This is just what I needed, Harrison. And it's what a lot of people need, even though they don't know it.
Please pardon what is going to initially sound like a Personal Feels story. It's not; it's about the concept.
I've been in longterm psychotherapy since the rupture and the Cluster B awakening in my life 6 years ago. There have been times that were so difficult all I wanted to do was complain to my therapist about the pointless suffering.
He reminds me that it's not pointless. It's necessary. We must all suffer at some times in order to gain the things that your article talks about. We must be forced to think and feel our way through it. That's how we learn what is valuable and worth striving for, and how to correct ourselves when we stray from a productive path.
Sep 28, 2022·edited Sep 28, 2022Liked by Harrison Koehli
That’s some strong meat you’ve got here. I’ve been feeling the same, and your eloquent words were very helpful for me in getting a better grasp of the broad dimensions of our current state.
I’ve been viewing this as at least partially a purification process, coupled with what amounts to a much needed spanking for His Children by God. Lately my mind has been drawn to passages from the book of Hebrews. Chapter 12:4-13
“You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons,
“MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD,
NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM;
FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES,
AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.”
It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.
And the last verse of the chapter “Our God is a consuming fire.”
It’s going to continue to heat up, of that I’ve little doubt.
I wouldn’t discount teleological approaches but they often strike me as backward constructions.
Regarding pathological political developments most people lack a visceral understanding what this can mean for them. Anecdote alert:
I grew up in West Germany in the 70s and 80s. The NS period was absolutely everywhere in school, in every class and every subject, repeatedly over the 13 years of schooling (PE may have been exempt). Yet when I was 13 I caused a massive row in class. Can’t remember the background but we were talking about the youth organisations and all my friends were adamant that they would have never joined the Hitler youth, that they would’ve hidden Jews and so on. I pointed out that yes, we would all have been in the HJ and the girl equivalent, our (young, very nice) teacher would have led the girl branch and We. Would. Have. Loved. It.
Massive, massive row, I had to go see the principal, my teacher cried, there was a special PT conference (in which my dad made my teacher cry again), good times. Point being: people like to see themselves as good, can’t imagine themselves as doing evil and unless they have direct, visceral experience to the contrary this naivety can and will be abused. Only after the abuse will a portion of the populace have developed an ideological immune system so to speak that will keep totalitarian impulses at bay for a while. These people die off and round and round she goes. No teleology necessary.
I liked this article. I think it's right. There is cause effect laws of nature (-or the universe as the author says) at play here-always. I also think it's like a duty of a person encountering suffering to attribute that to cause effect. To not do so, other than denying growth & change, is to attribute arbitrary random chaos to the world- which is difficult to rule out completely as a factor , but seems to me, based on my own lived experience, that cause effect, teleology , or taking responsibility for one's own misfortune to be a better tool to transform adversity to acceptance.
Man is free. Man is free to have his spirit align with the Holy and free to not align with the Holy.
Progress is myth. Change constant. If man does not align with the Holy he remains in the world as "so human an animal.". And those humans who are more beast than man will prey on him and now empowered by no restraint will using knowledge play Demiurge. Following Vico-Relying on a complex etymology, Vico argues in the Scienza Nuova that civilization develops in a recurring cycle (ricorso) of three ages: the divine, the heroic, and the human. Each age exhibits distinct political and social features and can be characterized by master tropes or figures of language. The giganti of the divine age rely on metaphor to compare, and thus comprehend, human and natural phenomena. In the heroic age, metonymy and synecdoche support the development of feudal or monarchic institutions embodied by idealized figures. The final age is characterized by popular democracy and reflection via irony; in this epoch, the rise of rationality leads to barbarie della reflessione or barbarism of reflection, and civilization descends once more into the poetic era. Taken together, the recurring cycle of three ages – common to every nation – constitutes for Vico a storia ideale eterna or ideal eternal history. Therefore, it can be said that all history is the history of the rise and fall of civilizations, for which Vico provides evidence (up until, and including the Graeco-Roman historians). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Science
Another great article, I really appreciate how you are tying together the overall theme in your articles, I am still going through them all from Psychology of Totalitarianism, Ignorance of Evil, Ponerogenesis and the other God etc. and about to read Lobaczewski's book.
