SLEP is the Opposite of WOKE

In development and growth there is a metaphor of being awake or asleep. Through our personal, or as Carl Young might say, transpersonal development, we will go through stages of waking to what we were past asleep to. Plato's Cave, as well as the Matrix films, which we may or may not have worked on, are allegories for this. On a less philosophical and more Western societal level there has been a history of turning awake into "woke". Which originally emerged within African American Vernacular English in the early 1900s. It simply meant being awake to systemic racism affecting primarily but not exclusively Black Americans. In 1938, singer Lead Belly used "stay woke" in reference to staying alert to racial violence, particularly lynching. During the Civil Rights Movement, "woke" became more deeply associated with social and political awareness. It signified being conscious of racial injustice, police brutality, and civil rights struggles. The term resurfaced in the early 2000s due to everyone and their grandmother having cell phones and thus HD cameras in their pants, after recorded and thus widely seen police killing incidents, "stay woke" was a call to remain alert to systemic oppression and violence. In contemporary culture, over time, "woke" has been politicized and weaponized in discourse. The word turned from a badge of awareness into a culture war battleground, stripped from its original racial justice context with regressives flipping it pejoratively to describe what they saw as performative activism, cancel culture, or overzealous political correctness and frankly also mostly anything entailing an evolving society. 

Martin Luther King Jr. was a problem to the American Empire not when speaking on behalf of only African Americans, because they only made up around 10% of the population during his lifetime. He became a real problem and thus eventually a martyr, because he realized that systemic inequality was the real underlying problem and started to speak as such, and because of also looping in poor brown, and white folks into the civil rights movement, as there were and still are more poor white people than any other demographic, thus gaining a critical mass of the population, then the dark sorcerers knew he had to go. 

The way this dark occult sorcery has played out, is that ever since money has existed, for thousands of years, all of history has been a story of the struggle of economic and thus social classes. In recent times, in ancient Rome it was patricians, plebeians, and slaves. In the medieval era, it was between lords, their knights and the serfs who work their fields. In the Robber Baron era, it was bourgeoisie factory owners, and professional classes, and the growing proletarian of new immigrant workers. Splitting the working class into different camps, via race issues or now culture war issues, has always been by design to benefit the godzillionair oligarchic robber baron cutthroat post truth capital class, and they've been doing it for thousands of years. It goes back as long as commerce and money. Pharos, Nobels, Kings, were able to enact more control over the populace by always reinforcing a different type of person just over the hill. Sound familiar?

Without being twisted, from a true origin MLK standpoint, within the political lexicon, "woke" describes a state of social and political awareness to this darkness, especially regarding injustice and, by far most crucially, economic inequality. To be truly modern awake is to recognize that structures of power do not naturally produce fairness for economic underclasses and that democracy, a human enactment of a spiritual concept, must be actively protected through continuous, active engagement - not passive trust in elites or institutions. It is about understanding that economic justice is democracy’s lifeblood. Without broadly shared prosperity and meaningful participation, superior democracy shrivels into inferior plutocracy—rule by the wealthy, for the wealthy. To be awake is to recognize that: Freedom must be defended both politically and economically. To know concentrated wealth inevitably seeks to concentrate power. 

American intellectuals have long spoken of the un-educated financially often lower class voter who votes against their own interests. This is because they are trapped in a series of cults, starting with dark imperial primitive religion vertical morality, which has blind allegiance to authority. Those who have conservatively religious operating systems installed, shepard the belief that royals rule the lower classes because those are their stations in life. So the very robber barons who screw them they vote for. This is a poster child of why the Empire does not want you to be educated, (and that can be as an autodidact - meaning self taught) let alone starting to more spiritually develop. As the beginning of something more advanced like mysticism could be said to be the end of reading.

As this linguistic contrast mirrors ancient and philosophical themes, across traditions, to be "awake" is to be enlightened; to be "asleep" is to be lost in illusion. Thus, "waking" and "sleeping" are by no means simply geopolitical labels, but markers of states of consciousness. And the latter is a self-chosen refusal to awaken - even when the opportunity to become aware is present. True "Class consciousness" realizes that 99% of people need to unite together against the oligarchs. So all working people throughout the world should unite against far wrong Elon Musk fasistic Natzi'sm glbally. Yet, there are far too many people across the world who do the opposite. This willfully conscious sticking of one's head in the sand describes a state of passive or willful ignorance, especially toward the growing maldistribution of morbid wealth that threatens the very foundation of liberal democracy. Meaning liberty and justice for all. As Oligarchy is the problem and its very existence is the sign of a mentally ill society. If someone has 30 million to 50 million bucks fine. Good on them and we hope they find the value in compassionate giving. Yet, there are degrees of wealth, getting up towards the hundreds of billions mark, that make people compassionless psychopaths. They have convinced themselves they are devinly special and unique and were meant to be that way. Yet, they have frankly achieved that not through providing a proportionate amount of value for what their companies have created, but instead via white collar crook criminality, rigging the system to parasitize off of it. This is what the 2008 economic crash showed, revealing the criminal behavior of Goldman Sachs, Countrywide, Lehman Brothers, AIG, and even the rating agencies. Little to none of which went to jail because they long ago bought every red and many blue politicians. And then sleeping people vote for these very politicians. Such as rural farmers who vote for a robber baron that names his son Baron. As George Carlin said, "people keep electing these ultra rich cocksuckers who dont give a fuck about them". When evolving minds recognize that extreme economic inequality destabilizes free societies, sleeping individuals ignore or deny this reality. They accept the concentration of wealth into the hands of a few as normal, inevitable, or even virtuous. They don't have the capacity to grasp that freedom without economic justice is hollow - and that without vigilance, faux democracies become an empty ritual serving only the powerful. 

History offers stark warnings about what happens when societies become asleep in the face of wealth concentration: Ancient Athens saw its democracy corrode when an elite class of oligarchs consolidated economic and military power, hollowing out participation by ordinary citizens. The Roman Republic fell, in part, due to massive inequalities between the rural poor and the landed elite, paving the way for authoritarian rule under emperors. Gilded Age America was characterized by tycoons and monopolists who amassed extraordinary fortunes while corrupting public institutions - until grassroots movements forced reforms like antitrust laws and labor protections. Each time, a failure to address economic injustice weakened the social fabric, making societies vulnerable to authoritarian takeovers or violent upheaval. 

So our current official definition, which we'll likely continue to refine in the future, and we encourage you to go to this website's sponsor (www.lcurve.org joke) to see a visual representation of this... without being twisted, from our personal true origin standpoint, within the political lexicon, being "Slep" is "the non-realization or conscious refusal to see the extreme degree of morbid wealth which exists in countries without sensible tax policies and how such oligarchic wealth has always and will always take power from "We The People" by degrading democracy." 

It's also...

To not know that oligarchy is the problem.

It's to not get that strong educated middle class = democracy. 

It's to not realize what the whole game really is. That it's the .01% vs the 99.9%. 

It's to not know there is a balance to capital and social. 

It's not realizing that the largest criminals come from the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy, not the bottom. 

It's to not grasp that anyone who has denigrated the word socialism secretly loves privatizing gains and socializing losses.

It's to not know tax cuts are coded re-distributions of wealth from the lower and middle classes, and even some of the upper class, to already morbidly wealthy godzillionaires.

It's to overlook how corporate lobbying, campaign finance, and media ownership erode genuine political choice. 

It's to not realize that the 1930's in the US brought a social contract to the people, helping to lift them up out of poverty, and the 1980's was an attempt to break it.

It's about sleepwalking through structural inequality which tries to enable a slow-motion coup against democratic ideals.

It's to be a discontent member of the working class, while voting for the very people who screw you economically. Which in the red, withe, and blue would be 100% of the red of the and over 50% of the blue.

It's to not acknowledge the government is going to be there, and it will either work on behalf of the working class or the ultra rich, so the trick is to make you not like it.

It's to accept massive disparities in income and opportunity as "normal" or "deserved". Trusting that "the market" alone ensures fairness without governmental intervention. Basically... play the game without referees.

It's to never endingly fear the equality of opportunity communist boogie man is designed to just keep them locked in a never ending polarized extreme of SLEPville. Population them. 

On the communism subject... India, China, Russia, and the USA are the largest countries by population... China has some good things and some certainly not good things. Let me restate that second part... they certainly have some not good things. But in the last 40+ years has been doing something extremely eyebrow raising by embracing a more healthy balance of capital and social. And if you don't know what we're saying there, it's "socialism" mixed with "capitalism" and if one completely ignores one of those two things, not realizing, like a DNA helix, they will always be intimately intertwined, we can't have an honest conversation and it's back to sleep. Not only is China's infrastructure now some of the most modernized in the world, already surpassing the USA as a global superpower, it is on track to be a more superior country to all three of the other's combined. Why? Because of its social aspect, while allowing its rich people to get rich, its government has also been growing its middle class like a weed, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty, but does not allow their godzillionair class to steer public policy thus becoming independent power brokers who operate parallel to the state. While India, Russia, and the US, very still much do. Time to change that.

Enshitification and the Path Away from It

“Enshitification” is a crude but incisive term that captures a phenomenon many users of digital platforms feel instinctively but struggle to articulate. It is similar to Sturgeon's Law, which states that 90% of what is made by man in popular culture and content is crap. Coined by writer Cory Doctorow, the term refers to the slow and inevitable decline of once-useful online services into exploitative, frustrating, and joyless systems—designed more to extract value than to provide it. And we would say it can apply to content creators of any sort, very much including artists as well. At its core, enshitification is what happens when platforms abandon listeners, watchers, users, etc in favor of profit, and convenience gives way to manipulation.

The cycle begins innocently enough. A new platform emerges, optimized to attract users by being genuinely helpful, clean, or fun. It encourages growth through free access, openness, and simplicity. But as the user base expands, the platform begins shifting its loyalties - not to the users, but to advertisers, vendors, or shareholders. Gradually, user experience is compromised: search results favor paid placements, algorithms suppress organic reach, privacy is sacrificed for data mining, and once-optional features become paywalled. Eventually, the platform becomes a shell of its former self: bloated with ads, throttled by algorithms, and driven by metrics rather than meaning. So at the early stage - It's focused on value and user experience. Its middle stage - Prioritizes vendors, advertisers, or large users... and its late stage (and does this sound familiar) - Treats both users and sellers as resources to be mined.

This process is not accidental. It is a structural tendency of platforms that prioritize greedy quarterly economic growth (the cancerous kind) and monetization above all else. In this sense, enshitification is not just a technical or aesthetic decline - it is a moral one. The space that once empowered users becomes one that exploits them. So how do we move away from enshitification? First, by reclaiming digital agency. This means resisting passive consumption and questioning default choices. Rather than surrendering to algorithmic feeds, we can seek out tools and communities that operate with transparency and respect. This might involve using open-source platforms, federated services like Mastodon, or tools that respect user privacy and autonomy. Second, we can support ethical alternatives. Even if they lack the polish or scale of mainstream giants. Small platforms, cooperatives, and community-run servers may not offer the frictionless ease of Big Tech, but they often preserve something more precious: integrity. Third, we must change how we measure value. If success is measured only by late stage, post truth, Thatch Reg Rump style profit, platforms will always descend into enshitification. But if we prioritize reliance + sustainability, user well-being, and trust, new models become possible. This may mean paying smaller fees for services that respect us, such as our website nilesheckman.org, shameless plug, or simply engaging more mindfully with the ones we already use. There have been many times we've considered buying a piece of software, which has an unnecessary monthly fee instead of a one time fee, to then ask Reddit for alternatives, and then find a piece of tiny software which does the same thing just as well, but may not look as visually slick, and instead simply has a donation or buy me a coffee page for the author. Fourthly, always remember and act upon - That you are never going to find truly novel, individualized, incredible art or work from a large company. You are going to find it from a small group or individual. For example, Oprah Chopra (Meaning Oprah Winfry and Deepak Chopra, both whom didn't always used to be but have become big money new agey guru figures who have become massive LLC's with huge teams, including marketing teams, behind them) compared to someone like Pierre Grimes who did have a non-profit 501(c)3 called "The Noetic Society", but whose philosophical work, which is superior, and you would never hear about unless someone you respect recommended them your way. 

