I will start out by confessing that according to politicalcompass.org (which is the site I believe you were referring to) I am so left-wing I am considered an anarchist. I too follow N S Lyons and Mattias Desmet. I consider anyone who would become hysterical at following either one to be deeply mired in tribalism and tunnel vision. How can people be sure what they think until they have experienced other people's ideas? And how do those two people translate somehow into Trump adulation?
As I said to a friend who was convinced after the election that Trump "was going to become a dictator" and "do away with democracy," what made him think that Trump was going to be more of a dictator and less democratic than Biden had already been? How could Trump be more of a fascist, more immoral, more corrupt, worse on Gaza, more insane on other foreign policy? It turned out, of course, that since Biden was on "his team," he had simply not paid any attention to anything Biden might have done that was reprehensible, nor paid attention to Harris's policy claims at all. And his team had told him that Trump was a unique threat, so without much thought, he believed it.
And as for democracy, was Trump not elected democratically, growing his supporters in virtually every metric, among women and every ethnic group? Is that not democratic? Or is only one party allowed to measure what democratic is?
Of course Trump is going to do very bad things, and we should criticize those things, even get out in the streets to protest those things. But we should all be able to agree that he is also likely to do some good things, like shine a light on government corrupt bureaucracies, maybe stop the idiotic war in Ukraine that has killed so many Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, a war provoked and fomented by the US after decades of continual overturning of governments in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, decades of deliberate lying to Russia, failure to follow any of our agreements, etc. Trump might usher in free speech and free discussion on many matters that have been illegally censored, even while quashing free speech in other areas, for which he should be rightly denounced.
I'm with McGilchrist here: is this the 19th c. Catholic Church? Do we have an Index of Forbidden Writers now with whom we Dare Not Engage, for fear they might pollute our minds? Is Mattias Desmet the Balzac of the 21st century?
A shout from one of those places you believe to be overturned by US foreign politics - Lithuania. We fought nail and teeth to come back to the West, where we belong by our own cultural standards, religion and history. If it wasn't for our own will, no amount of foreign influence would have made us risk everything and declare independence in 1990. That choice hurled us out of a relative safety of Gorbachevs late Soviets and into massive economic crisis. Later we practically begged ourselves into NATO for safety and since joining we did our best to adhere to the standards of defence financing. Ralaxing into pretend safety Iain is talking about never happened here. I believe the same can be said for our Baltic sisters - Latvia and Estonia. It was not a Western expansion, we simply grabbed the slim chance presented by geopolitical changes and returned where we belong.
It seems to me, people from powerful countries tend to overestimate the influence of their governments and underestimate the nuanced and shifting reality of local culture and politics in countries that are supposedly influenced. I won't pretend to know the exact situation in todays hot spot - Ukraine - but there is reason to believe local urges had at least as much sway as western meddling. Ukrainians have plenty of historical and cultural reasons to try and split from their abusive "big brother" for good.
Although I found Desmet to be an interesting and nuanced thinker when I saw him in London with Iain in October, I am still disturbed by Desmet’s choice to put Tucker Carlson’s plug on the front page of his book. Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump both represent a profound lack of Truth, Beauty and Goodness, whatever disruption they May be providing. I understand and appreciate Iain’s views and clarifications here, but both these men are glaring assaults to the values and integrity I believe Iain’s work represents. I sincerely hope this doesn’t represent an acceptance of ugliness and scorn for truth and diminishing of values that will be with us for a very long time.
How many Tucker Carlson interviews have you watched, Jennifer? Did you watch his interview with Jeffrey Sachs, for example? Matt Taibbi? Mike Benz? Did you ever wonder why Carlson is so popular with so many people? Or do you just think everyone who values Carlson's perspective is "ugly" and "scorns the truth"? What is Carlson's view on Ukraine? On Gaza? As for Trump, do you think Trump is more lacking in Truth, Beauty and Goodness than Joe Biden? Than Adam Schiff? Than John Fetterman? Than Hillary Clinton? How do you think we arrive at Truth? How do you think we arrive at a synthesis between right and left brain inputs?
Dear Linda, I have actually never commented in a section like this before in my life. Because Iain’s work is of deep personal importance to me, I have been thinking a lot about these feelings I have since October, and felt animated (and relieved) to read his nuanced and interesting answer to these queries. Reading your comments reminds me of the great divide in narrative we are experiencing, which I am really aware of as an American with the distance of living in Europe. I feel that Iain’s work reminds us that the nature of life is transformative, driven by things like love, and that truth indeed is complex and ever-changing. I am sorry if you or anyone else felt personally attacked by my comments. And I hope we (humans on this planet) will be able to transform into a more cohesive whole, whatever this current time brings. I would also like to mention that my sister is currently co-heading the American Embassy in Bujumbura, Burundi, where the citizens are dealing with a massive economic crisis, war at their border and real starvation. My sister loves her job and feels a real sense of purpose as a diplomat representing American values overseas. She also knows that our institutions are imperfect (as we humans are). The changes underway for her are dramatic and painful. In that situation, I wonder about the How. However, I am sure we do share values, some strong and powerful ones, if we are both in this community. Perhaps we will meet one day at one of Iain’s events and could have a conversation about that. I would welcome that! Thank you for reading and wishing us all more harmony as we navigate this wild flow of life.
If we could all at least be civil, right? I see Tucker as an above-average interviewer, a welcome platform for interesting guests, and a bit prone to snarly if not petty at times. He's only human. I'm sure there is some ideological daylight between him and Desmet, but what specifically makes him seem unsuitable for the book endorsement?
Iain urges us to get *past* this low-level analysis; these petty polarizations. Aim higher, Josh. You're slinging mud in a ghetto, while your overloads manage your "opinions" like the strings on puppet.
Aim higher, friend.
I think this is the one where fellow Canadian gets us past useless left-right polarizations:
Thanks for pointing a finger to the moon, which you could have just as well also posted directly to the original poster. Perhaps you sense where your pointers will be appreciated.
I would not have commented at all if there was a thumbs down option besides the like option, and the repeated know-it-all ravings were just too much to let stand.
I actually only quoted the post itself by inverting questions into self-evident statements.
Whatever good may come out of the current administration, there are some things that are beyond "opinion" to any decent human being.
I think you cannot accuse Douglas of being "woke" or leftist.
And in this courageous article Douglas shows what it really means to think for yourself - which currently many right-wing supporters (as left-wing supporters in recent years) are missing these days.
IF that were true, which I think is transparently not the case because his M.O. was to behave as an actual journalist, why would it be "ugly" in your personal view. I emphasize the word personal so that mainstream black & white talking points regarding the war are avoided as much as possible. Talking points that are thoroughly based on a complete distortion of very recent history.
Yes, thank you for sharing. I lived through something similar, only a few years older during the Velvet Revolution, (Czechoslovakia 1989) with the added 'bonus' of my parents being dissidents so saw how the revolution sausage was made. It is particularly galling to see people believing Russia is anything but a brutal expansionist, neo-imperial dystopia ruled by a former KGB officer who's been in power for 20 odd years, with no tradition of democracy, freedom and individual rights. The fools and useful idiots, the lot of them.
I love the muddled memories coagulating into a sense of difference less oppression and opportunity.
One of the things that stood out from Lyon’s Pro Vance piece - there’s little understanding in it that in calling out Europe under the free speech banner he was basically giving a green light to Russian “free speech” (hybrid war) in Romanian elections, pressure on Moldova (offering money for pro Russian activism via Russian bank accounts)followed swiftly by an immediate betrayal of Ukraine.
Overnight USAs enemies became allies and their allies became enemies. Conducted by an authoritarian state that doesn’t even pretend to have the moral cover of Marxism any longer. It might well shock Europe into funding defence and embracing national pride. But there a cost. It’s always complex but I feel that the anti nato isolationism has little understanding that nations have their own desire for freedom.
It’s good to be reminded of moments of true liberty in the face of uncertainty
I can appreciate the concern of Russian interference, particularly by Romanians, Georgians, and the Baltic peoples, and think a Trump administration may be a poor messenger, but I would be careful not to rush to judgment in defending the EU/ROM government position. Contra the BBC and NYT, the government has to date not produced any evidence supporting Russian financing or connection with the Tiktok campaign that elevated Georgescu. Similarly, they haven't produced any evidence of the crimes he's been charged with. With that in mind, I think it's prudent to consider that it's at least possible this is the type of totalitarianism Iain references: an (initial) democratic election was annulled, the opposition candidate charged with crimes, and the court has barred said candidate from future offices, all without producing the type of substantive evidence those extreme measures demand.
It may be that Georgescu is everything his critics and the government say he is, and that he is guilty of the alleged crimes, but it also may be that he is innocent, and that if elected his influence would be more like an Orban or a Meloni (or a Trump). This shouldn't be a partisan issue, though most Left leaning Western outlets are framing it as 'far right concern.' I'm not far-right, but I am concerned, and so should everyone else who believes in democracy.
You can read more about the situation here, which is a better (Left) source than NPR or the BBC:
There is a cost indeed. I'm painfully aware of it as a mother of a teenaged son, who will be of drafting age soon. Here in the region bordering the state of perpetual aggression, this awareness sometimes threatens to turn into hopelessness. Especially when witnessing how easily big players change course in international politics.
I agree with you Linda. You very diplomatically don't point out that we evidently don't agree with Iain on Ukraine v Russia.
I respect Iain tremendously for his substantial contribution to understanding the human mind and the present conjuncture of human development and history, and also for the his personal public character, however I'm not with him on this one and I also find his views about war and peace and the military to be a little too conventionally conservative and potentially reactionary. We all have our blindspots though, and maybe these are some of his.
