I can relate to the Sunday afternoon Italian feasts. I was privileged to have them for many years. That's what they were. A cultural and culinary feast.
I agree with all your points but I fear you overlooked one glaring possible reason: Loss of God. Believing in God (and even Christianity and its deep rich heritage) anchored Western civilization and gave people inspiration and a sense of direction and community. We lost that.
Now we put our 'faith' in idolatry and false gods. Be it tech, nouveau-age spiritual trends (people pick and choose parts of various faiths and create a hideous quilt that doesn't provide a real strong spiritual compass thus creating a sense of emptiness) or other examples mentioned in the article.
Purpose, service, contribution seems to be the age old remedy to escape the prison of the mind. Do something kind every day. If that doesn't cure the crazies, then do more. Sweep the streets. Weed the bed. Talk to someone no one wants to talk to. Sign up to work the food bank.
Excellent article. Very well thought out. We really are in the eye of the storm now - we are all trying to figure things out. We've gone down the path of commerce and it's left us all empty, maybe not all, but those who do not feel the effects must be very self centered. How can humans feel ok about all the devastation of our environment and fellow humans? There's something wrong with that picture. We should be all concerned about each other because if it can happen to others, it can happen to me. One thing that built relationships in the past and this is a huge thing, it may be the main thing - is that people depended on each other for their livelihoods. Some grew corn and tomatoes while others had chickens and provided eggs, etc. In these modern times, we don't produce anything, just paperwork and we rely on our sustenance on industry. We leave families and places where we know people to go to "a better job" (which usually means a lot more money) Money is the only thing that drives us today - rarely principle. Money IS the principle. It is the highest priority and we mostly all live this way. We accept that people will go for the greater amount and we coddle it instead of question it and even consider it unsavory. Bringing our needs back to our local people is what will enhance relationships. That's how we meet people, get to know them, get to know who does live with principle and get to share our lives together. Everything our culture is premised on is despicable - greed, scarcity, waste, isolation, worship of Big, etc. It is only up to us to change it. And we can - first we need to talk about it and share ideas and something will come out of that.
well said & yes great article. totally agree & so much to all this. not attempting to boast at all by any means, just ideas & sharing my experience, but with my work, i endeavour, to the best of my ability/conscious awareness, to conduct it with integrity and as cheap as possible to complete appropriately. typically costs me more time than i charge, but there are so many other benefits/outcomes that are immeasurable. and do quite a lot of random free work/advice i would just consider as a minor contribution to the community. try not to waste anything & therefore also appreciate much more with much less. also grow as much food as i can in a small city property & share excess produce with friends, neighbours, local shops etc. & most weeks drop in a box of random "volunteer" excess seedlings to a local shop, free for customers to encourage them to grow also. so many seemingly little things we can do that will help in many ways, most we will never know...
Also consider the anxiety and dread which are very reasonable responses to reports of climate change, ocean acidification etc
The last 12 months have each broken the temp record. Failure of leadership 40 years ago - eg Reagan removed Carter’s solar panels at the white house - has essentially continued to this day. Whether demonic or idiotic in complicity with extractive forces, it’s most disturbing to behold. (Regeneration.org compiles dozens of restoration methods btw)
Add this to the persistence of the military industrial complex - Ukraine, Israel receiving billions worth of destructive stuff - which is in fact a major driver of climate change
And the failure to heed the warnings about AI from its very developers (eg Geoffrey Hinton), instead we see it being incorporated into daily life.
Listening to the birds outside..it’s a beautiful world. Let benevolence and biophilia reign.
I lean towards Terrence McKenna suggestion of psilocybin to help us ‘turn on a dime’ as a society, plus a massive ad campaign and direct mailing..thanks for your work Joe🙏
It is difficult to develop as an individual in a tribe. Our ancestors lived for the most part in small tribes. There are many positives with having extended family close by. How to reconcile these two aspects of life?
But how do we know ALL modern humans feel so empty ? Or even a majority of people in Kazakhstan, for example ? How is it that we can even make those kind of sweeping, vastly implicating statements like that, knowing on some level that they are correct ? Or rather, at least knowing that most people reading them will agree with us ? i would say it's exactly because of the nature of the internet -- this medium which pervades everything now. And if you equate the internet with WiFi and wireless connectivity, it does, in principle, traverse every point on the planet today, considering that StarLink and the other satellite providers are making it well known that soon, nowhere on the planet will it be impossible to bring up Google on a device of your choice. Or is this conception just another illusion that we are all under ?
