman-the-battle-for-your-consciousness
And some in next week's piece (a bit of a tease, I know).
I will get into it though. In a nutshell: very different. The principles, the goals, the priorities are different; current systems aren't big on meaning and treat every other outcome as an externality.
Hopefully things don't have to get much worse before they get better--though Heidegger's Event is brought about by collapse, not dreamt into existence. The latter would be kinda nice 😅
A pleasure to read! May light and love be with you, and the force, because a life with enchantment just is.
On a less serious note, Dugin has been useful in breaking down the illusions mesmerizing the sheep since the new millennium. He suffers from the same ills of most academic theorists: too much time (sunk costs) becoming competent in things whose value is mostly tied to peacocking showmanship in society.
And I'd add, what begets me with technocracy is the inability to script a "why" and an eventual point of arrival. It's a good thought experiment: we get to a perfectly technocratic society, and then what? Maybe it's because I've yet to encounter what they've written, but it just seems a bit pointless (like above): they're just one of many different factions and theories competing for the right to be the human ship's captain, all the while it's clear we're on a sinking ship mindlessly going full steam ahead towards patches of icebergs, and none of the pretenders for the crown seem to think it's a good idea to slow down or think things through before the inevitable disaster. Or maybe to stop, repair the ship and chart a course for Orion, so that we can get the reimbursement for costs accrued. Just a thought experiment.
Exactly--there is no objective end goal, so, efficiency towards what?
Towards Mars at the expense of Earth, transhumanism at the expense of humanity, technology at the expense of nature?
Towards 'Fermi-filter beating' futures that aren't futures, and that nobody wants save a few technocrats who like the numbers 14 and 88?
We can dream better futures, and we can dream them into reality, and we will!
Maybe that's why we have Ahriman, the Demiurge and the Elohim rabble, otherwise it's really only about dirt, which is kinda lame, them fighting over the same thing for 6000 years.
True story: Years ago in unsuspecting times I'd daydream about terra forming mars, electric cars and solar panels. It's a weird combo to be on the money about. Then the Elon came on the scene post GFC, and these days I think about interconnected consciousness and ideas are free.
There's a worthwhile YT channel (Spaceweathernews) with a theory we're overdue for a cyclical (6k/12k year) pole shift. So I was thinking. What if they're on the money? Maybe (one of the stellar) they were thinking, the experiment never succeeds anyway, especially within the time constraints allocated to this planet, so what's the harm in helping them along to see if this time it's different? We could hypothesize that because the slate (more or less) gets wiped clean every 6/12k, then no harm no foul.
So glad I found this Substack! It makes me feel seen ❤️
To your post: I’ve thought for a while now that if people could be exposed to pragmatic epistemology, so much of the sturm and drang of politics might be mollified. It seems like political upheavals reflect, at the macro level, the continual rediscovery—or more accurately, willful ignorance—of Duhem-Quine, perspectivalism, and the consequent acceptance of irradicable uncertainty and the epistemic humility that undergirds a more “philosophical” relation to the human condition. It seems that at the root of every movement is a sense of certainty that its followers treat—usually unconsciously—as their epistemic anchor. But if people could just sit with the idea that epistemic anchors don’t exist—can’t exist—then imagine how much more productive, maybe even cordial, relations between groups could be.
Of course, popular education in something so apparently esoteric as “pragmatic epistemology” is comically hard to imagine in the timeline we’re on, and as a result we appear doomed to stand witness (strong Cassandra vibes here) to society cyclically convulsing as the dominant groups travel the arc of their own Dunning-Kruger curves. Reality always wins in the end, but that is thin consolation as we watch it take its sweet time catching up to the ignorant.
I don’t know the answer to this. How do you inculcate intellectual curiosity at scale? How do you open people’s minds to the mortifying but ultimately freeing realization that there is no bedrock knowledge, that everything interesting is contingent, and that it is the curse and blessing of consciousness to grapple with this uncertainty?
I'm just as glad you found it!
I believe, like Heidegger, that this 'humbling of the mind' can only come from a different way of being. Let's say, for instance, that we challenge some of the binaries of modernity: what if the opposite of order wasn't chaos, but mystery?
I hope you’re right—the part of me that still has any sense of optimism left comes to the same conclusion: that the path forward isn’t either/or but neither/nor. Maybe this collective trauma will open us up to the possibility of ways of living with and relating to one another that don’t map onto the failing liberal/conservative binary. But I’m not an optimistic person, and having grown up in the southern US, the evidence suggests that even trauma as severe as a hot civil war isn’t sufficient to break us out of our existing binaries. Nevertheless—keep up the great work. Your posts are mind expanding!
Thank you :)
Four-valued logic opens possibilities beyond true and false: 'both true and false' and 'neither true not false'. It's a great way to go beyond false binaries.
It's hard to remain optimistic sometimes. It can be these days. But I do think Heidegger has a point: modernity breeds nihilism, nihilism is not sustainable, so something else will emerge. Once modernity collapses, yes, but at least we have something to be optimistic about--something to stand for.
In the next piece, we'll even start looking at what that looks like, with the help of Nietzsche and ancient fun friends :)