Indeed. I was also surprised by his objection to Trump's contempt for the person of Zelensky. Whatever one's take on the conflict (I won't belabour you with mine) that contempt seems entirely warranted despite the endless adulation bestowed on him in the West.
Indeed. I find Iain McG's olde worlde manners and values charming but every now and again (and this is an example) he reveals, as far as I'm concerned, an unworldliness, an naivete, and an instinctive 'clubhouse' conventional Anglo-Saxon, British conservatism about the contemporary world politically. He is very much imo of his class and time and occupational biography. I don't think he has explored outside his limited, small world enough.
A particular example of this in this particular piece is his criticism of young Western people's propensity to not be willing to fight (and die) for their country. He makes all sorts of value laden, critical personal judgements about that, just like the local pub reactionary. But what he should be doing is looking at it in a structural political and philosophical way. Does he honestly believe the society and way of life that young people in the West have inherited is worth their dying for? To change it yes, but to save it for their Masters?!!! Ffs Iain needs to get out of his zone of interest.
I would add that I am guessing he is perhaps not aware of the context that Zelensky had delayed signing this agreement a couple of times prior to requesting that he do so specifically by invitation to the White House. He clearly had no intent to sign then either, but attempted to use the opportunity to thoroughly upend the proposal-- undoubtedly with the encouragement of EU leaders as well as the dems in the U.S. I also think Iain might understand any general contempt more readily if he understood that the vast majority of Ukrainians want him out of power and I would speculate that many of them likely feel greater contempt toward him than we can understand.
I was an anarchist by that measure for *such* a long time!
lovely people, punks and anarchists. still have good friends among that existing underground society, that those uninitiated dont even know exist all around them, all over the globe.
"a war provoked and fomented by the US after decades of continual overturning of governments in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, decades of deliberate lying to Russia, failure to follow any of our agreements"
Sorry, but this is so far from truth and naive look. As a person from East Europe I can tell you that Eastern Europe and Baltics have been fighting for more than 50 years to release themselves from the iron grip of communism and russian imperialism.
The biggest tragedy of all is that Russia itself has not gone through its own "Nuremberg Trials" and is still poisoning (metaphorically but also literally) many lives on this planet. And it is still big failed state that cannot live up to its geographical potential. Still mentally held in soviet imperial thinking, trying to brute force its failed ideas into the world.
Not everything is about US internal politics. People from US and Western Europe need to look past their internal lenses and see the things as they are: that Russia invaded and caused thousands of deaths in the name of its absurd failed ideas.
Just because Russia hates what you hated (Biden? left-leaning politics? covid vaccines?) doesn't mean it's your friend. Russia hates Western Civilization - the one that you're trying to defend - and is just using whatever useful to pursuit its own goals (imperialism).
Suggest you read Scott Horton's massive immaculately sourced book (500 pages of references, many US government documents) on the subject, Glenn Diesen's book on the subject, foreign policy experts John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs on the subject, independent journalists Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Mate on the subject and countless others. The truth is not in doubt.
So I suggest you better read how geopolitical "realists" like Mearsheimer or Sachs have been debunked.
There is plethora material on that topic - to start simple you can go from Kamil Kazani here on substack and then go onto other plentiful critics of "realists" thinking - please just read material from people from East Europe, from people who grew up there and better understand that geopolitical situation and motivations.
"Realists" ignore internal politics, treat international politics like a physics of billard balls, not able to see how idiosyncratic interplay of local cultures, internal politics, material situation affect political decisions like waging war on another country.
And there is the question of "independent" journalists who being right on one topic, try to be oracles on everything else, way outside their competence - and that's assuming their good faith, where we can say they fall prey to Dunning-Kruger effect. Because, no doubt, some of those have more grim agenda...
I know a number of people from Eastern Europe because I live in a university town. Perhaps you'd like to compare the number of governments the US has overturned in the last 80 years versus the number of governments Russia has overturned in the last 80 years. Also, I wonder if you think Scott Horton's primary sources from the US archives and the archives of past presidents are made up. No one is saying Putin is a great guy or that Russia is not a repressive government. No one claims the countries in the former Soviet Union were treated well, or that Moscow did not persecute dissidents. However, it's also true that Ukraine is a massively corrupt country, that much of the aid the US has sent them has been given to oligarchs including Zelensky himself, and that Putin did not fully invade the country until right-wing Nazis had been attacking ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine for eight years. He tried diplomacy over and over. It is also true that the US engineered the 2014 coup in Ukraine, and has trained and funded the neo-Nazi Azov battalion ever since, after having trashed every agreement they've ever made with Russia since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Vladimir Putin first and foremost leads imperial politics. His main primary goal is to restore Soviet Empire, whose collapse he treats as "greatest geopolitcal catastrophy of 20th century".
Vladimir Putin led Second Chechen War which took more than 100k lives.
Putin invaded Georgia in 2008. Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and instigated so called "separatists" war in East Ukraine - so the war is really going on for 11 years.
Countless independent journalists have been threatend, poisoned, killed effectively killing any indepedent journalism (and thinking) in this country.
Dubrovka and Beslan terrorist attacks had catastrophic rescue actions, and still likely they have been initiated by FSB to justify subsequent falling into dictatorship by Putin who consolidated power in the years after.
And finally, he (himself) started a war three years ago that already took hundreds of thousands human lives. So the Russia is here aggresor, Ukraine is just fighting for survival.
So having facts set up, we can go further.
What are the reasons for invasion?
NATO expansion? Neo-nazi Azov movements? Being lied by other countries? West not keeping agreements to the Russia?
Sorry but it's none of these. (And especially the last one is laughable - Putin (former KGB agent) and Russia who have great record of lies, deception suddenly care about truth).
Russia propaganda is famous for its creativity and coordinated spread of viral memes into the minds of poor Westerners trying to make sense of things. Thus videos of Mearsheimer clip circulating suddenly Twitter in February 2022. Thus amplifying some singular stories (which did happen) and trying to make always the same picture - "poor Russia" which had to invade the other because it had no choice. (actually this inferiority complex of russians drive a lot of their motivation. it's sad that they do not have enough reflection to see that maybe their economical and political decision are leading them always to the same despair?)
So coming to the main topic - what's the reason for 2022 Russia's invasion?
The answer lies in... domestic policy, raw materials, energy.
Domestic policy - Ukrainians had seen its country eternally stuck in coruption, dysfunctional. All true. Yet it was not despite Russia proximity but BECAUSE of Russia's proximity that they could not have fully developed as a country. Many Ukrainians were travelling around the Europe. They've been to Poland, Czechia, Hungary - countrier that were poorer than Ukraine in 1990. And they saw that all those countries have improved significantly where Ukraine could not release from the chains of corruption and oligarchs. Also many Ukrainians have been to Russia. And they see the same problems in their big neighbour. The same problems, just on the bigger scale - bigger corruption, more powerful oligarchs and the even bigger inequality and especially grim view of the russian province which is famous for it's third-world development level.
So majority of Ukrainians (though not all of them to be true), especially younger ones, wanted to go more on the West. Not Russia direction. 2004, 2013 - it was not big CIA conspiracy. These were just people tired of what they see.
And here lied the biggest threat to Russia and Putin dictatorship - if Ukraine pivot to the Western Europe was successful that would undermine and threated his power in Russia. So he could not let Ukraine do what it wanted to do - because power of imitation and memetics would give again many Russians power to rise up against the dictatorship in Russia (Russians did try to protest a couple of times but did not succeed).
Raw materials, energy - this is more complex situation but generally Russia in recent years was losing its upperhand in energy provision to Europe. Which in the long-term would mean accelerated economic decline and further domestic problems. Because Russia is essentially an "avocado economy" - even though it has plenty of fuels, raw materials and many bright people (mathematicians, engineers) it is a malfunctioning country that is not able to produce car of washing machine.
Here is article from 2019 (!) from polish blogger which correctly foresaw the Russian invasion and its reasoning:
In short - Russia was losing all on all fronts (technological, economical, demographical) and then only advantage it has is a demonstration of power.
Which they try to demonstrate - with mixed results.
So whatever reasons you got on this war from your twitter/facebook newsfeed or from your favourite podcaster, is at best half-truths.
Dig deeper - look at the geopolitcs, read Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn or Kolyma Tales by Shalamov, read something from russian oppositionists, or even read anti-woke journalists like Konstantin Kisin or Douglas Murray.
Whatever bad or corrupt you can find on Ukraine - be sure that if you look on Russia you would find the same (corruption, nationalists, nazis).
In the end - I know that politics and geopolitics is a nasty thing. Probably some nasty deal behind the closed door needs to be done, to avoid losing more human's lifes. I get that man should not know how sausages or politics is being made, as Bismarck famously said. All clear.
I just care about educating people. I just care about them leaving their superficial view of the world and learn that maybe their simple dichotomy of the world - like woke vs anti-woke is not always good lens to look at things. That sometimes you need to drop your left-hemispheric fixation on applying the same abstraction everywhere and you need to use more of a right hemisphere to see things as they are, in their own idiosyncratic way.
As it is here in this terrible unprovoked full-scale invasion.
So i'm leaving you in this conversation with this message.
I don't hope that you will be convinced today, next week or next month. But maybe some seed will be planted in your mind. Maybe after some time you will give a shot, try to leave your current information bubble and maybe curiosity will lead you to some new richer view of world. Which I wish you with all my heart.
“A skeptic among believers and a believer among skeptics”. I see a human being willing to think deeply and engage in real dialogue. And I am grateful for your example to us through reason empathy and grace.