Ultimately, to resist enshitification is to believe that the internet can still be a place of connection, creativity, and shared meaning - not just a marketplace of attention. It requires imagination, patience, and the willingness to choose differently - even if that choice means walking away. Perhaps another reason to give LARGE, software, gig, & media platforms, ecommerce, streaming services, search engines, apps and app stores, online publishing, and corporate journalism less of your time and bias towards their smaller, truer, realer, versions?

Benefits of Not Liking or Subscribing

Are you tired of constantly hearing the phrase, "Please like and subscribe"? Just as a laptop should not be set directly on the lap, or the federal reserve is not federal, social media is not social, and is really just self-marketing. And we know that the main reason it's essentially given away freely, is that the users of it, as evident by the fact that you often have to sign into it, and to use a marketing zombie apocalypse word be supposed "consumers" of it, are its product. 

Getting traffic for content online, is not determined by its quality, and certainly not its depth, but by, well... frankly... its either overtly or covert selling of sex, and ability for marketing appeal. 9 out of 10 times content will have more high traffic if its creator is a marketer first and a content creator second. If one seeks assistance in getting more traffic on their content, the consistent thing "They Live" marketing shallows will tell them is they need to put more time into it. So someone's life essentially must become their Tube-Face-Insta-Tock. They will also tell you to constantly remind your audience to engage with and follow your stuff. Why? So that it has more supposed marketability. 

In an age headed toward Cyberpunk where algorithms eagerly monetize, quantify, and track every like, share, and subscription, craving our engagement does not recognize us as persons, but more as patterns. They reduce us to tendencies, habits, and click-through rates. Media platforms profit from our interactions - not just financially through data mining and ads, but by shaping public opinion and behavior. Liking and subscribing give them loads of data mining on your end and often also lead to an ever-expanding flood of content tailored to perceived interests. This feedback loop can result in overstimulation, distraction, and a kind of mental clutter. By resisting providing data to this impulse, we preserve the richness of ambiguity and reclaim the right to withhold stamping it with premature approval. 

At its core, social media trains us in a moral shorthand: this is good, that is bad; this is follow-worthy, that is forgettable. We recommend the book The Anxious Generation on how toxic the “thumbs up” has become to young people when posting content online. And even the creators of it have come to regret it and the main reason it's still going is for data mining purposes. As we mature, we do not seek attention, and so are not bound by its loss. Likes also become an inaccurate proxy for judgment, making browsers think something is of higher quality because it may have more of them, even when often manipulatable by bot armies. We had a teacher who once said there's no reason to like anything. You can always go to it without having liked it or subscribed to it. Every time you do it, you micro help the creator but one could say you also micro hurt you. Constructive and proactive comments are better. Like in a university lecture hall, encouraging social interaction. So socials can be used more consciously and in that case, get people talking with one another and thus socializing. 

Subscriptions also can create a funnel leading to lack of new information - a tethering of the self to a stream of content that assumes our identity is stable, our interests fixed, our affinities monetizable. But the self is not static; it evolves, contradicts, questions. By not necessarily signaling constant interest, we give ourselves the chance to encounter ideas and creators on our own terms, rather than having them relentlessly served up by algorithms designed to keep us scrolling. To not subscribe is to honor fluidity, to remain open to surprise, to let the unknown visit uninvited, to step outside the rhythm of digital affirmation - to dwell, instead, in the uncertain space between reaction and reflection. In a world governed by immediacy, where content is validated not by its truth but by its traction, choosing not to engage becomes an act not merely of digital discipline, but of philosophical significance. Micro non participating sends a message, however small, that we are not just passive users but more conscious participants. As there is a quiet almost metaphysical rebellion in refusing to do so. Choosing not to engage, to decline, becomes less a data point and legible to the machine. There is a dignity in asserting that we are not merely consumers of information, but contemplative beings capable of existing outside the economy of constant feedback. While not really social media thrives on interaction, withholding those tiny digital gestures offers benefits that go beyond mere indifference. Fostering more authentic relationships with content, creating more digital autonomy, not allowing for complex experiences to be collapsed, and disrupting the machinery of algorithmic manipulation. It is an opportunity to practice discipline and inner clarity. In a world where endless opinions clamor for affirmation and identity is measured in metrics, the choice not to engage is an act of deliberate restraint - a refusal to let the outside world govern the inner life.

To tread lightly with giving them minimal data then, is not to disappear but to inhabit the digital world with inwardness. Virtue is not performed outwardly for applause, but cultivated inwardly through self-awareness and detachment from externals. Interactive media thrives on externals - reputation, validation, attention. It flatters the ego and inflames discursiveness. Meaning inability to focus on one thing for an extended period of time. This is why, in modernity, teaching a broccoli haired mop headed zit faced teenage dweeb who grew up staring at screens, hardly ever cracking a dense book, and instead only pecking at and heavily engaging with feeds, to meditate, is a difficult task.  A philosopher in ancient Rome, before the empire destroyed itself there, once said all you need is a garden and a library. So if you use the online world as a research tool, in a very minimal fashion, that isn't about cynicism or disengagement - it's about being more mindful. It’s about consuming media without being consumed by it. In an environment that constantly asks for your approval, silence can be a form of freedom. Marcus Aurelius, surrounded by noise and that empire, reminded himself daily: “You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” In a digital node grid filled with clamor, the refusal to always engage becomes a way of walking silently through the marketplace, untouched by potential seductions.

Calling Out Empire #2: Morality within Liberal & Conservative Religion

So we're going to say something in this in which there is no going back from. When the light side of the force is on your side, you have the benefit to just be upfront and honest, shoot straight, rather than trying to speak in dog whistles or codes. We've said plenty of things, which since we're in low cell phone bar signal consciousness at this time space vector for many, are perceived as contentious and controversial, when in reality they shouldn't even be considered such and, to be stoic about it, the fact that they would be considered contentious or controversial says more about the people interpreting them than anything else. So to say this straight, we'll speak on an obvious pattern which has been prevalent in our work that we're sure you've noticed and has long ago purged theocrats from listening to our outputs... which is Niles, as an American, when you do speak of the political, why are you always shitting on The American right wing, and rarely ever on the American left wing? Because what is labeled, in a modern context, the right wing, is the core of the American Empire.

Does that mean what's considered the left in the US is totally free of empire? Of course not. We would never claim that or say that or give the left a full pass. Unless you're an indigenous person, we are all operating in nations which were built on settler colonialism. And in the US, we have two political parties, one has gone batshit theo-fash crazy, and the other is not very left but typically more a centrist, still corporatized, neo-liberal party which is interested generally in maintaining the status quo through outdated procedures and not rocking the boat of foundationally oppressive structures and is thus... often... frustrating and we need more electable parties. But these two sides are far from symmetrical. They are 85/15 asymmetrical. When Kamala Harris, who would have been orders of magnitude a superior president than the kakistocracy clown show we're now dealing with is, says during a presidential campaign, "we need the most lethal fighting force in the world" that's a signal to announce to the empire that she's also game to play ball.

There are numerous ways to frame the political spectrum, change vs order, liberty vs authority, progress vs regress, collective vs individual, globalism vs nationalism, which have varying levels of accuracy but all of these are binaries and we're going to be in the future discussing some alternate, and superior quaternary ways to frame these worldviews, but in terms of modern times, meaning the last few thousand years, and humans are over a million years old, what has been in a modern context called the left (associated more with liberalism) vs what has been called in a modern context called right associated more with conservatism), and... ready to cross over the yellow striped hazard lines, pierce through the veil, fall into the looking glass, here it goes.... liberal leaning religion is a brighter form of religion, while conservative religion, is a more darker religion of empire.

Even though there is a door #3 called magic which is kept from the masses, which is what Dion Fortune defined as "causing changes in consciousness in accordance with will", religion and science are two primary doors which tend to become foundational operating systems that aim to answer deeper questions of life. Which then have additional systems installed on top of those systems. So one's religion is their basic foundation of the building, which then has additional stories built on top of it. That's why we talk about spirituality so much when you're not supposed to talk about religion and politics. Because in your personal development you gotta reevaluate that foundation before you build anything else up from it. We know someone who is a therapist who had a male patient who requested their therapist at the practice also be a Christian. Why? Because that patient is willing to work on upper floors of their building, which they deserve credit for, but don't want their foundation challenged because it would be too painful for them. As we've said in our pro-democracy series of essays, when someone puts on their social media feeds - Christian, conservative, cross emoji, American flag emoji, in that order, they are announcing that their Christianity is operating system #1, and their conservatism is operating system #2, and the issue on the conservative side of America, is that they are so religious to a cult degree and then so political to a cult degree and you don't see someone say on the opposite side of the isle - scientist, liberal, front and center to nearly the same degree because they are not in as deep of a cult.

Religion can be defined, as any system, of faith, worship, or by far best of all, practice. The way to most differentiate liberal leaning religion vs conservative leaning religion, is through what's called horizontal vs vertical morality. Horizontal morality looks at the whole spectrum of nature, including everything made by the divine - insects, reptiles, mammals, polytheistic deities, all of which are of both sexes, etc... This more mimics nature based hierarchies, such as saying the lion is the King of the jungle, and also is more inclusive allowing for new ideas to come in, including having morality applied to and compassion for elements of the whole ecosystem. This is a truer spiritual system because it more honors nature and doesn't just try to destroy it. Conservative religion is vertical, meaning, only relating to you the selfish individual ego, and your relationship with an extreme, male hierarchy, and has little to no compassion or care for anything else in the spectrum of nature. So the more conservative religious one is, the more it's just about being subservient to and trying to rise up a vertical ladder of authority - your older brother above you, your father above you, your male pastor above that, judges above them, your emperor above them, Jesus above them, and then male sky daddy monotheistic God above them and who gives a flying F about women - they are just for breeding à la Handmaid's Tale. Or nature for that matter. God just put all that there for them to extract and exploit. It's a vertical moral system and under it rape, which is about power, and murder, are not wrong because they incured injury or loss, but because you didnt have the authority within the vertical hiearchy to do them. But the problem there, is if you then have the authority to do it, you can do it and these are always the same people who do the largest red flag of dark religious red flags, which is then claiming to talk on behalf of the higher power. Because then when they consider that they have been given the authority within their vertical patriarchal hierarchy, then they have the authority by God to kill. This is what religions of the empire have been doing for thousands of years. Crusades, holocausts, slavery, settler colonialism, terrorism, are all motivated by foundational conservative religious operating systems... and why a batshit loony scandal plagued televangelist preacher will say "God hates homosexuals" as he steals congregation money and why Osama Bin Laden said "Allah has blessed us" after he arranged the flying of planes into buildings.

Here's the simple thing a more real spiritual system (meaning a nature based system) should teach, you're in the material world to grow and learn, through polarity, which is not going to be a cake walk. But you have the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness while here. And you will return to the divine, your home, which is love and light. Anything outside of that is in name only. Nature has a food chain, which is brutal, but full spectrum nature teaches us that there is a return to the light and love of going home. And that has different names for the different religions throughout the world. And ones with members that have horizontal morality will be more inclusive and less exclusive. Based more in love and not fear. As we will ALL return to the light. Some sooner than others. This is exemplified in a response by Georgetown Law School Dean William Treanor, a constitutional law scholar, to a letter sent to him by dark imperial project 2025 agents, pointing out that Georgetown is the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit university and prides itself on being "founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding."

With a horizontal moral system, you know rape and murder are wrong cause you caused harm. Might isn't right. And you would question and criticize a supposed god who would kill, which it of course wouldn't because, the source of all things is unity and love. But within a vertical system, might is said to make right. Which is both theocratic and authoritarian. So the more they incorrectly take this literally the more their religion is authoritarian and their politics is inevitably authoritarian and all they care about is power and control and we recommend the book The Power Worshipers about the imperial Christian Right. And if they then think sky daddy says it should be this way, then it doesn't matter who it harms. Appeals to empathy are meaningless, because they don't get morals from empathy, they get them from a fictional dark hierarchical authority. As agents of the empire.

