I deeply appreciate this conversation where Chris and Dr. Dreher touch on so many elements of western societal collapse.
The one that stands out for me is the piece on failure to form family. Without family, we have no foundation upon which to build a functioning culture because people live each day lost in unconscious psychological survival mode. There’s a core sense of helplessness that leads to destructive behavior.
We simply have to prioritize social capital these days as things really unravel. If there’s anyone reading this in the Boise area and you want to connect, please pm me.
19 Likes
So good.
4 Likes
We read his book, The Benedict Option, years ago and it still informs us.
Robie and Angie
5 Likes
This is so relevant, and so timely. It speaks to much of which is in my heart, serving to reinforce that I am on the right path in the approaches I am taking to deal with all that is happening.
An unwavering commitment to truth seeking and speaking gives us meaning and purpose. Walking in our integrity lays the foundational building blocks essential to success. And moral courage will form the strong pillars on which our parallel networks / structures will stand.
Yes, memory + desire will keep the flame of hope burning within, unquenchable, no matter what they throw at us…
15 Likes
I wanted to express my thanks to Chris for using this episode in drawing this matter to the attention of a greater audience. This interview offered an impressive number of insights. I am not only saying this because I am feeling this is important… no, because I am one of the ones that has the same experiences and conclusions as the persons Chris and Dreher are referring to in the video.
Saying this, I can confirm this sentiment of expats from former socialist places cited in the video, because anyone who followed my posts knew that I am from the “Eastern Part” of Europe. And in personal circles I am pointing out over the last years that the west has morphed into a new type of Socialism.
Shortly after the wall came down, right after my study, I took an opportunity to work overseas… from which I never returned. But with today’s technology and the internet, the world became a village and so I followed roughly the developments at home from the distance. Furthermore, life threw me into an area that is intrinsically immune to the “political correctness” virus. That that gives me a unique perspective.
And so I was observing the last 25 years a slow progression of the democratic western world into something that I know from before. More and more regulation and ideology. First little… but lately I have to say - full retard.
For me personally it has its own dimension. Actually I had the plan to leave the Middle East already a few years ago (but circumstances prevented this) but soon I have to. So, if people ask me where I will go - I have to say I don’t know. When they say ohh… you go home they are often shocked when I say, I have no home. I do not feel that the place where I come from is my home from the perspective of liberty - that what we actually though and got told when we teared down the wall.
Certainly Europe is a nice place and I am borne there. It is clean, green (I mean the nature), practical… but living there turned in the past decades awfully bureaucratic, technocratic, over-regulated and ideological. Europe now turned into a nanny state that dictates all of you up to the correct usage of the trash can based on a “modern morale” so that I clearly feel Europe is now a form of technocratic version of the socialism of the 1970th only at a more sophisticated level. And ohh… not even to talk about the media propaganda and the schools. That’s an own chapter.
So, the question now is where to settle and having tasted a bit the relaxed (free) life in Asia, going back to Europe is not that attractive anymore.
And sadly… when I mention this to other fellows they either look at me as I am from another planet because they are “inside the fog” or they are from another continent where they don’t understand what is going on in the west.
To explain how I feel I refer then often to the frame story from movie Planet of the Apes (2001 version). There in the movie an ambitious scientist left his home (the earth) to explore far places and ended up on this crazy planet (full of human apes) from which he managed to escape back to mother earth - understanding that this is his home where he belongs to. But when he arrived he shockingly had to realize that, in the meantime while he was away, his home (earth) transformed exactly into that nightmare from which he thought to have successfully escaped.
So, where to go? As for the place from where I came I am split-hearten. Interestingly, I found that medium developed places still offer a tick of freedom in life that we had in the past like Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines.
Unfortunately, my former favorites sadly moved to a different universe (Australia and Nazeeland).
25 Likes
So apparently at my son’s high school there is a giant “litter box” in one of the girls’ restrooms to be “inclusive” to a female student who identifies as a cat. I wish I was making this up but unfortunately not. Society is doomed.
32 Likes
I laughed out loud when I read your post.
I know it is true, but it sounds like something out of a comedy sketch mocking the woke agenda.
