Oeaohoo

But which way is the spiral going? “Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”! This seems closer to the truth…

Not in itself. The agenda is the force-feeding of these values onto everybody else. I suspected that someone would say this. It is the logical deduction from viewing everything in terms of linearly ascending stages of development. Looking through history, I see no evidence for this view. Instead, it is clear that development eventually becomes the downfall of human societies. The pluralistic values that you speak of have existed many times before. The trouble is that every time a civilisation has become excessively liberal and cosmopolitan, it has collapsed. The Tower of Babel and all that jazz. Liberalism is largely parasitic upon decadence. This is naive. As an example, I recently read that Sociology was created under the Nazi party: ‘It was under Hitler’s regime that statistically based sociology and social history got their start at Leipzig and other German universities. It is an irony bordering on the absurd that such a discipline was repackaged as a decisive break from the Nazi-tainted German past when it was promoted in the postwar period. In the late 1940s this relatively new discipline was brought back counterfactually or mistakenly as an effort to “overcome the German past.”‘ In a very short time, Sociology went from being a vehicle for the refinement of Nazi ideas to a vehicle for the likes of Adorno and Marcuse to express their Freudian-Marxist lamentations. This shows how quickly and radically the ideological agenda of an academic discipline can change. Many of the Nazis were extremely intelligent and capable scholars, and yet they were still “undeveloped” enough to follow Hitler off of a cliff, like you spoke about in your recent episode. By this point I probably sound needlessly argumentative, but this also rings false. Leadership requires intelligence, organisation and an intensity of vision. You can have these at any “stage of development”. If a leader is too far beyond the people he is leading, they won’t resonate with him, which is precisely what is happening in the tech world. There are many times in history where a leader has even taken people “backwards”. Isn’t that what you Americans fear with somebody like Trump? The short version of everything that I have said above is that development is a circle and not a straight line.

Reflecting on it, what I wrote about Musk representing some kind of counter-elite is almost certainly too sympathetic. We always have to remember that the primary function of democracy is to hold together a society of people who have very little in common. Rather than letting these people fight amongst each other, as they really want to do, an abstracted form of conflict is ritually played out every couple of years in the form of an election. As the democratic society becomes increasingly strained under the chaos of diversity, increasingly regular bouts of this abstracted conflict are required just to hold things together. The whole mechanism is little more than a way to divert conflict into controlled and contained channels, so that the mediocrity and decadence may flow on into the night of civilisation itself, and the “enemy party” is the secularised form of the ritual “Scapegoat” which René Girard spoke about in his books. Musk is just the right-wing form of this regime containment. At best, he will dial down the Woke messaging a little bit and make Twitter a less “anal-retentive” dominant space. Nothing will really change and Clown World will keep on Honking, until eventually it collapses under the weight of its own absurdity. Nothing to see here.

You mean the book by Jonah Goldberg? I haven’t read it personally but I can’t stand guys like Shapiro and Goldberg. They are mediocre minds who got where they are through nepotism and in-group preference, not through high-IQs and an unrivalled work ethic… I don’t mean to be rude but that is a very silly term. Liberalism and Fascism are completely antithetical. Goldberg was clearly trying to make a silly move, smearing liberalism with the “evils of Fascism”. Typical kvetching. Conservatives try to be clever like this sometimes but it never works out. I understand that you mean a kind of enforced liberalism, which is indeed more or less what I am referring to. A much more profound author, who also happens to be Jewish, Paul Gottfried, calls this “soft totalitarianism” and “therapeutic managerialism”. These are much better terms.

It’s the agenda of Nietzsche’s Last Man, the soulless bug man who blinks into space whilst declaring, “We have discovered happiness!”

That is an agenda. The agenda of the useless worker who wants to maintain their useless career, and who doesn’t want anyone reminding them how useless they are! I referred to the main agenda in my previous post: it is civilisation against culture, the cosmopolitan elite against the masses and the Rightist counter-elite. In the recent midterms, 98.7% of Twitter employee donations were to the Democratic Party, and the recent “Twitter Files” thread (which I also linked above) showed that most of the manipulation that was going on at Twitter went over the head of Jack Dorsey, the CEO. Like Leo said, the short answer is “Wokeism”, though the terms “Globohomo” and “Woke Capital” cut closer to the bone.

A lot of the time it was obvious that the agenda wasn’t even ideological. Most of the people who worked at Twitter, and even more so the “blue-check mark” journalists who loved it so, were (and still are, and always will be!) useless managerial bureaucrats, completely out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people. They couldn’t stand it when anyone burst their little bubble of mediocrity and smug self-satisfaction.

Oblivion was a beautiful game. I don’t know if it was intentional but I think that the Elder Scrolls games mirror the history of civilisation: Morrowind was like an ancient Middle-Eastern Empire, Oblivion was clearly modelled on Greco-Roman antiquity and Skyrim on the tension between Nordic Paganism and Imperial Christianity at the turn of the previous Millennium.