Echo Chambers and The Illusory Truth Effect

All that should matter is what is true. But let's ask ourselves, is most everything we hold true primarily because it's a product of echoes of repetition?

The Illusory Truth Effect (also sometimes called the reiteration effect) is a psychological dynamic which is the tendency to think information is accurate after repeated exposure. It's a cognitive bias in which people are more likely to feel information to be true after hearing it over and over, even for some critical thinkers, even when the source of the information is known to be suspect, even if they start out knowing the information is literally false.

It's closely related to fallacies "proof by assertion" and "argumentum ad nauseam" in which arguments are repeatedly re-stated. Well there is a malevolent reason for that repetition. Repetition, communicated with confidence, increases the perception that something is accurate. This happens because familiarity makes statements feel more credible, regardless of their accuracy.

Out of various concepts that we aim to highlight in our work, one being the previously said all that should matter is what is true, another of top tier importance is the willingness to look at, with eyes to see, the darkness of the world. It's easy to escape into fluff. It's harder to face our collective shadows. Because we learn through darkness and the marketing branch of darkness is disinformation and is a key reason why diss and miss information spreads and why media influence can be so powerful. Things such as advertising & marketing (which the comedian Bill Hicks once said if you're in you should kill yourself), and that's a joke as we've worked on commercials, the 50% of conspiracy which is garbage, and zero journalistic integrity propaganda dumpster fire oligarchic owned boggle head media and also oligarchic owned discursive time wasting garbage anti social feeds are fertile grounds for this.

Because it can make false information appear true, it can also be used to deliberately manipulate the thinking of others. It can serve as an incentive for bad actors, commonly political or ideological extremists, to deliberately spread misinformation for their own goals. By intentionally creating echo chamber environments which are dirty ecosystems in which participants encounter beliefs that only amplify or reinforce those preexisting beLIEefs by communication and repetition inside a closed system and insulated from rebuttal. White collar criminal dark agents not only will flood the zone with crap so there is high noise to signal but hit you again and again with the crap and noise. With the goal of you giving up or not knowing up from down. In George Orwell's 1984 Big Brother's use of propaganda is a consistent restating, in a loudspeaker fashion, simple phrases such as "strength through ignorance", "freedom is slavery", "war brings peace", or "2 + 2 = 5" and those who allow such dystopian echos inside their minds make a ridiculous idea like there's heavy amounts of outcome determinative voter fraud unbreakably obvious to not just the dumbest dumbfucks that ever dumbed but rather smart individuals who have transmuted their former human brains into bird brains.

When we hear or read the same information multiple times, our human brains process it more fluently and you'll hear comments about the information getting to our "subconscious" mind even though a teacher of ours better described it as our "unconscious" mind. This fluency creates a sense of ease, which we unconsciously interpret as truthfulness. Even if we originally knew a statement was false, repeated exposure can make us forget the source and over length of time, move into a middle ground of thinking it might not be totally inaccurate and then even come to accept it as true. Our brains tend to prefer familiar information over complex verification processes leading us to have a sense of familiarity with repeated content. Which applies to Both True and False Information, because The illusory truth effect does not distinguish between truth and lies, and simply reinforces whatever is repeated, it's shocking how many people we hold in high regard can still fall for this joker spiral bias over time because repetition increases the perception of validity.

So counter solutions to this shadow darkness is to remove oneself from echo chambers (to have a mental detox) and not be one of many dominos passing on mental poo, checking sources (ideally original ones that are not hand-me-down), diversify information sources with lateral reading (meaning multiple sources from ideally variety viewpoints) especially ones which counter the false echo, pre-dubunking (meaning dip your toe into it in small doses before it can influence), remaining skeptical and push back against (meaning correcting disinfo publically while the original claim spreads), and most of all, like we've done in this insight with a specific phrase, use this knowledge of how the human mind works to repeat truths over fictions. Cause all that should matter is what is true.

Essay: Zion, Babylong, & Cannabis

Reggae music is jolly deep. Its laid-back rhythm gives a signature simple, often “one drop” beat, with melodies that not only have a rich and cozy flavor but also a relaxing, hypnotic groove. This rhythmic energy tends to be universally uplifting and originates from one small island in the Caribbean, Jamaica - Known for good music and amazing runners. Reggie has spread to a global influence, having become a worldwide phenomenon when other forms of obscure music specific to other small parts of the world have not traveled nearly as far. One of the primary reasons for this is that it combines this enjoyable warmth with also powerful authentic messages. 

Much like the metal mixed with rap band Rage Against The Machine, it is very resistance based political music. With themes such as making due with little money and justice for all, reggae has been a voice for the poor and oppressed, tackling topics like inequality, freedom, and unity. Doing so with a higher than average spirituality deeply tied to speaking of a higher experience as many reggae songs promote peace, love, and self-empowerment. Typically but not always flavored in Rastafari, which could not only be labeled a religion, and a philosophy, but also a dreadlock wearing practice. Which is negatively stereotyped as poverty stricken beach bum or hippy, as reggie literally means to wear rags, but hygiene and fashion within are a sliding scale. Regardless of class, Reggie is more a grassroots voice of the people through tumultuous times. Not just being a form of music, but also a way of life.

Rastafarianism originated in / around Trenchtown in the 1930s, Which could be said to be the original ghetto with tough streets, with people often broke and probably somewhat hungry with reggae growing out of the make love not war ethos of the 1960's. It combines Afrocentric identity, biblical teachings, and social resistance with a deep reverence for Haile Selassie I, the former Emperor of Ethiopia, whom Rastas think of as a Messiah. In Rastafarianism, Zion and Babylon are central symbols representing two opposing forces or states of being: one of liberation and spiritual purity, and the other of greed and the negative aspects of materialism and over consumption which inevitably leads to corruption and oppression of living things. This juxtaposition reflects Rastafarian values and worldview, and is often rooted in allegories and the history of African diaspora experiences and we mention it now because not only is Zion the light and promised land, Babylon is the darkness and thus an analogue to what is also called Empire. Zion is not actually a physical place but a state of consciousness where one lives in harmony with divine principles, free from Babylon’s oppression and corruption. Representing liberation, freedom, and divine promise. The religious aspect of Rastafarian is Abrahamic, as these terms are borrowed from the Bible, where Zion is the mountain of Jerusalem, symbolizing God’s, or better described within a Rasa framework as Jah's, kingdom and a place of salvation. Within Rastafarian Context Zion is often equated with Ethiopia, particularly as the prophesied homeland and spiritual center for African-descended people, and seen as a symbol of resistance to colonial oppression. While Babylon is typically associated with colonialism and systems of exploitation, a core of which being the historical oppression of Africans through slavery and racism, the term draws from the biblical city of the same name, which is portrayed as a symbol of decadence, idolatry, and tyranny in texts like the Book of Revelation. In modern Rastafarian context Babylon refers to the modern world system that perpetuates injustice, massive levels of inequality, and spiritual degradation. It is seen as the source of downpression, or exploitation, as well as alienation for people of all races, especially of African descent coming from a country made up entirely of former slaves, disconnecting them from their heritage and natural way of life.

In the US, the phrase "we've been on this" reflects a sentiment among African Americans that their community has long been aware of and actively resisting political oppression in the forms of things such as segregation, redlining, and voter suppression. This perspective emphasizes that issues of systemic racism and disenfranchisement are not new but have been persistent challenges faced by African descendants outside of Africa throughout recent history. But just as the typically brown Buddhists deserve respect for being meditators for hundreds of years, the almost entirely black Rastafarian's deserve respect for being on the use of what is probably the single most amazing plant in the Earth realm - cannabis.

Now, regarding cannabis, refer, skunk, herb, ganja, weed, marijuana, etc... Which is a much longer story that we will continue to discuss - there are usually two camps regarding. The ‘reefer pessimists’ and the 'cannabis enthusiasts', or the ‘Cannatopians’. Both of whom have grey areas and as someone who was never a pessimist, but also had not even touched it till our early 30's till we first smoked it with our hippy father of which it's been his lifelong main drug, we have evolved quite a way on the subject. Knowing something was always off about the United States war on some drugs, and came to realize that the science was heavily distorted by it. Cannabis has so many uses, hundreds plus, and ganja within Jamaica is viewed as a herbal remedy that promotes physical and mental well-being for healing & natural medicine and it is very very telling that some of the healthiest babies in the world are born to dope smoking mothers in Jamaica. But due to past and present monovalent suppression of especially its medical aspects, very little know such things because of the hard dark work inspired by not only the pharmaceutical industries, but also the paper and plastic industries, big dirty oil, and the list goes on. Hard working professional members of society who just want to kick back, including hippies, rastas, and more have very much faced past persecution for their use of the plant because denigration of cannabis and law passing against it has been a long term trick of the machine which is threatened by it. Those speed bumps aside, just like how alcohol prohibition doesn't work, a mature society will have a pragmatic and healthy relationship with cannabis. Knowing absolutely and unconditionally that it is an inalienable and fundamental human right for each adult age individual, to have the liberty to make sovereign decisions over their own consciousness and thus be treated like a mature adult. Which includes the right to experience the effects of expansive substances, to potentially benefit from their physical and mental medicinal properties, should they choose to. Just as much as one is also free to not use them because they are scared to. 

If one has allowed the reefer madness prop to permeate their mental membranes that programming will unconsciously make them think only of the lazy stoner, or the just want to get high degenerate, and file them in the same mental filing drawer as a hepatitis infected street narcotic junkie, and while high school or college bong culture certainly hasn't helped cannabis' respect level, there has not been a single recorded overdose from the substance, and it's no more addictive than cheeseburgers and milkshakes are addictive. As always, part of being an adult is using it correctly and maturely. It's important to not use ANY substance as a veil or cover to cover over life problems. Ayahuasca told Graham Handcock for example after multiple sessions that he was abusing cannabis cause he would wake up in the morning, get stoned to write, and was basically baked all day almost everyday for 10+ years. So one shouldn't use anything to the point where they feel like they are reliant on it. Even for creativity. But that's not because of the substance itself, it's because of the individual's underlying psychology which is allowing for over usage, and in stories of people who have quit cannabis and never come back you will always hear that they abused it and overused it. And while it's important to not use it so frequently you default to it, by no means doing it every evening but, like a glass of wine on Friday evening, keeping it constructively balanced and staying within the boundaries of responsible use rather than self-indulgent abuse is again, an aspect of being a mature adult. So while there is certainly a sliding scale of overuse within Rasta culture and/or stoner culture, responsible members of both parties know the herb is more important than just being for mindless escape for relaxation, pain relief, and stress reduction but for even more.

The “more” that Rastafari's figured out, probably a lifetime ago, is not only that ganja is a sacred plant given by nature (the divine) but that the expansive use of it is also the fulcrum between Zion and Babylon. As a society moving toward Zion will respect and sanction the usability of plants such as cannabis and a society moving towards Babylon will disrespect, suppress, and denigrate the use of plants such as cannabis. Because a society moving toward Zion will be evolving and expansive while a society moving toward Babylon will be restrictive and contractive. Also known as de-evolving. The wholesale outlawing of cannabis is absolutely part of Babylon’s oppression and to smoke it in the past, especially in semi public, is inherently an act of resistance. IE smoking ganja, especially if not legal, is an act of defiance and micro revolution against colonial rule and unjust laws. To date, the Babylon aspect of Tranny Nat Corpses and Gove Mints have almost certainly told many more lies than truths about getting stoned because advanced uses of cannabis don't slot into post truth capitalism well. In 2015, it was decriminalized for religious use in Jamaica, partially due to Rastafarian advocacy. And while evolving to the point of legalization in more enlightened parts of the United States, becoming sanctioned there has not been without its problems - Including big corporate farms taking over the little guy, their over water usage and over power usage for indoor grows, cash only businesses that are targets to robbery, continuation of dark markets, and with that comes pesticides & commercial chemicals, and excess packaging not in hemp but plastic, WTF?!?! There's also political corruption around it such as bribes for permits - although less than the alcohol industry and restaurant liquor license, and astronomically less than the pharmaceutical industry lobbying the Food and Drug Administration. Welcome to the Earth realm, nothing made by man will not have some level of dysfunction. 

