So refreshing and invigorating to delve into the wit and wisdom of a sane soul. Not only are your writings insightful, but they go beyond being yet another exhaustive compilation of what's bent and broken, both on the level of the individual and the system. Unlike the legions of doom-sayers and soothsayers, you offer practical, realistic DIY guides to personal resurrection. Your methods accord with my personal-evolution programs to bring people back home; to return them to the state of sanity, serenity and natural grace (kinergy.life). Thank you Jeff!
Thank you, WTF (I've always wanted to say that), for your gracious response. Took me a long time to weave things together from sundry threads and patterns, but I'm glad you appreciate the tapestry. We should all be scientists by day and mystics by night. Scientists and mystics (theologians of a sort) always ask the best questions...
Seriously? You go tell someone working two jobs to makes ends meet that what they need is a better quality of life through community and religion and family. They'd look at you like you're crazy. You've confused cause and effect; the cause of these declines is the loss of well paying jobs which means people spend more time working to make ends meet and have less time for anything else. We've reversed what is important in this country; we no longer value the people who harvest, make, and distribute the goods we require. Instead we value people who play dress up for a living (actors) or people with jobs that contribute nothing to society (any person working in the financial or media industries). Note how everyone is supporting the Hollywood writer's strike but the fact that the Biden administration stopped the railworker's strike (they wanted safer working conditions as well as more pay) was barely mentioned?
The answer to our societal ills is old school labor strikes...a general strike of all the people who actually make the things we need. When rich people can't get their soy lattes at Starbucks maybe that will get their attention. And by the way...the modern communications system should make that easier to accomplish, so unplugging would be the last thing I recommend...
Thanks much for your response, erniet. Clearly no one needs to tell someone working two jobs something they very likely already know: that the quality of life is protected and promoted far better by strong faith, strong families, and strong communities than by slavish fealty to godless corporatist (fascist) globalism. They know better than anyone because -- demographically -- they're the ones most disenfranchised and underemployed by the early 21st-century confluence of state-sponsored default addiction and the institutional tyrannies of runaway digital scale. They know better because strong faith, strong families, and strong communities are precisely what protected the quality of life for their parents, grandparents, and ancestors. They know better because it's what they already struggle to provide for their kids and grandkids (see my essay, The Quality of Life Essentials at https://open.substack.com/pub/qolrm/p/the-quality-of-life-essentials?r=7hc45&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web).
No doubt, a good job that pays a decent living wage is an important and life-affirming component to overall quality of life. But as a nation we're not morbidly obese, rife with degenerative disease, and addicted to everything under the sun because people don't have adequate employment. We're not spiritually bereft, socially estranged, emotionally detached and depressed, stressed to the breaking point, sleep deprived, deep in debt, and anxious all the time because we're underemployed. If that were the case, why do people with six-figure salaries in NYC, LA, and the Silicon Valley -- people with great jobs -- suffer all of the above symptoms as well?
We're spiritually bereft because we've surrendered our faith to the expedience and empty promises of polytheistic narcissism, and are now told to worship the false gods of climate change, racial equity, trans equity, science, and technology instead. We're socially estranged from each other because we've been trained for the past three generations to bury our faces in screens and isolate ourselves from family, friends, and colleagues. We're emotionally detached and depressed because we consume an endless tsunami of electronic commercial media, all of which sells fear, envy, and addiction 24/7 -- by design. And we're physically ill because we've emptied all of our spiritual, social, and emotional garbage -- like toxic tributaries -- into a healthcare system that profits from death and disease and does nothing for our health except wreck it further.
We're all of these things not because we're underemployed, but because we abandoned faith, family, and community. And when we abandoned faith, family, and community we abandoned the meaningful rituals that ride shotgun with them -- the meaningful rituals that impose lifestyle moderation and protect the quality of our spiritual, social, emotional, and physical lives. Without them, without the meaningful rituals imposed by faith, family, and community, all that remain are the mindless rituals of our obsessions and addictions -- and the corporate drug lords who profit from them in a protracted class war against poor and middle-class people of all colors worldwide.
