Why should we be surprised that social media became programmed to block progressive, revolutionary efforts after Occupy? Hell, they did the same thing in the 70s to derail the activism then, too.

[this is an addendum to the previous post on this topic, 

Who’s behind the Facebook curtain? Profiling the elite, a silhouette of the real New World Order ]

Now that i think of it, why wouldn’t the powers-that-be seek to direct the influence that Facebook has on the world along a particular direction? 

After all, since not long ago, FB and twitter were central to major revolutionary and occupy movements around the world, it makes perfect sense that those affected by such outbursts of democratic activism would want to direct such a force (FB and twitter) and would by now have had time to regroup. It makes sense that they would have by now clandestinely set up algorithms, protocols, procedures, policies, and more designed to orchestrate and direct the power of this social media along lines beneficial to themselves. 

No small power, this, since Facebook has influence over more than 1/6th of the world’s population, at 1.23 billion members; it would seem to have a power larger than any nation in the world and perhaps larger than any worldwide religion. Of course by now those with money and power would have infested FB and the rest of the internet with elements meant to orchestrate and direct the powerful forces gathered together by these media along lines beneficial to them.

Indeed, this exact kind of thing happened as a reaction to activism of the Sixties, which I detail in my book, Culture War, Class War. As i make clear, America, beginning with Kent State, experienced a massive effort by the 1%, to direct all public institutions along lines beneficial to themselves and away from democracy and, in particular, the issues raised by the activism of those times — Civil Rights, war, free speech, the environment, and so on. Major institutions like education, specifically higher education, and the media were specially targeted. As they had been most influential in the awakening of the American mind, they could also be the tools for the dumbing down of the America to be created after 1971. We see the effects of these efforts today on a scale so huge that only folks like myself, who experienced a different, more free America, can even see them and note the glaring contrast to the America we knew when we were younger.

It is so obvious, I am astounded that i did not see this before now. Of course, the 1% has its fingers in everything on the internet … and all of media. The internet has an air of free speech and democracy about it because everyone has the right to post, to create blogs, and so on. What is less obvious is the control that has been going on behind the scenes, and Facebook has been a good example of that. For Facebook has shown in recent years this encroaching tendency to control the degree to which posts will be seen, even among friends. Beyond that, there are algorithms for deciding the degree of exposure posts will receive, which, it is known, are guarded secretly by Facebook, Google, and the rest. 

My mistake was assuming those decisions were all made on grounds having to do with profit and for business reasons. Of course there are going to be all kinds of considerations going into the construction of those ways of influencing the flow of information that are political and are for the benefit of the 1% and the powers-that-be. Why wouldn’t the owners of power use that power to influence the flow of information to protect and increase their power? That has been true throughout society, of course it would be true for the internet, though it is even easier to hide there.

My oversight, also, was not realizing how the internet could be influenced in invisible ways affecting small fish such as myself. But i realized all they had to do was create the net in exactly the right way, and all kinds of folks like myself would be caught up in it.

The point is that it is intentional, but it is not necessarily specifically targeted at particular individuals.

— see my book, “Culture War, Class War: The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths'”

for any of the books by Michael Adzema, see Michael Adzema at Amazon

#facebook #twitter #totalitarianism #activism #influence #elite #ptb #powers-that-be

[this is an addendum to the previous post on this topic, 

Who’s behind the Facebook curtain? Profiling the elite, a silhouette of the real New World Order ]

Who’s at the controls over at FB? Well, the profile, from my evidence, is one of right-wing, Christian, anti-environmental, anti-activist, greedy/paranoid, capitalist types defending the 1% … Well, welcome to the “real” new world order:

Interesting what is going on with me over at FB these days. There seems a discernible pattern to the harassment i receive and have been receiving for a year and a half.

They’ve had me blocked and unable to interact for a good deal of that time — in “FB jail” is the way we put it. And while it is good to be out … at this moment anyway, lol …  and not blocked, as before, from posting in groups, from commenting and liking anything (even my own posts), there are new developments, new harassments.

Out of jail, yes, but would you believe that FB has actually deleted all of the Notes that i made since April 27th of this year…. including several powerful and much talked about ones on the environmental emergency upon us (titled “if you don’t read anything else by me, you should at least read this“) and the one giving information on my book, Culture War, Class War…. which is a book supporting the 99% in struggle against the 1%.

also, they are blocking all links to my blog, Funny God, as well as they’ve begun blocking any links or connections to or from tsu…..

it’s unbelievable the extent that they will meddle in the work of little old me …. after all, i’m hardly important…

Relatedly, i have been blocked for nearly all of the last year and a half from being able to share directly from a post to any of the groups i belong to, including my own. I cannot click the share button on the bottom of a post and direct it to a group, i have to copy url’s and text and go to the actual page of a group and paste it in there manually. Consider the hassle this provides when trying to network, to share information on issues.

So they are anti-networking for those of us who are activists…

Altogether, it looks like someone at FB, or FB itself, is fucking with me over my efforts to raise some urgency over the environmental apocalypse and human extinction we are on the verge of….

over my attempts to raise awareness on the class war going on… my attempts to highlight the economic injustice and the media manipulation that are being used to keep the sheeple in line….

wants to throw a monkey wrench into my ability to network easily, thus inhibiting my activist activities

and hates the idea of a Funny God...

as well as doesn’t want me promoting tsu, a social media platform in competition with FB…

hmmmm….

does it not seem that there is a pattern to these seemingly random “glitches”? Is it part of some anti-activist algorithm with a pro-fundamentalism subroutine? A right-wing creation being used to beat up opposition? But, if an algorithm, then how to explain why my Notes were deleted… i mean selected with seeming intention and actually deleted, with the work on them lost.

