MARCH 2021 - FEAR OF FEAR

 

FEAR OF FEAR

Tainting by Thomas Aring

Dear Reader,

I am reflecting, this month, about the enormous pandemic of fear that we are experiencing globally. The Covid-19 epidemic is still with us, the vaccinations are starting but there are many complications, economical issues and other social issues are promoting more fear. Yet, this is not new in the history of humanity. Fear separates a person from his or her inner resources that help to live a good life and the past events have indicated the perils that fear is imposing on all society. Michael Made states:

“Throughout history, epidemics and plagues have stirred deep levels of distrust and fear that have, in turn, thrown entire cultures into upheaval. The current pandemic seems to be a perfect storm of fear that permeates all areas of society and exposes deep divisions as well as wild extremes.

Eventually, it becomes necessary to realize that what we fear will not simply go away; rather we must face our fears or else become overwhelmed. It is important to know that the hidden aim of fear is not “fight or flight,” but rather the revelation of untapped inner resources that are trying to awaken in each of us. Healthy fear involves an increase of consciousness that stirs deep instincts and intuitions that can be life-protective, lifesaving and life enhancing. In critical times, the greatest safety can be found in becoming wise enough to take the right risk.”

While afraid, we feel the need to become dependent of others, but a lack of help can quickly turn into aggression. Fear is multi-directional, as recent invasion of the Washington Capital indicated. The mob incited by the Qanon conspiracy theories and white supremacists have created a violent atmosphere where the paranoia about the elections results were considered  “stolen elections” from Trump. This is what the psychopaths in power are creating a collapse of whole government by speaking to people about theories that are clearly fake but place the faults to the other side. Daniel Pinchbeck a NY bestselling book review on “Conspiranoia: The Betrayed States of America” has a very insightful theory about how conspiracy theories turn to “facts” convincing whole mobs to attack and become destructive to people and property. I am offering an excerpt of his remarkably interesting book:

"A segment of the ruling elites in government, finance, and the corporate world are psychological deviants on the psychopathic spectrum. These individuals rise to power in hierarchical systems based on control, dominance, and exploitation. They win the game because they lack conscience. This allows them to ignore destructive consequences and “externalities.” Psychopaths can sense each other and recognize their distance from ordinary human beings. As the winners of the power game, they see themselves as innately superior, “masters of the universe,” who have a natural right to control and manipulate the mass population.  ​Some of them actively enjoy causing suffering. Over time, some of them get addicted to the adrenaline rush that comes from illicit, immoral, and criminal activity. Like addicts, they must keep increasing the dose. As world leaders, they enjoy performing increasingly flagrant immoral and destructive actions without getting caught or punished.  ​This framing helps us reach a coherent understanding of events like 9/11, why the Chinese leadership decided to spread the Coronavirus globally once it was released, and the partly orchestrated social breakdown that is happening in the US right now. Psychopaths do not necessarily need to be meshed in tightly plotted conspiracies to be working toward the same goal and agenda. Their tendency will be to push societal forces in the direction that serves their perceived, short-term interests. They automatically project the barren quality of their inner lives into the outer world, reshaping the world in their image.  ​That we are being ruled and manipulated by psychopaths without conscience helps to explain the vacuous, numbing quality of contemporary existence.

 

“When you understand the true nature of psychopathic influence, that it is conscienceless, emotionless, selfish, cold and calculating, and devoid of any moral or ethical standards, you are horrified, but at the same time, everything suddenly begins to make sense,” Callahan writes. “Our society is ever more soulless because the people who lead it and who set the example are soulless — they literally have no conscience.”

