ecosophia | The Root of the Madness

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The Root of the Madness

It occurred to me yesterday, while mulling over various symptoms of our ongoing national nervous breakdown, that there's a very simple explanation for it all: a very large number of people in our well-to-do classes have accepted the New Age notion that they create their own reality, and taken the next step -- the step that leads to madness -- and convinced themselves that they create everyone else's reality too.

Do you remember, dear reader, the aftermath of Trump's election in 2016? A great many of his opponents immediately insisted that those who voted for him could only have been motivated by racism. I originally put that down to Democratic propaganda, but it was more than that. When I pointed out to people who were spouting that particular line that they were wrong, and offered them a good deal of evidence that they were wrong, they didn't argue or challenge the evidence or anything -- they just got a thousand-mile stare in their eyes and insisted again that the people who voted for Trump could only have been motivated by racism. It was eerie.

It took quite a while for me to realize that these people thought that they, not Trump voters, got to decide why Trump voters voted the way they did. The reality that Trump voters are human beings, with their own values, needs, concerns, and motives, simply didn't exist for these people. The bleak economic landscape created by policies that benefit our well-to-do classes didn't exist for them either, and articles that talked about that harsh reality -- here's a recent one, and here's another -- made no impression, because that wasn't the reality they chose to live in.

I had another brush with that during the debate I had here on Dreamwidth with Michael M. Hughes, one of the leading figures in the soi-disant "Magic Resistance." One of the points I tried to make in that discussion was that the magical workings he was teaching people to do were bunny-slope stuff, inadequate for the purpose he had in mind. His response was to insist loudly that no, they were powerful magical rituals. At the time I was baffled, because they weren't; there are plenty of technical details that you put into a magical working to make it powerful, and his had none of those; furthermore, he was limiting himself to techniques that can be used by complete beginners, which again is a pretty fair demonstration that we're talking about the bunny slope. I realize now that he seriously thought that his workings were powerful because he said they were.

Take a look across the battered and smoking wasteland of our national consciousness and you'll see the same thing over and over again: a good many members of the comfortable classes have lost track of the fact that they don't get to decide what the universe will be. Violent rioters and arsonists are peaceful protesters, for example; why? Because we say they are, that's why.

I was about to write the words "that way lies madness," but we're much too far along the curve for that. A significant fraction of the well-to-do in today's America have lost their last fingernail grip on reality and are insisting that the universe is whatever they want it to be. Since reality doesn't know or care in the least what they think about it, this will not end well.

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Thank you for this! I'm living in Germany and it's still some time the next elections, but I notice an increasing madness around me, too. In fact, in the wake of the subject that shall not be named, this has reached new highs that I admit have become difficult to bear for me. It's become hard to keep the bullshit-filters working. This madness seems to spill over into much more areas of society and I begin to notice the pressure of the social grid which seems serve more and more like a fishing net than anything else. Frightening. Maybe start to cut the last ties and sail full speed ahead (if I knew the direction...), which is - as I have already written - difficult without any sign tentacled underground to rely on...