Think i’m being paranoid? Then how about this? The arrangement of my features on my wall, which i was allowed to set so that my Notes would be noticeable and at the top, was actually changed so that they would be hidden … and someone would have to dig for them; they would not find the hundreds of Notes i have written on activist and spiritually free-thinking topics unless they knew already that they were there. LOL. To top it off, when i go to set the arrangement properly, it does not get arranged properly on my wall, though my settings are indicating that the Notes *should* be on top, where i place them!

soooo…. sounds to me like forces that shape up as Christian (or otherwise fundamentalist), fascist, part of the economic elite, and greedily concerned over a rival social media…

Capitalistic, greedy Christians with no concern for free speech or rights and wishing to derail activism?

sounds like most of the right-wing we see everywhere these days… typified by Faux News, for example.

But who in hell would have the funds or motivation to pursue such clandestine activity to keep the activists and free-thinkers down? Who would have the money and staff? i think i’ve answered my own question, and it certainly wouldn’t be the forces of the 99%. Think *that’s* outlandish? How about alongside the fact that forces of the 1%, specifically the Koch brothers, are known to have entire staffs working on altering the content and flow of information on the internet and social media in order to keep them and their activities and interests in a positive light. 

summary: fuck FB…. 

based on all this shit, i’m even more determined to expand my internet exposure across larger and larger territories of different kinds of social and internet media….

so, in conclusion, fuck FB!

***

by the way, i encourage all and everyone to join me at Tsu. They are still a puppy dog compared to the FB behemoth. Still, i haven’t encountered any of the targeted monkey wrenching of activist or consciousness raising activity like at FB. At least not yet … and it’s been about 4 months i’ve been there.

to join, simply click on my link http://www.tsu.co/sillymickel

give them a username and a password of your choosing.

and you’re in.

Remember, another advantage of tsu is that they share the ad revenue we generate for them with all tsu members. It’s not much, but it is actual money, and it has the potential to amount to something in the long run, especially if one gets in early enough on, like now.

You’ll also start with at least one friend there (me), as i will send a request to friend, upon your joining.

Anyway, happy networking! We will overcome as we go over, under, around, and through any and all obstacles and harassment tactics to bring about a better world.

— for more on the elite and the culture war, class war being discussed here, see my book, “Culture War, Class War: Occupy Generations and the Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths'”

http://www.amazon.com/Culture-War-Class-Generations-Obvious/dp/1492864021/ref=sr_1_4_twi_pap_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443975079&sr=1-4&keywords=michael+adzema

for more on the environmental crises referred to here, see my books, Apocalypse Emergency, Apocalypse NO, and Planetmates: The Great Reveal

for any of Michael Adzema’s books, go to Michael Adzema at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Adzema/e/B00J7F0URC/ref=dp_byline_cont..

#facebook #tsu #Christian #harassments #capitalist #profile #anti-environmental #anti-activist

Drugs and Generations … Boomers: Drugs of choice were pot and LSD … no coincidence that Sixties values emphasized spiritual access, pacifism, authenticity, sensory openness, community

Vietnam-Era Generation — “Wow, Man!” “Just Do It” “Go With the Flow”

The Vietnam-War, or Baby-Boomer, Generation was noted for their use of a number of drugs. Marijuana, wine, “speed” (amphetamines), “downers” (for example, “ludes” or qualudes, also “reds” — that is to say, barbiturates), LSD, other hallucinogens such as mescaline, “magic mushrooms,” psilocybin, and peyote were all in use. It was a culture of experimentation in all areas, including drugs, which grew out of beliefs (following in the footsteps of the Beat Generation) that normal life/people were characterized by phoniness (plastic was the Vietnam-era Generation’s word for it), alienation, conformism, robotism, and lack of feelingness … and hypocrisy.

Though the Sixties Generation (another term used for this generation) experimented widely with drugs, their predominant drugs of choice were “pot” (marijuana) and LSD. Alongside this sort of drug use were attitudes of activism, free love, love as the ultimate value and/or as equivalent to God, pacifism in regards to the war, the valuing of openness, authenticity, “real” communication, and passion and/or feelingness, including sensory awareness or heightened perception of the physical world. 

It is easy to make the connection between the spiritual access capable with LSD and the emphasis on feeling, community, communication (‘rapping”), transcendence, and sensory enhancement that characterized the Sixties Generation. On the negative side, there was sometimes apathy and defeatism, like the Beat Generation, associated with marijuana use.

– excerpted from “Culture War, Class War: Occupy Generations and the Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths'” 

http://www.amazon.com/Culture-War-Class-Generations-Obvious/dp/1492864021/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://culturewarclasswar.wordpress.com/culture-war-is-class-war

For any of Michael Adzema’s books, go to Michael Adzema at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Adzema/e/B00J7F0URC/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

#Sixties #LSD #pot #activism #pacifism #community #openness #communication #authenticity

Activate Media, Extinction Radio. Peter Melton​ interviews Michael Adzema on extinction, activism, and the cosmic significance of our lives in these times

Heads up, folks. Here’s the recording of the show that was broadcast on Sunday, October 18th. It is the main interview on Extinction Radio. It is now available for listening and downloading.

http://www.extinctionradio.org/

I was interviewed by Peter Melton. Extinction Radio is a broadcast of Activate Media, formerly Occupy Boston Radio.

This is not to be missed. And thanks for the great support I always get from my followers and friends.

My 37 minute interview begins 2:40 minutes in. From the show broadcast on Sunday, October 18th. 

