Written Essay: Pro-Democracy Series #8: Telling People What To Do

Within any free society or in more actuality, a society that strives to honestly try and move toward being more free, there is one thing that should be paramount. And it is what was just stated....drumroll... freedom. What is freedom? An initial Webster's 1828 definition of freedom states it as: "A state of exemption from the power or control of another; liberty; exemption from slavery, servitude or confinement" - personal, civil, political, and religious. With a secondary, more simple definition being "Any exemption from constraint or control". Now within reality in modern society, we (being all individuals) should have the most freedom possible, within certain rules of course. Primarily which should contain the caveat of "not incurring injury or loss". To other property, people, and in a more sophisticated society, within aspects of nature as well. Unless you're going to live off the land and self impose being part of nature's brutal food chain by foraging and hunting, in which you need to incur occasional injury to other creatures and in most extreme cases, do viking style skull cracking followed by potential cannibalism to maintain sustenance during the brutal winter. Instead within modern political and civil society that's not the Purge, which is shared with your fellow women men, one does not have the freedom to say they're going to kill their neighbor without consequence, nor does one have the freedom to steal from their neighbor without consequence, nor does one have the freedom to kill their neighbor as an aggressor without consequence. Because all of which would be incurring injury and or loss.

Regardless of the rules set by laws, there is no way that any law maker would ever come into office by offering to limit the populace's freedom through enacting new rules and laws under their policies. So regardless of party or political orientation, one always has to market themselves on being pro freedom and in more extreme cases claim their opposition may want to even limit individual freedoms. However, a certain type of politician that is for progress (going forward) promotes real freedom from the two definitions stated prior and means it, because it's democratic freedom within a hopefully conscious and educated voting populace, while another type of politician that is for regress (going backwards), promises freedom, but has to lie about it because it's pho-authoritarian freedom which takes on another hidden element. And in this essay we give you a basic deconstruction of what that element is.

If you, like the majority, are pro-democratic, you want the most people possible to have a say in the selection of their representatives. Those whose policies actually do this are called populist. This comprises what is called the "proletariat", Who are the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose primary possession of significant economic value is their labor power. They make up 99.9% of society in the 3rd world and 90% of society in the first world. Then you have 1% to 10% of the society called the "bourgeoisie", who are a class of business owners and merchants which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between peasants and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted with the proletariat by their wealth, political power, and education, as well as their access to and control of cultural, social and financial capital. Who under democratic systems, also have a say, but unfortunately a very disproportionate amount of power. A long con is to make people from the proletariat think they are part of the bourgeoisie, when they are not. There are members of the proletariat who are pro-democratic and there are members of the bourgeoisie who are pro-democratic. However, when one is pro-authoritarian, they are the opposite of being pro-democratic because the pro democratic coalition wants both to have their say - that's why they can be truthful, while the pro-authoritarian minority only wants their small minority who happen to be the bourgeoisie and none of the proletariat to have a say, that's why they have to lie and spin. So we have continued and will continue to juxtapose in this series one who is pro-democracy vs one who is pro-authoritarian. As authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, no matter how crap, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting.

In our country, the United States, we are not a true democracy. If we were every citizen would vote on each piece of legislation proposed both at a state and federal level. Although there are advantages to that way of governing and due to technical advances from when our country began we should move toward being more like that with perhaps some sort of system similar to the reddit upvote dynamic. All initially done on analogue paper of course and we will get much more into the heart of democracy which is "voting" later in this series. We instead are still currently a "democratically elected constitutional republic" in which we elect representatives to create and vote on legislation. And as a result, unfortunately have only two primary parties named after this system. One is the more left leaning centrist party called the Democrats who are interested in people and the other is the more right leaning party called the Republicans that's interested in property.

Although we are politically independent, meaning we do not tie ourselves to be a member of either of these specific parties, and have in the past voted across multiple parties, our voting history has primarily extended across parties that use colors such as blue and green. The green is a small third party but the blue is the Democrats, which we wish were even better because they suck ass at messaging and are still a corporate lite middle of the road party. However, they are the more balanced party (and this is a podcast one aspect of which is based in seeking balance) and are comprised of a spectrum of quite liberal people to quite moderate conservative people - who comprise part of a pro-democratic coalition, and for the most part, have representatives which actually work to represent the proletariat and are generally the more truthful of the two main parties. The other main party in the United States, the Republican party, is red and ever since we were a young tween, because we were not indoctrinated into extremist imperial religion which is the foundation of the whole party, knew it was a crew whose tactic was to divide and conquer by spreading fear and or full hate. And because they have always only really been conserved with representing the corporate bourgeoisie class it has always had to pretend it's for democracy but has never really ever quite been so and is instead just about power and control over the proletariat. Even though that's been the playbook of the party our whole life, being the less truthful of the two parties, in more recent years it has degraded heavily into becoming something that's not conservative, in the true since of the word, but has transmuted into a fascism meets idiocracy authoritarian clown show lie with every breath cult. Which is now saying some of the quiet parts out loud including sometimes openly announcing its hostility to democracy.

While we will get more into deconstructing this later in this series, a gentleman named Ethan Grey who was once in the red cult, and was strong enough to leave, gave an excellent simple deconstruction to its past and present messaging on freedom. Which the corporate legacy media (meaning even the networks outside of the full propaganda media) have, in our lifetime, done a crap job of having any direct conversation about with the American people because they are, for the most part, corporate networks who seem to be A-okay with fascism lite. Why? Sadly because they are not interested in being real hard hitting journalists that speak truth to power who fight the bourgeoisie man but instead work for the bourgeoisie man because they know they can make more money doing so. Hence, the sad state of the

fourth estate is if one wants to speak truth to power and hard call out liars has to go outside the main to do that. Which is resulting in an old paradigm fourth estate, that won't structurally fix the messaging problem, flowering a new fourth estate to take over in the old ones place. With this series being one aspect of us doing our part to help with that. So you will hear this deconstruction on an obscure podcast rather than on corporate media. By a random guy, who happens to be us - combined with Ethan, a former cult member who had the strength, will power, and spiritual development to de-program himself and get out of a cult, and deserves compliments for doing so. Here are his insights along with our insights, on the red cult's messaging on everything of importance:

1. You cannot tell them what to do.
2. They can tell you what to do.

You've watched the Republican Party champion the idea of "freedom" while you have also watched the same party openly assault various freedoms, like the freedom to vote, freedom to choose, freedom to have what books you want available at the public library, and freedom to marry who one wants and so on. If this has been a source of confusion, then your assessments of what Republicans mean by “freedom” were likely too generous. Here’s what they and other authoritarian parties throughout the world mean by freedom - for themselves and their members alone:

1. The Freedom from being told what to do.
2. The freedom to tell people what to do.

So with this in mind, let’s examine some of our political issues with an emphasis on who is telling who what to do. And there will be no ambiguity about what the world's authoritarian parties' underlying basic actions are ever again. Not what is said, but what they attempt to do. Starting with the COVID-19 pandemic, origins aside and pharmaceutical industry profits and greed and greed from maximizing profits aside, which are whole other stories, we were told by experts in infectious diseases across the world that to control the spread of the pan and if you're more conspiracy minded plandemic, it would be wise to socially distance, which on a side note is a terrible term - As we are social beings who desperately need social connection. So way better to call it "temporarily physically distance"... thus we were told by them to temporarily physically distance, wear masks in public spaces, and get vaccinated. So, in a general sense, we were being told what to do. Guess who had a big problem with that? All Republicans saw were certain people trying to tell them what to do,

which was enough of a reason to make it their chief priority to insist that they will not be told what to do. Even though what they were told to do could be said to save lives, including their own. As you can see, this is a very stunning commitment to refusing to be told what to do and in many cases was used as an excuse to do the exact opposite. So during this time we saw corporate grifting regressive collectivist dogmatic false Christian cult churches of Empire who hate science and know nothing of spirituality packed together for service without a mask in sight while we saw more true and moderate science accepting churches of unity encouraging their attendees to wear KN95's during their services as well as indigenous people hiking miles to get vaccinated.

On the room splitting subject of abortion, which we touched on prior in this series and congrats if you're still listening, claims of being "pro-life" are actually "forced birth don't care about life" by patriarchs who want to disempower women. But Republicans will nevertheless use marketing spin to claim to be the “pro-life” party because they recognize “pro-life” marketing lies can be used to tell people what to do - especially the female half of the species. The reason they lie about being “pro-life” when they are trying to tell women what to do with their bodies is not out of genuine concern for human life, but because they recognize that in this position, they can tell women what to do and claim it's about another life. That’s why when you use that same appeal “pro-life” toward asking Republicans to help pass legislation regarding doing something about gun violence in schools, it doesn’t work. Because there is no bigger subject for them than the second amendment "the right to bear arms" because on their end they are pro-violence and on your end in order to couple common sense rules with that right you are now in the position of telling authoritarian ammosexuals what to do and that’s precisely why they don’t want to do anything about it - hence you get "come and take it" and "from my cold dead hands" bumper stickers. So for a party that claims to care about life but is really an end times death cult, gun violence in schools is not a problem, but their children having to wear masks in schools is. Because somebody outside of their cult is telling their children what to do. Since the primary trait of modern American Republicanism is being selfish, someone else's dead children bother them significantly less than someone else telling their children what to do. Only *they* should do that because they are patriarchal extremist religionists who view their children as their property. Especially their daughters.

They claim to be for “small government”, but that really means a government that tells them what to do should be as small as possible but when the Republican Party recognizes it has an opportunity to tell people what to do, they are more than happy to grow government and have long had Deep State envy. Real or illusionary.

The reason Republicans are always so infatuated with the border, specifically the one connecting the USofA to Mexico, isn’t because they care about border security, it’s because they recognize it as the most glaring example of when they can tell other people what to do - specifically poor brown people. And if it's poor brown women that's extra icing on their hate cake. That's why it’s their favorite issue. You want in? Too bad. We tell you what to do and you have no say. If Republicans could do this in every social space, tell the people who aren’t like them too bad, get the fuck out - that would be something resembling their ideal society.

There are economic policies that we can demonstrate would be of obvious benefit to all voters. Including Republican ones from the proletariat who have been conned by decades of mainlining propaganda TV networks and AM hate squawk radio into acting against their own interests on behalf of the bourgeoisie. So how do Republican leaders kill potential support for these policies? Make the issue about who is telling who what to do. So for example, if we were a Labor or Green Party politician who said we're going to raise taxes on the top 1% of income earners so godzillionaires can have only 2 gulf stream jets instead of 5 gulf stream jets and in exchange we can have higher nationwide salaries for public school teachers. The framing from the red cult would be that someone outside of their party are the people telling their cult members what to do. If you want to know why Republicans can easily be talked out of proposals from green, blue, and other non-red cult parties that are shown to be of benefit to them, it is precisely because they have to entertain the idea of someone like Democrats telling their flock what to do. What should be understood here from the very beginning is that you are dealing with a worst case scenario mean and selfish bully with no heart, a corrupted mind, but a lot of will on an elementary schoolyard who says no one but them should ultimately be in the position to tell anyone what to do. Only they can do that - hence they are the authority - hence they are authrotarian.

On the issue of anthropogenic climate change, in Australia, the United Kingdom, and America, primarily influenced by Murdoch mind rotting propaganda networks in those three nations, we're now at a point where many regressives in those countries don’t regard it as a serious issue to the extent that they think it is a liberal hoax. The causes of climate change aside, in regards to the environment of our beautiful planet, there are two types of people on the subject. The type who want to use our lands, rivers, skies, and oceans as toilets and those who do not. We are on the side of both David Attenborough, the indigenous, and eviormentalists and are a strong advocate for not using them as toilets as we have been for the last couple centuries since the industrial revolution began. So when putting forth policies to support such things, and doing so involves telling Republicans to do something for the sake of the planet, you are still ultimately telling them what to do. Furthermore, you are conceiving the planet as not only a potential spiritual ecosystem, but as something alive and important that all human beings should have to share in an ecological balance. Since American Regressive's underlying foundation is based on the religions of the empire, not only do they have no interest in sharing it but think God put those things here for them to colonize, conquest, and extract for prosperity gospel profit. Which is a paramount example of their de-spiritualization.

Now here’s where things get interesting: when you explain to Republicans you want them to do something and explain it’s on the basis of benefitting other people and the environment by not using it as a toilet, then you have really crossed a line. Not only did you tell them what to do, you told them to consider other humans and living creatures. The whole point of an arrangement where you can tell people what to do, but you can’t be told what to do, is precisely to avoid having to consider others. This is why this is their ideal arrangement: so they don’t have to do that. This is why this is a very toxic school yard bully relationship with the idea of who can tell who what to do. So much so that it seems like the entire point is to conceive of a “right” kind of person who can tell other people what to do without being told what to do doesn't it? So let’s add one more component to this dysfunctional dark imperial shadow mindset for who tells who what to do.

1.There are “right” human beings and there are "wrong" ones.
2. The “right” ones get to tell the “wrong” ones what to do.
3. The “wrong” ones do not tell the “right” ones what to do.

As you can see, we've been hinting at what past essays in this pro democratic series have built upon in regards to anti-democratic authoritarian ideology. Which is who the authoritarian views as their "right people" - Which in Liberia or Sierra Leone are crazy black authoritarian warlord fascists with child soldier armies who pretend to have something to do with Christianity, in Saudi Arabia or Iran are brown extremist fundamentalist muslims that pervert Islam and smash statues from ancient Persia with sledgehammers, in Myanmar are

autocratic military state asian generals trying to weaponize Buddhism, and in the United States are "Straight only allowed White Male Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASPs) who are false Christian Supremacists and not real love thy neighbor Christians. All of which are cults so large that they prop up the accompanying caste systems structures. While in each case, the "wrong people" are everyone else in the multi-philosophical, multi-science, multi-faith, multi-ethnic worldwide pro-democratic coalition that makes up the majority of the population. Hence, if you're in the cult, you're considered "right", but if you're not in the cult, you're considered "wrong" and we'll be heading over into the nested layers of cults, in the next essay in this series.

Written Insight: The Importance of Asking Questions

Is the majority of your time spent around boring and uninteresting people that energetically drain you? Well... you are not alone. We personally are constantly amazed how many people we interact with socially, or in any environment where it might be a getting to know others dynamic, how few people ask us much beyond the basic "how you doing?" or "what do you do?" questions. If you have a lot of people in your life that ask you multiple questions in conversation, consider yourself lucky. In America, surface level questions may be peppered a bit, but continuing questions, let alone deeper ones, are rare.

In order to have a superior exchange over the narrow canyons of average thought, discourse cannot be unilateral, if you know that word - being any doctrine or agenda that supports one-sided action. It must be a reciprocal discussion, of give and take, statement and question, to rise up out of a shallow canyon and see some level of horizon one must ask instead of only speak. For we have two ears and one mouth and they are to be used proportionately.

Women are usually better socially, and it's common for men to lose more relationships later in life and then get lonely and shrivel up and die earlier than their female counterparts. Any centrarian living in a blue zone knows that their social lives and community are a key to their life longevity. We know several men, who are very well paid working professionals and the husbands of our wife's friends, that we might see only once every few years, who on the rare occasion we see them, we ask them maybe a dozen questions over the first hour or two, and they never ask us anything. So at some point we stop asking and the conversation stops and as a result they simply dont know much about us, even though we've technically known them at a surface level for over a decade.

Due to the narcissism epidemic, many just want to talk about themselves and what’s going on in their own lives, perhaps not even tracking how much others in the conversation are interested in what they are saying. To keep another pair of ears interested during a discussion at a party, or around a dinner table, or even in a work environment, the speaking party must not just project, but also be willing to receive. Their ears must function as much if not more than their mouth. This entails asking multiple if not frequent questions of others. This is the origin of a bad date. Where two people are at a restaurant and one of them is a blabbermouth valley girl Chatty Cathy doll, unilaterally explaining away all aspects of various social minutia of their life without the reciprocation of ever wanting to know anything about the other which they are supposedly there to get to know. Shallow people just want to talk about themselves, so talking to unsophisticated members of especially the opposite sex in social environments, which pre-internet took place 99% of the time in dens of alcohol distribution, can far too often consist of just nodding and pretending looking one is interested.

Developed by the Greek philosopher, Socrates, the Socratic Method is a dialogue between a teacher and their students, instigated by the continual probing questions of the teacher, in a concerted effort to explore the underlying thoughts that shape the student's life choices. In school, university, or the professional workplace it's common for new recruits to have a fear based mindset and be scared to ask because the moment they ask reveals they don’t know something. In that environment, this will surely be to a potential group of onlookers, fellow students or colleagues. Yet, wanting to know is engaging and lowers the threshold for others to also get involved in the discourse and then usually improves the overall quality of the learning and/or work experience.

When you ask another person "get to know them" questions it shows not only that you have a growth-based mindset, but most importantly, that you care. Because the act of asking questions is a fundamental and powerful tool for human improvement, exploration, and progress - regardless of being in a formal educational context, asking gathers information, facilitates learning, drives innovation, broadens thinking, challenges held beliefs, strengthens communication, allows for problem solving, fosters creativity, encourages adaptation, improves relationships. And sometimes such things can come from the most unexpected people or places, such as from the janitor instead of the Socratic philosophy professor. Those who ask others things, regardless of status, know life provides a never ending education allowing for the ability to be informed, engaged, and enriched.

The quality of your life is the quality of your questions. Why would one ever stop asking questions? We'll get into the importance etymology, the study of the origin of words, in another insight, but it's worth noting that the etymology of Asking = AS KING.

Written Insight: Podcast Update + Channel Reboot

Our primary YouTube channel has consisted of our independent documentary film outputs - basically our directing work which is, for the most part, self financed and we shoot during our travels, with us rarely on screen, instead usually behind the camera, and sometimes heard as narrator. We also write and narrate essays which serve as incubation writings for our documentary projects, which were once included also in this channel but we came to find worked best broken out into a separate channel called "An Infinite Path" which is named after our podcast that's comprised of those audio narrated essays and release there prior to us potentially doing the long and laborious task of adding a visual component to some of those writings. We had about a year ago also experimented with rebooting this channel to also include our documentary/journalistic/cinematic style street photography, but also deemed that worked best as a separate channel called "Philosophical Photography" which corresponds to our photo blog. So we now have 3 separate channels - each updated periodically. Hooray!

In the meantime, this channel has basically remained a random collection of our past live-action film projects and things we've shot. But with us usually being the one behind the camera and thus out of sight and that is now going to change as we reboot it again, because we are now going to be making the majority of the video uploads here just like this one of us talking on screen, putting the You in YouTube, with us speaking into camera.

All of our essay writings and still and moving work have tried to have underlying themes of life insight, self development, and human beings' relationship to the natural world. This includes sub-categories such as mental health and physical health, ecology, philosophy, spirituality, pro democratic political philosophy, more authentic ways of living and being, etc... Not fluff, not gossip, not film criticism, not how to's, not gear/hardware reviews but instead areas of hopefully more philosophical deeper substance about life which our past/present future documentaries hope to focus on. Outside of travels, we also work a day job and thus spend quite a bit of time on the homefront working from our office shed which you are now seeing here. So many of these subjects that we are interested in, and have made documentary outputs surrounding, are able to be brought more efficiently to you by simply turning the camera on ourselves and having us directly talking about them. So the idea is to now use this channel with us doing so in short length videos consisting of life insights from past, present, future works that you may find valuable, filmed with the same hardware we would shoot one of our documentary projects on. Still peppering in future doco trailers, excerpts, and shorter form films here, but with those being done on a more sporadic basis while our speaking into camera here will now be the majority of the content of this channel and should allow for more value added here along with more regular content to both this channel and our related podcast as well.

We've learned a lot through our life work, study, praxis, and experiences and although we still have much to learn, creating and putting content out there, helps us learn by sharing with you.

