I appreciate your nuanced take, Tereza. I would say there’s a difference between forgiving and forgetting. Forgiving can benefit one’s own personal peace of mind, but to forget is to permit it to happen again, and again, and again, which is what we’ve seen play out throughout history. Hitler himself appears to have been emboldened by the fact that the Turkish government got away with the Armenian genocide (which the ancestors of my best friend witnessed firsthand and barely escaped with their lives).
You might appreciate the documentary “Forgiving Dr. Mengele” (https://smile.amazon.com/Forgiving-Dr-Mengele-Eva-Mozes/dp/B07TYSK54P/), which explores how two of Mengele’s twins responded to their experiences—one with forgiveness, while the other could not bring herself to do that and thus perpetuated her own suffering. I sympathize with both perspectives.
“The question of good and evil is something I always go back to, and I like defining my terms: to do good is to alleviate suffering, to do better is to enable people to alleviate their own suffering; to do bad is to cause suffering, and to do evil is to force others to cause suffering. I see actions as potentially evil but not people.”
This is a compelling definition. You seem to be missing the reality that philanthropaths/psychopaths/sociopaths exist, however, and are making the mistake of judging their words and deeds by your own good nature. That is a potentially lethal mistake equivalent to free-spirited women thinking they can bicycle through Islamic fundamentalist territory and be greeted with tolerance and love—a decision that has resulted in the rape and beheadings of far too many naïve individuals thinking everyone else shares their rosy worldview.
Margaret! Thank you for reading and liking my episode. I know your schedule doesn't allow for watching but I started this video by saying that I was going to record it and decide later if I'd release it. And, "since you are watching I must have decided that it was important enough to risk the conflict it might create with people I considered friends and supporters." You were, of course, uppermost in my mind. I'm glad that you haven't given up on me!
I think that my next one, while more controversial for some, will be one we mostly agree on--The Cancer-CoVax Connexion. I'm looking forward to your thoughts after I put it together.
One of my favorite novels, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, clearly identifies the System (and not Nurse Ratched) as the villain in the tale. I agree with most of what you write; but I challenge your assertion that propaganda is a combination of truth and lies. The fact that the Hunter Biden laptop was dismissed as Russian Propaganda is evidence that sometimes propaganda is nothing more than lies repeated over and over again until the consumers of propaganda accept it as truth.
Joseph Goebbels famously said, "A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth."
Charles! I was just about to respond to your comment on my last video and thank you for the kind words that my videos were intriguing and informative. And I thought it insightful that you said "As a proud descendant of Swiss Mennonites, I find it difficult to criticize Switzerland (despite all the evidence)." On the docility of 'Amerikans', I've been thinking that it's caring about other people that sucks us into the propaganda. I think I'm more immune because I'm more hard-hearted than some ;-)
LOVE one flew over ... especially the book, but I forgot that was Ken Kesey. You're absolutely right that it's a great example of the system being the villain and Nurse Ratched as just one manifestation.
Well, to play a little with the definition of propaganda, I would classify the claim that the laptop's existence was Russian propaganda as simply a lie. A very clumsy lie, because it's been abundantly and irrefutably proven that it does exist and that the contents, if they had been revealed, would have changed the election. So for anyone who's thinking, media and FBI manipulation of elections is now a given. That it STILL isn't seen as a lie goes back to your other post's point about "the docile and brainwashed Americans who still believe the third Obama administration has another goal besides replacing our style of government." We don't disagree about that.
Just some immediate unfiltered reactions to this video as they occurred to me while watching. I’ve dispensed with any structure, and the quotes are from memory. I don’t know why or if they are relevant. Wall, meet Spaghetti:
“The map is not the territory.” —Alfred Korzybski.
“Fiction is Truth unimpeded by fact.” —John Boorman.
“There is no truth. Everything is permitted.” —Peter Carroll.
“Tyger, tyger burning bright
In the forest of the night,
what immortal hand or eye
dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” —Blake.
You do your best work when you explore the nature of reality, or the the reality of Reality.
We humans do love our dichotomies: truth/lie, good/evil, life/death, light/dark, left/right, democrat/republican.
“It isn't true unless it makes you laugh.” —Robert Anton Wilson
The whole foundation of mathematics rests on division by zero, which is undefined.
The whole foundation of modern physics rests on mass, which is undefined.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Naomi Kline (or was it Rahm Emanuel, or YHVH?)
There are only three identities that matter: heretic, apostate, traitor.
I saw a segment of Rising (The Hill) in which Kim Iverson was explaining mass formation. Ryan Grimm said—I’m paraphrasing—that he would not accept that Nazis were victims of a psychosis because that alleviated them of their responsibility for their crimes.
Cluster B personalities are logical adaptations to the world. All neuroses solve problems. (I think Thomas Szasz wrote something like that.)
27 million Soviets died in WWII. The Red Army destroyed the Third Reich and liberated Europe.
Why do so few Christians (and Jews) never notice that there are two very different creation stories in Genesis? If they couldn’t even get that story right….
Oh Jack, so much spaghetti to respond to and in such interesting splatter patterns!
Love all the quotes but especially tickled by the Robert Anton Wilson. There's an episode in there somewhere, on why that 'click' of something suddenly making sense is the same thing that makes you laugh.
I'm sure you know the P. Sainath book, Everybody Loves a Good Drought. Along the same lines as Naomi.
The dichotomies are a good example. The Course mentions that darkness doesn't actually exist, only the absence of light (and I read somewhere recently that it's only the narrowness of our visual spectrum that makes us think space is black, when it's filled with wavelengths we're just missing.) But it doesn't put the absence of love as evil, only fear.
"Heretic, apostate, traitor" ooooh. I have to give that one more thought.
I wonder what crimes the future will accuse Ryan Grim of, things that he could have, should have, would have known if he'd wondered about them. The person who does the horrendous act has already paid the price of knowing. Hell could be Ryan Grim strapped with his eyelids taped open, ala Clockwork Orange, forced to watch to the 7th iteration the effect of every dollar he spent or invested, every word he spoke, every vote he cast, every tax dollar he paid. 'Do not judge lest ye be judged.'
Yes! I've written extensively (somewhere) about those two Creation stories. And the Course also makes that point--after the one where everything's good, in the next one Adam goes to sleep (during the rib removal surgery, I believe) but it never says he wakes up! Clearly, it's not the Tree of Knowledge but the Tree of Judgment. Once we start categorizing good and evil, it's all over.
Thank you for saying I do my best work on the nature of reality. I was just resigning myself to that same thing. I think that Lyndsey (who wrote a great comment on the YT version, very smart and articulate, I think you'd like her) has what I'm doing backwards--spiritual-socio--although it's not as catchy. But I think I might stop fighting my urge to start with the long view and put the specific in context. I think it's my niche.
Always great to hear your thoughts, my well-read friend!
Forgiveness, gratitude and overcoming of the stages of grief are all important steps in human spiritual growth. We also do best psychologically when holding ourselves responsible before engaging in reflexively blaming others. At least then we have elements of control over actually changing our own outlook & behavior for the better.
I woke up this morning thinking about response-ability and how it requires developing the self to respond to others with. I was thinking of it in relationship to my next episode so thanks for bringing that up, KW.
To complete my reference to Putin items … some of the items/videos may no longer be accessible in certain countries. (Jeff J Brown calls it the “Great Western Firewall”) I have cut and pasted from a private communique now a few years old.
Putin: “You know, we have a really dark time in our country’s history, at the beginning of the Soviet era, where many believers were killed – not only Christian Orthodox, but also Muslims and representatives of other religions. The Soviet state, in its early stage, was very cruel to religious authorities. Many of our Churches were completely destroyed, our traditional religions denominations suffered massively.
But the role of the State is to protect the people “
-----
• Putin: "With the absence of values, society begins to decay"
(Don’t worry about the title – Putin’s wit and sense of humour really shows through –
“Actually, you know what I’d like to say about that? Prostitution is one of those serious, ugly social phenomena; young women engage in this, for the most part because they can’t make a living any other credible way. And this reflects on the society and the government. But people who order this kind of falsified information – the kind that is being propagated against the President [Elect] of the United States – those that fabricate it and use if for political means – they are much worse than prostitutes. They have no moral limitations at all.”
-----
• Putin speaking with creative youth at the Tavrida National Youth Educational Forum, during his trip to Crimea on August 20, 2017. (excerpt)
Thank you so much for the link to your channel Tereza. I can't wait to look around and learn more, and share crumbs from my own (very recent) journey, which incidentally started by trying to understand President Putin and Russia today. My findings are very favourable - I just believe that there is a lot missing (or erroneous) information/narrative about both WWI and WWII.
Thanks, Julius, for subbing both my YT and Substack! Yes, I share exactly your feeling. It's like there's a missing piece of the puzzle and everything is being kludged together in ways they don't really fit. I've been very interested in Putin and Russia too, so I look forward to your comments there. Ukraine has been quite an education in things I can't believe I didn't know. The rabbit holes just keep going and going ...
Tereza - I've been chewing on the topic of forgiveness lately too. So much to look around and see the hurts in our world, and see how I've hurt people I care about, and see the ways I hurt myself. For those who can't forgive Hitler or any other genocidal regime, where is the dividing line? How do we know what's "forgivable" and what deserves eternal hatred? I want to believe my choices are forgivable, but I have internal critics who threaten to beat me up forever. And parts of our culture might cast condemnation on me forever. And then deeper wisdom in me says that forgiveness isn't even the question. That forgiveness is only a human construct. But then I get lost here, and go in a loop of "but what about the people who've been so hurt by suffering and by those in power who created conditions of suffering?"
I also wonder why Hitler is the personification of evil when there are many murderous leaders, such as Stalin and Pol Pot and so many more that others who remember history can list better than me. Why does Hitler get the top of list, at least in America and I imagine so in Europe too.
