On Geopolitics & Empire, Hrvoje Morić did an interview of Terry Wolfe called The New Age, The Great Awakening & the Green World Order. Terry was raised as a Mennonite and writes The Winter Christian, which he describes as a thought experiment:
Further to my initial response made during the early hours (UK time) I rested well and immediately watched the podcast from Geopolitics & Empire featuring Terry Wolfe, taking copious notes throughout. I am composing my response here and now as follows:
I have to state (from the outset), much to the surprise of Mr Wolfe no doubt, that I had never heard of him before, despite his billions "with a capital B" of claimed views on Tiktok. Mind you, I always thought Tiktok was intended for teenagers exchanging very brief videos and selfies. Obviously I was wrong about that!
At first I felt as if I was ear-wigging on a conversation between the reincarnation of the Witchfinder General and an ingratiating potential publicist, who stumbled and stuttered over his unbridled admiration for his guru. Mr Wolfe stated "...people's wives and people's mothers and a lot of women in a lot of guys' lives are getting into the 'new age' and the guys don't even know what to do with it and so I was basically trying to help people."
Ah, I thought. According to Mr Wolfe, it is WOMEN who are promoting thoughts about 'New Age' concepts. Listening on, I began to carefully note down all the apparent perpetrators he mentioned.
There were 21 men and only 5 women.
How interesting is that? Does Mr Wolfe imagine that all 21 of the men he names are influenced by an overbearing dominatrix in their lives? Surely not, I thought. After all, Pope Francis comes from an exclusively male genre, doesn't he?
Of the 21 men named and shamed in the podcast, many stood out to me as dubious characters that have shown themselves to be attempting mind control on the public. I have disregarded most of them. For example: Alex Jones, David Icke, David Wilcox, Joe Rogan, David Avocado Wolfe, Mark Passio, Stephen Greer, H.G. Wells, Dr Mercola, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Russell Brand and Robert Sephyr.
Of the 5 women mentioned I have been alarmed by: Helena Blavatsky and Alice Bailey since the early 1970s. I have never heard of Marilyn Ferguson or the Youtuber called 'Mariya'. Candace Owens is a TV presenter/influencer who dishes pithy reactions most of which are immediately forgettable. Nothing worthy of burning her at the stake though!
Then I noted a distortion of the word 'SPIN' quoted from Marilyn Ferguson's book. Call me an old fogey, but spin used to mean gyration and then, when applied to the media, it meant distortion of facts. Now, apparently, it is an acronym for 'segmented, polycentric, integrated networks' which Mr Wolfe seems to find threatening in some obscure way. I was struck that all of society is comprised of such networks - isn't that also known as co-operation?
Next Mr Wolfe speedily introduced his interpretation of the Biblical book, Revelation. He swapped out the Pale Horse for a Green Horse via Greek. I don't speak Greek so do we trust that he does?
I was impressed that this Green Horse is being ridden by Death itself and found it fascinating how he managed to tie that to the awful Green New Deal which has been sponsored for decades by the British Royal Family and their subservient think tanks like the Club of Rome. Unfortunately Mr Wolfe missed his opportunity to mention those originating sponsors. However, this brief dalliance into 'green' pastures was only there as promotion for his book 'Maybe Everyone Is Wrong'.
After that my notes petered out with a reminder for me to look up some You Tube character known as Penguin Zero.
Overall I was not impressed by the conversation and was amazed to see a plethora of comments heaping praise. I was disgusted by Mr Wolfe's arrogance and sneering contempt when replying to some comments. I have often noticed that fundamental Christians take the attitude that anyone who does not agree with them must be an embodied demon warranting a verbal exorcism.
I would like to offer Mr Wolfe an article I wrote some time ago. It might assist him.
Frances, this is HILARIOUS! I so hope it makes it into your posts because we all need the belly laughs. I will pin this because it's a perfect extension of my analysis, adding quotes, insight and so much flavor in descriptions like:
"At first I felt as if I was ear-wigging on a conversation between the reincarnation of the Witchfinder General and an ingratiating potential publicist, who stumbled and stuttered over his unbridled admiration for his guru."
Yes! And "fundamental Christians take the attitude that anyone who does not agree with them must be an embodied demon warranting a verbal exorcism." That's exactly what the Wolfe posing as shepherd is exhorting 'good Christians' to do--you can 'be holy' by castigating unbelievers and flaming them with your juvenile put-downs. Oooooh! "When we talk, we win." And that's why he refuses to engage.
So actually, Wolfe makes 21 straw men and 5 straw women arguments. He names people I too suspect of being sheepdogs herding the strays back to the slaughterhouse through a different route. My eventual disillusionment with Brand wasn't because of what he said but the company he was keeping, which included many of the named.
I think Wolfe sees women as gullible, not the masterminds of the 'Movement That Has No Name.' I doubt he even sees Blavatsky and Bailey as the brains, only the mouthpiece.
Excellent catch on the word SPIN. I love the idea of segmented, polycentric, integrated networks. Bring them on!
The comments heaping praise were one thing but even most of the critics were from a position of 'more fundamentalist than thou.' It's a shark-eat-shark or shepherd-eat-shepherd world out there.
Thank you so much for putting the time into this purgatory of illogic. I'm sure it will earn you absolutions in the etherworld!
Mathew posted on Terry's thread that he was disappointed Terry had shut down the conversation with insults. For your amusement, I'll post Terry's response below. It's very curious because he's read or heard my episode but then flips it, so I'm using logical fallacies to troll him into a HS debate where I make the rules. He appeals to "mountains" of authorities and quotes my paraphrase of him in 'been there, done that.' He justifies his initial dismissal of me as due to my lack of good-faith, as evidenced by my article's later misrepresentation of him. And I've LIED about Hrvoje's stance--if he says he opposes empire and believes in the Bible, who am I to say that's contradictory? Anyway, here it is:
"I've debated this topic since 2007, and the arguments on the other side just keep getting less informed as the years go on, even though the educational material is becoming better and more available. So if I'm curt, it's because there has to be a clear good-faith starting point to justify the effort, which Tereza has none of, considering she flagrantly misrepresented my own statements, lied about Geopolitics & Empire (actually inverted his stance), and is employing a host of logical fallacies to try to troll me into a high-school level debate where she gets to make the rules. Been there and done that.
"There are mountains of books and online courses written by secular scholars (who are no fans of Catholicism or Christianity) on the history of the biblical texts, and no serious scholar suggests that the actual Roman Empire authored the texts, which is what Tereza claims she discovered. By no means is it an "insult" to say that a person is actually disqualified from discussing it if they assert that the Torah was created by a Roman. The existence of the Septuagint alone destroys that assertion. I'm currently reading a fascinating book (written by a secular scholar) on the Septuagint and its rich history before the Roman Empire even existed.
"However, as for organized religion, I literally published a book a month or two ago about how Roman Catholicism is uniquely evil inversion of Christian principles (it's called "Rise of the Beast"). If you want to talk about that, I'm as fluent as anyone as to where and how that institution was corrupted. But that's a world apart from saying: "the authorship of the Bible as an imperial psyop" which is purely laughable."