Written Essay: Pro-Democracy Series #7: The Underlying Foundation

So some of you are still listening... You have made it this far eha? Since you haven't left we will use this one to summarize what is the underlying foundation of the authoritarian. A minority group throughout the world that all have a very specific thing they build their lies upon while even more importantly summarizing what is the underlying foundation of the larger, pro-democracy coalition.

The reason for these listeners leaving is surely due to us bringing up in each episode of this series so far, and for very specific reasons, the two things you're not supposed to bring up in polite conversation, politics and religion. So let's define each of these now. No big deal. Politics can be said to be "a part of ethics which consists in the regulation and government of a nation or state, for the preservation of its safety, peace and prosperity; comprehending the defense of its existence and rights against foreign control or conquest, the augmentation of its strength and resources, and the protection of its citizens in their rights, with the preservation and improvement of their morals."

At this point it's of extreme importance to also define what religion is. And believe it or not, we were surprised to find how sufficient the usually C+ to B- accurate Wikipedia definition is - Religion is a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from divine sacredness, faith, and a supernatural being or beings. More simple definitions of each could be that politics is the science of government. While religion is any system of faith, worship, or practice.

The founders of our country, the United States of America, were wise to put freedom of religion and freedom of speech in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. And as a reminder, it states - "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". Both founders James Madison and Thomas Jefferson expanded on these words. In an 1789 discussion in the house of Representatives regarding the initial draft of the First Amendment, Madison stated the critical importance of a "total separation of the church from the state" which "strongly guarded the separation between Religion & government in the Constitution of the United States", and declared "a practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government is essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by that Constitution." and continued in saying "We are teaching the world the great truth that governments do better without Kings & Nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson that Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of government." In an 1802 publication and corresponding letter Jefferson wrote "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man (meaning both female and male) & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

So both of these gentlemen, just like the majority of the founders, just like the majority of the world's pro-democracy coalition, just like ourselves, advocate for religious freedom due to the free will of the individual. Mind, heart, and will. What you think, what you feel, and what you do. And this separation allows for the freedom to choose. How democratic, the freedom to choose what you want to do - so long as you are not incurring injury or loss on another. Which means freedom of religion as well as freedom from religion. Of no faiths and practices and all faiths and practices all available if one so chooses. Religious freedom means one can practice what they want, even to worship Moloch, Baphomet, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and you can change your mind as much as you like without the undue influence of any government or any rich and/or powerful entity. Religious freedom does not mean freedom of those who call themselves religious to have it their way or the highway. Nor does it mean one can use their religion as a cudgel to create out-groups cause that would only include some of the people and not all of the people. It is instead catered to everyone's free will choice and is synonymous with an enlightened individual with a conscious mind to have freedom of mind. Religious freedom founders such as Madison and Jefferson saw it as a way to prevent their future government from enforcing specific religious doctrine. Including freedom from corrupt and totalitarian control.

Now because we can say religion is "any system of faith, worship, or practice" and the world has billions of people, you are inevitably going to get some good and some bad under that very broad definition. Or better to classify this under true religion vs false religion. Or what we could call religion for light or religion for shadow. And this is where many times someone on the spiritual path will completely decouple religion from spirituality - although this is a whole separate essay, if not a series of essays, if not a book to expand on later. But for Cliff Notes at this point and for this purpose, and for the word "Religion" being used in the first amendment of the constitution, we'll keep any spiritual practice, even outside the world's formal organized religions, still somewhere in the grey area of being a religious practice in the broad definition stated prior, regardless of size or level of organization. Not quite knowing what shamanism was, an anthropologist once asked an indigenous person in the Amazon basin about his religion, and the man simply said, "drink this Ayahuasca with us in ceremony tonight and you'll experience my religion." And in that sense, we say that is an accurate use of the word.

Just like this indigenous man's religion, which is based in nature, all true deeper Religion will be based in nature and its external and internal natural processes, will spread love of the divine along with love for fellow men of all races and economic classes - especially the poor or the natives, will not be dogmatic, and is concerned with the spiritual self development of the individual so at its most esoteric and occult core will have a real initiation lineage. This is what we advocate for, that's why this is a pro-true religion series. However, there is another type of religion out there which is imperial and false - and a constant threat to democracy around the world. False religion replaces natures natural external and internal processes with an external hierarchy of male only deities and authorities (which is the off balanced patriarchy), promotes a "prosperity gospel" of enriching the already wealthy and not doing anything for the poor, says people are bad and born in sin, still has this manifest destiny attitude which claims God created nature to extract, (hence it's imperial and colonist), is exclusionary and divisive, and has zero interest in spiritual self-development of the individual but instead simply installs dogmatic doctrine. This false religion, or big religion, is a type of dark shadow religion of the Empire that has led to thousands of years of colonialism and imperial conquest of indigenous peoples.

Because we all need teachers in our lives to help us learn things, just like in the martial arts, there is no way one is going to advance spiritually, without good spiritual teachers and it's important to build networks and make connections along the way. One cannot only go it alone. So unfortunately, one of the largest traps for those on the spiritual path, is getting involved in cults. Which are extremely hierarchical groups led by a single authority bad leader or hierarchy of bad authority leaders who require unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices that result in the loss of their members free will via what's called undue influence. That influence comes from both those authority leaders as well as other cult followers. There are many types of cults, such as multilevel marketing cults, or yoga and/or crystal and/or UFO woo cults, or organized religious cults. And a major trapfall is to think that cults are only small and medium sized, when in reality false religions are big cults comprised of millions of members that simply began as smaller sized cults and grew larger for decades or centuries based on the teachings or doctrines of certain leaders. But the primary trait they all share is excessive devotion by their members. So the more extreme one's devotion to a group, doctrine, and or ideology, the more close the mind and likely that the owner of that mind is in a cult. Not OCCULT as in hidden, but CULT which also all share the commonality of being something that you are a member of or subscribe to and then can not leave without pain. This is the foundation of every anti-democratic authoritarian in our country and throughout the world which all of the rest of their behavior radiates out from - an extreme devotion to their dark religious cult. Which they are usually indoctrinated into from birth, and then is doubled down and tripled down, and quadrupled down upon through the cult members lives - which then affect their politics.

This is the problem with false churches across America that spread an incorrect reading of dominion from the bible by engaging in dominionism - which is a skewed ideology that religious people (and by religious people they dont really mean all religious people but only mean their fellow cult members) who are supposedly called by God to exercise dominion over everything by taking control over religious and political institutions. So those within said cult, who think anyone outside of the cult is sinful or evil, will say things such as "This is a Christian Nation" which not only throws out all other faiths, it shows they don't actually want the religious freedom in the constitution, let alone a multi-racial democracy. They do not want muti-racial, multi-ethnic, muti-cultural, democracy let alone full spectrum spirituality but instead a theocracy. "Christian dominionists" and "Christian nationalists", are all secretly just "Christian supremacists" that all want to create a false narrative about the history of the founding of the United States, which has an ironclad & unbreakable separation of church and state to instead do the opposite and merge the church with the state and send us back to medieval feudalism. They are not truly conservatives, or foundationalists, they are just thirsty for a Handmaid's Tale nightmare. This is the issue with the American Christian Right / Christian Wrong. Which is not a positive spiritual movement - it is instead primarily a political block - a cult using their skewed version of religion as a front.

In the allegory "The Cave", Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners' reality, but are not accurate representations of the real world. The shadows represent the fragment of reality that we can normally perceive through our senses, while the objects under the sun represent the true forms of objects that we can only perceive through reason. Socrates explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are actually not the direct source of the images seen. One prisoner in the cave who leans philosophical aims to understand and perceive the higher levels of reality. However, the other inmates of the cave do not even desire to leave their prison, for they know no better life. So when one of the prisoners in the cave moves from being unconscious to conscious enough to figure out what's going on, and climbs out of the cave to see the outside world, and takes a difficult and long acclimation period by coming out into the light, nearly blinded by it, and is eventually amazed by it, then goes back down to tell the other prisoners what he has witnessed. The returning prisoner, whose eyes have become accustomed to the sunlight, is even more blind when he re-enters the cave, just as he was when he was first exposed to the sun. The prisoners who remained, according to the dialogue, would infer from the returning man's blindness that the journey out of the cave had harmed him and that they should not undertake a similar journey. Socrates concludes that the prisoners, if they were able, would therefore reach out and kill anyone who attempted to drag them out of the cave.

Not only are we going to be highlighting cults throughout the rest of this series, we will be getting into nested cults, meaning cults within cults in an upcoming essay, but if one knows the allegory of Plato's Cave, that hits the nail on the head of what cult members' lives are like. So when someone is extremely religious and is also extremely dogmatic about it, and puts it right up front in their communications - such as mentioning it very early in conversation, or putting it on a bumper sticker, or right on their social media profile with words like "Christian" immediately followed by "conservative" we and true religion would say they are neither truly Christian or truly conservative but instead in a religious authoritarian cult which is the underlying foundation for their political authoritarian cult and they are simply signaling to other cult members that they are on their team. Because they have no individual free will or identity and instead are only given their identity through their cult allegiance. They are the opposite of individualized, but are instead collectivist. They are regressive collectivist dogmatists. Their identities are so wrapped up in their dogmas they'll do anything to prevent themselves from being unplugged, even if it means living a life of lies, because it's easy and makes them feel good to take the low road by not having to think but instead use their hearts for hate by scapegoating others. Like Gollum being corrupted by the ring, this is what darkness does to the mind.

Just like the dark cave, when you're whole family, and friendship circles, and local community are predicated around the extremist faith spread at your church, or mosque, or synagogue, or temple, if one goes through enough soul maturity to become advanced enough when growing up in an organized religious system to realize that inside a minority percentage but still sobering percentage of these places they are being lied too because the whole thing is off-balanced, dogmatic, love-lacking, patriarchal, hateful, divisive, sexually repressed, un-educated, anti-philosophical, anti-scientific indoctrination which protects power and control and wants a king, emperor, or some kind of dictator who shares those dark values. If the individual who realizes some of these things wants to leave the cave, trying to remove oneself from such a system is so incredibly painful because those in such a group would have to give up everything, be outcast, and start all over from scratch. So a cult member will do anything to not want to go through that. Even lie, cheat, steal, or vote against their own interests because the ends justify the means. And when the most extreme degree excessive devotion is tested, which is usually put under the title of "faith" when the faith is tested, one can end up in a Branch Davidians situation where you're literally more willing to let yourself and your flock and even the children within it burn alive than admit you might be incorrect on some things. Because to admit you were wrong from a foundational level would just be too painful. So because of this pain and dogma, there is almost no use trying to convince someone to leave the cult. Most of them will be taking that shit to the grave. So this is why they say, don't talk about politics or religion. Because a minority but still sizable percentage of the population is so indoctrinated into their religious cult and is thus ultra close minded about not only about their false religion but their false politics - one of which predicates the other.

It's really key for more open minded, patriotic, traveled, educated, conscious, sophisticated, nature appreciating, scientific appreciating, and philosophy appreciating developed people, secular and/or moderately religious for light and love, or some mix of any of those things, to realize how this false religion always tries to sink its talons into politics. And that it's the reason for some of the most extreme deplorable political policies across the world which lack freedom. In Pakistan, which is majority muslim, the punishment for denigrating, or insulting, or even questioning the prophet Mohamid, is death. Uganda, which is primarily Catholic, Anglican, and Pentecostal has a kill the gays law. And Israel, which is majority Jewish, has created an open air concentration camp for Palestinians. Not to mention folks indoctrinated into the religions of the Empire who surely want to burn us alive for sharing esoteric spiritual philosophy for your dear listener's self development - and this is in 2023 at the time of this writing and not 1023. So the world's religions, especially the primary organized religions of the world - which contain light but also shadow, have a responsibility to denounce the skewing of their religious teachings away from religious freedom back towards religious freedom. We ourselves have such great respect for true people of faith and especially those within the formal organized religious systems who call out and denouse such toxic ideologies within their own religions. But that takes guts and we need more of it. The 2016 documentary "The Jihadis Next Door" highlights a small group of extreme fundamentalists Muslim morons in the UK who have become radicalized. And the most important part of the documentary is when it shows all the other more moderate muslims in the UK, who are angry at the more extreme muslims for perverting the teaching of their holy books and holy profit. Similar to how good police officers surely feel about dirty corrupt police officers - which can give all police officers a bad name even though they in no way reflect the majority's, attitudes, opinions, or behaviors. So thank you pro-democratic people of faith who are Inclusive instead of exclusive for helping promote religious freedom and the separation of church and state and who have an underlying pro-democratic foundation and thus are being the good cops and not bad cops. Not to mention who are then allowing, as James Madisan once said, "religion to flourish in greater purity."

Now that we've highlighted the importance of religious freedom, we are going to head over to the next essay in this series to what an individual's free will and freedom really are.

Essay Posting

Hey folks, as wonderful conscious individuals that have subscribed to this site in the past, who now should have free access, and likely rarely visit, the intention is to allow you continuing full access to nearly all our work here for the price of $0.

With the spoken word essays, we for the last few years typically posted them to literally FOUR places each time there was a new episode. They were…

1. The main podcast public feed on this website, which aggregates out via RSS

2. The PRIVATE full members section ON THIS WEBSITE

3. The PRIVATE lite members section ON THIS WEBSITE

4. Our PRIVATE CREATOR Patreon

As you can imagine, this had been a total repetitive pain. Since our outputs have slowed because we never made enough money via memberships and instead have gone back to day job freelance work, we’re not doing Patreon anymore (for now) and only keeping the membership dynamics to this site, so that is 1 of 4 we no longer have to do. However, we’ve deemed that posting audio versions 3 total times to this site is also a bit overkill. So from now on, we are only going to post public spoken word essays to the public RSS feed, and then the written versions to the members sections. This is so the written versions are more private and only accessible here, adding a tiny bit of value for members who might want to read them instead of listen to them. We also will perhaps post written versions way down the line to our Substack if we keep it in addition to future essay volumes which we sell.

Because we are only averaging around 1 essay per month, and are not making exclusive private versions as often, on the rare occasion we still create a private essay, we will of course then release them as both spoken word and written to the private members sections exclusivly.

Essay: Clearing The Room

Comedy is great. Stand up (or sit down) comedians are in a class of their own, because there is no other art form short of a solo musician in which one puts themselves in front of a group of people, and as a single individual, provides entertainment to potentially filled rooms, or theaters, or even stadiums. And doing so through the act of joke telling - being funny. People love to laugh and be around other funny people. However, a great deal of funny people who become "professional" comedians actually grew up with difficult upbringings or rough childhoods. That almost seems to be a prerequisite to greatness within the art form. Which may be credited to a mapping of polarity dynamic where you need to have not had your life be just sunshine, rainbows, and easiness to be able to output more full spectrum and hilariously joyful material. But with the rise of all things, most of those who do it are quite so so. Mediocre at best. And these mediocre people fill stadiums because they are good at producing mindless entertainment and talking about essentially little to nothing while also outputting chuckles. However, different types of comedians have existed through the hilarity of the decades who are usually not as known, or popular, or likely paid as much, yet are the highest quality comedians. They are the most timeless whose jokes became the most memorable and potentially life influential.

Some of our personal favorites we've mentioned in the past before. Names like (and pardon us not including any ladies in this one) David Cross, George Carlin, Steve Hughes, and even Robert Anton Wilson. Who were unique voices unlike any other. Yet another and most influential on us personally was Bill Hicks. Who died way too young of pancreatic cancer in 1994 - Although he performed for nearly 20 years, by that time most of America, his home country, had never heard of him. The first half of his comedy career was on the road at small venues. His television exposure along with any sort of AM radio, which at the time in the 80's and 90's was the only real way to reach more people in the genre and thus become more known, was small. He made only two albums during his lifetime with at least another five released posthumously.

Hicks, along with some of those other names, are and were great, because they use or used comedy to talk about deeper things in life. His content was not the urine filled baby pool of fluff and shallowness and distraction but instead went deeper. Into the political, cultural, philosophical, and perhaps deepest of all, the uncomfortably truthful. All of these comedians, and especially hicks, found that comedy could be a way to somewhat bypass people's conditioning systems. Of which there may be multiple layers from childhood. We have also spoken of the quote “if you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.” Which has had some debate around the originator but is primarily credited to Oscar Wild. This quote is likely a variant on an ancient Mongolian proverb which says “A man about to tell the truth should keep one foot in the stirrup” because in a culture awash of disinformation, telling the truth can be said to be a revolutionary act not to mention hazardous to one's health. While this is not the only death with truth quote we all know, another being “Don’t Kill Me, I’m Just The Messenger!”, the point of the otherwise they'll kill you quote, is to use a little sugar to help the medicine go down. In short, sugar coat it. Help to soften the blow. While the quote might have been speaking metaphorically about being killed, people in positions of power have been known to ruin careers or kill journalists over truth being shared about them. That's as impiral as Empire Pie. The machines of the empire and all of us complicit in it don't want to look at shadow, otherwise called darkness. Of both the culture let alone their own and how they are often complicit in the larger cultural shadow. Revealing that to them puts them on a psychiatrist's couch, where they don't want to be, and angers them due to the revealing of pain and confrontation - In Hermetic Kabbalah this is called Nachash and it is how you progress by not just confronting it but fixing the things that are causing it.

Humor can be a sign of immaturity if used to cover up real talk, but it can also be used to help with all sorts of aggravations and negative feelings - which is where the deepness lives in the dark depths of the ocean of the mind. At the same time however it's much harder to build an audience off your work when you do that as an artist. Trying to create difficult to swallow truthful content. But it will be timeless content - Like some wise person from the East once said from their meat suit, which has also been credited to Buddha - the only thing that will for sure rise is the moon, the sun, and the truth. So a main way Hicks was able to do this is he was not afraid to go up, in front of an audience, and make them a bit uncomfortable. By not only going deep but sometimes uncomfortably and truthfully deep. Never losing confidence and never adjusting his material to the crowd. Just instead being himself, with it being said that he went out of his way to make people fidget in their seats. He appeared not to care one bit about the crowd reaction, but in a deeper sense, that was all he cared about. He had so much of both mind and heart and thus his comedy came from a completely unique source, the story of what that is can be told at another time, yet always revolving around the hope of who we as human beings could become, versus the frustration of who we truthfully really are. Which is currently in a very dysfunctional state. Hicks knew we were the facilitators of our own creative evolution. Basically, he was further spiritually evolved, and thus had aspects of himself that were off at a 45 degree angle from homo-normalus and especially homo-vulgaris but still inherently wanted anyone who would listen to what he was saying to evolve with him. If one can crack a joke while being shockingly true, it also supercharges the joke. It takes jokes that would otherwise be just squared and makes them cubed. Or, if one inserts deeper spiritual philosophy into jokes that can smear them across all zeitgeists for all time. But that's not easy to do and most people don't have the eyes to see it or the ears to hear it because they are not mature enough to do so. But if an audience member is a young mind for molding or a flower for watering, and most importantly, more influential to truth than propaganda when they hear it, something that may be initially uncomfortable, and that is not dysfunctional enough to be walked out upon, will have the audience member lying in bed that night thinking about it, and be like, "that is so true!!!" And that nugget of truth was delivered to them through the parcel of comedy. Which made the data transfer of it more palpable.

So in the later half of his nearly 20 year career Hicks did become more well known, never of course becoming a household name, but becoming appreciated and respected by his peers - with many of them knowing he was special. But that was after a decade of doing small shows, on the road, many of which he would essentially clear the room with due to his truths. Eventually finding more success in the UK due to the political environment of the time being a bit less polluted with regression and also likely due to the fact that Hicks was from Texas which is full of churches full of Texicans, is hotter than the fires of hell, is the shitkicker mothership where the world's cowboys emanate out from, yet that would not stop him from still often ripping into the corporate aspects of non real religion there and in other regressive red stateness. Since Europe, having gone through their holy warring during the crusades, chucked more of their past most religious bonkers-ness than America had, they were more open to what Hicks had to say at that time and he was met with still some but less resistance there. He likely still made British audiences uncomfortable but not as much so as he would with American audiences of the time. So eventually, with an American, and especially British, and somewhat global audience, a small percentage of an international audience eventually begged for his scolding view of politics and his commentary on international chaos. Continuing to use comedy to say deeper truthful things about what the majority of (especially) Americans were doing with their lives and culture. Which if you really think about it, was primarily, mundane at best, if not even completely empty and meaningless and people were like "I don’t wanna hear this, I gotta be at work tomorrow."