Should we perhaps delve deeply into Marshall McLuhan's 1964 classic, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, about the true nature of media and its implications on society, for some direction on this issue ?
For McLuhan a medium is "any extension of ourselves" or, more broadly, "any new technology". In addition to traditional forms of media such as newspapers, television, and radio, McLuhan included the light bulb, cars, speech, language and mechanization. His definition of "media" is interchangeable with "technologies" since they mediate our communication and their forms or structures affect how we perceive and understand the world around us.
He suggested that the medium affects society mainly by the characteristics of the medium itself, rather than by its content. Mechanization, for example, impacts workers and society in the same way regardless of the product (content) manufactured (e.g. corn flakes or Cadillacs). As an example for a medium with no content McLuhan used a light bulb which does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium in that it has a social effect by enabling people to create spaces during nighttime.
McLuhan lived before the internet, but can we directly translate his concepts to this new medium which now pervades our global society ? 'Cyberspace' is now a rather passe term, yet can we analogously apply it to his idea of the new personal and societal 'space in the darkness of night' created by the advent of electric lighting ? (Perhaps the term 'cyberspace' is now not commonly used, because all conceptions of 'space' need boundaries to delineate them, and the boundaries of cyberspace have ceased to exist with the advent of global internet access as well as applicability.) Then we need to wipe away all of the content in our conception of cyberspace as a medium and see it like light illuminating what was once darkness. But in the case of the lightbulb as a medium, it wasn't simply that it illuminated what we couldn't see in the night, but also that it made possible direct interaction with what was illuminated too.
Let's face it, the internet would be nothing like it is, w/o its interactivity; if you had no keyboard or touchpad or camera or microphone, maybe just a knob to choose channels of content. But in McLuhan's conception, we must also take away 'the what' of that which we are posting, or reacting to, since it is the medium, not the content that matters. How would the pure nature of the internet as 'medium' change if we couldn't interact with what we saw on-line -- and just as importantly, if we knew, no one else could interact with us ?
Is it then the personal 'reach' and 'clout' the interactivity makes possible (even as just a potential) that really defines the medium of the net ? Could this then be like the concept of 'democracy' as a form of governance which conveys a collective sense of equality and singular identity among all citizens of country, even though that situation is likely far from reality ? But democracy is just an abstract concept, while the reach and clout of the internet medium comes on-line for me, each time i turn on my computer and confirm the respective icon in the corner of my screen. It is definitely a real felt sense for me, as i assume it must be for every other 'user'. Being in the on-line state is a seductive felt sense, waiting for my input. The reach is there -- i could look up a website in Kazakhstan and use the Google Translate option if necessary; as is the clout -- what i write and post here, could be read by someone in Kazakhstan, unlikely as that might be. But like 'democracy' it is the idea that pervades my experience and like any other existential reality, i know we create and maintain our experience of what the internet is, by consistent habits. But McLuhan's understanding of what a 'medium' is and how it truly impacts us and re-forms our social structure, seems to go beyond the personal experience of it.
Each medium, McLuhan said, "adds itself on to what we already are", realizing "amputations and extensions" to our senses and bodies, shaping them in a new technical form. As appealing as this remaking of ourselves may seem, it really puts us in a "narcissistic hypnosis" that prevents us from seeing the real nature of the media. Awareness of the changes are what McLuhan seemed to consider most important, so that, in his estimation, the only sure disaster would be a society not perceiving a technology's effects on their world, especially the chasms and tensions between generations. The only possible way to discern the real "principles and lines of force" of a medium (or structure) is to stand aside from it and be detached from it. This is necessary to avoid the powerful ability of any medium to put the unwary into a "subliminal state of Narcissus trance", imposing "its own assumptions, bias, and values" on them. Instead, while in a detached position, one can predict and control the effects of the medium. But this is difficult because "the spell can occur immediately upon contact, as in the first bars of a melody". [excerpts used from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media ]
well said & so true in many ways & so much more to it. tech is typically also a futile attempt to replicate/replace nature in some way (also where most ideas come from in the first place). essentially replacing natural innate instincts, abilities &/or skills & consciousness (also why it is so easily accepted - 1 e.g. "labour-saving devices"), & transferring power/control to the "owners" of the tech, with some form of unnatural "product" to purchase with our own time/energy - essentially doing it to ourselves with our consent, but unaware of what is actually occurring. brainwashed, marketed & sold as necessities to life, all the while actually damaging/destroying real life/nature/innate abilities to produce it & to afford it...let alone "planned obsolescence"...let alone typically also being directly & indirectly toxic to ourselves & environment on so many levels, most are not even aware/conscious of, or do not even acknowledge, much less comprehend. there must obviously be a bigger picture as to why all this is occurring...& why intentionally retard peoples health, wealth & natural innate abilities???
