No society has ever been as stubbornly materialistic as our own, and no society (in recorded history) has ever risen to the heights of power that ours has achieved. It's a great historical irony that it is our ideas, and not any material lack or danger, that is collapsing our civilization. Although it may not be ironic so much as a grand cosmic joke, played on us to make a point to the rest of history.
🗨 At the Grand Academy of Lagado in Balnibarbi, great resources and manpower are employed on researching preposterous schemes such as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, softening marble for use in pillows, learning how to mix paint by smell, and uncovering political conspiracies by examining the excrement of suspicious persons.
We're smack dab here ↑↑, ain't we? Upon disembarking his DeLorean, Gulliver would have to be put in quarantine with a severe case of déjà vu 😏🤸
Good to find another McGilchrist influenced thinker here. Without a deep understanding of how the left hemispheric perspective has build rigid physical forms to deepen its flawed hold, there is hardly any conversation possible. All the reasoning and arguments are part of that same perspective. The other way of seeing the world lies outside the frame used here. Very simple in theory, and very difficult in practice. Like suggesting to a football team, that ballet would be good for them and lead to higher scores. The above comments sound like the footballers after the announcement....good players but not getting it. Just meant as an illustration of the rift between our thinking now and how it could be too...
If willing the sportsmen would discover a whole new world of grace directly applicable to their current skills. For that to happen they need trust, not resistance.
I will check it out. I have a Sunday meet-up of of 'fans' and a sort of parallel trajectory for the practical implications of the hemisphere theory. Still searching for ways to bring it to a less intellectual audience. To 'translate' the message so to speak.
🗨 The other way of seeing the world lies outside the frame used here.[...] For that to happen they need trust, not resistance.
💬 But it's a different kind of work, coming to be as a consequence of an entirely different view of the world.[...] If you keep walking the path, learning and growing in the process, the cosmos will pull you along in the right direction.
How to explain the third dimension to a flatlander….or more accurate and closer to real for me personally: how to argue for the fifth dimension (metaphorically of course)
I think the future is very much a canvas. The medium itself - the paint we apply - will create different forms than we expect to see because a brush stroke here slightly misses the mark, or because an unexpected shape crops up from the clump of paint that you didn't think would look that way.
Philosophers are the artists with the vision of the completed work, and science and engineering is like the canvas. We need both sets of thinkers.
The Collapse may be mental... or due to lead poisoning... at it's core... but tied to that is the feverish expansion, greed, overreach, and exploding resource acquisition that eventually peters out following physical laws to a tee. Increased efficiency and clever workarounds tend to exacerbate the issue while improving appearances in the short term. Can mind really overcome limits to growth? Are humans really capable of that level of transformation at this stage?
Nice work, LP. What you've written here is consonant my own work. I come at things from a Zen Buddhist perspective and share your concern about the downstream effects of modeling society on delusional beliefs, especially at global scale. Thanks for the content, fellow-traveler.
I found this piece of writing to be very thought provoking and it gave me some respite from the constant negativity we are bombarded with daily coming from all directions and even a sense of hope.
I do feel there is evil at play here irrespective of being religious or not and we need the power of good to overcome it and banish it from our present times. There are so many signs both literal and physical of the presence of evil in our world now that we have become a godless society. The Pride parade with naked men riding bicycles letting it all hang out so to speak with many children in attendance and the police saying well normally it would be considered an offence of indecent exposure but being a Pride parade well… we just let it go. The overall degeneracy society at large seems to have fallen into is very disturbing to say the least and very reminiscent of the downfall of the Roman civilization.
People need hope and there is precious little to feel hopeful about but Luc always provides me with a little hope, always and I’m so very grateful for that in this world of negativity we live in.
It’s true too that a small group of people can start something and that movement can grow substantially and organically like our Canadian Freedom Convoy that began with only our truckers but gained more and more momentum as they made their way across the country to its capital city of Ottawa where tens of thousands of rejected Canadians joined in to protest against the government’s covid restrictions and policies and mandates. So it can indeed happen organically IF enough people feel sufficient angst about the ways in which they’re being forced to live and are so weary of being treated like 2nd class citizens.