Even writing my thoughts on forgiveness and Hitler in this comment thread makes me feel vulnerable. Extra kudos to you for making a video on it that grapples with the nature of evil, forgiveness and reality.
Thank you Marta, for the kudos and for sharing your thoughts. I had to laugh at the internal critic. There are things I've done that were selfish, inconsiderate or just ignorantly hurtful that I'm still rehashing 50 years later. Shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on embarrassment?
It's easier for me to weigh in with what the Course says, since I certainly don't know. What it would say is that in Reality, forgiveness doesn't exist because there's nothing to forgive. But in this world, forgiveness is our sole purpose because we haven't realized there's nothing to forgive. It's guilt and fear and blame, what I call the Unholy Trinity, that keep us stuck.
If we choose Door #3 and consider that the world may be One Mind dreaming, I am Pol Pot and Stalin and Hitler, and I am every victim--except nothing REALLY happened. It's like when you wake up with that awful feeling in your stomach that you did something horrible and even though you know it was a dream, you still can't shake it. The most important thing we can do is forgive ourselves but we can only do that vicariously, by forgiving others. I think.
It's very interesting, that feeling of vulnerability. I definitely get that, but I don't know if it's fear of human retaliation or psychological-supernatural. There's a lot of buried superstition, that's for sure. I'll have to explore that further and where it comes from in me.
Another tour de force, Tereza. Thank you very much. One only has to look at the official narrative of current events in and around Ukraine immediately to start questioning the narratives we have been fed about previous conflicts. History is a set of lies written by the winners?! Truth is the first casualty in any war?!
Have you come across Will Zoll's recent series of essays about Prussian "education" and mind kontrol systems/technologies, "Council of The Gods"?:
Thank you, Tirion. And yes! Knowing how we've been manipulated since 911 and with Ukraine makes it impossible to imagine that didn't happen in WWI and WWII, which were really the same war. I haven't seen Will Zoll before but this looks fascinating. I'll definitely check it out. Thanks again.
• “On Resistance to Evil by Force” by Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin
Some passages – FINALLY! . I will let you apply your own thoughts, experience and interpretation …
Ilyin spends quite a bit of time explaining his definitions and shoring up the theological basis for his perspective but there are many insightful gems … it is a book that I now treasure.
-----
“In fact, what would “non-resistance” [to evil] mean, in the sense of the absence of any resistance? This would mean accepting evil: letting it in and giving it freedom, scope and power. If under these conditions the uprising of evil occurred, and non-resistance continued, it would mean subordination to it, a surrender of the self to it, participation in it, and finally, turning oneself into its instrument, into its body, into its cesspool, its play thing, an absorbed element thereof. It would be a voluntary self-corruption and self-infection at the start, and the active spread of infection among other people and their involvement in its coordination by the end.
[…]
Moreover, for however long there is a dislike in the soul or at least a vague disgust, then the person still resists: he, perhaps, does not rise up in any way, but he is still divided, he fights within himself and as a result, the very acceptance of evil fails him; even while completely passive externally, he resists evil internally, condemns it, is indignant, exposes it before himself, does not succumb to his fears and temptations, and even succumbing in part reproaches himself for it, gathers with the spirit, resents himself, turns away from it, and is purified in repentance, even when drowning, he resists and does not sink.
[…]
Therefore the non-resistor of evil sooner or later arrives at the need to assure himself that evil is not so bad and that it is not so definitively evil, that it has some positive features, that there are many of them, that they may even predominate.
[…]
And when aversion subsides and evil is no longer experienced as evil, then acceptance imperceptibly becomes total: the soul begins to believe that black is white, adapts to match, becomes black itself, and finds that it approves and enjoys, and, of course, this gives evil great pleasure.
This is the spiritual law: the non-resistor to evil is absorbed by it and becomes possessed.
[…]
Evil is first and foremost the spiritual inclination of man =, inherent in each of us, as if for some, living within us there is a passionate desire to unbridle to unleash the beast inside, a gravitation that always strives to expand its field and to overtake us completely.
[…]
It is clear that the more spineless and unprincipled the man is, the closer he is to this state and the more natural it is for him not to resist evil.
[…]
And it is natural that from non-resistance evil passion expands its dominance to fullness: chunks of passion, already ennobled, discard their garments of nobility and pour into a common rebellion; they no longer hold the line and barricade, but they themselves indulge in the former enemy and embrace evil with vivacity. The evil obsession becomes total and draws the soul on its own paths, according to its own laws. Obsessed with an evil passion, the non-resistor runs rampant because he himself has rejected all that restrains, directs and formulates: all his non-resisting force becomes the power of the most thunderous evil, and the breath of death feeds upon the cruelty of a most helpless demise. This is why the end of his frenzy is the end of his psyche and bodily existence: insanity or death.
[…]
Such a decomposition of spirituality in the soul may emerge in a weak person in adulthood, but it can also begin in childhood …
[…]
A person who has been spiritually defective since childhood can even develop in himself a special mental structure, which, if superficially observed, can be mistaken for “character”, and special viewpoints that are then mistaken for “beliefs”.
In fact, he being unprincipled and spineless, remains always a slave to his bad passions, a prisoner of elaborate mental mechanisms that possess him and reign all-powerful in his life, devoid of spiritual dimension and divining the contours of his disgusting behaviour. He does not resist his evil obsession as “will”, his instinctive scheming as “the mind”, the impulses of his evil passions as “feelings”.
Wrapping himself in anti-spiritual passions, he pronounces his nature in a corresponding anti-spiritual “ideology”, in which radical and comprehensiveness godlessness merges with his own excruciating sickness of the heart and complete moral idiocy.
Naturally, spiritually healthy people cause such a person only irritation and anger, and foment in his a sick love for power, in the manifestations of which flashes of megalomania inevitably alternate with outbursts of maniacal persecution.”
-----
On forgiveness, Ivan Ilyin muses that if he could ’be God for an instant’ and get into the minds of these “villains” he would turn their minds around, make them ‘nice’ and forgive them – only if all else fails would he then resort to force and explode their f’n heads off - but forgiveness is always the first option.
Ilyin:
“Man is loving […] by that force which establishes a living identity between the acceptable and the unacceptable […] and communicating to the second a sense of forgiveness, reconciliation, dignity, power and freedom.”
Chapter 10. On Sentimentality and Pleasure
“Moral hedonism distorts both the force of clarity, the worldview and the foundation of personal character.
The moral hedonist does not want this experience, does not allow it to occur in his soul, and as a consequence he gradually begins to “not believe in evil”. … Shrink from evil, to overlook it and forget about it.
The moral hedonist does not see what he is really given and sees not what is true. He values in experience not objective fidelity and accuracy, but compliance with his subjective moods and the fantasy that has grown from them. He becomes accustomed to fantasising his experiences and to experience these fantasies as reality.
Moral hedonism damages not only the clarity but also the character of a person.
Hedonistic tenderness, embracing the soul and capturing its central sense, involves it in a certain weakness of will, expressed in indifference or in direct hostility to all wilful impulses and tasks.
“Love”, professed and preached by the affectionate moralist turns out to be a weak-willed or “passively-willed” state: this “love” does not strengthen the character by concentrating forces and forging the spiritual centre of the individual, but gradually weakens it; it […] delights the soul with boundlessness and uncertainty […] such weak-willed love is not an active emotion.
The weak-willed love of a hedonistic moralist is rather a “mood”, easily muddling along with a lack of both will and objectivity. As a weak-will mood, this love is sentimental, and as a pointless mood, this love is purposeless; it does not carry within itself a spiritual task or spiritual responsibility. It is a feeling that is saturated with itself; it is not a beginning, but an end, not an outcome, but a finalisation, not a step, but an achievement; it is sweet self-worth or the enjoyment of valuing one’s self”
-----
Page 195 (Chapter 21)
“The fate of man is, in his life on earth, to confront the outbreak of uninvited evil. It is impossible to avoid this fate; and thus there are only two possibilities: either to be dishonourable and turn away from this struggle, to dishonourably live through it by both blindness and cowardice, or the honourable path of accepting it, comprehending this acceptance as a service and remaining faithful to its vocation.“ [Contrast this with Koestler!]
[…]
… A strong man asserts his power precisely by the fact that he does not flee from the conflict into an allegedly virtuous passivity and does not close his eyes to his tragic nature, thus falling from cowardice into crookedness; a strong man sees the tragedy of his situation and goes out to meet it, enter it and eliminate it.”
[…]
“Anyone who, in the face of aggressive villainy, requires an “ideal” moral perfection in all outcomes and accepts nothing less, does not understand the central tragedy of life: this tragedy consists in the fact that there is no ideal outcome in such a situation.“
Finally (or rather penultimately)!! I promised you some passages from Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin’s “On Resistance to Evil By Force”
Written in 1925 in the context of the atrocities committed by the Bolshevists against (ultimately) tens of millions of Russians, it has only been translated into English as recently as 2018 by K Benois.
As a prelude,
Matthew Raphael Johnson introduced me to Ilyin:
• The Orthodox Nationalist - Ivan Ilyin on Democracy and Evil – TON 090121 – Matthew Raphael Johnson
“One of the important central concepts in Ivan Ilyin's thinking is the definition of freedom. The word ‘freedom’ in the West has been butchered to the point where it now almost means the opposite of what it originally was meant to be. The word that we should use I think that would make better sense is ‘autonomy’ rather than freedom. In the West there's a tendency to believe that freedom refers to the ability to do whatever you want, that there is a lack of external restraint and so it comes down to being able to act arbitrarily, having no reason to act the way you do, because there can be no causality-[…] it's freedom to do whatever you want, and that's somehow a good thing.”
(Here is Matthew Raphael Johnson’s main site … The Russian Orthodox Medievalist: https://www.rusjournal.org/)
I was taken aback by the relevance of Ilyin’s writing to the current day evil of the Covidian cult - a form of modern medical [redacted].