Cheers,
Nachtgurke

I'm not an American, but I've spent all my professional life around political systems in different countries. I think I recognise some patterns here. Some are what Marxists used to call Permanently Operating Factors of politics, others are specific to this situation. I'm on a very different time zone, so apologies if I duplicate comments made elsewhere.
First, politicians have to project an image of certainty and determination about things, although in my experience many of them are are actually very insecure and often out of their depth. They compensate for this by being stubborn and strident (Margaret Thatcher: "don't confuse me with facts, I know what I think.")
Second, political systems have become progressively more ingrown. The elites you describe now talk only to each other. Career politicians, would-be career politicians, pundits, journalists, NGOs, consultants, in fact the entire ecosystem, are much more homogeneous than they used to be. Reality is what is agreed to be true within the group and the penalty for dissent is expulsion. If everybody you know says the same thing ("the economy is doing fine", "all expenditure has to be funded from taxes") then that becomes reality. Moreover, the US system in particular is enormous and very powerful, and is actually capable of imposing reality on its own citizens and others. Managing international crises often depends much more on what Washington thinks than the actual situation on the ground. So the reported comment by a Bush official ("we're an empire now, we create our own reality") is just an extreme version of what's been happening for a long time now.
Third, much political thinking is magical anyway. As writers from Chesterton to Charles Taylor have pointed out, when people abandon religion, they don't become sober rationalists, they are more likely to believe in anything. The dominant economic policy of the last fifty years - neoliberal economics - has been called an ideology, but it's better seen as a type of magical thinking or even religion (utter spells, things happen). Likewise, secular documents (Human Rights texts, Constitutions) have been given a sacred status, and the tone of such documents is increasingly normative - ie describing the world as it should be, rather than it is.
But there is something special going on here, as you suggest.
Once upon a time, there were genuine parties of the Left with mass membership and a base among ordinary people. They were often run by ordinary people as well. From the 1980s, these parties were taken over by the Professional/Managerial Class, university educated, often wealthy, often with family or educational links to the media, finance, the universities etc, and to the comfortably off in general. The mass political base, links with trades unions etc. just seemed embarrassing and were quickly discarded. These parties (beginning with Clinton and Blair in the 90s) increasingly became the preferred political expression of educated professionals with vaguely liberal inclinations, but no intention of giving up their status and comfort. For their traditional supporters, the message was clear: "you have nowhere else to go, and if you think we're bad, look at the other lot."
This worked for a while, but there was a big problem. Unlike parties of the Right, which never pretended to be anything else than they were - interested in power and wealth - parties of the Left had a long and colourful history of struggles, victories and defeat, with a mythology and an iconography, and a series of principles and aspirations. Collectively this produced something - maybe there's a magical term - which couldn't easily be discarded. And it was something that the new PMC leaders deliberately set out to betray. After every election victory they would shaft the very people who had brought them to power . But you can't keep doing this forever, and in some countries (France for example) the PMC elites are in total disarray. The law of Karma seems to be doing its work.
In spite of what you see in the media, few politicians actually consider themselves to be deliberately evil. At some level, these PMC types can only live with themselves by constructing an image of personal virtue, even as they smash and destroy every part of their political heritage. This sets up huge cognitive dissonance, which can only be discharged outwardly - by identifying enemies against which the PMC elites are bravely fighting, terrible threats needing to be addressed, virtuous behaviour required and so forth. Only inner self-disgust and perhaps some kind of karmic effect can explain the hysteria and stridency of what we're seeing now. And it's going to end in tears.

A few small plastic freebee Biden signs here in Ohio. Trump signs are as sparse, but tend to be huge.

Well... getting kicked out of the middle class and taking up Green Wizardry has been very good for my mental health!

Where I'm living on the Iron Range of Northeast Minnesota, I saw one person wearing a Biden face mask. The majority of signs I see are for Republican candidates, and there are a fair amount of Trump/Pence Flags. What has really caught my attention is the number of American flags that have gone up. There are more flags on lawns, cars, even hanging across the back of the cab in a truck once, then I have ever seen. The outcome of this election will definitely surprise some people.

Prizm

My wife and I were out in the neighborhood last night. (We wouldn't be able to afford to move into now, if we hadn't gotten in twenty years ago: gentrification. We still love the neighborhood. It's walkable and has a great main street strip etc. Kunstleresque if I may coin a phrase. We thought about selling but have decided to stay despite all the doctors and designers edging out the Appalachians, blacks, and working-to-middle class that were there originally, as well as the first generation of gays and artists that colonized the 'hood. All that just to say how it has changed and who has come in.) Anyway, I saw a sign in the window of one house that said "We're All Mad Here" along with the usual We Believe in Science, BLM, poster's etc. Though I have a soft spot for the fiction of Lewis Carrol, I fear all the mad hatters that are going to be running around. Still, I guess the collective meltdown will be better than a queen who declares "off with their heads". Something is certainly off, anyway.

Turquoise Squeamous Octopous

I feel like that 60% is the segment that changes loyalty on a dime, as soon as someone else achieves social power.

I made that bet two years ago, and doubled it last summer. I would double it again if I could go to church, but the COVID has kept me from the mark.

Ditto here. Not planning to go anywhere for at least a couple weeks, in case things get weird. Living in a deep-red area, I don't expect much, but... you never know.

Lady Cutekitten:

I think you're onto something. Meditation and yoga sound so healthy and benign, but without a good teacher and proper grounding in the physical plane, you can get into trouble.

The dabbling is a problem too. The Way of the Dilettante is littered with unintended consequences, superficial understandings, and frayed connections.

Working with powerful forces requires skillful guidance, healthy respect and a careful approach.

"The further in you go, the bigger it gets."
-- John Crowley, "Little, Big"

Well, I just put in my request. I decided to take just the first three days off, wanting to save some time for other things later in the year, and in October. Speaking of October. The Halloween full Moon is just before election time. Could be crazy. I will also stock up on things for my wife and I. Making sure we have some extra groceries and the pantry is full. Also toilet paper because, well, people are in mad hatter mode.