We can, therefore, define one new organizing pole for a global counter-movement: It will be based on identifying psychopaths — through brain scans, personality tests, and observation — and removing them from positions of power. This is something that people can agree with, from across the political spectrum. The various forms of psychopathy must be understood more widely, along with methods for identifying the manipulative mechanisms used by psychopaths to cover their tracks.  ​Along with this, we need to define a new direction for human society that is distinct from the technological control paradigm which is sociopathic in its essence. I believe that liberals and progressives are making a mistake in rejecting working class anger against automation and corporate globalization. They need to re-think their position, finding common cause with them. Similarly, I consider the mass movement questioning vaccinations and other advances in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals to be a healthy one that is worthy of support. The subject requires much deeper analysis as well as oversight from civil society.  ​There are legitimate reasons to be concerned that a rushed vaccine for COVID-19 could have negative long-term health effects for many people. We have seen a massive increase in vaccinations since the mid-1980s. During that time, children have become more prone to many chronic diseases and conditions, from asthma to autism to ADHD. Vaccines provide enormous profits for pharmaceutical companies and billionaires like Gates. The pharmaceutical corporations that produce vaccines are part of the same market system that led cigarette companies to hide the danger of cigarette smoking and energy companies to disseminate climate change denial. Someone who develops a chronic condition is a long-term profit centre for a pharmaceutical company. Such long-term conditions are actually advantageous to pharmaceutical companies, increasing their bottom line. Also, in the US, vaccine-makers have been released from legal liability for damages they cause.

 ​My reason for writing this is to persuade those who still support the old progressive establishment or neoliberal agenda (which encompasses the technocratic / biosecurity worldview, the Blue Church etc) to abandon this obsolete ideology. We need to build a new alliance between the working class and the progressive “woke” elite — a group that includes those who have inherited wealth, plus the self-made entrepreneurs and tech company executives who flock to events like Burning Man, Nexus, and Summit — by defining a new orientation toward what is taking place as well as a shared vision for humanity’s future. Before we can get there, establishment liberals and progressives must take a step back and reassess. They need to understand there are valid reasons that the masses feel scorn toward them, reject their ideal of progress, and are now embracing lurid and dangerous conspiracy theories.

People have good reason to freak out about ever-increasing corporate control and techno-surveillance, enforced vaccinations, as well as other aspect of the bio-security control agenda. It is good that they are rejecting neoliberalism and seeking alternative. There are, also, good reasons why many people deeply distrust the traditional media. For many decades, CNN and The New York Times and other mainstream news sources have been thoroughly infiltrated by intelligence operatives who shape the content and rhetoric of the mainstream news when necessary. We know this to be the case from many past examples, including recent ones, such as the media frenzy over Hilary’s emails before the 2016 election, which tilted the election to Trump, or the laughable coverage over Jeffrey Epstein’s “suicide.”   Until space colonies on Mars open, we still must +deal with this world and its fragile, increasingly insecure, and unstable realities. If we hope to change the dynamics of the global geopolitical game, those of us who wish to see a more just, ecologically sane, and truly democratic society must coalesce around a new strategy. At this point, no matter who is “elected” as US President, this strategy must go beyond traditional political means.   

Much of our government and financial system is controlled by psychological deviants, outliers, who lack conscience. These psychopaths constantly seek more wealth, power, and control, to compensate for their innate insecurity and fear of discovery. They recognize each other intuitively and work toward the same basic goal: A destabilized and chaotic world order that allows them to oppress, dominate, and exploit. ​We need to acknowledge the invisible, occult, and ceremonial aspects of the culture, the operational theater, of our ruling elites. Some of them are drawn to secret societies. Some participate in rituals of domination and pedophilia sexual abuse which directly express their position above and outside of the law. Others share an ethos of self-interest, where the “means justify the ends” (the ethos of The Illuminati, an influential 18th Century secret society which has become legendary) on an individual or societal level.  ​When we turn our collective focus to address these two issues — the psychopaths who have taken control of human civilization and the technocratic system that enhances their capacity to manipulate us — we can build a global movement across classes, races, religious and ethnic groups to defeat them. If the mass populace’s fury can be redirected and channelled, transformed into a unifying force, we can bring together various classes and political factions in a global rebellion against corporate and technocratic rule, in favour of local democracies and bioregional autonomy. We can focus on building a regenerative system that supports local communities and allows humanity to focus on our next great collective mission, that of healing the biosphere, which requires harmony across classes, races, nations, and religious groups"

 

Pinchbeck, Daniel. Conspiranoia: The Betrayed States of America (p. 50). Kindle Edition.