Carlos - you exactly described what I felt as I read Iain’s article- so very grateful. His comments were the best explanation of the current situation I’ve ever read. Many thanks!!
I am reminded of something you mentioned to Elizabeth Oldfield:
"In Greek there is a way in which things are argued, in which you have two particles ‘men’ and ‘de’ [μέν…δέ…]. You start ‘men’, which means “on the one hand”, followed by ‘de’, which means “on the other”. So everything was “on the one hand… and on the other”. And this was the way we were taught to think. So as soon as we express something we were to question it and to see if there wasn't something to be said for the opposite point of view. So actually that was drilled into me from a very early age, that seeing both sides of a question is incredibly important. And I wish that was part of more people's education because it could save a lot of unpleasantness, and violence, and aggression, and anger, and resentment, and so forth.”
Iain McGilchrist on The Divided Brain and Perceiving the Sacred
This, I think, can be a particularly revealing process, if we pursue it deeply enough. Contrasting a postmodern culture with a more conservative culture that speaks in the language of traditional virtues and vices was done by Zak Stein as well. He recasts these complex socio-political relationships as between the nihilism of Skinner’s “operant conditioning,” that only responds to the logic of power and control, and what might be called an “axiological design” that is responsive to a sacred and animate cosmos. …I am sure you recognize the strong influence your work has had upon Stein’s own thinking in this regard. From a portion of just one conversation:
Matthew Goodman: “Do you think that there's a deeper underlying motivation behind trying to distort everyone's perceptions of what's actually valuable? What's the underlying motivation for being able to control people's attention?”
Zak Stein: “I’ve mentioned the emergence of existential risk after World War II as a category psychologists paid attention to. BF Skinner was super worried about the bomb, and basically said we need to replace politics with a science of behavior control, because if we don't we're all going to die. That was his argument. So basically the underlying motivation is a ‘benevolent technocratic futurism.’”
Matthew Goodman: “How does that help save us from the potential destruction of the bomb?”
Zak Stein: “Imagine Skinner’s view: We have basically the nervous systems and cultures of barbarians and premodern people, but we have the technologies of gods. Skinner thought this difference was insane. That the difference between what is used by science and what is possible politically was insane because of the backwardness of the political state.
Take pollution for example. Everybody's driving cars, everyone's throwing away plastic bottles. What do we do? Skinners solution is to just make an operant conditioning chamber that is as big as the society and you never have to tell them you're trying to stop them from throwing plastic bottles away, you just incentivize and disincentivize certain behaviors with ‘nudging’ and you create an environment where you just eliminated the pollution problem through a science of behavior control, rather than through some political argumentation where you pass laws, and then enforce the laws, and the laws are contested because of special interests. He’s like, “Screw that. The technocratic engineers will bring the human sciences to a point where we can organize large scale behavior technocratically, rather than politically.” So a scientistic elite replaces a political elite and the scientistic elite is a class of human engineers who largely do not reveal their work to the public. This is BF Skinner. This is documented; he's writing this.
Alex Pentland, who had students all over Silicon Valley, similarly argues for a replacement of politics with a science of behavior control. So again, ‘nudging’ is the classic example, which is an accepted form of coercion. We nudge people into the right decisions rather than dictate to them educationally or have some conversation about it. We create through social media, advertising campaigns, and a whole bunch of disparate channels within the environment, a situation in which that thing just isn't incentivized anymore.
Skinner’s utopian novel “Walden Two” is where he lays this out. Skinner’s other book, “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” is where he lays out very explicitly this argument about X-risk, that we're all going to die. He says simple things, like we have to get beyond the immature philosophies of human dignity and freedom. That’s the impediment; the thing that's stopping the replacement of politics with a science of behavior control is these silly philosophies of human dignity and freedom.
If we're giving him the absolute benefit of the doubt, it's a benevolent technocratic intervention into an increasingly unwieldy and complex society where we have to find ways to coordinate large scale behavior. And given current failures of rule of law, and all these other things, it becomes kind of almost a no-brainer that some technocratic class would step in and provide a couple of tools, these technologies, to the nation state. But you have to annihilate value. Is removing all human freedom from human life better than all the humans dying? What’s the argument against this class of people, who have kind of good intentions to ‘free us from our freedom’?
There are right now two main scenarios that are unfolding for the planetary future, we call them twin attractors. One is chaos and catastrophe, and the other one is oppression. If you do not think there's a third attractor, then most people would pick oppression (but not everybody). But the oscillation between those two neglects a hidden third: a return to reality, specifically the reality of what's actually valuable. At the end of the day that is what human culture must do, and we've lost the ability to do that easily in many cultural contexts.
The left hemisphere creates delusion. It's happening of course currently, and this ties into this general theory of civilizational simulation. There's a discourse that calls the simulation out for what it is and then reorients the civilization to reality, hopefully in time. We are just oscillating between too much order or too much chaos. And then the people who like order hate the people who like chaos and vice versa.
Our hemispheres should be maximally doing two different things and then coordinating those two different things. In an ideal situation there is that parallax, which means two views simultaneously over-crossing, giving the thing that's real. That is the third attractor, at the interface of what can be controlled and what cannot be controlled.”
What defines reality? Unless it can be defined, we are left with chaos and oppression. Jesus said "I am the way, the truth and the life." Either he is or he isn't. Dostoyevsky said "without God, all things are permissible." Skinner and Nietzsche were correct in their insight into life without God.
Mattias Desmet discerned a "massive worldview shift" that "eventually led to the Grand Narrative of mechanistic materialism (celebrated by both communists and capitalists alike) ...humanity was greatly reduced either to chemical and physical operations, according to many biologists, or in the psychology of B.F. Skinner, to a repertoire of behaviors. However, in each instance the result was basically the same: transcendence was eliminated and the essence of humanity was vacated, emptied out." [1]
Now, I think that one wouldn't necessarily need to explicitly define the transcendent in order to recognize, feel, and respond to it as such. But I do agree with your broader point, and that of Stein, which follows regardless. Because chaos and oppression is indeed very hard to see past without that "third attractor," without that vertical, transcendent dimension of life.
[1] The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions: A Review of The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Mattias Desmet
This is the heritage of an Eastern Orthodox Classical Education-
something which is finding instantiation again in small little village parishes- even right now, in the new world even.
I know, as I am a teacher in just such a grassroots re-ligamentation of mind, body, and soul. a parish school, full of beautiful human beings not being denied the full, unique expression of their minds.
For the children, it is utterly natural.
for the parents- well- some see and awe. Others resist even unto condemnation.
Thanks for this, Iain. I share basically all of your concerns about how things went haywire. Trump is a symptom of a very broken system. The problem I have with Lyons is not that you or anyone should read and share his insightful diagnoses of current political events. I've read and shared them, too! My problem is that he appears to be insufficiently attentive to the fact that Silicon Valley technofeudalist broligarchs are currently running the Executive Branch of the US Government. I can promise you they have no interest in the sort of conservative values you eloquently championed above. Their vision of the future could not be more LH-dominant. Elon Musk told Joe Rogan the other day that empathy is Western civilization's biggest weakness. It's "a bug," he said. The transhumanists running Trump's White House may not be "woke," but their vision is nonetheless a kind of transhuman hyper-progressivism.
"I believe in empathy, like I think you should care about other people – but you need to have empathy for civilisation as a whole, and not commit civilisational suicide."
Yes, but this talk of “empathy for civilization” as a whole is simply Musk’s channeling the transhumanist ethos where some absurdly abstracted idea of “future humanity” is used as a justification for the greatest humanitarian neglect or atrocities in the present.
I agree Matthew, and wonder if Iain, not being in the US, is just not aware of what's happening here since Trump took over. He writes, "Free speech is unusual in a world composed of largely tyrannical regimes, and it is infinitely precious" -- I could not agree more, and am watching with grave concern as the federal government moves to control and intimidate the press, universities, scientists, arts institutions...
the federal government is a self appointed gang of tax thieves and land grabbers. ending the feds is something more americans would like to see than not. also,the intimidation and co opting of universities press etc etc took place thirty plus years ago through the oligarchic buyout,polluting and manipulations of all the systems you name. feds ain’t got nothing to do with it.
Not only wise, just about perfect. Have I ever read a post or article anywhere, where I respect and admire and agree with just about every word? I doubt it.
I was with you until the comment about Trump and Zelenskyy and the glaring no comment about Gaza. To me this is not about right and left (I don’t identify as such) it’s about life and death. Essentially, you carefully paved a road and then fell into the ditch, like a sheep who is removed from a crevasse by the farmer and leaps right back in. However much of what you said prior and after that glaring attachment to something you may feel is “right”, you provided tremendous food for thought. Historical context of Ukraine and Gaza is crucial for LH thinking to reach over to the right for some consequential guidance IMHO.
Well said. I was quite stunned by the comment about Trump and Zelensky after reading the rest of a wonderful essay. Just doesn't fit, really. How can one see all of the rest and not see that? Perhaps Iain needs to confer a bit with Matthias on the matter?
Mattias Desmet's views on Covid are also about life and death for many of us with autoimmune diseases and primary immune deficiencies. Without lockdowns, many people with chronic illness and disabilities wouldn't be here.
It's so hard hearing anti-lockdown views intellectually debated when it is so much more than philosophy/politics to you personally.
I am sorry to hear that you feel this way. Our feelings about lockdown were obviously shaped by our circumstances. I personally agreed with the proposals put forward by the Great Barrington Declaration authors to shelter and protect the vulnerable whilst allowing those at little risk (and the distribution was known early on) to circulate.