Without a doubt I agree with you. The perversions we are seeing in our streets are 100% done on purpose with no remorse. And because many lunatics fear nothing and don't believe in higher principals and think nothing is worth preserving, they want everything destroyed.
All of us who recognize this as sheer craziness and madness need to continue to support one another and hold onto our reason and sanity because it is the power of many of us that helps to keep us all sane and the ability to foresee that eventually our world will right itself and balance will return.
I’m not the right person to answer this question as I’m not American but in Canada used to be you were FREE to practice whatever religion you liked or NOT and no one cared. I think all different religions can coexist if they are respectful of one another.
The crazy thing is that it doesn't take a whole army of people to destroy a beautiful city. Social media has enabled lunatics to participate more and more in the moral decay that we are witnessing.
Food for thought, or at least for neurochemical processes which unfold deterministically.
To me, the biggest difficulty with your proposed solution is that with every choice some of our available lines of thought collapse. To choose anything is to reject everything which is inconsistent with the chosen thing.(clear thinking which has not been permissible for a long time and never in the GAE) We really have corrupted our souls such that we can no longer think the thoughts that will lead us out. We began by being unwilling but we are quickly becoming unable. And, as Calvin realised so long ago, a thing's necessity makes compulsion superfluous.
And yet, you are right. New thoughts and new minds are exactly what is called for. Minds not twisted by decades of self-destructive choices. The path forward must be a path backward, the road to Hell must be walked backwards with hope that what was lost can be reclaimed. Perhaps repent-think again- really is what we must do. Think the thoughts that led us here in reverse, before we can think new thoughts.
First of all, great post. This has been my favorite post so far in all of substack! Good job! I found this post to be somewhat religious in the sense that you are arguing for a uniting vision for a better future. And I think you identified the problem. I believe we currently are facing the "Tower of Babel" problem. The idea that we are not all speaking the same language and therefore do not share the same vision as we move forward. Second point, maybe our problem all together is a spiritual problem. What is it that we should put at the highest? Most people believe going to church is a joke or not useful but maybe just like any other educational place, it could be seen as a place were the discussion for the development of a vision takes place. And since this is a philosophy discussion, I really only see two types of people. The first being the one who acts and then faces the problems. The second being the one who thinks and then acts. Perhaps this is the reason why not all of us can change our way of doing things and only those of us who are natural thinkers will be responsible for bettering the world.
Thank you, Jeiner. I agree, although I'm not sure we can (or even should) *all* share the same vision. I just hope enough of us will share a vision that is truly in line with the upwards trajectory towards beauty, unity, truth. As you can see, although I have a religious outlook, sometimes I prefer to use words not directly associated with any one tradition, for the sake of clarity and avoiding confusion.
Thank you for this article! The one place where I have seen people profoundly change their materialist thinking is in 12 step recovery programs. People who cannot change their thinking as you describe cannot remain sober for long. The 12 step process changes thinking from being dominated by materialism and wetiko to a spiritual perspective that frees and heals. (It’s important that the spiritual approach be uncontaminated by religion, which is grounded in materialism.) Changing the addict’s thinking changes his/her world.
This is a great essay. This is all parallel to what I've been writing about in my series on teaching, a fundamental shift in thought brought about from the ground up, forging a new elite with better ideals, ready to take the place of the current regime as it collapses under the weight of failures that are ultimately metaphysical.
I think you are missing the cause for the symptom.
The symptoms are mental, the cause is dysgenics.
And the rebirth will be trough eugenics, but will appear to be mental.
While dysgenic praxis lasts (equity) the result wil be worse conditions driven by people who are clearly degenerate (mentally deficient) when compared to the previous generations.
Ultimately this trend will lead to the utter collapse of society, there is no recovery possible (well, not practically). Once we have fallen into a thousand pieces, a few of those pieces will behave eugenically, and after a long time they will be able to put a new society together. A new west. Only it won't be called that anymore.