An interview with Michael Adzema, by Peter Melton. Extinction Radio

Broadcast originally at Activate Media http://www.activatemedia.org/

Now available as an archived broadcast to be listened to and downloaded any time 

https://soundcloud.com/xtinctionadioorg/extinction-radio-episode-30-10-18-2015


Michael Adzema, author of the books, “Apocalypse Emergency: Love’s Wake-Up Call,” “Apocalypse NO: Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious,” “Planetmates: The Great Reveal,” “Funny God: The Tao of Funny God and the Mind’s True Liberation,” and the soon-to-be-released, “Wounded Deer and Centaurs: The Necessary Hero and the Prenatal Matrix of Human Events” … among others … talks to Peter Melton​ on the meaning of these times in the context of the impending extinction of all life on Earth, the invigorating role thus presented to those awakened of us, the cosmic significance of it all, and much more.

#Adzema #extinction #radio #Melton #apocalypse #spirituality #activism #ecocide

For any books by Michael Adzema, see Michael Adzema at Amazon at

http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Adzema/e/B00J7F0URC/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1445114461&sr=1-1

“this battle has not gone away at all but is simply being ignored … and consciously *dismissed*”: Culture War, Class War, Occupy Generations

“People like to dismiss efforts such as mine and those of my cohorts at this time as trying to dredge up the battles of the Sixties, to relive or redo the past. This ignores the fact that this battle has not gone away at all but is simply being ignored … and consciously *dismissed*. It is as much here as 200,000 people were there in Wisconsin not long ago, though the media ignored and dismissed that in keeping with their insidious obedience. It is as much here as that we are currently surfing the tsunami of a WORLDWIDE OCCUPY movement addressing all the issues of this culture war, class war. Meanwhile the media exaggerates every Tea Party twitch involving handfuls or at the most hundreds of people and broadcasts far and wide every trivial pronouncement coming from their gang of cartoonish figures. 

“So yes, we are still fighting this culture war. For not only did it never go away, not only has our side not been heard, not only has the other side pounded our positions into rubble; and shouted down, ridiculed, slandered, and misconstrued our points to their own malevolent ends, but …  We ain’t won yet!”

– from “Culture War, Class War: Occupy Generations and the Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths'”

http://www.amazon.com/Culture-War-Class-Generations-Obvious/dp/1492864021/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

http://sillymickel.blogspot.mx/2015/09/culture-war-is-class-war-in-disguise.html

#politics #history #book #CultureWar #ClassWar #Occupy #activism #60s

“The last educated generation”: “It had become clear to the people at the top they could better manipulate the masses without free thinkers in the way”

“…the Vietnam War had seen increasingly larger degrees of complaint, criticism, resistance, and defiance to its pursuit from these liberal arts campuses. I was on campus and was part of it. I also saw how the campuses were purged of the liberal thinkers — professors were fired, departments of philosophy, religious studies, history, and the other liberal arts were cut back, often to be eliminated entirely. It had become clear to the people at the top that they could better manipulate the masses without free thinkers in the way. They did not want smart people noticing, that’s for sure…. 

“The result was that the Sixties Generation was the last educated generation. The result was that free-thinking generations would no longer be. They would not be encouraged; they would not be fostered; they would not be tolerated; they would not be *allowed*….”

– from “Culture War, Class War: Occupy Generations and the Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths'”

http://www.amazon.com/Culture-War-Class-Generations-Obvious/dp/1492864021/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.facebook.com/notes/michael-adzema/culture-war-class-war-the-rise-and-fall-of-obvious-truths-the-book/10151517042708138

#politics #history #book #CultureWar #ClassWar #Occupy #activism #VietnamWar

 

“we are … in the lives where we wanted to reincarnate at the “climax” of the movie here on Earth. For whatever reason … to help, to complete a mission, to observe the spectacle….”

“We here, all of us, are existing at a time in a history, a time in the game of humanity and this planet, where we are on the verge of either destroying everything — all life and ourselves — or of making a gigantic leap in consciousness of What Is … that is in becoming closer to God … having “greater participation” you might say.

“…what that means for the people reading this is that we have chosen to put our focus here, and we are getting to be at the center of the most important happening in history … on this planet anyway. There are other kinds of lives. We can have them if we wish. But it is like we are … here and now … in the lives where we wanted to show up at the “climax” of the movie. For whatever reason … to help, to complete a mission, to observe the spectacle … for whatever reason. And however you look at it, those groking this message, then, are involved in “greater participation” in Reality than many others on this planet now, yes … but for sure more than any other time in history….”

– from “Funny God: The Tao of Funny God and the Mind’s True Liberation”  http://www.amazon.com/Funny-God-Return-Grace-Book-ebook/dp/B00UV83F7Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441217959&sr=1-1&keywords=michael+adzema

#history #spirituality #consciousness #life #occupy #follow #tsu #activist #awakening #participation

The transcendent approach to activism, the necessary hero: Humor and the Reemergence of the Divine Feminine

The latest interview with me. I talk a lot about my newly released book, “Funny God: The Tao of Funny God and the Mind’s True Liberation” as well as my soon to be released work, “Wounded Deer and Centaurs: The Necessary Hero and and the Prenatal Matrix of Human Events.” The transcendent approach to activism; the necessary hero and her/his qualities; the relation of activism to true spirituality; the oppression of women, feeling, and Nature, and its roots in civilization and patriarchal cultures; our inner Divinity; life; existence; and the roots of evil and fear and their transcendence are among the many topics covered.

What was said about it:

Kristina Asinus: “Our new episode with our dear friend Michael Adzema!!

“We discussed the divine dual polarities, sacred energy manifestations, the comedy and humor of life and much much more!”

Michael Adzema: “I just finished listening to it and i am delighted with how it came out… You guys managed to get the best and realest me to come out in it…. Yours and Stefan’s responses, comments, and questions were spot on as well…. I truly believe folks will get a lot out of listening to it, their spirits will be lifted, and they might feel an easing of the fear they carry around…

“as you know, that is why i do what i do…. to comfort and lighten up where i can… thank you to both of you for doing what you do….”