I gave up.my career to care for my terminally ill mother, in a town where I had no friends. She died just before covid appeared. I had to grieve alone, without the touch of any living being. It drove me to the brink of suicide. Twice. Prisoners in Victorian solitary confinement had more human contact than I did, and they had to change that system as so many killed themselves.
Please.be assured that most of us arguing against lockdowns were NOT callous; targeted sheltering would have protected you and others like you to the same extent that lockdowns did, without the enormous negative societal costs.
I agree fully. But not just for the immuno compromised. Without lockdown millions more would have died. Covid is a Level 3 Biohazard with proven long-term impacts on heart, brain, lungs, immune system. Society wishes, and is encouraged, to see it as a cold. Also rhe lockdowns in UK and Ireland were soft. In Italy there were times when 250 metres were imposed and enforced. My dearest friend's life has been upended by Long Covid after a singe mild infection. Nobody knows how their body will react to the virus. Millions are suffering - and I mean suffering- with Long Covid throughout the world. Many will not agree with my views just as I will not agree with theirs. Best of luck to you Rikki-Lea.
There is no evidence at all that “millions more would have died.” The impacts on heart, brain, lungs and immune system that you ascribe to Covid are not “proven” at all, and are far more likely to be due to the mRNA shots. Long Covid is more likely to be caused by the mRNA shots than the virus. Covid is a moderately hazardous upper respiratory virus that has no mechanism to cause these sequelae, but the mRNA shots do.
lock downs created more problems than they actually solved. many immune compromised were actually killed by the offered solutions to ‘protect them.’ dig deeper into this subject matter. i might surprise you.
I wonder why don't question the enormous increase in autoimmune diseases etc. This is surely not natural. Covid was an opportunity to question the current medical paradigm.
As a woman of the Left this is not just a breath of fresh air but a lung transplant. We don't agree on everything, which is as it should be. 'Yes, but. Not always.' That. And the tyranny of mediocre elites and the narrative. If we are at all sincere and in charge of ourselves we cannot agree with our 'side' on everything. 'What? How can you say you are of the Left if you don't agree with x or y'. It's enervating. And silencing. And making society act stupid. Thank you.
Iain, as one of those that may have promoted the reply, I appreciate you going to such lengths to respond. I don’t think I disagree with much but it wouldn’t matter if I did - as I said originally, I respect your contributions enormously and like to hear from diverse views regardless. I think some of what Lyons said was unlikely to represent reality from my experience of it, but again, I can empathise with his views. I remain more worried about manipulative control more from unfettered tech companies, though. You quote Rowson above - he agrees on this point. Re the message of Munich - I work on Ukraine every day, which isn’t easy, and I am sensitive to their plight, so that can colour my responses to events at the moment.
As to Trump; we’ll see, I guess. I hope you’re right. I am particularly doubtful about some with whom he keeps company.
Regardless, great to have you on here, may you very much be well!
This is a tour de force. No need for you to have this conversation again as you said it all here. I do hope you’ll find time to write a bit about whatever fascinates you though. The pleasant surprise of finding you here only weeks ago got my hopes up for a stream of Applied McGilchrist.
I almost dare hope there is really is a sea change making waves. It seems many of my recent conversations resonate with what you convey here.
If I may, at risk of flying too close to the sun, add my complementary thoughts.
1. It is important I think to document, from a variety of perspectives, what happened with this runaway train. If we don’t it will simply be shunted off the main line and lie in wait. Not, necessarily, out of malice but simply because most of the fellow travelers didn’t (still don’t…) know it was a runaway train. We can’t allow this to be shunted and memory-holed without a forensic examination. Young people need to know what happened so they don’t have to fight the same battles.
For example: I think one day people will consider the notion that each individual should choose from an ever-expanding array of narrowly defined gender categories to be laughably quaint. (There are presently 72 genders, according to medicinenet.com.) It might resemble the way we consider Victorians searching for ghosts and spirits with electro-magnetic field detectors. The latter was a symptom of a new technology while the former was a symptom of postmodern language deconstruction, but they’re both part of the same long derailment of grounded embodiment.
2. Part of the story of this strange time is that this train wasn’t always a runaway. In the days of Reagan and Thatcher (and Mulroney, for my fellow Canadians) it was a different mould that had to be broken.
For example: in this version of corporatism there was “no such thing as society.” The message was, with Techno-Optimism always humming in the background, that the modern human was ‘nothing but’ a decontextualized, atomized individual enmeshed in a web of transactional, financialized relationships. Different map, but it too was claimed to be the territory. It too was reductive and totalitarian.
Something better could becoming around the bend, so to speak. As we maneuver back to the slipstream of continuity with the past, we can be receptive to wisdom and voices that were pushed aside in that earlier mould. We can find ourselves further up the spiral.
I hope this crashing, runaway train creates a thirty foot wave for us all to surf on, all the way back to shore. Prof Desmet says the way to kneecap a forming totalitarianism is for a few people to continue speaking their heartfelt truths. I hope you’ll come back with more Applied McGilchrist, whenever and however it suits you.
Well said, and thank you for taking the time to express it so clearly. I hope it is able to land for some of those who were disturbed by your previous posts.
Thanks for this follow up post. One thing I've taken up in recent years is not thinking about right or left (although I still love the term 'conservative') but looking for people who I call 'observers of reality.' They are often found on the right because of the way the world has been structured today but they also appear on the left. It's those who can look at and for what reality brings forth more than political opinions that I find interesting listening to today. Thanks for being one of them.
This was a very encouraging post, Dr McGilchrist—thank you. I’m a Christian, & often tell my wife that I feel I’m stuck being labeled either a liberal by conservative churches or a conservative by liberal ones.
In reality, I reject the framing altogether—but in our black-and-white world, the framing is the one thing all these churches agree upon!
but when I tried to get back into Fb (just curious), literally they refuse to send the "verification code" to the phone I am *required* to have linked to them (for my own good, they love and protect us so, keeping us all so safe and holding all our passwords for us fleshy, forgetful humans).
I took screenshots of the journey; might tell the story on my substack sometime but really it's small potatoes compared to far worse I've seen when I've
rattled the tree
of this very
Totality
that is spoken of boldly, here, only here really can it be said.
So please be aware: Our presence in the Web is becoming more and more explicitly and forcefully a tool of control over the sorts of thoughts we are allowed to have.
While you still can,
I advice also visiting the Online library of the Internet, not for profit:
I too am in my 70s. When I was in college in Cambridge, I was a radical and got involved student politics and the sit-in at the Senate House in 1972. Looking at the leaders of the movement and their attitudes, I realised they were no better than the elite institution we were fighting against and that if they ever came to power, it would be a case of, Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, as the song went (Won’t get fooled again). It’s all circular. I realised then that change has to happen individually on the inside and that directed the course of my life. So today, as I read your piece Iain, I also read my ‘scripture’ for the day which is entitled The Tyranny of Agreement and supports just about everything you have said. Democracy works because it makes use of a wide diversity of views. This is also the path of Love.
I will start out by confessing that according to politicalcompass.org (which is the site I believe you were referring to) I am so left-wing I am considered an anarchist. I too follow N S Lyons and Mattias Desmet. I consider anyone who would become hysterical at following either one to be deeply mired in tribalism and tunnel vision. How can people be sure what they think until they have experienced other people's ideas? And how do those two people translate somehow into Trump adulation?
As I said to a friend who was convinced after the election that Trump "was going to become a dictator" and "do away with democracy," what made him think that Trump was going to be more of a dictator and less democratic than Biden had already been? How could Trump be more of a fascist, more immoral, more corrupt, worse on Gaza, more insane on other foreign policy? It turned out, of course, that since Biden was on "his team," he had simply not paid any attention to anything Biden might have done that was reprehensible, nor paid attention to Harris's policy claims at all. And his team had told him that Trump was a unique threat, so without much thought, he believed it.
And as for democracy, was Trump not elected democratically, growing his supporters in virtually every metric, among women and every ethnic group? Is that not democratic? Or is only one party allowed to measure what democratic is?
Of course Trump is going to do very bad things, and we should criticize those things, even get out in the streets to protest those things. But we should all be able to agree that he is also likely to do some good things, like shine a light on government corrupt bureaucracies, maybe stop the idiotic war in Ukraine that has killed so many Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, a war provoked and fomented by the US after decades of continual overturning of governments in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, decades of deliberate lying to Russia, failure to follow any of our agreements, etc. Trump might usher in free speech and free discussion on many matters that have been illegally censored, even while quashing free speech in other areas, for which he should be rightly denounced.
I'm with McGilchrist here: is this the 19th c. Catholic Church? Do we have an Index of Forbidden Writers now with whom we Dare Not Engage, for fear they might pollute our minds? Is Mattias Desmet the Balzac of the 21st century?
A shout from one of those places you believe to be overturned by US foreign politics - Lithuania. We fought nail and teeth to come back to the West, where we belong by our own cultural standards, religion and history. If it wasn't for our own will, no amount of foreign influence would have made us risk everything and declare independence in 1990. That choice hurled us out of a relative safety of Gorbachevs late Soviets and into massive economic crisis. Later we practically begged ourselves into NATO for safety and since joining we did our best to adhere to the standards of defence financing. Ralaxing into pretend safety Iain is talking about never happened here. I believe the same can be said for our Baltic sisters - Latvia and Estonia. It was not a Western expansion, we simply grabbed the slim chance presented by geopolitical changes and returned where we belong.
