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Post by Admin on Feb 20, 2021 18:07:52 GMT
Something I think is kind of insane is how in modern society, people are so far removed from the processes that make food, clothing, and shelter. I could easily go my whole life without seeing a sheep---but I wear wool. Im afraid to look into how meat is processed. But I eat meat anyway. Ive never had to kill most of my animals for food. Im grateful for modern conveniences but I feel like at least knowing how certain commodities are made informs your choices and gives you more of an appreciation for the things we consume and the people who work to get us those things. i look a lot into the mechanisms / systems of civilization. A lot of the ways that humanity has treated nature / animals is truly awful. i can understand people becoming vegan / animal activists / green revolutionaries. i have for a long time cut right down on the amount of animal produce that i consume, & with consumption in general.
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Post by wynona on Feb 20, 2021 18:22:58 GMT
Something I think is kind of insane is how in modern society, people are so far removed from the processes that make food, clothing, and shelter. I could easily go my whole life without seeing a sheep---but I wear wool. Im afraid to look into how meat is processed. But I eat meat anyway. Ive never had to kill most of my animals for food. Im grateful for modern conveniences but I feel like at least knowing how certain commodities are made informs your choices and gives you more of an appreciation for the things we consume and the people who work to get us those things. i look a lot into the mechanisms / systems of civilization. A lot of the ways that humanity has treated nature / animals is truly awful. i can understand people becoming vegan / animal activists / green revolutionaries. i have for a long time cut right down on the amount of animal produce that i consume, & with consumption in general. Over here, there are specialty shops where they claim more humane options for meat with labels like "grass fed". Im always curious as to what qualifies as grass fed. Do the cows get to roam on the grass or what? Is it all grass or is it just partially so? In the future, I can see myself being a pescetarian or limiting animal products in my diet. I have heard that makeup is tested on animals. I don't wear makeup, so Im glad I can at least not be a part of that.
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Post by wynona on Feb 20, 2021 18:30:32 GMT
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Post by Admin on Mar 2, 2021 18:33:40 GMT
“The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.”
—H. L. Mencken
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Post by Admin on Mar 10, 2021 13:53:58 GMT
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Post by Admin on Mar 11, 2021 1:16:17 GMT
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Post by Admin on Mar 11, 2021 17:46:01 GMT
Finding Meaning Under A Meaningless Systemcaitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/finding-meaning-under-a-meaninglessHow many of people's mental health diagnoses are really just them struggling to function in a capitalist system that is amoral, destructive, overwhelming, overbearing, unsatisfying, and bereft of meaning? It's surely one of the most under-examined questions in the field of modern psychology. People in general and researchers in particular all too rarely think to take a step back from the data they are looking at and consider the large-scale framework within which that data is materializing, and to consider whether there's anything about that particular framework which is giving rise to the particular data sets they are seeing. How many of the mental health diagnoses given out are really just people not coping well under capitalism? It's worth looking into. How many people end up consulting with mental health professionals because they find themselves psychologically unable to keep up with the frenetic corporate pace that's demanded of them in order to "earn a living"? Or earlier on as children because they are unable to successfully navigate the capitalism boot camp known as school? How many people are given diagnoses, and corresponding bottles of pills, simply because they can't march to the beat of the capitalist drum? Beyond that, how many people are pushed into mental illness by the madness of our current system? How many people suffer from very real depression or anxiety arising from the pressure to keep churning out pieces of future landfill in meaningless jobs which serve no purpose other than to turn millionaires into billionaires? How many people simply collapse under the weight of financial insecurity, food insecurity, housing insecurity, employment and insurance insecurity, combined with the effects of desperate attempts to self-medicate the stress? How many of these stressors are exacerbated by being psychologically pummelled with mass media propaganda day in and day out, artificially twisting your mind into the belief that this is all normal, and that if you can't keep up, you're the problem? Telling you that it's fine and normal for there to be billionaires and empty investment properties while you struggle to keep a roof over your head? Telling you it's fine and normal for wealth and resources to go toward murdering strangers overseas while you're forced to choose between medicine and groceries? And by the capitalism propaganda known as advertising? How is our psychological health affected by a nonstop barrage of corporate messaging informing us that we are deficient, and that there are things we lack which we must obtain in order to become whole? That we're not beautiful enough, not skinny enough, not fashionable enough, not affluent enough, that we don't own enough of the top-line items which only the well-off can afford? I'd venture to say this all has a major impact on our minds. You can have anxiety without being poor, but you can't be poor without having anxiety. Our competition-based model uses the stress of potential homelessness and death to keep all the slaves turning the gears of the machine, and that stress is now interwoven into the very fabric of our society. It's so pervasive you have to take a step back just to see it all. So how best to respond to this depressing situation? How best to avoid drowning in the tar pit of a soulless, nihilistic political and economic paradigm? How to find meaning under a meaningless system which squeezes