Old school labor strikes might well work for some, but try persuading the working mom with two jobs to cut her already meager salary in half just so she can stand on a picket line for no money instead. Trust me, that lady longs for a return to faith, family, and community. It's what she wants for herself, for her kids, and for her grandkids.
Just FYI, the digital devices we carry with us so casually were never designed to empower us or improve the quality of our lives. They were designed originally as office productivity tools to empower large institutions. The natural bias of digital technology (especially digital media) is the accelerated consolidation of power and wealth among those institutions -- private and public alike -- already far too powerful and far too wealthy. Accordingly, our digital devices empower them, not us. We don't control our digital devices. They control us. We don't own our smartphones. They own us. To the extent we are able to liberate ourselves from the grips of state-sponsored default addiction and institutional tyranny in the years ahead, we will do so not because of our digital communications technologies, but in spite them.
The people I work with and deal with every day already have faith, community, and most importantly family. They also struggle to make ends meet. I have no sympathy for over-educated white-collar drones making six figures who are "spiritually bereft" as you put it; they have boutique problems compared to people trying to keep food on the table or keep the lights on or just pay the rent. And in terms of old-fashioned strikes? It's always taken sacrifices as my coal miner, union organizer ancestors knew. The people who make things have the power; they just don't know it...or have forgotten it.
I do appreciate that you are seeking solutions, but this country (and maybe the West in general) needs a complete changing of the guard in terms of the people in power. I'm not talking about revolution; just using the legitimate tools of our institutions (the ballot, strikes, boycotts, etc.) to show the parasites like Hollywood actors and media talking heads, as well as our elected officials, and even the Silicon Valley tech lords that they better pay attention. As Jimmy Dore always says, if you want them to listen you have to show them you're willing not to vote for them. And we can vote economically, not just in elections. We need to work on uniting the working classes, urban and rural, against the dividing forces (mainstream media, big tech) to achieve this. That's something we can agree on.
Thanks, erniet. No argument from me that we could use a wholesale changing of the guard, or that the only way for working class people to affect change is to organize and rise up.
Consider: A couple of generations ago, your morning newspaper reported mostly local stories about local issues and local personalities (and baseball box scores, of course). Now it reports almost national and international headlines entirely. No police beat, no city hall beat, no box scores. Local newspapers that once reported local police, city hall, school board, high school sports, and chamber of commerce news are gone. The family dinner table -- the original and very best source of actionable local news -- is all but gone. All of them replaced by a high-tech narcotic cartel that tells us -- without respite -- not to focus our attention on our own backyards, but to focus instead on racism, gender equity, climate change, and the battle against disinformation and domestic terrorism (MAGA).
In essence, faith, family, and community -- the three pillars pillars that together protect and promote the quality of life -- have been systematically destroyed over the past few generations, replaced in the 21st century by the seemingly sudden Rise of Huxley: a totalitarian dystopian state that combines the compliance mechanism of state-sponsored default addiction (borrowed from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World) with the enforcement mechanisms of 24/7 surveillance, linguistic thought control, and the institutional tyranny of state-manufactured hatred and fear (borrowed from George Orwell's 1984).
My intent is not to elicit sympathy for drones of any sort, over-educated or (like yours truly) otherwise. But right now 80% of the nation's population -- including those with six-figure incomes -- lives in urban areas with neither the time nor the inclination to explore or involve themselves with local issues. Certainly no time to fritter away on inconsequential institutions like the family dinner table or organized religion. And right now those urban populations -- per Jimmy Dore's frequent observation -- are the most propagandized people on earth.
That's precisely why parents suddenly showing up en masse at urban and suburban school board meetings is such a miracle. That's precisely why the rise of MAGA -- a populist movement of blue collar workers and working class individuals -- was and remains such a miracle. That's why the (long overdue) demise of corporate media and the rise of online independent news and opinion folks (like Jimmy Dore, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Bret Weinstein, Russel Brand, etc.) that champion blue collar and working class issues is such a miracle.
