Messages in a Bottle

Writing about Life in a World where Everything Is Connected with Everything Else, but It's All Tangled Together in a Disorderly Way...

AI-generated image of a message in a bottle

Everything Is Connected, But Tangled Together

Everything is connected, but it’s all tangled together in a disorderly way. You cannot really know much of anything purely in the abstract (which is why so many academics can be so devilishly smart and yet so childishly stupid at the same time¹). To really understand a thing requires knowing how that thing works, concretely, in the “real” world, and in relation to all sorts of other things that effect it and that are effected by it in turn. In other words, true understanding requires Right-Brain activation.²

An example: how do you run faster? This question seems simple and straightforward. After all, we learn how to run as toddlers without anyone really teaching us. Yet even this most basic activity, if you want to improve your performance of it beyond a certain point, requires at least some knowledge of nutrition, physiology, and even psychology.

What does this intricate interconnectedness of everything mean? Well, for me it frequently means writers’ block. I have what I believe to be some genuine insight about the world, or I find some interesting issue to explore, but writing about it seems to be a Herculean task because pulling on this seemingly isolated thread soon leads to a tangled web involving a host of other vexing issues, which are all tied together (ostensibly) haphazardly. To write competently about one thing entails some minimal understanding of many things, and of how all those things are co-related. Moreover, to understand how something is now, usually requires you to know something about how it came to be. Writing about nearly anything requires some knowledge of history — and in this clownworld where even the present is often falsified in absurdly Orwellian ways, it’s reasonable to presume that much of the historical record is similarly riddled with lies.

This pattern also makes it difficult to navigate Life well. The older I get, the more I appreciate how complicated and challenging Life really is. There’s so much information coming at you so fast, and the world is so dynamic and changes so rapidly, that by the time you cobble together a workable map to put into perspective your goals and the obstacles that you need to overcome to attain those goals, the world has changed, and very likely you have also changed, and your map now probably contains dangerously misleading anachronisms.

Life is a never-ending process of:

• Trial-and-error and learning how to learn from your errors and your successes;

• Comparing notes with others, including those who lived in different times and places, abstracting the principles that apply to your own situation, and figuring out how to apply that wisdom in your own life;

• Gradually honing your discernment, and in a fast-paced society characterized by frequent one-off, arms-length transactions, where you don’t have the luxury of really getting to know people over time, that means learning a few reliable rules-of-thumb for evaluating the trustworthiness of others;

• Cultivating your own self-awareness and figuring out how to use your gut instincts without being misled by them;

• Developing your ability to analyze sudden bursts of new information about novel situations, to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information, and then to synthesize the relevant information into a workable strategy;

• Etc., etc., et freaking cetera — there’s so much more involved in the process that it would take an entire library of books — or rather, living an entire lifetime (and probably beyond) — to understand the process fully.

And Then There’s All The Lies and Gaslighting

And to complicate these already complex matters even more, you not only have to overcome your own cognitive biases and inadvertent delusions, but you have to deal with so many well-intentioned people who wish to share the fruits of their unacknowledged cognitive biases and inadvertent delusions with you; and worse still, you have to contend with the endless lies polluting the public discourse, lies that have been deliberately engineered by malicious people trying to manipulate you and everyone like you.

And you have to do all of that without becoming cynical and bitter yourself, and that can be extraordinarily difficult. When you see the asymmetry between the terrible, even catastrophic harms those liars cause, on the one hand, and the absurdly stupid and petty reasons they tell those lies, on the other, the natural response is to hate them for it. People like Bill Gates and George Soros have levels of money and influence that are simply unimaginable for most of us; they are freed from all the ordinary constraints that the rest of us face; they have “fuck-you money” piled on top of “fuck-you money;” yet this is how they choose to expend their resources? By creating diabolical schemes to steal the little bit of freedom and financial opportunity that we still have left? By funding scamdemics and anarcho-tyranny and undermining the foundation of our civilization in order to make a few extra bucks from its collapse?

When I think of these demonic oligarchs and their crimes against humanity, I am reminded of the biblical passage where Nathan the prophet tells King David a parable about a rich man who stole a poor man’s only sheep (in order to prick David’s conscience about how he betrayed Uriah the Hittite in order to steal his wife, Bathsheba):

And the Lord sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds: But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveler unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him.

And David's anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die: And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity. (2 Sam 12: 1-6, KJV.)

A similar pattern is at play with the criminal elites and how they prey so spitefully and destructively upon the rest of humanity.

But true though that may be, and as natural as it is for us to respond by becoming cynical and bitter, that response harms only ourselves. As Richard Nixon said, (after learning this lesson a bit too late):

Always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember: others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win, unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself. (Excerpt from Nixon’s Farewell Speech to the White House Staff.)

