Eternal Returns

Part One

It's ten years since I first tentatively picked up a corner of the carpet and took a peek at what was lurking underneath. Ten years since reality began to rudely dawn: that what was presented as 'truth', as 'reality', as 'news', was not in fact truth or reality at all. Ten years since that edifice of naïve trust and belief began to shake and crumble. The process of reduction to dust continues to this day.

One of the major figures in what I divined to be 'alternative media' at the time was David Icke. Ridiculed by his former employer the BBC, along with the rest of mainstream media, David rode the wave, refusing to cow to their cackles of derision, refusing to be bullied into a mental breakdown or  quietly disappearing into a corner. Instead, he courageously rose like a phoenix of truth.

I read and listened to some of David's work during those halcyon years, before proceeding to forget all about him, pretty much so anyway. Until just recently when, for reasons I've forgotten, I found myself once more listening to him as he talked about truth, reality, control systems, energy, agendas, reptilians; you know, David Icke stuff. He remains a clear and fearless speaker, and has many instructive things to say. What is astonishing is how, ten years ago, most of what he talked about seemed extreme, really minority, stuff. Now, much of it is pretty normal fayre.

Here, in a five-minute clip, he presents more to chew on than many people manage in an entire lifetime. Mainly about how homeopathy and the rest of the universe work....
    
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3A1Z9dR5XI

Part Two

Another familar port-of-call in those heady early days was Red Ice Creations. 'We present, you decide' was their motto, as they put on a veritable feast of interviews on deep history and archaeology, free energy research, alternative medicine and health, the origins of humankind, and mysticism and bigger-picture stuff of every shape and size. I became acquainted with the work of Neil Kramer and John Lash among others, two prime influences, courtesy of Red Ice. All under the affable yet watchful eye of Henrik Palmgren.

Then, one day, something happened. 'We present, you decide' was discarded in favour of 'We present, and we have decided too'. Red Ice became overwhelmingly devoted to one theme, and one theme pretty much alone. The creeping threat of rampant globalism, along with the corresponding destruction of European cultures through indiscriminate invasion-like immigration, repressive political correctness, and other strategies. The headlines on the Red Ice website were full of the latest news on this stuff. It made for depressing reading, worse than the Daily Telegraph. Mystics and metaphysics - the real big picture - was gone, replaced by story after story on political toxicity. It was a turn off; so I duly turned off.

A good deal of the change seemed to coincide with the arrival on the Red Ice scene of Lana Lokteff, Henrik's wife. In contrast to Henrik's easy-going demeanour, Lana came over as very sharp, with a distinctive confrontational us-against-them stance. Her shrill intoning would give me a headache; another reason to turn off.

I maintain some reservations about the modern-day Red Ice. Nevertheless, not all is bad, and I submit that they are doing plenty of good work. Lana has improved her presenting style no end, in my view. I often enjoy her regular shortish presentations: witty, cutting, to-the-point. How Red Ice have managed to avoid getting chucked off YouTube with some of their content I do not know, but there they still are.

Here is a recent and typical Lana clip. For the record, once again: I do not follow Red Ice closely, and don't know everything they present at all; I do not necessarily go along with everything they say; I have not bought one of Lana's t-shirts; she is undoubtedly and sadly correct about being picked out and targeted for her political stance. A t-shirt boasting 'Come on in, Whoever you are' would get very different treatment.
   
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET258ROr9Wg

Hot Air and the Unexamined Life

Part One

When I was seventeen years old the world was a terrible place. Not my personal life or my immediate environment, which were not too bad at all. No. I'm talking about the big world, the wide world, out there. It was full of wars, and of violence in general. It was overrun with horrible people: vicious, ruthless, uncaring, manipulative. Everywhere I looked was greed, greed, greed. The environment was being destroyed by avaricious capitalists. Wickedness was the hallmark of life in 1970.

I felt desperate. Desperate to do something - anything - to improve things. I heard about 'ahimsa', harmlessness, and tried to put it into practice. I wanted to live a life that was pure, in order to counter the gross impurity that I saw and felt all around me.

I became a vegan. Now, being vegan in 1970 was not so simple as it has become in 2019. Nevertheless, I did it. Not only did I become vegan, I paid careful attention to the quantity of food that I was consuming, not wishing to exploit the Earth an iota more than was possible.

I began to feel very pure, not just psychologically but energetically and physically as well. Spots disappeared, greasy skin cleared up as if by miracle. I said goodbye to sluggish bowels. I felt light, clear, and pure, pure, pure. I was having none of the contaminated life that surrounded me.

The thing was, though, that I was starving myself to angelic death. Never exactly a fattie, I lost weight alarmingly as I carried out my carefully measured diet, compensating for consumeristic greed and avarice of the outside world. It took my mother breaking down in fits of anguished tears at the state that I had fallen into to bring me to my senses. I started stuffing myself with food suitable for a high metabolism teenage male again. I have lived to tell the tale.

This story is true. And, as a result, I am able to understand the mentality of some anorexic people well. More to the point here, I can see into and right through the neuroses which characterise many of our modern-day 'climate activists'. For them, too, the world and its people are terrible. Wanton destruction is the typical behaviour of older generations, which consist largely of psychopaths and Earth haters. Climate activists - 'Extinction Rebellion' ideologues in particular - need to compensate. Fuelled by anger and anxiety, their response to an extreme situation requires an equal opposite extreme. The world is going up in flames, and you bastards are the cause. What did Saint Greta say at the UN just a few days ago? "How dare you?"