None of the above miracles are manifestations of top-down institutional power. Indeed, top-down institutional power will always and forever do whatever it can to suppress and crush any populist thought. All of the above miracles are manifestations of local grassroots efforts to organize resistance to top-down corporatist power. All of the above miracles are happening because people are beginning, as you suggest, to take stock of their own power -- regardless of class.
Taking power over our own destinies means three things:
FIRST: Turning our backs on the diversionary sideshows of national politics and global politics and elite cultural memes like racism, gender equity, and climate change (the woke agenda), and turning our focus instead to those local things that better satisfy our four basic needs (spiritual, social, emotional, and physical): faith, family, and community. Translated: replace a couple hours of daily asynchronous media consumption with synchronous communications instead. Take those two hours of time each day to communicate with family, friends, and colleagues. Organize.
SECOND: Restoring the primacy of meaningful rituals in our lives as the key to lifestyle moderation — the only statistically viable antidote to state-sponsored default addiction. Reinstituting the family dinner table and the sabbath day of rest would be great places to start. Moderating our meta-addiction to all things media and all things digital is precisely where we'll rediscover the time and motivation to reinvigorate our lives and...organize.
THIRD and FINAL: Returning to local autonomy as the best way for individuals, families, and communities to combat the tyrannies of digital scale and runaway institutional power. Nothing threatens the centralized power and institutionalized tyranny of digital scale like a return to local autonomy. Nothing threatens Huxwellian tyrants on distant thrones more than states that offer school choice, counties that offer cooperative healthcare, regions and towns that provide support for local artists and craftspeople, or local lending institutions. Nothing enrages and challenges the high priests of Huxwell like vibrant communities of faith or — worse yet — parents who claim control of their own children.
In short, there is no top-down solution to totalitarianism. No quick answers to generations of institutional corruption. Back in the 20th century it was possible to defeat the Nazis with an alliance of international powers. But in the 21st-century no such relief will be forthcoming, because all of the international powers are in league with our Huxwellian masters. That leaves only individuals exerting their God-given individual liberties, their families, and their communities -- all in pursuit of a better quality of life. And again, it won't happen because of our digital communication technologies. It will happen -- and is happening -- in spite of them.
Thanks again, erniet. Much appreciate the opportunity to engage.
Awesome! I agree with everything you said 100% in regards to local autonomy and everything else. But I'm essentially a pragmatist and look for ways to put the discontent into practice. And yes, it has to start locally and then expand from there.
There are two relatively recent events that give me hope; the first was the Gamestop rebellion, the second was the demise of Bud Light. These give me hope that there is an awakening among us "deplorables" that united we are far more powerful than the establishment. But how to turn those episodes into a movement? I think it takes something along the lines of the 1970s-80s style Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) who got volunteers to get people to sign petitions for grass-roots changes; ballot initiatives at the state level, local ordinances, bond issues, all focused on the things that mattered at the local level. This led to an astonishing success at municipal, county, and state level government for the "old" Democratic Party (which at the time focused on worker issues and consumer safety, if you recall). We need a return to that kind of grass roots activism.
The problem is when 80% of people in say, San Francisco, think Gavin Newsome is doing a great job the voters themselves are the problem. This is why we need to flex the collective muscles of the working class beyond the local level. So it takes an approach from both above and below, if you get my meaning...that is, local and more broadly.
Anyway it sounds like i'm in violent agreement with you, as my wife says. Thanks for taking the time to respond to me in detail. I'm angry and frustrated, like do many Americans these days. Keep up the good work; you're doing more than I am!
Many thanks, erniet. My own late-life pragmatism is what led me to start the Quality of Life Resistance Movement. True, the collective muscle of the working class has atrophied -- largely from neglect and addiction-- in recent decades. And true, both top-down and bottom-up would be more ideal than exclusive reliance on either. But right now only one direction has the full force of institutional tyranny, and only one direction is feeling it.