Believing that we can somehow "turn the ship" is in essence "leftist" thinking. Nurture over nature. It is putting the wish front and center. The driving force of a new ideology. But all ideologies are in essence leftist.
A new 'west' or a new civilization can only arise if we overcome the dysgenic trends. Trouble is, that is not possible because eugenics cannot be enforced by clever planning. (Or at least near impossible) It has to be "enforced" by nature. Via selection.
Note: Curt Doolittle comes closest imo to reestablishing eugenics through nurture in his "natural law" idea's. (Some find him very irritating, but your mileage may vary)
💬 From a new way of thinking, a new world shall arise. One in harmony with the cosmic order: whole as opposed to fragmented in its thought, oriented towards the High instead of the Low, embodying universal order instead of chaos: in communion with the cosmic purpose, the final telos of unity and Truth for those who freely choose it.
↑↑ 🤔🙂 ↓↓
🗨 The transcendent ideal of Chinese political philosophy is the confucian concept of datong (大同), or "Great Unity", a harmonious and egalitarian society effortlessly in harmony with the Tao (the natural way of the universe).
In reading I found some holes (such as the real reasons people moved from country to city), but you’ve covered what you understand, of course the way you understand it. And I continued until I hit the part that says “we have to change our minds.” That requires comment now so that it’s not forgotten or schmoozed by some other part, because it’s all important.
The issue there is WHO decides in what way our minds must change, since there will be one million perspectives from one million individuals with only some overlaps.
My remaining hair stands on end and my dander rises, nobody had ever better, tell me what to think.
But there are ever so many who disagree. As long as they don’t have to change theirs.
I can see craziness in much of the published writing, right here on substack. These ideas have real followings, distract from actual problems, frequently are nonsensical and are the reverse of progress toward solutions. And yet the moment I point out these things I consider to be factual I will be demonized as a sympathizer to the forces of evil.
Humans are a scared, superstitious and suspicious lot, but free to believe as we please. Education is the best we can attempt. By other flawed humans.
The danger is in thinking that our own perspectives are better for everyone, and they should therefore be made a part of, everyone else.
At the same time inaction based on faith is an unavoidable train wreck.
Man, I can certainly relate to the frustration. It's all a big conundrum. Sometimes all I can do is try to let go, do something practical, just ride out the storm. I also try to not read things that drain my energy. Not a solution either, I know.
Yes in a sense, but as you know from my writing, I tend to take a wider perspective, keeping in mind that I can't plan how, if or when my efforts here bear fruits. It's also not strictly a numbers game - if there is one person out there who does something partly based on my writing that will affect history, perhaps even many years down the road, then it was worth it. But it's worth it anyway because it helps keeping me sane and often brings me joy, so there's that.
Back to deep trust in unfathomable cosmic helping hand 👌 The bestest we can ever hope for 🙂
🗨 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. ~~Isaiah 55:8-9
Yes. Yes. I think I may have seen one momentous positive result from my vocal complaints, but wouldn’t dare take credit for it, and I don’t need any. Best of good fortune to you.
Yes sadly I agree, you are right and maybe it is the very social media itself that has changed things to the degree of the moral depravity we are now witnessing in our streets no matter where we live.
No society has ever been as stubbornly materialistic as our own, and no society (in recorded history) has ever risen to the heights of power that ours has achieved. It's a great historical irony that it is our ideas, and not any material lack or danger, that is collapsing our civilization. Although it may not be ironic so much as a grand cosmic joke, played on us to make a point to the rest of history.
🗨 At the Grand Academy of Lagado in Balnibarbi, great resources and manpower are employed on researching preposterous schemes such as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, softening marble for use in pillows, learning how to mix paint by smell, and uncovering political conspiracies by examining the excrement of suspicious persons.