It seems to me, people from powerful countries tend to overestimate the influence of their governments and underestimate the nuanced and shifting reality of local culture and politics in countries that are supposedly influenced. I won't pretend to know the exact situation in todays hot spot - Ukraine - but there is reason to believe local urges had at least as much sway as western meddling. Ukrainians have plenty of historical and cultural reasons to try and split from their abusive "big brother" for good.
Nicely expressed.
I will put a shout out again, that we give proper due thanks to Substack for making this particular kind of honest communication possible:
"Social media is breaking our brains" Substack creator on why this platform was made:
https://manorthey.substack.com/p/social-media-is-breaking-our-brains
https://youtu.be/n37bNmVggtU
Thanks for sharing this. I agree
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DG8i7pBOscg/?igsh=MXVuZzJ4dXB2ZzRoYw==
HEARD!!!!
Although I found Desmet to be an interesting and nuanced thinker when I saw him in London with Iain in October, I am still disturbed by Desmet’s choice to put Tucker Carlson’s plug on the front page of his book. Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump both represent a profound lack of Truth, Beauty and Goodness, whatever disruption they May be providing. I understand and appreciate Iain’s views and clarifications here, but both these men are glaring assaults to the values and integrity I believe Iain’s work represents. I sincerely hope this doesn’t represent an acceptance of ugliness and scorn for truth and diminishing of values that will be with us for a very long time.
How many Tucker Carlson interviews have you watched, Jennifer? Did you watch his interview with Jeffrey Sachs, for example? Matt Taibbi? Mike Benz? Did you ever wonder why Carlson is so popular with so many people? Or do you just think everyone who values Carlson's perspective is "ugly" and "scorns the truth"? What is Carlson's view on Ukraine? On Gaza? As for Trump, do you think Trump is more lacking in Truth, Beauty and Goodness than Joe Biden? Than Adam Schiff? Than John Fetterman? Than Hillary Clinton? How do you think we arrive at Truth? How do you think we arrive at a synthesis between right and left brain inputs?
Dear Linda, I have actually never commented in a section like this before in my life. Because Iain’s work is of deep personal importance to me, I have been thinking a lot about these feelings I have since October, and felt animated (and relieved) to read his nuanced and interesting answer to these queries. Reading your comments reminds me of the great divide in narrative we are experiencing, which I am really aware of as an American with the distance of living in Europe. I feel that Iain’s work reminds us that the nature of life is transformative, driven by things like love, and that truth indeed is complex and ever-changing. I am sorry if you or anyone else felt personally attacked by my comments. And I hope we (humans on this planet) will be able to transform into a more cohesive whole, whatever this current time brings. I would also like to mention that my sister is currently co-heading the American Embassy in Bujumbura, Burundi, where the citizens are dealing with a massive economic crisis, war at their border and real starvation. My sister loves her job and feels a real sense of purpose as a diplomat representing American values overseas. She also knows that our institutions are imperfect (as we humans are). The changes underway for her are dramatic and painful. In that situation, I wonder about the How. However, I am sure we do share values, some strong and powerful ones, if we are both in this community. Perhaps we will meet one day at one of Iain’s events and could have a conversation about that. I would welcome that! Thank you for reading and wishing us all more harmony as we navigate this wild flow of life.
If we could all at least be civil, right? I see Tucker as an above-average interviewer, a welcome platform for interesting guests, and a bit prone to snarly if not petty at times. He's only human. I'm sure there is some ideological daylight between him and Desmet, but what specifically makes him seem unsuitable for the book endorsement?
Carlson's perspective is "ugly" and "scorns the truth"
Trump is more lacking in Truth, Beauty and Goodness than Joe Biden
Trump is more lacking in Truth, Beauty and Goodness than Adam Schiff
Trump is more lacking in Truth, Beauty and Goodness than John Fetterman
Trump is more lacking in Truth, Beauty and Goodness than Hillary Clinton
but also remember,
Iain urges us to get *past* this low-level analysis; these petty polarizations. Aim higher, Josh. You're slinging mud in a ghetto, while your overloads manage your "opinions" like the strings on puppet.
Aim higher, friend.
I think this is the one where fellow Canadian gets us past useless left-right polarizations:
Thoughts on the Pandemic: http://lindapannozzo.ca/blog/?fbclid=IwAR1jBKOr_Ac9IbHEA18y3lmyjfNvfD-ef-wjbRArCjTQD74sNkbY-rYtACI
Thanks for pointing a finger to the moon, which you could have just as well also posted directly to the original poster. Perhaps you sense where your pointers will be appreciated.
I would not have commented at all if there was a thumbs down option besides the like option, and the repeated know-it-all ravings were just too much to let stand.
I actually only quoted the post itself by inverting questions into self-evident statements.
Whatever good may come out of the current administration, there are some things that are beyond "opinion" to any decent human being.
ah, brother, forgive me.
pray to God for me the sinner.
yours;
-mark basil
Linda, please have a look at this Douglas Murray article:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-maga-movement-is-wrong-on-ukraine/
I think you cannot accuse Douglas of being "woke" or leftist.
And in this courageous article Douglas shows what it really means to think for yourself - which currently many right-wing supporters (as left-wing supporters in recent years) are missing these days.
Carlson’s support for Putin is particularly ugly
He has questioned why we are told to hate Putin. A legitimate question which does not constitute support. Why are we afraid to question our betters?
"Support"? Because he interviewed him?
He’s on the record as openly supportive of Putin, Jacqueline.
IF that were true, which I think is transparently not the case because his M.O. was to behave as an actual journalist, why would it be "ugly" in your personal view. I emphasize the word personal so that mainstream black & white talking points regarding the war are avoided as much as possible. Talking points that are thoroughly based on a complete distortion of very recent history.
At the risk of being a nuisance, I'll share a short piece on how "overturning of governments in Eastern Europe and the Baltics" looked from the inside. https://open.substack.com/pub/gilumon/p/when-the-voices-reached-heaven?r=3alveq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web If you have few minutes, please read, it's important for us to be heard, otherwise we are seen as mute pieces on the big game board.
This is so important, as well as very touching – thank you, Alma, for sending this link. Iain
Yes, thank you for sharing. I lived through something similar, only a few years older during the Velvet Revolution, (Czechoslovakia 1989) with the added 'bonus' of my parents being dissidents so saw how the revolution sausage was made. It is particularly galling to see people believing Russia is anything but a brutal expansionist, neo-imperial dystopia ruled by a former KGB officer who's been in power for 20 odd years, with no tradition of democracy, freedom and individual rights. The fools and useful idiots, the lot of them.
Thanks for sharing Alma.
I love the muddled memories coagulating into a sense of difference less oppression and opportunity.
One of the things that stood out from Lyon’s Pro Vance piece - there’s little understanding in it that in calling out Europe under the free speech banner he was basically giving a green light to Russian “free speech” (hybrid war) in Romanian elections, pressure on Moldova (offering money for pro Russian activism via Russian bank accounts)followed swiftly by an immediate betrayal of Ukraine.
Overnight USAs enemies became allies and their allies became enemies. Conducted by an authoritarian state that doesn’t even pretend to have the moral cover of Marxism any longer. It might well shock Europe into funding defence and embracing national pride. But there a cost. It’s always complex but I feel that the anti nato isolationism has little understanding that nations have their own desire for freedom.
It’s good to be reminded of moments of true liberty in the face of uncertainty
I can appreciate the concern of Russian interference, particularly by Romanians, Georgians, and the Baltic peoples, and think a Trump administration may be a poor messenger, but I would be careful not to rush to judgment in defending the EU/ROM government position. Contra the BBC and NYT, the government has to date not produced any evidence supporting Russian financing or connection with the Tiktok campaign that elevated Georgescu. Similarly, they haven't produced any evidence of the crimes he's been charged with. With that in mind, I think it's prudent to consider that it's at least possible this is the type of totalitarianism Iain references: an (initial) democratic election was annulled, the opposition candidate charged with crimes, and the court has barred said candidate from future offices, all without producing the type of substantive evidence those extreme measures demand.
It may be that Georgescu is everything his critics and the government say he is, and that he is guilty of the alleged crimes, but it also may be that he is innocent, and that if elected his influence would be more like an Orban or a Meloni (or a Trump). This shouldn't be a partisan issue, though most Left leaning Western outlets are framing it as 'far right concern.' I'm not far-right, but I am concerned, and so should everyone else who believes in democracy.
You can read more about the situation here, which is a better (Left) source than NPR or the BBC:
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/romania-calin-georgescu-voided-tiktok-election
(Edit) and:
https://www.racket.news/p/timeline-romania-overturns-presidential/comment/99494237
Interesting read. Thanks for sharing. Certainly gives a lot more detail.
There is a cost indeed. I'm painfully aware of it as a mother of a teenaged son, who will be of drafting age soon. Here in the region bordering the state of perpetual aggression, this awareness sometimes threatens to turn into hopelessness. Especially when witnessing how easily big players change course in international politics.
I agree with you Linda. You very diplomatically don't point out that we evidently don't agree with Iain on Ukraine v Russia.
I respect Iain tremendously for his substantial contribution to understanding the human mind and the present conjuncture of human development and history, and also for the his personal public character, however I'm not with him on this one and I also find his views about war and peace and the military to be a little too conventionally conservative and potentially reactionary. We all have our blindspots though, and maybe these are some of his.
Indeed. I was also surprised by his objection to Trump's contempt for the person of Zelensky. Whatever one's take on the conflict (I won't belabour you with mine) that contempt seems entirely warranted despite the endless adulation bestowed on him in the West.
Indeed. I find Iain McG's olde worlde manners and values charming but every now and again (and this is an example) he reveals, as far as I'm concerned, an unworldliness, an naivete, and an instinctive 'clubhouse' conventional Anglo-Saxon, British conservatism about the contemporary world politically. He is very much imo of his class and time and occupational biography. I don't think he has explored outside his limited, small world enough.
