239

A Meaningless Life

Todd Hayen

In Dr. Mattias Desmet’s insightful book The Psychology of Totalitarianism he posits that one of the primary problems of today’s culture is that many people believe they are living meaningless lives. He also cites rampant materialism as the reason. A quote from his book:

Man may not realize it, but his humanity does not really matter, it is nothing essential. His whole existence, his longing and his lust, his romantic lamentations and his most superficial needs, his joy and his sorrow, his doubt and his choices, his anger and unreasonableness, his pleasure and his suffering, his deepest aversion and his most lofty aesthetic appreciations, in short, the entire drama of his existence, can ultimately be reduced to elementary particles that interact according to the laws of mechanics.

This is what materialism does. A material-only universe means that matter is king, and matter is made up of tiny particles that bounce off of each other in a random way and basically are responsible for everything. EVERYTHING.

And through their random and mindless bouncing they mean nothing. If you live a life where everything that “matters” to you is matter, then you are probably missing the point of life.

I agree with Desmet, and he goes into quite a bit of detail about this idea in his book. I will expound on this concept a bit and say there are basically three things that make human beings believe their life is ultimately, on the whole, meaningless.

  1. Materialism
  2. Instant Gratification
  3. Secularism (or atheism)

Usually, or typically, materialism is focused upon in a person’s work life. The purpose of a life’s work then nearly completely entails the acquisition of “things” in the most efficient manner possible, i.e., the least amount of work for the highest monetary reward. This is not 100% true, but frequently is true in the beginning of a person’s work life.

It seems, from my observation as a psychotherapist working with young adults, that people moving into the work force, or even in University working toward a degree, focus almost entirely on what will get the most money with the least amount of effort, all the way from choosing “bird courses” in school, to picking the work environment they want to enter. Of course there are exceptions to this, i.e., young people who actually do have a passion for a particular field, but often that is not the rule.

The reason the focus is on money is obvious. We all live in a world where value, almost exclusively, is placed on the acquisition of material objects—houses, cars, phones, clothes, jewelry, food, vacations (although vacations are not entirely a material pursuit), high quality medical care, investments, sports, things for the kids (sports, art, camps, lessons) etc.

People do find all these things to be comforting, for a while at least. Of course it is obvious our entire existence, at least in the opulent West, is based on this idea (money to buy things—our culture is ruled by consumerism). All we seem to do is buy things. The more things we have, the better, and the more money we have to buy the things we want, the better.

The evils of materialism sneaks into other aspects of our lives besides acquiring physical things. We view our health in an almost exclusive materialistic view. Little regard in mainstream medicine is given to “mind body healing” (although as a fad many people “think” they are engaged in this sort of paradigm). Health care is a material “cause and effect” system. Keep the bad things out (disease organisms primarily—such as with a mask, or social distancing) and if they just so happen to get in, kill them, or otherwise rid yourself of them—at all costs. God forbid you keep your body healthy enough for it to do the task itself.

There is little, if any, interest in modern medicine as to how the body naturally lives and functions in a holistic way, merged with nature and natural processes of living and eventually dying. There is little interest by the general public in the mystery of life and health, which is largely non-material—energies, spirits, gods, love. Of course there are people who are not materialists…and maybe more people than I know. But largely the meaningless life, in part, is derived from believing in a random cause and effect reality and an effort to control whatever material aspects of our world we can.

Instant gratification is a byproduct of materialism, as is secularism. Materialism is essentially the umbrella that embraces just about everything about a meaningless existence.

We all know about instant gratification, and it isn’t all bad and at its core is rather natural. Human beings want everything they need as quickly, and with as little effort to get, as possible. We were made that way. It is just that in a natural state, such as in caveman times, not very much we wanted was all that easy to get. We were always fighting something to get it, whether it be nature itself, or howler monkeys who were better at climbing trees to get the ripe fruit—not to mention the tribe next door who pierced different parts of their bodies differently and thus were not the same…and thus were enemies. In order to be “instantly” gratified in the most efficient manner, we had to be ambitious and willing to be patient and work hard—or fight hard. However, if what we want is just handed to us, then we lose ambition, get bored quickly, and get very lazy. If it isn’t handed to us, many people put forth only so much effort, and then give up.

That describes today’s world. But only with the easy things that really are not that special, like easy to acquire food (fast), video games, smart phone dopamine hits, social media, pornography. If all we do is lay around and instantly become satiated, like Jabba the Hutt, there is very little opportunity to derive meaning from our existence. We might be sensory-content, but only for a short while.

Many people today, at least the ones that complain about meaningless lives, have little interest in working hard for a payoff tomorrow (well, they may WANT that due to our innate proclivity to be productive humans, but we are unfortunately driven by our unconscious negative complexes, not usually innate proclivities).

It’s the old “marshmallow experiment” which yielded predictable results from immature children, hopefully not so much from mature adults.

I am painting a dismal picture, and please understand I am more than likely not describing you, dear reader, but someone you may know. I am presenting the extremes here, and what I am describing can, and usually does, manifest in “not so clear” ways. A person can actually have a great job they work hard at, and still feel they have a fundamentally meaningless life. Even if you do achieve the goal of supreme materialism, i.e. having all the money you ever dreamed of having, and thus having all the things you dreamed of having, that is still part of the formula for meaninglessness.

The last on our list, secularism, is probably the most controversial. Who needs God and religion? Carl Jung, the eminent Swiss psychiatrist and father of Depth Psychology, said:

The idea of an all-powerful divine Being is present everywhere, unconsciously if not consciously, because it is an archetype. There is in the psyche some superior power, and if it is not consciously a god, it is the “belly” at least, in St. Paul’s words. I therefore consider it wiser to acknowledge the idea of God consciously, for, if we do not, something else is made God, usually something quite inappropriate and stupid such as only an “enlightened” intellect could hatch forth.

That’s about as secular a way to put it as you can get. You don’t have to see it that way though, but if you are a die-hard atheist, or someone who simply gives no credence to a “higher power,” Jung’s advice should be well considered. What is happening now in our culture is a clear example of Jung’s last words in this quote: it is wiser to acknowledge the idea of God consciously, or else something else is made God, usually something quite inappropriate and stupid…” Uh…yeah…isn’t that what a lot of us have been saying for two years now?

How you establish for yourself this “non-secularism” in your life is your business. Church services, or spiritual study with others, forms community at the very least. It is also a place where a materialist focus, and the desire for instant gratification, can be avoided. It is a good idea. May the force be with you,

So there ya have it. Pretty simple, eh? Well, books could be written on this subject and so they have been, so this article certainly isn’t complete. Think about it though…and see if any of this applies to our current situation. A life with no meaning creates a void that can easily be filled with fear (fear is the hobgoblin that is created by meaninglessness).

And finally from a very wise man indeed:

A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.
Matthew 13:1-9

A person living what they believe is a meaningless life will grow from that belief despair and fear—fertile ground for just what we see happening in the world today.

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Lost in a dark wood
Lost in a dark wood
Jan 9, 2023 11:57 PM

William James on “Medical Materialism”

One of the problems described by James with the materialist viewpoint is that although it can devalue the spiritual insights, it can produce no values or meaning of its own. One must ask: Where does this “antipathy” come from? Or: Why would one criticise this state of mind rather than that?

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/621
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature
by William James (1902)

We are surely all familiar in a general way with this method of discrediting states of mind for which we have an antipathy. We all use it to some degree in criticising persons whose states of mind we regard as overstrained. But when other people criticise our own more exalted soul-flights by calling them “nothing but” expressions of our organic disposition, we feel outraged and hurt, for we know that, whatever be our organism’s peculiarities, our mental states have their substantive value as revelations of the living truth; and we wish that all this medical materialism could be made to hold its tongue.

Medical materialism seems indeed a good appellation for the too simple-minded system of thought which we are considering. Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out Saint Teresa as an hysteric, Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate. George Fox’s discontent with the shams of his age, and his pining for spiritual veracity, it treats as a symptom of a disordered colon. Carlyle’s organ-tones of misery it accounts for by a gastro-duodenal catarrh. All such mental over-tensions, it says, are, when you come to the bottom of the matter, mere affairs of diathesis (auto-intoxications most probably), due to the perverted action of various glands which physiology will yet discover.

And medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual authority of all such personages is successfully undermined.

Etc

John Ervin
John Ervin
Jan 11, 2023 2:50 AM

It’s one explanation in negatives, but it doesn’t consider, as just one example, that organic expressions can transform into something “higher.” Something spiritual that, though organically originated, can evolve into something nobler.

As, in fact, is implicit in Darwinist explanations.

Peter Wright
Peter Wright
Jan 9, 2023 10:40 PM

It seems that many of us only find some meaning in life when we almost lose our own life or when we have all the material stuff taken away by circumstances beyond our control.

I’ve experienced both, now earning a fraction of what I was 30 years ago, still working at age 73 but doing something I enjoy. And enjoying a simple life.

There’s something to be said for a touch of adversity, it certainly concentrates the mind.

John Ervin
John Ervin
Jan 11, 2023 2:55 AM
Reply to  Peter Wright

Amen : also seen, by certain eyes, as the Cross “practically applied.”

Thomas à Kempis goes so far (600 years ago) as to say that “there is no health separate from the Cross.”

A radical look, but what all Christian ascetics ultimately believe.

His book “The Imitation of Christ” is the most widely read book after the Bible (source: multiple online encyclopedias) yet ironically few people that I know (outside of monasteries) have ever heard of it!

ZenPriest
ZenPriest
Jan 9, 2023 8:53 PM

If out of everything you’ve experienced in the world you still find no true meaning, isn’t it time to become spiritual?  😉  That’s where the meaning is.

People in love don’t worry about meaning, they’re too busy loving and besides, love IS the meaning. What if you now fell in love with Jesus Christ, what effect would that have on the world?

John Ervin
John Ervin
Jan 11, 2023 2:11 AM
Reply to  ZenPriest

That is exactly what St. Francis of Assisi did, he fell in love with Jesus, 800 years ago, and the seismic impact of that event is still being felt all around the world. It was and is huge. True love changes everything, even globalist agendas, often enough without their say so. That is exactly where to look: it’s in everyone, but there are times when the embers need real stirring, such as now. That is what music and poetry are for (I’m only guessing!).

“Just as St. Francis did not love mankind but men, so he did not love Christianity but Christ.” ~ GKC (voilà)

“If you want light, go to the source, not any reflections.” ~ seen in my fortune cookie

ZenPriest
ZenPriest
Jan 9, 2023 8:44 PM

“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
Matthew 6:25

Lack of meaning is rife among those stuck in the illusory self – the meat suit and its adornments. But these things are not YOU. You are the awareness behind these earthly things. Most people are obsessed with the self and the world and there is the problem.

TomUSA
TomUSA
Jan 9, 2023 5:22 PM

The meaning of life is as variable as the degree of its purpose is fulfilled in each of us and this is also true collectively.
The purpose of life is to become divine. No soul can opt out of the process though we move at differing rates, and in our ” freedom and glory ” can also degrade our state of being – again, this is true both individually and collectively.
What is wonderful about this time is how rapid the movement has become with some rapidly rising and others descending rapidly into the abyss. Those in the former category can be seen to seek the Eternal and the Truth, aspiring to reach them above all else.

Michael G Eaglemeare
Michael G Eaglemeare
Jan 9, 2023 10:05 AM

“Do what you love to do.” J Krishnamurti

Thomas L Frey
Thomas L Frey
Jan 9, 2023 10:28 PM

Even if that endeavor is harmful to yourself or others?