Great post Joe, I've liked your work for a long time now. I followed you early on in CE. This part: "The decline in our capacity and resilience also creates worse and worse decisions because we are driven by survival physiology, further feeding into disorienting feelings." That is only one piece of the puzzle. It's my contention that most people are adrenaline addicts through the fear based programming of Tell-Lie-Vision. They keep a low level fear based program running so when they pump you up with the "News," you get fear and an anxious emotion due to the way they promote the information provided. That fear and anxiety initiates an adrenaline response. The thing about being addicted to adrenaline is your next fix is only a negative thought away. If you add a strong emotion to your fearful thought you can increase the dose of adrenaline. Fear keep you in fight or flight which keeps you in your basal brain and restricts access to your frontal lobe where calm and reason based thinking occurs.
The world is full of adrenaline junkies that don't even know they are addicted to adrenaline, to them that's just normal life because that fear based brain washing machine has blared propaganda in their house 24/7, 365 days a year, When they get in nature they don't know how to act.... keep up you good work...Peace...
"I believe what we are going through is not just rapid and disorienting change but it’s also happening as we collectively witness a decline in capacity and resilience, making all of it seem much more challenging.
The decline in our capacity and resilience also creates worse and worse decisions because we are driven by survival physiology, further feeding into disorienting feelings."
Really great point. I catch myself getting into "it's this or it's that" type thinking, but you lay out the layers and complexity really well and make a good case for me to focus more on my practice haha.
Well said as always. Been nice to go back through the CE archives again.
I can relate to the Sunday afternoon Italian feasts. I was privileged to have them for many years. That's what they were. A cultural and culinary feast.
I agree with all your points but I fear you overlooked one glaring possible reason: Loss of God. Believing in God (and even Christianity and its deep rich heritage) anchored Western civilization and gave people inspiration and a sense of direction and community. We lost that.
Now we put our 'faith' in idolatry and false gods. Be it tech, nouveau-age spiritual trends (people pick and choose parts of various faiths and create a hideous quilt that doesn't provide a real strong spiritual compass thus creating a sense of emptiness) or other examples mentioned in the article.
But God.
That's a biggie to me.
Purpose, service, contribution seems to be the age old remedy to escape the prison of the mind. Do something kind every day. If that doesn't cure the crazies, then do more. Sweep the streets. Weed the bed. Talk to someone no one wants to talk to. Sign up to work the food bank.
Excellent article. Very well thought out. We really are in the eye of the storm now - we are all trying to figure things out. We've gone down the path of commerce and it's left us all empty, maybe not all, but those who do not feel the effects must be very self centered. How can humans feel ok about all the devastation of our environment and fellow humans? There's something wrong with that picture. We should be all concerned about each other because if it can happen to others, it can happen to me. One thing that built relationships in the past and this is a huge thing, it may be the main thing - is that people depended on each other for their livelihoods. Some grew corn and tomatoes while others had chickens and provided eggs, etc. In these modern times, we don't produce anything, just paperwork and we rely on our sustenance on industry. We leave families and places where we know people to go to "a better job" (which usually means a lot more money) Money is the only thing that drives us today - rarely principle. Money IS the principle. It is the highest priority and we mostly all live this way. We accept that people will go for the greater amount and we coddle it instead of question it and even consider it unsavory. Bringing our needs back to our local people is what will enhance relationships. That's how we meet people, get to know them, get to know who does live with principle and get to share our lives together. Everything our culture is premised on is despicable - greed, scarcity, waste, isolation, worship of Big, etc. It is only up to us to change it. And we can - first we need to talk about it and share ideas and something will come out of that.
well said & yes great article. totally agree & so much to all this. not attempting to boast at all by any means, just ideas & sharing my experience, but with my work, i endeavour, to the best of my ability/conscious awareness, to conduct it with integrity and as cheap as possible to complete appropriately. typically costs me more time than i charge, but there are so many other benefits/outcomes that are immeasurable. and do quite a lot of random free work/advice i would just consider as a minor contribution to the community. try not to waste anything & therefore also appreciate much more with much less. also grow as much food as i can in a small city property & share excess produce with friends, neighbours, local shops etc. & most weeks drop in a box of random "volunteer" excess seedlings to a local shop, free for customers to encourage them to grow also. so many seemingly little things we can do that will help in many ways, most we will never know...