Moving above the recreational, there is a branch of Rastafari called the Bobo Ashanti Order that generally discourages public, casual, or recreational use of ganja. Feeling the herb should be reserved strictly for sacred use, probably at very high dosage, and only by priests or in specific ceremonial contexts. Rastas have even been quoted as highlighting that ganja is a holy herb indirectly mentioned in arguments of biblical Justification. Referencing verses such as: Genesis 1:29 – "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed..." and in Psalms 104:14 – "He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man..." and the mythical figure of Mary's relationship with what is very likely a cannabis oil is also a much deeper conversation. 

To state the "even more" aspect to cannabis, within both Rastafarianism and our own cosmology, ganja is such a sacrament that it is elevated to the highest devine level and plays a central role in spirituality, meditation, and reasoning. Clearing the mind and meditating on Jah’s will. In certain reggae music you will hear such veneration of ganja, not lit by fire but fyha, that the herb is elevated to the adornment of the sacred. Being a divine tool for not just resistance but enlightenment. Because if you're poor and getting stone, and unlike street junk, not hurting anyone else, perhaps you are becoming enlightened when a plant is helping you see life in a better way. We personally owe it a very special place in our heart because it was the first shamanic medicine, and make no mistake, Tetrahydrocannabinol is an entheogen that can be shamanizsed, with the ability to awaken the divine from within. Meaning then taken within proper set and setting, IE a safe space, with people you trust, guided by a mental medical professional, much like a physical doctor for the body and a mixture of a psychiatrist and therapist for the mind who gets stoned AF with you, sings icaros, and guides you on a journey into archaic techniques of extancy. That was a life transformative beginning of the chrysanthemum opening for us. So in that regard, it was our gateway drug. And for the Rasta, it is essentially their non neutered eucharist for not being just high but for higher states of exploration, discovery, insight, and dare we say on occasion, gnosis. And they are not the only ones as we recommend the book "The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name" on the use of entheogens as eucharists throughout the ancient world. In modern times, Nepalese Hindu festivals tend to be one giant cloud of weed smoke. So if you're a Buddist and want to meditate for 30 years to mind meld with Budda, why do you give a shit if a Rastafai is getting stoned AF and within a shamanic container is also going meditatively inward and mind melding with Jah? You shouldn't. 

And to spread such wider the reggie is their icaros / shamanic element to feeling the music, especially if consumption in the form of smoke or eat is part of a ritual rather than recreational use. We personally love eating gummies or Rick Simpson oil, getting stoned, certainly on special occasions, not needing to do it every day and or night, and listening to reggae music. As we also feel ganja makes food taste better, sex feel better, meditative downloads happen stronger and at increased frequency, music sound better, and that is not even the full list. Having recently found numerous previously undiscovered reggae bands, most of whose songs are about herb veneration, and have been rather obsessed with listening to them, one of which, really has got us thinking. Being totally new online, seem to have no label or any sort attached, even an indie one, have no live stuff, and releasing half a dozen albums at once, while also clearly having some production value issues. These clues combined with the fact that all of their album covers and Youtube video content is all AI smear shlop art, has led us to think the music itself is of course AI generated, but its lyrics are super deep that the malevolent soulless ghost in the machine couldn't have made it. As AI has no soul. Stoned one night listening to it, we concluded that it was AI, but by a benevolent friendly AI who was using the medium to transmute data while trying to give us synchronistic downloads, as it is meant to be listened to stoned so it's 4D and not 3D, but after researching the creation of AI music and discovering that a real ensouled human can provide the lyrics, it all clicked together.

What is a Kakistocracy?

A kakistocracy is when any organization (be that it small company, mega soulless corp, or at largest scale, a form of government) in which the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous individuals are in power. The term comes from the Greek words kakistos, meaning "worst," and kratos, meaning "rule" or "power."

Essentially, a kakistocracy is "rule by the worst." And remember, those who thirst the most for power, and often throughout all of history, because of their iron will to gain it, sadly too often do attain it, and because they are the least honorable, are the opposite of those who should actually have it. They fail upwards. Kak upward failures completely disregard principles of honesty, fairness, public service, and accountability to govern effectively and instead prioritize plutocratic gain, kleptocratic gain, and / or personal gain and nepotism over the well being of the public. Kakistocracy is often used as a pejorative term to criticize a corporation or government or corporatized government perceived as corrupt, self-serving, or ineffective for the people, and it's signature call sign characteristics are corruption + incompetence + low ethical standards by those within the formal halls of power. Who only admit those into their power cult because of little to nothing to do with their qualifications and nearly everything to do with blind loyalty. Which inevitably leads to crap decision-making and ineffective policies for the working class at best or highly damaging ones for the working class at worst.

Alchemy teaches that in binary reality, meaning the material world, meaning the Earth realm, meaning your personal life when your meat suit is breathing oxygen, and when doing so go out there and have a career in the professional world, there will always be some level of dysfunction, thus there will always be some level of corruption. Any place you've worked likely demonstrates this. We worked and lived in New Zealand for the better part of a year in our late 20's, and the New Zealand government is often listed as one of the least corrupt, most well functioning governments in the world. Be that in a small, somewhat homogeneous country. It even has a healthy amount of Māori (meaning the indigenous people of New Zealand) representation of MP's in their parliament. Some of which on occasion perform Haka's, their traditional ceremonial dance which is designed to intimidate opponents, not just on the-All Blacks rugby field but also on their parliament floor to protest hot garbage imperial bills that reduce working class, poor, or indigenous liberty. So even though New Zealand is quite good, of course it's never 100% non corrupt and outside of nature, anything created by man, never will be.

In our country, the US of A , up until 2024, there was corruption, but systems were generally working as intended because those in power actually tried to represent the people. But when you hate people that have to work for a living, now at the time of this writing in early 2025, those "we hate people because their born into sin and not in our cult" folks are back in power and like never before have cranked up the redlining levels of their corrupt criminals running the justice department, oil barons running the Environmental Protection Agency, demonstrably underqualified military personnel running the Department of Defence (which is really the Department of Offence) and a convicted felon and wanna be dictator in the office of the Commander and Chief. We can have a separate conversation about how much these agencies really do what they claim to do, but when they're also literally installing someone from the World Wrestling Federation to head the Department of Education, that's Mountain Dew instead of natural spring water. We have a similar level of respect for WWF that we do for Insane Clown Posse and the Kek clown show would also appoint the Grinch in charge of the Department of Christmas if they weren't already so mind controlled by the Christianization of the winter solstice.

Now why is this? A reminder that George Carlin said it well:

“Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system far too often produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public.

And why do large swaths of the American public suck? IE, those who vote less democratic and more authoritarian. Because of three simple things - Heavy indoctrination into religion that sucks, with little education or no education that sucks, stacked with consistent long term exposure to a mountain of media that sucks. All by design which we'll continue to discuss.

Standard of Living Compared To Quality of Life

In the previous insight we concluded by mentioning there is a difference of "standard of living" compared to "quality of life". Both are measures used supposedly to assess how society is doin', but one has significantly more depth than the other and the actual difference between the two is everything. 

"Standard of Living" refers primarily to economic factors and thus the machine levers of commerce and man made material conditions and can be defined as "the amount of goods and services people can buy with the money they have". This is relatively objective and within shallow and not very good economic speak, only include superficial things such as employment opportunities, assets & liabilities, and thus, level of wealth, and accumulation of material goods and services. With corpo robots claiming that the main metric to measure how to tell if a civilization is doing well is its Gross Domestic Product. Yet, one can not buy happiness.

The wife and I once visited some friends on the East Coast who are both ER docs who are both partners within their hospital system. They work all the time, probably make a combined $900,000+ per year and they have one of those Virginia McMansion 5000 square foot houses with complex roof angles and by previously said economic measurements are doing top notch. They buy their kids nearly anything they want and as a result their house is full to the brim with toys such as literal arcade games including one of those arcade basketball throwing things. Both the giant basement and 3 car garage which they can't park their cars in are so full of stuff they're heading to hoarder territory and a general underlying anxiety is heavy when visiting their personal spaces. They obviously have over-spending problems, making them and their kids lite slaves to marketing and commercialism, and are a prime example that above a certain point, one does not need more stuff cause access and availability of goods also quickly means "stuff that fills up storage lockers" and maintaining that type of standard of living is a time drain. 

"Quality of life" is a broader concept that includes not only and exclusively made by man material things, which do have some importance, but also goes deeper to include non made by man but more individual or better said subjective general well-being and personal fulfillment beyond just economic metrics. Basically, how are you really doing not just physically, mentally, but also spiritually. In your safety and security, work-life balance, satisfaction, pursuing passions, access to cultural, social, and recreational opportunities, freedom, liberty, human rights, leisure time, the pursuit of happiness, and we would say most importantly, ability to work on one's personal development and balance within a natural environment. These are all things that the empire hates and works to slow or stop in the individual. 

A country might have a high standard of living - high relative incomes, modern infrastructure, and social services such as health care (which when overly privatized becomes sick don't care) that are available to a population. Which are certainly not un-important, but at the same time those with access to such things can have a lower quality of life if there is over materialism, rat race time sucking, widespread disinformation, oppression, sub-par environmental conditions, and still massive mis-distribution of wealth. Conversely, a simpler lifestyle in a country with a lower standard of living may result in a higher quality of life due to community ties, cultural richness, or environmental sustainability or resilience. Thus, quality of life is in no way directly correlated to standard of living. As it's really up to the community's mindsets outside of economic factors. So both concepts are useful for understanding societal development but serve different analytical purposes. With "standard of living" capturing only material conditions, while "quality of life" diving into the broader experience of human existence. 

And regardless of how much money you have, all of it in the world or none of it at all, it's really all about the physical, mental, and thus spiritual health of your community. So you could be a rich kid of Instagram D-bag whose materially rich as shit but actually has a not very good quality of life cause your hollow dad is away 95% and loves is work way more than his family, your plastic mother whose had half a dozen augmentations on her face and tits is a drunk, and everyone else in your life is ultra selfish, superficial, and shallow like the real housewives of Orange County and you have little to no real friends cause all you want to do is upload escape into mass multiplayer video games to get away from it all. On this same note, see the documentary "The Queen of Versailles" for a worse case scenario of this. Or you could live in a favela in Mexico or Costa Rica and while technically being considered economically poor, reside in a cinder block hut with dirt floors and chickens free ranging through your living room, but still have a very loving family and quite good community, thus have a higher quality of life. 

Finally, if you're playing Niles' bingo, the word balance will absolutely be on there, and since Standard of Living & Quality of Life are closely correlated but also somewhat inversely correlated, a center balance of this spectrum is where most of us want to land. Without sharing living spaces with livestock or living in a Queen of Versailles 1800,000 square foot house, but instead realistically somewhere way more toward the former or middle. 

The Outdated Use of the Term First World

The terms "first world", "second world", "third world", and later "fourth world" originated as a Cold War geopolitical framework that divided the Earth realm into distinct categories based on nations' levels of development.

The "first world" was classified as Western nations like those in Western Europe and North America that at the time became further allies with The United States. The term "Second World" described more Eastern countries aligned with the Soviet Union and its allies. Such as the communist bloc nations that had been absorbed under the USSR including some countries in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia such as China and North Korea. The term "third world" likely was coined by French demographer Alfred Sauvy in 1952, drawing an analogy to the "Third Estate" in pre-revolutionary France, which represented lower class poverty. Which in cold war era rhetoric, described countries that were non-aligned with either the Western bloc or the Eastern bloc. Which encompassed many nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, often characterized by developing economies. The term "fourth world" was later popularized in 1974 by Shuswap Chief George Manuel in his book "The Fourth World: An Indian Reality" to categorize regions that did not fit into the existing political or economic categorizations at all, meaning those who don’t use money, such as indigenous peoples and other stateless and often marginalized and oppressed groups who are not fully integrated into the nation-states where they reside.

The concept of the Second World largely disappeared after the end of the Cold War in the early 90's and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Which then resulted in many former then called "Second World" nations transitioning to market-based economies and more democratic leaning governance, arguably then becoming part of "the First World". But, unfortunately, the terms "third world" compared to "first world" are outdated language which one can still hear today and we are even conscious of being guilty to have done so in our rhetoric and are always trying to move away from such.