Petra Liverani
Petra Liverani
Jan 9, 2023 5:10 AM

This is so true.

comment image

Thomas L Frey
Thomas L Frey
Jan 9, 2023 10:28 PM
Reply to  Petra Liverani

That works for the fearful masses that lack critical thinking.

binra
binra
Jan 8, 2023 8:33 PM

Again, man directs his existence through the use of his imagination
— a feat that does distinguish him from the animals. What connects people and separates them is the power of idea and the force of imagination. Patriotism, family loyalty, political affiliations — the ideas behind these have the greatest practical applications in your world. You project yourselves into time like children through freely imagining your growth. You instantly color physical experience and nature itself with the tints of your unique imaginative processes. Unless you think quite consistently — and deeply — the importance of the imagination quite escapes you, and yet it literally forms the world that you experience and the mass world in which you live.
The theory of evolution, for instance, is an imaginative construct, and yet through its lights some generations now have viewed their world.
It is not only that you think of yourselves differently, but you actually experience a different kind of self. Your institutions change their aspects accordingly, so that experience fits the beliefs that you have about it. You act in certain ways. You view the entire universe in a fashion that did not exist before, so that imagination and belief intangibly structure your subjective experience and your objective circumstances.
(10:10.) In all of the other imaginative constructs, for example, whatever their merits and disadvantages, man felt himself to be a part of a plan. The planner might be God, or nature itself, or man within nature or nature within man. There might be many gods or one, but there was a meaning in the universe. Even the idea of fate gave man something to act against, and roused him to action.
(All with much emphasis and irony:) The idea of a meaningless universe, however, is in itself a highly creative imaginative act. Animals, for example, could not imagine such an idiocy, so that the theory shows the incredible accomplishment of an obviously ordered mind and intellect that can imagine itself to be the result of nonorder, or chaos — [you have] a creature who is capable of “mapping” its own brain, imagining that the brain’s fantastic regulated order could emerge from a reality that itself has no meaning. Indeed, then, the theory actually says that the ordered universe magically emerged —and evolutionists must certainly believe in a God of Chance somewhere, or in Coincidence with a capital C, for their theories would make no sense at all otherwise.

Seth quoted from “The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events” by Jane Roberts.

I don’t advocate believing ideas but discerning (in your own heart) as to their resonance and relevance for you at this timing.

To the first Bolded para I would add (in line with Owen Barfield) that we literally experience the self and world differently when our fundamental definitions and beliefs change.

Meaning is our function to extend and share or participate in. The attempt to grasp and lockdown to built in meanings as a mindset of predictive control, robs us of all meaning for the trickle that such rules and filters let through as imaged substitutions of some passing gratification.

Balkydj
Balkydj
Jan 12, 2023 2:13 AM
Reply to  binra

Fine effort, Binra.

John
John
Jan 8, 2023 6:10 PM

Your Soul is Immortal. Remember this. Protect it. Stay connected to it. All the New Cage psyop want to disconnect you from it. Looking outside yourself.
https://centralsun.substack.com/p/your-soul-is-immortal

Thiekbalj
Thiekbalj
Jan 8, 2023 6:08 PM

Hi Todd. You keep citing Desmet-why? Time you read this and stop doing the cabals heavy lifting for them. Desmet is a con man. And a good friend of Malone. If you are searching for truly awakened therapists to write about, check out Meredith Miller

Tom Larsen
Tom Larsen
Jan 8, 2023 6:23 PM
Reply to  Thiekbalj

You beat me to it! Indeed, Desmet has us blaming ourselves for the actions of the sociopaths orchestrating the Covid con. In a way it reminds me of Margaret Anna Alice’s poem where she points out that “Mistakes were not made.” Like Desmet’s book, it lets the perpetrators off the hook.

Thiekbalj
Thiekbalj
Jan 8, 2023 8:36 PM
Reply to  Tom Larsen

Tom I don’t understand why victim blaming and freemason fandom is so widespread! Have you heard about Malone’s massive lawsuit against Peter Breggin (who’s been writing on the psychiatric crimes vs humanity since the early 90s) which was brought in defense of his good pal and fellow cointelpro agent Matthias DESMET?!?

Tom Larsen
Tom Larsen
Jan 8, 2023 9:04 PM
Reply to  Thiekbalj

RE: I don’t understand why victim blaming .. is so widespread

Because it diverts attention away from those most responsible. That was the point of Malthus’ treatise on overpopulation. It blamed the poverty, squalor, and misery created by the Capitalism’s massive profits of the Industrial Revolution on those least responsible.

RE: freemason fandom
Sorry, don’t follow them.

RE: Have you heard about Malone’s massive lawsuit…
No.

Tom Larsen
Tom Larsen
Jan 9, 2023 1:29 AM
Reply to  Thiekbalj

Thanks for the link. Malone’s censorious suit is prima facie evidence that he’s controlled opposition – the real deal.

CK_
CK_
Jan 9, 2023 1:58 AM
Reply to  Tom Larsen
Tom Larsen
Tom Larsen
Jan 9, 2023 2:38 AM
Reply to  CK_

Yeah, I saw that. One thing I have noticed is that there is big difference in the viewpoints of those who saw the con of Covid from the beginning and those late comers like Malone and McCullough. The late comers tend to see Covid measures as a mistake as opposed to a planned and well coordinated mass atrocity.

Gordon McRae
Gordon McRae
Jan 10, 2023 2:25 AM
Reply to  Tom Larsen

Malone is currently fully engaged with exposing the premeditated nature of the whole ordeal.

Tom Larsen
Tom Larsen
Jan 10, 2023 5:45 AM
Reply to  Gordon McRae

Malone may destroy the Breggin’s lives, but Malone’s suit will hurt his reputation in the eyes of the health freedom movement far more than the Breggins’ whose reputation will soar. It is a dumb move on Malone’s part.

If he were legit, he wouldn’t sue he would have a full on debate in the court of public opinion. Let the best argument win. But that is not what he is doing is it?

Gordon McRae
Gordon McRae
Jan 11, 2023 1:29 AM
Reply to  Tom Larsen

If he was the kind of guy that gamed every situation he might do it that way. Having integrity means fighting when your attacked even if it hurts.

Thiekbalj
Thiekbalj
Jan 9, 2023 8:28 PM
Reply to  Tom Larsen

Spot on. But. Not just Malone, the suit was initiated after the Breggin’s critiqued Desmet. They are business partners 😂

Gordon McRae
Gordon McRae
Jan 10, 2023 2:27 AM
Reply to  Thiekbalj

According to Malone the Breggin’s specifically attacked him and that is the basis of his lawsuit. Not a partnership with Desmet as you suggest.

Tom Larsen
Tom Larsen
Jan 10, 2023 5:38 AM
Reply to  Gordon McRae

I don’t see any evidence of an “attack.” It’s social media, get over it. His views are being criticized, so what? THAT IS FREE SPEECH! A $25 million dollar suit against a person in his 80’s whose net worth is likely a fraction of that is not about damages. How has Malone been financially hurt? Do you see RFK Jr suing all the people that have slandered him over the years?

It is clear as a bell – this is about censorship.

Read this scholarly work and then tell me that Malone has a legit case.

https://unlimitedhangout.com/2022/11/investigative-reports/covid-19-mass-formation-or-mass-atrocity/

Gordon McRae
Gordon McRae
Jan 11, 2023 1:31 AM
Reply to  Tom Larsen

Breggin’s aren’t the only party to this lawsuit and all the others are young and able to defend themselves.

Gordon McRae
Gordon McRae
Jan 10, 2023 2:23 AM
Reply to  Tom Larsen

Wrong.

Gordon McRae
Gordon McRae
Jan 10, 2023 2:22 AM
Reply to  Tom Larsen

https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/just-the-facts

Here it is from Malone’s substack and gettr accounts of November 29/22.

Lost in a dark wood
Lost in a dark wood
Jan 10, 2023 3:55 AM
Reply to  Gordon McRae

Malone:

I did not seek this, I did not provoke this, and I repeatedly sought to get the defendants to stop attacking me (and Dr. Mattias Desmet), finally including sending a cease and desist legal letter to the defendants. Which prompted yet another attack which was further amplified on social media. I was left with no other option.

My guess would be that the Breggins know exactly what they’re doing and are able to support all the statements – most of which will turn out to be a bit woolly when examined closely. Also, because of Malone’s acknowledged Deep State connections, “they” won’t allow the case to go to court. They won’t take the risk of him being questioned under oath.

Gordon McRae
Gordon McRae
Jan 11, 2023 1:33 AM

Time will tell. I’m certainly trying to remain open minded about all those possibilities.

Lost in a dark wood
Lost in a dark wood
Jan 10, 2023 1:09 AM
Reply to  Thiekbalj

America Out Loud article:

Dr. Robert W. Malone filed a lawsuit on October 30, 2022, against Peter R. Breggin MD and Ginger Breggin, seeking damages for $25,350,000.00 or $25 million for short.

The following was before the lawsuit was issued.

https://rumble.com/v1k50qf-dr.-breggin-dr.-malone-and-dr.-desmet-are-part-of-the-deep-state-and-trying.html
Dr. Breggin: “Dr. Malone & Dr. Desmet Are Part of the Deep State & Trying to Blind Us to Our Enemy
The Pete Santilli Show
Sep 14, 2022

Gordon McRae
Gordon McRae
Jan 10, 2023 2:14 AM
Reply to  Thiekbalj

Proof please.

malcolm ripley
malcolm ripley
Jan 9, 2023 3:15 PM
Reply to  Tom Larsen

Desmet is not blaming us he is explaining how the “sociopaths” so easily had 80% of the population following like sheep. He also explain why some of us didn’t follow like sheep or did you miss that bit?

Tom Larsen
Tom Larsen
Jan 9, 2023 4:14 PM
Reply to  malcolm ripley

Read this then ask me again.This critique of Desmet’s theory is a serious scholarly work. It is worth your time.

https://unlimitedhangout.com/2022/11/investigative-reports/covid-19-mass-formation-or-mass-atrocity/

Gordon McRae
Gordon McRae
Jan 14, 2023 3:02 AM
Reply to  Tom Larsen

Thank-you Tom. That was a thorough rebuttal of Desmet’s book and ideas. There is a lot to chew on and I appreciate the link.

Mr Y
Mr Y
Jan 10, 2023 1:07 PM
Reply to  Tom Larsen

> Indeed, Desmet has us blaming ourselves for the actions of the sociopaths orchestrating the Covid con.

Blame the con men all you want but common men and women wouldn’t be so easily conned if they weren’t so damned uninformed.

Tom Larsen
Tom Larsen
Jan 10, 2023 2:58 PM
Reply to  Mr Y

The thing you’re missing is agency. Rape victims get blamed because they didn’t “know enough” not to put themselves into a potentially dangerous situation, they “wore sexy clothes” etc. None of that changes the actions (agency) of the predator.

Petra Liverani
Petra Liverani
Jan 9, 2023 5:24 AM
Reply to  Thiekbalj

But is Desmet “blaming the victim” or simply describing how humans are behaving? Obviously, something strange goes on in these situations. Why can’t those who are as intelligent (if not more so) and as educated as those of us who can see through the BS not see through it even when you bash them over the head with evidence and reason? What you can feel in them is massive resistance to even hearing you out, you know that they DON’T WANT TO KNOW, they do not want to know. It’s not that they cannot understand, they don’t want to know in the first place, it’s like they have their hands over their ears and they’re stamping their feet saying, “Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.”