Also consider the anxiety and dread which are very reasonable responses to reports of climate change, ocean acidification etc
The last 12 months have each broken the temp record. Failure of leadership 40 years ago - eg Reagan removed Carter’s solar panels at the white house - has essentially continued to this day. Whether demonic or idiotic in complicity with extractive forces, it’s most disturbing to behold. (Regeneration.org compiles dozens of restoration methods btw)
Add this to the persistence of the military industrial complex - Ukraine, Israel receiving billions worth of destructive stuff - which is in fact a major driver of climate change
And the failure to heed the warnings about AI from its very developers (eg Geoffrey Hinton), instead we see it being incorporated into daily life.
Listening to the birds outside..it’s a beautiful world. Let benevolence and biophilia reign.
I lean towards Terrence McKenna suggestion of psilocybin to help us ‘turn on a dime’ as a society, plus a massive ad campaign and direct mailing..thanks for your work Joe🙏
It is difficult to develop as an individual in a tribe. Our ancestors lived for the most part in small tribes. There are many positives with having extended family close by. How to reconcile these two aspects of life?
But how do we know ALL modern humans feel so empty ? Or even a majority of people in Kazakhstan, for example ? How is it that we can even make those kind of sweeping, vastly implicating statements like that, knowing on some level that they are correct ? Or rather, at least knowing that most people reading them will agree with us ? i would say it's exactly because of the nature of the internet -- this medium which pervades everything now. And if you equate the internet with WiFi and wireless connectivity, it does, in principle, traverse every point on the planet today, considering that StarLink and the other satellite providers are making it well known that soon, nowhere on the planet will it be impossible to bring up Google on a device of your choice. Or is this conception just another illusion that we are all under ?
Should we perhaps delve deeply into Marshall McLuhan's 1964 classic, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, about the true nature of media and its implications on society, for some direction on this issue ?
For McLuhan a medium is "any extension of ourselves" or, more broadly, "any new technology". In addition to traditional forms of media such as newspapers, television, and radio, McLuhan included the light bulb, cars, speech, language and mechanization. His definition of "media" is interchangeable with "technologies" since they mediate our communication and their forms or structures affect how we perceive and understand the world around us.
He suggested that the medium affects society mainly by the characteristics of the medium itself, rather than by its content. Mechanization, for example, impacts workers and society in the same way regardless of the product (content) manufactured (e.g. corn flakes or Cadillacs). As an example for a medium with no content McLuhan used a light bulb which does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium in that it has a social effect by enabling people to create spaces during nighttime.
McLuhan lived before the internet, but can we directly translate his concepts to this new medium which now pervades our global society ? 'Cyberspace' is now a rather passe term, yet can we analogously apply it to his idea of the new personal and societal 'space in the darkness of night' created by the advent of electric lighting ? (Perhaps the term 'cyberspace' is now not commonly used, because all conceptions of 'space' need boundaries to delineate them, and the boundaries of cyberspace have ceased to exist with the advent of global internet access as well as applicability.) Then we need to wipe away all of the content in our conception of cyberspace as a medium and see it like light illuminating what was once darkness. But in the case of the lightbulb as a medium, it wasn't simply that it illuminated what we couldn't see in the night, but also that it made possible direct interaction with what was illuminated too.
Let's face it, the internet would be nothing like it is, w/o its interactivity; if you had no keyboard or touchpad or camera or microphone, maybe just a knob to choose channels of content. But in McLuhan's conception, we must also take away 'the what' of that which we are posting, or reacting to, since it is the medium, not the content that matters. How would the pure nature of the internet as 'medium' change if we couldn't interact with what we saw on-line -- and just as importantly, if we knew, no one else could interact with us ?