your psychological wellbeing in order to power its batteries? Well, that question is much easier to answer. You find meaning under a meaningless system by working to destroy that system. Do whatever you need to survive, up to and including taking psychiatric medications if you need to, and with whatever remaining time and energy you have left, throw sand in the gears of the machine. Do whatever you can to upset the status quo. Engage in activism. Join a union. Start a union. Start a podcast. Start a Twitter account. Above all, work to spread awareness of what's really going on in our world, because that's the weakest point in the machine's armor right now. The loose transnational alliance of plutocrats and government agencies which comprises our real government works so hard to manufacture consent because they require the consent of the governed in order to rule; we greatly outnumber them and we can oust their rule if enough of us decide we don't consent to it anymore. In a western society which must try to at least appear to support free speech, the best front on which to attack such a power structure is on the front of information. They can't kill and imprison us all, so if we all awaken to how oppressed we are and to who has been oppressing us, we can use the power of our numbers to kick them out and replace them with a healthier model. The job of the propagandists is to prevent this from happening. The job of you and me is to make it happen. So help wake people up to the injustices of our system, as many people as you can by whatever means you have access to. Wake them up to the abuses of capitalism. To the abuses of imperialism. To the abuses of mass media propaganda. Learn as much as you can about the madness of our current system, and share what you have learned with as many people as possible. All positive changes in human behavior arise from an increasing awareness of the underlying dynamics which give rise to them, whether you're talking about the psychological dynamics underlying the addictive or compulsive behaviors of an individual or the power dynamics underlying the murderous and oppressive behaviors of a globe-spanning empire. If you are looking for meaning, you will find it in the spreading of that awareness. We absolutely do have the ability to move away from this misery-generating competition-based model that is choking us all to death and replace it with one in which we collaborate with each other and with our ecosystem toward health, beauty, truth, and thriving. If there is meaning to be found in our world, it lies in that direction. __________________________
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Post by Admin on Mar 15, 2021 21:27:15 GMT
The world’s mental health epidemic is caused by the system we’re forced to live underBy Caitlin Johnstone www.informationclearinghouse.info/56446.htmMarch 15, 2021 "Information Clearing House" - Are you psychologically unable to keep up with the harsh pace demanded of you by capitalism just to survive? Join the gang: we’re all depressed because we’re stuck in dead-end jobs that simply turn millionaires into billionaires. How many of people’s mental health diagnoses are really just them struggling to function in a capitalist system that is amoral, destructive, overwhelming, overbearing, unsatisfying, and bereft of meaning? It’s surely one of the most under-examined questions in the field of modern psychology. People in general and researchers in particular all too rarely think to take a step back from the data they are looking at and consider the large-scale framework within which that data is materializing, and to consider whether there’s anything about that particular framework which is giving rise to the particular data sets they are seeing. How many of the mental health diagnoses given out are really just people not coping well under capitalism? It’s worth looking into. How many people end up consulting with mental health professionals because they find themselves psychologically unable to keep up with the frenetic corporate pace that’s demanded of them in order to “earn a living”? Or earlier on as children because they are unable to successfully navigate the capitalism boot camp known as school? How many people are given diagnoses, and corresponding bottles of pills, simply because they can’t march to the beat of the capitalist drum? Beyond that, how many people are pushed into mental illness by the madness of our current system? How many people suffer from very real depression or anxiety arising from the pressure to keep churning out pieces of future landfill in meaningless jobs which serve no purpose other than to turn millionaires into billionaires? How many people simply collapse under the weight of financial insecurity, food insecurity, housing insecurity, employment and insurance insecurity, combined with the effects of desperate attempts to self-medicate the stress? "Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, 'It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.' And a profoundly sick society is indeed what we have here. The alienation which we experience is an alienation from something that isn’t worth belonging to anyway." t.co/2M1pY7EBXe— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) December 9, 2019 How many of these stressors are exacerbated by being psychologically pummelled with mass media propaganda day in and day out, artificially twisting your mind into the belief that this is all normal, and that if you can’t keep up, you’re the problem? Telling you that it’s fine and normal for there to be billionaires and empty investment properties while you struggle to keep a roof over your head? Telling you it’s fine and normal for wealth and resources to go toward murdering strangers overseas while you’re forced to choose between medicine and groceries? And by the capitalism propaganda known as advertising? How is our psychological health affected by a nonstop barrage of corporate messaging informing us that we are deficient, and that there are things we lack which we must obtain in order to become whole? That we’re not beautiful enough, not skinny enough, not fashionable enough, not affluent enough, that we don’t own enough of the top-line items which only the well-off can afford? I’d venture to say this all has a major impact on our minds. You can have anxiety without being poor, but you can’t be poor without having anxiety. Our competition-based model uses the stress of potential homelessness and death to keep all the slaves turning the gears of the machine, and