We're smack dab here ↑↑, ain't we? Upon disembarking his DeLorean, Gulliver would have to be put in quarantine with a severe case of déjà vu 😏🤸
Good to find another McGilchrist influenced thinker here. Without a deep understanding of how the left hemispheric perspective has build rigid physical forms to deepen its flawed hold, there is hardly any conversation possible. All the reasoning and arguments are part of that same perspective. The other way of seeing the world lies outside the frame used here. Very simple in theory, and very difficult in practice. Like suggesting to a football team, that ballet would be good for them and lead to higher scores. The above comments sound like the footballers after the announcement....good players but not getting it. Just meant as an illustration of the rift between our thinking now and how it could be too...
If willing the sportsmen would discover a whole new world of grace directly applicable to their current skills. For that to happen they need trust, not resistance.
Thanks for the comment, Bertus. If you are interested, I wrote about The Matter With Thigns (which I love) here: https://luctalks.substack.com/p/mcgilchrists-the-matter-with-things
As you can tell, McGilchrist's work has had a profound impact on my own thinking. Cheers!
I will check it out. I have a Sunday meet-up of of 'fans' and a sort of parallel trajectory for the practical implications of the hemisphere theory. Still searching for ways to bring it to a less intellectual audience. To 'translate' the message so to speak.
🗨 The other way of seeing the world lies outside the frame used here.[...] For that to happen they need trust, not resistance.
💬 But it's a different kind of work, coming to be as a consequence of an entirely different view of the world.[...] If you keep walking the path, learning and growing in the process, the cosmos will pull you along in the right direction.
Looks like from the very same liturgy 😊
How to explain the third dimension to a flatlander….or more accurate and closer to real for me personally: how to argue for the fifth dimension (metaphorically of course)
This is my right hemispheric approach:
https://open.substack.com/pub/bertus/p/sketchy-habits?r=fcm5o&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
I think the future is very much a canvas. The medium itself - the paint we apply - will create different forms than we expect to see because a brush stroke here slightly misses the mark, or because an unexpected shape crops up from the clump of paint that you didn't think would look that way.
Philosophers are the artists with the vision of the completed work, and science and engineering is like the canvas. We need both sets of thinkers.
The Collapse may be mental... or due to lead poisoning... at it's core... but tied to that is the feverish expansion, greed, overreach, and exploding resource acquisition that eventually peters out following physical laws to a tee. Increased efficiency and clever workarounds tend to exacerbate the issue while improving appearances in the short term. Can mind really overcome limits to growth? Are humans really capable of that level of transformation at this stage?
Some of us are. We'll have to be the ones who rebuild after it all falls to pieces.
Nice work, LP. What you've written here is consonant my own work. I come at things from a Zen Buddhist perspective and share your concern about the downstream effects of modeling society on delusional beliefs, especially at global scale. Thanks for the content, fellow-traveler.
I found this piece of writing to be very thought provoking and it gave me some respite from the constant negativity we are bombarded with daily coming from all directions and even a sense of hope.
I do feel there is evil at play here irrespective of being religious or not and we need the power of good to overcome it and banish it from our present times. There are so many signs both literal and physical of the presence of evil in our world now that we have become a godless society. The Pride parade with naked men riding bicycles letting it all hang out so to speak with many children in attendance and the police saying well normally it would be considered an offence of indecent exposure but being a Pride parade well… we just let it go. The overall degeneracy society at large seems to have fallen into is very disturbing to say the least and very reminiscent of the downfall of the Roman civilization.
People need hope and there is precious little to feel hopeful about but Luc always provides me with a little hope, always and I’m so very grateful for that in this world of negativity we live in.
It’s true too that a small group of people can start something and that movement can grow substantially and organically like our Canadian Freedom Convoy that began with only our truckers but gained more and more momentum as they made their way across the country to its capital city of Ottawa where tens of thousands of rejected Canadians joined in to protest against the government’s covid restrictions and policies and mandates. So it can indeed happen organically IF enough people feel sufficient angst about the ways in which they’re being forced to live and are so weary of being treated like 2nd class citizens.