9 Likes
Claim to identify as dogs so they can go outside and piss on the wall or better yet the tires of the principal’s car.
Kathy
16 Likes
with all the crazy shit going on and conspiracy theories coming true it must make running a satire site like the Bee very difficult.
6 Likes
This is so funny. Please send this to the makers of South Park.
7 Likes
If I went there, I would claim to identify as a bat - so they would have to put something in the bathroom to allow me to hang upside down from the ceiling while I take a leak.
6 Likes
Great talk, Dr Martenson. Thanks for bringing Rod into the Peak Prosperity orbit. Great discussion of great topics. I will add this thought:
It was Dr Aaron Kheriaty that recently said something to the effect the Reality always wins because it gets to bat last in the bottom of the ninth.
All of our foolishness, wokeness, and reality denying gets flushed away in the end. To rob from another pearl, “reality is a harsh mistress”. Its just that the journey is unlikely to be pretty or easy.
6 Likes
18 Likes
“NATURE BATS LAST” My favorite bumpersticker.
3 Likes
@thc
Hmm… I guess the makers of the movie Idiocracy were clearly on something…
7 Likes
Consider finding and reading Wendell Berry’s “Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community”. I’m sure it can be found online somewhere.
1 Like
There’s a concept in political theory developed by Joseph P. Overton which suggests that there’s a “window” of acceptable ideas and policy proposals in public discourse. Everything inside the window is normal and expected, while everything outside the window is radical, ridiculous, or unthinkable. And Overton argued that the easiest way to move that window was to force people to consider ideas at the extremes, as far away from the window as possible. Because forcing people to consider an unthinkable idea, even if they rejected it, would make all less extreme ideas seem acceptable by comparison -- it would move the “window” slowly in that direction.
That “Overton Window” concept is helpful for explaining how media coverage of the "pandemic" has been warped. The lack of transparency has forced the public to grapple with conspiracy theories and dishonest government spokespeople -- making them a regular fixture of our national political debates. And that grappling has moved the Overton Window in ways that will warp our politics long after this event has run its course.
8 Likes
Traditional totalitarianism is very easy to recognize. It is associated with a “strong man” dictator, King, Emperor, Khan, Chief etc. Inverted Totalitarianism (IT) is impossible for most to recognize. The top is characterized by an amorphous fog (intentionally). The lessons of the French and Russian revolutions were not lost. There is no one entity to pin the blame on.
It has taken millennia for the current system to evolve. Corporations are now people…well sort of. The line between corporation and government has been obliterated. Corporations write laws to protect themselves and are passed by bought and paid for politicians. Corporate wrongdoing gets a slap on the wrist ( 1% of corporate profit fine) and government wrongdoing goes unpunished or a lost election with a cushy job at a corporate dinner table.
Sheldon Wolin coined the term IT.
“Inverted totalitarianism is different from classical forms of totalitarianism. It does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader but in the faceless anonymity of the corporate state. Our inverted totalitarianism pays outward fealty to the facade of electoral politics, the Constitution, civil liberties, freedom of the press, the independence of the judiciary, and the iconography, traditions and language of American patriotism, but it has effectively seized all of the mechanisms of power to render the citizen impotent.”
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/sheldon-wolin-and-inverted-totalitarianism/
Ah but what to do if you are the victim of IT? One must first recognize its existence. Then one must recognize one is in such a system. It is important to remember you as an individual are completely irrelevant. As Stefan Moyneux pointed out you are nothing more than a farm animal. If you do not know who the sucker is in the game it is you.
Once those recognitions are in place one has to realize that the assymetry in power will not be given up willingly. There is no electoral process that alter that inequality. The footing that will bring about change is the understanding that this is a war. It is a spiritual war for your soul. This is no game for the weak hearted. It requires the risk of life and property.
https://suntzusaid.com/
22 Likes
1. ..."the search for truth is a search for God" ...The religious people and the scientists shared something very essential here...I wonder if anyone is interested in discussing this topic with me.Well, I'm interested. I can't understand how anyone can ponder the fundamental nature of the imaginary number i, as the square root of NEGATIVE 1, realize that it isn't even possible for a human to understand that "absurdity", realize that nonetheless it is, if anything, MORE real and fundamental than the number 1, and conclude that they are being "rational" in concluding that there can't be something on a higher order than just "raw meat in the wog world" going on here: God, or Universe, or whatever you want to call the organizing principle, must be a mathematician.