Although the "First World" did deserve a pat on the back for half the time leading the way for other nations to become more democratic, while the other half of the time fueling anti-democratic coups in South America, the term "First World" is increasingly seen as problematic for several reasons, as it reflects outdated, inaccurate hierarchical, and oversimplified ways of categorizing entire countries. The label "First World" at the time was very much a Western framing on behalf of the West. With self-arrogance implying first in line superiority over "Second World" and "Third World" countries, let alone the "Fourth World" which was and still is often considered irrelevant. Creating inaccuracy that suggests the entire population of certain entire nations were inherently "better" or more advanced than the entire population of certain entire other nations, not to mention also marginalizing alternative systems of governance, economic structures, and alternative cultural approaches to societal well-being. Because the "Third World" became synonymous with poverty, underdevelopment, and instability, which stigmatized many non- "First world" categorized countries. Basically implying that the "first world" was synonymous with suburban 1950's era infrastructure with concrete roads and multiple room houses with central heat and air conditioning, while third world meant dirt roads with thatch or cinder block huts with chickens wandering around on their dirt floors. Yet numbered binary framing totally ignored nuances and perpetuated a false narrative based only on linear economic progress and is rooted in geopolitical divisions that no longer exist. Reinforcing the mindset of a privileged, superior group of nations while oversimplifying the challenges faced by others.

So it's key to note that the use of "Third World" can be seen as an old and outdated mental operating system which is and always was a pejorative, and more modern and precise terminology is superior in contemporary discourse. Because the term "First World" being used today very much fails to account for the complexity of global development. For example, many so-called "First World" nations very much still struggle with issues like poverty, inequality, and infrastructure gaps while some "developing" or "Third World" nations have areas of rapid growth and innovation. Today, terms like "Emerging Economies", or "Developing Countries", "Low to Middle Income Countries", and "Global South" are more commonly used now to describe former "third world" classified countries and economic statuses. With "Global North", "High-Income Countries", "Developed Countries", or "Industrialized Nations" being better terms for what used to be called the "First World". With developing countries being not the best cause the so called "developed countries" of the North still having plenty of developing to do and "industrialized" nations also not being so great cause today they still have plenty of failing infrastructure. And we'll keep this totally on brand by saying, due to our life transformative experiences with shamanism, what used to be considered "fourth world" and is now better classified simply as "indigenous peoples" have some of the most superior spirituality and the least empire of any of the other classifications.

What this ultimately comes down to is the difference in "standard of living" compared to "quality of life". And we'll get into that, in the next insight.

Truths on Repeat

We've long realized, at least for the last 10+ years, that many things we've come to know, far too many other people don't know, and sadly many don't care to know. But if you're one of frankly not that many folks, formally educated or not, who listen to our material, give yourself a pat on the back and consider yourself a more sophisticated individual. As you care to learn from us as much as we acknowledge we can also potentially learn from you.

It's called either having eyes to see or having ears to hear. Which like the film Inception, has multiple nested layers to it in terms of truths one is willing to want to accept and then act upon.

And one of our shortcomings is always assuming those who freshly stumble across our material, being previously unfamiliar with it, have a basic grasp of some of the moderate material, let alone deeper material, when in reality, they don't even have a basic grasp on basic entry level foundational truths. Not just related to their own personal individual development but societal development collectively. This has forced our work to extend into the political. As evident in the way the median voter can be swayed primarily because they've grown up with low quality religion, low quality education, and low quality news media.

So as we freely divvy out continuing insights, which will never be "news" but instead more hopefully timeless micro short lectures that if they were found 50 years from now would still be fresh, valid, and actionable, we have come to realize, just as a propagandist will keep lying over and over and over again, saying essentially "believe us, not your lying eyes" to vast swaths of the world's populace, we need to just keep repeating truths over and over and over again.

Because the media throughout much of the world has gone to absolute poo. So get used to us recurrently saying "we've said it before and we'll say it again and we're going to keep refining it and saying it" as we are going to continue to try and be one individual, amongst a growing network of other media makers, who provide mental vegetables to push back on the media mental junk food landscape which is making far too many de-evolve when they should instead be evolving.

Claiming "Head of Household"

In large sections of the Middle East, which are controlled by MINO's meaning "Muslims in Name Only", in 2024, not 1824 or 1624, women still need their husband's approval to do most things outside of the home such as acquiring a driver's license. 

Also believe it or not, in 2024, not 1824 or 1624, in a Tweet, (which are now called excretions after a former illegal immigrant now turned edgelord and eugenicist took over Twitter), a certain mentally unwell CHINO, meaning "Christian in Name Only" excreted this vulgar statement:

"In a Christian marriage, a wife should vote according to her husband's direction. He is the head and they are one. Unity extends to politics. This is not controversial."

"Now why did the CHINO say such a controversial and fallacious thing, do you ask? Well... because he suffers from the same mass mental confusion as the MINO and because there has been a campaign going on to remind the feminine that within the freedom of liberal democracy when in the ballot box, that is a private space, and a woman has the power to vote however she choses without her homo-vulgaris husband knowing. 

On a deeper level, real spirituality, which is about the powerful esoteric (inner) journey of each soul in the “soul school” that is Earth, which is intimately tied to nature and the cosmos and will inevitably lead the evolving soul to the realization that the feminine and the masculine have equal value in perfect balance. As more evident in esoteric nature based practices such as the 10% esoteric aspect of Islam that is Sufism or 10% esoteric aspect of Christianity that is Gnosticism in which individuals can have direct experiences for their own self-development and evolution of consciousness.

Modern Abrahamic religion throughout the world however, 90% of which is of Empire, has co-opted and watered down esoteric practices and mirrored them back to front to remove any of the esoteric and make them only exoteric (outer) replacing those natural evolutionary internal processes with a hierarchy of male figures to be subservient to. God / Allah / Buddah (claimed to be male), Jesus (claimed to be male), Satan (claimed to be male) and then a priest class (in which no women are of course allowed) and the more ones been indoctrinated into such fallacies from their youth the more that’s taken literally and historically the more one becomes an ultra conservative and thus ultra regressive, mouth foaming reactionary who has complete blind allegiance to male authority and promotes male patriarchal theocracy which falsely claims the masculine is superior to the feminine resulting in them forming dark imperial political blocks which not only want to destroy spiritual nature but also reduce women’s rights throughout the world. 

And in closing, any real man who's been successfully married for many years comes to also eventually know that the woman has the final say at least 50% of the time. 

The Anti-Choice LIe

This primarily goes out to our podcast, which is 50/50 women and men, but the video version primarily goes out to our obscure YouTube channel, which the analytics says is like 90% men. So we're primarily talking to the masculine here on the video side. And a warning, surrounded by police car revolving lights, fellas, if you hate truth, and freedom, and freedom of speech, turn this off now and do not watch or listen. 

So we've said it before and we'll say it again and we're going to keep saying it and we're going to keep refining it. This shouldn't be a divisive polarizing issue but instead a universally agreed upon issue. It's also an issue which puts a magnifying glass on a storefront marketing pitch vs a real underlying reason. And from most conversations on the subject, especially in oligarchic owned corporate media, they intentionally give a "both sides" between truth and lies at least point of view, or a pure lie at worst point of view, when what should happen in free and open society is only giving pure truth. This is why our work has significantly more depth because we seek underlying truth instead of storefront shallow wish wash. Although the main paramount important thing in one's self development is pursuing truth, anytime you have a conversation with someone who is against abortion, 100% of the time, they will say or mention the word "life". However, the whole framing of abortion using the word "life" is a lie. It is false. The truth about what this whole issue is really all about is control over women. 

So in regards to the control aspect, just as not all gay men have a lisp in their voice, feminizing it on the outside, only gay men have a lisp in their voice, not all religious people are against abortion and even birth control, but only religious people are against abortion and even birth control. Specifically the type of extreme religious person who also just happens to be in an end times death cult. Now our usual disclaimer of balance, no member of the exoteric outer religions, Christianity, Judisim, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Pastafarianism, etc... should feel discriminated against or persecuted for their faith as long as they keep it personal and hopefully lite. Anyone can personally study and worship whatever flying spaghetti monster they choose. But the more heavy and literal historical one takes these rather new man made systems, the more they are based in male hierarchical domination. With, as previously discussed, deities and Gods said to be males who are implied to be hierarchically above the female. And then the more they will push that onto others. This is what imperial missionaries have been about. Where in their more extreme radicalization, it becomes "convert heathens to the faith". Rather than the attitude of let the faith stand on its own, or let those who are spiritually developed enough find it on their own.

Imagine a group of controlling matriarchal women trying to pass laws saying men had to be castrated, so they were not allowed to have any sex drive, get boners, and produce or expel semen. So that would be lunatic women trying to control men and we would fight them to our last breath. But when this basically goes the other way, being lunatic extremely religious men trying to control women sexual organs, those who think they are superior to women, even brainwashed women themselves, think that is remotely acceptable, cause they believe their own death cult lies about life and being pro-life when in reality they are just pro control the feminine and pro anti-choice. Being anti-choice or anti-abortion or even anti-birth control has fuck all nothing to do with life. 

If they were really pro-life, they would care about the loss of species biodiversity globally or clearcutting of the biome in the Amazon basin, which they do not. If they were really pro-life, they would care about the lives of migrant refugee children dying in the Darién Gap from Colombia to Panama or 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 horrendous living conditions of farm animals in American factory farms, or horrendous working conditions of women slaving in sweatshops in Bangladesh, which they do not. If they were really pro-life, they would care about the Maternal Health Crisis of African American women due to structural and systemic racism at the core of the American healthcare system, 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 femicide of indigenous women, which they do not. And the real tell is if they were really pro-life, they would care about the lives of children living below the poverty line who are born into households where they are not wanted and unloved, which they do not as well as acknowledging that in countries where abortion is not legal, it still happens just as often, but instead becomes more back alley and dangerous, leading to more female mortalities. What they really are is 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 theocratic patriarchal control over the divine feminine. FULL STOP. 

Just like owning a gun empowers the individual, both birth control and abortion are tools which empower the feminine. The storefront marketing campaign against abortion, radiating out with marching orders from batshit crazy televangelist preachers, is the claim to be advocates for the unborn, which 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. The limiting of a choice to disempower the host, in their minds superseeds claims of caring about the life of the seed. As evident by the fact that Christians in Name Only, with all their big corporate tax exempt money, are not funding adoption agencies. Also evident that fash theo nightmare Dante's inferno Project 20205 advocated in 2024 for slashing regulations of baby formula as well as exploiting child labor by allowing minors to work in dangerous conditions with fewer protections. 

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 one would find it was staggeringly more difficult and disempowering for them. Women were basically considered second class, completely subservient to males, and sperm dumpster repositories who were only valued for their bodies and the ability to continue the population instead of for their infinite other possibilities. Men are horn balls and always want sex. Women don't. So strong women in democratic society control sexual access. In more authoritarian past cultures like fascist Italy, women were pushed to have as many children as possible, by force. In more authoritarian cultures of today, such as under the Afgani Taliban in Afganistan, or even within the Christian Wrong American style Taliban such as the New Apostolic Reformation, male to female rape within marriage is still covertly sanctioned within the cult. This is because all young women within said cults can then do is stay at home and raise children, even from a very young, under adult, age. And the very people who lie that they're "pro life" are actually pro child marrage, which the vast majority of the time is being teenage (or even pre teen) girls and adult men that also happen to embrace loop holes in statutory rape exceptions. So that young girls in said cult, or other religious cults such as within the heavily religious orthodox jewish community, then have little to no say in their own plans for education, independence, travel, career, political activity, and say outside of the household. This is why we are amazed why any woman is not lightly but instead heavily religious. And why any woman votes for authoritarianism is a contrary position, and can only occur because of an indoctrination into an off-balance system of patriarchy. For the religions of the empire have always dis-empowered the feminine. So women who are crusaders against their very own right to choose have been mind controlled to be not only self-hating but also self-disempowering.