So for the previously mentioned reasons around Hicks, who was in influence on our work, we have long thought that much of our material would be better communicated through music and especially stand up comedy, instead of extremely obscure narrated documentary film or obscure narrated spoken-word essay. But over the years, as our work related to these podcasts, essays, and documentaries started flying the flags of being interested in alternative areas such as spiritual philosophies, which are not welcome in the mainstream consumerist corporate culture, we came to realize that much of the alternasphere, which comprises some very good things such as indigenous & ancient wisdom, nature's medicines, anti-imperial journalism, esotericism, and permaculture, but also not so good areas such as bad pseudo woo spirituality, snake oil alternative medicine, geopolitics, pop-occultism, and especially conspirituality and conspiracy did also not contain truth but were sometimes just as untruthful as mainstream culture. Seeing how many people went off the deep end with Covid-19 has been a real eye opener for example, so if anything this latest plague, and there have been ones in the past and there will be more in the future, has made us less conspiratorial.

We have plans for a future feature length narrated piece, to be made into either a documentary or if we don't end up spending the time on the visual component, a longer form spoken-word audiobook only around patternicity of what we have seen in many of these fields and with some folks who we might call past teachers, much of whose work focuses around the alternasphere. To cut to the bone of what the thesis of that piece will be, is that the majority of what these teachers were saying along with guests you might hear on especially conspiracy related channels, were claiming to be more conscious about reality and the world's problems, but instead solely and exclusively actually just talking about politics in disguise. And not from a standpoint of being pro-democratic and having more faith in our electoral process, but in fact the opposite. Sometimes identifying problems fairly accurately, but then oftentimes if not always proposing bat shit crazy pro-authoritarian hyper off balance right-wing homo-vulgaris solutions to such problems. Much of which is completely opposite to the indigenous wisdom we have come to respect and be shown by nature - which basically teaches in its most simple form that we must re-become homo-naturalis - reconnecting to spirit and return to be caretakers instead of just takers.

While we and likely you as well, are sick and tired of being sick and tired of corporate big legacy mainstream mockingbird media gaslighting us, and that's speaking to more false balance both-sides centrist media financed by sure, if you're more conservative leaning you'll thrown in the anti Jewish dog whistle of being "Soros backed." Yet that's not even speaking of the regressive lie with every breath extreme right wrong wing propaganda media that's bankrolled by sith lords with last names such as Koch, Devos, Murdock, Walton, and Mercer. As someone whose created alternate media as both a host and guest, we have also become sick and tired of being sick and tired of hearing the majority of folks in the aforementioned not so good areas, and especially conspiracy channels - books, podcasts, etc... promoting solutions which are in alignment with a very much minority but still concerning section of what makes up red America which has become a theocratic fascist cult as well as fascist movements across the world rising to concerning levels as a backward reaction to mass migration of climate refugees. Whose even more unswallowable untruthful material has worked decades out of the Goebbels "a lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth" playbook and have become professional at firing up pathos emotions using hate fueled talking point ecco chambers that claim they are actually the arbiters of truth when instead they are really in up-side-down world of endless lies through projection, inversion, and confession. 

So in closing we share a reminder that we not only release these essays as a podcast feed, but also bundle them up in volumes of 25 and make them available for a modest fee at our website www.nilesheckman.com and perhaps one day many years from now on archive.org. Meaning after we get 25 of them finished we are onto the next volume. For the first three volumes, which this essay you are listening to now is going to be one of the last in Vol III, our essays in all three volumes, comprising the first 75, have typically been about more overarching themes of self-development related to our personal life philosophy of growth + balance + creativity (meaning what is inside, what is a center point of equilibrium, and what manifestes externally) and have only occasionally touched on the political in the past. However, for our fourth volume, of which we have already released half a dozen essays at the time of this writing, will solely comprise our pro-democracy political philosophy series. Because if much of the conspiracy is just politics in disguise, we might as well speak about political philosophy and decoding transparently. So while no, this is not now exclusively a political podcast, we are committing to making a 25-part series which is related to the human enactment of a spiritual idea that is democracy, peppering this series' original slow drip release via the podcast feed mixed in with other occasional stand alone new essays but will likely take us at least the next year or two in order to complete that fourth volume. And also knowing that a large percentage of our past audience has had past interest in such aforementioned not so good areas, our ongoing pro-democracy and eventually Vol IV series of essays is a bit of our own attempt to clear the room. Since truth can make us uncomfortable, and also be hard to swallow, and is also paramount, we will continue to try and create it with at least some sprinkles of comedy, even if it clears the room.

Written Essay: Pro-Democracy Series #6: Structuring Socioeconomic Hierarchy

Since almost everything outside of nature, and thus spirit and real art in culture is secretly basically about either making money or procreating (making sex) - which sometimes includes making sex for money but more often than not making money to then have a desirable status for finding someone of similar status to procreate with and thus make sex, we focused heavily on the sex element of that in the last essay in this our pro-democracy political philosophy series. This time around we are going to focus on the money aspect, specifically how it is structured. Which is SO CRUCIAL to outerstand in one's personal development, as it's a key that answers many things about one's upbringing, morality, and later life behaviors. Not to reduce people to just their politics, there is also a major tell with how one deals with economic hierarchy and their political stance. Which we are going to give you as a simple decoding to the cipher in this one that unlocks a lock of money-based culture. And most importantly, what type of structuring of it is the most free and thus democratic. Since a major tenet of our work's philosophy is balance, we will mention now it's one in the middle - with the strongest middle class. For you can't have a democracy without an educated and strong middle class.

Although democracy is still a work in progress and one could say we haven't fully achieved real democracy yet. If you are hand on heart honest regarding you or your family members ability to thrive or just barely survive in our current kleptocratic or plutocratic system, one must admit it is currently almost exclusively due to your economic class status and resources. Economics is a social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Socioeconomics is of, relating to, or involving a combination of social and economic factors. Hierarchy is any system of persons or things ranked one above another. Economic Hierarchy refers to the structure of which money is dispersed to people and the ability of those with more money to exert power over those with less. So socioeconomic hierarchy is basically the financial and thus power ranking of individual people, households, companies, and institutions. Pertaining to you dear reader or listener, that's basically how much money you have, and how similar, less, or more it is than other people in your society or country have.  

Economic hierarchy is built up of three main sections, the poor, the middle class, and the upper class. In indigenous cultures money wasn't historically and isn't really a thing. Although there was/is trade. So indigenous people have operated outside of this rather new system. Living in a great balance with their natural environment for let’s say - a million years. But thousands of years ago, as agriculture became a thing and the empire and colonialism started to happen, this extraction mindset also kicked off. Commodifying earth, air, fire, and water - the elements for profit. This is the plot of the Avatar films. With the balanced and spiritual Na'vi living in harmony and longevity within their planet Pandora vs the batshit crazy technologically advanced yet de-spiritualized Sky People who only care about extracting Pandora's resources for financial gain. 

Future or past, Queens and Kings only work in high consciousness cultures like the ancient Toltecs of Mesoamerica or ancient Egypt in the Middle East, where there was a lineage of spiritual initiation, basically meaning there were Jedi in charge - resulting in hierarchical societies run by honorable Jedi initiated into higher states of consciousness who had good hearts and loved their people resulting in societies living in peace for hundreds if not thousands of years through the precessional cycle. But as that was lost, it turned those at the top of the hierarchy from Jedi to muggles. Since human beings are fundamentally good yet dysfunctional, being a muggle doesn't mean one is bad but it does mean one will be corruptible. So outside of those Jedi philosopher queens and kings historically the majority of rulers were not nice people because power to the uninitiated corrupts - thus they were mean spirited and most of all greedy. As the empire and colonialism continued, economic classes and warring factions later developed, and so did rotten to the core kings and emperors. Keeping the vast majority of the kingdom's wealth for themselves. They were no longer in balance with living with nature like the indigenous, not needing money, to now needing money within extractive systems. As most aboriginal people didn't need warfare, "savages" had peace for thousands of years while 13 colonies of decent yet still imperial English colonists have struggled to do the same for the last 300 years. 

Perhaps after this "Unapologetically Pro-Democracy" series we'll do another series along the lines of being called "Unapologetically Anti-Empire." And since we've spent some time with indigenous people we can tell you a thing or two about that. But at this point related to democracy and its economics, through the history of the last 2000 + years of empire, in which democracy has been a rarity of freedom pushing back against that repressive machine, money has usually been structured in a very lopsided and mis-distributed way. And has thus resulted in authoritarian monarchies - meaning one family who could care less about you or your family that's running the show - and if they didn't like you it's off with your head. That then transmuted only slightly less crap into oligarchies - where government ceases to work for the people and instead just for the very wealthy. Who if they had 100 people on an island, and they wanted to deve out wealth between them to create a micro economy, one person, solely because of bloodline (monarchy) and not initiation lineage are giving 95% of the wealth, 2 other people are given the 4% of the wealth, and the other 97% of people have to fight against each other for the tiny remainder of 1% of the wealth. And that's still how it is today but instead of caesars and kings we have robber baron godzillionaires. 

In a previous private essay titled "Let's Robin Hood the L-Curve" We gave some insight on something called the L-Curve, which can be found through the website www.lcurve.org. If you think the world's distribution of wealth is a 45 degree line, think again, it's actually literally a backwards shaped L of basically a nearly horizontal line meeting a sky high vertical line, which is basically no different than it was in times of medieval distribution of wealth. Where you had a corrupt king with 97% of the wealth, some corrupt landed gentry families who were the corrupt buddies of the king with 2% of the wealth, and 99% of the people who were peasant dirt poor. Today, what separates the first and third world is how the structuring of the finances of the people is laid out. And in third world countries 99% of the people have 1% of the wealth while in first world countries there is a stronger middle class that has maybe 10% of the wealth. Yet either way we're still always fighting this corrupt robber baron class of 1000 families making up less than 1% of the population with over 90%+ of the wealth. Let's take batshit crazy North Korea for example. Where you have a slothy Jabba the Hutt character supreme emperor who's drinking caviar out of $10,000 bottles of champagne while their people starve in labor camps. In Russia, which is sometimes said to be a gas station masquerading as a country, it simply went from monarchy to now solely oligarchy. Run by the corrupt Kremlin, and the Kremlin's fossil fuel robber baron oligarchic buddies. 

The morbid royal class, or oligarchic class, or mega-corporate class, the larger and more powerful they are, have historically defrauded consumers, exploited workers, and destroyed the environment when allowed to be completely let to their own devices without rules of the game set. So if you want to know the secret sauce hidden problem with the world today, which is still very much under the empire, here's your $64,000 secret answer to the problem - GREED from the top of the socio economic-hierarchy. And here's your secret cipher code - those who are truly pro-democratic and speak the truth will have politics that speak on behalf of the middle and bottom of the socio economic hierarchy, and those who are pro-authoritarian who lie and spin will claim they care about the working class 99% of people but whose policies and actions only benefit the top of the socio-economic hierarchy. And this is what we have been calling and will continue to be calling "dark sorcery" - which are those who protect the corrupt power structures, because they secretly know that's where the vast majority of the money is. It's also what we'll continue to be calling progress - being lessening the mis-distribution of wealth, and regress being increasing the mis-distribution of wealth. As the top of the hierarchy is where the dark sorcery comes from. Because power corrupts and ultimate power rots. 

Now to sink down into polarized politics for a moment, the words conservative and liberal mean different things in different parts of the planet. So sometimes left-wing and right-wing. And in the US we, unfortunately, have a polarized winner take all two party system. One is the blue more liberal party and one is the red more conservative party. While we intentionally are going to not continue to blast out these terms through this series and instead frame things more in a truthful pro-democracy progressive stance and a untruthful pro-authoritarian regressive stance, we will say the liberal parties have typically enacted policies that speak more on behalf of the bottom and middle of the socio-economic hierarchy, which represents everyone, because they think people are fundamentally good, while the conservative parties have more enacted policies which speak on behalf of the top of the socio-economic hierarchy, which represent extremely few - because they think people are fundamentally bad and born in sin. This is why, in the United States, truth now has for the most part, an extreme, extreme, left wing bias and why democracy is inherently liberal - A liberal democracy. This is also why left wingers punch up at corporate greed and the ultra rich, while right wingers always punch down at the poor. Usually the poor and black and brown. This is why right wingers are always shitting on immigrants, let alone not even giving a toss about the plight of indigenous, still thinking to this day they are savages, while at the same time when they see Jeff Bezos, who literally looks like a James Bond villain, has spent $500,000,000 on a new yacht to use privately for himself, rather than having that money go to (hundreds of college educations for example) simply say, good for him! It's easier to protect the man than fight the man. It's easier to sell out and speak on behalf of greedy dark sorcerers by getting paid millions of dollars a year as a propagandist protecting the top of the hierarchy than it is to be a financially struggling independent journalist trying to speak truth to power against the levels of power and control. One of those is Goliath and the other is David. This is why most journalists and documentary filmmakers like ourselves are progressive pro-democracy and most propagandists are regressive pro-authoritarians. 

Wealth should be like weight. Where we don’t want people to be gaunt emaciated anorexic skinny poor where they look like a skin skeleton in a concentration camp with so little money they have to live in a back alley and freeze to death during the winter, nor should they be slothy Jabba the Hutt whales with enough money for 1000x lifetimes, but instead have a nice middle range to their frame where they have a moderate nestage for their children and with a lifetime of work, enough money to live maybe a few lifetimes. Creating little to no poverty and little to no morbid wealth. For a strong democratic free society, we should instead have a much more just distribution of wealth. Where out of the 100 people on an island, who all have various different skill sets, lead to each person not having a total equal 1% of the wealth, but some have maybe as high as 3% while others have half a percent, which varies based on hard work. Because then power is more structured across each person and everyone has a near similar voice in the democratic process. This is what pro-democracy America, which should be a healthy center point from extreme authoritarian left-wing communism or extreme authoritarian right-wing fascism, is all about. While to some extent the right vs left narrative is not the best framing, what could be said to be a better framing is up vs down, or progress vs regress.

The good news is overthrowing the monarchs and oligarchs is as American as apple pie. Although America fought a revolution against monarchy in 1776, regress likes what it was like under monarchy and tries to let oligarchy rise again, Texas has to this day long modeled itself after Russian oligarchs. Where their politics is crueler and meaner and you have a couple morbid regressive oil guys influencing nearly all the show. Yet, one of our favorite things about America is that in its 300+ year history, about once a century, we have overthrown the oligarchs. The last example of which was after the pain of the depression in the 1920's which made even more of the population poor, and WWII of the 1930's which put everything on the credit card, progressive Franklin Delano Roosevelt brought economic balance back through paying off the debt and enacting New deal policies that created the fastest growing largest middle class in the world for 40 years. Then after actor turned regressive political actor Ronald Wilson Regan (6 letters, 6 letters, 6 letters) put everything back on the credit card through Reaganomics, to then having Bidenomics reversing that and paying down the deficit. So the third round of that is the fight we are in at the time of this writing. And this is partially why we are doing our part to fight these dark sorcerers by making this series and the rest of our work.  

This doesn't mean that there isn't a majority of people from all walks of the more moderate spectrum, left leaning liberals, independence, and even moderate right leaning conservatives, which make up a pro-democracy coalition, cause there are, but it does mean that is we also, hand on heart honestly, look solely at the data on each of the two major US political parties' economic policy over the last hundred years, a primary tell of who is more democratic is how it deals with taxes within economic policy. As blue enacts higher tax rates on the wealthy because they know that's where all the money is, while lowering them on the middle class and the poor. While the red cuts taxes on the wealthy because they also know that's where all the money is and who funds their campaigns. Today's godzillionaires aren't funding parks or public works projects or donating to improve schools. They're buying private islands, sports clubs, mega yachts, penthouses on billionaire's row in NYC that are so high up you can't hear the city below, building giant Austin Powers like phallic cock rockets to joy ride into space, or paying poor brown people to shepard them up Mt. Everest, or going on rides on non James Cameron approved failing submersibles - all of which to stroke their egos. Yet most of all, they are buying up all the politicians on team red and too many on team blue. 

As concentrated wealth skyrockets, the amount the wealthiest Americans donate stays the same, barely covering inflation. Data shows that when the red cult implements their supposed tax breaks which are really stealing from the poor and middle and even some of the rich to give to the morbidly obese rich, charitable giving drops and job creation slows. They're hoarding wealth, which hinders economies and stifles the democratic process. Deficit wise, in the US, the majority of blue are trying to make the middle class strong, and make us more democratic, by increasing taxes for the wealthy which aim to correct our deficit. While Red is trying to make us more and more into a third world country by giving us tax cuts for the wealthy, increasing the deficit. So blue is more pro-democratic and financially responsible while red is more pro-authoritarian and financially irresponsible. Under red administrations the debt explodes to pay for these tax cuts which are really just stealing from the poor and middle class while under blue administrations we get financially responsible and correct the debt. Red may make the economy look good in the short term, but are just putting it on the credit card. One is short term thinking and the other is longer term thinking. So basically blue is like Robin Hood, taking from the morbidly rich who are doing perfectly fine thank you very much to give to the poor, while red is reverse Robin Hood. As tax cuts are redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class and even some of the upper class, to the godzillionaire class. And by this godzillionaire class, we are not talking about the rich. We and likely you are rich in the grand scheme of the world. We're talking about the morbidly obese rich / the pyramid capstone. Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney makes $27,000,000.00+ per year and that pales compared to some of these modern day rulers like Mohammed bin Salman. Anywhere in the world you see this grand canyon of wealth between an aristocratic class and the people, you see less freedom and democracy. Ending up in situations where you have one Indian asshole who has his own private skyscraper mere blocks from hundreds of thousands of peasants with little to no sanitation living in shanty slums - that is not a free and just democratic society. It's just pretending to be.

Godzillionaire dark sorcerer and wrinkled Sith lord Rupert Murdoch, who runs propaganda media throughout Australia, the UK, and the US, was once quoted in saying it's not about red or blue, it's about green. Which shows that all he really cares about is money. And the playbook the robber baron class has done for over 100+ years, often via converting the green of nature to the green of money, is to get the working class people to fight against one another and not follow the money - primarily over tawdry culture wars. And this is kicked off by enraging a less traveled, less educated, and pro-authoritarian religious faction that makes up red America by disparaging all government by we the people, because they hate people, trying to create cynicism and apathy from the people around said subject, while the robber barons secretly using it to their own favor. Lobbying and passing legislation to deregulate corporations, bail out banks, and give tax breaks for Ebenezer Scrooge. The classical word misdirection example of such is the use of the word socialism. Capital means private while social means sharing, so in a system that has some private capital and some public social, the most pro-democratic societies have achieved a good balance of these two things. This is commonly seen in Scandinavian countries for example that have good social services. Yet a long con in the US has been to denigrate the social for the common worker, making a boogie man out of the word socialism, yet anyone who has ever denigrated that word is perfectly happy, surprise surprise, to privatize gains and socialize losses and actually loves socialism... for the rich. This was seen in the 2008 banking crisis by bailing out crooks on Wall Street at the expense of taxpayers. 

So to pierce further through the veil here, for those that haven't long already left this series... if you've let even a fraction of your mind be given to you by the talking points of dark sorcery overlords who protect the top of the hierarchy and thus even remotely think what we've been saying is socialist which somehow equates to Marxist garbage... guess what it actually really is - real Christianity. It is accurate to say the largest Pastafarian contingency in the United States is composed of various denominations of Christianity. So at this point we will make the Earth shattering statement, and decode, through the socio-economic hierarchy, that much of it is not actually Christianity but instead just masquerading as such.