Passages still to follow but in the meantime, a friend shared this with me just the other day …
• “Putin's Philosopher” - Anton Barbashin (September 2015)
(That’s right about when Russia intervened to help President Bashar al-Assad defend Syria against ‘ISIS’)
Tereza, you sort of asked me about my opinion of President Putin. My (favourable) assessment is based on what he has written, what he has said and what he has done.
For example, in his Valdai keynote speech 2013:
“Without the values embedded in Christianity and other world religions, without the standards of morality that have taken shape over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity. We consider it natural and right to defend these values. One must respect every minority’s right to be different, but the rights of the majority must not be put into question.”
Source:
• President Vladimir Putin at the 10th anniversary meeting of Valdai International Discussion Club in the Novgorod Region, September 19, 2013.
“Every one of us, on New Year’s Eve [2017], can be a little bit magical ...
For this, all you need to do is treat your parents with love and gratefulness, give your children and families the utmost love and care, respect your work colleagues and your friendships.
Stand up for justice and the truth, be merciful to those who require your help – and that’s the secret to being magic.
May all your dreams come true – pure thoughts and kind intentions.
May every household be blessed with joy and love.”
If I am wrong about Putin (and he has his detractors and critics) then so be it – we have been outplayed - but then so too have others including (both on my bookshelf and read)
• Mike King – “The War Against Putin”
• Matthew Raphael Johnson – “Russian Populist: The Political Thought of Vladimir Putin”
Andrew Carrington Hitchcock also shares their assessment.
Incidentally, I have also read “First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President” …
And watched the following remarkable documentaries. I have downloaded these documentaries but sadly, with the current events revolving around the Ukraine, they are no longer accessible here in Australia. I will share them anyway for other readers.
• “Putin" - the Documentary Sure to Change Everything You Thought You Knew About Russia's President
(Incidentally, Russia Insider is now somewhat latent but still accessible and re-posting older articles. It’s spin-off ‘Russian Faith’ is still very vibrant
Enough for now – will share some more from my compilation in due course. I have shared all these and more privately with family and friends – but they generally scoff (and get angry) at me because they read the Murdoch hatemongering press and watch TV for ‘the news’ 😊.
Regards.
PS – from the Unz Review (American Pravda series), the following is an excellent (and topical) place to start
Hello Tereza. After listening to just one of your videos, I have three books to share that come to mind immediately:
• “Falsehood in War-Time” by Arthur Ponsonby
About institutionalised atrocity/war propaganda
• “On Resistance to Evil by Force” by Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin
About confronting and resisting evil, and amongst other things, forgiveness
• “Darkness at Noon” by Arthur Koestler
About the immorality and the rewriting of history
Some specific passages to follow as I find time – here is the first:
• “Falsehoods in War Time” by Arthur Ponsonby
“Facts must be distorted, relevant circumstances concealed and a picture presented which by its crude colouring will persuade the ignorant people that their Government is blameless, their cause is righteous, and that the indisputable wickedness of the enemy has been proved beyond question.“
“Departments have to be created to see to the psychological side. People must never be allowed to become despondent; so victories must be exaggerated and defeats, if not concealed, at any rate minimized, and THE STIMULUS OF INDIGNATION, HORROR, AND HATRED MUST BE ASSIDUOUSLY AND CONTINUOUSLY PUMPED INTO THE PUBLIC MIND BY MEANS OF PROPAGANDA."
“… the injection of the poison of hatred into men's minds by means of falsehood is a greater evil in wartime than the actual loss of life. THE DEFILEMENT OF THE HUMAN SOUL IS WORSE THAN THE DESTRUCTION OF THE HUMAN BODY.” [EMPHASIS added]
Thanks to you reminding me of Ponsonby, I posted this comment on Matt Taibbi's Sub:
I was just discussing Lord Ponsonby's 10 Principles of War Propaganda published and translated to English by Nikta on Daily Kos in 2009:
In 2001 (before 9/11), Belgian historian Anne Morelli published a book analyzing the basic principles of war propaganda. Unfortunately and as far as I can tell, it was never translated to English (only in German). She credits the work of Lord Ponsonby, an amazing and unfortunately somewhat forgotten character. He stood, largely alone, in the Commons opposing WWI before it started, predicting not just the massacre it was going to be, but more interestingly for our purpose, how it was going to be sold to the masses.
Morelli enumerates it as the following principles:
1. We don't want war, we are only defending ourselves
2. The other guy is the sole responsible for this war
3. Our adversary's leader is evil and looks evil
4. We are defending a noble purpose, not special interests
5. The enemy is purposefully causing atrocities; we only commit mistakes
6. The enemy is using unlawful weapons
7. We have very little losses, the enemy is losing big
8. Intellectuals and artists support our cause
9. Our cause is sacred
10. Those who doubt our propaganda are traitors.
And any facts or logic that contradict our propaganda is disinformation.
Yes! It was Anne Morelli, a Flemish journalist who analyzed war propaganda, crediting Ponsonby. It was translated to English by an author on The Daily Kos. I quote it in my piece on Nina Jankowicz, who didn't last much longer after I posted it. It's a fun but sobering episode and hasn't gotten much attention after her digital demise: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/nina-jankowicz-the-warbling-warmonger.
Some passages. While this is a novel, we can assume that the author is revealing his (?insider) insights, experience and ideology through the thoughts, dialogues and, in the case of the ill-fated Rubashov), fictional personal diaries.
-----
“To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one’s own conscience is to abandon mankind. History is a priori amoral; it has no conscience.”
…
“The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains the only rule of political ethics; anything else is just vague chatter …“
…
“There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct […] The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community – which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit of a sacrificial lamb.“
…
“One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions. That is the first commandment for us. Sympathy, conscience, disgust, despair, repentance and atonement are for us repellent debauchery. […] The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one’s own conscience is perfidy.”
------
“For us the question of subjective good faith is of no interest. […]
History has taught us that often lies serve her better than the truth; for man is sluggish and has to be led through the desert for forty years before each step in his development. And he has to be driven through the desert with threats and promises, by imaginary terrors and imaginary consolations, so that he should not sit down prematurely to rest and divest himself by worshipping golden calves.
We have learnt history more thoroughly than the others. We differ from all the others in our logical consistency. We know that virtue does not matter to history, and that crimes remain unpunished; but that every error has its consequences and venges itself into the seventh generation. Therefore we concentrated all our efforts on preventing error and destroying the very seeds of it. Never in history has so much power over the future of humanity been concentrated in so few hands as in our case.”
-----
“Most of the works on foreign trade and currency disappeared from the shelves—their author, the People’s Commissar for Finance, had just been arrested; also nearly all old Party Congress reports treating the same subject; most books and reference-books on the history of antecedents of the Revolution; most works by living authors of jurisprudence and philosophy; all pamphlets dealing with the problems of birth control; the manuals on the structure of the People’s Army; treatises on trade unionism and the right to strike in the People’s state; practically every study of the problems of political constitution more than two years old, and, finally, even the volumes of the Encyclopaedia published by the Academy—a new revised edition being promised shortly.”
“New books arrived, too: the classics of social science appeared with new footnotes and commentaries, the old histories were replaced by new histories, the old memoirs of dead revolutionary leaders were replaced by new memoirs of the same defunct. Rubashov remarked jokingly to Arlova that the only thing left to be done was to publish a new and revised edition of the back numbers of all newspapers.”
-----
“The official version of the events of the Revolution had gone through a peculiar change in these ten years, the parts played in it by the chief actors had to be re-written, the scale of values reshuffled; but old Kieffer was stubborn, and understood nothing of the inner dialectics of the new era under No. 1 … “
Tereza, you’re mention of WWI at around 14:++ gives me the perfect segue to introduce Jeff J Brown (‘China Rising’) via the following particular article.
• Jeff J Brown with David Pear On Who And Why WWI Was Started, Then Prolonged. MSM And Your Textbooks Are All Lies.
I purchased and read two of Jeff’s books – “The Big Red Book on China” and “China Rising”
In the latter, Jeff provides his own personal testimony with passages like:
“I now understand that getting de-brainwashed takes a lot of effort, humility and personal courage. I get inspired reading about other people’s journeys to discover the truth. “
“My arc of personal enlightenment about how the world really works has been a long, slow hyperbolic curve that has skyrocketed upwards in the very recent past.“
“I clung to the nobility of the “democratic” process, capitalism and the mainstream media’s mind numbing consensus. I still believed at the time that the New York Times and the Economist were cutting edge (and dependable) journalism.”
“I was ready to question my 1950s-1960s upbringing, its conventional wisdom and official narrative. […] I was finally prepared to step out of the Matrix. There was no turning back.”
[…]
“I was in complete denial until recently. It’s just so much easier to look the other way and survive the day.”
“While not a religious person, I think that when the clarity of the truth fulfils you, it is like an intellectual and spiritual baptism of sorts.”
Fabulous discussion and interview with Jeff. Book ordered. So many trigger thoughts I don't know where to begin. Democracy ,,, Economics ... Atwill ... Let me just segue to something/someone I think you will find fascinating and inspiring (sadly RIP 2015)
My introduction to Acharya S. (Dorothy Milne Murdock) was via this great two-part interview:
I'll check it out. This is definitely right up my alley. I have several of my old radio shows on the OT/ Torah. You might like this one: Biblical Blackwater or Sodom vs. the Mercenaries: http://thirdparadigm.org/3p_053.php.
That is hilarious, Julian. Jeff just What'sApped me to let me know he'd started reading my book, and the two he sent me just arrived yesterday. He told me that 44 Days was the one to start with. We're planning on exchanging interviews in the near future. No accidents!
I appreciate you sending these quotes, which give me more of a sense of Jeff, and make me think he'll like my book. It's all about unlearning how the world really works. I'll check out that video in particular!