A particular example of this in this particular piece is his criticism of young Western people's propensity to not be willing to fight (and die) for their country. He makes all sorts of value laden, critical personal judgements about that, just like the local pub reactionary. But what he should be doing is looking at it in a structural political and philosophical way. Does he honestly believe the society and way of life that young people in the West have inherited is worth their dying for? To change it yes, but to save it for their Masters?!!! Ffs Iain needs to get out of his zone of interest.
I would add that I am guessing he is perhaps not aware of the context that Zelensky had delayed signing this agreement a couple of times prior to requesting that he do so specifically by invitation to the White House. He clearly had no intent to sign then either, but attempted to use the opportunity to thoroughly upend the proposal-- undoubtedly with the encouragement of EU leaders as well as the dems in the U.S. I also think Iain might understand any general contempt more readily if he understood that the vast majority of Ukrainians want him out of power and I would speculate that many of them likely feel greater contempt toward him than we can understand.
Ooo!
I was an anarchist by that measure for *such* a long time!
lovely people, punks and anarchists. still have good friends among that existing underground society, that those uninitiated dont even know exist all around them, all over the globe.
ha! silly Typicals. cant see for looking. ;)
"a war provoked and fomented by the US after decades of continual overturning of governments in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, decades of deliberate lying to Russia, failure to follow any of our agreements"
Sorry, but this is so far from truth and naive look. As a person from East Europe I can tell you that Eastern Europe and Baltics have been fighting for more than 50 years to release themselves from the iron grip of communism and russian imperialism.
The biggest tragedy of all is that Russia itself has not gone through its own "Nuremberg Trials" and is still poisoning (metaphorically but also literally) many lives on this planet. And it is still big failed state that cannot live up to its geographical potential. Still mentally held in soviet imperial thinking, trying to brute force its failed ideas into the world.
Not everything is about US internal politics. People from US and Western Europe need to look past their internal lenses and see the things as they are: that Russia invaded and caused thousands of deaths in the name of its absurd failed ideas.
Just because Russia hates what you hated (Biden? left-leaning politics? covid vaccines?) doesn't mean it's your friend. Russia hates Western Civilization - the one that you're trying to defend - and is just using whatever useful to pursuit its own goals (imperialism).
Suggest you read Scott Horton's massive immaculately sourced book (500 pages of references, many US government documents) on the subject, Glenn Diesen's book on the subject, foreign policy experts John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs on the subject, independent journalists Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Mate on the subject and countless others. The truth is not in doubt.
So I suggest you better read how geopolitical "realists" like Mearsheimer or Sachs have been debunked.
There is plethora material on that topic - to start simple you can go from Kamil Kazani here on substack and then go onto other plentiful critics of "realists" thinking - please just read material from people from East Europe, from people who grew up there and better understand that geopolitical situation and motivations.
"Realists" ignore internal politics, treat international politics like a physics of billard balls, not able to see how idiosyncratic interplay of local cultures, internal politics, material situation affect political decisions like waging war on another country.
And there is the question of "independent" journalists who being right on one topic, try to be oracles on everything else, way outside their competence - and that's assuming their good faith, where we can say they fall prey to Dunning-Kruger effect. Because, no doubt, some of those have more grim agenda...
I know a number of people from Eastern Europe because I live in a university town. Perhaps you'd like to compare the number of governments the US has overturned in the last 80 years versus the number of governments Russia has overturned in the last 80 years. Also, I wonder if you think Scott Horton's primary sources from the US archives and the archives of past presidents are made up. No one is saying Putin is a great guy or that Russia is not a repressive government. No one claims the countries in the former Soviet Union were treated well, or that Moscow did not persecute dissidents. However, it's also true that Ukraine is a massively corrupt country, that much of the aid the US has sent them has been given to oligarchs including Zelensky himself, and that Putin did not fully invade the country until right-wing Nazis had been attacking ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine for eight years. He tried diplomacy over and over. It is also true that the US engineered the 2014 coup in Ukraine, and has trained and funded the neo-Nazi Azov battalion ever since, after having trashed every agreement they've ever made with Russia since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Well said. Realpolitik is an ugly, nasty piece of work but, like tarring roofs, someone has to do it.
I'm sorry but you're still not getting it.
Let's again start with the facts.
Vladimir Putin first and foremost leads imperial politics. His main primary goal is to restore Soviet Empire, whose collapse he treats as "greatest geopolitcal catastrophy of 20th century".
Vladimir Putin led Second Chechen War which took more than 100k lives.
Putin invaded Georgia in 2008. Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and instigated so called "separatists" war in East Ukraine - so the war is really going on for 11 years.
Countless independent journalists have been threatend, poisoned, killed effectively killing any indepedent journalism (and thinking) in this country.
Dubrovka and Beslan terrorist attacks had catastrophic rescue actions, and still likely they have been initiated by FSB to justify subsequent falling into dictatorship by Putin who consolidated power in the years after.
And finally, he (himself) started a war three years ago that already took hundreds of thousands human lives. So the Russia is here aggresor, Ukraine is just fighting for survival.
So having facts set up, we can go further.
What are the reasons for invasion?
NATO expansion? Neo-nazi Azov movements? Being lied by other countries? West not keeping agreements to the Russia?
Sorry but it's none of these. (And especially the last one is laughable - Putin (former KGB agent) and Russia who have great record of lies, deception suddenly care about truth).
Russia propaganda is famous for its creativity and coordinated spread of viral memes into the minds of poor Westerners trying to make sense of things. Thus videos of Mearsheimer clip circulating suddenly Twitter in February 2022. Thus amplifying some singular stories (which did happen) and trying to make always the same picture - "poor Russia" which had to invade the other because it had no choice. (actually this inferiority complex of russians drive a lot of their motivation. it's sad that they do not have enough reflection to see that maybe their economical and political decision are leading them always to the same despair?)
So coming to the main topic - what's the reason for 2022 Russia's invasion?
The answer lies in... domestic policy, raw materials, energy.
Domestic policy - Ukrainians had seen its country eternally stuck in coruption, dysfunctional. All true. Yet it was not despite Russia proximity but BECAUSE of Russia's proximity that they could not have fully developed as a country. Many Ukrainians were travelling around the Europe. They've been to Poland, Czechia, Hungary - countrier that were poorer than Ukraine in 1990. And they saw that all those countries have improved significantly where Ukraine could not release from the chains of corruption and oligarchs. Also many Ukrainians have been to Russia. And they see the same problems in their big neighbour. The same problems, just on the bigger scale - bigger corruption, more powerful oligarchs and the even bigger inequality and especially grim view of the russian province which is famous for it's third-world development level.
So majority of Ukrainians (though not all of them to be true), especially younger ones, wanted to go more on the West. Not Russia direction. 2004, 2013 - it was not big CIA conspiracy. These were just people tired of what they see.
And here lied the biggest threat to Russia and Putin dictatorship - if Ukraine pivot to the Western Europe was successful that would undermine and threated his power in Russia. So he could not let Ukraine do what it wanted to do - because power of imitation and memetics would give again many Russians power to rise up against the dictatorship in Russia (Russians did try to protest a couple of times but did not succeed).
Raw materials, energy - this is more complex situation but generally Russia in recent years was losing its upperhand in energy provision to Europe. Which in the long-term would mean accelerated economic decline and further domestic problems. Because Russia is essentially an "avocado economy" - even though it has plenty of fuels, raw materials and many bright people (mathematicians, engineers) it is a malfunctioning country that is not able to produce car of washing machine.
Here is article from 2019 (!) from polish blogger which correctly foresaw the Russian invasion and its reasoning:
https://www.krzysztofwojczal.pl/geopolityka/europa-wschodnia/rosja-europa-wschodnia/do-2022-roku-rosja-wywola-wojne-w-europie-lub-na-bliskim-wschodzie/
In short - Russia was losing all on all fronts (technological, economical, demographical) and then only advantage it has is a demonstration of power.
Which they try to demonstrate - with mixed results.
So whatever reasons you got on this war from your twitter/facebook newsfeed or from your favourite podcaster, is at best half-truths.
Dig deeper - look at the geopolitcs, read Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn or Kolyma Tales by Shalamov, read something from russian oppositionists, or even read anti-woke journalists like Konstantin Kisin or Douglas Murray.
Whatever bad or corrupt you can find on Ukraine - be sure that if you look on Russia you would find the same (corruption, nationalists, nazis).
In the end - I know that politics and geopolitics is a nasty thing. Probably some nasty deal behind the closed door needs to be done, to avoid losing more human's lifes. I get that man should not know how sausages or politics is being made, as Bismarck famously said. All clear.
I just care about educating people. I just care about them leaving their superficial view of the world and learn that maybe their simple dichotomy of the world - like woke vs anti-woke is not always good lens to look at things. That sometimes you need to drop your left-hemispheric fixation on applying the same abstraction everywhere and you need to use more of a right hemisphere to see things as they are, in their own idiosyncratic way.
As it is here in this terrible unprovoked full-scale invasion.
So i'm leaving you in this conversation with this message.
I don't hope that you will be convinced today, next week or next month. But maybe some seed will be planted in your mind. Maybe after some time you will give a shot, try to leave your current information bubble and maybe curiosity will lead you to some new richer view of world. Which I wish you with all my heart.
“A skeptic among believers and a believer among skeptics”. I see a human being willing to think deeply and engage in real dialogue. And I am grateful for your example to us through reason empathy and grace.
yes, wholeheartedly agree!