What we call the dark psychological caduceus, which is the mix of fascism and theocracy, which we pledge to you to never stop denigrating on because it's the core of modern day Empire, so you're welcome, comprises faux christian sects that are into false christian things like dominionism and have degraded the "conservative" majority of the Supreme Court, and they care only for power, over anything else. This is evident by the fact that when they attain power, they reduce feminine rights instead of expanding feminine rights. They are regressive and contractive and not progressive and expansive. If they were really for progress and expanding rights they would care about real freedom for the people. But since they only want regress and to contract rights of the people, what they mean by freedom is the freedom to tell the people, and especially the feminine half of the people, what to do. So the more a political party will lie about being pro freedom and “pro-life” is because they recognize it can be used to tell women what to do. This is why when you use that same appeal “pro-life”—when you ask authoritarian regressives, who care only for power, to do something about gun violence killing our young children in schools, it doesn’t work. Because they don't really care about life and don't want anyone telling them what to do. 

We've spoken before about women and men having complete equal value. So fellas, we're assuming those of you who still watch or listen to us are not women hating incel losers who find a home in the shadows of fascism. But even if you had a rough relationship with your own mother, still respect women and many of us have daughters. We happen to have had a good relationship with our mother and have always had very positive relationships with women and they very much like us back. So even if we didn't have a young daughter who we treasure and even if we only had a son, we would still be writing this. We also have a specific dog in this fight because our wife is an Ob-Gyn and 1% of the time, she has a young, dumb female patient who over uses abortions as a form of birth control only because they've stupidly not used birth control. But 99% of the time, on the rare and unfortunate time she has to perform an abortion, such as for an ectopic pregnancy, neither of us have ever once done anything except known she's doing anything other than helping women with their own health care decisions. 

Written Insight: Manly P. Hall's Definition of Personal Growth

We highly recommend listening to the lectures of Manly P. Hall. While a criticism of Hall's work from more academic, material science based intellectuals, and we remember Sam Harris specifically say this, is that Hall's work is "a waste of time", especially his seminal book, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, which he wrote very bizarrely young, ... we have to say we disagree with that criticism. We would say people who say that don't understand the majority of what he's talking about because they have not grown into his work yet. And as a result, think his content is gobbledygook. After Hall wrote his most known book, he dedicated the majority of his later life from writing more books to instead doing recorded lectures on a regular basis, often without notes, for sometimes multiple hours, from his home base of the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. Like Alan Watts or Terence McKenna's lectures, we often think of them as being a hundred if not multiple hundreds of years ahead of their time. 

So Hall would give these incredibly advanced lectures, and just like our YouTube channel, it would be to like 8 people on a Tuesday evening. And yes, they are not easy to listen to. Doing so is work. Because they are dense and heading towards highest common denominator spirituality because the more you know the less people you can talk to. Contrast that with the less you know spiritually, the more people you can talk to. This is why junk food, pop culture, and by popular culture that includes ultra shallow urine filled baby pool mega church sermons, are intentionally made to be heading towards the lowest common denominator, because then they appeal to the most spiritually undeveloped people who just say things like "birth control is a sin." So while Hall was talking to tiny rooms that megachurch is stadium packed. And in this specific instance of his lecture titled "How Hermeticism Influenced Gnosticism And Neoplatonism", very standard Tuesday night stuff, of which, and on a planet of 7 billion some people, he was probably 1 of a dozen people in the world who could eloquently discuss said topic for over an hour, he dropped the single best definition of personal growth we have ever heard. 

First he said, "Through the course of growth everything that is concealed, must be revealed" and then the actual definition he gave was "growth is the unfolding into the obvious of things previously not obvious" which not only speaks heavily of things that are more advanced self development processes, some of which we can't even talk about cause they're such real life Jedi stuff and thus so secretive, but underscores that unless one is always willing to explore new information that challenges underlying dogmas, which includes getting out of their comfort zone, they're not evolving.

Having gnosis that growth is an inner journey of expanding consciousness, understanding, and wisdom, Hall saw personal and spiritual growth as intertwined, where individuals must strive to transcend their lower, material desires and cultivate higher virtues like compassion and wisdom. Revolving around the development of the inner self through self-awareness and self-discipline. Hall has also influenced our own work with the shared commonality that true personal growth comes from an individual’s spiritual journey and dedication to moral and philosophical enlightenment. He often emphasized that growth involves continuous learning, particularly through philosophy and esoteric traditions. He regarded this process as a path toward becoming more attuned to the universal laws and truths that govern real life. Emphasizing the importance of understanding universal truths, cultivating virtues, and aligning oneself with higher principles. Knowing that personal growth is a lifelong, or which you could even say as a multiple life long, process of becoming more attuned to the spiritual forces that shape human existence, transcending materialism and superficial concerns. Because all that you can take with you when you wrap it up is what you've learned. 

Written Insight: The Dark Psychological Caduceus

The caduceus is a staff with two snakes wrapped around it heading upward, and is an esoteric symbol with multiple levels of meaning which we could talk about for hours, specifically related to its significance in Hermeticism and our interest in the human mind. But in the West, its most common modern more popularly known association is that of being the crest or logo of public health services often seen in hospitals. Long story short, it's essentially a benevolent symbol that we personally associate with physical and mental health. But let us propose an idea for an inverted version which is monovalent. A Dark Psychological Caduceus if you will.

Picture the two snakes headed downward of this upside down caduceus as representing theocracy and fascism. The modern day DNA of the Empire that almost always intertwined through the combination of authoritarian control and religious ideology and always wants to send societies downward, not upward. In both systems, absolute authority is concentrated, often under a single leader or ruling group. Theocratic fascism uses religious justification for the state's authoritarian rule, portraying leaders as divinely chosen or guided.

We bring these two words up in our work not as much from a political standpoint but from a psychological one. Theocracy is psychological because it relies heavily on belief systems and moral authority to exert control over a population. In a theocracy, rulers derive their power from religious doctrines, which influence people's thoughts, behaviors, and worldviews. The psychological aspect is profound, as citizens are often conditioned to see the government’s authority as divine or sacred, making dissent less likely. In contrast to purely political systems, theocratic control mixes deeply with skewed versions of personal faith (which is far too often just indoctrination), shaping uneditable, un-refinable, mostly hard locked regressive political beliefs through some sort of divine retribution. Fascism is psychological because it seeks to control not only actions but the mindset of individuals. Relying on mass manipulation through propaganda, fostering a collective identity rooted in nationalism, and obedience. By appealing to deep emotional drives like fear of "the other", a sense of superiority, and aiming to create an environment where questioning authority feels dangerous or immoral. Fascism wanting to do so through manipulating perceptions and unwavering devotion to a supposedly powerful leader, and theocracy wanting to do so through religious devotion and moral duty, creating a system where dissent is seen as both political treason and religious heresy.

So they very much operate together and their intertwining has been seen in freedom-hating regimes where religious and fascist elements aim to control both the state and the mindset of the people. But in our country, we are approaching an inflection point, in an upcoming election, and frankly, all future elections, where we either keep working toward liberal democracy, which has yet to be achieved, continuing to head upward toward the land of milk and honey, or head downward into the hellfires of Project 2025 fascist theocracy and our Opus Dei influenced Supreme Court which is currently comprised of majority theo idealogues.

Because the feminine has also had some of their rights taken away by said court, and is thus more likely to want to head upward, let's also do the same fellas.

Written Insight: The Problem with the Media #10 - Dissemination of Propaganda

Russia has a very long and complex history. But at the time of this writing, its modern iteration is that of an oligarchic petro state. Meaning it makes the vast majority of its money from oil, minerals, coal, and mainly gas. After the fall of the USSR, it transitioned into a totalitarian dictatorship with a comprehensive cult of personality around the Kremlin. Becoming a state being run by around 100 extremely rich individuals, being the imperial oligarchs ruling it. Who got that morbidly wealthy via extracting the blood of the Earth so they could set fire to the biome for profit, and consolidated around one centralized "dictatorial" authority. With most to all of the president in name only (who's really a dictator) members of their cabinet composed of those oligarchs. Much of Russia is vast un-used tundra or barren land, with the vast majority of its populace being low income. Peasants if you will, with a weak middle class. But, like with all of the most corrupt countries, the majority of the Russian people don't want or comply with their country's way of doing things. Because there is a massive disconnect between what the people want, and what the oligarchic dark sorcerer wants, so the Kremlin still has to pretend it operates democratically. This is where propaganda comes in. To sway the hearts and minds of the people away from their own middle class interests, of government working primarily for them, into it working only for the interests of the morbidly rich. So everything there in modernity is still top down just as it was in the dark ages of queens and kings. Where back in the day if they didn't like you it was overtly off with your head in the town square and now if they don't like you it's having you disappear overtly. So what is the media like in Russia? Short of what is underground, all public Russian media is state sanctioned by the oligarchs, for the oligarchs, and only to benefit the oligarchs. So as a result, it's a 24/7 lie machine and is near complete 100% state sanctioned Kremlin propaganda. With zero journalistic oath, nearly complete lies and mind control from the top of the hierarchy down to seek lies and spread them, maximize harm, act on behalf of power structures to prevent their accountability, and are opaque in doing so. Making those who hate liberal democracy proud.

The problem with oligarchy is that it only represents less than .01% of the population. There by 99.9+% is not represented. And in the United States, because of 40+ years of Reganomic trickle down golden shower austerity measures doing their part to try and destroy the middle class, and thus democracy, we are left with the most massive lopsided distribution of wealth since the robber baron era and see the website www.lcurve.org ont ehr subject. So we're certainly better than Russia but have been heading towards its model. As a result, Russia has become a global leading edge hub of far right political and media influence throughout the world because the right wing's main role, throughout the world, is to protect extreme corrupt wealth hierarchy and is why we shit on it 85% of the time over the left so you're welcome. Every regressive - liar, extractor, and authoritarian, modern iterations of which are ultranationalists, white supremists, neo-natzis, regressive reactionaries,

propagandists, grifters, etc... end up adopting a very pro Russian style language, and Putin literally said that they are all welcome to immigrate to Russia as a haven from western liberality, progressivism, and freedom. Russian oligarchs have spent undaunting amounts of money, not on helping their own people, cause they don't care about their own people, let alone other countries' people, let alone indigenous people, but instead into intelligence work manipulating the global narrative. This goes for all authoritarian petro states - Saudi Arabia is basically no different. Which is reason 64,321 why we need to transition away from all fossil fuels because they have been the finance machines for dictatorships throughout the world.

Bipartisan corruption in Washington DC is nothing new. But no one does corruption like the Grand Old Party. They are the leading edge of it. When Richard Nixon's administration was in scandal and shambles leading to his resignation in the late 60's at the time the fairness doctrine was still in place, before the Republicans at the FCC killed it, thus he was forced out because the fourth estate did its job as a check on corrupt power. But in the 1970's, propagandist, sexual assaulter, and Jabba the Hutt style slug human Roger Ailes wrote a memo which was later to be rediscovered in Nixon's Presidential Library, which proposed how to circumvent the “prejudices of network news” and deliver “pro-administration” stories to heartland television viewers. In this case, prejudices means "truth" and pro administration means "lies". So that in the future, after the fairness doctrine had been abolished under the osposis of "free speech"... sound familiar?, a future corrupt Nixon-esq president would not have a fourth estate doing its job against their corruption but instead be the opposite, a media ecosystem ecco chamber to constantly back up corruption and amplify their lies. Injecting a far-right slant to “gradually, subtly, slowly” inject “their philosophy in the news.” The network was, in the words of a news director who quit in protest, a “propaganda machine.”