The Gamestop rebellion and Bud Light fiasco are certainly cases in point. We might also take stock in the fact that the first Republican presidential debate on Fox last month drew about 13 million viewers while Tucker Carlson's interview w/Donald Trump on X (aired live at the same time) has drawn more than 250 million views.
I would love to hear testimony from you or others you may know about successful efforts -- including labor disputes -- to re-establish control over their own lives, families, and communities. Any personal, familial, or local community story or testimony that speaks to the battle against Huxwell and the effort to restore the quality of life.
Anger and frustration can be great liberators. Or jailers. All things in moderation...
Meanwhile, you can always find me here. I truly appreciate your time and consideration, and all the best to you and yours.
Fantastic! I love this, Jeff. Thank you for recommending my substack too. Making art is how I keep some QoL in my little patch of the planet. 🙏🏽😌 looking forward to reading all of your info here!
Thank you for reaching out, Isma'il. Agreed, there's much spiritual, social, emotional, and physical pain in the historical downstream of Western colonialism. But that doesn't distinguish it from the pain left in the wake of other empires like the Romans, the Moors, the Mongols, Persians, etc.
Ancestry matters for the same reason borders matter: they both protect and promote the spiritual, social, emotional, and physical integrity of those who dwell within them. While it might be meaningful for the ancestors of the oppressed to hear an apology from the ancestors of the oppressors, it will do nothing to change the ancestral kamma of either. The only functional extension of ancestral kamma comes in forgiveness, and a willingness to move on. History repeats itself for a reason: to give us plenty of opportunities to forgive.
Submitting oneself to the righteous vengeance of another, however justified, may be purifying for some, but may -- in the end -- be less likely to breed forgiveness, and more likely to breed new cycles of hurt and vengeance. Vengeance feels good, but it has nothing to do with forgiveness. If you want vengeance to right past wrongs, seek vengeance. If you want to move on with your life and carve new ancestral paths, put down the sword and offer forgiveness, no strings attached.
I agree that a deeper appreciation of spirituality requires a measure of repentance. But of what use is repentance if it comes in response to vengeance? To wit: the virtue signals of the woke are altogether repentant -- and entirely self-serving. Repentance in response to vengeance sounds more like a confession solicited under duress. Forgive my Western cynicism, but only in utopian cloud cities are we likely to find the Shalom of wholeness restored. Cultures oppressed by Western colonialists aren't the only ones trapped in the cycles of trauma and vengeance. The familial and social cycles of trauma and vengeance are visited on the bodies and souls of men and women of all cultures and religions alike -- by men and women of all cultures and religions alike. No doubt, Allah knows best...
Isma'il...Peace to you. Just a quick note to say much I enjoyed our virtual discussion, and to thank you sincerely for your well-considered contribution. I look forward to our next encounter. All shalom to you and yours till then.
I’m not versed in your religious ways; I am trying to understand your POV. I am Catholic and I cannot reconcile vengeance with forgiveness. My simplistic, Catholic mind knows only that unconditional love and forgiveness is the Way as described in the New Testament. Peace.
Thanks, Isma'il. I would suggest that your authenticity has nothing to do with my repentance. How others treat you is up to them. How you treat others is up to you. We all have the capacity to analyze the behaviors of our ancestors. Further, we have the obligation to reject those behaviors that can only continue to hurt us, our families, and future ancestors. Both the West and the East have inflicted the world with colonial hordes and slave traders over the millennia. And both the West and the East have advanced our common interests as well. The similarities almost always emerge organically, whereas the differences are almost always manufactured. One seeks the truth while the other seeks the advantage. Vengeance requires a forge. Forgiveness requires a heart.
So refreshing and invigorating to delve into the wit and wisdom of a sane soul. Not only are your writings insightful, but they go beyond being yet another exhaustive compilation of what's bent and broken, both on the level of the individual and the system. Unlike the legions of doom-sayers and soothsayers, you offer practical, realistic DIY guides to personal resurrection. Your methods accord with my personal-evolution programs to bring people back home; to return them to the state of sanity, serenity and natural grace (kinergy.life). Thank you Jeff!
