I will just add one thing - stop using Internet. Disconnect and get back to normal physical life. The people brains are overloaded and getting crazy from that.
Stop using Zoom meetings, don't call via on WhatsApp, use normal phone, stop using Facebook, write letter, stop using Twitter, read printed newspaper, disconnect from Instagram, print pictures and show photo albums to others, meet people in person and talk with them face to face.
This will help to stop the madness and return people back to normal real world. There is no other way around, you have to get back to normal physical life or this craziness will continue.
I hope it will help. For others, who are more interested in this topic I can really recommend essay called "Is Google making us stupid?" published in 2008 by Nicholas Carr.
I can say with confidence now, that he was right and what we witnessed since 2020 is consequence of this trend.
More great advice- I agree. It can be hard because so much of last year felt like an information war and I needed to read people online who saw what I saw because I was in nyc where almost everyone in my real life was complying with the mandates and the madness and finally I was the last unvaccinated woman standing. I left, I’m so much happier and I’m starting to disconnect more from the internet. I have slightly more confidence that more Americans than I thought feel as Chris bray describes. For me it’s time to get really choosy about what I intellectually digest and yes, unplug….maybe that’s true for a lot of people now, too. I hope so
Completely agree Chris. Just keep standing up and do not be bullied. I stood up to the COVID bullying at work and was surprised at the support I got--after I continued to publicly, politely, and factually state my position. Be polite, but do not be bullied.
I tell people, "Please don’t try to save the world. That’s a temptation from the evil one that lures many of us in. Just be the best person you can be." I find the school board elections the most hopeful sign of turning things around. When Jehovahs Witnesses came to my door long ago and asked me, "Do you know the end of the world is coming soon?" I replied, "No, but I know I'm going to die." That's also the way to deal with the internet. Ask, "Is this something that is going to make me want to change my behavior?" If not, don't bother reading about it. I can't see how Kim Kardiashian's rear end means anything to my behavior, nor how Caitlyn Jenner's opinion means anything to my life. A male colleague once told me, "I decide on all the important issues, like our stance on nuclear disarmament. My wife decides on all the trivial stuff like where the kids go to school and what we have for dinner." He recognized the irony.
As to how to make it better, I have 2 doable but almost impossible suggestions. First, turn off the money spigot. If Congress and the Executive Branch have a trillion dollars a year to spend, the result will inevitably be a disaster that cannot be controlled. Second, end the charitable deduction. The churches will scream, the Red Cross will scream, but Bill Gates, George Soros, the Ford Foundation, Harvard et al will have to operate on a budget like the rest of us. I favor and donate to charities, but if they don't pay taxes on the income they take in every year, they will never care about what taxes do to the rest of us. If it doesn't hurt you, it's somebody else's problem.
Change people's minds by publicly standing for what YOU know is right, not what someone else tells you is right. To those I work with who think saving nature is their mission, I say, "The only thing Nature's ever done for me is try to kill me every day of my life. I don't litter and try to take care of my own household, not because Nature's ever done anything for me, but because I'm human, and I don't want to live in a pig sty."
Be a good person. Be kind. Don't be bullied. The world will change around you in ways you can never anticipate if you only stand for what's right for you and the people you encounter in your daily life. The rest is hubris.
Couldn't agree more. Preference falsification is a key social mechanism by which consent is manufactured.
The flip-side of that is the preference cascade, when a critical number of people realize that, no, they are NOT a minority, most people agree with them, and the bumbling lunatics and petty tyrants demanding everyone participate in their absurdity are in reality a small, despised minority held in contempt by anyone with basic common sense.
That's more or less what brought down the Eastern Bloc at the end of the Cold War.
And of course, the first and most essential step in effecting a preference cascade is exactly as you say: stop falsifying your preferences.
It’s a pendulum. Always has been. As spitting angry as I’ve been lately, I’ve also noticed that more and more people are noticing the nonsensical stranglehold pharma has on us, and this is the beginning of the end for their reign of terror. Spent a long time listening to talks by Camile Paglia last night, and man, I didn’t know a 75-year-old feminist could be my spirit animal, but she is an unapologetic force to be reckoned with! But the idea that we are a society that no longer truly believes in itself makes a lot of sense. I’m not sure we really believe in catastrophic failure of the earth’s environment, or we just want it to happen because there’s no other way out. Haha. So we need to keep grounded, keep camping, keep being curious about the past, keep speaking up, but just keep living. Don’t drink the koolaid. There’s a lot worth living for.