While all faiths have their important holy books, the bible is the primary text that Christians hold dear. Now, not claiming that this text is the literal word of sky daddy, only those from dumb-fuckistan proselytize that. As we're not dogmatically claiming that the Emerald Tablet is absolutely undeniably the literal word of Hermes Trismegistus and are attempting to shout such from the rooftops on a loudspeaker like some crazy street preacher, but will instead give it some credit looking at it as a book of morals. If one actually reads it, one will find it full of some ridiculously dumb things and goofy things (Ezekiel 23:20 speaks of donkey's genitals and emissions from horses for example) but then some really wonderful things as well. We'll get into the layers of exoteric fake storefront marketing job vs esoteric real Christ in a future essay, with the most surface level fake layer being corporeal white Republican Jesus, and layer 2 being the corporeal brown hippie from Palestine. But the Christ teachings from the bible, coming from an actual enlightened, and enLIGHTened is the key word (hint hint) man or not, for the most part we think are really beautiful teachings, are all about speaking on behalf of the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy - with compassion. Which, for your spiritual development, is your heart aspect.

Having previously shared in an essay in this series that one of the primary tenets of real Christian, and thus some level of real spiritual teaching, is both love God (meaning the divine omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent creator and thus also very importantly - its creation) as well as love thy neighbor. Far too many "christians" only claim to love their authoritarian sky daddy version of God and forget their neighbor. They instead distort the teachings to lose their morality to not love or care for others. They are divisive, hateful and only love the top of the hierarchy because of their authoritarian upbringings. Yet not only are the Jesus teachings not only criticizing that with statements like Matthew 19:24 "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God”, they are speaking about loving thy neighbor, feeding the sick, clothing the naked, providing daily bread, defending the poor and needy, and being sympathetic to immigrants - whom most of the Israelites at the time were, as well as the golden rule. It speaks of being socially just and equitable. With ideals focused on shared communal responsibility. With dominion over the Earth being all of mankind - from all cultures and economic classes, not only Christians. It really sounds like the morals of the Jesus teachings condemned selfishness, say that poverty is morally unacceptable, and that we are simply being reminded to love one another. In thus we remind you of a second cyber key of decoding not just Christianity but any real Faith, pasta based or not.

If one is not willing to look at society from the standpoint of the middle class, let alone the poor, let alone the indigenous, let alone nature's natural animal kingdom, let alone the flora and fauna, they are not willing to look at it from the point of view of all spiritual life. But instead only rich people in an in group and not giving a toss about an underclass that will always be there. Street rats who are born street rats and will die street rats who can go die for all they care. This is what the imperial agents of the dark colonial religions of the empire have done, for thousands of years and are still doing today on behalf of their Ebenezer Scrooge overlords. Not only trying to crush the spiritual growth of each person but turn them from free sovereign within the community into an economic slave class through commerce. And this is a problem of religion, while there is good stuff at the tiny bullseye core of many of the world's faith teachings, we often don't see them acted upon because instead the world's religion's patriarchal hierarchy is the easiest place for the selfish and greedy to hide within. Always using doctrine from their texts supposedly written by divine hierarchy to just push their corruption, greed, and racial supremacy of economic hierarchy. Coating their hierarchical money greed in patriarchal hierarchical theological language to promote their relentless thirst for power and control. 

One of the main proofs for this, is that the main thing that really activated and kicked off the religious right, which should be called the religious wrong in the United States getting more involved in politics, and where we'll be heading in upcoming essays in this series, is in the 1970's the threats of losing their tax exempt status for their discriminatory practices. Instead of using government to enact rules and laws that help all of the hierarchy, from the middle out they are very happy to use government to do so just for the morbidly rich and screw everyone else. Enacting morally indefensible policies that endure vast suffering because of a vast chasm of wealth between the poor and the rich, with a hollowing out middle class. This is also why the African American churches tend to more honor the actual Christ teachings, because they're people are used to being more toward the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy and have been shat on since about the year 1619 since they were brought over as slaves and are continuing to work toward a multi racial democracy. And why we'll be using some of the voices of African American preachers, who actually are saying some spiritual things, in future episodes of this series.

Tithing is not about giving money to the already ultra rich, ultra regressive Mormon church. Redistributing wealth upwards. It's about giving a portion of your money to charity, to help those in need who have less than you. So if you see a modest sized church with a soup kitchen line, feeding the homeless, that may be an actual real church. If you see a church that looks like a shopping mall, or Superman's fortress of solitude, which was surely built on top of an older indigenous or pagan sacred site, run. And make sure and do your patriotic duty as a freedom lover of your country to call "Christians" who don’t speak and act on behalf of the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy CHINOS - Christians in name only or hypoChristians for their hypocrisy. 

Songs Against The Machine

Here's a short piece we shot spontaneously and unplanned last week in Washington D.C. and edited this week documenting one of many ongoing protests against the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

What we love as both a street photographer and as a documentary filmmaker is that you’ll go out with a camera on a day and not be sure what you’re going to film, but when you find yourself in the right places at the right times, magic can happen.

As a filmmaker who’s basically had to edit every one of our films ourselves, we’ve come to learn a great deal about editing - which is where the documentary is oftentimes written. Since we love us some good protest photography or footage, using the edit to find a mini three act story in this one manifested around the songs that were sung. As we also got about another 1/3 of footage that didn’t make the final edit of other aspects of this protest which didn’t feature singing, and thus didn’t so much advance the narrative.

Written Essay: Pro-Democracy Series #5: The Mass Psychology of Sexual Repression

This is the 5th volume in our pro democracy political philosophy series. In the 4th volume, our previous essay related to "Growing Up With Authority and Love" we touch on how there is a direct link in growing up under loveless authoritarian parenting styles and incorrect indoctrination into thinking that the human race is fundamentally bad, based in sin, and later in life support for authoritarian political leadership. Authoritarian parenting is defined as a parenting style characterized by sky high levels of control and strict rules, with little room for negotiation or discussion. While authoritarian political leadership is characterized by a strong focus on obedience and respect for authority and the deplorables who aim to yield that authority with little room for dissent or democratic decision-making. Individuals who were raised in an authoritarian parenting style are locked into fully conforming to their parental asshole authority with near complete incapability to question or challenge their authority figures who emphasize obedience for that authority, regardless of whether those leaders are acting in their best interest.

In our third essay in this series, "Gender and Sexuality Balance", we also touched on the off-balanced nature of systems that do not equally value both the feminine and the masculine but instead skew heavily towards the masculine. This extends all the way up through culture, is ground zero for empire, and back through history (his story, not both her story and his story) to the centuries long con claim that the creator of the universe is only a male and not both a female and male. While most modern day organized religion is patriarchal, claiming that the creator is only a male, who has the most importance throwing the feminine to the side of less importance, many moderate religious folks are very much still pro-democratic. However, in all more extreme religious households, not only is there the incorrect claim that sky daddy is also a male but also a vengeful and mean authoritarian male - so basically your mean, macho father is also hierarchically under a mean and vengeful sky father. So if a dad was a chauvinist macho asshole, it's likely their children will be the same. Authoritarian leaders often present themselves as strong, decisive, and in control, which can be attractive to fear based persons who secretly feel powerless and lack control in their lives and need a macho father figure and patriarchal sky father to tell them what to do and think.

While a variety of factors play a role in shaping an individual's political views, and authoritarian parenting heavily relates to support for authoritarian political leaders because of the appeal to this loveless mean male hierarchy, other factors such as travel, socialization, and education also play a role. However, since the major factor missing in this hierarchy is ample love, there is another factor that is a major cause tied to the loveless aspect. Which is the way that the household treats sexual education. Which in progressive pro-democratic households is to embrace it and in regressive authoritarian households is to repress it.

Sexual repression is a state in which a person is prevented from expressing their own sexuality. It's often linked with feelings of guilt or shame being associated with sexual impulses. Defining characteristics and practices associated with sexual repression vary between societies and historical periods. The behaviors and attitudes constituting sexual repression differ across cultures, religious communities and moral systems. Sexual repression can largely be categorized as physical, mental or an amalgam of both. It thrives in authoritarian theocratic countries in which common practices include genital mutilation. Especially against, you guessed it... the feminine. Even consenting adults under these tyrannical systems believed to have engaged in behaviors contradicting dark social, imperial, religious, or cultural expectations - such as sex out of marriage, sodomy, or homosexuality, may even be punished through honor killings, persecution, or even the death penalty.

So instead of that tyrannical insanity, what is the more natural, healthy counter to this which occurs under loving parenting? Proper sexual education. When one is a baby, they learn how to eat, sleep and pee and poo. So they get those basics of their plumbing figured out. Sexual education, which when introduced, just prior to hitting puberty, is the completion of this previous education - further informing youth how the secondary aspects of their bodies systems and plumbing fully works. And then being educated about these natural instincts, being shown that these sexy liquids that start oozing out of us when we become teenagers are perfectly natural, and are openly shown how to balance these associated urges and interests in life, and have healthy expressions for them. Authoritarian households, especially repressive ones, not only do little to no education about this secondary basic natural education, they outright dismiss it as dirty and sinful and encourage the repression of it.

Now we know you love it when we talk about sex. We've had a long time essay in the works about how sexual energy is also creative energy. More on that in a future long form spoken word piece but we will touch on it a bit in this essay. So strap in here (no pun intended) as we get into this... We're going to say some things in this one that should just be considered standard mature adult conversation. Catered to you, the mature, sophisticated reader or listener.

Humans, and pretty much every other animal in the food chain, are sexual beings. We could have a whole separate evolutionary and epidemiological discussion about how the majority of mating in the animal kingdom happens quickly, not in a consummated relationship. IE, the two fish who never have met before, team up, share fluids, fertilize thousands of caviar, and then go off on their separate ways to never see each other again. Quick Quick Boom. This style of procreation in nature works well for creatures whose offspring can be independently operating from day one. But for other species, such as beavers or elephants or humans, where the offspring need to be under parental care for multiple years, that dynamic entails parents that have established monogamous relationships in order for both to be involved in protecting and raising their children. We could also have a separate evolutionary discussion about both primate and human indigenous hunter gatherer societies in smaller tribes, in which there is evidence to show that orgies were standard practice for long sections of human tribal history, in which everyone of consenting age is banging everyone else. In which not only is there more to go around, but then no one quite knows whose child is whose, so there's an incentive for the whole tribe to co-raise each child. Hence the phrase, it takes a village to raise a child. But as society scales up, the more standard practice has been that two parents, or a single parent, or some combination of parents, older siblings, and grandparents, help raise the child - with love and care.

So when a parental figure loves and cares, they want their child to be truly happy and educated. And part of having future healthy and loving relationships is to be informed about the underlying scaffolding that should be in place for future adults of consenting age to have the full extent of expression of that future loving relationship - physically. In open, pro democratic societies, which should hold both sexes of equal value, this is always in place. Because it's informing and educating about basic aspects of nature - which include foreplay, steamy sexual pleasure, and crescendoing orgasms. All of which, when done amongst consenting adults or shock horror, god forbid, when done individually by a single adult - are wonderful and a glorious part of life.

But if one is a de-spiritualized pro-authoritarian patriarchal theocrat who hates nature, and thinks people are born in sin, the opposite is thought. The 90% of religion that’s imperial crap is sexually super up tight and historically, the United States, which has a large percentage of its population that is quite religious, is thus a quite sexually repressed culture. This extends back to the Victorian era where they would have to literally cover exposed piano legs to not give the boys any arousal. And has carried into this puritanical mindset of the new American settlers, many of whom were colonialists of empire who slaughtered the native Americans. To this day, Europe is a bit more enlightened when it comes to nudity. As you're much more likely to see a topless woman on a beach in Spain. And not only does little to no one care, they mostly know it's awesome. Because they are more social, chill, free, and democratic. But since about 1/4 to 1/3rd of the US is still religiously bonkers, this constant through line of sexual repression still exists. And the lauder the volume is turned up on the religious indoctrination, the crazier these later effects end up being within those who grow into adulthood under heavy dogma - such as ultra sexually frustrated nuns that are always crabby and pissed off, or a quiverfull child who’s one of 19 kids in a bat shit crazy family that starts banging his siblings, or mega church preachers always having sex scandals, or the attitude that male to female rape within marriage is totally allowed, or Catholic preists who end up raping kids, or militias or mercenary soldiers for scumbag authoritarian armies who end up also being mass rapists. All of who would have little to no problem watching bullets spraying, because they’re ammosexuals, but shock horror at seeing that female statues bare chest or Michelangelo's David’s ween.

Most of everything in culture is secretly really about either making money or sex. Both are in a somewhat subtextual dont really say it upfront way - but especially so with sex. One example, if you haven't figured it out yet fellas, is dancing - which, like shamanism, is as old as the hills, and is a major flag wave for sex. Because there's nearly a 1-to-1 correlation with how good you are at shaking your hips dancing with how good you are in the sack. Women generally like to dance more than men, so you’ll see a group of women out on the dance floor first, and they know this. And want to see a man's dance skills - because it secretly reveals this information in finding a partner. So up tight culture has very much been about not directly speaking about sex but having undertones of it everywhere. The psychedelic philosopher Terence Mckenna once accurately said that culture “would make sex illegal if they could. But they can't, so it isn't.” But they will surely use it to sell things to you. We don’t have to tell you how much of society and culture, especially commercialism, is really all about sexual undertones. Human sexuality has had a significant impact on the marketing industry. The use of sexual imagery and themes in advertising is a common tactic used to grab attention and increase consumer interest in a product or service. This is because sexual content goes to our deep roots, urges, and natural instincts. Because we are sexual beings, and because we want that, which marketing knows, they also know that sexually related influences are highly attention-grabbing and memorable, and use it on us consciously or unconsciously as the most effective way to communicate a message and sell a product. The use of sexuality in advertising can be found across all forms of media, from print ads and television commercials to online marketing and social media campaigns.

Healthy society certainly discourages hedonistic orgies amongst under age teenagers. All getting STDs and pregnant during their pre-collegiate years. That would be bonkers in the other direction of repression if allowed. But when one naturally becomes an oily and sweaty teenager, this natural stuff they want to do, if in a more balanced dynamic which entailed being educated about birth control and allowed to have healthy, guilt free expressions for a fresh sex drive, should result in things like encouraged masturbation as a solo outlet along with development of a caring relationship prior to undertaking in sexual activity exclusively for pleasure when reaching adult age. But when none of that is allowed before some sort of strict marriage, or sometime even an arranged loveless marriage, and teenagers are instead told it's bad to do, or you shouldn't do, or is sinful to do, and birth control isn’t even mentioned or is also said to be bad from Satan, hating the thing you want to do most and repressing that natural healthy creative urge for pleasure purposes really messes with the horny teenage brain. Then fractal that out to every extreme regressively religiously indoctrinated child, and you've got 25% of a society's children that are totally mentally damaged. Basically, young adults with wet vaginas and hard boners are told by stuffy adults with ultra tight Protestant buttholes they can't physically interact for pleasure purposes. And claims that society is sinful and bad and you the child are bad and your sexual urges are wrong fucks you up in the head and makes you a future mean asshole who wants to be an authority over others.

We are far from being the first person whose come to decode this. Wilhlm Reich figured this out almost 100 years ago. He was a psychoanalyst and doctor of medicine who had a life very similar to Nicola Tesla's in which he was 100+ years ahead of his time but had a very tumultuous relationship with entrenched systems of power (the authority, more like the horny but repressed authority) which some of his work threatened. Much of that work, like his predecessor Sigmund Freud, was related to sexuality and sexual psychology. He coined a term called "orgone energy", from "orgasm" and "organism", for the notion of life energy and very much knew some of the esoteric secrets about the human orgasm. Which the religions of empire work really hard at repressing from the populace. Also like Nicola Tesla, his life is very worth looking into, as he died in very poor conditions when he should have died with high cultural and societal appreciation. Reich contended that psychoanalysis of his time had failed to address the social and political factors that contribute to emotional distress. He claimed that when an individual is sexually repressed in their youth, they develop a sense of guilt and shame about their sexuality. This guilt and shame, according to Reich, leads to a suppression of one's natural sexual impulses and desires. As a result, the individual's emotional and psychological development is hindered, which then snaps by inevitable feelings of aggression and a need for control. In addition to his work on orgone energy and its therapeutic potential, Reich made significant contributions to the field of sexology. He wrote extensively on the topic of sexual repression and its effects on mental health. He also helped to popularize the concept of "sex-economy," which posits that sexual energy is an obvious driving force in human life. Reich also found that this same orgone energy is responsible for the creative process and that the free flow of orgone energy is crucial for creativity. Reich's ideas about the connection between sexual energy and creative energy stem from his research that both are forms of bio-energy that are stored in the body. He was one of the first to propose the idea that sexual energy and creative energy are closely linked and that the repression or blockage of this energy can literally lead to a wide range of physical, emotional, and psychological problems. He also felt that the orgasm and the discharge of its energy leads to a feeling of well-being and balance when dont through healthy expression. He emphasized the importance of sexual liberation amongst consenting adults and the rejection of regressively old school up tight societal attitudes towards sex and sexuality - and especially how that relates to creative expression. Reich argued that the ultra conservative patriarchal repressed family structure, which only says sex can be used, without pleasure, to have way too many kids, plays a role in the rise of fascism because the patriarchal family creates a sense of submission and obedience making them more susceptible to fascist ideologies closely tied to the rise of authoritarianism and/or totalitarianism - so this is the extra nightmare fuel that supercharges what is already growing up under a mean authority which lacks love - and that is no guilt free sexual release valve.

He stated such in one of his accomplishments - which is his book titled "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" which he wrote in the early 1930's - which is a psychoanalytic examination of the rise of fascism in Germany and other European countries during the early 20th century. A definition of Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social patriarchal hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Like we always say to seek balance, as communism is the most extreme form of off balanced left-wing politics, where most everything is totalitarian government run and/or based, fascism is the most extreme form of off balanced right wing politics, where everything is under a complete totalitarian dictatorial mafia style corrupt corportized and often theocratic regime. Mussolini, took the name of his party from the Latin word fasces, which referred to a bundle of elm or birch rods. There’s a deeper story for another time as to why there are fasces symbols of these bundles of rods on each side of the American flag behind the congressional podium in congress in Washington D.C. but the premise of Reich’s book is that fascists and authoritarians actually come into power through previous decades of political and ideologically-oriented sexual repression on a society level in mass - the mass psychology of sexual repression. 

The book also very much mirrors what we have previously been highlighting here, which is not only that sexual repression in one's youth could lead to a number of emotional and psychological problems, but also includes the support of Fascism in adulthood. Reich argued that the suppression of sexuality, again, the natural and healthy aspect of human life, also contributes towards anxiety and aggression, which in turn make individuals more susceptible to ultra terrible fascist ideologies which hate others. Because as we've been decoding, orgasmic energy, designed to be used for love, can instead be negatively transmuted into hate. And since fascism always says get the dirty poor foreigners and other minorities out of our country and lies about restoring order and control in the face of oftentimes perceived chaos and instability of a population that is emotionally and psychologically damaged, Reich highlighted that this emotional state created by sexual repression makes gullible individuals more susceptible to such appeals because they are targeted towards those who have feelings of powerlessness, insecurity, and resentment. These feelings are exacerbated by the economic and social conditions of the time, such as unemployment, poverty, and a sense of alienation. Reich contended that these feelings lead gullible repressed individuals to seek a sense of belonging and security in fascist ideologies, which supposedly offer a sense of unity and power through the submission to a supposed strong leader, even though in reality these asshole leaders are weak cowards who have only managed to fail upwards, and instead of their mentally damaged supporters seeing the dictator as the obvious problem, their supporters pent up sexual repression hate mirrors it backwards onto the the scapegoating of certain other groups which the dictator commands. And those will always be those not in their cult and often on a lower totem of the "socio-economic hierarchy." Since most everything in modern culture is not just about sex but money, we'll be heading over to how that socio-economic hierarchy is structured and what type of its structuring is the most democratic in the next essay or two in this series. 

