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Clearing the Modern Mind

The modern mind is fundamentally divorced not only from reality as a state, but as a motive. In its delusional state, the brain frenetically confirms its own hypotheses because it cannot compare them to reality and thus determine how fit they are as solutions. For this reason it has nothing to consider but its initial assumptions, which it soon begins to defend vigorously. As a result, any ideas that contradict these are seen not as ideas but as acts of aggression against it, and the bearers of the modern mindset lash out at them.

It is for this reason that thinkers attempting to escape the modern have hit on a new hypothesis: our worldview is broken, not our methods. Most systems until this point have tried to regulate method, by changing economic or political systems, or trying to re-educate our language or visual preferences. While these efforts have each changed some traits of our societies, they have not changed the basic trend, which remains consistent. For this reason, liberalism has failed; conservatism has failed; even reformers have failed. Politics cannot save us, nor can economics, nor can military might. We must rethink our psychology.

PTSD

Although studies about the effects of living under a clear dominant authority, such as totalitarianism or the Stockholm Syndrome, are familiar, few have studied what happens under passive authority. Passive authority is created by an assumption that defines reality, and because its power is predicated on that hypothesis, a tendency to punish those who contradict that worldview. In passive authority, those who deviate from unstated rules are punished, where totalitarianism relies clearly states its rules and punishes those who oppose them. Passive authority is a superior mechanism for control because it does not act aggressively against detractors without first having construed them as the first to act with aggression. It is always the victim; always the well-intentioned parental figure, abused by its offspring, and thus justified in punishing them. Since its power relies on its assumptions regarding reality, anyone who differs with those is the worst kind of ideological criminal.

This leads us to the interesting condition called "Post Tramautic Stress Disorder," or PTSD. It occurs frequently whenever there is a disturbing or violent even that shapes the life of its victim, but it almost always happens when there is such an event and no way to reconstruct the self afterwards, such as by justifying the event as necessary or good. Most of us are familiar with the high rate of PTSD in returning Vietnam veterans, but a lack of corresponding rate in soldiers from the second world war, despite in many ways a more horrifying experience. Many theorize that the reason is very simple: veterans in the 1940s came home to congratulations, while Vietnam vets never had a clear positive consensus coming back to them from society. As a result, they were forced into the role of "bad guy" by the passivity of a society which would send them to a war and then, as a result of its own indecision, blame them for its extremity.

PTSD describes most of the people in modern society on a day-to-day basis. Although they are functional, they are in shock at a sublime level, such that most of what they do is part of a cover story that affirms their sanity and self-worth. Like secret agents in the field, they use their cover story to reinforce their sense of self, which is actually defined in a completely different way, since their internal agenda does not match the goals they would reveal in conversation. They are secret agents for their own safety and fulfilment. They can never tell their actual motivations to those around them.

This is a consequence of passive unreality. When we are all expected to silently agree on something that is not real, those who speak out for truth are the aggressors, and the passive society retaliates against them (ostracization, boycott, crucifixion). For this reason, those who dare glimpse the truth are traumatized by realizing that the knowledge upon which we need to act is the very knowledge that we deny, and they spot then not just an error in our society, but a fundamental corruption so vast that it will if not destroy us turn us into creatures of servitude to the most base and boring existence possible.

Disadvantages

Another area in which the passive society dominates: we live in a time where people cannot tell the difference between a disadvantage and a failure. A disadvantage is a negative consequence of some act when the act still attains its goal; for example, if I need to put wood on the fire but I bark my shin on the woodpile. In that case, it's illogical to say "I can never build a fire again, because I must bark my shin" - the fire must be made, so the possibility of barked shin is taken as a disadvantage. On the other hand, a failure is when an act cannot achieve its goal. If my goal is to make a fire, and I attempt to do it by machine-gunning the woodpile, then I have failed (there may also be disadvantages).