Without a doubt I agree with you. The perversions we are seeing in our streets are 100% done on purpose with no remorse. And because many lunatics fear nothing and don't believe in higher principals and think nothing is worth preserving, they want everything destroyed.
All of us who recognize this as sheer craziness and madness need to continue to support one another and hold onto our reason and sanity because it is the power of many of us that helps to keep us all sane and the ability to foresee that eventually our world will right itself and balance will return.
Do you think the United States was meant to function as a Christian nation? And if it was do you think it can survive much longer?
I’m not the right person to answer this question as I’m not American but in Canada used to be you were FREE to practice whatever religion you liked or NOT and no one cared. I think all different religions can coexist if they are respectful of one another.
The crazy thing is that it doesn't take a whole army of people to destroy a beautiful city. Social media has enabled lunatics to participate more and more in the moral decay that we are witnessing.
Food for thought, or at least for neurochemical processes which unfold deterministically.
To me, the biggest difficulty with your proposed solution is that with every choice some of our available lines of thought collapse. To choose anything is to reject everything which is inconsistent with the chosen thing.(clear thinking which has not been permissible for a long time and never in the GAE) We really have corrupted our souls such that we can no longer think the thoughts that will lead us out. We began by being unwilling but we are quickly becoming unable. And, as Calvin realised so long ago, a thing's necessity makes compulsion superfluous.
And yet, you are right. New thoughts and new minds are exactly what is called for. Minds not twisted by decades of self-destructive choices. The path forward must be a path backward, the road to Hell must be walked backwards with hope that what was lost can be reclaimed. Perhaps repent-think again- really is what we must do. Think the thoughts that led us here in reverse, before we can think new thoughts.
First of all, great post. This has been my favorite post so far in all of substack! Good job! I found this post to be somewhat religious in the sense that you are arguing for a uniting vision for a better future. And I think you identified the problem. I believe we currently are facing the "Tower of Babel" problem. The idea that we are not all speaking the same language and therefore do not share the same vision as we move forward. Second point, maybe our problem all together is a spiritual problem. What is it that we should put at the highest? Most people believe going to church is a joke or not useful but maybe just like any other educational place, it could be seen as a place were the discussion for the development of a vision takes place. And since this is a philosophy discussion, I really only see two types of people. The first being the one who acts and then faces the problems. The second being the one who thinks and then acts. Perhaps this is the reason why not all of us can change our way of doing things and only those of us who are natural thinkers will be responsible for bettering the world.
Thank you, Jeiner. I agree, although I'm not sure we can (or even should) *all* share the same vision. I just hope enough of us will share a vision that is truly in line with the upwards trajectory towards beauty, unity, truth. As you can see, although I have a religious outlook, sometimes I prefer to use words not directly associated with any one tradition, for the sake of clarity and avoiding confusion.
I meant to comment about a vision that is aimed at the things you mentioned, perhaps order and justice to say the least.
Thank you for this article! The one place where I have seen people profoundly change their materialist thinking is in 12 step recovery programs. People who cannot change their thinking as you describe cannot remain sober for long. The 12 step process changes thinking from being dominated by materialism and wetiko to a spiritual perspective that frees and heals. (It’s important that the spiritual approach be uncontaminated by religion, which is grounded in materialism.) Changing the addict’s thinking changes his/her world.
Superb - I enjoyed every line of this and will be sharing it widely (once I figure out what happened to the old “repost” option here on Substack.)
Thank you, much appreciated!
This is a great essay. This is all parallel to what I've been writing about in my series on teaching, a fundamental shift in thought brought about from the ground up, forging a new elite with better ideals, ready to take the place of the current regime as it collapses under the weight of failures that are ultimately metaphysical.
I think you are missing the cause for the symptom.
The symptoms are mental, the cause is dysgenics.
And the rebirth will be trough eugenics, but will appear to be mental.
While dysgenic praxis lasts (equity) the result wil be worse conditions driven by people who are clearly degenerate (mentally deficient) when compared to the previous generations.