I usually appreciate discussion of taboo topics but this one is particularly troubling. In a shared space state of free speech I guess its still seen as an exception - maybe an outcome of generational guilt?
We think our grandparents/great-grandparents or whatever might have been purveyors of cruelty to Jewish people, therefore we have inherited responsibility. Or maybe the consequences of nazi genocide were just so bad they deserve some special rule.
I don't hate that logic because it might make humans kinder, but I don't love it because the lack of debate inhibits our intellectual progress.
That's a very nuanced response, ep. I think you've touched on something very important with the generational guilt. What I tell my daughters is that guilt makes people behave badly. In my own experience raising them, when one was hurt, their natural reaction was kindness and compassion. If they had something to do with the hurt, their reaction was blame.
In some YT episodes I say that liberals are manipulated through guilt, which is more potent than fear. I think we're seeing this a lot with the virus, where blame is being shifted to the unvaccinated as people who just don't care about others.
I feel like every day I'm finding out that something I'd always believed isn't so. I just don't feel confident enough that I know the truth to judge anyone in history anymore. I certainly judge actions, but I'm not really sure what happened and who did it.
I appreciate you reading/listening and responding!
Oh my. This is all so deep and beyond my ability to carefully respond. I was drawn in by forgiving Hitler because I have, but only because my belief system has us all, an interbeing consciousness of sorts, each of us living many lives, growing and learning more within each one for the benefit of all.
Hitler after death is a far easier project when it comes to forgiveness. Hitler in life I’m still working on, as I am with alternative 9/11 etc narratives.
So for me the bottom line here is evil.
Evil leaves me at a loss, as does a working definition of God. Where I am now is to think of God as All of it, and evil as separation from God. But how do you separate from All of it? I don’t think our human brains are capable of understanding this paradox.
We humans are swimming through a viscous pool of what feels like evil right now. I think much of it, maybe all of it, is human-created. Egregores, wetiko, what have you. This is our unfortunate power as a species, to have the ability to create such discord. But we can also create its opposite.
I’m less of a mind to blame or figure out evil’s source and this is is likely a very unfortunate personal disconnect. I’m hoping, though, that we humans can choose to create positive egregores .. egregores of love and connection.
I’m very collapse-aware, and I think at this point that this scenario will be our future. But I’m also still hoping for healing, and most important for love to prevail. To go there, one must balance intellect with heart and will. It’s a difficult alchemical practice. But the results surpass any imagination of Power and Energy as we humans presently define them.
For saying this is beyond your ability to respond, you've beautifully articulated exactly the belief system I have. I would amend, "each of us living [all] lives" simultaneously: past, present, future.
You're really educating me. I had to look up egregore (and noticed that Peter Carroll was a notable figure in Chaos Magic, who Jack quotes above) and wetiko.
I think your 'working definition' (great concept) of God as "all of it" is perfect. If evil is not part of "all of it," wouldn't that mean that it doesn't exist? That it's an illusion that's not part of reality?
I guess the place I come to, apart from beliefs, is whether the concept of evil has any practical value. Does it give us useful strategies, things that we can do? When I look at the problem as the system, it gives us very practical things we could do about it. A belief in overpowering evil only stops us imagining we can change it or how we would change it.
One of the definitions shown for egregore was "a kind of group mind that is created when people consciously come together for a common purpose." That's the Course's definition of 'miracle-mindedness' or the Christ-mind. People who conspire for selfish reasons never really share a common purpose--each one's looking out for himself (sic).
You certainly are in a position to see the damage that's been done by the current system, whether we see living persons as creating it or it creating the personalities it's empowered. I can't help but want that system to collapse, even though it will take our current way of life with it, and that's scary. But I can't imagine any other way a new system could be born, and I never expected to see that in my lifetime. Now I think I will.
If All That Is (all of that) is good, and evil is a part of that, then evil is good. Or good is evil. LoL! Reminds of the 'Greed is good' line from Wallstreet. That was actually meant to be ironical and a warning, and yet the society seems to have mostly accepted it as true when it is so obviously untrue and even goes against every religious and philosophical principle not based on narcissism.
Perhaps at a 'higher' (or maybe different perspective) is that All That Is is without category and that good and evil are substrata of that and part of the illusion of duhka (suffering). And so from that perspective the 'practical' value of 'evil' is to motivate the seekers of truth to find the truth that good and evil are inseparable and untrue. Attraction to the 'good' (raga) and aversion to the bad (dvesa) is one of the key concepts of the creation of suffering. In a way, Tereza, this partially addresses your idea of the goodness in all and the evil of the system creating evil because if all were good, from where did the evil system arise? Chicken and egg conundrum resolved by a tertium quid (third option between a dualistic system). And so, it is possible that the only reason good CAN exist is because evil does. And to remove evil it would be necessary to remove good.
That argument is in line with the Taoists Chuang-Tzu and Lao-Tzu, who both argue that when we DO good that is not as good as doing nothing (meaning action without mind/ego based 'good' intentions) because the act of DOING good goes against the natural order of the Tao, that acts everywhere without intention, and thus creates suffering.
I also foresaw this system collapsing because it is inherently psychologically unstable hence economically and socially and environmentally unsustainable. I also anticipated I would be dead before it happened. Ah well. Humans make plans and predictions and the Universe (All That Is) laughs.
In the shamanic tradition, the shaman-to-be will experience some kind of death experience, psychologically or even physically, in order to come back with the wisdom, strength and ability to heal the community and move it to its next structure. It is possible that what we are seeing is a societal shamanic death for the birth of a wisdom that will lead us forward to new levels of consciousness. The new system will not become evident, likely, for many years. The collapse will look fast on the surface only. The rebuild will be slow, as it has been in each systemic collapse that has occurred around the time of the astrological calendar moving into a new sign.
That definition of egregore is slightly misleading, imo, because it glides over that the individual within that group is lost within the group. It more closely resembles mass formation or the old phrase 'group-think', in the sense of unthinking non-individuated unity within the whole. Mass unconsciousness that easily allows for 'evil' and even, in Jungian terms of the importance of individuation, questionable 'good.'
I hope to re-read your article and watch/listen to your videos with more care to give a more thorough response. I am actually filled with busy-ness right now, so that will be a challenge I hope to meet in a few days.
Thanks for reading, Guy, and giving such a thoughtful response. Maybe I should rename my Third Paradigm as Tertium Quid, since that's exactly what I meant by it!
It's tricky to translate one Explanation of Everything (the Course) into another Explanation of Everything (the Tao), much as I love the Tao. But it's like translating an indigenous language into an imperial one (not saying the Tao is, of course), it loses the nuance of concepts the latter doesn't have words for. But with that said, I agree about doing nothing in terms of letting go of results (if that's what intention means.)
And I definitely wouldn't say that the system is evil, first of all, because a system isn't alive, has no agency, is less than a thing really since it doesn't even have matter. In answer to Jenny I say it's dysfunctional but on reflection, I'd say all systems serve the purpose of their designers. The purpose of the capitalist system is to make the rich richer and it's doing that quite nicely. Greed is good!
And I wouldn't call the designers evil either, they're doing what we're all doing, they're just better at it and more single-minded aka ruthless. To free them from the bondage of the role they're stuck in could be a relief.
I'm hoping for a fast rebuild since designing a new system is just ONE of the projects I have on my bucket list ;-)
Wikipedia did have many definitions that matched yours, but this was a contemporary one that seemed like it might include Jenny's hope to transform that process.
Glad to hear your thoughts and the wealth of spiritual practice you bring!
Doc! It's so nice to know you're still reading and our difference on naive do-gooders didn't drive you away. Thank you for the compliment and appreciation that I am tiptoeing where 'angels' fear to tread ;-)
I appreciate your nuanced take, Tereza. I would say there’s a difference between forgiving and forgetting. Forgiving can benefit one’s own personal peace of mind, but to forget is to permit it to happen again, and again, and again, which is what we’ve seen play out throughout history. Hitler himself appears to have been emboldened by the fact that the Turkish government got away with the Armenian genocide (which the ancestors of my best friend witnessed firsthand and barely escaped with their lives).
You might appreciate the documentary “Forgiving Dr. Mengele” (https://smile.amazon.com/Forgiving-Dr-Mengele-Eva-Mozes/dp/B07TYSK54P/), which explores how two of Mengele’s twins responded to their experiences—one with forgiveness, while the other could not bring herself to do that and thus perpetuated her own suffering. I sympathize with both perspectives.
“The question of good and evil is something I always go back to, and I like defining my terms: to do good is to alleviate suffering, to do better is to enable people to alleviate their own suffering; to do bad is to cause suffering, and to do evil is to force others to cause suffering. I see actions as potentially evil but not people.”
This is a compelling definition. You seem to be missing the reality that philanthropaths/psychopaths/sociopaths exist, however, and are making the mistake of judging their words and deeds by your own good nature. That is a potentially lethal mistake equivalent to free-spirited women thinking they can bicycle through Islamic fundamentalist territory and be greeted with tolerance and love—a decision that has resulted in the rape and beheadings of far too many naïve individuals thinking everyone else shares their rosy worldview.
Margaret! Thank you for reading and liking my episode. I know your schedule doesn't allow for watching but I started this video by saying that I was going to record it and decide later if I'd release it. And, "since you are watching I must have decided that it was important enough to risk the conflict it might create with people I considered friends and supporters." You were, of course, uppermost in my mind. I'm glad that you haven't given up on me!
I think that my next one, while more controversial for some, will be one we mostly agree on--The Cancer-CoVax Connexion. I'm looking forward to your thoughts after I put it together.
One of my favorite novels, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, clearly identifies the System (and not Nurse Ratched) as the villain in the tale. I agree with most of what you write; but I challenge your assertion that propaganda is a combination of truth and lies. The fact that the Hunter Biden laptop was dismissed as Russian Propaganda is evidence that sometimes propaganda is nothing more than lies repeated over and over again until the consumers of propaganda accept it as truth.