"I've posted your disappointment, thank you Mathew, and Terry's reply on my comment thread. So my response is for you and Hrvoje, so you can weigh the evidence for yourself. "During the siege of Jerusalem, according to Josephus, Johanan ben Zakkai was smuggled out in a coffin and told the Roman general, Vespasian, that he would be emperor. According to the story, Vespasian gave him three wishes, which included the school of scholars who would reproduce the Torah and saving the Davidic line, who the Torah gave the divine right to rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yohanan_ben_Zakkai.
The Sadducees were against the Torah, which is the genealogy of the right to rule. The zealots were anti-imperialists against Rome. Zakkai came from Galilee where, he said, they hated the Torah and would "fall into the hands of robbers." This confirms the point in Jesus: Rebel or Imperialist? that the word 'robber' really means anti-imperialist insurgent. And Jesus expresses his hatred of the 'robbers' and his approval of the Romans in many passages I point out.
"As Laurent Guyenot shows, there are no existing texts from before the Common Era, only copies and fragments 'wishfully dated.' What we know, without dispute, is that the Torah was 'preserved' under the watchful eye of Emperor Vespasian, who had just slaughtered, tortured, enslaved and exiled all of Judea for their rebellion. And the person who preserved it was a traitor to his people who sold them out in order to save the rulers and a fiction that God gave them that divine right. It doesn't get more imperial than that."
By claiming that gnostics and other 'pagan' believers are cultists hell-bent upon destroying Christianity, Mr Wolfe spins reality to fit a very ugly totalitarian agenda.
His attack on you in his comments is so barbed, so holier-than-thou that it reveals a fanatical side of him which has, in the past, led to extreme persecution of innocent people. It should also be noted that he falsely claims that Hitler was a theosophist when he was actually a devout Catholic, supported by the Pope of the time.
"The Impact" is an 8.5 hour long documentary which explains how our freedoms are being limited and how groups are singled out for persecution. Listen and learn how easy it is to be classified as a terrorist by over-zealous authoritarians and religious fundamentalists.
Wow. Patience, thy name is Tereza. There is NO WAY I could continue to engage with someone like Terry, who clearly has nothing but contempt for you. I recently watched ten minutes of a half-hour clip of John Oliver roasting RFK, Jr. -- a friend sent it to me -- and I simply couldn't keep watching. And Oliver wasn't even saying one word about ME! I get so riled by individuals who fabricate half-truths or outright lies to make themselves seem like the cool kids. It's a lighted match to my haystack. So my hat is off to you... xox
PS Thanks for including me in the post! I feel like the innocent bystander to a murder scene 😂
It's you and Kathleen I'm grateful to, Mary. You provided such a clear contrast because we disagree, and we still listen and ask questions. And really, that's so much harder when you're friends. I can't emphasize enough how rare that is. And I don't have my mind made up about Bobby. You know I think the second most powerful force in the universe is a person who changes their mind--and it might as well be mine.
Terry, in contrast, was easy. What surprised me was that he had that guy thing of always needing to get in the last word. So he kept coming back and setting me up. I figured he'd just let it go after awhile, but he couldn't resist another dig. I never had to worry about hurting his feelings so I could simply trample those 'pearls' with my dainty little hooves.
I came here prompted by your response that you weren’t nice, but I saw nothing but you handling your side with Grace. It was almost… motherly. And now I feel weird saying that because, well I don’t mean to condescend Terry as a kid, it’s just… oh, forget it, he came off as an angst-filled teen. 🫣
Theology is a topic I know very little about. I’m learning, albeit slowly. I’ve read a lot of the research that Mathew has on Theosophy. It’s funny because I align with some of the gnostics philosophy, yet I can also see how it can be usurped to control. I feel the same about UFOs. My needle points to their existence but I can also see how governmental “disclosure” can be used to enslave further.
This is why I lean towards your way of debating ideas. I like exploration without being made to feel dumb or ridiculed or having my identity (say, being a woman) used as a way to dismiss me. Can we just allow curiosity to fuel the ebb and flow?
Thank you, Tonika! My motto is to be kind, not nice, and I also felt motherly. I really couldn't take him seriously enough to be offended, his retorts seemed so juvenile.
I've had a draft pending on the gnostics for awhile, saying that they shouldn't all be lumped together as if they're one hierarchical orthodox religion. They were independent thinkers who spanned different eras and geographies. I think my 'Gnostic Bible' has around 200 texts by different groups and authors. The word simply means people who consider God knowable to human consciousness.
Terry is talking about the Sethian gnostics who have the demiurge theory. Since I've now revised when I think the Jesus story was concocted (per my comment to Rat), I think the Dead Sea Scrolls preceded the gospels. Seth is also Set/ Yahweh, the destructive sociopathic god. In the Sethian gnostics, the demiurge is the fault of Sophia, who tries to create without a man so it goes all wrong and evil. However Seth is reproduced and reproduces without a woman and the results are angelic. Hmmm...
Other gnostics have important mystical clues, I think, like the Gospel of Philip. More to come.
My first question in a good argument, after defining the question and terms within it, is 'why does it matter?' I don't have strong opinions on UFOs because it wouldn't change how I live my life. If the world is a dream, nothing is more impossible than anything else. However, UFOs aren't useful to me as a dream element because I don't see how they can empower us to recognize it's a dream and that we can change it.
Yes on curiosity and exploration! Thank Dog for women!
I’ve gotten into occult rabbit holes, I find them super interesting, although I’m a novice. But it was Shakespeare that brought me into this deep dive podcast called “Secret Life is Best” that heavily featured the Gnostic (the demiurge one) journey and yes, the fact that they even called themselves gnostics, stealing the definition of the original folks who carried gnosis, to obfuscate the innate knowledge and become gate keepers.
I love what you’re saying about if life is a dream, nothing is more impossible than anything else. It’s the reason I buy into manifestations and the rest of the woo woo. 🙌
I'm feeling like it's my secret weapon, all I need to do is quote someone outside of their own echo chamber. No commentary necessary. I so appreciate you, Heather, knowing that you'll see the arrogance. It's what gives me the patience to see how far he'd go--and he didn't disappoint ;-)
Just noticed you after chiming in up there somewhere. Not really a serious question, but should we come up with a temporary stand-in phrase for "former-U.S. Military-Dependent-Children"? I'm not really thrilled about the Air Force Brat label, now that the sillier wing of our illusory political aircraft has adopted "Brat" as a motif...I 'spect it's enough to make an Army Brat grunt. You're good with words...please find something that will make it go. :-) www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hSmsrixcUM
I first heard it as distinguishing between drowning and swimming, but according to a website dealing with Jung's work, Jung compared Joyce and his daughter, Lucia's relationship with language as “like two people going to the bottom of a river, one falling and the other diving.” You're diving. He' falling.
You're embracing the square root of -1 and playing with complex number puzzles, while Wolfe's head over heels excited about doing long division, but still misunderstanding what Absolute Value means.
The best Wolfe can construct with his Biblical version of Euclid's Five Postulates is a very "nice", straight house that's derivative of one of Frank Lloyd Wright's early works.