Maxine Downs: “I planned to listen for a half hr and the rest tomorrow but was enjoying it too much to stop!

“Great interview, Michael. your laugh is so infectious … how great is that….

“I love how you tell it how it is with your authentic self. fucking amazing.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbLHY66LlXU&feature=youtu.be

Funny God: The Tao of Funny God and the Mind’s True Liberation is available at Amazon in print and e-book formats

http://www.amazon.com/Funny-God-Minds-Liberation-Return/dp/1499504845/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1436465784

Other Books by Michael Adzema available at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Adzema/e/B00J7F0URC/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1436465766&sr=1-2-ent

Culture War, Class War book released. Occupy Generations and The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths.” now available. Order Information

Culture War, Class War released.
3rd Book by Michael Adzema now available –
Culture War, Class War: Occupy Generations and the Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths.” Order Information.

Culture War, Class War, the third book – of the four being published in October-November, 2013 – is now completed also.

This book can be ordered now.

Click below to order.

http://www.amazon.com/Culture-War-Class-Generations-Obvious/dp/1492864021

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=michael%20adzema&sprefix=michael+adz%2Cstripbooks&rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3Amichael%20adzema

OCCUPY GENERATIONS. THE RISE AND FALL OF “OBVIOUS TRUTHS”

• What is the American Awakening?
• How have Americans become so dumb, so that they have so often voted against their self-interest? Or did they?
• What exactly are the Millennial Generation, Generation X, Yuppies, Boomers, the Fifties-Eisenhower, and the World War Two Generations? What do the drugs they use have to do with the events and the America they have helped to shape?
• Everyone knows what happened in America in 1963 and 1980 that changed its direction. But what happened in 1971 that did the same thing, and much more profoundly? How is it continuing today? And why do you not know about this?
• Has there ever really been a conservative backlash in America? Were Yuppies former hippies? Did Boomers become conservative as they became older?
• What of Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, the Tea Party, and the Wisconsin union movements?
• What is the Matrix? What are the things you know to be obviously true that are not? And why is it you think that way?
• Why is there now, suddenly, hope for America and the world?

Class War is disguised as Culture War. The 1% foment Culture War among the 99% to distract and cover their real economic motives.

This book looks into why America’s “privileged class” — its “royalty,” “blue bloods” — started a “culture war” against the middle class, working class, the poor … and the educated, artists, and humanists in the early 1970s. We discover how their fear of Sixties activism panicked them into an all-out assault against elements that threatened their wealth and privilege in all institutions of American society — media, education, medicine, government, politics, publication, religion, especially higher education — and restructured them for their ends.

Culture War, Class War—Occupy Generations and The Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths” is about how that reversal and restructuring happened and what has transpired in the last fifty years to bring us to this crisis. We see how Americans’ minds, personalities, beliefs, and their daily lives were orchestrated to a tune not theirs any more, but one that was sweet and harmonious to the profit-takers.

We see how this culture war, class war continues today: blatantly so in the Tea Party movement, the Republican Party, the Wall Street giveaways at the expense of jobs, tax cuts for the “filthy rich” and corporations, budget battles and cuts in government services and entitlement programs, rampant anti-environmentalism, and anti-minority, anti-immigrant laws and attacks.

Finally, we behold a worldwide global awakening. As the strains of war and financial oppression increase to a point no longer bearable, the American mind reawakens, beholds the obvious lies that have created the matrix of their lives, and sees more clearly….

About the Author

Michael Adzema is a writer, activist, teacher, and psychotherapist. In addition to Culture War, Class War, he has authored the books, Apocalypse Emergency; Primal Renaissance; Apocalypse NO; Experience Is Divinity, and Falls from Grace, which is listed as a reference on prenatal and perinatal psychology. In the last decade he authored and managed the popular blogs and websites, Culture War, Class War; Apocalypse No; and Things That Want to Be Said, among others. In the early Eighties, working as an anti-nuke activist with Oregon Fair Share, he was one of a small group of people whose actions led to the lawsuit that ended nuclear plant construction in the United States. He was the editor of Primal Renaissance, a professional journal of primal psychology, and was the first person in the United States to teach prenatal and perinatal psychology at the university level, which he did at Sonoma State University in the early Nineties. Culture War, Class War: Occupy Generations and the Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths” is the first volume in Michael Adzema’s Return to Grace series of ten volumes, of which four are currently in print and six more scheduled for publication in 2014 and 2015.

Apocalypse NO released. Book by Michael Adzema now available. Order Information

Apocalypse NO released. Book by Michael Adzema now available – Apocalypse NO, Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious. Order Information.

Apocalypse NO, the second book – of the four being published in the next four weeks – is now completed also. 

This book can be ordered now and will be available, is available ….

Amazon: Immediately
Expanded Distribution channels: 6-8 Weeks
in Kindle it has been available already….

More information coming, as I have it.

Click below to order.

http://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-NO-Emerging-Perinatal-Unconscious/dp/1492347213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381843954&sr=1-1&keywords=michael+adzema

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=michael+adzema&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Amichael+adzema

These are the strangest of days. We live in a time in which ending our species in our lifetime, even eliminating all life on this planet, are very real possibilities. The awareness of this acceleration toward an “end of days”—while so horrifying we hardly speak it—hangs over us and affects us in ways singular and fantastic.

Apocalypse NO, Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious awakens us to the unconscious influences erupting into our world which are changing the Earth and us in radical ways. Herein is revealed the underbelly of our modern life and the impetus behind our self-destruction. We see primal forces arising and exposed. Finally, we can direct our attention to the roots of our drive to apocalypse and reverse it.