The thing is, I got over it. I saw that things weren't quite like that. The problem was about 'me' as much as it was any world out there. If I wanted to make a difference, I had to get my own act together first: take responsibility for my own life, my own mind, my own consciousness. All of which most of these screaming enraged activists have singularly failed to do. It is, after all, easier to blame someone else....

And then there's 'The Psychedelic Society'. I've always considered it a misnomer, since psychedelics don't generally take to being organised into societies with rules and regulations. Anyhow, there they are. The Edinburgh branch (which seems to have now disappeared) organised a really good talk by Graham Hancock a few years back, but for the rest...… The Psychedelic Society are very big on, enthusiastic about, 'Extinction Rebellion', the vanguard of climate change activism. They are gearing up for another season of out-on-the-streets, socking-it-to-'em, in October. It's funny, really. Their founder, in particular, is known for his espousal of non-dual philosophy. But they don't seem to have quite connected the dots. This climate change activism is based in extreme dualistic thinking, serious polarising. It's 'us versus them' writ large. Confrontational, with no attempt at understanding 'them', whoever they actually are.

Well, I suppose it's proof that psychedelics don't lead to automatic enlightenment after all. Anyhow, I've unsubscribed.

Part Two

'The unexamined life is not worth living'. It's a quote from some time back gleaned from Neil Kramer. I can't recall whether it's an original, or whether he got it from someone else. I suppose it doesn't matter much. It's the message that counts.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

There will be exceptions, but in general it's this. It seems to me that climate change activism is populated by seriously unexamined lives. Despite their faux revolutionary fervour, despite their belief in their own superiority, they are playing the mainstream game, that of kneejerk unconsciousness. You see, there is another layer of conditioning that shapes them, and of which they appear gloriously unaware:

They are our new evangelical Christians.

That climate change is the new religion, and that its most fervent devotees act like cult members, is a view bandied about with increasing frequency nowadays. I think we can be more specific than that. Much of the behaviour and attitude of the cult members is a direct hand-me-down from a certain type of Protestant/Puritan conditioning that remains characteristic of much of Europe north of the Alps and parts of North America - precisely the regions where the new religion takes root most strongly.

I am no expert, and I'm going to do no more than throw out a few ideas, with some dots to be connected. But the overall conclusion is that, while Christianity in on the wane in these places, both in terms of numbers and of cultural and political influence, its legacy continues in the form of a pattern of social conditioning which manifests in the unexamined lives of climate change fanatics and Extinction Rebellion members.

A few easy ones to get going. Dogmatic evangelism, intolerance. Climate change activists tend to be extremely intolerant of those who differ. Someone like me will be considered a heretic. Burning at the stake is no longer in vogue, although some of them might consider this a deserving end for Pale Green Vortex man. So shouting down, calling nasty, emotionally-loaded names ('climate denier'), and silencing will have to do. It is all justified, you see, since I am effectively damning the Planet to extinction with my attitudes.

Then there is a certain moralism, and a distinctive moral superiority. Self-righteousness and moral indignation are the flavour of the day. We are the righteous, the pure in heart, and all you carbon-spewing monsters are for hell: this is what comes across. 'Saving the world' strikes me as another distinctive Protestant attitude. I don't think that people from other cultures normally think in terms of saving the world. It is northern European, northern American. There were folk in the 1960s and 70s alternative societies who talked in these terms; I never did it myself. It's ridiculous. I can't save the world, and neither can Extinction Rebellion.    

Apocalypse Now. End-of-world scenarios, the end of the world is nigh. The Book of Revelation writ large as cities topple into the ocean and the earth burns, burns, burns. You could imagine St Greta out there preaching fear and dread, scaring the wits out of the ordinary people, four hundred years ago. Meanwhile, it is worth noting that none of the apocalyptic panic predictions have yet come to pass. The polar bears are doing very nicely, it seems. Walruses don't topple off cliffs due to climate change; they've been doing it for ages. There are still little islands in the Pacific. New York has not been washed away. The apocalyptic panic is all manipulative bullshit, shameful, really.

And we are left with our saint fit for the modern age, little Greta. 'It's the science' she tells us. I don't think she really knows much about science; we share this in common, at least! In our post-enlightenment age of scientific rationalism (not so scientific or rational, actually, but let's leave that) it is fitting that a religion for the masses should come with a scientific gloss, though that's all it is. Check this: Greta has been declared the successor to Jesus Christ by the Church of Sweden. I kid not; this is true, it happened last December.

If you haven't seen it, and have the stomach, you might look at Greta Thunberg's address to the UN just recently. I find it disturbing. She is being exploited by very dark beings, who couldn't give a toss about her well-being. She is angry, fearful, despairing, and unbalanced. About to crack. It is child abuse. And is it only me who finds disturbing the sight of all these children out protesting, when they are not of the age to evaluate anything much. Adults who encourage this, be they politicians, teachers, or local authority bureaucrats, are twisted and distorted in my view. This is true indoctrination of young people through fear and anxiety.

Interestingly, even some UN official has admitted that the climate change thing is not primarily about the climate: it's about redistribution of wealth. And in case anyone begins to wonder whether this is a noble cause worth supporting, think again. Redistribution programmes exist not because of infinite compassion for poor people in Bolivia and Nigeria. They exist because of a globalist imperative. Globalism comes into being only when significant discrepancies, differences, between peoples are eradicated. Rich people here, poor people there: that's not globalism. All should be reduced to automaton-like mediocrity before we can usher in the One World dream.....