The only way (well, OK...one possible way) y'all's "gallinas de baile roto" troupe are gonna bring home the gold in 2028 is either by getting the Kazakhstan competitors detained in France based on some trumped up affiliation with Telegram or else performing in elaborate costumes built to give the impression of headless chickens, harking/squawking back to the 2024 Olympics' opening ceremony's homage to Marie Antoinette. I'm of no use with respect to choreography, but I do have a modest proposal (Tom said, Swiftly) for the score...something that starts softly but builds to a dynamic crescendo...most of the by then younger audience will have the reference to the Red Queen go figuratively over their heads, but any surviving Boomers will get it and dig it to the max, man... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVyrq0_7i_Y
I'm so glad I finally got to see this! My dance buddies have been riffing on it. We're planning to move to a country that's never heard of breakdancing so we can make the Olympics too (just like those 6 yr olds who are now so inspired!) Lisa has been taking her inspiration from the animals of her native Iowa--the cow, the pig and the chicken. She does a mean chicken, btw.
Now don't be a dreamkiller and tell us they're not going to have a breakdancing competition in the 2028 Olympics. We're going to crush it!
Not yet, and probably won't get there. An old college girlfriend teaches at Brandeis half the year and spends the other half in Catalonia doing anthro research. If I had gotten there in the summer of 2019, we would have met up and she'd have goven me the tour of the basilica and other Gaudi places (I fell in love with anything Gaudi back in college after seeing photos of the hallways in a hotel he worked on. Reminded me of a hallucinatory scene in Polanski's "Repulsion" where Catherine Deneuve is going a bit bonkers.)
Oh well, for now I'll have to make do with documentaries I download from the internet.
Geez, T...It's like playing Go Fish without having to hear "Go fish and hit the deck". Yes, I did notice your cross-country bus...I think it was part of the Clarice montage...next you're gonna tell me you're a Neal Cassady fan... (skip to 15:30 for the Bus with Neal verse) www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALNh0Hk09l4
I seldom get so disgusted by the written word that I feel the bile rising in my throat. In fact, I can't remember it having happened to me before reading this account.
'Holier-than-thou' spite always sickens me. It triggers memories that I wish to forget.
I am so sorry that your gracious and respectful challenges were greeted with such barbed, hostile abuse and I applaud your restraint and patience in the face of it.
It is bedtime for me now, so I will postpone until tomorrow listening to Terry Wolfe's chat on Geopolitics & Empire. I think I will need steely nerves to tolerate the man.
Thank you, Frances. I find myself quoting your three centers of power on an almost daily basis. It was like a puzzle piece that clicked into place for me, and made it clear that it's not DC or the City or the Vatican--it's a small black nob that turns three wheels of power that set all the zogs in motion.
If you do find the steely nerves to listen to TW on G&E, please let me know what you think of it. I'd appreciate your insights. It's clear that the Biblecrats are feeling under threat, so I'm taking that as encouraging. It's not just our little Substack pockets where people are thinking for themselves, those darn females are everywhere--infiltrating the churches! Is nothing sacred?
I have waded through the comments on G&E's post and note that Mr Wolfe dominates by responding to virtually every comment. I definitely want to challenge him and support you and a couple of others, but will wait until I have actually given him a fair hearing.
Of course I will return here to let you know what I make of it. 😉
Quote: "the default is one person who God loved better than the rest of us put together. That's a version of Christianity that's a personality cult."
Lovely!!!!
Quote: "You studied the Bible for a decade and still think it was written by the Roman empire, you aren't qualified to have any discussion."
Hilarious.... made me laugh!!!!
Quote: "The majority of my audience is female and would laugh at your weak smear attempt."
WOW this guy is so intellectually weak!
Also your exchange with Hrvoje is most interesting. I short note here, Hrvoje is Croatian. Croatia a very small country, less than 4 million people. Catholicism is the dominant religion and is surrounded by Orthodox and Moslems. It was under the Ottoman Yoke for centuries. These factor made many Croatians cling to Catholicism as a dogma, and more importantly cooperate with external European powers against their neighbors. In WWII the cooperated with Germany (392nd (Croatian) Infantry Division). Similarly with the fall of communism in 1991, Croatia along with Slovenia were the first to secede from Yugoslavia.
Thank you, Fadi, for the compliments and additional context for Hrvoje. I feel that door isn't entirely shut and who knows what the future will bring? He, unlike Terry, is a thoughtful and reflective person. Glad to have your insight to the geopolitics of his home culture.
Oh for sure cannot compare Terry Wolfe to Hrvoje... Wolfe's intellectual weakness is reflected in his immediate aggressiveness and impoliteness. Poor chap to get into a tussle with Tereza lol lol your exchange gave me a good laugh :-)
Once again, the subject here is way beyond my level of knowledge, but I find the arguments fascinating. Please keep fighting for respect and kindness in these discussions.
Oh good, I figured Frances would get the zog reference but I didn't know how many others would. I give, Specie, what's the ZOR? Oh wait, Zionist Owned Religion?
I have often said, I never argue with someone's faith. It's an impossible tangle. Mainly I think we intuit something 'more' - vaguely called Divine - and then we wrap a particular expression or form around that intuition - usually the one we encountered as children in our families.
The intuition is primary and pure but the secondary expression of that intuition is subject to all sorts of distortion.
For many their faith has merged both aspects. So questioning the form/expression feels like questioning the intuition. You can pull the bits apart, but they can't.
Here is why I think it's important to challenge both the concept and the content of 'faith.' I think that cognitive dissonance is the prison cell that keeps us thinking small, tweaking rearrangements of the bed, protesting for an extra dessert. To walk out the open door means first losing faith in the guards, who say they're protecting us. Maybe that's faith in our religion, our politics, our money system or our healthcare. For someone like Hrvoje, he's spending his life opposing empire yet his belief system, from my research, empowers empire. So it paralyzes him from thinking about what's possible.
It's the same process we've been dealing with in what I call CogniCovid Dissonance: https://youtu.be/dY43ztEAU68.
I completely agree on its importance and some of us are def better at challenging than others. :-) You seem born for it.
And agree we see it in many spheres. Religion is gonna be the toughest to overcome, imo, because it gets in so deep and it feels like risking a lot to really question it.
Inevitable though. And of course, when we do, the whole space opens up.
Thanks for linking back to this video. Brilliantly articulated. You need infinite stoicism to not judge or engage negatively with your own intimate family members who insist that they do not want you anywhere near your very own aging and ailing father or mother if you have not been 'vaccinated'. And they do it with such an air of 'responsibility'. And I haven't even started with the BIG news yet! :-)
I might need to read this whole thing once again... :)
«[I]t was precisely the imitations of healings, organized in abundance by Judas, that were listed as the main expense item in the budget of Operation Ichthys.
The operation progressed well. Jesus’s popularity grew rapidly, and within just three years he had indeed become one of the most influential religious leaders in Palestine. Moreover, the differences between his teaching and classical Judaism were rapidly deepening, and I watched with amazement as a new religious doctrine was being born right before my eyes - a doctrine that did not disappoint me in anything, Proconsul!» (Yes'kov, The Gospel of Afranius, p.87)
A polemic / spy novel written back in 1995 by Russian paleontologist (sic!) Kirill Yes'kov*, arguing that the whole thing might as well have been a special operation by Roman intelligence. The first 80 pages is a highly technical discussion of possibilities and probabilities, the fiction starts around page 82 or so.
* Кирилл Еськов; variants of transliteration – Eskov, Yeskov, Yes'kov etc.; it's the same guy who wrote «The Last Ringbearer», a deconstruction of The Lord of the Rings.