that stress is now interwoven into the very fabric of our society. It’s so pervasive you have to take a step back just to see it all. So how best to respond to this depressing situation? How best to avoid drowning in the tar pit of a soulless, nihilistic political and economic paradigm? How to find meaning under a meaningless system which squeezes your psychological wellbeing in order to power its batteries? Well, that question is much easier to answer. You find meaning under a meaningless system by working to destroy that system. Do whatever you need to survive, up to and including taking psychiatric medications if you need to, and with whatever remaining time and energy you have left, throw sand in the gears of the machine. Do whatever you can to upset the status quo. Engage in activism. Join a union. Start a union. Start a podcast. Start a Twitter account. Above all, work to spread awareness of what’s really going on in our world, because that’s the weakest point in the machine’s armor right now. The loose transnational alliance of plutocrats and government agencies which comprises our real government works so hard to manufacture consent because they require the consent of the governed in order to rule; we greatly outnumber them and we can oust their rule if enough of us decide we don’t consent to it anymore. In a western society which must try to at least appear to support free speech, the best front on which to attack such a power structure is on the front of information. They can’t kill and imprison us all, so if we all awaken to how oppressed we are and to who has been oppressing us, we can use the power of our numbers to kick them out and replace them with a healthier model. The job of the propagandists is to prevent this from happening. The job of you and me is to make it happen. So help wake people up to the injustices of our system, as many people as you can by whatever means you have access to. Wake them up to the abuses of capitalism. To the abuses of imperialism. To the abuses of mass media propaganda. Learn as much as you can about the madness of our current system, and share what you have learned with as many people as possible. All positive changes in human behavior arise from an increasing awareness of the underlying dynamics which give rise to them, whether you’re talking about the psychological dynamics underlying the addictive or compulsive behaviors of an individual or the power dynamics underlying the murderous and oppressive behaviors of a globe-spanning empire. If you are looking for meaning, you will find it in the spreading of that awareness. We absolutely do have the ability to move away from this misery-generating competition-based model that is choking us all to death and replace it with one in which we collaborate with each other and with our ecosystem toward health, beauty, truth, and thriving. If there is meaning to be found in our world, it lies in that direction. Caitlin's articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her on Facebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast, throwing some money into her hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying her book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. caitlinjohnstone.com
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Post by Admin on Mar 18, 2021 17:34:48 GMT
Christopher Lasch discussing his influential analysis of 'The Culture of Narcissism', exploring how many modern pathologies such as narcissism, hysteria, and schizophrenia may reflect social and economic structures: "Every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathology, which express in exaggerated form its underlying character structure. In Freud’s time, hysteria and obsessional neuroses carried to extremes the personality traits associated with the capitalist order at an earlier stage of its development: acquisitiveness, fanatical devotion to work, and a fierce repression of sexuality. In our time, the pre-schizophrenic, borderline, or character disorders have attracted increasing attention, along with schizophrenia itself. This change in the form of neuroses has been observed and described since World War II by an ever-increasing number of psychiatrists. The narcissist comes to the attention of psychiatrists for some of the same reasons that he rises to positions of prominence, not only in the awareness-movements and consciousness-movements and other therapeutic cults that have proliferated but in business corporations, political organizations, and government bureaucracies. For all his intense inner suffering, the narcissist has many traits that seem to make for success in our society, and particularly for success in bureaucratic institutions, which put a premium on the manipulation of interpersonal relationships, discourage the formation of deep personal attachments, and at the same time provide the narcissist with the interpersonal environment - the interpersonal feedback - that he needs in order to give him a sense of his own self. The dense interpersonal environment of modern bureaucracy in which work assumes an abstract quality almost wholly divorced from performance, by its very nature may elicit and even reinforce and reward a narcissistic response." Christopher Lasch - The Culture of Narcissismwww.youtube.com/watch?v=6dR2ghd8rmg
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2021 12:32:52 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 14, 2021 18:40:23 GMT
"Today man, a sublime creature with infinite capacity for self-improvement, in an effort to be true to false standards, turns from his birthright of understanding, without realizing the consequences, and plunges into the maelstrom of material illusion. The precious span of his earthly years he devotes to the pathetically futile efforts to establish himself as an enduring power in a realm of unenduring things. Gradually the memory of his life as a spiritual being vanishes from his objective mind and he focuses all partly awakened faculties upon the seething beehive of industry which he has come to consider the sole actuality. From the lofty heights of his Selfhood he slowly sinks into the gloomy depths of ephemerality. He falls to the level of the beast, and in brutish fashion mumbles the problems arising from his all too insufficient knowledge of the Divine Plan. Here in the lurid turmoil of a great industrial, political, commercial inferno, men writhe in self-inflicted agony and, reaching out into the swirling mists, strive to clutch and hold the grotesque phantoms of success and power.