Igor Shafarevich: “The death of humanity,” he says, “is not only a conceivable result when socialism triumphs, but it represents the very goal of socialism.”
My teacher tells me that: 1) Spiritual beings are meaning makers. They have no essential purpose or meaning beyond the urge to create things and play with them; 2) The games of life require purposes - the higher the purpose the better (the longer the game is likely to last). Beings willing to step up to the level of "game makers" are the ones that create our games and their purposes (or narratives). Others, given a game to play, are very good at doing that - they are the players. Others are too upset or distracted to play effectively. They become the "pawns" and "broken pieces."
Unless one is "happy" being a pawn, one's personal goals or purposes should probably include improving one's ability to play, with the eventual goal of being able to create one's own games.
Meanwhile, there is a constant ebb and flow of efforts to recruit players and pawns to the various different games and teams that exist in this universe. Part of the challenge of those who want to understand the events of life is to discover the full range of games that are being played in this universe.
And our biggest weakness is thinking we have found the "top" game, or to value one set of meanings too much over another set. Though we control the meaning of our lives, to live together we have arrived at certain agreements about "good" and "bad." If we stray too far from those agreements, we will get in trouble with each other, and likely with ourselves.
Your exploration and observations of Lobaczewski's treatise to humanity's future are top-notch. Looking forward to reading them when i'm focused & keen enough to let it all seep in. Bless!
A bit like what happens when a predator species out-reproduces its food source? A die-off becomes necessary for purposes of returning to ecological balance? I know that's a bit of a cliché/platitude, but there is something of value in the thought. As in ecology, likewise in evolution, dynamic forces may ultimately result in an improved fitness situation (for the survivors) but that comes by way of great misery for those who do not survive. It's understandable that subjectively we don't want to live through the great cull. Nor do we want to see our children go through it. And there's no comfort in invoking further platitudes from Nietzsche. But from another perspective, coldly objective, such things may be as inevitable as they are necessary. Maybe that recognition is as close as the secularist gets to something like a perception of god.
Another excellent piece. I agree that there is, or at least it is useful to believe in order to escape it that there is. purpose to what is happening. While things seem bad right now, and may even seem to getting worse by the day, there is the alternative perspective: that the signs are we are awakening to something better, and these times are just the death throes of the old, and the birthing pains of the new. There are definitely more and more of us waking up to what is going on, and becoming aware that there are better, healthier ways for us to be in the world. The online world, despite its many problems and negative impacts, and platforms just like this one, are allowing those of us who glimpse it to gather and amplify.
One doesn't have to look far in this world to see new enlightened leadership emerging, from the likes of Dr Stephen Porges, Dr Iain McGilchrist, Dr Gabor Mate, Prof. Andrew Huberman, Lex Fridman and many, many others. More people are listening to them now than to the corporate media and to our failing institutions, and so there is still reason to be hopeful. I will also look up the others you mention, and should also add you to my list of the wise ones.
There's an entirely practical perspective to all of this, too. When we discovered fossils fuels - a highly concentrated form of energy which led to the industrial revolution - we behaved just as any species would. We used it to expand our numbers and uplift ourselves out of our harsh standard of living.
However, we were also smart enough to great god-like technologies and yet we were oblivious to the damage and waste we were creating with these technologies because, like any other species, we did not recognize the simple fact that we live on a finite planet and nature is a brutal teacher. We were also kept ignorant of basic math and the dangers of exponential growth.
So, here we are, facing the horrific consequences despite countless scientists and leaders warning us for over a century that maybe the trajectory we chose would not lead us to utopia. Instead we're facing a hellish dystopian future far worse than Huxley, Orwell or anyone else could even imagine.
This is just what I needed, Harrison. And it's what a lot of people need, even though they don't know it.
Please pardon what is going to initially sound like a Personal Feels story. It's not; it's about the concept.