Photography Focused Channel

We are interested in many subjects. But over the years have solidified three main creative outputs which we would like to continue doing until we ship off this mortal coil. They are:

1) DIRECTING DOCUMENTARIES
2) TRAVELING THE WORLD AS AN INTERNATIONAL STREET PHOTOGRAPHER
3) WRITING AND NARRATING ESSAYS RELATED TO SELF-DEVELOPMENT

It has LONG been on the “to do list” to create more with our form of documentary photography - street photography. Specifically, to use the thousands of back photographs we’ve taken over the last 20 years to help provide visuals for more short form video documentary work related to the subject. Being interested in the vary obscure subject of esotericism, we also just really need one of our outputs to have a more mainstream appeal that we can still weave some esoteric themes into and photography just so happens to be the #1 most popular hobby in the world.

About a decade ago we secured the URL www.philosophicalphotography.com which has forwarded to nilesheckman.com/photography ever since. The reason for that name was that when we take a photograph of someone or something candidly, we will also provide a somewhat funny and/or philosophical caption along with each photo. Which is what you’ll see if you scroll through our work at the feed at https://www.nilesheckman.com/photographyfeed.

Over a year ago we also secured the same name for a YouTube channel and because we’re not doing the podcast conversations anymore have now been finding the time to create some video pieces there which can be found at - https://www.youtube.com/@philosophicalphotography/videos

YouTube is the largest video platform in the world and the second largest search engine in the world. Being under big brother Google does have its negatives, and we are constantly on the hunt for new video platforms that are not regressive hell scapes, but generally works very well and we do use it most days we are home and in our office. Since it’s good to upload to platforms you actually consume, we have deemed YouTube as a good single platform to showcase all of those three outputs. The platform also works best to have a channel based around one particular subject. For years we were uploading a mix of all of our three outputs to our main channel but we started getting trapped in the algorithm. So in recent months we have now broken each out into their own separate channel. Which seems a bit like overkill but we barely use any other social media.

With our usual approach of quality over quantity, the idea is to make each video on the street photography related exclusive channel a mini film in itself. Covering topics such as sharing our life experiences and techniques learned through our international street photography travels as well as share through a documentary lens the work of other street photographers and photojournalists.

Essay: Arriving In Waves

You may have very much noticed that these essays or episodes, at the time of their initial publication, come in waves. Meaning not one by one regularly on a set standardized, reoccuring schedule, but instead more in chunks or bursts, a bit sporadically, with oftentimes sizable gaps of time in between each wave. For example, not always, but oftentimes, they're may be 3 or 4 publications in a month and a half and then it will be 4 months of downtime - Crickets! Dust bowls! Making half the listeners or readers think we've hung up the reins, put them out to pasture, rode them off into the sunset, otherwise known as completely concluded them. Only to have another wave show up at some previously non-defined amount of time. Until this all re-courres again! 

Creative outputs are often intermittent due to a variety of factors. One of the most prominent reasons is the nature of the creative process itself. Each of these writings we try to make (hopefully somewhat) timeless and figuring out what the next one will be is based on what we feel at a certain time based upon how much introspection and incubation we've given an idea. Ours or anyone else's real creativity requires a certain level of inspiration, and inspiration is not always present or easily accessed. Often arriving sporadically and is influenced by factors such as emotions, schedule, environment, and life experiences. Primarily in this scheduling case, it's because we also undergo various waves of a short term slave job - day work. Having typically freelanced over the last decade, in various film related capacities, which means being absolutely slammed for numerous months, and then suddenly unemployed. Feast or famine.  

Creative work is very undervalued in the dysfunctional everything is for profit culture. Like most others, our most creative work makes us almost the least amount of money - so we work as well. Not as a permanent staff infection company man but here and there at various places at various times. So when little to no creative outputs are occuring, it almost always equates to us working. Less on our own projects, and way more on someone else's projects. Thus, these essays, along with our documentary and photography outputs, get mostly paused. There is an unfortunate stigma around creative personal work being viewed as a hobby or a luxury rather than a viable career option. This can make it difficult for artists to earn a fair wage for their work, particularly in fields such as writing, visual art, or music, where piracy and unauthorized sharing of content being rampant hasn't helped and the rise of the ghost in the machine, otherwise called Artificial Intelligence, is both a simultaneous help and hindrance as well. 

Even though, in the early 2020's there are now new models for funding, distribution, and monetization, pressures of commercial viability and financial success more often than not stifle creativity and limit artistic expression. In order to make a living off their work, many creatives must make compromises and sacrifices in their artistic vision, leading to a dilution of their unique autor voice and style. Not to mention spending time away from what they want to be doing to instead develop business skills. Another challenge facing creative individuals is the lack of stability and security that comes with working in a freelance or self-employed capacity. Without the benefits and protections of a traditional job, such as healthcare and retirement co-provided in a more sophisticated European society that provides those as a social contract through tax dollars paid - rather than solely through an employer, creatives often have to navigate a complex and often uncertain landscape of contracts, clients, and finances just to be able to be paid a modicum of a living wage along with a nestegg for the future. Furthermore, creative outputs are often hindered by the pressure of deadlines or expectations. The stress and anxiety associated with the need to produce on demand can be a significant impediment to the creative process, causing artists to second-guess their work and ultimately stifle their creativity. This is why we long ago learned to completely decouple our day job work from our own work. Knowing they are two completely different things. So between all of these life dynamics one goes through to make a living, or let the sand drain from the hourglass their whole life making a slow dying, intermittent waves of others work generally pause intermittent waves of maximized individualized original creativity. 

We've previously released a private essay on the subject of having "no set schedule" in regards to outputs. So we encourage you to seek that out and try and not have this be just a duplicate of that previous writing, but what is important to highlight here is that - it's incredibly difficult to make a full time job out of your own creativity. John Anthony West, the Egyptologist who, unlike most mainstream legacy forgettable Egyptologists, actually knew things about the esoteric and initiatory aspects of ancient egypt, thereby actually knew deep things about Egypt, and was someone who wrote his own books from his decade of research on the subject and made a documentary series about it as well called Magical Egypt which is very much worth your ear holes and eyeballs, once said in a lecture that it's nearly impossible to make a living off your own creativity.

Creative fields, where one does actually use some level of their own creativity, are highly competitive, with many talented individuals vying for nauseatingly limited keyston creative opportunities. This means that success often requires not only skill and talent, but also luck and perseverance. And then something called The Pareto distribution sadly also comes into play. Which is a power-law probability distribution that is used in describing the ratio of many types of observable phenomena sometimes within more perfect nature and way more often within dysfunctional culture. In short it highlights how most people will have little to very moderate success at something, while a tiny few will be wildly successful at it. Basically the scale of resources and thus power, is incredibly off balance. Such as how most podcasters make little to no money off their podcasts, and then one podcaster sells his to Spotify for $100,000,000.

Regardless of how one makes an income, in a boring slave job or even if it is lucky enough to be off some percentage of their own creativity that's in a job that is mostly enjoyable, over the long haul, being years or decades, the intermittent nature of creative outputs allow for more flexibility. Also allowing for splashes of productivity followed by periods of rest and reflection. This pattern of intense focus and rest is often necessary to allow the mind to recharge and generate new ideas. From within, not from outside sources. Such is how the band Tool is able to make such incredible albums that dont degrade over time. Where songs on their last album can be mixed with songs on their first album, and they pretty much all lock in place together without a noticeable style or quality change. You could take all their songs from all their albums, mix them all up, and basically not be able to tell which are newer and which are older. They are one of the only bands which seem to be able to do this, but the catch is their fan base will have to wait the better part of a decade between each album being released. 

Because the creative process is often unpredictable and nonlinear, meaning that progress may not always be immediately visible or measurable. It is not uncommon for creative individuals, outside of what they get paid for, on their own time, which is likely a rarity to begin with, to also spend long periods of that rare personal time on a single project or idea, only to abandon it entirely or return to it later with a fresh perspective. So we find, during these freelance job chunks, our creative flow, and frankly much of our self development, get either paused or turned down to a slow drip. As it's really hard to have time for introspection, travel, and synchronicity when you are working a lot of hours for 6 or sometimes even 7 days a week from home. At that point not only can you not get out there, see the world through travel and walk the yellow brick road, you barely have time to fold the now clean and formerly stinky laundry. 

The ebb and flow of inspiration, coupled with the need for rest and reflection, can often lead to periods of apparent inactivity. However, it is important to remember that these periods are not indicative of a lack of value, creativity, skill, or legacy built, but rather an essential part of the process that ultimately leads to the production of meaningful and impactful work over a lifetimes. So the intermittent nature of creative outputs is a natural and inevitable part of the creative process - and is how these essays will continue to arrive in waves over the months, quarters, and years. Think of this venture's orbit just being longer. Which should increase the value of the waves when they arrive anyway. So this orbit is not Venus, it's Jupiter.

Documentary Recommendation - The Lost Leonardo

This feature documentary covers the mystery surrounding the Salvator Mundi - the supposed first painting by Leonardo da Vinci to be discovered for more than a century. Which has gone missing after being sold to a morbidly rich godzillionaire - who is likely Mohammed bin Salman who had his guys cut Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi into pieces.

The work is for sure considered to be partially by da Vinci and for sure by one of his students. But whether it was 100% originally painted by da Vinci is still a matter of private debate. New York art restorer Dianne Modestini, who is One of the if not THE leading art restores in the world thinks so and so do the experts at the Louvre in Paris. The work stayed undiscovered for hundreds of years because of a bad restoration which covered up many of the traits that were call signs of da Vinci’s work and until that restoration work was removed only were those things then discovered.

The film tells the tail of this process and also how the priceless work of art of course went into the private sale market, and all the skullduggery contained within, to then being the highest selling work of art to date. A later twist on the story is that bin Salman visited Paris prior to the work’s authentication by the Louvre. So if it is not a 100% real da Vinci he could have just offered them a couple million to claim it was in order to increase the value of his very expensive investment.

Do consider paying to watch it via the usual streaming platforms or it can also be watched via a naughty link here - https://fmovies.to/movie/the-lost-leonardo-olvv8/1-full

Kevin Smith's Personal Journey

Even though this comes from “People Magazine”, it is quite amazing.

Kevin Smith is an American Filmmaker, comedian, and comic book nerd who hails from glorious New Jersey. He’s made a series of movies since the early 90’s, most of which are light weight fluff that could be classified in the “comedy” genre and appeal to younger adult audiences. Over the decades, we’ve paid attention to him because one of the other things he’s done for many many years is to tour college campuses participating in long and humorous talks and Q&A sessions to college students. Often discussing his films and their surrounding subject matters. Not only is much of it quite funny, but also gets philosophical at times, talking about life and also various inside skull duggery of Hollywood and the film industry. Here’s a quite beloved explanation he gave at one regarding his attempts to be involved in writing a screenplay for a Superman movie and dealing with a crazy studio executive in the process who of course knew next to nothing about the original material.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo2KB1dEDdk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53hMYw8LX60

What we like most about him are not his films but instead his willingness to publicly share many of his personal life challenges through these public discussions. Which have often surrounded his struggles with his weight. Here’s another solid gold one dealing with fan heckeling and criticism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou2mVnElp6c

Smith has recently gone through what one could call “acceleration” on his spiritual path. In which, with his years of public speaking experience, he does quite a masterful job of explaining some of his recent life adjustments. For spirituality is not only living more in balance with nature, but very much also fixing your life’s alchemical dysfunctions. Official blurb regarding:

“One morning in January 2023, 'Clerks' director Kevin Smith awoke in terror, convinced he was losing his mind. The next day, he checked into Arizona's Sierra Tucson Treatment Center, where he spent a month in intensive therapy and learned how childhood sexual abuse and bodyshaming over his weight by his 4th grade teacher led him to create and hide behind a larger-than-life public persona he calls "the other guy." Now Kevin has stopped smoking weed, cut back on social media, is slowing down his work schedule after churning out movies, comic books, TV shows and podcasts, and learning about the healing power of self-acceptance. Most importantly, he is determined to get the word out to others who could benefit from hearing his story and the tools he's acquired to help find peace.”

Essay: The Cannot Be Given Away Phase (Exclusive For Members)

This is a written and spoken word essay which we are writing and recording in March of 2023. To serve as a bit of a time capsule while also sharing some personal insights through struggle. For, like the majority of artists through time, we've spent the better part of two decades in "The Cannot Be Given Away Phase", which you very much may be in as well.

Putting this out privately, this currently goes to a small audience. Primarily to those who support our work via a membership, paying a little something to download this essay volume, or in perhaps 20 years from now put up on some sort of archival website. For those of you who have been past or present members, thank you so much for doing so - Essentially sticking with us here, especially at the time of this writing as our exclusive outputs for patrons have slowed in the last couple years. This is both due to the evolving of our work through our own development, combined with the continuing need to make money in commerce. And in all honesty, we'll give you some specifics of our ongoing challenges with all this, including some specific numbers.

It's not that uncommon to hear people claim that they put a piece of media online, such as a video or song, and then say "the response to it has been amazing". Or say the phrase "the power of social media". Our experience has nearly always been the exact opposite. We have put out a lot of content in the last 10 to 15 years, most of it took a long time to create and is of high to very high quality, and the result has, for the most part, been met with dusk bowls and crickets. So yes, we sometimes wonder why we keep doing it. In all honesty, it has felt like our posts anywhere we place content have usually been to an empty room, but that's how it's almost always felt so we are used to it. We've rarely if ever had a series of comments via the internet or in person responses from our work. Sure, there is an occasional comment or two here and there, public or private, which are very appreciated, but they are very few and far between. One shouldn't need external gratification to continue creating, as creation should be an internal process. But some threshold of positive external output does help. Both in terms of keeping wind in the sails, but also creating a lasting body of work - that is known. In this case, in person there has been a rare appreciation about our work from one who's watched one of the projects or listened to an essay, but those are even more rare. To be honest, there are members of our own family that don't even watch or listen to most of it. And the God's honest truth is as our internal growth has expanded through the years, (our external mundane success growth regarding the audience for our personal work), numbers growth, has done the exact opposite. Our audience numbers during the years have been contracting and not expanding, reducing instead of growing. So one of the main continuing struggles is the constant underlying worry that when we take the time to create something of quality, which thus means it takes a good chunk of time, will it basically go unheard or unseen and of course, un-responded to? There's a saying that "it's better to have negative attention than no attention at all" and man, we've really come to know why. As for some, being an asshole on the radar is thought superior to not being even a blip on the radar at all.

When we started our first podcast which was called Novelty Generators, that was at the time of this writing 15+ years ago, it would get somewhere between 5,000 to 10,000 listens. Which we've come to realize now was quite high. We credit this to being more in the early days of podcasts, when less were out there. Now there are like over a million+ podcasts in existence so the competition is higher. Same with our film outputs on a platform such as Vimeo. We would put a piece online 10 years ago and it could get 3000 to 5000 views. Now we're lucky if it gets 100 views. We directed a couple short narrative films during our living in Los Angeles years, one took us a year or so of side time to make and the other a few years of side time to make. One got some festival recognition and the other was on what has become the de facto indie science fiction platform called DUST, and we learned a lot from them, but they never led to any narrative directing work. Which helped force us to steer more toward documentaries. But we very much still have interest in what is called mockumentary - which is a documentary that is partially or fully re-enactments of past events with actors. And in order to do that well, one has to be good with actors.

When we later rebranded the podcast to An Infinite Path like 5+ years ago that really killed the numbers, which then sunk down to 2000 to at best 5000 listens per episode, which were very dependent on the guest. For a third rebranding a year ago making it just about our spoken word essays, we're now lucky if it gets 1500 listens and the YouTube channel of the back archive being uploaded currently barely breaks double digit listens per episode. Our long-form filmmaking content such as Transmutation and Shamans of the Global Village have been our most financially successful in the world of commerce. Leading to some connections being made and even though being created for very little money (Transmutation was made for around $8,000, EP#1 of SGV for $10,000 and EP#2 of SGV for around $3000), which have all been financially successful, having at least doubled if not tripled the money they cost to make them with occasional sales to this day. We have occasionally heard from folks who were positively influenced by them, however, none have gotten us more documentary work or by any means allowed us to be industry known as a filmmaker. So we still have to work in our previous industry, where we are a cog in an assembly line and use 1/10th of our skillset tops, in order to make a living. Not to mention taking up a great deal of our time. Since most of our personal creative short form outputs are either voice, photo, or film / video based, video platforms are the best place to put our film content. Yet even on the main current video platform of today YouTube, which we've been trying to do more on camera content for with more broad appeal, our channel is very obscure and unknown - having surprisingly little subscribers when the quality of the outputs deserve to have 100x more subscribers. And this doesn't even get to our photography. As we know we are one of the best street photographers, one of the hardest types of photography, in the world and most of it has barely even been seen. At the time of this writing we actually find Twitter to be the best photo sharing platform so we've been engaged in "digital minimalism" there. Sharing a somewhat comical and philosophical observation on humanity via our street photography there during the last year, and not only has posting it not been met with new notice or followers, we've actually lost some followers. Which Godzillionare Darth Elon would say were "bot followers" that have been removed. But we're not so sure about that.

While we appreciate networking with fellow podcasts and have been a guest on quite a few podcasts, the work itself has gotten little to no press. With minimum sharing. So we have to share it ourselves. So platform wise, we have long been a denigrator of social media cause we suck at social media. We actually seem to have a talent of posting content and losing followers. Any marketing person will tell you in order to be successful at it you have to do two primary things. The first is to be persistent, and the other is to constantly engage with them. Meaning give them a lot of your time. A friend of ours who very nicely manages one of our social networks for one of the long form projects, constantly gives it his time, so much to the point that he has literally spent more work on it than we do creating the underlying content itself. Not being willing to make it our full time job, we fully admit we are good at creating content and suck at getting it scene. So much to the point that we are constantly considering quitting various 3rd party tech platforms due to extensive lack of engagement back. So we get the hint.

This is mentioned to you because in order for an artist to make a living off their own art, they really need to be continually growing in terms of audience. Which is external growth and not the internal growth that our work often speaks of. But, ideally, the first would mirror the other. And we're sharing this to highlight how incredibly difficult it is for anyone to make a living off their own creativity. It's a bit of a sad reality that you've either carved out a niche within your specific industry, becoming a mini celebrity within that industry, or else you're in obscurity and thus poverty. And because we've never gotten large numbers, such as tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, let alone millions of listens or views on any of our works, in the long run that means then one can only output slow drip - which doesn't work as well for a subscription model with constant exclusive extras. In the past, when we tried to just focus 100% of our time on our own content, regularly outputting and saving half of it for private release on a regular basis, we make maybe $300/month and our bank accounts drained. Which of course is not enough to live on or be in any way sustainable. There is nothing more we would love then to do that 100% and make a living off of it, which would require 50x as much money received than we have thus far. But to date, that has never come to be. When we were most busy with an external private member section for our work, putting out one to two private member outputs per month, on top of one to two public outputs per month, we got up to mid double digit subscribers. In that last couple of years, as we've changed back to a freelance day job model, which allows for us to actually have a living wage in the state of California, resulting in our personal outputs to slow, at the time of this writing that has been reduced and is heading down to single digits. Continually lowering, even without even charging folks. So in terms of external growth, we have to date, been an utter failure.