Turquoise Squamous Octpous

Hi JMG,

This is an interesting theory! I tended to attribute this to cognitive dissonance. The case against Trump was so strong (he was a moron, a racist, a misogynist, a greedy capitalist) that the fact that he won means that something had to give. Either the case against him was wrong, or flawed somehow, or him winning the election revealed that in fact a majority of people shared the same flaws as him.

I am up in Canada, and even up here it is hard to get people who believe the racist story about his win to discuss this whole thing in any other terms. Generally I've found this whole thing quite informative, I don't think I've ever seen so clearly how influential media really is on people's thinking. The Anti-Trump folk I know have gone from one thing to another over the course of his 4 years, each time absolutely certain that this is "the final nail in his coffin" and he's done for, and each time there seems to be no effect they just forget the previous conviction and take up the latest with the same anger and certainty. Right now, everyone is sure that he has destroyed America (possibly the world) due to his poor response to the Coronavirus pandemic - they "say" that they weren't really upset prior to this, but now they really are.

I used to get slightly upset in conversations about this because it seemed like people would at least want to see another way of looking at it (especially as this general move towards "populism" seems to be the way history is headed, and being unable to deal with it will probably just be a bad situation mentally), but I've some how let that go and now don't say too much and just observe how the picture of reality being presented to me so passionately exactly matches whatever the media says. I do think that in the event he wins again, which I see as likely (I even have a bet on it - which a guy who lost a bet with me on the same thing last time, naturally) it is really going to be difficult for people.

Thanks,
Johnny

Captain Obvious here...it seems to me that the chances of a Biden win are proportional to the number of mail-in ballots. This is not due to fraud but simply that many people who would vote "Trump" in the privacy of the voting booth will not do so on the kitchen table where their family can see. (And one can't say "it's secret" and not be suspected...)

-RPC-

I have been pondering this for a long time. What I realized that the Left have formed a religion that is as powerful to them as Christianity is to others.

The Magic Resistance is based on the Goddess Religion which is a resistance to Christianity and the patriarchy and the notion of the persecution of women. Think of the witch burnings etc - granddaughters of the witches you did not burn. That religion coaleaced around being the mirror of Christianity with rituals of calling down the patriarchy, and performing rites of women solidarity. In other words, they resist the current system of oppression. That became a religion of social justice since resisting the system meant correcting the system.

What the convention had presented was the idea of a vast spiritual battleground between the forces of Good and the forces of Evil. Since the Resistance and the Left are the force of Good, then what is the force of Evil? The evil patriarchy and all of that. And who is the figure of the evil patriarchy - the white male. They are trying bring about the shining city on the hill by tearing down the system to create a new world of social justice.

Of course, if you have the Angels of God in the form of H. Clinton, M. Obama. and B. Obama telling you that we are in the Final Days, you have to name the Anti-Christ. If the Republicans are the minions of Satan in this battle for Good, then who is Satan, the Evil One? So the whole convention was centered on how the demons of hell are upon us and how we must not succumb to temptation but rise above with our High Priestess K. Harris, who will lead us into the Golden Land.

Think of it as a camp meeting for the woke crowd.

Neptune's Dolphins, Also known as "Dances with Mice"

Another thread of thought.

I was reading John Beckett's book "Paganism in Depth." (I am not asking for a comment on him, his writing or the book.) It left me vaguely unsatisfied and restless. So I meditated on why that should be. The book was a springboard to a deep meditation on what was happening in Neo-Paganism and the spiritual but not religious crowd.

They are curating a religion based on the self. The internet allows them to only deal with what pleases them, without disturbing their calmness. The consumer culture focuses on the self in that people should focus on bettering themselves. The Dr. Phil Show and other self-help media also encourage the separation of the self from the community, and then curates the community that the self lives in.

What is going on is people are casting the system as detriments to self-realization. The call out culture is a form of confessing sins and reaffirming the new community's values. The self seeks to change the environment but through the internet and media have consciously divorced from the actual reality.

What plagues neo-paganism - the sovereignty of self. Everything is factored through that. The community must bend to the needs of the self. So you have Michael Hughes, who is very uncomfortable with Trump, using rituals to reaffirm his dominion over that which he wants gone. With others, they create and affirm a community to buffer the reality of Trump. It is not that the ritual works or not, it is that they are seeking comfort in their own selves against the threat to their self sovereignty.

As for my reality, I am now doing a fandango with three mice in my bathroom. So, I call in the exterminator to deal with the problem.

Neptune's Dolphins (aka Dances with Mice)

JMG: "-- the step that leads to madness -- and convinced themselves that they create everyone else's reality too."