2. ...I want to organize a local community around local generation of energy, both electric and food wise. I offer recently built hardware/infrastructure beachside for such community if anyone here is interested in becoming a member...I am very interested in speaking with you about this, as well. We happen to have a common outcome, but it sounds like you are way ahead of me, at least with the technical know-how. I have 23 ag acres set aside in upland HI, in a location which doesn't need to be heated nor cooled, nor watered, yet still has plenty of sun without being very humid. If energy self-sufficiency isn't possible when everything is stacked that much in your favor, it probably isn't possible anywhere. I would like to see the ideal of near complete energy self-sufficiency, at least for comfortable everyday living, put to the test. What do YOU think you still need to make this test case a reality? Where do you have in mind -- and is it better than what I have access to? In order to make this work it really does need at least a modest community, although the history of communes is not very bright -- so that needs to be considered as well. And then there is the issue of how secure "the work" is likely to be in a near TEOTWAWKI scenario....which is what I think we are flirting with right now. I think the location needs geographical distance from large hoards of people, as well. I previously had land in NH but gave it up the more I realized how incredibly difficult it would be power, PLUS maintain against the elements, PLUS defend from both government predation and the hundred million zombies living in New England if things get tough. I will defer to your leadership in understanding the physics involved; If you already have a location secured, that is great. I would really like to talk to you more about this and see if we can work together to make it a working test case. That would be exciting and fulfilling. How do we communicate?
2 Likes
Stph, thank you for sharing your thoughts.
- regarding what you refer to as “the organizing principle” DaveFairtex pointed out to me the wonderful work of Michael Levin, who discovered that individual animal cells, when grown in small clumps outside of the large animal from which they are derived, self associate to make primitive, tiny organisms all on their own. This is mediated via transmembrane ion transport systems, to allow cell-cell communication. I think that this organizing principal occurs at the molecular level and even atomic level as well. You mention the mystical aspects of the square root of minus 1. The quality of the carbon atom (and silicon, germanium under it in the periodic chart) evinces characteristics of life and is equally mystical. These characteristics (organizing rules of life) can be found at all levels. Perhaps we can learn the rules from Michael Levin
s work in Developmental Biology and use that to guide us in working out a better government/society after the revolution that must come. I need to read more about this as well as Jeremy Englands work that predicts life purely from physics and math, which our information scout pointed out a couple years ago. These discussions would not lead to anything concrete in the near future and I dont them to distract from real activity, however. - I agree with your concern that intentional communities are fraught with problems. They rarely work out on the long term. There is something about Levin`s cells that we might decipher and to learn from. Also, we have much recorded history to draw on. I remember talking with a mainland Chinese years ago about “socialism” and his retort that the Chinese know more than Westerners about the dangers, as they have suffered more than Westerners… yet we are trained by our elite masters to avoid all serious consideration of what the Chinese learned (which frightens the crap out of our elite masters) We cannot even discuss why the Chinese have 1000 times less covid infections, or the Japanese have 100 times less covid infections, but can have a rousing debate on why and how one region of America or Europe has 0.5 times less infections than another, which merely strengthens the lie that somehow vaccines are dispositive to this issue.
- Lets have a video discussion on the community. There are broad issues regarding personnel in particular. But I think that incremental activities are possible via internet and am discussing this with a few others. I have PHP software (Laravel plug in) for a very relevant website to help people monitor and make decisions on the self sufficiency path, but dont know enough to actually use this software. Below is a link for a table with listed topics to focus on.
I am available most any day for a zoom call between 6PM and 8 AM Eastern Time. My full name and my website/contact can be found on the cover of my book “Take Back The Power!” at amazon.com or by PM here…
Stages of Local Resilience
2 Likes