All this being said, this has been us talking about ourselves in the past and not the future. It also hasn't been about you and what our outputs can continue to do for you dear reader, listener, and / or watcher. While all of our personal work does have philosophical themes of self development (which is hopefully really spiritual self development), esotericism, and the natural world, we realize that type of content is not favored by the algorithms of today. And on a rare occasion that it's recommended to a new audience member, it can be hard for many new folks coming in to find a through line with it. Because it's very individualized. It doesn't come up in recommendations because the algorithms don't favor it because it's not really like many others' works. It's not a paint by numbers thing. It's also deep and complex, and not a simple concept or mundane. Most folks are good but a bit mundane so they have mundane interests - See our essay on "Big Sports Fansmanship" and most importantly it's not commercial. It's a lesson in human psychology that you, the creator, have to constantly remind people on the regular to do things to help your reach. Which is a commercial contract. The classic example being asking listeners or viewers to like and subscribe. Which is unsophisticated and we put at the level of a used car salesman. But the truth is, those who are willing to sink down to that end up with more of an audience. Which then translates to more financial liquidity.

Commercial creators can grow a larger audience that are certainly interested in high level things beyond the mundane. Let's take those who are interested in mental or physical health for example. Which are of pinnacle importance for society. It's not like where the gal that's talking about only making vegetable juice, with everything being exclusively about juicing on what seems like the audience's behalf with it all being catered to how the audience can learn to make those juice drinks and how they help the audience's physical well being. While at the same time being very commercially successful and thus enriching the creator because they also have relationships with juicer companies, having maybe even created their own company that's making a revolutionary new juicer, and juicer affiliate links all over their websites, videos, podcasts, and blog posts. Those are the types of podcasts and channels that are most successful. Because they usually have a simple call to action for the audience, which attracts new members and then has them adjust their patterns of behavior to benefit both themselves and the creator. That, instead of sharing a portfolio of your own obscure content like we have. Folks do come to your work cause they enjoy it. But mostly because of what it can do for them. Little to no one invests in something because they want to support it. They do so because they hope it will give them a return on the investment. For themselves. And when one's work is more individualized and complex, that's harder for an audience to see and appreciate.

Now, this is not meant to be a pity party. As there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of others outputting content whose work is less known then ours and we think of this just as the "Niles cannot be given away phase" of his art. Millions of other artists have also been in such a phase and millions more will always be. Joseph Kosinski is a Hollywood director who we worked with many years ago on a commercial. When he first got representation as a commercial director in Los Angeles many years ago they couldn’t even give him away. Getting essentially zero work. So he sat around for over a year doing little to nothing. And that was with representatives working for him - which means people who see your value and want to help speak on your behalf and help get you work. Most entertainment industry artists don't ever get representation at all let alone work through that representation. We remember a fellow colleague at a sister company literally saying to us, "Yeah, they couldn't even give Joe away". Let alone have a client who wanted to pay him a lot of money to work with them. Later he went on to become an incredibly successful director who just so happened to direct Top Gun Maverick. Could other aspects of his life still be an absolute mess? Of course. But he's utilizing his creative potential.

Ke Huy Quan is an American born from Vietnamese immigrant parents and has been a phenomenal actor his whole life. He played Short Round in the early Indiana Jones movies and Data in Goonies and was literally thrown away by the acting world in Hollywood for over 20 years. After being a successful child actor, he had so much trouble finding adult acting work he started going by Jonathan Quan, thinking a more Western style name would help. During the interim struggle, he worked various sporadic roles in the industry. Including being a stunt coordinator and even an assistant. Later during the covid 19 pandemic, he was unemployed, with no health insurance and was inspired to get back into acting after seeing the film Crazy Rich Asians and would call his agent every 3 to 6 months asking if anything was out there and the agent would always say no. He was then cast by a quirky directing duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert who go by the name Daniels, (who on a side note just so happened to direct what could possibly be the most brilliant music video ever made - DJ Snake's Turn Down For What. Second only to the masterpiece music video for Aphex Twin's - Windowlicker - which makes fun of low brow, hyper misogynistic, materialistic hip hop videos) to be in the 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once which had a very asian cast, and reminded everyone how phenomenal of an actor he is and has always been - now during the week of this writing having won an Oscar for best actor. While Vivian Maier was a phenomenal street photographer who took over 150,000 photos in her lifetime, on expensive film mind you, and in the later half of her life was too poor to even have any rolls developed. Her day job was that of a nanny and virtually no one ever knew her photography existed until after she died when her negatives were found in a storage locker.

One could consider all of these first world problems or even upper middle class first world white people problems. The fact that some established power player person who we've reached out to and could really help our career doesn't call or write us back is insignificant in most ways. It's not like we, our you, are fearing for our life everyday inside a collapsing country, or working for pennies in a sulfur mine, or living out of our car as a single parent, or risking death riding dangerously on the top of a crowded coal train with thousands of other peasant migrants, or being diagnosed with a terminal neuroblastoma with 6 months left to live. Even though there is a lot going well, especially on the mental and physical health front, the spiritual path front, the home front, the fellowship front, this is us speaking of the work front alone. We're even appreciated and in demand for some things on the work front, even if they are not the specific things we would like to be in demand for. We've had a long problem, and it's a good problem to have, of being in demand for things we are good at but don’t want to be doing. We're not trying to be famous but we would love to be in demand for what we are most passionate about, and respected but more of an audience for our insights, knowledge, and creations. To have our work known enough to keep doing it exclusively full time. And will continue trying just that. For one of the things that Ke Huy Quan shared as he was back being recognized for his craft, is to not give up. Not to quit. And we are not going to be doing that either. Our work will absolutely continue. With ongoing refinement and adjustment. And perhaps actually have an audience one day after someone writes an article about us called "The never-been-represented, financially successful, documentary filmmaker you've never heard of."

What is also needed is continuing insight from you about how we can help you. If not in terms of support, we are always open ears on any suggestions, corrections, or recommendations you dear listener may have. It's also known that these struggles, and your struggles, are good struggles to have. Because we and you are supposed to be going through this right now. There's nothing else we're supposed to be doing. For we learn through our mistakes or non-successes and as shared here, we've certainly had a few of those.

Hail to the BEAVER!

Beavers are a keystone species. Meaning what they do, being amazing natural engineers for water, has a huge effect on countless other species which depend on water for their well being. In the mid 1800's to as recently the early 1900's our species were absolute dumb asses and considered them pests. Reducing their populations down in both Europe and North America to near nothing for unconscious reasons such as using their fur for bad fashion. And then after that, many rivers and waterways massively suffered. However, the fabulous news is these wonderful herbivore critters are coming back big time in both regions.

We are massive fans of both Capybara, which are the largest rodent on Earth, and beavers. The second largest. Some short doco pieces on the subject below. Hail to the BEAVER!

Leave it to Beavers

Want to Solve Wildfires and Drought? Leave it to BEAVERS!

Architects of The River

The Incredible Hulik and His Beavers

Heal the Planet with PONDS

The Giant Rat That Built America

Documentary Recommendation - The Occupation of the American Mind

The following is a good example of why we have a private members section for our work. Many things operate in secret because they are deplorable, like blankly anti Jewish Neo-Nazism. But just like the mystery traditions of the past, other things have to be shared a bit in secret because doing so in public can cause problems. They are too truthful for the current cultural operating system and speaking out against them can lead to your networks contracting and not expanding. Especially in terms of career.

In much of the world what is really going on here is an obvious issue because it's reported on truthfully, but we can think of no better example of a spin zone in The United States, then folks who support Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

All that should matter is the truth. And the truth is that Israel is an apartheid state founded on and continuing modern day imperial colonialism. And there’s a Grand Canyon of difference in realizing that obviousness vs being a somewhat anti Jewish person or a heavily hateful Neo-Nazi anti Jewish person - both who share an incorrect blanket “it’s the Jews” attitude. For there is a difference between most people of Jewish faith and Zionists. As there are even Hasidic Jews who recognize what Israel has done to be a violation of international law.

We want all people of all faith to live in peace. Which for the last couple thousands of years has been easier said than done. As they are keeping to themselves, no Christian should be persecuted for their beliefs. Nor should any Jew, muslim, or esoteric practitioner that has little or nothing to do with any of the religions of empire and is even more spiritual. However, imperial fundamentalist Christians who push their crap onto others are unacceptable. Same with fundamentalist Jews or Muslims who push their crap on others. And Israel has been led by imperialist radicalized fundamentalist Zionists since its founding, which could actually be said to not be real Jews but instead Khazarians but that’s another story, who push their crap on Muslims on this very special piece of Muslim land and are supported by US imperialist fundamentalist regressive collectivist dogmatist fake Christians. Should we call them IFRCDFC's? (joke).

The power structure of Israel is one of the main puppet string holders in the halls of American power and influence which shape American foreign policy and are supported by America’s war machine. All of America's Middle East debacles have had zero to do with spreading democracy and everything to do with American oil interests and benefiting Israel.

We will be getting more into this down the line in our pro democracy political philosophy series. It’s a simple issue but also a complex one in other ways, which inside the United States is starting to change more with younger generations. But the documentary "The Occupation of the American Mind" does a good job of deconstructing many of the marketing tricks and talking points of pro-Israel public relations efforts within the American Media and their attempt to continually occupy the American mind.

A Couple Q1 2023 Documentary Recommendations

Here are a couple documentary recommendations which we have recently watched. Both featuring filmmakers essentially documenting their own stories of going through struggle and hardship.

The first is “The Biggest Little Farm”. It’s official website is HERE and the trailer is here:

It’s about a Hollywood cameraman who, along with his wife, decide to leave Los Angeles and re-boot a farm about an hour north of LA in a more rural area. They do it right, working over the seasons to re-generate and create biodiversity of the land, as all real farms should do over stupid monoculture, and eventually come to learn each problem they encounter is fixed by adding more diversity. Go nature!

The second film is called "Wildcat" and is also a good one. It follows the inspiring story of a young British veteran suffering from depression and a mental health crisis after being in a stupid war and his later journey into the Peruvian Amazon. Not to drink ayahuasca, although that probably would greatly help him as well, but to connect up with animals. Specifically an ocelot - a species of wild cat larger than the domestic house cat but smaller than a cheeta or panther. Trailer:

Once down in the jungle, he meets a young woman (who becomes his new goose) who runs a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center, and his life finds new meaning as he is entrusted with the life of an orphaned baby ocelot. What was meant to be an attempt to escape from life, turns out to be an unexpected journey of love, discovery, and healing.

Do please consider paying to rent these to support the filmmakers but naughty watch links also exist HERE and HERE.

Written Essay: Pro-Democracy Series #4: Growing Up With Authority And Love

The number one factor which determines who one becomes as an adult is, and it's not really a shocker... drumroll... "how one was raised". Good parenting has always and will always be of pinnacle importance when talking about the future of humanity. Parenting styles are behaviors that parents use to discipline and raise their children. They are so crucial because they affect everything – from the way a child sees themselves, and their interactions to other people. Affecting not only later adolescence but all the way into adulthood. Ideally, these styles support healthy growth and development because they will greatly influence a child’s behavior and personality for the rest of their life.

Whether you had one parent, or multiple parents, or multiple paternal like figures. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings, were adopted, it can be a mixed bag for many. Let's say your mother isn't exclusively the woman whose ovaries you grew inside of and then who birthed you, but instead more the woman who raised you. Which is usually but not always the same person. Same with your father, it's not just the sack you were once swimming around in during your tadpole form but the man who raised you. We have a buddy who, in junior high school his parents separated and eventually each remarried. Then in high school found out he was the product of a sperm donor. So technically he has three dads. A donor dad, a step dad, and the dad who raised him and he considers the dad who raised him, his primary dad. So however the chessboard of your adolescence was structured, you certainly had older feminine and masculine influences.

There are multiple parenting styles. Such as authoritative, uninvolved, permissive, or authoritarian. Most little people growing up are raised in a somewhat mix of these. Ideally, they would be by far raised in mostly an authoritative style - which is based on the largest amount of love. In which parents are teachers that provide a living environment while also helping their little person or people face and overcome challenges. Enforcing rules and consequences while considering their child’s feelings. Explaining the reasons behind the rules they established and putting a lot of effort into creating and maintaining a positive parent-child relationship. This is also characterized by an openness to new experiences and by creativity and experimentation. Then there is an uninvolved style, consisting of being absent. Which can happen because a parent is crap and just doesn't care but more likely does involve loving parents or more likely a single parent who is just having to work their ass off and just isn't around that much. They are thus not as directly involved or knowledgeable about their child's life. Then you've got a permissive parenting style. Which can come from a loving parent but to a lukewarm degree and is frankly, overly lazy. Resulting in an overly lax attitude, with a more or less do whatever the child wants, with minimal parental interference, in which rules are loosely set but never reinforced. We know a single parent whose child is an absolute pain and a drain which we can barely stand. They basically let their offspring continue its established patterns of being very reactionary, crass, and selfish without trying to adjust those negative traits. So we suspect this child is already on their way to being rubbish into their adulthood.

Finally we have the worst parenting style, and why this is round four in our pro-democracy political philosophy series. Which is an authoritarian parenting style that causes the most pain and societal damage. Most of the time, authoritarian parents take little to no consideration for their child's feelings. When it comes to discipline and rules, they believe that there are no other rules, but theirs. Most of the time, the child’s sentiments and good behaviors are not seen or heard. This crap style focuses on obedience, with little to no interest in negotiation, and punishment over discipline. Often teaching children that they are the problem, to feel sorry for their inevitable mistakes, while the parents themselves are said to be infallible, instead of highlighting what both the parent and child do correctly along with what they can each improve. There is little to no gray area, instead only starkness of black and white, wrong, and right - all from the authorities point of view.

Within families, there is usually a blending of these styles. While there's also often a mix of these blended styles from multiple older influences - parental or societal. Gotten either directly in the household, or via the tribe or community, or lack of community. Regardless of being scientifically based, or religious based, or mix of the two, these styles can still stand. However the first three allow for more capacity for self-criticism, recognition of complexity, and tentativeness in the expression of beliefs. While the last one is unquestioned, and unreflective and is thereby where intolerance, prejudice, and dogmatism typically thrive.

Within a family or tribe, regardless of the cultural configuration, there is inevitably a hierarchy - Meaning a system in which people or things are put at various levels or ranks according to their power and importance. Led by the head of the household, either the matriarch or patriarch or if most balanced, both. And the hierarchy of influence comes down from there. If one has a grandmother, mother, aunts, and sisters, that is the primarily feminine side of the family. If grandma has become very elderly, the leadership role and matriarch is the mother. If one has a grandfather, father, uncles, and brothers, that is the primarily masculine side of the family. If grandpa has become very elderly, the leadership role and patriarch is the father. This is standard operating procedure within humans and other mammals like elephants. As a mother elephant will be the one who makes the decisions on behalf of an elephant tribe in regards to where they search in the height of summer for the watering holes. A crucial leadership decision which can literally mean death or life for the tribe.

We have spoken elsewhere on hierarchy and how it does very much exist within nature. A small portion of any group are the tallest, smartest, and yes, more the most creative or talented. Yet, one's development and attitude toward both hierarchy and authority is a crucial factor for how someone ends up either being more pro-democratic vs more pro-authoritarian into their adulthood.

Referencing our previous essay at this point, "Gender and Sexuality Balance," we are going to focus specifically on the patriarchal dynamics within how one was raised within the family - specifically relating to being off balanced with the masculine hierarchy. For it's one thing to teach a little person to respect others, especially their elders, of both sexes. In more authoritarian parenting styles, it's the father who is the one in charge at the top of the hierarchy and gets the most respect, because they are the unquestioned authority that instills fear. And often transfers down a very tough love at best or, chauvinist, macho, or even mentally or physically abusive behavior at worst from grandfather, to father, to sons within the authoritarian parenting style. This is the power and control over the family dynamic. Giving "power dad downloads" from father to son.

In authoritative parenting styles there is usually not only a respect for elders taught, with some respect for hierarchy, but a more balanced dynamic being taught which also allows for questioning the hierarchy and even being very skeptical of aspects of authority. This is a more balanced, open minded, and growth based mindset which allows for looking more deeply at life. Because as one gets older, when they look past the facades and peel back the curtain of power, the authorities often look not only unimpressive but morally bankrupt. But in the authoritarian household they are about indoctrination into unquestionable subservience into the higher masculine authority. With a playbook to continually naturalize power and existing entrenched forms of authority. With "authority" being defined as "Legal power, or a right to command or to act; as the authority of a prince over subjects, and of parents over children. Power; rule; sway". Which in their minds is to be revered and rarely questioned.

Now, if one gets indoctrinated in the first 7 years, or 14 years, or 21 years of their life into authoritarian parenting, it's likely that the fathering style is not only hard installed but mostly or completely loveless. Loving people produce other loving people. But hurt people also have a higher ratio of producing other hurt people. If one is primarily loving, there's a good chance their child or children will be primarily loving. If they lack love to others in their family there is a strong chance their children will lack love to both others in society and their eventual children. Either the masculine or feminine side can be more the problem, but typically if one parent is really loving, and the other is very cold tough love, or no love, or straight up physically or verbally abusive, there's a chance their children can turn out okay, but it's certainly less likely than if both are loving and nurturing. If both parents lack love, it's almost guaranteed their offspring will be the same because physically and mentally abusive parents produce physically and mentally abusive children the majority of the time. Ask any school teacher, counselor, superintendent, or principal, they will tell you that when a kid is a bully at school, it's almost certain one of the parents is a bully at home. This very sadly and unfortunately cascades down through the generations. If one has one parent who's authoritative, and one who's more authoritarian, it's likely the little person can still turn out okay and be authoritative into adulthood and their own parenting. But if both parents are authoritarian, it's much more

likely the child will grow up to be authoritarian. On rare occasions where someone does grow up with multiple authoritarian parents and then still turns out to be mostly authoritative in their parenting, we should all have infinite respect for those whose parental influences were all loveless but turned out loving to others and didn't continue the cycle of pain down to their children. Which can only happen frankly through a great deal of personal self development.

The feminine side is typically more nurturing, which is a built in operating system dynamic that is designed for child raising, and that has to be heavily reduced or removed in authoritarian parenting. Because it's more heart, and they must make one heartless, usually under the guise of being strong. A fighter. A man's man. A super ultra alpha. So you guessed correctly where this is going - A main determinant of democratic vs authoritarian leanings is due to your relationship, or lack thereof, with your father. If you didn't have a father, or a shit father, or a mentally or physically abusive father, or no father with a mentally or physically abusive masculinized mother, not only is one much more prone to violence externally but internally are much more prone to looking to sky daddy as your father. Specifically within the Christian menu - sky daddy, and sky daddy son. We can always tell this is the case when someone puts God or Jesus or Allah very front and center in their speech, they are speaking about their father figure they never had and always wished they had from their youth. For they claim one can only have love through God. No other way. Ask any secular, well educated person who grew up with loving parents what they think of these types of comments, and it's usually answered with eye rolls.

Now we are about to make a major declaration here. And say that we have honestly, hand on heart, a support for the real core of religion. What we call the esoteric core. We've said this before numerous times in our work and we say it again now and will always stand by this. For we are not blanketly hostile to all religion, or irreligious, or what crazy extreme religious people would call a heathen who needs to repent. Remember, Sturgeon's law, which we've also spoken over many times before, says that "ninety percent of everything is crap". However, 90% of nature and its creations are not crap. So we would modify that a bit to say that ninety percent of everything within modern society and culture is crap - because the primary goal of the majority of modern society and culture is just about making money. 90% of bee keeping is crap because it's commercialized. 90% of fishing is crap because it's commercial fishing. 90% of music is crap because it's commercial music. And 90% of religion is crap because it's commercial religion. Which is not from the spiritual, it is a man made attempt of trying to create menus for the spiritual. So time and time again, we will continue to always give religion credit for the 10% it does well. And that is what we call the esoteric core. Which one can think of as the small two circles in the center of the dart board.