Thank you, WTF (I've always wanted to say that), for your gracious response. Took me a long time to weave things together from sundry threads and patterns, but I'm glad you appreciate the tapestry. We should all be scientists by day and mystics by night. Scientists and mystics (theologians of a sort) always ask the best questions...
Thanks again, and keep delving...
A historical perspective https://open.substack.com/pub/frederickrsmith/p/individual-enterprise-part-one-traditional
Seriously? You go tell someone working two jobs to makes ends meet that what they need is a better quality of life through community and religion and family. They'd look at you like you're crazy. You've confused cause and effect; the cause of these declines is the loss of well paying jobs which means people spend more time working to make ends meet and have less time for anything else. We've reversed what is important in this country; we no longer value the people who harvest, make, and distribute the goods we require. Instead we value people who play dress up for a living (actors) or people with jobs that contribute nothing to society (any person working in the financial or media industries). Note how everyone is supporting the Hollywood writer's strike but the fact that the Biden administration stopped the railworker's strike (they wanted safer working conditions as well as more pay) was barely mentioned?
The answer to our societal ills is old school labor strikes...a general strike of all the people who actually make the things we need. When rich people can't get their soy lattes at Starbucks maybe that will get their attention. And by the way...the modern communications system should make that easier to accomplish, so unplugging would be the last thing I recommend...
Thanks much for your response, erniet. Clearly no one needs to tell someone working two jobs something they very likely already know: that the quality of life is protected and promoted far better by strong faith, strong families, and strong communities than by slavish fealty to godless corporatist (fascist) globalism. They know better than anyone because -- demographically -- they're the ones most disenfranchised and underemployed by the early 21st-century confluence of state-sponsored default addiction and the institutional tyrannies of runaway digital scale. They know better because strong faith, strong families, and strong communities are precisely what protected the quality of life for their parents, grandparents, and ancestors. They know better because it's what they already struggle to provide for their kids and grandkids (see my essay, The Quality of Life Essentials at https://open.substack.com/pub/qolrm/p/the-quality-of-life-essentials?r=7hc45&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web).
No doubt, a good job that pays a decent living wage is an important and life-affirming component to overall quality of life. But as a nation we're not morbidly obese, rife with degenerative disease, and addicted to everything under the sun because people don't have adequate employment. We're not spiritually bereft, socially estranged, emotionally detached and depressed, stressed to the breaking point, sleep deprived, deep in debt, and anxious all the time because we're underemployed. If that were the case, why do people with six-figure salaries in NYC, LA, and the Silicon Valley -- people with great jobs -- suffer all of the above symptoms as well?
We're spiritually bereft because we've surrendered our faith to the expedience and empty promises of polytheistic narcissism, and are now told to worship the false gods of climate change, racial equity, trans equity, science, and technology instead. We're socially estranged from each other because we've been trained for the past three generations to bury our faces in screens and isolate ourselves from family, friends, and colleagues. We're emotionally detached and depressed because we consume an endless tsunami of electronic commercial media, all of which sells fear, envy, and addiction 24/7 -- by design. And we're physically ill because we've emptied all of our spiritual, social, and emotional garbage -- like toxic tributaries -- into a healthcare system that profits from death and disease and does nothing for our health except wreck it further.
We're all of these things not because we're underemployed, but because we abandoned faith, family, and community. And when we abandoned faith, family, and community we abandoned the meaningful rituals that ride shotgun with them -- the meaningful rituals that impose lifestyle moderation and protect the quality of our spiritual, social, emotional, and physical lives. Without them, without the meaningful rituals imposed by faith, family, and community, all that remain are the mindless rituals of our obsessions and addictions -- and the corporate drug lords who profit from them in a protracted class war against poor and middle-class people of all colors worldwide.
Old school labor strikes might well work for some, but try persuading the working mom with two jobs to cut her already meager salary in half just so she can stand on a picket line for no money instead. Trust me, that lady longs for a return to faith, family, and community. It's what she wants for herself, for her kids, and for her grandkids.