That step really does seem to have been and gone doesn't it:

"Front-of-house staff may wear a face shield in lieu of a face covering only if the shield is designed to be worn inverted, attaching below the face (e.g. as a collar) and open at the top of the shield, with the shield extending above the eyes and laterally to the ears. Face shields that are open at the bottom, directing breath downward, are not acceptable replacements for face coverings for front-of-house staff. (Updated 8/14/20)"

https://www.maine.gov/decd/checklists/restaurants

Would post screen captures, but don't know if dreamwidth caters for that.

Mainly 'professional' class, but I'm seeing people from various classes exhibiting fear-based weird behaviour - More than one PMC (Proffessional Management Class) case has been wiping down shopping items with antiseptic wipes, then leaving out in sun for hours - obsessive antiseptic use on hands, door knobs and surfaces - mechanical and robotic repetition of political health slogans etc from the political nudge units alongwith compliance which began with the Thursday applause for the NHS (National Health Service), before that was retired. Easy switch from the 2 minute love to the 2 minute hate I reckon.

I see the sense in good cleansing/banishing rituals for sure, but once madness like this, and clinical symptoms like the Karenocracy, manifest on the material plane, I can't shake the feeling we have a bigger problem than I thought.

Not familiar with Vico but found this:
***
“...such peoples [in the barbarism], like so many beasts, have fallen into the custom of each man thinking only of his own private interests and have reached the extreme delicacy, or better of pride, in which like wild animals they bristle and lash out at the slightest displeasure"

Vico holds that the barbarism of reflection (which he also calls the 'barbarism of the intellect') is worse than the barbarism of sense; the barbarism of sense, what we usually think of savagery, has 'generous fierceness' -- while it's a state of war of all against all, it's of the kind against which you can fight back or from which you can run away. But the barbarism of reflection has 'vile fierceness' -- it's a war of all against all in which people speak soft words and play innocent out of malice and cunning. There are no more fair fights, because the preferred weapon is the poisoning of social relations. It is the corruption and then the dissolution of the senso commune that binds the community together.

***
Holy field-truffles, Batman!

JMG: "...this will not end well."

As things look right now, that has to be one of the understatements of the year!
;)

As per Chief Tecumseh, time to dust off my 'noble death song' and see how well the tune goes with a danse macabre...

One question I've had about all this insanity is how much of it is driven by the fact any practically any change that improves the live the majority means that the PMC, of which I am a lower level member, has to take a cut of some type in lifestyle, income and status. Here again, the PMC are desperately trying to fight to keep the fall of the great god Progress from hitting them personally. And yes, it's driving them insane.

John B

I’m an onlooker of course, and normally I’d hesitate to comment, but I read the Libra Ingress post this morning with huge interest. I suppose this is happening because essentially it’s time for it to happen.

The day before the US election in 2016, some wag in the office asked for predictions on a whiteboard. Several dozen yellow post-it notes for HC made the two orange (natch) Trump predictions stand out. There were over a thousand people in that open plan space and usually the first thing in the morning is a buzz of voices. On the following morning it was silence. The only other occasion I’ve encountered something similar was the day after the Brexit vote - on that morning you could have heard a pin drop.

The Betfair price for Trump to win this time round is down from the late July long odds, but Biden is still very much the favourite. I believe I shall have a flutter myself. Just for fun.

Andy

But is BLM and MAGA mutually exclusive?

Or people terrified that if they vote the "wrong way" on record someone might do something about it....

Good idea. I might try to make sure I don't need to go anywhere for November though: I'm far from sure the insanity here will end after just one week....

People get really weird if you question the Great God Automobile. Seriously, I think that people worship the things, and it's truly, truly bizarre....

Oh dear gods yes. It's not even enough to say "I don't have an opinion on that": you have to aggressively hate him. There's something truly weird going on here.

Yeah, I was thinking, "Have you actually been to an NRA rally?"

I have had more or less the same experience. Mostly, I get by, but the craziness around us made some strong banishings necessary. I know people whose fear of the coronavirus is so high that friendships are neglected, and in the media there are reports of brawls between people who don't wear masks and other persons. The big problem seems to me to be that there is no official idea how to get out of the pandemic and back to a normal way of life.

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The Root of the Madness

Madness and fishing nets

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Re: Karl Rove

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"We're All Mad Here" Sign

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Democratic Convention: Secular Religion in action: Come to Jesus Moment

Remixed and Bespoke religion

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary...

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Re: Adjacent Behaviors and Cars

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