Ultimately this trend will lead to the utter collapse of society, there is no recovery possible (well, not practically). Once we have fallen into a thousand pieces, a few of those pieces will behave eugenically, and after a long time they will be able to put a new society together. A new west. Only it won't be called that anymore.
Believing that we can somehow "turn the ship" is in essence "leftist" thinking. Nurture over nature. It is putting the wish front and center. The driving force of a new ideology. But all ideologies are in essence leftist.
A new 'west' or a new civilization can only arise if we overcome the dysgenic trends. Trouble is, that is not possible because eugenics cannot be enforced by clever planning. (Or at least near impossible) It has to be "enforced" by nature. Via selection.
Note: Curt Doolittle comes closest imo to reestablishing eugenics through nurture in his "natural law" idea's. (Some find him very irritating, but your mileage may vary)
💬 the really interesting questions are obscured by the proclaimed causality between two end points 😏
Whichever direction the arrow points 😝
Idiocracy - a prophetic documentary!
💬 From a new way of thinking, a new world shall arise. One in harmony with the cosmic order: whole as opposed to fragmented in its thought, oriented towards the High instead of the Low, embodying universal order instead of chaos: in communion with the cosmic purpose, the final telos of unity and Truth for those who freely choose it.
↑↑ 🤔🙂 ↓↓
🗨 The transcendent ideal of Chinese political philosophy is the confucian concept of datong (大同), or "Great Unity", a harmonious and egalitarian society effortlessly in harmony with the Tao (the natural way of the universe).
In reading I found some holes (such as the real reasons people moved from country to city), but you’ve covered what you understand, of course the way you understand it. And I continued until I hit the part that says “we have to change our minds.” That requires comment now so that it’s not forgotten or schmoozed by some other part, because it’s all important.
The issue there is WHO decides in what way our minds must change, since there will be one million perspectives from one million individuals with only some overlaps.
My remaining hair stands on end and my dander rises, nobody had ever better, tell me what to think.
But there are ever so many who disagree. As long as they don’t have to change theirs.
I’m done now, I’ll finish reading.
I don't like to be told what to think either, but there are still better and worse ways of thinking, and I'd like to find the better ones.
For whom else would they be found?
I can see craziness in much of the published writing, right here on substack. These ideas have real followings, distract from actual problems, frequently are nonsensical and are the reverse of progress toward solutions. And yet the moment I point out these things I consider to be factual I will be demonized as a sympathizer to the forces of evil.
Humans are a scared, superstitious and suspicious lot, but free to believe as we please. Education is the best we can attempt. By other flawed humans.
The danger is in thinking that our own perspectives are better for everyone, and they should therefore be made a part of, everyone else.
At the same time inaction based on faith is an unavoidable train wreck.
I wish I had a solution.
Man, I can certainly relate to the frustration. It's all a big conundrum. Sometimes all I can do is try to let go, do something practical, just ride out the storm. I also try to not read things that drain my energy. Not a solution either, I know.
There might be a partial solution in acquiring a bigger voice, and isn’t that what you are doing?
Yes in a sense, but as you know from my writing, I tend to take a wider perspective, keeping in mind that I can't plan how, if or when my efforts here bear fruits. It's also not strictly a numbers game - if there is one person out there who does something partly based on my writing that will affect history, perhaps even many years down the road, then it was worth it. But it's worth it anyway because it helps keeping me sane and often brings me joy, so there's that.
Back to deep trust in unfathomable cosmic helping hand 👌 The bestest we can ever hope for 🙂
🗨 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. ~~Isaiah 55:8-9
Yes. Yes. I think I may have seen one momentous positive result from my vocal complaints, but wouldn’t dare take credit for it, and I don’t need any. Best of good fortune to you.
And no. Trusting that everything will be alright just does not wash.
Yes sadly I agree, you are right and maybe it is the very social media itself that has changed things to the degree of the moral depravity we are now witnessing in our streets no matter where we live.
Good article. Agreed that the collapse will be wild, the rebirth will be epic, and materialism is wrong.