The Root of the Madness

[ecosophia]

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. 

Comments

Re: When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro

[(Anonymous)]

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...