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Sep 26, 2022Liked by Tereza Coraggio

Regarding the study involving cookies and radishes, I don’t quite follow how to get to Rule #2 (“What looks like laziness is often exhaustion”). Is the conclusion based on the notion that the cookie eaters got more caloric energy, so they had more energy to stay on the impossible/meaningless task longer than those nourished by mere radishes?

If so, it rather confirms my suspicions that the the Standard American Diet was designed to keep people working their bullshit jobs. Unless I'm totally missing the point, don't you think Graeber could have had a field day with this study?

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Good for you, Jack, get into the methodology of these vaccine, I mean, cookie experiments! Actually, I think their conclusions were even more specious. They attributed it to willpower exhaustion, but we think the radish eaters were just hungry! They'd told them not to eat for 3 hrs before the study and I sure couldn't do some stupid maze on a couple of radishes. Plus the cookie eaters felt rewarded, I'd bet, and felt that they owed something back.

You remember the subchapter of my book called Seduced By Sugar? It makes exactly the point you are--hot liquids that were essentially drugs that needed to be sweetened with more drugs were designed to substitute for a midday hot meal and keep factory workers going. Sugar was the British link to the slave trade.

Other studies they cite in Switch have aged worse (it was published in 2010). The campaign to get overweight West Virginianers to drink skim milk instead of whole, for instance. It's really marketing techniques and sales motivation.

And yet my intuition and, more reliably, my daughters, confirm that willpower is a muscle that needs to be built up steadily, not in willpower sprints.

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Sep 22, 2022Liked by Tereza Coraggio

Tereza, can you flesh out more of these ideas into practical, real life options? Like how do we engage our Rider and Elephant in daily life? How do we even know which direction to point with our Rider and Elephant? I'm really interested in what I can do that has the most bang for the buck. For example, I used to care a lot about language, and I would say often "language really matters!". But now I think that was my puny way of trying to control something that didn't matter all that much! If we all had equality and safety and community and health and true freedom, then it doesn't matter as much (to me any longer) about labels, identity, etc. When I feel solid in my own abilities and have deep confidence I give a flying fig if someone calls me "sweetie" or something annoying like that. So in retrospect I feel like I was barking up the wrong tree with good intentions for a bunch of years. Now I feel that getting people, me included, to feel more and more deeply empowered is the most important direction.....but is it? What actions matter most?

I love that you shared about the dinners you hosted. And I just love how you 1. compliment, 2. question, 3. comment if you must. I see that played out in all your comments on all your articles. I want to learn how to do this. Can you elaborate more on this?

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Oh good, Marta, just what I like--easy questions ;-) That is the dilemma I face every morning. I've just finished the 1000+ pp of the Course for the umpteenth time. In the conclusion, it recommends getting every day off to good start by setting the intention to ask for help in every encounter, and following what it says even if it seems out of place or embarrassing.

I'm not someone who hears 'the voice for God', although I envy those who do. So how I interpret this is to listen closely to what someone's saying and find my cues there for how to respond. If they bring a topic up, I take that as a sign but I don't initiate.

Mostly I try to make people feel good about themselves, even if I'm challenging their ideas. What you just said is brilliant, for instance (and no, I didn't mean that as an example ;-) but you just talked about doing something with good intentions for a bunch of years and finding out it was barking up the wrong tree. That's totally what we need--giving other people the benefit of the doubt for their good intentions, even if they're woofing in vain.

And the other thing the Course recommends is taking a few minutes at night for gratitude. I've been going over the warm encounters I had that day--with Charlotte the bank clerk, the Eritrean Costco delivery guy, the cranky person online who changed their mind, my funny friends, my daughter. When I count them up, it seems like so many that I'm hoping the next day is just like the last. Did I have as many before I started counting them? I don't know but it doesn't seem so.

Boy, I got in a lot of trouble before I developed that formula. But, in fact, I learned it from my youngest at a time when she and I were completely at odds. I noticed that when we went to a checkout counter, she'd often compliment the cashier's nails ... or hair ... or something they were wearing. It completely changed the interaction!

She now works at a hotel desk and was just saying how much sympathy it gives her for anyone in a service position because you're always getting the brunt of things out of your control that you can't do anything about. And mostly that's whatever the person is dealing with in their own lives. Lotta Karens out there. But she was able to turn a situation around yesterday where the complainer brought her favorite pastry to her later in the day. So clearly, I have more to learn from her ...

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I am not sure Russel Brand should be on that list. Seems plausible that he is an insider with a really good act. He seems to have been a handler for Katy Perry more than a equal partner based on some video footage being shared.