Perhaps Mattias Desmet is controlled opposition – obviously he doesn’t recognise there’s no virus – but I don’t feel he’s blaming the victim so much as describing the phenomenon of what is happening and it absolutely is happening how he describes. You can blame those in power or you can blame the abject believers – whoever you blame what’s happening is happening. And the thing is if people didn’t abjectly go along with the BS, if they listened to those of us who can see through it (or applied their own minds more critically) and behaved accordingly, power would be stymied. All that needed to happen at the beginning was that people didn’t wear masks. A few of us didn’t but the number was too small – if a larger number hadn’t that would have been the end of the covid BS. My mother always taught me that it’s up to people to use the agency they have and most people don’t.

Tom Larsen
Tom Larsen
Jan 10, 2023 3:20 PM
Reply to  Petra Liverani

RE: can blame the abject believers

The “abject believers” have gone thru 2+ years of nonstop mental abuse and manipulation, 24/7 fear porn. Before that they were conditioned to believe that the medical profession was to be trusted. This abuse was perpetrated by the predator class, yet because traumatized people haven’t risen up, the predators get a pass?

Gordon McRae
Gordon McRae
Jan 11, 2023 1:37 AM
Reply to  Tom Larsen

I certainly don’t want to see the predators get a pass…. except a pass for their new jail cells.

Human values
Human values
Jan 11, 2023 11:36 PM
Reply to  Petra Liverani
Gordon McRae
Gordon McRae
Jan 10, 2023 2:12 AM
Reply to  Thiekbalj

Malone is working tirelessly to improve the current situation. Desmet has intriguing ideas. I see no problem with either except among those imagining everything as a competition or wishing to find trouble wherever they look.

Mika Fenya
Mika Fenya
Jan 8, 2023 6:04 PM

In my view most are just trying to provide and have some shelter and food to survive.
Almost like the animal kingdom. Us humans use money and debt for that purpose. I wouldn’t call this materialism or greed or meanigless untill a certain level where some become so rich and instead of sharing they get more greedy and demanding. Also the money controlling tribe love to parasite on slaves created by debt and usury.

Spectre of Lacan
Spectre of Lacan
Jan 8, 2023 3:42 PM

 Anthropologically, the Human (Anthropos) chose metaphysical dualism as the means to interpret and explain the world-as-it-presents; only, that world is not dualistic. Therefore all descriptions, action-oriented explanations (deterministic reason-for ratiocination) and technical pragmatics are misconceived, misinterpreted, misunderstood… but forced into being with enormous technical-scientific efficiency anyway. With commensurably destructive effect.

Jacques Ellul called it “Technique”; Freud alluded to the Prothesengott… Man as technical-animal can force any form of putative phantasy ‘reality’ into being – but not without consequence – consequence that Jung foresaw when he alluded that “Man is the greatest threat to Man” because Man does not understand the psychiatry of Man …but nonetheless, he can unconsciously and destructively force that gross misunderstanding into being anyway. As such: “ordinary psychosis” is already a civilisationally normative global phaenomena.

(And ‘Man’ is archetypally a male dominated consciousness: an animating principle dominated by reason, science, logic, truth, analytical reductionism, mechanism and language.)

Civilisation as Eros is Civilisation as Thanatos
Jung was a self-confessed Platonist who honoured the fact of the split-minded psyche which obviated the conception of a dual nature – divided between sense and intellect – and subsequent opposing forces in “enantiodroma”; holding out for the eventual conjunction of opposites, the sacred marriage, and solve et coagula individuation or shadow-integration, union of anima and animus etcetera throughout dreaming and analysing the “talking cure” …which should be the “talking cause” because the world is not dualistic and the forced imposition of Technocracy and technical-scientific supremacism is not going too well… just as forecast.

The problematic is not materialism; and the solution-oriented thinking therefore is not crypto-idealism; the problematic is that the world-as-it-presents was never split at all …until Man began to think about it; inventing ‘god’; the soul-image, the psyche, the anima, the mind, consciousness and other nostrums of an intractable mind-body dualism along the way, in order to solve the problematic “two world, two substance” dualisms of specular overthinking about how the mind and body interact. They don’t. All metaphysical thinking is false, error prone, and ultimately fallacious …but some of it might be pragmatic anyway. Just ditch the independent, individuated thinking…

The problematic is not materialism, per se; the problematic is that there is no dialectical resolution between mind and body; materialism vis-à-vis idealism; empiricism vis-à-vis rationalism; subjectivism vis-à-vis objectivism; etcetera… or any other Cartesian onto-axiological dualism; the world-as-it-presents is not split-minded, human thinking about it is.

Therefore, there is no mind; no mind-body dualism, no “hard problematic”; no ‘psyche’, no separation, no psychiatric schismatic, no schismogenesis, no problem. The pragmatic solution is to live on earth, within the limit-function of available resources, and within the natural boundaried resilience of the earth, simpliciter. There is no further reason to speculate.

The perceived problematic is fundamental to human ‘reality’; the problem of semantics (meaning attribution) is epistemological and pragmatic; there is no realist “other world” (the imaginary Hinterwelt as Nietzsche named it); all is apparent, neither material or immaterial, appearance or essence, reality-principle or unreality-principle – until we think and talk about it and identify with the either/or phantasy… it is all in the language, stupid. There is no other solution but to live on earth, within limit-functions …but people keep making up shit and believing all and anything but, anyway.

We do take our identity and linguicultural properties seriously; hence the heavy self-investment in signs, which come into two sorts: psychiatric (quasi-absolute) vis-a-vis physiologic (quasi-relative); and the cartesian thinker prefers exaggerated exactness of terms, an objective reality-principle, ‘truth’ and other ontological paroxysms and paralogisms over life-affirmation and living as meaning enough; the animus against and the rejection of a fully embodied life is the originary cause; hence the mind over body supremacism and the mind over matter duality in the first ontological (metaphysical) place. Nietzsche called them “metaphors, metonyms and anthropomorphisms” – or mispoken lapsus linguae – on the way into horse-hugging madness. He also declared:

body I am entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something about the body.”The human-being is the wholeness of the body-as-body, which is naturally and necessarily situated in the phaenomenal reality-principle which is oecologically situated right here on earth: with nothingness behind, beyond, undergoing or overgoing – there is only the phylogenetic, the physical, the physiologic, the phaenomenological – everything elsewhere is image-forming imaginability – and the immateriality of the mind or the <I> is the “representative of the representation-only” (Vorstellungsrepräsentanz) or universal sinthome of trauma-binding to the wrong principle in the wrong order: something that seems implausible, ineffable, indiscernible, and incommunicable as an escape from the ‘real.’

So long as human-being think they have a ‘psyche’ or self-animating, self-conscious ‘soul-image’; ego-as-self, ideal-ego, etcetera, and cling to personal self-conscious identity; there will be the corollary and consummate clinging to property, self-animating consumptogenesis, scientific materialism and its civilisation of discontents seeking the unity that occurs before thinking splits the world-as-it-presents into two. Till then everybody’s a “split-minded subject” as dictated by the language. Lacan postulates that the original schismatic is due to lack: absent an oecophysiologic amor fati …it soon will be.

angelopuccinelli
angelopuccinelli
Jan 8, 2023 3:15 PM

Purpose in life for an individual is parallel to the drive of an atomic particle to adhere to the ‘laws’ of physics: If it doesn’t, existence will cease. Death is non-existence, therefore the individual lifeform must toil under the parameters of physicalism to perpetuate its existence. That is the ‘meaningfulness’ of a lifeform, its ‘purpose’, to simply not blip out into the void of nothingness. This is the same ‘purpose’ of the elementary particles of the universe: Abide by the necessary dynamics of interaction to perpetuate ‘somethingness’ as opposed to vacant nihility.
Spiritualism is merely Immaterialism, which is viewed by its practitioners as the foundation of meaningfulness. Those same practitioners, historically, have been the greatest impediments to the material actualization of lifeforms by prioritizing theological strategies for survival over corporealistic ones.

Jan
Jan
Jan 8, 2023 11:20 AM

The book ‘The closing of the American mind’ by Alan Bloom is in this context also interesting. Bloom’s alma mater is the U of Chicago: the origin of US neocons that may have started with Leo STrauss.

gabriel
gabriel
Jan 8, 2023 11:17 AM

Mr. Hayen, forget them for they do not know what they are doing (with such low rating, I mean). Please accept my humble “thank you” for your post here.

Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 8, 2023 12:50 PM
Reply to  gabriel

Very kind of you, thank you.

draeger
draeger
Jan 8, 2023 11:55 PM
Reply to  gabriel

ditto + thanks Todd

Petra Liverani
Petra Liverani
Jan 8, 2023 8:08 AM

What drives me to distraction are the arrogant atheists who “worship” science … and yet are so blatantly unscientific in their approach. To give one example: Bo Bennett (PhD), of the site, Logically Fallacious, simply deleted a comment I made about covid with no justification which was perfectly civil and cited doctors and scientists – not that they need to be cited to make a perfectly undeserving-of-censorship comment, of course, just sayin’. In response to my claim there was no pandemic – interestingly I didn’t claim there was a conspiracy, it’s not a term I use as a rule although of course the fake pandemic can only have been created by a conspiracy so a bit of a strawman there too – he said:

But I will repeat, claiming the entire pandemic is a conspiracy and nobody actually had or died from COVID because it doesn’t exist is BATSHIT CRAZY.

This response is a classic “argument from incredulity” or “argument from ignorance” listed on his website that simply indicates that Bo has simply swallowed the propaganda hook, line and sinker without in the least investigating the criticism of it … or even simply thinking for himself and noting anomalies.

The problem isn’t worshipping science, it’s pretending to worship science while being blatantly unscientific. I feel my life can easily have a purpose – to try to get people to be more unbiased in their approach but when you feel it’s a hopeless cause it kind of sucks the sense of purpose out of you.

Eva Bernodt
Eva Bernodt
Jan 8, 2023 7:10 AM

Excellent! Thanks!

Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 8, 2023 12:50 PM
Reply to  Eva Bernodt

Thank you!

jubal hershaw
jubal hershaw
Jan 8, 2023 6:58 AM

So your life lacks meaning ?
War can put meaning back into your life.
So why not become a mercenary,
There’s a war in the Ukraine to be fought.
Become a merc, make your life mean
something !

Johnny
Johnny
Jan 8, 2023 9:52 AM
Reply to  jubal hershaw

Tongue in cheek or gun in hand?

Thomas L Frey
Thomas L Frey
Jan 9, 2023 10:31 PM
Reply to  jubal hershaw

Absolutely. Become a mindless drone for the military doing the bidding of the central bank cartel. Sacrifice your life so that the central bank cartel can get even more control over every nation in debt to them.

niko
niko
Jan 8, 2023 6:37 AM

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. -Oscar Wilde 

Ever notice how ‘materialism’ is in the business of destroying the material conditions of life on earth? Seems it’s anti-materialism with which we should be concerned. Especially since we’re being herded into a new abnormal where having nothing, or just becoming nothing through depopulation, is what the “masters of mankind” (Adam Smith) have decided is the final solution for us proles to account for the world’s wastelands of Progress.  

The scientific revolution of early modernity advanced a Cartesian mechanics as means of liberating knowledge from the stranglehold of religion ruling minds, and bodies, with metaphysical superstitions. If science settled down into a dogmatic reductionism of its own in a Newtonian universe, its better spirit of inquiry into the truths of things kept revolutionizing theory and practice with relativity and quantum leaps.

The subject matter of reality is as protean as our knowledge can be, consistent with how we are participant observers within the relational webs of life. The material is the spiritual is the real. But all this mystery to be interpreted is lost to us by any system of human society where knowledge is monopolized by ruling elites to advance their power over the rabble they take us for.