 

I could not agree more with this analysis and learn from his book that I highly recommend.

 

 

 

Fear and Anger are related 

 

FEBRUARY 2021 CANCEL CULTURE AND THE PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN MOVIE

 

FEBRUARY 2021 BLOG

CANCEL CULTURE AND THE PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN MOVIE.

 

Dear Reader,

Recently I went to see a film with some of my male friends. The movie was hailed as an amazing and complex story of a young woman attending a medical school at a University in the USA. Her studies were interrupted by a rape of her best friend, who later suicides. She becomes totally obsessed with VENGEANCE and stalks young men pretending she is blind drunk. A quote from a review:

“She lives with her parents, and spends her nights going to bars and night clubs and pretending to be dangerously, blindly intoxicated.  When men take her back to their places—under the pretense of helping her—she rejects their advances, begs to go home, and then, when they persist, switches off the slurring and asks, in a cold and sober voice, what they are doing. It is startling enough that they always immediately backpedal. “I thought we had a connection,” one sputters. “I’m a nice guy!” Afterward, she goes home, tallies each conquest in a small notebook hidden under her childhood bed, and the next morning begins the whole process over again”.

The movie A PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN (written by Emerald Fennell) was very upsetting for me and I walked out at the middle of it. I felt a sense of inner disgust at the way the woman “Cassie” is after vengeance against all young men. Here the victim and the vigilante collapse into a single entity or confluence and it is an overly complex story. As I left the movie theater, I had a flash in my mind about how similar the theme seemed to the old Westerns where the good (hero) cowboy is taking vengeance on several “bad guys” who killed his friends. He stalks them and kills them all.

But vengeance (male or female) is a place where a ‘fractured’ mind goes when it is striving to stay whole (sane). But in many cultures, revenge means ‘doing something’ right and justifiable.

While reading several reviews to find out the end of the movie, I found this description:

Much has been made about the film’s ending, the final way in which “Promising Young Woman” sets itself apart from its lineage. Cassie infiltrates the bachelor party of Nina’s rapist disguised as a stripper. She ties him up, tells him what she knows, tries to get him to admit to what he has done, and threatens to cut Nina’s name into his skin. He breaks free of his restraints and smothers Cassie with a pillow. It takes an agonizingly long time for her to die. It is as brutal as watching the rape we’ve never been witness to.”

Now, this is an amazing topic for a serious discussion, and I am inviting my male friends to meet and share freely their opinions and feelings about the movie. I am asking my friends to be open and free to keep the door of rational debate and do not enter a place that journalists call  “the cancel culture”. where all rational open sharing is quickly judged, and the blame is usually put on the men.

Young men, in my experience, are frightened to express themselves freely for fear of being castigated and blamed for injuring women. Many young men retire to their mobiles and stay quiet.

As I followed my own intuition regarding the origin of the movie script and as I read the interview with the writer published in the VULTURE (www.vulture.com),where the author, Emerald Fennell, states that she loved old cowboy movies – YES! I thought, here is the source of her script. A hero cowboy now converted in the girl Cassey, is on a rampage to avenge the killing of his friend and goes and kills all the bandidos (bad guys). Therefore, I am seeing a ‘cancel culture” model emerging in the movie where the hero is a woman, and the young men are the bad guys. As Gemma Tognini states in her newspaper article: “The mob does not always dress in black and wear dark glasses, and carry knives or guns, the mob also wear suits and dresses, and are everywhere.” So, my readers, here is the challenge – speak up and write your comments - and here is a question:

As viewers, we have our own questions to ask. Do filmmakers owe us realistic portrayals of rape and its aftermath, or may we take pleasure in revenge fantasies, in which real-life obstacles are cast aside?

the futility of vengeance