More than that, this awakening provides a way of transformation. For in the heart of this darkness lies the most incredible opportunity for taking a leap beyond what we think of as human nature. This time calls for a new hero’s cycle—one that leaves behind the thuggishness of the old one. We are lifted beyond ourselves in a higher calling and a transcendent yet deeply rooted spirituality.

We realize that the necessary answer to the dilemma of apocalypse or Earth rebirth lies, not only in the resurrection of a new Earth, but in the dawning of a new self as well.

About the Author

Michael Adzema is a writer, activist, teacher, and psychotherapist. He was the editor of a professional journal of primal psychology and was the first person in the United States to teach prenatal and perinatal psychology at the university level. In the early Eighties, working as an anti-nuke activist, he was one those whose actions led to ending nuclear plant construction in the United States. In addition to Apocalypse NO, he has authored the books, Falls from Grace, which is a reference on prenatal and perinatal psychology; Primal Renaissance; Experience Is Divinity: Culture War, Class War; and the companion volume to this one, Apocalypse Emergency—Love’s Wake-Up Call.

Where There Is Hope and What Did You Expect Awakening to Look Like? Look Hard Enough, You Just Might See the Seeds of Light Amidst the Darkness Surrounding.

Rebirthing Rituals, the Hard Rain Fallin’, and the Value of Popular Culture in Awakening: The Price of Peace Is Inner Sight … Better Hitler Had Jumped Into Mosh Pits

Chapter Ten: Where There Is Hope, Cultural Rebirthing

Societal Self-Analysis and Talk Show Soul-Searching for Peace … Sorry, I Know You Wanted to Hate Reality Shows.

The Price of Peace Is Inner Sight: Societal Self-Analysis, an Internet Reformation, and Talk Show Soul-Searching for Peace

Societal Self-Analysis

Culture War Replaced Cold War

We see the workings of these opposing tendencies to look away from problems or to embrace them by examining the reactions in America to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The disappearance of this huge object for distraction from inner unhappiness, about which one could rationalize the use of defensiveness and scapegoating, led to continued turning away through the emergence, in America, of a search for other societal scapegoats and therefore the “Republican revolution.” Culture War replaced the Cold War as the way one could be comfortably ignorant of one’s insides and self-assuredly distracted, self-righteously engaged.

This removal of a collective punching bag or scapegoat also resulted in a healthy turning toward the darkness within and a collective self-analysis in America. This reaction has brought to the fore many of our social and political shortcomings.

Talk Show Soul-Searching

For evidence of this latter response we notice beginning in the Nineties the rise of the talk show; the rituals of nationwide self-examination over issues of sexual harassment, spouse abuse, and race relations played out in the Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas hearings and the O. J. Simpson trial; the hashing out of controversial and formerly hidden personal issues around sex, lies, and marital fidelity, played out in the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal; the reevaluation of matters of faith precipitated by priestly sexual abuse; and many other such national psychodramas staged on cable news networks and the magazine-style, documentary-type TV shows like Frontline, Nightline and the like.

We also witnessed the rise of reality shows as part of this societal pull to see beneath the covers of what is thought to be real. Now, progressives and intellectuals have lots of fun vamping about how superior they themselves are to such interests, as exemplified in reality shows. This can only be the position of elitists out of touch with the ways ordinary folks live their lives.

Sitcom Socialization

To make my point, let me back up a bit. The swagger that the Left, and intellectuals in general, display around reality shows is the same superiority they have expressed for decades concerning sitcoms. First, let me say that I consider most sitcoms and reality shows to be rather boring and a bit inane with their laugh and soundtrack framing. Yet, when I was a child, growing up in a medium-sized city in the coal country of Pennsylvania and coming from a very traditional family, it was only through such sitcoms that I had a chance to find out what a different style of family and parenting would be. Today, I would laugh at a “Father Knows Best.” But it was a step up and into socialization from the “Father Knows Little” or “Father Not Around” of many in my social stratum when I was a kid. This exposure allowed me, and many of my generation, to seek for more in our life and for better interpersonal family relationships…and eventually better parenting.

This presentation of better alternatives—middle-class, liberal, “hollywood” ones—to everyone in America has a lot to do with the fact that the Sixties were so explosive. It was the first decade after the introduction of a national culture through the medium of television. Much has been made of the fact that newscasts brought information into living rooms for the first time in that era—which is the thing that intellectual elitists will focus on, blinded by their quaint beliefs that humans are rational actors. It takes an experiential psychologist and social scientist like myself to notice that most folks act out of ideas and attitudes that are rooted in experiences and information that are hardly rational. So, the modeling of a more “advanced” way of family life—not perfect but for many better than the traditional ways they had known, which included things like spanking and attitudes like “children are better seen not heard” and “spare the rod, spoil the child”—through the TVs and cinemas of America was vastly more influential in changing society than newscasts, whose information could just as easily have been shared through the print media. The sitcoms brought liberal middle-class values to everyone in America who owned a tv set; and this was a huge step forward at the time.

A Modern “Priesthood”

This is where righties have it right when targeting “hollywood” for many of the changes in our culture over the last half century…though they see that as a negative influence. But intellectuals and lefties blow an opportunity and lose support among ordinary folks through an unconscious haughtiness and a cultural snobbery they are blind to but display in their turning up their noses at popular culture. Luckily, as an anthropological social scientist, I can study popular culture and get away with it, though not without some snide commentary coming my way from progressive and professional circles. They simply will never understand an intellectual who can speak to working folks because he’s one of them. They simply don’t get my attempts to package the crucial understandings of modern science and social sciences, on which the existence of our very world depends, in words that are not primarily directed to and meant to appease the gods of academia. They consider themselves important within their tiny professional circles, thinking they are changing the world when no one even knows what they are doing beyond that constrained perimeter.