What is capital but the conversion of life into dead commodities whose only value consists in their price? Rates of capital exchange at the expense of actual use of products (e.g., increased obsolescence), such that abstract measures of money obliterating limits of time and space reign over an unfree market of commodified relations between us and all life, explains much if not most of the insidious nature of materialism as we know it, down to our bones. All life, not least of all us, is resource to be exploited, reaching the endgame today, the singularity, whereby the natural world is synthetically converted into property of monsters of transhumankind.

Ever notice how much the search for meaning is founded upon material conditions of leisure, re-creation, freedom for doing so? Maybe that has something to do with why proles who know want and need too much in the guts don’t find much time and space for contemplation and freedom to wonder, and wander. Ironically, this can stand in contrast to a lot of ‘primitive’ society, in which more egalitarian social relations and ecological relations with other living beings contributed to a balance between hunting and gathering by day and storytelling and philosophizing by night, an original affluence (Marshall Sahlins) sustained to this day among what little remains of indigenist ways of life humans have lived for most of our (pre)history. Maybe much of modern history’s collective consciousness, and unconsciousness, represents a radical rupture with such organic roots by scientific-technological development of capitalist society, a process of alienation now nearing completion with the biodigital conversion of life into the megamachine (Lewis Mumford). 

Whatever ancestors past might offer to meet the collective insanity of the present, it seems clear we must find ways to fight the future toward which we’re being marched if what little remains of humanity is to be passed to descendants. What makes this so formidable is that the future is, and has been, already here. Our colonization by the machine that began with consumer capitalism, replacing earlier stages of wealth accumulation emphasizing industry and thrift, has perfected engineered pacification of human resources by techniques of instant gratification, and instant realization of capital, in the matrix of electronic media. To a degree far beyond the society of spectacle Debord described, the image is indeed everything as people, or rather avatars, are assimilated to virtual reality, the metaverse. If there’s anything materialistic about continually consuming, becoming hallucinations, ghosts in machines, it’s found in the means of production which secure our captivity to the class interests profiting from and empowered by the digital (c)age. Where capital leaves its carbon footprint is where we must fight.

The evolutionary paradigm shifts underway make it imperative we question everything, and radically reset our own cultural traditions to move beyond settled assumptions of secularism, atheism, religion, and whatever ideology might be bent to purposes of ruling elites out to remake us in the image of their psychopathy. War on humanity is being fought on all fronts of our existence. It’s time for us to take journeys into the unknown.

mgeo
mgeo
Jan 8, 2023 12:35 PM
Reply to  niko

Even in harsh conditions, aborigines and isolated natives are largely independent of money. This is why GloboCap seeks to wipe them out. This has been so since the earliest colonial and imperial times.

wardropper
wardropper
Jan 8, 2023 3:25 AM

It’s one of Jordan Peterson’s core principles that everybody wants life as they know it to have meaning.
When meaning has gone, then, essentially, life itself has gone too.

A couple of thoughts on this:

1) In the plant sphere of biology, Nature shows that life is unbelievably tenacious and can thrive in the most impossible places.

2) In the animal world, the more developed animals will fight to the death to ensure survival for themselves and their offspring.

3) But in the human world, “survival” and “thriving” are sometimes not enough. Many of our species have set their sights higher than that, and feel that we have the right to expect quality in our inner life, and not just the trappings of life’s mere presence.

Of course every individual has his/her personal threshold of pain and endurance, and some of our would-be philosophers might well change their minds very quickly if put under real pressure.
But we also have our heroes, people who can genuinely fight for universal human ideals and principles, and can put their own ego in second place.

If that’s really true – and I think it is – then I’d say we need lots of those people right now.
The frightful picture above this article shows exactly what we have to stop tolerating in our environment, but these horrors already confront us with their ghastly effects every single day.

mgeo
mgeo
Jan 8, 2023 12:40 PM
Reply to  wardropper

Besides quality, there are serious mental problems: insecurity, hoarding, dominance, sadism, etc.

Veri Tas
Veri Tas
Jan 8, 2023 12:18 AM

I tend to go along with the theory of intelligent design as the only thing that makes sense out of the hogwash that both the church and scientism disseminate.

Neither the stories of the old testament nor the something out of nothing by pure chance ideology make any sense to me. Nor does evolution – the said finch has always been a finch (Darwin’s transitional forms have never been found).

les online
les online
Jan 7, 2023 11:40 PM

“I am a carno, ovo, lacto, pesco, pollo vegetarian.”
Dr Gary Fettke: The Role of Nutrition is Everything (57.38):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctkvriSwX8I

Seventh Day Adventists. Lifestyle Medicine. Stealth, operating below the radar.
Just how much influence do Seventh Day Adventists have over WHO nutrition policy ? (@ 48.35 +)

Placental_Mammal
Placental_Mammal
Jan 8, 2023 3:22 AM
Reply to  les online

No adult animal drinks milk. Except for some humans.

Pilgrim Shadow
Pilgrim Shadow
Jan 8, 2023 4:04 PM

Adult cats and dogs both drink milk enthusiasticlly when available. Whether it’s good for them is another question, but they do drink it.

Johnny
Johnny
Jan 8, 2023 7:02 AM
Reply to  les online

A lot of Adventists are unvaxxed Les.
Give em a break.

tony0pmoc
tony0pmoc
Jan 7, 2023 10:29 PM

The cat is not stupid.She has a meaningful life Sat above keeping warm, looking at us daft humans

comment image

George Mc
George Mc
Jan 7, 2023 10:02 PM

Sorry – off topic:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/07/andrew-tate-misogyny-schools-vulnerable-boys

‘Vulnerable boys are drawn in’: schools fear spread of Andrew Tate’s misogyny

The notorious TikTok ‘influencer’ may be in jail, but his ‘terrifying’ ideology has already taken hold in classrooms, teachers say

Never mind lethal vaxxes for non-existent pandemics, plummeting bank accounts and kids being encouraged to mutilate themselves into non-binary Nirvana, this is truly terrifying stuff: 

A boy said: “Well, men are better than women” and …. oh the horror! …. his friends all nodded in agreement.

“…misogyny is rife, even among students as young as 12, ….“I heard one student in the playground introduce his girlfriend and as soon as she was out of earshot he was asked by several friends if they could ‘have a go’ with her,””

12 year olds are saying this? Of course regular guys of any age never make these kind of remarks! There is only one reason why this utterly unprecedented speech is on the rise: Andrew Tate!

And it gets worse! There is a “sexist meme”: “make me a sandwich” which is used to “belittle women”. You may not want to read this next bit since it could lead to permanent trauma-induced damage:

“A female teacher said: ‘I’ve got a lad in year 10 who always writes MMAS at the bottom of my homework,’” he says. “She hadn’t known what it meant until then. But he was trying to humiliate her.”

So the next time you hear a young lad refer to a girl as “tottie”, “pussy” or any other vile demeaning slur then report him at once as another instance of someone “groomed” by Tate.

Petra Liverani
Petra Liverani
Jan 8, 2023 2:13 AM
Reply to  George Mc

I have to say that putting MMAS (make me a sandwich) on the bottom of homework strikes me as completely bizarre and quite concerning. What’s so very obvious is that while some young men are influenced by the societal push towards equality, lack of respect for women seems more prevalent than ever despite the propaganda. While negative propaganda seems to work so very well, “positive” propaganda is simply political correctness that does not reflect reality any more than the negative propaganda – it’s just that the negative propaganda works while the positive doesn’t. It’s impossible to say how much Andrew Tate influences male attitudes but obviously he has a lot of followers. He strikes me as a very unappealing person and I wonder why he would attract such a following.

Clive Williams
Clive Williams
Jan 8, 2023 6:07 AM
Reply to  Petra Liverani

You sound strict to me. Say 1965 I remember upper middle class saying young men respect women. I’am not saying it’s wrong it’s just different growing up in the North of England that’s all.

George Mc
George Mc
Jan 8, 2023 8:05 AM
Reply to  Petra Liverani

It’s just a puppet show to whip up resentment. That’s all it ever was.

Ananda
Ananda
Jan 8, 2023 10:41 AM
Reply to  Petra Liverani

Tate.
He is the straight moslem version of milo.
He is so censored – he is everywhere.
Same nonsense repeated.

Clive Williams
Clive Williams
Jan 8, 2023 5:32 AM
Reply to  George Mc

Oh Girls would say ‘me tut’ when we were lads, pussy fanny all that sexual awaking gearing up. It’s part of going through Pubity.
12? George come on, lol! You old fart!!
It’s all this safe and banning crap that drove your childern indoors isolated.
Imo.

George Mc
George Mc
Jan 8, 2023 8:08 AM
Reply to  Clive Williams

I wasn’t being serious about the age thing. Boys, men, whatever. I grew up with Benny Hill and Carry On movies for chrissakes.

Hele
Hele
Jan 8, 2023 9:41 AM
Reply to  George Mc

Nothing has changed and those unfortunate ideas/remarks about girls and women certainly did not just appear or escalate from being exposed to Andrew Tate.MSM is increasingly ridiculous.

John Ervin
John Ervin
Jan 7, 2023 8:50 PM

All earthly matters belong to the world of “dead works” in the end.

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

The Spirit is so elusive in a world of those pale reflections, only to be discerned in the midst of all so much of what is not Spirit, and when found only then can give anything worthy of real life. Otherwise, what’s the point?

“Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

The Apostle cuts to that chase: “In God alone do we live.”

As a younger-ster I happened upon a book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry called “Wind, Sand. and Stars” (“La Terre des Hommes”). It was about his truly striking adventures as one of the first “flock” of French aviators.

His crashes! His rescues. His times flying blind (he ultimately disappeared aloft, never again seen, young like his “Petit Prince,” whose tall fairy tales had first led me to those “travel logs”).

A few things Antoine logged stirred me so deeply that I never forgot them.

Summing up at one point at the heart of his travels and battles, “Unless the Spirit breathes upon the clay there is no man.”

Struck by that as current poetry, it wasn’t til some years later that I recognized that as simply his own recitation of one of the first lines of the Bible, in Genesis.

Thousands of years later that was painted as two index fingers touching as seen by Michelangelo, hanging from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

syl shawcross
syl shawcross
Jan 7, 2023 8:45 PM

Todd, thank you for this. Your writings are a gift.

A B
A B
Jan 7, 2023 8:32 PM

At this point, we are able to pinpoint the psychological essence of totalitarianism: an attempt to reduce the polysemy of human language to the monosemy of a sign system.” A quote from chapter 7, ‘The Psychology of Totalitarianism’ by Matthias Desmet
I agree with James Corbett’s surmising that this is The Quote of Quotes from Desmet’s book. It relates to one of the fundamental errors in Western thought, that the material world is particle-based, reducable to tiny bits of stuff, and that if only we work on that basis, we will find the key to all. We won’t, because it isn’t.

Another quote from Desmet’s book, chapter 10 (for me was by far the most interesting chapter), “We could also refer to a series of observations that show in a direct way that the psychological realm can be the cause of the physical realm, rather than vice versa.”

Matter emerges from consciousness, not the other way around. This is ancient wisdom common to many cultures and most spiritual traditions. Michael Cremo puts it succinctly, “We do not evolve up from matter; rather we devolve, or come down, from the level of pure consciousness.” For those interested, I highly recommend his book, ‘Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin’s Theory’.