I think the truth is truly stranger than this fiction (which my browser won't let me read from these Russkies. Maybe your global music videos are why it plunked ConspiRat into my junk mail. Or perhaps a naked tail bias, my theory for why we think squirrels are cute but rats no so much.)
Since reading Laurent in Anno Domini, I don't think there was an ancient Roman Empire, only "the Holy Roman Empire (962-1806 AD) and the Papal States (754-1870 AD), which were seen as a continuation of the Roman Empire through translatio imperii."
So the story of Jesus was made up no earlier than 754 and maybe as late as 1000 when the whole first millennium was fabricated. It's so transparent when you imagine them saying, "So what was the religion of ancient Rome?" "I know, let's take Greek mythology and change the names!"
Somewhere else in this thread, Julius and I were talking about the Australian Break Dancer https://www.winterwatch.net/2024/08/ray-gun-the-olympic-break-dancing-spoof/#respond and I wrote that my dance buddies and I were planning to move to a country that's never heard of breakdancing so we can make the Olympics too. My friend Lisa has been taking her inspiration from the animals of her native Iowa--the cow, the pig and the chicken. But then I wrote:
Sure, I wanted to see the quality of the arguments of their followers.
I am totally ignorant about the topic but your arguments are neat and clear and make the topic very interesting to me.
This chap, Wolfe, is like a ballon as soon as you poke it a bit you realise it's all thin air, nothing else (ego, narcissistic ego). As for the host of G&E, I followed him a few years ago, then I got bored of him. My feeling was that he was carefully dancing on the surface of his topics and always stopped at some imaginary line - but it might just be me. He reminds me of the Corbett report - limited hangouts.
I was also about to comment something to the effect of what Guy said way too lengthily but I need to go to sleep.
I could not help feeling that your wisdom, intelligence and arguments were completely lost on these two. And that you were wasting your time and skills on them. And that they still have a long way to go in their personal development, of which they seem to be completely unaware.
Thank you for your perception and kind compliments, yulia. Interesting your comment about Corbett. I'm still a sub but have come to feel the same way about him as about Matt Ehret and Cynthia Chung. I can learn history from them but their analysis stops short at certain preconceptions.
Nothing is wasted when it elicits your insightful attention!
Tereza, again, i really congratulate you for attracting so many thoughtful people. I'm not sure i fully understand everything said here but i am sure that i don't agree with them all. But that being said it is all very thoughtful and interesting. Maybe when i get rid of some of my thoughts that are not correct i will have room to accept some of their beliefs as my own.
Thank you, Specie, and no need to get rid of any of your thoughts to make room for someone else's beliefs. As my all-time favorite wombat cartoon shows (thank you, Isaac) you can just delete childhood memories to fit more fun facts: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/wombats.
hola, tereza. omg, this was fun to watch/listen to. they really put a burr in your butt and then got you spinning.
and of course, your approach was great and ... how to put this? there is actually no point in wrestling with pigs. the pigs always win and you wind up covered in their shit.
i appreciate you jumping into that fray, though, your hope(?) that this particular group of 'zombies' were actually there to talk as in converse. hmmmmm. the prevalence of this type of mentality or psychological infantilism made itself evident subsequent to the controlled attempted social coup of the world by convid — it pre-existed convid, of course; it took a push for it to make itself known — is the same as the trump disorder syndrome, climate terrorism, all the crt and gender woke stuff. people have merged with an idea, ideology, as the authority. truly, the first stage of transhumanism: identification with moral truth.
yes, we are in the time of moving beyond labeled authorities and their moralities. clif high has the intriguing name/label 'hyper-novelty' to describe that manifested social change/evolution that we are seeing and living. and he observes, astutely imo, that that is freaking out the authority moralists who are doubling down on it. and the authority moralist worshippers are going into derangement in their own ways of doubling down into their own expression of infantilism: the infant needs the authority and the authority needs the infant.
jeff childers has referred to, gently, the 'real' christian fundamentalists who are very happy and excited by the social destruction they are seeing around them: it is proof, to them, that the end is nigh and that they are alive to be an active part of the second coming and resurrection. how big a number that is might be hinted at by the 'billions' of followers (views?) Terry (clearly exaggerating) claims to have. at the same time, to what extent are the end of the worlders passively present, the happy christian zombies sitting on their crosses and spinning their rosaries around their necks like mini hoola-hoops singing christian anthems of authority worship? and to what extent are they nihilistically embracing the lack of dialogue and intelligent resistance to the control freaks looking to imprison them? (and isn't that yet another infancy behaviour — sorry infants, we are very inappropriately slagging you. please understand we are using you metaphorically.)
yes: how to argue with the people who have deadened their curiosity to authority and morals, and with that their ability to think and engage in conversations? this 'problem' goes all the way back to the early days of convid: how to red pill those who have taken the blue bill in whatever shape that has? back then steve k didn't think about that, i'm sure: what to do with those who have already swallowed the blue pill? morpheus assured neo, there is no red pill to wake you up once the blue pill is taken. hmmmm.
great work in the sties of the christian zombies. a rather smelly place, i can infer by your furrowed brow and energetic effort to clear the stench from your nose.
all the best with what is changing. everything changes!
Further to my initial response made during the early hours (UK time) I rested well and immediately watched the podcast from Geopolitics & Empire featuring Terry Wolfe, taking copious notes throughout. I am composing my response here and now as follows:
I have to state (from the outset), much to the surprise of Mr Wolfe no doubt, that I had never heard of him before, despite his billions "with a capital B" of claimed views on Tiktok. Mind you, I always thought Tiktok was intended for teenagers exchanging very brief videos and selfies. Obviously I was wrong about that!
At first I felt as if I was ear-wigging on a conversation between the reincarnation of the Witchfinder General and an ingratiating potential publicist, who stumbled and stuttered over his unbridled admiration for his guru. Mr Wolfe stated "...people's wives and people's mothers and a lot of women in a lot of guys' lives are getting into the 'new age' and the guys don't even know what to do with it and so I was basically trying to help people."
Ah, I thought. According to Mr Wolfe, it is WOMEN who are promoting thoughts about 'New Age' concepts. Listening on, I began to carefully note down all the apparent perpetrators he mentioned.
There were 21 men and only 5 women.
How interesting is that? Does Mr Wolfe imagine that all 21 of the men he names are influenced by an overbearing dominatrix in their lives? Surely not, I thought. After all, Pope Francis comes from an exclusively male genre, doesn't he?
Of the 21 men named and shamed in the podcast, many stood out to me as dubious characters that have shown themselves to be attempting mind control on the public. I have disregarded most of them. For example: Alex Jones, David Icke, David Wilcox, Joe Rogan, David Avocado Wolfe, Mark Passio, Stephen Greer, H.G. Wells, Dr Mercola, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Russell Brand and Robert Sephyr.
Of the 5 women mentioned I have been alarmed by: Helena Blavatsky and Alice Bailey since the early 1970s. I have never heard of Marilyn Ferguson or the Youtuber called 'Mariya'. Candace Owens is a TV presenter/influencer who dishes pithy reactions most of which are immediately forgettable. Nothing worthy of burning her at the stake though!