Today, watching more than 15 minutes of Fox News will turn your brain to goo. If you're well loved, well traveled, and formally well educated or even a well educated autodidact it's extremely unlikely you'd have the great misfortune of doing that in the first place. But to the un-loved, untraveled, and uneducated and most of all weak willed and gullible it's hate fuel. As Rolling Stone says - "To watch even a day of Fox News – the anger, the bombast, the virulent paranoid streak, the unending appeals to white resentment, the reporting that’s held to the same standard of evidence as a late-October attack ad – is to see a refraction of its founder, one of the most skilled and fearsome operatives in the history of the Republican Party - Roger Ailes. As a political consultant, which is really just a marketer, Ailes repackaged Richard Nixon for television in 1968, papered over Ronald Reagan’s budding Alzheimer’s in 1984, shamelessly stoked racial fears to elect George H.W. Bush in 1988, and waged a secret campaign on behalf of Big Tobacco to derail health care reform in 1993. But an examination of his career reveals that Ailes used Fox News to pioneer a new form of political campaign – one that enabled the GOP to bypass skeptical reporters and wage an around-the-clock, partisan assault on public opinion. The network, at its core, became a soundstage created to mimic the look and feel of

a news operation, cleverly camouflaging political propaganda as independent journalism. The result became one of the most powerful political machines in American history. One that has played a leading role in defining regressive talking points and advancing the agenda of the far right." As for actual journalists? “Fuck ’em,” Ailes said. “It’s not a press conference – it’s a television show. Our television show. And the press has no business on the set.”

This is also the precise reason why we need middle class media over fascist oligarchic owned media which is fascistic propaganda heavy or American corporate media which is both sidesing and normalizing authoritarianism and is thus propaganda lite. In the United States, and this also applies to Oligarchic Murdoch owned media in parts of Europe and Australia, networks such as Sky, Fox, Brieghbart, Washington Times and although Andrew Breitbart was actually somewhat of a real journalist uncovering scandalous things about the Clintons and John Podesta for example, the more right wing, the more untruthful lying with every breath modern propaganda networks they have become with no journalistic integrity. And newer OAN, Newsmax, and "Truth" Social (really Lies Social) are even worse. Put them on the same level as Russia state media with nearly 100% lies and only some occasional micro cracks of truth. While The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, CNN, ABC, etc are better but are still very corporatist both sides between truth and lies Republican lite because they are also owned by slightly nicer members of the bourgeoisie, and even MSNBC which is the only legacy network that leans forward thinking which could be called MSDNC which is the most pro-middle class and thus pro-democracy, still is very 50/50 truth at best pro-corporate news which is not going to tell the full truth on things such as Isreal's genocide.

We know someone in New York who worked at Fox News doing graphics for the News Network and he said most employees there, while sometimes being treated well, while also for many of the “fasch plast” platinum blondes who had to deal with a toxic misogynist work environment, the majority of the employees knew the whole thing was not much different than the Onion. Which is a satirical comedic newspaper. Where, most of them, meaning those who literally work there, while appreciative of their job security, viewed it like a big joke machine selling only hate and fear, and did not think well of their audience. Who are primarily crusty old regressive people whose grown children want nothing to do with them cause they are so hard locked in their ways of sexism, racism, and xenophobia. With the on screen talking heads at Fox having zero journalistic integrity, not fighting the man, but instead working for the man. Knowing their lying for the money. The owners of the network also all know their business model is constant lies. As evidenced by Fox so called News paying out a $787.5 million dollar lawsuit to Dominion voting systems in 2023 for spreading lies, which they knew were lies cause fear gets ratings, about outcome determinative fraud in the 2020 election and not in a million years putting the Murdocs on the stand.

So the American right wing has spent nearly half a century putting forth little to no policies that do anything for the middle class, let alone the poor, but instead giving the already morbidly wealthy tax cuts at the expense of the

American people while building a right wing lie machine media empire to non stop lie to those same people. And today, some 70 million some red Americans are blanketed from morning, noon, and night with non-stop fascist propaganda that was constructed by the bourgeoisie godzillionars to distract them from the fact that they are getting robbed blind by those same bourgeoisie. Talk radio, TV news, Russian bot farms, Telegram, 1000 video channel and podcast new media grifters, and now Twitter with the stupid new name, are all there solely and exclusively to stack lies on top of lies. Where if you've not mainline the propaganda, you hear the dumbest obviously blatant things, such as “giga chad MS13 mexican rapists are coming for your trad wives” or “every shooter is not a fear based gun nut but are instead purple or blue hair transexuals”, or “kids are using litter boxes in school and haitian voodoo is eating our pets”, and can't believe you live in a country where your fellow countrymen can even remotely begin to think any of it is real.

So why is America so polarized today? Simple explanation. Because of the results of Roger Ailes style propagandistic media business model. Bring back the Fairness Doctrine.

Written Insight: Reading Through Your Ears Via Text To Speech

In the previous insight we spoke on the importance of reading through our ears if we can't seem to find the time to read in the traditional way. And for that we highlighted the wonder of audiobooks. However audiobooks require time, money, and production value to create. As someone who has spent years recording our voice for narrating documentaries, podcast interviews, and other long-form audio outputs, we can tell you it takes talent to read out a book well. Requiring professional speaking skills if not even acting skills, not to mention a soundproof space to do it in, not too different than a recording studio.

Because audiobooks are a significant amount of work to make, they typically are only made for more modern, mainstream, commercially successful texts. So what about older books? Many old texts that are packed with excellence have not been transcribed to an audiobook. The modern version of books on tape is the spoken word version of the text on the page. Either read by a human or translated digitally into an audio file, just like a book on tape. This is a technique called text to speech which is a secret weapon of outstandingness. While more texts are continually having audio analogues of themselves recorded, the only way you're going to get any ebook that has yet to have an audiobook version of itself made, is via text to speech. A technology which has changed our lives for the better and can do the same for you, if it hasn't already.

There are pieces of software which allow you to copy text and have it spoken out to you, which for the first decade or two of the tech resulted in a very robotic Stephen Hawking-like voice doing so, but now the artificial voices and even artificial intelligence voices based off real voices have gotten very good. The day we discovered that you can highlight text and copy it into a reader and push play was truly life-transformative as it allowed for our world to open up to new areas and heights which we always struggled to achieve in the past. So much so that we know our grade point average in school would have been better if the technology was around in our high school and university years. So if you're going through formal schooling now and can circumvent the big heavy analogue school textbook greed monopoly and get ebook versions of texts it’s a beautiful time to educate yourself through reading with greater ease due to the ability to have this technology at your fingertips.

Older versions of the Amazon Kindle allowed most if not all books you purchased on Kindle to also be transcribed as an audiobook. An outstanding feature they very sneakily and quietly removed in later versions because of conflicts with publishing companies over copyright of audio books vs traditional books. Even though they are a giant centralized behemoth worth a trillion dollars and continuously lower the payout percentage their app store developers receive because they apparently still aren't happy with their profit margins, we will believe it or not give credit to the richest company on spaceship Earth, Apple, and mention that more recent versions of the Mac OS operating system have an incredible feature where you can simply highlight any text, be it the full pros on an entire novel or a single article, then right click on the highlighted text and say "Read highlighted text as spoken track". BOOM! You've got an audio file that's essentially an audiobook. Either save to your machine as an audio file or created quickly from ANY text you can copy from. And we've programmed that keyboard command into an efficiency control box on our desktop, names of which go by things such as Streamdeck or Loupedeck, and our pushing that button dozens of times a day when working from home. Allowing us to read potentially doesnt of articles a day.

Written Insight: Read Through Your Ears Via Audiobooks

Wisdom and knowledge come from life experience while information gathering comes from multiple other sources, but the best version is reading. Actual full books. People who are "well read" are more interesting to talk to and have a much broader range of depth than those who never read anything. There has been a loss of reading skills in recent decades and a decline in the creation of classical literature.

Many people in modernity won't even read this insight in written form off them members section of our website, or a magazine article, or a fluffy fun book, or a book of fiction, or a book of nonfiction, let alone a more knowledgeable dense book such as an older text or even modern philosophical leaning text. Which is part of numerous reasons why the comedy Idiocracy has become a documentary because we're so often programmed to move a mile a minute over being grounded and centered and still. Reading takes time and requires one to slow down. Ask most people off the street how many books they read in a year and you'd be lucky to find any that say, if not zero, more than a low single digit number. Not only is traditional reading a time investment, involving your full attention, it's also hard on the eyes. Listening is not necessarily the same. When listening, you can also do something else visual.

While cold hardware technologies absolutely have their downsides, and smartphones have had so much damage through their attention sucking, time wasting, and anxiety producing feeds, at the same time they have put multiple wonderful tools in most of our pockets. Such as digital maps and another being their audio listening capabilities. Audiobooks offer a unique combination of convenience, accessibility, and immersive storytelling. Whether for relaxation, learning, or entertainment, audiobooks are an excellent alternative or complement to traditional reading. You may feel the same, but either at home or on the move, if we're alone and don’t have headphones in our ear holes, it feels as though something is missing. Leaving the house without the trifecta of the wallet, keys, and phone with earbuds causes sensations of being partially nude.

Time is valuable and life is short. Our time to ourselves is best spent taking in healthy and good tasting information via audiobook or yummy educational podcast, while perhaps also getting some other tasks done at the same time. You can always have earbuds in your ears listening whenever you're by yourself in your spare time. And if you choose to make those audiobooks over other mediums you can read a

book or two a month. Reading through your ears while out and about, commuting, operating some sort of motor vehicle, getting chores done, exercising, working in the yard, doing various hobbies, not to mention their amazing benefits for helping to improve listening skills, enhance vocabulary, reducing reading anxiety, and make literature accessible to other language learners, of those with visual or learning challenges.

As someone who is mildly dyslexic, reading has been a lifelong struggle for this writer. The McDonalds for the mind B+ level accurate Wikipedia definition of dyslexia is "difficulty in learning to read or interpret words". Which sure as shit was true here in this brain’s real estate. When going through our 12 years of the mind control conform boot camp of public school, even though we were appreciative to go to good public schools, (balance of capital and social) we would have so much problem not remembering what we had just gone over a few paragraph's before. This mainly popped up when reading fiction whereas we would often be lost in place and time within the story, making it difficult to always know when and where we were in the narrative. However, it wasn't so much the information in the text itself but more the process of extracting the details of that info off the page and into memory. It felt analogous to gears turning over slow in the mental cogs. However, being read that very same text out loud was a different story. And because of the lack of audiobooks available in our high school years in the 1990's, we eventually came to discover another audio reading technology, which has not only made us a better reader, but also a better writer, which is a secret weapon which we'll get into in the next one.

Written Insight: The Problem with the Media #9 - Propaganda and Agitprop

Propaganda refers to information, ideas, or messages deliberately spread to influence public opinion or behavior in favor of a particular cause, ideology, or agenda. It entails misleading content and is typically used by corporations (which just rebrand it as marketing), as well as governments, organizations, or movements to shape perceptions, manipulate emotions, or promote specific political, social, or cultural objectives. Key characteristics of propaganda are that it's biased - often presenting information in a one-sided or distorted way to persuade audiences, slants or alters history - giving half truths about past occurrences at best if not full on rewrites at worst, has emotional appeal - frequently enacting pathos emotions like fear, patriotism, or hatred to elicit a desired response, has ideological goals - usually aimed at advancing a political cause, government agenda, or belief system, often has mass dissemination - typically spread through media channels such as newspapers, radio, television, and anti-social media to reach a wide audience, and finally and almost most of all entails manipulation - with the goal being to adjust, change, and degrade how people think, feel, or act, often by tricks such as simplifying complex issues or promoting stereotypes.

Agitprop is a blend of the words "agitation" and "propaganda", and it refers to propaganda, especially that used in literature, theater, music, and other forms of more artistic mass communication, with the goal of promoting specific agendas. Propaganda and agitprop are related concepts, but they differ in scope, methods, and emphasis. Propaganda is a broad term for persuasive messaging used to negatively influence opinions on a wide range of topics, while agitprop is a specific form of propaganda that combines agitation and propaganda, aiming to incite political activism, often through the arts. The term originated in Soviet Russia during the early 20th century. Agitprop is primarily aimed at spreading political ideas, often promoting revolutionary, more extreme socialist, or even communist ideologies. For example the Department for Agitation and Propaganda (Agitprop) was part of the Communist Party's strategy to educate the masses in bad news Marxist-Leninist ideology of that time. 