In a future essay in this series we will give a itemized whole list of each factor that separates what we call the esoteric, and thus spiritual core of religion, and the crap garbage that makes up the religions of empire, which thrive in authoritarianism, but one of which is an underlying dynamic in how the religion chooses to raise its children. Which then extends into children being loving and thus loving adults, or hateful, and thus hateful adults. And this dynamic is how they answer the age-old question... Are people, (human beings, the human race) fundamentally good or fundamentally bad?

If one looks into how Western religious denominations such as the Amish, Anglican, Baptist, Calvary Chapel, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Messianic, New Apostle, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Reformed, Salvation, or Seventh Day Adventists, etc... aim to answer this question, it is that the human species is in depravity, corrupt, sinful, and primarily bad or evil. Unless one does what they call repentance. Which in theology can be said to be confessing to the pain, regret or affliction which a person feels on account of their past conduct.

Always trying to improve past bad behavior is good, but the problem here and why things derail at this point into fake commercialized religion is due to a misinterpreted concept called original sin. This Judeo-Christian concept of original sin, also described as ancestral sin, is a view of the nature of sin in which humanity has existed since the fall of man. Which is said to have arisen from Adam and Eve's transgression in Eden, the supposed sin of disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Original sin can be said to be explained as “that sin and its effects that we all possess in God’s, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster's, meatball eyes as a direct result of Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden.”

So what is meant by sin here? What should be meant, and what the genesis story is saying, is something the esoteric core of spirituality can properly decode. Which is an alchemical metaphor about how humanity is not at its highest state. It indeed had a fall, otherwise known alchemically as a separation / putrefaction, in which it lost its real initiatory lineage. That doesn't mean everyone is bad, quite the opposite is true, it just means all of humanity has gone from singular unity down into the binary material to learn from the polarity of binary mechanics. The vast majority of despiritualized theocrats have lost their real initiatory lineage and thereby dont know how to decode the good parts of their own religious texts. So what they offer instead is a commercial solution. For what exoteric outer religion does with original sin has been the marketing job of all marketing jobs. Which is that everyone is sinful or bad, from birth, and the only way to become not that way is to buy what they are selling. So what the fake aspects of commercial religion do with the concept of sin is interpret it as humans are sinful, meaning bad, and unless they do things subservient to the religious system's top of the hierarchy - the authority, such as repent and serve sky daddy, which is then said to be the only path to provide that past missing love. And your supposed free will option he has given you is a false binary to either love him or burn in hell. Worship him or be tortured forever. Which is not a loving dynamic but a hateful and thus fearful one in which you risk banishment to an out group. By being in this culty system of authority, including, surprise surprise, the requirement to give it money, and be subservient to it, only then can you find love from sky daddy, and sky daddies son, both who are said to be your only path of love. This type of agreement is very appealing to those who grew up in authoritarian households because it supposedly provides missing love while not violating the authoritarian contract of being subservient to authority.

Now this could also lead to a much deeper and philosophical conversation about both ethics and morality, which we may touch on at a later time in this series. As morality can be said to be an intrinsic quality of things, as neither is beauty or any other quality that is relative to the subject in a relationship with an object. If one watches a video on one of the more scuzzy corners of the internet of one person bashing another person's skull in, murdering them violently, you could say the person doing the bashing is bad. But then one could watch a nature video of an alligator ripping the side of a zebra's torso open, spilling its guts out. Which is just as violent. Does that mean the alligator is bad? The Native Americans very much understood this concept. As being part of the food chain in nature, at times does involve violent actions, and even the occurrence of injury or loss. Yet when they would hunt and kill an animal, they wouldn't hate and fear the animal but instead love it and appreciate the animal during this process. And during its death thank it and honor its spirit which would live on.

If one traveled all over the world, and spoke to most people on the planet, they would see a similar dynamic full spectrum of incredible, too beautiful to horrendous and awful. But in the realm of Earth, even though terrible things happen every day, produced by our species, far more good things happen every day than bad, also produced by our species. So if one talked to the majority of the people, the ones not in cults, in either more free democratic societies or even in more authoritarian societies who have come to realize their authoritarian leaders are garbage, one would find that they are all for the most part good people. The main reason why humanity is in a hot mess at this point is not because people are foundationally bad, especially in the middle or lower parts of the hierarchy, but because we are commodifying the elements of nature because of the greed of the top of the hierarchy.

Saying that people are fundamentally evil and bad is also a way to keep the flock, be that it their offspring or cult members, under their wing, and very fearful and thus untraveled and insular. What very theocratic people who have never owned a passport do to denigrate travel and experience with other cultures is use words like "worldly". Which is used not as an obvious, "hey this person has gotten out there and seen the world" but instead that their someone only concerned with the mundane of the world and not the fake cult.

The only way one can unite and not divide, is by including everyone. Which also brings us to our foundational dynamic of a real faith. Is it based in love, or has it been perverted to be based in hate? Which is really just fear. Does it lovingly support all of the hierarchy of power and control, especially the very bottom of it, instead of supporting just the top? The Real spiritual core of multi faith religion, including real Christianity, Judaism, and Islam will

teach love and that the vast majority of humanity is foundationally good. Most religious people of faith throughout the world are sincerely devoted to a good and loving life. In fact, this is exactly the ground where the secular and the spiritual stand together. Since we are in the West, this is where we can safely make an initial statement that a real Pastafarian Judeo-Christian is one who follows the teachings of Christ and actually loves thy neighbor (regardless of where that neighbor is in the socio economic hierarchy) over hating anyone not in their cult. One of the spiritual reasons to back that up, is that the divine is pure love. It is not pure hate. And love is really the name of the game. Real spirituality, and then one aspect of it, a man made aspect of it, which are the formal official menu subscription systems of religion, should unite and not divide. If they are uniting, they are doing their job of moving each individual closer to the divine. If they are dividing and conquering, to protect entrenched authority, that is imperial dark sorcery. So a simplified way to look at good and bad can instead be to always ask what is spreading love and thus unity and what is spreading hate, and thus division.

So if one comes from an authoritarian household which also advocates an extreme authoritarian based religious dogma, supporting the concept of original sin and that humans are bad, and this also applies to communism by the way, which becomes authoritarian state religion, you've got a toxic combination in terms of politics. If you are forward thinking in politics and have always been baffled why certain other people think so opposite from you on virtually every single political policy, this is why. Because you know people are fundamentally good, and the other side of the spectrum who boggles your mind have been indoctrinated into thinking they are fundamentally bad. And at that point on, you will disagree on virtually every single political policy. This is why Niles has constantly been highlighting the negative aspect of what we are going to continue to call commercial fake religion in this unapologetically pro democracy political philosophy series.

If you see value in and have some care for all of your fellow patriotic countrymen, and neighboring countrymen, and even all humans throughout Earth. You want them to have healthcare as a right and not a privilege, and you value governmental systems of social uplift. However, the authoritarian thinks nobody is good, thereby thinks no one should have any right towards anything without proving their goodness by rising up the socio-economic hierarchy to becoming rich and powerful, or being part of the in group which props up that power, which is really a cult, which are actually nested cults - their faith cult, and their party cult, and their fake patriotic cult, that we'll get into later, and all they think the shared political contract of government is useful for is ultimately backed not by mutual relations of love and assistance but violence. Hence their most value is put into patriarchal military might, which uses blood spilling to achieve its goals. Because that's from the alpha macho male side of the parental hierarchy. They don't value those mother nurturing programs of social uplift, they only value the force and violence of their fake authoritarian father. With Propensity to victim blame, aggression, hate, and violence. This is why the Afghan Taliban drive around with their flags and Kalashnikovs out in truck trains and why the American Taliban drive around with their flags and AR-15s out in truck trains. Because they are foundationally based in fake religious cults. Only supporting their own cult members. Because in their tiny rotten brains everyone else who is not like them is considered bad and are then more pro-authoritarian in their political politics.

Jeff Sharlet, has written two books called The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power and C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy. Books which the docuseries The Family, is based after. It focuses on an organization that pretends to have something to do with spirituality but is really led by dark imperial agents called - The Fellowship, or The Family, or the International Foundation. We will also get into the dark tentacles influencing the halls of power later in this pro-democracy series but this organization is one of them. Amongst other things, it hosts an event in the United States called the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual event attended at least once by every sitting president dating back to Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is sponsored by the Fellowship, and brings thousands of leaders and influencers from around the world to Washington, D.C. every February. The group's known participants include ranking United States government officials, corporate executives, heads of religious and supposed humanitarian aid organizations, and ambassadors and high-ranking politicians from across the world. If you read the books or watch the series you’ll be able to see the pattern which we've been decoding here. Which is not the reality that each human is a direct conduit to the divine, but instead the opposite dark sorcery view that the divine only speaks through people of influence and power - the authority. Who are always attempting to influence policy through back channels.

Raising children to be self-educated, critical thinking, as well as sympathy, kindness, and respect for others of all ages in secular households along with non-culty, real spirituality including, indigenous, pegan, multi faith practices, as well as formal religious menus, should all love thy neighbor. So if you are educated, including sexually educated and not repressed, secular or faith based people who question authority, and spread love for both sexes and know they are both foundationally good? Then you are pro-democratic. But if you grew up with no love, lack of love, or extreme tough love and were indoctrinated to be subservient to authority and then strive to become the authority with power over others, regardless of your education level or travel level, there is a near guarantee you will be regressive in your politics and a pro authoritarian cold bastard who looks to scumbag strong men as your leaders. Whether that person is living alone in a cabin in the woods with zero standing in the hierarchy, or a board member and / or CEO of a mega corporation or a dictator at the top of a hierarchy, we promise you they got that way growing up with a lack of love, being forced to fear and not question patriarchal authority, and also with one other major factor that we will dive into in the next essay - which is due to the mass psychology of sexual repression.

Essay: Gender And Sexuality Balance

In what seems like a rather none-ominous title mixed with a well, also a “here we go” title ”Gender And Sexuality Balance”, we are going to state some things here, specifically one main concept, which may make small minds absolutely steam with anger. We are also going to make a room splitting statement of truth in the later half of this one that will make these same minds absolutely boil. As always if you are a stark dogmatist, do not proceed any further.

We live in the material binary realm. Material meaning made of matter. From a material scientific perspective this is from atoms and molecules. Binary meaning relating to, composed of, or involving two things. Within this natural dynamic of the material world we have poles and opposites. The primary examples of this being night and day. And continuing examples being cold and hot, positive and negative electric poles, and what might even be the most obvious example, the two genders of female and male.

Yet, we come from unity. Oneness. Which we can think of as the unified mind, the collective of all things, highest genius, non-duality, highest aspect of the human soul, white light void of unity consciousness, the divine, etc... Which is pure light, pure love, pure energy, at infinity. This is what all timeless, ancient practices of philosophic, spiritual, highest level thought have always realized and communicated in their teachings. In Hebrew it is called Yasheda. It is non physical, non corporeal - meaning not having a body. From the most pedestrian standpoint, it can also be said to be the white light one transmutes into in a near death experience. For who can say for sure what happens when one dies but we suspect that it is a full sensory experience of melting into this pure overexposed light and a leaving of one's physical vessel which can no longer function, rejoining that highest frequency and thus none material light, you are a drop rejoining the cosmic ocean.

So we have two things. Two poles. Two opposites with a spectrum in between. Carry this idea on down the list as to how nature is structured. Which, alchemically can be divided further by a trinity of sulfur, mercury and salt. Then down into earth, air, fire, and water. So shall we say, from a spiritual perspective, 1 becomes 2, 2 becomes 3, and 3 becomes 4 to make up the basic building blocks of nature. If you want more detail on said dynamic, give a read, perhaps followed by years of study, to a book "The Golden Chain of Homer". Also called "Aurea Catena Homeri" which was originally written in German by Anton Josef Kirchweger, first printed in the early 1700's, it very well may be one of the most important books ever written which gives insight into how the world was made alchemically. With the idea that all creation, no matter what its nature, is closely interconnected from one secret correlation.

There is a much deeper story about what the one thing really is and why it created a material sub-division. But we could call it the creator, the divine, God, or in reference to our previous essay - The Flying Spaghetti Monster. The book would be a good source for diving  deeper into this concept, so we recommend doing so. But this this light brush over of the concept it is important to know that when things subdivide, and subdivide again, they still contain both aspects of the previous division. It is not all or nothing. For example a woman is a female externally, but a male internally and a man is a male externally but a female internally - both with various degrees on a scale. Where a tiny frail woman can be macho and a big male bodybuilder can be gentle.

Everything in the binary material has a scale of degree and it's actually not possible to have perfect balance. Although the best example of balance in the material realm is what nature shows us. For nature has near, but not perfect balance. Which translates to longevity and nature has lasted eons - meaning millions and millions of years. But nature is still evolving. Becoming more and more perfect yet can only be absolutely perfect when returning to complete unity. So certain dynamics here will graduate away from the material, back to the spiritual, the only place where this can be achieved.

So to recap, there is no binary in unity, but instead complete unity. Conversely, there is no complete unity (or perfect balance) in binary. So why in the heck man do we mention this now in round three of our pro-democracy political philosophy series? And here goes the dogmatic heads steaming part... Because a supreme being, in complete unity outside of binary, can not be exclusively a male. God does not have a penis. No supreme being, which is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, has soly a pair of testicles with no ovaries. It has instead evolved to the point of achieving complete unity in all things including the masculine and feminine. It has evolved into becoming non-binary. Hardy har har.

So whenever we hear the word “he” as referring to God, which likely happens millions of times a day in the realm of Earth, those doing so get the celestial red buzzer of incorrectness. To be fair, and in never ending attempts to seek more balance, on the other side of this coin, it is also not fully accurate to say mother nature. For nature is not inherently feminine. Peyote taught us this one. For our Peyote experience was very nature based in the masculine.

At this point it's important to state that the words "Man" or "He" in older language typically referred to both sexes. With Webster's 1828 definition of "Man" being - "Mankind; the human race; the whole species of human beings". And in Genesis 1:26 of the Bible, it says "And God said, Let us make man in our image." Man, not meaning soly males but females and male. So what is key to state here is that from the past there was often an inclusion of the female aspect of the species using languages from multiple hundreds of years ago all the way back to multiple thousands of years ago when the bible was written. Yet outside of that, there have been centuries of off balance giving the masculine, the male side of the gender, more importance within traditional religion. Which is bollocks. Fast forward to the blood spilling of the crusades all the way to today, most religiously affiliated folks, even the more lightly religious ones with more balance, Actually think of God (or the FSM) as a male, not female. Not in what it really is - androgynous.

Those who have been de-spiritualized, which is most of modern society and culture, can only have other's higher level experiences be most easily communicated to the largest groups of people via fables and myths literalized. IE, things in these old religious books are claimed to have really happened. We will get into the cons of the religions of the empire in due course but one of them is to take what is really inside and claim it is only outside. So a being which is so supreme, without body, in such an expanded, higher level, or dare we say risking sounding woo, higher dimensional state, which each and every one of us is a micro branch of, a node on its network, that can be accessed through the inside psychologically, is instead claimed to be a humanized corporealized form - A big man in the sky. This is why in the stars over eons constellations we're made from the clusters of stars turned into large man like characters. The astrotheology, degraded by theology, to corporealize (meaning give bodies to) what ancients thought of as their external, gods, up above. It's easier to try and understand what is such a spiritually expensive, non-languagable, psychedelic, experience of divinity and reduce it or degrade it, or simplify it, or water it down, or mirror it back to front by simply instead saying its physical and corporeal, and then take that long standing age old recipe of inaccuracy and simplicity and then unfortunately carry it into only one aspect of the binary. Which over time was more often than not, only one of two poles. The male one. For example, the Christian Trinity is said to contain the father, son, and the wholly ghost - what about mother, daughter, and the holy ghost? They are removing ½ of the equation. So the young keen mind who's not buying the indoctrination may already be able to tell they're being bullshitted.

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian psychologist, professor, and author who initially became famous from pushing back against a bill advocating "compelled speech" regarding gender pronouns within the Canadian university system that he was a part of. Compelled speech, from either side of the binary political spectrum, absolutely does have issues but we will save discussion of this at another time. Peterson has argued that there is an ongoing "crisis of masculinity" and "backlash against masculinity" in which the "masculine spirit is under assault" due to modern cultural attempts to "feminize" men. Have one look at Korean boy bands and you'll 100% agree with him. As they look like plastic hybridized manikins and you can't quite tell if they are guys or gals. So some of his work we very much agree with, including that men need strong masculine role models in their lives but some we very much do not agree with. For we appreciate the masculine and this is not meant to be an exclusive hit piece against the masculine while only speaking positively of the feminine. Strong masculinity is important. We are a male and like being so. Engaging in chopping wood, carrying water, creating man glitter (otherwise known as sawdust), at times in recent years have wanted to punch someone in the face, have wanted to use our sex organs way more often than any female we've gotten naked with have, occasionally do accelerate our car very fast, and part of us very much sees the appeal in owning various stabbing and shooting weapons. We know someone who is a bit of a cowboy, who when upon returning back home from a flight, his wife picks him up from the airport and brings a soft pouch with his weapons. So that he can immediately put them on. It's marked "Husbands weapons". In much of the US, which has never matured beyond cowboy culture, its standard procedure to have your glock as part of your everyday carry. The feminine part of us thinks this is ridiculous and unnecessary but an aspect of the masculine part of us sees the point and thinks, fair enough, they should have the freedom to do that - in certain public areas. A strong male who is a protector and caretaker is important and not to be undervalued. But so is a strong female who is also a protector and caretaker and what we are talking about is balance. Which is finding equal importance in each.

Peterson happens to also have become quite heavily religious, which he and anyone else are more than welcome to be, but in doing so is increasingly part of a system where those who become more  fundamentalist within said system disagree with obvious examples of patriarchy through the past and present. Where the King had higher control than the queen. And bloodlines of male heirs were encouraged over female ones. Which still continues to this day by male dominance in the majority of the authoritarian world, and even still has reminiscence in the more democratic world. With it being commonplace still to shake a man's hand over a woman's hand. Or mention the man first in speech before the woman. Which has led to the statement "ladies first" as a modern day counter weight. Patriarchy has certainly very much been the name of the game in both the political and business worlds. But no one, not even the ultra modern day boiler rooms of wall street are more patriarchal than what Peterson is on the team for - religion. For in the most extreme forms of religion male dominance is the absolute way. This is being seen as the time we write this by the Afghan Taliban who are declaring women unable to attend school or even have employment. In extreme sects of Mormonism polygamy has long been a thing. In which a man can have multiple wives. Increasing the value of the male, because there's only one of them and decreasing the value of the female, because there's multiple of them. One can tell us there’s no patriarchy when a woman can have multiple husbands but not the other way around. Or in the extremes of the Muslim world when a woman has to wear the Hijab but the men can wear almost anything they want. No matter how much skin is showing. Let's see a man wearing a full body covering with his wife walking in the 114 degree weather with a thong bathing suit and flip flops. Show us that along with not referring to God as "he" and then there will be no religious patriarchy. And to be fair, since we often advocate for the shamanic, we have also spent time with a shamanic tribe which leaned patriarchal, where only men seem to be taking up the shamanic path, but not the tribe's women.

Energetically, Western cultures tend to see the sun or son as male. Which spreads hotness or the positive pole of polarity. Being associated with the element of fire. While the Moon spreads coolness or the negative pole of polarity. Being associated with the element of water. The moon has a relationship with ocean tides. My wife is an OB/GYN doctor which encompasses the two subspecialties of obstetrics (covering pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period) and gynecology (covering the health of the female reproductive system – vagina, uterus, ovaries, breasts and all those wonderful things). She and I know in our marital schedule that it is guaranteed that she’ll be doing at least one, if not multiple baby deliveries on the full moon because it's so common. Like an egg timer. Our daughter came on the full moon.

The positive pole goes outward and the negative pole goes inward. Positive and negative not to be confused with their emotions. For positive is not good while negative is not bad. Same with growth, powered by the sun, and decay, powered by the moon. Both of which have equal importance. Masculine energy is said to be more the mind (thinking), while feminine energy is said to be more the heart (feelings).

