Apr 12, 2022·edited Apr 12, 2022Liked by Winston Smith
It's a variation of the mass formation psychosis 'theory' in that it attempts to blame those with the least agency in this world when in fact the 'safety' is desired, actually demanded, by the uncouth mega-wealthy.
Fear belongs only to the fearful, and it can be dealt with only by its owner.
Whether it is justified or unjustified fear, it is again its owner's duty to find out. One cannot blame anybody else for one's own fears, even when others are trying to inject this sentiment in one's mind, as an example I can write now with capital letters :
"OH MY GOD, OUR SUN JUST EXPLODED AND WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE !!!!"
and instinctively, many will stare at the sky for a moment before deciding whether to collapse in visceral terror, or just call me bonkers.
Now you won't take a glance, because I wrote that ツ
But many won't bother to look up and will panic anyway, for just guessing that it has to be some truth in my warning, even if they don't actually witness the evidence, thinking "well, what do I know, I'm not an astronomer, so perhaps I should react somehow". Yes, I know, it is amazing, but sadly true.
Just look back at the last two years, and you will see lots of them.
Everyone fears losing their jobs, homes, having accidents, losing someone dear, while completely oblivious that we are a very fragile moss on a boulder spinning crazy around a humongous nuclear furnace doing its best to blow away our thin magnetic and athmospheric protective shields, darting through a horribly cold, dark, barely known and definitely unfriendly space filled with other boulders, furnaces, bottomless wells crushing time itself, clouds of radioactive dust and poisonous gasses and who-knows-what else.
We are at a perpeual life-or-death war with the entire Universe who's trying really hard to kill us, and we are still here, victorious and laughing in its face. Compared to that, all our earthly worries are less than trivial.
I know the incoming answer - what's the point worrying about something we can't do anything about, anyway? we only worry about things we can change - and my reply to it is - then stop wasting your time worrying, and start working on that change, make it happen.
Get to terms with the fact that your time on this planet has limits, everyday is a bonus, death is an essential part of life, and nobody is completely safe. Stop listening to others, start enjoying listening to yourselves, make your journey worth its while ☀
Tribal societies had ways of facing and overcoming their existential threats. They valued skill, strength, common sense intelligence and practical know-how, bravery, generosity, social cohesion, all towards the good of the whole tribe. Tribes are extended families. Every member is accurately perceived as part of "we". "We" are here in this physical reality together. How are "we" going to secure our material necessities of life (food, water, shelter)?
Tribes solve that question and make a life for themselves in this world. They live by the family values morality that Marx erroneously believed could apply to mass society: From each according to his ability, to each according to their need. In ("successful") families and tribes the adults provide for the children, the strong protect the weak. The people all know each other and care for each other. Providers are rewarded with love and respect and gratitude, not with luxuriant personal wealth.
Civilization is nothing like that. Civilization - organized mass society - is organized by rulers to enslave the masses for the benefit of the rulers whose motivating desire is to dominate people and to enjoy the material wealth that is produced by the work of others. Rulers organize thug armies to conquer tribal people - murder and rob and enslave them - and bring them into the 'civilization' to do the physical labor. The rulers and their thug servants and "administrators" enjoy the fruits of slave labor. This is not a theory. This is history.
The rulers of 'civilizations' build monumental architecture with slave labor. The slaves don't enjoy the use of the monuments, The slaves and serfs live in hovels. The rulers occupy the monuments to their egos and their 'greatness'.
The famous "democracy" of Athens was populated by about 25% citizens and 75% slaves - the people we now call domestic servants and wage laborers. Slaves were owned by citizens as their property. Aristotle's economics is household economics - how to manage your family and slaves. Greek philosophers took for granted that "people" did not have to do physical labor to deal with the physical exigencies of their material life in this world. "People" only had to deal with the "higher" matters of the mind and morality.
Slaves did the physical work. "Human nature" is the nature of the rulers and the owners of people. The "human" nature of slaves is never considered, other than how to manipulate it to serve the owners. Today, as always, legitimate fear of abuse or death by owners/rulers, and the "mass formation" of religious or secular worldviews (like scientism today), is used to deceive, terrify and rule over "the people". Greek philosophy is the philosophy of rulers, not of "the people" - the majority population. That has remained the case throughout Western history.
Most people forget that the US Constitution created a Republic that granted political rights - the right to vote and to participate in government - to white men who owned sufficient property. Poor white men, white women, black men and women, and Native American men and women - 90% or more of the human population - were not included in US "democracy".
Who builds global supply chains? Not you. Not tribespeople. Who then?
Rich people who own transnational banking and mercantile corporations build global supply chains that enrich the owning class and the governing class whose armies and navies secure the global supply chains against the plundered people of colonies and against "pirates" who would plunder the rich as the rich plunder "the people".
In 1930 Freud published Civilization and its Discontents, explaining how the travails of psychological-social life in organized mass society are inescapable within the context of organized mass society.
In 1957 Leopold Kohr published The Breakdown of Nations, explaining how social scale is itself the problem and the problems of excessively large scale societies can only be solved by breaking those societies down into much smaller more local human scale units.
In 1973 Kohr's student and friend EF Schumacher reiterated Kohr's thesis in Small is Beautiful.
You will not find solutions to the problems of civilization within the context of civilization. Civilization is the problem. Small human scale local society is the solution. If that fails, then you're f*cked so get used to it.