Lashing out against disadvantages supports a passive society. First, assume that the status quo is a working solution which will always get better - people who feel that modern society is fixing the past fall into this category, one which is "progressive" in that people believe we're on the path to progress and therefore, even if things are bad, they will get better because we are on the path of progress. Second, take any argument against the status quo and find a disadvantage with it, thus discard it. If we make our fires outside, the thought of making them inside is immediately discredited because we might bark our shins. This argument against disadvantages is passive because it denies the disadvantages brought on by the current system, and essentially demands a perfect, Utopian, flawless solution in order to change course - and when we drop that pretense, we see it's all a big logic trap designed to reject any course but the present. You might even call it inertia and not be wrong. This passive view of the world is fundamentally negative, in that it assumes there is only one solution, and we already have it, thus we must accept what is wrong and not seek to change it, because any change will bring about some disadvantages. People even argue this in terms of lives lost; we cannot have change, as someone might die, even if that person is crazy and dies because of his or her craziness. Therefore, they rigidly stick to a failing course of action and lash out at anyone who proposes something different, as those disadvantages might not only inconvenience them, but might illustrate the complete illogical farce that is modern society.

Brainless

Our society is passive because it defers to the judgment of individuals. It defers to the judgment of individuals because, lacking a common cultural or philosophical goal, it unites itself through the power of vast crowds of individuals who, as granular political entities, want nothing more than an increase in personal wealth and power and social prestige. The Crowd is formed of those who cannot lead, so their agenda is to destroy leaders, and then to drag down standards for earning wealth and gaining power and achieving social prestige, so that even idiots can do it. The Crowd likes the kind of system that rewards you for spending the time, not doing something genius or unusually powerful.

This makes for a brainless society. Our opinions depend on the opinions of others, which means that no one is leading, because the way one "leads" is to figure out what other people are thinking. We're all asking each other what we should think and, since there's no way to get a clear thought of that process, always concluding that we should keep on roughly the same course and beat down anyone who threatens it. To liven things up, we rename our course and re-construe it as something new, but it has basically been the same for at least 2,000 years. It has been and is the process of making the rule of the Crowd stronger, under the guise that this will empower the individual (and it does, in the short term - it's just the long term where the individual must pay the price).

How does this brainlessness manifest itself? We no longer have any clear path from the current time to a better state except for our assumption. We assume that by continuing the process of equality, of "freedom" and economic empowerment, we will arrive at a Utopia, but have we seen any signs of that yet? Things get worse, but because we exist in a passive society where teh assumption of "progress" is a sacred cow, we take no clear action. Instead, we allow ourselves to be led: we are led by the economy, by popularity, or by "surprise" disasters for which we cannot prepare. We have no sense of design; our cities are a jumble of different functions that collaborate reasonably while we have cheap transportation, but reflect no particular order. Our lives are empty because there is no purpose other than self-gratification. Our hands are tied at the elbow in thousands of ways, where we reach for something that seems intuitively to be a better future, and then are reminded that it is unacceptable: we will cut someone out of the picture, cause a retarded orphan to cry, offend the sensibilities of some political entity. In short, we will transgress against the passive ones, and thus, the Crowd will rise up and smite us.

Passivity

It is almost impossible to explain to someone why passivity is destructive. After all, it is like a form of pacifism, and if conflict is eliminated, we tend to think a situation is under control. Peace is the absence of war. However, it can also be the absence of something necessary that some call "change" but to my mind is more fundamental: doing what is necessary to maintain a social order headed to ever-higher heights. If we make peace our goal, instead of doing the right thing, we have no way to get ourselves back on track once we drift toward mediocrity. We have no way to forcibly say NO to someone who is doing something retrograde and destructive. Passivity ties our hands, except for in one special circumstance. When someone violates passivity, even if for a higher goal than is currently being pursued, they are crucified, because we value peace more than we care about being on the path to something better.

Terms like "truth" and "right" and "justice" and "freedom" have become our enemies. They are too easily twisted with implication, and inevitably, those who do the twisting run off to make great profit behind the scenes while their civic-minded neighbors fight it out over the definitions - ultimately concluding nothing, because few of them understand enough philosophy to make sense out of the question. We cannot say we desire truth, because some clever nitwit will say, "Well, whose truth?" implying that we live in different worlds and therefore there is a different assessment of truth in each. We cannot say "x is right and y is wrong" for the same reason. We have lost the sense of cultural and social consensus that allows us to agree on reality not in a descriptive sense, e.g. "The tree is green," as much in a valuative sense, as in "It's more important to have written language than hedonism." It is this consensus that allows civilizations to arise where none previously were, and when the consensus aims toward a higher standard for the civilization, it is what allows great civilizations to arise: Rome, Greece, India, Germany.