Many modern assumptions of truth and so-called scientific thinking we discover are in fact – if we care to research – baseless, ‘lego-logic’. Including Cell Theory. Harold Hillman, amongst others, meticulously and laboriously investigated this theory and found it to be, er, lacking to put it mildly. Did we hear news of this in the ‘news’ outlets? Of course not!
For those interested in finding out more about some of the scientific investigations and discoveries that will never make it to popular science outlets or the ‘news’, I highly recommend watching ‘What biology IS – body and soul biology and the substance life is made of’, the second lecture of two lectures recorded by Dr Stefan Lanka for ‘Wissen ist Relevant’ (WIR) on 21 January 2022. There are a few English subtitled versions of this fascinating video doing the rounds but this is the only one I’ve seen that is accurate (and it offers the viewer related research options in the video description) https://odysee.com/@counterpropaganda2020:a/Stefan-Lanka–What-biology-IS—Body-and-soul-biology-and-the-substance-life-is-made-out-of:9

A B
A B
Jan 8, 2023 10:34 AM
Reply to  A B

The link shared for ‘What biology IS – body and soul biology and the substance life is made of’ isn’t ‘broken’ or incorrect, the video is still there, you can search for and find it in the odysee channel but there is some censorship devilry going on with that link  😂 
Alternatively, you can watch it here https://t.me/Miscellaneous_Illuminations/3913

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Jan 7, 2023 8:22 PM

I just love Mattias Desmet’s book “The Psychology of Totalitarianism”, and I am barely one quarter the way into it. He covers so many aspects of hard basic real science – maths physics and chemistry – which is pretty much indisputable – in such a gentle appealing way, I can’t think of anyone who could find anything in what I have so far read offensive – even if they are Psychology Students.

This guy has got real humanity, empathy and love….You can see it when he does a live interview. It emanates from his soul.

I have some understanding of Psychology. It can be used for good, and it can be used for evil. Studying it in depth can drive you almost mad, when you understand the power of it, and how it has been completely misused and abused over the last 3 years by The Psychologists in control of eg The British Governement – in control of the British people – and the Rest of the World.

In my view these people, are even worse than the Politicians and the Media responsible for the Mass Genocide going on.

Matt Desmet is simply explaining it.

Maybe he has an eminent, peaceful, eloquent, non violent solution, to bring justice, in the two thirds of his book, I have not yet read.

Personally after Trial, I want to see These Evil People Dead, and I have been against the Death penalty all my Life.

I make an exception for The Genocidal Psychopaths in Control attempting the Depopulaton of Human Race from our Planet Earth.

They are doing their best trying to kill us all.

How else should we react?

The fish rots from the head

Just look at the state of them, and puke.

Tony

Martin Usher
Martin Usher
Jan 7, 2023 8:21 PM

I put the phiosophical problem down to us being trained to think of society only in terms of the binary choice of ‘democracy’ versus ‘totalitarianism’. This simplistic rendering, forced on us by our leadership results in what Marxists call ‘contradictions’, a rather fancy way of saying that what we’re told we’re experiencing and what we are actually experiencing are at odds. Rather than simply just admit that we’re repeatedly told is BS, its just stuff to keep the ‘rubes from complaining too much, we try to invent ways to square the circle which mostly just don’t work. Hence unhappiness, ennui and general depression. Our futures are constrained anyway but now we can’t find a way to to find meaning in those constraints — religion, either traditional religion, cults or the secular equivalent just don’t cut it, there’s nothing out there to tell us what to do or why none of this makes any sense.

I don’t see why this is a problem myself. If you drop your impressed world view, the sort of “Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad” mindset that’s been drummed into us from the cradle, then everything becomes relatively clear. Not less complicated, of course, but at least making some kind of sense. Part of this is admitting that our society is as totalitarian as anyone else’s — most societies hold elections but they don’t influence the overall tenor and direction of that society in the slightest, they have never been democratic’ in an absolute sense. Likewise, the notion ‘freedom’ has hard limits. We live in a ‘free’ society only up to the point where we threaten that society, then we discover that it truly has some seriously hard edges. Understanding this is true freedom (or as the song goes — “Freedom is another word for nothing left to lose”).

jubal hershaw
jubal hershaw
Jan 7, 2023 8:08 PM

Solution: Own nothing. Be Happy !

Ulrich Schmid
Ulrich Schmid
Jan 7, 2023 7:59 PM

Thank you for the wise words!

Annie
Annie
Jan 7, 2023 7:51 PM

I never asked for these people to make decisions for me who cares if they got money, money means nothing it’s us that means everything.

Voz 0db
Voz 0db
Jan 7, 2023 7:28 PM

This is what materialism does

So… Now “we” blame materialism!

Thought is the root cause… not the by-product (materialism) of Thought.

And since degenerate uman animal Thought is accelerating it is clear that we aren’t able to reverse the degeneration.

From 6y old kids shooting “teachers” to 10y old kids shooting “mothers” and from kids shooting kids… If kids are already at this level there is nothing more to do than sit back, relax and enjoy the Uman Degeneration Show.

And what a Show it is…

Church services, or spiritual study with others” and this for sure won’t help either!

Thomas L Frey
Thomas L Frey
Jan 7, 2023 6:48 PM

The Cosmology of Nothing versus the Cosmology of Spirit.
Choose wisely.
Free will.

Pilgrim Shadow
Pilgrim Shadow
Jan 7, 2023 6:45 PM

Life feels meaningless? Existence feels purposeless? “Everything goes, and nothing matters.”

Fear not! There is an answer: “drugs and video games.”

Voz 0db
Voz 0db
Jan 7, 2023 7:30 PM
Reply to  Pilgrim Shadow

After a short period even those “answers” run out of Illusion!

Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Jan 7, 2023 7:59 PM
Reply to  Pilgrim Shadow

Very droll!

Pilgrim Shadow
Pilgrim Shadow
Jan 7, 2023 8:44 PM
Reply to  Graham Greene

I can’t take credit for it. You can thank Noah Yuvall Harari.

Albert Anderson
Albert Anderson
Jan 7, 2023 6:24 PM

Let’s see, because I don’t believe in God, and I buy shit, my life is meaningless? OK, got it.

Thomas L Frey
Thomas L Frey
Jan 7, 2023 6:41 PM

If you are living life, believing there are no consequences for your soul, based on how you live, then yes, there is very little meaning.

Weather you believe in God, or a God, this world is just a stop on the journey. This world is the anvil upon which your soul is forged into a useful tool, or thrown back into the fire.

Do you really want to be here for all eternity?

Albert Anderson
Albert Anderson
Jan 7, 2023 11:44 PM
Reply to  Thomas L Frey

When I’m done here, I’ll be dead Thomas. That’s the deal. Believing otherwise is just wishful thinking. Whatever floats your boat.

Thomas Frey
Thomas Frey
Jan 8, 2023 12:54 AM

Thinking there is nothing after this life is just a cop out to rationalize poor character, poor ethics and amoral behavior.
Do as thou wilt.
Satan loves people like you.

Albert Anderson
Albert Anderson
Jan 8, 2023 3:30 AM
Reply to  Thomas Frey

Oh Jesus.

Mann Friedmann
Mann Friedmann
Jan 8, 2023 6:04 PM
Reply to  Thomas Frey

Get over yourself, bigot!
Heaven and Hell exist BOTH on this Earth.
Thanks for the reminder that Religion created virtue signalling.

Thomas Frey
Thomas Frey
Jan 9, 2023 2:23 PM
Reply to  Mann Friedmann

I never said hell or heaven isn’t on earth.
How could you possibly know what religion I am or not based on what was stated?

Try harder at not assuming and attempting to blame religion for the world’s issues.

Placental Mammal
Placental Mammal
Jan 10, 2023 6:01 AM
Reply to  Mann Friedmann

What has religion to do with God ?

John Ervin
John Ervin
Jan 11, 2023 2:34 AM

Palliative medicine for all bouts of atheism, progressedly severe or merely incipient, in printable form:

“Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative.”
– “Charles II,” Twelve Types

“It is still bad taste to be an avowed atheist. But now it is equally bad taste to be an avowed Christian.”
– “Introductory Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy,” Heretics

“If there were no God, there would be no atheists.”
– “The Case for Complexity,” Where All Roads Lead

“There is no bigot like the atheist.”
– Magic

“The atheist is not interested in anything except attacks on atheism.”
– “Frozen Free Thought,” The Well and the Shallows

“Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.”

– “Wells and the World State,” What I Saw in America

“There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life; only it happens to be a superficial survey of life.”
– Illustrated London News, Jan. 3, 1931

“I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification.”
– “Babies and Distributism,” The Well and the Shallows

“Even in an empire of atheists the dead man is always sacred.”
– “The Meaning of Dreams,” Lunacy and Letters

“Somehow one can never manage to be an atheist.”
– “The Swords Rejoined,” The Ball and the Cross

Atheism
“Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative.”
– “Charles II,” Twelve Types

“It is still bad taste to be an avowed atheist. But now it is equally bad taste to be an avowed Christian.”
– “Introductory Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy,” Heretics

“If there were no God, there would be no atheists.”
– “The Case for Complexity,” Where All Roads Lead

“There is no bigot like the atheist.”
– Magic

“The atheist is not interested in anything except attacks on atheism.”
– “Frozen Free Thought,” The Well and the Shallows

“Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.”
– “Wells and the World State,” What I Saw in America

“There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life; only it happens to be a superficial survey of life.”
– Illustrated London News, Jan. 3, 1931

“I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification.”
– “Babies and Distributism,” The Well and the Shallows

“Even in an empire of atheists the dead man is always sacred.”
– “The Meaning of Dreams,” Lunacy and Letters

“Somehow one can never manage to be an atheist.”
– “The Swords Rejoined,” The Ball and the Cross

Peter Jennings
Peter Jennings
Jan 8, 2023 8:48 AM
Reply to  Thomas L Frey

This life is the whole journey. What comes next nobody truely knows, and anyone that says any different is most probably on the make or looking to influence for reasons of their own.
IMO, humans should do its goodwill whilst here on this planet rather than waiting around for a deity who may or may not exist to tell us we done good. Waiting around for God to judge one’s actions seems like a lazy way out.
Our moral compass is Instinctive and intrinsic in most, if not all humans. It’s what separates us from the animals.

Thomas Frey
Thomas Frey
Jan 9, 2023 2:25 PM
Reply to  Peter Jennings

I never claimed to know what is next. I just asserted is isn’t nothing and that what we do here and now matters.

Assuming that everyone is waiting around is very presumptuous and ignorant.

Mann Friedmann
Mann Friedmann
Jan 8, 2023 5:49 PM
Reply to  Thomas L Frey

Such narcissism! One’s belief is better than another’s belief!
The soul ‘has consequences’! Was this “universe-view” sold at a Catholic, Protestant or new age church!
Look, if you cannot figure out that there is a collective resource of knowledge from all over the world, that has been in circulation like “energy” untapped I will always be dismissive towards, “My belief is better than your belief“.
“Treat others as you would like them to treat you”. The Golden Rule. Or as a friend of mine, a Jew, phrased it this way, “Don’t treat others as you would not like to be treated”.

A saying that has been getting used much in recent times (so much virtue signalling),

“Shut the fuck up and Walk the Walk!”

Thomas Frey
Thomas Frey
Jan 9, 2023 2:27 PM
Reply to  Mann Friedmann

Never claimed any belief to be greater than another.
I asserted that believing in the cosmology of nothing is ignorant.
So what you are saying is that you want others to tell you to STFU.
Interesting philosophy.

Voz 0db
Voz 0db
Jan 7, 2023 7:32 PM

Not believing in others made-up fairy tales [gods] is always a good way to Live a meaningful Life.