Joseph Goebbels famously said, "A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth."
Charles! I was just about to respond to your comment on my last video and thank you for the kind words that my videos were intriguing and informative. And I thought it insightful that you said "As a proud descendant of Swiss Mennonites, I find it difficult to criticize Switzerland (despite all the evidence)." On the docility of 'Amerikans', I've been thinking that it's caring about other people that sucks us into the propaganda. I think I'm more immune because I'm more hard-hearted than some ;-)
LOVE one flew over ... especially the book, but I forgot that was Ken Kesey. You're absolutely right that it's a great example of the system being the villain and Nurse Ratched as just one manifestation.
Well, to play a little with the definition of propaganda, I would classify the claim that the laptop's existence was Russian propaganda as simply a lie. A very clumsy lie, because it's been abundantly and irrefutably proven that it does exist and that the contents, if they had been revealed, would have changed the election. So for anyone who's thinking, media and FBI manipulation of elections is now a given. That it STILL isn't seen as a lie goes back to your other post's point about "the docile and brainwashed Americans who still believe the third Obama administration has another goal besides replacing our style of government." We don't disagree about that.
Just some immediate unfiltered reactions to this video as they occurred to me while watching. I’ve dispensed with any structure, and the quotes are from memory. I don’t know why or if they are relevant. Wall, meet Spaghetti:
“The map is not the territory.” —Alfred Korzybski.
“Fiction is Truth unimpeded by fact.” —John Boorman.
“There is no truth. Everything is permitted.” —Peter Carroll.
“Tyger, tyger burning bright
In the forest of the night,
what immortal hand or eye
dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” —Blake.
You do your best work when you explore the nature of reality, or the the reality of Reality.
We humans do love our dichotomies: truth/lie, good/evil, life/death, light/dark, left/right, democrat/republican.
“It isn't true unless it makes you laugh.” —Robert Anton Wilson
The whole foundation of mathematics rests on division by zero, which is undefined.
The whole foundation of modern physics rests on mass, which is undefined.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Naomi Kline (or was it Rahm Emanuel, or YHVH?)
There are only three identities that matter: heretic, apostate, traitor.
I saw a segment of Rising (The Hill) in which Kim Iverson was explaining mass formation. Ryan Grimm said—I’m paraphrasing—that he would not accept that Nazis were victims of a psychosis because that alleviated them of their responsibility for their crimes.
Cluster B personalities are logical adaptations to the world. All neuroses solve problems. (I think Thomas Szasz wrote something like that.)
27 million Soviets died in WWII. The Red Army destroyed the Third Reich and liberated Europe.
Why do so few Christians (and Jews) never notice that there are two very different creation stories in Genesis? If they couldn’t even get that story right….
Oh Jack, so much spaghetti to respond to and in such interesting splatter patterns!
Love all the quotes but especially tickled by the Robert Anton Wilson. There's an episode in there somewhere, on why that 'click' of something suddenly making sense is the same thing that makes you laugh.
I'm sure you know the P. Sainath book, Everybody Loves a Good Drought. Along the same lines as Naomi.
The dichotomies are a good example. The Course mentions that darkness doesn't actually exist, only the absence of light (and I read somewhere recently that it's only the narrowness of our visual spectrum that makes us think space is black, when it's filled with wavelengths we're just missing.) But it doesn't put the absence of love as evil, only fear.
"Heretic, apostate, traitor" ooooh. I have to give that one more thought.
I wonder what crimes the future will accuse Ryan Grim of, things that he could have, should have, would have known if he'd wondered about them. The person who does the horrendous act has already paid the price of knowing. Hell could be Ryan Grim strapped with his eyelids taped open, ala Clockwork Orange, forced to watch to the 7th iteration the effect of every dollar he spent or invested, every word he spoke, every vote he cast, every tax dollar he paid. 'Do not judge lest ye be judged.'
Yes! I've written extensively (somewhere) about those two Creation stories. And the Course also makes that point--after the one where everything's good, in the next one Adam goes to sleep (during the rib removal surgery, I believe) but it never says he wakes up! Clearly, it's not the Tree of Knowledge but the Tree of Judgment. Once we start categorizing good and evil, it's all over.
Thank you for saying I do my best work on the nature of reality. I was just resigning myself to that same thing. I think that Lyndsey (who wrote a great comment on the YT version, very smart and articulate, I think you'd like her) has what I'm doing backwards--spiritual-socio--although it's not as catchy. But I think I might stop fighting my urge to start with the long view and put the specific in context. I think it's my niche.
Always great to hear your thoughts, my well-read friend!
Forgiveness, gratitude and overcoming of the stages of grief are all important steps in human spiritual growth. We also do best psychologically when holding ourselves responsible before engaging in reflexively blaming others. At least then we have elements of control over actually changing our own outlook & behavior for the better.
I woke up this morning thinking about response-ability and how it requires developing the self to respond to others with. I was thinking of it in relationship to my next episode so thanks for bringing that up, KW.
Thrashing about - I forget where I was up to ...
To complete my reference to Putin items … some of the items/videos may no longer be accessible in certain countries. (Jeff J Brown calls it the “Great Western Firewall”) I have cut and pasted from a private communique now a few years old.
Putin’s 2013 Valdai speech is also featured here:
• Putin Just Exposed the Plot To Destroy America
https://youtu.be/Bee70unn9aM
Predictably, the owners of yootube (and now Bitchute) have removed this video which is also mentioned here
https://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=145514
Found a copy (after much searching)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_wbLzPYKzI
-----
Interviews/Impromptu chats with children and youths
• "I work so that you could be happy" – Putin to a young couple in public Q&A (youtube channel ‘Inessa S’)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYRSXYNyuQI
-----
• President Putin on the “dark time [under Bolshevism] in our country’s history”
https://youtu.be/cgaYag-XjTQ?t=190
Putin: “You know, we have a really dark time in our country’s history, at the beginning of the Soviet era, where many believers were killed – not only Christian Orthodox, but also Muslims and representatives of other religions. The Soviet state, in its early stage, was very cruel to religious authorities. Many of our Churches were completely destroyed, our traditional religions denominations suffered massively.
But the role of the State is to protect the people “
-----
• Putin: "With the absence of values, society begins to decay"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5pSe2zRaQI
“Conservatism is that which does not get in the way of moving forward and upward, but does prevent from sliding backwards and downwards.”
-----
• On Alaska? – this really highlights his sense of humour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3XeRMSAgMg
-----
• Putin ranting on about social values again ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avr0K-YEcSA
(Don’t worry about the title – Putin’s wit and sense of humour really shows through –
“Actually, you know what I’d like to say about that? Prostitution is one of those serious, ugly social phenomena; young women engage in this, for the most part because they can’t make a living any other credible way. And this reflects on the society and the government. But people who order this kind of falsified information – the kind that is being propagated against the President [Elect] of the United States – those that fabricate it and use if for political means – they are much worse than prostitutes. They have no moral limitations at all.”
-----
• Putin speaking with creative youth at the Tavrida National Youth Educational Forum, during his trip to Crimea on August 20, 2017. (excerpt)
https://youtu.be/wndZP0HiCTY?t=132
-----
• Putin Speaking with Children at the opening of the Sirius Educational Centre in Sochi
(a couple of insightful snippets from one of his four hour session)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-FZmgE4OwU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCvn72dDiWg
Take your time :-)
Thank you so much for the link to your channel Tereza. I can't wait to look around and learn more, and share crumbs from my own (very recent) journey, which incidentally started by trying to understand President Putin and Russia today. My findings are very favourable - I just believe that there is a lot missing (or erroneous) information/narrative about both WWI and WWII.
Thanks, Julius, for subbing both my YT and Substack! Yes, I share exactly your feeling. It's like there's a missing piece of the puzzle and everything is being kludged together in ways they don't really fit. I've been very interested in Putin and Russia too, so I look forward to your comments there. Ukraine has been quite an education in things I can't believe I didn't know. The rabbit holes just keep going and going ...
Tereza - I've been chewing on the topic of forgiveness lately too. So much to look around and see the hurts in our world, and see how I've hurt people I care about, and see the ways I hurt myself. For those who can't forgive Hitler or any other genocidal regime, where is the dividing line? How do we know what's "forgivable" and what deserves eternal hatred? I want to believe my choices are forgivable, but I have internal critics who threaten to beat me up forever. And parts of our culture might cast condemnation on me forever. And then deeper wisdom in me says that forgiveness isn't even the question. That forgiveness is only a human construct. But then I get lost here, and go in a loop of "but what about the people who've been so hurt by suffering and by those in power who created conditions of suffering?"
I also wonder why Hitler is the personification of evil when there are many murderous leaders, such as Stalin and Pol Pot and so many more that others who remember history can list better than me. Why does Hitler get the top of list, at least in America and I imagine so in Europe too.
Even writing my thoughts on forgiveness and Hitler in this comment thread makes me feel vulnerable. Extra kudos to you for making a video on it that grapples with the nature of evil, forgiveness and reality.
Thank you Marta, for the kudos and for sharing your thoughts. I had to laugh at the internal critic. There are things I've done that were selfish, inconsiderate or just ignorantly hurtful that I'm still rehashing 50 years later. Shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on embarrassment?
It's easier for me to weigh in with what the Course says, since I certainly don't know. What it would say is that in Reality, forgiveness doesn't exist because there's nothing to forgive. But in this world, forgiveness is our sole purpose because we haven't realized there's nothing to forgive. It's guilt and fear and blame, what I call the Unholy Trinity, that keep us stuck.
If we choose Door #3 and consider that the world may be One Mind dreaming, I am Pol Pot and Stalin and Hitler, and I am every victim--except nothing REALLY happened. It's like when you wake up with that awful feeling in your stomach that you did something horrible and even though you know it was a dream, you still can't shake it. The most important thing we can do is forgive ourselves but we can only do that vicariously, by forgiving others. I think.