Is it then the personal 'reach' and 'clout' the interactivity makes possible (even as just a potential) that really defines the medium of the net ? Could this then be like the concept of 'democracy' as a form of governance which conveys a collective sense of equality and singular identity among all citizens of country, even though that situation is likely far from reality ? But democracy is just an abstract concept, while the reach and clout of the internet medium comes on-line for me, each time i turn on my computer and confirm the respective icon in the corner of my screen. It is definitely a real felt sense for me, as i assume it must be for every other 'user'. Being in the on-line state is a seductive felt sense, waiting for my input. The reach is there -- i could look up a website in Kazakhstan and use the Google Translate option if necessary; as is the clout -- what i write and post here, could be read by someone in Kazakhstan, unlikely as that might be. But like 'democracy' it is the idea that pervades my experience and like any other existential reality, i know we create and maintain our experience of what the internet is, by consistent habits. But McLuhan's understanding of what a 'medium' is and how it truly impacts us and re-forms our social structure, seems to go beyond the personal experience of it.
Each medium, McLuhan said, "adds itself on to what we already are", realizing "amputations and extensions" to our senses and bodies, shaping them in a new technical form. As appealing as this remaking of ourselves may seem, it really puts us in a "narcissistic hypnosis" that prevents us from seeing the real nature of the media. Awareness of the changes are what McLuhan seemed to consider most important, so that, in his estimation, the only sure disaster would be a society not perceiving a technology's effects on their world, especially the chasms and tensions between generations. The only possible way to discern the real "principles and lines of force" of a medium (or structure) is to stand aside from it and be detached from it. This is necessary to avoid the powerful ability of any medium to put the unwary into a "subliminal state of Narcissus trance", imposing "its own assumptions, bias, and values" on them. Instead, while in a detached position, one can predict and control the effects of the medium. But this is difficult because "the spell can occur immediately upon contact, as in the first bars of a melody". [excerpts used from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media ]
well said & so true in many ways & so much more to it. tech is typically also a futile attempt to replicate/replace nature in some way (also where most ideas come from in the first place). essentially replacing natural innate instincts, abilities &/or skills & consciousness (also why it is so easily accepted - 1 e.g. "labour-saving devices"), & transferring power/control to the "owners" of the tech, with some form of unnatural "product" to purchase with our own time/energy - essentially doing it to ourselves with our consent, but unaware of what is actually occurring. brainwashed, marketed & sold as necessities to life, all the while actually damaging/destroying real life/nature/innate abilities to produce it & to afford it...let alone "planned obsolescence"...let alone typically also being directly & indirectly toxic to ourselves & environment on so many levels, most are not even aware/conscious of, or do not even acknowledge, much less comprehend. there must obviously be a bigger picture as to why all this is occurring...& why intentionally retard peoples health, wealth & natural innate abilities???
Great post Joe, I've liked your work for a long time now. I followed you early on in CE. This part: "The decline in our capacity and resilience also creates worse and worse decisions because we are driven by survival physiology, further feeding into disorienting feelings." That is only one piece of the puzzle. It's my contention that most people are adrenaline addicts through the fear based programming of Tell-Lie-Vision. They keep a low level fear based program running so when they pump you up with the "News," you get fear and an anxious emotion due to the way they promote the information provided. That fear and anxiety initiates an adrenaline response. The thing about being addicted to adrenaline is your next fix is only a negative thought away. If you add a strong emotion to your fearful thought you can increase the dose of adrenaline. Fear keep you in fight or flight which keeps you in your basal brain and restricts access to your frontal lobe where calm and reason based thinking occurs.
The world is full of adrenaline junkies that don't even know they are addicted to adrenaline, to them that's just normal life because that fear based brain washing machine has blared propaganda in their house 24/7, 365 days a year, When they get in nature they don't know how to act.... keep up you good work...Peace...
"I believe what we are going through is not just rapid and disorienting change but it’s also happening as we collectively witness a decline in capacity and resilience, making all of it seem much more challenging.
The decline in our capacity and resilience also creates worse and worse decisions because we are driven by survival physiology, further feeding into disorienting feelings."
Really great point. I catch myself getting into "it's this or it's that" type thinking, but you lay out the layers and complexity really well and make a good case for me to focus more on my practice haha.
Well said as always. Been nice to go back through the CE archives again.
Thanks man! Looking forward to your course.
Thankyou for your writing, and your example of true engagement .
That’s why we need inspiration. Check out a better way of living life through better governance. marniekhaw.substack.com