Physically men typically have more upper body strength, in their chest and arms. While women typically have more internal body strength in their lower body. With men having larger wider chests and shoulders and women having wider, more curvy hips and butts which are both thought to be signs of beauty. One is certainly more designed to chop wood while the other is more designed to birth children. This does not mean that a male is not a culinary rockstar or a woman can't crack skulls in battle while wearing warrior regalia 6 months pregnant. It also doesn't mean either has greater or lesser value, but they compliment themselves perfectly.

Men tend to do things more externally. Which materially does extend to being outside. As men evolved to be more hunter gatherers while the women evolved to be more the child bearers staying with little ones inside. Womens threshold for being cold is typically lower than mens. The males facial hair, as a tool of keeping the face warm in colder weather is an obvious evolutionary example of such. Foraging for nuts and greens or killing meat and bringing it back to the shelter to feed the woman so the woman can then feed the baby via the boob have equal importance.

Women have concave sexual organs. Going inward. Men have convex sexual organs. Going outward. Without getting into the birds and the bees we know they are designed to work together. In binary material both human genders, each containing their own sexual organs and plumbing, must combine to create another human and hermaphroditism - meaning having dual sexual organs only occurs in botany (plants) and most invertebrates on the outside. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal external condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which either partner can act as the female or male. Using their dual organs at the same time, but they lack the ability to undergo self-reproduction. In very rare circumstances, a mammal, including a human, can be born with dual sexual organs, but without the inability to self replicate. Outside of androgyny in some species, it is not possible to do without one of each of the sexes. Not only should this be proof that a creator, which can self-replicate, must contain both sexes, it brings us to androgyny in mythology. The androgyne (from the Greek words gune "woman" and andros "man,") is a creature that is half male and half female. In myth, such a creature is usually a god (because it can only exist out of the binary) and in terms of its sexual hardware is called a hermaphrodite, after Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite - "herm" "aphrodite" - In religious parlance, androgyny is a much more comprehensive and abstract concept than is implied by the literal image of a creature simultaneously male and female in physical form. To say that God is androgynous differs from saying that God is an androgyne. But if we limit ourselves to the relatively narrow interpretation of the bisexual god, usually a creator, we are still dealing with a very broad and important religious concept. So we would encourage, if you are taken into occasional reading of religious texts, trying to find the minority amount that's the good stuff, to pay attention to Gods referred to as androgynous.

Now remember when we said that the God / Flying Spaghetti Monster creation subdivides, its divisions contain both aspects of the previous division? Also when we said women are men on the inside and men are women on the outside? The internal sexuality becomes inverted when one is homosexual, and just like with religious beliefs or practice, this is a sliding scale. When one is heterosexual, being attracted to the opposite sex, their internal sexuality is mirrored back to front / front to back. When one is bi-sexual, these internal dynamics are more leveled out the same. When one is homosexual but you wouldn't know it from their behavior or mannerisms, their internal sexuality has slightly flipped. When their sexuality is more externally predominant to the point where they begin to externalize their flipped pole exponent, their internal sexuality has also become more amplified. Examples being where you see a gay woman externalize her male aspect, with a more butch style masculinized lesbian who might look like a construction worker or a feminized gay male man with the lisp - both who prefer to somewhat cross dress. This is also seen in more of an extreme degree with drag queens. Where they amplify their opposite sex dress to a very heavy degree. Within the more extreme sexuality component flip amplifications, this is also where one is transgender or transexual. Meaning their gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Where they likely have always had feelings of being the opposite sex in an incorrect body. In the early stages of being trans, at whatever age, they are likely going through a sexual identity crisis, not being sure where they stand, meaning trying to figure out who they are and then once moving past the denial stage into the acceptance stage of their underlying urges, further along become in the physical process of transitioning to the opposite sex through hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgery. Which is a process that can not only be quite expensive, but take years. So due to numerous circumstances, one being a lack of resources, many trans people throughout the world, such as let's say financially impoverished gay male who lives in the slum favelas of Rio De Janeiro will spend the remainder of their life with breasts and a penis. Being a “tranny” which are never able to fully flip their inverted internal and external sexuality toward their preference during their lifetimes.

Since we are on team democratic love over team authoritarian hate, we will caveat that it's important to be understanding, accepting, and supportive of others' struggles through life. Virtually every bi-sexual, lesbian, gay, or trans person deals with psychological difficulties in their lifetimes due to their composition of their internal and external gender and sexuality and if they come from religious households this struggle is even more amplified. But at the same time there has been an attempt within the trans community, supported by the larger gay community to allow certain people to label themselves as "non-binary" which is simply not accurate in the binary material. We accept and understand that the gay community is always adding new language because we personally are also all about new language. At the time of this writing the gay community's current labeling has expanded to LGBTQIA+ and will likely expand more in future years, but at the same time it must do things accurately to fully educate and not undermine itself. For a variety of reasons within culture and society, one being legal forms, if someone claims they are something they are not that's called lying. This was seen by an attractive, very feminine blond woman, with heavy makeup and a cross around her neck (as a sigil of her faith), going into a sympathetic LGBTQIA+ organizations building to fill out paperwork with a camera crew. She then requested the paperwork label her as a man, which she obviously was not. Which was her way of trying to highlight on camera what she perceived as ridiculous and what she would claim as a non-traditional or non-natural way of it all.

While in extremely rare occurrences it is possible for a human being to be born with dual sexual organs, they will always have one intended primary external and internal sexual gender. Folks who claim that they are non-binary are simply in the subset of homosexuality being transgenderism / transsexualism undergoing some stage of their transition period. Wherever they are in their personal fashion or hormone treatments, and regardless of what other titles like pansexual, asexual, or intersex they are using. The claiming of they or them would be more accurately and truly described as "female transitioning to male" or "male transitioning to female" and would also help reduce confusion and lack of education around such issues. Such as when someone who is born a woman, with ovaries, realizes they are gay, and trans, then begins to adopt male dress and a male haircut, then takes on male hormone treatments, then grows male facial hair, then decides before they have gender reassignment surgery, they would like to have a child, then has artificial insemination through their soon to be removed vagina to their still remaining ovaries, then becomes what appears by all view from the outside, a pregnant guy with a beard.

If someone is oppressing their internal sexuality, it tends to amplify extremes. So back to the flamingly gay drag queen, they are a bible-thumping homophobic hater on the inside. And yes, homophobic bible thumping hate spewers are repressed gay drag queens on the inside. This is why the bible belt in the United States, has been for year after year after year, by far the highest viewer of gay pornography. Instead of openly accepting gay cities in which horny gay consenting adults, in the privacy of their own bedrooms, are free to go at it with each other without needing to masturbate to gay porn, and more power to em, those who secretly would like to do that, are instead repressing it. It's also why, in the United States you see anti-gay, gay supposed Christian Republicans. Who advocate for and attempt to pass legislation which limits the rights of gay people. Even though they are secretly gay themselves.

Ultra macho, pickup, hookup and leave one night stand, chauvinism is off balance. My wife had a lesbian female patient, who had a female partner. They were not the usual loving gay type, but the man disliking gay type. When my wife asked some questions about the father they were so off balance offended against the masculine that they corrected her by saying “you mean donor”, with a “how dare you mention the male aspect of our pregnancy” attitude. Not healthy. These are all issues of being off equilibrium. For over Masculinity is off balance - over femininity is also off balance.

We will get into another component of the real and noble and good spiritual core of religion vs the religions of empire in the next essay - which is the love aspect or hate aspect (both to do with the feminine heart), but even though a classic talking point of more extreme religion is its claim that it is always under prosecution, the truth is that bisexual and homosexual people have had a long history of discrimination from religion. Engaging in attacks against transgenderism. Claiming heterosexuality is the only natural way when in nature we find all forms of sexuality. Other mammals such as bull cows or certain primates if left alone without females constantly start humping one another of the same sex. To give credit for less extreme modern aspects of religion, some conventional abrahamic systems of faith have made much progress in this area in just our lifetimes. Supporting democratic societies which allow for private practices of any type of sexuality amongst consenting adults and its surrounding education. Because that includes everyone, not just a select group. While authoritarian, patriarchal societies disapprove of, or dis-allow, or punish anything that is not solely heterosexuality. And usually a very repressed form of it.

Now, we approach the room splitter and dogmatic mind boiler. Just as not all gay men have a lisp in their voice. Feminizing it on the outside, only gay men have a lisp. Not all religious people are against birth control and abortion but only religious people are against birth control and abortion. Being anti-choice or anti-abortion or even anti-birth control has fuck all nothing to do with life. Pro-life is a lie, lie, lie. If anti-choice folks were really pro-life, they would care about the loss of species biodiversity, which they do not. If they were really pro-life, they would care about the lives of migrant refugee children dying in the Mexican desert on their way into Texas and Arizona, or drowning in the Mediterranean, which they do not. If they were really pro-life, they would care about the lives of animals being slaughtered in factory farms, which they do not. If they were really pro-life, they would care more about the lives of second graders more than the second amendment. Which they do not. If they were really pro life, they would care about the lives of children born into households where they are not wanted and unloved, which they do not. They are forced birth don’t care about life because that removes the final decision from the woman, and turns her back into a mandatory baby factory. Limiting women's access to abortion and contraception is about power and control. Specifically patriarchal control over the divine feminine. Full stop. This is because both birth control and abortion are tools which empower the feminine. The store font marketing campaign against abortion claims to be advocates for the unborn, allows for a faux quasi highest morality stance while then hiding their actual not giving a shit about the acorns which they claim are oak trees after they are born. So women who are crusaders against a woman's right to choose have been mind controlled  to be self-disempowering.

Doing some research of what life was like for women prior to the advent of birth control, which is a preventative, and abortion, which is a much more difficult decision but an available option of choice, and you'll find it was staggeringly more difficult and disempowering for them. Women were basically considered second class, completely subservient to males, and sperm repositories who were only valued for their bodies and the ability to continue the population instead of for their leadership capabilities and infinity other possibilities. Strong women in democratic society control access to sex. In authoritarian past cultures like fascist Italy, women were pushed to have as many children as possible - by force. In more authoritarian cultures of today, male to female rape within marriage is still essential legal. This is because all woman can then do is stay at home and raise children, even from a very young age. And then have less say in their own plans for education, independence, travel, career, politics, and say outside of the household. This is why we are amazed why any woman is heavily religious. And why any woman votes for authoritarianism is a contrary position, and can only occur because of a heavy indoctrination into a system of patriarchy. For the religions of the empire have always dis-empowered the feminine.

Not only do more free & democratic leaning societies always allow simple access to birth control and abortion, they are always more co-balanced on their gender importance. While those who are more pro-authoritarian are patriarchal. There is also evidence in the historical record that in higher consciousness ancient civilizations, before the religions of empire spread, that the patriarchy (those going outward from their society) were the decision makers, and the matriarchy (going inward for their society), were equally respected decision makers and both had just as much say in terms of their tribe, culture, and society. But guess who were the final when all what said and done decision makers? The matriarchy. The wise female elders who often lived longer than the males. One piece of evidence carried down in culture and myth still to this day which is proof of this can be found in the ancient game of chess. Where the queen is actually more fluid than the king. Not only being able to move one square per move, but the entire length of the board per move. That’s power. So it’s not surprising that educated, smart, strong, independent, and spiritually powerful women, who are each capable of one day becoming the Queen of the chess board, don't like attempts at having their rights reduced.

Essay: Pastafarians and The Flying Spaghetti Monster

Pastafarianism (not to be confused with Rastafarianism) is the world's fastest growing carbohydrate-based belief system which worships the Flying Spaghetti Monster. An omnipotent deity consisting of a moist heap of spaghetti which floats around in a zero gravity like state with two large meatballs and a pair of eyes in stalks. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is the Supreme Being, invisible, and omnipotent. It is also undetectable; therefore, it is impossible to prove that he does not exist. Outsiders call the group's members satirists, enemies call them heretics, and landlubbers call them scallywags or deceitful pirates, but one thing is certain about Pastafarians – they sure love carbohydrates such as pasta and beer!

If you haven’t figured it out yet, simply switch out Pastafarianism for Hinduism, Judaism, Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, etc.... and the Flying Spaghetti Monster (otherwise known as FSM) for GOD. This applies to all mentions of both going forward throughout the body of our work till the end of time.

The FSM, according to Pastafarians, is a benevolent supernatural entity who created the world some 4,000 years ago while very drunk. Although they assert that in their religion “anything that comes across as humor or satire is purely coincidental”, the Church of the FSM also knows religion in general does not require literal belief in order to provide spiritual enlightenment. Pastafarianism is obviously a parody religion in a similar vein to other past religious parodies such as Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius. Founded by Bobby Henderson, a self-described hobo and hammock enthusiast, the FSM was revealed to the world in 2005. As a physics graduate, Henderson wrote a letter to the bad shit crazy Kansas State Board of Education satirizing its decision to primary creationism in the state's school curriculum by arguing that his belief that “the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster” is as valid as intelligent design.

Parody religions are a comical and clever way for those not buying, not signing up for, or otherwise analyzing, stepping back from, or being critical of religion to essentially make fun of it and some of its absurdities. For mainstream religions far too often than not take themselves way too seriously. We personally have absolutely no allegiance to any religion nor do we ever have any plans to and also find it hilarious when any stand up comic makes fun of religion. Such as Australian comedian Jim Jefferies, who says "asking questions man, that's fucking cancer to religion". My grandparents, parents, and then myself each grew up in an agnostic household where no one was indoctrinated into religion nor were they hostile to it. They acknowledged anyone to believe what they want to. However, for us personally growing up, from as far back as we can remember, we have never been impressed by it. And came to know by the time we were teenagers that the faiths of the world have some good things, but far too many bad things as well. Into later adult life, we have become more and more spiritually open, but without subscription to anyone's pre-set menu.

An initial problem with a religious based system (parody or not) is that it requires you to essentially do, just what we said, follow it. Meaning buy what they are selling. Pre-packaged and wholesale. For what in the West we call Abrahamic based religions, those centered around worship of the God of Abraham, and other mainstream adapted religions of the East such as Hinduism or Buddhism, essentially present menus, which you essentially swear your allegiance toward. But why swear your allegiance at all? Why not instead look at what they all do well, and not well, take the best bits and look even further back to where they each acquired their separate but similar knowledge? That's what we do and what you are likely most interested in as well, for we like a balanced culinary diet. For those who want to limit their diet into less range, or variety, they order off only one type of selection menu. Such as saying, "I am a Pastafarian" I will now only eat this type of food for the rest of my life. Which, in this case, due to the deities' meatballs and noodly appendages, would surely be Italian. So the problem with joining these preset systems is that one has to somewhat swear their allegiance to them, through family, community, or sometimes their entire country. Essentially claiming "I'm only an Italian food eater, and will only eat Italian food for the rest of my days." But why not like different foods from all over the world? Or perhaps have your half a dozen or so favorites, but give yourself the option to access any down your gullet at any future time.

All self development training systems, and especially systems related to spiritual self development, whether veiled in religion or not, generally have rules for those who wish to train in them which have to be followed to progress. There is nothing wrong with that and, like military training, discounting some lite to heavy brainwashing, can actually have some good things such as inspiring hard work and discipline. But a major problem comes into play if someone decides they no longer want to be in the system. Real spiritual training systems demand you ask questions, you do not move forward unless you ask continuing questions. And a real spiritual one, such as the esoteric mystery traditions, which expect constant questions, will essentially dump you or drop you, or amicably separate with you, and happily send you on your way if you do not pass their tests. But a CULTY one, will not let you leave without pain. For you are then reducing the size of the flock. So one of the beauties of a parody religion such as Pastafarianism is that if you’re not satisfied, the parody church offers a “God-back guarantee” in which “your old religion will most likely take you back.”

Now here's the main reason we lay this out at this time as a second essay in our pro-democracy political philosophy series, if someone wants to believe in and worship The Flying Spaghetti Monster, and do it within a specific menu of Pastafarianism, they should have absolute freedom to do that. Denying them that would be the most oppressive, Communist thing ever. Yet what is equally as terrible as Communism is a theocratic, Fascistic attitude that one must force the flying spaghetti monster and Pastafarianism to be imposed on others. This leads us to the first amendment of the United States constitution. Which states:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

So in this line written multiple hundreds of years ago with three commas and two semicolons we have valuable things said. In regards to religion there are two main clauses mentioned. One is the establishment clause, and the other is the free exercise clause. The "establishment" clause prevents the selection by the government of an "official" church. It would be an "establishment" of a religion if the Government financed one church or several churches. The "establishment" clause protects citizens also against any law which selects favorability to any religious custom, practice, or ritual, puts the force of government behind it, and fines, imprisons, or otherwise penalizes a person for not observing it. This is unfortunetly, a very outdated operating system which still continueds to run it's software in parts of the Muslim world today. Even though the founding documents of the US do have mentioned an analogue of The Flying Spaghetti Monster (the God word) in its language, which certainly implies that the founders supported the idea of a creator, they were conscious, wise enough, and sophisticated enough to make sure there was no official state religion. So the Government plainly could not join forces with one religious group and decree a universal and symbolic creepy and mandatory genital mutilation circumcision on its youngsters. Nor could it require all children to undergo what is secretly an occult ritual - a baptism against their will or give tax exemptions only to those whose children were baptized.

“The First Amendment commands government to essentially be free of one's interest in theology or ritual and admonishes government to be interested in allowing religious freedom to flourish or to either produce in the long run atheists or agnostics. On matters of this kind, the government must be neutral. This freedom plainly includes freedom from religion, with the right to believe, speak, write, publish and advocate both pro-religions or anti-religious programs as freedom of speech. Certainly the "free exercise" clause does not require that everyone embrace the theology of some church or of some faith, or observe the religious practices of any majority or minority sect. Which is stating, as would be the freest expression for all, neutrality. This is super awesome because it gives full free exercise to the country's citizenry to practice respect, worship, or swear private allegiance to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and also simultaneously have full freedom to ignore, discount, or be extremely critical of both the belief of FSM and the practice of Pastafarianism.

Probably the most beautiful part of the founding documents is what's said in this line from the first Amendment and followed up in other founding and early documents such as the Treaty of Tripoli. Which is the beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, Separation of Church & State. A philosophical and jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the state. Conceptually, the term refers to the creation of a secular state and to disestablishment, the changing of an existing, formal relationship between the church and the state. Although the concept is older, the exact phrase "separation of church and state" is derived from "wall of separation between church and state" which is a term coined by Thomas Jefferson. The concept was promoted by Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke - a person the red cult, and we'll get into the red cult later, loves to hate. The philosophy of the separation of the church from the civil state parallels the philosophies of secularism, disestablishmentarianism, religious liberty, and religious pluralism. By way of these philosophies, the European states assumed some of the social roles of the church and the state, which the US also eventually adopted.

In all seriousness, we want anyone who reads or listens to this, whether you're tolerantly atheist, agnostic, religious, or perhaps any combination thereof to feel welcome here. But an underlying foundation to those things co-existing is a mutual respect for allowing each to have their own way within people's private lives, and keep the shared contract of government neutral on the subject. For as the founders knew, neutrality leads to the strongest form of democracy. This is very important to state at this time in our pro-democracy series because there is a type of person, who blends across these spectrums, who has aggression against subordinate groups. The extreme nature of their one menu means they want to dictate not only what they are allowed to do in private but what others must do to abide by their one and only menu in public. They discount neutrality as well as the shared social contract of society, putting everything into a friend-enemy dynamic, and not only does not respect and aspires toward true democracy but instead has pro-authoritarian political leanings, and then completely denies what is fact versus what is fiction.

In short, they want their deities' noodly appendages to stretch into every branch of your life, whether you're into that or not. Details and deconstructions are what we are leading toward in regards to this will be followed up on in the next essays.