Just FYI, the digital devices we carry with us so casually were never designed to empower us or improve the quality of our lives. They were designed originally as office productivity tools to empower large institutions. The natural bias of digital technology (especially digital media) is the accelerated consolidation of power and wealth among those institutions -- private and public alike -- already far too powerful and far too wealthy. Accordingly, our digital devices empower them, not us. We don't control our digital devices. They control us. We don't own our smartphones. They own us. To the extent we are able to liberate ourselves from the grips of state-sponsored default addiction and institutional tyranny in the years ahead, we will do so not because of our digital communications technologies, but in spite them.
The answer, per your observation, is not to unplug, not to abstain, but to moderate: the only statistically proven response to any addiction (see my essay, The Truth About Addiction at https://open.substack.com/pub/qolrm/p/the-truth-about-addiction?r=7hc45&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web).
Thanks again for reaching out. Much appreciate your participation.
The people I work with and deal with every day already have faith, community, and most importantly family. They also struggle to make ends meet. I have no sympathy for over-educated white-collar drones making six figures who are "spiritually bereft" as you put it; they have boutique problems compared to people trying to keep food on the table or keep the lights on or just pay the rent. And in terms of old-fashioned strikes? It's always taken sacrifices as my coal miner, union organizer ancestors knew. The people who make things have the power; they just don't know it...or have forgotten it.
I do appreciate that you are seeking solutions, but this country (and maybe the West in general) needs a complete changing of the guard in terms of the people in power. I'm not talking about revolution; just using the legitimate tools of our institutions (the ballot, strikes, boycotts, etc.) to show the parasites like Hollywood actors and media talking heads, as well as our elected officials, and even the Silicon Valley tech lords that they better pay attention. As Jimmy Dore always says, if you want them to listen you have to show them you're willing not to vote for them. And we can vote economically, not just in elections. We need to work on uniting the working classes, urban and rural, against the dividing forces (mainstream media, big tech) to achieve this. That's something we can agree on.
Thanks, erniet. No argument from me that we could use a wholesale changing of the guard, or that the only way for working class people to affect change is to organize and rise up.
Consider: A couple of generations ago, your morning newspaper reported mostly local stories about local issues and local personalities (and baseball box scores, of course). Now it reports almost national and international headlines entirely. No police beat, no city hall beat, no box scores. Local newspapers that once reported local police, city hall, school board, high school sports, and chamber of commerce news are gone. The family dinner table -- the original and very best source of actionable local news -- is all but gone. All of them replaced by a high-tech narcotic cartel that tells us -- without respite -- not to focus our attention on our own backyards, but to focus instead on racism, gender equity, climate change, and the battle against disinformation and domestic terrorism (MAGA).
In essence, faith, family, and community -- the three pillars pillars that together protect and promote the quality of life -- have been systematically destroyed over the past few generations, replaced in the 21st century by the seemingly sudden Rise of Huxley: a totalitarian dystopian state that combines the compliance mechanism of state-sponsored default addiction (borrowed from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World) with the enforcement mechanisms of 24/7 surveillance, linguistic thought control, and the institutional tyranny of state-manufactured hatred and fear (borrowed from George Orwell's 1984).
My intent is not to elicit sympathy for drones of any sort, over-educated or (like yours truly) otherwise. But right now 80% of the nation's population -- including those with six-figure incomes -- lives in urban areas with neither the time nor the inclination to explore or involve themselves with local issues. Certainly no time to fritter away on inconsequential institutions like the family dinner table or organized religion. And right now those urban populations -- per Jimmy Dore's frequent observation -- are the most propagandized people on earth.
That's precisely why parents suddenly showing up en masse at urban and suburban school board meetings is such a miracle. That's precisely why the rise of MAGA -- a populist movement of blue collar workers and working class individuals -- was and remains such a miracle. That's why the (long overdue) demise of corporate media and the rise of online independent news and opinion folks (like Jimmy Dore, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Bret Weinstein, Russel Brand, etc.) that champion blue collar and working class issues is such a miracle.