Then I noted a distortion of the word 'SPIN' quoted from Marilyn Ferguson's book. Call me an old fogey, but spin used to mean gyration and then, when applied to the media, it meant distortion of facts. Now, apparently, it is an acronym for 'segmented, polycentric, integrated networks' which Mr Wolfe seems to find threatening in some obscure way. I was struck that all of society is comprised of such networks - isn't that also known as co-operation?
Next Mr Wolfe speedily introduced his interpretation of the Biblical book, Revelation. He swapped out the Pale Horse for a Green Horse via Greek. I don't speak Greek so do we trust that he does?
I was impressed that this Green Horse is being ridden by Death itself and found it fascinating how he managed to tie that to the awful Green New Deal which has been sponsored for decades by the British Royal Family and their subservient think tanks like the Club of Rome. Unfortunately Mr Wolfe missed his opportunity to mention those originating sponsors. However, this brief dalliance into 'green' pastures was only there as promotion for his book 'Maybe Everyone Is Wrong'.
After that my notes petered out with a reminder for me to look up some You Tube character known as Penguin Zero.
Overall I was not impressed by the conversation and was amazed to see a plethora of comments heaping praise. I was disgusted by Mr Wolfe's arrogance and sneering contempt when replying to some comments. I have often noticed that fundamental Christians take the attitude that anyone who does not agree with them must be an embodied demon warranting a verbal exorcism.
I would like to offer Mr Wolfe an article I wrote some time ago. It might assist him.
https://francesleader.substack.com/p/from-jesus-to-lao-tzu
Frances, this is HILARIOUS! I so hope it makes it into your posts because we all need the belly laughs. I will pin this because it's a perfect extension of my analysis, adding quotes, insight and so much flavor in descriptions like:
"At first I felt as if I was ear-wigging on a conversation between the reincarnation of the Witchfinder General and an ingratiating potential publicist, who stumbled and stuttered over his unbridled admiration for his guru."
Yes! And "fundamental Christians take the attitude that anyone who does not agree with them must be an embodied demon warranting a verbal exorcism." That's exactly what the Wolfe posing as shepherd is exhorting 'good Christians' to do--you can 'be holy' by castigating unbelievers and flaming them with your juvenile put-downs. Oooooh! "When we talk, we win." And that's why he refuses to engage.
So actually, Wolfe makes 21 straw men and 5 straw women arguments. He names people I too suspect of being sheepdogs herding the strays back to the slaughterhouse through a different route. My eventual disillusionment with Brand wasn't because of what he said but the company he was keeping, which included many of the named.
I think Wolfe sees women as gullible, not the masterminds of the 'Movement That Has No Name.' I doubt he even sees Blavatsky and Bailey as the brains, only the mouthpiece.
Excellent catch on the word SPIN. I love the idea of segmented, polycentric, integrated networks. Bring them on!
The comments heaping praise were one thing but even most of the critics were from a position of 'more fundamentalist than thou.' It's a shark-eat-shark or shepherd-eat-shepherd world out there.
Thank you so much for putting the time into this purgatory of illogic. I'm sure it will earn you absolutions in the etherworld!
Happy you liked it! xx
Edit: As suggested this comment has been illustrated and provided with appropriate titling and links - https://francesleader.substack.com/p/spin-the-witchfinder
Mathew posted on Terry's thread that he was disappointed Terry had shut down the conversation with insults. For your amusement, I'll post Terry's response below. It's very curious because he's read or heard my episode but then flips it, so I'm using logical fallacies to troll him into a HS debate where I make the rules. He appeals to "mountains" of authorities and quotes my paraphrase of him in 'been there, done that.' He justifies his initial dismissal of me as due to my lack of good-faith, as evidenced by my article's later misrepresentation of him. And I've LIED about Hrvoje's stance--if he says he opposes empire and believes in the Bible, who am I to say that's contradictory? Anyway, here it is:
"I've debated this topic since 2007, and the arguments on the other side just keep getting less informed as the years go on, even though the educational material is becoming better and more available. So if I'm curt, it's because there has to be a clear good-faith starting point to justify the effort, which Tereza has none of, considering she flagrantly misrepresented my own statements, lied about Geopolitics & Empire (actually inverted his stance), and is employing a host of logical fallacies to try to troll me into a high-school level debate where she gets to make the rules. Been there and done that.
"There are mountains of books and online courses written by secular scholars (who are no fans of Catholicism or Christianity) on the history of the biblical texts, and no serious scholar suggests that the actual Roman Empire authored the texts, which is what Tereza claims she discovered. By no means is it an "insult" to say that a person is actually disqualified from discussing it if they assert that the Torah was created by a Roman. The existence of the Septuagint alone destroys that assertion. I'm currently reading a fascinating book (written by a secular scholar) on the Septuagint and its rich history before the Roman Empire even existed.
"However, as for organized religion, I literally published a book a month or two ago about how Roman Catholicism is uniquely evil inversion of Christian principles (it's called "Rise of the Beast"). If you want to talk about that, I'm as fluent as anyone as to where and how that institution was corrupted. But that's a world apart from saying: "the authorship of the Bible as an imperial psyop" which is purely laughable."
And here is my reply to Mathew:
"I've posted your disappointment, thank you Mathew, and Terry's reply on my comment thread. So my response is for you and Hrvoje, so you can weigh the evidence for yourself. "During the siege of Jerusalem, according to Josephus, Johanan ben Zakkai was smuggled out in a coffin and told the Roman general, Vespasian, that he would be emperor. According to the story, Vespasian gave him three wishes, which included the school of scholars who would reproduce the Torah and saving the Davidic line, who the Torah gave the divine right to rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yohanan_ben_Zakkai.
The Sadducees were against the Torah, which is the genealogy of the right to rule. The zealots were anti-imperialists against Rome. Zakkai came from Galilee where, he said, they hated the Torah and would "fall into the hands of robbers." This confirms the point in Jesus: Rebel or Imperialist? that the word 'robber' really means anti-imperialist insurgent. And Jesus expresses his hatred of the 'robbers' and his approval of the Romans in many passages I point out.
"As Laurent Guyenot shows, there are no existing texts from before the Common Era, only copies and fragments 'wishfully dated.' What we know, without dispute, is that the Torah was 'preserved' under the watchful eye of Emperor Vespasian, who had just slaughtered, tortured, enslaved and exiled all of Judea for their rebellion. And the person who preserved it was a traitor to his people who sold them out in order to save the rulers and a fiction that God gave them that divine right. It doesn't get more imperial than that."
I have a rather sinister post-script to add here.
By claiming that gnostics and other 'pagan' believers are cultists hell-bent upon destroying Christianity, Mr Wolfe spins reality to fit a very ugly totalitarian agenda.
His attack on you in his comments is so barbed, so holier-than-thou that it reveals a fanatical side of him which has, in the past, led to extreme persecution of innocent people. It should also be noted that he falsely claims that Hitler was a theosophist when he was actually a devout Catholic, supported by the Pope of the time.