Ignorant of the cause of life, ignorant of the purpose of life, ignorant of what lies beyond the mystery of death, yet possessing within himself the answer to it all, man is willing to sacrifice the beautiful, the true, the good within and without upon the blood-stained altar of worldly ambition. The world of philosophy, that beautiful garden of thought wherein the sages dwell in the bond of fraternity, fades from view. In its place rises an empire of stone, steel, smoke, and hate - a world in which millions of creatures potentially human scurry to and fro in the desperate effort to exist and at the same time maintain the vast institution which they have erected and which, like some mighty juggernaught, is rumbling inevitably towards an unknown end. In this physical empire, which man erects in the vain belief that he can outshine the kingdom of the celestials, everything is changed to stone. * Fascinated by the glitter of gain, man gazes at the Medusa-like face of greed and stands petrified. *"
- Manly P. Hall, "The Secret Teachings of All Ages
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Post by Admin on Apr 23, 2021 11:06:24 GMT
"The twisted logic of this system has now reached peak absurdity. Some of its supporters now essentially claim that people should accept their own death in the service of neverending growth and profit. On 23 March, for example, one Texas politician said ‘grandparents’ should consider risking their lives by rejecting social distancing for the sake of “keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren”. This, of course, meant protecting his Republican Party’s orthodoxy of unfettered ‘free’-market capitalism – at all costs.This has exposed the fact that modern capitalism is not just inherently unstable, unsustainable, and unsuited to meeting the needs of humankind, but has degenerated into nothing short of a death cult.”
By Peter Bolton - 25th March 2020
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Post by Admin on Apr 26, 2021 15:22:08 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 30, 2021 1:16:35 GMT
The same poisonous philosophical basis emanating first out of American colonization and racial genocide of native peoples - 'manifest destiny', now morphed into 'American exceptionalism' - is likely to generate the next mass holocaust by American imperialists, as the ecological pressures of climate change undermine exploitive capitalism and destabilize countless nation states around the globe. Already the unprecidented militarization of American police and militarized US borders have fomented human rights atrocities, including mass police violence against America's colonized domestic people of color and an ever-expanding glut of inhumane migrant detention camps creating Holocaust-like abuses, including mass child separation from parents, forced sterilization of women and mass tear gassing of unarmed civilian populations - banned in warfare by international treaties and blatant war crimes by any measure of moral behavior. It is all based on the Nazi-borrowed American concept, that an allegedly "superior" nation is entitled to conquer, 'fix' and plunder other nations for its own well being - and even the racially dispossessed of its own people - from supposedly "inferior" peoples of other non-white races. The capitalist ruling class fully intends to approach the climate crisis through military conquest, personal enrichment and territorialism, viewing the climate crisis as an incentive to hoard and exploit. War and conquest are their answer to our predicament - just look at Biden's proposed $753 billion war budget. Kamala Harris illustrates the prevailing ruling class attitude that peaceful international cooperation and resource-sharing are definitely NOT how imperialist leaders intend to approach the scarcities of the 21st century, recently stating that it has become common knowledge among US military technocrats that water wars will have to be waged in the near future. And water was recently made a tradable commodity in the US stock market, a sure indication of imminent scarcity and hoarding by capitalist speculators in a warming and drying world. Climate catastrophe, capitalist scarcity mentality, & the next wave of genocides medium.com/perceive-more/climate-catastrophe-capitalist-scarcity-mentality-the-next-wave-of-genocides-2286c700ad84
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Post by Admin on May 9, 2021 12:14:10 GMT
"Many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself."
~ Erich Fromm
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