Keeping the People Down

Indeed the attitude of academics and progressives about popular culture, especially talk and reality show tv programming and although they would be appalled to ever think it, is no different from the attitudes of the Catholic church and the clergy about matters of faith during medieval times. There, too, we had an elite wanting to “keep out the unwashed.” There, too, we had a distinction between people in the know and the rabble, with the anointed ones requiring ordinary folks to go through them for matters of truth and faith. We had then also this sharp distinction between the “high culture” of the Church and aristocracy—exemplified in the chamber music of the time—and the “low culture” of the masses—exemplified by the folk music of the troubadours of that day.

Nowadays this poo-pooing of tv culture by intellectuals is the same kind of attempt to funnel reality to the masses through the filters of a new “priesthood.” The cultural purists and intellectual elites would prefer that for truth you go through them in academia, where you ‘d have to pay a toll of course, just as the priests of the Middle Ages required you to pass their way on the road to the divine.

Therapy for the Masses

At any rate throwing off the snootiness of intellectualism, I contend, allows us to notice that sitcoms, reality shows, and talk shows serve functions in society that are, overall, beneficial in advancing our culture and catalyzing increased growth. They may not reflect, yet, where intellectuals and progressives think we should be, but for many they show something beyond where they are.

We should know that they are overall helpful in our cause from the fact that conservatives want to attack hollywood and limit freedom of expression on any airwave. The fact that many reactionaries want to keep their children out of schools, home-schooled, and away from tv sets should be telling progressives something about the value of popular culture.

Rebirth Denied

My point is that the rise in reality and talk shows are coincident with a need for a kind of societal “therapy” that came about when we took back our projections from the Soviets and were forced to look at ourselves. I’m saying this was a healthy way of doing it, and this was helping us, though it was tumultuous and difficult, in the Nineties. It is unfortunate, but it suited the forces of war and fascism, for the 1% to bring forth in the millennium the bugaboo of terrorism…perfectly bringing about another endless feud with another concocted enemy to project our own darknesses onto so we can escape from having to notice them ourselves and bring about actual personal growth and cultural advance…let alone the cultural rebirth that has been trying to happen for decades.

American Rehab

Reality shows are like watching group therapy happening. It is not surprising that there was even one reality program that was about therapy—Celebrity Rehab. Reality shows also expose ordinary folks to what amounts to crude but informative sociological experiments. If academics could see beyond their pretensions they would applaud this sort of, however haphazard and imprecise, understanding of group processes and individual psychology arising in the masses.

If there weren’t reality shows, folks would have a harder time knowing appropriate ways for men and women to act with each other. The gains of feminism would not have spread so widely or as fast if they were not being modeled and reinforced repeatedly on talk and reality shows. They demonstrate parenting and social skills—“politically correct” ones, in the good sense—to folks who would otherwise not know any better than to behave crudely and abusively. They bring the world, geography, travel, and history to the masses.

Intellectuals quibble about the quality of that, which comes across as quite childish, for it arises as if out of a jealousy of others getting the attention they want and out of a fear of competition for informational matters around science, culture, and humanities. It strikes me as more than ironic that those on the Left who would wish people to wake up from their zombie slumber would want to push programs of literature or drama where truths are filtered through the consciousness, and unconscious, of the artist, while wishing to deprive folks of a direct look—however contrived, it is actual reality and not scripted—at the world around them and people’s actual unplanned behavior and spontaneous reactions to unusual events.

Seeing people’s behavior in some of these shows does often remind me of the dynamics I’ve seen in therapy groups, and some of the personal changes in the participants mirror some of the evolutions I’ve seen in folks undergoing deep experiential psychotherapy. The audience participation part often sounds like group therapy or an intervention. I’ve been struck by how some of the group processes in the show remind me of family day in rehab, with folks reflecting back what they see in each other and how others’ behavior has affected them. These are all things that conservatives cringe at…actually hate. Yet liberals, except for notable exceptions like Jerry Springer, are not seeing the opening they have here. Lefties are fighting rather than using these forces, which are in the direction of personal growth and, cumulatively, much needed societal change.

As a psychologist and simply someone who loves people, I am fascinated by some of the things I see in these shows. They can be heart-wrenchingly real at times. So it occurs to me that folks who disparage these shows, comparing them with literature and dramatic productions, is another thing where some are wanting to have their reality filtered, managed, and packaged for them, lest it be too “disruptive” to their prejudices of things.

The Price of Peace Is Inner Sight

The upshot of all this is to say that just as a lack of a Cold War caused both collective acting out—another war, a Culture War—and collective inner searching via television talk shows, documentaries, and such. So also the prevention of “hot” wars on an international, not just intercultural, scale and the cause of peace in general require such inner soul-searching and such confrontation with one’s darker sides. And if we must, it is better to endure the psychotic acting out of a culture war—with its battles played out on the airwaves—than an actual war.

For is there any doubt that either of these or any combinations of these alternatives, however uncomfortable and even violent…on a smaller scale…at times, is a small price to pay compared to the price of outright war and violence which, by any measurement, is a cost horrifyingly huge and unacceptable?

America Currently Refusing to Pay Such Price

The converse of this is also true: When the dramas wanting to be discussed are suppressed in the mainstream media, it is as stifling of the growth of a nation as an individual’s growth. Unfortunately we have seen this as well recently. There have been massive worldwide and nationwide Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, massive Wisconsin union outpourings, and events in Japan and about Fukushima that the American people really want to and need to know and discuss, but they are being blacklisted from being broadcasted on. There has been a change in government in Iceland, with banksters being jailed, that Americans are not hearing about; there have been demonstrations in Japan about their insane response to their tragedy, which Americans won’t be told about; there have been massive demonstrations in Israel against the colonial policies of their own government that curiously do not make it into the offerings of news programs. These are things that in the Nineties would have fed the talk on tv and stimulated the necessary societal hashing out for there to be a chance of going beyond them.