"The Impact" is an 8.5 hour long documentary which explains how our freedoms are being limited and how groups are singled out for persecution. Listen and learn how easy it is to be classified as a terrorist by over-zealous authoritarians and religious fundamentalists.
https://rumble.com/v56stt1-the-impact-groundbreaking-documentary.html
Wow. Patience, thy name is Tereza. There is NO WAY I could continue to engage with someone like Terry, who clearly has nothing but contempt for you. I recently watched ten minutes of a half-hour clip of John Oliver roasting RFK, Jr. -- a friend sent it to me -- and I simply couldn't keep watching. And Oliver wasn't even saying one word about ME! I get so riled by individuals who fabricate half-truths or outright lies to make themselves seem like the cool kids. It's a lighted match to my haystack. So my hat is off to you... xox
PS Thanks for including me in the post! I feel like the innocent bystander to a murder scene 😂
It's you and Kathleen I'm grateful to, Mary. You provided such a clear contrast because we disagree, and we still listen and ask questions. And really, that's so much harder when you're friends. I can't emphasize enough how rare that is. And I don't have my mind made up about Bobby. You know I think the second most powerful force in the universe is a person who changes their mind--and it might as well be mine.
Terry, in contrast, was easy. What surprised me was that he had that guy thing of always needing to get in the last word. So he kept coming back and setting me up. I figured he'd just let it go after awhile, but he couldn't resist another dig. I never had to worry about hurting his feelings so I could simply trample those 'pearls' with my dainty little hooves.
I'm right there, Mary. I do no have that kind of patience. Nor access to so much knowledge on the subject.
If Terry wasn't so dismissive and awful in his replies, I woulda felt sorry for him.
Oh, I DO feel sorry for him! He made a total tit of himself.
I came here prompted by your response that you weren’t nice, but I saw nothing but you handling your side with Grace. It was almost… motherly. And now I feel weird saying that because, well I don’t mean to condescend Terry as a kid, it’s just… oh, forget it, he came off as an angst-filled teen. 🫣
Theology is a topic I know very little about. I’m learning, albeit slowly. I’ve read a lot of the research that Mathew has on Theosophy. It’s funny because I align with some of the gnostics philosophy, yet I can also see how it can be usurped to control. I feel the same about UFOs. My needle points to their existence but I can also see how governmental “disclosure” can be used to enslave further.
This is why I lean towards your way of debating ideas. I like exploration without being made to feel dumb or ridiculed or having my identity (say, being a woman) used as a way to dismiss me. Can we just allow curiosity to fuel the ebb and flow?
Thank you, Tonika! My motto is to be kind, not nice, and I also felt motherly. I really couldn't take him seriously enough to be offended, his retorts seemed so juvenile.
I've had a draft pending on the gnostics for awhile, saying that they shouldn't all be lumped together as if they're one hierarchical orthodox religion. They were independent thinkers who spanned different eras and geographies. I think my 'Gnostic Bible' has around 200 texts by different groups and authors. The word simply means people who consider God knowable to human consciousness.
Terry is talking about the Sethian gnostics who have the demiurge theory. Since I've now revised when I think the Jesus story was concocted (per my comment to Rat), I think the Dead Sea Scrolls preceded the gospels. Seth is also Set/ Yahweh, the destructive sociopathic god. In the Sethian gnostics, the demiurge is the fault of Sophia, who tries to create without a man so it goes all wrong and evil. However Seth is reproduced and reproduces without a woman and the results are angelic. Hmmm...
Other gnostics have important mystical clues, I think, like the Gospel of Philip. More to come.
My first question in a good argument, after defining the question and terms within it, is 'why does it matter?' I don't have strong opinions on UFOs because it wouldn't change how I live my life. If the world is a dream, nothing is more impossible than anything else. However, UFOs aren't useful to me as a dream element because I don't see how they can empower us to recognize it's a dream and that we can change it.
Yes on curiosity and exploration! Thank Dog for women!
I’ve gotten into occult rabbit holes, I find them super interesting, although I’m a novice. But it was Shakespeare that brought me into this deep dive podcast called “Secret Life is Best” that heavily featured the Gnostic (the demiurge one) journey and yes, the fact that they even called themselves gnostics, stealing the definition of the original folks who carried gnosis, to obfuscate the innate knowledge and become gate keepers.
I love what you’re saying about if life is a dream, nothing is more impossible than anything else. It’s the reason I buy into manifestations and the rest of the woo woo. 🙌
“Thank Dog for women!” 😂
You have far more patience than I do. I would have blocked him. Wow the arrogance.
I'm feeling like it's my secret weapon, all I need to do is quote someone outside of their own echo chamber. No commentary necessary. I so appreciate you, Heather, knowing that you'll see the arrogance. It's what gives me the patience to see how far he'd go--and he didn't disappoint ;-)
Just noticed you after chiming in up there somewhere. Not really a serious question, but should we come up with a temporary stand-in phrase for "former-U.S. Military-Dependent-Children"? I'm not really thrilled about the Air Force Brat label, now that the sillier wing of our illusory political aircraft has adopted "Brat" as a motif...I 'spect it's enough to make an Army Brat grunt. You're good with words...please find something that will make it go. :-) www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hSmsrixcUM
Sometimes I call us PTSD survivors. 😂
Those guys in that clip sound like Appalachians - and their guidance system went si-gogglin.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/ZIONorHScMsm
I felt a Chinese proverb coming on as I read/listened to this ...
“Better to argue with a wise man than prattle with a fool”
or
与智者争论总比与愚者争吵好 (Yandex)
I first heard it as distinguishing between drowning and swimming, but according to a website dealing with Jung's work, Jung compared Joyce and his daughter, Lucia's relationship with language as “like two people going to the bottom of a river, one falling and the other diving.” You're diving. He' falling.
You're embracing the square root of -1 and playing with complex number puzzles, while Wolfe's head over heels excited about doing long division, but still misunderstanding what Absolute Value means.
The best Wolfe can construct with his Biblical version of Euclid's Five Postulates is a very "nice", straight house that's derivative of one of Frank Lloyd Wright's early works.
You're starting with Basílica de la Sagrada Família...with a special guest at the downstairs bake sale. :-) www.youtube.com/watch?v=z42_agfZv-U&t=12s
To quote (again) Freberg's Ferdinand, "Isabella, whenayou gonna quit hangin' around with these nuts?"
For a lighter look at the Bible, I re-recommend: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/w/edward-whittemore/sinai-tapestry.htm
Free download, but use a VPN... scroll down & pick your format, Epub or PDF... https://oceanofpdf.com/genres/historical/pdf-epub-sinai-tapestry-the-jerusalem-quartet-1-download/
No music tonight...enjoy the dance.
Oooh, fun Twyla Tharpe!
OK, twist my arm like a cruller...here's the Dead live, fresh from that Baked sale...musica !! www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXW8kyisxWo
But can she break dance?
Ray Gun: The Olympic Break Dancing Spoof
https://www.winterwatch.net/2024/08/ray-gun-the-olympic-break-dancing-spoof/
All of Australia is cringing!!
If Kazakhstan enters the 2028 breakdancing Olympics, my buddies and I are sunk with our chicken impersonations. This was posted on ConspiRat's World Entertainment Friday, if you're not a sub, you wanna be: https://conspirat.substack.com/p/wef-world-entertainment-friday-week-3d3
Here's the performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MFEBt6ldrg
The only way (well, OK...one possible way) y'all's "gallinas de baile roto" troupe are gonna bring home the gold in 2028 is either by getting the Kazakhstan competitors detained in France based on some trumped up affiliation with Telegram or else performing in elaborate costumes built to give the impression of headless chickens, harking/squawking back to the 2024 Olympics' opening ceremony's homage to Marie Antoinette. I'm of no use with respect to choreography, but I do have a modest proposal (Tom said, Swiftly) for the score...something that starts softly but builds to a dynamic crescendo...most of the by then younger audience will have the reference to the Red Queen go figuratively over their heads, but any surviving Boomers will get it and dig it to the max, man... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVyrq0_7i_Y
Sensational - Subscribed and *Liked
I'm so glad I finally got to see this! My dance buddies have been riffing on it. We're planning to move to a country that's never heard of breakdancing so we can make the Olympics too (just like those 6 yr olds who are now so inspired!) Lisa has been taking her inspiration from the animals of her native Iowa--the cow, the pig and the chicken. She does a mean chicken, btw.