It's very interesting, that feeling of vulnerability. I definitely get that, but I don't know if it's fear of human retaliation or psychological-supernatural. There's a lot of buried superstition, that's for sure. I'll have to explore that further and where it comes from in me.
Another tour de force, Tereza. Thank you very much. One only has to look at the official narrative of current events in and around Ukraine immediately to start questioning the narratives we have been fed about previous conflicts. History is a set of lies written by the winners?! Truth is the first casualty in any war?!
Have you come across Will Zoll's recent series of essays about Prussian "education" and mind kontrol systems/technologies, "Council of The Gods"?:
https://prussiagate.substack.com/archive?sort=new
Thank you, Tirion. And yes! Knowing how we've been manipulated since 911 and with Ukraine makes it impossible to imagine that didn't happen in WWI and WWII, which were really the same war. I haven't seen Will Zoll before but this looks fascinating. I'll definitely check it out. Thanks again.
• “On Resistance to Evil by Force” by Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin
Some passages – FINALLY! . I will let you apply your own thoughts, experience and interpretation …
Ilyin spends quite a bit of time explaining his definitions and shoring up the theological basis for his perspective but there are many insightful gems … it is a book that I now treasure.
-----
“In fact, what would “non-resistance” [to evil] mean, in the sense of the absence of any resistance? This would mean accepting evil: letting it in and giving it freedom, scope and power. If under these conditions the uprising of evil occurred, and non-resistance continued, it would mean subordination to it, a surrender of the self to it, participation in it, and finally, turning oneself into its instrument, into its body, into its cesspool, its play thing, an absorbed element thereof. It would be a voluntary self-corruption and self-infection at the start, and the active spread of infection among other people and their involvement in its coordination by the end.
[…]
Moreover, for however long there is a dislike in the soul or at least a vague disgust, then the person still resists: he, perhaps, does not rise up in any way, but he is still divided, he fights within himself and as a result, the very acceptance of evil fails him; even while completely passive externally, he resists evil internally, condemns it, is indignant, exposes it before himself, does not succumb to his fears and temptations, and even succumbing in part reproaches himself for it, gathers with the spirit, resents himself, turns away from it, and is purified in repentance, even when drowning, he resists and does not sink.
[…]
Therefore the non-resistor of evil sooner or later arrives at the need to assure himself that evil is not so bad and that it is not so definitively evil, that it has some positive features, that there are many of them, that they may even predominate.
[…]
And when aversion subsides and evil is no longer experienced as evil, then acceptance imperceptibly becomes total: the soul begins to believe that black is white, adapts to match, becomes black itself, and finds that it approves and enjoys, and, of course, this gives evil great pleasure.
This is the spiritual law: the non-resistor to evil is absorbed by it and becomes possessed.
[…]
Evil is first and foremost the spiritual inclination of man =, inherent in each of us, as if for some, living within us there is a passionate desire to unbridle to unleash the beast inside, a gravitation that always strives to expand its field and to overtake us completely.
[…]
It is clear that the more spineless and unprincipled the man is, the closer he is to this state and the more natural it is for him not to resist evil.
[…]
And it is natural that from non-resistance evil passion expands its dominance to fullness: chunks of passion, already ennobled, discard their garments of nobility and pour into a common rebellion; they no longer hold the line and barricade, but they themselves indulge in the former enemy and embrace evil with vivacity. The evil obsession becomes total and draws the soul on its own paths, according to its own laws. Obsessed with an evil passion, the non-resistor runs rampant because he himself has rejected all that restrains, directs and formulates: all his non-resisting force becomes the power of the most thunderous evil, and the breath of death feeds upon the cruelty of a most helpless demise. This is why the end of his frenzy is the end of his psyche and bodily existence: insanity or death.
[…]
Such a decomposition of spirituality in the soul may emerge in a weak person in adulthood, but it can also begin in childhood …
[…]
A person who has been spiritually defective since childhood can even develop in himself a special mental structure, which, if superficially observed, can be mistaken for “character”, and special viewpoints that are then mistaken for “beliefs”.
In fact, he being unprincipled and spineless, remains always a slave to his bad passions, a prisoner of elaborate mental mechanisms that possess him and reign all-powerful in his life, devoid of spiritual dimension and divining the contours of his disgusting behaviour. He does not resist his evil obsession as “will”, his instinctive scheming as “the mind”, the impulses of his evil passions as “feelings”.
Wrapping himself in anti-spiritual passions, he pronounces his nature in a corresponding anti-spiritual “ideology”, in which radical and comprehensiveness godlessness merges with his own excruciating sickness of the heart and complete moral idiocy.
Naturally, spiritually healthy people cause such a person only irritation and anger, and foment in his a sick love for power, in the manifestations of which flashes of megalomania inevitably alternate with outbursts of maniacal persecution.”
-----
On forgiveness, Ivan Ilyin muses that if he could ’be God for an instant’ and get into the minds of these “villains” he would turn their minds around, make them ‘nice’ and forgive them – only if all else fails would he then resort to force and explode their f’n heads off - but forgiveness is always the first option.
Ilyin:
“Man is loving […] by that force which establishes a living identity between the acceptable and the unacceptable […] and communicating to the second a sense of forgiveness, reconciliation, dignity, power and freedom.”
Chapter 10. On Sentimentality and Pleasure
“Moral hedonism distorts both the force of clarity, the worldview and the foundation of personal character.
The moral hedonist does not want this experience, does not allow it to occur in his soul, and as a consequence he gradually begins to “not believe in evil”. … Shrink from evil, to overlook it and forget about it.
The moral hedonist does not see what he is really given and sees not what is true. He values in experience not objective fidelity and accuracy, but compliance with his subjective moods and the fantasy that has grown from them. He becomes accustomed to fantasising his experiences and to experience these fantasies as reality.
Moral hedonism damages not only the clarity but also the character of a person.
Hedonistic tenderness, embracing the soul and capturing its central sense, involves it in a certain weakness of will, expressed in indifference or in direct hostility to all wilful impulses and tasks.
“Love”, professed and preached by the affectionate moralist turns out to be a weak-willed or “passively-willed” state: this “love” does not strengthen the character by concentrating forces and forging the spiritual centre of the individual, but gradually weakens it; it […] delights the soul with boundlessness and uncertainty […] such weak-willed love is not an active emotion.
The weak-willed love of a hedonistic moralist is rather a “mood”, easily muddling along with a lack of both will and objectivity. As a weak-will mood, this love is sentimental, and as a pointless mood, this love is purposeless; it does not carry within itself a spiritual task or spiritual responsibility. It is a feeling that is saturated with itself; it is not a beginning, but an end, not an outcome, but a finalisation, not a step, but an achievement; it is sweet self-worth or the enjoyment of valuing one’s self”
-----
Page 195 (Chapter 21)
“The fate of man is, in his life on earth, to confront the outbreak of uninvited evil. It is impossible to avoid this fate; and thus there are only two possibilities: either to be dishonourable and turn away from this struggle, to dishonourably live through it by both blindness and cowardice, or the honourable path of accepting it, comprehending this acceptance as a service and remaining faithful to its vocation.“ [Contrast this with Koestler!]
[…]
… A strong man asserts his power precisely by the fact that he does not flee from the conflict into an allegedly virtuous passivity and does not close his eyes to his tragic nature, thus falling from cowardice into crookedness; a strong man sees the tragedy of his situation and goes out to meet it, enter it and eliminate it.”
[…]
“Anyone who, in the face of aggressive villainy, requires an “ideal” moral perfection in all outcomes and accepts nothing less, does not understand the central tragedy of life: this tragedy consists in the fact that there is no ideal outcome in such a situation.“
End of quoted passages.
Over and out.
Finally (or rather penultimately)!! I promised you some passages from Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin’s “On Resistance to Evil By Force”
Written in 1925 in the context of the atrocities committed by the Bolshevists against (ultimately) tens of millions of Russians, it has only been translated into English as recently as 2018 by K Benois.
As a prelude,
Matthew Raphael Johnson introduced me to Ilyin:
• The Orthodox Nationalist - Ivan Ilyin on Democracy and Evil – TON 090121 – Matthew Raphael Johnson
https://www.radioalbion.com/2021/09/the-orthodox-nationalist-ivan-ilyin-on.html
• Russian Nationalist Philosopher - Ivan Ilyin - Matthew Raphael Johnson
I have started this at 21:23 to whet your appetite – just rewind if it gets your attention
https://youtu.be/oFnELC8Bi98&t=1283
Johnson:
“One of the important central concepts in Ivan Ilyin's thinking is the definition of freedom. The word ‘freedom’ in the West has been butchered to the point where it now almost means the opposite of what it originally was meant to be. The word that we should use I think that would make better sense is ‘autonomy’ rather than freedom. In the West there's a tendency to believe that freedom refers to the ability to do whatever you want, that there is a lack of external restraint and so it comes down to being able to act arbitrarily, having no reason to act the way you do, because there can be no causality-[…] it's freedom to do whatever you want, and that's somehow a good thing.”
(Here is Matthew Raphael Johnson’s main site … The Russian Orthodox Medievalist: https://www.rusjournal.org/)
I was taken aback by the relevance of Ilyin’s writing to the current day evil of the Covidian cult - a form of modern medical [redacted].
Passages still to follow but in the meantime, a friend shared this with me just the other day …
• “Putin's Philosopher” - Anton Barbashin (September 2015)
(That’s right about when Russia intervened to help President Bashar al-Assad defend Syria against ‘ISIS’)
https://www.hudson.org/research/11676-putin-s-philosopher
Tereza, you sort of asked me about my opinion of President Putin. My (favourable) assessment is based on what he has written, what he has said and what he has done.