👏👏👏👏. As bout a good a plan as any other I've heard😊
Over the last 2-3years covid SNAFU, I've discovered that I have become an anarchist. 😐😐
Not in the radical, woke waving, doomsday, let's violently tear it all down, way.
I'm talking about a different kind of anarchy- basically inline with minding your own patch. Not in a selfish daffy duck way- "mine, mine, MINE!!". But in a collectively, local community, almost farmer way. I keep my eye on what's happening around me, to people I know in my neighborhood, I help where I can, stay out of the way of what I can't. Keep a strong eye on the community "weather", seeing which way things are blowing, adding my voice or solidarity for that that I believe is a right direction or community benefit. And or keep an eye on those in power that could impact my daily life.
If you think about it, politicians, bureaucracy think they so busy, doing all these momentous tasks, are placing all these rules to protect the community, the vulnerable, oh they are so important we couldn't possibly survive/run a town, city, country without their wise and educated input!.....Yet we do. We have. Everyday for thousands of years. We, the people, have got up and gone about our business.
I hear people cry, "Oh but someone needs to organise the roads, the buildings, blah, blah, or it will be anarchy!".
Yes, it will anarchy, in that if a road needs fixing, the locals there will join together and figure a solution. Like villages and towns did for hundreds of years before.
Realistically, I'm suggesting localism, not anarchy. But as here in Australia we have a federal election coming up, my proposal for an anarchy, would be for EVERY single voter, to NOT vote. But that statement of power only works if everyone does it, on the same day. So I propose a new form of personal anarchy.
With personal anarchy, you can say no to whatever you believe to be wrong or right. No flag waving, no fighting, just no or yes, and then be about your everyday business.🤗😂🤣
For re-form, I suggest reading Columbia Law Professor, Philip Hamburger's, "The Administrative Threat" or "Purchasing Submission" and supporting his New Civil Liberties Alliance. Hamburger believes Congress and the Judiciary need to reclaim from the Administrative State their Constitutional monopoly on making and interpreting the law.
For re-found, I suggest a strong form of direct democracy in which tax day and election day are the same. Choose the amount of tax you'd like to pay and how you'd like it to be allocated. Perhaps with 1% minimums each for defense, police plus courts, and everything else. No more fake free lunch, no more wedge issues while they give our money to their friends, no more funding people who wish to undermine the very freedoms that created the wealth.
Your city government in the past would not have imagined a consequential role in global anything. We were much more fixed it place and time. The majority of your council's electorate are more focused on global everything than city anything. In short, we tend to get the governments we deserve.
The breakdown of all institutions is due to the fact these institutions helped us cope with the time and the place where we are stuck. The internet changes everything. I am on a 48 hour trip thousands of miles from my home, typing on one of two global cell phone manufacturers handsets. Commenting on a nameless city government while I ignore the rather mindless chatter of my wife and her sister.
Isolated from time and space, immersed in a pixilated representation of global humanity. Routinely taking calls from Sydney and Guangzhou.
Before our last city council election, a community group sponsored a debate between candidates, and solicited questions from the public. In a city that had new directors of finance, public works, and community development every few months, a city with no budget or general plan, the questions were all along the lines of, "What is the role of the arts in society?"
People don't notice where they live. And yes, not caring about potholes shows up in the real world. If you've driven in Los Angeles lately....
I'm a bit surprised by your description of South Pasadena's government. I'm from just north of you and I've always been under the impression that South Pas was well run (except for that councilwoman a couple of years back) and spent most of the past many decades fighting the freeway, which was the most important issue for the community. Have they lost purpose and feel the misguided need to go looking for it elsewhere instead of solving local problems?
It was. The town got hit hard by woke-class migration from the Westside. The freeway was defeated by community activists more than by the city government, but by and large it used to be a well-run small town. That councilwoman a couple of years back resigned because I caught her:
I have noticed a cultural change over the years when I go to the farmers market. I find myself figuratively rolling my eyes at many more people than I used to.