None of the above miracles are manifestations of top-down institutional power. Indeed, top-down institutional power will always and forever do whatever it can to suppress and crush any populist thought. All of the above miracles are manifestations of local grassroots efforts to organize resistance to top-down corporatist power. All of the above miracles are happening because people are beginning, as you suggest, to take stock of their own power -- regardless of class.
Taking power over our own destinies means three things:
FIRST: Turning our backs on the diversionary sideshows of national politics and global politics and elite cultural memes like racism, gender equity, and climate change (the woke agenda), and turning our focus instead to those local things that better satisfy our four basic needs (spiritual, social, emotional, and physical): faith, family, and community. Translated: replace a couple hours of daily asynchronous media consumption with synchronous communications instead. Take those two hours of time each day to communicate with family, friends, and colleagues. Organize.
SECOND: Restoring the primacy of meaningful rituals in our lives as the key to lifestyle moderation — the only statistically viable antidote to state-sponsored default addiction. Reinstituting the family dinner table and the sabbath day of rest would be great places to start. Moderating our meta-addiction to all things media and all things digital is precisely where we'll rediscover the time and motivation to reinvigorate our lives and...organize.
THIRD and FINAL: Returning to local autonomy as the best way for individuals, families, and communities to combat the tyrannies of digital scale and runaway institutional power. Nothing threatens the centralized power and institutionalized tyranny of digital scale like a return to local autonomy. Nothing threatens Huxwellian tyrants on distant thrones more than states that offer school choice, counties that offer cooperative healthcare, regions and towns that provide support for local artists and craftspeople, or local lending institutions. Nothing enrages and challenges the high priests of Huxwell like vibrant communities of faith or — worse yet — parents who claim control of their own children.
In short, there is no top-down solution to totalitarianism. No quick answers to generations of institutional corruption. Back in the 20th century it was possible to defeat the Nazis with an alliance of international powers. But in the 21st-century no such relief will be forthcoming, because all of the international powers are in league with our Huxwellian masters. That leaves only individuals exerting their God-given individual liberties, their families, and their communities -- all in pursuit of a better quality of life. And again, it won't happen because of our digital communication technologies. It will happen -- and is happening -- in spite of them.
Thanks again, erniet. Much appreciate the opportunity to engage.
Awesome! I agree with everything you said 100% in regards to local autonomy and everything else. But I'm essentially a pragmatist and look for ways to put the discontent into practice. And yes, it has to start locally and then expand from there.
There are two relatively recent events that give me hope; the first was the Gamestop rebellion, the second was the demise of Bud Light. These give me hope that there is an awakening among us "deplorables" that united we are far more powerful than the establishment. But how to turn those episodes into a movement? I think it takes something along the lines of the 1970s-80s style Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) who got volunteers to get people to sign petitions for grass-roots changes; ballot initiatives at the state level, local ordinances, bond issues, all focused on the things that mattered at the local level. This led to an astonishing success at municipal, county, and state level government for the "old" Democratic Party (which at the time focused on worker issues and consumer safety, if you recall). We need a return to that kind of grass roots activism.
The problem is when 80% of people in say, San Francisco, think Gavin Newsome is doing a great job the voters themselves are the problem. This is why we need to flex the collective muscles of the working class beyond the local level. So it takes an approach from both above and below, if you get my meaning...that is, local and more broadly.
Anyway it sounds like i'm in violent agreement with you, as my wife says. Thanks for taking the time to respond to me in detail. I'm angry and frustrated, like do many Americans these days. Keep up the good work; you're doing more than I am!
Many thanks, erniet. My own late-life pragmatism is what led me to start the Quality of Life Resistance Movement. True, the collective muscle of the working class has atrophied -- largely from neglect and addiction-- in recent decades. And true, both top-down and bottom-up would be more ideal than exclusive reliance on either. But right now only one direction has the full force of institutional tyranny, and only one direction is feeling it.