This is a lesson I am still very much in the process of learning myself, as those of you who’ve read some of my angrier rants and more acerbic satires have no doubt noticed. (One of the points in favor of Christianity is that it really is the only philosophical or religious system that deals so directly and unflinchingly with the inescapable need for forgiveness; the New Age, Inc. gurus have tried to steal this element of Christianity and repackage it without any real concept of “sin” to give it context, and their project has accomplished nothing except to give a spiritual veneer to American-style consumerist narcissism.) I am reconsidering my approach to some of these issues and how I write about them. Somehow, I need to thread that needle: acknowledge and confront “evil,” but do so without becoming cynical and bitter myself. Hopefully this time next year, I will be able to see some real progress in that direction.

We are essentially like John Murdoch in the movie Dark City: we “wake up” in a world so bizarre it often seems like a dream, with an unsettling amnesia about who and what we are and how we came to be, and with a vague sense that larger, likely malevolent forces are at work behind the superficial story we are encouraged to believe about ourselves and the world. What is strangest of all, most humans seem not to be bothered by any of this; rather, they contentedly and even cheerfully engage this unnatural Matrix on its own terms and without wondering what any of it means. If we’re lucky, we eventually encounter a few others who share our suspicions and our willingness to ask heterodox, but good faith³, questions.

And in the midst of this madness, some of us try to write down the questions and tentative answers we discover, and we send our writings out into the online ether, like a message in a bottle. We gather the bottles that come our way and read the messages inside, and we send back our replies. These conversations seem to help everyone who participates, so we keep doing it.

As we ply our trade and hone our skills on our little corner of the internet, we gradually notice that the *big* money and honorary checkmarks often seem to go to those who say exactly what the regime wants you to think, and no more — those willing to prostitute their platforms and talents to broadcast nonstop, brain-anesthetizing, regime-friendly propaganda; those who, as

Librarian of Celaeno

put it, seem to have “tens of thousands of paid subscribers” and “tens of readers,” given the suspicious discrepancy between their staggering numbers of paid subscribers, on the one hand, and the relatively meager, robot-like engagement their posts typically get from these paying “readers,” on the other — could this be the latest iteration of “Project Mockingbird?” Anyway, I digress. But you see what we have to contend with? We just want an open and honest conversation about Life’s mysteries. Of course, it would also be nice if we could make a little money in the process and thereby get some financial independence from the regime’s economic shenanigans, but wherever we go, Big Brother is there with his fingers on the scale, funneling easy money towards the smug and self-congratulatory media apparatchiks who speak Power to Truth and demand censorship of our thoughtcrimes.⁴

Moving Forward, with All That in Mind

Anyway, with the start of the new year and all, I was thinking about what to do with this substack. I’m almost two years into it, and I still don’t know precisely what in the hell this blog is supposed to be. I know all the business-savvy people would tell me that you have to find a narrow niche, something easily definable and profitably brandable. Unfortunately, I am not wired that way, and I cannot even pretend to be. I have certain themes that I keep coming back to (perhaps to your annoyance, especially if one of my recurring topics offends you); but I am seeking Truth and Meaning, and that quest is incompatible with such conventional limitations. Since I’ve been on substack, I’ve changed, and so has my writing (hopefully for the better!).

I look back at the person I was even just a year ago and wonder at how naïve and normie my views were on certain topics. It’s like growing up: you think as a teenager that you are so much more mature and wise than you were as a young child, but of course when you look back at your teenage years as an adult, you shake your head and laugh at some of the childish things you believed about yourself and about the world as a teenager. That’s exactly how I feel when I think of the worldview that I had circa January 2020: I believed at that time that, although there was much that I did not know, I more or less had a decent overall understanding of how the world worked. In reality, I suffered from a terrible case of Gell-Mann Amnesia: I knew after Iraq that the military-industrial complex was completely corrupt (although I admittedly should have known that long before then); I knew after 2008 that the financial system was completely corrupt (although again, I should have known that long before then); but somehow, I did not question whether other institutions and industries, such as the healthcare system, suffered from the same corruption. For me, 2020 was like the scene in Dark City⁵ where John Murdoch, on the run from the mysterious strangers, remains awake while those around him are all simultaneously put to sleep. And after that, I had to scrap my existing paradigm for making sense of the world and build a new one, on the fly.

Now, that brings me back to the point of this substack. Back in March 2022, I started a substack to do humor writing, as an extension of my hobby-level interest in standup comedy. I like comedy for its own sake, but also because it provides a format for exploring pretty much any area of Life, finding interesting connections between seemingly unrelated things, and revealing those connections in fun and surprising ways. Maybe I would have done better if I had just stuck to that, but in light of how dreadfully serious the situation in our world has been (it’s all fun and games until your government flexes on its ability to deprive you of Life, liberty and property without any kind of due process and on the flimsiest of obviously bullshit justifications — and hordes of your fellow humans just nod in agreement and chant the regime’s stupid slogans in response to these outrages), it has been practically impossible to maintain a constantly humorous approach. I have explored more serious storytelling, sketches, parables, and essays, as well as the occasional angry rant about the latest cultural outrage being pushed on us by the powers that be. In doing so, I had an example in one of my all-time favorite comedians, Woody Allen, who went from clever bits and absurd movies based around slapstick and silly wordplay, like Take the Money and Run, to somber, philosophically rich masterpieces, like Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point. Obviously, I’m no Woody Allen, but I do admire his willingness to explore and evolve creatively; and I hope to continue exploring new styles and formats myself.