The internet dissolves everything, including representative government. The Feminists want to burn it all down over abortion. BLM over law "enforcement." The leisure of wealth and the horror of an ideology of equality.
Jordan Peterson once said 'clean up your own room' before taking on enormous problems like 'climate change'. We're in a closed loop where we take on impossible tasks before taking care of problems we can actually handle and perhaps solve.
I read the scenario you painted and all that kept coming back at me was Kafka's 'The Trial'.
This is not a conclusion unlike one that I saw reached on the political "left" during the ascendance of Bernie and AOC and The Squad. And the Fox News in that case was not CNN/MSNBC but more the faux lefty media, The Intercept, The Young Turks, etc.
I believe that we (America) are run by the Security State and have been for decades. Chuck Schumer let this slip in that infamous "say the quiet part out loud" interview with Rachel Maddow.
I do not think things can change for the better until the two party paradigm is smashed, and that is going to be very difficult. The Uniparty works for the wealthy and the wealthy have their own Global Mall Cop, the US MIC. With a budget larger than the next 10-11 nations combined.
So I'm not quite as hopeful that occasional head wagging in Professional Management Class circles will do much.
The bridge will likely have to collapse all the way. And I hope that I'm wrong.
I wonder how much any part of "the state" is on top, at this point. Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab aren't the state. Lines of authority are very very strange right now.
To me, it's just follow the money. The money being a modern day proxy for power.
I think they (and the Davos, Global Capital crew) are the State, the Global State.
Owning the media, owning every "Big (Blank)" funneled through horizontally integrated concerns into a few hedge funds.
You now have incentive structures in place where you can engineer almost anything.
The media is the big one. I gave up on Corp. Media ten years ago, (actually NYT and WaPo within the last two). And this is why I asked you about Greenwald and Taibbi on the other thread.
Conspicuously absent on COVID, the jabs, WEF, Gates. The singular biggest audacious ruse and fraud and historic Evil going down in real time. Crickets.
I agree. The road we are on does not, can not, end any place we want to be. Our world has been hijacked by stupid people. Of all political stripes. Or none. I suspect there's no way to reset the clock to a saner era. And, like you, I hope I'm wrong!
The question should no longer be what are we going to do but what am I going to do. I don't want to get involved in local politics but I am going to start because even the Republicans in my deep red state keep screwing up simple tasks. Perhaps it will all still implode, but if it does, I am going to be in a position to pick up the pieces and help form a new republic where good men can be free and groomers can have a tall tree with a short rope.
Have been reading news stories about the governor of South Dakota working against state legislators who are "wack jobs," and it depresses me to no end. The circular firing squad prevails.
First of all: thank you for writing. Particularly your article on the DA. Ours is up for re-election and I had no idea, until I read your article, how to evaluate his performance. Other thing you can do is get involved in politics, and run for public office. Particularly if you are a business owner, and ESPECIALLY if you are not a politician and have no use for politics.
Totally agree that the cycles are important to pay attention to, and recognizing that small incremental, local, actions ARE crucial. The difficulty for me- these days, the cyles feel like a death-roller coaster with an insane clown at the helm. BTW, thanks for the human centipede imagery. Really helped solidify in my mind our reality- bunch of a**holes and sh*theads steering our course.
I will just add one thing - stop using Internet. Disconnect and get back to normal physical life. The people brains are overloaded and getting crazy from that.
Stop using Zoom meetings, don't call via on WhatsApp, use normal phone, stop using Facebook, write letter, stop using Twitter, read printed newspaper, disconnect from Instagram, print pictures and show photo albums to others, meet people in person and talk with them face to face.
This will help to stop the madness and return people back to normal real world. There is no other way around, you have to get back to normal physical life or this craziness will continue.
I try to schedule days away. Hard to do, now, but yes.
I hope it will help. For others, who are more interested in this topic I can really recommend essay called "Is Google making us stupid?" published in 2008 by Nicholas Carr.