Thomas Frey
Thomas Frey
Jan 8, 2023 12:56 AM
Reply to  Voz 0db

What do “fairy” tales like Snow White have to do with spirituality?
Do you seriously think we are just a series of happy accidents?
If you do then I guess you also think modern automobiles design and build themselves like a happy accident.

Mann Friedmann
Mann Friedmann
Jan 8, 2023 6:20 PM
Reply to  Thomas Frey

What do “fairy” tales like Snow White have to do with spirituality?

The “stories” are to reflect spiritual ideas, regardless of the belief of any existence of reality within them. These are UNIVERSAL.

If you do then I guess you also think modern automobiles design and build themselves like a happy accident.

This is what Mattias Desmet is saying: religious explanation is used to uplift material certitudes to inarguable.
This is identical behaviour of those Professional CoVidiots that continue to tell us that the vitus is real, it is contagious, it is deadly, that it can cause all sorts of long term effects, that the vaccine works to prevent infection and is harmless… or even more absurd, “Russia is the Big Evil”.

ZenPriest
ZenPriest
Jan 9, 2023 2:00 PM
Reply to  Mann Friedmann

The universe is a system. Intricate and complex systems are not accidental, they are designed – anyone honest will admit that. If that renders the truth of creation inarguable, then good!

Thomas Frey
Thomas Frey
Jan 9, 2023 2:21 PM
Reply to  Mann Friedmann

You did not answer the question.
We are intelligently designed and could not happen by accident.
Blaming all the world’s issues on religion is ignorant.
Just because someone believes in God does not by default mean that a person prescribes to an earthly religion. That is just your own mind making excuses for not taking responsibility for your role in the world.

So you have a better moral code than the 10 commandments?
Do you have a better life example than Jesus Christ?
Would the world not be a better place of everyone lived up to the 10 commandments and lived a life exemplary of Jesus Christ?

If not, then what is your example or guidance?

George Mc
George Mc
Jan 7, 2023 6:15 PM

And talking about meaninglessness:

https://unherd.com/thepost/why-are-incels-turning-themselves-into-girls/

“Transmaxxing” That’s where it’s at!

“the transmaxxers are strikingly post-ideological about their self-remodelling” Ooh that’s good! I smell yet another academic media gravy train!

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Jan 7, 2023 7:08 PM
Reply to  George Mc

…- Oh, For Fuck’s Sake…

Voz 0db
Voz 0db
Jan 7, 2023 7:40 PM
Reply to  George Mc

why a community of depressed young men with nothing to lose is convinced the only way out of their misery is gender transition suicide

a degenerate male pretending to be a degenerate female won’t fix it!

Rhisiart Gwilym
Rhisiart Gwilym
Jan 7, 2023 7:49 PM
Reply to  George Mc

I smell a ridiculous fad that will be gone soon, along with all the ‘woke’ hallucinations.

These Interesting Times are going to winnow quite severely the under-employed, over-‘entitled’ uni-plankton, who work-up and harbour the woke-tosh, on the good old real-world principle of “Root, hog, or die!”:

Get down off your ridiculous ivory tower and start growing potatoes, or something else actually useful and needed in the world, or be left to starve…

Penelope
Penelope
Jan 7, 2023 8:15 PM
Reply to  George Mc

George, thanks for the educational link. I come away feeling pity for them: They’re not exactly pondering the verities of the universe are they? And probably all unknowing of all the toxic factors that’ve robbed them of identity– from vegetable oil instead of animal fats to fluoride in the water to glyphosate,

Hele
Hele
Jan 8, 2023 9:52 AM
Reply to  George Mc

Born again

George Mc
George Mc
Jan 7, 2023 6:11 PM

Sorry for going off topic but the media keep sinking lower and lower and have now reached a point of obnoxiousness barely credible. I was tempted to deliver yet another “deconstruction” on a truly vile Telegraph piece but felt like King Canute trying to hold back the sea – of shit. This piece complained about NHS managers gaslighting whilst itself gaslighting – and with a cutesy tinge (RSV is like “covid with bovver boots”) and apparently “we” no longer care about the skyrocketing piles of corpses etc. Thus using our alleged indifference as an excuse for yet more fear porn.

Then I turn on the fucking telly and it’s all “How are we going to cut down our carbon emissions?”

I keep getting visions of that monolith from 2001 a Space Odyssey. “Here are your words for today!”

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Jan 7, 2023 7:15 PM
Reply to  George Mc

…- Yeknow George, if you read Telegraph articles just right – sorta with squint-eye and head cocked aside just so, they kinda deconstruct ’emselves… – Saves you the effort…

(…- Works for *All Other* ‘news media’ too, by and large…)

ZenPriest
ZenPriest
Jan 8, 2023 5:33 PM
Reply to  George Mc

Telegraph piece.. telly… there’s your problem.

John Pretty
John Pretty
Jan 7, 2023 5:50 PM

I don’t accept this analysis, by the way.

There is no answer. The central delusion is that there is one. Many people spend their lives searching for something that doesn’t actually exist.

Mostly the “problem”, as has been pointed out elsewhere, is conceptualisation.

But, of course, to point at any sort of culprit is a delusion. So ultimately the “problem” isn’t even that.

In the same way that there is no answer, in reality there is no “problem”. The “problem” really is that you think there is a problem! (If you didn’t believe in the “problem” you wouldn’t waste time and energy looking for the “answer”.)

I like the biblical phrase (paraphrased), “To enter the kingdom of God you must become as little children.”

In other words, in order to be happy, you must drop your adult pretences.

Not many young children talk about “meaning” (or its absence) in their lives. Generally children are happier than adults. This may be why. (But then again, it may not be.)

Thomas L Frey
Thomas L Frey
Jan 7, 2023 6:46 PM
Reply to  John Pretty

The act of searching can be the journey of discovery. Just depends what you are ultimately seeking.

In our own hearts, we know what pursuits are the most virtuous.

When we pursue nothing, as for example digital entertainment, then ultimately we are seeking meaning in a virtual environment that can be taken or turned off on a whim.

When we pursue meaningful endeavors, our discoveries cannot be taken from anyone, or from others. Raising a child, and helping that person be successful on their own, is a great example.

Free will.

Hele
Hele
Jan 8, 2023 9:54 AM
Reply to  John Pretty

This makes sense

mgeo
mgeo
Jan 8, 2023 2:27 PM
Reply to  John Pretty

The proclivity the article mentions includes innate bent of mind. One may be mystic, imaginative, open, hedonistic, etc, or the opposite of any of these.

Bob the Hod
Bob the Hod
Jan 7, 2023 5:47 PM

You don’t need to invent, or, more likely, believe in already invented deities in order to find meaning in life.

The Universe is God, it created us, it is all of us, it is one, it is infinitely more powerful than us and we are part of the oneness. It is magnificent, it has the power to create and to destroy, it is beautiful and we cannot see the whole. As stated a few posts earlier, we know next to nothing of it, and we no next to nothing of ourselves. To realise this is to instantly raise your conciousness to a higher plane without succumbing to logically fallacious faith position. It is patently true. The corollary of all this is that we are the Universe conciously experiencing itself. And that is the point.

Naturalistic Pantheism was a great discovery for me, raised an atheist but with an innate sense of the spiritual and a realisation that we don’t know the half of it. Mechanistic materialism is very useful for the day to day, humdrum reality that we inhabit, it helps me to build a wall and earn a living. But it is useless in explaining why the hairs stand up on the back of my neck when I hear music that I love, feel the love of my family or I see something that leaves me in awe. I don’t need an explanation for that, it is enough that it just is, and that is living, as far as I’m concerned.

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Jan 7, 2023 7:19 PM
Reply to  Bob the Hod

…*Amen*… – Beautifully, succinctly put, Bob…

Rhisiart Gwilym
Rhisiart Gwilym
Jan 7, 2023 7:53 PM
Reply to  Sgt Oddball

Indeed, Bob!

John Pretty
John Pretty
Jan 7, 2023 5:36 PM

I don’t actually have a problem with Atheism, but a lot of practicing Atheists are deeply conceited. Most Christians may sometimes doubt, but for an Atheist their belief in Nogod is one of total and unflinching devotion. Those that do not share their view are lower, less intelligent forms of human life.

Clive Williams
Clive Williams
Jan 7, 2023 7:41 PM
Reply to  John Pretty

Atheists are historical revisionists..because they are unflinching cruel in their own self importance on Festive Religious Rememberance occasions, is but an example of their turncoat-isms.

Human values
Human values
Jan 7, 2023 5:22 PM

Humans never lived as cavemen. That idea must have come from some American cartoons, just like the idea that God lives upon a cloud and looks like a white old man with beard, or that storks deliver babies.

Fiction, not fact.

Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 7, 2023 5:35 PM
Reply to  Human values

Its a joke.

John Pretty
John Pretty
Jan 7, 2023 5:37 PM
Reply to  Human values

Well, if the stork didn’t bring me where did I come from?!

(joke)

Clive Williams
Clive Williams
Jan 7, 2023 8:11 PM
Reply to  John Pretty

A Rooster, the lucky blighter has sex with anything Stationary.
(Tech Joke).

Clive Williams
Clive Williams
Jan 7, 2023 7:55 PM
Reply to  Human values

Says you in nail pin gunned box with a flapping roof. Clap of thumber Flash of lightening and you piss yourself in a “Nuke Shelter”.
Let’s all have a Big Laugh over those times….and move on.
Very funny.

Hemlockfen
Hemlockfen
Jan 8, 2023 2:07 PM
Reply to  Human values

Sorry for “interrupting” your discussion. Apparently, you don’t visit natural history museums much. Lots of good dioramas depicting early people sitting around a fire in front of a cave. Longhouses and Teepees too. Chicago Academy of Sciences had some great ones. Field Museum as well. No cartoons come to mind. And there are not many cartoons I missed as kid. Plenty of archeological evidence of cave dwellings along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers where eons of flooding and water movements eroded openings in the sandstone. Smoke stained ceilings, bone fragments etc., etc.. Plenty of evidence. Lots of caves in the driftless zones that were not ground to a pulp by glaciers. Sorry.

Human values
Human values
Jan 8, 2023 8:53 PM
Reply to  Hemlockfen

Caves are terrible places to live. But they are very good for preserving bones, paintings and other artifacts. People who lived as nomads, hunter-gatherers, lived in tents and huts that have been long gone because materials do not last long in an open environment.

Hunters have used caves during their trips as a temporary shelter. There is no evidence that they lived there any longer. Some caves may have been used for ritual purposes or maybe a storage. But how many caves are there? None, where I live. The idea of cavemen is ridiculous, and it’s not supported by anthropology or archeology.

Hemlockfen
Hemlockfen
Jan 9, 2023 5:37 PM
Reply to  Human values

Going to have to agree to disagree. I am not an archeologist or anthropologist but I have known several through digs that were done on the public properties I managed. Had some good discussions. Also had a relative with Ohio river frontage with caves that had been occupied and also used as burial sites. A good friend lived in a town in the same area Called Cave In Rock. Very rural area as the name implies. Their large cave was featured in a few scenes in the movie, How the West Was Won. Occupied. Also, just a curious memory. Ever heard of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky? Yes. Occupied. And by more than bats. As for cartoons depicting cave man theories in the heads of American children, like I said, these ideas stem from natural history museums whose extensive research led them to depict “cave men” families. Maybe they used them like “snow birds” through seasonal migrations. I don’t know. I would guess they were not all nomads. Just the weaker ones who did not manage to secure a prime property in time because they were born too late. Just like today’s post WWII baby boomers. They bought most of the prime waterfront properties for a “song” and now they are worth millions. Who knows for sure how the earliest people really lived when food was plentiful and populations were low. If I had a choice between a dry cave and wet sticks covered by wet stinky badly tanned leather or strips of moldy bark, I would go with the cave. Defending it would be the problem as populations grew. Eventually, when food and wood supplies dwindled I would imagine they would have been forced to travel more especially when the populations increased. But not in the beginning. And that’s the point. Earliest Man.