What Is the Cost of Denial? Of Complacency?

It is hard to know, though, what happens when the natural urges of a nation to grow and change are thwarted. While I discussed this abortion of cultural renewal and the abomination that results from it at length in Chapter Seven of a companion book to this one, Culture War, Class War, under the title Cultural Rebirth, Aborted, the question remains what happens when this societal “rebirthing” is more urgent than ever. What happens when—for the sake of the survival of the human race and of the planet—it is necessary that this growth happen and instead it is continuously derailed and snuffed out of the light of collective consciousness?

Internet Revolution Is Another Reformation

Luckily all this is changing as the internet and social networking have upended the academic elitists, swarming around and over their petty barriers of intellectual privilege. The blogsters and “rabble” of the net have taken over the cultural dialogue of the time as assuredly as Martin Luther and the Reformation changed religion forever and helped to bring to an end the cultural stagnation of the Middle Ages and to ignite an Age of Reason and of Enlightenment.

We Could Use More “Narcissistic” Generations: Know Thyself … Let the Buck Stop Here!

Moratorium … Let the Buck Stop Here! We Could Use More “Narcissistic” Generations

“Know Thyself” ~ “Narcissistic”?

Self-Discovery, Soul-Searching, Psychological-Mindedness, Self-Analysis – Sixties Generation

So, we have taken a look at the need for societies to “do therapy” on themselves, to hash out and process, however messy that might seem to be, the perinatal projections from the unconscious, as they manifest in the tribulations of the times—both profound and mundane. It must be kept in mind that it is the products of nearly the most “advanced” mode of child-caring—the delegated-release subclass of the socializing psychoclass — who have proved most willing to pay such prices for peace, as for example, in increased soul-searching. In fact they would be later stigmatized for just this quality of introspection, this supposed fault of looking into themselves, through the derogatory appellation, narcissistic.

Indeed, Keniston foresaw this when he studied the Sixties generation as college students. Observing the amount of inner exploration they engaged in during their quests for self-discovery, he would describe this attribute in a biased way as “the overexamined life,” and more fairly, for the activist youth, as a “psychological-mindedness” and “self-analysis.” [Footnote 1]

“Let It All Out? No, Leave Some of It In!” – Pat Buchanan, Fifties Generation

No doubt those who criticized these youth in the past are some of the same ones or their surrogates who, now older, are wrongly castigating the self-analyzing characteristics of contemporary society as the Sixties generation is now in its “triumphant” phase—the time when as adults a psychoclass takes over the reins of society and most strongly influences it. I have already taken note of the tendencies of the right to rile against the collective processing that is happening in their attacks on popular culture and in particular what they call “hollywood.” They express their desire that “such matters” not come to public light, for they deem them “offensive” or an affront to their (oh so delicate) sensibilities. They sense a threat to the precious untruths that prop up their self-destructive way of life, woven through as it is with war, fascism, planetary and planetmate annihilation, and the other horrors mushrooming about them in the postmodern era. [Footnote 2]

These highly defended and fear-minded conservatives, prone to projection, are incapable of appreciating the integrity of an inner-thinking generation like the Boomers are. These outer-minded authoritarians would not get, would outright hate those who “questioned authority” in the Sixties.

These defended entrenched egos would be secretly jealous of and overtly aggressive to a generational emergence that since the Sixties has been psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually working on themselves to be free of inner tyranny. As one of their exemplars, Pat Buchanan, long ago phrased it, “Let it all out? No, leave some of it in!”

Let the Buck Stop Here!

Nonetheless this cadre of kindred Sixties spirits would in their actions declare for the first time in history as a generation, “Let the buck stop here!” And they would seek to turn themselves, and by extension their children and society-at-large, into a more loving, wise, and less acting-out humanity…most importantly, one willing to cooperate rather than war with Nature, or other nations.

If Not Us, Who? If Not Now, When?

What virtually all the folks outside “my generation” never get is the unimpeachable vision we had of the complete and utter wrongness of the path and tendencies of modern times and the abyss toward which civilization was heading. We were proven right, of course, as especially in the last decade we have seen the disintegration wrought of those tendencies on all fronts—political, environmental, personal. The Sixties generation saw modern civilization as being unreformable and needing complete remaking, so that everything we did was an attempt to create reality and culture from scratch, sans tradition.

We had seen normal ways of doing things to be impotent and often dangerous and most importantly leading to apocalyptic endings in our near future. This understanding is what was responsible for all the “non-normal” behaviors my generation displayed—communes, confrontations, clothes, relationships, organics, alternative ways of everything…an entire counterculture. We have been laughed at for essentially being ahead of the curve on the messages of modern events. We have been called crazy for our inconvenient prophecies, virtually all of which are now coming to pass.

While I and my cohorts, to use just one example, spoke out on the dangers of nuclear energy and in particular the insanity of building plants on fault lines, the professional pundits scoffed and boasted they lived near nuclear plants. This was thirty years and more before the world ever heard the word, Fukushima. The examples like this are endless. We saw all these unworkable endings and asked ourselves, “What would be a real way of doing that?” “What would be a workable, sustainable way?” “What would be a sane and happy life, ethic, and lifestyle.” “What would be a loving, peaceful mode of being?”