The Gamestop rebellion and Bud Light fiasco are certainly cases in point. We might also take stock in the fact that the first Republican presidential debate on Fox last month drew about 13 million viewers while Tucker Carlson's interview w/Donald Trump on X (aired live at the same time) has drawn more than 250 million views.
I would love to hear testimony from you or others you may know about successful efforts -- including labor disputes -- to re-establish control over their own lives, families, and communities. Any personal, familial, or local community story or testimony that speaks to the battle against Huxwell and the effort to restore the quality of life.
Anger and frustration can be great liberators. Or jailers. All things in moderation...
Meanwhile, you can always find me here. I truly appreciate your time and consideration, and all the best to you and yours.
Jeff
Thanks for the kind reaction, Cynthia. Don't know if you're a baseball fan, but check out my essay, Baseball and My Father (https://open.substack.com/pub/qolrm/p/baseball-and-my-father?r=7hc45&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web). It's where I introduce the theory that all creation is a function of rhythm, and all artists create by ear.
Fantastic! I love this, Jeff. Thank you for recommending my substack too. Making art is how I keep some QoL in my little patch of the planet. 🙏🏽😌 looking forward to reading all of your info here!
Thank you for reaching out, Isma'il. Agreed, there's much spiritual, social, emotional, and physical pain in the historical downstream of Western colonialism. But that doesn't distinguish it from the pain left in the wake of other empires like the Romans, the Moors, the Mongols, Persians, etc.
Ancestry matters for the same reason borders matter: they both protect and promote the spiritual, social, emotional, and physical integrity of those who dwell within them. While it might be meaningful for the ancestors of the oppressed to hear an apology from the ancestors of the oppressors, it will do nothing to change the ancestral kamma of either. The only functional extension of ancestral kamma comes in forgiveness, and a willingness to move on. History repeats itself for a reason: to give us plenty of opportunities to forgive.
Submitting oneself to the righteous vengeance of another, however justified, may be purifying for some, but may -- in the end -- be less likely to breed forgiveness, and more likely to breed new cycles of hurt and vengeance. Vengeance feels good, but it has nothing to do with forgiveness. If you want vengeance to right past wrongs, seek vengeance. If you want to move on with your life and carve new ancestral paths, put down the sword and offer forgiveness, no strings attached.
I agree that a deeper appreciation of spirituality requires a measure of repentance. But of what use is repentance if it comes in response to vengeance? To wit: the virtue signals of the woke are altogether repentant -- and entirely self-serving. Repentance in response to vengeance sounds more like a confession solicited under duress. Forgive my Western cynicism, but only in utopian cloud cities are we likely to find the Shalom of wholeness restored. Cultures oppressed by Western colonialists aren't the only ones trapped in the cycles of trauma and vengeance. The familial and social cycles of trauma and vengeance are visited on the bodies and souls of men and women of all cultures and religions alike -- by men and women of all cultures and religions alike. No doubt, Allah knows best...
Isma'il...Peace to you. Just a quick note to say much I enjoyed our virtual discussion, and to thank you sincerely for your well-considered contribution. I look forward to our next encounter. All shalom to you and yours till then.
Dear Isma’il,
I’m not versed in your religious ways; I am trying to understand your POV. I am Catholic and I cannot reconcile vengeance with forgiveness. My simplistic, Catholic mind knows only that unconditional love and forgiveness is the Way as described in the New Testament. Peace.
Thanks, Isma'il. I would suggest that your authenticity has nothing to do with my repentance. How others treat you is up to them. How you treat others is up to you. We all have the capacity to analyze the behaviors of our ancestors. Further, we have the obligation to reject those behaviors that can only continue to hurt us, our families, and future ancestors. Both the West and the East have inflicted the world with colonial hordes and slave traders over the millennia. And both the West and the East have advanced our common interests as well. The similarities almost always emerge organically, whereas the differences are almost always manufactured. One seeks the truth while the other seeks the advantage. Vengeance requires a forge. Forgiveness requires a heart.