Our modern passivity comes about because we became distracted by wealth and power; the ones who were distracted were those who did not have wealth and power, and thus made a collective crusade out of it: this was the Crowd. Those who had self-confidence, noble bearing, and intelligence had these things already, or had no need for them, much as a Zen monk desires neither Cadillac nor CEO position. When the Crowd overwhelmed the leaders with its superior numbers, the leaders tended to fade out of the spotlight and try to survive as best they can. However, no person is an island, and when your society is run by people driven insane by greed and mortal fear, soon you too will be working for their causes and not your own. As it is today: cost of living is high and everyone works/commutes for ten hours a day. You either join the procession, or you starve in obscurity, and if you fight it, you have offended Passivity and will be beaten down as an enemy of the state.

Morality

If a cyclic view of history is adopted, the solution to this mess has already been present in the past many times, and will return when the Crowd finally screws up to the point of wrecking things, allowing some of the smart people to manipulate others into creating a civilization around a concept other than those which motivate failing civilizations (egodrama, materialism, equality of Crowd members). One thing that can be hinted at is the need for a different morality in two key ways. First, it will not be dualistic. Second, it will not be individualistic, at least in the populist sense that places the individual before all else, even sense.

When we speak of dualistic morality, we are describing the source of moral judgment in the moral system. Dualistic morality requires an absolute reason for judgment external to the reality in which we live. This can be a god, or an abstract concept, like equality, or simply a conception of "truth" which exists independently as opposed to exists as interpretation. When someone says "The truth is..." they are on dangerous ground unless they understand the alchemy of truth; it is an assessment of an action or idea in the context of the ultimate "truth" of existence, which is existence itself - otherwise known as "reality." To say something is true is to say that it corresponds approximately to a prediction of how an action or idea will translate into the world. This is why we can say that "You will survive a ten story fall" is NOT true, unless there are mitigating circumstances. Truth is a way we interpret our thoughts alone; when we speak of things external to our thoughts, truth is a tautology, since because they exist, they are true. There is no way to encapsulate truth outside of this formula. Dualistic truth attempts to do exactly that. If we are to move forward from our current disease, as a species, we must find our truth in our thoughts as they adapt to our reality, and not try to create some Truth which we can define somewhere and force upon the Crowd, because they cannot figure it out themselves.

And what of the individual in morality? Our current morality is that of the Crowd, because we believe that preservation of the individual is the highest goal we can have. Our commandment is not "Do what is right," but "Avoid doing what is wrong." Do not kill. Do not offend. Do not brush aside the "rights" of another. The only exception is the primal one, which is that one may kill or offend or deny rights when the person in question has transgressed against society; can you see how passivity comes into play here? Society sets the rules, and those who disagree have no option, because their opinions themselves are even an offense. They must either find a way to frame their ideas in terms of Crowdist doctrine (not possible) or they must be silent, lest they transgress and the injured party, Society at large, take its turn to crush them.

For these reasons, when we speak of "morality" now, what we are talking about is an abstract concept with no relation to practical, here-and-now existence, and it is based in the individual, as none wish to find themselves inconvenienced by the need to do what is "right"! What we have created is the greatest illusion that any thinking being can undertake, which is the supposition that our thoughts are reality, and that we exist independently of our external world (including death). In this light, the environmental destruction by humans is entirely too clearly revealed as more than gross ignorance; we had to destroy the environment to "prove" to ourselves that only our thoughts dictate the world. Why is our society such a mess? We are distracted, all of us, by following our personal vision - to the point that we do not consider that it is contained in, and dependent on, a whole. The modern human is oblivious to the fact that his consciousness merges with a larger awareness. Therefore, he sees nothing but himself and his own desires.

Frustration

It is impossible to both live now, and be aware of the whole; one who attempts a "holistic morality" whereby one thinks outside the individual and instead asks, "What is the best order for all of this - nature, humanity, and cosmos?" will surely go insane. Daytime is occupied by function, whether in job or family, and in fending off the handful of thoughts that are repeated a million different ways by almost all of the voices around us. It's hard for people to realize how pervasive our media is, but think about it: of the people you talk to on a daily basis, how many got their information either from product-media (meaning: media that sells stories as a product, so that truthfulness is secondary) or from someone who did? Even if you live in academia, or the rural areas of this continent, the answer is likely 75% or more.