I can say with confidence now, that he was right and what we witnessed since 2020 is consequence of this trend.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/
More great advice- I agree. It can be hard because so much of last year felt like an information war and I needed to read people online who saw what I saw because I was in nyc where almost everyone in my real life was complying with the mandates and the madness and finally I was the last unvaccinated woman standing. I left, I’m so much happier and I’m starting to disconnect more from the internet. I have slightly more confidence that more Americans than I thought feel as Chris bray describes. For me it’s time to get really choosy about what I intellectually digest and yes, unplug….maybe that’s true for a lot of people now, too. I hope so
can't go along with that. sounds like advocating total censorship to cope with sensory overload.
control is fine, necessary, but total avoidance? no.
Completely agree Chris. Just keep standing up and do not be bullied. I stood up to the COVID bullying at work and was surprised at the support I got--after I continued to publicly, politely, and factually state my position. Be polite, but do not be bullied.
I tell people, "Please don’t try to save the world. That’s a temptation from the evil one that lures many of us in. Just be the best person you can be." I find the school board elections the most hopeful sign of turning things around. When Jehovahs Witnesses came to my door long ago and asked me, "Do you know the end of the world is coming soon?" I replied, "No, but I know I'm going to die." That's also the way to deal with the internet. Ask, "Is this something that is going to make me want to change my behavior?" If not, don't bother reading about it. I can't see how Kim Kardiashian's rear end means anything to my behavior, nor how Caitlyn Jenner's opinion means anything to my life. A male colleague once told me, "I decide on all the important issues, like our stance on nuclear disarmament. My wife decides on all the trivial stuff like where the kids go to school and what we have for dinner." He recognized the irony.
As to how to make it better, I have 2 doable but almost impossible suggestions. First, turn off the money spigot. If Congress and the Executive Branch have a trillion dollars a year to spend, the result will inevitably be a disaster that cannot be controlled. Second, end the charitable deduction. The churches will scream, the Red Cross will scream, but Bill Gates, George Soros, the Ford Foundation, Harvard et al will have to operate on a budget like the rest of us. I favor and donate to charities, but if they don't pay taxes on the income they take in every year, they will never care about what taxes do to the rest of us. If it doesn't hurt you, it's somebody else's problem.
Change people's minds by publicly standing for what YOU know is right, not what someone else tells you is right. To those I work with who think saving nature is their mission, I say, "The only thing Nature's ever done for me is try to kill me every day of my life. I don't litter and try to take care of my own household, not because Nature's ever done anything for me, but because I'm human, and I don't want to live in a pig sty."
Be a good person. Be kind. Don't be bullied. The world will change around you in ways you can never anticipate if you only stand for what's right for you and the people you encounter in your daily life. The rest is hubris.
💕🎯💕🎯💕commonsense.
Couldn't agree more. Preference falsification is a key social mechanism by which consent is manufactured.
The flip-side of that is the preference cascade, when a critical number of people realize that, no, they are NOT a minority, most people agree with them, and the bumbling lunatics and petty tyrants demanding everyone participate in their absurdity are in reality a small, despised minority held in contempt by anyone with basic common sense.
That's more or less what brought down the Eastern Bloc at the end of the Cold War.
And of course, the first and most essential step in effecting a preference cascade is exactly as you say: stop falsifying your preferences.
It’s a pendulum. Always has been. As spitting angry as I’ve been lately, I’ve also noticed that more and more people are noticing the nonsensical stranglehold pharma has on us, and this is the beginning of the end for their reign of terror. Spent a long time listening to talks by Camile Paglia last night, and man, I didn’t know a 75-year-old feminist could be my spirit animal, but she is an unapologetic force to be reckoned with! But the idea that we are a society that no longer truly believes in itself makes a lot of sense. I’m not sure we really believe in catastrophic failure of the earth’s environment, or we just want it to happen because there’s no other way out. Haha. So we need to keep grounded, keep camping, keep being curious about the past, keep speaking up, but just keep living. Don’t drink the koolaid. There’s a lot worth living for.
But above all, keep camping!
And now this was actually inspiring!
👏👏👏👏. As bout a good a plan as any other I've heard😊
Over the last 2-3years covid SNAFU, I've discovered that I have become an anarchist. 😐😐
Not in the radical, woke waving, doomsday, let's violently tear it all down, way.