Carlos - you exactly described what I felt as I read Iain’s article- so very grateful. His comments were the best explanation of the current situation I’ve ever read. Many thanks!!
I am reminded of something you mentioned to Elizabeth Oldfield:
"In Greek there is a way in which things are argued, in which you have two particles ‘men’ and ‘de’ [μέν…δέ…]. You start ‘men’, which means “on the one hand”, followed by ‘de’, which means “on the other”. So everything was “on the one hand… and on the other”. And this was the way we were taught to think. So as soon as we express something we were to question it and to see if there wasn't something to be said for the opposite point of view. So actually that was drilled into me from a very early age, that seeing both sides of a question is incredibly important. And I wish that was part of more people's education because it could save a lot of unpleasantness, and violence, and aggression, and anger, and resentment, and so forth.”
Iain McGilchrist on The Divided Brain and Perceiving the Sacred
https://youtu.be/2So6GC6OS6E?t=768
Thank you for this, Eric
This, I think, can be a particularly revealing process, if we pursue it deeply enough. Contrasting a postmodern culture with a more conservative culture that speaks in the language of traditional virtues and vices was done by Zak Stein as well. He recasts these complex socio-political relationships as between the nihilism of Skinner’s “operant conditioning,” that only responds to the logic of power and control, and what might be called an “axiological design” that is responsive to a sacred and animate cosmos. …I am sure you recognize the strong influence your work has had upon Stein’s own thinking in this regard. From a portion of just one conversation:
Matthew Goodman: “Do you think that there's a deeper underlying motivation behind trying to distort everyone's perceptions of what's actually valuable? What's the underlying motivation for being able to control people's attention?”
Zak Stein: “I’ve mentioned the emergence of existential risk after World War II as a category psychologists paid attention to. BF Skinner was super worried about the bomb, and basically said we need to replace politics with a science of behavior control, because if we don't we're all going to die. That was his argument. So basically the underlying motivation is a ‘benevolent technocratic futurism.’”
Matthew Goodman: “How does that help save us from the potential destruction of the bomb?”
Zak Stein: “Imagine Skinner’s view: We have basically the nervous systems and cultures of barbarians and premodern people, but we have the technologies of gods. Skinner thought this difference was insane. That the difference between what is used by science and what is possible politically was insane because of the backwardness of the political state.
Take pollution for example. Everybody's driving cars, everyone's throwing away plastic bottles. What do we do? Skinners solution is to just make an operant conditioning chamber that is as big as the society and you never have to tell them you're trying to stop them from throwing plastic bottles away, you just incentivize and disincentivize certain behaviors with ‘nudging’ and you create an environment where you just eliminated the pollution problem through a science of behavior control, rather than through some political argumentation where you pass laws, and then enforce the laws, and the laws are contested because of special interests. He’s like, “Screw that. The technocratic engineers will bring the human sciences to a point where we can organize large scale behavior technocratically, rather than politically.” So a scientistic elite replaces a political elite and the scientistic elite is a class of human engineers who largely do not reveal their work to the public. This is BF Skinner. This is documented; he's writing this.
Alex Pentland, who had students all over Silicon Valley, similarly argues for a replacement of politics with a science of behavior control. So again, ‘nudging’ is the classic example, which is an accepted form of coercion. We nudge people into the right decisions rather than dictate to them educationally or have some conversation about it. We create through social media, advertising campaigns, and a whole bunch of disparate channels within the environment, a situation in which that thing just isn't incentivized anymore.
Skinner’s utopian novel “Walden Two” is where he lays this out. Skinner’s other book, “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” is where he lays out very explicitly this argument about X-risk, that we're all going to die. He says simple things, like we have to get beyond the immature philosophies of human dignity and freedom. That’s the impediment; the thing that's stopping the replacement of politics with a science of behavior control is these silly philosophies of human dignity and freedom.
If we're giving him the absolute benefit of the doubt, it's a benevolent technocratic intervention into an increasingly unwieldy and complex society where we have to find ways to coordinate large scale behavior. And given current failures of rule of law, and all these other things, it becomes kind of almost a no-brainer that some technocratic class would step in and provide a couple of tools, these technologies, to the nation state. But you have to annihilate value. Is removing all human freedom from human life better than all the humans dying? What’s the argument against this class of people, who have kind of good intentions to ‘free us from our freedom’?
There are right now two main scenarios that are unfolding for the planetary future, we call them twin attractors. One is chaos and catastrophe, and the other one is oppression. If you do not think there's a third attractor, then most people would pick oppression (but not everybody). But the oscillation between those two neglects a hidden third: a return to reality, specifically the reality of what's actually valuable. At the end of the day that is what human culture must do, and we've lost the ability to do that easily in many cultural contexts.
The left hemisphere creates delusion. It's happening of course currently, and this ties into this general theory of civilizational simulation. There's a discourse that calls the simulation out for what it is and then reorients the civilization to reality, hopefully in time. We are just oscillating between too much order or too much chaos. And then the people who like order hate the people who like chaos and vice versa.
Our hemispheres should be maximally doing two different things and then coordinating those two different things. In an ideal situation there is that parallax, which means two views simultaneously over-crossing, giving the thing that's real. That is the third attractor, at the interface of what can be controlled and what cannot be controlled.”
Dr. Zak Stein - First Principles of the Universe
https://youtu.be/-YrQAJ8M3DY?t=4942
What defines reality? Unless it can be defined, we are left with chaos and oppression. Jesus said "I am the way, the truth and the life." Either he is or he isn't. Dostoyevsky said "without God, all things are permissible." Skinner and Nietzsche were correct in their insight into life without God.
Mattias Desmet discerned a "massive worldview shift" that "eventually led to the Grand Narrative of mechanistic materialism (celebrated by both communists and capitalists alike) ...humanity was greatly reduced either to chemical and physical operations, according to many biologists, or in the psychology of B.F. Skinner, to a repertoire of behaviors. However, in each instance the result was basically the same: transcendence was eliminated and the essence of humanity was vacated, emptied out." [1]
Now, I think that one wouldn't necessarily need to explicitly define the transcendent in order to recognize, feel, and respond to it as such. But I do agree with your broader point, and that of Stein, which follows regardless. Because chaos and oppression is indeed very hard to see past without that "third attractor," without that vertical, transcendent dimension of life.
[1] The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions: A Review of The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Mattias Desmet
https://firebrandmag.com/articles/the-road-to-hell-is-paved-with-good-intentions-a-review-of-the-psychology-of-totalitarianism-by-mattias-desmet
This is the heritage of an Eastern Orthodox Classical Education-
something which is finding instantiation again in small little village parishes- even right now, in the new world even.
I know, as I am a teacher in just such a grassroots re-ligamentation of mind, body, and soul. a parish school, full of beautiful human beings not being denied the full, unique expression of their minds.
For the children, it is utterly natural.
for the parents- well- some see and awe. Others resist even unto condemnation.
prayers and good thoughts welcome from you all!
-mb
FDR wished for “a one-handed economist”, because they were always saying, “…on the other hand…”
Thanks for this, Iain. I share basically all of your concerns about how things went haywire. Trump is a symptom of a very broken system. The problem I have with Lyons is not that you or anyone should read and share his insightful diagnoses of current political events. I've read and shared them, too! My problem is that he appears to be insufficiently attentive to the fact that Silicon Valley technofeudalist broligarchs are currently running the Executive Branch of the US Government. I can promise you they have no interest in the sort of conservative values you eloquently championed above. Their vision of the future could not be more LH-dominant. Elon Musk told Joe Rogan the other day that empathy is Western civilization's biggest weakness. It's "a bug," he said. The transhumanists running Trump's White House may not be "woke," but their vision is nonetheless a kind of transhuman hyper-progressivism.
>Elon Musk told Joe Rogan the other day that empathy is Western civilization's biggest weakness. It's "a bug," he said.
This is misleading. Context:
https://youtu.be/sSOxPJD-VNo?si=cra8feUim2GEE94o&t=4559
A few seconds in:
"I believe in empathy, like I think you should care about other people – but you need to have empathy for civilisation as a whole, and not commit civilisational suicide."
Yes, but this talk of “empathy for civilization” as a whole is simply Musk’s channeling the transhumanist ethos where some absurdly abstracted idea of “future humanity” is used as a justification for the greatest humanitarian neglect or atrocities in the present.
Musk and Rogan were discussing the very real and immediate concerns over illegal immigration.
If I have mischaracterized Musk and he is actually a compassionate, empathic person, then I do apologize. My heart goes out to him.
I agree Matthew, and wonder if Iain, not being in the US, is just not aware of what's happening here since Trump took over. He writes, "Free speech is unusual in a world composed of largely tyrannical regimes, and it is infinitely precious" -- I could not agree more, and am watching with grave concern as the federal government moves to control and intimidate the press, universities, scientists, arts institutions...
You had no concerns with the last administration's control of media, academia, etc? Many of us did and see this as freeing and less controling.
the federal government is a self appointed gang of tax thieves and land grabbers. ending the feds is something more americans would like to see than not. also,the intimidation and co opting of universities press etc etc took place thirty plus years ago through the oligarchic buyout,polluting and manipulations of all the systems you name. feds ain’t got nothing to do with it.
Not only wise, just about perfect. Have I ever read a post or article anywhere, where I respect and admire and agree with just about every word? I doubt it.
I was with you until the comment about Trump and Zelenskyy and the glaring no comment about Gaza. To me this is not about right and left (I don’t identify as such) it’s about life and death. Essentially, you carefully paved a road and then fell into the ditch, like a sheep who is removed from a crevasse by the farmer and leaps right back in. However much of what you said prior and after that glaring attachment to something you may feel is “right”, you provided tremendous food for thought. Historical context of Ukraine and Gaza is crucial for LH thinking to reach over to the right for some consequential guidance IMHO.