We live in a time of inferior minds masquerading as benevolent leaders; we have eliminated the independent, realistic thinkers or driven them into hiding; we are motivated by profit and equality, which are one and the same impulse, thus we keep ourselves from rising to the real challenges that can select better minds among us. Our society has not made a bad choice of political system or economic system, but a bad choice of its most fundamental value: it has elected for Crowd domination, and from that all else has come. (Money is popular, especially among the poor, for the same reason the lottery is: one can dream that one will climb the ladder that way, and it's an easier and more likely dream than gaining traits like nobility, intelligence and beauty. The Crowd loves easy ways to get ahead.)

And there is no escape. Society is global. It poisons air, earth and sea, so even running away to a faroff land will not stop the problem. People have tried various solutions and each has failed, depressing us further. Those who can even understand the issues in question are the smallest minority of all minorities in society. New types of government, "new" ideas about language or values, and new economic systems or new areas to make wealth are all failures. The disease is within. To fix it, we must reprogram ourselves.

PPOT vs PTSD

To change the world, we must first become what we wish it to be, and the first step in that is to think positive. The apocalyptic agenda of various political groups - leftists and far-rightists in particular - is destructive in that it is anticlimatic. They will encourage you to take desperate action because if you do not, right now, the cause will be lost. They do this because they respond to very simple emotional symbols, and to desperate situations, much like bad movies always feature lost orphans and murdered puppies and other heart-tugging symbols. This mentality is part of Crowdism. Discard it. There is time for us to act, and our actions do not need be hasty. Think positive: the world is good, and what we are going through now is one part of its cycle, and therefore, we shall be delivered from it as inexorably as we came into it.

Positive thinking takes many forms. Just saying to yourself that there is a solution will free you from the PTSD that afflicts our smartest people, who go through life tortured by the knowledge of the death-march upon which our species has embarked. Set that out of your head. If you think positive, you can see another way and act accordingly; even a small percentage of people doing this are important, because they put the lie to the Crowdist doctrine that there is no other way, and they fragment the Crowd by making its members distrust its conclusions. Positive thinking crushes fearful thinking, which is all that binds a crowd together. They're afraid that they cannot stand alone, and cannot face the consequences of their choices, so they form what is basically a large street gang, even if they call it liberal democracy and stamp UN and ADL logos all over it.

Positive thinking delivers you from frustration and depression. It also gives you focus to work on positive things. One of the many reasons that White Nationalism is a failure doctrine for utter morons is its inherent negativity; White Nationalists are by definition people of mixed Irish-Slavic heritage who would rather sit around complaining about African-Americans that doing something positive for white people. Furthermore, they're afraid to admit that even among white people there are divisions, and that some are better than others. That is Crowdism, and its roots are in depression and fear and underconfidence. Positive thinking builds confidence. Wherever you are in the hierarchy of life, even if you're a paraplegic AIDS-ridden slave, if you act according to positive principles, you will not only be doing right but you will be feeling better about yourself for doing it. Positive thinking followed by positive action drives away underconfidence.

Post-Crowdism

Once you have a positive outlook, you can look into changing the psychology of our times - in yourself. Observe what the Crowd believes and how it manifests itself. Realize it is a deficiency. Then, act without that deficiency. Where others have individualistic morals, think in a holistic moral sense, where you do what is right by an external order no matter who is inconvenienced. Although people on the Internet (generally oversocialized, underconfident losers) will tell you otherwise, if you have some brains and think positively, you will rapidly get to positions of power where you can exercise this ability. Do so. You will inspire others and show how the Crowdist doctrine of "the individual ueber alles" is false.

It's too much to outline a complete solution in this article, and no thinker worth his or her salt will do so, because once you set it down in black and white, the Crowd immediately emulates it as an unconscious attempt to discredit it. But what should be clear here is that by leaving passivity behind, you become a creator and a lover instead of a destroyer and fearer; those who claim not be destroyers, not to be afraid, to embrace difference, etc. are the ones with the greatest amount of fear, and that's why they preach doctrines that are accessible to the biggest sheep among us. When you think positively, and outthink Crowdism, you lay the foundations for getting past this bad period of human psychology. In that is something greater than defeat of the Crowd - it is victory for all of us.