Human values
Human values
Jan 10, 2023 4:17 PM
Reply to  Hemlockfen

The idea of cavemen was born because the first findings of prehistoric fossils were from caves, where they had survived, unlike in open environments. The scientists were stupid enough to assume that it was how most people lived. Caves were sometimes used as graves, probably during winter, when digging was hard, but people don’t live in graves. They don’t live in cemeteries either.

Early humans were very civilized. They buried their dead with ceremony; they knew their environment and the medicines it provided; they took care of their sick; they formed cultures distinct from each other, but they interacted freely when given a chance. They lived mostly at peace. Most human history has been peace time. The idea of the violent past, where cave men warred with each other and dragged their women into the cave to be used as servants, is absolutely false. That idea came from the imaginations of western intellectuals who thought they were the top in the human development. The idea of human development is arrogant, stupid and racist, because there is no scientific proof of such a thing. Science has been used for white male supremacy for centuries.

Science has also been filled with frauds, hoaxes and pranks, especially when money, fame or status are involved. New discoveries make big news and stay in the popular thinking even when they are later proven false. For example, the discovery of the Tasaday tribe in the Philippines in 1971. A wealthy businessman Elizalde who worked together with a dictator Marcos claimed to have found a stone age cavemen tribe of 24 people living in total isolation and unable to speak any known language. It’s a story of international media attention, celebrities, martial law to ”protect the vulnerable people” and money making. And it’s a hoax.

https://www.tasaday.org/the-story

Caves are really not so comfortable as you seem to think. Often they are places for dangerous animals like bats, spiders, snakes and wild beasts, and there’s only one way out so people would be trapped. There’s no ventilation for fire, so the cave would be filled with smoke. If the rain can get in, the people would drown. Caves are usually dark, uncomfortable, not easy to get in, not easy to get out, and they may even collapse.

I certainly wouldn’t choose to live in a cave if there’s a possibility of building a house. Early humans were hunter-gatherers, and since there were no property rights or property, or money, the whole world was theirs, and there was no need to settle for a rocky confined space.

SeamusPadraig
SeamusPadraig
Jan 7, 2023 5:08 PM

Nice work, Todd! Your citation from Jung instantly made me think of G.K. Chesterton’s observation: “When a man stops believing in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing, he believes in anything.”

I see so many liberals in our time simply making a god out of ‘the’ science without even thinking. Theirs is a very misplaced faith. Meanwhile, so many conservatives confuse God with holy books or organized religion — also a mistake. We have no business placing any faith in earthly institutions, theories or artifacts. Faith is for God alone — God as you conceive of Him (It?).

Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 7, 2023 5:36 PM
Reply to  SeamusPadraig

I could not have said it better myself. Thank you!

Clive Williams
Clive Williams
Jan 7, 2023 9:02 PM
Reply to  Todd Hayen

Tod
Sorry, I don’t believe in it for example God is a common North American exclamation “my God!”

John Pretty
John Pretty
Jan 7, 2023 5:39 PM
Reply to  SeamusPadraig

As I have said elsewhere, I make no judgments about people’s beliefs. If people believe in God that is fine. If they believe in something else, that too, is fine. It isn’t for me to pass judgment.

Hugh O’Neill
Hugh O’Neill
Jan 7, 2023 7:12 PM
Reply to  SeamusPadraig

Well said, SP. I was going to deploy the exact same GKC quote. My first point is that one needs to have faith (small f) in other people, because distrust in everyone and everything cannot be healthy. One has to learn whom to trust. Secondly, I distrust all labels – like Liberal or Conservative. I like to think of people as individuals, until proven otherwise…

Voz 0db
Voz 0db
Jan 7, 2023 7:42 PM
Reply to  SeamusPadraig

It appears that it’s the other way!!!

When one believes in “god”, one believes in anything.

Letterman
Letterman
Jan 7, 2023 8:00 PM
Reply to  SeamusPadraig

I note a certain irony in your use of the quote/epigram attributed to Chesterton. That is, according to The Society of G.K. Chesterton after attempting to the locate the origin of the quote (see https://www.chesterton.org/ceases-to-worship/) the Society’s web site states: “The Quotemeister confidently asserts to all future inquirers that the source of the fugitive epigram is “The Oracle of the Dog” as codified by Emile Cammaerts.” Consequently, attributing the quote/epigram’s origin to G. K. Chesterton appears to be mistaken. Or so it seems.

TRT
TRT
Jan 7, 2023 4:52 PM

Desmet doesn’t believe that Covid was an operation imposed on the masses by the oligarchy, and this position has rightly led to suspicions that his book is a limited hangout at best.

However, he has also been accused of blaming the victim, and I don’t entirely agree with this accusation. A large part of the masses, while perhaps victims in one sense, doubled as oppressors themselves. They vilified and attacked the unvaxed and the unmasked, and many happily enforced state mandates. It’s more complex than either Desmet or his critics claim.

John Pretty
John Pretty
Jan 7, 2023 5:39 PM
Reply to  TRT

Really? Maybe I’ll buy the book after all.

Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 7, 2023 5:45 PM
Reply to  TRT

Hmm…always interesting to read criticisms…I may have missed something. I did a pre-publication review of Desmet’s book, and I felt that he avoided the “oligarchy” imposition purposely just to focus on the sort of preconditioned mind that would take in that imposition hook, line and sinker. I SEEMS to me that many people confuse Desmet’s intentions…i.e., he chose to “blame it all” on the masses. I didn’t get that impression at all.

Sure, the masses do get a lot of “blame”…but that is like blaming someone for their behaviour after being hypnotized, or traumatized in childhood, or any number of other mind altering events. The people themselves are not to blame…if anyone is to blame it is of course the group that administers the brain washing. I think Desmet was just showing reasons, causes…etc. Not attacking.

It is hard to draw the line here…just as it is in a court of law dealing with an “insane” murderer, most murderers are mentally disturbed, aren’t they?…isn’t it always the line “they knew what they were doing” that gets them in trouble and the insanity plea loses? I think we have the same problem here. Any real criticism I would have of Desmet’s hypothesis is that many of these people know exactly what they are doing, and cannot fall back on a mental illness, mass formation psychosis, as an excuse…(Desment never uses the word psychosis…although personally and professionally I do believe for some it is a psychosis…a departure from what we generally call reality).

TRT
TRT
Jan 7, 2023 6:02 PM
Reply to  Todd Hayen

To be clear, I am referring to the criticisms of his book, many of which accuse him of blaming the victim, including in this comment section. I am not accusing him of doing so myself. If anything, I agree with you that he lets too many off the hook with his theory. Many of the petty fascists among the population knew exactly what they were doing and should be held responsible for their actions.

Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 7, 2023 6:18 PM
Reply to  TRT

Thanks for the clarification…but of course you have the right to hold that opinion! Yes about the criticisms…maybe I am just TOO forgiving…I really liked his main points…

Lost in a dark wood
Lost in a dark wood
Jan 8, 2023 1:30 AM
Reply to  Todd Hayen

You write an essay attacking materialism, but then promote the ultra-materialistic concept of “mental illness” !

Tom Larsen
Tom Larsen
Jan 8, 2023 6:34 PM
Reply to  Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 7, 2023 6:16 PM
Reply to  TRT

Me again…yes, I do believe there are many people, smart people too, who do not believe this was/is an intentional “operation” imposed by the “elites”…that is just plain ignorant. If that is true of Desmet, then he simply is wrong…about that…doesn’t mean he doesn’t have some interesting ideas about human psychology!

After all, Isaac Newton was curious as to how many fairies could dance on the head of a pin, and we don’t hold that against him and his theories!

MiloT
MiloT
Jan 8, 2023 12:07 PM
Reply to  TRT

Desmet did an interview with James Corbett where towards the end Corbett raised the first point with him. His point was that yes of course there’s a manipulative elite behind these agendas but the real issue is the mechanistic thinking of the masses which allows this to happen.

https://youtu.be/PvexXloLhd0

It’s an hour in and he and Corbett make some very interesting points.

Letterman
Letterman
Jan 7, 2023 4:44 PM

“Leo Tolstoy on Finding Meaning in a Meaningless World”
https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/06/03/tolstoy-confession/

Paul Vonharnish
Paul Vonharnish
Jan 7, 2023 4:40 PM

Well. I was just fooling around in my earlier comments, but I’ll fool ya again – if you wish…

I believe a major driver of “meaninglessness” is the overt robbery of our futures. How can children remain optimistic (a Natural state of mind) when unemployed adults slump around wearing masks? How can they associate themselves with the brightness of the world, when the world has shut them away in dingy “high security” schools? What kind of future is awaiting those who temporarily “work” from home – isolated from human contact? Is that a job??? In what year will their “employment” magically yield anything resembling productivity?

In short: The future is being robbed of all meaning and temporal association. The art of life has become a monotone grayness. A sinking ship in an angry sea… Meaninglessness is only the logical refuge of the intellect…

Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 7, 2023 6:23 PM

Yes, meaninglessness is self perpetuating…if you factor in my essay, there is a reason why people are consumer mesmerized, why they are seeking constant instant gratification and why they have lost all faith in mystery and any organizing principle beyond the human’s attempt to become “God” through technology.

You are absolutely right, but I feel that all you are describing here is a result of all that I bring up in the essay…it’s turtles all the way down as they say.

I used to believe this “mess” we are now in was a result of natural social evolution. Now I believe it has been intentionally set…for decades…in an attempt to destroy humanity…

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Jan 7, 2023 7:32 PM

…- I find frequently reflect on the fact that, contrary to its more conventional ‘lay’ conotation, true philosophical Nihilism is practically identical with honest, rigorous (and ‘maximalist’) Scepticism…

…- What is going on here, on the other hand, I don’t even have a word for yet… – Something in the way of ‘terminally jaded’ perhaps, only far, far worse…

Paul Vonharnish
Paul Vonharnish
Jan 8, 2023 12:08 AM
Reply to  Sgt Oddball

Hello Sgt Oddball: I believe the universe is infinitely pliable and creative. People insisted on thinking positive for many, many years, and I’m fine with that. But in the last two decades or so, negative thinking has permeated the collective psyche. I call it negative magic. I don’t know what the universe calls it.

An example of negative magic: A 19 year old guy is driving home from his third date with a girl he’s totally hot for. He mumbles to his steering wheel. “Shit! I’ll never get down her pants.” The universe says. “OK. Whatever…” And files his request. Ummm…

Clive Williams
Clive Williams
Jan 7, 2023 10:48 PM

Oh fuck off with that. You’ve been at it for 40 years!
Face it, thats your fault get a grip. How is it anyone else’s worry.
Piss off

Paul Vonharnish
Paul Vonharnish
Jan 7, 2023 11:52 PM
Reply to  Clive Williams

Hello Clive Williams: I’ve been living much longer than 40 years. As I was never married and seldom anything but self-employed, no one was there to “worry” about me at all. I’ve made that a point…

Piss off?

What’s your problem? Swollen prostate? Small dick? Weak ego?

mgeo
mgeo
Jan 8, 2023 2:39 PM

The children of the ultra-wealthy did not have their futures stolen fom them. Are they happy in the long term?

Paul Vonharnish
Paul Vonharnish
Jan 8, 2023 4:21 PM
Reply to  mgeo

Hello mego: Despite the cockeyed dictates of the media, children of the wealthy are passengers on the same sinking ship as the rest of us. As Kurt Vonnegut once said: “Yes, there will be no Nirvana’s”.