I'm talking about a different kind of anarchy- basically inline with minding your own patch. Not in a selfish daffy duck way- "mine, mine, MINE!!". But in a collectively, local community, almost farmer way. I keep my eye on what's happening around me, to people I know in my neighborhood, I help where I can, stay out of the way of what I can't. Keep a strong eye on the community "weather", seeing which way things are blowing, adding my voice or solidarity for that that I believe is a right direction or community benefit. And or keep an eye on those in power that could impact my daily life.
If you think about it, politicians, bureaucracy think they so busy, doing all these momentous tasks, are placing all these rules to protect the community, the vulnerable, oh they are so important we couldn't possibly survive/run a town, city, country without their wise and educated input!.....Yet we do. We have. Everyday for thousands of years. We, the people, have got up and gone about our business.
I hear people cry, "Oh but someone needs to organise the roads, the buildings, blah, blah, or it will be anarchy!".
Yes, it will anarchy, in that if a road needs fixing, the locals there will join together and figure a solution. Like villages and towns did for hundreds of years before.
Realistically, I'm suggesting localism, not anarchy. But as here in Australia we have a federal election coming up, my proposal for an anarchy, would be for EVERY single voter, to NOT vote. But that statement of power only works if everyone does it, on the same day. So I propose a new form of personal anarchy.
With personal anarchy, you can say no to whatever you believe to be wrong or right. No flag waving, no fighting, just no or yes, and then be about your everyday business.🤗😂🤣
#ignoretheF #outtathem #whatburacracy #localismrevived
Re-form or re-found?
For re-form, I suggest reading Columbia Law Professor, Philip Hamburger's, "The Administrative Threat" or "Purchasing Submission" and supporting his New Civil Liberties Alliance. Hamburger believes Congress and the Judiciary need to reclaim from the Administrative State their Constitutional monopoly on making and interpreting the law.
For re-found, I suggest a strong form of direct democracy in which tax day and election day are the same. Choose the amount of tax you'd like to pay and how you'd like it to be allocated. Perhaps with 1% minimums each for defense, police plus courts, and everything else. No more fake free lunch, no more wedge issues while they give our money to their friends, no more funding people who wish to undermine the very freedoms that created the wealth.
That's an interesting framing.
Your city government in the past would not have imagined a consequential role in global anything. We were much more fixed it place and time. The majority of your council's electorate are more focused on global everything than city anything. In short, we tend to get the governments we deserve.
The breakdown of all institutions is due to the fact these institutions helped us cope with the time and the place where we are stuck. The internet changes everything. I am on a 48 hour trip thousands of miles from my home, typing on one of two global cell phone manufacturers handsets. Commenting on a nameless city government while I ignore the rather mindless chatter of my wife and her sister.
Isolated from time and space, immersed in a pixilated representation of global humanity. Routinely taking calls from Sydney and Guangzhou.
Do I care passionately about potholes? Nope.
Before our last city council election, a community group sponsored a debate between candidates, and solicited questions from the public. In a city that had new directors of finance, public works, and community development every few months, a city with no budget or general plan, the questions were all along the lines of, "What is the role of the arts in society?"
People don't notice where they live. And yes, not caring about potholes shows up in the real world. If you've driven in Los Angeles lately....
I'm a bit surprised by your description of South Pasadena's government. I'm from just north of you and I've always been under the impression that South Pas was well run (except for that councilwoman a couple of years back) and spent most of the past many decades fighting the freeway, which was the most important issue for the community. Have they lost purpose and feel the misguided need to go looking for it elsewhere instead of solving local problems?
It was. The town got hit hard by woke-class migration from the Westside. The freeway was defeated by community activists more than by the city government, but by and large it used to be a well-run small town. That councilwoman a couple of years back resigned because I caught her:
https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2020/08/15/south-pasadena-councilwoman-resigns-apologizes-for-fake-public-comments/
But it hasn't really fixed anything.
Wow, nice job!
I have noticed a cultural change over the years when I go to the farmers market. I find myself figuratively rolling my eyes at many more people than I used to.
The internet dissolves everything, including representative government. The Feminists want to burn it all down over abortion. BLM over law "enforcement." The leisure of wealth and the horror of an ideology of equality.