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Sep 21, 2022·edited Sep 21, 2022Author

Hi, Jennifer and thanks for your reply! I'm assuming you mean my list on We Need to Agree to Agree of non-deluded journalists. Of course, half of my list aren't even journalists but people relaying the journalism of others or historians like Matt Ehret.

What I look at are the words and actions of a person currently and I disregard their associations and past, unless their current actions are consistent with them. For instance, Putin was a WEF young leader but his current policies, now that he's been freed of the Russian oligarchs and petrodollar, are the exact opposite of the WEF agenda.

Russell's been criticized for his friendly and even affectionate conversations with Yuval Noah Harari. But in those, Russell stays true to, and pushes Yuval on, Russell's goal of small-scale experimentation in self-governance. He keeps asking Yuval, why wouldn't this work?

I'm not looking for someone to follow or trust. When Russell asks Matt Taibbi what media outlets he trusts, Matt quotes 'Trust in Allah but always tie your camel.' He says you can find useful information anywhere but also need to read critically everywhere. There are many places I disagree with Russell, some of which he's changed. Others, not.

My goal is small-scale sovereignty and recognizing we're no better than others, and have no right to tell them what to do. Russell's more consistent and outspoken about both of those than anyone else I've found. At nearly 6M subscribers, he now has almost 1% of the world listening to him--and that's the whole world, so a much higher percent of English-speaking.

He was the source of the clip of the English PM pledging her willingness to nuke the human race out of existence 'if needed', which no one else seems to have commented on. Isn't that crazy? So the reasons for the PTB (powers that be) to want to discredit him are many, irrespective of the video footage. What are your thoughts, Jennifer?

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Sep 21, 2022·edited Sep 21, 2022Liked by Tereza Coraggio

A math point, six million is 0.075% of the eight billion (est to be reached this November) or 1/13th of 1%. Of those, only 3 to 400k watch his videos.

Now that is big by youtube enlightenment hawker standards, but still miniscule. The danger here is being among these circles, not grasping 1. How small the biggest are and 2. What tiny fraction of even those circles, are doing more than getting a dopamine fix of agreement and changing nothing.

However those outside these circles, aren't passively going to allow experiments in more enlightened living. Enough are easily manipulated to see them as dangerous and attack them. And we are now at an end stage of an imperialistic empire, with unprecedented consequences in play of environmental destruction, both toxins and climate.

I sincerely believe we are beyond stopping the repeated human cycle, of most deferring to the minority of the most avaricious and violent, who inherently buy their own superiority and have reached the place where our advanced tech and primative social programming, will bring another societal collapse and this time, destruction far beyond that.

That said, I am a proponent of real solutions to basic essential needs unmet and mitigations of increasingly worsening conditions. Technology complex and often simple can help. Communities of trust locally and successful processes shared widely. I have no belief, politics or societal enlightenment, on the scale needed to reverse the overarching dynamics in play, is a rational response anymore, given the speed of destruction. We need to focus on these real and immediate mitigations, outside the prevailing control the psychopathic avaricious have over us.

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That's called a buzz kill, Sam ;-) But seriously, thanks for checking my math, decimal places always confuse me.

I'm inclined to agree with you. I think that this is going to play out and no one with a plan, spiritual enlightenment, or a YT channel is going to stop it. Given that, it's not a trivial question as to whether life has meaning or purpose, or if consciousness is an accidental collision that aided survival. The fact that we dismiss this question as idle speculation for college sophomores--is that part of their plan?

If there is purpose, we can't get out of it with the push of a button by England's PM. If there is no purpose, do we really want to survive Armaggedon? For what? A few more years of pain and suffering before we die?

As my 'operating system,' I figure I might as well live as if there's purpose because, if there's not, nothing matters anyway. I don't have it in me to be a prepper. Having the last food and water while my neighbors starve--just kill me, eat me and get it over with! That sounds horrible.

Thanks, I'm glad my math error got you to respond!

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More later but my purpose at this point is in improving circumstances of unmet or insufficient essential needs and perhaps inspiring more to focus on what can be done. I've got one to work on and without that, I'd go mad. As it is, I"m mad but have someplace to put the energy, which I know bestows real benefit. I hope an increasing number find their own path to actual creation of desperately needed solutions now.. When I die, I want to feel I tried to improve lives and unquestionably did.

My copy of Switch is several years old, btw. Valuable observations.

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The copy of Switch I picked up from the Free Little Library was also quite old and well-loved, with lots of pink highlighter passages. Your purpose sounds like a good one. I look forward to your more later.

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