FJQ
FJQ
Jan 7, 2023 4:32 PM

Let’s see if I have the first two points straight:

1. The problem is that people define their lives by the acquisition of things.

2. The problem is that people don’t want to work hard to give their lives meaning by the acquisition of things.

Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 7, 2023 6:26 PM
Reply to  FJQ

Close…the first point is basically right on. The second, and I know you are saying this cynically, is not. The acquisition of things, or at least the obsession with it, is relatively easy. Today it is quite easy to be instantly gratified. If a person loses the desire to constantly be instantly gratified they may seek out other forms of reward…and thus find meaning. This typically takes harder work than the instant gratification.

Ananda
Ananda
Jan 7, 2023 4:26 PM

Mattias Desmet appeared in the usual shill format.
posted in unison by woke alt right intelligence service media.
Within seconds he was everywhere ….
He aimed at the half awake zombies who literally lick any old shite if it has fake PRESTIGE to it.
There spell bounded by it. Add the Doctorate title charlatan sprinkle of prestige and this lot wouldn’t no a western Nigerian scam if it hit them in the face twice.
Its aimed at the Reiner Fuellmich huge mega court case is really scaring them has them quaking in there boots types.
If the dummies believed Ceo Pfizer spin us a yeadon who refuses to be interviewed on his back story, the same lot would believe a what a load of baloney Dr Robert Malone fairytale phantasy that he invent what…
if you liked Juden Patterson. Dumb enough to fool for that type of psychobbabble dribble.
A fake PRESTIGE Dr Dilldow Desmet fits there criteria.
them lot fool for any old shite. Believe any old shite. More so with A Doctor title added to a fake prestige.
Wont be long before Dr Dilldow Desmet be selling them a bubble for a spirit level and tartan paint.
There mesmerized by his explanation. (doesn’t take much for this lot to be mesmerized)
They will lick it up as it adds to the insatiable egos how intelligent they think they are.
The Military-Intelligence Complex piss them selves laughing creating theses type of characters for you.

To easy. 

Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 7, 2023 4:33 PM
Reply to  Ananda

Anybody you DO believe? Would be curious to hear…

Albert Anderson
Albert Anderson
Jan 7, 2023 6:20 PM
Reply to  Todd Hayen

Who should we believe?

Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 7, 2023 6:35 PM

Good lord, I have no idea. I think we all use our critical thinking and critical analysis to discern if what people are saying is true and/or useful. I do tend to believe certain people, but it really isn’t the PERSON I choose to believe, or not, it is what they say, or write. I do have a handful of people I suppose I could say I trust to be consistent in their thinking (Robert Kennedy comes to mind). But ultimately you cannot project “perfection” or any other over the top idealism on any one person. Everyone is flawed, and everyone has the potential of losing their mind, or going off track, being momentarily stupid, or whatever.

There are many people I used to admire, but then they would say, write, or do something, that caused me to lose my admiration for them (Barack Obama being one). But that didn’t change my judgement of certain very wise things they at one time said.

Humans love to celebrate other humans (as well as hate them). It is a natural tendency to do that, we are wired for it. But we have to be very careful with this because most “celebrations” are merely projections of our own inner stuff, usually something that isn’t fully integrated.

Albert Anderson
Albert Anderson
Jan 7, 2023 6:42 PM
Reply to  Todd Hayen

There ya go. Think for your own dam self. I’m 67 too. After a while, patterns become clear don’t they. Personally, I’m no longer in the mood for fluff. We need action. And I’m not pointing to you, just to say.

Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 7, 2023 6:53 PM

Agreed…check out my substack…www.shrewviews.com

Johnny
Johnny
Jan 8, 2023 10:08 AM
Reply to  Todd Hayen

Shrewviews ?
Ain’t there Todd.

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Jan 7, 2023 8:01 PM
Reply to  Todd Hayen

…Mmm… – You remember that fight we got into a long whiles back, Todd?… – You referred to us as friends, to which I took vehement exception and wasted no time in disabusing you of the notion harshly, and in no uncertain terms…

…- Your above comment is *Precisely* the answer to the reason why I did that, *In A Nutshell*…

…- While I appreciated the sentiment you were attempting to express back then, the stone-cold fact is I don’t know you from Adam, we’ve never met in person – you’re not even in my circle of aquaintances and, even more to the point, here on Teh Intertubes you could be *Literally Anyone* (aside from who you claim to be)… – All I have to go on is the writing you put out and its consistency over time and with your character that it reveals, matched with my own critical thinking faculties (my Bullshit-ometer), just as you say…

…- It’s nothing personal, to you or anyone else, just a personal heuristic that time, a lot of jaundiced experience, and a *Helluva, Helluva Lot* of heartache have obliged me to deploy universally and without exception…

…- Paranoiac?… – No, not really… – After all we’ve seen by now, I think most all of us can agree we are way, *Waaayy* past “Just because you’re paranoid…” – Turns out They *Are, Indeed* out to get us – *All* of us – and as it turns out they’ve spun-up a million-and-one ‘Alt’-LARPing pied pipers in an effort to confuse, divide and lead us all astray…

Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 7, 2023 9:00 PM
Reply to  Sgt Oddball

Ha!! I remember that, but I didn’t remember it was you. I’ve also mellowed out a bit. Yeah, that’s all cool…totally understand. Up until last year I would NEVER call a stranger a “friend” but I find myself doing it all of the time now…and “brother” or “sister”…but I have no idea what sex anyone is, considering there are about 100 to choose from these days…before you had a 50% chance of getting it right.

The above comment was on “who do you believe”…which is a bit different. I call you friend because anyone I perceive is on this side of this particular fence is a certain type of friend…a “brother in arms”…if that offends you in anyway, fine…I promise I will not be calling you if I need an organ for a transplant.

All I can say is that I appreciate your understanding of this whole global situation. I am sure we don’t see eye to eye on every point, but I still consider you part of my tribe, therefore, loosely, I will still think of you as a “certain” type of friend. You don’t have to return the sentiment…

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Jan 7, 2023 9:41 PM
Reply to  Todd Hayen

…- Thanks Todd, and again; sentiment appreciated and returned in kind, and no need to explain – I actually didn’t make my above point clearly enough:… – Your explanation, re: “who to believe” *IS* almost *Exactly*, *Literally* my own sole reason for the millitancy I displayed back then, were I to have put it in words myself, so… – *Concurred*…

…- Also I should’ve added at the end of my above reply:… – Reagan was a muppet: – Verify, *Then, And Only Then* trust…

Mr Y
Mr Y
Jan 8, 2023 2:39 AM
Reply to  Todd Hayen

> There are many people I used to admire, but then they would say, write, or do something, that caused me to lose my admiration for them (Barack Obama being one).

If you see the Obama figure as anything else than someone reciting other peoples speeches that’s your problem …

Snorkklefun
Snorkklefun
Jan 10, 2023 6:52 PM

“Who should we believe?”

A honest look at civilized human history shows we should not believe advanced humans at all … Why humans don’t learn from history

It follows that because civilized humans’ fundamental dishonesty virtually no civilized human takes a honest look at that history, and so humans never learned anything of significance from history as had been pointed out centuries ago.

Stop The Prison Mentality
Stop The Prison Mentality
Jan 7, 2023 4:13 PM

A material-only universe means that matter is king, and matter is made up of tiny particles that bounce off of each other in a random way and basically are responsible for everything.

That’s the propaganda. It’s what the “Scientists” spoon feed the people to make it seem like they know what they’re talking about.

I dare anyone to delve into the subject for 12 to 24 months. I’ve been reading about it all my life and have come to the following conclusion;

We know next to fuck all about our universe.

There is more than an abundance of awe, wonder and mystery in this universe if one cares to pay attention, and we’re all part of it. So, if you think you’re living a meaningless life, I’ve got some news for you, you’re being played and you’ve been sucked in.

Of course, it’s also possible that 3 years ago there was a serious event at CERN, whereby, during an experiment, they accidentally ripped a hole in the spacetime continuum and transported everyone on earth through a wormhole to an entirely different planet called Clownworld.

Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 7, 2023 4:37 PM

HA! I like that theory…

Yes, I agree 100%. We don’t know fuck all about our universe…not even close…but most of them dance around thinking they’ve got it figured out. The arrogance behind this “vaccine” proves that point…”we know all we need to know about the human body, so this mRNA technology is a good thing and will work just fine”….oops.

Of course, that statement is assuming they actually were TRYING to make a “good thing”…it seems much clearer that it actually is working just the way they intended…and as they say, you don’t have to know much to destroy something….

Stop The Prison Mentality
Stop The Prison Mentality
Jan 7, 2023 5:41 PM
Reply to  Todd Hayen

There’s no doubt about the arrogance. The stupid ones are the arrogant ones all suffering from terminal Dunning Kruger Syndrome*, useful idiot marionettes.

*, after years of observing it, I can only conclude it’s actually a syndrome as opposed to an effect.

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Jan 7, 2023 8:31 PM

…- Add to the ranks of the stupid ones also the *Willfully* malicious (- Tho’ there is some overlap, of course)…

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Jan 7, 2023 8:23 PM
Reply to  Todd Hayen

…- Or indeed, assuming they were even speaking truthfully, or even in good faith believing themselves to be speaking truthfully when, in fact, speaking in error…

…As a side note, *All* hegemonizing organized systems of ideological belief *Inevitably* trend towards eventual culthood, even if they didn’t start out that way…

…- Teh Science(tm) is not *Science*, done right… – Not by a damn long chalk…

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Jan 7, 2023 8:27 PM
Reply to  Sgt Oddball

…- Incidentally Todd, who was the guy wrote that one popular book on the psychology of organizations?… – Erving Goffman, Erich Fromm?… – I forget (Can’t even remember the damn title)…

Sgt Oddball
Sgt Oddball
Jan 7, 2023 8:13 PM

“That’s the propaganda. It’s what the “Scientists” spoon feed the people to make it seem like they know what they’re talking about.

I dare anyone to delve into the subject for 12 to 24 months. I’ve been reading about it all my life and have come to the following conclusion;

We know next to fuck all about our universe.”

…- *Bell’s Theorem*… – Specifically the inequalities elaborated therein… – *Heh, Heh*… 😉

“Of course, it’s also possible that 3 years ago there was a serious event at CERN, whereby, during an experiment, they accidentally ripped a hole in the spacetime continuum and transported everyone on earth through a wormhole to an entirely different planet called Clownworld.”

…- Holy Shit!… – We’ve been Isekai-ed to Clownworld!?… – Y’know that *Does* makes a certain amount of sense…

Howard
Howard
Jan 7, 2023 3:58 PM

As a self-described materialist, I am awed beyond belief at the stupendous achievement simple matter has made and continually makes. A supernatural force could do no more or no better.

It is astounding that particles over billions of years come together to form galaxies, stars, planets, even living beings. And yet, it happened.

Each particle of matter contains the seeds of a universe within.

The universe is Dr. Seuss’s “Horton Hears A Who” on steroids. And it’s to be revered, not denigrated.

Todd Hayen
Todd Hayen
Jan 7, 2023 4:41 PM
Reply to  Howard

You are right, materialism is fine and good for what it is…it is utterly amazing. But in my opinion you can’t leave out soul, leave out divine intervention…and if you do, you end up where we are now, pumping crap into people’s veins with arrogance and a “holier than thou” attitude. Again, that may be just what they want…to hurt people…so it is the people that are taking the vax out of fear, and trust the materialist paradigm to fix them.