The grass does not refuse
To flourish in the spring wind;
The leaves are not angry
At falling through the autumn sky.
Who with whip or spur
Can urge the feet of Time?
The things of the world flourish and decay,
Each at its own hour.
- Li Po
Jordan Peterson once said 'clean up your own room' before taking on enormous problems like 'climate change'. We're in a closed loop where we take on impossible tasks before taking care of problems we can actually handle and perhaps solve.
I read the scenario you painted and all that kept coming back at me was Kafka's 'The Trial'.
It's where we're at.
Great advice, I’m starting to move emotionally in this direction, regaining a sliver of faith. Regular people need to save the day.
Get out of large cities and begin to grow food now.
Just got through reading this piece.
https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/fox-news-is-headed-for-disaster?s=r
This is not a conclusion unlike one that I saw reached on the political "left" during the ascendance of Bernie and AOC and The Squad. And the Fox News in that case was not CNN/MSNBC but more the faux lefty media, The Intercept, The Young Turks, etc.
I believe that we (America) are run by the Security State and have been for decades. Chuck Schumer let this slip in that infamous "say the quiet part out loud" interview with Rachel Maddow.
I do not think things can change for the better until the two party paradigm is smashed, and that is going to be very difficult. The Uniparty works for the wealthy and the wealthy have their own Global Mall Cop, the US MIC. With a budget larger than the next 10-11 nations combined.
So I'm not quite as hopeful that occasional head wagging in Professional Management Class circles will do much.
The bridge will likely have to collapse all the way. And I hope that I'm wrong.
I wonder how much any part of "the state" is on top, at this point. Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab aren't the state. Lines of authority are very very strange right now.
To me, it's just follow the money. The money being a modern day proxy for power.
I think they (and the Davos, Global Capital crew) are the State, the Global State.
Owning the media, owning every "Big (Blank)" funneled through horizontally integrated concerns into a few hedge funds.
You now have incentive structures in place where you can engineer almost anything.
The media is the big one. I gave up on Corp. Media ten years ago, (actually NYT and WaPo within the last two). And this is why I asked you about Greenwald and Taibbi on the other thread.
Conspicuously absent on COVID, the jabs, WEF, Gates. The singular biggest audacious ruse and fraud and historic Evil going down in real time. Crickets.
I agree. The road we are on does not, can not, end any place we want to be. Our world has been hijacked by stupid people. Of all political stripes. Or none. I suspect there's no way to reset the clock to a saner era. And, like you, I hope I'm wrong!
The question should no longer be what are we going to do but what am I going to do. I don't want to get involved in local politics but I am going to start because even the Republicans in my deep red state keep screwing up simple tasks. Perhaps it will all still implode, but if it does, I am going to be in a position to pick up the pieces and help form a new republic where good men can be free and groomers can have a tall tree with a short rope.
Have been reading news stories about the governor of South Dakota working against state legislators who are "wack jobs," and it depresses me to no end. The circular firing squad prevails.
First of all: thank you for writing. Particularly your article on the DA. Ours is up for re-election and I had no idea, until I read your article, how to evaluate his performance. Other thing you can do is get involved in politics, and run for public office. Particularly if you are a business owner, and ESPECIALLY if you are not a politician and have no use for politics.
Step One:
Go to All your city council meetings that you can.
Learn the rules and procedures.
Find out who leans Left and who leans toward Liberty.
Partner with the good guys.
Gather supporters. (always be building)
Using the rules, work to restrict government involvement in education.
Start with school choice with the goal of privatizing all schools.
While you’re doing that:
Stop doing business with media and companies wanting you forced into selflessness.
Start putting your money where your Individual Rights are respected and promoted.
Bonus:
If you can, create and share viral, compelling, moral art communicating the values and ethical standards for a free country based on Individualism.
Totally agree that the cycles are important to pay attention to, and recognizing that small incremental, local, actions ARE crucial. The difficulty for me- these days, the cyles feel like a death-roller coaster with an insane clown at the helm. BTW, thanks for the human centipede imagery. Really helped solidify in my mind our reality- bunch of a**holes and sh*theads steering our course.