Now don't be a dreamkiller and tell us they're not going to have a breakdancing competition in the 2028 Olympics. We're going to crush it!
Here are a couple costume ideas if you want to come in 3rd or 2nd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CikAm9q-fJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsP-qhhe4Fg
They are very cool, and I come from the home of the Great Morgani:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNr62wAc0yg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldr3ydQF4Ro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vqZfXqpelM
... with some Jaw Harp accompaniment
Olena UUTAi. Earth music Jaw Harp. Музыка Земли Варган Горловое пение
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH2J81ZjsGk
This was awe-inducing. And the costume! And attitude!
You MUST post this to Rat. In the attitude of Olena, that's a direct order.
epic comment 💕
Off topic but have you been to Basílica de la Sagrada Família? Totally amazing in person...
Not yet, and probably won't get there. An old college girlfriend teaches at Brandeis half the year and spends the other half in Catalonia doing anthro research. If I had gotten there in the summer of 2019, we would have met up and she'd have goven me the tour of the basilica and other Gaudi places (I fell in love with anything Gaudi back in college after seeing photos of the hallways in a hotel he worked on. Reminded me of a hallucinatory scene in Polanski's "Repulsion" where Catherine Deneuve is going a bit bonkers.)
Oh well, for now I'll have to make do with documentaries I download from the internet.
We have another shared interest: Gaudi!
Geez, T...It's like playing Go Fish without having to hear "Go fish and hit the deck". Yes, I did notice your cross-country bus...I think it was part of the Clarice montage...next you're gonna tell me you're a Neal Cassady fan... (skip to 15:30 for the Bus with Neal verse) www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALNh0Hk09l4
I seldom get so disgusted by the written word that I feel the bile rising in my throat. In fact, I can't remember it having happened to me before reading this account.
'Holier-than-thou' spite always sickens me. It triggers memories that I wish to forget.
I am so sorry that your gracious and respectful challenges were greeted with such barbed, hostile abuse and I applaud your restraint and patience in the face of it.
It is bedtime for me now, so I will postpone until tomorrow listening to Terry Wolfe's chat on Geopolitics & Empire. I think I will need steely nerves to tolerate the man.
Thank you, Frances. I find myself quoting your three centers of power on an almost daily basis. It was like a puzzle piece that clicked into place for me, and made it clear that it's not DC or the City or the Vatican--it's a small black nob that turns three wheels of power that set all the zogs in motion.
If you do find the steely nerves to listen to TW on G&E, please let me know what you think of it. I'd appreciate your insights. It's clear that the Biblecrats are feeling under threat, so I'm taking that as encouraging. It's not just our little Substack pockets where people are thinking for themselves, those darn females are everywhere--infiltrating the churches! Is nothing sacred?
I have waded through the comments on G&E's post and note that Mr Wolfe dominates by responding to virtually every comment. I definitely want to challenge him and support you and a couple of others, but will wait until I have actually given him a fair hearing.
Of course I will return here to let you know what I make of it. 😉
Quote: "the default is one person who God loved better than the rest of us put together. That's a version of Christianity that's a personality cult."
Lovely!!!!
Quote: "You studied the Bible for a decade and still think it was written by the Roman empire, you aren't qualified to have any discussion."
Hilarious.... made me laugh!!!!
Quote: "The majority of my audience is female and would laugh at your weak smear attempt."
WOW this guy is so intellectually weak!
Also your exchange with Hrvoje is most interesting. I short note here, Hrvoje is Croatian. Croatia a very small country, less than 4 million people. Catholicism is the dominant religion and is surrounded by Orthodox and Moslems. It was under the Ottoman Yoke for centuries. These factor made many Croatians cling to Catholicism as a dogma, and more importantly cooperate with external European powers against their neighbors. In WWII the cooperated with Germany (392nd (Croatian) Infantry Division). Similarly with the fall of communism in 1991, Croatia along with Slovenia were the first to secede from Yugoslavia.
Thank you, Fadi, for the compliments and additional context for Hrvoje. I feel that door isn't entirely shut and who knows what the future will bring? He, unlike Terry, is a thoughtful and reflective person. Glad to have your insight to the geopolitics of his home culture.
Oh for sure cannot compare Terry Wolfe to Hrvoje... Wolfe's intellectual weakness is reflected in his immediate aggressiveness and impoliteness. Poor chap to get into a tussle with Tereza lol lol your exchange gave me a good laugh :-)
Once again, the subject here is way beyond my level of knowledge, but I find the arguments fascinating. Please keep fighting for respect and kindness in these discussions.
Fascinating
While many recognize we live in a world of ZOG, they don't see the ZOR.
Oh good, I figured Frances would get the zog reference but I didn't know how many others would. I give, Specie, what's the ZOR? Oh wait, Zionist Owned Religion?
You are way too sharp Tereza
I have often said, I never argue with someone's faith. It's an impossible tangle. Mainly I think we intuit something 'more' - vaguely called Divine - and then we wrap a particular expression or form around that intuition - usually the one we encountered as children in our families.
The intuition is primary and pure but the secondary expression of that intuition is subject to all sorts of distortion.
For many their faith has merged both aspects. So questioning the form/expression feels like questioning the intuition. You can pull the bits apart, but they can't.
You have gears I don't Tereza. :-)
Here is why I think it's important to challenge both the concept and the content of 'faith.' I think that cognitive dissonance is the prison cell that keeps us thinking small, tweaking rearrangements of the bed, protesting for an extra dessert. To walk out the open door means first losing faith in the guards, who say they're protecting us. Maybe that's faith in our religion, our politics, our money system or our healthcare. For someone like Hrvoje, he's spending his life opposing empire yet his belief system, from my research, empowers empire. So it paralyzes him from thinking about what's possible.
It's the same process we've been dealing with in what I call CogniCovid Dissonance: https://youtu.be/dY43ztEAU68.
I completely agree on its importance and some of us are def better at challenging than others. :-) You seem born for it.
And agree we see it in many spheres. Religion is gonna be the toughest to overcome, imo, because it gets in so deep and it feels like risking a lot to really question it.
Inevitable though. And of course, when we do, the whole space opens up.
Thanks for linking back to this video. Brilliantly articulated. You need infinite stoicism to not judge or engage negatively with your own intimate family members who insist that they do not want you anywhere near your very own aging and ailing father or mother if you have not been 'vaccinated'. And they do it with such an air of 'responsibility'. And I haven't even started with the BIG news yet! :-)
I might need to read this whole thing once again... :)
«[I]t was precisely the imitations of healings, organized in abundance by Judas, that were listed as the main expense item in the budget of Operation Ichthys.