As a fellow Stage Yellow Systems Thinker, I completely agree… All of this has happened before. Every culture has developed into a civilisation and every civilisation has become decadent, resulting in extreme tensions between urban and rural life. Every time that this has happened, the rural population have been stirred on by a demagogic strong-man to rise up and crush the urbanite. Why would this time be different? Because some Boomers came up with a stupid theory about spiralling upwards forever? Delusional.

Musk may be a clown but there is more to this than just “capitalism in decay”, the typical Marxist framing of right-wing populism. Twitter hasn’t just been censoring crude bigotry and conspiracy theories, it has been imposing an agenda. It is a classic case of what Spengler would call civilisation against culture: an extremely cosmopolitan elite imposing their beliefs on everybody else. Spengler showed that, whenever this happens, the next step is Caesarism. Of course, most of you won’t care about this because this is also your agenda… The accursed “survival” strikes again! I just wish that you would stop pretending to care about the majority consensus and the sacred cow of “democracy”. It’s easy to value the “consensus” when it has been manufactured so as to represent what you, as smug cosmopolitan liberals, think that it should be!

One of my favourite memes of late…

https://mobile.twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394

That’s true. I’d drawn a false distinction between being a political idealist and a pragmatic capitalist… If you are right about his motivations, Musk has the pleasure of having his cake and eating it!

Of course but you pointed out that Twitter is a terrible business model to begin with. His motivations are clearly something more than just capitalising. Like you said just now, he probably thinks he is saving the world… The “twitter files” thing would seem to support this conclusion.

Something doesn’t add up here…

It’s quite possible that he’s naive enough to believe that free speech is actually a possibility today. A lot of people in the tech world really believe in that sort of mushy libertarianism. It’s also possible that he is part of an undeclared right-wing counter-elite (which might involve the likes of Peter Thiel, other potential elites who would benefit from a resurgence of right-wing populism, and maybe even Trump) who intend to overthrow the current establishment. Throughout history, this is generally how revolutions have happened: counter-elites and the people teaming up against the established elite. For example, in the French Revolution the monarchy were the established elite, the Philosophes and various Masonic lodges were the counter-elite, who promulgated the propaganda and ideological justification for revolt, and the people were, as they always are, the people… I also like Leo’s idea that he’s just another brain-rotted clown. He does spend most of his time on Twitter sharing memes and “owning” people…

FYI, this is how I expect people to react to everything that I write: The reality is probably somewhat different…

This is a short letter to say: “Thank you.” I grew up in an Orthodox Christian household. They forced me to believe in God, to live in a moral and upright way, to abstain from depravity and pursue higher things. Then I discovered Actualized.org. The penetrating insights expressed here allowed me to deconstruct the lies that I had been told. This beautiful community was like a spiritual refuge for me. Now I’m finally free. Now I can live my life as I WANT to live it. Now, nobody can keep me down… I’ve started my first business: we provide contractor-based solutions for digital platform space analytics. The work environment is full of dynamism and synergies and we have employed a beautiful diverse staff. I know now that I was stuck in the past, in the shadows of Stage Blue, as so many unfortunately are today. How can we wake them up before it is too late?! Right now, I am between Stage Orange and Green: I have a deep respect for women and minorities but in my heart I still desire personal success above all. I don’t need to believe in God anymore because I AM God! Admittedly, I haven’t realised this for myself yet… I’m working towards this goal every day. I know that this is the goal because I believe in Leo’s teachings and have faith in him. I’m constantly developing myself - sometimes it amazes me how far I’ve come! Do I ever miss my old life? Maybe… But then I remember that in all things Change is the law, Growth is the path and Progress is the way! Anyway, I must go now. To tell the truth, I’m exhausted. I’ve had over one hundred sexual partners in the past week alone. I’m getting some blood tests back tomorrow - hoping that I haven’t contracted any sexually transmitted diseases… Whether or not the tests come back positive, there’s one thing that I am positive about - how grateful I am! Thank you.