For example, in his Valdai keynote speech 2013:
“Without the values embedded in Christianity and other world religions, without the standards of morality that have taken shape over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity. We consider it natural and right to defend these values. One must respect every minority’s right to be different, but the rights of the majority must not be put into question.”
Source:
• President Vladimir Putin at the 10th anniversary meeting of Valdai International Discussion Club in the Novgorod Region, September 19, 2013.
https://www.rt.com/politics/official-word/putin-valdai-national-idea-142/
and
• Putin 2017 New Year’s Eve message
https://youtu.be/j6o0LTEmeLM?t=50
“Every one of us, on New Year’s Eve [2017], can be a little bit magical ...
For this, all you need to do is treat your parents with love and gratefulness, give your children and families the utmost love and care, respect your work colleagues and your friendships.
Stand up for justice and the truth, be merciful to those who require your help – and that’s the secret to being magic.
May all your dreams come true – pure thoughts and kind intentions.
May every household be blessed with joy and love.”
If I am wrong about Putin (and he has his detractors and critics) then so be it – we have been outplayed - but then so too have others including (both on my bookshelf and read)
• Mike King – “The War Against Putin”
• Matthew Raphael Johnson – “Russian Populist: The Political Thought of Vladimir Putin”
Andrew Carrington Hitchcock also shares their assessment.
Incidentally, I have also read “First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President” …
And watched the following remarkable documentaries. I have downloaded these documentaries but sadly, with the current events revolving around the Ukraine, they are no longer accessible here in Australia. I will share them anyway for other readers.
• “Putin" - the Documentary Sure to Change Everything You Thought You Knew About Russia's President
Featured here on Russia Insider.
• https://russia-insider.com/en/its-here-putin-extraordinary-new-documentary-english-subtitles-video/ri22884
Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCFs0PtzeVE
Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IldUKuYbcLs
And on Crimea (very topical):
• Crimea. The Way Home. Documentary by Andrey Kondrashev
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8nMhCMphYU
(Incidentally, Russia Insider is now somewhat latent but still accessible and re-posting older articles. It’s spin-off ‘Russian Faith’ is still very vibrant
https://russian-faith.com/
Enough for now – will share some more from my compilation in due course. I have shared all these and more privately with family and friends – but they generally scoff (and get angry) at me because they read the Murdoch hatemongering press and watch TV for ‘the news’ 😊.
Regards.
PS – from the Unz Review (American Pravda series), the following is an excellent (and topical) place to start
American Pravda: Understanding World War II
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-understanding-world-war-ii/
The Unz Review • September 23, 2019 • 20,500 Words • 2h32m
Audio Segments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Thank you for that beautiful quote and all the great references, Julius.
Hello Tereza. After listening to just one of your videos, I have three books to share that come to mind immediately:
• “Falsehood in War-Time” by Arthur Ponsonby
About institutionalised atrocity/war propaganda
• “On Resistance to Evil by Force” by Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin
About confronting and resisting evil, and amongst other things, forgiveness
• “Darkness at Noon” by Arthur Koestler
About the immorality and the rewriting of history
Some specific passages to follow as I find time – here is the first:
• “Falsehoods in War Time” by Arthur Ponsonby
“Facts must be distorted, relevant circumstances concealed and a picture presented which by its crude colouring will persuade the ignorant people that their Government is blameless, their cause is righteous, and that the indisputable wickedness of the enemy has been proved beyond question.“
“Departments have to be created to see to the psychological side. People must never be allowed to become despondent; so victories must be exaggerated and defeats, if not concealed, at any rate minimized, and THE STIMULUS OF INDIGNATION, HORROR, AND HATRED MUST BE ASSIDUOUSLY AND CONTINUOUSLY PUMPED INTO THE PUBLIC MIND BY MEANS OF PROPAGANDA."
“… the injection of the poison of hatred into men's minds by means of falsehood is a greater evil in wartime than the actual loss of life. THE DEFILEMENT OF THE HUMAN SOUL IS WORSE THAN THE DESTRUCTION OF THE HUMAN BODY.” [EMPHASIS added]
Read on … (PDF)
• Falsehood in War-Time - Arthur Ponsonby
http://www.vlib.us/wwi/resources/archives/texts/t050824i/ponsonby.pdf
Thanks to you reminding me of Ponsonby, I posted this comment on Matt Taibbi's Sub:
I was just discussing Lord Ponsonby's 10 Principles of War Propaganda published and translated to English by Nikta on Daily Kos in 2009:
In 2001 (before 9/11), Belgian historian Anne Morelli published a book analyzing the basic principles of war propaganda. Unfortunately and as far as I can tell, it was never translated to English (only in German). She credits the work of Lord Ponsonby, an amazing and unfortunately somewhat forgotten character. He stood, largely alone, in the Commons opposing WWI before it started, predicting not just the massacre it was going to be, but more interestingly for our purpose, how it was going to be sold to the masses.
Morelli enumerates it as the following principles:
1. We don't want war, we are only defending ourselves
2. The other guy is the sole responsible for this war
3. Our adversary's leader is evil and looks evil
4. We are defending a noble purpose, not special interests
5. The enemy is purposefully causing atrocities; we only commit mistakes
6. The enemy is using unlawful weapons
7. We have very little losses, the enemy is losing big
8. Intellectuals and artists support our cause
9. Our cause is sacred
10. Those who doubt our propaganda are traitors.
And any facts or logic that contradict our propaganda is disinformation.
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/nina-jankowicz-the-warbling-warmonger
That's perfect - thanks so much for raising the bar and elaborating with this gem - and about the warbling Nina. Do these people really exist?
Biden appoints transgender Penn. official Rachel Levine to senior health post despite grisly record on Covid nursing home deaths
https://www.rt.com/usa/512995-biden-appoints-transgender-levine-covid/
While looking to see if it was Ponsonby I quoted in a previous episode, I looked at this one that I think you would like: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/ukraine-the-hegemons-last-stand. Did I meet you on Matt Ehret's Sub, where I met Jeff? If so, this one is about Matt and Cynthia: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/matt-ehret-and-cynthia-chung-geopuzzle.
Yes! It was Anne Morelli, a Flemish journalist who analyzed war propaganda, crediting Ponsonby. It was translated to English by an author on The Daily Kos. I quote it in my piece on Nina Jankowicz, who didn't last much longer after I posted it. It's a fun but sobering episode and hasn't gotten much attention after her digital demise: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/nina-jankowicz-the-warbling-warmonger.
• “Darkness at Noon” by Arthur Koestler (1940)
Some passages. While this is a novel, we can assume that the author is revealing his (?insider) insights, experience and ideology through the thoughts, dialogues and, in the case of the ill-fated Rubashov), fictional personal diaries.
-----
“To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one’s own conscience is to abandon mankind. History is a priori amoral; it has no conscience.”
…
“The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains the only rule of political ethics; anything else is just vague chatter …“
…
“There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct […] The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community – which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit of a sacrificial lamb.“
…
“One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions. That is the first commandment for us. Sympathy, conscience, disgust, despair, repentance and atonement are for us repellent debauchery. […] The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one’s own conscience is perfidy.”
------
“For us the question of subjective good faith is of no interest. […]
History has taught us that often lies serve her better than the truth; for man is sluggish and has to be led through the desert for forty years before each step in his development. And he has to be driven through the desert with threats and promises, by imaginary terrors and imaginary consolations, so that he should not sit down prematurely to rest and divest himself by worshipping golden calves.
We have learnt history more thoroughly than the others. We differ from all the others in our logical consistency. We know that virtue does not matter to history, and that crimes remain unpunished; but that every error has its consequences and venges itself into the seventh generation. Therefore we concentrated all our efforts on preventing error and destroying the very seeds of it. Never in history has so much power over the future of humanity been concentrated in so few hands as in our case.”
-----
“Most of the works on foreign trade and currency disappeared from the shelves—their author, the People’s Commissar for Finance, had just been arrested; also nearly all old Party Congress reports treating the same subject; most books and reference-books on the history of antecedents of the Revolution; most works by living authors of jurisprudence and philosophy; all pamphlets dealing with the problems of birth control; the manuals on the structure of the People’s Army; treatises on trade unionism and the right to strike in the People’s state; practically every study of the problems of political constitution more than two years old, and, finally, even the volumes of the Encyclopaedia published by the Academy—a new revised edition being promised shortly.”
“New books arrived, too: the classics of social science appeared with new footnotes and commentaries, the old histories were replaced by new histories, the old memoirs of dead revolutionary leaders were replaced by new memoirs of the same defunct. Rubashov remarked jokingly to Arlova that the only thing left to be done was to publish a new and revised edition of the back numbers of all newspapers.”
-----
“The official version of the events of the Revolution had gone through a peculiar change in these ten years, the parts played in it by the chief actors had to be re-written, the scale of values reshuffled; but old Kieffer was stubborn, and understood nothing of the inner dialectics of the new era under No. 1 … “
Tereza, you’re mention of WWI at around 14:++ gives me the perfect segue to introduce Jeff J Brown (‘China Rising’) via the following particular article.
• Jeff J Brown with David Pear On Who And Why WWI Was Started, Then Prolonged. MSM And Your Textbooks Are All Lies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI6QOQcMyc8
Jeff’s substack is 'China Rising Radio Sinoland'
https://jeffjbrown.substack.com/
I purchased and read two of Jeff’s books – “The Big Red Book on China” and “China Rising”
In the latter, Jeff provides his own personal testimony with passages like:
“I now understand that getting de-brainwashed takes a lot of effort, humility and personal courage. I get inspired reading about other people’s journeys to discover the truth. “
“My arc of personal enlightenment about how the world really works has been a long, slow hyperbolic curve that has skyrocketed upwards in the very recent past.“
“I clung to the nobility of the “democratic” process, capitalism and the mainstream media’s mind numbing consensus. I still believed at the time that the New York Times and the Economist were cutting edge (and dependable) journalism.”