Well said. I was quite stunned by the comment about Trump and Zelensky after reading the rest of a wonderful essay. Just doesn't fit, really. How can one see all of the rest and not see that? Perhaps Iain needs to confer a bit with Matthias on the matter?
Mattias Desmet's views on Covid are also about life and death for many of us with autoimmune diseases and primary immune deficiencies. Without lockdowns, many people with chronic illness and disabilities wouldn't be here.
It's so hard hearing anti-lockdown views intellectually debated when it is so much more than philosophy/politics to you personally.
I am sorry to hear that you feel this way. Our feelings about lockdown were obviously shaped by our circumstances. I personally agreed with the proposals put forward by the Great Barrington Declaration authors to shelter and protect the vulnerable whilst allowing those at little risk (and the distribution was known early on) to circulate.
I gave up.my career to care for my terminally ill mother, in a town where I had no friends. She died just before covid appeared. I had to grieve alone, without the touch of any living being. It drove me to the brink of suicide. Twice. Prisoners in Victorian solitary confinement had more human contact than I did, and they had to change that system as so many killed themselves.
Please.be assured that most of us arguing against lockdowns were NOT callous; targeted sheltering would have protected you and others like you to the same extent that lockdowns did, without the enormous negative societal costs.
Thank you for reading my point of view.
I take immunosuppressant medication and I am anti-lockdown. I respect other’s rights to hold a different view based on their own situation.
Why should everyone else be locked down? It was never difficult to isolate oneself if that was considered appropriate.
a fellow canadian, David Cayley, who had a heart condition and wondered if the v was safe for him,
reflected quite thoughtfully on this question:
https://www.davidcayley.com/blog/2020/12/3/pandemic-revelations-1
and concerning life:
https://www.davidcayley.com/blog/2021/6/11/concerning-life-1?rq=concerning life
I agree fully. But not just for the immuno compromised. Without lockdown millions more would have died. Covid is a Level 3 Biohazard with proven long-term impacts on heart, brain, lungs, immune system. Society wishes, and is encouraged, to see it as a cold. Also rhe lockdowns in UK and Ireland were soft. In Italy there were times when 250 metres were imposed and enforced. My dearest friend's life has been upended by Long Covid after a singe mild infection. Nobody knows how their body will react to the virus. Millions are suffering - and I mean suffering- with Long Covid throughout the world. Many will not agree with my views just as I will not agree with theirs. Best of luck to you Rikki-Lea.
There is no evidence at all that “millions more would have died.” The impacts on heart, brain, lungs and immune system that you ascribe to Covid are not “proven” at all, and are far more likely to be due to the mRNA shots. Long Covid is more likely to be caused by the mRNA shots than the virus. Covid is a moderately hazardous upper respiratory virus that has no mechanism to cause these sequelae, but the mRNA shots do.
or maybe both "virus" and shots contained snake venom, spread two different ways. https://thedrardisshow.com/the-antidote
But somebody had to keep working to maintain society. What about those people?
lock downs created more problems than they actually solved. many immune compromised were actually killed by the offered solutions to ‘protect them.’ dig deeper into this subject matter. i might surprise you.
I wonder why don't question the enormous increase in autoimmune diseases etc. This is surely not natural. Covid was an opportunity to question the current medical paradigm.
Agreed
As a woman of the Left this is not just a breath of fresh air but a lung transplant. We don't agree on everything, which is as it should be. 'Yes, but. Not always.' That. And the tyranny of mediocre elites and the narrative. If we are at all sincere and in charge of ourselves we cannot agree with our 'side' on everything. 'What? How can you say you are of the Left if you don't agree with x or y'. It's enervating. And silencing. And making society act stupid. Thank you.
maybe instead of left vs right, we should consider another dimension - like up vs down - as in authoritarian vs freedom . . .
Iain, as one of those that may have promoted the reply, I appreciate you going to such lengths to respond. I don’t think I disagree with much but it wouldn’t matter if I did - as I said originally, I respect your contributions enormously and like to hear from diverse views regardless. I think some of what Lyons said was unlikely to represent reality from my experience of it, but again, I can empathise with his views. I remain more worried about manipulative control more from unfettered tech companies, though. You quote Rowson above - he agrees on this point. Re the message of Munich - I work on Ukraine every day, which isn’t easy, and I am sensitive to their plight, so that can colour my responses to events at the moment.
As to Trump; we’ll see, I guess. I hope you’re right. I am particularly doubtful about some with whom he keeps company.
Regardless, great to have you on here, may you very much be well!
This is a tour de force. No need for you to have this conversation again as you said it all here. I do hope you’ll find time to write a bit about whatever fascinates you though. The pleasant surprise of finding you here only weeks ago got my hopes up for a stream of Applied McGilchrist.
I almost dare hope there is really is a sea change making waves. It seems many of my recent conversations resonate with what you convey here.
If I may, at risk of flying too close to the sun, add my complementary thoughts.
1. It is important I think to document, from a variety of perspectives, what happened with this runaway train. If we don’t it will simply be shunted off the main line and lie in wait. Not, necessarily, out of malice but simply because most of the fellow travelers didn’t (still don’t…) know it was a runaway train. We can’t allow this to be shunted and memory-holed without a forensic examination. Young people need to know what happened so they don’t have to fight the same battles.
For example: I think one day people will consider the notion that each individual should choose from an ever-expanding array of narrowly defined gender categories to be laughably quaint. (There are presently 72 genders, according to medicinenet.com.) It might resemble the way we consider Victorians searching for ghosts and spirits with electro-magnetic field detectors. The latter was a symptom of a new technology while the former was a symptom of postmodern language deconstruction, but they’re both part of the same long derailment of grounded embodiment.
2. Part of the story of this strange time is that this train wasn’t always a runaway. In the days of Reagan and Thatcher (and Mulroney, for my fellow Canadians) it was a different mould that had to be broken.
For example: in this version of corporatism there was “no such thing as society.” The message was, with Techno-Optimism always humming in the background, that the modern human was ‘nothing but’ a decontextualized, atomized individual enmeshed in a web of transactional, financialized relationships. Different map, but it too was claimed to be the territory. It too was reductive and totalitarian.
Something better could becoming around the bend, so to speak. As we maneuver back to the slipstream of continuity with the past, we can be receptive to wisdom and voices that were pushed aside in that earlier mould. We can find ourselves further up the spiral.
I hope this crashing, runaway train creates a thirty foot wave for us all to surf on, all the way back to shore. Prof Desmet says the way to kneecap a forming totalitarianism is for a few people to continue speaking their heartfelt truths. I hope you’ll come back with more Applied McGilchrist, whenever and however it suits you.
It’s an ugly moment, when many seem to have forgotten the banal truth that reasonable people may disagree.
Well said, and thank you for taking the time to express it so clearly. I hope it is able to land for some of those who were disturbed by your previous posts.
Thanks, Iain. Integrity is all too rare and is certainly not the preserve of any particular group.
Thanks for this follow up post. One thing I've taken up in recent years is not thinking about right or left (although I still love the term 'conservative') but looking for people who I call 'observers of reality.' They are often found on the right because of the way the world has been structured today but they also appear on the left. It's those who can look at and for what reality brings forth more than political opinions that I find interesting listening to today. Thanks for being one of them.
This was a very encouraging post, Dr McGilchrist—thank you. I’m a Christian, & often tell my wife that I feel I’m stuck being labeled either a liberal by conservative churches or a conservative by liberal ones.
In reality, I reject the framing altogether—but in our black-and-white world, the framing is the one thing all these churches agree upon!
for anyone interested:
I was recently (as in, today) locked out of my Fb account, because I posted this interview explaining that Substack- our platform here-
was created to give a "free thought" alternative to the dominant Social Media Oligarchy.
"Substack, a platform for free speech? (Lulu Cheng Meservey)"
https://youtu.be/VzmJMq1YDoo
Now not only that,
but when I tried to get back into Fb (just curious), literally they refuse to send the "verification code" to the phone I am *required* to have linked to them (for my own good, they love and protect us so, keeping us all so safe and holding all our passwords for us fleshy, forgetful humans).
I took screenshots of the journey; might tell the story on my substack sometime but really it's small potatoes compared to far worse I've seen when I've
rattled the tree
of this very
Totality
that is spoken of boldly, here, only here really can it be said.
So please be aware: Our presence in the Web is becoming more and more explicitly and forcefully a tool of control over the sorts of thoughts we are allowed to have.
While you still can,
I advice also visiting the Online library of the Internet, not for profit:
Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/
https://archive.org/details/TheCenturyOfTheSelfFullDocumentary
Those who lived through Totalitarian regimes, they always thought it wasn't that bad until it was far too gone to redeem.
We may already be there, friends. Check your hearts. Test it all for yourself.
yours;
-mb
I too am in my 70s. When I was in college in Cambridge, I was a radical and got involved student politics and the sit-in at the Senate House in 1972. Looking at the leaders of the movement and their attitudes, I realised they were no better than the elite institution we were fighting against and that if they ever came to power, it would be a case of, Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, as the song went (Won’t get fooled again). It’s all circular. I realised then that change has to happen individually on the inside and that directed the course of my life. So today, as I read your piece Iain, I also read my ‘scripture’ for the day which is entitled The Tyranny of Agreement and supports just about everything you have said. Democracy works because it makes use of a wide diversity of views. This is also the path of Love.