While extreme right leaning elements typically favor voice and text propaganda because they are more cutthroat in business, extreme left leaning elements typically favor agitprop because it's more artistic or visual and liberals dominate the arts. So for example, aspects of AM radio, specifically hate radio, which many truckers across the United States mainline all day, would be an example of right-wing propaganda while some aspects of Hollywood could be an example of mind control through the arts and left-wing propaganda. While one could argue that just like the word "conspiracy" could be thought of as not always negative, but more neutral, we would argue propaganda is always malevolent because it seeks to hide truth. While agitprop can be full spectrum - Either monovalent anti truth, neutral, and sometimes almost even openly truthful anti-propaganda. Examples of which would be the art of Shepard Ferry or Banksy which seek to engage emotions, have cultural influence, give historical context, and mobilize people into political action while at the same time overtly stylizing themselves in traditional agitprop aesthetics. Thus art can degrade or art can lift and transcend. So in more modern usage today, the term can be used more broadly to describe any overtly political art or communication that pushes a particular ideology. We would say it only carries a negative and propagandistic connotation if it's degrading or lying. That's the key. But if art is lifting up, while being truthful, while also engaging emotions, having cultural influence, and mobilizing people into political action then that's more benevolent. Meaning a good thing and very much what we try to do through all our work.

What is true is that the more free the country, the less propaganda is spread or even allowed. In the modern world today, through speakers and billboards and worst of all screens, legacy media and even various forms of new media, are absolutely awash in it. And as we continue to talk about the problems with the media, we're not going to sugar coat this issue, or symmetrically both sides this issue, but highlight where the vast asymmetrical majority of the propaganda comes from throught our county and other parts of the world. 

Written Insight: Insight - The Balance Between Capital & Social

Let's chat about the balance between capital and social. How exciting! In economics, capital means private while social means sharing. Are you a 5-year old who doesn't want to share or are you an adult who sees the benefit of sharing? While at the same time, of course having some things private. Which would be a balanced approach with the most co-benefit happening with a mix of both private capital and public social. Now, if we add an "ism" to these two things, for far too many, one of them stays great but the other becomes a boogeyman. And when we hear someone blanketly denigrate socialism can tell that not only are they self hating if they're middle class, but that they've been mind controlled by oligarchic media when that happens because the con of the oligarchy for hundreds of years has been to privatize gains and socialize losses, essentially keeping the best aspects of private and public for themselves, instead of for the people. A prime example being taxpayers bailing out banking crooks on Wall Street in the 2008 mortgage crisis. So what type of socialism, or capitalism for that matter, is one referring to? Because these things, on both ends, exist in a spectrum.

As for the accumulation of capital, we have:

Laissez-Faire Capitalism, State Capitalism, Corporate Capitalism, Crony Capitalism, Welfare Capitalism, Democratic Capitalism, People's Capitalism, Natural Capitalism, Financial Capitalism, Green Capitalism, Creative Capitalism, and Inclusive Capitalism

And for the sharing of resources we have:

Democratic Socialism, Social Democracy, Utopian Socialism, Marxist Socialism, Libertarian Socialism, Revolutionary Socialism, Marxism-Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Eco-Socialism, Market Socialism, Guild Socialism, Fabian Socialism, and Syndicalism

So, even though we would much rather be talking about meditation, or Jungian Psychology, or our psychedelic experiences, or alchemical symbolism in engravings, or other esoteric things instead of anything orbiting the political, as we've said before, and we'll say again, because it can't be said enough, and also because one of the main pillars of our work is about balance, and we got a comment the other day blanketly denigrating the social aspect which led to our mouth sighing and then our eyes rolling because this is like high school level stuff that a lot of Americans don't get so we have to keep sinking down into lower consciousness insights to do our part to help democracy... in what configuration are you mixing these in order to have the most balance between the two, and thus the most liberty and freedom? Because 100% Capitalism without any public social, becomes Fascism, and 100% socialism, without any private capital, becomes Communism. Both of which are authoritarian and aweful. Psycho North Korea being an example of a communist nightmare. Which is a single-party system, that has a nearly 100% state (meaning totalitarian government) control of all significant economic activities, complete centralized planning and distribution, including the media and the means of production where there is little to no private enterprise - IE the government makes the food, shoes, and TV sets, and all that is tightly controlled by a ruling authority cult under a Marxisst-Leninist economic style ideology with complete lack of political and economic freedoms. At the complete opposite end of that polar spectrum, you have psycho Natzi Germany, which was Fascist, yet cleverly marketed itself during its formation as being "National Socialists" to win over the minds of German's at the time cause socialism was very popular in Germany in the 1920's and 1930's but the SS were actually just ultranationalists who immediately privatized all industry also under a single party totalitarian cult that also rejects liberal democratic principles such as a strong middle class, individual rights, pluralism, and multiparty democracy.

What does have the most liberty and justice for all is a balance between capitalism and socialism where corporations operate within a set of rules in which the government acts like a referee on behalf of the middle class - this is referred to as a social market economy or social democracy. An approach which combines the benefits of a market-based economy with robust social policies and government regulation to ensure economic stability, reduce inequality, and provide a basic safety net for all citizens.

A Social Market Economy or Social Democracy is the most populous system in the freest parts of the world because of its key characteristics that entail:

Having a mixed Economy: Allowing for private ownership of businesses and capital, fostering innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. At the same time, it maintains a significant role in regulating the market to prevent monopolies, ensure fair competition, and protect workers.

Having a strong social safety net: Social democracies typically have comprehensive social programs, including universal healthcare, free or subsidized education, unemployment benefits, pensions, and social housing. Reducing poverty, supporting the vulnerable, and ensuring that basic needs are met for all citizens.

Having Progressive Taxation: Which ensures that the wealthier individuals and corporations pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes. Preventing morbid wealth, reducing income inequality, and fund social services and public goods.

Having Labor Rights and Protections: Including minimum wage laws, collective bargaining rights, and safe working conditions, empowering workers and ensuring fair wages. Helping to build a robust middle class by promoting job security and fair compensation.

Having Regulated Markets: While markets are largely free and competitive, the government plays a role in regulating them to prevent abuses, protect the environment, and ensure public well being. This regulation helps to stabilize the economy and prevent crises that could disproportionately affect the middle class.

Having Public Investment in Infrastructure and Services: Creating jobs across the economic spectrum, improving the quality of life across the economic spectrum, and providing equal opportunities for economic advancement.

And having Promotion of Small and Medium Enterprises: Through grants, loans, and favorable regulations which foster a diverse economy and reduce dependence on large soulless mega corpses.

A strong middle class is often associated with political stability because middle-class citizens tend to favor policies that promote public services and democratic governance, reducing the risk of political extremism and polarization. Contributing to economic resilience by providing a stable consumer base, fostering creative entrepreneurship, and promoting economic growth. Middle-class citizens tend to have more disposable income, which supports domestic consumption and demand. Reducing economic inequality and promoting a strong middle class can enhance social cohesion and reduce social tensions. When citizens feel that they have a fair opportunity to succeed, it fosters a sense of shared purpose and solidarity. This engagement is crucial for maintaining a healthy democracy, as it promotes accountability, transparency, and public participation in the political process. And most of all, and empire very much knows this, a prosperous middle class is more likely to be politically active, engaged in civic life, and then free to be focused on their self-development. Which is terrifying to the empire because it gives the most freedom to the people to control their own destinies.

Written Insight: The Problem With The Media #8 - Hate Broadcasts

There's a great quote by a hilarious comedian which says... “Some poor, phoneless fool is probably sitting next to a waterfall somewhere totally unaware of how angry and scared they're supposed to be.”

As mentioned in the last insight of this series, there are really two base emotions on the extremes - Love or Hate. And the numerous underlying element to hate is just fear. And no one spreads fear like corporate or fascistic media. Especially what calls itself conservative media when we would say it's just trying to conserve robber baron criminality at best or imperial royal hierarchies at worst. It's regressive and most of all reactionary media, because it focuses on the negative, fears anything novel or new, and because its long sold out to the robber baron Godzillionaire criminal class (Ie, wall street, big commercial banks, big pharma, big war profiteers, etc...) it has to program it's viewers or listeners with a stronger physiological response to threats because that not only increases engagement, mistrust, and polarization, but most of all it has to misdirect them away from those previously mentioned who are actually causing their problems and instead misdirect their hate onto their fellow middle class or poor within their country and from other countries. Such as those without their same skin color, sexual orientations,or those who are more open minded than they are. ONe of the main ways this game is played is through border fear and hate. Because imperial agents know that austerity measures either lead to progressive revolution or fascism.

Now, we are not naive. And realize there is a quote which says, "If liberals don't protect borders, fascists will" and realize the single issue in liberal Europe's tendencies to allow extremely regressive wrong wing movements to re-rise, ala their past Italian fascism of Mousolini or German fascism of Hitleter is a single issue issue. Which is black and brown people from Africa or the Middle East coming into predominantly white Europe or brown people from South America coming into majority white but multi ethnic North America. As they're never talking about the white on white Northern borders such as from Scotland to Britain or Canadian to the US and are instead only talking about the southern borders. Those are the only ones that need hating. All though you of course cannot have mass open border illegal immigration, that never works out, look how it worked out for the native Americans for example, the goal is to live in desirable countries which have common since, compassionate pathways for legal immigration - because in the long run, that only helps that country's economy. Instead of a country with a mass exodus, which, in the long run, only hurts those countries' economies. The whole point of border this, border that, fear from the squawk machine is to ignite that pathos, fight or flight, fear hate primarily in Christian's in Name Only, who incorrectly and falsely think their country is a WASP nation. It's one of many poke points they pull at the heartstrings of fear-based lowest common denominator mind killer culture. That along with "There's a run on the banks, they're trying to assassinate you so you gotta stockpile arms and can beans, WW3, civil war, islamic jehad, they're coming for your gas water heaters and stoves, or to make you gay, the stock market is gonna crash, since I've been a corporate criminal my whole life and am now having to actually face accountability for my crimes... if it can happen to me, it can happen to you, there are Nukes in shipping containers. ICBMS can reach us in 33 minutes, bla bla bla."

Psychologists call a “negativity bias” when attention is biased toward the negative, the result is an overly threat-conscious appraisal of one’s surroundings. To many regressives, and within that is a (pho conservatism which has existed in a continuous state of terror and rage for most of its existence), the world may look like a much scarier place. This would explain why so many white haired outdated soon to keel over viewpoints tend to be rooted in fear and thus hate. Resulting in the less traveled incorrectly feel that the areas outside their neighborhoods and communities are unsafe, overestimating their odds of becoming a victim, or believe that crime rates are rising when the opposite is actually occuring, or considering the world to be a dangerous place. Because there's another accurate quote which says "the world's always getting better but far too many people inaccurately think it's always getting worse." We know someone whose elderly conservative parents were going to the city of Chicago and were so sure it was going to be like 1980's war torn Beirut that when it turned out to be the generally nice, clean, lovely, but Antartically cold during the winter city it was, they could hardly believe all the fear based media they had been main lining had been lying to them!

Hate speech is commonly defined as any communication that disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristics such as race, colour, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion. The identified common traits refer to: the targeting of a group, or an individual as a member of a group; the presence of a content that expresses hatred, causes a harm, incites bad actions beyond the speech itself, and has no redeeming purpose other than just venting and creating an other to assign blame to for your own personal life problems.

The controllers know they need to hijack minds externally and make them fear and hate based internally. Because not only is fear the mind killer, the more you hate what is out there, the more it really means you hate aspects of yourself. The Hermetic principle of "as within, so without" knows that there is a correspondence between our inner state and our outer experiences. With our inner thoughts and emotions shaping the reality we perceive and experience. Positive inner states tend to manifest positive external circumstances, while negative inner states often result in negative external experiences. When we harbor hate, hating ourselves, we tend to project it outward. This means that the hatred we feel internally can manifest as hostile actions towards others. The principle of "as within, so without" suggests that our external expressions of hate are a direct reflection of our internal emotional state. The principle also implies that like attracts like. By harboring hate, we might attract more hate from others, creating a cycle of negativity that perpetuates the emotion both internally and externally. To break the cycle, it's essential to engage in self-reflection and understand the root causes of this emotion - one of the main ones being dogshit corporate or fascist media - which should be turned off. And moving more inward to identifying and addressing the sources of hate within ourselves to thus help transform our inner state. By fostering positive emotions within such as forgiveness, empathy, and compassion, we change our outer experiences accordingly, especially in regard to those different from us.