It's a variation of the mass formation psychosis 'theory' in that it attempts to blame those with the least agency in this world when in fact the 'safety' is desired, actually demanded, by the uncouth mega-wealthy.
I think the video lays out the problem but what is the solution for individuals to escape from this state? What is the opposite of fear?
There is a wonderful little book that is a quick read. It is probably about 50 years old. Love Is Letting Go of Fear by Gerald G. Jampolsky.
☕
Fear belongs only to the fearful, and it can be dealt with only by its owner.
Whether it is justified or unjustified fear, it is again its owner's duty to find out. One cannot blame anybody else for one's own fears, even when others are trying to inject this sentiment in one's mind, as an example I can write now with capital letters :
"OH MY GOD, OUR SUN JUST EXPLODED AND WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE !!!!"
and instinctively, many will stare at the sky for a moment before deciding whether to collapse in visceral terror, or just call me bonkers.
Now you won't take a glance, because I wrote that ツ
But many won't bother to look up and will panic anyway, for just guessing that it has to be some truth in my warning, even if they don't actually witness the evidence, thinking "well, what do I know, I'm not an astronomer, so perhaps I should react somehow". Yes, I know, it is amazing, but sadly true.
Just look back at the last two years, and you will see lots of them.
Everyone fears losing their jobs, homes, having accidents, losing someone dear, while completely oblivious that we are a very fragile moss on a boulder spinning crazy around a humongous nuclear furnace doing its best to blow away our thin magnetic and athmospheric protective shields, darting through a horribly cold, dark, barely known and definitely unfriendly space filled with other boulders, furnaces, bottomless wells crushing time itself, clouds of radioactive dust and poisonous gasses and who-knows-what else.
We are at a perpeual life-or-death war with the entire Universe who's trying really hard to kill us, and we are still here, victorious and laughing in its face. Compared to that, all our earthly worries are less than trivial.
I know the incoming answer - what's the point worrying about something we can't do anything about, anyway? we only worry about things we can change - and my reply to it is - then stop wasting your time worrying, and start working on that change, make it happen.
Get to terms with the fact that your time on this planet has limits, everyday is a bonus, death is an essential part of life, and nobody is completely safe. Stop listening to others, start enjoying listening to yourselves, make your journey worth its while ☀
Tribal societies had ways of facing and overcoming their existential threats. They valued skill, strength, common sense intelligence and practical know-how, bravery, generosity, social cohesion, all towards the good of the whole tribe. Tribes are extended families. Every member is accurately perceived as part of "we". "We" are here in this physical reality together. How are "we" going to secure our material necessities of life (food, water, shelter)?
Tribes solve that question and make a life for themselves in this world. They live by the family values morality that Marx erroneously believed could apply to mass society: From each according to his ability, to each according to their need. In ("successful") families and tribes the adults provide for the children, the strong protect the weak. The people all know each other and care for each other. Providers are rewarded with love and respect and gratitude, not with luxuriant personal wealth.
Civilization is nothing like that. Civilization - organized mass society - is organized by rulers to enslave the masses for the benefit of the rulers whose motivating desire is to dominate people and to enjoy the material wealth that is produced by the work of others. Rulers organize thug armies to conquer tribal people - murder and rob and enslave them - and bring them into the 'civilization' to do the physical labor. The rulers and their thug servants and "administrators" enjoy the fruits of slave labor. This is not a theory. This is history.
The rulers of 'civilizations' build monumental architecture with slave labor. The slaves don't enjoy the use of the monuments, The slaves and serfs live in hovels. The rulers occupy the monuments to their egos and their 'greatness'.
The famous "democracy" of Athens was populated by about 25% citizens and 75% slaves - the people we now call domestic servants and wage laborers. Slaves were owned by citizens as their property. Aristotle's economics is household economics - how to manage your family and slaves. Greek philosophers took for granted that "people" did not have to do physical labor to deal with the physical exigencies of their material life in this world. "People" only had to deal with the "higher" matters of the mind and morality.
Slaves did the physical work. "Human nature" is the nature of the rulers and the owners of people. The "human" nature of slaves is never considered, other than how to manipulate it to serve the owners. Today, as always, legitimate fear of abuse or death by owners/rulers, and the "mass formation" of religious or secular worldviews (like scientism today), is used to deceive, terrify and rule over "the people". Greek philosophy is the philosophy of rulers, not of "the people" - the majority population. That has remained the case throughout Western history.
Most people forget that the US Constitution created a Republic that granted political rights - the right to vote and to participate in government - to white men who owned sufficient property. Poor white men, white women, black men and women, and Native American men and women - 90% or more of the human population - were not included in US "democracy".
Who builds global supply chains? Not you. Not tribespeople. Who then?
Rich people who own transnational banking and mercantile corporations build global supply chains that enrich the owning class and the governing class whose armies and navies secure the global supply chains against the plundered people of colonies and against "pirates" who would plunder the rich as the rich plunder "the people".
In 1930 Freud published Civilization and its Discontents, explaining how the travails of psychological-social life in organized mass society are inescapable within the context of organized mass society.
In 1957 Leopold Kohr published The Breakdown of Nations, explaining how social scale is itself the problem and the problems of excessively large scale societies can only be solved by breaking those societies down into much smaller more local human scale units.
In 1973 Kohr's student and friend EF Schumacher reiterated Kohr's thesis in Small is Beautiful.
You will not find solutions to the problems of civilization within the context of civilization. Civilization is the problem. Small human scale local society is the solution. If that fails, then you're f*cked so get used to it.