There are underlying unities which transcend particular differences. For example, most cultures throughout history have organised themselves into similar hierarchies: Dumézil wrote about this in an academic setting and called it the “trifunctional hypothesis”. Until recently, initiation was a universal cultural practice. Most cultures have a ruling class and a monarchy, which often survives even through decadent democratic phases, and organise life in terms of rites and ritualised customs. To my knowledge, René Guénon did the best job of restating this underlying unity for modern times: the key insight here is that exoteric diversity is grounded in esoteric unity. On the other hand, have you noticed how so many aspects of globalised society are an inversion of this underlying unity in the name of an externalised uniformity? Rather than a liturgical calendar we have “Black History Month” and “International Women’s Day”, rather than Mass or Communion we have the sports match, rather than ritualised anti-structure we have “It’s Friday! Party time!” and clubbing… These are surely a grand testament to the great strides made by “mankind” (itself a uniform and homogenising term) in recent times! There is no longer an underlying unity of organic cultures, only a sterile uniformity enforced by global bureaucracy. Having said all of that, the tremendous variety of human cultures is bound to be slightly overwhelming… Maybe it is supposed to be! There is a talk somewhere by OSHO in which he talks about taking the “Path of Confusion”: reading thousands of books, he drowned himself in knowledge until reaching a point of total confusion and a radical state of not-knowing, which served as a kind of kenosis or “self-emptying” for the reception of metaphysical truth. For a while now I have been fascinated by the Egyptian God Seth, who was the God of Confusion. I think that practitioners of his cult would have practised a similar self-emptying confusion…

This guy gets it. He offers a rich, nuanced and exquisitely balanced Tier 2 perspective. There’s no doubt that he’s up there with the greats: Albert Einstein, Charles Eisenstein, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Leo Gura… Definitely one to watch!

I thought that someone might say that! It still often comes across as being more or less the survival of the physical organism, which I suppose makes sense given that most people are strongly identified with this.

I woke up today and I immediately thought of all the other people in the world waking up with me: some of them would wake up alone, some with a hangover, some in bed with their husbands or wives, some with a new partner - some of them wouldn’t have slept at all! I imagined the natural light or the variety of alarm sounds which might have woken them up. I asked myself: “What is the first thought that will run through their minds? What truly motivates and inspires them? What are they going to do today?” In my minds eye I saw millions of individual days playing out before me like a fractal pattern of morning-to-nights. I was able to do all of this because… I am a Stage Yellow Systems Thinker. So how did I get here? As a precocious youngster I studied many subjects, but I was never satisfied. Even then, I was to able to intuitively sense that most of the big ideas that could be grasped within an academic setting had already been arrived at. The great geniuses of the past - the likes of Einstein, Wittgenstein and Rothberg - already had their photos on the wall, and I knew that I couldn’t compete with them. Most of the intellectuals I came across had lived austere and isolated lives, and I certainly didn’t want to do that! Even worse, I knew that most of the ideas they had expressed would not be popular today… Given that I did not want an academic career, mainstream popularity was very important to me. If I wanted to be successful, I would have to limit myself to presenting ideas that are compatible with our advanced and inclusive times. That’s when I hit upon my idea of genius: I would go through the works of all of the great thinkers and philosophers, borrowing the ideas that were compatible with what is popular today and discarding the rest! After a while, I had even forgotten why I was doing this, and I was able to really believe that I was distilling the gems of truth from otherwise hopelessly outdated material! This is the story of how I became a Stage Yellow Systems Thinker. What is most beautiful about this is that I am able to look down on the first tier of humanity from my Tier 2 perspective whilst maintaining our shared belief in equality and democracy! But I’m still human. There are still wounds within me that need to be healed and shadows to bring to the light. In dealing with my own traumas, I am able to have compassion with myself whilst remaining detached. This is my innovation and my superpower. I’ve built myself a beautiful body, a beautiful mind, and - most importantly - a beautiful spirit. I built these through my own ingenuity and through the assistance of many other beautiful people. I am a walking testament to the power of individualism and collectivism spiralling in love together, forever. Mark my words. One day, all of the world is going to be like me. They don’t know it yet, but they will. The wisdom of the higher stages which I embody so perfectly will be simply irresistible. Only then, when everyone is like me, will the world finally know the peace and joy of Divine Unity.

I watched the rest of Leo’s Conservatism video. I actually thought that the bulk of it was pretty good, though it went a bit downhill towards the end. My main objection is that it seems like in Leo’s analysis of worldly matters, what would previously have been referred to as the “cosmic order” of things (Rta, Logos) is replaced with “survival”. This strikes me as a more subtle form of the general tendency nowadays to reduce all higher things to base impulses: similar to the way that Freud reduced everything to libido, Nietzsche to power, psychology in general to “ego development”, Bergson to the “life force” and so on… It’s a degrading inversion whereby, rather than viewing everything as emanating from a divine Source, everything is viewed as nothing more than more or less sophisticated expressions of biological impulses. It’s peculiar that Leo of all people, who otherwise teaches a form of extreme metaphysical idealism, would view things in this way.

I don’t mean to be rude but I think that this kind of deliberately debauched and degrading behaviour is precisely the reason why people have been homophobic in the past. It’s just ugly and gross. I don’t like to psychologise people but it reminds me of what psychoanalysis calls “Schadenfreude”, the perverse joy in dirtying and spoiling things. Anyway, sorry that you are offended by things that I had written. Like I said earlier, as a Stage Yellow Systems Thinker I know that we are all just where we need to be…