I've been in longterm psychotherapy since the rupture and the Cluster B awakening in my life 6 years ago. There have been times that were so difficult all I wanted to do was complain to my therapist about the pointless suffering.
He reminds me that it's not pointless. It's necessary. We must all suffer at some times in order to gain the things that your article talks about. We must be forced to think and feel our way through it. That's how we learn what is valuable and worth striving for, and how to correct ourselves when we stray from a productive path.
That’s some strong meat you’ve got here. I’ve been feeling the same, and your eloquent words were very helpful for me in getting a better grasp of the broad dimensions of our current state.
I’ve been viewing this as at least partially a purification process, coupled with what amounts to a much needed spanking for His Children by God. Lately my mind has been drawn to passages from the book of Hebrews. Chapter 12:4-13
“You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons,
“MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD,
NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM;
FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES,
AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.”
It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.
And the last verse of the chapter “Our God is a consuming fire.”
It’s going to continue to heat up, of that I’ve little doubt.
I wouldn’t discount teleological approaches but they often strike me as backward constructions.
Regarding pathological political developments most people lack a visceral understanding what this can mean for them. Anecdote alert:
I grew up in West Germany in the 70s and 80s. The NS period was absolutely everywhere in school, in every class and every subject, repeatedly over the 13 years of schooling (PE may have been exempt). Yet when I was 13 I caused a massive row in class. Can’t remember the background but we were talking about the youth organisations and all my friends were adamant that they would have never joined the Hitler youth, that they would’ve hidden Jews and so on. I pointed out that yes, we would all have been in the HJ and the girl equivalent, our (young, very nice) teacher would have led the girl branch and We. Would. Have. Loved. It.
Massive, massive row, I had to go see the principal, my teacher cried, there was a special PT conference (in which my dad made my teacher cry again), good times. Point being: people like to see themselves as good, can’t imagine themselves as doing evil and unless they have direct, visceral experience to the contrary this naivety can and will be abused. Only after the abuse will a portion of the populace have developed an ideological immune system so to speak that will keep totalitarian impulses at bay for a while. These people die off and round and round she goes. No teleology necessary.
💬 In the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of champagne.
~~Paul Claudel
I liked this article. I think it's right. There is cause effect laws of nature (-or the universe as the author says) at play here-always. I also think it's like a duty of a person encountering suffering to attribute that to cause effect. To not do so, other than denying growth & change, is to attribute arbitrary random chaos to the world- which is difficult to rule out completely as a factor , but seems to me, based on my own lived experience, that cause effect, teleology , or taking responsibility for one's own misfortune to be a better tool to transform adversity to acceptance.
Man is free. Man is free to have his spirit align with the Holy and free to not align with the Holy.
Progress is myth. Change constant. If man does not align with the Holy he remains in the world as "so human an animal.". And those humans who are more beast than man will prey on him and now empowered by no restraint will using knowledge play Demiurge. Following Vico-Relying on a complex etymology, Vico argues in the Scienza Nuova that civilization develops in a recurring cycle (ricorso) of three ages: the divine, the heroic, and the human. Each age exhibits distinct political and social features and can be characterized by master tropes or figures of language. The giganti of the divine age rely on metaphor to compare, and thus comprehend, human and natural phenomena. In the heroic age, metonymy and synecdoche support the development of feudal or monarchic institutions embodied by idealized figures. The final age is characterized by popular democracy and reflection via irony; in this epoch, the rise of rationality leads to barbarie della reflessione or barbarism of reflection, and civilization descends once more into the poetic era. Taken together, the recurring cycle of three ages – common to every nation – constitutes for Vico a storia ideale eterna or ideal eternal history. Therefore, it can be said that all history is the history of the rise and fall of civilizations, for which Vico provides evidence (up until, and including the Graeco-Roman historians). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Science
Harrison, great work, passed along to me by one of our fellow writing students.
Another great article, I really appreciate how you are tying together the overall theme in your articles, I am still going through them all from Psychology of Totalitarianism, Ignorance of Evil, Ponerogenesis and the other God etc. and about to read Lobaczewski's book.