So what’s to come for this substack in 2024? Time will tell, my frens. Time will tell. Remember how relatively normal 2019 was, like the calm before the crazy shit-storm of 2020? And recall that 2020 was the year of a Presidential election in The United States of Enron, with the Globohomo regime desperate to defeat the system-disrupter known as Donald J Trump? Well, keep in mind that 2024 is similarly an election year, with that same system-disrupter seeking the Presidency, and consider how much more chaotic 2023 was than 2019 — the past year we’ve seen escalating war in Eurasia and heard ominous rumors of war out of East Asia; meanwhile, domestically, the American regime has unleashed open lawfare on its political enemies and declared millions of voters to be an existential threat because of their views. I think you can reasonably conclude that 2024 is going to be the craziest year in living memory. God only knows what’s coming and what it will all mean.

For now, at least, I plan to continue putting my little messages into these substack bottles⁶ and casting them out upon the internet’s waters. The little community of heterodox seekers and warriors I’ve found through this platform has been a Godsend — tonic frens like

Mark Bisone

,

John Carter

,

Grant Smith

,

Harrison Koehli

,

L.P. Koch

; fellow Gnostics (or Gnostic-adjacent metaphysicians) like

Rurik Skywalker

,

Neoliberal Feudalism

, and

William Hunter Duncan

; seeming Renaissance men of wide learning and deep insight like

Chris Langan

,

Librarian of Celaeno

,

Tree of Woe

, and

Theophilus Chilton

, as well as some Renaissance women like

Megha Lillywhite

; real journalists like

Lorenzo Warby

,

Helen Dale

,

Christopher Brunet

, and

Chris Bray

; innovative artists and cultural explorers like

Billionaire Psycho

,

Yakubian Ape

,

Josh Slocum

,

Aly Dee

,

Rachel Haywire

,

John Psmith

,

Chris Waldburger

,

Yuri Bezmenov

,

The Inmate

,

Morgthorak the Undead

, and

Mark Bisone

(Mark deserves his own category, but I don’t have a single term comprehensive enough to capture everything that he brings to the table; that’s why I listed him twice); and so many more that even a list the length of an entire post would miss most of them.

Friends and fellow weirdos, we stand at the precipice of some truly incredible and chaotic times. And Lord willing, throughout 2024 (and beyond) I’ll be reporting to you live (or almost live) from the margins of this crazy twilight zone.

If you find my “messages in a bottle” meaningful or entertaining, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription — and if you can’t, I completely understand: I subscribe to as many substacks as I can afford, including a revolving set of substacks to which I pay for a few months and pause for a few months and then pay again for a few months, in order to try to support their writers with something in exchange for the value I get from reading them — and if yours is one of the substacks that I sometimes have to pause, or one that I am presently reading for free, just know that this is completely due to the limitations of my own finances, and not at all because of the quality of your writing. There are so many great writers and thinkers on this platform that it is truly an honor to count myself among your ranks.

Dear readers, we’ve got a long way to go in this psychological war before sanity is restored in our culture, so postings will continue until morale improves — both my own morale and, hopefully, yours as well!

1. At least, academics used to be both high-IQ and childishly ignorant, before the academy DIEd completely; now, as Claudine the Fake and Gay and others like her show, academics are embarrassingly low-IQ, in addition to being childishly ignorant.

2. There’s a whole rabbit hole of insights to explore, with regards to the brain’s hemispheric differences (as explicated most notably by Iain McGilchrist), and

John Carter

and

Winston Smith

have some excellent posts on this theme:

Right Brain Activation

3. Seeking in good faith, i.e., with a real desire to find Truth (even if such knowledge is impossible in our current state), is absolutely critical. Many people are heterodox, but have no interest in the search for Truth: they ask questions only to “critique” and to undermine any bonds or norms that they find inconvenient. In other words, “Do what thou wilt” is the whole of their illegitimate Law; they care nothing whatsoever for Truth or any higher Meaning.

4. For more on these curious cases of selective outrage and censoriousness, where questioning regime narratives is verboten, but real evil, such as big social media platforms boosting pedophile networks with their algorithms, is completely kosher, check out:

5. Howdie Mickoski gives an interesting analysis of the movie Dark City in this video (also available on Rumble):

6. So I cannot refer, however obliquely, to a great Police song and not drop the music video for it: