As always, your analysis and description of the problem is brilliant, and beautifully written. However, your analysis of the underlying cause isn't an analysis at all: it's a thrown-together jumble of half-baked, unexamined conservative clichés. It's basically a way of saying "now that we've lost our traditional values of church, gender roles, and obedience, we're all so confused that we're willing to believe in anything." You pretty much never write anything with this kind of vague, clichéd evasion of thought, so I'm extremely surprised by it.
I am not sure, because, as usual, in your article you have pointed to something very important that I never focused on or thought about before. Your writing always opens up new perspectives for me. My first thought might be really only a different way of thinking about what you said. The old conservative version of reality (traditional gender roles, the benefits of democracy, the benefits of capitalism, etc) was certainly just as fake, if not faker, than anything we have today. (That's pretty much what the whole content of Beat generation literature is about.) The change, now that the old consensus reality has been destroyed, is not that we now have started to prefer artifice to reality, because we always did. The change is now that most people DON'T believe what authorities are saying, but authorities are no longer worried about this. Democracy has been gamed enough that authorities don't need to care about popular sentiment. This is why Macron thinks he can raise the retirement age in France, when the entire population is against it. It is why Netanyahu can weaken the judiciary in Israel, when the majority is against it. Another symptom of the cultural change is that people no longer believe what ads say. Almost all ads nowadays are snarky spoofs on older styles of advertising pitches, because that's the only way advertisers can think of to try and gain a little bit of trust. I think the last part of your analysis, that people prefer the artificial because it signals that you belong to the crowd, is much more accurate. It's not always easy to see that a change in technology and media can, by itself, cause a major cultural shift, but I think the invention of social media is more than sufficient to explain the simultaneous cultural shift towards extreme conformism. It is as if, suddenly, everyone in the world is looking at you at once, and judging your appearance and your opinions and your choices. No wonder people rush for cover, and try to make themselves into whatever would seem most acceptable to the crowd.
Great conversation. Let's see how this all plays out when reality reverts to the mean and we have to talk face to face while struggling to find something to eat. Toby, I love your writing. I am one of those kids who tried to fit in by poisoning themselves. Now I am confused and questioning my habit of fitting in. Thank You.
"The revolution we seek then is about a turn away from the artificial and ridiculous toward the real. That would seem to be the most natural and rewarding turn of all. But the human condition and the flaws in human nature are such that we are always fighting a battle against the temptations of the artificial and idolatrous. Together we must build an entire culture and economy based on cherishing the good, the true, and the beautiful in everyday life."
Well, that's a goal, but what are the means? Although they aren't very flashy, a couple of ready and powerful means (work at jobs that involve much physical activity, give up the pill as a birth control method) are embodied in these particular scientific findings: https://larryturner.substack.com/p/cognitive-downsides-of-modern-oral. Moral -- don't overthink it and overengineer this building of a better culture, just pay attention to the big drags on the basic system.
AMEN brother you summed it up quite nicely, touching on the essence of each point. As the word turns in darkness your light is shining brightly- a beacon to the like minded and warm hearted.
Peace and blessings as you continue your journey in courage!
The bible says this world belongs to satan, father of lies. That, or something very like that deceitful darkness runs our society, and leads every human it can away from our inherent beautiful truthful possibilities, rejecting goodness and god, and towards fakeness and mediocrity, and various forms of mental, spiritual, psychological and physical suicides. The goal seems to be to make humans reject the divine goodness they are destined for, if they choose it, and send themselves to hell instead, for that consciousness to prey on, energetically perhaps. All forms of art, philosophy, spirituality and expression are controlled and suppressed in the mainstream, with talented individuals excluded from public awareness unless they submit to the dehumanisation process and give up their birthright as beautiful individual expressions of truth. Music is my field, and it is heavily controlled, with endless corrupting, shallow, repetitive, trite or downright destructive shite pumped into childrens ears all day, and artificially socially approved of until only the strongest reject it for actual real musical art, leaving very few paths to self sufficiency as a musician other than surrendering to them (I wont).
Same in architecture, painting, scultpture, politics, philosophy, and definitely the sciences, with particular attention on health and nutrition, where nearly everything the mainstream parrots or proclaims is close to or actually a 100% harmful lie.
My goal is to be true to truth, to br true to my true self, to notice and reject the endless forms of that influence as much as possible, to reject the self harm/slow suicidal cultures of hedonisitic self destruction, and seek the rarepeople and places where goodness and true greatness is still celebrated.
I was happy to find that the majority my fellow nurses took things very seriously and had what I thought were good ethics. But recently things got a tad weird ;)
I realize this is a silly comment but here goes anyway, I thought snipes were furry ground dwellers/burrowers. We went snipe hunting in Manteca and farther north. Who knew?
They are birds but can't fly after dark so you can catch them with a large burlap bag. As a wiser more compassionate warrior I now advocate for protecting animals and not dealing them fear and death including not using them for entertainment so its been many years since I organized a snipe hunt. I did one at work for adults and had quite a few people signed up before somebody blew the whistle.
We were told they could fly so I assumed they were birds. Spent an hour or so after dark banging on pot lids with spoons with my best friend and my little sister. I think one of us waved a big bag around to catch them in. The whole neighborhood was in on it. Hilarious. Hm, maybe I learned something.
Aug 8, 2023·edited Aug 9, 2023Liked by Toby Rogers
"Blessings to the warriors". Wow. I just read this and, earlier today, it occurred to me that I could use a warrior as a friend. Not my children (though most of them are fierce individuals-it just can't be one of them). The spouse isn't it, he is on the other side, with Tony(Fauci), Bill (Gates), and The Rest. Not my siblings (they call me "anti-vaxxer"). My friends are all vaxxed. My colleagues helped destroy my career. I have relied heavily upon a much-older-than-me counselor, but, well, he can not really face or grasp what's going on: he's got massive vestiges of BS programming cycling through his being. Last week, when he told me about his dream (that a masked Hitler was annihilating the innocents, and when the mask came off, it was Trump), it finally caused me to realize that paying him to hear me formulate sentences really isn't helping me. I pondered, I prayed, and it came to me, if I am going to speak to anyone about my concerns and burdens, it must be a warrior. Of course, I know to not look for a warrior, but become a better warrior myself and push on.
There's a good community here on my Substack. Like you, we are all on an arduous journey of speaking truth and seeking freedom. You can meet other warriors in real life at conferences organized by the Weston A. Price Foundation, Children's Health Defense, Brownstone Institute, or state-based medical freedom groups. 🙏
Wonderful writing. This helps me understand why people choose to go along with all the lies. I think this whole Covid thing has really shown how people think. You can see the divide of those who will go along with the lie, despite any evidence to the contrary, and those who seek and speak the truth.
As always, your analysis and description of the problem is brilliant, and beautifully written. However, your analysis of the underlying cause isn't an analysis at all: it's a thrown-together jumble of half-baked, unexamined conservative clichés. It's basically a way of saying "now that we've lost our traditional values of church, gender roles, and obedience, we're all so confused that we're willing to believe in anything." You pretty much never write anything with this kind of vague, clichéd evasion of thought, so I'm extremely surprised by it.
What's your analysis of the underlying cause?
I am not sure, because, as usual, in your article you have pointed to something very important that I never focused on or thought about before. Your writing always opens up new perspectives for me. My first thought might be really only a different way of thinking about what you said. The old conservative version of reality (traditional gender roles, the benefits of democracy, the benefits of capitalism, etc) was certainly just as fake, if not faker, than anything we have today. (That's pretty much what the whole content of Beat generation literature is about.) The change, now that the old consensus reality has been destroyed, is not that we now have started to prefer artifice to reality, because we always did. The change is now that most people DON'T believe what authorities are saying, but authorities are no longer worried about this. Democracy has been gamed enough that authorities don't need to care about popular sentiment. This is why Macron thinks he can raise the retirement age in France, when the entire population is against it. It is why Netanyahu can weaken the judiciary in Israel, when the majority is against it. Another symptom of the cultural change is that people no longer believe what ads say. Almost all ads nowadays are snarky spoofs on older styles of advertising pitches, because that's the only way advertisers can think of to try and gain a little bit of trust. I think the last part of your analysis, that people prefer the artificial because it signals that you belong to the crowd, is much more accurate. It's not always easy to see that a change in technology and media can, by itself, cause a major cultural shift, but I think the invention of social media is more than sufficient to explain the simultaneous cultural shift towards extreme conformism. It is as if, suddenly, everyone in the world is looking at you at once, and judging your appearance and your opinions and your choices. No wonder people rush for cover, and try to make themselves into whatever would seem most acceptable to the crowd.
Great conversation. Let's see how this all plays out when reality reverts to the mean and we have to talk face to face while struggling to find something to eat. Toby, I love your writing. I am one of those kids who tried to fit in by poisoning themselves. Now I am confused and questioning my habit of fitting in. Thank You.
"The revolution we seek then is about a turn away from the artificial and ridiculous toward the real. That would seem to be the most natural and rewarding turn of all. But the human condition and the flaws in human nature are such that we are always fighting a battle against the temptations of the artificial and idolatrous. Together we must build an entire culture and economy based on cherishing the good, the true, and the beautiful in everyday life."
Well, that's a goal, but what are the means? Although they aren't very flashy, a couple of ready and powerful means (work at jobs that involve much physical activity, give up the pill as a birth control method) are embodied in these particular scientific findings: https://larryturner.substack.com/p/cognitive-downsides-of-modern-oral. Moral -- don't overthink it and overengineer this building of a better culture, just pay attention to the big drags on the basic system.
TRUTH, well said.
Thanks
🍷😂🙏
AMEN brother you summed it up quite nicely, touching on the essence of each point. As the word turns in darkness your light is shining brightly- a beacon to the like minded and warm hearted.
Peace and blessings as you continue your journey in courage!
I think a return to our Judeo Christian beliefs and values would bring us back to searching for the true and the good and the real.
Generational and locale. I know it wasn’t the point of the post but I couldn’t resist : )
The bible says this world belongs to satan, father of lies. That, or something very like that deceitful darkness runs our society, and leads every human it can away from our inherent beautiful truthful possibilities, rejecting goodness and god, and towards fakeness and mediocrity, and various forms of mental, spiritual, psychological and physical suicides. The goal seems to be to make humans reject the divine goodness they are destined for, if they choose it, and send themselves to hell instead, for that consciousness to prey on, energetically perhaps. All forms of art, philosophy, spirituality and expression are controlled and suppressed in the mainstream, with talented individuals excluded from public awareness unless they submit to the dehumanisation process and give up their birthright as beautiful individual expressions of truth. Music is my field, and it is heavily controlled, with endless corrupting, shallow, repetitive, trite or downright destructive shite pumped into childrens ears all day, and artificially socially approved of until only the strongest reject it for actual real musical art, leaving very few paths to self sufficiency as a musician other than surrendering to them (I wont).
Same in architecture, painting, scultpture, politics, philosophy, and definitely the sciences, with particular attention on health and nutrition, where nearly everything the mainstream parrots or proclaims is close to or actually a 100% harmful lie.
My goal is to be true to truth, to br true to my true self, to notice and reject the endless forms of that influence as much as possible, to reject the self harm/slow suicidal cultures of hedonisitic self destruction, and seek the rarepeople and places where goodness and true greatness is still celebrated.
Thank you Toby. I enjoyed this in a twisted sad way.
“As an adult, I could not wait to enter the workforce where I figured, finally, people would take things seriously. “
Sorry I had to snicker at this. : )
I was happy to find that the majority my fellow nurses took things very seriously and had what I thought were good ethics. But recently things got a tad weird ;)
I realize this is a silly comment but here goes anyway, I thought snipes were furry ground dwellers/burrowers. We went snipe hunting in Manteca and farther north. Who knew?
I think they are birds or something. But the hoax story gets changed by every generation I guess.
They are birds but can't fly after dark so you can catch them with a large burlap bag. As a wiser more compassionate warrior I now advocate for protecting animals and not dealing them fear and death including not using them for entertainment so its been many years since I organized a snipe hunt. I did one at work for adults and had quite a few people signed up before somebody blew the whistle.
We were told they could fly so I assumed they were birds. Spent an hour or so after dark banging on pot lids with spoons with my best friend and my little sister. I think one of us waved a big bag around to catch them in. The whole neighborhood was in on it. Hilarious. Hm, maybe I learned something.
Great stuff. As Always. Thank you Toby. 🙌❤️
"Blessings to the warriors". Wow. I just read this and, earlier today, it occurred to me that I could use a warrior as a friend. Not my children (though most of them are fierce individuals-it just can't be one of them). The spouse isn't it, he is on the other side, with Tony(Fauci), Bill (Gates), and The Rest. Not my siblings (they call me "anti-vaxxer"). My friends are all vaxxed. My colleagues helped destroy my career. I have relied heavily upon a much-older-than-me counselor, but, well, he can not really face or grasp what's going on: he's got massive vestiges of BS programming cycling through his being. Last week, when he told me about his dream (that a masked Hitler was annihilating the innocents, and when the mask came off, it was Trump), it finally caused me to realize that paying him to hear me formulate sentences really isn't helping me. I pondered, I prayed, and it came to me, if I am going to speak to anyone about my concerns and burdens, it must be a warrior. Of course, I know to not look for a warrior, but become a better warrior myself and push on.
There's a good community here on my Substack. Like you, we are all on an arduous journey of speaking truth and seeking freedom. You can meet other warriors in real life at conferences organized by the Weston A. Price Foundation, Children's Health Defense, Brownstone Institute, or state-based medical freedom groups. 🙏
Even intelligence has become artificial .....
Wonderful writing. This helps me understand why people choose to go along with all the lies. I think this whole Covid thing has really shown how people think. You can see the divide of those who will go along with the lie, despite any evidence to the contrary, and those who seek and speak the truth.
THANK YOU!!!!!!! LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!