“I was ready to question my 1950s-1960s upbringing, its conventional wisdom and official narrative. […] I was finally prepared to step out of the Matrix. There was no turning back.”
[…]
“I was in complete denial until recently. It’s just so much easier to look the other way and survive the day.”
“While not a religious person, I think that when the clarity of the truth fulfils you, it is like an intellectual and spiritual baptism of sorts.”
Hi, Julius. I came across your reference to Jeff and wanted to let you know that he interviewed me. I'm still figuring out how to get it up on my YT and/or Substack but here's his page: https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2023/01/31/tereza-coraggio-shares-her-incredibly-informative-and-hopeful-book-how-to-dismantle-an-empire-transcript-and-podcast-china-rising-radio-sinoland-230131/.
Fabulous discussion and interview with Jeff. Book ordered. So many trigger thoughts I don't know where to begin. Democracy ,,, Economics ... Atwill ... Let me just segue to something/someone I think you will find fascinating and inspiring (sadly RIP 2015)
My introduction to Acharya S. (Dorothy Milne Murdock) was via this great two-part interview:
Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOAZ1L-0hgs
Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrBFwhBMgz8
Which led me to one of her extraordinary treatises …
“Did Moses Exist? The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver”
(my PDF download link is now broken)
I'll check it out. This is definitely right up my alley. I have several of my old radio shows on the OT/ Torah. You might like this one: Biblical Blackwater or Sodom vs. the Mercenaries: http://thirdparadigm.org/3p_053.php.
That is hilarious, Julian. Jeff just What'sApped me to let me know he'd started reading my book, and the two he sent me just arrived yesterday. He told me that 44 Days was the one to start with. We're planning on exchanging interviews in the near future. No accidents!
I appreciate you sending these quotes, which give me more of a sense of Jeff, and make me think he'll like my book. It's all about unlearning how the world really works. I'll check out that video in particular!
That's so cool. I will seek out your book when I come up for a breath.
I usually appreciate discussion of taboo topics but this one is particularly troubling. In a shared space state of free speech I guess its still seen as an exception - maybe an outcome of generational guilt?
We think our grandparents/great-grandparents or whatever might have been purveyors of cruelty to Jewish people, therefore we have inherited responsibility. Or maybe the consequences of nazi genocide were just so bad they deserve some special rule.
I don't hate that logic because it might make humans kinder, but I don't love it because the lack of debate inhibits our intellectual progress.
That's a very nuanced response, ep. I think you've touched on something very important with the generational guilt. What I tell my daughters is that guilt makes people behave badly. In my own experience raising them, when one was hurt, their natural reaction was kindness and compassion. If they had something to do with the hurt, their reaction was blame.
In some YT episodes I say that liberals are manipulated through guilt, which is more potent than fear. I think we're seeing this a lot with the virus, where blame is being shifted to the unvaccinated as people who just don't care about others.
I feel like every day I'm finding out that something I'd always believed isn't so. I just don't feel confident enough that I know the truth to judge anyone in history anymore. I certainly judge actions, but I'm not really sure what happened and who did it.
I appreciate you reading/listening and responding!
Oh my. This is all so deep and beyond my ability to carefully respond. I was drawn in by forgiving Hitler because I have, but only because my belief system has us all, an interbeing consciousness of sorts, each of us living many lives, growing and learning more within each one for the benefit of all.
Hitler after death is a far easier project when it comes to forgiveness. Hitler in life I’m still working on, as I am with alternative 9/11 etc narratives.
So for me the bottom line here is evil.
Evil leaves me at a loss, as does a working definition of God. Where I am now is to think of God as All of it, and evil as separation from God. But how do you separate from All of it? I don’t think our human brains are capable of understanding this paradox.
We humans are swimming through a viscous pool of what feels like evil right now. I think much of it, maybe all of it, is human-created. Egregores, wetiko, what have you. This is our unfortunate power as a species, to have the ability to create such discord. But we can also create its opposite.
I’m less of a mind to blame or figure out evil’s source and this is is likely a very unfortunate personal disconnect. I’m hoping, though, that we humans can choose to create positive egregores .. egregores of love and connection.
I’m very collapse-aware, and I think at this point that this scenario will be our future. But I’m also still hoping for healing, and most important for love to prevail. To go there, one must balance intellect with heart and will. It’s a difficult alchemical practice. But the results surpass any imagination of Power and Energy as we humans presently define them.
Jenny, I'm happy to be in touch again!
For saying this is beyond your ability to respond, you've beautifully articulated exactly the belief system I have. I would amend, "each of us living [all] lives" simultaneously: past, present, future.
You're really educating me. I had to look up egregore (and noticed that Peter Carroll was a notable figure in Chaos Magic, who Jack quotes above) and wetiko.
I think your 'working definition' (great concept) of God as "all of it" is perfect. If evil is not part of "all of it," wouldn't that mean that it doesn't exist? That it's an illusion that's not part of reality?
I guess the place I come to, apart from beliefs, is whether the concept of evil has any practical value. Does it give us useful strategies, things that we can do? When I look at the problem as the system, it gives us very practical things we could do about it. A belief in overpowering evil only stops us imagining we can change it or how we would change it.
One of the definitions shown for egregore was "a kind of group mind that is created when people consciously come together for a common purpose." That's the Course's definition of 'miracle-mindedness' or the Christ-mind. People who conspire for selfish reasons never really share a common purpose--each one's looking out for himself (sic).
You certainly are in a position to see the damage that's been done by the current system, whether we see living persons as creating it or it creating the personalities it's empowered. I can't help but want that system to collapse, even though it will take our current way of life with it, and that's scary. But I can't imagine any other way a new system could be born, and I never expected to see that in my lifetime. Now I think I will.
If All That Is (all of that) is good, and evil is a part of that, then evil is good. Or good is evil. LoL! Reminds of the 'Greed is good' line from Wallstreet. That was actually meant to be ironical and a warning, and yet the society seems to have mostly accepted it as true when it is so obviously untrue and even goes against every religious and philosophical principle not based on narcissism.
Perhaps at a 'higher' (or maybe different perspective) is that All That Is is without category and that good and evil are substrata of that and part of the illusion of duhka (suffering). And so from that perspective the 'practical' value of 'evil' is to motivate the seekers of truth to find the truth that good and evil are inseparable and untrue. Attraction to the 'good' (raga) and aversion to the bad (dvesa) is one of the key concepts of the creation of suffering. In a way, Tereza, this partially addresses your idea of the goodness in all and the evil of the system creating evil because if all were good, from where did the evil system arise? Chicken and egg conundrum resolved by a tertium quid (third option between a dualistic system). And so, it is possible that the only reason good CAN exist is because evil does. And to remove evil it would be necessary to remove good.
That argument is in line with the Taoists Chuang-Tzu and Lao-Tzu, who both argue that when we DO good that is not as good as doing nothing (meaning action without mind/ego based 'good' intentions) because the act of DOING good goes against the natural order of the Tao, that acts everywhere without intention, and thus creates suffering.
I also foresaw this system collapsing because it is inherently psychologically unstable hence economically and socially and environmentally unsustainable. I also anticipated I would be dead before it happened. Ah well. Humans make plans and predictions and the Universe (All That Is) laughs.
In the shamanic tradition, the shaman-to-be will experience some kind of death experience, psychologically or even physically, in order to come back with the wisdom, strength and ability to heal the community and move it to its next structure. It is possible that what we are seeing is a societal shamanic death for the birth of a wisdom that will lead us forward to new levels of consciousness. The new system will not become evident, likely, for many years. The collapse will look fast on the surface only. The rebuild will be slow, as it has been in each systemic collapse that has occurred around the time of the astrological calendar moving into a new sign.
That definition of egregore is slightly misleading, imo, because it glides over that the individual within that group is lost within the group. It more closely resembles mass formation or the old phrase 'group-think', in the sense of unthinking non-individuated unity within the whole. Mass unconsciousness that easily allows for 'evil' and even, in Jungian terms of the importance of individuation, questionable 'good.'
I hope to re-read your article and watch/listen to your videos with more care to give a more thorough response. I am actually filled with busy-ness right now, so that will be a challenge I hope to meet in a few days.
Thanks for reading, Guy, and giving such a thoughtful response. Maybe I should rename my Third Paradigm as Tertium Quid, since that's exactly what I meant by it!
It's tricky to translate one Explanation of Everything (the Course) into another Explanation of Everything (the Tao), much as I love the Tao. But it's like translating an indigenous language into an imperial one (not saying the Tao is, of course), it loses the nuance of concepts the latter doesn't have words for. But with that said, I agree about doing nothing in terms of letting go of results (if that's what intention means.)
And I definitely wouldn't say that the system is evil, first of all, because a system isn't alive, has no agency, is less than a thing really since it doesn't even have matter. In answer to Jenny I say it's dysfunctional but on reflection, I'd say all systems serve the purpose of their designers. The purpose of the capitalist system is to make the rich richer and it's doing that quite nicely. Greed is good!
And I wouldn't call the designers evil either, they're doing what we're all doing, they're just better at it and more single-minded aka ruthless. To free them from the bondage of the role they're stuck in could be a relief.
I'm hoping for a fast rebuild since designing a new system is just ONE of the projects I have on my bucket list ;-)
Wikipedia did have many definitions that matched yours, but this was a contemporary one that seemed like it might include Jenny's hope to transform that process.
Glad to hear your thoughts and the wealth of spiritual practice you bring!
Well done, Tereza. In your approach to the problem of evil (POE) - going where angels* fear to tread - you’ve provided much to consider. Thank you.
*that’s a figure of speech; I don’t actually believe in angels.
Doc! It's so nice to know you're still reading and our difference on naive do-gooders didn't drive you away. Thank you for the compliment and appreciation that I am tiptoeing where 'angels' fear to tread ;-)