The operation progressed well. Jesus’s popularity grew rapidly, and within just three years he had indeed become one of the most influential religious leaders in Palestine. Moreover, the differences between his teaching and classical Judaism were rapidly deepening, and I watched with amazement as a new religious doctrine was being born right before my eyes - a doctrine that did not disappoint me in anything, Proconsul!» (Yes'kov, The Gospel of Afranius, p.87)
What a tantalizing quote, Rat. Tell me more about this Gospel of Afranius, what is it?
https://fan.lib.ru/img/e/eskov/afranius_engl/afranius_engl.pdf
A polemic / spy novel written back in 1995 by Russian paleontologist (sic!) Kirill Yes'kov*, arguing that the whole thing might as well have been a special operation by Roman intelligence. The first 80 pages is a highly technical discussion of possibilities and probabilities, the fiction starts around page 82 or so.
* Кирилл Еськов; variants of transliteration – Eskov, Yeskov, Yes'kov etc.; it's the same guy who wrote «The Last Ringbearer», a deconstruction of The Lord of the Rings.
Paleontologist! Excellent!
I think the truth is truly stranger than this fiction (which my browser won't let me read from these Russkies. Maybe your global music videos are why it plunked ConspiRat into my junk mail. Or perhaps a naked tail bias, my theory for why we think squirrels are cute but rats no so much.)
Since reading Laurent in Anno Domini, I don't think there was an ancient Roman Empire, only "the Holy Roman Empire (962-1806 AD) and the Papal States (754-1870 AD), which were seen as a continuation of the Roman Empire through translatio imperii."
So the story of Jesus was made up no earlier than 754 and maybe as late as 1000 when the whole first millennium was fabricated. It's so transparent when you imagine them saying, "So what was the religion of ancient Rome?" "I know, let's take Greek mythology and change the names!"
Tereza, I don't know what you use, but we should stop using Google products (I stopped at the beginning of Convid). Firefox is good.
I might go back to Firefox, which is still up on my sidebar. I've been using Brave at someone's recommendation. But I don't love the interface.
if you need to search for something Yandex will bring you a lot of hits that others hide.
Brave is built on Chrome, which is Google.
I am vigilant and reevaluate everything in light of new information, and I move on when necessary.
I also used to use Brave briefly.
Try this: http://fan.lib.ru/img/e/eskov/afranius_en/afranius_en.pdf (a slightly different translation but as far as I understand endorsed by the author)
Somewhere else in this thread, Julius and I were talking about the Australian Break Dancer https://www.winterwatch.net/2024/08/ray-gun-the-olympic-break-dancing-spoof/#respond and I wrote that my dance buddies and I were planning to move to a country that's never heard of breakdancing so we can make the Olympics too. My friend Lisa has been taking her inspiration from the animals of her native Iowa--the cow, the pig and the chicken. But then I wrote:
"If Kazakhstan enters the 2028 breakdancing Olympics, my buddies and I are sunk with our chicken impersonations. This was posted on ConspiRat's World Entertainment Friday, if you're not a sub, you wanna be: https://conspirat.substack.com/p/wef-world-entertainment-friday-week-3d3. Here's the performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MFEBt6ldrg"
I have to send this to Lisa and break her dreams ...
I much enjoy your argumentations.
Thank you yulia for going to the G&E post and liking my comments there. That felt very good to have that validation in context.
Sure, I wanted to see the quality of the arguments of their followers.
I am totally ignorant about the topic but your arguments are neat and clear and make the topic very interesting to me.
This chap, Wolfe, is like a ballon as soon as you poke it a bit you realise it's all thin air, nothing else (ego, narcissistic ego). As for the host of G&E, I followed him a few years ago, then I got bored of him. My feeling was that he was carefully dancing on the surface of his topics and always stopped at some imaginary line - but it might just be me. He reminds me of the Corbett report - limited hangouts.
I was also about to comment something to the effect of what Guy said way too lengthily but I need to go to sleep.
I could not help feeling that your wisdom, intelligence and arguments were completely lost on these two. And that you were wasting your time and skills on them. And that they still have a long way to go in their personal development, of which they seem to be completely unaware.
Thank you for your perception and kind compliments, yulia. Interesting your comment about Corbett. I'm still a sub but have come to feel the same way about him as about Matt Ehret and Cynthia Chung. I can learn history from them but their analysis stops short at certain preconceptions.
Nothing is wasted when it elicits your insightful attention!
Tereza, again, i really congratulate you for attracting so many thoughtful people. I'm not sure i fully understand everything said here but i am sure that i don't agree with them all. But that being said it is all very thoughtful and interesting. Maybe when i get rid of some of my thoughts that are not correct i will have room to accept some of their beliefs as my own.
Thank you, Specie, and no need to get rid of any of your thoughts to make room for someone else's beliefs. As my all-time favorite wombat cartoon shows (thank you, Isaac) you can just delete childhood memories to fit more fun facts: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/wombats.
hola, tereza. omg, this was fun to watch/listen to. they really put a burr in your butt and then got you spinning.
and of course, your approach was great and ... how to put this? there is actually no point in wrestling with pigs. the pigs always win and you wind up covered in their shit.
i appreciate you jumping into that fray, though, your hope(?) that this particular group of 'zombies' were actually there to talk as in converse. hmmmmm. the prevalence of this type of mentality or psychological infantilism made itself evident subsequent to the controlled attempted social coup of the world by convid — it pre-existed convid, of course; it took a push for it to make itself known — is the same as the trump disorder syndrome, climate terrorism, all the crt and gender woke stuff. people have merged with an idea, ideology, as the authority. truly, the first stage of transhumanism: identification with moral truth.
yes, we are in the time of moving beyond labeled authorities and their moralities. clif high has the intriguing name/label 'hyper-novelty' to describe that manifested social change/evolution that we are seeing and living. and he observes, astutely imo, that that is freaking out the authority moralists who are doubling down on it. and the authority moralist worshippers are going into derangement in their own ways of doubling down into their own expression of infantilism: the infant needs the authority and the authority needs the infant.
jeff childers has referred to, gently, the 'real' christian fundamentalists who are very happy and excited by the social destruction they are seeing around them: it is proof, to them, that the end is nigh and that they are alive to be an active part of the second coming and resurrection. how big a number that is might be hinted at by the 'billions' of followers (views?) Terry (clearly exaggerating) claims to have. at the same time, to what extent are the end of the worlders passively present, the happy christian zombies sitting on their crosses and spinning their rosaries around their necks like mini hoola-hoops singing christian anthems of authority worship? and to what extent are they nihilistically embracing the lack of dialogue and intelligent resistance to the control freaks looking to imprison them? (and isn't that yet another infancy behaviour — sorry infants, we are very inappropriately slagging you. please understand we are using you metaphorically.)
yes: how to argue with the people who have deadened their curiosity to authority and morals, and with that their ability to think and engage in conversations? this 'problem' goes all the way back to the early days of convid: how to red pill those who have taken the blue bill in whatever shape that has? back then steve k didn't think about that, i'm sure: what to do with those who have already swallowed the blue pill? morpheus assured neo, there is no red pill to wake you up once the blue pill is taken. hmmmm.
great work in the sties of the christian zombies. a rather smelly place, i can infer by your furrowed brow and energetic effort to clear the stench from your nose.
all the best with what is changing. everything changes!