While we sought to redo culture from scratch, building it on perennial and unimpeachable principles, the threatened elders and the jealous youngers, who would soon enough come behind, poked fun from within the confines of their assured and comfortable wrongness. They called us narcissistic for thinking we could look at ourselves and the world and dare to think we could change it from ancient ways. They thought we were making ourselves important that way, putting on airs, even. Actually we were shouldering responsibility we did not want—yearning for a simpler, less serious time—but which we accepted for the sake of all those who would come after, knowing their very existence depended on our actions. We took faith in the touchstone of love itself—the only thing that did not crumble under examination—and sought to bend all emerging along its outlines.

So our seeming impertinence was born of an inconvenient prompting, an unwanted vision now proving prophetic. It was hardly selfish, as many of the best of my generation paid the ultimate price and are no longer with us or they are imprisoned. It was hardly narcissistic as it was done out of love…for each other, for the peoples of all the world and of all the religions, for our children, for the planetmates and for the Nature of which we learned we were a part, and for the generations unborn.

What others will never get is that our “overexamined life,” our “psychological-mindedness,” our perinatal propensities, and our soul-searching and self-analysis were not about being narcissistic. It was about needing to start everything anew as a rational response to the horrors we saw about us in our culture and in the world… horrors which we were correct in trying to address at the time. For their existence today, because of our inability to be completely successful in remedying them, are bringing about all the political, economic, and environmental armageddons I’ve been discussing in this, and its related, books. And we knew, and still know, that only some change huge and radical will help us, and for that we need to find and stand upon the deepest and firmest of ground within us. That is what we’ve been looking for, are still looking for…only now we have lots of company .

Better Hitler Had Jumped Into Mosh Pits: A Drive to Healing, the Hard Rain Fallin’, and Millennial Promise

A Drive to Healing and What Did You Expect Peace to Look Like? Better Hitler Had Jumped Into Mosh Pits

A Drive to Healing

We cannot expect that everyone will heal their birth traumas when they arise into consciousness during periods of peace. However, we can expect—especially now that there is understanding of these dynamics and there are techniques and modalities available for healing them—that some people will!

Furthermore, even the more ritualistic and superficial yet blatant regressions to infancy, birth, prenatal, or even prior to that—for example, as Mayr and Boelderl describe in Europe—are not the indication of a “death drive” or “death instinct” as these researchers claimed. [Footnote 3]

These highly symbolic collective rituals are instead the manifestations of a drive to healing—a drive to regressing to early traumas and to reexperiencing the events that occurred then and thus recapturing an integrity of self that existed prior to the dissociation that happened as a result of those traumas. This drive to regression is no more a “death wish” than the mystical or spiritual quest is a “death wish,” and for the same reasons, as Jung correctly admonished Freud a long time ago. And we can expect that more good than bad can come, eventually, from engaging in them.

What Did You Expect Peace to Look Like?

Better Hitler Had Jumped Into Mosh Pits

In conclusion, when we see blatant collective regressions, by the sorts of people mentioned, to these perinatal dynamics in undisguised, and relatively harmless, social rituals—as described by Mayr and Boelderl, and Lawson—we can expect that, because of their closeness to their unconscious pain, they are likely—even if only a little more likely because of their more advanced mode of child-caring—to have insight into these dynamics and to resist acting them out in a more extreme form, like war, global pollution, and overpopulation.

To put it another way, I would have preferred that Hitler had acted out his craziness by jumping into mosh pits, humming baby tunes, wearing a pacifier…or even engaging in sexual orgies…than the way he did.

So these current signs of blatant regression by youth and others in Europe or the US, or in fact anywhere in the world as in rock concerts, are not signs of an impending war. What did you expect peace to look like? You might call it messy, but it is the scenery of human healing, we should expect to be seeing, on the pathway to an Earth rebirth.

What Might We Expect?

Millennial Promise

What might we expect from the future? Well if ecological/environmental consciousness and refusal to use projection onto others is accepted as evidence of perinatal access, as I have been asserting, then the current generation of youth and young adults—the Baby-Boomer Echo Generation, also called the Millennial Generation, whose two main concerns, as I have mentioned, have been polled as being the environment and racism—may also be expected to be more open to their perinatal trauma, and hence more likely to resolve it and further the gains of their parents against war and global apocalypse.

“A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”

For, as Janov has pointed out, closer to one’s Pain—one’s unconscious—is closer to being real. And this closeness holds out the possibility both of healing…and of self-destruction.

From the roads and TV screens of America the scenery can often appear bleak. Sure, heavy changes are coming down…but what should we expect? “A hard rain’s gonna fall,” sang Bob Dylan. And that’s what it takes to blossom the spring. Look hard enough, you just might see the seeds of Light amidst the darkness surrounding.

Evidence in Our Collective Dreaming

Next we will take a look at one of the projective systems of our society, specifically, our cinema, to see if it shows evidence of the change of consciousness that we have here been describing as necessary to derail the cycles of war and violence that have plagued our species for millennia uncountable and have led us to the brink of extinction.

Films are both the collective dreams of our society as well as the only truly widely shared method of collectively experiencing a nonordinary state of consciousness. Thus they are telling, in the messages they contain, as well as powerful in their impact on the audience, who in this mild nonordinary state of consciousness are more open to suggestion and to receiving mental impressions and information.

We will look to examples from films of the last few decades for indications that our collective consciousness is actually changing and that there are grounds for hoping that we will be able to stave off apocalypse…creating instead the quantum leap to an Earth rebirth.

Footnote

1. For “overexamined life”see Keniston, op. cit., 1965; for “psychological-mindedness” and “self-analysis” see Keniston, op. cit., 1968, especially p. 81.

2. Davis, op. cit., especially Ch. 7, “The Great Society and The Youth Revolt.”

3. Mayr and Boelderl, op. cit., p. 149.

Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Eleven: Control Versus Surrender … Heaven Leads Through Hell

Return to Apocalypse No! Chapter Nine: Regressions in the Service of Society — Messy Healing

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