Igor Shafarevich: “The death of humanity,” he says, “is not only a conceivable result when socialism triumphs, but it represents the very goal of socialism.”
My teacher tells me that: 1) Spiritual beings are meaning makers. They have no essential purpose or meaning beyond the urge to create things and play with them; 2) The games of life require purposes - the higher the purpose the better (the longer the game is likely to last). Beings willing to step up to the level of "game makers" are the ones that create our games and their purposes (or narratives). Others, given a game to play, are very good at doing that - they are the players. Others are too upset or distracted to play effectively. They become the "pawns" and "broken pieces."
Unless one is "happy" being a pawn, one's personal goals or purposes should probably include improving one's ability to play, with the eventual goal of being able to create one's own games.
Meanwhile, there is a constant ebb and flow of efforts to recruit players and pawns to the various different games and teams that exist in this universe. Part of the challenge of those who want to understand the events of life is to discover the full range of games that are being played in this universe.
And our biggest weakness is thinking we have found the "top" game, or to value one set of meanings too much over another set. Though we control the meaning of our lives, to live together we have arrived at certain agreements about "good" and "bad." If we stray too far from those agreements, we will get in trouble with each other, and likely with ourselves.
Your exploration and observations of Lobaczewski's treatise to humanity's future are top-notch. Looking forward to reading them when i'm focused & keen enough to let it all seep in. Bless!
A bit like what happens when a predator species out-reproduces its food source? A die-off becomes necessary for purposes of returning to ecological balance? I know that's a bit of a cliché/platitude, but there is something of value in the thought. As in ecology, likewise in evolution, dynamic forces may ultimately result in an improved fitness situation (for the survivors) but that comes by way of great misery for those who do not survive. It's understandable that subjectively we don't want to live through the great cull. Nor do we want to see our children go through it. And there's no comfort in invoking further platitudes from Nietzsche. But from another perspective, coldly objective, such things may be as inevitable as they are necessary. Maybe that recognition is as close as the secularist gets to something like a perception of god.
Another excellent piece. I agree that there is, or at least it is useful to believe in order to escape it that there is. purpose to what is happening. While things seem bad right now, and may even seem to getting worse by the day, there is the alternative perspective: that the signs are we are awakening to something better, and these times are just the death throes of the old, and the birthing pains of the new. There are definitely more and more of us waking up to what is going on, and becoming aware that there are better, healthier ways for us to be in the world. The online world, despite its many problems and negative impacts, and platforms just like this one, are allowing those of us who glimpse it to gather and amplify.
One doesn't have to look far in this world to see new enlightened leadership emerging, from the likes of Dr Stephen Porges, Dr Iain McGilchrist, Dr Gabor Mate, Prof. Andrew Huberman, Lex Fridman and many, many others. More people are listening to them now than to the corporate media and to our failing institutions, and so there is still reason to be hopeful. I will also look up the others you mention, and should also add you to my list of the wise ones.
[ps reading your writings helped inspire and motivate me to add my two cents about these wider, bigger picture, societal level issues, from a trauma/nervous system dysregulation perspective, here is my contribution: https://garysharpe.substack.com/p/how-to-avoid-a-hybrid-orwellian-huxleyian ].
It's a long fall off that high horse
There's an entirely practical perspective to all of this, too. When we discovered fossils fuels - a highly concentrated form of energy which led to the industrial revolution - we behaved just as any species would. We used it to expand our numbers and uplift ourselves out of our harsh standard of living.
However, we were also smart enough to great god-like technologies and yet we were oblivious to the damage and waste we were creating with these technologies because, like any other species, we did not recognize the simple fact that we live on a finite planet and nature is a brutal teacher. We were also kept ignorant of basic math and the dangers of exponential growth.
So, here we are, facing the horrific consequences despite countless scientists and leaders warning us for over a century that maybe the trajectory we chose would not lead us to utopia. Instead we're facing a hellish dystopian future far worse than Huxley, Orwell or anyone else could even imagine.
Our descendants will curse our name.